The Butterfly Keyboard Effect on Writing
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| The Butterfly Keyboard Effect on Writing | |
| Number | 3715 |
| Broadcast Date | FEBRUARY 10, 2020 |
| Episode Length | 32:40 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang |
| Guests | Charlotte Henry |
Oscar Award Winner Taika Waititi called on the WGA to get Apple to fix its keyboards. "Apple needs to fix those keyboards. They are impossible to write on — they’ve gotten worse." Is he right?
Guest
Quick Hits
- The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that the Elector app, used by the country's Likud political party, contained the usernames and passwords of all admins in its source code, allowing anyone to login and download the country's voter registry of 6.4 million eligible voters. The developer of the app confirmed the vulnerability, stating it was a “one-off incident that was immediately dealt with."
- Coronavirus updates, Foxconn received government approval Monday to resume production at its Zhenghzou plant but its major Shenzen plant remains closed. Meanwhile, Sony and Amazon announced they would not attend Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year, over concerns about the epidemic, joining cancellations by LG, ZTE, Nvidia, and Ericsson. MWC organizers will also not allow travelers from China's Hubei province at the event, and all other Chinese travelers must show proof of being outside China for 14 days.
- ARM announced two new processors, the Cortex-M55 for embedded devices and the Ethos-U55 micro neural processing unit, designed to offer higher performance machine learning on edge devices. The Ethos-U55 is a co-processor to the Cortex-M line, with ARM claiming a performance increase on ML workloads of 480x.
- In its Q4 earnings report, Uber claimed it provided 14 million rides in India in 2019, claiming more than 50% of the ride hailing market in the country. Uber plans to expand from 50 to 200 cities served in India by the end of 2020, with a focus of onboarding drivers of two-wheeler and three-wheeler vehicles.
Top Stories
- Samsung aired a commercial during the Oscars, showing a previously unannounced foldable device, which we all assume will be called the Galaxy Z Flip, shown in Purple and Black. The phone uses a clamshell form factor but doesn't appear to fold completely flat. It was shown sitting on a table at a 90 degree angle, and with a small full color display on the front, showing caller ID with a slider to accept calls while folded. A notice at the bottom of the screen stated, “You may notice a small crease in the center of the main screen, which is a natural characteristic of the screen.” The ad promised more details at Samsung's Unpacked event February 11th.
- US Senator Josh Hawley published a plan to remake the Federal Trade Commission to provide for more direct congressional oversight, as well as better scrutinize big tech, calling out Google and Facebook as instances of the FTC failing to protect consumers. The plan would put the FTC within the Department of Justice, and replace the five commissioner panel with a single Senate-confirmed director. It would also create a “digital market research section” of the FTC to specifically look at big tech. Hawley also calls for new legislation to give the FTC the power to levy fines on first-time civil penalties, authority to enforce data portability and interoperability standards, and to give state attorneys general the authority to enforce the same laws as the FTC.
- Wednesday, the EU General Court in Luxembourg will start a three-day hearing of an appeal by Google to overturn a 2.4-billion Euro penalty for abusing its search dominance to the disadvantage of smaller shopping search services. Google argues that services did not appear high up because they weren't good enough, not that Google demoted them. Regulators found that Google promoted its own services at the expense of competitors. The judges' decision might not arrive until next year and appeals can last longer. Intel has a case which still isn't resolved after more than 10 years. The EU also levied fines for linking apps to Android and abusing dominance to the disadvantage of advertising rivals.
- The group behind the BigML machine learning platform used some Deep Neural Networks trained on factors that were considered best predictors of an Oscar winner. They used things like film synopsis, other award show nominations, film festival prizes and more. Of the eight categories it made predictions for, it got 5 right. It went against oddsmakers choice 1917 and predicted Once Upon a Time in Hollywood would win Best Picture. Neither were right. Parasite won. The algorithm also predicted the Irishman would win Best Adapted Screenplay while the oddsmakers favored JoJo Rabbit. The oddsmakers won that one. The algorithm also got Best Director wrong.
- The US Justice Department charged four officers of the Chinese People's Liberation Army by name with crimes related to the 2017 Equifax data breach. The indictment includes three counts of conspiracy to commit computer fraud, conspiracy to commit economic espionage, conspiracy to commit wire fraud a charge of economic espionage, three counts of wire fraud and two counts of unauthorized access and intentional damage to a protected computer. The indictment claims the defendants gained access to Equifax's system through an unpatched Apache Struts vulnerability "about May 13th," running more than 9000 queries over the course of two months to obtain trade secrets along with personal data on nearly half of all people in the US, as well as a million UK and Canada citizens. The intruders allegedly cleared logs daily, used encrypted communication within Equifax systems, and routed traffic through dozens of servers across 20 countries to cover their tracks.
Discussion
- In an Oscar press conference, winner of the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, Taika Waititi was asked what writers should be asking for in upcoming guild discussions regarding a new labor contract. Waititi called on the WGA to get Apple to fix its keyboards. "Apple needs to fix those keyboards. They are impossible to write on — they’ve gotten worse. It makes me want to go back to PCs. Because PC keyboards, the bounce-back for your fingers is way better. Hands up who still uses a PC? You know what I’m talking about. It’s a way better keyboard. Those Apple keyboards are horrendous." He expressed a preference for deeper travel in the keys and complained of inflammation in his shoulders and tendons in relation to the narrowness of the keys.
Thing of the Day
- Chris Christensen aka the Amateur Traveler has a product tip for those who want more security from their luggage.
Mailbag
- Tesla software-based upgrade packages seem to be a strange mix of physical items which can be resold and game or software license keys are usually bound to an account on first use.
The question in my head is this: when purchased, is the upgrade tied to the item or the "user?" Since the upgrade was removed for the second-hand buyer it would indicate the latter. That being so, if someone buys the autopilot upgrade package on their first Tesla could they apply that upgrade for no additional fee to their second Tesla given their "purchase history?" - Sent by Rob from Recently Stormy London
- Tesla software-based upgrade packages seem to be a strange mix of physical items which can be resold and game or software license keys are usually bound to an account on first use.
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Links
| Preceded by: "Which Laptop Should I Buy?" |
The Butterfly Keyboard Effect on Writing |
Followed by: "Mobile World Canceled?" |