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The Republican Tax Plan Could End Up Hurting Seniors
 The Republican tax bill comes with a price.

According to "pay as you go" rules, the tax bill could trigger sudden and severe cuts to federal programs, including Medicare.

One of President Donald Trump's biggest campaign promises was to preserve Medicare and Social Security, and these cuts could break that promise.

Big changes are afoot in Washington. After more than 10 months in the White House, tax-reform momentum is building for President Trump after House Republicans passed, by a 227-to-205 vote, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Following the failure of Congress to come to an agreement on healthcare reforms earlier this year, Trump is looking for his first major legislative victory as president, and he views tax reform, a key campaign pledge, as a means to get it.

While you can read a more thorough summary of what the House GOP tax bill entails, its primary focus is on cutting taxes for middle-class families, as well as corporations. Individual taxpayers would see a notable simplification of the U.S. tax code, with fewer income-tax brackets, a beefier standard deduction, and far fewer deductions and credits.

As for corporations, the peak marginal income-tax rate would be lowered to 20% from 35%. The thinking here is that putting more money into the pockets of businesses will lead to job creation and higher wages. Since the U.S. economy relies on consumption for about 70% of GDP, both lower taxes on the middle class and corporations should help boost spending, as Republicans see it.

The GOP tax plan comes with a price

But there's a price to be paid for this massive overhaul to the U.S. tax code. According to an analysis conducted by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the GOP tax plan would add about $1.5 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. Yes, that figure includes the positive impacts of lower tax rates on consumers and corporations. It means that the GOP needs to find ways to boost revenue and/or cut expenses to bridge this gap. Otherwise, the results could be disastrous.

Should Republicans pass the House GOP tax bill in its current form but fail to reduce the long-term (i.e., 10-year) deficit, the paygo budget rule, which was introduced in 1990, would be triggered. Paygo, which is short for "pay as you go," is a budget rule requiring that tax cuts, as well as increases in entitlement and mandatory spending categories, be covered by tax increases and/or cuts in mandatory spending -- though it doesn't apply to discretionary spending.

In other words, if the 10-year cost of a program is greater than $0 -- in the case of the GOP tax plan, it's close to $1.5 trillion -- as determined by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), it would trigger sequestration.

What's sequestration? It's the process of applying across-the-board spending cuts to mandatory spending programs. According to estimates from the CBO, sequestration would require $136 billion worth of cuts in mandatory spending in 2018 if the GOP doesn't find a way to raise additional capital or make further cuts in spending.

President Trump might be forced to break a key promise on entitlements

Where would this $136 billion come from? Glad you asked. Most of it -- say, $85 billion to $90 billion -- would be derived from cuts to agricultural subsidies, Customs and Border Patrol operations, Student Loan Administration funding, and some of the health funds for the Affordable Care Act, according to The Hill. It's possible the OMB may not be able to scrape enough from these mandatory programs to cover the entirety of the $136 billion.

More importantly, $25 billion would need to be cut from Medicare, the healthcare program that covers about 58 million Americans, of which five out of six are senior citizens aged 65 and up. If there's a silver lining here, paygo can't cut Medicare by more than 4% in a year.

But here are the two issues at hand. First, if the deficit remains in 2019, 2020, and beyond, paygo would kick in and continue to reduce mandatory spending to counter the increase in the deficit caused by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Thus, a 4% cut to Medicare spending could become the norm year after year until the deficit is resolved.

Second, it would require Trump to break perhaps his most important campaign promise: the pledge that he wouldn't cut funding to so-called "entitlement programs" like Social Security and Medicare. Seniors are the primary beneficiaries of these programs, and they'd be none too pleased if their funding was cut to pay for tax reforms.

Trump has broken a promise before

However, Americans should keep in mind that Trump's pledge to leave entitlement programs alone has technically already been broken. Back in May, the president released his outline for the fiscal 2018 federal budget, and in that proposal was a $72 billion cut over the next 10 years to the Social Security Disability program. Even though this failed to make it into the final budget, the mere fact that Trump attempted to pass along a cut to any part of Social Security goes against his pledge to leave these vital programs alone.

While I don't believe we'll see Medicare subjected to paygo-induced sequestration, the GOP tax plan and previous attempts at health reform do lay down a few clues on where Republicans are looking to save money. Within healthcare reform, the GOP had been looking to slash Medicaid funding by up to $800 billion over the next decade.

Meanwhile, the current GOP tax bill contains a provision allowing the federal government to tether tax provisions to the Chained Consumer Price Index (CPI). Unlike the standard CPI, the Chained CPI takes into account something known as substitution bias. This is the idea that consumers will trade down to cheaper goods or services as others become more expensive.

Switching to the Chained CPI would result in smaller annual inflationary increases. Though it doesn't specifically mean that the Chained CPI would be used as a measure for Social Security or Medicare, it certainly opens the door for that to happen. And if it did happen, it would mean smaller cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security recipients that'd save the federal government money.

The GOP looks to expedite tax reform, but questions remain

Another factor that comes into play is that the GOP is hard-pressed to pass tax reforms, given that one of their 52 seats in the Senate is up for election in Alabama. Without any expected Democratic support, they can only afford to lose two votes at present and still have tax reform pass in the Senate. If they lose their seat in Alabama, the margin for error becomes just one GOP Senator. They couldn't pass healthcare reform with a two-seat majority in the Senate, so a one-seat majority for tax reform could be impossible if they're looking to approach things unilaterally.

What taxpayers and especially seniors should keep in mind at the moment is that tax reform often means compromise, either within a party or with the other political party. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act probably won't look the same once it's been voted on in the Senate, which means there's a chance of no sequestration whatsoever to Medicare and other mandatory spending programs in the years that lie ahead.

Only time will give us more answers.

Output: The proposed Republican tax bill could result in issues for senior American citizens, as the “pay as you go” rules risk causing severe cuts to federally-funded programs such as Medicare. The tax bill has been passed as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act through the House by Republicans through a 227-to-205 vote. The bill represents the new hope for the Trump administration, which aims to gain a legislative victory after the healthcare defeat of recent months. The bill’s aim is to cut taxes for the middle-class, as well as businesses. However, the cuts proposed could cause a negative impact on healthcare for seniors. The Paygo, or pay-as-you-go, budget regulation requires all tax cuts to be covered by tax increases or mandatory spending cuts. In this case, if the 10-year cost is larger than $0, it will trigger sequestration, or spending cuts for mandatory spending programs. At present, the GOP tax plan cost stands at $1.5 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office believes that sequestration will cause $136 billion worth of cuts to mandatory spending in 2018, if capital is not raised through another method. The $136 billion in cuts is likely to be made through a decrease in spending to Customs and Border Patrol operations, agricultural subsidies, Student Loan Administration funding and some health funding for the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare. It would also be made from a $25 billion cut to Medicare, which covers approximately 58 million Americans, of which five out of six are aged over 65. Though Paygo cannot cut Medicare by more than 4 percent in one 12-month period, it will likely be triggered in 2020 if the deficit has not been cleared by 2019. This could cause a 4 percent cut to Medicare every year until the deficit has been paid. The move would, however, cause President Trump to break his campaign promise to leave “entitlement programs” such as Medicare out of cuts. The GOP had been seeking to cut Medicaid funding by $800 billion with their previously proposed reforms, and the tax bill may provide a legal way to do so. The present tax bill also includes a link between tax provisions and the Chained Consumer Price Index (CPI), which could mean less money for Social Security recipients for the cost of living as smaller annual inflationary increases may allow the government to save money.


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China's overseas trade policy changing cargo insurance landscape
 "As a rule, we will always use a marine warranty surveyor where Delay in Start-up (DSU) is concerned on the load out and load in of critical items oarticularly from the sea fastening aspect... but once you've got it off and on to a trailer everything changes," said Munich Re Syndicate Singapore regional marine underwriter Tony Betteridge.

He added that from a project cargo perspective he is finding the largest losses are on the inland transit section and as a result is looking at surveyors that have a mechanical background for aspects of the job such as hydraulic systems, and perhaps civil surveyors for things like bridge loading.

"In the project cargo field we're moving more and more away from a pure marine warranty surveyor to surveyors with skills in all sorts of different classes," Betteridge said.

Meanwhile project cargo is seeing larger values of risks, not just on the conveyance limit but also the DSU values at the back end which can see sums insured of as high as $1bn now.

Project-critical equipment is routinely shipped around the world and high levels of risk are associated with these shipments due to the nature of the cargo, transport logistics, and tight timeframes.

Failure of a shipment to arrive intact can balloon a simple cargo loss into a multi-million dollar Delay in Start-up (DSU) loss when factors such as re-fabrication, shipping, expenses, lost profits and other operational costs are considered.

This is being compounded by the fact that BRI projects are increasingly coming to the fore and these are going to places with very different infrastructure from that traditionally expected in places such as Southeast Asia.

Noting that almost any project on BRI will involve putting cargo on trailers, especially larger items on very sophisticated hydraulic module trailers, Betteridge reiterated "like a ship they have to be properly maintained and properly underwritten".

"When you're handling this sort of cargo the distances involved, particularly in BRI projects potentially are going to be very long inland transits," he emphasised and so therefore with some of the extra long trailers, some with up to 24 axles, there needs to be extra attention paid to overland issues.

"You're moving away more from a traditional marine survey to a route survey as well," Betteridge said.

