Whacking The System
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
| Whacking The System | |
| Number | 2837 |
| Broadcast Date | AUGUST 19, 2016 |
| Episode Length | 41:18 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt |
| Guests | Roger Chang, Dan Tentler, Len Peralta |
A plan to fight robocalls, a plan to double battery life and Phobos Group’s Dan Tentler explains to Roger Chang and Tom Merritt how the NSA’s plans for man in the middle attacks might work.
Guest
Top Stories
- Google is ending support for Chrome apps on Windows, macOS and Linux, they'll remain on ChromeOS for the foreseeable future.
- Submitted by anotherjmartin
- 30 technology companies are partnering in a US FCC plan to combat robocalls. Companies include telephone service providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon along with phone providers like Apple and Google. The Robocall Strike Force held its first meeting Friday. Among the goals are Caller ID verification standards and a Do Not Originate list to block spoofers of numbers from governments and banks. The group will make its first report on October 19.
- Submitted by spsheridan
- The Wall Street Journal reports Pandora is signing deals with record companies to launch a $10 a month on-demand streaming tier with unlimited access to songs on the platform. It's current $5 a month ad-free Pandora One tier will get new features like more skips and offline listening. The new plans are expected to launch sometime in September.
- Submitted by AJSea87
- On Thursday in Federal District Court for Northern California, Judge Edward M. Chen overturned an April class-action lawsuit settlement between Uber and a class of drivers. The judge rejected the $100 million settlement to almost 400,000 drivers as "not fair, adequate, and reasonable", noting it represented only 0.1% of the potential full verdict value for the case. The lawsuit regards the classification of Uber drivers as employees or contractors. The objection to the settlement was brought by a group of 200 Uber drivers, with the assistance of the National Taxi Workers Alliance. The drivers attorney, Shannon Liss-Riordan say a revised settlement may yet be reached.
- Brad Sams at Thurott.com notes that many people report their webcams stopped working with the Windows 10 anniversary update. Apparently Windows stops allowing MJPEG or H264 encoded streams and only allows YUY2 encoding. Microsoft did this to stop duplication of encoding streams in some new scenarios. If a webcam tries to use MJPEG or H264 it freezes after a bout a minute. Mike M of Windows Camera team says a fix is coming in September. If you're comfortable editing the registry Rafael Rivera has a workaround on his twitter feed at @WithinRafael.
- Submitted by pcguy8088_
- Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports sources tell him that Apple has not been able to add data connection to its watches because of battery life issues. Apple has begun studying lower-power cellular data chips. New Apple Watches are still expected this year that would integrate GPS.
- MIT News reports lithium metal batteries developed by SolidEnergy can deliver the same energy as lithium ion batteries in half the size. The new batteries use lithium metal instead of carbon for the anode. SolidEnergy CEO Qichao Hu and team solved the overheating problem that plagued previous lithium metal batteries by coating the anode with a solid electrolyte that functions at room temperature and doesn't create harmful filaments. SolidEnergy plans to launch batteries for drones by the end of the year, cells for smartphones and other electronics in 2017 with electric vehicle batteries to come in 2018.
- Submitted by icu_
Discussion
Pick of the Day
- I'd like to suggest a podcast called Song Exploder. If you like music and want to know how songs are made, it can be very enlightening. Recently they did the Bojack Horseman theme song and a while ago did the theme to Game of Thrones. Good stuff.
Thanks, - Submitted by Mark W from Detroit, MI
- I'd like to suggest a podcast called Song Exploder. If you like music and want to know how songs are made, it can be very enlightening. Recently they did the Bojack Horseman theme song and a while ago did the theme to Game of Thrones. Good stuff.
Messages
- I wonder what will become of FM radios in phones that use headphone jacks as tuners. I know this is probably a small use case, but sometimes you just want to listen to local radio, or if traveling with spotty data, you can still get fm stations virtually everywhere.
- Sent by Justin
- Hi Tom,
Love the show, etc. Thank you so much for the Australian edition with Peter Wells. It's nice to hear a locals (for me) perspective in a sea of American centric podcasts podcasts. I'd just like to provide some thoughts on the USB C vs 3.5mm jack argument.
I am currently working in the broadcast industry, and have 15 years experience as an audio engineer previously. And I am very much pro USB C for several reasons.
