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Tech news from Australia and abroad, with Mashable reporter/tech extraordinaire Johnny Lieu and FBi’s Lucy Smith.

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20.09.17- iPhone X Facial Recognition is Creepy and Autoplay Ads are on Their Way Out Sep 20, 2017

Show notes

Apple's Sept. 12 unveiling of the iPhone X brought with it the official reveal of Face ID: face-scanning tech that will be used in lieu of Touch ID to both unlock smartphones and authenticate Apple Pay. But privacy experts, security consultants, and at least one sitting U.S. senator are concerned that the technology is ripe for abuse. So just how worried should you be? Browsing the web is an integral part of most people's lives, but that process is frequently a jarring one complete with loud autoplay ads and video making it difficult to focus on what's in front of you. Google, however, has decided to do something about that. Starting in early 2018 will block autoplay video with sound on its popular Chrome browser. But what does this mean for the internet ecosystem as a whole? Google is an advertising company, so why would it take a stand against any type of ad? Could Edge, Safari, and Firefox soon follow suit, and how will this move affect surfing the information superhighway (yup) on our smartphones? Could we soon be heralding the end of noisy autoplay video?

16.08.17- Facebook TV and Google Eating the Open Internet Aug 16, 2017

Show notes

Mark Zuckerberg has been preaching video as our future for the last couple years. On Thursday, he's launching the next big step in the company's quest to dominate every last second of your waking life. Facebook is set to debut original shows made by media partners exclusively for the social network, marking the company's official entry into the high-end online video world that already includes rivals Amazon, Netflix, Google, and Apple. It is also a product update, meaning the video tab in Facebook's mobile app will feature a new section called "Watch" to highlight the initiative. "Watch" will also appear on desktop and Facebook's TV apps. Google used to be about transporting you around the open web and connecting you with all the weird, wonderful stuff the internet has to offer. Not anymore. If it was up to Google, you'd never need to leave its growing internet real estate. It's a scary proposition for just about everybody but Google. Between fast-loading AMP articles from major news brands hosted in its domain, full pages of information scraped from outside sites that don't require you to visit them, basic shopping functions built into ads, YouTube, and a host of other features, the Google-verse is more of a digital walled garden than ever. The most recent addition comes in the form of a report that the company is considering killing visible URLs altogether.

09.08.17- Googles Anti-Diversity Rant and Computers Detecting Depression Aug 09, 2017

Show notes

A software engineer at Google by the name of James Damore, penned a 10 page manifesto against diversity at the company and sent it around to colleagues. He argued, without much citation, that women show higher interest in people and men in things — and it’s why men are more biologically suited to software engineering, and women to creative or artistic things. He also said Google was biased against white men and was too left wing, too politically correct and not accepting of conservative viewpoints. In a new study published in EPJ Data Science, two researchers accessed the Instagram accounts of 166 volunteers and then applied machine learning to their collective 43,950 images in order to identify and predict depression. By comparing those predictions to each individual's clinical diagnosis, the researchers discovered that their model outperformed the average rate of physicians accurately diagnosing depression in patients. In other words, an Instagram account may have the potential to reveal whether you're experiencing depression. The right algorithm might just be better at making that prediction than a trained physician.

02.08.17- Farewell to Adobe Flash and iPods Aug 02, 2017

Show notes

There has been a lot of tech deaths recently, this week Adobe has announced that they are discontinuing Flash, meaning your old school videos and online games might be lost forever. And Apple is quietly pulling the iPod from the shelves, the era of the iPod Nano and iPod shuffle is over.

29.07.17- Google Kills The Search Bar and Microsoft Kills MS Paint Jul 26, 2017

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Google recently launched a personalized news feed on the company's flagship app, and it will soon rollout to browser versions of google.com. The update is a huge deal for a couple of reasons: First, it will be the most radical change to Google's famously simple home page since 1996, or at least since the its big push behind Google+, which began in 2011 an has since been deemed a failure. It also positions Google to compete directly with the Facebook News Feed, which generally provides the same type of information like sports scores, viral videos, and news. Time is running out for Microsoft Paint. The venerable application that started its life 32 years ago as a monochrome, bitmap Windows 1.0 drawing program is on Microsoft's "Deprecated" list. In an official Microsoft list of "Features that are removed or deprecated in Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, first spotted by The Guardian, Microsoft Paint is on the deprecated list. Microsoft defines "deprecated" as "might be removed from future releases." News that Microsoft is moving on from Paint is not surprising. Microsoft demoted the long-time Windows App earlier this year when it released 3D Paint in the Windows 10 Creators Update, which rolled out to users earlier this year.

