Quick Overview
- AI: Google reduces voice to text AI 200 fold, will store entire model on device
- COMPUTING: Get a never before seen look into China’s mass surveillance app
- COMPUTING: Google releases Pixel 3a, Nest Hub Max and Android Q
- COMPUTING: Androids will soon be able to live caption anything in real time
- ENERGY: You won’t be allowed to drive any fossil car in Amsterdam by 2030
- MEDICINE: Near complete rejuvenation of human hearts now possible
- TRANSPORT: Tesla vehicles now automatically pre-order broken parts for you
We believe that everyone’s future can be richer, happier and more efficient, but you can’t embrace that future unless you take the first most crucial step, being informed of it.
Welcome to The Tipping Point, news from the most critical future industries curated for you every week so you can stay informed and prepared. No need to waste hours everyday researching, stay on top of it all with one post and then get back to doing what you do best.
The Tipping point is named after the point at which a new technology goes from being disappointing, expensive and buggy to exciting, exponential, cheap and mainstream. This point of change often sneaks up on and surprises everyone including industry experts!
No matter if you’re personally employed in the industry or just a lurker, The Tipping Point is vital to staying up to date and being ready to transition smoothly rather than getting caught off guard.
This Weeks News!
AI: Google reduces voice to text AI 200 fold, will store entire model on device
Currently all the voice to text work Google does on phones records the audio, compresses and uploads it to their servers where it’s processed and the text sent back. This is mainly because the AI that does this voice to text work is around 100 GB in size. Thanks to a fantastic effort that size has now reduced to just 0.5 GB or 200 times less. Now they can fit it entirely on your phones local storage and do all that voice to text goodness locally and privately.
This is an absolute all round win as it not only increases security and privacy by keeping your recorded audio and generated text locally on your device, but also drastically increases processing speed too. The new model operating locally on a Pixel is 10 times faster than waiting for it to go up and down to/from the cloud. You also can obviously use the feature offline now too.
COMPUTING: Get a never before seen look into China’s mass surveillance app
Human Rights Watch has released a report detailing an application Chinese police and officials are currently using in Xinjiang. This app gives a chilling look into one of the best examples we have of a real life surveillance state in the 21st century. The app focuses on anyone who travels, who has “problematic” apps on their phone like WhatsApp or a VPN, who are related to other suspect people, who use too much electricity, who don’t socialise with their neighbours, who have too many children and on and on.
If you just so happen to be one of these “suspect people” then you will have a detailed alert sent to officials all about you and your phone etc. It’s likely this would also tie into their other Social Credit Score systems that are already preventing people from catching flights, buying train tickets or even getting loans.
COMPUTING: Google releases Pixel 3a, Nest Hub Max and Android Q
In slightly more positive computing news Google has had their Google IO 2019 Keynote presentation and used it to launch their new Google Nest Hub Max and Pixel 3a line up. While I literally face palmed when hearing the “Google Nest Hub” name – seriously Google? this is just stupidly confusing now – it’s a decent product which is essentially a bigger, 10″ screen version of the Google Home Hub with upgraded speakers and a camera too. The Pixel 3a also looks like it’ll hit a sweet spot starting at $400 USD and having many of the great features of the Pixel 3 flagship phones. Both are available now in a bunch of countries.
COMPUTING: Androids will soon be able to live caption anything in real time
With the help of Google’s now much slimmer and lighter voice to text translation AI they will soon release Live Caption. For those that are deaf or hard of hearing – or just want to hear a video without disturbing others and with no headphones – Live Captions will caption literally any media playing on your phone in real time, locally. It could be a family video you just took, a 10 year old episode of Star Trek or the latest Facebook post. Taking up just 80 MB the Live Caption feature will overlay whatever is being said on your screen so that you can easily see what’s being said. For the over 500,000,000 people that are hard of hearing or deaf this should be an amazing new Android Q feature.
ENERGY: You won’t be allowed to drive any fossil car in Amsterdam by 2030
Starting next year a newly announced plan in Amsterdam will ban all diesel cars over 15 years old. As the years go by more and more bans and restrictions will be enforced right up until 2030 where all fossil cars will no longer be permitted. Hopefully this along with many other fines and rules being introduced throughout Europe will further push car manufacturers to speed up their electrification efforts.
MEDICINE: Near complete rejuvenation of human hearts now possible
While stem cells and rejuvenation medicine has been talked about for decades now this new TED talk presents a refreshingly clear and positive outline of just how close we now are. Describing their entire journey from idea to Phase I clinical trials soon to be held in 2020 it’s a glimpse at the revolutionary changes that are coming in the medical field. While today’s medicine mostly just band aides the issue with drugs, over the next 5-10 years we will be able to completely rebuild damaged hearts with a patients own cells restoring almost all previous capabilities. I say bring it on!
TRANSPORT: Tesla vehicles now automatically pre-order broken parts for you
Finally we have another stark example of how the old guard car makers handle car troubles vs the new kids on the block. While your BMW or Audi might blink a useless red warning light at you telling you to “take it to a qualified repair centre” your Tesla’s can now not only self diagnose the problem but also pre-order replacement parts to your designated repair centre. If the problem can be fixed by one of Tesla’s mobile repair vehicles you won’t even have to take your car to the repair centre as they’ll come to you!
Tesla has also rolled out more OTA software updates with new tweaks to Sentry Mode too. This comes just after other news broke stating that Fiat-Chrysler will pay them over $2 billion in order to allow their fleets to merge so that Fiat can meet emission standards in Europe. This has resulted in a 29% drop in first quarter profits for Fiat, I guess that’s what you get when you drag your feet in Europe!
And that’s it for this week! Let us know in the comments if you’ve heard of any other awesome news!
The benefits include: 1) How to get those silky smooth videos that everyone loves to watch, even if you're new 2) How to fly your drone, from taking off to the most advanced flight modes 3) Clear outlines of how to fly with step-by-step instructional demonstrations and more 4) Why flying indoors often results in new pilots crashing their drone 5) What other great 3rd party apps are out there to get the most out of your drone 6) A huge mistake many pilots make when storing their drone in the car and how to avoid it 7) How to do all of these things whilst flying safely and within your countries laws.
