Diginauts

Starting with the latest technological breakthroughs, corporate innovations, and scientific discoveries, hosts Eric Fader and Deron Sedy examine today’s digital society. Join us in discussing ethics, culture, business, social interaction — and just plain what it means to be human — against a digital landscape that evolves at an ever-accelerating pace.

Diginauts 0014 — Trump Team Botching Tech Security, Human-Pig Chimerae, Facial Recognition Catching Criminals

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  • segment 1, Top of Mind — Terrible Trump Tech (0:00): January in the Trump administration has featured failure to 2-factor authenticate, vulnerable phones, tweeted passwords, and worse.
  • segment 2, Juris Prudent — Facial Recognition Fighting Crime (12:11):  Are you comfortable with the FBI using computers to check your photo in their database when they suspect someone of a crime?
  • segment 3, Future File — Meme Marketplace (24:39): A subreddit allowing you to “buy” memes.
  • segment 4,  Let’s Dig Some More (31:43):  Splicing embryos to grow human organs, computerized telepathy, and the climate change run–down.

Tweet us @efader or @digitalderon or give us a call and leave a voice message at 323.686.8255.

Diginauts 0013 — Babies from Three Parents, Finland’s Experiment in Basic Income, Coolest Stuff from CES

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  • segment 1, Top of Mind — Healthy Babies from Three Parents (0:00): Doctors have succeeded in allowing a woman with fatal genetic defects to successfully have a baby.  Detractors fear the science isn’t yet sound.
  • segment 2, Let’s Hash It Out — CES  (12:02):  Tech companies headed to Las Vegas to show off this year’s trends in gadgets and all things digital.  Deron & Eric discuss the standout products.
  • segment 3, Juris Prudent — Libel and the Invention of Email  (31:04): Self-proclaimed inventor of EMAIL files defamation lawsuit against TechDirt’s Mike Masnick.
  • segment 4,  Let’s Dig Some More (41:32): We look at Google’s stealth advancement in artificial intelligence, a Japanese company’s decision to replace white collar workers with AI, and Finland’s move to experiment in fundamental basic income.
  • segment 5, Semantically Incorrect: ‘Ping’ and ‘Talk’ (1:11:23): Deron thinks we need a new word for talking to someone without talking to someone.

Tweet us @efader or @digitalderon or give us a call and leave a voice message at 323.686.8255.

Diginauts 0012 — Amazon’s Many Plans To Replace Humans, Politics & Your Brain, Are We Evolving into a New Species?

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  • segment 1, Top of Mind — Challenging Your Brain’s Political Believes (0:00): A study shows MRI images of people who’s deepest political beliefs are challenged, and it matches primitive reactions to life-threatening situations.
  • segment 2, Future File —  Human-Computer Hybrids (12:37):  The Singularity is looming.  We discuss what the future of humanity will look like, and whether humans will merge with computers to form what amounts to a new species.
  • segment 3, Juris Prudent — Search Warrants for Amazon Echo Data  (35:48): A murder case has caused law enforcement to seek recordings from a personal assistant device.  Do people have a right to privacy when it comes to always-listening technology?
  • segment 4,  Let’s Dig Some More (47:20): Your environmental update, then a look at the latest happenings in self-driving vehicles.  How will fewer car crashes impact organ donation?
  • segment 5, What’s Your Take — Warehouses in the Sky (1:09:46): Amazon filed for a patent to place blimps into high-altitude flight over cities, so that drones can deliver your products faster.

Tweet us @efader or @digitalderon or give us a call and leave a voice message at 323.686.8255.

Diginauts 0011 — Trump Summons Tech CEOs, Gamers as Drone Pilots, Opting Out of Body Scanners

Diginauts episode 0011
Diginauts episode 0011

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:11:10 — 98.2MB) | Embed

  • segment 1, Top of Mind — Drumpf & Technology (0:00): Technology’s most powerful are gathering in New York to meet with Donald Drumpf.  What will they say?  And what the hell are they not telling us about Russian cyber interference in the election?
  • segment 2, Future File —  Fusion Stellerator (23:55):  German scientists have successfully tested the next level of their fusion device, and the results were unprecedentedly positive.
  • segment 3, Juris Prudent — Opting Out of Body Scanners   (35:33): A blogger shared his experience opting out of the “voluntary” airport scanners in Berlin.  FAKE NEWS ALERT!!! Deron mentions that a TSA operator was caught masturbating to images from a backscatter device.  He got fooled.  Snopes says that never happened.
  • segment 4,  Let’s Dig Some More (48:34): After a round-up of headlines on climate change, we discuss the possibility of the UK military recruiting computer gamers as weaponized drone operators.  We also listen to a Christmas song composed by an artificial intelligence that was shown a picture of a Christmas tree.
  • segment 5, What’s Your Take — Entrepreneurial Predisposition (1:03:55): We discuss whether entrepreneurship is in your DNA.

Tweet us @efader or @digitalderon or give us a call and leave a voice message at 323.686.8255.

