Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 11/17 – A Deepfake Detector

Starting point is 00:00:00 On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech meme right home for Thursday, November 17th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. The guy who handled the Enron bankruptcy says FTX is the worst he's ever seen. Xbox gets full Discord integration. Apple's plans for Major League Soccer are revealed. Evernote finds a forever home, a new deep fake detector

Starting point is 00:00:52 from Intel and supercomputing in the cloud from Microsoft and Nvidia. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. So as part of bankruptcy proceedings, FTX has a new CEO. in place to try to rescue things, I guess, or at least dig things out. So what is this new CEO's assessment of where FTX is at? Quoting Coin Desk. New FTX CEO, John J. Ray the third, issued a scathing assessment of, quote, unprecedented, poor management practices by his predecessor Sam Bankman-Fried in a series of filings in a Delaware court. Ray, who has previously supervised financial scandals such as Enron, criticize poor recordkeeping and a lack of expertise among senior managers as well as the use of company funds to purchase real estate in the Bahamas.

Starting point is 00:01:46 Quote, never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here, Ray said in a court document filed on Thursday, from compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated, and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented, and quote, Ray is attempting to unravel a complex mess of dozens of companies which seem to have had scant regard for corporate norms. FTX, quote, did not keep appropriate books or records or security controls for its digital assets, used unsecured, shared email accounts to access private keys,

Starting point is 00:02:31 and to this day cannot provide a list of those working for the company as of November 11th, he said. Ray also criticized the use of software to conceal the, quote, misuse of corporate funds, a failure to reconcile blockchain positions daily, and the absence of independent governance between Alameda and the cluster of companies that includes FtX.com, an issue first revealed by CoinDesk, which caused cracks in the company to deepen ahead of its collapse. In the Bahamas, FTCS group corporate funds were, quote, used to purchase homes and other personal items for employees and advisors, and funds were transferred to staff personally with no record of them having to repay any loan, he said, and quote. Or as Josh Cincinnati tweeted, quote, John Ray, after taking one look at FTC's finances and corporate controls, what? Microsoft has rolled out Discord voice chat integration to all Xbox users, after a pre-executive.

Starting point is 00:03:30 after a previous Insiders test. PlayStation will reportedly get a deeper Discord integration sometime in 2023, quoting and gadget. Starting today, all Xbox 1 and series X slash S owners will be able to connect to Discord voice channels directly through their console. You'll no longer need to set things up with your phone. That should make it easier for you to chat with friends, even if you're all playing different games on different platforms

Starting point is 00:03:54 or you're playing, say, Halo Infinite together across console, PC, and mobile. Once you've connected your Discord account to Xbox, simply go to the Parties and Chats menu and select Discord. You'll see your available servers and be able to pick a voice channel. You can check which of your friends are in a server or voice channel before you hop in. Although Sony has invested in Discord, Microsoft beat it to the punch with voice integration on Xbox, including a noise suppression option on Xbox series X-slash-S. PlayStation is reportedly due to gain deeper integration with Discord next year.

Starting point is 00:04:26 Elsewhere, Xbox users can more easily start a live stream via Twitch, lightstream, or stream labs, thanks to built-in options. From the guide, go to Capture and Share, live streaming, and then more options. In the destination section, you'll be able to start a stream with the Twitch, lightstream, or Stream Lab Studio apps. As part of this move, the Xbox Twitch app will now only be used for watching other streamers, end quote. Apple plans to launch its Major League's soccer season pass on February 1st for $15 a month

Starting point is 00:05:01 or $99 a season, and $13 a month or $79 a season for Apple TV Plus subscribers. I find this interesting because this is going to be the biggest experiment running in terms of how sports will work in the streaming era. Remember, Apple and MLS are basically full partners here, so this will give us an idea of what it would be like if a streamer slash tech company helped run, promote, and broadcast an entire sport. Quoting deadline. It marks one of the biggest sports streaming deals at a reported cost of $2.5 billion and comes as Apple ramps up its sporting interest with rights to certain MLB baseball games.

Starting point is 00:05:39 The MLS season pass will offer subscribers every live MLS regular season match, the entire playoffs and cup competition with no blackouts. The games will be available in 100 countries and regions. Games featuring the likes of recent winners L-AFC will be available through the Apple TV app on Apple devices, smart TV, streaming devices, set top boxes, game consoles, and online.

