Adidas Wilson's Blog, page 160
April 26, 2017
Apple shows off Dubai Mall store with ‘stunning views’, motorized carbon fiber windows
A day before the official opening, Apple invited local press to tour its latest retail store within the Dubai Mall in the United Arab Emirates. Headline features include views of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, and a 180-feet wide motorized window comprising 18 carbon fiber panels.
To mitigate Dubai’s climate, Foster + Parters designed eighteen 37.5-foot-high motorized “Solar Wings” that respond to the ever-changing environmental conditions. When the sun is at its hottest they cool the store, and in the evenings they open to welcome everyone to the public terrace. Inspired by the the traditional Arabic Mashrabiya, each “Solar Wing” is locally fabricated from 340 carbon fiber reinforced polymer rods, and at 180 feet wide, the 18 panels make up one of the world’s largest kinetic art installations.
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The store will also provide great views of another Dubai attraction …
Each evening, there is a spectacular evening fountain show directly outside the store, and Apple is inviting visitors to use that 18-foot wide opening window to view the display. Video of the fountain display can be seen below.
Apple’s announcement of the opening also focuses on its rebranded and expanded store workshops, Today at Apple. This initiative was revealed in a CBS interview yesterday.
At the heart of every Apple Store is the drive to educate and inspire. “Today at Apple“ will launch at Apple Dubai Mall and in all 495 Apple stores next month with new sessions across photo and video, music, coding, art and design, and more, led by highly-trained team members. Apple Dubai Mall will also host high-profile events including live music, intimate conversations with film-makers and photographers, and live workshops with some of the world’s top talent. Events on opening day include Live Art with Myneandyours, and Artist Duos with musician Hamdan Al Abri and artist Sultan Al Ramahi.
These will be run by Creative Pros, a new position we first discovered in August of last year.
The motorized windows look pretty spectacular.
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Source:
Apple shows off Dubai Mall store with ‘stunning views’, motorized carbon fiber windows [Video]
I’ve locked three Bollywood films: Priyanka Chopra
Mumbai: The press conference of Priyanka Chopra’s Hollywood film ‘Baywatch’ was held amidst enough galore in the city on Wednesday.
Priyanka Chopra, who returned from the US to the city for merely five days, was quite enthralled to interact with the Indian media.
However, the main lead actor Dwayne Johnson, who couldn’t make it physically to the press conference, was virtually present there.
The conference began with his heart-warming message through a video.
He expressed his grief of not making it to India, and said that he is missing India a lot.
Dwayne, popularly known as ‘The Rock’ further joked with the Indian media, to not ask any questions to PeeCee about Zac Efron or other ladies, but only about him.
Taking charge of the press conference solely, Priyanka was asked her opinion about the much-in-debate Akshay Kumar’s National Award win.
To which, the actress didn’t pay any heed to let the journalist even complete her question. Squashing her question, she laughingly said, “I was in America, I do not know anything.”
Priyanka was asked the most expected and obvious question about she missing Bollywood and her upcoming films, to which the actress shared her feelings saying, “I am listening to many scripts, but once I know what my schedule is, then only I can figure out when I can do a film. I can tell you for sure I have locked three films! But I can’t announce them till I know my dates. And I don’t know when I will do it, this year or next year. Actually after June, I really don’t know what I am going to do! And I definitely missed Hindi film industry. I am meeting people here also. So yes, it feels wonderful.”
When questioned about Indians or browns being welcomed warmly and accepted by Hollywood, the ever-so-humble diva replied, “You can’t be so entitled as being from Hindi film industry. We can’t say that if we are stars in India we will be stars everywhere. I am okay to walk into a room and introduce myself as, ‘Hello, I am Priyanka Chopra. I am an Indian actor.’ There’s nothing small about it, our achievements are quite big. Of course, people didn’t know me then. I never thought they were mean except a few. But I think American press was wonderfully accepting of me. In fact, I haven’t seen them being that good to any other Indian actor. They have been loving, friendly and encouraging of me. So, I can’t say about brown skin. I can’t generalise.”
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We are all aware about filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s admiration for Priyanka, hence when asked if she would be seen in his next ‘Padmavati’ in any role, she admitted, ” No! just because I am Sanjay sir’s favourite (laughs), I am joking… We have spoken about other films, but not ‘Padmavati’.”
