Weekly Tech Recap - № 238 - Cybertruck, Instant Pots, Twitter, Richard Nixon and Pi 4 bug
Tesla’s Cybertruck success
Cybertruck. © Tesla.
Did Tesla’s Cybertruck, unveiled last week, leave you perplexed, even dubious? You’re not the only one. Its angular, retro-futuristic lines had some truckers thinking that the announcement was just a particularly sophisticated joke, and not an actual product. On the other hand, it looks like hundreds of thousands of drivers had no doubts whatsoever, since, according to a succinct Elon Musk tweet, Tesla received 250,000 pre-orders for the vehicle in just 5 days. This adds up to a 25 million dollar injection in Tesla’s coffers. Better yet, most potential buyers seem to be interested in the more powerful, more expensive models. On the other hand, Tesla’s Model 3 car had garnered no less than 325,000 pre-orders in the first week, even with a higher deposit (USD1,000 compared to USD100). That said, the Cybertruck is less versatile than a classic sedan, and its unusual design has probably scared away many pick-up drivers looking for a more conventional, less conspicuous ride. At the end of the day, the Cybertruck is a dark horse success for a bold design that many automobile punters wouldn’t have bet on. The fact is that the Cybertruck is probably attracting the non-pick-up crowd and creating a whole new market segment from scratch! Musk wows us again.
⇨ Mashable, Stan Schroeder, “Tesla Cybertruck hits 250,000 pre-orders.”
R2-D2 beef stew
Star Wars-themed Instant Pots. © Williams Sonoma.
Movie-related merchandizing tends to reach ridiculous heights. But if you happen to love stew as much as Star Wars, you might be interested in the latest line of Instant Pot pressure cookers. With the upcoming release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, you can now equip yourself with R2-D2, BB-8, Darth Vader, Stormtrooper and even Chewbacca cookers. The “Star Wars™ Instant Pot®” is now available exclusively at Williams-Sonoma for anywhere between CAD116 and CAD174, depending on model capacity (the Chewbacca model is the largest). While you’re at it, check out all their other Star Wars-related products, like the R2-D2 popcorn maker, the fabulous Darth Vader toaster, and even the Princess Leia bottles!
⇨ The Verge, Jay Peters, “Star Wars Instant Pots invite you to cook out of Chewbacca’s chest.”
Twitter twaddle
© iStock.
Twitter has a problem: new Twitterers are having a hard time finding a username that’s simple and isn’t already taken. To solve this problem and free up hundreds of thousands of names, Twitter decided to purge all inactive accounts, i.e. those whose owners haven’t logged in six months. Unfortunately, this was forgetting the concept of “Web memory”, which is especially important when it comes to deceased persons. Not to mention that recycling usernames leaves the door wide open to all manner of abuse, usurpation and fraud. Not surprisingly, Twitter’s announcement unleashed a wave of protests. At first, the company tried to downplay the decision, saying that it would only affect accounts in Europe and that it was necessary to comply with European General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR); however, regulatory experts have been unable to explain how deleting inactive accounts complies with any rules. In the end, Twitter backpedalled and put the plan on ice until it found a better solution. If you would like to archive a loved one’s Twitter account forever, contact Jason Scott, of Internet Archive. His organization is accepting requests.
⇨ BuzzFeeed.news, Katie Notopoulos, “Twitter said it will not delete the accounts of dead people.”
Deepfake videos
Richard Nixon. Oliver F. Atkins, 1971.
“Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace,” said Nixon in 1969. Or is that in 2019? The nightmare scenario we warned against, back in August 2018, has materialized (Putting words in people’s mouths, Supasorn Suwajanakorn, Steven M. Seitz, Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman, “Synthesizing Obama: Learning Lip Sync from Audio.”) Researchers at the MIT Center for Advanced Virtuality teamed up with Respeecher, a Ukrainian company, and Israel’s Canny AI, to match up pre-recorded clips with deepfake videos to show the president’s mouth moving in perfect sync with synthetic audio. The six-minute video debuted last week at the International Film Festival Amsterdam, where participants sat in a 1,960s-era living room and watched the president deliver the ghost speech on TV. The video simultaneously shows the dangerous power of deepfake technology, that can put words into the mouths of powerful leaders, and its potential as a force for good: Lyrebird, a company that creates digital voices that mimic actual speakers, is cloning the voices of people with ALS in order to allow them to continue communicating once they can no longer speak (Project Revoice).
⇨ YouTube, “In Event of Moon Disaster - Nixon Deepfake Clips.”
⇨ Axios, Kaveh Waddell, “In a deepfake, Nixon laments a catastrophe that wasn’t.”
Wi-Fi killed by HDMI
Pi 4 Model-B. © Raspberry Pi Foundation.
After the USB-C port problem, the Raspberry Pi 4 is facing a new bug. Users of the mini computer are puzzling over an issue where setting some display resolutions have the side-effect of killing the Wi-Fi connection. The problem was noticed by developer Enrico Zini, who is working on a digital signage box using the Raspberry Pi 4. “One full day of crazy debugging, and the result is that if the Raspberry Pi 4 outputs HDMI at a resolution of 2560x1440, the Wi-Fi stops working,” he reported. Users are hoping for a fix or definitive advice from the Pi Foundation. The biggest problem here, perhaps, is that if they cannot connect to Wi-Fi, most users will not immediately think of changing their display resolution or HDMI cable as a solution.
⇨ Enrico Zini, “Raspberry Pi 4 WiFi stops working at 2560x1440 screen resolution.”
⇨ The Register, Tim Anderson, “Twitter said it will not delete the accounts of dead people.”
