Podcast

Science Communicator Dr. Kiki Sanford (#8) - TMO Background Mode Interview

John Martellaro · · Add Comment

Dr. Kiki Sanford makes her eighth appearance on Background Mode. Kiki is a neurophysiologist with a B.S. in conservation biology and a Ph.D. avian neurophysiology from the University of California. She’s a popular science communicator and creator/co-host of This Week in Science (TWIS) podcast and radio show.

In this episode, we spend the entire first segment discussing the coronavirus. Kiki fills us in on the details you don’t hear about on the nightly news. In segment #2, Kiki tells us the real reason why people under stress get grey hair, how Mars used to have surface water, how the Earth’s sea level is rising faster than expected, and how zebra strips seem to provide good protection against biting insects. As always, Kiki makes science fun and interesting.

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Amazon Will Sell Your Face for as Low as 40 Cents for Facial Recognition

Andrew Orr ·

Reporters at The California Sunday Magazine recently published an overview of facial recognition technology. It’s a long read and it provides a lot of information on this technology and how it works. Among the tidbits that caught my eye I wanted to share this one:

Why has the use of facial recognition become such a hot-button issue now? The most obvious answer is that the technology has been improved, streamlined, and commercialized to the point that it has become widely accessible, available for purchase for as low as 40 cents an image if you opt for Amazon’s facial-recognition software plan.

TMO Deals

This Tech Gear Bag Has Multiple Compartments, Durable Construction, Cable Port, More: $59.99

Bryan Chaffin ·

We have a deal on the Incase ICON Backpack, a bag designed for all your tech gear. The main compartment provides space for larger items and organization for flat documents and small accessories, the secondary compartment offers a series of organizer pockets to hold tech accessories, the dedicated side-access pocket is for your iPad, and the hip-side power pocket with integrated cable port to allow access to portable power or audio. This backpack is $59.99 through our deal.

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Microsoft Cancels Launch of Surface Hub 2X

Charlotte Henry ·

Microsoft has cancelled the launch of the Surface Hub 2X, The Verge reported. However, it has insisted it will rollout many of the previously announced features.

In a leaked webinar to Surface Hub 2 sellers, Microsoft says it’s still committed to developing tiling and rotation but it’s not clear when these features will arrive. “They might not require an upgrade for Surface Hub 2S customers, or they might not require a paid compute cartridge swap,” says a Microsoft spokesperson in the webinar. “We don’t have plans to release a compute cartridge in 2020, because the best way to release those capabilities — tiling and rotation — may not require us to take that path.”

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Wistron to Assemble iPhone Parts in India

Charlotte Henry ·

Wistron, a key Apple supplier, is set to assemble iPhone components in India, Reuters reported. It is part of a bid from Apple to expand its manufacturing in the country.

The local assembly of PCBs by Wistron’s India unit will be a first for the contract manufacturer, which began making Apple’s low-priced SE model in the southern tech hub of Bengaluru in 2017. It currently assembles the 6S and 7 iPhone models there as well. A PCB is a bed for key components such as processors, memory and wireless chip sets that are the heart of an electronic device. Once assembled, or populated with components, PCBs account for about half the cost of a smartphone. Wistron’s second iPhone plant, some 65 km (40 miles) from Bengaluru, is expected to become operational by April, the sources said, adding that it will make iPhone 7 and 8 models, some of which will be exported.

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HomePod And Other Products That Need Attention

Charlotte Henry ·

Apple regularly rolls out product updates, but that doesn’t mean some products couldn’t benefit from a little TLC. Dan Moren at MacWorld suggested which products he’d like to receive some attention, including the HomePod.

What is the HomePod to Apple? In the almost two years since its release, the company still hasn’t quite landed upon an answer. It’s a wireless smart speaker, to be sure, but when it comes to what differentiates it from its competitors from Amazon, Google, and Sonos, there hasn’t been a particularly compelling argument—beyond the fact that as an Apple product, it’s simply better. (An assertion that even numerous HomePod owners, including myself, would challenge.) If Apple does want to continue down the HomePod road, then the company needs to make some decisions. Is the HomePod simply a premium product? While it started out at a pricey $350, it’s become more and more common to see it floating around the $200-$250 range. Frankly I can’t remember the last time I saw an Apple product with that kind of deep discount.

