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FORD-VW autonomous and electric vehicles

Ford-Volkswagen Alliance will Now Focus on Development of Autonomous and Electric Vehicles

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January this year, the two major automobile companies, Ford and VolksWagan, joined their forces to manufacture pickup trucks and vans, and now almost seven months later, the two wants to expand their partnership by adding a few more services in their list that they will be developing together. The two companies have confirmed that they will now be working together to build autonomous and electric vehicles.

In the past few years, many of the major automobile companies have shifted their focus to autonomous and driver-less cars. Those companies have realised the scope of such vehicles and are investing a lot of money in the field.

In fact, Ford is already working towards developing autonomous taxis and has partnered with Argo AI, a self-driving-car developer. Noticeably, Ford announced in 2017 that it will be investing over a billion dollar in the startup (Argo AI) in the coming five years, in order to bring its own autonomous and electric vehicles on the roads.

FORD-VW autonomous and electric vehicles
Image Source: autoblog.com

According to the reports, under the deal between Ford and VW, the latter will also be putting a huge sum of $2.6 billion in Argo AI, as the startup will be playing a significant part in the development work. VW will be paying a $1 billion in cash and the rest of the sum will be paid in the form of assets. The VolksWagso’s Munich-based Autonomous Intelligent Driving team will be joining Argo AI for the development work as one of the assets.

Argo AI is an independent company that has been developing autonomous and electric vehicles for the cities with well-marked roads and which are properly geo-fenced. The company has successfully tested its driver-less vehicles in five U.S. cities, including Pittsburgh, Palo Alto, Detroit, Miami and Washington, D.C.

“Ford and VW will remain ‘independent and fiercely competitive’ in the marketplace. Unlocking the synergies across a range of areas allows us to showcase the power of our global alliance in this era of smart vehicles for a smart world.” the CEO Ford Motor Company, Jim Hackett, said in a statement.

The reports say that with the deal, Ford will get the access to VW’s electric-vehicle MEB platform. The company plans to launch over 60000 self-driving cars, based on the MEB architecture, in a span of six years in the various cities in Europe and will start the mass production from 2023.

Though the companies will be building their own self-driving and autonomous cars on their own, the two will be using the same software and architecture for the development work. The collaboration between the two will help both in speeding up the development and will push the governments to add their support in such projects.

HBO Max

WarnerMedia Names its Next Streaming Service ‘HBO Max’

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The subscription video services are soon going to ditch the conventional cable connection, and shortly, people will be confused as to which subscription they should opt for, and which one they should leave, as after Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and a few other such services, WarnerMedia will be bringing HBO Max as the new streaming service for people.

The company revealed the name of its upcoming streaming service on Tuesday, along with the name of a few programs that the company will be streaming through the service, including Dune: The Sisterhood, Tokyo Vice, The Flight Attendant, Love Life, Made for Love, etc. And, the company will be producing new shows under the lineup of HBO Originals to stream through the service. It will also include the collection of movies (old and new) to it.

The company has already signed a contract of four movies with Director and writer Greg Berlanti, and Reese Witherspoon will be producing at least two movies for the Max Originals.

HBO Max
Image Source: variety.com

HBO Max will also be including almost all the HBO TV series, its films as well as documentaries to it. The company even revealed that content from CNN, Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, truTV, TBS and TNT, will also be the part of the HBO Max video library.

WarnerMedia said the new service “is anticipated to premiere with 10,000 hours of premium content.” Among those new shows and movies, ‘Friends’, will also be a part of this service.

The company had been licensing Netflix for streaming Friends over it, and the former even paid $80 million to include the show into its library only for 2019. But the license will be over by the end of the year, and HBO Max will be among the few platforms that stream this iconic sitcom.

There are already a few streaming services operating in the name of HBO, including HBO Go and HBO Now. The AT&T acquired company, WarnerMedia, earlier wanted to launch a three-tiered service by the end of 2019. But the company dropped the idea, and now, will focus entirely on HBO Max, which the company will be introducing in the first quarter of 2020.