Output: China's "One Belt, One Road" policy is transforming the insurance landscape for project cargo, the shipping of oversized and specialist consignments for major infrastructure schemes. The demands of the nation's overseas trade and development initiative is requiring new approaches to cargo risk profiles and surveying as insured values reach $1bn. Delay in Start-Up (DSU) loss risks are surging due to the nature of the cargo, transport logistics and the strict timeframes.


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CFTE targets re-education of finance workforce
 Ten years on from the global financial crisis, bankers are facing another dilemma destined to destroy tens of thousands more jobs. New technologies, particularly automation, artificial intelligence, and blockchain, are disrupting the world’s banking centers.

The attack on banking jobs has been relentless. British banks are set to close almost 800 branches this year, after shutting nearly 600 in 2016. The CEO of Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest bank, warned that the company could afford to lose half of its staff to automation. Swiss bank Nordea announced at the end of last month that it was cutting a tenth of its staff, and its CEO said the banking industry could cope with half its current number of personnel. Consultancy Greenwich Associates estimates that 15% of the finance industry’s jobs are at risk of being lost to AI-driven alternatives.

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“Everything that can be automated, will be,” says Huy Nguyen Trieu, a former managing director at Citi and lecturer in financial technology (fintech) at Oxford University. But widespread financial job losses aren’t inevitable, he adds. Right now, he argues, the problem is that not enough people working in finance—particularly older people—have the right skills to take advantage of the technological changes that are transforming their industry. At the same time, bank CEOs are too quick to fire people.

With his wife, Tram Anh Nguyen (a former capital markets trader), Nguyen Trieu created the Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CFTE), which provides online courses in fintech. The first course, “Around Fintech in 8 hours,” costs £299 ($397) and is taught by people who have lectured in the UK, Hong Kong and Singapore. It is split into four chapters, each with four 30-minute modules within them. The sections cover everything from challenger banks and cloud computing to peer-to-peer lending and cryptocurriences, as well as explaining the key people and companies in the burgeoning fintech world (some of whom make appearances as part of the course). The second session begins on Dec. 11.

In addition to teaching, Nguyen Trieu is leading by example with the launch of an AI-enabled mobile savings app, which is in the early planning stages. Quartz spoke with him at his office in London about how urgently the finance industry needs to prepare for a machine-led future. The conversation has been edited and condensed.

Quartz: After working at big banks for more than a decade, what led you to try out teaching instead?

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Nguyen Trieu: Banking was my day job but I also had a night job mentoring entrepreneurs and writing my blog Disruptive Finance. Two years ago, I met Peter Tufano, the Dean of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, and I was talking about trying to hire people at Citibank but a lot of the students weren’t properly prepared. Peter said, “why don’t we do something about it?” I became a resident expert at Oxford and so we started to do fintech lectures.

In early 2016, it all became too much. I was telling entrepreneurs you have to focus on something but I was doing a lot of different things. The reality is I couldn’t really tell everybody, “finance is being transformed, big things are happening,” and still do the same thing I’d been doing for the past 10 years. I left and launched The Disruptive Group with the objective of building the next Google of finance.

What does that mean?

Ten years ago, no one would have expected Google to be one of the biggest players in advertising. I think the same is happening in finance. There will be companies creating new products and services, which we can’t even imagine today. The Disruptive Group had three pillars: building businesses, advising entrepreneurs, and education. I thought education would take up just 10% of time. But when I was trying to build businesses, I found that one of the big issues I was facing was talent—people who could combine finance and technology. Everyone’s struggling to find good talent.

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Who should take this course?

Initially, I thought my ex-colleagues in finance who are missing the boat and don’t realize what’s happening. But it’s also for those who realize but don’t know where to start. Fintech is going to impact their careers very quickly.

What was also especially important for my wife is the potential social impact. Fintech is having a huge impact, especially in emerging markets, where suddenly you can create companies that provide finance to people in a way you couldn’t before. That’s why we wanted to do something that was accessible for people beyond London.

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But there’s a big difference in fintech scenes across the world.

The mindset and the way people use technology and fintech is very different. If you’re in Hong Kong, you have WeChat on your phone and you use it on a daily basis. Here, you don’t use fintech on a daily basis. Some people might use Revolut but they still have a traditional bank account. Here, fintech is seen as innovations on top of existing financial services whereas in Hong Kong, fintech is finance.

So the course is for everyone, everywhere?

And not just for people in finance. When we did the beta test only 40% of the users were from the finance industry—the rest were from tech, or were entrepreneurs or consultants.

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Did you find it surprising that finance take-up was so low?

I talk to a lot of students and most of them still expect to enter the world of finance in the same way we entered it 10 or 20 years ago. They still think they will join banking, stay there for the next 15 years, and if they do well become managing directors. Only after a while do they realize it’s not going to happen because those jobs might not exist at all.

So automation, AI, machine learning, and the like are all coming for your job if you don’t retrain?

Banks are thinking today about cutting thousands of jobs and increasing their technology budgets. To me, it is is absurd for a CEO of a bank to think this way. What is the value of the service being provided to clients? They’re still providing the same service as 10 or 20 years ago, but instead of having people you have machines. There is an opportunity for all of these people working in large banks to provide better and different services by using tools we have at our disposal today. We are trying to change this mindset, particularly in the western world, which is about just using automation to protect your bottom line.

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How do you get execs at the top of finance firms to understand the impact of fintech? Do they need retraining, too?

We’ve had feedback from senior people who say it’s interesting but they didn’t say for themselves. They say it’s interesting for their staff. We’re starting to see a change in mindset but there’s a lot of convincing to do.

What about policymakers and regulators? How many of them should take a course like yours?

All of them.

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So, what finance jobs most at risk right now?

In general, anything that can be automated will be automated. But right now, compliance is at risk. Over the past few years there’s been a lot of investment in compliance and KYC [know your customer], because regulators wanted the investment and it was a way for banks to demonstrate they were doing their part after the financial crisis. Now, that has totally changed. It’s starting to cost a lot and regulators have said we want you to show that you are being efficient, not just hiring a lot of people.

What is going to be the most transformative force in the finance industry?

The big change for me doesn’t even come from tech, it’s enabled by tech. It’s invisible finance. Finance is very boring. Everybody knows a pension fund is very important, but if you ask me how much I have in it, I have no idea. What we’ve seen over the past 20 or 30 years is that as the finance world has become digitalized, the level of customer service we have has gone down. My situation versus your situation is totally different but when we go to the HSBC site, we have the same kind of information.

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What will make it happen is APIs. I used to be in the telecom industry and 10 or 15 years ago if I wanted to launch an app I could spend a week developing the app and then three months making the same app for Samsung, Ericsson, Nokia, etc. There was no standardization. What was very successful were the ringtones. When you had standardization of iPhones and Androids, you had millions of apps because it was simple. In the world of APIs it will be the same in finance. It’s going to be very easy to create a financial service just for you.

Is that the thinking behind your launch of an AI-driven savings app?

It’s a project from The Disruptive Group, which is a business builder. We’re currently working on the bank project, and CFTE was also launched out of it. So they are sister projects, although most of the focus is on CFTE at the moment, if only because our timing for the bank is longer.

Output: Edtech start-up The Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CFTE) plans to retrain financial workers, who may be at risk of losing their jobs to artificial intelligence (AI). "15% of the finance industry’s jobs are at risk of being lost to AI-driven alternatives", according to Greenwich Associates. Bankers need "the right skills to take advantage of the technological changes that are transforming their industry", said CFTE co-founder Huy Nguyen Trieu. The CFTE's first course covers topics including P2P lending, cryptocurrencies, key fintech figures, and cloud computing.


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Change Healthcare and Zebra Medical partner for AI radiology
 Change Healthcare and Zebra Medical Vision today announced an agreement to create solutions that deliver artificial intelligence solutions to complex radiology reporting environments. Change Healthcare’s proven radiology solutions, along with Zebra Medical Vision’s algorithms, will benefit radiologists and other imaging specialists by improving the efficiency of routine tasks and the effectiveness of workflow in the radiologist reading environment.

By working together on the pragmatic integration of artificial intelligence algorithms into radiology solutions, Change Healthcare and Zebra Medical Vision are innovating to transform the radiology readflow environment. In parallel, Change Healthcare will continue to work closely with its forum of clinical and academic leaders on leveraging the integral insights inherent in imaging and clinical information so that solutions developed truly help imaging specialists identify critical conditions more quickly.

“For artificial intelligence to be truly valuable, it must be integrated into radiologists’ routine, daily readflow,” said Ashish Sant, senior vice president and general manager, Radiology & Infrastructure, Change Healthcare in a statement. “Pragmatic, artificial intelligence solutions such as the All in One (AI1) offering from Zebra Medical Vision are essential. We see a strategic fit as Change Healthcare pursues solutions that optimize workflow and access to clinical data for our medical imaging customers.”

Output: Change Healthcare and Zebra Medical Vision have partnered to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into radiology solutions. Change Healthcare aims to incorporate Zebra's algorithms into its existing imaging services, hoping to "optimise workflow and access to clinical data for our medical imaging customers" and speed up the diagnosis of serious conditions, according to senior VP and manager at Change Healthcare, Ashish Sant.


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Revolut rolls out duty-free payment alternative
 This article is the latest in our popular new series in association with Tito’s Handmade Vodka, which examines travel retail and airport sector ‘disruptors’ – focusing on companies and individuals challenging established models through innovation.

UK/INTERNATIONAL. An app-based banking alternative called Revolut is being rolled out in the global duty free and airlines market.

