The Iowa App Flap
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| The Iowa App Flap | |
| Number | 3711 |
| Broadcast Date | FEBRUARY 4, 2020 |
| Episode Length | 32:14 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang |
| Guests | Patrick Beja, Justin Robert Young |
Iowa’s Democratic Party app to tally votes crashes during the party’s caucus. Paper ballots saved the day but why did the app fail and what can be learned from this incident?
Guest
Quick Hits
- Facebook's Messenger Kids app now lets parents see more details about who their children are messaging with, if there are video calls being made, and a history of anyone they’ve blocked. Parents will also see a log of recent images their child has sent and received (with the option to remove and report it if it’s inappropriate), and can log them out of devices remotely. Parents can also download all of their child’s information, like the data-download feature available in the main Facebook app.
- The semiconductor industry suffered its worst annual slump since 2001 in 2019, the Semiconductor Industry Association said Monday in a statement. Revenue fell 12% to $412 billion in 2019. Sales grew slightly in the fourth quarter from the preceding three-month period. Memory chip revenue dropped 33% from 2018 led by declines in computer memory. Sales in China fell 8.7%, according to the SIA, and sales in the Americas dropped the most of any region at 24%.
- Alphabet-owned Jigsaw, released details of a tool call Assembler that uses seven detectors to try to find signs of image manipulation. It can spot the usage of Photoshop as well as more advanced deep fake manipulation. In its early development Jigsaw will make the tool available to journalists and fact checkers.
Top Stories
- Users in North America and Europe, can sign up for Nvidia's GeForce Now game streaming service, which supports games from Steam, the Epic Games Store, Battle.net, and Uplay, running on a PC in a data center. Games must have been optimized for the service before they appear as available, even if you own them. The Founders Edition of the service is $5 a month for up to 6 hours at a time, but Nvidia says the fee will go up at some point. You can try the service for free for an hour at a time without a credit card, though you may be put in a queue and you will get access to less powerful hardware. The GeForce Now app runs on macOS, Windows and Android and requires at least 15Mbps connection. 30 Mbps for 1080p and 50 Mbps for the best experience. There's no 4K option.
- Google told affected users of its backup photo service, Google Takeout, that between November 21st and 25th, "some videos in Google Photos were incorrectly exported to unrelated users' archives." Google also says that backups made during that five-day period may be incomplete. Google says it has resolved the issue that caused the problem and suggests deleting any export made in November. Google told 9to5Google that 0.01 percent of Photos users were affected.
- Alphabet reported a revenue rise of 17%, its slowest rate of growth since 2017. Profit rose 19% while costs rose 19% mostly due to data center investment and content acquisition for YouTube TV and YouTube Music. Google ad revenue rose 17%. For the first time, the company reported numbers for YouTube and Cloud. YouTube reported $15.15 billion in revenue for the year, below expectations. YouTube ad sales rose 31% year over year to $4.7 billion and counts 22 million paid subscribers. YouTube TV counts 2 million subscribers. Alphabet reported cloud revenue grew 53% on the year to $2.61 billion. By comparison, Amazon reported almost $10 billion and Microsoft $12.5 billion in their most recent quarters.
- Sony reported a smaller than expected decline of 20% in quarterly profit on the strength of a 62% rise in profit from smartphone image sensor sales. Sales have been so strong that Sony cannot meet its inventory goals even at full production. Sony's gaming business fell 27%. Sony shipped 6.1 million PS4s, its lowest holiday quarter since launch. Sony's PS Plus subscriber service rose to 38.8 million subscribers from 36.3 million.
Discussion
- Iowa’s high-tech caucuses crashed, and paper ballots saved the day
- Iowa Democrats blame ‘coding issue’ for botched caucus results
- A results reporting app by Shadow Inc. takes center stage at chaotic Iowa caucuses
- Election tech was supposed to clean up the Iowa caucus — instead, it may have killed it
- Pete Buttigieg Maintains Lead in Iowa: Campaign Update
- Iowa Democrats say sloppy app code delayed caucus results
- Nevada Democrats may abandon caucus app
Mailbag
- Big Jim had some insights on the coronavirus affecting shipments in and out of China.
YouTube
Links
| Preceded by: "AirBnB Cautious" |
The Iowa App Flap |
Followed by: "Zoom and Enhance on 1896 Film" |