here's what's coming up in the category
5
tv newsroom nasa made an incredible
10-year time lapse of the sun's fiery
rotation
tim hortons is facing a class-action
lawsuit over
app location tracking disney has been
developing incredibly life life
deep fake technology japan's arm-based
fugaku is now the world's
fastest super computer apple-backed firm
aims for 1 million robo taxis
and facebook has developed a new set of
vr glasses that look like a chunky pair
of sunglasses
stick around the full details and this
week's crypto corner are coming up
this is the category 5 dot tv newsroom
covering the week's top tech stories
with a slight
linux bias
from the newsroom i'm becca ferguson
you shouldn't stare at the sun it's
dangerous
but this month marks a full decade of
nasa's solar dynamics observatory doing
the staring at the sun
for us it's been studying the star
closest to earth non-stop from orbit
gathering 425 million high resolution
images
since june 2010 the data collected has
helped scientists make many discoveries
but for those of us scrolling the
internet for some kind of good news
nasa has turned the observations into
something fun
nasa has compiled the images into a
stunning time lapse of the star's
activity over the last 10 years
the time lapse assembles images taken at
an extreme ultraviolet wavelength
that shows the sun's outermost
atmospheric layer the corona
the movie compiles a photo every hour
with dark slides caused by the earth or
the moon eclipsing the observatory
as they pass between the spacecraft and
the sun
the full video lasts 61 minutes
showcasing the sun's 11-year solar cycle
with its rise and fall inactivity
the shift in solar activity can be
clearly seen
as the number of swelling solar spots
increased to explosive levels with
violent whips of magnetic field lines
and solar flares
it then calms down again to a period
known as solar minimum
when the amount of solar activity is
relatively low
that's a period we're in now with one
result being that the northern lights
are less frequently seen
in lower latitudes it's stunning to see
from our perspective even if a decade
is a little more than a blip in the life
of a star
the full-time lapse video in 4k
resolution can be viewed at
cat5.tv sun
tim hortons is facing a class-action
lawsuit in quebec over data collection
issues in the company's mobile ordering
app filed a day after four privacy
watchdogs announced a joint
investigation
into the company's overreach the court
application filed by two montreal-based
law firms on tuesday
cites an investigative story by the
financial post which revealed the tim
hortons app
was logging users location data in the
background
even when the app wasn't open the app
was streaming gps location data to radar
labs
inc an american company which analyzes
location data to infer where users live
and work and logs a person's visits to
one of tim horton's competitors
such as starbucks or mcdonald's corp
immediately after privacy commissioners
for the federal government
quebec alberta and british columbia
announced their joint investigation on
monday
tim horton said in a statement that it
has discontinued its practice of
tracking
users location when the app is not open
the lead plaintiff is a montreal
resident who works in the i.t
sector and even though defined by his
lawyer as a tech savvy guy he was
shocked to find out how the app was
tracking him
consumer protection lawyer joey zuchron
said that simply stopping the practice
of background location tracking isn't
enough
because tim horton's parent company
appears to have been tracking the lead
plaintiff since
last year and the damage is already done
zuckerin says they've gained a valuable
database of information and behavior
patterns and activities of individuals
so are they now just going to throw that
out or are they going to profit from it
my guess my guess is the latter tim
horton's chief corporate officer
duncan folsom fulton said in an emailed
statement the company did not have any
comment on the class action lawsuit
and reiterated that it had discontinued
background location tracking
although the app may still record user
location when it's
open in many cases of privacy violations
it's difficult to sue because litigants
can't put a dollar value on the harm
they have suffered
but the quebec charter of rights and
freedoms makes privacy a protected right
and that simplifies the case most
privacy and data cases in canada have
been focused on breaches where companies
allowed private information to be leaked
or stolen by hackers but litigation
around issues relating to data and
privacy could become
more common depending on how the courts
respond in this case and
future cases a new paper published by
disney research describes a fully
automated neural network based method
for swapping
faces in photos and videos the first
method that results in high resolution
results of sufficient quality
to be used in film and tv the
researchers
specifically intend this tech for use in
replacing
an existing actor's performance with a
substitute actor's face
for instance when de-aging or increasing
the age of someone
or potentially when portraying an actor
who has passed away
they also suggest it could be used for
replacing the faces of stunt doubles
in cases where the conditions of a
seeing call for them to be used
this method is unique from other
approaches in a number of ways
including that any face used in the set
can be swapped with any recorded
performance
making it possible to relatively easily
re-image the actors on demand
the other is that it recreates contrast
and lighting conditions to ensure the
actor looks like they are
actually present in the same conditions
as the scene
you can check out the results for
yourself in this video
as you can see there's still a hint of
uncanny valley going on here but the
researchers acknowledge that in their
paper
calling this a major step toward
photorealistic face swapping that can
successfully bridge the uncanny valley
it is still a lot more realistic than
other attempts which is especially
apparent when you've seen the
side-by-side comparisons
with other techniques most notably it
works at much higher resolution which is
key for actual entertainment industry
use
considering the example of using this
technique for a stunt double
the realist realism could come across as
being incredibly realistic
the examples presented are a super small
sample
so it remains to be seen how broadly
this can be applied
subjects used appear to be primarily
white for instance
also there's always the question of the
ethical implication of any use of face
swapping technology
especially in video as it could be used
to fabricate
credible video or photographic evidence
of something that didn't actually happen
