Outlets are reporting massive drops in cable and satellite subscribers, new facial recognition tech is giving everyone the heebie-jeebies, and reports about Apple looking to set up more production plants in India has turned heads on social media.
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Even social isolation can’t prevent cable and satellite TV subscribers from flocking to streaming platforms. The National Interest reported massive drops in subscribers in cable and satellite TVs. In the first quarter of 2020, providers lost 1.8 million subscribers, or 7.6 per cent of the total user base, marking the steepest drop ever. Satellite subscribers were especially eager to leave. The first quarter of the year saw 14.3 per cent ditching the service, compared to four per cent of cable.
Smile–or don’t–it won’t matter much for facial recognition cameras of the future. A new facial recognition solution developed by Rank One only needs your eyes and eyebrows to spit out your identity. This technology is a double-edged sword. On one side, people won’t have to remove their masks to sign in to facial recognition biometrics. On the other, traditional methods to defeat facial recognition surveillance will be obsolete. I’m sure a lot of people won’t want to work even harder to maintain their privacy, so it may be good news that this new tech still needs a lot of work. Its false non-match rate, for example, is 1.5 per cent. To put that into perspective, it will miss 15 matches for every 1,000 scans.
And lastly, The Indian Economic Times is reporting that in a bid to reduce its reliance on China as a base for operations, Apple could be planning to produce up to $40 billion worth of smartphones in India through contract manufacturers Wistron and Foxconn. Currently, Apple sells $1.5 billion of phones in India, but less than $0.5 billion of those are locally manufactured. Apple meanwhile produced $220 billion worth of products in China in 2018-19.
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home daily briefing.