Advanced Software Systems will begin distributing the Revolut cards with immediate effect. Premier Portfolio International will handle sales to travel retailers.

Revolut allows users to open a prepaid current account in 60 seconds. There they will receive instant spending notifications, spending categorisation and can set weekly or monthly budgets.

The app also allows users to hold and exchange up to 25 currencies with the real exchange rate. They can also send free domestic and international money transfers and spend abroad in over 130 currencies with no fees via a contactless MasterCard.

London-based Revolut has already launched in Middle East travel retail. The launch was planned to coincide with the original date of the MEADFA Conference (now postponed until January).

Airport or airline customers can receive their Revolut card instantly upon purchase. Revolut aims to partner with additional airlines in the coming months, providing cards to travellers looking to spend money abroad without fees.

The company plans to expand into North America in early 2018, followed by launches in Australia and Asia in the near future.

Revolut is also launching a pay-per-day travel insurance service. It will use a customer’s geo-location to provide instant medical and dental cover, starting at less than £1 per day. Pay-per-day travel insurance will sit alongside Revolut’s new device insurance as the company looks to assemble a suite of smart insurance products.

“We are excited to be able to help even more customers save money abroad by entering the global duty free and airlines market,” said Revolut Founder & CEO Nikolay Storonsky. “By distributing our cards to airline passengers and duty free store consumers, we can help them avoid rip-off fees whenever they try to transfer, spend or withdraw money abroad.”

Advanced Software CEO Howard Amor, a well-known figure in the travel retail sector, commented: “As a software house with 40 years of management experience of the airlines and duty free market, we wanted to find new and traveller-specific ideas with real financial and logistical benefits for the market.

“Revolut stood out as a market leader compared to currently available travel money cards, so we are delighted to partner with such an innovative company. Revolut takes up no space in the duty free bar and is a new and exciting product area for airlines and duty free. Its FX rates and fee-free card will save travellers a huge amount.”

Output: Revolut is rolling out its app-based alternative banking service to airports across the globe. Revolut's service allows users to transact abroad, in over 130 currencies, with no fees. The app can hold and exchange 25 currencies at any given time. “By distributing our cards to airline passengers and duty-free store consumers, we can help them avoid rip-off fees whenever they try to transfer, spend or withdraw money abroad”, said Revolut founder & CEO Nikolay Storonsky.


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Head of Apple News monetisation and strategy quits after a year
 Publishers hoping to make money off Apple News can’t be cheered by this: David Kang, who became senior director of Apple News monetization and strategy in November 2016, is leaving after a year in the position.

It’s unclear why Kang is leaving the Apple News role, but it can’t be easy running monetization at a company that’s been notoriously indifferent, if not hostile, to advertising, given that it makes most of its money selling phones and prizes its users’ privacy.

Output: Apple News has lost its director of monetisation in the latest in a string of senior-level departures from the service this year. David Kang, who joined Apple in 2014 and has overseen Apple News's monetisation and strategy since November 2016, is said to be taking on a different role within Apple but it is unclear why he is moving. Publishers have had a mixed relationship with Apple News; while they value the traffic and exposure the service brings, Apple has been resistant to proliferating ads on the service and many publishers have reportedly not seen the revenues they expected.


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Samsung buys AI firm Fluently to refresh voice-assistant Bixby
 Samsung's not giving up on Bixby, despite initial lukewarm responses to its AI assistant.

Bixby is the South Korean firm's answer to other voice assistants like Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa. But when it debuted, fans found it just wasn't as smart as the competition.

To buff up Bixby's brains, Samsung has now acquired Fluently(opens in a new tab), which makes an AI chatbot that can compose smart replies in English and Korean.

Fluently produced an app that plugged into messengers like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, and offered natural-sounding contextual responses.

Respond to friends with a tap. Credit: fluently

Similar to Gmail's auto responder, Fluently reads an incoming message, and tries to offer you a selection of appropriate reactions.

The Fluently acquisition adds onto Samsung's 2016 buyout of US-based AI platform Viv, which was co-founded by the team that created Siri.

To be fair to Bixby, it's a lot younger than the competition. And the Viv team didn't contribute to the current version of Bixby either, so it's safe to say that the injection of all this new expertise will help Bixby close the gap a lot sooner.

Output: Samsung has bought artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot firm Fluently to boost its voice-assistant Bixby. Fluently's chatbot integrates with messaging services to offer natural, contextually relevant automated responses. The acquisition follows Samsung's previous purchase of US-based AI firm Viv, which was co-founded by the team that created Apple's Siri.


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US researcher builds AI system that can create new video games
 The goal for Angelina is that it will dream up completely new elements of games—a form of computational creativity. On the surface, Angelina works with striking simplicity: Cook presses a button labeled “Play,” and it boots up. The AI then describes a new game in a unique description language that outlines both the game’s rules and its levels. It can make games from images that it pulls from license-free depositories such as Wikimedia Commons, and it can flesh out the premise and rules with characters and ideas lifted from online newspapers or social media (think U.S. presidents or Brexit, for example). This information is written to a text file that can then be run by a stand-alone application, in the same way that a game cartridge is read by a game console.

In its early years, Angelina was limited to developing platform games, in the style of Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. But in the software’s current iteration, which has been designed for further expansion, its repertoire has expanded to other genres, such as puzzle games and adventures.

“Angelina doesn’t set out to make a game in a particular genre—instead, it tries to build games that match its notion of what a good game is,” says Cook. This notion of quality currently comes from Cook’s own ideas about game design (such as ensuring that the game is not impossible to win or lose, and offering players a number of interesting choices at each step), but in time, he says, the system will learn from the feedback of players, as well as the AI’s experience of playing games made by human designers.

In most cases today, semiautonomous game-making systems are supported by human designers. “There are two types of content in video games: ‘throwaway’ content, such as terrain, common enemies, quests that don’t add to the overall plot that make very little lasting impact on the player, and ‘memorable’ content, such as boss monsters, major plot points,” says Mark Riedl, a 42-year-old associate professor at Georgia Tech. “While the automated creation of ‘throwaway’ content has been used for decades using simple rule-based algorithms, generating ‘memorable’ content is a human-level AI problem.”

Despite the challenges, it’s an area that could, Cook believes, reap major rewards in unlocking new game concepts and mechanics. Recently, he fed Angelina a game outline about exploring a dungeon as an adventurer. Instead of designing basic levels for an adventure game, Angelina designed levels in which a player controls multiple adventurers simultaneously and must get some of them killed in order to rescue the remainder. “It frequently does things like this—looking beyond the assumptions I have, and finding interesting things I would not think to look for,” says Cook.

Output: A US researcher has built an artificial intelligence-driven system capable of independently imagining new video games without human input. While AI has been tasked with configuring enemies, terrain and minor story elements, the Angelina AI built by Michael Cook at the University of Falmouth has created hundreds of experimental games since its earliest form in 2011.


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Business models of many US universities are unsustainable
 Almost half of financial planning staff at US universities believe that the current business model at their institution is “not sustainable for the next five to 10 years”, according to new research.

A survey of 183 US higher education professionals who are involved in the financial planning and budgeting process at their institution found that 47 per cent of respondents thought that their business model was unsustainable.

This figure rises to more than 50 per cent when just based on respondents from two-year community colleges and for-profit universities, and drops to about 45 per cent for respondents from both public and non-profit private four-year universities, according to Tony Ard, vice-president of higher education software at Chicago-based management consulting firm Kaufman Hall, which conducted the study.

Meanwhile, two-thirds of respondents (66 per cent) said that they are not able to respond quickly to changing financial circumstances or are unsure if they could, based on existing tools and processes at their institution. A similar proportion (64 per cent) believed that higher education was behind most other industries in terms of “adopting modern financial planning practices and tools”.

More than two-fifths of respondents (43 per cent) said that the current length of the budget cycle limits their ability to make informed decisions and react to changing circumstances; 82 per cent of respondents said that their budgeting cycle takes more than three months to complete from initial rollout to board presentation, while 34 per cent said that it takes more than six months.

The survey was conducted in August and September 2017.

Mr Ard said that the findings confirm that there is a “growing recognition from people within higher education, and specifically in finance offices, that at the micro-level we probably can’t grow our way out of these financial challenges”.

He said that the unsustainability of universities’ business models was because of “flat demographic trends around high school graduates”, a drop in state appropriation to public universities and the “challenges with growing tuition revenue”.

“There has been a lot of scrutiny on published tuition rates” and there have been questions over the “average family’s ability and willingness to pay what it perceives as a high tuition rate”, Mr Ard said.

He added that it is “not that easy” for universities to “influence their costs in the short run because it’s pretty much tied up in people and facilities”.

Mr Ard said that while institutions with “very strong brand names will be fine”, there are risks that more universities will close or merge as a result of their financial challenges.

ellie.bothwell@timeshighereducation.com

Output: Almost half of the financial planning staff at US universities have said their current business model is unsustainable in the short term, according to a survey by management consultancy Kaufman Hall. Among 183 US higher education professionals, 66% said they couldn't respond quickly to changing financial circumstances, while 64% believed the education sector was lagging behind other industries in the adoption of "modern financial planning practices and tools". Kaufman Hall's Tony Ard said he could foresee universities merging or closing because of financial pressures, though institutions with "very strong brand names" would be unaffected.


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P2P property finance start-up Proplend joins UK brokers group
 PROPLEND has joined the National Association of Commercial Finance Brokers (NACFB) as a patron.

