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In this episode of WRLWND Radio, J. Richard Jones talks with Zoe Chilton, Head of Technical Partnerships, Aston Martin Red Bull Racing. Zoe leads a team managing key relationships with Aston Martin Red Bull Racing’s technical and innovation partners, based at the team’s headquarters in Milton Keynes, UK. The diverse portfolio of 14 Partnerships spans a wide range of technical capabilities and products – from some of the World’s biggest names in telecoms and IT, to leading experts in manufacturing and product development. Zoe joined Aston Martin Red Bull Racing in 2015, coming from 5 years industry experience in motorsport and high-performance engineering in the UK’s Motorsport Valley. Initially joining the Team as a Senior Partnership Manager, Zoe’s role is to liaise directly with the team’s key technical partners, and also engineering stakeholders within the business, to ensure innovation partnerships deliver the maximum value to both parties. Hear about the role between racing and technology, the challenges in travelling with a racing team and sharing data with all parties and how Red Bull is using technologies from CITRIX to race in 21 countries around the world for Formula 1.

The demand for security services is growing around the world. The industry itself is projected to increase by 6 per cent annually over the next few years. With such a growth, Montreal’s tech startup TrackTik Software Inc. is on a mission to provide organizations managing security guards around the world with the tools to run leaner and more responsive automated operations. In this episode, Marcello Sukhdeo talks with Julie Lacasse, VP of Operations at TrackTik about the future of managing security services. Recently, TrackTik received a Deloitte Technology Fast 50™ award, ranking it as Canada’s 11th fastest growing technology, media and telecommunications company in recognition of over 1,700 per cent revenue growth over the past four years. The company is also on LinkedIn’s list of the Top 25 Startups in Canada and placing 36th on the Canadian Business 2018 Startup 50 ranking of Canada’s Top New Growth Companies. Hear about their secret to success. Also, Julie talks about the challenges in the industry and what TrackTick is working on to improve their all-in-one software for the industry in data analysis and reporting. For more information, go to: https://www.tracktik.com.

In October of this year, Bloomberg Businessweek published a story about an alleged attack by Chinese spies of almost 30 US companies, including Amazon and Apple. The story reveals that the attack was done through microchips from Super Micro that were apparently planted during the manufacturing stage of motherboards that were used in servers. These servers were then sold to many US customers including the US Department of Defense. In the show today, Marcello Sukhdeo and Johnathan Mansour talk about the ramifications of such an attack and how Super Micro, Apple and Amazon have all denied it. To see the full story from Bloomberg, go to: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies.

In this episode of WRLWND Radio, Marcello Sukhdeo and Johnathan Mansour talk about the worrying signs coming out Apple. The cutback on production of the iPhone, the unaffordability of Apple products, the lack of innovation and the desperate means that Apple is employing to meet its revenue targets. Is Apple going to end up like BlackBerry? Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

By now you may have heard about the announcement from Apple about their new products - the new Macbook Air, the Mac Mini and iPad Pro. This announcement reveals a trend that Apple is on that should be concerning to us. With the price hike, Apple is pushing their products out of reach for many, and soon it will become unaffordable. Other than the price increase, should you upgrade? That's the burning question that we tackle on today's show. Visit our website for more!

On October 17, Fujitsu Canada, Inc. announced the ScanSnap iX1500, a new flagship colour duplex model, joining the Fujitsu ScanSnap Series of document scanners. The core appeal of the ScanSnap Series is in its ability to effortlessly convert most office documents into PDF’s, searchable PDF’s, Word and Excel documents, and more. ScanSnap is an essential productivity tool for knowledge workers whether they are scanning to their desktop, a network folder or to a Cloud service. On today’s episode of WRLWND Radio, Steve Oblin, Senior Marketing Manager at Fujitsu Canada, Inc., is on the line to discuss the new iX1500 scanner, it’s new features and how it fulfills your business’s needs.   Subscribe to our weekly ITinCanada newsletter!   Stay connected on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Is it worth it to upgrade your iPhone or Apple Watch?   The big news this week is that Apple announced three new iPhones including its biggest and most expensive model yet and the new Apple Watch Series 4. Is it worth it to upgrade your iPhone or Apple Watch? That’s the question that Marcello Sukhdeo tackles in this episode of WRLWND Radio.  Show Notes:  At its special event, Apple announced three new iPhones. These phones are already being criticized by people around the world for lacking innovation and it is being seen as part of Apple's strategy to increase revenue by increasing the prices.  These iPhones are bigger, faster and more expensive. That is the strategy that Apple is using to continue growing revenue.   By making the phones larger and faster, and then charging more for them, the company is milking a product line that has already saturated the market. The new iPhones would start at $750, $1,000 and $1,100. The starting prices last year were $700, $800 and $1,000.   The Apple Watch Series 4 has been redesigned to have a more health focus.    This is the first time Apple as redesigned its watch since it was launched in 2015. The new watch is slightly thinner and has a larger display area.  Apple said the new watch had a faster processor and better health and motion sensors. For instance, the watch can detect when a wearer has fallen down and would prompt the person to alert emergency services. If it detects no motion by the wearer after a minute, it calls automatically.   Another feature, is the watch can perform an electrocardiogram, alerting you to worrisome heart rhythms. 

What will the future of work look like? That’s a question that many companies are pondering. With the evolution of the workplace and how we interact with technology, our work is changing in so many different ways. In the show today, Marcello Sukhdeo talks about some exciting changes based on his visit to BoxWorks 2018 – like having a system that will feed you documents that need your attention, easy automation of tasks and working in any file format right within your only platform. BoxWorks is an event hosted by Box. Box is a company that provides a cloud content management platform where you can work, share and collaborate securely. Box has over 87,000 customers with many coming from 69 per cent of the Fortune 500 companies. For more information, go to Box.com. Visit us at WRLWND.

Apple announced yesterday its annual fall iPhone event will be held on September 12 in Cupertino, California. We can expect to hear about Apple's new lineup of iPhones to soon hit the market. On today’s episode, we give you a rundown of the latest rumours and specs concerning these new iPhones and what you need to know. Amazon hit another all-time record of $2000 per share in the early trading hours of August 30, putting them just $30 per share short of joining Apple in the $1 trillion market value club. To put that into perspective: a $100 investment in Amazon in 1997 would today we worth $125,000! For these stories and more, tune in to today’s episode of WRLWND Radio, with guest-host Johnathan Mansour.   Subscribe to our weekly newsletter   Tags: Amazon, Apple, iPhone, AMZN   Links:    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-27/apple-to-embrace-iphone-x-design-with-new-colors-bigger-screens   https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/27/17785594/apple-iphone-xs-september-launch-three-new-devices-rumors   https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/30/amazon-set-to-open-above-2000-a-share-for-the-first-time.html

Helping large companies to migrate and secure cloud infrastructure is a challenge. It’s also a big opportunity to improve business efficiencies. Join WRLWND radio guest host J. Richard Jones as he chats with Jonathan Spinks, CEO from Sourced Group. Learn about the challenges of cloud adaptation, how Canada measures up to other countries and the future of cloud, in this episode of WRLWND radio. To learn more: https://www.sourcedgroup.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonspinks/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jrichardjones/

Today on the show, Windows 95 is back and this time you can run it on Mac and Linux. Take a trip down memory lane with Wordpad, phone dialer, MS Paint, and Minesweeper. And we are headed to information apocalypse? Don’t panic, some say the solution is more technology.   SEGMENT 1 The New York Public Library is using Instagram Stories to bring classic novels to your smartphone The New York Public Library—an essential provider of free books, information, ideas, and education for all New Yorkers for more than 100 years is doing something unprecedented! It is now using Instagram's Stories feature to make classic novels more accessible and enticing to read, especially to the younger generation. It has teamed up with ad agency Mother in New York to create "Insta Novels," which turns classic pieces of literature into animated digital novels illustrated by various visual artists. These digitized versions take inspiration from the layouts of the original classics, featuring elements that reflect the novels' designs. The full digital books will be posted as Stories: simply hold the screen to read a page and lift your finger to turn it. If you're a fast reader, just let it play on its own to watch the animated elements move on screen. Here is the link to the promo on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/BmvKKlhFv0w/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=embed_loading_state_control #InstaNovels   SEGMENT 2 Windows 95 is now an app you can download and install on macOS, Windows, and Linux   Windows 95 is the operating system that’s now used as a yardstick for what’s possible on modern devices and platforms. We’ve seen Microsoft’s popular OS appear on the Apple Watch, an Android Wear smartwatch, and even the Xbox One. Today, someone has gone a step further and made Windows 95 into an app that you can run on macOS, Windows, and Linux. A Slack developer created Windows 95 app where you can use Wordpad, phone dialer, MS Paint, and Minesweeper. They all run pretty well. Except for Internet Explorer which is not fully functional. The app its only 129MB in size and you can download it over at Github for both macOS and Windows. Once it’s running it surprisingly only takes up around 200MB of RAM, even when running all of the old Windows 95 system utilities, apps, and games. If you run into any issues with the app you can always reset the Windows 95 instance inside the app and start over again.    SEGMENT 3 Browser plug-ins that spot fake news show the difficulty of tackling the ‘information apocalypse’ According to some, the world is headed toward an information apocalypse. A combination of AI-generated fakes, fake news gone wild, and faltering confidence in the media means soon, no one will be able to trust what they see or hear online. But don’t panic yet, says a subset of these same prophets, for a solution, is already at hand: more technology.  This week, two projects were unveiled that are intended to act as buffers between the world and fake news. The first, SurfSafe, was created by a pair of UC Berkley undergrads. The second, Reality Defender, is the work of the AI Foundation, a startup founded in 2017 that has yet to release a commercial product. Both projects are browser plug-ins that will alert users to misinformation by scanning images and videos on the webpages they’re looking at and flagging any doctored content. Of the two plug-ins, SurfSafe’s approach is simpler. Once installed, users can click on pictures, and the software will perform something like a reverse-image search. It will look for the same content that appears on trusted “source” sites and flag well-known doctored images. Reality Defender promises to do the same (the plug-in has yet to launch fully), but in a more advanced manner, using machine learning to verify whether or not an image has been tinkered with. Both plug-ins also encourage users to help out with this process, identifying pictures that have been manipulated or so-called “propaganda.”

