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Popular face-swapping app Zao sparks another privacy outcry
Yet another AI-powered face-swapping app has gone viral, and it's introducing the usual privacy concerns in record time. The iOS app Zao quickly topped China's edition of the App Store since its August 30th launch thanks to its uncanny ability to put your face into scenes from movies and TV shows. However, Bloomberg noted that an early version of Zao's user agreement gave the developer Changsha Shenduronghe Network Technology (a subsidiary of dating and livestreaming company Momo) "free, irrevocable, permanent, transferable and relicense-able" rights to all user-made content. In other words, photos and videos involving your face effectively became the app creator's property.
Viral hoax Momo is getting its own movie
Momo, the viral hoax that took the internet by storm last summer, has always looked like it belonged in a horror movie. Now it will star in one. Deadline reported that Orion Pictures is planning a movie based on Momo, the creepy looking character at the center of the Momo Challenge. The project will be developed in partnership with Vertigo Entertainment and will be led by Taka Ichise, one of the producers of The Grudge.
Adults are the only ones who fell for the Momo hoax
Oh man, we really do live on the dumbest timeline. You probably recognize the horrifying visage you see above: it's Momo, the mascot for the internet's newest outrage sensation. The Momo Challenge, as it's called, reportedly encourages children and teens to commit increasingly brazen acts of self-harm and criminality. It's also a complete and utter, laughably obvious hoax. Your kids are fine, literally nobody on the entire internet has fallen for this -- except, well, countless adults, law enforcement agencies, news outlets and school districts. You know, the responsible folks. The Momo in the picture, it should be noted, is real. The figure is not digitally generated, nor is it photoshopped. "Momo" actually exists as a static sculpture, dubbed "Mother Bird," and was created by Japanese artist Keisuke Aisawa, who made it for his employer: the special effects company, Link Factory. It was first displayed in a Tokyo horror-art gallery back in 2016. View this post on Instagram 台風だから幽霊の絵見てきた 幽霊はいいぞ #幽霊画廊 #猫将軍 A post shared by さとう【生ビール嫌い】 (@j_s_rock) on Aug 22, 2016 at 7:13am PDT During its run at the gallery, visitors snapped pictures of the sculpture, officially titled "Mother Bird," and posted them to Instagram. Eventually the images made their way to Reddit's r/creepy forum where it was further disseminated across the internet, all the while morphing into the Momo Challenge. Momo made her first appearance in the mainstream early last year after authorities in Argentina warned of a "WhatsApp terror game" following the suicide of a 12-year-old girl. In the following months, the rumor of "El Momo" made waves in Mexico before eventually landing on news desks here in the US that fall. By that point, school officials and local police departments were claiming that Momo was being spliced into children's programming on YouTube and spread among WhatsApp users. The panic even spread to the UK at the start of 2019 before hopping the pond back to the United States late last month. At the end of February, a Twitter user going by Wanda Maximoff issued the following warning in a now-deleted tweet, The Atlantic reports, "Warning! Please read, this is real. There is a thing called 'Momo' that's instructing kids to kill themselves. INFORM EVERYONE YOU CAN." That tweet was viewed more than 22,000 times over the next few days before exploding onto the mainstream consciousness thanks to Kim Kardashian discussing the Challenge with her 129 million-odd Instagram followers. Yet despite there being no confirmed cases of kids and teens even participating in this activity -- much less dying from it -- adults and authority figures around the country have flipped out, rushing to protect children from an online menace that doesn't actually exist. What we have here is a full-blown moral panic. I wish I could tell you that moral panics were something new but, as Chris Ferguson, professor and co-chair of psychology at Florida's Stetson University, explains to Engadget, they've been around for millenia. "I mean, you can see narratives in Plato's dialogues where Athenians are talking about Greek plays -- that they're going to be morally corrupting, that they're going to cause delinquency in kids," Ferguson points out. "That's why Socrates was killed, right? Essentially, that his his ideas were going to corrupt the youth of Athens. Socrates was the Momo challenge of his day." Unfortunately, humanity appears to still be roughly as gullible as we were in the 5th century BC as new moral panics crop up with uncanny regularity. In recent decades we've seen panics about Dungeons and Dragons