Power
Microsoft wants you to live on as a digital chatbot
Drone blimps, emotional video editing, better Apple Watches and other patents from Big Tech.
Image: USPTO
Source Code: Your daily look at what matters in tech.
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Drone blimps, emotional video editing, better Apple Watches and other patents from Big Tech.
Hello patent roundup readers! It's been a while since I've brought you the latest Big Tech filings from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Blame Thanksgiving and the latest Protocol Manuals. But never fear: We're back now, and there were some truly great patents from the last few weeks. Amazon wants to edit content when it thinks you're sad and blanket the world in drone blimps; Apple is thinking about making long-living wearables; and Microsoft wants to digitally resurrect your dead loved ones.
And remember: The big tech companies file all kinds of crazy patents for things, and though most never amount to anything, some end up defining the future.
Keeping up with the news is a difficult task, even on slow news days (remember those?), but Google thinks it can solve it with automation. Based on things people have searched for and their general popularity, Google could send people daily or weekly digests of headlines. The system's algorithm would rank each item on how important it thought it would be to the user. A much easier solution: just sign up for Source Code.
Editing content if you look sad
Sometimes after a rough day, we turn to music, books, games or movies to cheer us up. But what if the content we ingested was specifically tuned to reverse whatever mood we're in? Amazon is thinking about using facial recognition to try to determine what mood a person is in by their facial expressions, and then tailoring — or even editing — content to fit the mood. If you're exasperated and just want something to zone out to, the system probably wouldn't show you "Love in the Time of Cholera." Maybe if you keep wearing a mask, the system won't know what sort of content to program for you.
Connected containers that reorder more products
Ever get down to the end of your jar of coffee beans and realize you don't have enough left for that morning cup you need? If so, Amazon's new patent might be welcome news. It outlines an internet-connected container that can gauge the weight of what's in it; if it's getting light, it can automatically reorder what you usually get. In this case, that could mean never being without your organic fair-trade medium roast coffee grounds ever again, which means more booked revenue for Amazon.
This looks like something out of Space Invaders. Apparently not content with the possibility of covering the sky in small delivery drones, Amazon seems to be looking into using blimps to monitor those drones, flying above them to track whether they're all doing as told. Can't wait to see Prime Air blimps replacing Goodyear at all major sporting events in the future — and everywhere else.
The Apple Watch is great, but all of the new features the company has introduced — like the always-on display and sleep tracking — really eat up a lot of battery. This new patent, though, could potentially go a long way to adding more battery capacity to Apple's watches without adding much more thickness. The idea is to basically incorporate tiny tubular cells into the design of the watch band — creating something that doesn't look wildly different from some of the bands Apple already sells today — that would still allow the watch band to be flexible. Just don't catch that band on anything!
Apple is also looking into making wearables that might feel a little less like wearing a small iPhone on your wrist. This patent outlines incorporating circuits into stretchy fabrics that could even withstand being put through the wash. While I'd prefer an Apple Watch that can last more than a day or two between charges, it would probably be pretty nice to have one that I can easily wash; they do get pretty grimy after a while!
On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog — apart from maybe Facebook. The company is looking into how it can recognize people even if they're not logged into the social network. The patent outlines some more obvious ways — such as cookies that follow your browser around the web — as well as some deeper tracking, such as remembering logged-in users' MAC addresses, IP addresses, device serial numbers and device model numbers. Very little stays secret online these days.
Turning someone into a chatbot
This is a concept I'm endlessly fascinated by. I wrote a very long story about the idea of turning all your digital correspondence with another person into a simulacrum of that person and the nature of humanity, and whether we are more than the sum of our digital parts. Turns out, Microsoft appears to be exploring that very question itself. This patent envisions a system for taking digital content from a person ("images, voice data, social media posts, electronic messages, written letters," the patent says) and using machine learning to train a chatbot on replicating how that person would sound. Is this the future of customer service or a really creepy way to honor loved ones who've died? Maybe both!
Combatting "notification blindness"
If you're not extremely ornery like me, you've probably given up trying to maintain inbox zero and keep all the apps on your phone free of unread notifications. You'll have probably missed a few important notifications in the sea of spam emails, meeting invites, podcast reminders and whatever else pings your phone each day. Microsoft is working on determining the likelihood that displaying a notification badge will cause a user to either read the notification and do something about it, or to turn notifications off for that app entirely (something I do with merciless frequency). If the system decides it's more likely that they'll turn notifications off altogether, it might not show a badge.
Playing basketball on your own
We're having to do a lot on our own these days, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to have fun on our own. Microsoft is working on wearables that could be programmed to restrict motion to certain parts of the body, which would give the wearer a sensation of weight or touch. Done correctly, this could be used to simulate something like holding and shooting a basketball. Pair that up with an augmented reality system like HoloLens, and you've got virtual H-O-R-S-E on your hands. Who needs the NBA Bubble?
