CES Goes All-Digital in 2021

CES Goes All-Digital in 2021
Number	1190
Broadcast Date	JULY 28, 2020
Episode Length	5:00
Hosts	Sarah Lane

Study finds face masks decrease facial recognition accuracy, Spotify increases Group Sessions party size, Twitter temporarily suspends account to force tweet deletion.

Headlines

• CES is going online-only in 2021

The Consumer Technology Association CEO Gary Shapiro tells VentureBeat there will be no physical event in 2021 after initially planning a hybrid in-person and virtual show. A new all-virtual format will let exhibitors, attendees and the press engage through online talks and meetings. The CTA says it consulted with more than 10,000 attendees and other stakeholders and found that many didn't want to physically attend due to COVID-19 pandemic worries. Shapiro says “Our event has been primarily an indoor event. If it were a financial decision, we would go forward. (But this decision) gives exhibitors and attendees the opportunity to make their own plans and reimagine the event and their digital presence.”

• Twitter forced Donald Trump Jr. to delete tweet spreading COVID-19 misinformation

Twitter forced the son of President Trump, Donald Trump Jr., to remove a tweet that linked to a video spreading information about COVID-19 the company labeled as misinformation. The tweet included a link to another now-deleted tweet that featured the video promoting hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 cure. Donald Trump Jr's account was suspended from posting new tweets, and Twitter told Vice that it was a “temporary lockout until the Tweet is deleted—not a suspension.”

• Google’s Top Search Result? Surprise! It’s Google

The Markup reports it found that of more than 15,000 recent popular Google queries, 41 percent of the first page of search results on mobile devices linked to Google's own properties and what the company calls “direct answers,” or information copied from other sources, sometimes without their knowledge or consent. On the top 15 percent of the page, that figure jumped to 63 percent, and in 20% of searches in the Markup's sample, links to external websites weren't on the first screen at all. Google spokesperson Lara Levin says The Markup's methodology was “flawed and misleading" because it was “based on a non-representative sample of searches” and said using Google Trends makes it more likely that results would include Google “knowledge panels” than a random sample would.

• Face masks are breaking facial recognition algorithms, says new government study

A study by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has found that wearing face masks that adequately cover the mouth and nose causes the error rate of many facial recognition algorithms to spike to between 5 percent and 50 percent. Black masks were more likely to cause errors than blue masks, and the more of the nose covered by the mask, the more the algorithms struggled to correctly identify a face. However, the NIST’s report only tested a type of facial recognition known as one-to-one matching, where an algorithm checks to see if the target’s face matches the face on an ID, such as a passport. Mass surveillance, where a crowd is scanned to find matches with faces in a database, uses a one-to-many system.

• Samsung teases Note 20, Galaxy Buds Live, Fold 2, Tab S7, and Galaxy Watch 3 in Unpacked trailer

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. A video of the purported Galaxy Watch 3 was also posted in a hands-on demo from YouTuber TechTalkTV.

• Spotify adds a remote listening party option where everyone is a DJ

Spotify updated its Group Sessions beta feature to let up to five premium subscribers listen to music or podcasts together. All members of the listening party's host and guests can control playback, skip tracks or episodes, and add items in the queue. Spotify first launched Group Sessions in May.

• Qualcomm's Quick Charge 5 promises more power and super fast speeds

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.

• Report suggests local election officials’ emails could be at risk for phishing attempts

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.

Links

• This episode on dailytechnewsshow.com
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Preceded by: "Garmin Restores Limiting Functionality Following Multi-Day Outage"

CES Goes All-Digital in 2021

Followed by: "AMC And Universal Agree 17-Day Theatrical Exclusives"