our species depends on urgently
improving understanding of peoples across hemispheres- none more so than east-west; two thirds of humans live on the continent of asia with a few more per cent of the world's population living in what have emerged as the extraordinary productive hi-tech islands - japan, taiwan , hk, singapore. by the late 19th century all of the people on the asian continent had been colonised or had their trading systems blocked by western empires- primarly britain's. given this, we find it extraordinary valuable to study how 3 people from the orient travelled to the west and went on to change both hemispheres: gandhi
fazle abed

jack ma
below we look at how jack ma's first trip to the usa - seattle 1995 changed the world. he was then his city hangzhou's most popular english teacher- amazon's launch of ecommerce he returned to china to form a network with energetic youth and extraordinary investors including japan's hi tech billionnaire masa son and the silicon valley founder of yahoo jerry yang- how can ecommerce and efinance create the most jobs when china's web infrasucture arrives-?
Having become one of the world's biggest marketmakers, ma was tech city host of china's g20 2016 and at the un he was invited to become worldwide youth jobs adviser;in 2017 he announced that from 2019 september he would return full time to education- according to ma he couldnt see how to impact the 4 most vital social markets with commerce- this web tracks his progress as a return to full time education and his goal of celebrating how the sdg generation can change education , health, green markets, sports and arts markets

unlike ma, gandhi and abed travelled to britain in their teens - gandhi to study law in 1880s, abed to study engineering and shipping at glasgow uni of 1950s.--all three changed the livelihoods and sustainability of hundreds of millions of people in the race to end systemic poverty. unlike gandhi, graduate abed's 10 year spent ascending to become regional ceo of royal dutch shell gave him the perfect mix of engineering and admin experience to empower the poorest to nation build
AI foci of ali- I&V: QC; sec; ML; NLP; big data
https://www.jackmafoundation.org.cn/ welcome to digital silk road plus 6 youth Belt Road Maps ... Changing Education - the most exciting times to parent or grow up sustainably. Our old versions: EW , AU ...how can web maximise sme value and job creating education? -help welcomed in compiling top 100 alumni networks of alibabauni.com -UNited fintech & edutech & 17 goals-- notes on china's greatest educators ggv podcast limebike.. sinica -notes who's helping jos number 1 educator? Kenyann, Bangla girls Tsinghua, olympians-for-all, IR4-forhumans - rsvp chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk

official alibaba (also notable apps - eg missing children )
*taobao university up to 100 million alumni in China - received training on how to taobao; as of 2017 established 1311 taobao e-commerce villages
*Damo Academy 1 2 started with 15 billion dollar investment by jack ma's as intercity top notch research on humanising livelihood advantages of major components of Industrial Rev 4 such as AI, blockchain, internet of things .. related IR4 at world economic forum: san francisco hub; wef summer china summoit
*gateway17 ma's 3000 citizens and leaders one day masterclass in ecommerce
*ma's personal mentoring (aka efounders) of first 100 entrepreneur chorts chosen with unctad and developing nations that have asked jack ma to help
+Aliresearch 1 tsinghua alumni network of Ying Lowrey's SME curriculum aligned to AliBaba model
Podcast Ant Finance

*hong kong 100 million dollar youth entrepreneur fund: AI webs 1 2 : Jumpstarter competition.-see also hk youth entrepreneur curricula YFS & MIT -- taiwan ma entrepreneur fund
*alibaba entrepreneur fund
*poverty funds 1 :: blockchain research china poverty association 1 - alibaba 0.3 revenue to green foundation 1
Breaking news 1 from


jack ma- when i first studied (e)commerce in states i was surprised to find that each market was dominated by 2 or 3 manufacturers- i decided to design china ecommerce to maxise small enterprise suppliers and local jobs

.ying lowrey is tsinghua's professor of small enterprises- her book alibaba way is eyeopening:

foreword by nobel economist edmund phelps, columbia....Alibaba uses information technology to enable mass innovation to flourish.and to improve the lives of the people

related tsinghua - innovation events
lowrey beijing coorindtaor of aliresearch whose dean at hq is Hongbing Gao