Priyanka’s home production Marathi film ‘Ventilator’ bagged three National Awards, on which the elated diva joked that for some reason whenever she receives an honour from the Government of India, she happens to always be in New York.
Elaborating about her happiness on the win, she further added that she was very happy as this was her first film under her production house Purple Pebble Pictures.
Daddy’s little girl Priyanka said, “I made this film for my dad. The entire sequence happening outside the ICU, while my dad was on ventilator, is the story of ‘Ventilator’.”
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She was asked about the difference in freedom of speech there in Hollywood, where the celebrities are in more power to criticise the authority and perhaps, the Indian celebrities here hesitate.
“It’s a cultural difference maybe. I say what I feel. I’ve always had my opinion. When I don’t want to say anything, I just don’t. Maybe controversies get…when public figures say anything there and over here they get into trouble,” she concluded.
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Bringing down the language barriers – making the internet more inclusive
There are currently over 400* million Internet users in India, but with only 20% of the population fluent in English, most Internet users have significant language barriers to getting the full value of the Internet. A speaker of Indian languages like Hindi or Tamil still has trouble finding content to read and or use services that they can use in their own languages.
To build rich and empowering experiences for everyone means first and foremost making things work in the languages people speak. Today, we’re taking a huge step forward by launching new set of products and features that will empower the Internet ecosystem to create more language content and better serve the needs of a billion Indians who’re coming online rapidly.
Neural Machine Translation: The world’s content, in your language
Starting today, when you use Google Translate, you might notice that the translation is more accurate and easier to understand, especially when translating full sentences. That’s because we’ve brought our new Neural Machine Translation technology to translations between English and nine widely used Indian languages — Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Punjabi, Malayalam and Kannada.
Neural translation is a lot better than our old phrase-based system, translating full sentences at a time, instead of pieces of a sentence. It uses this broader context to help it figure out the most relevant translation, which it then rearranges and adjusts to be more like a human speaking with proper grammar. This new technique improves the quality of translation more in a single jump than we’ve seen in the last ten years combined.
Just like it’s easier to learn a language when you already know a related language, we’ve discovered that our neural technology speaks each language better when it learns several at a time. For example, we have a whole lot more sample data for Hindi than its relatives Marathi and Bengali, but when we train them all together, the translations for all improve more than if we’d trained each individually.
But how does this make the whole web better for everyone — Chrome has it covered!
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That’s where Chrome’s built-in Translate functionality comes into play. Every day, more than 150 million web pages are translated by Chrome users through the magic of machine translations with one click or tap. The Chrome team and the Google Translate team have worked together to bring the power of Neural Machine Translation to web content, making full-page translations more accurate and easier to read.
Today, we’re extending Neural Machine Translation built into Chrome to and from English for the same nine Indian languages (Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil Telugu and Hindi). This means higher quality translations of everything from song lyrics to news articles to cricket discussions.
Being able to type in your language of choice is as important as understanding content on the web. Today, we are ramping up support to include 11 new languages to the list of 11 existing Indian languages —with transliteration support—including Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, and Gujarati.
Gboard has all the things you love about your Google Keyboard — speed and accuracy, Glide Typing and voice typing — plus Google Search built in. It also allows you to search and use Google Translate right in your keyboard (just tap the “G” button to get started). And—as a reminder—Gboard already has a Hinglish language option for those of you who often switch back and forth between Hindi and English.
With today’s update, we’ve also dropped in a new text editing tool that makes it easier to select, copy and paste, plus new options for resizing and repositioning the keyboard so it fits to your hand and texting style. And to top it all off, this Gboard update comes with some under-the-hood improvements including better accuracy and predictions while you type
Like Google Indic Keyboard, Gboard has auto-correction and prediction in these new languages, plus two layouts for each—one in the native language script and one with the QWERTY layout for transliteration, which lets you spell words phonetically using the QWERTY alphabet and get text output in your native language script. For example, type “aapko holi ki hardik shubhkamnay” and get “आपको होली की हार्दिक शुभकामनायें ”.
