Daily Tech Headlines – March 8, 2018
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| Daily Tech Headlines – March 8, 2018 | |
| Number | 454 |
| Broadcast Date | MARCH 8, 2018 |
| Episode Length | 4:38 |
| Hosts | Sarah Lane |
MoviePass updates its iOS app after location tracking confusion, new alliance seeks to unify smart camera data, Oculus updates software after Rift headsets stopped working.
Headlines
- MoviePass has updated its iOS app to remove "unused app location capability." The company has yet to clarify it has been collecting location information beyond what it discloses in its terms of service. MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe recently said in a conference keynote, "We watch how you drive from home to the movies. We watch where you go afterwards." The terms of service state MoviePass collects location information only when buying a ticket for the purpose of locating which theater you are near.
- Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has announced 10100, pronounced “ten-one-hundred,” a new investment fund he says will focus on large-scale job creation, particularly in real estate, e-commerce, and innovations from countries like China and India. Kalanick also says the new fund's non-profit efforts will initially focus on education and the future of cities.
- Oculus Rift headsets stopped working Wednesday, apparently because Oculus forgot to renew its security certificate. Oculus has issued a software update with a valid certificate and promises to provide store credit to affected users.
- The Network of Intelligent Camera Ecosystem (NICE), an alliance now including Sony, Nikon, iPhone manufacturer Foxconn, imaging startup Scenera, and Wistron, are working on new ways to get smart cameras to talk to each other... for example, monitoring video streams from different camera brands from a single interface. NICE will define a specification for footage that can be split into scenes, indexed, and saved in cloud storage. The alliance already includes companies that supply components like sensors and processors.
- Apple said Wednesday its latest annual audit of supplier conditions found a higher number of serious labor and environmental violations in facilities where iPhones and other Apple products are made. Apple found 44 “core violations” of its labor rules in 2017, double the previous year. Apple actually increased the number of suppliers to 756 in 30 countries, so the proportion of “low performers,” or suppliers scoring less than 59 points on its 100-point scale, fell to 1 percent in 2017 from 3 percent in 2016 and 14 percent in 2014. “High performers” with scores of more than 90 rose to a record high of 59 percent from 47 percent the year before.
- A Windows 10 update due next month has not been officially named, but test versions of next fall's update refer to this one as Windows 10 Spring Creator Update. The Verge reported Microsoft may have been considering changing the name of the update. It's expected, whatever it's called, in early April.
- The new world record for solving a Rubik’s Cube is .38 seconds. MIT student Ben Katz and partner Jared Di Carlo sought to improve upon competing Rubik’s Cube solvers stepper motors, and their solution included acquiring the image from a two Playstation Eye cameras, detecting colors, finding a solution, and then rotating the faces of the cube.” Each turn of the cube took the motors about 10 milliseconds.
- California's proposed legislation introduced by assembly member Susan Talamantes Eggman called the "Right to Repair Act" would require smartphone makers and other gadget manufactures to give consumers access to diagnostic and repair information, and equipment or service parts. Proponents say this will cut down the high fees manufacturers charge to repair products, and cut down on the added waste of a product getting discarded instead of being fixed. 17 other states have introduced similar legislation.
- USA Today reports that Flippy the robot was turned off on its first day flipping burgers at Caliburger because too many people wanted robot-made burgers. Miso shut the robot down for the weekend and said it will not resume operations until Monday. In the meantime, Miso is analyzing data from the first orders to make sure it can fulfill them when it starts back up again during lunchtime from 11-2.
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| Preceded by: "Daily Tech Headlines – March 7, 2018" |
Daily Tech Headlines – March 8, 2018 |
Followed by: "Daily Tech Headlines – March 9, 2018" |