 Coming up on DTNS, how GDPR is doing two years in countries begin putting together their contact tracing app plans and whether doctors and nurses need to be social media stars. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, April 27, 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. We were talking about how to tell if a review online is legitimate or fake on good day internet. You want to get that wider conversation, become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. The Wall Street Journal sources say Apple production of the next generation iPhone is about a month behind schedule, indicating a later release than the company's typical September target. Apple also reportedly cut its July through September build estimates by 20% as more production is pushed to 2021. On April 7, WhatsApp implemented a limit on highly forwarded messages, letting users forward these onto one user or group at a time down from five. You wanted to do more than one and to just keep doing it by hand over and over again. Facebook announced that since that change, the spread of such messages has been reduced 70% globally. Facebook previously limited WhatsApp forwards to five recipients in 2018, which had said reduced forwards on its service by 25%. Well, if it's less convenient, people will forward less, it looks like. According to analyst firm Canalis, in Q1, Vivo overtook Samsung and smartphone shipments in India. Growing shipments 49% to 6.7 million units to Samsung's 6.3 million so close, but Vivo's on top. This makes Vivo number two in terms of market share behind Xiaomi. The Kronos Group released the provisional OpenCL 3.0 standard, the latest update to the open framework for programming GPUs and other compute accelerators. The new version reverts the core API to a fork of OpenCL 1.2 with everything released as part of the OpenCL 2 releases made optional components. That gives platforms more control over which features to integrate. Kronos hopes to have the standard ratified by members in just a few months. Bill Gates announced that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would turn its total focus to defeating the COVID-19 pandemic. This will shift the charity from its work on HIV, malaria and polio research. Even the Foundation's educational efforts will shift to focus on facilitating online learning for COVID. The Gates Foundation has the largest charity endowment with over $40 billion. Starting in May, CVS and UPS will be using MatterNet M2 quadcopters to deliver prescription medication to the villages retirement community in central Florida. The villages has more than 135,000 residents. CVS and UPS began drone delivery of medicine in North Carolina last November, so this is a big expansion of that test. Alright, it's time to check in on how the GDPR is doing. Sarah, when's the last time you checked in on the GDPR and just said how you doing? It's been a while. I perhaps foolishly thought it was doing just fine based on the way that the story is getting set up. Europe's General Data Protection Regulation went into effect about two years ago. That's the one that brought a broad set of consumer data rights with fines of up to 4% of global company revenue for violations. A recent New York Times piece took a look at the issues around enforcement, kind of checking in on how it's doing. So far, some interesting things out of this report. Google is the only large tech firm to be fined under the law, a 50 million euro fine for not properly disclosing to users how data was collected across services for ad personalization. The two largest fines are against Marriott and British Airways for data breaches. Those are both under regulatory review and there is an enforcement problem. At least New York Times thinks there is one. EU countries are responsible for investigations where companies are based rather than centrally pooling resources across the European Union. That means that Luxembourg with its 5.7 million euro regulatory budget is responsible for cases involving Amazon. Ireland, where Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Twitter are based, is responsible for leading more investigations than any other EU country, but has not issued any GDPR penalties. Proponents of the law point to the benefits beyond the penalties, citing an increased awareness of data issues by the public, changes from major tech companies with requests to download and delete data, and Facebook's recent delay of its dating app launch in Europe over data collection questions from regulators. So GDPR proponents saying you're not hearing anything because it's working, or critics saying it's not working right because we should be seeing more busts. Obviously these tech companies are down and dirty in stealing your data. Well, and the tech companies in large part under the New York Times pointed this out, it's like, I mean, how many folks are working on behalf of a company like Facebook when a matter like this comes up? More than whoever's based in Luxembourg, you know, kind of thing. I know Luxembourg is Amazon, but you get my point. The large data companies, even just through appeals and drying out cases and just having more money to throw at a problem is going to muck up a lot of the stuff, even if the intentions are good. Sure, you could say all the tech companies have been put in their place by GDPR, so there aren't as many cases because life is better. Well, that's a nice rosy way to look at it, but it's more complicated than that. Yeah, it obviously is. And I think the thing out of this report that I find the most significant is looking at that centralization aspect and saying, OK, we could have guessed that Ireland being friendly to tech companies means more tech companies are in Ireland, which means they probably won't get as many GDPR investigations if you leave it up to Ireland. Not that Ireland's derelict in their duty, they just take a different approach. And if you had a centralized resource, there might be more investigations going on. That said, I think it's probably kind of split along the lines of maybe companies really did