 Coming up on DTNS Science Week continues as Dr. Kiki from This Week in Science answers some questions about tech and COVID-19 plus a check-in on Quibi's first day and a new way to cut down spam in your email. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, April 7th, 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. And from the dark forests of Finland, I'm Patrick Beja. Under Rainy Skies, I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. And as I just mentioned, Dr. Kiki is with us from This Week in Science. How's it going, Kiki? It's going great. I'm here in my basement in Sunny Portland. Is it sunny in your basement? These lights. I have these UV spectrum lights. It makes all the difference. Looks like you've got sunshine behind you. It's a very sunny situation. We were just talking all of us about some of our favorite television shows of days gone by. If you want that conversation and more, we also talked about the new Sony controller. Become a member and get good day internet. You can do that at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Samsung beat analyst expectations. Estimating operating profit rose 2.7% in Q1 over last year. The company also expects first quarter consolidated sales up almost 5% from last year. Samsung didn't break down the numbers by business units specifically, but a relatively weak Korean won, cost saving measures by the company, and strong demand for memory chips from data centers are all expected to be among the contributors. An attacker accessed the data of more than 600,000 users of email.it and is selling the data online. The sellers claim they obtained the data more than two years ago and also claim it contains plain text passwords, security questions, email content, and email attachments dating back to 2007. The attackers also claim to have source code for email.it's web apps. Email.it told ZD net only free accounts were compromised. The Verge reports that a Microsoft email to Microsoft MVPs says quote, Microsoft has made the decision to transition all external and internal events to a digital first experience through July 2021. That would affect Microsoft Ignite in September, also Computex 2020 and CES 2021 and probably affect Build 2021 as well. Firefox 74 features a larger address bar that will show site suggestions with larger fonts and shorter URLs. Smarter searches in the address bar will also show additional bolded keywords as you're typing. Clicking the address bar will show a list of most visited websites kind of handy, and Mozilla also said it will prioritize future fixes and feature changes in a way that will quote, provide uninterrupted access to vital government and health services. Google released a Pixel 4 update Tuesday requiring users to have their eyes open when using the face unlock feature by default with an option to disable it in the settings. The Pixel 4 update also corrects issues for dropped audio input while on a call and fixes lag when opening the keyboard for some apps. Microsoft hired former Apple executive Ruben Caballero as a corporate VP to work on mixed reality hardware like HoloLens as well as artificial intelligence tech. At Apple, Caballero was a VP of engineering in charge of developing wireless technology, things like modems and antennas, and oversaw Apple's global wireless product testing efforts. Taiwan barred government agencies from using video software with security or privacy concerns such as the Zoom video communication service. The hits keep coming for Zoom. The government advises that if agencies must use non-domestically produced software that organizations should consider Google and Microsoft. Sonia unveiled the controller for its next console called DualSense, that's the name of the controller. Haptic feedback replaces Rumble technology and adds an integrated microphone and adaptive triggers that can adjust resistance. The share button also has been renamed to the create button and presumably does more than just share. It creates, I guess. If you're separated from your significant other right now, Facebook has launched an experimental app in Canada and the United States called tuned. It's TUNED. It's an iPhone private space for couples to share notes, photos, cards, voice clips, and Spotify songs to cheer each other up. People add each other with a phone number and nobody else gets access to the content except for the third party advertisers, I would presume. All right, let's talk about something WhatsApp is doing to help fight misinformation. Indeed, WhatsApp announced it will impose a new limit on message forwarding as it seeks to slow down the spread of misinformation. If a user receives a message that has already been forwarded more than five times, the user will only be able to send the message on to a single chat at a time down from the five chat limit imposed in 2019. The message can still be passed on as many times as the user manually hits the forward button. Because of WhatsApp end to end description, it can't moderate based on message content. Yeah, so they can't tell what's in there. They just have to figure out kind of a brute force way of doing this. And we've been covering this on DTNS since it started back in 2017 with limiting forwards. And every time they sort of put another limit, another speed bump, the idea is that if you can't forward as fast, you may be less likely to forward something that you give a second thought to. And we'll also just slow down how fast stuff spreads. Yeah, just less convenient. I mean, I think in 2018, it was a 20 limit on sending something that had already been forwarded. Then