Checkout free retail + more things

2 minutes estimated reading time

Exclusive: Microsoft takes aim at Amazon with push for checkout free retail | Reuters – I hope that checkout free retail works better than self service checkouts. Also will checkout free retail work well in low trust societies? More related content here.

The Ruggedmen and the End of Free & Easy – but out of the Ashes is born something new

Are Apple AirPods Any Good? – The Atlantic – interesting observation on the changes on consumer behaviour using AirPods

Why the Future of Machine Learning is Tiny | Pete Warden’s blog – and not AI – the early 1990s use of fuzzy logic is a better analogue

Upscaling of Sneaker Brands Threatens Luxury Fashion | Jing Daily – Gildo Zegna, CEO of Italian luxury fashion house Ermenegildo Zegna, attributed the rising price of sportswear sneakers to their rise in emotional value, “If there is one product today that is impulse driven and creates emotions among consumers, it is the sneaker (…) you are talking about people spending $100 to $700 on a single pair.”

Publicis publicity win was bigger than the bot | Special: Cannes Lions – Ad AgePublicis campaigns won’t be absent from Cannes after all, because clients and partners stepped up to pay for the entry cost for a few hundred campaigns

Volkswagen tests quantum computing in battery research | eeNews Power – chemistry makes sense as it works on low qubit machines. Involvement with Google and D-Wave is a blow to IBM

Monzo’s big smart bank move links your money to Alexa, Twitter and pretty much anything else | WIRED UK – I find this quite scary

Customer Experience Trends In China, 2018 | Forrester ResearchToday, China has become so innovative that businesses in mature Western markets are taking note. The country’s tech giants are blurring the boundaries between digital and physical and expanding the reach of their platform businesses with new value propositions

Microsoft acquires a whole bunch of game studios | TechCrunch – interesting how Microsoft is going about this. Steam is looking like the future of gaming

About the Finder… | Ars Technica – the finder is a bug bear since I started as a Mac user and the lack of positive change in Mojave is no different