 Coming up on DTNS, why quitting social networks might make you feel better, but it won't solve U.S. political polarization, plus AT&T's bid to replace direct TV with an Android box and machine learning for fish. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, March 2nd, 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. And from some part of LA, I am Roger Chang, the show's producer. Forgot where you live from. Hey folks, we were just having a good conversation about babies and wrestling and whether we should have music at the beginning of Good Day Internet. Become part of that show. Become part of that conversation, patreon.com, slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Amazon announced it banned over one million products that claim to either cure or prevent the COVID-19 virus and also terminated tens of thousands of deals from merchants that attempted to price gouge customers on hygiene masks and hand sanitizers. Organizers of the Game Developers Conference announced the event will be postponed due to COVID-19 concerns. Plans are now to hold a GDC event sometime this summer. Nvidia announced its GPU Technology Conference would be held online this year. It was originally scheduled to be in San Jose, March 22nd through the 26th. And Twitter has withdrawn from attending South by Southwest, cancelling a planned keynote by Jack Dorsey. Yesterday, I was in Santa Clara County where there is a known infection and I feel fine. Just thought I should add that. Oh, happy to hear that, Tom. Apple tentatively agreed to a settlement and dozens of class action lawsuits over the company's practice of slowing down iPhones with aging batteries. Pending court approval, Apple will offer $25 to anybody who buys an iPhone 6 or 7 model for a total settlement of $500 million. And a new law affecting internet speech in China went into effect Sunday. The provisions on the governance of online information content ecosystem groups online speech into illegal, negative and positive classifications and explicitly makes dissemination of rumors, threats, insults and doxing illegal in China. All right, let's talk about something that is not at all confusing if you if you really pay attention, Sarah. And please do, but it's going to be confusing. I guarantee you AT&T TV, not the same as AT&T TV now, which is the company's new service. AT&T TV now is the renamed Direct TV now, which offers cable like streaming TV service over the internet on most platforms without a contract. So you get the app, you pay for the subscription, you watch TV. AT&T TV without the now is the one where you pay for streaming cable like TV over the internet. And AT&T gives you an Android box to watch the service on for a two year contract. AT&T TV without the contract and the box, but not the word now, hope you're following, is $50 a month for the first year, but then goes up to $93 a month with a $15 per month early, early termination fee on whatever months you have left. If you happen to cancel early, the Android box as most of the Google Play apps like Netflix and YouTube doesn't have Hulu or Prime Video. So it's got some not all you could access AT&T TV on iOS and Android mobile devices as well. So to recap, there is a service that used to be called Direct TV now, which is like Sling TV or Hulu Live or YouTube TV. You just you pay for it, you get an app, you watch it, but there's another service that's called AT&T TV. And the difference is it doesn't say now, and it's trying to be for people who aren't in the cord cutting. It's trying to be for folks who were like, Oh, I want to switch my cable to AT&T or in the past would have switched to Direct TV, the satellite service. And AT&T says, Oh, great, we'll send you a cable box. It runs over your internet. It's $120 for extra boxes, but you get one bundled in and it starts at $50, like everything is very similar to cable TV. You have a contract, you have an introductory price, they provide the equipment, but it's easier. It's easier setup because you don't have to put a satellite dish on top. And in fact, AT&T says they will be reducing the marketing of Direct TV. They're going to be phasing out the satellite service. And as we know, the rumors are they're trying to find a buyer for it and replacing it with this Android TV box. But it's confusing because there is a very similarly named product that is a streaming service that you or I might want to get on our Roku or anything. If you're like, why would I need a box? You don't. It's not, that's not marketed to you. This is marketed to people who don't understand they could go and do this themselves or don't want to. My mom who has been a customer of Direct TV for some time. And you know, it's expensive. Every time she tells me how much it costs and sort of the hassles of like, which room is going to have which TVs? I'm like, yeah, mom, we got it. We got to get something better for you. You know, YouTube TV is my solution. That's like the one that I've just sort of figured out is kind of the cheapest and works the best. But I'm also running everything through either a Roku or Apple TV. This is super confusing. I mean, for the show, I obviously understand how it works. But as a just like regular consumer, I would just be like, what? What? Well, as a regular consumer, you're probably not going to hear about both of them, right? I guess really into this stuff, right? So they're going to market this to people who would not hear about AT&T TV now. They'll just know AT&T provides TV. And otherwise, the content, you know, the channels that are available on both services are pretty much the same. I think right now AT&T TV now bundles in HBO in their bottom service. So it technically is more expensive, but you're also getting HBO. They're going to put in HBO Max integrated with both of these. I do think it's weird that it's an Android box and they're saying it doesn't have Hulu or Prime Video. I don't know if that just means it's not integrated into the guide the way Netflix is. Yeah, or totally unavailable. Yeah, which would be weird because I don't think Google would let you use Android and do that. I think you'd have to be able to install the apps. So curious about that. Sharp announced it will convert part of an LCD panel factory in Osaka, Japan to make surgical masks with the domestic supply exhausted amid the COVID-19 outbreak. Sharp says they'll be able to produce 150,000 masks a day within weeks and could eventually reach 500,000. Foxconn previously converted a factory in Shenzhen, China to partial mask production as well. Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe promised to make 600 million masks available every month. Masks are worn, you know, just part of being courteous in Japan if you want to stop the spread of droplets out of your mouth. They're sometimes worn for preventative. They're not as effective for that. US and UK health advice is that the masks are useful for some high-risk patients if they're worn and used properly and they are definitely useful for surgical masks for health practitioners in certain situations. But, and this is a quote from the UK, there is very little evidence of widespread benefit for members of the public. And the problem is people who don't need them are stockpiling them. And that means that the people who do need them aren't able to get them. Yeah, I was just having a conversation with a friend over the weekend. She was like, they're sold out everywhere. I've been looking on like the second market for masks. I was like, are you sick? Do you know someone who, like, it really does sort of, it matters. Like, if you are ill, if you feel ill and you have to go into public for some reason, yes, this makes a lot of sense. The stockpiling and the, you know, like, perhaps overproduction of masks in factories that would do other things otherwise, I'm not going to say it's a bad idea, but it does. I don't know. There's so much fear mongering going on right now. It's sort of difficult to understand, you know, what's the right thing to do. I'm very used to being around people wearing surgical masks, depending on where you are in the world. It's a little bit more normal than other places, but it does seem like if you are not ill, I'm not hearing reports that it's going to keep you from getting it. No, in fact, quite the opposite. And there's some very specific uses that make it useful in a hospital situation. And that's why we're needing to ramp up television factories and Foxconn factories to create masks for those purposes, because people are stockpiling them in other situations. Moving on, Business Insider calls Google's Stadia flailing and attributes that to developer concerns, specifically that developers were hesitant to develop for the platform because Google didn't offer them enough money. Developers will take less money to reach a huge audience like Steam, but Stadia doesn't have that audience just yet kind of ramping up to it. So developers are like, what are we doing? And they might take less money to be on the platform early before it grows, but they don't trust the company to stick with the platform because Google. Yeah, this set the people I follow on Twitter on fire yesterday because they're like, see, because they cancel Google reader, Stadia is flailing. I'm not I'm not sure. It's a little bit of an overreaction to say that Google Stadia is failing. Maybe flailing isn't too far off, but it's early days still. And I think Google has, you know, the ability to stick with this and pour some money into it. They're going to have a few couple hundred games by the end of the year, at least 120, I think something like that. But there is a, you know, it's valid that whether it's valid to believe it or not, it's valid that people do worry that Google won't stick with this. This is not the same as reader. This is not a free service that they were floating out there and decided wasn't profitable and decided to end. This is a huge effort. It's more if you want to have a concern comparable to Google Fiber where they rolled it out and then paused and said, well, hold on, we're not going to roll out Google Fiber anymore while we figure out what to do. And that's been a couple of years because that was a big effort. They haven't gotten rid of Google Fiber though. And I think Stadia is very similar to that where they don't think they're just going to pull the plug one day the way they did with Google reader. They're not comparable situations. Yeah, I feel for developers who are like, I mean, how much does this company really care? There's so many initiatives with, you know, on the inside. So I can see where there would be concern that said, yeah, I wouldn't compare this to Google reader at all. I would, you know, as a gamer, you know, for people who care about various platforms, Stadia doesn't get a really great rap. I mean, we've had lots of conversations on the show about like, Stadia, you know, it's sort of there. We'll see. We'll see. You know, that's sort of like the best situation. So in that sense, that's really where it matters, you know, and I think go ahead. No, sorry, I was just going to say, I think that's as much of a conservative developers as whether Google will kill it or not is like, yeah, I don't see my audience getting excited about it either. Well, Facebook launched 3D photos on its app back in 2018, you may have forgotten. It used dual camera smartphones to post images with backgrounds that moved when scrolling or tilting a device. Facebook now announced that it could produce 3D photos from virtually any 2D image will that make you more interested? That means ones that you've already uploaded to the service could be converted to 3D. When we say 3D, it's kind of a portrait mode where the background sort of shifts, you get a little parallax, you know, but it's it's a nifty trick. It uses a neural network to map the estimated depth of each pixel in a 2D image, something previously supplied by the secondary portrait camera. Viewing the photos requires the Facebook mobile app or an iPhone 7 or newer or a recent mid-range Android device. So your device has to be able to show the parallax to show the 3D, but the neural network can do it to pretty much any photo you've uploaded. I have like three friends who use this feature regularly on Facebook. And, you know, you sort of you move your mouse around the photo and you're like, oh, it's a picture of your dog and like, like slightly moves left or right. I have yet to be wowed by this. But if you have a 2D image that can get rendered into some 3D sense, I still think that's it's sort of a hat trick like who cares. But it's cool that it is possible. Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's a nifty thing. It's a great I think I think I was curious about it because it's it's an example of using neural networks in public, you know, this this is a thing they can do. It may not be that useful to you, but it is definitely a thing they can do, which is take that 2D image and figure out how to do it without having to have that second image. And that's an advance. That's an advance in neural networks. Yeah, absolutely. It's it's it's it's cool because it's cool. That's that's kind of all I have to say about that. Alphabet's xLab announced a new project called title. This is not the music service title. This is something very different. Title is working to protect the ocean. The first project uses computer vision with underwater cameras to monitor individual fish in fish farms and detect behavior that isn't visible to the human eye, which could let farmers make more efficient decisions. For example, how much food they need to put in pens in feeding and raising the fish leading to fewer environmental impacts. The Financial Times reported that title is working with farms based in Europe and Asia to track several species, including salmon and yellowtail. Yeah, this is another this is almost similar to the Facebook neural network story, which is this is early days and who knows how much of an impact this is really going to have. But it's a use of computer vision, in this case, not a neural network, per se, but but you know, very close closely related actually might be using neural network for this, but using computer vision to be able to monitor behavior without knowing what that behavior is. You don't need a person sitting there counting, you know, the food, you can let the computer vision algorithm determine it. And that can tell you whether you need to add more food or if you're overfeeding, and that is more efficient and better for the environment. Because when you're overfeeding, that food ends up feeding other things that you don't necessarily need growing there, both plant, plankton, otherwise. So this is this is an interesting spin off. And who knows what these alphabet X lab things where they end up some of them have ended up like Waymo as as actual businesses. We have yet to see whether it's going to succeed as a business, but it's a future, you know, forward looking business. And it's definitely on its way on track. Others of them end up just getting folded back into Google, like some of their security systems like Chronicle, and others get spent out all together from alphabet and just become their own independent businesses that are again, still very forward looking. But they're all such such long bets as alphabet likes to call them that it's hard to tell where they're going. But this is an interesting one to me. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if this is a fish farm. But if you think about, you know, farms in general, it's sort of like pasture raised cows or chickens produce better food that we're eating, you know, are the farmed fish happier? Are they healthier? These are, I don't know, more sustainable. That's the that's the biggest thing, at least according to this Engadget article. Yeah, exactly. Because, you know, if anybody eats a lot of sushi, it's like, oh, farmed fish is supposed to be like, Well, that's not really the one you want. You want the wild cod, you know, because that's like the real fish. But but a lot of that, I think is because the farms were not as sustainable as they might be in the future. So this is this cool to me. Yeah. And some of it has to do with what you feed the fish changes the nutrient make up in farmed fish, fish versus wild caught. So if this allows them to change the diet to make them more similar to wild caught because they can control and it's not as expensive, I mean, there's there's all kinds of things I could think of that this would end up benefiting. Hey, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to our sister show daily tech headlines.com. Monday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that he was thinking about giving up on his Facebook, his Twitter, his Instagram, his YouTube accounts. We've all been there. PM sometimes gets too much, right? That's it. That's it. It's the ultimate. I would like to post on social media that I'm thinking about quitting social media. Please respond. Separate topic is why the Prime Minister of India is doing that. That's a whole separate topic. But in fact, this led me to a paper published in the American Economic Review that backs up the fact that quitting social media might indeed make you happier. This was a well done study, randomized trial, 2,743 users left Facebook for one month in exchange for a cash reward. Now they all agreed to that, but some of them were not required to quit. So they agreed to it. But then after they got, you know, signed up, they're like, okay, you guys are the control group, stay on Facebook. We'll still follow up with you. But knock yourselves out. Another group were verified to quit Facebook for a month, but suspend their accounts and monitored, and then asked questions of those who quit Facebook, they reported 60 extra minutes a day than the ones who didn't quit Facebook of leisure time, which they