Bots in the Belfry

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Bots in the Belfry
Number 2787
Broadcast Date JUNE 16, 2016
Episode Length 36:51
Hosts Tom Merritt
Guests Veronica Belmont

Bots can order food or rides, schedule meetings and be our bus friends. What else do we want bots to do? Veronica Belmont and Tom Merritt discuss.

Guest

Top Stories

Samsung announced it has agreed to acquire cloud-computing company Joyent. It will become part of Samsung’s mobile communications unit but continue as a standalone company while key staffers work on Samsung’s cloud projects. Joyent’s main products power mobile and Web apps with a container infrastructure platform called Triton and object storage service Manta.
Submitted by habichuelacondulce
Microsoft acquired messaging app vendor Wand Labs. Microsoft cited Wand’s expertise in, “semantic ontologies, services mapping, third-party developer integration and conversational interfaces” as part of the reason for the purchase. Essentially that means Wand and its seven employees is good at apps that use a chat interface to do things like share songs and control your thermostat. Wand CEO, Vishal Sharma, spent seven years at Google and contributed to the Google Now project there. Wand will join the Bing engineering and platform team.
Facebook announced a redesign of Facebook Messenger today that adds a Home tab so you can see who is online, upcoming birthdays, unresponded messages and recent conversations plus who your favorite people to chat with are. The navigation bar on the bottom has tabs for calls, contacts, groups and your profile. Facebook VP of messaging products David Marcus told the Wired Business Conference that the redesign is an attempt at ”reinventing the inbox.”
Magic Leap, a company we must remind you has not come out with a product or shown more than a glimpse of a working prototype to the public, is partnering with Lucasfilm and Industrial Light and Magic on a semisecret lab. Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz told the Wired Business conference the lab will be based in San Francisco.
Submitted by macwinuxit
A federal judge in San Jose sentenced Sanford Wallace to 30 months in prison and fined him $310,000. Wallace sent out more than 27 million spam messages through Facebook's servers between 2008 and 2009. He pleaded guilty to one count of fraud and one count of criminal contempt in August 2015. Wallace has a history with spam, dating back to junk faxes in 1991. In civic lawsuits with MySpace and Facebook, he accumulated more than a total of $1 billion in outstanding default judgments.
Submitted by pcguy8088_
At E3, Nintendo announced that Pokemon Go, the Niantic co-developed Augmented Reality mobile game, will launch in July for Android and iOS. Several features will not be ready at launch, such as trading monsters and integration with Pokemon Sun and Moon. The Pokemon Go Plus, a $35 wrist worn wearable that lets you play the game without a smartphone, will not be ready for the July launch. BUT at launch it will put Pokemon in the real world through your smartphone's camera, place gym's at notable real world landmarks and have Red, Blue, and Yellow teams vie for control of gyms.
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative which is handling the commitment to give 99% of Zuckerberg's Facebook stock to charity over the course of his lifetime has made its first investment. The company is leading a $24 million funding round for Andela, a startup that works to train software developers in Kenya and Nigeria and connect them with jobs. Andela plans to use the funds to expand to other African countries.
Politico reports the House of Representatives voted 198-222 to block an amendment that would prohibit the government from forcing companies to weaken their encryption for law enforcement after Orlando shooting. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte said "This amendment prohibits the government from searching data already in its possession collected lawfully … to determine whether Omar Mateen was in contact with terrorists overseas." Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who co-sponsored the amendment with Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said "It’s unfortunate my colleagues would take advantage of that situation."
The x.ai appointment-scheduling bot now supports Office 365 and Outlook.com. Corporate accounts are not yet supported. Business Insider reports that Exchange Calendar Server support is coming soon. The bot lets users cc [email protected] or [email protected] on meeting-scheduling threads then the bot handles finding mutual free times. X.ai is currently in a closed beta, and expects to release a paid business version of the bot later this year.
IBM announced it’s Watson platform is powering services on a self-driving bus called Olli. Local Motors also 3D-printed parts of the bus to keep costs down. Watson won’t be driving but ‘improving the passenger experience.’ Passengers can talk to Watson about how Olli works, why it makes the driving decisions it does and even get restaurant recommendations. Olli cars will start operations in Washington, DC, and come to Miami-Dade County and Las Vegas later this year.

Discussion

Pick of the Day

Hi everyone!

Did you ever live in the Cincinnati / Hamilton County area during the 80s and 90s? Do you miss the sound of the dumb terminals that they deployed when they replaced their paper card catalog? Well now you can re-live the experience on your own computer by buying a keyboard from Unicomp!

Unicomp bought the Model M IP from Lexmark (who bought it from IBM), and they now sell keyboards with the same buckling-spring keyswitches that IBM used. The keyboards use native USB or PS/2, and they offer keyboards with proper Mac support, which includes the special key functions for volume, play/pause, and eject. Unicomp also sells 122-key keyboards, for people who want an extra 18 function keys to play with.

If you already have a Model M, give them the model number and Unicomp can provide a replacement.

Their web site is pckeyboard.com.
Submitted by Karl in Lively Los Altos

Messages

Hi Tom,
I didn't know this would be such a big topic, but..... there are regulations for interstate hazardous material shipments that don't apply to intrastate shipments.

The regulations apply to shipping via ground too. It's not about air vs ground like your previous emailer suggested, it's just about shipping hazardous across state borders.

Love the show....
Sent by Natron


Tom:

On yesterday’s show you were discussing the idea that Facebook could be moving to 100% video within five years. One of the challenges could be around audio. Many times people look at social media casually on the desktop or on their phones while out and about and are not always plugged in for sound. Also, there are a lot of times when you do not want to have to have audio to consume content. Just a thought.

Thanks as always for the good discussions. Looking forward to the headlines launch.
Sent by Russell

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"Three Devs & A Normie" 		Bots in the Belfry
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"Hacker Curious?"
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