Ai in education
around grade 5 - a
around12th grade - about 50 podcasts and notes here
10th grade ai history from circa 1996?
15th grade ai earlier 2018 Kai-Fu Lee hope was us would lead ai discovery, china implementation
15th grade china top50 ai
15th grade 14 billion dollar uniciorn ai in china - wef 2018 review- speakers Speakers: - Dai Wenyuan, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, 4th Paradigm Data & Technology Co., People's Republic of China. - Huang Dinglong, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Malong Technologies, People's Republic of China. - Wendell Wallach, Scholar, Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, Yale University, USA. - Wang Xiaoming, Director, Center for Innovation Strategy and Policy Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, People's Republic of China. - Yuan Hui, Chairman, Shanghai Xiaoi Robot Technology, People's Republic of China.
.partners of ma &
..
*jack ma chairs cen 1- 2 = china's 50 most respomnsible businessmen - search curricula funds etc - location close to tsingua beijng

example founder of shanghai conglomerate fosun actively celebrates CEN, and partners in one of Jack Ma's universities at hangzhou and supports new york greatest yoth-led arts movement singforhope.com

co-sponsor: wise@beijing: Zhejiang Zhipu Foundation Founded by the six founding members of Alibaba Group, Zhejiang Zhipu Foundation supports rural education and promotes healthy and sustainable relationship between human and the society, as well as between human and the nature.
Guterres UN Digital Cooperation Panel #DigitalCooperation
The Panel is expected to raise awareness about the transformative impact of digital technologies across society and the economy, and contribute to the broader public debate on how to ensure a safe and inclusive digital future for all, taking into account relevant human rights norms.

Panel Members

Co-chairs

Panel members

  • Mohammed Al Gergawi (UAE), Minister of Cabinet Affairs and the Future, UAE
  • Yuichiro Anzai (Japan), Senior Advisor and Director of Center for Science Information Analysis, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
  • Nikolai Astrup (Norway), Minister of International Development, Norway
  • Vinton Cerf (USA), Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google
  • Fadi Chehadé (USA), Partner at ABRY Partners
  • Isabel Guerrero Pulgar (Chile), Director, IMAGO Global Grassroots and Lecturer, Harvard Kennedy School
  • Marina Kaljurand (Estonia), Chair of the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace
  • Bogolo Kenewendo (Botswana), Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry, Botswana
  • Akaliza Keza Ntwari (Rwanda), ICT advocate and entrepreneur
  • Marina Kolesnik (Russian Federation), senior executive, entrepreneur and WEF Young Global Leader
  • Doris Leuthard (Switzerland), Head of the Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications, Switzerland
  • Cathy Mulligan (United Kingdom), Co-Director of Imperial College Centre for Cryptocurrency
  • Edson Prestes (Brazil), Professor, Institute of Informatics, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
  • Kira Radinsky (Israel), Director of Data Science, eBay
  • Nanjira Sambuli (Kenya), Digital Equality Advocacy Manager, World Wide Web Foundation
  • Sophie Soowon Eom (Republic of Korea), Founder of Adriel AI and Solidware
  • Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah (Australia), Secretary General, CIVICUS
  • Jean Tirole (France), Chairman of the Toulouse School of Economics and the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse
The deliberations of the Panel will be supported by a small secretariat, co-led by:
  • Amandeep Singh Gill (India), Executive Director, Secretariat of the High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation (ex officio)
  • Jovan Kurbalija, (Serbia), Executive Director, Secretariat of the High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation (ex officio)
..
.
  • Patrick Bolton, Barbara and David Zalaznick Professor of Business, Columbia Business School
  • Markus Brunnermeier, Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Economics, Princeton University
  • Bengt Holmstrom, 2016 Nobel Laureate, Paul A. Samuelson Professor of Economics, MIT
  • Lars Peter Hansen, 2013 Nobel Laureate, David Rockefeller Distinguished Service Professor in Economics, Statistics, Booth School of Business & The College, University of Chicago
  • Preston McAfee, Most Recently Served as Chief Economist and Corp VP at Microsoft
  • Christopher Pissarides, 2010 Nobel Laureate, Regius Professor of Economics, LSE
  • Yingyi Qian, Distinguished Professor and Dean of School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University
  • Alvin Roth, 2012 Nobel Laureate, The Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics, Stanford University
  • Thomas Sargent, 2011 Nobel Laureate, W.R. Berkley Professor of Economics and Business, New York University
  • Michael Spence, 2001 Nobel Laureate, William R. Berkley Professor in Economics & Business, NYU Stern
  • Steve Tadelis, Professor of Economics, Business and Public Policy, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley
  • Neng Wang, Chong Khoon Lin Professor of Real Estate & Professor of Finance, Columbia Business School
  • Shangjin Wei, Professor of Finance and Economics, Professor of International Affairs, and N.T. Wang Professor of Chinese Business and Economy, Columbia University
  • Wei Xiong, Trumbull-Adams Professor of Finance, Princeton University
  • Chenggang Xu, Quoin Professor in Economic Development, University of Hong Kong, Professor of Economics, Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business
..
the wicked problem of missing curricula youth most need- as jack says this is a huge problem; correspondenmce case posted may 2018: moreover we have atended many world bank youth summits where missing curricula have been pitched and everyone cheered the value but getiing each different nation to newly cetrtify suc new learning is a fools erand
-here part of a specific example- do you know a missing peer to peer curricula that needs similar linking in

