Real tech stories. Really Shaky Analysis.

Welcome to early fall, that magical time of year when many of us get to both rake leaves and mow the lawn! Take a well-deserved break with a few minutes of pseudo-technology nonsense.

For the week of September 21 – September 25, 2015

It’s All About That Face, ‘Bout That Face, New Pebble
Pebble announced the Pebble Time Round, its first smartwatch with a round face. This is how I hope the press conference went:

[A round stage is designed to mimic a watch face and at each hour sits a two-year-old dressed like Fred and Wilma Flintstone’s kid. Center stage, Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky takes questions]

“Why does the new watch have a shorter battery life than previous versions?”

“It’s round.”

“Do you think the smaller display will hinder it’s functionality?”

“It’s round!”

“What’s that smell?”

“Three o’clock Pebbles peed.”

“Why wasn’t the $249 price rounded to $250?”

“We’re done here.”

Starbucks Makes it Easier Than Ever to Spend Seven Bucks on a 900-Calorie, Nutrition-Free Breakfast
The Starbucks app is now available for Android, providing the ability to order and pay with your mobile device. This will work in 7,000 U.S. locations, which, according to the most recent census, covers nearly three-quarters of the stores in eastern Connecticut. The next update to the app is expected to include the Digital Barista, a feature that lets you speak your order into your phone–“a Venti Pumpkin Spice Frappuccino and a Pumpkin Scone, for Charles”–and then, at the very moment your order is ready, you will get a voice message stating “Your order is ready, Caramels.”

And While You’re At It, Tattoo Your Bank Account Info on Your Forehead
The Indian government had proposed a law requiring smartphone users to keep any encrypted information stored on their phone, in plain text, for ninety days, so the government could have a little look-see if they felt like it. Thankfully, this provision was removed in a later draft, along with the less-publicized requirement that citizens keep all web site passwords written on a piece of paper and kept in their sock drawer.

At Least There Was No Vomit Involved
When Amazon Web Services went down over the weekend, writer David Gerwitz reported that his Echo–Amazon’s personal assistant device–didn’t take it well. When he spoke requests such as “turn on the lights” or “turn off the alarm,” the only response from Alexa–the Echo’s “brain”–was to initiate a spinning red light (a light that is normally blue) and slowly speak a series of meaningless words. Analysts expect Mr. Gerwitz to add some levitation and a swarm of flies and get cracking on a first draft of The Alexorcist.

Yeah, But How About the Fun We Had With Fahrvergnugen?
The Environmental Protection Agency sent a notice of violation (known in official government parlance as “calling shenanigans”) to Volkswagen after discovering that some of their diesel vehicles were cheating emissions tests. The German auto manufacturer had installed software to determine if testing was being done, and only under those conditions would emissions be scaled back.

No question, Volkswagen (motto: “If the car doesn’t emit, you must issue a permit“) did a lousy thing. They duped the EPA and screwed their customers by taking an axe to their car’s resale value. But I think we can all agree the big picture takeaway is this: machines continue to become more like us every day.

As anthropologists have said for centuries, the ability to control when we emit gasses is what separates us from the animals.* Which of us hasn’t, when being “tested”–at a job interview, on a date, sitting through the third hour of a play you didn’t want to go to in the first place and has you questioning whether it was really worth promising this to be able to go to the Browns game with your friends last week–altered our natural tendencies and contained emissions that would put us in a bad light in the eyes of others, and then, once free of the testing scenario, emitted something not only harmful to the immediate environment, but capable of jiggling the needle on a nearby seismograph?

Fingerprints Are Like Snowflakes–Neither Is Safe Inside a Federal Government Building
Previously, The U.S. Office of Personnel Management stated that the fingerprints of 1.1 million government employees were accessed during a data breach this summer. That number has now been updated to 5.6 million. Demoralized by the extent of this hack, officials performed an extensive cost/benefit analysis and decided they could save taxpayers millions of dollars and be nearly as secure by uninstalling all computer security software and asking the world to go on the honor system.

