Shaun Weston and Rick Huckstep discuss TikTok, spy balloons, CCTV surveillance, paranoia and overreactions. The US want to ban TikTok because its a china surveillance machines- what’s that all about and should we be worried?
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🌎 For all show notes, background links and everything to do with the show, go to the Big Tech Little Tech website.
00:00 Preamble
It's Carnaval in Spain and Rick is getting little sleep because of it. Despite this, we're all looking forward to pancakes to use up the eggs and flour. Shaun is reading Red & White by Oz Clarke, which sparks Rick into teasing his blueberry story. We must come back to this!
05:00 Interesting Tech
Shaun’s tech of the week is the Bots&Pots Sci-Food Bistro – a Croatian restaurant that has a robotic chef. The robot is called GammaChef, and it’s taught digitally how to cook a meal by the restaurant's head chef. Five robot cookers can each produce four meals in 15 minutes, or nearly 100 meals in an hour.
Rick loves the new NBA app (no release date as yet), which enables users to create digital versions of themselves they can then overlay onto real basketball players. You paste your avatar into real game footage and score baskets with the NBA's biggest stars. (Check out the video below.)
Rick also mention Unspun, which uses similar technology to ensure you get custom-made jeans.
10:07 Tech News
- Yahoo plans to lay off more than 20% of its workforce as part of a major restructuring. The BBC says the company is reorganising its advertising unit, which will lose more than half of the department by the end of 2023.
- Netflix is introducing limits on password sharing in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain, with an extra fee for friends and family who don't live with them to share their subscription. The move follows a crackdown on sharing passwords in South America, and is part of a larger effort to increase revenues and invest in new programming content. Netflix is also introducing a cheaper ad-supported option in 12 countries, with the aim of increasing its total paid subscribers worldwide.
- The EU will investigate Amazon’s $1.7bn Roomba acquisition. According to the Financial Times, EU regulators have sent Amazon a preliminary series of questions ahead of an antitrust probe.
- Instagram and Facebook users will now be able to pay for a blue tick verification.Meta Verified will cost $11.99 (£9.96) a month on web, or $14.99 for iPhone users.
- Sir Jony Ive’s official logo design for King Charles III's coronation has been revealed by Buckingham Palace.
13:45 Spy tech paranoia
Rick and Shaun discuss TikTok, spy balloons, CCTV surveillance, paranoia and overreactions.
The US want to ban it because its a china surveillance machines, what’s that all about and should we be worried? Another question might be: Is China spying on everybody, or have we all turned into conspiracy theorists?
Highlights
14:01 Spy balloons and Jeff Koons, and the US’s Roswell history.
16:15 Has paranoia been triggered by TikTok’s data collection model?
19:41 Are we overreacting to the whole spying scenario? Let's talk about facial recognition.
23:34 Will TikTok Shop gather even more data than ever before? It's not spying, it's all about the advertising model.
27:45 Paranoia about China. It could be that the advertising model is the only important thing.
30:31 Where is it safe to use Chinese-made cameras?
32:08 TikTok drives the hashtag trend for old digital cameras.
33:20 Does anyone remember the Sony Mavica that used floppy disks?
34:04 What are we watching lately?
Shaun is watching The Old Man on Disney+. The Last of Us (Sky/HBO/Binge/Foxtel) is also popular with both of our hosts, and Rick extends the viral theme by mentioning Fantastic Fungi (Netflix).
The latest seasons of Your Honor, You and Servant are also out. Shaun is watching Shrinking (Apple TV+), complete with abundant effing and blinding.
Further Reading
- A Chinese spy balloon, missiles and ‘UFOs’: What we’ve learned about string of objects shot down by the US (The Independent)
- The Roswell incident (Wikipedia)
- Surveillance and Lack of Data Privacy in the US is Under Scrutiny (Wiser!)
- TikTok has been accused of ‘aggressive’ data harvesting. Is your information at risk? (The Guardian)
- Clearview AI fined £7.5m by watchdog and ordered to delete UK data (Evening Standard)
- France plots surveillance power grab for Paris 2024 Olympics (Politico)
- More brands are now testing TikTok’s Shop feature in the US (TechCrunch)
- TikTok planning two more data centres in Europe amid data security concerns (Reuters)
- Digital cameras back in fashion after online revival (BBC)
- Three Reasons TikTok Is As Addictive As Playing The Slots. (Wiser!)
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