Black man arrested in the USA based on an incorrect facial recognition match
Olympus sells off its camera division because nobody’s buying cameras
Atlassian’s big wooden skyscraper HQ & Bathurst’s cybersecurity centre
New stuff in iOS 14 that I think is cool
Cheap Google Pixel 3, 32" 1080p TV, AirPods Pro, Sega Mega Drive Classics for PS4, Samsung 970 EVO SSD, DJI Tello drone and 10% off Macs at JB
The thing we warned everyone would happened, happened - a black man falsely identified and arrested based off an incorrect facial recognition match. Lazy police in Detroit took a poor quality CCTV image still from a robbery and fed it into something called DataWorks that tries to use NEC and Rank One's algorithms to check mugshots and driver's licence photos for suspects (in 2019 the NIST found those algorithms falsely identified black and Asian faces 10 to 100 times more often than white faces). The police then used that match to arrest Robert Williams, where he was kept in custody for 30 hours and only released on a $1,000 bond. The ACLU has joined Williams to sue the Detroit police for this whole saga. Hopefully it means police departments taking this half-baked shit seriously they realise there's real consequences for getting it wrong.
After years of fairly unconvincing cameras and significant financial scandals, smartphones were the thing that eventually broke the back of Olympus's 90+ year old camera business. They announced that the imaging division of their business will be sold to Japanese Industrial Partners (who you might remember snapped up Sony's VAIO computer brand) by the end of September after 3 years of losses that they attribute to a "rapid market shrink caused by the evolution of smartphones". Basically smartphone cameras are so good now, nobody except hardcore photography enthusiasts are buying cameras and Olympus's cameras aren't hardcore enough for that crowd.
Atlassian has shown off design renders of the fancy new office tower it plans to build in the Sydney Innovation and Technology Precinct near Central station, that their bosses have been hyping up alongside NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian for the last few years. I'll wait here while you go look at the pics. It's a very impressive building at 180 metres high, making it the tallest "hybrid timber building" in the world. 4,000 Atlassian staff will be working in there when it's completed in 2025. Totally unrelated except for the fact the NSW state government is involved - Bathurst will be home to a "cybersecurity vulnerability management centre" operated by Cyber Security NSW.
There's heaps of new stuff tricking out about iOS 14 now that developers have had time with the beta and more WWDC sessions take place. Here's a list of what I saw that I think is cool:
Double or triple tap the back of your phone to take a screenshot, mute sound, go back home and loads of others, including launching a Shortcut. I can’t wait to set up unlocking the charge port of my Model 3 with this.
App Clips are kinda like mini-apps that can be run on an iPhone without needing the full app, triggered by a link/code/NFC tag. Good for one off uses like food ordering or paying for parking, etc.
Safari will add support for websites to allow authentication via Touch ID and Face ID, via the WebAuthn component of the FIDO2 standard.
Sound Recognition is an accessibility feature that listens for knocking, horns, alarms, smoke detectors plus other noises and when detected, will send a notification to your device.
iOS will alert you when an app reads what you've pasted the to clipboard without copying it into the app. TikTok seems to be doing this on almost every keystroke!
Ex-demo Google Pixel 3 64GB - $349 from Phonebot
32” JVC 1080p TV - $179 at Big W
Apple AirPods Pro - $349 at Harvey Norman (get Officeworks to price match and they’re $331.55)
Sega Mega Drive Classics for the PS4 - $17.95 on the PlayStation Store
Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe 250GB SSD - $84.95 after cashback + delivery
10% off Macs (except the iMac Pro and previous gen MacBook Air) at JB Hi-Fi
DJI Tello drone combo pack - $199 from DJI’s eBay store
🎶 Jekyll and Hide - The Meanies
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