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Source:
https://india.googleblog.com/2017/04/bringing-down-language-barriers-making.html
Designing the hanging gardens of Mars
NASA is all about solving challenges, and the goal of having a prolonged presence in space, or a colony on Mars or some other world, is full of challenges, including the necessity of growing food. Scientists at Kennedy Advanced Life Support Research are working on the Prototype Lunar/Mars Greenhouse Project to try and meet that challenge.
The Prototype Lunar/Mars Greenhouse Project (PLMGP) is all about growing vegetables for astronauts during extended stays on the moon, on Mars, or anywhere they can’t be resupplied from Earth. Beyond growing food, the Project aims to understand how food-growing systems can also be a part of life-support systems.
We’re working with a team of scientists, engineers and small businesses at the University of Arizona to develop a closed-loop system. The approach uses plants to scrub carbon dioxide, while providing food and oxygen,” said Dr. Ray Wheeler, lead scientist in Kennedy Advanced Life Support Research.
The prototype itself is an inflatable, deployable system that researchers call a bioregenerative life support system. As crops are grown, the system recycles, water, recycles waste, and revitalizes the air.
The system is hydroponic, so no soil is needed. Water that is either brought along on missions or gathered in situ—on the moon or at Mars for example—is enriched with nutrient salts, and flows continuously through plant root systems. Air in the system is recycled too. Astronauts exhale carbon dioxide, which plants absorb. Through photosynthesis, the plants produce oxygen for the astronauts.
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“We’re mimicking what the plants would have if they were on Earth and make use of these processes for life support,” said Dr. Gene Giacomelli, director of the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center at the University of Arizona. “The entire system of the lunar greenhouse does represent, in a small way, the biological systems that are here on Earth.”
A key part of a system like this is knowing what astronauts will have to bring with them, and what resources they can find at their destination. This includes which type of plants and seeds will be needed, as well as how much water might be available once astronauts reach their destination. Methods of extracting water on Mars or the moon are also being researched and developed.
Even if the necessary water can be found in situ on Mars and the moon, that hardly means those are easy places to grow food. Astronauts have to be protected from radiation, and so will crops. These greenhouse chambers would have to buried underground, which means specialized lighting systems are also required.
“We’ve been successful in using electric LED (light emitting diode) lighting to grow plants,” Dr. Wheeler said. “We also have tested hybrids using both natural and artificial lighting.” Solar light could be captured with light concentrators that track the sun and then convey the light to the chamber using fiber optic bundles.
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Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-04-gardens-mars.html#jCp
Driver-friendly ride-hailing apps Gett and Juno are combining
Ride-hailing app Gett today confirmed that it will acquire Juno, another app in the on-demand transportation industry, for $200 million, reports TechCrunch. The deal will combine Juno’s network of New York City-based drivers under Gett’s and continue to offer drivers a 10 percent commission rate while giving them 100 percent of tips. (Uber’s commission ranges between 20 to 25 percent.)
Juno launched in New York City just one year ago, and initially pitched itself toward drivers, not riders. It promised to be a more “ethical ride-sharing app,” offering drivers $50 a week to keep the app open during normal work hours and a rating system that deducted 5 percent of their lowest ratings on a weekly basis.
In light of recent press around Uber’s shady business practices, consumers have been rapidly switching to competitors like Juno, Lyft, and Gett. Just a few days after the #DeleteUber campaign began in January, Lyft surpassed Uber in app downloads for the first time ever. Gett also reported that in the last quarter, its revenue and rides completed grew 100 percent.
Gett currently services 100 cities worldwide, including New York, Tel Aviv, London, and Moscow. Its acquisition of Juno aims to help it further expand in the United States.
Source:
http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/26/15436222/gett-acquires-juno-driver-friendly-ride-hailing-apps
Glow app closes on first $250,000 round of funding, finalizes expansion plans
Yazmin Cavale thinks of the process of taking her freelance beauty business to become Glow, the beauty-on-demand app, as a series of goals.
Can I convince someone to book an at-home makeup appointment online? Check.
Can I get a booking through someone who doesn’t know me? Check.
Can I get a whole market of people who don’t know me to buy my product? Check.
Can I get investors? Glow just closed its first $250,000 round of fundraising.
Cavale launched her app in November before becoming one of the first companies to complete the Innovation Depot’s Velocity Accelerator program. She just closed on her first round of funding, and the investors couldn’t get much closer to home: The Innovation Depot; Scott McGlaun, chairman of the Depot’s board and Chief Information Officer at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama; and Molly LaBorde, Chief Operating Officer at the Depot.