reform their practices and aren't acting as badly. It's not all that, obviously, but I think it's had an effect. Well, while many of us are stuck at home watching lots of things online, if you're worried about some of that content maybe running out during the COVID-19 pandemic, we are starting to see evidence of production resuming with film and TV shoots regarding in Sweden and Denmark, Australia's long running soap neighbors resuming production soon, pre-production on the Mandalorian beginning for season three, and Netflix filming in South Korea and Iceland. In fact, Netflix says it doesn't expect to have their 2020 content schedule affected much at all. Chief Content Officer Ted Serrando said that 2020 content is largely already in post-production since Netflix releases entire seasons at once. Most series are shot well in advance of release, so we're looking at stuff that was kind of already done or ready for post, which can often be done remotely anyway. Netflix currently has over 200 projects being working on remotely with plans to release more content in 2020 than last year. I'm still holding out that we're going to see a boom in animated productions for a short period of time at some point down the road because what's happening now affects what gets released farther away, right? It's not because things are in production, but yeah, this is interesting. And those filming productions coming back have varying rules. Some of them, the one in Australia, for instance, with neighbors, the actors can't be more than six feet close to each other. In Sweden and Denmark, they're saying like, if everybody's tested and everybody's cool and the actors agree, they can do a kissing scene. It's fine. In Australia, no, they're like, use camera tricks to make it look like they're close, but they can't in fact be close, which means no kissing scenes, no make-out scenes. And you're definitely not going to see crowd scenes in any of these productions for a while. That'll all be done by CG, I guess. It's funny, especially working in production when I'm always looking at what's going on behind the scenes, what were the producers thinking? It used to be, if something didn't have a lot of actors, I'd be like, oh, they were cutting costs, so they didn't want to pay people. And now it's like, how else do they get around this sort of thing? I mean, sure, cutting costs is still top of mind for lots of productions, but it's because people can't be around each other. But yeah, I'm with you, Tom. I think that it's some of the ripple effects that we might even not see, you know, even until next year. And after that are going to be a lot more creative ways to not have a bunch of people and production staff in a small area together. Yeah. I mean, something like Neighbors, you can easily work the virus into the plot line, and that helps, you know, make it make more sense. But, you know, you're doing a period piece or something. That's just not going to work. Google announced the second generation of Pixel Buds back in October 2019. We were all different people back when the Pixel Buds were first announced. The $179 wireless earbuds are finally available now in April 2020. Reviews found that the design seems to be an improvement over the first generation of Pixel Buds. Solid fit, although the Verde said they do start to hurt their reviewer over time. Nice solid fit, but maybe not comfortable depending on your ears. I think that's always true though. Not class leading in sound quality and microphones. Decent, you know, kind of middle of the pack. They also don't have active noise cancellation. So compared to a lot of the other earbuds out there, they're not going to be as good in loud environments, but they do seal the ear. Not bad, as I said. There is an adaptive sound mode that changes the volume based on the environment. So if you're in a quiet area, it'll lower the volume. If you get in a loud area, it'll boost it automatically. So you don't have to keep riding the volume. Battery life is five hours, which is not bad given the small size. An additional 19 hours from the case. Hands-free Google Assistant integration is something that Input Mag was praising quite a bit. They said that the responses maybe sometimes were slower, but you can use Google Assistant with the Pixel Buds with Android 6.0 devices and they said it worked really well. On the software side, Google's fast pair seems to work well, but the reviewer at Input Mag criticized the app for not supporting EQ adjustments or customizing touch controls. So overall, another set of wireless earbuds in there and the upshot seems to be that if you're really into the Pixel Universe or just really like Google stuff, they're great. Otherwise, you might find better options elsewhere. Yeah, I mean, I hate to compare everything to my Jabra 65T's, which is my very first live with its segment, as you might recall, but, you know, those are cheaper than this. They have more bells and whistles, really great sound quality. So it's like, okay, and, you know, there's sort of a companion app that does everything that these Pixel Buds seem to do, but without the noise, you know, the docks for, ah, the sound isn't that great kind of thing. So yeah, I'm with you. If you're kind of like, I want the Pixel Buds. I want to kind of stay in this line of products. Great, but you can get something that's better than this for less based on what I'm hearing from the reviewers. Yeah, I guess the other thing we should point out is these are the ones that don't really hang out of your ear like the AirPods and the Galaxy Buds do. So a lot of reviewers were giving them points for style, too, that they sort of hide themselves out of the way a little better. Yeah, I would say it depends on how much they hurt after a certain amount of time. You know, I kind of get that feeling of like, it's almost like you have water in your ear if my earbuds are too snug. They don't hurt necessarily, but it's almost like there's like too much pressure that bothers me, but actual pain. I mean, you don't want your buds to hurt even if they look good, but you