Unreal Fans
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
| Unreal Fans | |
| Number | 3831 |
| Broadcast Date | JULY 27, 2020 |
| Episode Length | 32:29 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang |
| Guests | Andy Ihnatko |
First it was canned audio played over loudspeakers, now it's virtual fans in the stands. How is the technology that powers video games making virtual audiences for live games?
Guest
Quick Hits
- Garmin confirmed reports that its 5-day outage was caused by a ransomware attack that encrypted "some of its systems". The company also began restoring limited functionality to Garmin Connect. Garmin Connect can now display activity details and uploads, register devices, show the dashboard, produce reports and segments. On Garmin's Strava service, Strava Beacon integration is working, but segments, routes and uploaded activities can only be queued to sync. Garmin said there is “no indication” that customer data was accessed, lost or stolen.
- Axios' sources say Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Apple's Tim Cook, and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg will now testify before the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee in a rescheduled session on July 29th.
- Last month, India banned 59 Chinese smartphone apps, including TikTok. India Today's sources now say an additional 47 apps have been banned, mostly clones of the already banned apps that would let Indian users still access the services, like TikTok Lite. The Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is also reportedly reviewing over 250 Chinese apps for any user privacy or national security violations, including the popular game PUBG.
- Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced that Google will extend its work from home policy until at least July 2021. This extends to Google's roughly 200,000 full time and contract employees in its major office in Mountain View, Calif., as well as other offices in the U.S., U.K., India, and Brazil. Google has partially reopened some smaller offices in countries relatively unaffected by the COVID-19 pandemic, including Australia, Greece and Thailand.
- Samsung published a trailer for its virtual Unpacked event, scheduled for August 5th. The video featured the silhouettes of five devices, which appear to be the Galaxy Tab S7, Galaxy Buds Live, Galaxy Watch 3, a new Galaxy Fold and the Galaxy Note 20.
- Qualcomm announced Quick Charge 5, which it claims is 70% faster than Quick Charge 4, and supports 100W smartphone charging. The new charging tech uses 12 separate voltage, current and temperature protections, and runs 10 degrees Celsius cooler than Quick Charge 4. Quick Charge 5 cables will be backward compatible with earlier versions and it supports USB Power Delivery and Type-C.
- The Consumer Technology Association launched the Public Health Tech Initiative. This working group includes Microsoft, Facebook, Philips CVS Health and Northwell Health, and will look at how technology has been deployed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The group plans to introduce a white paper with initial findings, with an ultimate goal of creating recommendations for policymakers to prepare for future public health emergencies.
Top Stories
- The research firm Area 1 Security published a new report looking at how vulnerable email systems used by county and local elections officials were to phishing. Surveying more than 10,000 officials, the report found that 53% only implemented rudimentary or non-standard anti-phishing technologies, with 28% implementing basic measures like those from a cloud provider’s email controls, and 18.6% using advanced controls like an independent email security service. Additionally 5.4% of surveyed officials used personal email addresses to conduct election-related business. Six jurisdictions across New Hampshire, Maine, Missouri, and Michigan were also using unpatched versions of the open source Exim email software. The US National Security Agency warned in May that unpatched Exim installs were being exploited by foreign intelligence agencies. The researchers note that email systems aren't connected to systems that count votes.
- Bloomberg's sources claim and Twitter confirmed that more than 1500 people have access to admin tools that can reset Twitter accounts, review security breaches and responding to content violations. Those tools can access phone numbers, email addresses and IP addresses which could be used to estimate location. The 1500 people include Twitter employees as well as employees of companies Twitter contracts to provide customer service. Bloomberg's sources- which are made up of four former Twitter employees and several contractors-- claim that in 2017 and 2018 some contractors made a game of creating bogus help desk inquiries to justify accessing celebrity accounts including Beyonce. Some contractors were caught and fired. In a statement Twitter said “We have no indication that the partners we work with on customer service and account management played a part [in the recent attack]" and Twitter told Bloomberg that personnel only have access to tools they require for their jobs, and need “extensive security training and managerial oversight” to get access. 1500 employees would average to about 124,000 twitter accounts per customer service person.
- A new report on game streaming from StreamElements and the streaming analytics firm Arsenal shows that Twitch streaming in Q2 grew 56% from Q1, peaking at 1.8 billion hours watched in April, and surpassing 5 billion hours in the quarter. In June, streaming hours watch on Twitch increased 60%. Facebook gaming saw streaming in June up 200% on the year to 334 million hours. In Q2 Facebook streaming was up 75% from Q1. The report also found that the top 4 Twitch streamers and top 10 on Facebook Gaming come from outside the US. The most popular content on Twitch for the quarter was not a game but people Just Chatting, up 94% from Q1. The top three actual games in Q2 were League of Legends, Grand Theft Auto 5, and Fortnite. Twitch's Travel and Outdoors category also rose 183% from January to June as people yearned to see some nature, apparently.
- The BBC's Justin Rowlatt has a story about an industry that has adopted widespread use of solar power to reduce costs and increase productivity. This agricultural industry has seen increasing crop yields from small entrepreneurs as solar power allows it to place groundwater pumps in more areas, allowing irrigation and planting in places that it previously couldn't use. Essentially if you drill 100 meters down to ground water you can then pump it into reservoir by attaching solar panels to an electric pump. The whole setup costs about $5,000. Cultivation in one area has grown from 157,000 hectares in 2012 to an estimated 344,000 hectares in 2019. The industry is opium-growing and the entrepreneurs are in Afghanistan's Helmand province. The panels first began appearing in 2013. By 2019 67,000 solar arrays have been counted in Helmand province alone. The evidence comes from satellite images analyzed by a company called Alcis. The have increasingly found areas that were just desert now show green fields, water reservoirs and arrays of solar panels.
Discussion
Mailbag
- Tom mentioned that Rey treed a possum. Well, meet my Alaskan Malamute, Jack. Two weeks ago, he treed this guy, our neighborhood black bear, Bruno.
Poor Bruno tried to come down three times. Jack kept chasing him back up the tree. On the fourth try, Bruno made it down and Jack jumped on top of him. They wrestled for a couple of minutes, then stopped. Bruno got up and walked off in one direction, Jack calmly walked over to me in the other direction and we headed for home. Me? I was standing about five feet away from the action trying to get Jack to stop. What was I thinking?!?
P.S. Bruno on all fours is about four to five feet tall. Jack is a big dog. He weighs 130 lbs, but still only about a quarter of the size of Bruno. - Sent by Barry in Jaffrey, NH
- Tom mentioned that Rey treed a possum. Well, meet my Alaskan Malamute, Jack. Two weeks ago, he treed this guy, our neighborhood black bear, Bruno.
YouTube
Links
| Preceded by: "Driving A Fork Into Intel" |
Unreal Fans |
Followed by: "AI Stories That Write Themselves" |