“This is the time I’ll hold so dear to my heart, because it’s been such a process, and every step has been so monumental,” Cavale said. “Of course, there’s downsides to everything, and it’s definitely a roller coaster, but it’s those steps moving forward that just push us.”
The round will fund Glow’s first expansion outside Birmingham: by the end of July, Glow plans to be up and running in Nashville. Cavale will be there this week interviewing make-up artists and hoping to find a full-time sales lead and full-time artist leader there.
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“Nashville is going to be different. It’s a different market and we’ll market to different groups, and really find out what works with a touristy market,” Cavale said. “Birmingham is more everyday women and weddings and things like that, where Nashville is a high tourist area. So we’re going to see what works there, and that way we have two markets to base our next move on.”
The app works similar to Uber or Lyft, but instead of GPS finding you the nearest cab, it uses GPS to find you the nearest makeup artist, hair stylist or spray tanning professional. After you input the service you want and your location or home address, you browse available beauty professionals sorted by how close they are to you. You can check each professional, read user reviews, and browse photos of his or her work without leaving the app.
You request an artist-an independent contractor-who can accept or reject the booking. Glow offers make-up, spray tan and hair styling and blowout services. Services range in price from $50 to $175, but the average booking is about $100.
Glow hopes to hit 200 bookings per month this month, and within a year of launching in Nashville, it aims to hit 1,000 bookings a month.
“We keep seeing bookings grow each month. We don’t want to see it taper,” said Jim Cavale, Yazmin’s husband and an entrepreneur himself, a former President of Iron Tribe Fitness. He’s not full-time with Glow, but he’s helping with the launch and building the brand. “We think it’s very possible, being just four months in and hitting 20 percent of that just in Birmingham.”
Glow is partnering on the launch with New York City-based marketing firm VaynerMedia, the marketing firm of Gary Vaynerchuk, an investment fund owner who has invested in companies like Uber, Facebook and Birchbox, as well as an author and Internet personality.
Glow has also applied for up to $100,000 in grants to help grow the business without giving up any more equity.
“We could have raise money upfront, but we didn’t. We self-funded it, and I was still leading Iron Tribe at that point. But we said, let’s just tough it out, let’s self fund it, let’s make it work, because we would give up way too much if we raised money before we even had a client,” Jim Cavale said.
“We want to, in Nashville, create a prototype that people see as scalable. If the Nashville launch is successful, the valuation of this company will increase, and the next round of capital could be significant but without giving up as much.”
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Source:
http://www.al.com/business/index.ssf/2017/04/glow_app_closes_on_first_25000.html
McDonald’s and Uber Just Made a Huge Announcement, and It’s Going to Be a Game-Changer
Believe it or not, business is booming at McDonald’s.
The fast-food chain is currently riding a wave of success founded on several prosperous initiatives, including all-day breakfast, aggressive soft-drink promotions, and a makeover of its iconic Big Mac.
This killer combination (possible pun intended) has led to exceptionally strong first-quarter sales, shooting the stock up to an all-time high.
But none of these strategies can compare with McDonald’s’ next move.
As reported yesterday by Crain’s Chicago Business, which broke the story on its website:
McDonald’s plans to expand its relationship with Uber Technologies as it seeks to offer delivery of its food to customers in more U.S. cities.
The Oak Brook-based burger chain, which has been testing delivery through the UberEats mobile app in about 200 restaurants in Florida since December, said today it will launch delivery in several cities by the end of June.
“We’re encouraged about the start we’ve had,” CEO Steve Easterbrook said on a conference call with analysts and investors. “We are not in test mode, we are expanding.”
This announcement is huge, for several different reasons.
Why This Is So Huge
I know what you’re thinking:
Who in the world wants McDonald’s food delivered? It’s not even that great when it’s fresh.
But you’re underestimating the customer base of the fast-food king. Sure, there are a lot of McDonald’s haters out there, but there are also a lot of fans. This isn’t one of the most ubiquitous restaurants across the globe for nothing.
And it’s exactly that saturation that gives McDonald’s such a major advantage when it comes to delivery.
