TLDR 2019-12-18

Top executives at Alphabet debated whether the company should stay in the public cloud business back in 2018. They decided to aim to become a top-two player by 2023. Google's main business is web search and advertising, but it has a cloud computing department that rents out computing and storage resources to other companies, schools, and governments. Alphabet stated in July that Google Cloud generated $8 billion in annualized revenue. Its performance lags behind Amazon Web Services, Alibaba, and Microsoft Azure.

Affiliates of Francisco Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital Corporation have bought LogMeIn for $4.3 billion in an all-cash deal. LogMeIn had a yearly high of $96.87 and a low of $62.02. CEO of LogMeIn Bill Wagner is optimistic that the partnership will help the company going forward. LogMeIn bought Jive Communications in 2018 and GoToMeeting in 2016 in order to have a stronger hold on the unified communications market. The deal with Francisco and Evergreen is expected to close in 2020. As part of the deal, LogMeIn has 45 days to try to find a buyer that will offer a better price.

Luna is a fully autonomous helicopter built by transportation company Skyryse. Helicopter flight requires constant adjustments. The video shows a pilot controlling a helicopter normally and the movements required to do so. Afterward, the helicopter is shown to hover and then fly without any control by the pilot. Luna is able to fly to locations autonomously and manages flight dynamics more quickly and accurately than a human.

GlaxoSmithKline has invested $300 million into Home-DNA-test provider 23andMe. As part of the deal, the pharmaceutical giant will have access to the genetic information of 23andMe's five million customers. 23andMe charges up to $199 for DNA ancestry and health tests. Customers agree to have their DNA used for medical research when they sign up for the tests. Critics of the deal say that it is unfair that 23andMe is making money both from customers and from selling customers' data, and that the problem with customers agreeing to the Terms of Service is that nobody reads the terms before agreeing to them. The deal will last four years, and the companies will split any costs and profits related to any drugs that result from the partnership.

While we are all aware that computers will one day take over many jobs, some of us still like to believe that our jobs are somehow immune. Different types of AI exist, some which are designed for specific purposes, and some which are able to learn generalized skills through repetitive training of tasks. Fields such as design require humans to be creative and socially intelligent, understanding users' psychology in order to produce usable products. Tracking users' reactions through clicks and likes is difficult. AR wearables will be able to gather more accurate data about users, including information about heart rate, respiration, pupil size, and eye movement. The extra data will help AI become more effective, helping it adapt to us and our needs.

pack is a command-line interface that makes it easy to use, develop, and package buildpacks for distribution and application maintenance. It is a CLI implementation of the Platform Interface Specification for Cloud Native Buildpacks.

A Google security engineer has been fired after using an internal alert system to remind colleagues that they had the right to take collective action against the company. Google posted a list of employee rights in September, which includes the right to organize and discuss various workplace issues without retribution. Kathryn Spiers used an internal tool to trigger a pop-up inside the Chrome browser if an employee visited an internal policy page or website of a firm recently consulted by Google. Google claims that the dismissal was fair as it was a case of an employee misusing an internal security and privacy tool.