Starting point is 00:06:00 although they are not thought to be broadcast in 4K. Production details were not offered. An Apple TV patch will be adorned on the sleeves of the shirts of all 29 clubs, as first reported this morning by 2023 Expansion Club, St. Louis City, SC, end quote. One of the longest startup sagas of the modern era is heading to a conclusion. Evernote has agreed to be acquired by Milan-based app developer Bending Spoons and a transaction expected to close in early 2023. No word on the purchase price, though Evernote has raised $290 million to date since its founding over 20 years ago. Quoting TechCrunch.

Starting point is 00:06:46 For Evernote, the acquisition, the terms of which weren't made public, marks the end of a rollercoaster of a journey. Founded in the year 2000 by Russian-American entrepreneur Stepan Pachikov, Redwood City-based Evernote made handwriting recognition software for Windows and the eponymous this note-taking web-clipping app Evernote, which stored notes on an infinite role of paper. Under CEO Phil Libin, who joined the company in 2000, Evernote shifted its focus to the web, smartphones, and Macs, starting with Evernote 3.0 in 2008. This proved to be a winning strategy, at least at first, between 2010 and 2015. Evernote raised hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital from investors, including Sequoia, Meritec Capital, and Japanese media company,

Starting point is 00:07:27 Nike. Its web service reached 11 million users within the first three years. and Evernote launched a business in China as the startup sought to rapidly expand. In 2013, Evernote was reportedly valued at nearly a billion dollars, but then trouble set in, end quote. Basically what happened was sales never really got traction, various versions of the software infuriated longtime users, and there was a whole revolving door of executives. Quoting again, Evernote hit $100 million in recurring revenue, millions of paying customers and over 250 million users. But it largely failed to keep pace with competitors like Notion, opting to rely heavily on a consumer-focused freemium model while eschewing the kinds of collaboration

Starting point is 00:08:09 features embraced by its rivals. So what does Bending Spoons gain with the purchase? Another feather in its software cap, it had seemed. The European tech company makes apps like video editor Splice, 30-day Fitness, Live Quiz, and Photo Editor Rimini, which combined have about 100 million users. Benning Spoon's CEO Luca Ferrari says that Benning Spoon, spending spoons fresh off a $340 million venture round will apply its proprietary technologies to Evernote to augment its usefulness and strengthen its reach, end quote. Google has announced a range of updates for Google Search, including helping users find specific meals and dishes near them, Maps is getting expanded Live View, and shopping has added

Starting point is 00:08:56 AR tools for makeup shopping, quoting TechCrunch. Starting today, users will be able to use search to find their favorite dish at a restaurant near them. For example, you can search truffle mac and cheese near me to see which nearby restaurants carry the dish on their menu. Once you find a specific dish that you're looking for, you can get more information about its price, ingredients, and more. Another new search functionality lets you use Google's multi-search feature to find specific food near you. Say you see something tasty looking online, but don't know what it is or where to find it. You can now use lens in the Google app for Android or iOS to snap a picture or take a screenshot of a dish and add the words

Starting point is 00:09:32 near me to find a place that sells it nearby. As for the new Maps features, Google is launching a new visual search experience called Live View in London, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, San Francisco, and Tokyo. Say you're visiting New York with plans to knock out your holiday shopping and catch up with friends. Google says on a blog post, lift your phone and tap on the camera icon in the search bar to see nearby stores and other places like coffee shops, banks, and ATMs. With AR powered directions and arrows, you can see what direction they're in and how far away they are, and even spot places that aren't in your immediate view, like a clothing store around the block, to get a true sense of the neighborhood at a glance, end quote.

Starting point is 00:10:10 If you want to find other places, you can tap on categories to explore what restaurants, bars, dessert shops, parks, and transit stations are nearby. In addition to displaying information about where places are, users will be able to see key information about each spot overlaid, such as whether the location is busy, if it's open, what the price range is, etc. And Google has announced a new AR shopping feature that is designed to make it easy. easier to find your exact foundation match. The company says its new photo library features 148 models representing a diverse spectrum of skin tones, ages, genders, face shapes, ethnicities, and skin types. As a result, it should be easier for shoppers to better visualize what different products will

Starting point is 00:10:48 look like on them. Users can now also shop for shoes using AR. You can start exploring shoes from brands like Sokini, Vans, and Merrill starting today. The feature will be compatible with more brands in the future, Google says. You can start by searching for a sneaker type such as shop blue vans sneakers and tap view in my space. Then you'll be able to spin, zoom, and see the shoes in your space to make it easier to see if you like the color, laces, tread, et cetera, end quote. Here's some good news from the hopefully saving us from a digital dystopia file.

