Drones for business are still barely getting off the ground

Some new technologies slip into our lives quietly. You may not even know how often you’ve interacted with or been analyzed by the machine learning-driven apps Aric mentioned in yesterday’s Data Sheet. Some technologies, on the other hand, buzz noisily into our awareness. You will almost certainly hear when a drone zips past you.

But in terms of actually making an impact in the business world, they’re also still a long way behind technologies like A.I. or 5G.

When I was interviewing UPS CEO David Abney last month, the talk quickly turned to drones. UPS is very interested in using drones to improve the efficiency of the giant, global logistical puzzle of delivering 20 million packages a day. UPS has a couple of efforts underway, testing drones to deliver pharmacy orders and bring medical samples from a doctor’s office to a lab. Abney shared a funny story about how he tried to impress his grandkids with a drone and ended up landing it in the swimming pool. (That didn’t happen when my teenage son let me pilot his drone. He flipped on a safety setting restricting me to a maximum speed of 2 miles per hour. I managed not to get into too much trouble.)

The business question is one of the biggest hurdles drones face. We can’t just let anyone and everyone who has a business idea for drones fill the skies with flying pizza-delivery bots or mosquito-spraying quadcopters. Switzerland last year halted a major delivery trial for several months after one drone crashed near a kindergarten playground.

So the Federal Aviation Administration is moving slowly, some say too slowly, in granting permission to companies for commercial operations beyond the sight line of a drone’s pilot. So far, just a couple have won a Part 135 certification, as it’s known, including UPS and Wing Aviation, the Google sister company. Imagine if only two companies had permission to use A.I. in commercial applications.

The day after Christmas, the FAA issued a 300-page proposal to improve safety by requiring all drones to broadcast an identification signal. The complex plan has drawn criticism for requiring an expensive, Internet-connected solution, and it could take a while to get to a final rule. “This is an important building block in the unmanned traffic management ecosystem,” the FAA said in the proposal.

The much more difficult task of creating a drone air traffic-control system, akin to the FAA’s system for overseeing all the airplanes in the sky, still lies ahead. For now, drones for business are barely getting off the ground.

Aaron Pressman

Twitter: @ampressman

Email: aaron.pressman@fortune.com

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NEWSWORTHY

That wasn't very cash money of you. Amazon and others may imagine a future of retail stores not accepting cash, but New York City authorities are having none of it. The city council voted Thursday to require stores and restaurants to accept cash for payment. “This practice punishes the underbanked,” City Council Speaker Corey Johnson said before the 43-3 vote in favor of the rule.

A really bad date. Copying Twitter's blue checkmark, Tinder debuted a photo verification service so users of the popular dating app can have confidence that the person they're swiping right on actually looks like their profile picture. The feature relies on self-authentication via a series of guided selfies. The company also added a panic button to its app to call for help on dates that go dangerously wrong.

Camouflaged. The latest tweaking by Google of its search results page makes it harder to tell the difference between organic results and paid advertising, some critics charge. Click rates on ads in the results page have increased since the tweaks, which added similarly sized icons to both kinds of results, Digiday reports.

More gigahertz. On Wall Street, Intel delighted investors by posting much better fourth quarter results than expected and offering an upbeat forecast for 2020. Intel said sales of $20.2 billion grew 8% from the year before and exceeded the average analyst forecast by $1 billion. Intel's share, up 31% over the past year, gained 6% in pre-market trading on Friday morning. Communications chipmaker Broadcom got a bounce after announcing a new $15 billion supply deal with Apple. Broadcom shares, up 24% over the past year, gained 3% in pre-market trading.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

While the designers and developers at Apple get all the attention, the company's success has also been fueled by some wizardry in the areas of supply chain management and procurement. The Wall Street Journal's Tripp Mickle has a profile of Tony Blevins, Apple's vice president of procurement, showing just how far the company will go to save a few bucks. Blevin's nickname is the Blevinator.

For years, Mr. Blevins wore a tourist trinket from Hawaii, a cheap puka-shell necklace he had negotiated to a $2 price from $5. It was a reminder to his staff that nothing should fetch full price, said Helen Wang, who worked on his procurement team for years. “If he’s like that for himself, you can only imagine how he is with company money,” she said.

FOR YOUR WEEKEND READING PLEASURE

A few long reads that I came across this week:

I Tried Listening to Podcasts at 3x and Broke My Brain (OneZero)
‘Podfasters’ listen to their favorite pods at 1.5x, even 2x speed. But how fast is too fast?

The Gene Drive Dilemma: We Can Alter Entire Species, but Should We? (New York Times Magazine)
A new genetic engineering technology could help eliminate malaria and stave off extinctions — if humanity decides to unleash it.

Taylor Swift: No Longer ‘Polite at All Costs’ (Variety)
Taylor Swift — who, at 30, has reached a Zen state of cheerful realism — laughs as she leans into a pillow she’s placed over her crossed legs inside her suite at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, leaning further still into her infinitesimal odds of winning a Golden Globe, which will zero out when she heads down to the televised ball in a few hours.

At Home With Rem Koolhaas (WSJ Magazine)
The legendary architect Rem Koolhaas is turning his unflinching gaze to the earth’s future, with an exhibition opening at New York City’s Guggenheim Museum.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Exclusive: American Well’s next act is turning your bedroom into a hospital By Sy Mukherjee

The U.S. doesn’t mandate diverse boardrooms—but now Goldman Sachs does By Claire Zillman

FedEx text scam: These fake personalized ‘alerts’ could result in identity theft By Chris Morris

These tailors show that custom suiting is no longer just for men By Kristen Bellstrom

5G is supposed to be the future. But here’s what it’s like today By Aaron Pressman

The long ocean voyage that helped find the flaws in GPS By Katherine Dunn

Minding the GAAP: companies are using a wider range of accounting metrics to inform investors—and sometimes mislead them By Erik Sherman

BEFORE YOU GO

British comedy troupe Monty Python has been getting chuckles for decades, but lost one of its core members this week with the death of Terry Jones at age 77. Guardian News put together a highlight reel of some of Jones' best bits over the years with Monty Python. Have a great weekend, with plenty of laughs.