given however that the technology is now
in development from multiple quarters
it's essentially long past the time for
debate about the ethics of its
development and exploration
instead it's welcome that organizations
like disney research are following the
academic path
and sharing the results of their work so
that others concerned about its
potential
malicious use can determine ways to flag
identify and protect
against any bad actors japan's
arm-based fugaku is now the world's
fastest
supercomputer an apple-backed firm aims
at 1 million robo-taxis and facebook has
developed a new set of vr glasses that
look like a chunky pair of sunglasses
becca has these stories coming up plus
robert's here with the crypto corner
don't go anywhere
welcome to the cryptocorner and again
we've got a fully loaded program for you
so let's dive into it if we look into
the market
then you'll see that there has been a
slight drop between last week and this
week
from 277 billion to 263 billion
uh an average around five percent drop
between last week and this week
we sold this year by seven days then
last week we had 20 coins that gained
more than 15
this time it's a mere six coins and
uh on the downside last week we had two
coins that lost more than 15 percent
this time it's a few more than that so
it's slightly bearish behavior in the
market
and if we look into the d5 market then
similar picture there from 6.7 billion
down to 6.1 billion
dropped between last week and this week
now
if you remember last week we went into
detail in regards to the d5 market how
to participate
in this market and how the future looks
like
but also that there are risks attached
to that because it's a very young market
and so this is what happened between
last week and this week
a hacker stole around half a million u.s
dollars now it's not stealing in
traditional sense we just take something
it's just that they
made use of these different protocols in
a way
that they were able to harvest
around half a million us dollars and the
way that worked
is as you remember this is one of those
platforms where you can participate
and so you they use the balance and pool
the balancer platform in one of those
pools
and they use the flashlight technology
so with this technology which means a
flashlight is something that happens
between two blocks so it's never
registered
so you can take a loan as high as you
want
doesn't matter because it's never
registered but between two
those two blocks you can do whatever you
want to do uh
you can do whatever you want to with
that money and that's what they did
so they took out that loan and then they
started swapping between
the ethereum and the sta token and they
did that 24 times
until the whole pool was drained again
that's between two blocks so
it's never registered but they were
making use of that
and every time that this transfer
happened
a transfer fee of one percent was
charged to the recipient
but that was not registered on the
balance of platform
and so every time the attacker swapped
between those two
coins uh those two tokens the balancer
pool received one percent less
sta than was expected and these people
were harvesting that
so it shows how young this industry is
but also how interesting it is
and as i encourage you last week just
go in there and learn more about it now
on the other side
looking at the traditional market
something similar happened
uh 2.8 billion u.s dollars were scammed
in the gold market
now that's something that would never
have be able to happen in the bitcoin or
the crypto
market especially bitcoin because it's
the most secure platform in the world
uh but in gold everybody operates with
certificates so not the physical gold
it's a certificate that's being
transferred and that's where the scam
happened with bitcoin that would have
never happened because bitcoin was never
hacked
so it's the most secure software
platform in the world
now something interesting is somebody
published a report
um that is fantastic i encourage you to
take a look at it
and as usual i put the link into the
description but this report is in debt
and very scientific and fantastic i love
this report
so these they go into every single
aspect of
of the market so adoption rate uh
tax evasion uh remittance and that on a
global basis
and they also look into uh
how the value is going to perform
from bitcoin ethereum ripple and xrp
over the next five to 10 years they
predicted their price i'm not going to
mention that here because it's not
what we do but take a look into what
that report says but the interesting
thing is
really what they are talking about so
online transactions how they look
as you can see it's really in detail of
what um
they are analyzing and it's worth
spending some time
into reading this report it's 64 or 61
pages
now um part of this is of course as you
heard from us last uh
a few weeks ago is that china is moving
into um the the chinese remedy into
uh cryptocurrency and canada is uh
like most other countries are planning
to do similar things
uh the interesting thing is that some
experts in canada
are uh hoping that the bank of canada
will
create a more inclusive and accessible
um
digital canadian dollar so let's hope
that that happens because that would be
beneficial for everybody in the world
and the last one is uh
coinbase um they have got a section
where you can earn money by just
learning something so you go into
coinbase.com and then slash earn
and then you've got here section where
you can just by
learning something uh earn money and
it's i think in total over 400
and they just started this one here the
compound course
uh where you can earn nine compounds or
nine dollars worth in compound
um by just taking the course now you
have to be fast because
these things sell out pretty fast but
it's just in the
other way on how you can make small
money but you can make some money
anyway um that's it from me uh this week
i hope you enjoyed it i hope you learned
something and i'm
looking forward to see you next week so
thank you very much for watching
thanks bye-bye thank you robert just a
reminder that we're not providing
financial advice but just sharing what's
happening in the cryptocurrency market
always remember that the cryptocurrency
market is ever-changing
and always volatile so you should only
spend what you can afford to lose
now back to becca in the newsroom thank
you robbie
according to a semi-annual ranking
announced by the u.s
european top 500 project on monday
japan's latest supercomputer fugaku is
the world's fastest for computing speed
this is the first time that a japanese
supercomputer has taken the top position
in nine years when the k
computer fugaku's predecessor took first
place at this time in 2011.
