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1) GM-Lyft Alliance – GM and Lyft have announced details of a short-term rental program that will allow Lyft drivers to rent GM vehicles with Lyft picking up the tab. The announcement comes just two months after GM pumped $500 million into Lyft and formed its “Maven” brand that will handle all of the car manufacturer’s ride-sharing programs. The deal is seen as a bridge to a future where GM vehicles will provide autonomous, on-demand vehicles for Lyft customers.
Read More: Lyft Will Subsidize Car Rentals for Drivers Who Do 65 Rides a Week
Read More: The First GM Vehicles on Lyft’s Driverless Platform Will Only Be Semi-Driverless

2) Instagram Moves to Algorithm for its Feed – In a long-rumored move, Instagram will reorganize users’ feeds to showcase the most relevant and popular posts instead or all posts in chronological order. The move follows Twitter’s recent changes to the way it organizes its feed. While the move is being billed as a way to allow users to see more of the important posts they frequently miss, it’s also likely a move that will allow the social network to increase ad revenues.
Read More: Instagram is switching its feed from chronological to best posts first

3) Dropbox Leaves AWS – Dropbox has made the bold decision to migrate its entire cloud-based file-storage business from AWS to its own servers. The move has been in the works for over two years and involves a new system and even programming language invented to make the move possible. While Dropbox is explaining the move as purely economic, it’s hard not to see the parallels to Amazon’s AWS story and see how Dropbox will sell their new platform as a service to customers in the future.
Read More: The Epic Story of Dropbox’s Exodus From the Amazon Cloud Empire
Watch: Game of Clouds: Dropbox Declares Independence From Amazon

4) Google AI Bests Go Champ – By now you’ve probably heard that Google’s AlphaGo AI bested world Go champ in a best of five match this week. Wired has an excellent review of the highlights of the match and how AlphaGo used its neural networking basis to learn from the best human players in the world and then started playing itself to learn beyond how humans currently play the game. It’s a fascinating look at how an AI system can begin to learn on its own and move past human knowledge, but how humans can also return the favor and learn from AI systems.
Read More: In Two Moves, AlphaGo and Lee Sedol Redefined the Future

5) Amazon Patents “Pay by Selfie” Facial Recognition Authentication  – Authentication problems have long-plagued Amazon and other ecommerce sites and Amazon appears to want to use facial recognition as a replacement for services like CAPTCHA and simple passwords. The debate over how to keep data safe and reduce fraud online has been a hot topic of late with President Obama penning an OpEd in the Wall Street Journal last month on the need for increased cybersecurity in the government and numerous articles on the importance of multifactor authentication.

Read More: Amazon applies for “pay by selfie” patent
Read More: Passwords Are Dead. Long Live Multifactor Authentication

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