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So many good things to take away from that read.

But the fact is that of all the world’s deterministic perfect information games — tic-tac-toe, chess, checkers, Othello, xiangqi, shogi — Go is the only one in which computers don’t stand a chance against humans.

A fantastic read on the quest to build a program capable to beat human pro-players, and quite metaphorically on the ever-going battle man vs machine.

#programming #ai #go

Google has updated its apps for iOS and Android with a bunch of new features, including Uber integration directly in its collection of options for travel..

I'd love to see what kind of impact this can have on Uber activity, especially in terms on new users recruting.

Anyway, hard to think this has nothing to do with the quarter billion dollars Google recently poured into Uber's wallet.

#google #google maps #uber

In 1692 an artist known only as "A. Boogert" sat down to write a book in Dutch about mixing watercolors.

Let me buy some posters.

#art #design

Forbes has a great piece on the story behind the mega-acquisition of Whatsapp by Facebook.

What I find fascinating is the role played by Zuckerberg in closing those deals (the story was roughly the same for Instagram). He is the one approaching Koum or Systrom, he is doing all the convincing, he is dropping the (big) number and voilà, a handshake and everyone can marvel.

Time only will say if those acquisitions were worth it, but it should be no debate that Zuckerberg is running a tight ship. He has a pretty clear vision of where Facebook is going, and is determined to make it happen.

#facebook #Whatsapp #instagram #zuckerberg

Nokia announced yesterday a line-up of three Android phones (a forked version of Android, mind you, meaning no access to all the core Google applications such as Gmail, Gmaps… already off to a good start)

The Verge has its review up:

Nokia has been working on the X for a long time

And then:

Using the X can be quite frustrating, however, as the entire interface is prone to slow response and a lot of lag.

Who in their right mind would buy such crap. It’s going to cost Nokia a lot of money to put this in the hand of people. But:

Microsoft will control the future of Nokia X.

Which means that these phones won’t get anywhere near the amount of support they would need to become relevant.

[…] these Android phones are still a puzzling result of what Nokia has always done best: experimentation.

Can really a company like Nokia afford this type of (very costly) experimentation? I highly doubt it.

#nokia #microsoft #android

Four years ago, Brian Acton was looking for a job. His job at Yahoo, where he'd filled many engineering roles over 11 years, had come to an end.

Life ensues...

#facebook #whatsapp

In a blog post yesterday, Google announced their plans to expand Fiber into 9 new metro areas.

2 weeks after the Comcast-TWC announcement, I can imagine how hopeful people living in those areas might be about this piece of news.

I'm especially interested by the presence of San Jose on the list : Google expanding Fiber in the heart of Silicon Valley is a big deal: on one hand, a lot of pressure to deliver nothing less than a perfect service to people who won't cut them any slack. On the other hand, tons of media coverage, which will me mostly positive given how well Fiber has done in Austin, KC & Provo so far.

#google #fiber #google fiber

Very enjoyable read on what to do or avoid when it comes to designing a logo, with a lot of speaking examples.

Shame on me, I do not respect rule#1, the logo on this page being a bitmap version. I'll add on my to-do list to replace it with its vectorized version...

#design #logo

A story of how PayPal and GoDaddy allowed the attack and caused me to lose my $50,000 Twitter username.

I wonder how soon Hollywood will start screening heist movies based on those stories.

Regardless, it's quite scary to see how easy it is for a hacker with good social engineering skills to plot this type of things. Protecting your online IDs is definitely something widely underestimated today, and a task for which we still lack robust and reliable tools.

I also enjoyed the follow-up story from Josh Bryant:

Some of the biggest companies in the world have security that is only as good as a minimum-wage phone support worker who has the power to reset your account. And they have valid business reasons for giving them this power.

#security #godaddy #hack

The challenge of venture investing is that the model depends on investing in things that are laughable, because those are the only things that can make billions of dollars from zero in a few years. So you kind of want people to laugh at you and think you don’t understand the sector. You just have to be sure that you understand why they’re laughing.

I loved this point of view of Ben Evans on disruption. It gives a good read on all those discussions around "the next big thing" that just never stop.

#tech #disruption

“The San Francisco Cab Drivers Association (SFCDA) [...] reports that one-third of the 8,500 or so taxi drivers in San Francisco — over 2,800 — have ditched driving a registered cab in the last 12 months to drive for a private transportation startup like Uber, Lyft, or Sidecar instead.”

I wish somebody from the french cab drivers unions could understand that. I can't speak for other cities, but in Paris, the traditional taxi business is experiencing this exact disruption phenomenon, and so far their only answer has been nothing but lawsuits and strikes.

They will be dead before they even know it.

#uber #cab #disruption

People are fucking stupid.

#nest #google

I got the wrong sort of birthday present yesterday: a sincerely-written post by Jason Kincaid lamenting a perceived decline in the quality of Evernote software over the past few months. I could quibble with the specifics, but reading Jason's article was a painful and frustrating experience because, in the big picture, he's right. We're going to fix this.

Being a heavy Evernote user myself, I can't say how delighted I am to see their CEO addressing public criticism with such honesty and transparency.

I agree with most of the points raised by Kincaid; personally, my main concern is about the simplicity of the service. I feel that a number of the features that have been added to both web & mobile apps have taken a toll on how easy it used to be to take a simple note. And please fix Evernote Web Clipper which has gotten slower and counterintuitive with the update.

#evernote

On my way to the 1%...

Great idea to share this type of stats: Pocket (and read-it-later services alike) key users are mostly hardcore news reader, so it makes perfect sense to remind them how useful Pocket is to them.

I find that it is a very good practice in general for a service to highlight its usage stats: it is an ego-booster for the top-users, and a great way to engage others to spend more time in your ecosystem.

Examples that come to mind: the now departed Google Reader trends,

Or Swiftkey that reminds you from time to time how many keystroke you saved thanks to their predictive keyboard (in the hundreds of thousands for me...)

#pocket #stat #tech

parislemon

Kyle Vanhemert spoke with Square’s VP of hardware, Jesse Dorogusker, about their new card reader:

The redesign also gave Dorogusker and company a chance to tweak the feel of the swipe itself, which is a crucial detail that makes the product itself feel trustworthy despite its tininess. By tweaking the design of the spring to which the magnetic read head was attached, the team was able to fine-tune the friction customers feel when swiping their card. At one point in development, they found that the level of contact they needed to successfully transfer data from a card resulted in a swipe that felt too loose. And when the swipe felt too loose, it felt like it wasn’t working, and would thus require another swipe. So they increased the friction above what was actually needed–an adjustment that was overkill from a technical point of view but resulted in a swipe that felt perfect to the hand.

Design is how it works…

Not surprisingly, Dorogusker came to Square from Apple, where he most recently lead the development of the Lightning connector.

#square #design

This means that while the chances are that most of the water in your soda has never been in another soda, almost all of it has been drunk by at least one dinosaur.

Thanks Randall, that made my day.

#xkcd #comic

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