TEH 003: The Chatbot Will See You Now

In This Episode: The Macintosh “Root Password” problems, and the scare-tactic headlines. Why Windows isn’t “about to get a game-changing feature” despite a clickbait headline. Can chatbots help deter child sex exploitation? Google’s new Android app helps limit mobile data usage. And saving bits of computer history: ironically, much of it isn’t digitized for archive storage.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 54:55 — 25.3MB)

This Week’s Hosts

• Randy Cassingham, founder of This is True and the Internet Spam Primer.
• Leo Notenboom, “Chief Question Answerer” at tech education site Ask Leo!
• Gary Rosenzweig host and producer of MacMost, and mobile game developer at Clever Media.
• Kevin Savetz, web site publisher and Computer Historian at Atari Podcast.
• Longer Bios on the Hosts page.

Show Notes

• Gizmodo reports There’s a Massive Security Vulnerability in the New macOS — but Gary disagrees.
• BGR reports Windows 10 is about to get a game-changing feature — but Leo disagrees.
• The chatbot taking on Seattle’s sex trade — will it really reduce pervs’ appetites for children? Last month we saw news of another chatbot trying to waste spam scammers’ time: New Zealand cybersecurity firm Netsafe is hosting the free Re:scam, a chatbot you can send email scams to, and it will try to engage the scammer.
• If you have an Android phone with a tight data quota from your cellphone provider, Google’s new app Datally will let you selectively choose which apps can access mobile data in the background (but will let any app use it if you open it, such as opening Gmail to see if you have new mail).
• In addition to his historical Atari podcast, Kevin likes adding Atari computer information to Archive.org; here’s a simple search for its Atari information. Another useful site is AtariMania.com.
• Andy Weir (author of The Martian, which was made into a great film) has published his newest book (soon to also be a film), Artemis.
• And Google is officially 100% sun and wind powered, Electrek reports. GOOG spent $3.5 billion to develop 3.0 gigawatts worth of green power, mostly wind, with 2/3 being in the U.S. They’re the biggest corporate user of renewable power by far, more than double #2, Amazon (see chart below).