129: AI Wars: How to Make Chatbots and Future Artificial Intelligence Work for Us

This week we’re talking about Samsung’s big bang, Amazon Music Unlimited, and Evernote’s data loss. Questions/comments/tips? Visit awkward.email or call/text 509-AWKWARD.

Guests: Chris Messina (Uber) and Liam Broza (BitScoop)

This week we’re talking about Samsung’s big bang, Amazon Music Unlimited, and Evernote’s data loss. Questions/comments/tips? Visit awkward.email or call/text 509-AWKWARD.

Guests: Chris Messina (Uber) and Liam Broza (BitScoop)

Links for this episode:

Groups for Twitter; or A Proposal for Twitter Tag Channels
This is Chris' original proposal for the creation of the hashtag as we know it.
Feds Order Comcast to Cough Up Millions for Shady Billing Practices
In a win for frustrated Comcast customers everywhere, the FCC has ordered the vampiric media conglomerate to cough up $2.3 million—“the largest civil penalty assessed from a cable operator”— for sketchy billing practices.
Evernote Admits Bug Caused Data Loss for Some Mac Users
In an email that's going out to Evernote users this afternoon, Evernote confirms that a serious bug caused "a small number of people" who used the Evernote Mac app to lose data.
Amazon Music Unlimited Launches With $3.99 Echo-Only Subscription Option
Amazon today launched Amazon Music Unlimited, its new standalone, on-demand streaming service.
Amazon to Expand Grocery Business With New Convenience Stores
Retailer to build brick-and-mortar locations and offer curbside pickup for online orders.
Mac Sales Continue to Slide Amid Lack of Updates
Amid a continuing decline in worldwide PC shipments, Apple is also experiencing a decline according to new PC shipping estimates from Gartner. During the third quarter of 2016, Apple shipped an estimated 5 million Macs, down from 5.7 million in the year-ago quarter for a 13.4 percent decline in growth.
Samsung Halts Galaxy Note 7 Sales Worldwide
Samsung today announced that it is officially asking its global partners to cease all sales and exchanges of the Galaxy Note 7 while it further investigates claims of ongoing safety issues with replacement devices.
Walt Mossberg Calls Siri 'Too Limited and Unreliable' to Compete in 'Coming AI Wars'
The Verge's Walt Mossberg today wrote a critical article on Apple's Siri personal assistant, exploring the service's shortcomings, mistakes, and inability to answer some simple questions that competing products have no problem with.
LAFORGE Optical
LAFORGE Shima is prescription eyewear that displays notifications from your smartphone in your field of vision.
Here One
Stream. Connect. Control. Create. Everything else is just a headphone.
Sony Future Lab: N
N is a Concept Prototype featuring a voice interaction system.
With ears open, hands free, and eyes no longer distracted by mobile displays,
you can enjoy music and get up-to-the-minute information on demand,
promoting a more agreeable active lifestyle.
Behind Facebook’s Messenger Missteps
Facebook employees buzzed about Messenger’s personal assistant, known as M, when it launched inside the company and to a test group of thousands of users in California last year. Users could buy movie tickets or even order pinatas for employee birthday parties, although the work was performed mostly by people rather than a computer. The idea was that deep-learning algorithms would eventually learn enough from the requests to automate the work.
Hi, I am your Replika. What is my name?
Replika is your AI friend that you teach and grow through conversation. Reserve your name now and be the first to start raising your Replika when the app is out!
The Binge Breaker
Tristan Harris believes Silicon Valley is addicting us to our phones. He’s determined to make it stop.
Hard Drive Stats for Q2 2016
Q2 2016 saw Backblaze: introduce 8TB drives into our drive mix, kickoff a pod-to-vault migration of over 6.5 Petabytes of data, cross over 250 Petabytes of data stored, and deploy another 7,290 drives into the data center for a total of 68,813 spinning hard drives under management. With all the ins-and-outs let’s take a look at how our hard drives fared in Q2 2016.
How to uninstall stubborn Android apps
Jack Wallen shows you how to remove unwanted Android apps when the Uninstall button is grayed out.

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