Google Tensor SoC Chip-Future Smart Glasses; Twitter Gets Help from Reuters & AP to Bolster Credible Info; Facebook-Analyzing Encrypted Data; Amazon Will Pay Whopping $10 for Your Palm Print

As Google steps up the teasing about their Tensor system on a chip, here’s another little nugget from their Rick Osterloh. 9to5google.com reports that he said it will make big improvements in AR…which he said for now will be used mainly in smartphones like the Pixel. Osterloh went on to say that smart glasses will be ‘very useful’ in the future, and added “Without a doubt, sometime in the future, there will be the ability to have those experiences on different devices too.” It sounds like Google continues to work towards a better version of Google Glass. With Apple also working on smart glasses, it seems pretty likely that we will all be seeing things through them in the next few years. 

Twitter is hooking up with Associated Press and Reuters, hoping the news giants can help their curation team get credible information out to users. Engadget.com says that Trends will include contextual descriptions and links to reporting from reputable publications more frequently with the partnerships. Initially, the new news sources will focus on English language content, but that will be expanded. The Twitter curation team already contextualizes items in Japanese, Arabic, Spanish, and Portuguese. The platform hopes with the added muscle to its curation, trolls will be at least a little less successful at manipulating information or posting blatantly false information. 

Facebook is working on using AI to study ways to analyze data without decrypting it. According to The Information, this would allow them to target ads based on encrypted messages in WhatsApp, and to encrypt data Facebook collects without damaging their ad targeting capabilities (and selling those all-important ads! They recently lured a top researcher from Microsoft, which is also studying this, as are Amazon and Google. This field has been dubbed homomorphic encryption. Of course, all the companies think it will be un-hackable by competitors, etc. As we all know by now with hacking…fat chance.

From the ‘You’ve got to be kidding’ department, Amazon is offering a princely $10 if you enroll your biometric data in their palm print recognition system, Amazon One. Theverge.com reports that Amazon is pitching the pay system as an easy way to pay at their stores, and plans to offer it to other businesses. The system looks at the lines, ridges, and even veins to verify your unique palm print. Right now, Amazon One is in use at 50 SSU locations, including some Whole Foods and Amazon Go stores. While it’s a laughably small amount, some of your data sells for pennies…nice to know how highly business values us!