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Episode 321 — Three Thumbs Up

By Michael Martine | May 24, 2021 - 06:41 |May 23, 2021 Podcast

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Augmented thumb, World Cup, Eurovision & AI inspired music, Ford F-150 frunk, Zhurong & Zigbee on Mars, RasQberry quantum computing and more!

With all of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy references in recent episodes, Michael, Michael and Andy could not resist the story of a third thumb. This experimental augmented appendage is noteworthy because of the rapidity with which the subjects got used to the extra thumb, and how much they missed it at the end of the study. In a related story, the computer-brain interface leveraging the sensation of touch helped speed up the adoption and precision of the user.

Turning to the world of automotive mobility, there were several articles about electric vehicles – starting with a cure for range anxiety. The cure? Ubiquitous charging stations where the time to recharge (or swap batteries) approaches the time to fill up with gasoline. This is closer to reality than one might think. Also important, purchase price parity for the economics fans in the Games At Work audience — where the total cost of ownership, including the initial purchase price of the vehicle, is close to the fossil fuel powered competition. The iconic Ford F-150 now has an electric version, replete with the ability to provide emergency household power and an enormous frunk. Staying with battery power, check out the Qi-charging retrofit of an HP-25 calculator. Quite an accomplishment to behold.

Next up, several stories of home automation. First off, an example for what happens when things go wrong, with the Eufy camera security issue. Then when things go incredibly right – proven Zigbee home automation technology serving as the underpinnings for the Ingenuity helicopter communications. And big recent news: the Chinese Zhurong rover successfully lands on Mars, and rolls off it’s platform to explore. Space is indeed hard – and this is a tremendous accomplishment.

Back on Earth, and continuing with the computing theme, this week’s Raspberry Pi story revolves around the qubit. Jan and Robert Lahmann built out a Raspberry Pi using IBM’s Qiskit, calling the creation RasQberry. Check out the code from the Github link and article in the show notes below.

Rounding out the show this week are a couple of quick hit articles. Nintendo Switch games, AirTags as NFC triggers, a LEGO Daily Bugle kit and AI taking a famous Spice Girls song and reimagining it as a Nine Inch Nails tune. What would be your recommendation to pass through the Nine Inch Nails AI? Perhaps the #Eurovision2021 winner?

Selected Links

TechCrunch article: Review: Apple’s 2021 iPad Pro is great, again, but… — https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/19/review-apples-2021-ipad-pro-is-great-again-but/

Six Colors article: 2021 iPad Pro review: All systems go, but where? — https://sixcolors.com/post/2021/05/2021-ipad-pro-review/

Eurovision 2021 — https://eurovisionworld.com/eurovision/songs-videos

Gizmodo article: Like ‘A Part of Their Body’: People Adapt to an Extra Thumb in Fascinating Experiment — https://gizmodo.com/like-a-part-of-their-body-people-adapt-to-an-extra-thu-1846926329

Wired article: This Brain-Controlled Robotic Arm Can Twist, Grasp — and Feel — https://www.wired.com/story/this-brain-controlled-robotic-arm-can-twist-grasp-and-feel/

The Times article: Electric Car Range Anxiety To Be Cured By Battery That Charges in Five Minutes — https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/electric-car-range-anxiety-to-be-cured-by-battery-that-charges-in-five-minutes-mxwgqgdmg

Wired article: The Most Radical Thing About Ford’s F-150 Lightning? The Price — https://www.wired.com/story/most-radical-thing-about-ford-f-150-lightning-cost/

TechCrunch article: Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck can power your home in an outage — https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/19/ford-f-150-lightning-electric-pickup-truck-can-power-your-home-in-an-outage/

RAC article: 2030 band – is it worth buying an electric car now? — https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/electric-cars/choosing/2030-is-it-worth-buying-an-electric-car-now/

Gizmodo article: Adding Wireless Charging to a 46-Year-Old Calculator Shows Off Incredible Devotion to a Gadget — https://gizmodo.com/adding-wireless-charging-to-a-46-year-old-calculator-sh-1846909664

The Verge article: Server glitch allowed Eufy owners to see through other homes’ cameras — https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/17/22440298/eufy-privacy-glitch-server-error-camera-feed-exposed

BBC News article: China lands its Zhurong rover on Mars — https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57122914

The Verge article: Zigbee on Mars — https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/20/22445330/zigbee-on-mars-ingenuity-helicopter-perseverance-rover

Zigbee — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zigbee

Github RasQberry — https://github.com/JanLahmann/RasQberry

hackster.io article: Jan and Robert Lahmann Get a Quantum Computer Running on Your Raspberry Pi in Under 30 Minutes — https://www.hackster.io/news/jan-and-robert-lahmann-get-a-quantum-computer-running-on-your-raspberry-pi-in-under-30-minutes-4b972010009d

