Twitter Scored a Touchdown

Twitter Scored a Touchdown
Number	2728
Broadcast Date	APRIL 5, 2016
Episode Length	43:02
Hosts	Tom Merritt
Guests	Patrick Beja

Twitter is ready for some football. Live. On Streaming video. On Twitter. Most Thursdays this fall. Why? Tom Merritt and Patrick Beja discuss.

Guest

• Patrick Beja
  • Patrick's Patreon

Headlines

• Facebook’s tool to help the blind “see” images just launched for iOS

Facebook launched “Automatic Alternative Text” that uses object recognition to generate text descriptions of images on Facebook that can be used by screen readers. The object recognition is done by a trained neural network. AAT is available for iOS English screen readers other platforms and languages will follow.

• end-to-end encryption

WhatsApp announced Tuesday that end-to-end encryption has been applied to all communications. Messages already received such encryption but now photos, videos, files, voice messages, and group chats do too. WhatsApp uses the Signal Protocol from Open Whisper Systems.

• Sony's next PS4 update arrives tomorrow with game streaming for PC and Macs

Sony will release System Software 3.5 for PlayStation 4 Wednesday according to a PlayStation blog post. Feature updates include the ability to Appear Offline, get notifications when friends come online, schedule gameplay sessions with friends, and install Remote Play apps on PCs and Macs. Remote Play allows PS4 owners to stream gameplay to their computer at resolutions of 360p, 540p or 720p with frame rates of 30fps or 60fps. You'll need to connect a DualShock 4 controller to the PC or Mac as well.

• HTC starts shipping its Vive virtual reality headset

The first HTC Vive headsets have begun shipping. Although some folks who lost their place in line because of credit card processing troubles have yet to get confirmation they’re back in the right order.

• HP goes for bling with new super-thin, copper-accented Spectre notebook

HP introduced the 13.3-inch HP Spectre laptop with a Core i7 processor, up to 8GB of RAM, three USB-C ports, two of which double as Thunderbolt, and up to 9.5 hours of battery life all packed in a carbon fiber and CNC aluminum frame that is 10.3mm thick and weighs 2.45 pounds. Alternate designs come in standard copper, midnight blue with floral swirls and Swarovski crystals with 18k gold accents and one dipped in 18k gold and encrusted with diamonds. The non-bejeweled version starts at $1169 available for pre-order April 25.

• An easier way to share Tweets privately

Twitter is adding a direct message button to its Android and iOS apps to make it simpler to share a tweet by direct message. It will appear next to the favorite heart below the timeline. Twitter says DMs grew 60% in 2015.

• Roku's new $50 stick fits a quad-core CPU in a smaller frame

Roku introduced an updated $50 Streaming Stick. It now comes with a quad-core CPU, dual-band MIMO antenna, and the ability to stream audio over Wi-Fi to a smartphone. The device does not support 4k video only 1080p. The stick is available for purchase today and will ship near the end of the month. Roku is also rolling out OS 7.1 today available on all devices within 6 to 8 weeks.

• Kik Messenger launched a bot store one week before Facebook is expected to launch a bot store

Messaging app Kik rolled out a bot store Tuesday. Any developer can build a bot though Kik will approve them before they get listed in the bot shop. Sephora, The Weather Channel and Vine are among the 16 bots at launch.

• Rwanda will get drone-delivered medical aid in July

A company called Zipline will start delivering medical supplies to 21 hospitals and clinics in Rwanda by fixed-wing autonomous aircraft starting in July. The aircraft can make 50-150 deliveries a day carrying up to 3.5 pounds. A SIM card stores the flight path and payloads are dropped by paper parachute. Zipline plans to expand into other countries within the year.

• NVIDIA Announces Quadro M5500 For Notebooks, Details Professional VR Plans

Nvidia announced I-ray VR technology to create photoreal images in VR. Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang called it “pixar-like” quality. Nvidia also introduced a GPU Inference Engine, to help energy efficiency in GPU computing. Yesterday Nvidia announced the Quadro M5500 line of video cards for laptops capable of supporting VR headsets.