The company has not revealed on the prices of the packages it will be providing for the streaming service. Currently, HBO Now costs $14.99 for a month’s subscription, which is already expensive than its rivals Netflix and Hulu. So to bear with the competition, the WarnerMedia should keep the prices for the HBO Max subscription, a bit affordable.

ibam red hat

Red Hat is Finally IBM’s Subsidiary After Closing the World’s Second Biggest IT Deal

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The much-rumoured deal has finally come to a conclusion, as IBM has finally acquired Red Hat for a sum of $34 billion. The rumours of the acquisition had been making rounds for the past couple of months, and now, with Red Hat, IBM will be moving forward to extend its expertise in cloud computing. The company paid $190 a share for all the Red Hat’s issued and outstanding shares in cash, completely overtaking all the operations of the company.

Since the past few years, the cloud has become the biggest thing, and IBM has been trying its hands in the field but had been falling against other cloud service providers like Amazon and Microsoft. Through the deal with Red Hat, the company will be now working as one of the partners in both Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft’s Azure. Together the companies will be experimenting on the hybrid cloud computing.

As the name suggests, the hybrid cloud technology will allow the companies to run their programs over their own servers as well as on the public servers, simultaneously. In this case, AWS and Azure will be the public clouds, and IBM will be closely working with its rivals.

ibam red hat
Image Source: techcrunch.com

On the acquisition of Red Hat Ginni Rometty, IBM CEO, said, “This is about hybrid cloud. It is the future, it is the destination of the cloud. This market is a trillion dollars. It’s emerging, and it’s very interesting to me that since our announcement, now you hear everybody else talking about it too.”

This agreement between IBM and Red Hat not only will make the rival companies work together, but the deal is the one largest tech acquisitions of all time.

The company revealed its interest in buying the Red Hat last October and obtained the stamp of approval from the U.S. Department of Justice in May this year. And, finally, after getting the unconditional approval from the EU, IBM purchased the company.

The acquisition of Red Hat is a positive sign for IBM moving towards stabilization, as it has been facing some much losses for the past six years. And with taking over the company, and its work in cloud computing, there are high chances for IBM to get through the losses it has faced in the past.

According to IBM, Jim Whitehurst, CEO Red Hat, will continue to head the company and will be joining the senior management of IBM. Whitehurst will be working under IBM CEO Rometty and will directly report her. Despite the acquisition, the company will be operating independently.

“We think open source has become the de-facto standard in technology because it enables these solutions. Joining forces with IBM gives the company the opportunity to bring more open source innovation to an even broader range of organizations,” said Jim Whitehurst, “You’ve heard me say this before, but it bears repeating, Red Hat is still Red Hat. IBM is committed to preserving Red Hat’s independence, neutrality, culture and industry partnerships”, he added.

Canon Powershot G7 X Mark III and G5 X Mark II

Canon to Launch an Updated PowerShot G7X Mark III with Support for YouTube Live Stream

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YouTube has generated a lot of opportunities for the content creators, and the one thing that has become popular with the emergence of YouTube is Vlogging. Many of the tech companies are now focussing on building tools for those vloggers, among which one company is Cannon. Canon has just announced the new joinees for its vlogger camera PowerShot G7 X line, the G7 X III and a redesigned Canon PowerShot G5X Mark II, equipped with even more useful features than their predecessors.

Canon Powershot G7 X Mark III and G5 X Mark II
Image Source: petapixel.com

Both the cameras are the look-alike of the previously launched cameras of the same series and have been built to target specifically the YouTubers and the bloggers. The G7 X III is boasting the new Stack technology and having the support for uncropped 4K video recording at 30 frames a second as well 1080p video recording 120 frames a second. The feature that will attract most of the YouTubers, is the live YouTube video streaming. Yes, the G7 X III when connected to wifi, allows the users to stream live on YouTube. The camera also renders the support for an external mic, such that the users can record the live audio in the best quality.

The users can also schedule their live stream and record it, as to edit and upload it later to any of the social media platforms. The camera is perfect for recording vertical and Instagram videos. The camera also boasts support for mobile-friendly portrait video.

