Amazon-More Brick & Mortar; TikTok Working On Paywalled Video Option; AI Flew Air Force Training Jet 17 Hours; Seattle Police-Adhesive GPS Trackers on Cars Avoids High Speed Chases

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wants to ‘go big’ on brick and mortar grocery stores. CNET.com reports that in spite of the company closing dozens of book stores and other physical establishments, Amazon intends to vastly increase the number of grocery stores they have. They are also looking at putting in physical clothing stores. All would eventually feature the ‘Just Walk Out’ tech, where sensors and cameras keep track of your items and charge you as you leave, eliminating check out lines…and checkers, for that matter. Besides the Whole Foods chain Amazon bought in 2017, the company presently has about 40 Amazon Fresh grocery stores. 

TikTok is not sitting still. They are now working on new features to boost usage and also to attract older audiences in the US. According to theverge.com, one new feature is a paywall, which would allow creators to charge a buck…or maybe more…to watch their videos. Exclusive content for paying fans was pretty well pioneered by OnlyFans, but has also been used by Instagram to try to lure creators to use that platform. TikTok is also revising its creator fund…already in use in France and Brazil, and looking to roll that out in the US next month. The fund is a billion dollar pool of money that pays creators for popular videos. They may boost the eligibility requirement for the fund, rewarding only creators with 100,000 followers and videos longer than 10 minutes. 

While there is some hand-wringing about self-driving vehicles, way above our heads AI is flying along pretty well, apparently, Of course, traffic is more limited at 40,000 feet! An artificial intelligence ‘agent’ recently flew a Lockheed Martin Vista X-62A training aircraft for over 17 hours! Engadget.com says that plane uses software to emulate performance characteristics of other aircraft. This time, they used software to sit in as the human pilot! It is the first time AI has been used to fly a tactical aircraft. The system was cooked up by Lockheed’s famous Skunk Works in conjunction with Calspan.

Seattle area police are using a novel way to catch suspects on the run without high speed chases. Geekwire.com reports that they are using a high powered air compressor to fire a GPS tracker at the fleeing vehicle. The tracker is coated with an industrial strength glue that sticks to the car…and presto! No need to fly through streets at warp speed after the bad guys. You can just set a road block ahead or track them until they stop. 

I’m Clark Reid, and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.