On today’s episode, we take a look at how SpaceX is training NASA astronauts to fly on the company’s Dragon capsule, breathing new life into space exploration and into space and tech industries respectively. A simple parody website prompted us to examine social media transparency and what to be aware of. Also, be sure to hear our coverage of MVMT’s big announcement. For these stories and more, tune in to today’s episode of WRLWND Radio, guest-hosted by Johnathan Mansour. The opinions expressed on this show may The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the presenters and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of IT in Canada or WRLWND media. Links: http://www.itincanadaonline.ca/index.php/insights/eric-jacksch/2385-maybe-it-is-time   https://www.cnet.com/news/mike-pence-parody-site-tops-google-search-results-for-his-name/   https://www.cnet.com/news/the-answer-to-facebook-twitter-and-youtubes-problems-with-infowars-transparency/   https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/15/17688388/spacex-commercial-crew-astronauts-training-dragon-iss-launch   https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertanaas/2018/08/16/movado-group-to-acquire-mvmt-lifestyle-watch-and-accessories-brand/#6bb77d506a8c Tags: #SpaceX, #MVMT, #SociaMedia, #AlexJones, #Twitter, #Facebook, #Tech, #IPO 

In this episode, AI could be doing the hiring in the future. A massive blow to Uber and Lyft as New York votes to limit rideshares and Zume to receive millions of dollars to perfect their pizza robot.  Show Notes:  Employee referrals, still make up the bulk of companies’ hires. This of course tends to leave out the majority of applicants, where their resumes are dumped into the trash, literally and electronically.   Added to that, recruiters and hiring managers also bring their own biases to the process, often choosing people with the “right-sounding” names and educational background.   We see these biases in almost every business. If you are looking for a job you can identify with these issues. But that could change.   Enter AI.   People who support AI, argue that this technology can eliminate some of these biases. Instead of relying on people’s feelings to make hiring decisions, companies such as Entelo and Stella.ai use machine learning to detect the skills needed for certain jobs.   Now there is something to be cautious about. Using AI in hiring can also lead to discrimination. The system will only look for what it was programmed to do. It will look for certain qualities and skills only.   NYC Takes Aim at Rideshares  With the increase number of rideshares services around the world it might come as a surprise that New York, one of the busiest cities in the world, has voted to cap the number of ride-hailing cars by imposing a year-long freeze on new licenses.   For Uber and Lyft, this year-long freeze on new licenses in their largest market is the big setback to them.   If this ruling goes into effect, all it needs is the mayor’s signature, then this will affect Uber and Lyft significantly. But not only that, what about other cities who might want to follow what NYC is doing and put a cap on licenses for ridesharing.   Companies like Uber and Lyft will lose revenue and people will suffer by waiting longer and even paying more for a ridesharing service.   Pizza robots  Robots may be going after our jobs, but they’ll make us delicious pizza while they’re at it. Some exciting news for pizza lovers.   Zume, a startup that makes and delivers pizza with robots is in talks with Softbank is in talks to invest $500m to $750m in its robot pizza business.   Softbank has also invested in other food deliver business, in 2016, with Pizza Hut Asia to help distribute their humanoid robots into stores, and more recently they led a $535m funding into meal-delivery app DoorDash.   Zume currently operates 3 trucks from their Mountain View, CA, HQ, but plans to partner with companies like UberEats in the future.  Check out my article on the Galaxy Watch. http://itincanadaonline.ca/index.php/mobility/2430-samsung-launches-galaxy-watch  

  In this episode, Marcello Sukhdeo talks about banning the use of smartphones in the classroom. Is it going to help or detract from kids’ education? The screens on smartphones are increasing in size getting close to the 7-inch range. And Google wants to help people with their digital well-being. Sounds ironic, but it has some good features to get us off our phones.  Show Notes:  A Study done in 2015: "Teens are spending more than one-third of their days using media such as online video or music — nearly nine hours on average, those between the ages of 8 and 12, the average is nearly six hours per day."  One country is taking a serious step to get rid of this problem in schools - France.   French lawmakers voted to ban smartphone use in schools.  Lawmakers decided that students under the age of 15 must leave their cellphones at home, or at least have them turned off during the school day.   The ban also includes the use of tablets, computers, and other internet-connected devices as well. There are exceptions in place for students with disabilities and for the educational use of devices in the classroom. High schools have the option to go with this or not.   Huawei 7-inch device  Huawei is introducing a new phone in its Honor Note series, and this model is coming with the line’s biggest screen yet: just a little under seven inches.   It comes with either 6GB or 8GB of RAM, and storage of 64GB or 128GB. Its huge AMOLED screen has a 1080 x 2220 resolution, putting it a bit over 1080p. The phone has a massive 5,000mAh battery to match its extra-large screen.  Huawei is launching the Honor Note 10 in China for about $410 USD.    Google and our digital well-being  Google is planning to release some new features to help us to see and manage the time we spend on our devices. By doing this, the company hopes that we can better understand our habits, so that we can control the demands that technology places on us in using up our attention all with the aim to help us focus on what matters the most.      

Amazon’s facial recognition system failed to recognize over 5% of US Congress members. Exactly what dirt your digital assistant has on you? And you have been looking at your cards in your wallet the wrong way.  Show Notes  Digital assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant learn more about you by listening and recording conversations you have with them to learn your tone of voice, prompts, and requests.   It is common for smart speakers to pick up a random part of your conversation if you use the wake word - like Alexa or Hey Google when talking. If you changed the trigger to a more common everyday word, then you are in a bad position, because whenever you use that word, your speaker will listen and record.  Check your recordings on Amazon Alexa device:  Go to you Alexa app, Tap the dropdown icon on the top left side of the screen to open the menu options. Click on the Settings menu, then find History.  If you would like to delete a recording in your Alexa history, you can do so individually or in bulk by going to the Amazon’s Manage Your Content and Devices page to remove all. By doing this, Amazon warns that it may reduce your Alexa experience.  For Google Assistant:  On web browser: Log in to your Google account via a web browser. Click your profile picture in the top right, click on “Google Account,” and afterward you’ll be taken to an overview page. Look for the “Personal info & privacy” column centered in the overview page, then click on “Manage your Google activity.” Once you’re there, scroll down until you reach the “Review activity” section — this is what you’re looking for — and click on the “Go to my activity” link.  On your phone: Log in to your Google account in the browser and tap the following: your profile picture > Manage Accounts > Google Activity Controls > Manage Activity. You’ll be greeted by a full list of all queries that can be sorted and deleted.  Amazon’s Facial Recognition System   Here is the link to Episode 134 that we did on Facial scans at airports  - http://itincanadaonline.ca/index.php/security/2416-facial-scans-are-coming-to-airports-are-we-ready-for-it   Recently, The American Civil Liberties Union tested Amazon’s facial recognition system — and the results were not good. During the test the faces of all 535 members of Congress were scanned against 25,000 public mugshots, using Amazon’s open Rekognition API. None of the members of Congress were in the mugshot lineup, but Amazon’s system generated 28 false matches, a finding that has raised some serious concerns about Rekognition’s use by police.   Cards  When handling your card - like handing it over to a cashier, swiping it to make contactless payments, tapping at a machine or inserting it into an ATM - we all do this vertically.   The vast majority of credit and debit cards today are designed in landscape, which is an outdated usage model.   It's time that we have cards in portrait mode. This the UK’s Starling Bank is coming out with - portrait card design.  There are others as well, like Virgin America that does a full-on portrait credit card, and CapitalOne has a range of vertical credit cards. A few other banks and payment services have been experimenting with the portrait design over the years. 

Facebook and Instagram are changing their policy to crack down on underage children on their network. And Nike has opened another experimental store to provide a better and more personalized service to customers.   Show Notes  Nike has rolled out another of its retail-of-the-future experiments in opening a concept store with the aim to lure the digital shopper with personal services and experiences.    Though its interaction with customers, Nike will know what people are buying and not buying. This will help the company to know what to keep in stock.   Google Maps  Google Maps recently added a neat new feature to the web version, one that most of us likely missed because it’s the kind of smart feature you expect your mobile device to deliver.   Google Maps on the web can now notify you when it’s time to leave, in order to make sure you arrive at your destination on time. Of course, this is already on the mobile version.    A second option was added to the Notifications toggles in Google Maps’ settings called “Time to leave.” Just make sure you activate the feature by going to the Notifications toggles inside the side menu.   A crackdown on those below the age of 13  Facebook and Instagram are now looking to be more proactive and lock the accounts of users that they suspect are below the age of 13.   Before, their policy was to only investigate accounts if they were reported specifically for being potentially underage. But Facebook now confirmed that an “operational” change to its policy to lock the accounts of any underage user they come across. Once locked and if they are above 13, then Facebook will require the users to provide proof that they’re over 13, such as a government-issued photo ID, to get back access.

Do you have a cracked smartphone screen and would like to replace it with a third-party one? Not such a good idea because criminals can see what you are touching on your phone. And a cool feature in Google Pay that makes it easier for you to get back money from your friends when you're out for a bite.    Show Notes  A university in Israel has shown that it's possible to impersonate a user by tracking touch movements on smartphones with compromised third-party touchscreens. Some of these third-party screens have malicious code embedded in them.   Whether you're sending emails, doing a financial transaction or even playing games, the codes are capturing your touches that can be used against you.  The research pointed out that "if an attacker can understand the context of certain events, he can use the information to create a more effective customized attack."  Samsung Family Hub  Samsung has launched its latest Family Hub refrigerator that integrates with its voice assistant - Bixby.  The Family Hub uses the Internet of Things (IoT) technology, which is big for Samsung.   This new Family Hub refrigerator which is available in Singapore, comes with a food management service feature that helps manage the expiry date of groceries through voice and provides optimum recipes. It also provides personal weather and schedule-related information to family members using consumer recognition service.    It also functions as a family communication platform where family members can share event information, photos, and memos.  Google Pay  Earlier this year, Google has brought its two existing online payment and transaction services, Google Pay Send and Google Wallet, under a single platform called Google Pay, and to make it even stronger, Google has been adding dynamic features with a series of new updates.   By sending or requesting money through Google Pay Send, users can now do so directly from the Google Pay app, which is a fairly simple process.  Google Pay can also store mobile tickets and boarding passes purchased on a new tab called Passes, which will also store gift cards.

In this episode, as Netflix, the world’s leading video streaming continues to dominate, the company is looking to add a new plan for subscribers and it is going to be more expensive. Also, crypto-jacking, you could be mining cryptocurrency for criminals.  Show Notes:  Netflix is the world's leading internet entertainment service with over 120 million subscribers in over 190 countries, enjoying more than 140 million hours of TV shows and movies per day.   Today, Netflix offers three packages - Basic, Standard, and Premium. Now the company is looking at adding a fourth option - Ultra.  Netflix is testing out a new “Ultra” subscription that would up the monthly price even higher than the current premium option $13.99.  It looks like the Ultra plan would cost $16.99 where you can have four simultaneous 4K streams at once. For those with a premium plan, you know that four streams are already offered on the Premium plan.   Crypto-jacking   Criminals can infect devices like smart fridges with untraceable cryptocurrency mining malware. The software uses the smart device’s computing power to mine digital currency, for the third party.  Cryptocurrency mining makes money. How much money a user can make mining is the amount of computing power they have, so computing power has value. Criminals are using computing power from wherever they can sneak in the malware that does so. This is the new kind of hijacking.  Robots without the need for cameras  Most of the robots that were built need cameras to help them function. MIT is trying remove cameras and it seems like they are succeeding. Their Cheetah 3 robot doesn’t need cameras to it see to run up a set of stairs.  This is a huge development in robotics that can help in many areas to make life a little easier, especially in cases where it is very dangerous for human to go. 