The peer-to-peer property platform said on Wednesday that it received positive feedback from the trade body’s broker community, prior to its membership being approved.

“Brokers play a significant role in the UK finance market, particularly within our commercial property funding sector,” said Brian Bartaby (pictured), chief executive of Proplend.

Read more: Proplend embarks on equity fundraising to scale up the business

“It’s important to know what you’re looking for as well as where to look. This is where specialist commercial brokers come in.

“Increasingly their market awareness and due diligence point them in the direction of P2P lending platforms like Proplend, who are rapidly becoming a larger slice of the lending ecosystem.

“We can help when high street banks and secondary lenders have been unable to – often providing finance quicker and with more flexible, bespoke terms.”

Read more: Proplend’s Brian Bartaby on the IFISA

The NACFB provides access to more than 1,600 commercial finance brokers nationwide.

“Our member brokers have warmly received Proplend as they offer further diversity in the property lending space,” said Norman Chambers, managing director of the NACFB.

“We encourage all our members to engage with Brian and explore Proplend’s services to see how they may help their commercial property clients find bridging and mortgage finance solutions.”

Proplend connects individual and institutional investors with creditworthy borrowers looking for secured commercial property loans. The platform has lent out more than £28.5m to date, on commercial property worth over £57m, with an average loan-to-value of less than 60 per cent.

It is fully authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority and launched its Innovative Finance ISA earlier this year.

Output: The P2P property lending platform Proplend has joined the National Association of Commercial Finance Brokers (NACFB), which provides access to more than 1,600 commercial finance brokers nationwide. “Our member brokers have warmly received Proplend as they offer further diversity in the property lending space,” said NACFB MD Norman Chambers.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Sandia Lab develops cybersecurity tool Hades to trick hackers
 Sandia National Laboratories cyber researcher Vince Urias helped develop the Sandia-originated HADES program that employs alternative realities to confuse hackers. HADES stands for High-fidelity Adaptive Deception & Emulation System. Credit: Randy Montoya

The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky once postulated that the devil no longer uses fire and brimstone but instead simply tells you what you want to hear.

Sandia National Laboratories cyber researchers go with that second option when it comes to foiling a hacker. Rather than simply blocking a discovered intruder, Vince Urias, Will Stout and Caleb Loverro deploy a recently patented alternative reality, dubbed HADES for High-fidelity Adaptive Deception & Emulation System, which feeds a hacker not what he needs to know but what he wants to believe.

"Deception is the future of cyber defense," said Urias. "Simply kicking a hacker out is next to useless. The hacker has asymmetry on his side; we have to guard a hundred possible entry points and a hacker only needs to penetrate one to get in."

Rather than being summarily removed from a data source, a discovered hacker is led unobtrusively into HADES, where cloned virtual hard drives, memory and data sets create a simulation very much like the reality. However, certain artifacts have been deliberately, but not obviously, altered.

"So, a hacker may report to his handler that he or she has cracked our system and will be sending back reports on what we're doing," Urias said. "Let's say they spent 12 months gathering info. When they realize we've altered their reality, they have to wonder at what point did their target start using deception, at what point should they not trust the data? They may have received a year or so of false information before realizing something is wrong. A hacker informing his boss that he's discovered a problem doesn't do his reputation much good, he's discredited. And then the adversary must check all data obtained from us because they don't know when we started falsifying."

Furthermore, when a hacker finally puzzles out something is wrong, he must display his toolkit as he tries to discern truth from fiction.

"Then he's like a goldfish fluttering in a bowl," said Urias. "He exposes his techniques and we see everything he does." Credit: Sandia National Laboratories

HADES just won a 2017 R&D100 award, presented by R&D Magazine to recognize exceptional innovations in science and technology over the past year. The Sandia work, patented in October, began five years ago with a three-year Laboratory Directed Research and Development grant.

"It used to be that technologically we couldn't move a visitor to a different reality without them knowing," said Urias, "but there's been a radical change in networking in the last 10 to 15 years, from hardware to software. With the ephemerality of the network fabric, I can change realities without a hacker knowing."

Adversaries want data that helps their situational awareness. "But when we change data in our fake world, we devalue information and set up eventual inconsistencies."

To do this, Urias said, "we move to another location in the cloud and build a slightly different world around them. Our intent is to introduce doubt. If they get something, is it real or is it fake? The worst horror for an adversary is the identical world, but changed. Can we introduce more work for them?"

HADES can operate in multiple modes from a small organization without resources to a large company, he said. The Department of Homeland Security's Cyber Security Division has worked with Sandia on deployment.

Like any technique, HADES has its limitations. While the simplest deceptive environment can be done on a small private computer, environments of greater fidelity require more CPU and memory resources and may thereby reduce the number of virtual environments deployable on a single server.

What the information technology and cybersecurity communities want, Urias said, is what he wants: "To stop the [information] bleeding, and get actionable intelligence: What is an adversary looking for, what did they actually get, and how did they get it?"

The technique has allowed the researchers to locate malware an adversary has placed in a system, and is capable of active attack.

Output: Researchers at the US's Sandia National Laboratories have developed a cybersecurity system that moves hackers into a separate, simulated environment. High-fidelity Adaptive Deception & Emulation System, or Hades, is a cloud-based system that allows the team to unobtrusively move identified hackers into an alternative reality, where they can then monitor their every action and feed them misleading and incorrect data. The US Department of Homeland Security's cybersecurity division is working with Hades on rolling out the system, which can be deployed on a small or large scale.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Public Health England calls for ban on Coca-Cola Christmas tour
 The NHS’s public health boss is urging local councils and shopping centres to ban visits from Coca-Cola’s promotional Christmas trucks because of sugar’s key role in rotting children’s teeth and making them fat.

Duncan Selbie, the chief executive of Public Health England, has criticised the soft drink giant’s annual PR stunt, in which 14-tonne lorries decorated with fairy lights and fake snow visit towns, cities and landmarks around the UK to advertise its products.

Selbie’s comments come as PHE research found that most of the places the trucks plan to visit before Christmas have above-average rates of children with tooth decay or obesity.

“Big-name brands touring the country at Christmas to advertise their most sugary products to children and boost sales does nothing to help families make healthy choices and wider efforts to combat childhood obesity and rotten teeth,” Selbie said.

“Local authorities celebrating sugary drinks in this way need to reflect on whether it’s in the best interests of the health of local children and families.”

Coca-Cola is sending two articulated lorries to 42 locations in England and Scotland in the run-up to Christmas, including Wembley in north London, the O2 complex in the capital’s Docklands and the Lakeside shopping centre in Thurrock, Essex.

The firm’s promotional material says the trucks will be “delivering Christmas cheer up and down the country. At every stop you’ll have the chance to project your festive selfies across the side of the truck as it lights up.

“You’ll also be able to experience a snowy winter wonderland setting while enjoying a choice of Coca-Cola Classic, Diet Coke or Coca Cola Zero Sugar.”

Staff will offer consumers, many of them children, free 150ml samples of the three drinks at a truck lit by 372 bulbs and 8,772 fairy lights.

But PHE believes that Coke’s marketing risks worsening already high rates of tooth decay and obesity. On Thursday, one of the trucks is due to visit Bolton, where 40.5% of five-year-olds have tooth decay – the highest number of all the areas on the list.

Overall, 61% of the stops are in places where both five- and 12-year-olds have higher rates of rotten teeth than the English average, NHS dental statistics reveal.

The same proportion of places have an unusually high number of 10- and 11-year-olds who are overweight or obese, while 56% have above-average numbers of children aged three and four in reception class who are dangerously overweight.

Councils and health officials in areas already visitedby the trucks have protested against the marketing stunt, and some have called for an outright ban on the trucks.

The tour began on 11 November in Glasgow, where Linda de Caestecker, the director of public health at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, was among 44 people urging Coke to give away only water and sugar-free versions of its products. In a letter, they called on the company to be more responsible in how it markets its products and highlighted the large numbers of young children in the city who were overweight, obese or have tooth decay.

“The bright lights of the Coca-Cola truck and giving out free fizzy drinks will of course appeal to children. But when we’re in the midst of an obesity epidemic – and have increasing numbers of children with tooth decay – it’s not really doing children any favours,” said Prof Mary Fewtrell, nutrition lead at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

“We’re seeing increasing numbers of local protests against the truck, both from the public and council leaders, public health professionals and dentists. The motivation behind these is not to take the joy out of Christmas; but to recognise that linking fizzy drinks with the fun of the festive season is a marketing tactic and not good for child health,” she added.

Coca-Cola defended its use of the promotional Christmas trucks, which it says have made 397 stops and covered 730,000 miles in the UK.

“The Coca-Cola Christmas truck tour is a one-off, annual event where we offer people a choice of 150ml samples of Coca-Cola Classic, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar or Diet Coke, so two of the three options are no sugar drinks. This is also reflected in the take-up of samples on the truck tour, with on average over 70% of what we sample being a zero-sugar option,” a spokesperson for the company said.

“We also have a policy of not providing drinks to children under the age of 12, unless their parent or guardian is present and says they can have one. The truck tour route changes every year as we try to cover a fair geographical spread of the UK.”

Output: The CEO of Public Health England (PHE) is calling for local councils and shopping centres to ban visits from Christmas trucks promoting Coca-Cola because of the role of sugar in childhood dental decay and obesity. Duncan Selbie criticised the 14-tonne lorries, decorated with 372 bulbs and 8,772 fairy lights, as research from PHE indicated that 61% of the 42 stops on the tour have above-average rates of such health issues.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Britvic bolsters defences as CEO cracks down on ad fraud
 Soft-drinks advertiser Britvic is prioritizing rooting out fraudulent traffic from its media buys.