If It Wasn’t Important, It Wouldn’t Be On Twitter
On this episode of Priorities Playhouse, we eavesdrop on a technology conversation taking place in thousands of homes, workplaces, dorms, and coffeeshops between two web surfers:

Web Surfer A: “Wow, listen to this–a paraplegic was able to walk by wearing a cap that sent signals from his brain–bypassing his severed spinal cord!–to his leg muscles via electrodes around his kn–”

Web Surfer B: “Hey–you can get your selfie printed on a pancake!”**

There Ought to Be a Law
A U.S. District Judge ruled that the Fifth Amendment prevents someone from having to divulge their mobile phone passcode to provide authorities access to the contents. It turns out, however, that it does nothing to prevent your fantasy football leaguemates, after listening to you brag all off-season about going 12-1-1 and winning the league championship, from guessing that your passcode is 1211 and leaving images on your camera roll of the trophy you bought to commemorate your accomplishment being subjected to contact with parts of their bodies that only the most intimate of medical specialists would normally see.

* Journal of Obnoxious Smells (June, 1981)

** Yes, it’s true: http://laist.com/2015/09/24/pancake_selfies_are_the_future.php

Thanks for spending some of your non-yard work time with the Weekly Tech Views. If you know someone else who needs an excuse to put the rake down for a few minutes, send them by.

Mike Range
@MovieLeagueMike

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

Real tech stories. Really shaky analysis.

The week in tech, without the annoying facts or common sense.

For the week of September 14 – September 18, 2015

And the First Game Will be Called Game 1
Sony has officially changed the name of their virtual reality initiative from Project Morpheus to PlayStation VR, in an attempt to ward off any dangerous excess excitement a cool name might produce.

Now I Can Really Let You Know What I Think of Your Cat
Facebook is talking about adding a Dislike button. CEO Mark Zuckerberg tried to explain that the purpose would be to show empathy, not disagreement, but many Facebook users still see this as the first step toward the Holy Grail of web site commenters, the Burn In Hell, You Stupid A-Hole button.

I Remember When Bad News Was Losing in the Playoffs
Apple said they are on pace to set a new first-weekend iPhone sales record. Of course, “on pace” can be misleading. The Cleveland Browns lost their first game, so, technically, they are on pace to go 0-16, but the odds of that actually…

Okay, Apple, congratulations.

Buckle Up
Intel launched the Automotive Security Review Board to improve cybersecurity in cars and reduce the chances of vehicles being hacked, after a recent study stated: HOLY CRAP, CARS CAN BE HACKED! I can hardly wait for the fast-approaching day when some bored eighth-grader finds an exploit in all mid-sized sedans and we find ourselves in the middle of a rush hour Mario Kart game.

Technostalgia
German auto manufacturer Porsche (pronounced “gif”) introduced the Mission E, an electric concept car with 590 horsepower, a 311-mile range, and a battery that can recharge to 80% in fifteen minutes. Automotive reporters present at the Frankfurt Motor Show for the unveiling were unanimous in commenting, “I remember when I could recharge in fifteen minutes.”

That’s So Old School
Apple released iOS 9 this week, and after thoroughly examining the features and performance of their competitor’s updated operating system, Microsoft executives said, “Nine? Who names their OS with a ‘nine'”?”

Good Thing Nobody’s Heard of That Amazon Store
Sharp plans to start selling an 85-inch, 8K TV in Japan next month. “Best news ever,” shouted Bert Naughton, Senior Vice President at Monster–the company best known for selling wildly overpriced electronics cables–from a raucous, company-wide celebration. “Getting 8K video is going to require four HDMI cables! Is Marketing on the phone yet? We need new packaging; call them Mega Super Ultra HD, 8K certified by the Professional Pixel Panel, with, I don’t know, Platinomium-coated contacts or something. And anyone that sells a cable for less than $200 is fired!”

But, Mom, That’s Not…
Android devices using the current Lollipop operating system were shown to be hackable by entering abnormally long passwords, though this exploit did not work on devices protected with a short pin code. “What’s that you were saying about not using 1-2-3-4?” asked everyone’s mother, smiling smugly.

Why Couldn’t I Have Gotten Arrested?
Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old in Irving, Texas, built a homemade clock, brought it to school, and was, naturally, arrested, handcuffed, and taken to a juvenile detention center. The claim was that he had built a “hoax bomb” to scare his classmates and teachers. No charges were filed, and the aftermath resulted in invitations to visit the White House, Facebook, and Google.

This was a nice turn of events for Ahmed, but I can’t help being a little bitter. It sounds like his clock was not even part of a competition, just something he did on his own, whereas my second grade Science Fair entry Fun With Static Electricity won first place (not just balloons–balloon animals!), but I didn’t get so much as a letter from the city councilman who lived on our street.

