Weekly News Roundup – August 11th 2017

Scottish Tech News

• Scottish Sports app Find A Player secures £100,000 investment
• Faraday Grid, a disruptive electricity transaction platform, which allows users to buy and sell electricity from/to each other, signs investment agreement with clean energy giant Amp
• Millarworld, the comic publisher created by Mark Millar (Kick Ass, Kingsman and many more) was acquired by Netflix (for an estimated $50M – $100M)
• Finally, a reason to go to Hamilton: Construction Scotland’s £3M Innovation Centre coming soon
• The University of Dundee is rated one of the world’s most innovative at number 26 (Cambridge, the only other UK entrant is 51st…)
• GTA: London 2017 Come for the weather, stay for the crime
• FanDuel launches season-long fantasy sports Championship leagues

Global Tech News

• Is that your phone BLINGING?! In a world of pointless excess, we wave goodbye to Vertu, the least capable, most over-priced mobiles ever created.
• Microsoft is throwing it’s weight behind enterprise Blockchain (we know, a sensible story, we were surprised too…)
• Google is rolling out phishing warnings to iOS Gmail users worldwide
• AWS joins Cloud Native Computing Foundation to help build global containerisation standards
• Google manufacturing robot issues manifesto: Humans biologically unsuited to jobs in tech
• Technology finally answers the question: If I dug straight through the earth, where would I come out? Thanks technology!
• IKEA co-opts flatpack ASMR for relaxathon dorm ad. What do you mean ‘you don’t understand?’
• Durham University builds supercomputer out of spare parts! Go Durham…

And Finally…

• You know the sheer misery of measuring salt? The grinding (sorry) tedium of scooping, pouring, or tipping small amounts of sodium chloride out of a container, with all of the heart-attacks and strokes which accompany incorrect measurement? You know how measuring your salt has always lacked accompanying music? You know how you always thought there should be an alternative? A digital solution, which would free you from the pointless tedium of your silent, salt-measuring agony? Now there is. A digital, app-connected salt measuring device which combines the best parts of an Amazon Echo and a container full of salt. Meet SMALT, your new music-playing, sodium-counting, salt-measuring digital chum. It’s more than a dispenser, it’s an interactive centrepiece. (NOTE: SMALT does not grind salt. SMALT only measure and dispenses salt. Take your artisanal rock salt and measure/dispense it some other way, you luddite!)