Cloud Farms
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| Assassin's Chrome | |
| Number | 3381 |
| Broadcast Date | OCTOBER 3, 2018 |
| Episode Length | 31:12 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane |
| Guests | Scott Johnson |
Microsoft throws down the gauntlet and reveals its Surface headphones. With Apple and Google already selling their own wireless headphones/earbuds are we about to witness the opening of a new front in the war between tech ecosystems?
Guest
Quick Hits
- Facebook announced its investigations show that third-party services that use Facebook for login do not appear to be affected by copied tokens. Facebook revealed Friday that attackers were able to access login tokens for up to 50 million Facebook accounts.
- Plex has added Web Shows like ASAPscience, Household Hacker, The Pet Collective, Epic Meal Time and more. You can subscribe to the shows within the Plex app and it will alert you when new episodes arrive as well as track older shows and suggest shows that seem to match your interests.
- Intra, a security app used to get around government internet censorship and traffic manipulation, has gone from being tested with Venezuelan activists to a worldwide released by Jigsaw, an Alphabet company. Intra creates an encrypted connection between your phone and DNS servers, making it harder for traffic to be intercepted by governments or purveyors of malware.
Top Stories
- The WiFi alliance announced that the next version of WiFi, heretofore known as 802.11ax will now be called WiFi 6. 802.11ac will now be called WiFi 5 and 802.11n WiFi 4. The idea is to make it easier to tell which version of WiFi is older.
- Google Assistant got a redesign to give more visual additions in response to voice commands - for example, offering a slider to better control dimming your lights. This is good on a phone but also on smart displays. JBL and Lenovo have already put out their Google-powered Smart Displays, and Google is rumored to be prepping its own to be revealed alongside the Pixel 3. Google is also now offering developers the ability to take payments from users directly through the assistant.
- Iron Ox is opening its first fully autonomous indoor production farm with plans to start selling produce from it soon. The farm is growing romaine, butterhead, kale, basil, cilantro and chives. A cloud system monitors sensors and tells robots what actions to perform including when its time to harvest. Angus, a 1,000-pound robot that can lift and move the 800-pound hydroponic boxes the plants grow in takes the plants to processing for any action like replanting seedlings which is done by a robotic arm. Humans still do harvesting, seeding, and packaging. It can produce about 26,000 plants a year in about an acre of space. Founders Brandon Alexander and Jon Binney wanted to do something practical with robots. A couple of side notes. One LED was still too expensive to make this profitable so the farms have to be located outside cities and use natural light. Also famers look at this as a way to help them solve the labor shortage in the ag industry.
- Amazon announced the Fire TV Stick 4K that includes support for 4K, Dolby Vision HDR, HDR10, HDR10+, and Dolby Atmos surround sound. It also has a 1.7GHZ quad-core processor, the fastest processor in any Fire TV device. The remote comes with an IR transmitter for control of soundbars and cable boxes and such. It's available for preorder now shipping October 31 for $50.
- Kobo launched the 8-inch Kobo Forma ereader that's IPX8 waterproof up to 2 meters, and weighs 197 grams, 15 percent lighter than the Kobo Auro One. The E-ink Mobius display can handle being dropped from more than 6 feet as well as handle more bends and twists. The Forma also adds tactile page-turn buttons on the right-hand side. Pre-orders begin October 16 and the Kobo Forma comes to stores in Canada, US, UK, Italy, the Netherlands, France, Japan, and Spain October 23 followed by more countries in early 2019.
Discussion
- The headphone wars have begun
- Microsoft is dragging its feet on helping USB-C go mainstream
- Microsoft has unveiled the $3,499 Surface Studio 2, its super-powerful and gorgeous new competitor to the Apple iMac
- Microsoft unveils Surface Pro 6 with new matte black finish and quad-core processors
- Microsoft refreshes Surface Laptop and Surface Pro with updated specs and black variants
- Microsoft Announces New Surface All Access Subscription Service
- Microsoft Surface Headphones: Hands-on with Microsoft's new Bose-buster noise-canceling headphones
Mailbag
- While I applaud California for passing this law, and I hope it stands, I have become convinced that making it easier/possible for local cities to provide internet service is the ultimate long term answer.
I am fortunate enough to live in a small town in Ohio that does provide internet service. The internet service is fast, cheap, reliable, and the very definition of a dumb pipe. My town has no motivation or reason to limit or block any particular website or type of traffic. Everyone else I talk to that does not live in my town pays more for a slower connection. At first I could not figure out why every town does not do this, and then I started hearing about all the legal nonsense that has been done to block it.
Normally I have the viewpoint that the less government has their hands in things the better, and I would not want the national government, or state government to control the internet. But from my experience, having the local town provide internet service is a wonderful answer. My town is not wealthy or big, so if they can do it, then I am sure any town could do it if the obstacles where taken out of the way. - Sent by Eric
- While I applaud California for passing this law, and I hope it stands, I have become convinced that making it easier/possible for local cities to provide internet service is the ultimate long term answer.
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| Preceded by: "Assassin's Chrome" |
Cloud Farms |
Followed by: "China's Tiny Hack Into Big Data" |