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It’s time to change your passwords again, Guvera is worth $1.2billion dollarydoos, and how does a geek pack for a week away?

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Show Notes
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Real tech stories. Really shaky analysis.

We’re all feeling the effects of yesterday’s National Doughnut Day–the sugar crash, the weight gain, the sprinkles in our hair. A good way to recuperate is with the Weekly Tech Views, which causes almost none of those things while still providing the same amount of useful tech information as a strawberry-glazed cruller.

For the week of May 30 – June 3, 2016…

It’s On The List Right After Klingon
Facebook has developed Deep Text, a learning engine that can understand written text with “near human” accuracy in over twenty languages. They hope to add more difficult languages like Mandarin and Arabic shortly, but reluctantly admit that they are still many years away from mastering Politician.

Anthropologists Think They Probably Classify As Human
Also, before we get too impressed with Deep Text, let’s find out which humans we’re comparing it to. There is a subset of humans known colloquially as “teenagers” who will interpret the clearly-written, three-word note CLEAN YOUR ROOM as MOVE ONE OF THE PLATES WITH A HALF-EATEN BALONEY SANDWICH FROM UNDER YOUR BED TO THE CORNER OF YOUR DESK AND THEN PLAY UNCHARTED 4 FOR SEVEN HOURS.

“Candy Crush Made It All Worthwhile”
A study indicating that male rats exposed to CDMA cell phone signals had a slightly higher incidence of cancer has been widely challenged on a variety of questionable scientific procedures. One finding that can not be debated, however, is the rampant occurrence of joint issues suffered by the rats because they all just haaaad to have the iPhone 6S Plus, knowing damn well it was way too big for them.

Interestingly, despite being healthier, the control group rats had a much higher incidence of sulkiness–they spent most of their time with their forelegs crossed over their chest, throwing quick, disdainful glances at the phone-toting rats and then quickly looking away, trying to pretend they didn’t care that their only entertainment was that stupid, squeaky wheel.

Don’t Ask Questions You Don’t Want The Answers To
The upcoming Pebble Core wearable fitness device will integrate Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistant for voice-activated interaction. The top anticipated queries:

“Alexa, how many steps have I done?”

“Alexa, how many more steps until I can have a doughnut?”

“Alexa, should my legs feel like cement?”

“Alexa, does anybody say ‘fartlek’ without laughing?”

“Alexa, where is the nearest doughnut shop? Haha, just kidding–there are four within a mile radius and I could get to any of them blindfolded.”

“Alexa, where the hell is the damn ‘runner’s high’ everybody keeps telling me about?!”

“Alexa, now how many steps have I done? And if your answer is still under a thousand so help me you weren’t too expensive to throw under this oncoming bus.”

“Alexa, seriously, how many more steps until I’ve burned enough calories for a doughnut? I mean, come on, if we weren’t supposed to eat them there wouldn’t be a National Doughnut Day, right? It doesn’t have to be fancy–no custard or jelly or sprinkles or anything, just the plain kind that are still sitting in the box in the office break room at the end of the day, pushed aside as everyone gets at the good ones. Is that too much to ask?”

He’s Starting To Scare Away The Pizza Guy
Asus revealed Zenbo–a home-assistant robot that you can instruct to control your lights, TV, air conditioning, etc. It can also provide security by accessing a camera trained outside the front door, letting you know who’s there, and, at your command, unlocking the door. I’m sure many people would find this helpful, but every time I hear someone at the door it’s always just this guy I know from work who actually lives here, back from vacation and screaming about how I don’t know how house-sitting works. Like he’s any better, not knowing how squatting works.

I Only Recently Learned There Are Shows Without The Explicit Label
Iran’s Supreme Council of Cyberspace* is cracking down on social media by not only giving foreign messaging apps one year to store all data involving Iranian citizens within Iran’s borders, but also arresting administrators of the messaging app Telegram for “spreading immoral content.” If that were grounds for arrest here in the U.S., I would have maybe two podcasts left to listen to.

To Avoid Bugs, I Always Wait Until Version 48.0
360 million MySpace usernames and passwords, from accounts created prior to June 11, 2013, have been stolen and are being sold online. So now where’s everyone who laughed at me for waiting until last week to sign up for MySpace? **

Live Fast, Burn Bright, Uninstall
Xiaomi (pronounced… well, this isn’t quite right, but if you say it like Cuba Gooding Jr.’s “Xiaomi the money!” then you’ll be closer than most) announced their latest fitness tracker, the Mi Band 2. At only $22, it will track steps and heart rate and also display the time. Xiaomi promises 20-day battery life, a benchmark the company is justifiably proud of, easily exceeding as it will the vast majority of customers’ use of the product.