I am staying at brac in bangaldesh my favorite girls education network in the world as well as largest ngo in wortld and partnership networkwe will see dean of james grant school of public health at brac university tomorrow- do you still have any message you wanted passed to brac about the peer to peer adolescent health program you and lancet have been building? we are mainly working with brac's overall education director as specified directly by sir fazle abed when i met him in qatar 2017 - sir fazle kindly gave a lot of his time to remembrance parties of my dad norman macrae at the japan embassy in dhaka in 2012more generally brac and jack ma started fin tech partnership earlier this month with brac's BkashSMS in bangladesh but for s asia (the whole 2 billion of china's neigbors particularly poorest girls on china south and south westren borders), for sustainabiliuty generation to scale and gain from these 2 superstars we believe partnering relations will broaden into looking at skills education ; we will be trying to form team both on bangladesh and china side to monitor this however fast or slow it goesmostofa has been working on bangladesh side for very long time- he also worked with modjtabia sadria then at aga khan in london while they were in london at time muhammad yunus was at his social business peak ; i believe modjtabia is now back in iran after some years with paul at monash? ( i didnt get to pauls grn summit in jordan 2006; i believe sadria did; i note that jack ma just made donation to queen of jordans education fund)

we are trying to invite any university student to form a club to see where is the nexus between what students most want to study practically and training that sir fazle and jack ma could mooc or otherwise maximally distribute to benefit livelihoods- togther the names of jack ma and sir fazle can be a top 100 web and top 1 web for open action learning- in branding terms this is easy as long as we quickly get all best friends of ma and abed signed up at one launch summit blessed by china and on the road to ma's sponsorship of huge expo at tokyo olympics

after 8 visits to beijing i am reasonably confident that we can get as much additional support as we want from tsinghua university in beijing (over there they know thgere are half a billion undre 30s and that china cant afford any youth left legless by mismatch between jobs and what colleges like examining-- ) additionally tsinghua with aiib is heavily into belt road pitches to india this year so education can be 2 for 1 so to speak
as long as both jack ma and sir fazle have approved a subject area as being one that needs development in this type 2 pee to peer or apprentice mode i believe we can help scale missing curricula

as you think you know i first met pauil komesdroff in 2004- i love everything he was trying to create volunteer expereinces abroad around monash and medics and cultural/arts translators;I hope we can find the right way to linkin monash as this idea gains momentum
coming soon at wechatuni : difficult questions like what happens when ai or robotic intelligence is inside your phone?
- world's largest market fund Yu'e Bao Sesame Credit score

Sunday, December 31, 2017

2017's most exciting new academy - damo

damo- 15 billion dollar intercity investment by jack ma
-help us track sighting
future of ai - one of his main scouts jerry yang - see committee 100 interviews
back from future of industrial revolution 4 - see also wef hub san franscisco
future of big data small
future of cloud
future of internet of things , fablab suopercities ...