also don't want them to hang out of your ear. I use the AirPods and I never, I forget I have them in my ears, but I know that they don't work for like they didn't work for you. So it just kind of depends on, you got to find one that match your ears well, I guess. Yeah, all ears are not created equal, that's for sure. But you know, if you get the Pixel Buds and you really like them and you got good reasons why, we would love to know about it. Amazon announced a pilot program in the US, the UK, China and Japan to verify third-party sellers to help reduce fraudulent sellers and listings on its platform. The program initially used in-person interviews and now switched to video calls in light of COVID-19 and checks the seller's ID against their applications to Amazon, with Amazon associates also using third-party data sources for additional verification. They want to know who you are, who you're saying you are. The pilot project is in addition to the use of machine learning algorithms and human investigators reviewing applications, which Amazon says 2.5 million accounts from listing items in 2019, so on the up and up. Amazon says more than 1,000 seller applications have already gone through the verification pilot project. Oh yeah, Amazon's not going to win this fight. Using the video conferencing to help combat this, I think Amazon's putting that out there in press releases to show that they're trying to fight fraud. They're like even in COVID-19, we're trying to keep those pirated watches and Louis Vuitton bags off of Amazon. But you know what's going to happen is they're going to deny a seller that's legitimate by accident because nobody's perfect, and then that seller is going to raise antitrust concerns saying Amazon's trying to keep them off their platform to maintain a competitive advantage. I'm waiting for that complaint whether it gets traction or not. You know that's going to happen because Amazon is this weird combination of being a normal retailer and eBay at the same time. When I go to eBay, I assume that it's a little bit buyer beware, that I got to do a little extra vetting of where I'm buying. On Amazon though, a lot of people think, oh it's Amazon, I can trust them. And third party sellers in the past can conduct some scammy type stuff on Amazon. So in the end, I'm glad they're doing more verification there. Yeah, I have no idea what percentage of those in-person interviews were somehow, you know, somebody pretending to be somebody else anyway. Sure, some percentage of that is happening, but maybe, you know, that was going real well. I have to believe that if you switch anything that's in-person to a video call and someone's going to try to get around the system or impersonate somebody, it's just that much easier. But yeah, you're right, Tom. I think the bigger concern is how does this block legitimate sellers who can then complain, you know, this is they're trying even less hard to figure out who I am. Also look for a spike in people selling Zoom backgrounds that look like a full-working warehouse. Just for, you know, for your next job interview. Yeah. Along with comprehensive testing, availability, contact tracing is an essential method that countries like South Korea, New Zealand, even the Indian state of Kerala have been using to stop the spread of COVID-19 and allowing them to loosen up restrictions on movement. These efforts are mostly manual. Contact tracing is best done manually. That's labor-intensive though. So apps can help provide a little extra accuracy, a little more efficiency by doing contact tracing, and several countries are firming up their plans. Europe has been one of the great debates about this, where there have been two competing systems, one that's centralized and one that's not. Sunday, Germany changed course from favoring a centralized system to now favoring a decentralized system. Similar to the one that Apple and Google are putting out, though Germany has not adopted the Apple Google system yet. They're adopting a system that's very similar. One would assume they might end up using it, but they haven't said that. That system tracks exposure, keeps anonymized encrypted data on devices. The centralized systems also keep anonymized encrypted data. They all work in protecting privacy, mostly the same. The centralized systems just put them on a central server, which means theoretically someone could try to get access to that data in a way they couldn't if it's encrypted on your own device. Meanwhile, France has been developing its own centralized protocol called Robare, R-O-B-E-R-T. The UK's NHS seems like they're going to go ahead with a centralized approach. Australia launched an app Sunday based on Singapore's Trace Together software that is also centralized. The Australian app got more than 2 million downloads. Centralization may be slightly more effective because you give more data access to healthcare workers. South Korea's system involves phone surveillance and involves finding what your location data is on your phone. It's very privacy-invasion, so it depends on what the populace is tolerant of and how much they trust their government to stop accessing this data or only access it to fight the virus is why you're seeing different approaches in different places. Gosh, I don't know, I've been reading too many mystery novels, but I would assume all the governments are accessing this data. I'm being unfair, but I would never be like, centralized server is better in my country because my country would never do such a thing. I think it's more of a, yes, how does this become the most effective tool? Temporarily, fingers crossed, and then move on from there. Yeah, and honestly, manual tracing is the most effective. That's what South Korea, Kerala, New Zealand have done. They've done very intensive manual tracing where you interview people. In fact, in Kerala, there was a story today, I think it was in technology review about just not believing people, but actually doing detective work, like going out and interviewing where they knew the people were and finding out where they went from there. Did