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Show of 09-23-2017

Tech Talk

September 23, 2017

Email and Forum Questions

  • Email from Lynn in Ohio: Dear Doc and Jim. I would like to create a Facebook Group for my friends and family. I am so tired of dealing with the privacy issue and have people stalk our shared photos. How can I get a Facebook Group started? Love the show. Lynn in Ohio.
  • Tech Talk Responds: Facebook Groups are a great way for people with a common interest or who are members of the same club, society, or community to communicate. It is easy to start your own group.
    • Open Facebook, click the downward facing arrow in the top right and select Create Group.
    • Give the Group a name. For instance, Ohio Party Time Group.
    • Select who you want to invite to join. They must have a Facebook account.
    • Set the privacy for your Group: Open, Closed, and Secret. And click Create.
      • In a Public Group (Open), anyone can join whenever they want. Anyone can also see what members post in the group.
      • In a Closed Group, anyone can ask to join, but they will need to be approved by another member to see posts. Posts in Closed Groups are hidden from non-members.
      • A Secret Group is even more private. New people have to be invited by members. Only current and former members can even see it exists.
    • Select an icon. This is what appears in the Facebook sidebar next to its name. Select one and click OK. The group is now officially created..
    • Customize it with a Cover Photo, Description, Location, and Tags so people can see what it’s about. You can also invite more members if you want to.
  • Group is now up and ready for use. Now any member will be able to use it.
  • Email from Charlie in Kansas: Dear Tech Talk. I have four Amazon Echo devices in my house. Is there a way to play the all at the same time, like a Sonos system? When I have a party, I like to have music playing in the whole house and this would be the easiest way for me to do it. Enjoy the podcast. Charlie in Kansas
  • Tech Talk Responds: Amazon has finally added the ability to play music on multiple Echos at once. Set get started with a whole-house setup, you will need need two or more Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, or Echo Show speakers. Make sure your speakers are powered on, connected to the same network, and have easy to pick nicknames, so grouping them is painless.
    • Open the Amazon Alexa app on phone or tablet.
    • Tap on the menu icon (upper left corner) to bring up the left-hand navigation menu.
    • Select “Settings” from the sidebar.
    • Scroll down in the Settings menu until you see the entry for “Audio Groups”. Select the only entry in that group: “Multi-Room Music”.
      • Tap on “Choose Group Name” at the top. Pick the name you want from a list of potential group names.
      • Select all the Echo devices (this is the “Everywhere” configuration, after all) and then click “Create Group”.
    • Now simply say: “Alexa, play [Song Name] Everywhere” to match the group name you just created.
    • Email from Doug in New Orleans: Dear Tech Talk. I enjoyed your discussion about cord cutting options. I am particularly excited about the new Mohu options for integrating OTA TV with streamed content. I did not hear you mention PlayStation Vue. It seems like a good option. What is your opinion? Doug in New Orleans
    • Tech Talk Responds: Playstation Vue has entered cord cutters arena. They are competing directly with Sling TV as a provider of stream content. And Sony has done a better job of negotiating for content than Direct TV (owners of Sling TV). You do not need a PlayStation to subscribe to PlayStation Vue.
    • One great feature that PlayStation Vue has is its built-in DVR. PlayStation Vue offers three packages, ranging from 55+ channels to 100+ channels. The highlights of the package include AMC, CNN, ESPN, TBS, TNT, and USA. You can check out the full channel list over on PlayStation Vue’s site. They have deals with some key channels, like NBCSN and FOX News, that competitors like Sling TV have been unable to ink. On top of the live channels, PlayStation Vue offers on-demand content from ABC, FOX, and NBC, which is a really nice perk.
    • Streaming quality is excellent (better than Sling TV). Live broadcasts look great.
    • PlayStation Vue is available on:
      • PlayStation (PS3 and PS4)
      • iOS (with Chromecast functionality)
      • Fire TV
      • Apple TVR
    • PlayStation Vue offers four price points, each with a different channel selection. All levels include live TV (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, ESPN), News Channels (Fox News, CNBC, MSNBC, CNN), and Disney. Local channels only available in some markets. The packages are:
      • Access Slim (55+ channels): $39.99/month
      • Core Slim (70+ channels): $44.99/month (more sports)
      • Elite Slim (100+ channels): $54.99/month (more sports)
      • Ultra (100+ channels plus HBO and other premium): $74.99/month
    • Add on packages are available (e.g. HBO is $15/month)
  • Email from Helen in Maryland: Dear Tech Talk. I heard that the authorities can force me to open my phone if it has face recognition or finger print recognition enabled, but they cannot force me to put in a security code to open the phone. I am about to travel overseas. Is there a quick way to disable the biometrics in my iPhone in the event that the authorities stop me? Enjoy the show. Helen in Maryland
  • Tech Talk Responds: Upgrade to the latest operation system. iOS 11 has a new feature that allows you to disable the Touch ID unlock functionality, requiring the PIN code for access to the device. This new feature has been called the “cop button”, because the most immediately apparent and practical use of the button is to disable Touch ID discreetly when you encounter law enforcement officers, border agents, or others who wish to access your phone. Because PIN codes and passwords afford you better protection under current legislative models than biometric identification. U.S. courts have ruled that biometric identifiers like your fingerprint are not covered under Fifth Amendment protections, but codes (which must be recalled from your mind and
  • While your iPhone, running iOS 11, is on, simply grab the phone and rapidly click the power button on the side of the phone five times. iOS will pull up the emergency calls screen but will also disable Touch ID. Touch ID will not be enabled until the phone is unlocked with a valid PIN. At this point Touch ID is disabled and if you phone it taken from you your fingerprint cannot be used to unlock it.
  • If you were using your phone in a situation where disabling Touch ID is even a consideration, it would also be wise to toggle off the “Allow Access When Locked” settings to remove access to the message reply function and missed calls, for example.

