Every Monday morning at 7:10 am, I am a guest contributor on CHOM 97.7 FM radio broadcasting out of Montreal (home base). It’s not a long segment – about 5 to 10 minutes every week – about everything that is happening in the world of technology and digital media. The good folks at CHOM 97.7 FM are posting these segments weekly to SoundCloud, if you’re interested in hearing more of me blathering away. I’m really excited about this opportunity, because this is the radio station that I grew up on listening to, and it really is a fun treat to be invited to the Mornings Rock with Terry and Heather B. morning show. The segment is called, CTRL ALT Delete with Mitch Joel.
This is a tragedy, and it was bound to happen. A man was killed driving his Tesla while in Autopilot mode. “According to Tesla, the Model S was traveling on a divided highway when a tractor trailer crossed in front of the car. The side of the truck apparently lined up perfectly with the skyline in both position and color, and because of that neither Autopilot nor the driver saw it. Autopilot missed it because the car was lined up with the middle of the truck, where there are no wheels, and the Tesla’s low-mounted sensors only look downward toward the road, not above it. That allowed the car to drive underneath the trailer, killing the driver.” Now, everybody is questioning the reliability of driverless cars, in a world where 1.3 million people die daily (almost 3500 a day). This is very sad, but we have to understand the different between autonomous vehicles and driver assisted technology.
We’ve talked about messenger apps the growth of bots in the past. Well, why not have Bots that can defend you in court. How about this DoNotPay. It’s a bot that helps you fight tickets and flight delays. Only in the UK and NYC, but check it out, so far it has gotten 160,000 tickets dismissed in the U.K. and New York in just 21 months.
There is one missing and key feature that Netflix does not offer. Let’s hope these rumours are true. Netflix should be offering a download button by the end of the year. Sure, Amazon and Spotify already have this feature, but this could be a game-changer for Netflix.