It’s Thursday! And since I don’t own cryptos I still have money in my pocket. I’m on with Mark Starling, Seth, John, and the First News 570 crew. This week, cold cash up cryptos down, El Goog comes in the clutch with Google I/O, a Waymo driverless vehicle pulls a runner. You can listen to Mark and I point and laugh while talking about the wild and crazy technology world every Thursday morning, LIVE at 6:43am Eastern.
WAYMO CAR RUNS AWAY WHEN TECH SUPPORT ARRIVES
Waymo rider JJRicks experienced an episode when his Level 4 Waymo got stuck at an intersection in Chandler, Arizona. Waymo Level 4 vehicles offer customers rides without a safety driver and on this occasion Joel Johnson’s Waymo decided stop at an intersection. Unfortunately, when roadside assistance arrived on the scene Joel’s Waymo…decided to run away. Really. His Waymo got confused when construction cones were placed in the intersection and left him stranded. When support arrived, the car decided to run away. Kind of like how a child does when a parent catches them doing something they shouldn’t. We still can’t explain why AI learning systems like this work, and it shows.
EL GOOG HOLDS I/O CONFERENCE WITH NEW FEATURES
Google annual developer conference was canceled last year due to COVID-19, but it’s back and this year’s I/O Conference has some interesting features. Google announced its new Android operating system, Android 12 and has some features that have been familiar to Apple users like how Siri will create new Memories from a Camera Roll, but some new things like using AI to detect skin conditions. Android 12 will be featuring a new 3D video conferencing feature called Starlight which makes it appear people are speaking with you front and center. Android 12 will also feature a light to indicate when the camera and microphone are on, like iOS. Android 12 will also be featuring new privacy controls that allow a user to limit how much location information is reported to app developers.
BITCOIN, ETHER, AND THE DOGE SEE LOSSES AFTER MUSK AND CHINA KNOCK CRYPTOS
First, it was Elon Musk saying DogeCoin was just a hustle. Then, it was Elon Musk saying BitCoin was bad for the environment. Then, it was China banning financial institutions and payment processors from accepting cryptocurrencies as payment for transactions. Either way, cryptocurrencies and the trading platforms that exchange them took a hit this week. BitCoin closed at $37k per coin from its high of $64k yesterday. Ether closed down 22.5% of its value, and the Doge closed at 35 cents per coin losing 26% of its value. All told, $1 trillion, a trillion with a ‘T’ of value was wiped out this week in the crypto market. Binance and the CoinBase trading platform were experiencing issues processing trades with CoinBase losing 5.9% of its value yesterday.