anyone see them? Talk about a mystery novel, like really going and trying to crack down on it. Obviously, once infections reach a certain scale, that becomes entirely impractical, hence the need for the apps to supplement things. But if you really wanted to crack down on this early enough, you would have done things like that and it's been fairly successful in places like Kerala. Well, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, we got something for you. It's called DailyTechHeadlines.com. Technology reviews, Abbey Oheiser has a story out about all the doctors and other medical professionals becoming celebrities on social media these days as people look for information related to the virus. The article suggests that medical misinformation might have been thriving on social media, in part because prior to this, medical professionals didn't want to go on social media. It was kind of seen as unprofessional to make a TikTok video, you know, not actively, but probably like, that's just not something I need to concern myself with. I've got my medical job. But without those voices, those credible voices out there, misinformation could thrive unchallenged. And so now that people are wanting more social media content from doctors and nurses, etc., you're seeing more of them doing it and providing good solid information. Except it's not as easy to be a social media star as it sounds, even if you went to medical school. COVID-19 is causing more people to join, but you have to be funny on TikTok. But you also have to be funny in a way that TikTok users think is funny, not cringy, because you'll lose your audience and your credibility, which could be even worse than not being on there at all. You also have to maintain your ethics. You can't be making fun of patients on there, right? And not all doctors know all things. For instance, Jeffrey Van Wyngen is a doctor who runs a private family practice in western Michigan, made a very popular video about disinfecting groceries. His first video ever, and he got 25 million views on YouTube, and it's probably higher now. But he got a couple of things wrong. He said to wash fruits with soap, and you shouldn't. You'll leave soap residue on there, and that's not good for you. The recommendation of most experts in the field is that you wash fruits with water. He did not clarify that you shouldn't leave perishables in the garage for a few days. He said leave groceries in the garage for a few days. Again, he wasn't being misinformed here. He just didn't have clean language. He has since added links and updates to the description, because YouTube doesn't let you edit and replace a video, and he didn't want to lose all those streams. So he's trying to correct it, but he was not an expert in food safety. He was a doctor. So he knew some things about sanitation, but he missed a couple of things that were in a field that he doesn't know about. It's important to remember that just because someone's smart doesn't mean they're smart about everything. Even within disciplines, not everybody is as qualified as everybody else. Eric Feiglding, an epidemiologist who now has a large following on Twitter, has found his expertise in analysis questioned by other epidemiologists. So again, not everybody in a field even agrees on the nuances of things from time to time. Or they may say like, you're just not a very good epidemiologist. I'm not sure that's what they're saying here, but they might. Even reliable individuals that are generally thought to have good information may have outsized influence, which could be dangerous. Dr. Mike on YouTube says himself, expert opinion, including his own, is the lowest form of evidence. He's like, you should look at evidence. You should look at anything on what I say alone. And of course, becoming popular means sponsors come knocking. So in medical cases, you're seeing pharmaceutical companies approach doctors and say, hey, we'd love to sponsor your video, which you know, you got to be careful of that. That you're not favoring something in your recommendation, even subconsciously, because you have a sponsor. Yeah. I mean, ethics just, you know, even just those pharmaceutical companies. I know somebody who's one of several people who've worked in pharmaceutical sales in the past. You get those like, oh, here are a couple freebies. When you walk out of the doctor, you know, it's a certain brand name. There are these like, you know, little, whatever's that might, you know, help make you feel better. Don't worry, it's free. That kind of stuff. I mean, that's all kind of part of the deal. Once you get to a certain thresholds, it becomes an ethical issue. So moving to the social aspect of this. Yeah. I mean, you read the story. And just kind of, you know, more in talk of medical experts and what that means being more vocal online, because we're all trying to get to the heart of, you know, a lot of issues that are pretty convoluted right now. It's like, short answer. I'm like, they don't need to be on social media. Just be a doctor. Be good at what you do. The problem is that there is a lot of misinformation. And if you're somebody who believes that you can help, you know, save lives or, you know, or just, you know, make me more informed and anything between those two things, then it's hard to sit back and be like, well, I'm just this person who's only helping a few people, but I could reach so many more if only I leverage these tools a little bit better. But that, you know, as gosh, we work in media and it's like, I know when somebody is trying to game a system for views, or page hits, or, you know, link bait, you know, we have so many terms for these things that are designed to get more attention by being louder, or by being more sensational, or by being funny or screaming or having crazy hair. Or, you know, there's so many kind of, you know, gimmicky things that are just going to spill over into all professions that want to use these platforms, especially social stuff. You mentioned TikTok, Tom. Yeah, it's like, it's very jokey. You know, it's jokey slash clever slash short, and