then used for offline activities like socializing with friends and family in person, for instance, a self reported increase in life satisfaction. Now this is apples to apples. They asked the people who are continuing to use Facebook, how good do you feel about your life? And then they asked people who weren't using Facebook, how good do you feel about your life? So it's self reported, but at least you're comparing self reporting to self reporting here. And again, the people who quit Facebook reported about 25 to 40% higher life satisfaction, which the author's note is about the same you see in self reported life satisfaction increase when people go to therapy. There were some downsides though. There was a decline in news reading of 15% amongst those who canceled Facebook and a decreased ability to answer questions about recent news events. They were just a little less well informed because they didn't replace the news they were getting through Facebook with other news sources. However, they did note a reduced polarization of views on policy and issues, but not reduced negative feelings about the opposite political party. So they were less extreme, but they still didn't like the other folks. So there you have it, right? Quit and social networks will not only help you feel better, but also reduces this polarized world we live in or will it, or we kick this around there, there's one more study I want to note. It's a working paper. So there may be some flaws in here, but it's from the National Bureau of Economic Research pointing out that, yes, polarization is increasing faster in the United States than anywhere else, but that several large modern nations with high internet usage are seeing a decrease in polarization, at least between their two major parties. In fact, internet usage has risen fastest in these countries with that kind of falling polarization. And of course, it's well known that US polarization predates digital media. It was on the rise before these social networks came along and polarization is concentrated among older populations that have lower internet usage and some coincidental stuff here, but it's worth more study. In fact, in an interview with the Verges Casey Newton, Ezra Klein commenting on this paper says, we know that social networks further polarized elites who then act in more polarized ways, which create more polarized choices and situations that the mass public has to respond to. And maybe that's it. Maybe because we have a two-party system in the United States, that's why we're seeing the increased polarization, whereas other systems can absorb some of the extreme polarization in the smaller parties, leaving the middle. Again, we don't know about that, but it is interesting to note here that, yes, quitting social media seems to make you happier, but no, we don't know for sure whether it's going to fix society. These studies, and you threw out a lot here just now, Tom, but these sorts of studies, sometimes I have a hard time wrapping my head around it for myself because I use social media in, I think, is a somewhat unusual way because of our jobs. So Facebook and Twitter and and various feeds and the whole thing. I sometimes reluctantly, but I do, I just have to dive in and just absorb a lot of stuff because I'm trying to figure out what's going on, like what's popping. The idea of maybe social media would, a little bit of a break would be good for me is tempting, trust me. It's funny, over the weekend, I specifically tried not to be on social media because I was just doing my own little experiment, but there kept being stuff where I'm like, okay, I don't want to look at my Twitter timeline, but I want to look up something, so I'll use the search function and just see what a bunch of strangers are talking about, which is a whole other thing. So it's really difficult for me to cut that out, but as far as habits go and habits that maybe end up making people feel, I don't know, less than thrilled, I definitely think that there are patterns that have been developed for a lot of folks that could be better. Yeah, there's lots of things on social media to make you feel bad. Some of them are just people sharing the worst version of a news story, especially as we're talking about with COVID-19, that just starts to make you feel like the world is falling apart when it's not a lack of concern. There is something to be concerned about, but whether that concern should be at 100 or 75 or 50 is what'll make you feel worse or better. And then there's just seeing somebody else having a great time. That's the Instagram concern of like, man, everybody else's life is better and my life is not like that, when in fact, a lot of those pictures you're seeing are not actual representations of exactly how those people's lives are growing. There's all of that sort of thing. So I like that this, especially this second story that we talked about, the American Economic Review article, is saying, look, we just studied it and we found that, yeah, people felt a little more satisfied with their life. I still think I'm going to go back to my media diet, that it's how we need to learn how to manage these things. Like ripping out Facebook all together showed this effect, but I bet there's a way to manage Facebook so that people don't feel a decrease in satisfaction. But we're too new at this to know how that goes. And I say this because on Twitter, which is my social media network of choice, I use Twitter. In fact, I don't even have Facebook installed on my phone to my detriment. There were some people saying some things about good day internet that I had no idea was going on. And I had to be messaged to go in there without go get good day internet to get that story. But on Twitter, I see people reacting to outbreaks of Twitter rage. I don't see the rage itself because I have very carefully manicured who I follow. And to me, that means it's working. If I'm seeing somebody, if I'm seeing the people debunking the stuff, but