“One of our greatest competitive advantages is that we’re closer to more customers than any other restaurant company in the world, with nearly 75% of the population in our five largest markets living within three miles of a McDonald’s,” Easterbrook pointed out in a recent letter to shareholders.
“On top of that, we have 20+ years of delivery experience in Asia and the Middle East,” he continued. “We’re working aggressively to identify the right operating models for bringing delivery to more customers–whether we control all aspects of the delivery process from end to end or partner with third parties for ordering and fulfilment. We have a number of pilots underway and plan to scale quickly based on results.”
In addition, remember that most McDonald’s food is already consumed outside its stores.
“Some 70 percent of McDonald’s U.S. business goes through the drive-thru, and in urban areas, far more consumers take its food to-go versus eating inside,” reported Crain’s.
Despite a rough start, Easterbrook really seems to be hitting his stride as McDonald’s’ chief executive. His vision moving forward is remarkably clear, and no one can deny the results he’s achieved in a very short amount of time.
And with a variety of stock-option awards and performance-based bonuses, he’s certainly motivated: In 2016, his compensation almost doubled.
In the process, Easterbrook has us calling McDonald’s a word we haven’t associated with the brand for a very long time:
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Scientists May Have Finally Found A Way To Cure HIV
“This protection would be long term,” said first author Jia Xie.
The researchers, led by senior study author Richard Lerner, plan to collaborate with investigators at City of Hope’s Center for Gene Therapy to evaluate this new therapy in efficacy and safety tests, as required by federal regulations, before testing in patients.
“City of Hope currently has active clinical trials of gene therapy for AIDS using blood stem cell transplantation, and this experience will be applied to the task of bringing this discovery to the clinic,” said researcher John A. Zaia. “The ultimate goal will be the control of HIV in patients with AIDS without the need for other medications.”
“We at TSRI are honored to be able to collaborate with physicians and scientists at City of Hope, whose expertise in transplantation in HIV patients should hopefully allow this therapy to be used in people,” added Lerner.
The new TSRI technique offers a significant advantage over therapies where antibodies float freely in the bloodstream at a relatively low concentration. Instead, antibodies in the new study hang on to a cell’s surface, blocking HIV from accessing a crucial cell receptor and spreading infection.
Xie called it the “neighbor effect.” An antibody stuck nearby is more effective than having many antibodies floating throughout the bloodstream. “You don’t need to have so many molecules in one cell to be effective,” he said.
Before testing their system against HIV, the scientists used rhinovirus (responsible for many cases of the common cold) as a model. They used a vector called lentivirus to deliver a new gene to cultured human cells. This gene instructed cells to synthesise antibodies that bind to the human cell receptor (ICAM-1) that rhinovirus needs. With the antibodies monopolising that site, the virus cannot enter the cell to spread infection.
“This is really a form of cellular vaccination,” said Lerner.
Because the delivery system can’t reach exactly 100 percent of cells, the finished product was a mix of engineered and unengineered cells. The researchers then added rhinovirus to these cell populations and waited to see what would happen.
The vast majority of cells died in about two days. In dishes with only unengineered cells, the population never recovered. There was an initial die-off in the mixed, engineered/unengineered populations, too, but their numbers quickly bounced back. After 125 hours, these cell populations were back up to around the same levels as cells in an undiseased control group.
In essence, the researchers had forced the cells to compete in Darwinian, “survival-of-the-fittest” selection in a lab dish. Cells without antibody protection died off, leaving protected cells to survive and multiply, passing on the protective gene to new cells.
This success led the researchers to test the same technique against HIV
To infect a person, all strains of HIV need to bind with a cell surface receptor called CD4. So the scientists tested antibodies that could potentially protect this receptor on the very immune cells normally killed by HIV. “This research is possible because of the ability to select specialized antibodies from combinatorial antibody libraries,” said Lerner.
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Again, their technique worked. After introducing cells to the virus, the researchers ended up with an HIV- resistant population. The antibodies recognized the CD4 binding site, blocking HIV from getting to the receptor.
The scientists further confirmed that these tethered antibodies blocked HIV more effectively than free-floating, soluble antibodies in experiments led by study co-authors Devin Sok of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and TSRI Professor Dennis R. Burton, who is also scientific director of the IAVI Neutralizing Antibody Center and of the National Institutes of Health’s Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology and Immunogen Discovery (CHAVI-ID) at TSRI.
