PUBLIC HEALTH

Google and Apple are having a contact-tracing kumbaya moment. On Friday, the companies announced they're partnering to develop software that automates a technique to trace infectious diseases. 

This is a big deal. Rounding up, Google's Android and Apple's iOS have 100% mobile OS market share...and around 3 billion combined users. 

The plan

• Phase 1: Next month, Apple and Google will release application programming interfaces. Health officials will build third-party apps that leverage the cross-platform APIs.
• Phase 2: "In the coming months," the companies will develop OS-level changes that allow users to turn on a contact tracing setting.

How it works

Alice and Bob meet in a park. With Bluetooth and the app running in the background, their phones broadcast anonymous identifier beacons that cycle out every 15 minutes. Alice's iPhone logs the beacon from Bob's Android and vice-versa. 

Later, Bob is diagnosed with COVID-19. He reports this to the app and consents to sharing the past two weeks of beacon logs with central servers. Bob's data is held for around two weeks as the system identifies close encounters with other beacons. Alice gets an anonymous alert she's potentially been exposed and is sent resources with more information. 

Privacy: CEOs Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai both emphasized the privacy controls they're building into the software. And based on spec papers, the system is built on a decentralized, cryptographic tech stack that doesn't use location data. 

Challenges

The app needs a critical mass of downloads to be effective—potentially 60% of the adult population. If citizens can be convinced that downloading the app will help their lives get back to normal or officials condition re-entry into public spaces on installing the software, the app may get more traction. 

Another issue: Bluetooth isn't a perfect proxy for close encounters. Bob and Alice could've been on different apartment floors when the system recorded they were close by.

Bottom line: Until there's a COVID-19 vaccine, countries need more testing, tracking, and tracing. While governments ramp up the testing, Google and Apple have offered to help with tracking and tracing. 

AUTOMATION

Robot Density Gets Denser

As the coronavirus has spread, robots are having the "put me in coach" moment they've secretly been waiting for all along. 

A Starship Technologies exec said demand for its autonomous food delivery service "has expanded exponentially" during the pandemic, and it's been launching operations in new markets (Tempe, AZ) as recently as last week. Alphabet's drone subsidiary, Wing, is busy dropping off packages in Virginia. And Amazon is still testing its Scout delivery robot in Snohomish County, WA, and Irvine, CA, a source said. 

Then . Autonomous mobile robots (AMR) are currently doing 8,000+ hours of cleaning work a day, Brain Corp. VP Phil Duffy (no relation) told me. His company provides the technology for a fleet of 10,000+ retail and industrial AMRs, which do the "dull, dirty, or dangerous tasks." 

• Duffy said these bots are running more cleaning and restocking routes. They're also gathering data on which store aisles have the most foot traffic and may need more cleaning. Let me guess—it's the one with beer and wine. 

Zoom out: The pandemic makes robots an enticing source of labor for companies selling staple goods. Since some retailers are currently hiring by the hundreds of thousands, it seems robots are for now augmenting jobs, not replacing them. 

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One-Size-Fits-All Is a Bad Fit for Orthopedics

One-size-fits-all is reasonable for hats. But joint replacements? That’s a bone too far.

Monogram was born when one surgeon had enough with one-size-fits-all orthopedics—orthopedics that actually fit nobody. Now, they’re disrupting the $27 billion orthopedic surgery market.

Innovation in orthopedics has been slow and inefficient. Why? Big companies currently dominate the market with their generic, indistinguishable implants; they have no incentive to evolve their approach.

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Monogram is an illustration of what’s possible in the future of orthopedics. This is your chance to invest and become a part of that $27 billion disruption.

Invest in tech that has the potential to overhaul a massive industry. Invest in Monogram.

GAMING

Free Stadia

Citing stay-at-home orders during the coronavirus pandemic, Google temporarily opened Stadia Pro, its cloud gaming service, to gamers in 14 countries. Users don't need to buy a hardware bundle to access the platform, which was previously required. Instead, they'll get two months free when they sign up; existing Stadia users will also get two months free.

Stadia was built on a bold idea: offer console-level games on phones, tablets, or old laptops without all the fancy hardware or upfront costs. All you need is the phone app or desktop Chrome browser. 

• Stadia's Pro service costs $9.99/month and promises gameplay in up to 4K resolution. The default screen resolution will be temporarily scaled back to “reduce load on the internet.” 

But when you look at Stadia's performance, you can hear Jason Bateman saying "bold strategy, Cotton." When the service launched last November, reviews were mixed. The streaming quality really depends on the strength of your internet connection. 

Big picture: Stadia may not bring console-level quality or a complete game library, but it's ready to scale its user base. 

BITS & BYTES

Stat: Last Thursday, a NASA astronaut and two cosmonauts took a Russian rocket to the International Space Station. For nine years, ridesharing on Russian spaceships has been American astronauts' only option to get to the ISS. Now, NASA's got its sights on American alternatives. 

Quote: "Samsung is a company that just has a track record of messing up, but then managing to survive it intact...their system is designed to sustain disasters and to hold back crises and to find ways to get out of it"—Geoffrey Cain to The Verge. Cain's the author of the new book Samsung Rising.

See: 15 pictures from the future of human evolution, c/o BuzzFeed News. Bionic limbs, brain-machine interfaces, and lab-grown body parts. Funky times. 

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WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• The tech arm of the U.K. National Health Service is building a contact tracing app with Google and Apple at "breakneck speed," The Times reports. 
• Samsung will bring 5G to midrange phones this year.
• Steam, a gaming service, estimates it had more than 1 million users with VR headsets for the month of March. That's a new record. 
• IBM is publishing a free training course for COBOL, a 60-year-old programming language that many state unemployment systems still run on. 

WHAT'S BREWING THIS WEEK

Monday: 50th anniversary of "Houston, we've had a problem here" message after explosion on board Apollo 13; Hudson Institute livestream on the future of FCC spectrum regulation

Tuesday: CSIS online discussion on synthetic biology and national security

Wednesday: Tax Day moved from April 15 to July 15; NBCUniversal's Peacock service launches for Comcast subscribers

Thursday: TSMC reports Q1 earnings 

Friday: China Q1 GDP

TECH THROWBACK

37 years ago, biochemistry professor and prolific sci-fi author Isaac Asimov was thinking about smartphones, GPS location, and constant contact. He passed away a decade later in 1992, so he wasn't able to see his predictions become reality.

TECH THINGAMABOBS

For consultants: Deloitte and Salesforce presented four scenarios of how the pandemic might remake the world. 

For those missing GOT: Alternate season 8 endings written by the GPT-2 AI text generator. 

For innovation evangelists: CB Insights compiled a list of the 25 most absurd job titles in the tech industry.