The only real concern is potential buyers confusing Mi Band with Mii Band, the follow-up to Miitomo, Nintendo’s first ever mobile app. Mii Band lets your Mii play virtually any musical instrument and team up with other users to form a–you guessed it–Mii band. Having learned from Miitomo what users really want from a mobile Nintendo experience, the company has considerately programmed the app to automatically delete itself after a week of intense use.

Flame Throwers and Tear Gas Launchers Are Right Around The Corner
During the first quarter of this year, 31% of new cellular accounts were activated for phones, while 32% were for cars.

“About time,” said David Hasselhoff.

“I know, right?” said KITT.

They had a good laugh together, the kind only best friends can, as The Hoff finished gently scraping mosquito guts from the Trans Am’s headlights.

 

*   Winner of this year’s Real Organization That Sounds Like A Comic Book Villain’s Headquarters award.

** https://myspace.com/movieleaguemike

 

(It’s a little quiet for Jennie and Tom right now, but it’s a tight race in the Summer Movie Draft–follow along with the CRUMDUM.)

 

Okay, if you getting through another Weekly Tech Views doesn’t call for a celebration, I don’t know what does. To the leftover bear claws!

Mike Range
@MovieLeagueMike

 

Weekly Tech Views (The Tech – No Logic Blog) by Mike Range is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

The Web isn’t going away but voice and chat assistants will be the next thing to optimize for now that we’re all optimized for mobile. Shannon Morse and Tom Merritt discuss whether that’s safe, while Len Peralta illustrates.

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A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you are willing to support the show or give as little as 5 cents a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke, sebgonz and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes
To read the show notes in a separate page click here!

Can Snapchat avoid becoming Twitter? Can Twitter avoid becoming Yahoo? Justin Young and Tom Merritt discuss Snapchat passing Twitter in daily active users.

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Follow us on Soundcloud.

A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you are willing to support the show or give as little as 5 cents a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke, sebgonz and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes
To read the show notes in a separate page click here!

Internet adoption is slowing and voice assistant usage is about to skyrocket. Scott Johnson and Tom Merritt discuss that and more from Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends Report.

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Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) from Archive.org.

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Follow us on Soundcloud.

A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you are willing to support the show or give as little as 5 cents a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke, sebgonz and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes
To read the show notes in a separate page click here!

Computex, like all tech conferences brings on the buzzwords. Patrick Beja and Tom Merritt try to predict which buzzwiords will go mainstream (like smartphone did) and which are destined for the trash heap. (RIP netbook).

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Follow us on Soundcloud.

A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you are willing to support the show or give as little as 5 cents a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke, sebgonz and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes
To read the show notes in a separate page click here!

Just the headlines about Asus announcements from Computex and more.

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Follow us on Soundcloud.

A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you are willing to support the show or give as little as 5 cents a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke, sebgonz and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes
To read the show notes in a separate page click here!

Real tech stories. Really shaky analysis.

Ah, Memorial Day Weekend. The unofficial kickoff to summer, when the weather is finally nice enough to open the windows while spending three days on the couch watching The Simpsons Marathon.

For the week of May 23 – 27, 2016…

They Are Kind Of Catchy
Google is launching Magenta, a project that will use “deep learning” to allow artificial intelligence to create art, starting with music. Its first efforts are a little derivative, like the obviously R.E.M.-inspired It’s the End of Insignificant Humans as We Know Them. And you can hardly ignore the Springsteen influences in Born to Run Insignificant Humans Off the Face of the Earth. Katy Perry’s team is actually considering legal action to collect anticipated profits from I Killed an Insignificant Human and I Liked It. Yes, the unwavering theme is a bit disturbing, but the videos are really kick-ass.

What, I Let Him Borrow A Rake Once
Microsoft is rumored to be releasing a streaming stick that would allow you to stream games from your Xbox One to another TV. It’s a nice idea, but my concern is with the range. If the Xbox is in an upstairs bedroom, will it stream to a TV in the basement? Or what if the other room is separated by the kitchen, then a bedroom, then, say, a fifteen-foot strip of lawn, then the neighbor’s kitchen, a small hallway, and most of the living room where the Xbox you’d like to stream from is located? Asking for a friend.