last year, it became five. Or I'm sorry, it was something like 100. Then it was 20. Then last year became five. And now just the one. So obviously, WhatsApp thinks, especially if it's seen viral content that's misleading, which of course, there is, well, there's always a lot of that, but there particularly is a lot of that related to COVID-19 right now, that the company thinks this actually does help to slow the spread of bad information. And yeah, if WhatsApp can't really scan for content otherwise, it's kind of the way to do it. But I think they're doing the right thing. They're not saying you can't possibly share this with anybody, but just the one person because it's been forwarded too many times might be totally legitimate news. It's just making it harder. So you have to think twice. Yeah. Kiki, it's kind of like flattening the curve for misinformation. Messages. It is like flattening the curve. Exactly. Yeah. I think Patrick, your question about legitimate messages. I mean, it is annoying if you're like, oh, I've got something really, really good here, really legitimate that I'd like to share with more than one person at a time. You still can just a little bit harder. I guess it would be mainly for memes. I can't really think of any piece of information that would need to be shared in that way. Maybe something funny, but yeah, the question is there. Edison maker of Edison mail has launched an email service called on mail that it describes as the first permission based email service. So you get an email from a new contact, it gets put in a separate field and then you can decide to accept it or block it. It also promises automatic read receipt blocking without disabling images and support for larger attachments. It also promises effective natural language search and it has both paid and free versions. At least it'll be offered at launch later this summer, although it didn't give details on what the differences were between free and paid. You can sign up for early access if you're interested at onmail.com. It's been well since we had a buzzy new email app that was going to finally fix email. What do we think? What are the chances that this will be the one? You know, Sam has become so good that I forget to check it half the time. So something that kind of is like, this is probably spam, but maybe because it's the first time this, you know, you're the recipient from this particular person. We're going to put it in this little area and you having signed up for the service want the ability to go into that area and filter better. I don't, I think it sounds like a good idea as long as you don't miss stuff. And it may be a system that would. No, go ahead, geeky, please. Yeah, I was just going to say this system may be the kind of thing that for very direct communications where you want to keep a private contacts list and you want things that are, you know, that are only permission based much, much more private and less accessible by those spam email bots. This seems like something that it might make a dent. It might be something useful to people. Feels like these kinds of communications don't happen by the email though, but I guess maybe it's because we don't have this tool yet. And that could be useful for those. I do worry that it's another thing to go check. And as you mentioned, Sarah, basically spam filters are so good. Initially, when I read it, I was like, Oh, yes, this is great. This is going to be just what I need. But in practice, Google's and others spam filters are so good that it's rare that you get something that you don't want from in the first place. And sometimes the things that you don't didn't ask for you actually do want or they might be useful or it's something from a, you know, service you signed up for you want to be informed about. And then with this, you have to go into that separate place and check that you emptied it. It's essentially like checking your spam folder. I think in the long run, it's a little bit less practical than it sounds. Microsoft is expanding its xCloud game streaming beta from the US, UK and Korea to include Belgium, Denmark, Finland and France, Patrick, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden. People in these added countries can now sign up for the Android version, a limited number of people will get access in each market with more people added over time than trying not to overwhelm networks. Project xCloud will launch more broadly later this year, but not in every test country. Microsoft is also testing on iOS, but it has to limit that to a single game because of App Store policies. So Project xCloud, the ability to stream your video games. I know that's something Patrick that you have been doing for a while with Shadow and other services. How excited or are you excited about this? Well, I signed up for it twice, as you mentioned, for Finland and France. No, I signed up once, but it's definitely the most promising and biggest player in that space because it's Microsoft and they also have their Game Pass service, which is essentially a subscription to a large number of games. It is pretty exciting, but it's still just a test. It only works on Android phones, Android devices. It's for a certain number of games. It's not for the entire catalog. So it's still in the testing stages. I'm excited it's coming to a place where I can give it a try, but it's not going to be a significant part of my gaming routine yet until it launches a little bit more broadly. Yeah, but it is slow motion, but we're seeing these services become real. It's interesting. Yeah, absolutely. Facebook Gaming