• NVIDIA's insane DGX-1 is a computer tailor-made for deep learning

And of course Nvidia has a new supercomputer, the $129,000 DGX-1 is like 250 servers in a box. 7TB of storage eight Tesla P100 GPUs, two Xeon processors all pulling 170 teraflops. The first ten machines go to universities. Their great for machine-learning.

Discussion

• Twitter Gets NFL Thursday Night Games for a Bargain Price
• National Football League and Twitter Announce Streaming Partnership for Thursday Night Football
• Twitter Beats Amazon, Verizon for Global NFL Streaming Deal
• Twitter’s big bet on NFL streaming is about users, not money

Pick of the Day

• LastPass Authenticator: Technical Analysis

The free LastPass authenticator app provides convenient and secure multi-factor authentication for your LastPass account. It even works on the free version of LastPass. We've done a deep technical analysis to validate the security model, and it looks great.

Best,

Submitted by Eric

Messages

Thanks for the show really appreciate the effort you put in to producing such great content.

Just wanted to point out this kickstarter that is due to arrive soon using wearables for contactless payments without the need for phone or wallet.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/philipcampbell/kerv-the-worlds-first-contactless-payment-ring

So you preload the ring account (or set it to auto refill if you spend it all) . Then just touch the NFC terminal as you would with a contactless card. Will work on the tube over here too.

It is also very cool to pay for things just be putting your palm on the terminal! Very Jedi like.

Keep up the great work.

Sent by Fozza from Nottingham UK

I have started playing what I like to call Apple Pay Bingo. Even if a payment terminal doesn't indicate that it does contactless payments I'll wave my phone over it and see what happens. Every now and then I get a hit and the cashier is stunned! Sadly when I found that our grocery store's terminals were active this weekend I also found out that they have to enter the last 4 digits of your card for anything over $50, and guess what you don't have with Apple Pay?!

Sent by John, your boss in hold on to your hats it's windy billings, MT

Chi'lantro (a local food truck moved to brick-and-mortar restaurant) moving cold-turkey to a cashless operation for their permanent locations. This model not only would make contactless payments more of a habit (provided they have Apple/Android Pay terminals), but removing the need for cash also decreases the liability on the restaurant.

Sent by Chris

Mohan has only had two failures with Samsung Pay both oddities with the point of sale: he says "I am confident enough that I could get by a day with Samsung Pay and what helps is that I can use it almost anywhere."

Sent by Mohan

Starbucks has the brilliant strategy. They built their own contactless payment app, but inside the app the user can chose to use Apple Pay to reload the card. AND points out they use geofencing so it pops up on the lock screen when you walk in.

Sent by Allison Sheridan

Hi Tom,

I work for a medium sized Credit Union and thought I could possibly shed some light on the Apple Pay discussion as far as what I can see. (Plus I was pulling our monthly numbers anyway so...)

We offer both debit cards and credit cards. Our credit cards have a rewards points system. Of our members who have signed up for Apple Pay, 39% are credit cards and 61% are debit cards. But we see more transactions on credit cards. Of all Apple Pay transactions, 58% are credit cards. We believe that these users are more savvy and want to earn rewards points with their credit card purchases.

Of all cards, both debit and credit, we have out and in use, about 9% have been signed up with Apple Pay. Sounds pretty good, but if you look at transactions only 0.22% of transactions that our members made used Apple Pay. I'd love to be able to break it down to see when a transaction is "Apple Pay eligible" it is used but am unable to at this time.

We are currently in the process of rolling out Android and Sumsung pay so I'm looking forward to seeing how these numbers compare to Apple Pay.

Sorry for speaking in percentages but I'd rather not give out actual numbers.

Thanks and as I'm sure you know, love the show.

Sent by Biocow

The Vivaldi browser 1.0 launches tomorrow, at 8 AM according to Varsha from Vivaldi!

Sent by Varsha

Links

• This episode on dailytechnewsshow.com
• Support DTNS on Patreon
• DTNS subreddit

Preceded by: "Nobody’s touching contactless payments"

Twitter Scored a Touchdown

Followed by: "Vivaldi makes your browsing sing"