Light Start – Google’s live streaming app, Tay the drunken AI, mapping mishaps, and why we can’t have nice things
CraigWilson
Watch out Periscope, here comes Google’s YouTube Connect
Mobile operators rejoice, there’s another live-streaming app coming to market to help your customers burn through their data allowance faster than a 15-year-old boy with an iPad and a premium PornHub account. Called YouTube Connect, it looks set to include many of the features we’ve come to expect from services like Twitter’s Periscope and Facebook Live — the ability to live-stream from a mobile device, chat and add tags. We’d also be as surprised as the aforementioned teenager when his mom comes home from work early if the service doesn’t let you publish streams to YouTube immediately after finishing one. Expect an official announcement from Google soon.
MS has a new artificial intelligence bot it’s testing on Twitter, Kik and GroupMe called Taylor, or Tay to your, me and lazy (and now confused) Taylor Swift fans. Tay’s targeted at 18- to 24-year-old English speakers and is meant to be able to throw shade, discuss the intricacies of getting into formation or just moan about how unfair parents are with the best of real-world youngsters. Except, she’s not really very good at conversation, unless by good at conversation you mean prone to meaningless statements and non sequiturs. Her pop culture game is weak, she doesn’t seem to have any political views and we suspect she’s been drinking. Wait, maybe she’s a better youngster than we thought.
Digital maps aren’t perfect, we know this. Apple Maps one tried to get us to drive into the sea, and Google Maps has on more than one occasion suggesting getting to our intended location might require a transatlantic swim. But to date it hasn’t encouraged us to inadvertently tear down a house intended for repair. Sadly this was the fate that befell a Texas home after a company tasked with demolitions in the area confused a repair job with a demotion one with the help of Google’s mapping service. Given the old builders’ maxim, “measure twice, cut once” you’d think they’d’ve, you know, measured twice.
There’s incense-and-chakras stupid, then there’s astrology-meaningfully-affects-my-life stupid and then there’s let’s-bring-back-infectious-diseases stupid. That’s right, we’re talking about that most obnoxious of brain donors, the anti-vaxxers. A new report’s found those morons are responsible for the rise in two infectious diseases the US had almost wholly eliminated: measles and whooping cough. “A substantial proportion of the US measles cases in the era after elimination were intentionally unvaccinated,” reads the report’s conclusion. As per the header image on Boing Boing’s original version of this story, “The best part of getting vaccinated isn’t the lollipop… it’s the part where you don’t get sick and die”. Face, meet palm.