You Don’t Know Until You Listen An Hour In Their Earbuds
Spotify is allowing an additional person on family plans, upping the total to six, while also lowering the monthly price to $15. So the Big Family lobby wins again. While couples with no kids are paying $7.50 each, two-parent, four-kid tribes are only dropping $2.50 apiece. Is there any break big families don’t get? Lower Spotify costs, higher tax deductions, fewer household chores per person, it’s ridiculously unfair. Sure, the parents in big families may sacrifice “free time” to cart their kids all over town, and when one person gets sick everyone gets sick, and the washer and dryer and shower are always running and jacking up utility bills, and they might fix five different dinners each night because no kid likes what anybody else likes… you know what, where can I donate to the six-family-member Spotify accounts?

It’s Better To Look Good Than To Feel Good
HP is introducing the Omen line of gaming laptops. They contain some serious specs–configurable to i7 processors, 16 gigs of RAM, a GTX 965M graphics card, and a 4K display–and look pretty stylish, with red highlights on the lid and around the keys. Which is cool, I guess, though a real gamer earns the red outlines the old school way–by playing Doom until your fingers bleed.

Even Worse, There Are No Scheduled Patches
The US Government Accountability Office would like to scare the crap out of you by reporting that the unit in charge of nuclear weapons uses an IBM computer from 1976. That uses floppy disks. Eight-inch floppy disks, that are, apparently, an actual thing. Said one government official, “Yes, we’ve had these computers a long time. You know why? Because they work. They might have a few quirks, but we know how to handle them. If you want to worry about the deployment of nuclear arms, I suggest you concern yourself with the potential installation of a 69-year-old piece of bloated software that shows no signs of stability, that seems likely to send nukes at Quebec because it didn’t like the maple syrup on its pancakes.” He lowered his voice and said, “You get what I’m saying, right? About the software? Orange-skinned, baseball cap-wearing software? Rhymes with Ronald Dump?”

I Saw It On Monsters & Myths On Some Cable Channel And It Was Late And I’d Had A Couple Drinks But I’m Pretty Sure It Was In The Monster Part
Microsoft and Facebook are helping to build the transatlantic MAREA cable, capable of 160 terabits per second. Great. Technology trumps safety once again. How many more innocent ocean floor visitors have to lose their lives because they confused the Giant Ocean Snake Monster for a transatlantic cable?

“Don’t worry, I’ve heard about these. It’s just a cable to increase bandwidth–OH MY GOD!”

“IT ATE GEORGE! CABLES DON’T HAVE MOUTHS WHAT IS THIS GIANT OCEAN SNAKE MONSTER-LIKE THING IT’S COMING THIS W–”

Happens all the time. But you go ahead and enjoy your faster-loading cute panda video on Facebook.

Could It Finally Be?
The tech press has been speculating for years that Apple would not only produce their own television but include their own content-providing service, though the rumors never panned out. Now, sources have indicated that Apple has been in talks to possibly acquire Time Warner (owner of HBO, TBS, and TNT), which has had its own talks about buying a stake in Hulu. Apple is also said to be interested in acquiring a streaming service, possibly even Netflix. After weighing the pros and cons of various options, buying Hulu and its existing relationships with broadcast networks versus forging their own deals, buying Netflix and its library of content versus obtaining a smaller company for the streaming infrastructure and producing their own content, Apple is finally ready to announce that the iPhone 7 will be available in Primrose Lavender!

Take That, Robot
Scientists are trying to devise ways for robots to feel pain, primarily as a deterrent from doing things that could damage them. The scientists are presenting “nervous robot-tissue models inspired by human skin structure,” but already there are competitors promising a cheaper, more effective alternative–if the robot does something dangerous, a quick clip from ESPN’s latest 30 For 30 documentary, Believeland, chronicling the history of Cleveland sports, is uploaded to their memory, and the dangerous action is never, ever repeated.

Also, it turns out their robots can cry.

 

* Shhhh. It involves a sex tape.

 

Mike Range
@MovieLeagueMike

Weekly Tech Views by Mike Range is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Justin Robert Young hosts the show and is joined by Steve Kovach (Tech Insider) and Len Peralta to discuss Facebook and their ad push beyond the walled garden.

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Using a Screen Reader? Click here

Multiple versions (ogg, video etc.) from Archive.org.

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A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

If you are willing to support the show or give as little as 5 cents a day on Patreon. Thank you!

Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke, sebgonz and scottierowland on the subreddit

Show Notes
To read the show notes in a separate page click here!