The Verge article: Nintendo Switch Online reaches more than 100 retro games — https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/19/22443321/nintendo-switch-online-may-2021-retro-games-total-library

MacRumors article: AirTags Work as an NFC Trigger for Apple Shortcuts — https://www.macrumors.com/2021/05/17/airtags-work-as-an-nfc-trigger-for-apple-shortcuts/

Slashfilm article: The Largest Marvel LEGO Set Ever Unleashes Spider-Man’s Villians on the Daily Bugle — https://www.slashfilm.com/daily-bugle-spider-man-lego-set/

AV Club article: AI turns The Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” into a pretty solid Nine Inch Nails song — https://music.avclub.com/ai-turns-the-spice-girls-wannabe-into-a-pretty-solid-1846934735

GoalZero Yeti1500x Portable Power Station — https://www.goalzero.com/shop/portable-power/goal-zero-yeti-1500x-portable-power-station/

Jackery Portable Power Station — https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08RNT5BDT?ie=UTF8&psc=1&linkCode=sl1&tag=thejumpgate-21&linkId=d86eaca4cbe8abd9f07531dec6d72c25&language=en_GB&ref_=as_li_ss_tl

Rory Cellan-Jones Always On: Hope and Fear in the Social Smartphone Era (UK Amazon store) — https://www.amazon.co.uk/Always-Hope-Fear-Social-Smartphone/dp/1472981197?crid=L7ANL8J0QMD1&dchild=1&keywords=rory+cellan-jones&qid=1621623131&sprefix=black+eletrcial+tape,aps,528&sr=8-1&linkCode=sl1&tag=thejumpgate-21&linkId=c4648e8363f69690fb446013fce905a7&language=en_GB&ref_=as_li_ss_tl

Rory Cellan Jones Always On: Hope and Fear in the Social Smartphone Era (US Amazon store) — https://www.amazon.com/Always-Hope-Fear-Social-Smartphone/dp/1472981197

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Episode 320 — Artificial Oblique Hums

By Michael Martine | May 17, 2021 - 06:29 |May 16, 2021 Podcast

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Berlin city street — Photo by Dewang Gupta on Unsplash

Space, the current frontier, AirTags, AI convolutional networks improving game photorealism, explosive propulsion, the Infinite Improbability Drive and a bevy of games.

Andy starts off this episode with his shiny new AirTag experience and reflects on the discussion from last week’s show. Andy and Michael both consider the rapidity of which the AirTags have been hacked.

Michael R and Andy then launch into deep space. The co-hosts reflect on the amazing fact that the Voyager spacecraft are still transmitting data after so long, and being so far away from Earth. After discussing the strange ‘hum’ that’s been detected by the Voyager spacecraft, the pair talk about the Star Trek: Legends game on Apple Arcade and a couple of television shows.

Switching from spacecraft to aircraft, Michael R and Andy turn their attention to a story from UCF researchers who have had success with a hypersonic detonation engine. This engine draws power from oblique wave detonation that theoretically could create enough thrust to power an aircraft up to 17 times the speed of sound. Incredible!

Coming back down to Earth, the cohosts then take a look at the improved photo realism stemming from the Cityscapes dataset in conjunction with a convolutional AI network for Grand Theft Auto V. Michael R notes that the hills in California light brown while German hills are green, and this had a factor in the machine learning model which tinge the California hills green.

Andy and Michael then make the connection to last week’s episode on generating interiors, and with the combination play of outdoor landscapes (Flight Simulator) to cities (GTA V) to the interior of buildings to have fully livable virtual worlds in only 50 years.

Demeo is a great example of playing virtually together in the Oculus social/digital realm. Check out the launch video below. The pair then close out this week’s episode with D&D, Board Game Geek, genres and categories to indulge your inner game geek.