launched a feature called tournaments that lets users create and organize virtual gaming tournaments. Creators can host fan tournaments and stream them. Streamers can also use Facebook fundraising tools to donate money directly to relieve organizations. How significant is this? This is Facebook's attempt to try to get some of that gaming love over to it. It is not as well established as Twitch or Mixer or any of those kinds of things. Will this be something fun that people take advantage of, do you think? Well, there are already tools for organizing tournaments. The big advantage Facebook has is that it has all of the pieces in order to make this happen. It can broadcast. It can get the people into the brackets and all of that. And Twitch is the big player there. I'm not sure Mixer or YouTube for streaming are bigger than Facebook Gaming. It's kind of everyone other than Twitch seems to be in a similar spot. I'm not sure this is going to make a huge dent into their position on that market, but it's certainly a cool tool that if you want to organize a tournament, then you don't have to fumble as much. At this stage, Twitch is still the main player. So you're probably going to want to do it on Twitch. But if Facebook offers these tools, maybe you use the Facebook tools, stream on Facebook, and then stream on Twitch as well, because that's where most people are. But it's probably a useful tool for a number of people. All right. Let's follow up on yesterday's Quibi launch, Sarah. Oh, let's. According to preliminary data from Sensor Tower, Short Video Service, Quibi was downloaded more than 300,000 times following its launch on late Sunday. As of midday Tuesday, Quibi was the number four app in the Apple App Store. That's behind TikTok, Zoom, and Hangouts Meet. Imagine that. In where it was heavily promoted in banners and curated app collections. So it did get a lot of love on the iOS side. Number 29 on Google Play by comparison. Also by comparison, Disney Plus saw approximately 4 million installs when it launched in the USA and Canada back on November 12th. And HBO Now saw 45,000 when it launched April 7th, 2015. Numbers are a little bit different because of course, Quibi is mobile only, but gives you some sort of a sense of where it's falling compared to other heavily touted services. Kiki, have you tried Quibi? Do you know what it is? I have not tried Quibi yet, but we were just having a conversation about it this morning at breakfast. My nine-year-old knows Quibi and we've all agreed, what? No, I mean, this is a, it's a revamp of this Short Video Service. There's already players in this space like YouTube and many others. And but what are they doing? And I mean, I mean, maybe it'll be because people are going there to see stars that they recognize and they like in particular content creations, maybe they'll download it and access it. But yeah, I don't know what's going on there. It should have been number one on the App Store. It doesn't really even matter what the download numbers are exactly. 300,000 is not bad, but it should be in front of TikTok on day one. If it was going to have a good start, is my opinion. Patrick, I'm curious what your opinion is. My opinion is that I am still curious about the service because I think there is a space for professionally produced, mobile, targeted and designed content. And even though I use YouTube an enormous amount, I think it's a different kind of content. And I don't really watch Netflix on my mobile, especially not when I'm moving around, which nobody is doing at the moment. But it seems like if you design something to be more bite-sized, but still scripted and unscripted, maybe shows, there could, I'm not saying should, but there could be a place for it. But yeah, as you said, it should have been number one. And that maybe doesn't... I guess the big issue I see with Quibi is that they've launched and we still don't know exactly what it is. We don't know why we should want it, which is... Their advertising is terrible. I also, a friend of mine who by the time we... I polled a few people before we talked about Quibi on the show yesterday because it was launch day. And a lot of my friends were like, I don't know, I'll get to it. And one of them between then and now was like, yeah, I watched some content. And it's all that kind of neatly summarized style of content where it's like, we've got to get through a lot of information in a short amount of time. We're going to go ahead and make it... We're going to parse it nicely for you because you're very busy and on the go. And that is the sort of thing that only some people want anyway and feels to me like, very internet overdone already as a style, but just so off for right now. Part of me is like, I'm sure Quibi had lots of really great reasons to stay on their track as far as launch goes, but man, to just have launched when people were commuting and people really were kind of rushing from place to place or maybe had a few minutes between meetings and really only had that 10 to 15 minutes where something like this would come in much more handy. It's a tough sell right now. I will say just to wrap this up that the one Quibi show I've watched every day since it launched is Fresh Daily from Rotten Tomatoes. Disclaimer, my wife runs the team that makes Fresh Daily from Rotten Tomatoes. All right, folks, if you want to get the headlines, there's one way to do it. Go find our show Daily Tech Headlines at DailyTechHeadlines.com. All right, one of the reasons we love having Kiki on the show is this weekend science does a great job of covering science. And