Ad fraud has emerged as the key issue for Britvic amid the fallout from the industrywide transparency debate, according to CMO Matt Barwell, who said its brands are distancing themselves from metrics easily inflated by bots and fraudulent clicks. Removing fraudulent placements is now a core pillar of all the advertiser’s media plans, pushing its spend away from the so-called long tail of cheaper sites toward more premium inventory.

For now, Barwell said a carefully considered mix of whitelists, blacklists and keyword exclusions alongside pre- and post-bid verification is the best approach. All media buys for Britvic’s brands, which include Robinsons and Drench, are verified for fraud by ad verification company Adloox, a move that has helped push fraud rates down to the low, single digits, said Barwell. Whitelists have also helped purge fraud from Britvic’s buys, with the advertiser’s own combined with those from M/Six, Adloox and GroupM, to create larger whitelists and blacklists for media plans to adhere to.

“When I look at the pre- and post-bid validation that we’re buying on display, it makes me confident that we are managing to avoid fraud at the level that others may be exposed to,” Barwell said. “The idea is to be really clear about what metrics are needed for what campaigns or channels and then work with our data providers to understand what we should pay for things like a 10-second view or click-through rate.”

Barwell said the brand’s efforts to combat fraud have been aided by a commitment to avoid buying cheap inventory. Britvic, along with its media and creative agencies, now plan campaigns upfront prior to the creative being developed, meaning there’s a greater focus on assessing the effectiveness of each channel prior to ad buying. Barwell explained: “We’ve been trying to force our media agency and creative agencies to work together more on the communications planning from the outset and to have those insights drive the creative process so that we’re developing ideas specifically for the channels our audiences use.”

Given Britvic’s agency is M/Six, it’s likely using the media buyer’s criteria for the quality of placements, which are based on four metrics: the size of the ad, 50 percent of the ad is on screen, the average percentage length of time the ad is in view and how much of the ad has the sound turned on. Barwell acknowledged that he must pay a premium for those types of placements, given they are unlikely to be found in the cheaper, bottom-of-the-funnel environments.

For Barwell, weeding out ad fraud from Britvic’s media buying is more of a focus than ad misplacement. “I’m more relaxed about brand safety,” he said.

He made the claim prior to the latest reports of misplaced ads on YouTube, which spurred brands such as Adidas and Diageo to pull spend from the video platform last week. Barwell acknowledged the negative PR that comes with any brand-safety story but stressed that fake inventory was the more inherent threat to his bottom line and brands. Fake clicks are projected to cost advertisers £12.3 billion ($16.4 billion) globally this year, according to Adloox.

That’s not to say Barwell isn’t taking the scandal engulfing YouTube seriously. Rather, he and his team are not as reliant on the site as some of their peers and, therefore, have been able to limit their risk by focusing on other channels they have more confidence in, such as private marketplaces. “Of course, no brand owner wants their brand showing up in environments that they don’t want,” he said. “The bigger issue is fraud. The media owners, the platforms and the agencies need to take more responsibility for helping us navigate that minefield.”

At times, the advertiser has “leapt too quickly” to put money behind new technology and new platforms without genuinely challenging itself to prove what the return of investment is, according to Barwell. It’s why on Facebook, rather than purchase ads, Britvic’s activity comes from its official brand channels in order to avoid the risk of it appearing in unsavory places.

The threat of ad fraud has become so big that the London City Police is working with Adloox to tackle the threat. The partnership will help the national police deepen its investigation into sources of invalid traffic and nonhuman traffic that proliferate across programmatic advertising. Ad fraud is set to cost the industry £37 billion ($49 billion) by 2025, according to the World Federation of Advertisers.

Image courtesy of Britvic.

Output: UK drinks maker Britvic will use whitelists and blacklists as well as use verification company Adloox to patrol the use of its ads online as CEO Matt Barwell cracks down on fraudulent placements. The moves come as the industry wrestles with an increase in fraud, which the World Federation of Advertisers estimates will cost UK companies £37bn ($50bn) by 2025.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Skyx wins funding to develop crop-management software
 Israeli drone software startup Skyx has raised an undisclosed seed funding round to commercialize software that allows one operator to control a fleet of up to six crop spraying drones.

The round marks the first investment for a new Israeli agtech VC, the Rimonim Fund, which was the sole investor in the round. The fund was cofounded by Sharon Devir, also cofounder of Roots Sustainable Agriculture Technologies, which recently listed on the ASX, and Michal Devir, a medical doctor with medtech investing experience. Michal Devir will join Skyx as chairperson.

Skyx’s software allows the user to control multiple drones — what it calls a “swarm” — and direct them to complete a single mission. The software allows the user to build a fleet of drones gradually over time and choose the drones themselves, as Skyx intends to be compatible with any commercially available hardware.

“We’re not a drone company. The vision that we have is that our software will become an operating system that includes mission planning and mission control in real time and autopiloting for the entire fleet,” said founder Eylon Sorek.

The traditional methods of pesticide application such as planes, tractors, and handheld sprayers, are inefficient in terms of both labor and cost and offer environmental risks such as pesticide drift and water contamination, as well as risk to human health for growers and workers in close, frequent contact with the chemicals, according to Sorek.

Skyx seeks to add not only safety but more efficiency and precision to this process. “Not only for uniform spraying but also for variable spraying rates at unlimited sizes and shapes of spots in the farmland,” said Itzik Turkel, the company’s cofounder and CTO.

Skyx is not looking to compete with drone companies themselves, but it is competing with the software that drone manufacturers offer as an add-on.

“The way we see it, the vast majority of drone companies don’t really know agriculture because they are building drones for many verticals,” said Sorek, who sees his initial customer base in companies that sell spraying-as-a-service.

“The reason that we don’t see one person and one drone in the field today is because this person doesn’t offer enough return on investment. With a swarm, you can achieve a competitive price point with the exact same operation.”

The benefit to the customer is greatly dependent on the size of the fleet, and here is where regulation becomes important, which Sorek says is a major hindrance to the growth of spraying drones.

Some regulatory authorities require drones to be within the line of sight of the operators, disallowing autonomous drones. Others restrict drone size and payload. Regulations have generally been more relaxed for agricultural drones for field mapping and remote sensing functions, but drones for crop spraying have not received the same regulatory allowances.

“The ability for a fleet to cover larger and larger areas is in the hand of regulators,” said Sorek.

A limiting factor is also the frequency with which spraying drones need to be serviced, refilling pesticide payloads and replacing batteries. Sorek says that a reasonably-sized fleet for one operator to service is four to six drones, which can reasonably cover 40-60 hectare (100-150 acres) in one day — appropriate for small and medium-sized operations according to Sorek, but not large row crops operations.

For this reason, and in light of the types of crops commonly grown in Israel where Skyx has conducted pilot research, the company will initially focus on horticultural operations in the US and the EU — targeting spraying contractors servicing vegetable growers.

Other recent fundings in crop spraying drone technology include Nileworks, a Japanese company claiming its multi-copter drones are able to see the shape of a field and spray just 30cm above, thereby reducing drift raised a ¥800 million ($7.12 million) financing round from Japanese investors last month.

Output: Israeli start-up Skyx has raised an undisclosed sum in a seed funding round to develop its crop-spraying drone software. The Rimonim Fund, an agriculture technology venture capital firm, was the sole participant. Skyx has developed software for drones used in agriculture but does not make drones itself. Founder Eylon Sorek said the software provides mission planning and autopiloting for drone fleets, and said the company would initially focus on US and European agricultural markets.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Outstream and social in-feed ads over half of UK video ad spend
 Despite brand-safety concerns, user experience issues and measurement gripes, digital video advertising is in decent shape. According to data from GroupM’s “This Year Next Year,” U.K. marketing forecast, this is at the expense of legacy media: TV has zero percent growth forecast for 2018 in the U.K.

Here are four charts on the state of online video advertising in the U.K.

Outstream overtakes pre-roll

The overall ad market has grown, thanks to digital video. In the first half of 2017, advertisers spent £699 million ($930 million) on video ads — a 46 percent year-over-year increase — making video the fastest-growing digital format, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau’s latest report on U.K. digital ad spend.

Investment in outstream and social in-feed video ads has nearly doubled, making it the most popular format, accounting for 52 percent of video spend, overtaking pre- and post-roll ads.

Noticing the demand in outstream, publishers The Guardian, News UK and The Telegraph have joined forces to pool outstream ad inventory. “[The alliance] brings this kind of format and inventory back under direct publisher control, with guaranteed quality and brand-safe environments, while still having enough scale to satisfy advertisers and agencies,” said Mark Holden, global strategy director at media agency Starcom.

Source: IAB

Ads are becoming more relevant

Striving for more ad revenue has meant some publishers overlook user experience, particularly when it comes to autoplay video formats. According to data from the IAB’s “Consumer Insights: Video” report, ads are becoming more relevant: 53 percent of adults who find online video ads more relevant than static ads also feel advertising relevancy has improved over the past year.

One in 10 video ads appears beside risky content

In its “This Year Next Year” report, GroupM estimates three-quarters of brands that paused advertising on YouTube in May after their ads appeared next to extremist content have returned to the platform. (The estimates were made prior to this week’s reports of brands like Diageo and Mars pulling ads from YouTube after finding them running against unsuitable content, although buyers don’t expect this to harm YouTube much.)