jointly developed by japan's
state-backed raiken center for
computational science and fujitsu
fugaku is the first ever arm-based
system to become the world's fastest
super computer
it scored a high-performance linpack hpl
score
of 415.5 petaflops
which makes it 2.8 times faster than ibm
summit's 148.6 petaflops
that is now in second place in the top
500 supercomputer rankings
fugaku is powered by fujitsu's 48 core
arm-based a64
fx system on chip and consists of nearly
7.3 million cpu cores
in single precision operations it
reaches peak performance of over one
thousand petaflops which pushes our
vernacular into the next tier at one
the chips run at 2.0 gigahertz with a
boost to 2.2 gigahertz
and carry 32 gigabytes of second
generation high bandwidth memory
each this arm-based supercomputer also
secured the number one position in other
rankings that test computers on
different parameters
including graph 500 hpl ai and high
performance conjugate gradient
this is the first time that a
supercomputer has simultaneously topped
the rankings in the above four
categories
according to fujitsu currently installed
at the raiken center for computational
science
in kobe japan fugaku is will also carry
out a wide
range of applications that will address
high priority
social and scientific issues
while the super computer is expected to
start full-time operation in april next
year
they are already using it in the fight
against colbot 19.
in recent years countries like the us
and china have dominated the race to
develop powerful machines
this time too china dominated the top
500 lists with 226 super computers
while the us took second place with 114
systems followed by japan with 30
france with 18 and germany with 16
systems chinese ride-hailing firm
didi ching says it plans to operate more
than a million self-driving driving
vehicles by 2030.
according to dd's chief operating
officer meng xing
the robo taxis are to be deployed in
places where ride-hailing drivers are
less available
the company last month completed a more
than 500 million dollar fundraising
round for the autonomous driving unit
led by softbank group's vision fund 2.
apple who is known to be interested in
the development of autonomous driving
invested 1 billion dollars into dd back
in 2016.
last year didi said it would start using
autonomous vehicles to pick up
passengers in beijing
shanghai and shenzhen this year before
expanding the scheme
outside china in 2021
automakers and tech companies in china
are investing heavily in the autonomous
driving industry to compete with the
likes of tesla
alphabet waymo and uber while some
industry insiders say it will take time
for the public
to trust autonomous vehicles fully mang
said didi expects autonomous vehicles to
be in mass production
by 2025. competitors are already
offering robo-taxi service but a fleet
of 1 million vehicles would put them all
to shame
we'll keep our eye on this and see if
deedee is able
to deliver facebook has created a
virtual reality headset that's not much
larger than a chunky pair of sunglasses
the futuristic shades use a specially
designed holographic film to miniaturize
the lens
conventional vr displays tend to be
bulky as the refractive lenses inside of
them
need a couple of inch inches to focus
the display for its wearer's eyes
the result is a pair of glasses that are
most at most only nine millimeters thick
according to the researchers and weigh
only 17.8 grams
images from the glasses green and black
display are frankly extremely cyberpunk
the glasses can provide an approximately
90 degree horizontal field of view
according to testing detailed in a paper
published by facebook research the
design also does away with the
traditional
lcd panels used in conventional vr
headsets
and uses lasers instead to create an
image
that means pixel counting isn't really
an option
it's still an early prototype with
plenty of limitations
since light rays from the backlight fan
out significantly before they are
focused by the holographic
beam splitter surface large reason
regions of the display do not contribute
to the display's field of view
the researchers write in the paper the
glasses are also still
not capable of producing a full color
image and exhibit ghosting around the
edges of the field of view caused by
optical surfaces reflecting light
the team already has a plan to reduce
weight even further
by switching to plastic substrates the
researchers expect to bring total weight
to just 6.6 grams
about the weight of a pair of large
aviator style sunglasses
this news comes at the same time as
google's acquisition of canadian smart
glasses startup north
who developed lightweight focal smart
glasses designed with a holographic
display that only the user can see
it would appear augmented reality is
still in the sights of these two big
players
which could mean some interesting tech
in the coming years
big thanks to roy w nash and our
community of viewers for submitting
stories to us
this week thanks for watching the
category 5 tv newsroom
don't forget to like and subscribe for
all your tech news with a slight line of
bias
and if you appreciate what we do become
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from the category 5 dot tv newsroom i'm
becca ferguson
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you