particularly right now, Kiki, I have been relying on you as one of my sources for understanding what's going on with COVID-19. So I'm very glad that you're willing to kind of answer some of our tech questions about this. We asked folks in the Discord what kinds of questions we should have Kiki talk about here. And let's start with testing and vaccines. Stoic Squirrel wanted us to ask what are the types of tests used to detect viruses and how do they work? So there are a number of different tests that are used. And as you know, there's rapid flu tests that you can have done within about 15 minutes and or even faster. And there are other tests that take longer. And so the question is how do they work? Why are some longer and why are some shorter? Especially with respect to COVID-19 and the SARS-CoV-2 virus, what we started with were PCR-based tests. PCR stands for polymerase chain reaction. A long time ago, the creator of this won a Nobel Prize for it. And what the process does, it uses chemical reagents and a series of heating and cooling steps to basically multiply genetic material, DNA, from a virus into enough copies that amplifies the signal to a big enough signal so that it can be picked up and read. And then you have reagents that interact with that signal and turn a certain color if a particular type or a sequence of DNA is detected. So in other words, you're taking a blood sample or a swab or whatever and then you're saying amplify everything in here and let's see if any of it's the virus. Exactly. But when you're just doing a swab, that's not a lot of material. It's a very small amount of material and so how do you really detect something? You have to make it a bigger signal. PCR is what we traditionally use. It takes time to run the tests, which is part of the problem. And there are machines and reagents that are involved that limit the number of places that are able to run these tests. And so number one, you may have heard that the CDC fumbled on their initial tests that involved this PCR methodology because one of their chemical reagents was wrong and so they needed to get a chemical. And so there are also supply chain issues involved. Now we have a bunch of different labs up in Washington State. There has been this massive outpouring of support volunteers from laboratories across the state have been taking their laboratory testing equipment and turning it into COVID-19 testing equipment using what they have. But pipette tips, the little tips on the little suction machines that suck up a certain amount of fluid and spit it into another well, those pipette tips of particular sizes were a limiting factor. So there are all sorts of things in the supply chain that come into question and limit the availability of the tests or how long it takes to have them done. So this PCR testing is the one that takes up, you know, you'll find out maybe five to 12 days after the fact whether or not you are positive for COVID-19 in your system. The other tests that are being worked on are more rapid tests that also use an amplification of genetic material but they use different techniques and different machines. And so these more rapid tests again can work with a swab of your throat or your nose and but can be ready in about 15 to 45 minutes which is much better for, you know, you might have heard of drive-through testing where people are able to go through in their car, get a swab and then get their results within just a small amount of time. And these use different chemical reagents, they use different what are called cartridges which are these sets of testing equipment. It's just all the chemical reagents and test parts that are needed all put into a small package. And so again, manufacturing and supply comes into question into making them available to people. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, and then I was going to say also moving on from that, you might have also heard of these antigen-based tests. And if you're familiar with allergies, this is the same kind of thing. Your body responds to antigens. The antigens are bits of proteins that come from an invader and whether it's a piece of pollen or whether it's a virus, your body is going to have an immune response to the antigen and we can, your body then starts, you can find antigens within the blood and the saliva if your body has started creating an immune response to them. It starts having these puzzle pieces, locking key that fit together that can be recognized. And so you can do a blood test to find out whether or not somebody has an antigen response. And I believe just this week, the FDA has approved a serology test that looks for these antigens in people's blood. And while it cannot tell you whether somebody is immune and can go back to work, it can tell you that they have encountered the virus at some point previously. Right, because we don't yet know about immunity. We don't yet know enough about that. But at least we can tell like, okay, you were exposed, might be more likely that you're immune, perhaps we don't know, but at least you know for sure whether you're exposed. And then Brett Stewart wanted to know, is there any tech out there being floated by companies testing potential vaccines that would help it get to market quicker? Yeah, so this is really interesting. This is in the last 20 or 30 years, people in research have been working on plasmid DNA and more recently mRNA vaccines. And these are different from the traditional vaccine production pipeline, where historically you got active virus, and then you had to either deactivate it and inject it inject