It has been a great week for special events. Trump did the unspeakable and pulled off the Presidential contest in the US. Who would have forecast it?
Away from politics, there has been great excitement with the announcement that Dubai could host the debut of HyperLoop One's radical transit technology, linking to Abu Dhabi in 12 minutes and implementing Elon Musk's vision of near supersonic pod transport.
Sitting over a glass of Moldovan Wine (yes Moldovan) at the World Travel Market, in London's Excel, I casually bumped into one of London'd start up kings, Razvan Patrascioiu, see http://bit.ly/2fydFf4 , who is working on his new venture to ensure that London's visitors get to really enjoy the great restaurants that have become part of the capital's landscape. Later over Slovakian and Israeli wine on other stands I mused on the power of wine to connect people, especially in the digital world. So anyone who is remotely keen on this idea should check out the Chief Wine Officer on LinkedIn and Twitter. This is still my favourite digitaly enabled marketing vehicle and remains extremely effective at connecting CIO level people with technology providers.
Anyway, anyone who actually read my post about digital vikings, will know that digital entrepreneurs face defensive business fortifications which can derail their asymetrical attacks on new markets. This week Facebook halted the deployment of a Fintech Insurance app aimed at correlating facebook behaviour with driving behaviour. Facebook will not release the data to be used in the app. It's against their policy. Additionally, Uber was told that under UK law, their drivers are effectively employees and entitled to minimum wages and holiday pay. This just goes to show, that you need to able to respond quickly to set backs and if you cannot anticipate problems, at least plan to implement in ways that adapt to changes in circumstance and don't burn all your funds at once.
Finally in a great demonstration at the ACM Conference
on Computer and Communications Security Hofburg Palace, Vienna, Austria, researchers from Carnegie Melon demonstrated how special glasses could be used to fool commercial facial recognition systems. For example a male
test subject wearing the special glasses was recognised as actress Milla Jovovich..
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