Integral Ad Science’s “Media Quality Report” in the U.K., which examines ad inventory, from this year found that just over 13 percent of video inventory on desktop in the U.K. appeared next to content that was considered “risky.” Most of this fell into the “moderate risk” category, with programmatic accounting for 12.2 percent and direct deals making up 9.2 percent of that category. (In the chart below, dark blue indicates no risk, gray is moderate risk, purple is high risk and red is very high risk.)

Although “risk” is a subjective term and brands have varying levels of tolerance for risk, IAS found that inventory with a level of risk was mostly next to violent and adult content, with 26.4 percent and 23.7 percent of that inventory appearing next to those categories, respectively, while hate speech was the lowest at 2.2 percent.

Sports rights holders command high ad rates

Live sports events have long attracted viewers and ad dollars. Now, platforms like Amazon and Facebook are joining the fray and bidding for rights.

According to GroupM’s “The State of Video” report, 2021 will be a milestone year for live TV sports media rights. A total of 10 rights deals will be up for renewal, including the UEFA Champions League and Bundesliga soccer matches in Europe, as well as the NFL’s “Monday Night Football” and MLB rights in the U.S. The value of these deals will total $5.7 billion (£4.3 billion).

“It may be broadcasters remain the best at TV production and the big-screen experience, with rights sliced accordingly,” the report states. “Such broadcasters might themselves seek to sub-license new technology and digital partners to reach the markets and fans they are unable to service.”

Output: UK digital ad spend on outstream and social in-feed video almost doubled for H1 2017 year on year, overtaking pre and post-roll ads for the first time, with 52% of spend, according to a marketing report by GroupM. The report also revealed video ads were the fastest-growing digital format, with UK advertisers spending £699m ($930m) on them, a year-on-year rise of 46%. The report also highlighted that 53% of adults felt online ads were more relevant than static campaigns, and estimated 75% of brands that suspended their ads on YouTube have returned to the video-sharing site.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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LIDAR is improving, but it's not getting any cheaper
 But those specifications aren’t enough to help vehicles at high speed in unpredictable situations. A car is traveling at 70 miles per hour would have just four seconds to respond to an obstacle. The angular resolution is also too low to make out an object that’s far away, because the laser beams will be too spread out to return a viable image. As a result, many autonomous cars use data from other sensors to help recognize obstacles, even if they have lidar sensors on board.

“The consensus is pretty clear,” Austin Russell, CEO of rival lidar manufacturer Luminar and one of our 35 Innovators under 35 of 2017, told MIT Technology Review earlier this year. “You need a lidar that can see out past 200 meters. You also need to be able to see ... not just that there’s an object out there, but what it is.”

Velodyne

Such concerns have pushed the world’s most advanced driverless-car projects to build their own lidar systems. Two of them, Waymo and Uber, are currently embroiled in a heated lawsuit centered on stolen trade secrets related to their in-house devices.

Now, Velodyne has launched a sensor called VLS-128 that it hopes will satisfy the demand for increased performance. The new device uses 128 laser beams, twice as many as its predecessor. The firm’s chief technical officer, Anand Gopalan, told MIT Technology Review that those beams are separated by angles as small as 0.1°, with a range of 300 meters, and create as many as four million data points per second as they spin through 360 degrees. The increase in resolution, says Gopalan, will provide such detail that cars won’t need other sensors for obstacle detection—though they probably will still carry other sensors in the interests of redundancy and safety.

Ingmar Posner, an associate professor of information engineering at the University of Oxford and founder of the university’s autonomous-driving spinoff Oxbotica, says the increase in performance is “awesome.” He agrees that it should allow vehicles to detect objects more reliably using lidar data, and believes it would enable driverless cars to cope better in faster-moving environments.

For once, though, Velodyne is starting to see competition. Russell’s startup, Luminar, has developed its own mechanical lidar system, which uses a single mirror to steer a powerful laser in order to see 250 meters, with beams separated by as little as 0.05° (see “College Dropout Says He’s Cracked Self-Driving Cars’ Most Crucial Component”). And other firms, such as Aeva, are experimenting with systems that blend lidar and radar approaches, to push range and resolution even further.

Still, Velodyne has more experience with actually building and selling such devices, and it says it will ship units of the VLS-128 before 2017 is out. Gopalan wouldn’t say whether its customers included firms that were building their own alternatives, such as Waymo and Uber, explaining only that he would “expect this sensor to meet the needs of any autonomous-vehicle program in the industry, either current or in the future.”

For now, big companies may be the only ones able to afford the sensor. Gopalan wouldn’t say how much it will cost at first, explaining only that it could cost “thousands of dollars” when it enters mass production, though it’s not clear when that will happen. But the device’s predecessor, the HDL-64E, is not mass-produced and costs $80,000 per unit. Gopalan would say, however, that the new sensor will probably be installed in robotic taxis and autonomous trucks at first.

Russell shares that sentiment. “Some of the companies in the ride-sharing space have said that if you had an autonomous car that just worked, they’d be willing to purchase these cars for $300,000 to $400,000 apiece and buy as many as you could possibly make,” he says. That’s because the total vehicle cost—and, therefore, the price of sensors—is less important than it is in a consumer car, because a steep investment could be recouped quickly by keeping a vehicle on the road nearly 24 hours a day.

Meanwhile, many firms, including Velodyne, are busy building low-cost, solid-state lidar sensors for autonomous vehicles. But in truth, they lack the range and resolution required for high-speed driving (see “Low-Quality Lidar Will Keep Self-Driving Cars in the Slow Lane”). Gopalan agrees. He imagines seeing such devices used as driver aids in consumer vehicles, or to augment expensive sensors in fully autonomous vehicles.

Output: Velodyne has built a new autonomous vehicle sensor a fifth the size of its previous design, which it says can see further and make out more details than any other commercially available LIDAR. Using LIDAR, Velodyne's VLS-128 has 128 laser beams separated by angles as small as 0.1 degrees, each with a range of 300 metres, said Velodyne's CTO Anand Gopalan. However, at present, only major technological players will be able to afford the technology, each of which will cost "thousands of dollars" when it eventually enters mass production, a date which remains uncertain.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Robots given 'undo' button to encourage quicker learning
 Deep reinforcement learning works a lot like a child learning a skill: practice makes perfect. For an autonomous agent like a robot, though, its environment has to be reset to its original state between attempts—a chore that can take hours as humans scurry around replacing objects, for example.

A new arXiv paper by researchers with Google Brain, the University of Cambridge, the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, and UC Berkeley details a method that can teach an agent to reset the environment for the next attempt, as well as stop it from performing actions that would be irreversible.

Their advance was to give agents a “forward” and “reset” policy that work together. While the forward policy is tasked with learning a skill, hitting reset forces an agent to learn how to “leave no trace,” effectively rewinding an action. Actions that the robot thinks would be irreversible are aborted as soon as possible.

The researchers write that they sought to give their agents “intuition” to classify anything that is reversible as safe, since it’s possible to go back to the original state. Through trial and error, the agent discovers that more and more actions are reversible, allowing it to explore safely.

Deep reinforcement learning is often done in simulation, and especially when real-world environments will be less forgiving of errors, like an autonomous car driving over a cliff. Even for safer situations, waiting for manual resets can become a bottleneck for data collection. For this reason, the team’s work was confined to virtual environments. Eventually, however, real-world testing has to be done, and this research could make it faster and safer.

As Jack Clark points out in his Import AI newsletter, this paper echoes the work outlined in another paper (PDF) from Facebook AI Research last month, in which a single agent has two separate modes, nicknamed Alice and Bob, one of which tries to reverse the task the other has attempted to complete. This type of work to make AI able to plan ahead could save it (and us) from disastrous mistakes in the future.

Output: Researchers have developed a function that would enable robots to more effectively benefit from deep learning, by deploying a reset that would effectively undo a previous action. The research, which was published in a recent arXiv paper, outlines how the robot is given a “forward” and “reset” policy that work together; whereby the forward policy learns a skill, whilst hitting the reset forces the robot to learn how it can “leave no trace” of its action. This process would therefore teach robots never to perform an action that is irreversible, for example, driving an automated vehicle over a cliff's edge.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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NHS to employ ethical hackers as it bolsters cybersecurity
 The UK's Foreign Office has said it too blames North Korea for the WannaCry ransomware campaign that brought the majority of the NHS and other public sector organisations to their knees back in May.

"The UK's National Cyber Security Centre assesses it is highly likely that North Korean actors known as the Lazarus Group were behind the WannaCry ransomware campaign one of the most significant to hit the UK in terms of scale and disruption," Foreign Office Minister Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon said in a statement.

The official announcement follows comments by Security Minister Ben Wallace in October that suggested the government believed a nation-state was responsible for WannaCry campaign, and that it was "as sure as possible" that state was North Korea.

He said, like the US authorities, the UK government would "identify, pursue and respond" to malicious activity and wants to make it clear it will not tolerate malicious cyber activity of any kind, wherever it may originate and however severe the impact. It will impose costs on the responsible parties, preventing them from launching further attacks and using them as an example to deter other potential criminals.

"We condemn these actions and commit ourselves to working with all responsible states to combat destructive criminal use of cyber space," he added. "The indiscriminate use of the WannaCry ransomware demonstrates North Korean actors using their cyber programme to circumvent sanctions."