-all if these fut\ures could  empower education to co-create youth livelihoods of sustainabklluth generation or the opposite

jack has announced first intercity hubs of damo include hangzhou,l west coast usa, israel, fussia - you tell us isabella@unacknowledgedgiant.com

Saturday, December 30, 2017

baidu ai update oct 2018

Our use of AI to strengthen Baidu's core business is also generating new use cases and opening Baidu up to exciting new markets, such as AI as a Service. We are seeing AI extend beyond the Internet into everyday life and this presents Baidu with large new market opportunities in the 2C, 2B, and 2G markets.
Let's begin Q3 with search and feed. In core search, top 1 now compresses of over 40% of our search queries. And video search is becoming ever more popular with daily queries in the tens of millions, doubling from last year.
This AI-powered feature not only differentiates Baidu's search experience, but also enable us to introduce features like Smart Answer or Smart Screen. For example, a user of Huawei, OPPO, or Vivo smartphones with Baidu AI may take a photo of a plant or a pet. And the phone screen will return the card with information about the (05:20) in the photo. Smart Answer can also identify and provide information about celebrities, points of interest, and so forth.
IDC recently reported that smartphones' shipments in China declined 11% year over year in the first half of this year, making it more difficult for less frequented apps to continue traffic acquisition from app pre-installations.
Mini Programs have become a new source of traffic without requiring merchants to have native apps. We launched the invite-only phase of our Smart Mini Program in July and monthly active users ramped up quickly, surpassing 100 million in September. We have received favorable feedback from users, developers, and our network partners. And program registration was open to the public at the end of September.
We are on track to open source our Smart Mini Programs, which enable apps to join our Host, Union, and (06:38) Smart Mini Programs. Our Smart Mini Program open approach, by design, makes the information in Baidu's Smart Mini Program network searchable.
Moving on to Baidu Apps. In September, average daily active users of Baidu App reached 151 million, up 19% year over year, and time spent on Feed grow 68% year over year. In the two short years that we launched the Baidu Feed, we have added 276 MCNs and over 1.5 million content publishers, up from 1 million two quarters ago.
Twin-engine search plus feed offerings, coupled with unmatched AI-powered recommendation technology deep inside of our massive user base, makes Baidu Apps a compelling offering. A twin-engine apps not only provides better user experience but also generates better unit economics.
Excluding iQIYI, Baidu distributes over 2 billion video views per day. The strong demand for video content on Baidu's platform places us in a good position to offer more variety of video feed. We are replicating the Baidu Apps formula to develop video-only feed apps. For example, we began experimenting with Haokan this year, and in September, Haokan reached a DAU of 12 million.
According to QuestMobile, Haokan was the fastest-growing apps from June to September among all mobile apps in China, with a DAU of more than 5 million.
On monetization, the strong traffic growth of our feed, as well as video traffic are contributing to Baidu's revenue growth. In addition, our industry-leading use of AI to power ad monetization as dynamic ads, mobile action ads, and optimized cost per click, continues to position Baidu as a compelling source of performance-based traffic.
Baidu is pushing the boundary of innovation with cutting-edge technologies to better meet our customers' needs. For example, using blockchain and visual search to combat fake goods and generate more revenue for our customers.
Hairy crabs from the Yangcheng Lake in Jiangsu Province apprised four-season delicacy in China. This year, we worked to build hairy crabs fisheries from the Yangcheng Lake to set up a Smart Mini Program to enable consumers to verify product authenticity via the Baidu App.
Blockchain ensures a tag or a cart's uniqueness, while visual search provides a matching reading to ensure that the product was not switched. The combination of the two technologies have significant commercial value for merchants of big ticket items sold online.
Baidu has made significant strides to proactively improve the quality of healthcare information, and consumers are increasingly dependent on Baidu for healthcare-related services. We are developing a search solution to organize healthcare information into a structured format, so that users can more easily compare services across healthcare providers.