19.07.17-Aussie Government is Cracking Down on Encrypted Messaging and RIP SoundCloud Jul 19, 2017

Show notes

The jig is up for encrypted messaging, in the eyes of the Australian government. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced Friday morning the government will bring in new laws to force tech companies to hand over data protected by encrypted messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal. A tense scene unfolded earlier this week as user-generated, music-streaming service SoundCloud held an all-hands meeting to explain to employees why it suddenly had to lay off 40 percent of its staff last week... but Chance The Rapper claims he has something in the works to save it all.

05.07.17- Medicare Hacked and Tinder Cheats Jul 05, 2017

Show notes

In a matter of clicks on the darknet, you can purchase the details Australians use for identification and to access health services in the country. As reported by The Guardian, a vendor on a large darknet marketplace is illegally selling patient details in a listing dubbed the "Medicare machine." The seller claims to get the data by "exploiting a vulnerability" in a government system. Australia is one of the first countries to have Tinder Gold (others being Argentina, Canada, and Mexico.) There’s a couple of features like being able to rewind, look for matches in other places, that super liking thing, and a whole heap of other random features. But the most important change is the ability to see who has already liked you — which kinda kills the fun of it all, to be honest.

28.06.17- Netflix Tax and Augmented Reality on the New iPhone Jun 28, 2017

Show notes

From July 1 you’ll have to pay an extra 10 per cent on digital goods and services that are imported into Australia. The Netflix tax is a catchier name for an amendment to the GST which means anything you download or stream to your computer or phone is subject to this tax. It also applies to things like eBay fees, but other companies like Netflix haven’t indicated if they’ll absorb some of that GST or make it 9.89 a month compared to 8.99. It was introduced in the 2015-16 budget but passed in May last year... but it doesn't stop there... We've already heard a lot about the iPhone 8 through leaks. Rumors say it'll have a 5.8-inch edge-to-edge screen, Touch ID fingerprint sensor built into the screen, inductive wireless charging, a new "glass sandwich" design, faster performance, and a better dual camera system. Aside from the new screen, what will be the iPhone 8's killer feature? It could be augmented reality (AR).

21.06.17- Woebot Can Help You Become A Better Person and Banning Smartphones for Kids Jun 21, 2017

Show notes

There’s a new generation of bots helping us be better at being humans. It’s an experimental bot called Woebot, developed by psychologists at Stanford University in the U.S. and it operates on Facebook’s Messenger chat platform. It’s one of the first bots of its kind, in that it is kind of therapist. It won’t tackle your deepest problems, but it will improve your mood, and even alleviate symptoms of depression. While there’s no evidence just yet these kinds of bots can help mental health in the same way a professional does, it certainly makes the topic a little more approachable. Parents in Colorado want to ban smartphones for children under 13. They’re worried about the psychological effects on children having smartphones that young - but in reality it's just about control.

14.06.17- Johnny Goes to Uluru and We're Not Making Any Money Off Bitcoin Jun 14, 2017

Show notes

One of Australia’s most famous landmarks is now on Google Maps Street View. Johnny Lieu headed up to Uluru to witness the capturing of the sacred sight on Street View. Now people that can't make it to the site itself can explore it online! Bitcoin has been hitting highs of more than $3,000 per Bitcoin — it’s now at $3,800. If you compare this to January, one Bitcoin was around $1200 — nearly doubling its value in six months. But if you take it back it to 2010, one bitcoin was less than 10 cents each. So if you held on to bitcoin worth the price of a pick-up pizza — you would have $300,000 today... great news for bitcoin investors in 2010... bit of a bummer for everyone else...

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