Lord Ahmad added that the UK authorities will work closely with other organisations around the world to "uphold a free, open, peaceful and secure cyberspace."

The WannaCry attacks affected 300,000 computers in 150 countries, including 48 NHS trusts, the government said. Users were told they needed to pay a ransom to get their machines unlocked and data restored.

19/12/2017: NHS ransomware: US blames North Korea for "cowardly" WannaCry attack

The US government has officially blamed North Korea for the devastating WannaCry ransomware campaign that crippled public services and infrastructure in more than 35 countries in May.

The announcement, made by Homeland Security Advisor Thomas Bossert in the New York Times, is the first time the US has formally blamed a nation-state for the attack which hit the NHS, Spain's Telefonica, FedEx and German rail company Deutsche Bahn.

"After careful investigation, the US today publicly attributes the massive 'WannaCry' cyber attack to North Korea," said Bossert. "It encrypted and rendered useless hundreds of thousands of computers in hospitals, schools, businesses and homes. While victims received ransom demands, paying did not unlock their computers."

"It was cowardly, costly and careless," added Bossert. "The attack was widespread and cost billions, and North Korea is directly responsible."

North Korea became a suspect almost immediately following an initial investigation into the attack, particularly as the malware shared a number of similarities with the attack on Sony Pictures, widely thought to have been carried out by the North Korean-based "Lazarus Group".

The WannaCry campaign is thought to have affected around 300,000 computer systems across the world, propagated through a vulnerability in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. The attack was eventually halted when security researcher Marcus Hutchins discovered a 'kill switch' in the malware that shut down the malware before it delivered its payload.

The US stance comes almost three months after the UK government and Microsoft officially blamed North Korea for the attack. "North Korea was the state that we believe was involved in this worldwide attack on our systems," said security minister Ben Wallace, speaking to BBC Radio 4. "It is widely believed across the community and in a number of countries that North Korea had taken this role."

As well as officially blaming Pyongyang for the attack, Bossert took the opportunity to highlight recent bolstering of IT defences by the Trump administration.

"(Trump's) continued sanctions on Russian hackers and directed the most transparent and effective government effort in the world to find and share vulnerabilities in important software," said Bossert, almost certainly referring to the recent ban on Kaspersky products from all government departments.

Bossert added that the US was now calling on the private sector to "increase its accountability in the cyber realm by taking actions that deny North Korea and other bad actors the ability to launch reckless and destructive cyber attacks."

North Korea has always denied its involvement in the WannaCry attack, and labelled the UK's accusation as a "wicked attempt" to enact tougher sanctions against the country.

Speaking to the Korean Central News Agency, a spokesperson for the Korea-Europe Association said at the time: "It does not make any sense that the DPRK, which gives the highest priority to the life and health of its people, would carry out a cyber attack on the UK health service."

28/11/2017: NHS to hire ethical hackers in 20m cyber security boost

The NHS has set aside 20 million to establish a new security centre designed to constantly probe the organisation's cyber defences using ethical hackers.

The Security Operations Centre (SOC) will operate throughout all NHS sites across the UK, providing monitoring services and guidance on how to handle cyber security incidents to local departments.

Part of its remit will be to employ 'white-hat' hackers to test the NHS' ability to prevent a data breach or a repeat of the style of attacks seen during the WannaCry ransomware campaign, which hit over one-third of health trusts earlier this year.

Dan Taylor, head of the Digital Security Centre at NHS Digital, said that the new centre will provide a "near-real-time monitoring and alerting service that covers the whole health and care system"

"The Security Operations Centre will enhance NHS Digital's current data security services that support the health and care system in protecting sensitive patient information," he added.

"The partnership will provide access to extra specialist resources during peak periods and enable the team to proactively monitor the web for security threats and emerging vulnerabilities.

"It will also allow us to improve our current capabilities in ethical hacking, vulnerability testing and the forensic analysis of malicious software, and will improve our ability to anticipate future vulnerabilities while supporting health and care in remediating current known threats."

Taylor said the centre would "drive economies of scale, giving health and care organisations additional intelligence and support services that they might not otherwise be able to access".

NHS Digital also said it's seeking a partner to provide advice and help run the project, a contract for which is tendered to run for three to five years.

It's not the first time a public body has turned to ethical hacking to probe its defences. In July, it was revealed that the Met Office had previously asked cloud security firm Cloudreach to purposefully break its systems in an effort to test how well its teams were able to deal with major outages.

The move is the latest attempt to try and overhaul the NHS' outdated IT systems, which were considered to have been a soft target for the WannaCry malware. A recent report by the National Audit Office found that "basic IT security" could have prevented the spread of the ransomware, and that the NHS had been warned previously about its reliance on the outdated Windows XP operating system.

"Given the impact of the WannaCry attack, one must ask why it has taken them so long to create an SOC," said Matt Lock, director of sales engineers at Varonis, in a statement to IT Pro.

"The new centre must be a part of an ongoing effort to keep up with the latest attacks from extremely well-funded and experienced criminals intent on compromising the NHS system.

"An SOC is an important piece of the overall security posture for large organizations, but continuous improvement and advancements are critical parts of the equation."

31/10/2017: North Korea denies it created the WannaCry ransomware

North Korea yesterday denied being behind the devastating WannaCry attack, after the UK government identified the nation as the creator of the ransomware.

Home Office Minister Ben Wallace told the BBC last week that the government was "as sure as possible" that North Korea was behind the cyber attack in May, which caused chaos among NHS hospitals, dozens of which had to suspend and postpone appointments and operations.

But a spokesperson for the North's Korea-Europe Association denounced this as a "wicked attempt" to toughen sanctions against the country, which is currently embroiled in a war of words with the US over its nuclear tests.

In the statement, published on the Korean Central News Agency, the spokesperson said: "It does not make any sense that the DPRK, which gives the highest priority to the life and health of its people, would carry out a cyber attack on the UK health service.

"The moves of the UK government to doggedly associate the DPRK with the cyber attack cannot be interpreted in any other way than a wicked attempt to lure the international community into harbouring greater mistrust of the DPRK and further tighten sanctions and pressure against the latter."

The spokesperson added: "This is an act beyond the limit of our tolerance and it makes us question the real purpose behind the UK's move."

Along with the UK government, Microsoft also said it believed North Korea was behind the WannaCry attack. Brad Smith, Microsoft's president and chief legal officer, said that the attack was carried out by the country using cyber tools stolen from the NSA in the US.

An investigation into the ransomware attack found that the NHS failed to follow basic IT security principles that could have prevented the malware from taking effect, such as upgrading from the unsupported Windows XP operating system.

27/10/2017: NHS ransomware: "Basic IT security" could've prevented WannaCry

A report conducted by the National Audit Office found that the NHS was informed by the Department of Health and the Cabinet as early as 2014 about the dangers of cyber attacks and were encouraged to make plans to move away from old software like Windows XP by April 2015.

Despite the NHS's critical alerts telling organisations to patch their system to prevent the spread of WannaCry ransomware, the department had "no formal mechanism for assessing whether local NHS organisations had complied with their advice and guidance and whether they were prepared for a cyber attack".

"The WannaCry cyber attack had potentially serious implications for the NHS and its ability to provide care to patients. It was a relatively unsophisticated attack and could have been prevented by the NHS following basic IT security best practice. There are more sophisticated cyber threats out there than WannaCry so the department and the NHS need to get their act together to ensure the NHS is better protected against future attacks," said Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office.

The attack, which occurred on 12 May 2017, affected 81 out of 236 NHS organisations in England. It also lead to the cancellation of 19,500 medical appointments, the locking of 600 GP surgeries, and the diversion of ambulances from five hospitals, according to the report.

Although the department, NHS England, and the National Crime Agency said that no NHS organisation paid the ransom, the report found that the department does not know how much the attacks cost the NHS when considering costs such as the cancelled appointments, IT support and consultants, along with the restoration of data.

"What the NHS needed was the ability to detect and put a stop to malicious behaviour as early as possible in the kill chain," Nick Pollard, security intelligence and analytics director at Nuix said.

He suggested the use of next-generation endpoint security, which "can analyse unknown processes and terminates those that exhibit bad behaviours, keeping end users from clicking on unusual and potentially harmful attachments and applications even before they knew you were in danger".

The report said that the NHS has learned from WannaCry and is taking action to secure local firewalls by asking hospital trust boards to make sure they have implemented measures outlined in all alerts issued between March and May 2017.

16/10/17: Microsoft says North Korea was behind WannaCry attack

Microsoft's president and chief legal officer has said that North Korea was behind the WannaCry attack that affected companies worldwide.

Brad Smith told ITV News: "I think at this point that all observers in the know have concluded that WannaCry was caused by North Korea using cyber tools or weapons that were stolen from the National Security Agency in the United States."

Smith also said cyber-attacks conducted by nation-states have become more frequent and more severe. He added that governments around the world should do more to protect people from harm.

"We need governments to come together as they did in Geneva in 1949 and adopt a new digital Geneva Convention that makes clear that these cyber-attacks against civilians, especially in times of peace, are off-limits and a violation of international law," said Smith.

He addressed criticism over the fact that Microsoft left Windows XP vulnerable to attackers since it had withdrawn support for the operating system. "When there's a broad attack, we provide patches for [all versions of Windows]," he said. "We did so with WannaCry, we did it again in June when Ukraine was attacked."

He added: "At the same time we repeatedly asked people, we explained to people, we virtually pleaded with people 'please don't rely on software that now belongs in a museum'."