Joseph Alvarnas, M.D., director of Value-Based Analytics at City of Hope, explained how the TSRI technique could help patients, who, despite treatment with anti-retroviral drugs, still suffer from higher rates of diseases, such as cancers.
“HIV is treatable but not curable; this remains a disease that causes a lot of suffering. That makes the case for why these technologies are so important,” he said.
In addition to potentially collaborating with City of Hope, Xie said the next step in this research is to try engineering antibodies to protect a different receptor on the cell surface.
The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Source:
http://www.indiatimes.com/health/scientists-may-have-finally-found-a-way-to-cure-hiv-275511.html
April 25, 2017
John Paul DeJoria
DeJoria entered the world of hair care as an employee of Redken Laboratories. He was fired from this position, he claims over a disagreement on business strategies. In 1980, he formed John Paul Mitchell Systems with hairdresser Paul Mitchell and a loan for $700.
DeJoria co-founded the Patrón Spirits Company in 1989, is a founding partner of the House of Blues nightclub chain, and has interests in Madagascar Oil Ltd., Pyrat Rum, Smokey Mountain Bison Farm, llc, Ultimat Vodka, Solar Utility, Sun King Solar, Touchstone Natural Gas, Three Star Energy, Diamond Audio, a Harley-Davidson dealership, a diamond company (DeJoria), mobile technology developer ROK AMERICAS, the John Paul Pet company, which does hair and personal grooming for animals, and J&D Acquisitions LLC, the parent company for the Larson, Striper, Triumph, Marquis and Carver boat companies formed with Minneapolis-based investor Irwin L. Jacobs.
DeJoria has been active in the film industry as an executive producer and actor. He made a cameo appearance as himself, in the 2008 comedy You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, and also in The Big Tease as the fictional John Paul Mitchell. DeJoria also made a cameo appearance in the Showtime series Weeds season 2. He narrated and appeared in television commercials for Patron in November 2011. In 2012, using a video, DeJoria showed his support for Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, when Watson was detained in Germany for interfering with shark finning operations.
DeJoria appeared on the November 1, 2013, broadcast of the ABC reality series Shark Tank as a guest investor, replacing series regular Robert Herjavec. He’s also been interviewed many times on podcasts and video series, including the Handshakin Video Series
Waymo Has Invited the Public to Hop into Its Self-Driving Cars
Waymo—or, the company formerly known as Google’s self-driving car project—announced Tuesday that it plans to sign up hundreds of households living in and around the Phoenix, Arizona, area for a trial that will give them free, on-demand access to self-driving cars.
“Rather than offering people one or two rides, the goal of this program is to give participants access to our fleet every day, at any time, to go anywhere within an area that’s about twice the size of San Francisco,” John Krafcik, CEO of Waymo, wrote in a post on Medium.
The fact that Krafcik outlined how much of the greater Phoenix area will be open to riders is significant, suggesting that Waymo has mapped it in great detail and is confident that its cars will perform well there. This is similar to the approach Uber took when it launched its self-driving taxi program in Pittsburgh last year.
Uber’s Pittsburgh experiment showcased a technology that was a long way from self-sufficient (see “What to Know Before You Get In a Self-driving Car”), and since then the ride-hailing giant’s autonomous vehicle operations have had a rough ride—including being accused by Waymo of stealing its lidar technology.
Waymo, meanwhile, appears to believe its fleet of self-driving Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans and Lexus RX450h SUVs is up to the challenge of ferrying families to and from work, soccer practice, and on errands. While the company makes clear that each car will come with a human test driver, Krafcik said the purpose of the trial is to learn more about how people use Waymo’s vehicles—where they go with them, how they interact with them during rides, and so on.
This could be a sign that the technology is maturing to the point that Waymo is becoming more concerned with how to make an actual business out of its cars (which was, after all, the point of spinning the company out of Google in the first place). There is also plenty of pressure from a growing list of competitors to keep pushing forward.
Regardless of the motivation, the trial is likely to provide a trove of data on what regular people do with autonomous vehicles when given the opportunity. And if Waymo’s years of experience in testing self-driving cars is any indication, there are bound to be a lot of unexpected results.
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