Podcast

TMO Background Mode Interview with Technical Journalist Lance Ulanoff

John Martellaro · · Add Comment

Lance is a technology journalist, on-air expert, consultant, and influencer. He’s been a senior editor at Online Windows Magazine, editor-in-chief of PC Magazine, and Chief Correspondent and Editor-in-chief at Mashable.

Currently, Lance is a Freelance Journalist and contributor to Medium. He’s appeared on Live with Kelly and Ryan, The Today Show and Good Morning America.

We chatted about his early interest in journalism, but it didn’t have a technical focus when he got his B.A. Lance describes how he got interested in tech journalism and his path towards becoming the editor-in-chief of PC Magazine for 11 years (2000-2011). Then we turned our attention to the Mac, Apple News+, AirPods, AirPower, and Apple TV+. Lance made a strong argument for how Apple should approach Apple TV+ content.

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Apple News is Better for Big Publishers Than Small

Andrew Orr ·

Digiday reached out to five publishers participating in Apple News+, and so far it sounds like there is a lot of confusion. Plus there’s the reality that the service seems to favor big publishers over smaller ones.

All participating publishers were given an email address where they were encouraged to send pitches, and sources said that by and large, Apple’s representatives were responsive to their outreach.

But a smaller, select group of publishers were invited to join a private Slack channel where they could connect with Apple more directly, a move that exasperated several sources when they were informed of the channel’s existence.

So far that’s the way Apple News has been, and this isn’t a News+ specific problem. Hopefully the service will improve over time.

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Meet the AI-Created Sport Called Speedgate

Andrew Orr ·

Design agency AKQA gave data on 400 existing sports to a neural network, and one of the games it created is called Speedgate.

While the sport was created as an exercise for Design Week, it might just become a serious sport. AKQA is talking to the Oregon Sports Authority about Speedgate, and there might be an intramural league in the summer. The company is encouraging others to start their own leagues.

This sounds (and looks) like a cool game and I’d be interested to try it out. Additionally an informative guide to Speedgate can be found here.

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iPhones Aren’t Safe From Google’s Sensorvault Database

Andrew Orr ·

Google has a database called Sensorvault. It contains location data of users and shares it with law enforcement—if they have a warrant, of course. Apple honors lawful requests as well. But Jennifer Valentino-DeVries wonders whether the database is too broad.

Google would not provide details on Sensorvault, but Aaron Edens, an intelligence analyst with the sheriff’s office in San Mateo County, Calif., who has examined data from hundreds of phones, said most Android devices and some iPhones he had seen had this data available from Google…

“It shows the whole pattern of life,” said Mark Bruley, the deputy police chief in Brooklyn Park, Minn., where investigators have been using the technique since this fall. “That’s the game changer for law enforcement.”

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EU Lawmakers Approve Controversial 'Article 13' Copyright Reforms

Charlotte Henry ·

The EU Parliament voted to approve controversial copyright reforms Monday. The reforms included provisions known as  ‘Article 13. That section makes firms responsible for copyright material on their platform. Article 11, which says aggregators must license content that is more than a “short extract”, was also approved.  AppleInsider reported that the changes will be implemented within 2 years.

Known as Article 13, the most controversial element makes firms put more efforts into policing the content on their services, including properly licensing copyrighted material, or be held liable for illegally shared content. The rules not only apply to firms based in the European Union, as it also will impact practically every company that has an online presence accessible within the EU, including those on other continents. The full rules apply to larger firms, but smaller companies and startups have relatively fewer requirements.

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Bringing Alan Turing Back to Life

Charlotte Henry ·

Ian Mcewan does not like science fiction. However, for his latest work, he imagined a dystopian time in which humans live alongside AI-powered robots. He also brought the acclaimed computer scientist Alan Turing back to life and had him solve one of the major unsolved problems in the field. He told Wired why.

In Machines Like Me, he imagines that the mathematician and codebreaker didn’t die by suicide at age 41 but lived on to crack P versus NP, a major computer science problem that in reality remains unsolved. In the world of the novel, this opens a path toward artificial minds that can learn, think – and fall in love.