Smith underlined that hospitals need to give more priority to upgrading their IT systems. "When hospitals think about the equipment that is critical to protecting their patients they've got to think not only about the beds...Computers play a fundamental role in the delivery of healthcare and patients shouldn't have to rely on healthcare based on an old computer."

WannaCry affected over 200,000 computers in 150 countries and demanded money for users to access their files.

Marcus Hutchins, the British security researcher who stopped the attack, was charged by US authorities with creating and distributing the Kronos banking Trojan in August.

At IP Expo 2017, Microsoft's Brad Anderson told IT Pro that the company had seen a 300% increase in cyber attacks in the last year. The sophistication of the attacks have increased and the most sophisticated ones he has seen are from nation-states.

18/08/2017: 'WannaCry' ransomware hits LG self-service kiosks

Electronics giant LG has likely become the latest victim of the WannaCry ransomware, which infected self-service kiosks found at its service centres.

LG has yet to confirm the infection was definitely the WannaCry ransomware, but a spokesperson told The Korea Herald that the malware bears a strong resemblance to WannaCry, which caused widespread chaos when it targeted NHS hospitals and businesses in May.

"The problem was found to be caused by ransomware. There was no damage such as data encryption or asking for money, as we immediately shut down the service centre network," the spokesperson said.

The infection was reported to the state-run Korean Internet & Security Agency, which noted that it had found samples of code in the LG kiosks that were identical to code used in the original WannaCry ransomware campaign.

LG moved to quickly shut down the kiosks and pushed out a security update for them, and said that all the of the kiosks are now back up and running.

Dean Ferrando, EMEA manager at cyber security firm Tripwire, suggested that the infection of LG's kiosks is down to the company failing to apply a security update to the vulnerable machines.

"Reports suggest that the company had not applied all the security updates available from Microsoft. This highlights something that we already knew - many organisations are not good at applying software security updates," he said.

"Applying available patches is one of the easiest ways to keep an organisation safe from new attacks however, the unfortunate truth is that, despite the warnings and advisories to patch and secure the systems, there will always be a system that is missed."

17/08/2017: WannaCry paralyses 200 computers in Delhi

WannaCry has infected over 200 computers belonging to book publishing company Rachna Sagar in the Indian capital New Delhi.

The attack was reported on 9 August as staff found they could no longer access their user accounts, according to The Indian Express.

Users were faced with a message demanding $800-$1000 US dollars in Bitcoin in order to unlock their computers.

A complaint filed by the company at the Darya Ganj police station read: "This morning, when we started our work and opened Busy software, we received a text message which said our files are encrypted. The message said we have to pay money to enable decryption of our files."

The company uses "Busy" accounting software where employees have two accounts: live and busy. In order to conduct business, they need to access their live account which has been blocked by hackers.

A source told The Indian Express: "The hackers have locked out their data since April. Employees have not been able to conduct any business since the day of the cyber attack. Their billing process has been delayed and they are even scared to use net banking as they fear online payment systems may be compromised."

IT Pro has contacted Rachna Sagar for comment.

This isn't the first WannaCry attack to hit India. There were isolated incidents reported in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala and West Bengal, but it is the capital's first attack.

Marcus Hutchins, the British national who stopped the initial spread of WannaCry, was arrested in Las Vegas charged on six counts relating to the creation and distribution of a banking Trojan known as Kronos. The judge has set a trial date for October and released Hutchins on bail. He's not allowed to access the server he used to prevent WannaCry from spreading and must remain under house arrest.

Output: The UK's National Health Service (NHS) is to hire so-called white-hat hackers -- coding experts who use the techniques of criminals to crack cyberattacks -- as part of a drive to boost its digital defences. They'll test new security systems to be drawn up by a £20m ($27m) Security Operations Centre, which was created in the wake of the devastating WannaCry ransomware attack this year, according to digital chief Dan Taylor. The centre will provide alerts against attempted cyberattacks such as the WannaCry ransomware, Taylor said. NHS Digital is seeking a partner to help advise on, and run, the project over the next three-to-five years.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Manufacturer cost cutting could lead to increased recalls
 As many as 99% of food and drink manufacturers admitted to shrinking their products or considering doing so in the future, claimed Lockton.

It described shrinkflation as an “endemic”, as 76% manufacturers admitted to coming under pressure from retailers to cut costs.

Only 1% of respondents ruled out shrinkflation, while 43% of manufacturers admitted they had already reduced the size of products and kept the price the same. A further 56% said they were thinking of doing the same in the future.

Lockton’s head of product recall Ian Harrison said: “The real impact of shrinkflation goes way beyond consumers getting less for their money – manufacturers are seemingly willing to significantly alter products to cut costs.

“If price pressures continue, consumers could be left with a bad taste in their mouths as manufacturers are forced to use inferior ingredients as well as reducing the size of their offerings.”

Manufacturers have already started to use cheaper raw materials in response to demand for reduced costs, according to Lockton.

Demand for reduced costs

One in 10 said they had already started to use cheaper raw materials, while as many a 72% said they were considering doing this in the future.

Just under a third (32%) of manufacturers said they had started to look for international sources for cheaper raw materials, while 53% said they planned to.

“We’re fast approaching a tipping point where the quality of what's on our shelves is at stake,” added Harrison.

What is shrinkflation? Shrinkflation is a term used to describe the business practice of changing the physical weight of a product, while keeping its price constant. Source: The Office for National Statistics

“The move towards cheaper raw ingredients is setting a dangerous precedent that puts manufacturers at risk of product recall or food scandal. Inexpensive ingredients are often associated with poorer quality, food fraud and lower safety standards.”

On-site safety standards have also taken a hit as manufacturers combat rising costs.

Of the manufacturers surveyed, 38% said standards had been eroded, while a further 32% said production facilities were less safe than in the past due to pressure to cut costs.

Reduced focus on improving safety standards

Over half (55%) of manufacturers surveyed said they had reduced or would reduce their focus on improving safety standards in order to meet contractual demands from retailers.

Lockton’s research also found that 44% of manufacturers were forced to take out increased liability insurance purely to meet contractual demands from retailers. On average, manufacturers had to purchase 13% additional liability.

Harrison said retailers were trying to distance themselves from any potential scandals, such as the horsemeat scandal.

“By pushing responsibility further down the supply chain, retailers are hoping to shelter themselves from any potential fallout should a recall or legal action occur,” he said.

“More liability cover is no bad thing, but comes with higher premiums and manufacturers must determine what costs are realistic for them.”

FoodManufacture.co.uk has approached the British Retail Consortium for a comment on Lockton’s report.

Meanwhile, earlier this year, Coco Pops, Peperami and Doritos were reportedly the latest food products to decrease in weight, while maintaining their original prices.

Output: Manufacturers are being forced to cut costs of food products, meaning a compromise on ingredients. Such a compromise could lead to increasing product recalls, impacting insurers providing coverage to food and beverage firms. Unless manufacturers are willing to compromise on the size of their products then cheaper ingredients are likely to be used. Manufacturers have been historically reluctant to alter the size of their products due to consumers having a familiarity with the brand.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Google joins palm oil impact mapping project on Borneo
 In Indonesia, researchers from the Center for International Forestry Research have developed the Borneo Atlas, mapping the location and ownership of 467 palm-oil mills on Borneo, in an effort to help buyers ensure palm oil purchased doesn’t negatively impact forests. So far, 90% of the island’s palm oil production has been mapped. The map is integrated with Google Maps so users can look in detail at plantations and will be updated automatically to show any plantation expansion.

Output: The Center for International Forestry Research in Indonesia has partnered with Google Maps to monitor the environmental impact of the palm oil industry on Borneo. They've created a map that draws a 10 km-radius around each of the 467 palm-oil mills on the island. So far, 90% of plantations have been recorded with the use of various documentary sources, while satellite imagery will be used to update the map and monitor the impact of mills on the immediate environment.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Deliveroo puts pressure on UberEats with Lunchbox service
 It's midday, your stomach is growling and you haven't brought a packed lunch. You could go outside and queue for some Pret a Manger, or — if you live in east London — you could try Deliveroo's new Lunchbox service. It's a £6 meal deal from various restaurant partners including Motu, Yoobi Sushi, Franco Manca, BabaBoom and Mother Clucker. The service is available between 12 and 3pm, Monday to Friday, and the menu changes at the start of every week. Food is prepared in "Editions" — delivery-only kitchens built by Deliveroo — and can be dropped off almost anywhere in "The City" or Canary Wharf. (More places will be added over time.)

The food delivery business is hugely competitive in the UK. Deliveroo is up against UberEats — which already offers breakfast, McDonalds and scheduled deliveries in the capital — Amazon, and the combined might of Just Eat and Hungryhouse, which was recently allowed to merge by the Competition and Markets Authority. Deliveroo is growing rapidly because of its prices and, more importantly, brand recognition — it was one of the first companies to offer lyrca-clad bicycle couriers in the UK. That's no guarantee of future success, however. To keep its rivals at bay, Deliveroo will need more ideas like Editions and its subscription-based Plus service.

Output: In an effort to shore itself up against a growing field of competition, Deliveroo is offering a £6 ($8) restaurant "lunchbox" service for customers in The City and Canary Wharf. The food itself is prepared in "Editions", which are small delivery-only kitchens built by Deliveroo. The service already has support from popular food chains such as Franca Manca, Motu and Yoobi Sushi, helping Deliveroo distinguish itself from its main rival UberEats, which already delivers McDonald's across London.