On the other hand, the G5X Mark II is a revamped premium version of PowerShot G5X, which is a compact-lightweight camera. The centre mounted EVF has been removed from the camera, instead, it has got the pop-up EVF and the pop-up flash now appears over its top deck. The camera now has got a new panoramic shooting mode, and a longer 24-120mm 5x optical zoom lens. Since G5X Mark II is more focused on photography, it does not have a pre-installed YouTube app for live streaming like G7 X III.

Both the cameras are backed by Canon’s DIGIC 8 image processors and feature 20-megapixel 1-inch stacked CMOS sensors. According to the company, the G7 X III will be available in two colour variants, i.e. black and silver, whereas the G5 X Mark II will only be available in black. The cost set for G7 X III is $899, while the G5 X Mark II will cost $749. Both cameras will be in stores in early August.

Instagram

Instagram Announces Two New Features to Fight Cyberbullying

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Cyberbullying has become the biggest issue of the current time, as trolling in the comment section of various social media platforms has hurt many people mentally, especially the teens. To overcome this issue, Instagram has announced a new feature for the platform, through which the users will be able to flag the hate comments on their posts. Though Instagram already has set a proper guideline for the users to follow and has got a filtering feature that screens the hate comments, it is quite time-consuming.

Instagram cyberbullying
Image Source: npr.org

“We can do more to prevent bullying from happening on Instagram, and we can do more to empower the targets of bullying to stand up for themselves. Today we’re announcing one new feature in both areas. These tools are grounded in a deep understanding of how people bully each other and how they respond to bullying on Instagram, but they’re only two steps on a longer path.” said Instagram head Adam Mosseri through a post.

The company has made the use of artificial intelligence for implementing the new feature, such that whenever anyone will try to post a comment, if the system finds it offensive, a question will pop up on their screen asking, “Are you sure you want to post this?”, along with an undo button, to change their action.

Though people will still be able to post the comment, according to Mosseri, the feature will produce high possibilities for the commenter to rethink about posting the comment.

Another feature, that the company is working on, is the ability of a user to restrict the other users’ interaction with the former’s account. This feature will help Instagram users, who are reluctant to blocking or unfollowing an account that is constantly cyberbullying them. If one user has restricted a specific account, the comments posted by that account will only be visible to the commenter, unless the former approves it for the other users. This way, the account owner can shadowban the users, who use hate speech, without them knowing about it. The banned user will also be restricted from seeing if the owner of the account has read their DM or is active at the moment.

Elon Musk Plans To Soon Stop Selling Tesla Cars (at Current Prices) to ‘Save Tesla’

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Tesla is known for its luxurious electric and self-driving high-end cars. But according to a tweet from the founder of the company itself, the consumers won’t be able to buy these fancy cars. No, it is not like that the company will stop making those cars, but with the integration of a new chip, these cars are going to be quite expensive, and not all the people will be able to buy them.

Tesla
Image Source: theverge.com

The company has taken the initiative in order to recover from the losses it has been suffering, due to the cheaper price of its luxury cars. To prevent and overcome them, the company will be embedding a newly developed chip to its new as well as old cars, including Model S, X and 3S, such that these will become fully-autonomous and will not need the intervention of a human driver.



Musk posted a tweet on his official Twitter account on Sunday that the company will be upgrading its old cars, and will integrate the new chip into them as well as to new cars. So the consumers have a limited time to buy Tesla cars. Upon a tweet asking about when these upgrade will take place, Musk replied, “End of Q4, most likely”.

This means the company has already started working on building those new chips for the cars. According to another tweet from Musk, the owners who have purchased the full self-driving feature, the $6000 software package, will get the upgrade for free.

The company launched this new custom chip in the month of March this year, which already have been integrated to new Model 3, Model X and S vehicles. The upgrade of the older cars is a part of Tesla’s ‘Master Plan, Part Deux’, under which the company intends to make every Tesla car fully-autonomous and bring its dream robo-taxis on the road.

With the integration of the new chip into Tesla cars, the price of these cars may reach up to $40,000, and if remained unsold, these cars can earn even more profits as a robo-taxi.