Profile of Nick Clegg, ex-Liberal Democrats leader and deputy prime minister in UK, who became Facebook's head of global affairs and communications in Oct. 2018 — He quit Westminster after failing to realign British politics. Now the former Lib Dem leader has taken on an even bigger challenge at Facebook.
Analysis of factors that have slowed the tech boom in China, where VC deals in the IT sector have declined from a peak of $26.4B in Q2 2018 to $2.2B in Q2 2019 — From Xiamen to Shanghai mass graveyards of dirty bikes, all twisted frames and busted axles and handlebars …
A look at gallium nitride, a compound that can replace silicon in chips and is key to miniaturizing 5G tech; China controls 95% of gallium's global supply — China accounts for 95 per cent of the global supply of the soft, bluish metal Huawei has filed for more than 2,000 patents related …
From Toronto to Tokyo, the challenges faced by cities today are often remarkably similar: climate change, rising housing costs, traffic, economic polarization, unemployment. To tackle these problems, new technology companies and industries have been sprouting and scaling up with innovative digital solutions like ride sharing and home sharing. Without a doubt, the city of the future must be digital. It must be smart. It must work for everyone.
This is a trend civic leaders everywhere need to embrace wholeheartedly. But building a truly operational smart city is going to take a village, and then some. It won’t happen overnight, but progress is already under way.
As tech broadens its urban footprint, there will be more and more potential for conflict between innovation and citizen priorities like privacy and inclusive growth. Last month, we were reminded of that in Toronto, where planning authorities from three levels of government released a 1,500-page plan by Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs meant to pave the way for a futuristic waterfront development. Months in the making, the plan met with considerably less than universal acclaim.
But whether it’s with Sidewalk or other tech partners, the imperative to resolve these conflicts becomes even stronger for cities like Toronto. If they’re playing this game to win, civic leaders need to minimize the damage and maximize the benefits for the people they represent. They need to develop co-ordinated innovation plans that prioritize transparency, public engagement, data privacy and collaboration.
Transparency
The Sidewalk Labs plan is full of tech-forward proposals for new transit, green buildings and affordable housing, optimized by sensors, algorithms and mountains of data. But even the best intentions of a business or a city can be misconstrued when leaders fail to be transparent about their plans. Openness and engagement are critical for building legitimacy and social license.
Sidewalk says it consulted 21,000 Toronto citizens while developing its proposal. But some critics have already complained that the big decisions were made behind closed doors, with too many public platitudes and not enough debate about issues raised by citizens, city staff and the region’s already thriving innovation ecosystem.
In defense of Sidewalk Labs and Alphabet, their roots are in Internet services. They are relative newcomers to the give and take of community consultation. But they are definitely now hearing how citizens would prefer to be engaged and consulted.
As for the public planners, they have a number of excellent examples to draw from. In Barcelona, for example, the city government opened up its data sets to citizens to encourage shared use among private, public and academic sectors. And in Pittsburgh, which has become a hub for the testing of autonomous vehicles, the city provided open forum opportunities for the public to raise questions, concerns and issues directly with civic decision-makers.
Other forward-looking cities, such as San Francisco, Singapore, Helsinki and Glasgow, are already using digital technology and smart sensors to build futuristic urban services that can serve as real-world case studies for Toronto and others. However, to achieve true success, city officials need to earn residents’ trust and confidence that they are following and adapting best practices.
Toronto skyline courtesy of Shutterstock/Niloo
Data privacy
Access to shared data is crucial to informing and improving tech-enabled urban innovation. But it could also fuel a technologically driven move toward surveillance capitalism or a surveillance state – profiteering or big brother instead of trust and security.
The Sidewalk proposal respects the principles of responsible use of data and artificial intelligence. It outlines principles for guiding the smart-city project’s ethical handling of citizen data and secure use of emerging technologies like facial recognition. But these principles aren’t yet accompanied by clear, enforceable standards.
Members of the MaRS Discovery District recently co-authored an open-source report with fellow design and data governance experts, outlining how privacy conflicts could be addressed by an ethical digital trust. A digital trust ought to be transparently governed by independent, representative third-party trustees. Its trustees should be mandated to make data-use decisions in the public interest: how data could be gathered, how anonymity could be ensured, how requests for use should be dealt with.
They come with big questions to be resolved. But if a digital trust were developed for the Sidewalk project, it could be adapted and reused in other cities around the world, as civic leaders everywhere grapple with innovation plans of their own.
Image courtesy of Getty Images/Colin Anderson
Collaboration
The private sector creates jobs and economic growth. Academia and education offers ideas, research and a sustainable flow of tech-savvy workers. The public sector provide policy guidance and accountability. Non-profits mobilize public awareness and surplus capital.
