Of course fake volume

https://www.newsbtc.com/2018/12/20/only-coinbase-binance-have-300k-users-fake-volume-on-most-crypto-platforms

Most of these others need eyeballs, but don't offer much value in a bear Market.  Click bait everything as a thing these days. 

Ibm ibm ibm ... And hyperledger

https://www.coindesk.com/tensions-emerge-between-hyperledger-blockchains-biggest-supporters

IBM has become a marketing engine with very little substance behind any of their products and services these days.  Sad really.  But it's interesting to see sawtooth being pushed forward and not just some centralized on IBM dlt Product.

Will EOS be a target of SEC ?

https://blockmanity.com/news/cardanos-founder-says-that-the-sec-will-target-eos

Most of these were securities or flat out scams.   And EOS was interesting till it was just a joke of a "company".  But can the SEC target Companies that didn't actually offer tokens or do an ICO in the US or to US citizens? 

Penny lane quantum computing

https://pennylane.readthedocs.io/en/latest

Quantum computing and pennylane sandbox.

Decentralized internet

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/12/its-time-to-take-back-your-data-from-google-and-facebooks-server-farms

I agree a decentralized internet is needed, but many people don't like paying for things anymore or don't have an extra buck to send an individual email.  The other reality is companies like at&t and Comcast collect just as much data and are forgotten, ignored or thought to be the cost of living. 

Skynet and 1984 and big brother has been freely given away and created and we didn't care.   

Chatbots are terrible

https://www.thedrum.com/news/2018/12/11/consumers-go-cold-automated-chatbots-finds-acquia-research

" Widespread dissatisfaction with the service provided by chatbots has done nothing to dent the enthusiasm of marketers, with 80% of CMOs either already using the technology or planning to do so by 2020 according to a separate Oracle survey."

I played around with chatbots and smart chatbots a couple years back.  I still lived in California when a friend and I thought about a health and wellness chatbot for new and expecting parents.  Never figured the monetary business model for it though and it was early stages before things like dialogflow basically abstracted away natural language processing (NLP).

It was interesting how you had to come up with a natural conversation flow script.  Otherwise it be kind of a dumb chatbot like we had in the early 90s.  

Fast forward to the world of Alexa and Google home and Siri and even my kids call Alexa dumb.  At least Google hole explores the internet a little better.   But I don't think it's  Technology problem as it's a customer centric problem.   Companies have offshored support to places like India for years.  And you'd speak to a Tom Smith who wasn't a Tom Smith pretending to live in the same state as you.   And they spoke English very poorly and read from a limited script. 

     They were the human version of a dumb chatbot, sadly.  Deviate away from that script and it was a useless phone call and nothing good would come out of it.  But wow, pay nothing to create a dumb chatbot with the same weak script and little programmatic or NLP or rules and you get a worse version of the offshore customer support human being that people hated for years.   No wonder chatbots are useless.

A tier one, two, three model makes sense , but a dumbed down version of a cheap Sweatshop like human being customer support center becomes a get what you pay for and why most of these chatbots offer a few lines and not much else . 

Blockchain to change the world ...

From the report,

"
blockchain has the potential to significantly cut trade costs by increasing transparency and facilitating processes automation, including financial intermediation, exchange rate costs, coordination, and other aspects. “The removal of barriers due to blockchain could result in more than $ 1 trillion of new trade in the next decade
"

https://cointelegraph.com/news/report-blockchain-deployment-could-add-3-trillion-in-international-trade-by-2030