An interview with Facebook's CTO; seed funding harvest fails; and Toyota bets big on robots.
Ten nuggets of knowledge to take away for the weekend, including: interview with Facebook’s CTO; seed funding harvest fails; and Toyota bets big on robots.
1. ‘Hollywood has done tech a disservice’ – Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer
Hollywood’s portrayal of tech workers like coders and engineers is nothing like the real thing, Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer told Siliconrepublic.com. He said the geeky portrayal of tech workers is potentially causing lots of young people from all walks of life to miss out on a rewarding career.
2. Irish venture capital in Q3 reaches €415m – but seed funding dangerously low
Venture capital funding in Ireland in the first nine months of 2015 reached €415m, up by a third on the same time last year. However, seed funding was only 6pc of this activity.
3. New Star Wars trailer in Japan shows brand new scenes
In an odd twist, a new trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens released in Japan shows a few scenes that western audiences have yet to see.
4. Fallout 4 launch trailer released with Pip Boy app, reaches peak hype
With just a few days left before the release of the much-anticipated Fallout 4, its publisher Bethesda Softworks has contributed to peak hype by revealing the launch trailer along with the Pip Boy app.
5. Microsoft Office: 25 years of evolution (infographic)
Microsoft Office is 25 years old, dropping onto our screens way back in 1990. What started out as a trio of fairly standard applications (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) soon came to include OneNote, Access, Outlook and Publisher.
6. Wexford start-up Scurri to manage €3bn of goods for Fastway Couriers
Wexford start-up Scurri has won a multi-million euro deal with Fastway Couriers and Parcel Connect that will see its technology facilitate the delivery of more than €3bn worth of merchandise over the next five years.
7. Adolphe Sax, inventor of the saxophone, honoured with Google Doodle
Google marked what would have been the 201st birthday of Adolphe Sax, the creator of the saxophone, with a new doodle that celebrates the instrument that became the defining emblem and sound of the jazz age.
8. Toyota makes $1bn bet on artificial intelligence and robots
Japanese car maker Toyota is investing $1bn in a new R&D lab in Silicon Valley that will develop artificial intelligence and robots as part of its drive to create cars and consumer products of the future.
9. Dundalk-based Blueacre lands €4.5m EU H2020 project
Blueacre Technology has just secured a role in a €4.5m EU research project developing next-generation surgical devices with eight other companies from Europe.
10. There’s a new drone you can buy that never needs to land
The shift from the days of ‘oh my, those drones seem awfully intrusive’ to ‘oh, so it’s just going to hang up there forever, watching?’ seems to have occured.
Weekend takeaway image via Shutterstock