Hypersonic jet to fly from New York to London in two hours         In this episode, a new hypersonic passenger jet that could fly across the Atlantic in two hours. And if you use Samsung Messages app, you may want to start deleting your embarrassing photos.  Show Notes:  Boeing has revealed a new concept, a hypersonic jet that could fly passengers from New York to London in just two hours.   The chief scientist of hypersonics at Boeing, said a hypersonic passenger vehicle could be airborne in 20 to 30 years and eventually enter use as a jet for global travel. Boeing is considering both commercial and military applications.  Samsung Messages app  If you have a Samsung phone and use the default Samsung Messages app for all your texting needs, you may want to check your gallery to make sure you don't have any embarrassing photos in it.   The reason why I am telling you this is - there is a bug is causing Samsung Messages to randomly send pictures to contacts without leaving any sort of evidence.  Beauty Products Shopping  In shopping online today, most of our decisions are based on technology and how tech is being used to push the products and services to us.   A recent study by Automat, a leader in AI-driven Conversational Marketing, shows consumer shopping experiences and attitudes regarding beauty purchases, while exploring the extent to which technology influences those purchases, and identifies areas of unmet needs that messaging experiences can help address.   This study was set up as part of the focus on the beauty industry.    Some of the finding with you.   • 70 per cent of beauty consumers are overwhelmed by too many beauty product choices and 63 per cent of consumers are confused by beauty product claims.  • As a result, over two-thirds of beauty consumers perform extensive online research before making purchases. The most common purchase behavior is researching online and purchasing in a store.  • Approximately two-thirds of consumers prefer to be left alone while shopping. Surprisingly, 71 per cent of consumers use their mobile phones to do additional online research while standing at the shelf. As such, online and offline purchase behavior becomes deeply intertwined.  • Nearly half (49 per cent) of all respondents said that they would definitely use or likely use a virtual beauty advisor when shopping for beauty products whether online or offline.  • Virtual beauty advisors especially appeal to the young, digitally-engaged, frequent beauty purchasers that beauty brands want to reach the most as part of their digital strategies  In this study over 1,500 surveys were completed by U.S. female beauty consumers between the ages of 18 and 65 with a household income over $40,000, who are mobile phone users and have Facebook Messenger installed on their phones, and who made a beauty product purchase in the last three months.     

Facial scan is coming to airports. Are we ready for it?  In this episode, Marcello Sukhdeo talks about the subject of facial scan at airports. If you are flying to Florida in the next little while you might be subjected to a facial scan. Is this technology ripe and ready for this type of large scale use?    Show Notes  Orlando International Airport, the busiest airport in Florida where about 6 million people pass through every year is looking to become the first airport in the US to use facial scan of passengers on all arriving and departing international flights, including U.S. citizens.  This is the first airport that will try to scan all passengers. There are some airports like in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, New York and Washington which are already using face scans for some departing international flights, but they don't involve all international travelers at the airports. In the case with Orlando, this program will be expanded to include all passengers.   The question of privacy comes into play here.   Prime Wardrobe  Amazon is looking to expand in clothing. This is an interesting model that Amazon is trying out where they are looking to mimic the experience you get when you go to a physical store.  YouTube Music service  YouTube launched its YouTube Music and YouTube Premium services.   It comes with free and paid options, mobile app and a new desktop interface.       

Apple is looking to close the backdoor to your iPhone In this episode, Marcell Sukhdeo talks about how Apple is working on closing the loophole that law enforcement agencies use to access iPhones. And Microsoft is joining the action to bring us no checkout shopping experience. Show Notes When Amazon Go was first announced back in 2016, some people were saying that this could be the future of retail shopping. A time when physical check out through a line up at a store will be replaced with a walk in, pick up and walk out experience. Now it seems like another major company wants to get into this direction. Sources have confirmed that Microsoft is in talks with Walmart about a potential collaboration of coming out with its own brand of checkout-free technology. Apple and the backdoor Over the years Apple has positioned the iPhone as a secure device that only its owner can open. That of course has led to battles with law enforcement officials who want to access the phones of individuals who are deemed a threat. Apple is closing the technological loophole that let authorities hack into iPhones. This has angered police and other officials and have started a debate over whether the government has a right to get into the personal devices. Uber and drunk passengers Uber has filed an application for a patent to use AI that will tell whether a passenger is drunk. AI will be used to separate sober passengers from drunk ones. According to the application, the technology would be used to spot "uncharacteristic user activity," including passenger location, number of typos entered into the mobile app and even the angle the smartphone is being held.

  In this episode, Marcello Sukhdeo talks about a new app that allows Alexa on Apple Watch, also, Encyclopedia Britannica has released a new free Chrome extension that will give you factual, relevant information in the search engine sidebar. And a new display technology from Intel that will result in over 24 hours battery life for laptops.   Show Notes  Intel has found a way to extend battery life by hours using a new type of display. The result is a laptop that can run for up to 28 hours between charges.  Intel is working with a Low Power Display Technology (LPDT), which allows for the creation of a one-watt panel manufactured by Sharp and Innolux.   The laptop that Intel used in these tests had an LPDT display running on a 15-watt Core i7 processor, 8GB of RAM, an Intel 600p SSD, UHD Graphics 620.   Britannica Insights  The Encyclopedia Britannica is looking to regain its relevance by attaching itself to Google search results. This is to correct the inaccurate information that the Encyclopedia Britannica believes exists on the Internet.  The new search product, “Britannica Insights,” is a Chrome extension that will take information from the encyclopedia and populate it on the sidebar “snippet” of a Google search results page.   Britannica Insights works with major search engines – Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others – on the Chrome browser.  Alexa Assistant on Apple Watch  Voice in a Can is an app that lets you interact with Alexa on an Apple Watch. It’s a standalone Apple Watch app, which means you don’t need to tether to an iPhone to use Alexa, and all you need is a Wi-Fi signal or LTE if you have that version of the Apple Watch.  

In this episode, Marcello Sukhdeo talks about how a Tesla car hits a parked police vehicle and the driver claimed it was in autopilot mode. And it looks like we may be replacing our cracked, peeled, rusting license plates with digital license plates, on our cars, in the near future.     Show Notes    There is yet another case where a car driving in "autopilot" mode crashed recently. This time it's Tesla's Model S. The car crashed into an unoccupied, parked police vehicle in Laguna Beach, California. The driver told investigators the Tesla was in “Autopilot” mode at the time.    Photos of the crash scene show extensive damage to the front end of the Tesla and the rear side of the police vehicle.    Autopilot is a semi-autonomous technology that Tesla says is a form of advanced cruise control. So, the car was in advanced cruise control mode when it hit the parked police car.    Digital license plates    With everything going digital these days, it would be so cool to have a digital license plate. That is what California governor Jerry Brown wanted to get going five years ago when he signed a legislation authorizing digital license plates to be sold in California. Now finally, these new digital display boards are hitting the streets.    Those who are opting to buy the digital plates can register their vehicles electronically and get rid of the need to physically place stickers on their license plates each year. This of course would save money for the state.     The digital plates come with their own computer chips, batteries, and wireless communication systems. They also may be able to display personal messages — if the DMV decides to allow that.    Dealerships are expected to sell the plates for $699, not including installation costs. Users also must pay a monthly fee of about $7.     YouTube and Teens    With the fall out with Facebook, teens are more interested than ever in YouTube.      A recent study conducted by Pew Research Center, reveals that 85 per cent of teenagers (ages 13–17) say they use the platform. Closely behind are Instagram (72 per cent) and Snapchat (69 per cent).  These findings indicate an ongoing trend among teenagers of moving away from platforms like Facebook in recent years. A 2015 report pointed to 71 per cent of teens who reported themselves as Facebook users; today, that number is around 51 per cent.     GrandPad    This is a neat device that can be used to keep in touch with your parents. Through a monthly subscription they can get unlimited 4G LTE data, ad-free unlimited music. It comes with customizable security options, mobile access for caregivers and family and more.     Stay safe in the technology WRLWND. 

In this episode, Marcello Sukhdeo talks about how Apple now provides a way for you to download a copy of all the data the company has on you. Also, you can now whistle your way into a song through a new Facebook AI, and Alexa has recorded a woman’s private conversation and sent it to a random contact. Show Notes: Companies, governments, businesses are all collecting data from us. It would be nice to know what these organizations have on us. What sort of data does Microsoft or Google have about me, about you?  Well, Apple has made it very easy for you to know exactly that.  The company is giving users the opportunity to download a copy of all the data it has collected from them. This includes information gathered by the App Store and iTunes, information based on your Apple ID account, device information, online and retail store activity, AppleCare support history, and more. The tool is part of Apple’s new Data and Privacy website, which also allows users to correct any information Apple holds about them, and deactivate their account entirely.  The new Data and Privacy website, which can be found at privacy.apple.com, is a one-stop shop for users who want to find out what Apple knows about them and you have the option of downloading that data. Whistling your way to the next Hit with Facebook AI Facebook AI Research has developed an AI that can convert music in one style or genre into virtually any other. Instead of merely trying to repeat notes or style-specific traits, the approach uses unsupervised training to teach a neural network how to create similar noises all on its own. Facebook's system even prevents the AI from merely memorizing the audio signal by purposefully distorting the input. Bad Alexa! As a smart home speaker owner, your worst nightmare is having your private message recorded AND sent to someone without your knowledge. Well, that turned out to be a real-life nightmare for a woman in Portland. Her Amazon Echo recorded an audio clip of her conversation and sent it to a person on her contact list. The woman said she was alerted to the bug when the person who received the audio clip called to let her know that she has been hacked. The person who received the message was one of her husband’s employees. By looking at the log, Amazon was able to confirm that what the woman said was entirely accurate. It happened the way she related. The company is looking to fix this.

  In this episode, Google is getting closer to making its assistant sound more human, but can they get to the point where AI can react to us on an emotional level? Also, what if every company is like Amazon where they can fulfill customer orders within two days? That would be cool. And if you are learning to play the guitar, you can Riffstation Pro app for free. I will tell you how.  Google Duplex  If you have not heard by now, Google’s updated virtual assistant can now make phone calls on your behalf to schedule appointments and make reservations.   We’re entering an age when conversations with computers are reaching a whole new level – better quality and reliability. But there is still lots of room for improvement, as we’ve heard in the two clips I played, the technology is getting better, Yet, I still believe that AI’s capability to interact with humans on a deeper level has a long way to go. For example, in having a normal conversation with an AI and to have that AI recognize the mood of the other person is not here yet.   Two-day shipping   What would it be like, if every company is like Amazon where they can fulfill customer orders within two days? Wouldn’t that be awesome? You can order anything online and within 48 hours the item is waiting for you at home.   Business around the world with the exception of Amazon are facing pressure to deliver on time and in full, but don’t have the necessary tools to execute contracts, take payments efficiently, and track deliveries, ensuring that goods arrive when they should.  There is a platform that is called ‘Movement Ecosystem’ (“MOVA), where people can go and utilize performance tools, and pull monthly management reports, where they can see everything that moves and what the real performance was. They can pinpoint and track where the faults were, whether it’s the result of an employee’s doing, or something back at the warehouse.  Riffstation   If you are an accomplished guitarist or just trying to learn playing the guitar like me, then you will be excited to know that Riffstation is offering its desktop app, for Mac and Windows for free. This app normally cost $35.00.   Riffstation will no longer be available on the web or mobile devices. But they are hoping to bring a similar service back in the future.   If you would like to get the Pro copy of this app, you can do so by going to Riffstattion.com.  

