Google’s Pixelbook is at its lowest price ever thanks to a $250 discount on the entry-level model. The deal is a limited time promotion through Google’s web store, Amazon, and Best Buy, making Google’s premium Chromebook more affordable.
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Source: Digital trends
Taking a pause to work on stability is exactly the right move for iOS 12 and macOS Mojave.
Source: Wired
While hose-toting drones may be a fantasy, hose-powered robo-dragons (or robotic hose-dragons — however you like it) are very much a reality. This strange but potentially useful robot from Japanese researchers could snake into the windows of burning buildings, blasting everything around it with the powerful jets of water it uses to maneuver itself.
Yes, it’s a real thing: Created by Tohoku University and Hachinohe College, the DragonFireFighter was presented last month at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation.
It works on the same principle your hose does when you turn it on and it starts flapping around everywhere. Essentially your hose is acting as a simple jet: the force of the water being blasted out pushes the hose itself in the opposite direction. So what if the hose had several nozzles, pointing in several directions, that could be opened and closed independently?
Well, you’d have a robotic hose-dragon. And we do.
The DragonFireFighter has a nozzle-covered sort of “head” and what can only be called a “neck.” The water pressure from the hose is diverted into numerous outlets on both in order to create a stable position that can be adjusted more or less at will.
It requires a bit of human intervention to go forwards, but, as you can see, several jets are pushing it that direction already, presumably at this point for stability and rigidity purposes. If the operators had a little more line to give it, it seems to me it could zoom out quite a bit farther than where it was permitted to in the video.
For now it may be more effective to just direct all that water pressure into the window, but one can certainly imagine situations where something like this would be useful.
DragonFireFighter was also displayed at the International Fire and Disaster Prevention Exhibition in Tokyo.
One last thing. I really have to give credit where credit’s due: I couldn’t possibly outdo IEEE Spectrum’s headline, “Firefighting Robot Snake Flies on Jets of Water.”
Source: TechCrunch
Barcelona-based online travel agency Exoticca — which sells “affordable luxury” holidays to popular destinations such as India, Kenya, Brazil, Thailand and South Africa — has closed a €3.5 million (~$4.1 million) Series A to expand into more markets.
The lead investor is early-stage Madrid-based VC K Fund, with existing investors Sabadell Venture Capital and Grupo Palau also participating, along with new investors Nero Ventures, Palladium Corporate Venture and Smartech Capital.
Exoticca was founded in 2013 and currently operates in three European markets: Spain, France and the U.K. The new funding will be put toward expanding that tally — with the German market next in line, and a launch into the U.S. and Canada also on the horizon. Funds will also be funneled into further developing the platform.
“The company spent the first couple of years developing the technological platform and sales have grown very rapidly since then (€4.4 million in 2016, €10.5 million in 2017 and a budget of more than €20 million for 2018),” says CEO Pere Valles, a recent recruit to the business and previously CEO of Scytl.
Valles argues that Exoticca’s progress to date proves both the profitability of its business model — noting that Spain was “the first market which Exoticca launched is already profitable” — and its replicability. “Last year we launched the U.K. and France and the U.K. is already bigger than Spain,” he says, adding: “In July, we are launching in Germany and we have plans to open in the U.S. and Canada in 2019.”
Valles says the market Exoticca is operating in is one of the few travel market segments that has not yet been digitized — with people still purchasing these types of trips in traditional “offline” travel agencies, owing to relative complexity, with the holidays typically having multiple legs and components, perhaps including international and domestic flights, land transportation, hotels in different locations, tour guides and so on.
Exoticca’s platform allows users to buy such trips online in a single visit, thanks to a proprietary booking engine that integrates with all the various providers — enabling real-time pricing for each component (so no need to phone up for an actual price before being able to book, for example).
“There is nobody else who provides real-time pricing for these types of trips through an online platform,” argues Valles. “Our competition uses internet only to generate leads and then close the sale either on the phone or in a store while we allow our customers to do the entire purchase process online in a single visit.”
There are some differences versus traditional bricks-and-mortar travel agents, though. Exoticca customers can’t spec out a very bespoke holiday in discussion with an agent, for example.
Rather it offers an inventory of around 50 trip packages in its permanent portfolio, covering what are described as “the most popular destinations” for its target travel category. (Though Valles points out it does offer a degree of light personalization — such as being able to pick a hotel category and optional excursions, for example.)
If you’re content to choose from the selection, Exoticca claims the trips are 30 percent cheaper on average versus “traditional providers” — as a consequence of the disintermediation process (i.e. it acting as both wholesaler and retailer).