pieces of the virus into people or actually live virus would be injected into people so that your body would build up that immune response. However, with these, once you know the genetic sequence of the virus in question, you can take a small segment of DNA or messenger RNA and inject it into somebody. The DNA needs to get into the nucleus of the cell, and then it just goes through the normal cellular machinery for copying of genes. And the plasmid DNA gets into the nucleus, creates a whole bunch of mRNA, the mRNA moves out to the ribosomes and gets translated into the antigens that your body produces an immune response to. So it uses the cells own machinery to boost the immune response. And it can happen faster. And there are two companies right now that have these have mRNA and DNA vaccines under testing. And there are a bunch of others that are currently being tested. But these are the ones that we're hoping are going to get moving faster because they're quicker to clinical studies. And they will also be quicker and more easily manufactured to be able to get out to people. Yeah, because those are the two things you want to be really sure that the vaccine doesn't, you know, hurt people or kill them and make the problem worse. So you need to you need to test for that. And then you have to be able to make them and the speed at which you can make them is going to delay it too. Yep. All right. Last thing before, oh, go ahead. Yeah, we're into human trials, which is exciting. But that just means we're into the beginning of human trial of making sure that it's safe for the humans. Exactly. Yeah. All right. Last thing before we go, both Dark Knight and BioCal had had questions about companies stepping in to make machines that they don't normally make. We hear about companies making ventilators. We hear about people using 3D printers to print parts. Is this safe? How do we make sure that these parts are the right ones and they work well and that they're appropriate for a clinical environment? Yeah. So the the the the manufacturer pipeline of companies like GM and Tesla transforming their manufacturing pipeline into doing ventilators instead of solar panels or cars, once they have the engineering specs, the blueprints, and have have switched their machines over, the like the speed of their ability is very high and they will be looking at them to make sure that they're safe. They will be checked. But these larger corporate efforts, these industrial efforts, are going to be probably safer in the long run than the smaller scale from home 3D printing efforts. But that said, we are in a triage situation and hospitals have ventilators with parts that are breaking all the time. They have other a variety of things that are needed and hospitals themselves are accepting parts from known entities and there are efforts currently at work using engineering specs and blueprints that are getting these parts from 3D printers to hospitals around the country. So there's there's a back and forth. We want to we want it to be safe, but at the same time, we also need things now. And so hospitals, there's there's a balancing act that's in play at the moment. From what I can tell and tell me if this looks the same to you, everything is is being held to a standard of safety. It's not like people it's Wild West and anybody can just print something and send it to a hospital. Yeah, but people that might not have even been allowed to make stuff before because they're like, we know it's safe from this factory. You might still make a mistake even though you're certified. That's been like, well, we'd rather have it than not have it. So if you're meeting the minimum standards, we'll accept it. Is that fair, fair way to characterize it? Yeah, and there are organized efforts that you can work with so that you're not a lone wolf, but actually working with other people to be able to create a smaller pipeline that delivers these needed parts to hospitals. Yeah, well, thanks to everybody in our discord for submitting these questions. They were fantastic. And if you want more good information like this, of course, you got to check out this week in science at twist.org. We're also always participating in our subreddit by seeing what you have submitted and what you're voting on and what you care about. Submit stories and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. Also, a special shout out to our patrons at our master and our grandmaster levels including Dr. Carmine M. Bailey, Mike McLaughlin, and Philip Lass. Also, an extra, extra, extra special thanks to Dr. Kiki Sanford. Kiki, it's been so nice having you on Science Week. Where can people keep up with all the work that you do? You can find me at twist.org, my website for my podcast This Week in Science. Just look for This Week in Science. All places where podcasts are found on YouTube and Facebook. And you can find me at Dr. Kiki, d-r-k-i-k-i, on Twitter. Excellent. Also, thanks to Patrick Beja for being with us our Thursday through and through. Yeah, that I don't know. I'll work on that one. Patrick, what's been going on since we saw you last week? Especially since it's Tuesday, but you know, we don't know what day it is. What did I say? Thursday. Ah, man, see, I told you, I don't know what day it is. Please, please tell me something good. You know what? I'm just happy to be on the show. Just follow me on Twitter if you want, on Instagram. I'm not Patrick on both. And I'm so glad I got to listen to Kiki tell us about cool science stuff. So thank you for having me. 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