Profiles in IT: Yann LeCun

  • Yann LeCun is a computer scientist with contributions in machine learning. , computer vision, mobile robotics and computational neuroscience. He is a founding father of convolutional neural nets He is director of Facebook AI Research
  • Yann LeCun was born near Paris, France, in 1960.
  • He liked to build radio controlled, ultra-light, battery-powered model airplanes with unconventional design, propulsion, or construction technique.
  • He received a Diplôme d’Ingénieur from the Ecole Superieure d’Ingénieur en Electrotechnique et Electronique (ESIEE), Paris in 1983.
  • In 1987, he received a PhD in Computer Science from Université Pierre et Marie Curie, where he proposed a form of the back-propagation for neural networks.
  • After graduation, he was a postdoc in Geoffrey Hinton’s lab at the Univ. of Toronto.
  • In 1988, he joined the Adaptive Systems Research Department at AT&T Bell Laboratories, where he developed a biologically inspired model of image recognition called Convolutional Neural Networks and the Graph Transformer Network method, which he applied to handwriting recognition and OCR.
  • The check recognition system that he helped develop was deployed by NCR and other companies, reading over 10% of all the checks in the US.
  • In 1996, he joined AT&T Labs-Research as head of the Image Processing Research Department and worked on the DjVu image compression technology.
  • DjVu is an image compression technique, a file format, and a software platform, designed bring paper documents and high resolution photos to the Internet.
  • After a brief tenure as a Fellow of the NEC Research Institute, he joined New York University (NYU) in 2003, as Professor of Computer Science Neural Science.
  • At NYU, he has worked primarily on Energy-Based Models for supervised and unsupervised learning for object recognition and mobile robotics.
  • In 2012, he became the founding director of the NYU Center for Data Science.
  • On December 9, 2013, LeCun became the first director of Facebook AI Research.
  • LeCun is a recipient of the 2014 IEEE Neural Network Pioneer Award.
  • In 2013, he co-founded the International Conference on Learning Representations,
  • He was the chair and organizer of the “Learning Workshop” held every year between 1986 and 2012 in Snowbird, Utah.
  • He is the Co-Director of the Learning in Machines and Brain research program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR).
  • He loves to sail and owns two small catamarans.
  • He played the recorder and various wind instruments in a Renaissance ensemble when he was in high school and college. (Play a sample.)
  • He now plays mostly Jazz improvisation, which he grew to love while in NYC.
  • His personal home page is: http://yann.lecun.com/

Autumn Equinox: First Day of Fall

  • Friday’s autumn equinox marks the end of summer and the first day of fall for anybody living in the Northern Hemisphere, meaning colder weather and longer nights are on the way.
  • The 2017 autumn equinox, which signals the official change of season, occurs on Sept. 22 at 4:02 p.m. EDT, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory, which handles astronomical data and serves as the official source of time for the military and country.
  • On the day of the equinox — a Latin term that means equality between day and night — day and night are each 12 hours long, according to NASA. The U.S. space agency said equinoxes occur when the Earth is in alignment with the sun directly above the Earth’s equator.
  • Seasons change based on how the Earth, which spins on a tilted axis, moves around the sun each year, NASA said. For example, it’s summer when the North Pole is pointed toward the sun, which provides the Northern Hemisphere with direct sunlight. But it’s winter when the North Pole is pointed away from the sun.
  • Winter officially begins in the Northern Hemisphere this year on Dec. 21.

