Photo by Florian Klauer on Unsplash

Digital humans & deep fakes to personalize movies, a floating chair, importance of OS patches, security and backup.  

Michael and Michael start things off right for this episode with a blog post from Ian “ePredator” Hughes on Digital Humans.  This sparks a discussion on what it might be like to take advantage of deep fake technology to personalize and customize a movie to the viewer’s choices.  Replacing Harrison Ford with another actor in the Star Wars films reminds Michael R of a photo of Pee-wee Herman as Darth Vader.  

Next, a Laughing Squid post of an ingenious floating chair captures the co-hosts’ imaginations.  The build video is cool – and the structure of the chair even more amazing.  A nice little project for our listeners to consider doing.  Check it out!

In the next portion of the podcast, the co-hosts consider a ZDNet article about the Facebook AR neural wristband controller.  This controller captures the neural signals from the brain as they travel down to the hand.  Quite an advancement over 1989’s Nintendo Glove. 

The last set of topics are all about the importance of keeping your operating system up to date on your devices and having current backups.  For the example on security, the pair talks about a malicious 0day bug that leverages a Gatekeeper exploit.  Michael and Michael were both very happy that Shirt Pocket Software has updated it’s SuperDuper! backup application to run under Big Sur.  Have a look at the blog post in the show notes for all the details – the good news is that there is a beta that works: Michael M created a successful backup with his machine over the weekend.

Selected Links

Feeding Edge LTD blog post: Digital humans evolve — https://www.feedingedge.co.uk/blog/2021/04/29/digital-humans-evolve/ 

Pee Wee blog: May the Fourth be with you on this Star Wars Day!!! >> PW as Darth Vader — https://peewee.com/2020/05/04/may-the-fourth/pw-as-darth-vader/ 

IMDb: Altered States movie (1980) — https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080360/ 

An Amazing Chair That Uses Floating Structural Compression to Hold a Person’s Seated Weight https://t.co/zh8NYPGetW— Laughing Squid (@LaughingSquid) April 28, 2021

ZDNet article: Facebook’s ‘mind-reading’ tech startup deal could completely change how we control computers — https://www.zdnet.com/article/facebooks-mind-reading-tech-startup-deal-could-completely-change-how-we-control-computers/ 

ZDNet article (video): Facebook unveils further details about its mystery virtual AR neural wristband controller —  https://www.zdnet.com/video/facebook-unveils-further-details-about-its-mystery-vir...