Our solution will verify the identity of licensed medical institutions and use AI to monitor the information quality on the landing pages, as well linked to such structured data instead of third-party websites. Although, these efforts to improve user experience may impact our revenue in the near-term as users get used to the new information structure, we believe they will ultimately lead to better traffic conversion for healthcare providers.
Turning to DuerOS, Baidu's voice assistant. DuerOS continues to gain traction as we focus on user experience, such as improving natural language processing, which enables endless conversation, and building out DuerOS scale ecosystem. We have seen people across China, from Tier-1 to lower-tier cities, from toddlers to senior citizen, use DuerOS-powered devices to perform or search, watch videos, listen to music, make video calls, and control IoT devices in their homes.
In September, DuerOS installed base reached 141 million, up from 100 million in July, and voice queries on DuerOS continued its rapid rise, surpassing 800 million times, which roughly doubled every quarter for the past seven quarters.
DuerOS skills store now has a community of over 24,000 developers and over 800 skills available, such as education, cooking, and game genres such as VIPKID, Cooking Recipes and Digital Pets, respectively.
DuerOS partners continue to expand from TVs to smart meters to smart watches. In addition to homes, DuerOS also expanding its partnership in the IoV environment. For example, UCAR, better known as Shenzhou Zuche, a car rental and ride-hailing service provider, will be installing DuerOS on its fleet of new vehicles.
Turning to Apollo. We are gaining valuable experience in commercial operations with Level 4 vehicles. The Xiamen King Long produced Apolong, Apollo-based fully autonomous minibus, is currently running in over 10 locations throughout China. We are learning that end customers are requesting to purchase wholesale annual maintenance plans, and that the passengers are willing to pay for a ride on the Apolong minibuses. For example, Guangzhou's sunflower garden charges RMB 20 a ride for adults and RMB 10 for children.
Smart city utilizing AI to improve urban living presents Baidu with a great opportunity to serve the 2G market and bring Baidu AI to everyday lives.
The municipality of Changsha have just signed with us to be the first municipality in China to test robot taxi and our connected road solution, powered by Apollo. We are also in discussions with Beijing and Shanghai, whose population is almost equivalent of three New York cities to provide AI-powered city management solutions to help with urban safety, traffic congestion, and public parking, leveraging Baidu Brain, Baidu Cloud, and autonomous driving technologies to improve urban living.
Turning to ABC Cloud. Baidu Cloud continue to grow robustly, and recently recognized by third-party market research firm, Analysys, as the fastest-growing and among the top three most technologically advanced cloud service providers in China. And Baidu ABC Cloud Summit in Shanghai last month, we announced new enterprise solutions with advanced AI capabilities to serve the transportation, education, and financial services industries.
Our AI as a Service approach aims to help customers increase productivity and improve operational efficiency. For example, a top Chinese telco choose Baidu's ABC Cloud with AI as a Service to power their call center. Baidu Cloud was chosen for our differentiated AI technology in speech recognition, natural language processing, and knowledge graph, enabling endless conversation and sparing customers the tedious experience of IVR menus.
Using Baidu's enterprise AI solution, the call center saw dramatic improvement in customer service quality, with average call time falling 70%, and Baidu's AI solution handling millions of calls per month. At Baidu World in Beijing tomorrow, we will share many more case studies illustrating Baidu's enterprise AI solutions now serving over one dozen industries.
Turning to iQIYI. In the third quarter, iQIYI added a record 13.5 million subscribers, reaching a total of 80.7 million subscribers, driven by top-quality content and blockbuster originals like Story of Yanxi Palace. iQIYI continues to rank number one across reach and in engagement metrics in the third quarter, according to third-party market research firms.
Also during the quarter, iQIYI co-launched a hybrid OTT box, with Beijing Gehua CATV network, featuring DuerOS voice assistant video search and children's mode. The hybrid OTT box enables users to access both iQIYI videos and cable TV from one box, an industry first.
Partnerships such as this help DuerOS and iQIYI extend presence into the fast-growing OTT market and exemplify the unique value proposition that Baidu and iQIYI can offer, working in tandem.
With that, let me turn the call over to Herman to go through the financial highlights


