Swyped Away

Swyped Away
Number	3223
Broadcast Date	FEBRUARY 20, 2018
Episode Length	29:04
Hosts	Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane
Guests	Patrick Beja

Is the tide of Fake News too great to overcome and where will its effects lead society? Plus, Qualcomm raised its bid to buy NXP Semiconductors and a warning that Twitter bots with ties to the Russian government are using the Parkland shooting to sow discord on American social media.

Guest

• Patrick Beja
  • Patrick's Patreon

Quick Hits

• Snapchat adds GIF stickers via Giphy, plus new Friends and Discover screen tabs

Snapchat has added the ability to add GIFs from the Giphy search engine as stickers in your Snaps. Snapchat also added tabs to the Friends and Discover screens.

• Bitcoin Rises as South Korea Talks ‘Active’ Support for Trading

Choe Heungsik, governor of South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service, told reporters his agency is making efforts to normalize cryptocurrency trading. Choe wants to establish a real-name account system and money-laundering guidelines. Meanwhile in Japan, 16 cryptocurrency exchanges plan to create a self-regulating body there.

• Samsung's new SSD is industry's biggest at 30TB

Samsung began production in January of a 30.72 TB solid state drive. The PM 1643 is now the largest capacity SSD in production. It has sequential read and write speeds of up to 2,100MBps and 1,700MBps, respectively. No price was announced.

Top Stories

• Say goodbye to Android Pay and hello to Google Pay

Android Pay is now Google Pay for Android. The app update is now rolling out and has a redesign and some new functionality, such as the home screen which now shows you relevant stores around you where you can pay with Google Pay based on your location and previous stores where you used the service.

• Qualcomm deals blow to Broadcom's bid with sweetened NXP deal

Qualcomm raised its offer to buy NXP Semiconductors to $127.50 per share. This will force Broadcom, which is trying to buy Qualcomm, to reassess a stipulation in its $121 billion bid for Qualcomm that Qualcomm not raise its previous $110 a share offer for NXP. Broadcom is nominating members for Qualcomm's board to be voted on March 6.

• Eric Lundgren, ‘e-waste’ recycling innovator, faces prison for trying to extend life span of PCs

Technology recycler Eric Lundgren was convicted of conspiracy and copyright infringement against Microsoft for manufacturing 28,000 Windows restore discs back in 2013, which got him a 15-month prison sentence and a $50,000 fine. Now a federal appeals court has granted an emergency stay of the sentence. Lundgren does not deny that he made the discs, or hoped to sell them, but he does say it was merely to extend the life of secondhand computers. His appeal is pending before the 11th Circuit. Lundgren was downloading restore discs from Dell and burning them to disc for use in refurbished computers. He was doing what refurbishers can legally do themselves and charging them for the convenience.

• Swype pioneered a new way to type on smartphones—now it’s dead

RIP Swype Keyboard. Nuance Communications which bought Swype for 100M in 2011, confirmed to XDA Developers that Swype is no longer in development for Android or iOS. In response to a Reddit poster who emailed Swype developers about a bug on Android, the company said it would instead concentrate on developing AI solutions for sale directly to businesses. It has now confirmed that with a post on its website saying it is leaving the "direct-to-consumer keyboard business" to "concentrate on developing our AI solutions for sale directly to businesses."

• Russian bots debate US gun control laws

Two companies that track online disinformation, New Knowledge and The Alliance for Securing Democracy, claim that Twitter account bots that may have links to Russia began tweeting about the Parkland school shooting shortly after the tragedy in an effort to spark debate on divisive issues in the US. Federal and congressional investigations are looking at Russia's role in influencing the U.S. presidential election in 2016 and the role social media played.

Discussion

• He Predicted The 2016 Fake News Crisis. Now He's Worried About An Information Apocalypse.
• aviv ovadya | about
• We Are Truly Fucked: Everyone Is Making AI-Generated Fake Porn Now
• Face2Face: Real-time Face Capture and Reenactment of RGB Videos (CVPR 2016 Oral)
• Synthesizing Obama: Learning Lip Sync from Audio
• Lyrebird claims it can recreate any voice using just one minute of sample audio

Mailbag

Regarding Robonaut from Friday's episode...back in 2010, I was interning at Johnson Space Center and was on the Robonaut 2 program working on the GUI and Motion Stop System.

While i was there, the Robonaut 2 launched the final flight of Space Shuttle Discovery and the team had 5 months to go from a prototype to a flight ready design. Big accomplishment. I still remember sitting in the EMI chamber for 3 days straight staring at an oscilloscope to test the power supply performance It's unfortunate the ground was missed. The legs were just an idea at that point.

With regard to R2's size (it is gender-less), It is roughly human size. See attached photo with me and R2 shaking hands. I'm 6'2".


PS. Should Gen 4 come into existence, they will be the "D" units and the second one produced will have a "2" appended to the end. I always liked that little fact and thought I should share it as well.

Sent by David

Links

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

Preceded by: "The Anecdotal Antidote"

Swyped Away

Followed by: "Know A Good Ethicist?"