leading to Satanism, hidden messages in Beatles songs, killer forest clowns, the Blue Whale, the Knockout Game, and the Tide Pod Challenge. Despite the unique nature of threat presented in each panic, this phenomenon follows a pair of basic motifs, Ferguson explained. "There's this inherent protectiveness of kids," he said. "There's also the sense of like, kids are idiots and therefore adults have to step in and 'do something' -- hence the idea that your teenager can simply watch a YouTube video and then suddenly want to kill themselves. It's ridiculous if you think about if for 30 seconds but, nonetheless, this is an appealing sort of narrative." "There's the general sense of teens behaving badly and technology oftentimes being the culprit in some way or another," Ferguson continued. "It just seems that we're kind of wired, particularly as we get older, to be more and more suspicious of technology and popular culture." That is due, in part, because the popular culture right now isn't the popular culture that the people in power grew up with. It's a "kids today with their music and their hair" situation, Ferguson argues. He points out that "Mid-adult mammals tend to be the most dominant in social species," but as they age, their power erodes until they are forced out of their position by a younger, fitter rival. "As we get older, eventually we're going to become less and less relevant," he said. Faced with that prospect, older members of society may begin to view fresh ideas and new technologies as evidence of society's overall moral decline. kids: we're afraid of dying because of climate change boomers: that's ridiculous! we're afraid a Japanese half-woman half-bird sculpture is trying to kill you through the internet — Notorious Sexual Freak Mrs. Beverly Bighead (@mechapoetic) March 2, 2019 When presented with unfamiliar tech and notions, "we may have the sense that we're losing control of culture gradually," Ferguson speculates. "That makes [moral panicking] easy for us because of that anxiety to push back against anything new." Conversely, the motivations for people to commit these hoaxes is depressingly straightforward: it's fun being a jerk online. Trolling folks into believing that a nightmarish chicken lady is grooming your kids for suicide by targeting their Peppa Pig videos is done for a variety of reasons: simple amusement, as attention seeking behavior, or as an act of revenge. "I think sometimes people like to start these things because they want the reaction," Ferguson said. "They want to feel like they're smarter than all these knuckleheads," who fell for their ruse. Unfortunately, in today's social media landscape where attention serves as the de facto currency, simply ignoring the trolls -- hoping that they'll get bored and quit -- isn't likely to happen. And for as long as people keep reproducing, society will be faced with intergenerational strife as "the kids with their music and their hair" grow up, rightfully displace their elders and assert themselves as gatekeepers of the dominant culture. Even when faced with their own mortality and declining social influence, today's panic stricken adults do still have a quantum of solace: Aisawa announced earlier this week that, in the wake of the Momo Challenge fallout, he has destroyed the original sculpture. "It doesn't exist anymore, it was never meant to last," Aisawa told The Sun. "It was rotten and I threw it away. The children can be reassured Momo is dead – she doesn't exist and the curse is gone."
YouTube is removing ads from all Momo-related videos
YouTube is trying to dissuade creators from posting videos about the Momo Challenge (a viral self-harm hoax allegedly targeted towards kids) by stopping ads from running against such content. It told The Verge videos related to Momo violate advertiser guidelines, and as such can't be monetized.
Japan's latest chance at private rocket launch ends in flames
Japan's hopes for a thriving private spaceflight industry have been dashed once again. Interstellar Technologies' second attempt at a rocket launch has ended in spectacular fashion, with its 33-foot MOMO-2 vehicle crashing (and bursting into flames) just moments after liftoff. The company put on a brave face with word that the launch facility remained intact and a promise that it would continue the program, but it's hard to be optimistic when the 2017 launch at least cleared the launchpad area.
Japan’s first private rocket launch is a partial success
The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) hasn't made a secret of their spaceflight ambitions; they aim to put humans on the moon before China. But private spaceflight is also reaching new heights (literally) in the country. On Sunday, Momo, a startup supported partially by crowdfunding, launched Japan's first commercial space rocket from Hokkaido. The rocket was built by Interstellar Technologies Inc.