To-may-to, To-mah-to
Microsoft sent out media invites for next months briefing about new Windows 10 devices, including the updated Surface Pro, or, as it’s referred to by NFL television announcers–after Microsoft paid the NFL $400 million to make the Surface Pro the official tablet of the NFL–“the iPad.”

Do I Not Bleed?
Facebook is working with the German government to prevent xenophobic and racist comments from being posted. OK, but what’s being done to crack down on the guy who, with no regard for the fact that I’m a real person with actual, human emotions, viciously and hatefully lashed out by referring to this blog as “meh?”

Frankly, I Don’t Trust the Coffee Maker Either
The new Roomba 980 vacuum cleaner will allegedly keep working until it has cleaned every possible spot on your floor. It is able to do this by mapping your whole house with the use of a camera. Oh, and military robotics technology.

No thanks. I’ve seen this movie. It was called Maximum Overdrive. It was based on a Stephen King story in which machines come to life and help us lead more efficient, fulfilling lives. Ha! As if! No, they want us dead, of course. And you know what the ability to map my whole house means? The ability to find me wherever the hell I hide, that’s what.

“Oh, what’s a Roomba going to do to you?” you ask. “Clean you to death?”

You don’t watch horror movies, do you?

All you have to do is trip once (guess what trips you?), and the Roomba accelerates, gets hold of your hair, and, without being too graphic, let’s just say you aren’t standing up again with your scalp and brain intact.

So I think we’ll keep pushing around our twelve-year-old, non-military grade Dirt Devil. (My wife would like me to clarify that, by “we,” I mean “she.” This is true, but only because I have an old Frisbee-related wrist injury that could flare up at any time, especially with the way that vacuum cleaner lurches to one side, being on only three wheels–it’s a real bear to manage, let me tell you–and I wouldn’t want my ability to type up this blog and deliver it to the readers (both of you) to be affected.)

Thanks again for stopping by the Weekly Tech Views Blog. If you enjoyed it, feel free to send a friend or five this way. If you weren’t so crazy about it, we’ll just pretend this never happened.

Mike Range
@MovieLeagueMike

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

Real tech stories. Really shaky analysis.

Give me five minutes and I’ll give you the week in tech, without the annoying facts or common sense.

For the week of September 7 – September 11, 2015

We start, of course, with news from the Apple Press Event…

You Can’t Spell Tablet Without Table

Apple is expanding their tablet line with the iPad Pro, which, despite being nearly twice the size of the iPad Air, actually conserves space in your home by converting, with the optional fold-out legs, into a dining room table.

Hard Core Star Wars Fans Rebel Against Force Touch

An angry mob of Star Wars fans gathered outside this week’s Apple event to protest the company’s Force Touch feature, claiming it was intentionally deceptive. “They have shown with the Apple Watch that Force Touch does not mean you can control your device with your mind,” said Tommy McCourty, raising and shaking his left arm, where a space black stainless steel Apple Watch rattled against the gold plastic of his C-3PO costume. “And just try to return it because of that. I’m pretty sure…” He turned to face the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, where Apple executives were, after eight hours, guiding the press event toward its halfway point, “…YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO LAUGH AT CUSTOMERS!

“And now they want to claim the iPhone will have Force Touch? Enough is enough.”

Just then, word reached the crowd that Apple was not, in fact, using the term Force Touch for iPhone interaction, but rather 3-D Touch. There was a momentary silence, and then a 250-pound man wearing a Princess Leia slave costume shouted, “We won!” and the air was filled with jubilant droid screams and Wookie bellows.

At last report, the vigilant crusaders were headed for the Glad company to demand the dismissal and possible execution of the creator of the ForceFlex garbage bags, which, it turns out, have to be tied by hand.

A Rose Gold By Any Other Name…

Of course, Apple’s most anticipated announcement came when Tim Cook unveiled this year’s wacky, made-up color option for devices. The winner, as we all know now, was “Rose Gold,” which, according to insiders, narrowly edged out “Chrysanthemum Platinum” and “Fuchsia.”

And, in non-Apple news…

Whisky-A-No-No

In one of mankind’s most vital experiments, a Scottish distillery sent whisky to the International Space Station for three years to find out what effect microgravity would have on flavor. The control sample kept on Earth had hints of raisins, toffee, vanilla, and creamy fudge, while tasters found the “space whisky” to have aromas and flavors of smoke, violet perfume, and antiseptic lozenges, a combination classified by whiskey aficionados as “My Grandmother’s Purse.”

