Daily Tech Headlines – July 8, 2016
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| Daily Tech Headlines – July 8, 2016 | |
| Number | 22 |
| Broadcast Date | JULY 8, 2016 |
| Episode Length | 6:47 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt |
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Headlines
- Facebook announced secret conversations Friday a new feature inside Messenger that uses end-to-end encryption and only stores messages on the sender and recipients devices, not Facebook servers. You can also set these messages to disappear after a time period between 5 seconds and 24 hours. Users must turn on the secret chat option and keep in mind that with messages stored on devices they won't be visible across platforms. Facebook will start rolling out the option to a test group and intends it to be available to everyone by the end of summer.
- Google announced it is switching the TLS encryption in a test portion of Chrome installations from using just elliptic curve cryptography to also having Ring Learning With Error or Ring-LWE. In other words it's testing a type of encryption that cannot be broken easily by quantum computers. Traditional encryption is also still used so that the experimental connections are at minimum as strong as all others. The experiment is only enabled in Chrome Canary, the developer edition. You can see if your installation is by looking for CECPQ1 in the key exchange visible in the Security Panel.
- Google announced Thursday it has acquired Anvato, a video platform for cloud editing, on-demand and live streaming. NBC, CBS, Fox and Univision are among its clients. This puts Google in competition with Amazon, Microsoft and to some extent BAM.
- Thursday Lyft announced Lyft Premier starting in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City. Lyft Premier will cost twice a normal Lyft ride but provide higher-end sedans and SUVs from carmakers like Audi, BMW, and Mercedes.
- Friday, EU governments approved the Privacy Shield data-sharing framework between the US and EU. Austria, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Croatia abstained from the vote. The European Commission will formally adopt Privacy Shield on Tuesday. Privacy Shield replaces the Safe Harbor system which was used for 15 years but struck down by the EU's highest court. The framework reduces legal complications when data is transferred from one region to another.
- The Amazon Echo will now let you choose Spotify as your default music library and Pandora or iHeartRadio as your default music station. Previously Amazon's own music service was the only default and other services had to be specified at the end of a spoken command. The default can be changed in the Echo app or on the Web.
- Despite remarks from witnesses including the truck driver involved in the Tesla crash in Florida, investigators say they cannot confirm that a movie was playing in the Tesla Model S driven by the late Joshua Brown. Sergeant Kim Montes of the Florida Highway Patrol told Reuters that a laptop and DVD player were found after the crash but neither were running nor mounted on stands. The investigation into the cause of the crash is still ongoing.
- Microsoft is open sourcing Project Malmo, its platform that uses Minecraft to improve AI problem solving. It will also have an overclocking feature to run experiments faster than the normal Minecraft game speed. The platform has a mod for the Java version of Minecraft and code to help AI agents act within the game. The code runs on Windows, Linux or MacOS and can be found at github.com/Microsoft/malmo.
- Research conducted by teams from the department of electrical and computing engineering at the Stevens Institute of Technology and Binghamton University in New York State how motion sensor data in a smartwatch could be used to deduce a user's PIN. The algorithm was tested on 5,000 key entry traces made by 20 adults using one of three different wearables with 80% accuracy on the first attempt rising to 90% after three tries. An exploit would need to capture packets from Bluetooth or by malware on a phone or watch. It could be foiled by using another hand or introducing random movements while entering a PIN.
- ReCode's Kurt Wagner has several sources that say Twitter is in talks with Turner to get digital streaming rights for NBA and Major League Soccer games. It is unclear if Twitter would get live games or so-called Fringe content like pre and post-game analysis and highlights.
- Researchers from Harvard University have developed a robot made of silicone, gold wire genetically engineered rat heart cells infused with photosensitive algae - that can swim like a stingray and follow a light source allowing for remote control. It cannot survive outside the lab. Yet.
- MessageBird, a company from Amsterdam offers SMS and voice services as a platform, similar to Twilio, has introduced chat app support. While Twilio works with developers, MessageBird focuses on enterprise, in Europe and Asia Pacific. The company which is already profitable, has built an API on top of chat platforms like WeChat, Weibo, Line, Messenger and Telegram.
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| Preceded by: "Daily Tech Headlines – July 7, 2016" |
Daily Tech Headlines – July 8, 2016 |
Followed by: "Daily Tech Headlines – July 11, 2016" |