Waymo is launching its driverless taxi service in Los Angeles tomorrow after a stream of crashes. Angelenos will be able to sign up for Waymo's waitlist to be the first to ride in the fully autonomous vehicles after years of testing. 'Once an unimaginable future, autonomous driving is now a real-world way of getting around for tens of thousands of people each week,' said Waymo co-CEO, Tekedra Mawakana. 'After achieving key milestones in each city, we're so excited to bring the safety, comfort and delight of our Waymo One service to more people in Los Angeles and Austin this year.' Although Waymo is rolling out its taxi service in LA, it is still conducting fully autonomous testing in Austin, Texas and is expected to become available to public riders later this year.

A US government agency has formally opened a probe into Tesla's so-called Autopilot system following a spate of well-publicised crashes over the past few years. The investigation covers over three-quarters of a million vehicles, which has got to be a decent chunk of the US inventory shifted by Tesla since the start of the 2014 model year. It is estimated that in past three years alone, Tesla has sold a combined 430,592 units of Model X, Model S, and Model 3 in the United States. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) said it was looking into the "level 2" Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS), which it said consists of lane-keeping and cruise control functions. "Most incidents took place after dark and the crash scenes encountered included scene control measures such as first responder vehicle lights, flares, an illuminated arrow board, and road cones," the agency said in a statement [PDF] today.

Artificial intelligence company Torch. … AI alone plans to add 70 jobs in Leawood this year, and CEO Brian Weaver said it could add 400 local jobs in …

The smart home is dead. I'm not sure exactly when the time of death should have been called, but it happened at some point between Google trying to rebrand the smart home as "the helpful home" and the publication of this article, which expresses dismay that at five years of age, Amazon's Alexa offers little more than a new way of interacting with things, without deep functionality or truly new use cases. This week in New York, at an IoT Consortium event, I listened to executives of dozens of companies associated with the smart home talk around its death but never address the fact directly. Instead, they talked about a lack of compelling use cases, how to move beyond a device-specific mindset, and the ways they are trying to handle consumer demand for interoperability in the smart home without actually providing such interoperability. For example, Google's Mark Spates, who works in the smart display and speaker division, said onstage, "I don't think we've done a good job explaining our value proposition to consumers. We have to come up with new stories that isn't just'Go buy another Mini.'"

Google introduced a revamped version of its entry-level smart speaker at a press event in New York Tuesday: The new $49 Nest Mini speaker effectively replaces its Home Mini predecessor with bigger sound, a built-in machine learning chip for faster responses, ultrasound for proximity detection and the ability to pair 2 speakers for inexpensive stereo sound. The Nest Mini pulls all of this off while staying true to the Home Mini's size and shape, with a bit of a twist: Google decided to rely on 35% post-consumer plastic for the Nest Mini's enclosure, and make the speaker's fabric cover out of 100% recycled material derived from old plastic bottles. The company also added a hook to the back to give consumers an option to wall-mount the Nest Mini. And in addition to the three existing colors (white, black and red), the Nest Mini is now also available in light blue (pictured above). But the biggest two new features are the sound improvements, as well as the addition of on-device machine-learning.

The Diet enacted a revised aviation law Thursday that increases punishments for pilots found to have flown under the influence of alcohol or drugs following a series of drinking-related incidents involving Japanese airlines. Under the legislation, which will take effect in stages within one year of its official announcement, the penalty for drinking and flying has been raised from a maximum one-year jail term or ¥300,000 fine to a sentence of up to three years or a ¥500,000 fine. Japanese airlines have already tightened drinking rules, introducing mandatory Breathalyzer tests and relieving pilots of their duties if even a very low level of alcohol is detected. Those flying private planes, however, are not subject to the same checks. The legislation also seeks to improve aviation safety ahead of the intended mid-2020 delivery of the Mitsubishi Regional Jet, Japan's first homegrown commercial passenger jet.

Businesses understand the importance of providing seamless customer journeys, but we've seen a growing spate of digital service outages and software performance problems in recent months. There have been online banking outages that have left customers unable to pay bills on time, while problems with major payment systems have left shoppers unable to use their bank cards at the checkouts. These problems seriously disrupt peoples' ability to live their day-to-day lives, so they're becoming a growing concern for businesses and consumers alike. So, if businesses understand the importance of providing seamless customer journeys, why are outages happening more often? The soaring complexity of technology ecosystems is the biggest contributor to the rise in software performance problems. Modern digital services reside in complex hybrid multi-cloud environments, spanning multiple platforms and technologies.