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The Morning Download: Lowe's DIYs Software Development
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Good morning, CIOs. Home-improvement chain Lowe's is applying the do-it-yourself ethos to its own e-commerce platform, developing software in-house to better personalize the online shopping experience for customers.
“To do something like this in a package software is almost impossible, because you are dependent on a completely different company to change their product road map and respond to your needs at your speed,” CIO Seemantini Godbole tells CIO Journal's Agam Shah.
When a fixer-upper becomes a gut job. The effort to renovate a decade-old website is part of a larger tech overhaul at Lowe's, one where it plans to invest $500 million annually in technology through 2021 and hire as many as 2,000 software engineers, infrastructure engineers and data analysts.
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Employees on the assembly line at Chinese auto maker FAW Group, which has teamed up with the U.S. self-driving software developer Plus.ai. PHOTO: FREDDY CHAN/EPA-EFE/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
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Trade tensions jeopardize self-driving vehicles. A decision by Washington to tighten controls governing the exchange of AI technology between the U.S. and China has the eternally nascent autonomous vehicle industry worried, The Wall Street Journal's Trefor Moss reports. Currently many self-driving operations function as Sino-U.S. hybrids with research-and-development bases of equal importance in California and in China.
Extending Alexa’s reach. Amazon yesterday showed off new earbuds, Echo Buds, designed to compete against Apple's AirPods. Amazon said Echo Buds users will have to have their phone on them to use the Alexa virtual assistant. Also introduced: Echo Frames, eyeglasses that will feature microphones and speakers to communicate with Alexa. In addition, Amazon is also launching an Alexa-enabled ring named Echo Loop. (WSJ)
Amazon's IOT. The company also announced Amazon Sidewalk, an intermediate wireless network that could be used to control wireless devices. (Reuters)
English, Alexa! Do you speak it? Samuel L. Jackson is among the actors expected to lend their voices to the virtual assistant. (Reuters)
Google refuses to pay for news links in France. Google said it would refuse to pay for licenses for previews of French news articles when the European Union’s new copyright directive goes into effect here next month. (WSJ)
Drones have a killer app. Ninety-five countries now own military drones with at least 21,000 and probably more than 30,000 in service world-wide. At least 10 countries, including Azerbaijan and Nigeria, have conducted strikes using unmanned aerial vehicles. (WSJ)
70 countries have disinformation campaigns. And Facebook is the top social network platform favored by governments and political groups engaged in propaganda, according to a new report by researchers from Oxford University. (New York Times)
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PHOTO: DAVE J HOGAN/GETTY IMAGES
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You're my firewaaaall. Noel Gallagher, leader of 90s-era Britpop group Oasis, talked with the WSJ about why he stopped using laptops: "I got so frightened that if I hit the wrong button rockets would launch over Ukraine or something, that I sent it away." (WSJ)
Rage Against the Machine rages against the machine. Some musicians are not hip with the investments in facial recognition technology made by events promoter Live Nation. "I don’t want Big Brother at my shows targeting fans for harassment, deportation, or arrest," tweeted Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine. Live Nation last week said it didn't currently have plans to deploy the technology. (Newsweek)
An algorithmic playwright. Among the MacArthur 'Genius Grant' winners announced Wednesday is Annie Dorsen, a 45-year-old Brooklyn, N.Y., playwright, who uses computer algorithms to generate works about the nature of our relationship with technology—and how we experience a world that is increasingly dominated by it. (WSJ)
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PHOTO: ANDRE M. CHANG/ZUMA PRESS
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Symantec CIO joins Slack board. The workplace-collaboration software company says Sheila Jordan has a track record of leadership in enterprise transformation, security and information-technology management. She becomes the eighth director on Slack's board, which comprises only executives from other companies and venture-capital firms with the exception of its co-founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield.
EBay CEO Devin Wenig resigns. Mr. Wenig left the online marketplace citing conflicts with the company’s new board, which is overseeing a strategic review of the business. He became eBay’s CEO after the company spun off PayPal in 2015, which it had purchased in 2002 for roughly $1.5 billion—one of the biggest tech deals at the time. (WSJ)
We? Me! Adam Neuman, until yesterday the CEO of office sharing startup WeWork, was mentioned 169 times in the company's S-1. By comparison, Steve Jobs was mentioned 11 times in Apple's 1980 IPO prospectus. (CNBC)
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Everything Else You Need to Know
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President Trump asked his Ukrainian counterpart to “look into” former Vice President Joe Biden and his son and said he would direct his personal lawyer and the attorney general to reach out, according to a document of a July phone call. (WSJ)
The United Auto Workers strike at General Motors is starting to take a toll on businesses throughout Michigan, creating a growing threat to the state’s already-slowing economy. (WSJ)
California and more than a dozen other states sued the Trump administration over regulations that they say have weakened the federal law designed to save wildlife from extinction. (WSJ)
The average total cost of employer-provided health coverage passed $20,000 for a family plan this year, according to a new survey, a landmark that will likely resonate politically. (WSJ)
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