Say Cheese

Canon is introducing a 247-megapixel image sensor that they say can make out the lettering on a plane eleven miles away. If my calculations are correct–try and follow my logic here–that means someone on a plane eleven miles away could capture images on the ground. Which is bad news for our neighbors, Ed and Judy. They just dropped five grand on a community-mandated eight-foot privacy fence after a dozen seven-year-olds at Tina Nelson’s birthday party paused festivities (according to reports, this was a spirited game of Who Can Wear the Most Cake Frosting?) to watch Ed, Judy, and their Labor Day picnic guests playing a spirited game of their own–Nude Bocce. “It’s the way God intended bocce to be played,” Judy told them, just before the kids’ horrified parents yanked them into the Nelson’s house, a process that took longer than expected, because frosting is slippery.

It seems Ed and Judy, following their recent retirement, had pledged to avoid “growing old” by living life “unconventionally,” or, “in a creepy and obscene manner” as the Neighborhood Association put it in the complaint filed with the city.

“Now what, does this camera mean we have to put up a dome because some kid in a window seat on his way to Disney World might snap a photo of our backyard on badminton night? I’m telling you, Thoreau had the right idea; if we could find a nice, secluded, away-from-uptight-humanity spot in the woods we would go full-on Walden Pond, right now. I mean, if it got at least twelve meg internet access. Jude and I have to have our Netflix. Catching up on True Blood, you know.” He nudged me and said, “We watch an episode, then play act it. Getting me some Sookie nookie, right?”

There is no fence tall enough to keep that image from my mind. Thanks, Canon.

Say, I’ve Been Looking for a New Way to Look Like an Idiot in Public

Nintendo is preparing to release Pokemon Go, an augmented reality game for smartphones that has you chasing the game’s characters in the real world. It looks interesting, but the promotional video’s scene of Pokemon characters running through Times Square is nothing new. If you don’t see a sprinting Pikachu carrying an Elmo head and being chased by a cop (and the rest of Elmo) on a Thursday afternoon, you’re not paying attention.

That’s Exactly What He Wants Us to Think

The latest car hack comes from a scientist who claims that, using a low power laser and pulse generator, he can make a self-driving car think there is an obstacle present when there isn’t.

Or is there?

Did anybody stop to think that maybe this guy is an evil genius who has developed an Invisible Obstacle-inator which is placing all too real hazards in the car’s path, and the car is correctly identifying them? Huh? As usual, nobody is going to believe the poor car, the Haley Joel Osment of the vehicle world, that sees things nobody else does. “Just another run-of-the-mill car hack,” the media says. And nobody questions it, because these days, apparently, anyone with a Raspberry Pi and a garage door opener can hack a car. So the mad scientist gets to test his dastardly invention without anyone catching on. Then, when it’s too late, he takes over the world by–

Hey, here’s a question: is it possible to take too much cough syrup?

Thanks again for stopping by the Weekly Tech Views Blog. If you enjoyed it, feel free to send a friend or five this way. If you weren’t so crazy about it, we’ll just pretend this never happened.

Mike Range

@MovieLeagueMike

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

Real tech news. Really shaky analysis.

Give me five minutes and I’ll give you the week in tech, without the annoying facts or common sense.

For the week of August 31 – September 4, 2015

Hooray for Applewood
Apple may be looking to compete with Netflix, as Apple executives have reportedly been in touch with Hollywood, seeking the production of original video content. Talks were delayed when Hollywood movie executives doubled over, laughed for half an hour, and finally gasped, “Original? Did you hear that? They want original content!” After another spasm of laughter, during which three more Paranormal Activity sequels were greenlighted, they wiped their eyes and said, “You guys are looking for TV; they’re next door.”

Don’t Let the Door Hit You…
Stanford, MIT, and Toyota are teaming to create “intelligent”, rather than self-driving, cars, with artificial intelligence that will make people better drivers. That’s cool, as long as they come up with what the industry calls a TAW function (“the industry” being Weekly Tech Views writers) that works like this: if a driver cuts someone off three times in a month or stays ten miles per hour below the speed limit for over ten minutes or leaves their left turn signal on from Cleveland to Indianapolis, the dashboard flashes “THIS AIN’T WORKING” while the car pulls over and the seat tips the driver out onto the sidewalk. Then it dispenses cab fare, and lists itself on Craigslist.

