Tech Bytes to Know this Week: 7.7.2016

July 7th, 2016

Topics: Infrastructure Internet of Things

Tesla Pushes the Limits of Agile Development with Autopilot Fatality – Tesla’s Autopilot feature was implicated in fatal crash this week after a user of the technology officially listed as in “Public Beta Phase” was killed when his car drove into a tractor trailer on a Florida highway. The fatality in a self-driving car is a first, and raises questions about whether or not there are limits to applying software development tactics to the physical world. Tesla follows an aggressive development approach, favored by many in Silicon Valley, that promises new products on aggressive timelines and then works through problems as they arise in development. The Agile development model promotes iterative work and new versions that are incrementally improved following the discovery of errors by beta testers and developers alike. It’s a model that works extremely well when developing software and has been the secret to rapid growth by many tech companies. The problem for Tesla is errors uncovered during a public beta in a car driving at highway speeds can have disastrous consequences. Google understood the ramifications and has decided to limit its self-driving cars to 25 mph speed limits and stay off highway roads. While self-driving cars will eventually reduce motor vehicle fatalities, how we arrive to that point is critically important and Tesla probably just set the bar even higher for all companies working on autonomous vehicle technologies.

South Korea Turns on Nationwide IoT Network – This week Korea announced it finished its infrastructure development project creating a national Internet of Things network six months earlier than planned. The network combines LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network) with existing LTE-M infrastructure to wire up everything from smart meters for utilities to parking spaces. The network is open to development for public, commercial and private projects and was developed by SK Telecom. The Netherlands also completed a national IoT network last month, making the two countries leaders in IoT infrastructure development.

Comcast’s X1 Platform to Welcome Netflix Later this Year – The Net Neutrality rulings have made it illegal for ISPs like Comcast to throttle back traffic to streaming competitors, like Netflix, and so it probably makes sense that Comcast would want customer users accessing Netflix via its platform instead of a competing platform like Apple TV or Roku. Why push your customers to a competing platform (where they might stay) when you can allow them to access the services they want inside your own platform?

Featured CXOTalk video of the week: Episode 168: Disruption in the Power Industry, with Ganesh Bell, Chief Digital Officer, GE Power
The power industry is undergoing significant disruption and digital transformation. On this episode, the Chief Digital Officer of GE Power guides us through these disruptions and explains how General Electric is changing as a result.

Ganesh Bell is Chief Digital Officer & GM, Commercial Software & Analytics at GE working across its largest industrial business Power & Water and GE Software. In this position he leads digital innovation and transformation – responsible for the digital solutions business and digital engagement to drive business growth.