1. It moves the analog to digital converter and amplifier out of your device, and into the audio equipment. This is the best news ever for me, as the headphone amplifier in ANY consumer grade device makes me want to cry! The worst example of which is laptops that buzz like crazy when there is an earth differential between the audio equipment, and the laptop charger.
2. Upgradability. Remember the Pono Player? Well you too can enjoy high definition 96kHz 24bit audio simply by upgrading your headphones.
3. I think the downside of having to have adaptors in the interim is exaggerated. I consider it a far greater hassle to upgrade or carry around charging cables and power supplies, than have a simple adaptor. And if you have a USB C device, you have already solved that problem. Also, keep in mind that a cheap USB C cable can literally blow up your device if used for charging.
4. "Audio is dumb". Analog is dumb and simple. But analog transmission is always worse due to the signal loss. Would you prefer a world where we all use composite video instead of HDMI? Video has jumped this analog hurdle, and audio will too. Just sit back and embrace the inevitability.
P.S. Hey Scott, 1/4" jack is still very much the standard for headphone output in professional audio equipment. I just wish that they would stop using it for line level audio! XLR is clearly what should be used. - Sent by Ned
- Hi Tom,
- Why don't they just give us phones with two USB-C ports. If a manufacturer came out and said we'll have two USB ports on our phone, it sounds like Scott's main objection and mine would be dealt with.
(Sorry about all your old mini-jack cables.) - Sent by Heather from Charleston, South Carolina
- Why don't they just give us phones with two USB-C ports. If a manufacturer came out and said we'll have two USB ports on our phone, it sounds like Scott's main objection and mine would be dealt with.
- Wouldn't making the battery bigger be negated by the power needed to send the Bluetooth signal out from the phone? I leave Bluetooth off cause it helps drain my iPhone battery.
Just askin. For a friend! - Sent by Sheala from GA
- Wouldn't making the battery bigger be negated by the power needed to send the Bluetooth signal out from the phone? I leave Bluetooth off cause it helps drain my iPhone battery.
- (re: news of Overwatch replacing "gg wp" with less offensive variations)
Justin mentioned on how a system to detect offensive behaviour would be useful to also target other uses like twitter and such. While I doubt a simple system that search and replaces words would work, I would like to bring to attention the system that is being used in another widely popular video game League of Legends, which is bigger and (especially EU servers) known for toxicity (especially as players who are banned can easily make a new account as it's free to play).
Originally the game had what was called "The Tribunal" where players were shown chat logs of players reported for toxic behaviour and then choose to either punish or not punish. (you may recall similar system in periscope chats). This however was slow, and took a while from when toxic behaviour occurred to when punishment was delivered.
But in spring of 2015 a new system (called instant feedback) was released, which once a player is reported, their chat history (across multiple matches) is analysed by a machine learning system based on what the community has reported as toxic behaviour before and can deliver a punishment in 15 minutes of the match ending.
This one system is used across regions and has learned game lingo and region-specific cultural differences (even in different languages and non-latin alphabets), for example in English-regions "your mom" isn't the worst thing to be said but in Korea it is considered as THE worst behaviour, and the system learned it by itself based on what people reported as bad behaviour.
And it's quite accurate with it, in fact the first known error in the system was "Case #10 847", where a player was banned for being passive-aggressive against themself. But this case was also reviewed and confirmed as toxic behaviour by the team creating the system before ban went into effect, so even the humans mistook it (until the player pointed out that raging was targeted at himself and then the team apologised and changed the engine). But hey, 1 mistake in 10 000 cases isn't bad, eh?
Also the system is being used in rewards, with players who have shown toxic behaviour being unable to get end of the season rewards, showing off how I got gol-- I mean master last season.
Yeah, master.
Totally am master.
>_>
Look, my team's holding me down. - Sent by t2t2
- (re: news of Overwatch replacing "gg wp" with less offensive variations)
Related Links:
- Initial Announcement
- Follow-up once the machine learning generated per-region smarts
- GDC talk by Lyte, who lead the team creating the system
- Current info on the punishments delivered by the system
YouTube
Links
| Preceded by: "Yinz Gahn Uber Dahntahn?" |
Whacking The System |
Followed by: "Route! Damned Dead Spot! Route, I say!" |