Tech

Uber wants to launch a system of flying cars to move people around cities, with a goal of putting demonstration projects in place by 2020. "I hate that term (flying car), but we’ll have to live with it," the company’s chief product officer, Jeff Holden, said at the Uber Elevate Summit in Dallas. The vision was published in a 99-page white paper last year.

The ride-sharing giant announced a series of partnerships to manufacture “vertical takeoff and landing” (VTOL) vehicles and put networks in place, a system dubbed Uber Elevate.

Predicting and acting upon financial fraud is one of the prime areas of application of advanced big data techniques like machine learning (ML). There are many different types of fraud related to the financial industry. The Laundromat is a case of money laundering (MLA), which is estimated to generate about US$300 billion in illicit proceeds annually in the US alone.

MLA has more than financial impact, as it is associated with activities ranging from trafficking people and drugs to terrorism and corruption. It’s no wonder then that governments around the world are trying to crack down on MLA by means of regulation on financial institutions.

In a recent survey of US college students, commissioned by LendEDU, a consumer finance comparison site, only 8% of respondents said they didn’t have a Netflix account. That means that a whopping 92% have Netflix. Additionally, 5% said they used their current or ex-girlfriend’s or boyfriend’s account. Meanwhile, only 34% said they have their own account.
“Netflix continues to be the clear leader in online streaming, but is hurting in one key performance metric,” the report said. Netflix is also the most popular video platform among teens, beating out both YouTube and cable TV in a recent Piper Jaffray survey.

CERN is known for the latest discoveries in nuclear research, but the European organization is also important in many other fields, including the economy. Tiago Araujo, Knowledge Transfer Officer at CERN, explains why to Marketplus.

Usually, the technology CERN develops becomes important for the general public, too, maybe years later. Could you give us an example?

It’s true, due to the specificity of our scientific challenges, our technologies are often state-of-the-art. A very good example of an early stage development ongoing at CERN are the high magnetic field magnets. We are producing unprecedented magnetic field intensity magnets that are potentially very interesting for example for the ultra-high MRI (Magnetic Resonance Image).

Doctors are stretched thin, especially in underserved areas, to respond to the growing needs of the population. Meanwhile, training physicians and health workers is historically an arduous process that requires years of education and experience. Fortunately, artificial intelligence can help the healthcare sector to overcome present and future challenges.

One of the most basic yet efficient use cases of artificial intelligence is to optimize the clinical process. Traditionally, when patients feel ill, they go to the doctor, who checks their vital signs, asks questions, and gives a prescription. Now, AI assistants can cover a large part of clinical and outpatient services, freeing up doctors’ time to attend to more critical cases.

Facebook Messenger now has over 1.2 billion monthly active users, with the platform adding 200 million users in just eight months.

The milestone, announced ahead of Facebook’s annual conference for software developers next week by head of Messenger David Marcus, is key to Facebook’s push to own more of people’s time and wallets on mobile devices as the arms race with Google and other competitors escalates.

What are the scenarios of roboadvisory?

«According to our experience, it will take quite a lot of time before roboadvisory reaches a level of professionalism and competence. We believe that one day there will be a mix: the discretion of those investing in my opinion may be reduced but if customers want tailor-made solutions, the presence of man will always be necessary.

Startups in the music industry are nowadays flourishing, trying to answer some of the questions that the same technology that allows their existence is posing. Data security, secondary ticketing, royalties, hit music: every topic has someone covering it in more or less successful ways.

The social media help ask these questions but also spread the word about these startups, while many of them get a kickstart from incubators. Marketplus is running a special regarding these startups.

Daniela Grecnerova is co-founder of TootToot, one of the startups that were singled out as Top 10 Music Start-ups to Watch at Eurosonic 2017. TootToot is, as she explains, both a social network putting fans in contact with artists and a ticketing company: «We started as a platform for fans and artists to get closer to each other – we created a platform that is designed for concert requests – to be simple but effective and powerful. Then we added our own ticketing solution – it was the natural following step. Also, we cooperate with other ticketing companies as affiliate partners to provide our users with a complete calendar of events tailor-made for everyone according to his/her music taste and requests».