As the week comes to a close, we at IndianWeb2 recap the top ten happenings that took place in the tech world this week.

1) 75% of IoT Projects Failing Globally, Says Cisco Report

According to a recent survey done by Cisco, even though while IoT keeps creating buzz all around the world with numerous projects being rolled out on a daily basis, but unfortunately almost 75 per cent of these projects end up failing, impacted by factors such as culture and leadership.

The report churned out by Cisco said that only 26 per cent of the companies it surveyed acknowledged that they have had an IoT project that they would consider a success. The report also highlighted the fact that 60 per cent of the IoT initiatives don’t even go beyond the Proof of Concept (PoC) stage.

2) Google Creates A Thing That Can Create Itself

Google recently published a blogpost talking about “AutoML” for “auto-machine learning,” a reinforcement learning approach that provides one A.I. the capability of becoming the architect of another one, and direct its own development without having to depend on a human engineer for input.

The approach basically involves a controller neural net proposing a “child” model architecture, which can then be trained and evaluated for quality on a particular task. The feedback received is then used to train the controller on how it can improve its proposals for the next round. This whole process is repeated thousands of times, which eventually leads to the controller learning to assigning high probability to areas of architecture space that achieve better accuracy on a held-out validation dataset, and low probability to areas of architecture space that score poorly.

3) Cisco Launches IoT Operations Platform To Save Your IoT Project From An Early Death

In order to address the early failure rate in enterprise Internet of Things (IoT) deployments, Cisco has announced a new Cisco IoT Operations Platform that will be offering tools and features to improve their success. According to a blogpost published by Cisco recently, the platform will be addressing connection management, Fog Computing, device control, and data delivery, and will come integrated with Cisco security.

Announced at the recent held IoT World Forum event in London, the Cisco IoT Operations Platform is expected to be available later this year.

4) Elon Musk Explains Why Tesla Is Not Selling In India, Government Claps Back with A Detailed Reply

Earlier this year in February, when a Twitter user asked technology entrepreneur Elon Musk about Tesla’s plans of launching in India anytime soon, Musk got everyone excited in the South Asian country when he replied that the company is eyeing a summer launch this year.

Seeing that it has been May already with no official word from Tesla on the launch yet, another Twitter asked Musk if the launch is happening this year or next year. To everyone’s shock and disappointment, Musk announced that he doesn’t see Tesla cars on Indian roads anytime soon as he has been informed that 30% of parts for the cars need to be locally sourced and unfortunately, the supply doesn’t yet exist in India to support that.

Thought it seems, the billionaire entrepreneur has been misinformed about the rules and regulations. In order to set the record straight and uplift the spirits of the people dreaming to own a Tesla car in India, the Indian government’s Make In India Twitter account tweeted a long explanation about how Musk has got the facts wrong and the FDI policy of India does not mandate any such minimum sourcing of components by manufacturers.

5) Microsoft Renames Beam To Mixer, Adds New Game Streaming Features

The week saw Microsoft rebranding its game streaming service, Beam to Mixer. According to Matt Salsamendi, co-founder and engineering lead at Mixer, the decision was something that they decided on as a team and took a long time to get there. He further added, "We believe so much in the power of the platform and want to grow it in every major market around the world. Unfortunately, that wasn’t something we could do with the Beam name."

In addition to the name change, the company also introduced some new features to the streaming service. It introduced a new co-streaming feature that lets four PC streamers combine their broadcasts into a single stream with split-screen views. The company has also launched a new Mixer Create mobile apps for iOS and Android.

6) Olacabs Launches Ola Electric – India’s First Ever Electric Mass Mobility System, in Nagpur

The week saw India's homegrown cab hailing giant, Ola launching Ola Electric, India’s first multi-modal electric platform that includes electric autos, cars, and buses in Nagpur. Ola and Mahindra joined hands with the Government of India in a first-of- its-kind programme to build an electric mass mobility ecosystem in Nagpur with an aim of bringing around a transformational change in the automotive and transportation landscape in the Indian subcontinent.

7) AP Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu Launches Mobile App For Farmers In India

In order help Indian framers protect their crops against pests and diseases, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Thursday launched an innovative multi-lingual plant disease and pest diagnostic app called 'Plantix.'

The app, which has been developed by the German startup Progressive Environmental & Agricultural Technologies (PEAT) in collaboration with its knowledge and extension partner, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and the Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University, is initially being launched in Telugu and Hindi, but will soon be available in other regional languages as well.

The app's capability to provide real-time diagnosis to farmers about their crops is what sets it apart from other apps in the market.

8) Blippar’s Machine Learning Tech Can Identify Cars Better Than You Can

The week saw augmented reality/visual search company Blippar announcing a new machine learning technology that is an automotive recognition tech. Originally launched as an AR platform for brands and publishers, Blippar’s AI is capable of identifying the maker, model and year of any U.S. car made in 2000 or after, as long as the car is traveling slower than 15mph.

9) Facebook Could Farm Users' Thoughts With Mind-reading Technology to Sell Adverts

Social networking giant Facebook is planning to use its user's thoughts for advertising purposes. In a statement given by Facebook spokesperson Ha Thai to The Intercept, Thai revealed that the company is currently working on developing an interface that allows users to communicate with the speed and flexibility of voice and the privacy of text.

The company calls the technology a “brain-computer speech-to-text interface”, and has a team of 60 people working on it at Building 8, its futuristic hardware division. The technology has got various privacy advocates worried, but the company has strategically refused to confirm or deny if it will be using people’s thoughts to sell ads.

10) Verizon CEO Confirms Company’s Plan To Launch A Streaming TV Service

According to a report in Variety, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam has confirmed that his company is planning to use the post-merger AOL-Yahoo subsidiary as a platform to “test out an over-the-top service."

The new streaming TV service, which will be similar to DirecTV Now or Sling TV would still be separate from Go90, Verizon’s existing mobile video service.
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