Diginauts 0010 — Every Human Replaced by Robots, Reddit Admits Edits, United Kingdom Surveillance Law

Diginauts Episode 0010
Diginauts Episode 0010

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:01:58 — 85.6MB) | Embed

Give us a call and leave a voice message at 323.686.8255, or tweet @efader or @digitalderon.

Diginauts 0009 — VR to Prevent Insanity after Head Transplant, Privacy with Snap Spectacles and Spying Earbuds, Updates on YOUTHvGOV

Diginauts episode 0009
Diginauts episode 0009

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Give us a call and leave a voice message at 323.686.8255, or tweet @efader or @digitalderon.

Diginauts 0008 — Facebook Echo Chamber and the 2016 Election, Human-Transmitted Passwords, Teens Sue U.S. Government

Diginauts episode 0008
Diginauts episode 0008

Podcast: Download (Duration: 59:21 — 82.4MB) | Embed

Tweet @DigitalDeron or @efader with your opinions, or give us a call and leave a voice message at 323.686.8255.

Diginauts 0007 — Election Results, Mining Asteroids for Minerals, Robots Programmed to Kill

Diginauts -- episode 0007
Diginauts -- episode 0007

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  • segment 1, Top of Mind — Election Results (0:00): Rightly or wrongly, we tried to record this episode as the results were coming in on election night.  Drumpf defeats Clinton.  We let our politics show a little.  (Oh, and here’s that Michael Moore article about Trump never wanting to be president in the first place.)
  • segment 2, Let’s Review (31:21):  New updates on our previous topics include a government effort to design drones that can take out insurgent fighters and and Atlantic reporter attempted to find out how long a device can sit at a random IP address before hacking attempts try to co-opt it for DDoS purposes.
  • segment 3, Future File — Mining the Asteroids (50:01): A U.S. company has received grants from the Government of Luxembourg to find mineral wealth in the asteroid belt, bringing commerce to space.

Tweet @DigitalDeron or @efader with your opinions, or give us a call and leave a voice message at 323.686.8255.

Diginauts 0006 — DDoS Attack, Computers Owning Patents, Brainwave Interfaces

Diginauts episode 0006
Diginauts episode 0006

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:07:51 — 94.1MB) | Embed

  • segment 1, Top of Mind — DDoS Attack (0:00): Spotify, Amazon, Paypal, and Twitter all suffered downtime last week owing to waves of Denial of Service attacks.  This latest cyber-attack involved the Internet of Things.  Who was responsible, and how do we stop future attacks?
  • segment 2, Future File — Brainwave Interfaces (17:04): A review in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience theorizes that we might be able to decode brain activity, allowing computers to convert our thoughts to words or computer codes.  We discuss the implications of computers that can essentially read our minds.
  • segment 3, Juris Prudent — AT&T’s Project Hemisphere (27:24  ): Law enforcement can buy into a database kept by AT&T that tracks user location.  Are they violating your privacy rights?
  • segment 4, Total Recall (43:49): Genetic modification will have a failsafe, if DARPA has anything to do with it, and a listener offers a suggestion for how to verb listening to audio books. 
  • segment 5, What’s Your Take?– Intellectual Property Rights for Computers? (52:28 ): We just can’t stop talking about the Monkey Selfie case, and this time we’re also exploring the possibility that computers should own patents for inventions created by their software.

Tweet @DigitalDeron or @efader with your opinions, or give us a call and leave a voice message at 323.686.8255.

Diginauts 0005 — Engineering Life, Doctor Chatbot, Your Phone vs. The 4th Amendment

Diginauts 0005
Diginauts 0005

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:07:32 — 94.2MB) | Embed

  • segment 1, Top of Mind–Politics & Y Combinator (0:00): Sam Altman’s Bay Area incubator gets money from a wealthy Drumpf supporter, and they’ll disavow Drumpf, but not the supporter.  Gizmodo things Altman should have to step down.  What do we think?
  • segment 2, Future File–Paging Dr. Chatbot (14:41): Increasingly, the medical industry will lean on technology to streamline the process of seeing your doctor.  Kaiser Permanente is pushing further into virtual doctor visits, and China’s Baidu has created a medical chatbot.
  • segment 3, Juris Prudent–Warranted Overreach? (30:38):  The government wants to do whatever it can to avoid a technology stand-off like the one it faced with Apple over the San Bernadino terrorist case.  To that end, they’ve begun writing warrants that pre-suppose the ability to force you to unlock your phone with your finger prints.
  • segment 4, Total Recall–Climate Change All Fixed! (45:10 ): That global climate change world meeting we discussed last week?  They reached an agreement!  But, does it have teeth?  Meanwhile, scientists have found a cheap and efficient way to remove CO2 from the air and turn it into fuel.
  • segment 5, What’s Your Take?–Rewriting The Genetic Code of Life(52:49): Scientists are now taking the genetic modification to the lowest biological building blocks, giving them the ability to manipulate… pretty much anything.  Should we apply these capabilities to agriculture?  To medicine? To how we reproduce?

Tweet @DigitalDeron or @efader with your opinions, or give us a call and leave a voice message at 323.686.8255.

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