128 | Hackers can get into your hotel room with you knowing  Did you know that hackers can break into your hotel room without your knowledge? I will let you know how. Google has released an update to Gmail and from what it looks like, it’s going after Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft is sending an e-waste recycler to jail for ‘pirating’ Windows.  Show Notes  Did you know that hackers have been able to sneak in-and-out of hotel rooms for years now? It is very possible that a hacker may have entered the room you have stayed at during your last trip without you knowing.  Using “off-the-shelf” hardware items, hackers can convert ordinary room cards into master keys.  Researchers from F-Secure, that's a cybersecurity firm in Finland, stumbled upon the flaw about a year ago and have been working with the largest lock manufacturer in the world to help fix it.  They’ve already managed to create a software update that would effectively resolve the issue, but it will be several weeks before it’s fully up and running.  Google is going after Outlook   Google unveiled a new Gmail design this week, giving its free email service some new features and a fresh look. Regular Gmail users can now enjoy the new design, smart replies, and email snooze features.    Also, Google is adding some smart business-focused features designed to improve productivity, security, and manage the sharing of emails. These are the types of features that you'd usually find in Microsoft’s Outlook app. Of course, Microsoft dominates the workplace space, but Google through its G Suite is working to change that.    Microsoft is sending an e-waste recycler to jail for ‘pirating’ Windows  Eric Lundgren, the founder of the first electronic hybrid recycling facility in the United States and an innovator in the field of recycling e-waste, was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison over restore disks for Windows computer.  His company uses old mobile phones, computers and other electronics to build new devices. Eric has long been an advocate of recycling electronics, and now he's going to jail for it.   

127 | AI that can create Flintstones and a robot to assemble your furniture    Remember the Flintstones, there is an AI that can create the 'Flintstones' cartoons from text descriptions. The days of putting together a new piece of furniture from IKEA could be gone soon, a robot can do that for us instead. And what exactly is blockchain? I will share some information on this technology that is growing rapidly across industries.    Show Notes    Looking through pages of instructions and sorting through a bag of screws and bolts to assemble a furniture may soon be a thing of the past. Scientists have spent three years programming a robot - made of arms, grippers, sensors and 3D cameras - which assembled the frame of an IKEA dining chair in around 20 minutes.    They say it may not be long before such robots can fully assemble a piece of furniture from a manual, verbal instruction or by just looking at an image of the finished item.    What exactly is blockchain?     We've been hearing a lot about blockchain and bitcoins and it is a little to grasp what it is exactly. So, I will try to share some information with you, hopefully at the end of this show you will have a better understanding of blockchain.     AI and Flintstones    It can take such a long time to animate cartoons. But what if you could ask computers to do some of the heavy lifting? They just might.     Researchers have produced an AI system, called Craft, that automatically produces The Flintstones scenes based on text descriptions.     The team trained Craft to recognize elements from the classic cartoon by feeding it more than 25,000 three-second clips, each of which included descriptions of who was in the scene and what was happening. From there, the AI only needed a line or two referencing a scene to stitch together characters, backgrounds and props.     

Phone addiction is causing loneliness, anxiety and depression in many, and has been considered in a new study as substance abuse. Some phone vendors are telling Android users that they have the latest security updates while it’s not so. And in search of the perfect voice for virtual personal assistants. All of this on WRLWND Radio for this week. Show Notes In a new study published in NeuroRegulation, argues that overuse of smart phones is just like any other type of substance abuse. The study pointed out that, “behavioral addiction of smartphone use begins forming neurological connections in the brain in ways similar to how opioid addiction is experienced by people taking Oxycontin for pain relief.” Android updates A German security firm found that many Android phone vendors fail to make patches available to their users, or delay their release for months; they sometimes also tell users their phone's firmware is fully up to date, even while they've secretly skipped patches. The company tested the firmware of 1,200 phones, from more than a dozen phone manufacturers, for every Android patch released in 2017. The devices were made by Google itself as well as major Android phone makers like Samsung, Motorola, and HTC, and lesser-known Chinese-owned companies like ZTE and TCL. Their testing found that other than Google's own flagship phones like the Pixel and Pixel 2, even top-tier phone vendors sometimes claimed to have patches installed that they actually lacked. Virtual Assistant Voice IT research firm Gartner predicts that many touch-required tasks on mobile apps will become voice activated within the next several years. So, the voice feature on our devices are becoming more common these days. In the book Wired for Speech: How Voice Activates and Advances the Human-Computer Relationship, the authors Clifford Nass and Scott Brave explored the relationships among technology, gender and authority. According to their research, men like a male computer voice more than a female computer voice. Women, like a female voice more than a male one.

  Google workers are calling on the company to stop developing AI for warfare, Microsoft is adding ransomware protection and file restore to its OneDrive cloud storage and is video games addiction a disease? The WHO says, yes!   Show Notes: Microsoft is marketing the Files Restore feature as a good way to protect against ransomware attacks that lock files on a local PC, and often try to delete copies that are stored in synced folders – replicating those changes in the cloud. We’ve seen a number of these attacks recently, and victims have been forced to pay money to try and get their files back.   If OneDrive detects mass deletion of cloud files, Microsoft will alert users through an email or mobile / desktop notification and a recovery process will let you quickly restore to a time before the ransomware attack. Google  Thousands of Google employees have signed a letter to CEO Sundar Pichai protesting the company's work assisting the US Department of Defense to develop computer vision AI.  The employees in the letter wrote that Google is "already struggling to keep the public's trust" due to fears about biased and weaponized AI.  The employees are trying to make the point that Google will now be joining defence companies like Raytheon, and General Dynamics. Other tech companies like Microsoft and Amazon, are also participating in defence related technologies so why can’t Google be involved?    Video games In the June update of its International Classification of Diseases, the WHO will include "gaming disorder". This is a pattern of behavior according to the WHO that is "characterized by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences."  A study that was done in Ontario in 2016 estimated that 13 per cent of Ontario students — or almost 123,000 children — have experienced symptoms of a "video gaming problem," which was up from nine per cent in 2007. About one in five boys reported having "problematic symptoms" linked to their video gaming.  We want to hear from you! Thanks for taking the time to join us on today’s show. I would love to hear from you, please send me an email at marcello@promotivemedia.ca. We may even read your email on the show, you never know.   From the rest of the team at WRLWND Radio, this is Marcello Sukhdeo, in light of the news we’ve covered today, saying, stay safe in the technology WRLWND.    

MyFitnessPal and Saks data breaches and the Facebook fiasco  We have been hit by a wave of data breaches of recent. Should we keep trusting companies with our personal data? And the Facebook fiasco, it’s not about security, it’s a privacy breach that could spell the doom of social media giant.   Show Notes  Saks data breach   A few days ago, three Canadian locations of department store Saks, were exposed to the data breach. This was revealed by Saks parent company, Hudson's Bay.   Three Canadian Saks locations, all in Ontario, were exposed to the breach:  Sherway Gardens in Toronto.  Bramalea City Centre in Brampton.  Pickering Town Centre.  Hudson Bay itself, at the time of recording this podcast, hasn't said whether any of its Canadian locations were affected. It says the investigation is ongoing, but there's no indication the breach affected the company's digital platforms or Hudson's Bay and Home Outfitters stores.  The company is asking clients to review their account statements to see if there have been activity or transactions they don't recognize and that they will notify customers affected by the breach as quickly as possible and will offer free identity protection services once they learn more about the breach.  MyFitnessPal breach  There has been another massive data breach, over 150 million My Fitness Pal accounts were compromised.   Under Armour, the company that owns MyFitnessPal, quickly sent out notifications to its users and once the breach was discovered, so they deserve some credit for how they responded unlike the other examples we have seen over the last few year and recently.   In addition to notifying all MyFitnessPal users, the company has provided information about how users can protect their data, and asking that all users to change their passwords. They are also working with law enforcement to investigate and monitor for suspicious activity, and exploring enhancements to help detect and prevent similar unauthorized access in the future.  Facebook   Mark Zuckerberg has responded to the current backlash that Facebook is getting regarding the way data collected by Facebook was used. The shortened version of what he said, was, “We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can't, then, we don't deserve to serve you.”   That is not right. That’s not the issue here.   The Cambridge Analytica scandal is not about a failure to protect users’ data; it is a failure to protect the privacy of users’ data. There is a difference there. So, let me repeat, is not about a failure to protect users’ data; it is a failure to protect the privacy of users’ data.    

In this episode, Uber self-driving car killed a woman in Arizona recently, was that accident avoidable? There are many calls coming from different quarters to quite Facebook and streaming is taking over the music industry, so what's next?   Show Notes   Last Sunday, in the city of Tempe, Arizona, Elaine Herzberg who was 49 years old, attempted to cross a busy road. She was pushing a bicycle across the road about 100 meters from the closest pedestrian crosswalk when she was hit by a vehicle, which was travelling at 38 miles per hour in a 35 mile-per-hour zone.   The Police Chief of Tempe said the crash may have been unavoidable.  One analyst who follows autonomous vehicles, said laser and radar systems can see in the dark much better than humans or cameras and that the victim was well within the range.  He said, “It absolutely should have been able to pick her up. From what I see in the video it sure looks like the car is at fault, not the pedestrian.”   Delete Facebook  How often do you post on Facebook? A lot of people are calling for others to quit Facebook. Even the hashtag #DeleteFacebook is trending.    Many are wondering if it is time to say goodbye to Facebook.  At its best, Facebook is a nice way to stay in touch with friends around the world, in business to learn what’s important to the people we serve and to share the work we’re doing. But there’s a concern to all of this. The very data that make it work so well, have power, power that can be used for good or evil.    And because of this, many are now waking up to the concerns over privacy and how our personal information is being shared.   Streaming Music  Over the years we have seen the evolution of the way music is consumed. From cassettes to cds, then onto digital downloads. For a little while now streaming is the main way of getting our music.   Streaming music is taking over the music industry, and that can be seen with digital download sales which have fallen so much in the past few years that they’re now smaller than sales of CDs, vinyl, and other physical media.   A recent report shows that digital downloads fell to $1.3 billion last year, whereas physical media, while also falling, only declined to $1.5 billion.

In this episode, Elon Musk says AI threat greater than nuclear warheads. Social media companies may have to disclose how they target us with ads. And are you passionate about your Apple Watch, the CFO of Fitbit has never met anyone who is? Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, SpaceX and PayPal, is sounding the alarm of AI. He has once again warned, quite recently, against the dangers of developing artificial intelligence and the need for its regulation  “Experts think they know more than they do,” he said, when asked why he disagreed with how many are viewing AI technology in a positive light. “They are much less smart than they think they are and this tends to plague smart people – they don’t like the idea that a machine can be smarter than them. "It’s the wishful thinking of the situation. It scares the hell out of me. It is capable of vastly more than anyone know and the rate of improvement is exponential.” "AI is much greater danger than nuclear warheads, so why do we have no regulatory insight? It’s insane." We need to have regulations to govern AI technology. Disclosure of how and why we are targeted by ads on social media Facebook and Twitter may be forced to reveal detailed information about how and why users were targeted for political ads, according to Elizabeth Denham, the information commissioner in the UK  What she is trying to do is bring transparency in political campaigning. Some are even concerned that the tools being used by social media companies are being used to determine how to microtarget someone. Apple Watch Apple has been constantly getting the praises and recommendations as a brand consumers feel passionate about, but Fitbit Chief Financial Officer Bill Zerella doesn’t think that applies to the Apple Watch. Speaking at a conference recently, he said that, “I have yet to meet anyone who owns an Apple Watch who’s passionate about the product.” The latest IDC data suggests that Apple sold more wearables than any rival last quarter, thanks to strong demand for the Apple Watch 3. Fitbit, meanwhile, is ramping up its efforts to compete with Apple by introducing the new Versa smartwatch. The new Fitbit wearable looks similar to the Apple Watch, and offers music playback and other capabilities at a price under $200 US. Last year, the company also introduced its $300 Fitbit Ionic, its first stab at an Apple Watch-style device, complete with GPS. For comments, please send me an email: marcello@promotivemedia.ca.   Looking forward to hearing from you.

