Interview with Jeff Bezos

When I Asked Jeff Bezos The Tough Questions -- No Profits, The Book Controversies, The Phone Flop -- He Proved Why He's A Genius CEO | Business Insider:

"Experiments are, by their very nature, prone to failure. A few big successes compensate for dozens and dozens of things that didn’t work.
...What really matters is, companies that don’t continue to experiment, companies that don’t embrace failure, they eventually get in a desperate position where the only thing they can do is a Hail Mary bet at the very end of their corporate existence. Whereas companies that are making bets all along, even big bets, but not bet-the-company bets, prevail. I don’t believe in bet-the-company bets. That’s when you’re desperate. That’s the last thing you can do."

Atlas: Netflix's Primary Telemetry Platform

The Netflix Tech Blog: Introducing Atlas: Netflix's Primary Telemetry Platform:

...platform and ecosystem... for time-series telemetry and its capabilities
and announce the open-sourcing of its underlying foundation

• In-Memory Storage
• Engineering for Performance
• Engineering for Resilience
• Engineering for Cost

IoT: sensors, networks, distributed computing

Cheap sensors, fast networks, and distributed computing - O'Reilly Radar (free report)

"The trifecta of cheap sensors, fast networks, and distributing computing are changing how we work with data. But making sense of all that data takes help, which is arriving in the form of machine learning. Here’s one view of how that might play out."

ideas: replacing rearview mirror with camera (Acura)

Cadillac replacing rearview mirror with camera:
“In addition to the increased field of view, the technology eliminates any rear seat, rear pillar or passenger obstructions, allowing the driver an unimpeded view of the lanes behind and traditional blind-spots
...
Thanks to a high dynamic range, the camera’s video feed reduces glare and allows a crisper image in low-light situations, versus a traditional glass electrochromatic, or auto-dimming, rearview mirror,” Cadillac noted in a release. “The in-mirror display is an industry-leading 1280 by 240-pixel TFT-LCD display with 171 pixels per inch, combined with a HD camera designed specifically to enhance rear view lane width and maximize low-light situations.”

2010 Acura MDX rear-view mirror with integrated backup camera display photo

Feature: Acura Winter Testing Experience - YouTube

.NET: Speech Recognition and Synthesys

Voice Recognition - Speech Recognition with .NET Desktop Applications:
"... how to get started with speech recognition and speech synthesis in Windows console applications, Windows Forms applications, and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) applications.

...you can also add speech capabilities to Windows Phone apps, ASP.NET Web apps, Windows Store apps, Windows RT apps and Xbox Kinect, but the techniques to do so are different from those presented in this article."

Microsoft Speech Platform (downloads)

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A nice article with step-by-step guide for making Windows voice apps.
The setup is a non-trivial.
It is interesting to compare this with cloud-based (Google Now) or mobile (Siri, Cortana) agents,
that just show in web browser or in a smartphone app, and "just work" (or entertain :)