“Each one of these trip packages is our ‘own’ product in the sense that we are the ones who ‘build’ it by engaging directly with the provider of each component,” says Valles, adding: “We also give our own personal touch to the tours in each one of these destinations.”
There’s a pretty striking branding style on show too — which features 1950s-esque graphics illustrating elements of the holiday packages and service…
Presumably the hope is the retro styling will resonate with the older adults who are the demographic most likely to be in the market for long-haul, luxury trips.
“We have customers in all age groups but those between 45 and 65 tend to be ‘overrepresented,’ ” agrees Valles.
He says the company is generally targeting a similar customer profile to that of GV-backed members-only travel club Secret Escapes.
Though they are not like-for-like competitors, with Exoticca’s product certainly having more of a focus on, well, exotic holidays — versus Secret Escapes offering hotel getaways to almost anywhere (so long as the hotel is up to snuff).
Other European online travel agency startups include the likes of Dreamlines, which is focused exclusively on cruise holidays to address a distinct market segment; and Evaneos, a marketplace for tailored travel experiences that connects travelers directly with a community of local travel agents — so is doing the lead generation Exoticca’s approach avoids.
Valles says the packages it sells are with “high-quality providers” (4- and 5-star hotels) but offered at “discounted prices” intended to appeal to a mass market of middle- and upper-class travelers.
The overall aim is to “democratize” this segment of the travel market. (“A great experience at a reasonable cost” is the pitch.) Though if they really succeed in widening the funnel they may end up undermining their luxury promise. But clearly that’s not something they have to worry about yet.
Funding wise, Valles says Exoticca previously raised €1 million in two seed rounds, one with F&F and another with Sabadell Venture Capital. The business is not breaking out any user or usage metrics at this stage, five years in.
Source: TechCrunch
Esta provincia canadiense se está convirtiendo en uno de los lugares del mundo donde más bitcoins se minan. La parte buena es que esta industria favorece la revitalización económica y social. La mala, es que consume enormes cantidades de energía hidroeléctrica que depende de enormes presas
Source: MIT
La directora de la iniciativa Work of the Future del MIT, Liz Reynolds, afirma que cada vez cuesta menos automatizar trabajos, lo que mejora la competitividad de las PYME. En su opinión, uno de los mayores retos está en la falta de diversidad de empleos de las ciudades rurales
Source: MIT
The next version of Safari takes on ad-trackers more aggressively than ever.
Source: Wired
Egnyte has always had the goal of protecting data and files wherever they live, whether on-premises or in the cloud. Today, the company announced a new feature to help customers comply with GDPR privacy regulations that went into effect in Europe last week in a straight-forward fashion.
You can start by simply telling Egnyte that you want to turn on “Identify sensitive content.” You then select which sets of rules you want to check for compliance including GDPR. Once you do this, the system goes and scans all of your repositories to find content deemed sensitive under GDPR rules (or whichever other rules you have selected).
Photo: Egnyte
It then gives you a list of files and marks them with a risk factor from 1-9 with one being the lowest level of risk and 9 being the highest. You can configure the program to expose whichever files you wish based on your own level of compliance tolerance. So for instance, you could ask to see any files with a risk level of seven or higher.
“In essence, it’s a data security and governance solution for unstructured data, and we are approaching that at the repository levels. The goal is to provide visibility, control and protection of that information in any in any unstructured repository,” Jeff Sizemore, VP of governance for Egnyte Protect told TechCrunch.
Photo: Egnyte
Sizemore says that Egnyte weighs the sensitivity of the data against the danger it could be exposed and leave a customer in violation of GDPR rules. “We look at things like public links into groups, which is basically just governance of the data, making sure nothing is wide open from a file share perspective. We also look at how the information is being shared,” Sizemore said. A social security number being shared internally is a lot less risky than a thousand social security numbers being shared in a public link.
The service covers 28 nations and 24 languages and it’s pre-configured to understand what data is considered sensitive by country and language. “We already have all the mapping and all the languages sitting underneath these policies. We are literally going into the data and actually scanning through and looking for GDPR-relevant data that’s in the scope of Article 40.”
The new service is generally available on Tuesday morning. The company will be makign an announcement at the InfoSecurity Conference in London. It has had the service in Beta prior to this.
Source: TechCrunch
Apple’s yearly developer keynote was all about software.
Source: Wired
MacOS Mojave was announced as the next release of the Mac operating system at WWDC today, and Apple revealed that along with a new Dark Mode, iOS apps will soon be able to run on your favorite Mac hardware along with security enhancements.
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Source: Digital trends