In this episode, have you ever stopped to think who is the author of the news you're reading, is it a human or an AI? And with the race to driverless cars heating up, there are some ethical and moral questions that need to be answered, like unemployment and who should be held responsible for an accident. In the not so distant future, we will receive the news in a version that is more suitable to our liking, written entirely by artificial intelligence.  One may argue that journalists will still be around. And that's true, but journalists might still report on events, but it will be AI that will take these inputs, inject data from its vast historical data and formulate a multitude of different themes, each making different arguments and coming to different conclusions. Then, using data about readers' interests learned from their social media, online shopping and browsing history, AI will present them with the version of the news they would like to read.  Driverless cars At Mobile World Congress, where the top companies in mobile normally meet to showcase their latest line of phones, it is worthwhile to note that it is now becoming a place where executives from the car industry are showing up in large numbers. Given the growth of technology and how that is being integrated into cars, carmakers have no choice but to stay with the pack or risk being left behind. That is why more and more executives from the car industry are making their way to events like Mobile World Congress and other tech conferences.  Regarding moral concerns: The first issue is unemployment caused by a disruptive technology that could put millions of truck and taxi drivers out of work; the second, who will be held responsible when things go wrong. False News  According to a new study examining the flow of stories on Twitter, people, prefer false news. As a result, false news travels faster, farther and deeper through the social network than true news. The researchers, from the MIT, found that those patterns applied to every subject they studied, not only politics and urban legends but also business, science and technology. False claims were 70 percent more likely than the truth to be shared on Twitter. True stories were rarely retweeted by more than 1,000 people, but the top 1 percent of false stories were routinely shared by 1,000 to 100,000 people. And it took true stories about six times as long as false ones to reach 1,500 people. Researchers identified more than 80,000 posts on Twitter that contained false claims and stories. Combined, those posts were retweeted millions of times.

A software to identifying gang related crimes faster, and Equifax is back in the news In this episode, a new software that can help police identify gang crimes faster. Are you the master or slave of your phone? Marcello Sukhdeo shares some tips on how to become the master, and Equifax confirmed another 2.4 million records were breached and not previously reported. Show Notes: A new algorithm is being tried which automates the process of identifying gang crimes. But this has come under some criticism where scientists have warned that far from reducing gang violence, this program could do the opposite by eroding trust in communities, or it could brand innocent people as gang members. For years, scientists have been using computer algorithms to map criminal networks, or to guess where and when future crimes might take place, a practice known as predictive policing. But little work has been done on labeling past crimes as gang-related. In this new work, researchers developed a system that can identify a crime as gang-related based on only four pieces of information: the primary weapon, the number of suspects, and the neighborhood and location where the crime took place. Slave or Master? Samsung’s head of mobile in the UK said: “We need to return to being the masters of our technology and stop being slaves to our phones.” Many studies have shown that both the young and old alike are becoming increasingly addicted to smartphones, social media and the constant need for messaging. “Let’s not spend our life looking at these devices. You look around and everyone is doing it, leaning over [their] phones. Let’s make the device be the slave and we’ll be the master - let’s turn the roles completely on their head.” Now the way that he says this can be done is leverage their vast portfolio of devices, from fridges to cookers, vacuums and TVs, as well as its SmartThings, Internet of Things platform, to shift the game towards a more intelligent, connected future that frees us from phone obsession. Equifax is back in the news Last month, reports surfaced that more information than previously thought may have been exposed in Equifax's massive data breach and this week, the has company confirmed it. Along with the 145.5 million individuals already reported to have been affected by the breach, Equifax says another 2.4 million were as well. Now to play this down, the interim CEO of Equifax said that: "This is not about newly discovered stolen data. It's about sifting through the previously identified stolen data, analyzing other information in our databases that was not taken by the attackers and making connections that enabled us to identify additional individuals."

A new algorithm that can predict heart disease by looking at your eyes    In this episode, a new AI algorithm from Google that can predict heart disease by looking at your eyes. How to avoid getting your phone number ported without your permission and a smart jacket named Mercury that can keep you warm during the winter.    Show Notes:    T-Mobile has recently warned its customers about "port-out scams," This is a type of scam by hackers to get your phone number, then transfer it to another carrier, and finally use it to access your bank account.    These scams aren't necessarily limited to T-Mobile and can affect other carriers as well.     How can you protect yourself? For a T-Mobile customer, you can enable port validation, which requires the creation of a 6- to 15-digit passcode.     In Canada, providers also give the ability to set up a PIN on your account. To port out, you need your phone number, account number and PIN. If you forget your PIN, the carriers can reset it for you.    Google's new AI algorithm    Cardiovascular diseases are the number one cause of death globally. An estimated 17.7 million people died from cardiovascular diseases in 2015, representing 31 per cent of all global deaths.     In the US, about 630,000 Americans die from heart disease each year, that's one in every four deaths.     In Canada, about one in 12 (or 2.4 million) Canadian adults age 20 and over live with diagnosed heart disease;  Every hour, about 12 Canadian adults age 20 and over with diagnosed heart disease die.    Scientists from Google have discovered a new way to assess a person's risk of heart disease using machine learning. By analyzing scans of the back of a patient's eye, the company's software is able to accurately deduce data, including an individual's age, blood pressure, and whether or not they smoke. This can then be used to predict their risk of suffering a major cardiac event - such as a heart attack - with roughly the same accuracy as current leading methods.    Mercury Smart Jacket    A new smart jacket from the company Ministry of Supply provides a personalized climate control heated jacket that adjusts its temperature to match the user preference.     The jacket that is made from polyester and polyurethane that is waterproof, windproof and odour resistant.    At first thought, one might get the idea that this jacket is going to be heavy because of the heating elements, but that is not the case. The heating elements weight just 3.4 oz which is fairly light making it a jacket that can be used as a regular jacket.     It also uses machine learning to understand the user's preferences. The more feedback given to the jacket, the better it will get at making automatic adjustments to keep the temperature inside at the optimal level, right up to 57° C.    Check out the video: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1850124313/ministry-of-supply-the-first-intelligent-heated-ja/widget     TechBytes:    Amazon founder Jeff Bezos took to Twitter to announce that the construction of the 10,000-year clock has begun on his property in Texas. Conceived back in 1986 by American computer scientist Daniel Hills, the clock's mechanism is designed to advance far more slowly than your average timekeeping device. It will tick once a year, its century hand will move once every 100 years, and its cuckoo will emerge every millennium.    Google's latest consumer version of Chrome, version number 64, just started cleaning up messy referral links. Now, when you go to share an item, you'll no longer see a long tracking string after a link, just the primary link itself.    This feature now happens automatically when sharing links in Chrome, either by the Share menu or by copying the link and pasting it elsewhere. Even though it slices off the extra bit of the URL, this doesn't affect referral information. 

HomePod destroying furniture & FBI warns against Huawei  In this episode, Apple HomePod, if you are thinking of getting one and you have beautiful wooden floors, you may want to think twice. Facebook is reportedly using the phone numbers given for its two-factor authentication to send users unsolicited marketing messages. Also, the heads of the FBI, CIA, and NSA are calling on people not to use Huawei phones.  Show Notes  It appears that the HomePod is leaving white ring marks on wooden surfaces that are difficult to remove.  Someone tweeted that the HomePod left "etched circles" on their wooden furniture within 20 minutes of use, while others found the speaker left deeper and more obvious marks in several places and on several different types of wooden surface.  Even reviewers also noted that marks have appeared on some surfaces to varying degrees, which faded but not disappear over time.  Apple said in a support page: "It is not unusual for any speaker with a vibration-damping silicone base to leave mild marks when placed on some wooden surfaces.  "The marks can be caused by oils diffusing between the silicone base and the table surface, and will often go away after several days when the speaker is removed from the wooden surface."  The company suggests the marks can be remedied by wiping the wood down with a soft damp or dry cloth, but failing that, the surface will need to be cleaned or resurfaced.  For more on the HomePod, check out my article: http://itincanadaonline.ca/index.php/mobility/2357-apple-announces-the-release-of-homepod   Facebook  Facebook is reportedly using two-factor authentication phone numbers to spam its users with unsolicited marketing.   Someone noticed that Facebook was sending text notifications to a phone number that he registered only for receiving two-factor authentication codes. But what is more important is that he never opted to enable text message notifications.  Huawei   Huawei has been pushing their phones into North America for the past few years. In what started out as telecoms firm, Huawei is a fairly successful company creating hardware for communications infrastructure.   But the heads of six major US intelligence agencies have warned that American citizens shouldn't use products and services made by Chinese tech giants Huawei and ZTE.   The intelligence chiefs made the recommendation during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing recently. The group included the heads of the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and the director of national intelligence.  TechBytes  The age of annoying pop-up ads online may be at an end. Google has begun blocking intrusive ads by default in its Chrome browser. The move leaves the tech giant, which makes most of its revenue from advertising, in control of the kind of ads users can see. Starting on 15 February, Google will use a default ad blocker in its Chrome browser aimed at stopping ads and pop-ups which make for slow user experience. Flashing animated banner ads and auto-playing video ads with sound are set to be targeted, while Google will contact websites that breach the advertising guidelines and, ultimately, block their advertising if they fail to make changes after 30 days.    The first big smartphone launch of 2018 is edging closer, with Samsung expected to announce its hotly anticipated Samsung Galaxy S9 in just a few weeks. The S9 is the latest phone in the company's series of flagship smartphones, with high-end specs, an edge-to-edge display and a dual camera. Samsung has sent out invites to an event on February 25 at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to unveil the S9; it's latest high-end smartphone that will look to take on Apple's iPhone X.      Amazon has made the surprise decision to cut hundreds of positions, despite recent hiring sprees. Most of the layoffs said to be in the "hundreds" affect the company's Seattle headquarters, but there are expected to be more around the world as well.  

  In this episode, Marcello Sukhdeo talks about how your phone is spying on you even after you have turned off the tracking feature, what you can do to break the unhealthy habit of sitting in front of your TV after a long work day and how to avoid being skimmed at a payment terminal.  Show Notes:  Some of the things you can do to break the habit of sitting in front of your TV after a long day at work:  Read a book, Exercise, Listen to a Podcast, Spend time with a friend, Play with your kids or pets, Meet a friend for dinner or a drink, Cook or bake, Clean your living space, Go for a walk or run.  Skimming your financial information  Police in Pennsylvania have spotted a group of thieves who are placing completely camouflaged skimmers on top of credit card terminals in Aldi stores. The skimmers, look exactly like the original credit card terminals but instead, it would store debit card numbers and PINs of shoppers.  Your phone is spying on you  U.S. military officials were recently caught off guard by revelations that service members' digital fitness trackers were storing the locations of their workouts-including at or near military bases and clandestine sites around the world. But this threat is not limited to Fitbits and similar devices.   Most people expect that turning their phone's location services off disables this sort of mobile surveillance - a phone can listen in on a user's finger-typing to discover a secret password-and how simply carrying a phone in your pocket can tell data companies where you are and where you're going.  Mobile phones have so many sensors. Apps can access most of these sensors without asking for permission from the user.   Check out Security Shelf for tips and suggestions. Go to: http://itincanadaonline.ca/index.php/insights/eric-jacksch    Thanks for listening.

