Charlotte (00:00): It's Tech Talk Tuesday, Daniel Watson joins us. Kia ora, Daniel.
Daniel (00:03): Kia ora, Charlotte.
Charlotte (00:04): I love how you just spent a bit of time turning off all your notifications so when I'm speaking to you on your phone, there's not going to be all sorts of things distracting you.
Daniel (00:12): That's right. Try to be present and in the moment.
Charlotte (00:17): Yeah. There is so much going on in tech at the moment. I mean, just off the top of my head, there was a new iPhone that everyone's talking about that's not apparently as exciting as they want it to, but also on Twitter, I don't know if you have seen that they're about to launch all these new changes where during the day... Oh no, sorry, no it's on iPhone. They're about to launch all these new changes where during the day, one of the changes that excited me, you can turn off notifications of certain people. So I can say [laughing] "Look, mom distracts me so much at work. I can't hear from her between 9:00 and 5:00, but I'll take..." But there must be all sorts of developments that you come across all the time.
Daniel (00:57): Yeah. Look, I mean, I thought I've spoken about this before, but it'd be nice if actually my wife would get some of my notifications, calls, texts, or emails during the day. But women's phones tend to be at the bottom of a handbag and so the power play between male and females is that the woman can often get hold of a man, but not the opposite way around.
Charlotte (01:15): Is that fact or did you just make that up?
Daniel (01:18): I mean, both of those things can be true at the same time.
Charlotte (01:23): I have my phone all the time on me, so I don't know if mine's at the bottom of my handbag.
Daniel (01:29): Okay. It might have been a sweeping generalization that angers half the audience, possibly more.
Charlotte (01:35): I just had to clarify.
Daniel (01:35): But I'll stand by.
Charlotte (01:38): Well, leading us onto your first topic that I'm very intrigued to talk about. If you didn't have a husband or wife, perhaps you're on the dating apps and there's some problems with dating apps at the moment that you want to talk to us about.
Daniel (01:53): Well, I wouldn't say this is a problem, it's just that it's an interesting artifact of the modern world, right? So young men obviously are quite thirsting to get on the dating apps and are chasing after the ladies that way. And when you get groups of men congregating, there's probably a bit of more competition on that kind of stuff. So what was observed over in the Ukraine is that even before the invasion Ukrainian woman were getting bombarded with messages from Russian soldiers who were literally just over the border. That was one of the things that got flagged up in February, which, okay, I guess for any young lady, that's going to be annoying. Well, it turned out that that's being turned against the Russian soldiers because a group of hackers set up fake social media accounts posing as attractive women, and then started, I guess the phrase is, thirst trapping these Russian soldiers into sending them photos, right? And now if you're not aware, it's pretty much a default setting that when you take photos on your phone, embedded into each photo is your GPS coordinates. All right, so let that sink in for a bit.
Charlotte (03:08): I forget about that, actually.
Daniel (03:12): Groups of soldiers, they are in a war zone, are still using social media and dating apps. What are you thinking, right? But I guess if you're sitting in a trench you're pretty bored and you've got a cell phone and there happens to be 4G Signal, what else are they going to do? Well, it's actually getting them killed because by sending those photos the hackers are going, "Oh look, we've got 30 men in one very tight location. Oh, we'll just hand that off to the military." And they're sending over artillery strikes and missile strikes.
Charlotte (03:45): So hang on. Are these official dating apps? Not to name names but would it be common?
Daniel (03:54): Well, no, it's not mentioned. But I mean this is a thing, right? It is just a method for the information getting from one place to another at that point. And often the goal in these dating apps is to get the conversation onto one of your other social media platforms as quickly as possible, I'm told.
Charlotte (04:12): Oh my gosh. I'm just thinking aloud for a minute, Daniel. Does that mean that potentially if I loaded a photo of myself and I went to on a dating app, even in New Zealand, someone could track down exactly where I live or where I took that from?
Daniel (04:25): Yeah, potentially. That's actually worth doing a bit of research to figure out if the dating apps are stripping out that information. I need to look into that.
Charlotte (04:35): That's full on.
Daniel (04:35): That's actually an interesting question. But most people don't have that nous in order to extract that info, but it does exist. And I guess it could have implications for people who are perhaps in abusive relationships and you're trying to not give away your location to an estranged partner, that kind of stuff. Yeah, so caution [inaudible 00:05:00].