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Location is One of The Big Factors in Advertising

Andrew Orr ·

Jennifer Jolly wrote an article wondering if Siri was spying on her because she began to see ads in Spanish after her husband began speaking Spanish at home, within “earshot” of her iPad. The answer is, of course, no. In her buried lede she tells us that she had just moved to a predominantly Spanish-speaking part of Oakland California. It seems reasonable to me that you would see Spanish ads in a Spanish area. Although I’m sure the device’s language is a factor. We did have news last year that contractors listened to some snippets of Siri recordings, but that was to improve the service and not sell ads. Meanwhile, if you turn on Limit Ad Tracking in Settings, your advertising identifier is zeroed. After that, location becomes one of the big factors in advertising.

And Apple says it engineers its devices to protect user privacy. When it comes to Siri, which is integrated in nearly every Apple device, the assistant is designed to activate only after the wake word (“Hey, Siri”) or a waking action is completed, Apple says.

Podcast

One Eight Hundredth Geek Out! – Mac Geek Gab 800

John F. Braun · · 2 Comments

What to do for the eight hundredth episode? Share tips, answer your questions, and solve your problems, of course! Today learn about HDMI adapters, iOS backups, mounting network shares, Copying from Screenshots, and a cool edit to the iOS Share Sheet. What more can you ask for? Well, maybe a rant about Neil Young, too! Listen and learn five new things with John F. Braun and Dave Hamilton, that’s what!

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CERN Replaces Facebook Workplace With Open Source

Andrew Orr ·

CERN is ending its trial of Facebook Workplace and replacing it with open source alternatives, like Mattermost and Discourse.

Facebook Workplace is Facebook’s corporate-focused product for internal real-time communication and related communication needs within organizations. CERN had been making use of Facebook Workplace and in addition to data privacy concerns, they were recently confronted with either paying Facebook or losing administrative rights, no more single sign-on access, and Facebook having access to their internal data. But now they have assembled their own set of software packages to fill the void by abandoning Facebook Workplace.

I hope to see more of this. Facebook is the Fox News of social media. Like The Mac Observer’s editor-in-chief Bryan Chaffin says: “Death by a thousand paper cuts.”

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Lindsey Graham’s Draft Bill Punishes Companies Using End-to-End Encryption

Andrew Orr ·

Senator Lindsey Graham is drafting a bill [PDF] that could penalize companies using end-to-end encryption.

Although the measure doesn’t directly mention encryption, it would require that companies work with law enforcement to identify, remove, report and preserve evidence related to child exploitation — which critics said would be impossible to do for services such as WhatsApp that are encrypted from end-to-end.

If technology companies don’t certify that they are following the best practices set by the 15-member commission, they would lose the legal immunity they currently enjoy under Section 230 relating to child exploitation and abuse laws. That would open the door to lawsuits for “reckless” violations of those laws, a lower standard than contained in current statutes.

Of all the dumb things this administration has done, attacking encryption is a doozy. It’s not clear how much this would impact Apple, since the company does in fact scan for child abuse images. But iMessage and a few other services are end-to-end encrypted.

TMO Deals

iOS 13 and Swift 5 Programming eBook: $9

Bryan Chaffin ·

We have a deal on the iOS 13 & Swift 5 Programming eBook, which is designed to be the ultimate beginner programming guide. Covering Swift programming basics, object-oriented programming, model view controller, iOS 13 development, and other frameworks, this book will have you build multiple apps on your own and publish it to the Apple App Store. It’s $9 through our deal.

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Apple Chipmaker Says Supply Not Affected By Coronavirus

Charlotte Henry ·

The coronavirus outbreak in China has posed a number of manufacturing problems, not least for Apple. It was an issue of concern at the firm’s otherwise successful earnings call this week. However, one of its chipmakers, TMSC, insists it is business as usual, according to DigiTimes.

TSMC, UMC say production in China remains normal: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and United Microelectronics (UMC) have both said that production at their fabs in China stays on track and has not been affected by the coronavirus outbreak… coronavirus outbreak likely to complicate global panel supply: The lockdown of Wuhan due to the coronavirus outbreak could impact global panel shipments as the Chinese city is one of the major production bases for a number of China-based panel makers.