The call to remove Messenger Kids app and Uber Bike is coming  In this episode, the new Messenger Kids app from Facebook and why child development advocates are calling for it to be discontinued, Robots could soon be issuing speeding tickets and Uber is set to launch a new bike sharing service – the Uber Bike.   Show Notes:  We’ve heard about concern about AI taking over jobs in many different sectors, but one that we don’t often hear about is policing. It looks like police officers may be next in line to see certain tasks replaced by AI.   In January, Ford filed a US patent application for self-driving police cars that could someday replace traffic officers.  For some this may sound strange but technologies such as cameras for surveillance are already being used around the world to collect and report on certain activities.   To take this a step further, Dubai comes to mind, they have recently unveiled their first robot police officer, and plan for these AI officers to make up a quarter of their police force by 2030.  The reason being cited for this move of automating police tasks such as issuing tickets for speeding or failing to stop at a stop sign is that it can free up time for human police officers so that they can perform other duties.  Uber Bike  Uber is planning to launch a bike-sharing service soon in partnership with JUMP. JUMP is a startup that recently received the first and only permit to operate dockless bike-sharing in San Francisco.   This new service is called Uber Bike. Uber customers will be able to book JUMP bikes within the Uber app. Just to be clear, the bikes will not be brought to people. Instead, riders are responsible for going to the location of the bike.  Messenger Kids app  More than a dozen organizations and about 100 health experts sent a letter to Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying the new chat app Messenger Kids will likely damage a child's healthy development.  The letter states: "Raising children in our new digital age is difficult enough. We ask that you do not use Facebook's enormous reach and influence to make it even harder."  The experts argue that younger children are not ready to have social media accounts.  TechBytes:  Facebook’s daily active user base in the U.S. and Canada fell for the first time ever in the fourth quarter, dropping to 184 million from 185 million in the previous quarter.  Overall, Facebook’s daily active user audience was up 32 million people in Q4. But it was the smallest quarter-over-quarter increase in two years.  It looks like Microsoft will be coming out with its Edge browser for the iPad soon. The company announced that it will be coming out with its beta form this month.   It looks like the browser will be available for the iPad ahead of a version for Android tablets. Based on the iPhone test period, an official release can probably be expected in March.  Apple is working on three new iPhones for this year, one will be a big-screen model that will be cheaper than the iPhone X. The tech giant is said to have plans to develop an iPhone that comes with a 6.1-inch TFT LCD display. That device will reportedly be the cheapest of the new Apple smartphones this year and will have the design of the iPhone X, featuring an edge-to-edge display and "notch" at the top of the screen. 

Computers that work like brains In this episode, Spectre and Meltdown, what to do, computers that work like brains and you can now watch Plex in virtual reality with Google Daydream Show Notes: Meltdown and Spectre have dominated security discussions since early this year. These attacks are within the hardware and can expose confidential data. This is a different kind of vulnerability, one that is tied to hardware instead of an application or operating system. The Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities were discovered by a team of independent researchers including Google's Project Zero and are said to likely to be the worst processor bugs ever discovered. Computers that work like our brains Advances in machine learning have moved at a gallop in recent years, but the computer processors these programs run on have barely changed. To remedy this, companies have been retuning existing chip architecture to fit the demands of AI, while, an entirely new approach is taking shape: remaking processors so they work more like our brains. This is called "neuromorphic computing," and scientists from MIT said they've made significant progress in getting this new breed of chips up and running. Their research, published in the journal Nature Materials, could eventually lead to processors that run machine learning tasks with lower energy demands - up to 1,000 times less. This would enable us to give more devices AI abilities like voice and image recognition. Plex in virtual reality with Google Daydream Plex, the hugely popular media streaming app, is adding support for Google's Daydream VR. With a Daydream-compatible Android smartphone and the requisite headset, you'll be able to watch movies or TV shows from any media server linked to your Plex account in virtual reality. Plex has several interactive viewing environments you can choose from, ranging from a luxurious loft apartment to a drive-in movie theater. Once you start playing something, that content will take up "a large percentage of your visual field." TechBytes: Last June, Apple announced the HomePod. Scheduled to be released last December, the HomePod was delayed to early 2018, so that Apple can get some more time to get it ready. Now, the HomePod is finally here. The device will be available in stores on February 9 with pre-orders starting this Friday, January 26 in the US, UK and Australia. Microsoft today announced that it's dropping the price of Azure Standard Support from $300 per month to $100 per month and that it's shortening its promised response time for critical cases from two to one hour. Google Play has ever seen the highest number of app downloads in a quarter. Google Play app downloads topped 19 billion in Q4 2017, a new record. That also makes Google Play's download lead over iOS its largest ever, at 145 percent. Specifically, the downloads were driven by markets including India, Indonesia, and Brazil, which all contributed to Google Play's 10 percent yearover-year growth in total downloads as well.

The importance of paint in self-driving cars and voice-activated tech, is it worth it?  In this episode, hear about how your voice is now an important part of technology, but is it really worth it? Another challenge for self-driving cars - the colour of the paint and Amazon has narrowed its search for its second headquarters down to 20 locations.   Show Notes:  CES 2018 has come and gone and one of the things that the media is doing is sifting through the many new tech that were on displayed at the event.  With the avalanche of so many cool tech ideas and products, one of the biggest things that really stands out about technology is our VOICE.   Our voice is playing a big part in technology. We can see that with the two biggest players on the market - Amazon and Google, but there are many other companies entering the race as well.  Apple has Siri, Samsung has Bixby, Facebook just announced connected home products. This trend is expected to continue on with many more digital assistants in the next few months and years.  If you think about smart speakers, that category of tech products is heating up as well. Google, Amazon and even Apple is trying to get into the race. Once again, it is about our voice interacting with tech.   Paint and self-driving cars  We have heard about many challenges and concerns about self-driving cars. But another one that popped up recently - is about the colour of the vehicle.   As you know dark colours absorb light, and therein is a problem. This means the lasers of autonomous vehicles don’t quite bounce off—or are unable to detect cars painted in black.   So, paint makers now have to work on a new type of paint that will reflect lasers to tell that a car is infront or behind.   The world’s largest producer of vehicle coatings, PPG Industries Inc., is engineering a paint that allows the near-infrared light emitted by lasers to pass through a dark car’s exterior layer and rebound off a reflective undercoat—making it visible to sensors. They got the idea from the purple eggplant, which uses a similar trick on farms to keep cool on hot days.  Natural Cycles and unwanted pregnancies   A little while ago, we talked about the much-hyped birth control app – Natural Cycles. It’s a contraceptive app that provides women with the best time to have sexual intercourse without the need for protection.   But this app has been reported to Swedish authorities after a hospital found 37 cases of unwanted pregnancies among women relying on the app for contraception.       TechBytes:  WhatsApp today officially launched its new WhatsApp Business app in select markets, including Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, the U.K. and the U.S., ahead of its planned worldwide rollout. The addition of business profiles and new messaging tools aimed at business customers is part of the company’s broader plan to generate revenue by charging larger enterprises for advanced tools to communicate with customers on the platform now used by over a billion people worldwide.  Instagram is continuing to build out its messaging section with a new feature that’s already found in popular apps like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. From the direct messages screen, people you follow or have previously chatted with can now see when you were last using Instagram. The new “Show Activity Status” option is enabled by default inside of Instagram’s settings. You can choose to toggle it off.  Amazon has narrowed the search for its second headquarters down to 20 locations from 238 proposals across North America. The company intends to work through this list and make a final pick by the end of 2018.   The only Canadian city that made this list is Toronto. Amazon says that it plans to “dive deeper into their proposals” and evaluate whether these locations can actually support the company’s plan to add up to 50,000 jobs.

CES 2018: Laundry folding robot, bigger and rollable TVs, and Nokia sleep    In this episode, we take a look at CES 2018, the biggest tech show in the world. Hear about autonomous cars, taxis, Samsung’s Wall TV, Razar’s laptop dock and FoldiMate’s laundry folding robot and more.  Show Notes:  Fisker’s new luxury EMotion electric sedan is coming in 2020 with futuristic butterfly doors that open upwards at an angle.   Bell Helicopter is looking to bring us autonomous air taxis. Uber is partnering with Bell to help develop the project for launch sometime in the 2020s.  Samsung’s "The Wall" 4K TV is one of the largest (if not the biggest) TVs unveiled at CES 2018.   LG is showing off its eye-popping 65-inch rollable 4K OLED TV.   50-qubit quantum computer that is capable of processing more calculations and could be a game-changer for AI and machine-learning.  FoldiMate laundry folding robot  Nokia has announced the Nokia Sleep, a bed sensor that sits under your mattress to provide you with data while you sleep  Fingerprint sensor under the display.   Tech Bytes:   Scientists at Harvard University recently unveiled a metalens that has the potential to shrink the size of any device that uses a camera while at the same time improving performance.  While traditional lenses are made from glass, metalenses use a flat surface peppered with nanostructures to focus light. One problem with metalenses has been their inability to focus the full spectrum of light.  That's not the case anymore, however, as a team at Harvard's Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science have developed a metalens that can focus the entire visible spectrum of light -- including white light -- at a focal point, with high resolution.  This means that lens will be thinner making future phones and other devices much thinner.   One of America's largest retirement villages will have a fleet of self-driving taxis introduced next year.  US firm Voyage said it will start rolling out the service at The Villages, Florida which is home to 125,000 senior residents.  It said the scheme, spanning 750 miles of road, would be the "largest by area size" in the world.    Facebook is testing a new feature in its app where it will have city-specific local news, events and announcements available on its platform.  The test is currently live for a new section called 'Today In' in six US cities.    

  In this first episode of 2018, Marcello Sukhdeo talks about the world’s first ever tech nail which works as a phone, self-repairing screens can become a reality soon and a new technology from Nissan that uses signals from the driver's brain to aid in driving.   Show Notes:  According to report published in the journal Science, a research team has created a glass from a low-weight polymer that is able to re-bind cracks when pushed together by hand. This can also work at room temperature.  Nail wearable  In collaboration with inventor Sean Miles and beauty brand Nails Inc., the Mobile Nail is a new wearable that contains embedded technology that allows it to operate as a mobile "handset". The idea is that users can talk to their friends by simply raising their finger to their face.  Brain-to-Vehicle  Nissan announced some new automobile technology that goes beyond autonomous driving to make the car more responsive to the human hosts, and make driving more enjoyable. The new technology has been dubbed Brain-to-Vehicle, or B2V, technology and is said to enable vehicles to interpret signals from the driver's brain, "redefining how people interact with their cars". It's interesting to hear of Nissan's new B2V technology research as most other vehicle companies stride forward to remove the human from the driving equation.  Tech Bytes:  Spotify just announced that it has 70 million subscribers compared to Apple Music’s 30 million. Last July, Spotify had more than 60 million paid listeners and over 140 million active users.  The App Store just blew through another record, Together, iPhone and iPad users spent $300 million in the App Store on the first day of 2018 alone.   The company claims it set a new holiday record. "During the week starting on Christmas Eve, a record number of customers made purchases or downloaded apps from the App Store, spending over $890 million in that seven-day period," Apple said in a statement.  Garmin announced Thursday an Intel-based infotainment platform for automotive manufacturers to embed in their products. For customers, Garmin's infotainment offering will bring Amazon Alexa, wireless rear-seat navigation, and other conveniences while driving or riding.   Garmin is trying to take a shot at BlackBerry QNX, who has a large footprint in the infotainment space thanks to its partnerships with all the largest automotive industry chip suppliers. BlackBerry's software is in about 60 percent of the vehicles on the road.  Trying to utilize its GPS expertise, Garmin's partnership with Amazon brings Alexa integration into Garmin's infotainment offering to enable drivers to control on-board navigation, media player software, and utilize Alexa skills –without the need for a smartphone. 