Hackers Hid Backdoor In CCleaner Security App

  • Users of Avast-owned security application CCleaner for Windows have been advised to update their software immediately, after researchers discovered criminal hackers had installed a backdoor in the tool.
  • The tainted application allows for download of further malware, be it ransomware or keyloggers, with fears millions are affected.
  • 27 million ran the affected software, though the company said users should not panic.
  • The affected app, CCleaner, is a maintenance and file clean-up software run by a subsidiary of anti-virus giant Avast. It has 2 billion downloads and claims to be getting 5 million extra a week, making the threat particularly severe.
  • The CCleaner download server was hosting the back doored app as far back as September 11.
  • The malware would send encrypted information about the infected computer – the name of the computer, installed software and running processes – back to the hackers’ server. The hackers also used what’s known as a domain generation algorithm (DGA); whenever the crooks’ server went down, the DGA could create new domains to receive and send stolen data. Use of DGAs shows some sophistication on the part of the attackers.
  • Users of CCleaner Cloud version 1.07.3191 have received an automatic update.

iPhone X Top Features

  • Apple’s tenth-anniversary iPhone X is a step forward and keeps Apple competitive with Samsung.
  • Super Retina Display — Apple’s first iPhone with an OLED, the Super Retina Display. It measures 5.8 inches diagonally, and it features a pixel density of 458 ppi with a 1,000,000:1 color ratio.
  • No Home Button — We knew this one was coming, of course, and Apple has replaced all of the home button’s functionality with gestures. For example, a swipe up from the bottom brings you to the home screen. Or, you can swipe up from the bottom and pause to open the app switcher. Ditching the home screen allowed Apple to produce a phone with an all-screen front, and it’s a welcome change.
  • Build — Apple’s iPhone is constructed entirely of glass and stainless steel. It comes in black and white, and the stainless steel polished to match the color of the phone.
  • Face ID — Face ID is an enhanced facial recognition feature that utilizes Apple’s new True Depth camera system. It features eight different cameras and sensors that combine to instantly recognize the owner’s face. The system still works if you’re wearing glasses, if you change your hair, or even if you grow a beard. Low light also isn’t a problem, since there’s an infrared element.
  • Animoji — The iPhone X’s new True Depth camera system also enables a fun new feature called Animoji. There are a dozen different animated emoji to start, and once you send them they mirror your own expressions and movements.
  • Cameras — The iPhone X includes a new dual-lens camera system on the back of the phone. It has dual optical image stabilization, making it just the second smartphone ever to feature dual OIS. The cameras still have 12-megapixel sensors, but they feature enhancements to improve color reproduction and reduce noise.
  • New Portrait Mode — Portrait Mode is also enhanced, with a new portrait lighting feature that lets you add lighting effects to your Portrait Mode shots. Around front, the True Depth camera also lets you take selfies in Portrait Mode!
  • A11 Bionic Chipset — 64 bits… 6 cores… new Apple-designed GPU.
  • Battery Life — Despite the smaller housing, Apple has somehow managed to increase battery life by 2 hours, compared to the iPhone 7.
  • Wireless Charging — Apple’s new iPhone X supports Qi wireless charging so it works with just about all the equipment that’s already out there. Apple has a new charging mat that’s capable of charging an iPhone X, an Apple Watch, and AirPods (with an optional new wireless charging case)!
  • You can start pre-ordering on October 27 at 12:01 am PDT.

iPhone8 Features

  • The iPhone 8 and 8 Plus both look like the iPhone 7 with home buttons!.
  • Both new models support wireless charging, run the latest A11 Bionic processor, and have 2 gigs of RAM.
  • They also have glass backs, which gives them a glossy new look.
  • They don’t have OLED screens and they can shoot video in 4K.
  • You can buy them in black, silver, and a newly retooled gold finish for $699 and up for the regular one, $799 for the big one.
  • You can preorder the 8 and 8 Plus on September 15, and the phones arrive in stores on September 22.