Thursday, December 28, 2017

Alibaba’s DAMO Academy Announces R&D of AI Chip with 40 Times the Cost Performance

2 min read 
Recently, the U.S. ban on sales to ZTE has aroused much attention to the chip industry in China. Today, Alibaba DAMO Academy (DAMO stands for Discovery, Adventure, Momentum, and Outlook) claims that it is developing a neural network chip called Ali-NPU, which will be used in AI reasoning calculations such as video image analysis and machine learning. DAMO Academy says that according to its design, the chip’s cost performance will be 40 times that of existing products.
Jiao Yang, a researcher from DAMO Academy, explained that as general-purpose computing chips, CPU and GPU are designed to deal with linear logic and graphics, but they have high power consumption and low cost performance when dealing with AI computing. Thus specially designed chips are needed for AI computing.
At present, AI chips developed by Alibaba are mainly used to solve AI-related computing problems in commercial scenarios including image and video recognition as well as cloud computing, and to improve computing efficiency and reduce costs.
According to Jiao Yang, Alibaba’s Ali-NPU is developed independently based on the large number of AI algorithm models accumulated by Alibaba A.I. Labs and other teams. It can achieve AI model algorithmic computing of the maximum efficiency at minimum cost according to the microstructure and instruction set based on AI algorithm models.
The Ali-NPU chip is designed to have a special architecture with a performance that is 10 times better than mainstream AI chips based on CPU or GPU architecture, while the manufacturing cost and power consumption are only half of theirs. Its cost performance is over 40 times of existing options. In the future, Ali-NPU can not only meet the demand for video and image processing, but could also for computing output through Ali Cloud, empowering all industries.
In fact, Alibaba has been building a team to develop their own AI chips for a long time.
The Alibaba-developed AI chip is a part of Alibaba’s “China Chip” strategy. At present, the R&D team of DOMA Academy has hired dozens of talent in the United States and Shanghai, and will have 100 people by the end of this year. Prior to this, Alibaba has invested in a number of chip companies including Cambricon, Barefoot Networks, Deephi, Kneron, ASR, and C-Sky.
This article originally appeared in NetEase and was translated by Pandaily.
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Wednesday, December 27, 2017

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By Ina Fried ·Sep 27, 2018
One more plug for this: Tomorrow at 8 a.m. in D.C., join Axios' Mike Allen for conversations on the future of global competition in the age of 5G. He'll be interviewing two of the world's top antitrust officials: European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager and DOJ Assistant Attorney General Makan DelrahimRSVP here.
1 big thing: Founders keep piling on Facebook
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images
First it was the Instagram co-founders leaving. Now WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton is taking fresh aim at the social network he sold his company to in 2014 for $22 billion.
In an interview with Forbes, Acton provided his first detailed comments since encouraging people to delete Facebook in a March tweet. Acton left Facebook in 2017, and his WhatsApp co-founder, Jan Koum, left earlier this year.
Why it matters: The dramatic back-and-forth underscores the disconnect between Facebook’s leaders and the founders of WhatsApp and Instagram as those apps buoyed the company in the face of stagnant growth on its original platform.
The details: Here's some of what Acton had to say...
  • “I sold my users’ privacy to a larger benefit,” he said. “I made a choice and a compromise. And I live with that every day.”
  • He also said that while Facebook was instructing him to tell European regulators that it would be difficult to link WhatsApp to Facebook's platforms, the company was exploring that very option. (The company was ultimately fined for misleading regulators during the approval process.)
  • Acton accused Facebook leadership of pushing ad-based revenue strategies, when he believed other approaches would have been successful and better for users.
If Acton needed an Exhibit A, it arrived in a Gizmodo story that reported Facebook was using the phone numbers users provide for two-factor authentication to target ads at them.
What they're saying: Acton's comments, meanwhile, provoked a host of reactions, including a strong rebuke from Facebook's David Marcus, who stressed he was speaking for himself, not the company:
“Lastly — call me old fashioned. But I find attacking the people and company that made you a billionaire, and went to an unprecedented extent to shield and accommodate you for years, low-class. It’s actually a whole new standard of low-class.”
Andreessen Horowitz' Benedict Evans offered a similar criticism:
"This is just a thought, but maybe if you don’t want your product to have ads, don’t sell it to an ad company, or find a way to make it worth the ~$18bn they paid without taking ads, or both."
Our thought bubble: Yes, all the sniping between members of Silicon Valley's wealthy founder class is entertaining. But the disagreements underscore the discord growing within Facebook's key acquisitions right when the company needs them most.
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2. Oculus debuts powerful portable VR headset
A man tries out the Oculus Quest VR headset