Selected Links

AirTags — https://www.apple.com/airtag/

Macworld article: AirTag already hacked and reprogrammed — https://www.macworld.co.uk/news/airtag-already-hacked-reprogrammed-3804443/

Voyager 1 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1

Voyager 2 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_2

Star Trek Voyager (TV series) — https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112178/

Red Shirts Always Die article: New RPG called Star Trek: Legends launches on Apple Arcade — https://redshirtsalwaysdie.com/2021/04/02/star-trek-legends-new-rpg-launches-exclusively-on-apple-arcade-today/

Star Trek Legends (Apple Arcade game) — https://apps.apple.com/us/app/star-trek-legends/id1529664467

The Independent article: NASA spacecraft hears strange ‘hum’ outside our solar system — https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/space/nasa-voyager-1-space-hum-b1845015.html

New Atlas article: World first: Oblique wave detonation engine may unlock Mach 17 aircraft — https://newatlas.com/aircraft/oblique-wave-detonation-engine-hypersonic-ucf/

The Expanse (TV show) — https://www.syfy.com/the-expanse

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy wiki: Infinite Improbability Drive — https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Infinite_Improbability_Drive

Enhancing photorealism enhancement paper by Stephan R. Richter, Hassan Abu AlHaija, and Vladlen Koltun — https://arxiv.org/pdf/2105.04619.pdf

Kotaku article: Grand Theft Auto V Looks Almost Photorealistic Thanks To Machine Learning — https://kotaku.com/grand-theft-auto-v-looks-almost-photorealistic-with-mac-1846882588

The Verge article: Intel is using machine learning to make GTA V look incredibly realistic — https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/12/22432945/intel-gta-v-realistic-machine-learning-cityscapes-dataset

Cityscapes dataset — https://www.cityscapes-dataset.com

Games at Work episode 319 — Tracking Vinyl Discs — https://gamesatwork.biz/2021/05/10/episode-319-tracking-vinyl-discs/

Pong — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong

Road to VR article: ‘Demeo’ Review – Excellent Tabletop Gameplay Needing More Native VR Touch — https://www.roadtovr.com/demeo-review-quest-2-steam/

Wizards of the Coast Dungeon & Dragons — https://dnd.wizards.com

Board Game Geek andypiper user profile — https://boardgamegeek.com/user/andypiper

Board Game Geek categories — https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamecategory

Carcasonne — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcassonne_(board_game)

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Episode 319 — Tracking Vinyl Discs

By Michael Martine | May 10, 2021 - 06:22 |May 9, 2021 Podcast

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Record on record player — Photo by Patrick Perkins on Unsplash

Digitizing vinyl, early VR & AR from UNC, Matrix-esque open world generation, App and AirTag tracking, Starship landing success, Loki & Boba Fett on the silver screen.

Michael and Michael start things off with stacks of wax – in this case, a quarter million 78 R.P.M. vinyl that the Internet Archive has digitized. Check out the show notes for how this was done. In other, but more recent, digitization, check out the VHS recording of UNC’s Department of Computer Science research into virtual reality and augmented reality from the 1990s. Michael and Michael marvel at how far we’ve come, and how much things have stayed largely the same in this field.

A recent Sony patent gives sparks the co-hosts on a conversation about dynamically generating virtual world content. This innovation creates house interiors via AI. Following this story is one about the experience of Oculus Home users having all of their interior decorations and furniture go missing. Backing up, as discussed in the prior week’s episode looms large yet again!

Next, the co-hosts get into tracking, starting with the news about the iOS 14.5 App Tracking Transparency option. The default option has this functionality turned on, and a whopping 96% of users leave the option turned on. For more stories on tracking, Michael and Michael turn to AirTags, with a couple of stories of people changing the form factor of the tags to make them more useful. In the first case, iFixit drills a hole in the case to allow the AirTag to be affixed to a keychain without an extra holder. In the second case, the AirTag is completely disassembled to make it skinnier so it may be more easily inserted into a wallet. Last, in this segment, the interesting hidden AirTag developer menu is shown to provide details on locating AirTags.

For more on intriguing data, the co-hosts discuss an article where a future Apple Watch may have additional sensor information. Another story is about information your car’s infotainment system could serve up to law enforcement.

In the ‘space is hard’ arena, Michael and Michael celebrate SpaceX’s successful landing of a Starship. They also celebrate Andy’s inclusion in the May 2021 issue of Linux Format magazine.

The co-hosts round out this week’s episode with a couple of Slashfilm articles about Loki and Boba Fett.

Selected Links

Open Culture article: How the Internet Archive Has Digitized More than 250,000 78 R.P.M. Records: See the Painstaking Process Up-Close — https://www.openculture.com/2021/05/how-the-internet-archive-has-digitized-more-than-250000-78-r-p-m-records.html

Newly digitized! This video looks at an early virtual reality headset developed at the UNC Dept. of Computer Science in the early 1990s. https://t.co/tTNO3v6xVJ
— UNC Archives (@uncarchives) May 5, 2021

PlayStation Patents Technology That Could Change Open-World Games one for @GamesAtWork_Biz https://t.co/wJ8QHbWa1l
— Ian Hughes/epredator (@epredator) May 7, 2021

