Global fintech report. Voting on the blockchain? M&A flops.
Do it for the (holo)gram
Hi there,
Your career shouldn’t end when you die, right?
Well it doesn’t have to — at least if you’re famous.
Celebrities are digitally preserving themselves so that their holograms can continue on for them in the event of their death. There’s a whole industry for resurrecting dead artists.
Next year Amy Winehouse will be going on a posthumous tour produced by BASE Hologram, the same company that produced hologram tours of Roy Orbison and Maria Callas.
YouTube
Protect the vote
The midterms are just around the corner, and election security is more important than ever. Elections are threatened by malicious parties that can hack voting machines, alter voter registrations, and more.
Some of your peers have already signed up to attend TRANSFORM:
December 4-5 in NYC. Killer speakers. One-on-one meetings. No fluff. Just how-tos.
Like the participants? Check out the speakers. $500 off with code meetme. Prices go up November 1.
Where my money at?
VC-backed fintech companies raised $5.65B across 375 deals globally in Q3’18 — a drop in funding and deals from Q2’s record highs. But they’re still on track to set a record for annual deals.
Check out our new Global Fintech Report for Q3’s new unicorn births, the sectors that saw the biggest dips in deals, and much more.
Swedish chips
Thousands of people in Sweden have had microchips implanted in their hands.
The chips are about the size of a grain of rice and are used to enter buildings and to store emergency contact information, social media profiles, and e-tickets.
Sweden’s main chipping company reportedly has so many requests that it can’t keep up.
What could possibly go wrong?
Giphy
Let’s talk about it
Google was recently in some hot water for its conversational AI feature Duplex, which can make phone calls and reservations for its user while sounding like a real person.
University of Cape Town students have developed a brick made out of sand, bacteria, and urine.
The bio-bricks don’t have to be baked in a high-temperature kiln like normal bricks, which means they save a ton of energy and don’t emit carbon dioxide.
These zero-waste bricks could be huge.
Unsure what they smell like, but we hear it’s better than most streets in San Francisco.
Robyn Walker
Howdy, partner
In the race to offer 5G services, mobile network operators (MNOs) like Verizon, T-Mobile, and others have started partnering with equipment manufacturers to develop the infrastructure.
Let’s talk about it
