So I was going to put an a16z podcast “Security’s Past, Present, and Future” as this week’s 「Podcast of the Week」…
Then on April. 23, I found that the podcast was deleted from all platform.
None of the links works now. (a16z, SoundCloud)
And I didn’t notice anything wrong when I listened…
Anyway, I will save this post for that podcast… as it has existed for around one week.
On 15 April 2019, shortly before 18:50 CEST, fire broke out beneath the roof of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. [Wikipedia]
When it comes to recover/rebuild the damaged masterpiece, the gaming industry will help.
The 2014 game ‘Assassin’s Creed Unity,’ set in Paris during the French Revolution, features a realistic 3D model of the historic house of worship. Caroline Miousse, an artist for the game, spent about two years perfecting the model of the cathedral that appears on gamers’ screens. [New York Post]
Game developer Ubisoft also employs several staff historians to help dig up any extra details the development team might need. [The Verge]
The level of details not only makes Assassin’s Creed a great game, but also could help to save the history and the real world.
Another very helpful resource is from Vassar art historian Andrew Tallon’s work of exquisite 3D laser maps of every detail of Notre Dame.
I know this doesn’t help, but we have exquisite 3D laser maps of every detail of Notre Dame, thanks to the incredible work of @Vassar art historian Andrew Tallon. Prof Tallon passed away last November, but his work will be absolutely crucial https://t.co/YJl3XXUZTg
— Hannah Groch-Begley (@grouchybagels) April 15, 2019
In the past, we have many artworks digitalized but mainly for a paining or a sculpture I guess. The tragedy happened in Paris will remind us of many other things to be digitalized. In the future, VR games would probably need even more details and virtually serve as a permanent digital copy of our history. Expect much more “digitalization work” to be done in the next few years. We may even digitalize an event or a piece of time in the digital world.
It’s going to be similar to the “genome bank” to preserve what have existed in this world.
Having lived for 3 years, the current Starbucks Rewards program will end on April 15, 2019. The most direct comparison with the new program is the cost of “a free drink” – raised from 125 stars to 150 stars, a 20% inflation.
Taking the previous revamp into account, from pre-April-2016 to post-April-2019, the program has been through 2 major changes with “points inflation” being the unchanged theme.
Let’s go back and do some calculation.
Program Redesign In April 2016
Starbucks Rewards has been through a redesign in April 2016, which transformed the transaction-based system into a value-based one.
Basically, before 2016, a $1.95 purchase is equivalent to a $5+ purchase in terms of stars earned (1 star; 12 starts = 1 free drink).
Assuming a customer would use his/her stars for a free item with an average value of $5:
This change was resonating with a broader trend in “rewards” offered by consumer-facing industries such as airlines.
American Airlines is the latest major airlines that changed its rewards calculation from distance-based to money-based (announced in November 2015, effective August 2016)
Program Redesign In April 2019
As I mentioned at the beginning, the new program features a 20% inflation in terms of redeeming free drinks.
For dollar values, in the 2016-version, a Starbucks star is approximately worth 4 cents ($5/125); now, it is approximately 3.33 cents ($5/150). [to enhance the utility, one could order a venti drink and add a shot, making free drink ~$9 so a star is worth ~7 cents before and ~6 cents in the new program]
However, better yields could be found in hot coffee/tea.
The items above will maintain the value of stars and provide the valuable revenue diversification for Starbucks (especially for lunch items).
Plus, those items usually involve less manual work from baristas. They could enhance the overall productivity for Starbucks stores and increase the profit margin on average.
Warby Parker Co-Founders and Co-CEOs Neil Blumenthal and Dave Gilboa
Just finished The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond this weekend and here is an excerpt I would really want to recommend, where you could literally replace “languages” with other words.
How do languages go extinct? … so too are there different ways of eradicating a language.
The most direct way is to kill almost all of its speakers…
The next most direct way to eradicate a language is not to kill its speakers, but instead to forbid them to use their language, and to punish them if they are caught doing so… the French government’s official policy is in effect to exclude the Breton language form primary and secondary schools…
But in most cases language loss proceeds by the more insidious process now under way at Rotokas… Young people in search of economics opportunity abandon their native-speaking villages and move the urban centers, where speakers of their own tribal language are greatly outnumbered by people from other tribal backgrounds, and where people needing to communicate with each other have no option except to speak the majority language…
Eventually, minority languages are spoken only by older people, until the last of them dies. Long before that end is reached, the minority language has degenerated through loss of its grammatical complexities, loss of forgotten native words, and incorporation of foreign vocabulary and grammatical features.