The Matrix — https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/

Gaming Bible article: PlayStation Patents Technology That Could Completely Change Open-World Games — https://www.gamingbible.co.uk/news/playstation-playstation-patents-technology-that-could-change-open-world-games-20210505

Kotaku article: Oculus Homes Ransacked — https://kotaku.com/oculus-homes-ransacked-1846822987

Games at Work episode 318: Virtually Floating — https://gamesatwork.biz/2021/05/03/episode-318-virtually-floating/

MacRumors article: Analytics Suggest 96% of Users Leave App Tracking Disabled in iOS 14.5 — https://www.macrumors.com/2021/05/07/most-iphone-users-app-tracking-opt-out/

The Verge article: iFixit drilled a key ring hole into one of Apple’s AirTags in its latest teardown — https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/2/22415831/ifixit-drilled-key-ring-hole-apple-airtag-tile-teardown

TechCrunch article: Someone already turned Apple’s AirTag into a slim, wallet-friendly card — https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/06/someone-already-turned-apples-airtag-into-a-slim-wallet-friendly-card/

The Verge article: Apple’s AirTags have a hidden developer menu — https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/6/22422696/apple-airtags-hidden-developer-menu-back-end-data-how-to-access

Cult of Mac article: New sensor could turn 2022 Apple Watch into a doctor on your wrist — https://www.cultofmac.com/741467/2022-apple-watch-sensor-blood-sugar-pressure-alcohol/

The Verge article: Go read this report on how law enforcement can extract sensitive data from your car — https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/5/22420674/go-read-this-intercept-report-vehicle-forensics-infotainment-personal-sensitive-data-law-enforcement

The Verge article: SpaceX successfully landed a Starship prototype for the first time — https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/5/22421845/spacex-starship-sn15-successful-landing

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation

Oh hello, is that me on page 46 of Linux Format this month? #PiUser #RaspberryPi #fanboy #ThankYouChief @biglesp 😀 pic.twitter.com/XNI3Qspl5i
— Andy Piper (@andypiper) May 4, 2021

Slashfilm article: ‘Loki’ Special Look: Tom Hiddleston is Burdened With Glorious Purpose (Again) — https://www.slashfilm.com/loki-special-look-glorious-purpose/

Slashfilm article: The Morning Watch: Updated 2021 ‘Star Wars’ Canon Timeline, Boba Fett Returns in Animated LEGO Fight & More — https://www.slashfilm.com/the-morning-watch-updated-2021-star-wars-canon-timeline-boba-fett-returns-in-animated-lego-fight-more/

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Episode 318 — Virtually Floating

By Michael Martine | May 3, 2021 - 06:28 |May 3, 2021 Podcast

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Chair with balloon — Photo by Florian Klauer on Unsplash

Digital humans & deep fakes to personalize movies, a floating chair, importance of OS patches, security and backup.

Michael and Michael start things off right for this episode with a blog post from Ian “ePredator” Hughes on Digital Humans. This sparks a discussion on what it might be like to take advantage of deep fake technology to personalize and customize a movie to the viewer’s choices. Replacing Harrison Ford with another actor in the Star Wars films reminds Michael R of a photo of Pee-wee Herman as Darth Vader.

Next, a Laughing Squid post of an ingenious floating chair captures the co-hosts’ imaginations. The build video is cool – and the structure of the chair even more amazing. A nice little project for our listeners to consider doing. Check it out!

In the next portion of the podcast, the co-hosts consider a ZDNet article about the Facebook AR neural wristband controller. This controller captures the neural signals from the brain as they travel down to the hand. Quite an advancement over 1989’s Nintendo Glove.

The last set of topics are all about the importance of keeping your operating system up to date on your devices and having current backups. For the example on security, the pair talks about a malicious 0day bug that leverages a Gatekeeper exploit. Michael and Michael were both very happy that Shirt Pocket Software has updated it’s SuperDuper! backup application to run under Big Sur. Have a look at the blog post in the show notes for all the details – the good news is that there is a beta that works: Michael M created a successful backup with his machine over the weekend.

Selected Links

Feeding Edge LTD blog post: Digital humans evolve — https://www.feedingedge.co.uk/blog/2021/04/29/digital-humans-evolve/

Pee Wee blog: May the Fourth be with you on this Star Wars Day!!! >> PW as Darth Vader — https://peewee.com/2020/05/04/may-the-fourth/pw-as-darth-vader/

IMDb: Altered States movie (1980) — https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080360/

An Amazing Chair That Uses Floating Structural Compression to Hold a Person’s Seated Weight https://t.co/zh8NYPGetW
— Laughing Squid (@LaughingSquid) April 28, 2021