Know A Good Ethicist?
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| Know A Good Ethicist? | |
| Number | 3224 |
| Broadcast Date | FEBRUARY 21, 2018 |
| Episode Length | 29:15 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane |
| Guests | Scott Johnson |
The US Copyright Office takes comments on a 2015 exemption that lets gamers legally bypass copy protection on games if it requires the Internet to work. Qualcomm shows off a reference VR headset based on the company’s new Snapdragon 845 chip. And Uber launches a cheaper ride-sharing service called Uber Pool.
Guest
Quick Hits
- In response to Qualcomm raising its offer to buy NXP Semiconductor, Broadcom is lowering its offer to buy Qualcomm from $121 billion to $117 billion. Qualcomm has declined Broadcom's offer but Broadcom has nominated members to Qualcomm's board who will be voted on at a shareholder meeting on March 6.
- Shadow, the game streaming service from France's Blade is launching in California, it's first US market. The service gives you access to a virtual Windows PC that you can use to run Steam on (or anything else really) and promises low latency. Blade has apps for Mac, Windows, and Android, with iOS coming soon. The service costs between $35 to $50 a month.
- AT&T announced that it will begin mobile 5G service in parts of Atlanta, Waco, Texas and Dallas this year with nine more cities to be announced in the coming months. AT&T made no mention of which devices might support the service as most 5G-capable devices aren't expected until 2019.
- In an effort to combat bots, Twitter has banned developers from using systems that simultaneously post identical or substantially similar tweets from multiple accounts at once. Twitter also appears to have suspended thousands of accounts for being bots.
Top Stories
- Bloomberg's sources say Apple is in talks to purchase cobalt directly from miners in order to avoid a shortage of the ingredient necessary to make lithium ion batteries. An expected boom in electric cars could cause a shortage in cobalt. Supposedly, Apple wants to secure several thousand metric tons of cobalt a year for five years or more. South Korean oil refiner SK Innovation recently agreed to buy all of Perth's Sconi mine cobalt and nickel for up to 13 years.
- Uber launched a cheaper ride-hailing service called Uber Pool Express. It's similar to Uber Pool where you share your ride with people heading in the same general direction. But to smooth out the route, Express will require you to walk up to two blocks for your pickup. The option is available in Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and Denver, and will expand to more cities Thursday.
- Yesterday, we talked a bit about preparing for a world where video can be convincingly faked using some AI tools. Later that day, a report titled The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence: Forecasting, Prevention, and Mitigation" was published by more than two dozen experts from institutes including the Future of Humanity Institute, the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, and the Elon Musk-backed non-profit OpenAI. Co-author Miles Brundage of the Future of Humanity Institute told The Verge he sees the paper as a call to action, and the paper makes five recommendations to combat future problems.
- Yesterday, we talked a bit about preparing for a world where video can be convincingly faked using some AI tools. Later that day, a report titled The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence: Forecasting, Prevention, and Mitigation" was published by more than two dozen experts from institutes including the Future of Humanity Institute, the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, and the Elon Musk-backed non-profit OpenAI. Co-author Miles Brundage of the Future of Humanity Institute told The Verge he sees the paper as a call to action, and the paper makes five recommendations to combat future problems.
- - AI researchers should acknowledge how their work can be used maliciously
- - Policymakers need to learn from technical experts about these threats
- - The AI world needs to learn from cybersecurity experts how to best protect its systems
- - Ethical frameworks for AI need to be developed and followed
- - And more people need to be involved in these discussions. Not just AI scientists and policymakers, but also ethicists, businesses, and the general public
- Qualcomm showed off a reference design for a VR headset using its Snapdragon 845 chip. The Snapdragon 845 Xtended Reality platform is meant for standalone VR and AR headsets. The chip can support sensors and cameras to provide six degrees of freedom movement controls and simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). The 845 chip promises 30% faster graphics, 30% better power efficiency and double the display throughput speed compared to the 835. It can handle 2K resolution per eye and foveated rendering.
- The Next Web's Abhimanyu Ghoshal, has a story about how 3 years ago, 13-year-old Sword Art Online fan Maxime Coutte couldn't afford an Oculus Rift so with the help of friends and his math teacher, he built his own VR headset. Now, the 16-year-old has open sourced his tech which can play Steam VR games. The 3D-printed headset has a 5.5-inch 2560 x 1440 screen with 90-degree field of view and a Leap Motion hand tracking device. He developed software called WRMHL to enable low latency communication between Unity3D and Arduino so he could use low-powered components that fit into his $100 budget. Look for a project called Relativ on GitHub.
- The US Copyright Office is taking comments on a 2015 exemption that lets gamers and researchers circumvent copyright protection in order to play games that need Internet authentication to work! The exemption allows working around authentication but does not allow recreation of the servers. The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment wants to expand the exemption to allow the preservation of not just local multiplayer and LAN games but also games that require a centralized internet server. The Entertainment Software Association argues against this saying it would allow simulating proprietary code that was never meant to be made public. In other words the museum, or "MADE" says they just want to preserve the games for study and ESA says that's BS, they just want to use them for recreational play by the public. The Copyright Office will make its recommendations by October.
Pick of the Day
- People, yes, you should always keep an eye on your bags when traveling. But there's a limit. The Amateur Traveler explains.
- Submitted by Chris Christensen
Mailbag
- I just wanted to including in the discussion of possibly not needing an Ad Blocker with Chrome's new blocking.
I use UBlock Origin for its ability to protect against malvertising. Also, the developer has already added blocking of the coinhive/monero related background crytocurrency mining.
Thank You, - Sent by Stephen Funkhouser
- I just wanted to including in the discussion of possibly not needing an Ad Blocker with Chrome's new blocking.
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Links
| Preceded by: "Swyped Away" |
Know A Good Ethicist? |
Followed by: "Nuthin’ but a 5G Thang" |