Mike Murphy ( @mcwm) is the director of special projects at Protocol, focusing on the industries being rapidly upended by technology and the companies disrupting incumbents. Previously, Mike was the technology editor at Quartz, where he frequently wrote on robotics, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics.
It's an app for all your social apps. And part of an entirely new way to think about chat.
David Pierce ( @pierce) is Protocol's editor at large. Prior to joining Protocol, he was a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, a senior writer with Wired, and deputy editor at The Verge. He owns all the phones.
Eric Migicovsky likes to tinker. And the former CEO of Pebble — he's now a partner at Y Combinator — knows a thing or two about messaging. "You remember on the Pebble," he asked me, "how we had this microphone, and on Android you could reply to all kinds of messages?" Migicovsky liked that feature, and he especially liked that it didn't care which app you used. Android-using Pebble wearers could speak their replies to texts, Messenger chats, almost any notification that popped up.
That kind of universal, non-siloed approach to messaging appealed to Migicovsky, and it didn't really exist anywhere else. "Remember Trillian from back in the day?" he asked, somewhat wistfully. "Or Adium?" They were the gold-standard of universal messaging apps; users could log in to their AIM, MSN, GChat and Yahoo accounts, and chat with everyone in one place.
David Pierce ( @pierce) is Protocol's editor at large. Prior to joining Protocol, he was a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, a senior writer with Wired, and deputy editor at The Verge. He owns all the phones.
Absence of dues, retaliation fears and small numbers could pose problems for the union's dream of collective bargaining, but Googlers are undeterred.
Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (@ anna_c_kramer), where she helps write and produce Source Code, Protocol's daily newsletter. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.
When the Alphabet Workers Union launched with more than 200 Googlers at the beginning of the year, it saw a quick flood of new sign-ups, nearly quadrupling membership over a few weeks. But even with the more than 710 members it now represents, the union still stands for just a tiny fraction of Google's more than 200,000 North American employees and contractors. The broader Alphabet workforce could prove difficult to win over, which is a hurdle that could stand in the way of the group's long-term ambitions for substantive culture change and even collective bargaining.
The initial boom of interest from Googlers was thrilling for Alex Peterson, a software engineer and union spokesperson. "It's really reinvigorating what it means to actually be a community of Googlers, which is something that's been eroding over the past four or five years, or even longer."
Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (@ anna_c_kramer), where she helps write and produce Source Code, Protocol's daily newsletter. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.
The Board's decision on whether to reinstate Trump could set a new precedent for Facebook. But does the average user care what the Board has to say?
Two weeks after Facebook suspended former President Donald Trump's account indefinitely, Facebook answered a chorus of calls and referred the case to its newly created Oversight Board for review. Now, the board has 90 days to make a call as to whether Trump stays or goes permanently. The board's decision — and more specifically, how and why it arrives at that decision — could have consequences not only for other global leaders on Facebook, but for the future of the Board itself.
Facebook created its Oversight Board for such a time as this — a time when it would face a controversial content moderation decision and might need a gut check. Or a fall guy. There could be no decision more controversial than the one Facebook made on Jan. 7, when it decided to muzzle one of the most powerful people in the world with weeks remaining in his presidency. It stands to reason, then, that Facebook would tap in its newly anointed refs on the Oversight Board both to earnestly review the call and to put a little distance between Facebook and the decision.
President Joe Biden has named Becca Slaughter acting chair of the FTC. In conversation with Protocol, she laid out her priorities for the next four years.
Becca Slaughter made a name for herself last year when, as a commissioner for the Federal Trade Commission, she breastfed her newborn baby during video testimony before the Senate, raising awareness about the plight of working parents during the pandemic.
But on Thursday, Slaughter's name began circulating for other reasons: She was just named as President Joe Biden's pick for acting chair of the FTC, an appointment that puts Slaughter at the head of antitrust investigations into tech giants, including Facebook.
Anne Toth, Amazon's director of Alexa Trust, explains what it takes to get people to feel comfortable using your product — and why that is work worth doing.
David Pierce ( @pierce) is Protocol's editor at large. Prior to joining Protocol, he was a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, a senior writer with Wired, and deputy editor at The Verge. He owns all the phones.
Anne Toth has had a long career in the tech industry, thinking about privacy and security at companies like Yahoo, Google and Slack, working with the World Economic Forum and advising companies around Silicon Valley.
Last August she took on a new job as the director of Alexa Trust, leading a big team tackling a big question: How do you make people feel good using a product like Alexa, which is designed to be deeply ingrained in their lives? "Alexa in your home is probably the closest sort of consumer experience or manifestation of AI in your life," she said. That comes with data questions, privacy questions, ethical questions and lots more.
David Pierce ( @pierce) is Protocol's editor at large. Prior to joining Protocol, he was a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, a senior writer with Wired, and deputy editor at The Verge. He owns all the phones.