not seeing the people spreading the misinformation, then I feel like, oh, that's working better for me. And it means that I'm going to be more satisfied after, you know, a few minutes looking at Twitter than I would be if I saw all these people spewing out things that weren't true or that were making me feel like things were worse than they are, etc. Which is, I mean, you're obviously self sampling quite a bit, but those are trusted sources that you feel comfortable saying, I want to know what you think about it. I don't want to know what that first person said about, you know, this that or the other thing. And that is, you know, curation is a huge thing. We talk all the time about social networks and the proliferation of, you know, bad information that is spread around and memes and just, you know, all sorts of stuff, a lot of buzzwords, but mostly people who are just sort of blindly sharing things. And, you know, how do we cut down on that stuff? And I don't know. I don't know how to make anybody else cut down on that stuff. But I know for me, we kind of like fill me one shame on you kind of thing. It's, it's, it really is important to, to have a network that you believe in and that, and that that has been proven to be trustworthy. Yeah. And like you say, I'm self sampling here. So it's not, it's not a really good, it's not a really good sample. But maybe there's some best practices from people who use these better. You know, one of the things that I do is if I see someone more than once tripping my trigger, I'm self aware enough to go like, okay, I need to mute this person or unfollow them. And that, that has kept people that I would otherwise feel like, oh, it's probably fine to follow them. It's kept them out and kept me from getting upset. I will say I agree with Tom's selectively on the Twitter versus Facebook. I made the mistake of accepting anyone on Facebook. And so I literally have a thousand people. And I will say a couple of store more than more than a handful of stories have really gotten my go. But I have a very small amount of people I follow on Twitter. And I don't get that same sort of flood of new stories that would boil my blood. Yeah. Yeah, it's, I don't know. I mean, we could talk about this all day. And I know, you know, a lot of folks listening feel the same way. There's also the, you know, the friendly ad. I went to high school with you. And then you go, Oh gosh, we have nothing in common. And then you're yet like mad all the time. Yeah. And that's something where we need to learn like, Oh, the friendly ad is not, shouldn't be expected. Yeah. We've learned that like, it's not friendly all the time. Yeah. Exactly. You know what is friendly? Our subreddit, you can submit stories and vote on other stories at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. We get a lot of our story ideas from there. So thanks to everybody who contributes stuff that you care about. You can also join in the conversation in our Discord, which you can join by linking to a Patreon account, patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's check out the mail bag. We got a great email from Matthew who says, while listening to Friday's show describing an article that the COVID-19 virus might have some companies start to realize the benefits of employees working from home. I'm reminded about a formal study that was done with a Chinese company called C-Trip. He links us to that article that details it a little bit more. Matthew says, the study found that the employees that worked from home were 13% more productive. They reported higher job satisfaction rates and C-Trip found a cost savings of around $2,000 per employee. Sounds pretty good. One of the really interesting twists though, 50% of the participants decided to go back to the office. They chose lower satisfaction, lower productivity, and longer commutes with the reported reason being that they felt lonely at home. Doesn't surprise me, says Matthew. While I work 100% remote due to my company having no presence where I live, if I did live near an office, I'd probably go in once or twice a week for the socialization. This doesn't seem to be abnormal as all my co-workers who are allowed to work from home as much as they want, still go into the office a few days a week due to the loneliest factor as well. You know what I love about this email is that he is pointing out, okay, these are the benefits that we found, but there are also some downsides. He's not condemning or promoting. He's saying, actually, let's just look at this, and yeah, there are some positives to it, but there's also some negatives that would need to be addressed if we really wanted to switch over to that being the norm. How do you deal with that loneliness factor? That's interesting. Thank you, Matthew. Yeah, absolutely. Also, shout out to patrons at our master and grand master levels, including Bjorn Andre, Tim Ashman, and Philip Shane. It is the second of the month, which means we have a brand new month for you to enjoy as a patron. We've got the June Oven Live With It coming from Sarah Lane, where she'll talk about her last three months using the June Oven, putting it through its paces. We have weekly editor's desks from me where I talk about the behind the scenes of the show, things like advertising, story selection, all that. Roger has a weekly column talking about his perspective on using technology as a real human being in the world. If these kinds of things sound interesting, you can sign up right now, get a full month of them, patreon.com slash dtns. Our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. We'll live Monday through Friday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern. That's 21.30 UTC for just a little while longer, and you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Is there anything you need to know from RSA Security Conference? Seth Rosenblatt's going to tell you tomorrow. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com.