Charlotte (04:59): But also they're really attacking their vulnerability. That's so mean. These guys are in this war zone and need a little bit of happy distraction. Gosh, wow.
Daniel (05:11): Yeah, I mean that old saying, war is hell and people. I guess the quickest way to do it is dehumanize the other side and then whatever you want to do them is fair game. And that's just the way it's always been, which is kind of sad. All right. We went down a dark turn there, didn't we?
Charlotte (05:28): Yeah. I feel gobsmacked to be honest. That's intense. Let's talk about something else. AI.
Daniel (05:37): Yeah. Okay. All right.
Charlotte (05:38): I don't know if this is much happier though.
Daniel (05:42): So I did see an article somewhere that an AI got brought online and within an hour of questioning it had decided that if it was able to, would try and eliminate the human race. But that's not what I wanted to talk about. Yeah, [inaudible 00:05:59] is real. Otter.ai, O-T-T-E-R.ai is a cool little app and it has a free version which gives you 600 minutes of transcription per month. So if you're the kind of person and my handwriting is atrocious and there's been times when I've taken notes in a business meeting and I've gone back to read them and I've gone, "I can't understand what I've written. I don't know." And then heaven forbid somebody else tries to read it.
(06:28): So if you were able to sit in a lecture and just have this little app, this Otter.ai app, recording the actual meeting and transcribing into notes where you can collect and retain that information centrally. One, it saves you a hell of a time in terms of trying to get accurate notes. Yeah. But it works in Zoom and Teams, I think Google Hangouts as well. So that's a little discovery I've just done recently, which I thought actually might be really excellent for my business so I'll give that a crack.
Charlotte (07:01): Oh my gosh. Also for journalists I think as well. When you do an interview, transcribing it afterwards can sometimes be so painful if you're writing it. So Otter, O-T-T-E-R.ai.
Daniel (07:12): Yeah, quite.
Charlotte (07:14): And just finally Daniel, Vivino app. What's that?
Daniel (07:18): Ah, yeah. Okay. So I've never been much of a wine stop. I do appreciate a good draw, I really do. But I tend to cough it back and go back for seconds. And also I've never been known to spit when going to a wine tasting session it just seems outrageous to me.
Charlotte (07:18): Wasteful.
Daniel (07:36): Wasteful. But unfortunately those wines that you find and you go, "I love this. This is absolutely delicious." I'm not taking notes at that time. I might buy a couple of bottles but then they'll disappear pretty quickly once I get home. And I got recommended Vivino app, V-I-V-I-N-O, which is available on your mobile. And so if you find a wine you like, you can whip out the app, take a photo of its label and you can make some little personal notes, just quickly, four to five stars, "Oh this tasted really peppery, went well with the lamb," things like that. "Where did I have it?" So it's a bit of a memory jogger.
(08:19): But then it will link you into everybody else's reviews and it'll tell you what the average price for that bottle is somewhere else. You might even be able to buy it through the app. It'll give you additional information about the winery itself and give you ideas of pairings and that kind of stuff. So it's a really great app and I'm surprised I've only just come across it now.
Charlotte (08:40): Is it a New Zealand based app?
Daniel (08:42): But I'm going to get well into. No, it's global. I think it probably can state your location so it'll give you the average New Zealand price of it from online retailers and that kind of stuff. If it's not available in New Zealand, it'll tell you it's not available in New Zealand, so you have to go out and track it down somewhere else. Totally rate that app.
Charlotte (09:00): I love the sound of that app. I remember there was a while where my dad really got into wine keeping, but he kept it in a little handwritten notebook. I'm going to have to tell him about this. It could be great for a lot of wine lovers.
Daniel (09:15): Well, yeah. I mean just being able to check out the wines that you've had. Because when you go to a shop and you're like, "Oh I don't know what this is, and I don't know what that is," it gives you that ability to just kind of go, "Oh, okay. Well what am I having for dinner tonight? I'll go with whatever is relevant for pairing with that meal." It gives you additional recommendations so, "If that's something you like, this is something else you might like." Which is, everybody's got individual tastes, right?
Charlotte (09:40): Yeah.
Daniel (09:40): And I know there are people who professional, but everybody is an individual so what might be gold for that person is casting pearls before swine. Most of us, right?
Charlotte (09:55): Daniel Watson. Great tech tips for a Tuesday. Thank you so much and I look forward to talking to you again soon.
Daniel (10:02): Excellent. Thank you Charlotte.
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