I’m Just Saying, Get a Receipt
Nextbit is Kickstarting a new phone called Robin that would automatically store your lesser used apps and data in the cloud to save space on the phone. Sweet. Why not store what you’re not using somewhere else? When you need it, you just bring it back. A fine idea. Except, I’ve kind of been through this before.

It starts out, “You haven’t looked at these comic books in a while, let’s make some space in your closet and store these in the attic.” You say, “Whatever.” They weren’t bothering you in the closet, but if it’s that big a deal to your mom, fine, it’s not battle-worthy.

Then, a year later, in eighth grade homeroom, you meet a cute girl who is actually into Marvel Comics. So you race home from school to prepare your collection to show her the next day. You perform the Olympic-level gymnastics necessary to hoist yourself through the ladderless two-foot square opening in the ceiling. It’s early September, so the attic has maintained its customary 197 degrees and your new school clothes are plastered to your body, including the sweater-vest, for god’s sake, that your mom made you wear, despite the fact that it was still officially summer, so you’d be a “handsome young man” for the first day of school.

But none of that matters, because you’ve reached the box that’s going to let you impress Cindy Stewart before any of the other guys have a chance. You throw open the slimy-yet-sticky, perpetually-on-the-verge-of-melting lid to the Rubbermaid container, and gaze upon six cubic feet of… tiny plastic pilgrims. And Indians. And turkeys. All slightly warped, losing their own non-air conditioned battle with the Cleveland summer. What you don’t see are four neatly-wrapped and bound packages of Marvel comics.

You have the wrong bin. Easy mistake.

You look at the side of the container and see the curling masking tape… Mike’s Comic Books is crossed off, Thanksgiving Decorations is squeezed underneath in your mom’s neat cursive.

You interrupt your mother’s viewing of General Hospital with a scream that convinces her you’ve finally impaled yourself on one of “those damned lightsabers scattered all over your room.” And when you try to explain that she has ruined any chance you ever had at being happy, she responds, with the same tone she might use to say she cleaned up an accident the dog had in the living room, “Oh, you hadn’t looked at those in forever, I got rid of them.”

Careful, Nextbit. Be very careful.

The Battery’s Just Showing Off
Runtastic introduced the Orbit, a fitness-tracking smartwatch which stores a week’s worth of data, is waterproof, and contains a lifetime battery. Technically, it’s a six-month battery, but, after completing an in-depth study consisting of flipping through my workout journals of the last five years, I’ve determined that nobody has ever used a fitness tracker long enough to know the difference.

What’s In a Name?
Wikipedia banned nearly 400 accounts for targeting users who’d had a requested article change declined, and offering to publish them for a fee. Then they would require as much as $30 per month to “protect” the article. Yes, that’s extortion, and sure, it’s unethical, but looking at it from a purely financial standpoint, at thirty bucks a month, was I paying too much to have my entry read “Lord High Tech Blogger of the Entire Tri-State Area”?

Global IQ Reaches All-Time Low as Throngs Join Hacked Adultery Site
A funny thing happened while Ashley Madison employees were cleaning out their desks and sneaking mouse pads, staplers, and pads of Post-It notes into their briefcases–the business didn’t die. According to Ashley Madison (slogan: “Sure your data is vulnerable; it’s the risk of getting caught that makes it exciting.”), hundreds of thousands of new users signed up in just the last week. Apparently, the recent deluge of news stories has served as effective advertising, despite that recent news being, essentially, “if you sign up for Ashley Madison, there is a good chance your name will be published as a client, your spouse, family, and friends will find out, you will be ridiculed, sued for divorce, and possibly lose half your net worth.” Which, as ad copy goes, is not CLIO Award-winning stuff. Asked to explain the surge in business despite the horrible publicity, an Ashley Madison spokesperson said, “We’ve found that the demographic least swayed by news is humanity’s impulsive, wandering loins.”

OK, Google…Find Hair Plugs
Following last month’s major reorganization, Google has now changed its logo. The new font is  sans serif (from the French, meaning “without a particularly good reason”), which some say looks “more modern and playful.” Industry insiders predict this isn’t the last of Google’s changes, and expect the internet giant to start shopping at Aeropostale, driving a Jaguar, and dating search engines half their age.

Thanks again for stopping by the Weekly Tech Views Blog. If you enjoyed it, feel free to send a friend or five this way. If you weren’t so crazy about it, we’ll just pretend this never happened.

Mike Range
@MovieLeagueMike

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