A Real Brainy Machine!

Happy Friday!

Welcome to the third edition of the Quantumics Weekly Roundup. This week, we’ll dive into the world of brain-computer interfacing and explore Synchron, an Australian company who reportedly implanted its first device in a US patient earlier this month.

We’ll also explore the latest news and information in data and AI, business and tech. Let’s go! ??

Data Titbits ??

Synchron, a brain-computer interface startup, reportedly implanted its first device in a US patient earlier this month — overtaking?Elon Musk's Neuralink?for the third time. The startup reportedly implanted a 1.5-inch device into the brain of an ALS patient at Mount Sinai West medical center in New York on July 6. The purpose of the device is to allow the patient to communicate — even after they have lost the ability to move — by using their thoughts to send emails and texts, WhatsApp and even shop online!

• China has fined ride-hailing giant Didi more than 8 billion yuan?($1.2 billion), regulators announced Thursday, concluding a year-long investigation into alleged data security violations. Didi has been one of the highest-profile targets of a widespread crackdown on China's tech firms, which saw years of runaway growth and the emergence of supersized monopolies.
• The heat’s really starting to take it’s toll in the UK, not just on its citizens but its data centers too!?A Google Cloud data center in London faced a “cooling related” outage recently, according to an update on the Alphabet Inc unit’s status page, as temperature in the UK soared to a record high.

Tech News ??

The?UK is set to become home to the world's largest automated drone superhighway?within the next two years. The drones will be used on the 164-mile Skyway project connecting towns and cities, including Cambridge and Rugby. It is part of a ￡273m funding package for the aerospace sector which will be revealed by Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng on Monday. Other projects include drones delivering mail to the Isles of Scilly and medication across Scotland.

• A decade after?Google Glass, Google is getting back to testing smart glasses in public again. The company announced its own?smart glasses initiative?earlier this year at Google's I/O developer conference, a project that's aimed at assistance rather than entertainment. Google's now starting to?publicly test those smart glasses, the company announced today, beginning with dozens of pairs in field use and ramping up to several hundred by the end of the year.
• Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg?announced?today that the company is launching a new “payments in chat” feature on Instagram. With this new feature, users can purchase products from small businesses and track orders via direct messages on Instagram in the United States.

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Market News ??

• Indian companies are rushing to hedge their overseas dollar debt against further declines in the rupee, a process that threatens to cascade into additional losses for the battered local currency. The?nation’s firms had $79 billion of unhedged offshore loans at the end of March, about 44% of their total overseas borrowings, according to the latest data from the Reserve Bank of India. The cost of repaying that has been soaring as the rupee has tumbled more than 7% this year.
• Crypto markets have moved up significantly over the last two days. Prices of several crypto tokens have also increased. Bitcoin climbed to its highest point in over a month, surging over $22,500.?Several altcoins have managed to outperform Bitcoin in the last few days with Polygon network’s MATIC token leading the charts.?Is this the start of the bull run?