it also, sure, it's supposed to be done easily through a mobile device, you know, and you don't have to be some sort of a production whiz in order to be really good at it. But it is a style, and it is a style that they're not going to be teaching you in medical school last I checked. So, yeah, what do you do with this information? And if you're a doctor who, you know, really cares about your reputation going forward and making sure that your information is not misconstrued or taken out of context, or called into question, or just downright wrong, how do you participate? Yeah, this is, and this is not limited to doctors. The wider version of this, you know, think about musicians who say like, I don't want to have to go on social media. I just want to write my music and do concerts, you know, or even just put out albums. It's a different world. Authors. How many authors have I talked to on the Sword and Laser podcast where I can tell they're like, I just don't want to have to do social media, but I guess I have to. And it's just a new reality where the way to get your stuff in front of people is to do this thing that is a skill. And this is where that temptation to say like, how hard is it to X becomes different when you realize it may not be hard to post something on Twitter. But it is a skill to know how to post something on Twitter that won't anger people that will get a point across, that will be picked up and viewed and will become popular, that will have the effect you want. Like, you make fun of social media managers, but ones that do it well don't get enough credit because there is a skill to it. And not having doctors on social media means you leave those medical opinions open for anybody to dispute because the people who really know stuff aren't there to counteract it with factual arguments. And I hear Dr. Kiki talk about this on This Week in Science all the time, the importance of science communication, of having people who know science who can expertly communicate it. So, I don't know, I don't think it's every doctor should become a social media expert, but there should be a way for doctors who do have the ability to do this well to learn that. And right now they're just kind of being thrown in the pool sink or swim style because there is a demand and a need for this kind of information right now. Yeah, and hopefully, you know, the optimistic way to look at this is I can think of a few doctors, medical professionals, you know, various fields who are going, yeah, but they're just like the TV people. You know, they just get all the attention because they do all the appearances. Maybe that that playing field will be leveled going forward. And it'll be a little bit more of, you know, the smartest people get the appearances rather than the people who just kind of understood that celebrity factor of it a little bit earlier. I don't know. I have to hope it goes in that direction. You know, you bring up a good point because there's a big difference between in the olden days of 2019 having somebody tell you like diet information that isn't exactly accurate. And people are like, yeah, I don't really care. There's a big difference between that and having someone who says they're a doctor on TV telling you to take something that won't cure COVID-19 and could potentially be deadly. A lot more pressure to get things right. So there is a positive pressure to not just accept somebody who says they're an expert, which I think that's a positive out of all of this. Also a positive everybody in our discord. You can join our discord. In fact, you can link to a Patreon account at patreon.com slash D T N S and get to chatting. They're in there right now and they're wonderful people. They are. They're in there right now and they're great. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Rico wrote in and said, I was pleasantly surprised on your recent coverage of the van move e-bike. Electric bikes are all the rage in waffely Belgium and Europe. Certainly. I was at first I was like waffely. Do they have waffely streets? Haha, Belgium waffles in the battle. Consumers are the winners says Rico. There's so many choices and completely new in different types of bikes. I'm a van move s2 guy myself. If you're wondering and I know you're wondering. And yes, a six foot nine inch person can ride one of those. He wrote 205 centimeters. I'm not going to let you get off without telling us given the metrics there. Rico is an equal metric and imperial employer. A couple of interesting ones. Rico says in the van move vein that there's also the cowboy. And he notes that cowboy is at the bike is at cowboy.com. If you want to know more about it, Rico says how the heck did they get that domain? It must be a story. Cowboy is a Brussels startup. Brussels, Belgium that makes a sleeker, more sporty looking bike than the van move and has a removable battery, which is a big plus. Oh, Rico, thank you so much for sharing your enthusiasm and knowledge about the electric bikes. That was great. I had no idea that you could cowboy up in Brussels with an electric bike. Me either. But I'm excited to go one more ride a cowboy. The old phrase that they would say in Belgium. That's what Belgium is known for. In fact. Hey, shout out to page. Also, Rico, you're very tall. We should meet. It would just be a great photo. Shout out to patrons at our master and grandmaster levels, including Mike, Mike Laughlin, Phillip less and Frederick Huebner. And thank you folks for supporting us at patreon.com slash D T N S. We know that right now is not the best time for a lot of people to be figuring out how to spend money when you're trying to save money. But thankfully so many of you and I cannot thank you enough have stepped up and said, you know what, I can afford a couple of dollars more because I have a job or I'm retired or whatever. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the folks who have covered for everyone else. And I know we're not out of this. There's there's going to be there's going to be more difficulties. 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