Nossa! Brazilian Soap Opera Invades Silicon Valley
Geração Brasil revolves around a Brazilian Larry Ellison type named Jonas Marra who, after building a multi billion dollar tech company in Silicon Valley, returns home to spread the love via a televised hackathon that features an array of Brazilian nerds. There’s favela nerds, mauricinho nerds, nerdettes, and basic poindexter nerds; tem nerd pra cacete. Marra even employs a sycophantic spiritual advisor, just like HBO’s Silicon Valley / the actual Silicon Valley. It’s not that farfetched. Facebook has a Brazilian founder. Brazilians adoram American brands and culture. Silicon Valley is the center of the known digital universe, and Brazil is ... → Read More
Betabeat - Wednesday, May 28, 2014
The market for apps is booming. According to the latest data from Distimo, via Ben Schachter at Macquarie Research, combined spending in Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play store, was up 83% year-over-year in April, hitting $ 1.4 billion. Right now, Apple takes 62% of the revenue, and Google takes 38%. However, Google is growing faster, up 166% year-over-year, versus Apple at 53%. This is a trend to watch. For years, Apple has been the best platform for developers despite a smaller user base. If this trend holds, then it will be even, which could hurt Apple’s app supremacy. Chart ... 
Google recently revealed a prototype driverless car without pedals, brakes, or steering wheel. All you have to do is push a button. Google is planning to make roughly 100 versions of the self-driving car prototype, Google cofounder Sergey Brin said at the Code Conference. “Our software and sensors do all the work,” the company wrote in a blog post. “The vehicles will be very basic—we want to learn from them and adapt them as quickly as possible—but they will take you where you want to.” It’s worth noting that current California law states that while a driverless car is moving, ... 
She learned how to do that on Wikipedia. (Photo: Getty) In case you needed more proof that the Internet is a terrible, no good, very bad place to go for medical information, scientific research has now officially confirmed it. A new study states nine out of 10 Wikipedia entries on the U.S.’s costliest medical conditions contain “many” factual errors, the BBC reports. In other words, you should definitely stop relying on the Internet for information on all your gross health concerns.
Every year, former analyst and venture capitalist Mary Meeker releases an in-depth look at the state of the web. The Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner also hints at up-and-coming startups and uncovers digital trends with an array of surprising stats. This morning, she released it at Re/code’s CodeCon conference. We’ve uploaded it here, and will have more on it shortly… See the rest of the story at Business Insider Tech
Robots, robots everywhere (YouTube). Were you hoping Amazon would go away so you could stop buying things you don’t need solely because they come in two days? Oh well. Amazon is about to multiply their robot army times 10, CNN reported. The online retailing giant announced plans to increase their robot workforce to 10,000 by the end of this year. Currently, Amazon employs 1,000 of the wondrous warehouse machines.
