Welcome to the Tech Mem Ride Home for Friday, January 3rd, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today.

Google's AI has a medical breakthrough.

Apple raids HBO for maybe its biggest name.

Instagram seems to be plateauing by one metric at least,

going gangbusters in another, and what to expect from CES and of course the

weekend long read suggestions here's what you miss today in the world of

tech.

Google says its AI has made significant improvements in the reading of

mammograms to detect breast cancer in a research study of images from around 90,000 cases, quote,

tested on images where the diagnosis was already known,

the new system performed better than radiologists on On scans from the United States, the system produced a 9.4%

reduction in false negatives in which a mammogram is mistakenly read as normal and a cancer

is missed. It also provided a lowering of 5.7% in

false positives where the scan is incorrectly judged abnormal but there is no cancer. On mammograms performed in Britain the system also beat the

radiologist reducing false negatives by 2.7% and false positives by 1.2%.

Google paid for the study and worked with researchers from Northwestern University in Chicago and two British Medical Centers

Cancer Research Imperial Center and Royal Surrey County Hospital end quote

Apparently around 33 million mammograms are performed each year in the US.

And according to the New York Times, they miss about 20% of breast cancers and false positives are routinely common.

Once more I find myself covering Hollywood News because it is now major tech news thanks to the streaming wars.

Apple has signed Richard Pleppler, the former CEO of HBO to a five-year deal with Apple for his production company Eden Productions to produce films and shows exclusively for Apple TV Plus.

This is a big deal because as the New York Times puts it

...