Broken Facts Machine
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| Broken Facts Machine | |
| Number | 3732 |
| Broadcast Date | MARCH 5, 2020 |
| Episode Length | 31:33 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang |
| Guests | Justin Robert Young |
Facebook’s attempt at fact-checking political posts runs into a problem as various fact-checking partners contradict each other on a recent POTUS comment.
Guest
Quick Hits
- Amazon and Facebook have shut down their Seattle-area offices after confirming that workers at both companies have contracted COVID-19. Amazon recommends all Seattle and Bellevue, Washington employees work from home. Facebook encourages its Seattle employees to work from home. Google asked all its employees in Washington state to work from home. And Microsoft will let all its Seattle and San Francisco area employees work from home.
- Twitter announced it has expanded its rules around prohibited speech to include language that dehumanizes people on the basis of their age, disability, or disease. New Tweets that break these rules could result in account suspensions.
- A vulnerability that impacts the Intel Converged Security and Management Engine (CSME) is worse than originally thought and a patch from May 2019 does not fully fix the issue. The CSME cryptographically verifies and authenticates all firmware running on a system. Mark Ermolov from Positive Technologies found the bug can be exploited by malware with root privileges to recover the chipset key and grant an attacker access to everything on a device. Previously it was thought physical access was needed to exploit the vulnerability. For sensitive systems the only recourse is to replace the hardware. Only Intel 10th-generation chips are free of the vulnerability.
- Samsung is launching its 8K and 4K QLED TV lineup in the US. The Q950TS flagship model in 65, 75, and 85-inch models run at 7,680 x 4,320 native resolution, have full array local dimming (FALD) to maximize HDR quality, and peak brightness by up to 20 percent over last year's models. The TVs offer support for both AMD's open-source FreeSync and NVIDIA G-Sync technology for gaming, and contain a neural-network upscaling engine powered by the Quantum Processor 2.0 8K for 4K programming. No exact price or release dates yet.
- The South Korean National Assembly unanimously passed an amendment to the country’s financial services laws that would authorize Korea’s financial regulators to provide a framework for the regulation and legalization of cryptocurrencies and crypto exchanges. Regulators will develop rules around anti-money laundering and other processes, but loosen restrictions it placed on blockchain adoption during the crypto-boom several years ago.
- Anthony Levandowski, former employee of Google and Uber's autonomous car units, has been ordered to pay $179 million to Google for unfair competition and a breach of legal obligations. Levandowski and Lior Ron (who settled separately with Google) started their own autonomous car company bringing over Google employees and then sold the company to Uber. Levandowski is also under federal indictment for stealing trade secrets from Google. Levandowski filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Top Stories
- DuckDuckGo has been collecting data about online trackers and has created a dataset called Tracker Radar that it will share with other companies to help protect user privacy. Tracker Radar has 5,326 domains from 1,727 companies. Browser maker Vivaldi says it has begun using the dataset to protect its users. TrackerRadar data will be updated monthly and DuckDuckGo also sells an optional license for help using the data.
- Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports Apple told technical support staff at its stores that replacement iPhones for damaged devices will be in short supply for two to four weeks. Staff were told they could offer to mail replacement devices when they arrive and offer loaner devices in the meantime. Some of Bloomberg's sources indicate replacement parts have also started to run low.
- TCL showed off two prototype devices with flexible screens. The first was a working unit of their tri-fold phone, first showed as a non-functioning unit at CES. The device is a 6.65-inch phone when folded down, and expands into a 10-inch tablet. The phone uses two distinct hinge designs to fold flat, and TCL demonstrated using it in a two-pane fold as well. The other device featured a sliding design with a screen that rolls up into the back of the phone. A dummy device was demoed by TCL, and a video concept showed a motorized screen unrolling at the push of a button. TCL says it's experimenting with dozens of form factors, and no timeline for these devices to come to market was announced.
- Apple updated its App Store review guidelines. These now state that developers must submit new and updated apps using the iOS 13 SDK and implement “Sign in with Apple” for apps that offer other services to log in with, both starting April 30, 2020. Apple also announced that new apps in the “dating” and “fortune telling” categories will be rejected unless they provide a “unique, high-quality experience.” Developers will also no longer be able to use custom notifications to ask for a user review, they'll have to use the API, BUT apps can now send advertising push notifications if a user authorizes them and a way to opt out is provided.
- DoNotPay, the robot lawyer service that started disputing parking tickets, has expanded to multiple services like cancelling streaming services, requesting compensation from airlines for poor customer service and more. The latest service from DoNotPay called "Digital Health" automates the process of requesting your data be deleted under the California Consumer Privacy Act. The system contacts more than 100 data brokers and requests your data be deleted, shows you what data they collected and can file legal paperwork to sue if companies fail to comply. DoNotPay costs $3 a month for access to all its services.
Discussion
- Facebook fact-check feud erupts over Trump virus ‘hoax’
- Fact-Checking on Facebook: What Publishers Should Know
- Commit to transparency — sign up for the International Fact-Checking Network's code of principles
- Facebook's fact-checking partners have been certified through the Pointer Institute's non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network. Stories can be labeled partly false, false headline or just false (among others like satire and opinion) on Facebook on the advice of one of these partners. The partners are: AFP US, The Associated Press, Check Your Fact, Factcheck.org, Lead Stories, Politifact, Science Feedback and Reuters Fact Check. Check Your Fact is a subsidiary of conservative outlet The Daily Caller. This week, the President said, “Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. They’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs . . . They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything, they tried it over and over, they’ve been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning, they lost, it’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax.” Snopes rated the quote “mixed” saying, “Despite creating some confusion with his remarks, Trump did not call the coronavirus itself a hoax.” Politico wrote a story headlined: “Trump rallies his base to treat coronavirus as a ‘hoax.’” NBC News wrote a story headlined: “Trump calls coronavirus Democrats’ ‘new hoax.’” Check Your Fact rated both headlines as false with the note, “Trump actually described Democratic complaints about his handling of the virus threat as a ‘hoax.’” Publishers may appeal to the fact-checking entity about the label, in this case Check Your Fact. The only other remedy would be to convince the IFCN to reject the fact-checking entity for failure to meet its guidelines. Who you think is right in this case is NOT the issue for us. The heat of the controversy is.
Thing of the Day
- Chris Christensen aka the Amateur Traveler has a tip for finding work remotely.
Mailbag
- I can attest to reasoning being as important as math skills in programming. I have been a working software engineer for 35 years. I was a liberal arts major with a concentration in math. I knew I wanted to do software, but my school didn't have a CS concentration. In retrospect I did better being more general. I can't remember any of the math, but the training in problem solving has stayed with me. I have a mantra for any of my teams, "Think about the problem not the solution."
- Sent by Jason from Chicago
- In the late seventies, I was an undergrad in college and worked as a Computer Lab Assistant. I would help the students with programming in BASIC. I found a near perfect correlation between the person's skills with programming and their proficiency in doing proofs in high school geometry. I mentioned this to the professor and he suggested I write a paper about it. This never came about, but I was always felt that the same skill set was used in both thought processes. This is similar to the field of Logic as taught in Math and Philosophy.
- Sent by Ian
YouTube
Links
| Preceded by: "Reasoning (Is Greater Than) Math = Coder" |
Broken Facts Machine |
Followed by: "Night of the Living Gadgets" |