The Elephant in the Facebook Room

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The Elephant in the Facebook Room
Number 2756
Broadcast Date MAY 9, 2016
Episode Length 33:37
Hosts Tom Merritt
Guests Veronica Belmont

Facebook showed bias in picking its trending topics, according to a former curator. Sounds like MSNBC or Fox News? Tom Merritt and Veronica Belmont discuss the difference.

Guest

Headlines

Evleaks and HelloMotoHK have posted pictures of a supposed new Motorola X phone. This would be the first flagship phone out of Motorola Since Lenovo bought it from Google. The pictures show a phone with an all-metal design and a large camera assembly and rear-facing speakers ont he back. The bottom has a large bezel with a fingerprint reader and the front shows four sensors at each corner. HelloMotoHK’s photos show the Droid logo, indicating a Verizon version.
Opera released Opera VPN for iOS today with unlimited mobile VPN free “for life”. It has servers in the US Canada, Germany Singapore and the Netherlands. It also removes ad-tracking cookies and ads an ad-blocker to browsers and other apps.
Submitted by tglass1976
Periscope announced it’s adding a few more features to its Android and iOS apps in the coming weeks. You’ll be able to switch cameras between your phone a DJI UAV and GoPro camera. Broadcasts will be saved permanently by default. A new search bar gives results based on titles and descriptions.
Viv, the open platform voice assistant from the creators of Siri, was demonstrated today at Disrupt New York and generally impressed as expected. Viv demonstrated dynamic program generation. With every verbal requests Viv showed the code that handled it. This could allow developers build a conversational UI by speaking to Viv and tweaking the generated code returned.
The Wall Street Journal reports Twitter has blocked another third party service from analyzing tweets. The significance of this block is the company, Dataminr, counts the US Intelligence Community among its clients. Dataminr was the only third-party getting access to real-time feeds of all Tweets. Twitter owns a 5% stake in Dataminr. Twitter also has a policy banning third-parties from selling information to government bodies for the purposes of surveillance.
Submitted by StrikitRich1 and habichuelacondulce
Uber and Lyft both suspended service in Austin, Texas Monday after voters supported keeping a city ordinance requiring fingerprint checks on drivers. Uber says it will continue to operate its food delivery service in Austin. New York, Atlanta and Houston are also considering requiring fingerprint checks.
Spotify announced it will bring out 12 original TV series about music and pop culture. Episodes will be less than 15 minutes long for iOS and Android in US, UK, Germany and Sweden. Among the shows will be Rush Hour from Russell Simmons, Landmark a doc series based on the music history podcast and Trading Playlists.
Submitted by tm204
Google News announced it will add a “Local Source” tag to stories that start as local coverage and go national. "Local Source" articles are identified automatically by looking at where a publisher has written about in the past and comparing that to the story location.” This will help local blogs and other outlets not part of a larger organization get highlighted.
BBC News reports Facebook has a won a trademark infringement case against Zhongshan Pearl River company who registered the name “face book” in 2014. In a statement released April 28th the Beijing court ruled that Chinese company had “violated moral principles" with "obvious intention to duplicate and copy from another high-profile trademark". BBC News notes that Facebook is currently blocked in China and that Mark Zuckerberg recently met with China’s propaganda chief Liu Yunshan as well as Alibaba’s Jack Ma.
China has imposed limits on the number of healthcare advertisements it can present above search results. The number of paid results will be capped at 30% of the page, rankings can no longer be solely determined by payment, and medical institutions advertising must be approved by the government. A student died after undergoing an experimental cancer treatment found in an ad on Baidu. The hospital involved was breaking the law and has been investigated as well.

Discussion

Pick of the Day

I wanted to plug my favorite music app, stream & website Radio Paradise for pick-of-the-day. Just a couple of tidbits:

The music selection is an eclectic mix of modern and classic rock, world music, electronica, and even a bit of classical and jazz selected by two real human beings.
The site supports multiple streaming types and services well as apps for iOS and Android
The app allows you to download up to 12 hours of high bitrate music to your phone over wifi, so you don't have to compromise quality to save precious data plan bytes.
There is a synced HD slideshow which listeners can submit their own photos to.

And finally, it's 100% commercial free supported by listeners via this crazy value-for-value proposition! They simply ask if you get value out of the site, to send whatever you think that is worth back to them to help support the station and pay ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC fees. What's unbelievable is that model has been working now for 16 years! Please check it out at http://radioparadise.com or just say (as I often do): "Alexa, play Radio Paradise"

Thanks and keep up the good work.
Submitted by Mike, a nickelbacker from Summer-is-here-Winter-is-coming San Francisco

Messages

On one show recently, I mentioned the legend of Inuit people having multiple words for snow.

Mark writes “I thought you might be interested to know they probably don't have anywhere near the 'myth' levels although given that their language is built upon suffixation in theory they could. I cover this in a recent episode of a new podcast/vidcast series I started in the last couple of months. If you are at all interested, check out the latest episode on the website http://www.whatisitabouttheweather.com/ .”
Sent by Mark


Rob wrote in and reported that the Sea Hero Quest game that is being used to collect data for Alzheimer’s Research is funded by Deutsche Telekom but is available to all Android users.
Sent by Rob

YouTube

Links



Preceded by:
"Let’s Make You a Millionaire" 		The Elephant in the Facebook Room
 Followed by:
"Expensive Cat Videos"
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