As Toronto is learning, it isn’t always easy to get buy-in, because every player in every sector has its own priorities. But civic leaders should be trying to pull all these innovation levers to overcome urban challenges, because when the mission is right, collaboration creates more than the sum of its parts.
One civic example we like to point to is New York, where the development of the High Line park and the rezoning of the West Chelsea Special District created a “halo effect.” A $260-million investment increased property values, boosted city tax revenues by $900-million and brought four million tourists per year to a formerly underused neighborhood.
A mission-oriented innovation ecosystem connects the dots between entrepreneurs and customers, academia and corporates, capital and talent, policymakers and activists, physical and digital infrastructure – and systems financing models can help us predict and more equitably distribute the returns. Organizations like Civic Capital Lab (disclaimer: a MaRS partner) work to repurpose projects like the High Line into real-life frameworks for other cities and communities.
That kind of planning works because the challenges cities face are so similar. When civic leaders are properly prepared to make the best of modern tech-driven innovation, there’s no problem they can’t overcome.
A new set of Pixel 4 leaked images and a series of renders show it will have a large forehead bezel for a variety of sensors and front-facing cameras — A lot of space to cover up — A new set of leaked images of Google's forthcoming Pixel 4 smartphone have surfaced on the web …
Phreesia, a patient-intake software platform, has closed up 40% on its first day of trading on Thursday, after raising $167M in its IPO — Healthcare software company Phreesia closed its first day of trading as a public company Thursday about 40% above its set price.
If information circulating the internet is to be believed, then WhatsApp is working on a new feature that will let users preview voice messages from the notifications itself. The feature is expected to come as a part of a major update, possible iOS 13. The feature is still under development and there is no information on a concrete launch date for it. Until now, WhatsApp users have been able to preview videos and photos through the notifications. WABetaInfo has tweeted an image of what the preview will look like. The image shows a voice message with a play icon and the name of the sender has been blurred out.
Speaking of other WhatsApp features, in June it was reported that Whatsapp is testing a feature that lets you share your status to other apps. The feature has already started rolling for beta users. Therefore, the users on the latest WhatsApp beta version will start to see a share a button beneath their status. The feature enables you to share your status on apps like Facebook, Instagram, Gmail and Google Photos. You can read more about the feature here.
In other news, new research by Symantec talks about the dangers of Media File Jacking, a type of attack undertaken by cybercriminals to target media files, which are sent through instant messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram and are stored in the external storage of Android phones. The criminals can take advantage of a flaw that exposes these media files and they can then be manipulated by malicious actors, Symantec’s Modern OS Security team has found. You can read more about it here.
I leave this here. Yes, it's a push notification with an incoming voice message, on iOS. It will be available in future (maybe in a major update with other features?) pic.twitter.com/eSm55GxFuO
— WABetaInfo (@WABetaInfo) July 18, 2019
https://ift.tt/2JTckiz
UK-based AppyParking, which uses sensors in parking bays to help drivers find empty parking spots, raises £7.6M Series A, at a valuation of £50M — Car giant's investment boosts value of London start-up — A London tech firm that aims to end drivers' hunt for parking spots …
Those fortunate enough to attend Comic Con in San Diego this weekend and attended the Marvel Games Panel were treated with gameplay footage of the upcoming Avengers video game. A trailer for the game was announced back at E3 2019 and the press got to see gameplay behind closed doors. At Comic Con it looks like the attendees got to see some gameplay and some attendees have published the gameplay on YouTube. You can check out the leaked gameplay below before it gets pulled down.
Looking at the leaked gameplay footage, one can see that the mission which takes place on the San Francisco bridge switches between playable characters like Thor, Iron Man and the Hulk. Each character brings with him signature moves and abilities. The game looks to be a run of the mill third-person action-adventure game.
According to Crystal Dynamics director Shaun Escayg, players will be able to customize Heroes with "classic, fan-favourite, and all-new outfits." Players will also be able to unlock new skills and playstyle. So two different players can have completely different playstyles for Thor or Captain America. The game is a story-based action game with certain missions designed for certain heroes. The game has legendary voice actors like Troy Baker and Nolan North lending their voices to Bruce Banner and Tony Stark respectively. The game is slated to release on May 15 2020. It will release for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows and Google Stadia.
The Avengers game isn't the only one that will make the gameplay demo public after Gamecom. CD Projekt Red has also confirmed that the behind closed doors demo from E3 2019 will be made public after Gamecom.
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Axios : CoinGecko: $TRUMP rose more than 600% overnight and was trading just over $32 as of 11AM ET, giving it a fully diluted market cap...