Photo: Oculus
While Facebook took a number of hits Wednesday, its Oculus unit made a big step forward. At its developer conference in San Jose, Oculus unveiled its Oculus Quest headset, a mobile VR headset that offers high-end features similar to the Rift but, like Oculus Go, doesn't need to be tethered to a PC.
The details:
  • Due spring 2019
  • $399
  • 50 titles promised for launch
Also: Oculus announced new titles coming for the Rift and new features for Oculus Go, including support for YouTube VR and the ability to mirror video to a nearby TV.
Why it matters: The VR industry has struggled to take off beyond hard-core gamers. Oculus Quest offers another opportunity to strike the right balance of price, convenience and features.
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3. Tech companies want privacy rules on their terms
Sen. John Thune seen with a pack of reporters

Sen. John Thune is spearheading a push for privacy legislation. Photo: Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images
While major tech and telecom companies told lawmakers Wednesday that they generally support federal privacy rules, they aren't ready to embrace some of the most significant policy changes backed by privacy advocates.
At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing, witnesses from companies including Google, Apple and AT&T expressed reservations about some particularly strong steps lawmakers could take to ensure user data privacy.
Why it matters: Companies are drawing lines in the sand for lawmakers who are under pressure to produce something, thanks to new privacy rules in Europe and a California privacy law that will go into effect in 2020.
What's next: “I think we might have a pretty good idea what a draft would look like [by the end of the year], but I suspect we probably wouldn’t get it acted on until next year," Commerce Chairman John Thune said.
Go deeper: Axios' David McCabe has more on the hearing here.
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5G will build a new critical infrastructure for America
The 5G network will form a new critical infrastructure for a fully connected society. Cities will become smarter and machines will speak with machines, enabling remote medical monitoring, intelligent factories and hyper-efficient power grids. Learn about 5G use cases.
4. Masa Son sees more Vision Funds ahead
Softbank chief Masayoshi Son tells Bloomberg Businessweek he plans to raise a fresh $100 billion fund every two to three years and to spend around $50 billion a year.
By way of comparison, the Bloomberg article points out that the entire U.S. venture capital industry invested around $75 billion in 2106, per the National Venture Capital Association.
Other revelations:
  • Son initially was going to pitch the first Vision fund as a $30 billion entity, but decided to up the stakes at the last minute. "Life’s too short to think small,” he told a lieutenant.
  • When Son made his first pitch with the $100 billion figure, the potential client laughed, but Son kept going, raising nearly $100 billion, including $45 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
Why it matters: Softbank's Vision Fund has already reshaped the tech industry, inspiring other investors to up their aspirations and fueling a wave of ever more cash-hungry startups.
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5. Take Note
On Tap
ICYMI
  • Lyft doubled its revenue in the first half of the year, ahead of an expected IPO filing. (The Information)
  • The FCC approved rules designed to remove local roadblocks to 5G network construction. (Axios)
  • Special Counsel Robert Muller was seen getting tech support at a D.C.-area Apple Store. (Business Insider)
  • Stripe has raised $245 million in additional capital, giving the company a $20 billion valuation. (Axios)
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6. After you Login
As a huge fan of women's hockey and love, this story warms my heart.
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A MESSAGE FROM INTEL
America’s 5G future needs mid-band “Goldilocks” Spectrum
Mid-band wireless spectrum for 5G is vital to provide higher data rates over larger areas. Learn what policymakers can do to accelerate U.S. 5G leadership today.