2017: Top searches, breakthrough technologies and biggest breaches  In this episode, Marcello Sukhdeo talks the top searches on Google for 2017, also a look at 10 breakthrough technologies that emerged during the year and the biggest breaches of 2017 thus far.   Show Notes  It’s no secret that Google has been tracking us. Everything that we searched for on Google is being complied to see what the trends are and what we are interested in.     https://trends.google.com/trends/yis/2017/CA/    Technologies in 2017    Looking back at 2017, there were some really innovative and breakthrough technologies that made the news. These technologies all have staying power. They will affect the economy and our politics, improve medicine, or influence our culture. Some are unfolding right now; and others will take a decade or more to develop.     https://www.technologyreview.com/lists/technologies/2017/     Biggest data breaches in 2017    We’ve heard about so many data breaches during the year. As businesses continue in the path of digital transformation, some are making mistakes that others can learn from.    The year 2017 was a record one for data breaches.     https://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/biggest-data-breaches-2017     Tech Bytes:    Google has announced that it is bringing Google Assistant to older phones running Android 5.0 Lollipop and up. With this update, Google will be covering up to 80 percent of its active Android base with Google Assistant. This update has been rolled out to users with the language set to English in the US, UK, India, Australia, Canada and Singapore, as well as in Spanish in the US, Mexico and Spain. It’s also rolling out to users in Italy, Japan, Germany, Brazil and Korea."    A few months after being spotted in tests, Twitter’s tool for creating tweestorms is now an official part of the app. Threads, as the company is calling them, let you string together tweets by tapping a new plus button in the tweet composer. “A few weeks ago, we expanded our character count to make it easier for people to fit what they’re thinking into a Tweet,” the company said in a blog post. “But we know people also may want to serialize a longer story or thought, or provide ongoing commentary on an event or topic. That’s where this update to threads comes in!”    Snapchat is finally opening up so outside developers can help it offer infinite augmented reality experiences beyond those it designs in-house. Today, Snap launches the Lens Studio AR developer tool for desktops so anyone can create World Lenses that place interactive, imaginary 3D objects in your photos and videos.  Lock 

In this episode, hear about ‘open banking’ and its concerns, smart apartments could change the future of health in Canada and how AI and Machine Learning are changing our customer service experience. Show Notes: Open banking is the concept of granting third-parties to access bank data to develop innovative apps. This according to Jeff Henderson, Toronto Dominion Bank's chief information officer could be a "game changer." All but one of 100 payment executives at major banks globally said they were planning major investments in open banking by 2020, according to an online survey by consulting firm Accenture released last month. But even as Canadian financial institutions toy with the idea, they're concerned about the looming risk to consumers' personal information amid the growing threat of cyberattacks. The Accenture survey also showed that 50 per cent of respondents said that implementing the emerging concept increases risk. The issue is because of this interconnectedness, this means if one bank is attacked then that could spread throughout the entire system affecting all other banks that are connected. The smart apartment and aging in Canada An apartment located inside Ottawa’s Élisabeth Bruyère Hospital, is a living laboratory that comes equipped with technology that gathers information to help identify memory and mobility issues. This apartment looks like a typical one-bedroom senior’s apartment, but hidden inside are a series of sensors that could change the future of aging in Canada. The Sensors and Analytics for Monitoring Mobility and Memory hub which was unveiled recently is the first of its kind in Canada that will work on the development and testing of new technologies to help seniors remain in their homes longer and more safely. One of the technologies is a sensor pad on a bed that measures how a person gets out of bed — and can spot worrisome signs that could, for example, point to a stroke or other problem. There were also sensors on appliances to track how often and when the refrigerator was opened and whether the stove was left on, as well as a motion sensor that could help track movements throughout the apartment and sensors to check balance and the way a person walks. AI to change the customer experience In the world of customer service, we're experiencing the rise of chatbots, virtual digital assistants, and artificial intelligence (AI) agents, answering basic queries which allow humans to tackle more complex problems and improve the speed and efficiency of decisions. These technologies will play a much more significant role in customer interactions in the next five years. According to Juniper Research, chatbots will create a cost savings of more than $8 Billion annually by 2022, up from $20 Million in 2017. In the enterprise, 31 per cent of business executives believe virtual personal assistants will have a substantial impact on their business, more than any other AI-powered solution according to a PwC report in 2017. And 34 per cent of business executives say that the time saved that was generated from using digital assistants allows them to focus on deep thinking and creating. Tech Bytes: Apple may be getting into semiconductors in an even bigger way. The company may make its own iPhone power management chips as soon as 2018. Currently, Apple relies on supplier Dialog Semiconductor for those processors, which are important for making sure an iPhone charges correctly and doesn't consume too much energy. Amazon.com Inc announced its adoption of Kubernetes, a popular open-source technology, in a sign of increased competition in the cloud computing business, which Amazon Web Services has long dominated. Kubernetes has emerged as a standard among companies as they build more applications on public clouds, the big computer data centers that are displacing traditional customer-owned computer systems. Earlier this year companies including Microsoft Corp, Oracle Corp and IBM Corp announced their support for Kubernetes, which was originally developed by a team at Google. Samsung is looking into using palm scanning to remember forgotten passwords.  Users would take a photo of their palm using the rear camera, in order to verify their identity. If the palm lines match with previous records, then Samsung would display a password hint scattered across the lines, so that you might be able to remember what your password is.

In this show, Uber is looking to get rid of motion sickness in self driving cars, Google has been tracking Android users even with location services turned off and Budweiser is about to start space experiments aimed at brewing beer on Mars. Show Notes Uber is working on a system to prevent travel sickness in cars. This is seen as an obstacle in the adoption of self-driving vehicles. Uber describes this as a “sensory stimulation system for autonomous vehicles”. To get to the point of getting rid of motion sickness, Uber plans to use vibrating and moving seats, along with air blowing over your face and body, and also light bars and screens to prevent passengers from feeling travel sick. The aim is to focus the rider’s attention on other activities like work, socialising, reading, writing and other activities which will change the rider’s perception of motion. Google tracking Google has confirmed it has been able to track the location of Android users via the addresses of local mobile phone masts, even when location services were turned off and the sim cards removed to protect privacy. This story was reported by the Guardian. In a report by Quartz, Google’s Android system, which handles messaging services to ensure delivery of push notifications, began requesting the unique addresses of mobile phone masts (called Cell ID) at the beginning of 2017. The information was captured by the phone and routinely sent to Google by any modern Android device, even when location services were turned off and the sim card was removed. As a result Google could in theory track the location of the Android device and therefore the user, despite a reasonable expectation of privacy.  Budweiser When Budweiser announced earlier this year that it wanted to be the first company to brew beer on Mars, most commentators and almost everyone else laughed at the idea. But for Budweiser, it is no laughing matter. It just announced that it is “upholding its commitment” and moving forward with the first stage of the plan. It involves sending barley seeds to the International Space Station (ISS) this December to learn about how beer ingredients react in a microgravity environment. Budweiser is hoping that when we finally build a city on Mars, then the Martians may want a beer or two from time to time. And Budweiser wants to be there to brew it. To get the ball rolling, the famous beer brand is partnering with the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, which manages the ISS U.S. National Laboratories, and Space Tango, a payload development company that operates two commercial research facilities within the National Laboratory. Working with Budweiser’s innovation team, the group will send two barley-based experiments to the ISS as part of the next SpaceX cargo supply mission, scheduled for December 4. Tech Bytes  Following the success of its Galaxy S8 lineup this year, Samsung is now reportedly gearing up to show off the next generation of its flagship phones as soon as January 2018. The upcoming devices, codenamed Star 1 and Star 2, will feature identical designs to the S8 and S8+, along with the same 5.8-inch and 6.2-inch curved Super AMOLED displays, respectively. Samsung is slated to reveal certain details about them at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Researchers from British energy price comparison platform Power Compare have discovered that the total volume of electricity required for mining Bitcoin – the computational process that keeps transactions on the blockchain moving – now amounts to more consumption than 159 individual countries. In case you were wondering what all this electricity bills round up to, the researchers estimate the annual Bitcoin mining electricity costs currently stand at $1.5 billion. And if Bitcoin was a country, then it would rank 61st globally in terms of total electricity consumption. And finally, Toronto is the best bet for technology companies looking to set up shop in a Canadian city, according CBRE annual ranking. Ottawa took second prize on the list released Thursday, followed by Vancouver, Montreal, Waterloo Region, Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Winnipeg and London rounding off the Top 10.

Paramount Pictures is set to launch the first VR movie theater experience, Bose newest earphones to help you sleep better, and Facebook has removed the delete option for the web version of its platform. Show Notes Paramount Pictures in partnership with Bigscreen, is collaborating with several tech companies leading efforts in the virtual reality space — Oculus, Samsung, HTC and Microsoft, among others — to launch the very first VR movie theater. To kick off the VR movie theater, Paramount plans to host a showing of "Top Gun" in 3D on Dec. 3. If you have a VR headset, you can sign on to bigscreenvr.com and experience Top Gun 3D in what looks like a movie theater. Bose's newest headphones  Bose is hoping with its newest headphones that it can be able to “put an end to sleepless nights” by cancelling out barks, snores and other irritating noises while you sleep — and it’s the smallest product they’ve ever made. The earbuds connect to the “Bose Sleep” app on your phone, where you can choose which soothing sounds you prefer, out of 10 pre-loaded options. They are estimated to cost $249 retail price. Google Maps Google Maps is adding a bit more colour to the interface and making things a little easier to pick out. There are more categories than before, and the shades used are rather more pastel-like. These changes will roll out to Maps and other Google products that use it over the next few weeks. Tech Bytes Back in 2013, WhatsApp rolled push-to-talk voice messages. Now, the popular messenger is experimenting with a feature to record voice messages without having to hold that what many will consider that irritating button. WhatsApp will display a new sliding interface for the microphone button. Users will see an option to swipe up to lock into recording mode, allowing them to speak to their phones without holding the button. Vimeo has added HDR support to its video service. Users will be able to upload HDR videos in up to 8K, and the service also supports 10-bit video. Vimeo says all of its HDR videos will be available on the newest mobile devices with an HDR display, including the iPhone X and iPad Pro, and the Apple TV 4K as well. It appears that Facebook has removed the delete option on its web-based version. However, the option to delete posts is still available on the mobile website and in the iOS and Android apps. Some believe that Facebook is testing to see what kind of feedback it would get from this move or simply trying to get more users to use the mobile app version.