One big confirmation of our knowledge about the universe – the first picture of blackhole due to gravity is available.
target was a nearby galaxy dubbed M87 and its supermassive black hole, which packs the mass of six and half billion suns. Despite its size, the black hole is so far from Earth – 53 million light-years – that capturing the image took a telescope the size of the planet.
Meanwhile, a firm in China claimed the copyright of this picture and tried to charge fees for it.
The firm, called Visual China, is China’s largest stock images provider.
It shut its website and apologized on Friday after it falsely claimed copyright of images such as the first photo of a black hole and China’s national flag. [Reuters]
It is a time that China is doing more to protect intellectual property but company in this is embarrassing. It’s definitely not a representation of the “highest” level of IP protection in China, but it does show us that a lot of work needs to be done.
The S-1 of much anticipated Uber IPO is publicly available for the first time.
The valuation is said to be $90-100 billion, lower than previously reported.
That is also the reason that Lyft’s valuation is under pressure these days. It all makes that Lyft and Morgan Stanley have something to argue about… Lyft’s high valuation at IPO makes it difficult for Morgan Stanley and other banks to sell Uber. (and the pressure is much higher in such a big deal – $10 billion)
So relatively speaking, how much “higher” is Lyft valued?
La Croix may or may not be a one-time thing, but consumers’ tastes are shifting towards beverages that have less sugar and looks more healthy.
The overall market of carbonated & flavored bottled water is steadily growing.
Established companies are preparing for the shift, which started decades ago when obesity became a thing in the US.
Diet Coke was introduced almost 100 years after the original coke (1886 -> 1982). Coke Zero was introduced in 2005.
The pursuit for “healthy”, “organic” and “natural” has never stopped.
In 2008, The Coca-Cola Company purchased a 40% stake in Honest Tea at $43 million, and acquired the company in 2011.
Coca-cola also invested in ZICO Coconut water in 2009, and purchased a majority stake in ZICO Coconut water in 2012.
In 2017, Coke Zero has become Coke Zero Sugar with minor modifications (taste more like original coke).
Meanwhile, Pepsi Co has made a series of investments and acquisitions. The most recent move is to buy SodaStream for $3.2 billion.
I feel like consumers’ tastes in China need to catch-up…. at least a certain percentage of people should look for heathy brands. There is no well-recognized Chinese brand in this category (at least to me).
Future is closer than most will believe. Drone delivery is yet another example.
A few days ago (around April Fools’ Day), a FAKE video (by rendering) populated on Twitter, presenting an Amazon mothership equipped with drones.
However, this may not be far away from what the future will look like, especially for the drone part.
The idea could be seen in an Amazon patent US000009305280B120160405 filed in December 2014 and issued by the USPTO in April 2016.
This is part of Amazon Prime Air program first announced in 2013. It looks more viable on the drone-only side, the first delivery made in December 2016 in Cambridge, UK.
First-ever #AmazonPrimeAir customer delivery is in the books. 13 min—click to delivery. Check out the video: https://t.co/Xl8HiQMA1S pic.twitter.com/5HGsmHvPlE
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) December 14, 2016
And in 2017, an Amazon Prime Air drone dropped off some bottles of sunscreen for attendees at the company’s invite-only MARS conference in California. [The Verge]
In the US, FAA has selected 10 state, local and tribal governments for pilot programs in drone testing in May 2018. [More about the program]
Another exciting move is made by Alphabet’s Wing on Tuesday, which was granted approval in Canberra by Australian aviation authority CASA. Wing officially becomes world’s first drone delivery business according to The Guardian.
The deliveries will start with roughly 100 homes in the Canberra area. The drones are required to operate during daylight hours, banned from crossing over major roads and there’s a minimum distance they have to maintain from people on the ground.
Meanwhile, according to Wing’s website, they are going to launch the drone delivery service in Finland in spring of 2019, which will be their first operations in Europe.
Before this approval, in September 2016 at Virginia Tech, Wing (a Google X project then) has tested food delivery (Chipotle burritos) in the US for a tenth of a mile, maintaining the kind of line-of-sight flights that the FAA prefers (before any pilot programs). Virginia Tech is home to a U.S. FAA test site.
Wing made its first test in 2014 in Queensland, Australia, delivering a first aid kit, candy bars, dog treats and water to farmers.
Wing graduated from Google X in July 2018.
Earlier this year, JD.com announced that it has completed the first government approved drone flight in Indonesia, delivering backpacks and books to students in a local elementary school.
In China, JD has been approved for drone delivery services in provinces including Shanxi, Jiangsu, Qinghai, Guangdong, Hainan and Guangxi.