Published 18 December 2023
Michael, Andy and Michael are back – and have a great show on transparency, AI, VR, E3, NASA and more.
This episode starts chugging out of the station with a follow on story from e444 focused on the reported bricked trains in Poland. According to the article, the trains’ manufacturer is now threatening legal action against the hackers who were hired by the independent repair company to fix the trains.
Moving forward on the transparency theme, the co-hosts move into the world of materials science and consider a story about transparent wood. According to the article, the cells of the wood provide an extremely strong structure, even stronger than carbon fiber. Continuing on the transparency theme, an article in Nature highlights the record breaking number of retractions in scientific papers. The conversation continues, thinking through the ramifications of a retracted paper cited by many other papers, as well as the potential uses of generative AI to create papers in the first place.
Next up is a discussion on the privacy implications of smart TVs, and the onerous steps necessary to opt out of the default settings which capture tons of data about the consumer’s viewing habits. Michael R reminds the team that a Raspberry Pi Pi Hole would help with this. Andy remembers the Hymm of Acxiom (see links below).
Then, moving to the VR world, the co-hosts discuss a couple of articles about Second Life’s private alpha mobile experience and how Xbox Cloud Gaming is now supported on Meta Quest headsets. An intriguing story about one of bitHuman’s agents allows Michael M to speculate how generative AI might be used to harvest a company’s ethos in a retrieval augmented generation (RAG) fashion.
Wrapping things up for this episode, the co-hosts touch on E3 ending (both in person and virtual) and the NASA + Johns Hopkins collaboration on Dragonfly to explore Titan.
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Selected Article Links
Trains
404 Media article: Polish Hackers Repaired Trains the Manufacturer Artificially Bricked. Now The Train Company Is Threatening Them
Games at Work e444 Glitch in the Matrix
Transparent Paper Chase
Knowable Magazine article: Why scientists are making transparent wood
Nature article: More than 10,000 research papers were retracted in 2023 — a new record
TV Knows What You Are Watching
The Markup article: Your Smart TV Knows What You’re Watching
Tom’s Guide article: Vienna Teng Sings about Surveillance in ‘Hymn of Acxiom’
Genius ‘Hymn of Acxiom’ lyrics
AR/VR
New World Notes post: Second Life IOS/Android App Now In Private Alpha For Premium+ Subscribers. Here’s How To Request Access!
The Verge article: Xbox Cloud Gaming is now available on Meta’s Quest VR headsets
Not So Secret Agents
VentureBeat article: BitHuman introduces lifelike AI agents for enterprises
Wrapping Up
VentureBeat article: E3 is deader than ever
Mashable article: NASA will land daring spacecraft on a world 800 million miles away
Dragonfly Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:24 — 32.0MB) | Embed
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