“Smart Reply” … Google making your conversations more dynamic and fun by taking you out of the loop little by little.
Links
Yay, Oxytocin
Leaky Apps
How much data are the most popular apps on Android and iOS leaking to third parties (i.e. people who have nothing to do with the app you’re using). A LOT!
Hello, Is That You?
It looks like Google has been recording your voice searches (German). There have been rumors all along and it was assumed this was going on. They have the actual voice recordings and their transcripts and also generate a “finger print” of your voice to be able to verify it.
If you extrapolate from that they can by now
- transcribe speech almost instantaneously,
- have (over time) enough data to recognize your voice among others and
- are also able to speak in your voice stitching together chopped-up samples of your speech.
*shudder*
youpronounce.it
YouPronounce.it allows you to enter an (English) word and finds YouTube videos where this word is used, jumps to the exact point so you can hear how that word is pronounced. 😀
Widow Update FUBAR
Microsoft accidentally published a weird “test” patch via Windows Update … world-wide! ?
Update 2015-10-05: And now they also seem to use an untrusted certificate(German). o.O
Soothing Noises of Uneventful Ambiences
My brother recently showed me a totally awesome ambient noise generator … with great themed presets. ?
In Vino Veritas … At Least Untill You Have To Pee
Who would have thought the lies we tell are more convincing when we need to pee.
I’m watching out for sentences like this in the news: ?
[…] complained they were subjected to ‘forced urination’ before they were interrogated by the TSA.
The actual paper.
Abstract: The Inhibitory-Spillover-Effect (ISE) on a deception task was investigated. The ISE occurs when performance in one self-control task facilitates performance in another (simultaneously conducted) self-control task. Deceiving requires increased access to inhibitory control. We hypothesized that inducing liars to control urination urgency (physical inhibition) would facilitate control during deceptive interviews (cognitive inhibition). Participants drank small (low-control) or large (high-control) amounts of water. Next, they lied or told the truth to an interviewer. Third-party observers assessed the presence of behavioral cues and made true/lie judgments. In the high-control, but not the low-control condition, liars displayed significantly fewer behavioral cues to deception, more behavioral cues signaling truth, and provided longer and more complex accounts than truth-tellers. Accuracy detecting liars in the high-control condition was significantly impaired; observers revealed bias toward perceiving liars as truth-tellers. The ISE can operate in complex behaviors. Acts of deception can be facilitated by covert manipulations of self-control.
Encrypt All Your Devices
Ars Technica has compiled a guide for how to encrypt laptops and phones. There are brief descriptions for all the relevant systems.
Moral parents, moral babies
Ars again covers interesting research on the psychology toddlers. This time: toddlers with parents with lower tolerance to injustice show stronger differences in EEG-readings when watching prosocial vs. antisocial behavior.
It also has a discussion on how difficult it is to do a “psychological” assessment of toddlers’ behavior and derive concrete explanations or conclusions from them.