Starting point is 00:11:28 Intel has unveiled fake catcher, a web-based real-time deep fake detector that analyzes the subtle blood flow in video pixels. The company claims a 96% accuracy rate in spotting fake videos. Quoting Venture Beat. Ilke Demir, senior staff research scientist at Intel Labs, designed fake catcher in collaboration with Umar Siftsi from the state University of New York at Binghampton. The product uses Intel hardware and software runs on a server and interfaces through a web-based platform. Unlike most deep learning-based deep-fake detectors, which look at raw data to pinpoint in authenticity, fake catcher is focused on clues within actual videos. It is based on, boy, polyplethymography or PPG, a method for measuring the amount of light that

Starting point is 00:12:19 is absorbed or reflected by blood vessels in living tissue. When the heart pumps blood, it goes to the veins, which change color. You can't see it with your eyes, but it is computationally visible, Demir told Venturebeat. PPPG signals have been known, but they have not been applied to the deep fake problem before. With fake catcher, PPG signals are collected from 32 locations on the face, she explained, and then PPG maps are created from the temporal and spectral components. We take those maps and train a convolutional neural network on top of the PPG maps to classify them as fake and real, Demeer said. Then, thanks to Intel technologies like the Deep Learning Boost Framework for inference and advanced vector extensions 512, we can run it in real time and up to 72 concurrent

Starting point is 00:13:03 detection streams, end quote. The next step after that will be source detection or finding the GAN model that is behind each deepfake, she said. Quote, the golden point of what we envision is having an ensemble of all these AI models so we can provide an algorithmic consensus about what is fake and what is real, end quote. Intel claims the product has a 96% accuracy rate, end quote. Finally today, also Bleeding Edge tech news, Nvidia and Microsoft have signed a multi-year deal to build an AI supercomputer in the cloud, making Azure the first public cloud to incorporate NVIDIA's full AI stack inclusive of GPUs, networking, and AI software. Quoting ZDNet. By beefing up Azure's infrastructure with NVIDIA's full AI suite, more enterprises will be able

Starting point is 00:13:56 to train, deploy, and scale AI, including large state-of-the-art models. Azure instances already feature NVIDIA-100 GPUs paired with NVIDIA-Quantinfini-Band networking. Future instances will be integrated with Nvidia H-100 GPUs and NVIDIA quantum 2 infinity band networking. Meanwhile, Nvidia's software suite, NVIDIAI Enterprise, is certified and supported on Microsoft Azure instances with A100 GPUs. Support for Azure instances with H-100 GPUs will be added as a future software release. Azure Enterprise customers will also get access to Nvidia's full stack of AI workflows and software development kits optimized for Azure. The companies will also collaborate to optimize Microsoft's deep speed, deep learning,

Starting point is 00:14:38 optimization software," end quote. So super computing as a service, a cloud service, quoting Silicon Republic. As part of the collaboration, Nvidia's full stack of AI workflows and software development kits will be made available to Azure Enterprise customers. Invidia said it will also utilize Azure's scalable virtual machine instances to research further advances in generative AI. These models are able to create new content using previously created content such as text, audio, video, and images.

Starting point is 00:15:07 include text-to-image AI generators, such as OpenAI's Dali. Last year, Nvidia and Microsoft teamed up to train a massive AI-powered language model. The two companies said this model had 105 layers and 530 billion parameters, three times as many parameters as OpenAI's GPT3, end quote. I made a list of things to say, but all I really want to say is hold her and keep him strong. While I'm away from here. That's that untitled song by REM. That's the last song on their Green album,

Starting point is 00:15:48 which weirdly, I only heard for the first time a couple years ago. Don't know how I missed it all this time, because it's great. It's become one of my favorite songs of all time. Believe me, if 13-year-old Brian had known that song existed, I would have played it a thousand times by now. Easy. Talk to you tomorrow.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 11/17 – A Deepfake Detector

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