Blocking annoying popups in Google Chrome; keep your coffee warm for eight hours; Netflix email scam In the show today, Marcello Sukhdeo talks about a Google Chrome update that will prevent websites from taking advantage of us by opening new tabs, a smart mug that can keep your coffee warm for up to eight hours, and if you are a Netflix subscriber there is an email scam that you need to be aware of.  Show Notes:  Google Chrome will now do more to prevent those annoying ways that websites try to take advantage of us. Google is planning a new update which will prevent these websites from automatically launching new tabs and windows you never intended on opening in the first place.  According to a blog post from Google, it says: "One piece of feedback we regularly hear from users is that a page will unexpectedly navigate to a new page, for seemingly no reason.” The source of these redirects, according to Google, is often content embedded within the site itself.  Now, with the latest update, Chrome will block third-party content from launching new pages unless you're actively interacting with that content. With this update, you will get a notification to let you know the redirect has been blocked.  A smart mug The Ember Ceramic mug is a smart mug that connects to your phone through Bluetooth and allows you to set an ideal temperature for whatever you’re drinking (up to 62 degrees Celsius for Canadians). Once the beverage reaches that temperature, the mug will maintain it for up to eight hours. The ceramic mug will retail for $79 US and is available exclusively at Starbucks and on Ember’s website.  Netflix email scam A well designed scanned email has been landing in the inboxes of millions of Netflix subscribers asking them to update their billing information. This of course is part of a large-scale phishing operation. The email, which has the subject line: ‘Your suspension notification’, includes a link that takes readers what looks like a genuine Netflix home page. From there, readers are prompted to enter private information, regarding their billing details.  Tech Bytes Some 800 schools across the US have been targeted by hackers and their websites redirected to an Islamic State-sponsored YouTube video. The attack, which lasted a few hours, affected schools in Arizona, Connecticut, Virginia and New Jersey. The hack, which also affected private companies and government websites, is being investigated by the FBI. Apple has offered to help the FBI with an encrypted phone belonging to Texas church shooter Devin Patrick Kelley after learning the bureau was having trouble getting into the device. A statement from Apple reads: “Our team immediately reached out to the FBI after learning from their press conference on Tuesday that investigators were trying to access a mobile phone. We offered assistance and said we would expedite any legal process they send us." Facebook has announced version 2.2 of Messenger. This new version introduces a series of new business-friendly features to the messaging platform. It includes a customer chat plugin that lets businesses integrate Messenger into their own website.

In this show, hear about how to turn your regular glasses into smart glasses, Samsung Pay in Canada gains new partners and now has the option to use debit cards, and Apple has made an update that now lets you change your third-party email address on your Apple ID to an Apple domain email.   Show Notes: PogoCam There’s a way to turn the glasses you already own into a pair of the smart glasses. Thanks to PogoCam from PogoTec. This is a tiny camera, that you can attach to your existing pair of glasses or even sun glasses. It is fairly light and is not in your way to block your view. This camera which is removable has the function to record memories with the touch of a button on top. It can hold up to 100 photos or six 30-second videos. The photos have a 5MP resolution, while videos are in 720p. You can soon pre-order a PogoCam now for $149 US, with shipment expected for this fall. Samsung Pay Samsung Pay is getting its first big expansion in Canada. This includes the addition of new partners and the ability to finally use debit cards. The new partners for Samsung Pay in Canada include Interac Debit, Scotiabank, American Express Canada, ATB Financial, Visa Canada, and Mastercard. Cards through these partners can be used on Samsung Pay now, and in addition to them, support for Tangerine and Peoples Card Services will also be rolling out soon. Apple ID  Apple has made an update to the process of changing the email address associated with your Apple ID. You can now change your Apple ID from a third-party email service such as Gmail or Yahoo to an Apple domain. Now, with the update you can change your Apple ID from a third-party email to @iCloud.com, @me.com, or @mac.com account. To make the switch: Go to Settings > at the top where you see your name (tap) > Name, Phone Numbers, Email. Next to Contactable At, tap Edit, then delete your current Apple ID. Tap Continue. Enter the Apple ID that you want to use. Tap Next. Use your Apple ID account page Go to appleid.apple.com and sign in. In the Account section, click Edit. Under your Apple ID, click Change Apple ID. Enter the Apple ID that you want to use. Click Continue. Note: Once you changed your Apple ID from a third-party email address to an Apple domain, you cannot change back.    Tech Bytes Amazon announced its entry into the smart security camera business last week with the new $119 Cloud Cam. The Cloud Cam works with a Cloud Cam app which is available on the Play Store. This is like a control center of your cameras on your phone. You can add cams, rename them, view the live stream if you want to drop in and check something, and activate two-way audio to talk to your kids or anyone at home, calm your pets, or scare an intruder. You also get notifications for motion alerts with the option to replay, download, share, or delete the automatically recorded videos. The app lets you manage person alerts plus viewfinder zones to exclude areas you don't want to be monitored. Plus, you can use your phone as a presence detector and automatically turn off recording when you're home for privacy. Social media giants Facebook and Instagram have told a parliamentary inquiry they are strongly opposed to any tightening of the laws on cyber bullying, saying prevention is better than cure. The two platforms were invited to respond to the Senate's legal and constitutional affairs committee, which is looking at whether existing laws go far enough to punish perpetrators of cyber bullying.  Concerns about cyber bullying and poor mental health resulting from sleep deprivation have prompted the principal of a private girls’ school to urge parents to ban all digital devices from bedrooms after lights out. A recent study by the Australian Research Council indicated 75 per cent of Year 8s and 78 per cent of Year 11s were using their phones well into the night, up from 15 per cent in 2011. The research also found most cyber bullying took place on social media late at night.

In this episode, hear more about how businesses are now targeting Generation Z, Using your watch or shoes as a form of two-factor authentication and a new ransomware attack, Bad Rabbit. Show Notes: For the longest while we have been hearing about Millennials and how they are being targeted by businesses as the main group to go after to increase sales but that is changing. Today, more and more efforts are being placed on targeting Generation Z. Businesses have been preoccupied with how to cater to and exploit to their advantage the peculiar characteristics associated with consumers born between the early 1980s and early 2000s. But a new report released by Accenture indicates that the so-called Gen Z – the generation immediately following millennials – is the payment industry’s future customer base. Gen Zs are projected to make up 40 per cent of all North American consumers by 2020, according to Accenture’s report Driving the future of payments – 10 mega trends. Accenture conducted an online survey of 1,000 adults in the United States and 500 in Canada between September 1, 2017, and September 10, 2017. Gen Zers move fast but still demand personalized and highly-relevant experiences as consumers. As the payments market expands, customer experience will become a prime differentiator. The danger for many traditional non-digital players is that they are losing control of customers due to their difficulties of getting a handle on customer experience. For instance, businesses need to tie-in other desirable services to the payment solutions they offer customers. Items and 2FA One day, your household items and accessories like that old watch, or picture frame sitting on your fireplace, could become a new way to authenticate yourself online, according to researchers. Many websites and online services are now enforcing or at least offering two-factor authentication (2FA) as a way to enhance the security of your accounts. We all know passwords are not ideal these days, with all the news about cyberattacks. And often times we set simple, repetitive passwords -- so we can see why other methods are now needed. So, researchers from Florida International University and Bloomberg have come up with another idea of using your phone’s camera. This project is called Pixie, which explores how 2FA can be implemented through cameras without the need for additional hardware. Bad Rabbit The U.S. government has issued a warning about a new ransomware attack that spread through Russia and Ukraine and into other countries around the world. Cybersecurity experts said the ransomware -- which posed as an Adobe update before locking down computers and demanding money for people to get their files back -- targeted Russian media companies and Ukrainian transportation systems. It has also been detected in other countries including the U.S., Germany and Japan. The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team said late Tuesday it "has received multiple reports of ransomware infections ... in many countries around the world." Dubbed "Bad Rabbit," the virus is the latest example of cybercriminals using ransomware to try to extort money from victims across the globe. Tech Bytes  Twitter reported its earnings this week for Q3, and watchers of the company, used to seeing declines across the board, got an unexpected piece of news: the social media platform reported revenues of $590 million on adjusted earnings per share of $0.10. The revenues were still a decline over a year ago of about four percent compared to a year ago. The two areas where Twitter continues to get hit publicly are in the fact that its service continues to present itself as a hotbed for harassment and spreading false information, alongside its important role in providing a communications platform, which remains the problematic paradox of the service. Facebook has teamed up with auto car dealers to introduce a new Marketplace section for vehicles on its flagship social media app. The new section features search filters to find a vehicle of a specific type, maker, transmission, color, and more, offered by members of the public as well as car dealerships including Edmunds, Auction123, Cars.com, CDK Global, and SocialDealer. The automobile Marketplace includes a price checking function that uses the industry standard Kelly's Blue Book, and integrates with Messenger bots to allow users to communicate with dealers in real-time. More than 30,000 organisations have signed up to the Facebook's Workplace collaboration tool since its launch last year, the company has revealed, more than double the number announced just six months ago. Coinciding with the news, and to celebrate the app's one year anniversary, Facebook has also announced the release of a Workplace desktop app for group chats, which will eventually support video calls in an update due to land in the coming weeks.

In this episode, Facebook tests self-destructing status updates, New technologies to make the lives of diabetes patients easier, and Samsung is working on a Linux desktop for Android phones.   Show Notes:   Facebook   Facebook is process of testing a new functionality – it is - self-destructing messages. Facebook is hoping that this is a way to encourage users to post more status updates.   This lets users share 101 character updates that are made from text only.   If Facebook decides to roll this out to all users, then news feeds will be filled with text updates, making it look more like Twitter or like the early days of Facebook.   New technologies for diabetes   There are a few out there like a new product from Novo Nordisk. This is a fast-acting insulin that is designed to help to minimize the high blood sugar spikes that occur when people with diabetes eat a meal containing carbohydrates.   This adds (vitamin B3), which doubles the speed of initial insulin absorption compared to current fast-acting insulins taken at mealtime. This new insulin hits the bloodstream in under three minutes.   Another advance is Abbott's new monitoring device called the FreeStyle Libre Flash. It's a round patch with a tube that is inserted on the arm for up to 10 days. It has a scanning device that the user places over the patch to read their blood sugar level.   What is different about this product is that it lets users monitor blood glucose levels without having to frequently prick their fingers for blood testing.   Samsung working on Linux desktop   Samsung is working on an app that lets users run a variety of Linux-based desktops on its Galaxy phones.   The Linux on Galaxy app works with the DeX, a dock that converts a Galaxy phone into a desktop PC when connected to a keyboard and mouse.   Samsung hasn't offered any details about how the app works or what the install process is like.   Samsung hasn't set a release date for Linux on Galaxy and says it is still a work in progress.   Dex works with a variety of apps, including Microsoft Office and Samsung mobile apps that have been resized for a larger display. However, many apps, like Netflix, Facebook, Spotify and Twitter either don't work or aren't optimized for DeX.   Tech Bytes   Apple’s shares fell 1.5 percent in premarket trading this week on growing concerns about muted demand for the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus.   The company has cut orders for both models by about 50 per cent for November and December, Taiwan-based Economic Daily News reported, citing a supply chain official.   Representatives for Facebook, Google, and Twitter will appear in front of congress on November 1st to provide testimony on Russian election interference.   The congressional hearing is one of many government probes into Russian election interference, this one turns its focus on social media’s involvement.   All three tech companies found evidence of ad tampering over the course of internal investigations this year, and subsequently reported those findings to congress.   Samsung is combining its various Internet of Things services under a single banner called SmartThings Cloud, the company announced.   While in the past various Samsung IoT devices have used SmartThings, Samsung Connect, and ARTIK platforms, going forward the company will be uniting them into SmartThings Cloud. Samsung says that SmartThings Cloud will provide “a single, powerful cloud-based hub,” and that SmartThings Cloud will be a new open ecosystem, that will work with both Samsung devices and other third-party products.