Apples and Oranges: Amazon moves into the Apple TV space
Those of us who have been waiting for an Amazon Prime channel to finally show up on their Apple TV now have an explanation as to why it never arrived. Today Amazon introduced FireTV (US $99), an Amazon set-top box that seems perfectly situated to compete with Apple TV. Amazon cited a 350% growth in their video streaming service as their basis for entering this market. With a quad-core processor, a dedicated GPU, and 2GB of onboard RAM, the new unit's specifications compare extremely favorably against both Apple's latest unit as well as Roku. Standout features include enhanced "MIMO dual-band WiFi", a slick user interface, built-in Karaoke, and voice search. The box is about the same form factor as an Apple TV, with a small but much more solid-looking remote. The unit will offer many of the same channels, or "apps" in the Amazon parlance. These include Netflix, Hulu Plus, WatchESPN, SHO Anytime, Bloomberg, and Vevo. Streaming music services including Pandora and iHeart Radio should follow soon after launch. A feature called "X-Ray" will provide additional details about what you're watching as you watch it. This extra information is delivered to your Kindle Fire HDX tablet for tight product-line integration. There's also some sort of AirPlay equivalent on offer for watching slideshows of your tablet- and cloud-based photo collections. Apple has to be taking notice of Amazon's latest move. From the Kindle to the TV, Amazon is striding boldly into an arena of consumer content that Apple first pioneered with iTunes and Apple TV. If anyone can transform content delivery from a hobby to a business, Amazon can. FireTV's easier interaction style and spoken commands (yes, I struggle with entering text on Apple TV -- especially when I have to re-enter my WiFi network password) should set a new bar for streaming set top. Apparently there's even a mic built into the remote. I found the interface screenshots to be cleaner than the somewhat confusing menu system I currently see on my Apple TV unit.They're full of bright clear images that feel like a well thought out, navigable system -- and probably a bit of a WiFi hog. So how will Apple react? Certainly that $99 price point for Apple TV has got to give or the Apple unit needs a major refresh. If Apple intends to stay in this "hobby", I would expect an interface overhaul and perhaps some Siri support to stay competitive. I also would think they'd need to open a third party SDK, the way that Amazon will with its open HTML and Android ecosystem. At launch, you'll be able to download and play Minecraft, The Walking Dead, Monsters University, the Amazon exclusive Sev Zero -- all on your TV.
GestureTek brings Eyemo gesture control to Android, Momo tracking engine for Windows Mobile
GestureTek was showing off some of its gesture-based options for controlling your TV at last year's CES, and it's now back again with a few more slightly interesting pieces of software. That includes a version of its Eyemo software for Android, which is already available for range of other platforms, and lets developers take advantage of a phone's camera to add gesture control options to various applications -- although that only involves gesturing with the device itself, not your hands. The company's recently announced Momo software for Windows Mobile takes things one step further than that, however, and will indeed apparently let you control a game or other application with hand or body gestures -- although that'll likely work best on a device with a front-facing camera.
LG set to release WWAN-enabled X110 Momo netbook
LG doesn't look to be pushing the envelope all that hard with its netbook entry -- are you sick of 10-inch screens, 1.6GHz Atom processors, and Windows XP yet? -- but the company's X110 Momo looks to up the ante ever so slightly with a built-in HSUPA modem and a slightly reconfigured keyboard with bigger arrow keys and a full-size right shift key. No pricing or availability yet, but we'll take LG at its word when it says the Momo is "coming soon."[Via Wired]
MOMODESIGN MD-3 puts some style in the DVB-H game
MOMODESIGN (of all random companies) has released a new pivoting clamshell equipped with a spec sheet that actually seems to be plenty competitive with some of the world's best fashion phones. At the top of the list has to be the integrated DVB-H tuner, but we've also got 3.6Mbps HSDPA, triband GSM (850 left out, of course), a 2 megapixel camera, and a QVGA internal display. If you want to sit back, relax, and enjoy a little boob tube, that internal display happily twists 180 degrees to become the external display, tucking away the 96 x 64 OLED external screen for another time. Not bad, but we'll get over the fact that we'll never see it in North America, we think.[Via oled-display.net]
Newman MoMo media player measures up at 10mm thick
While we're running thin on details about this new Newman MoMo media player, we can tell you that the word on the street in China is that it's quite slim at 10mm (0.39 inches) for a player with 320 x 240 resolution, plus support for AVI, ASF, MPEG, VOB, WMV, MTV, DAT, MP4, MPG, and the normal group of still formats. Not even our buddies at Engadget Chinese were able to locate a price nor availability for this one, but we hope that no matter what, it comes wrapped in bear fur, as shown in this photo.[Via Engadget Chinese]
