Weekly News Recap #5

30/07/2018

1. Google and Apple ban crypto apps from stores

A couple of weeks ago Apple made the decision to ban crypto mining apps from the Apple Store on iPhone and iPad. In their App Store review guidelines, Apple now states that “apps, including any third-party advertisements displayed within them, may not run unrelated background processes, such as cryptocurrency mining.” The ban is enforced due to fraudulent programmers, cunningly inserting software that mines cryptocurrency in unrelated advertisements and apps and sends a clear message from Apple: Don’t mine it on our devices.

Mirroring Apple, Google now too updated its Play Store policies to ban cryptocurrency-mining apps explicitly. Google says: “We don’t allow apps that mine cryptocurrency on devices”. We permit apps that remotely manage the mining of cryptocurrency.”

Apple, however, went further than Google by also banning apps that use coin giveaways as an incentive to get social media engagement or app downloads.

Source: Mashable

2. Bias facial recognition stays unresolved

Tech industry researchers have found that software used for facial identification, recognition, or analysis performs differently based on the age, gender, and ethnicity of the person it’s identifying.

A study from MIT Media Lab has published findings that show facial recognition algorithms designed by IBM, Microsoft, and Face++ had error rates of up to 35 percent higher when detecting the gender of darker-skinned women compared to lighter-skinned men. This bias has the potential to reinforce prejudice within the society and negatively affect women and minorities.

Even though the problem within has been identified, the tech industry has no plans nor ideas about how to fix it. Individual firms have begun dealing with the bias in their own software, however, there are no benchmarks that would allow the public to track improvement on an industry-wide scale.

Source: The Verge

3. Magic Leap sneak peek

Magic Leap is a start-up company that is working on a head-mounted virtual retinal display which superimposes 3Dcomputer-generated imagery over real-world objects. Not long ago, it released an AR demo and divulged its collaboration with the comics industry veteran Grant Morrison. Magic Leap just updated its developer documentation, giving us a preview of its operating system and interface. Few mock-up images and videos circulating on Twitter and Reddit have been gathered and include a photo of the device’s home screen and the stock apps that’ll ship with it, the platform’s gallery and avatar system (2D look).

The three-dimensional applications with elements that can interact with your environment, on the other hand, are called “immersive apps. Magic Leap will start shipping its mixed reality headsets this summer.

Source: Tech Crunch

4. Tesla released a surfboard

Elon Musk’s electric car company Tesla released a new product: a $1500 surfboard, designed by Tesla’s design studio “in collaboration with Lost Surfboards and Matt “Mayhem” Biolos.

The surfboard comes in black and red and matches the company’s vehicle aesthetic, mixing of the same high-quality matte and gloss finishes used on all their cars.

There were only 200 made which makes them limited edition. As of now all of them have sadly been already sold out! However, a small number made their way onto eBay attached with an amended price tag of $2000-$5000.

Leaves us to wonder what other extravagant new additions to Tesla’s “lifestyle” accessories there will be?!

Source: Engadget