 Coming up on DTNS Wi-Fi 7 promises to be better than wired US before hopes to end cable confusion and using Minecraft as AI kindergarten This is the Daily Tech news for Tuesday September 3rd 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio feline I'm Sarah Lane and from the Finnish countryside. I'm Patrick beta and I'm the shows producer and Swaltering in Southern California Roger Chang We were just having a wonderful conversation about Bonnie Tyler's the best as well as whether artificial meat is Bad good or indifferent on patreon.com slash DTNS is good day internet You can find it there go subscribe get part of the wider conversation. Let's start with a few tech things. You should know Huawei announced on Twitter it will unveil the upcoming at May 30 on September 19th in Munich, Germany Huawei is currently in its second 90 day pre from the US government's export ban Which if it keeps going would mean that Google can't certify new Android phones Which also means that no Google apps would be on the May 30 Huawei hasn't said whether or not it plans to launch the mate 30 with some other form of Android or possibly with its own harmony or Hong-Meng OS Nintendo announced a Nintendo Direct live stream set for Wednesday, September 4th Focusing on switch games still to come this year including two notable titles Luigi's Mansion 3 and Pokemon sword and Pokemon shield Nintendo says the presentation will last about 40 minutes and will be available on its YouTube, Twitch and Twitter channels at 6 p.m Eastern Time 3 p.m. Pacific Time Facebook face recognition notifies you as somebody uploads a picture of you anywhere on Facebook and starting now That setting will be turned off by default for all users They're rolling out that setting right now So once the new setting is rolled out to your account You'll see a notification in your newsfeed and if you want to get notifications of when your face is uploaded You'll have to agree to let Facebook scan your face Android Q which is officially Android 10 and not Android quite sugary Get it is rolling out to Pixel phones now with updates to other phones following soon Android 10 ads gesture navigation dark mode and action buttons on the notification panel It also includes Google Play system update which handles OS updates for components like open GL without needing a full system update Android 10 also has a new option to give an application info only if it's in the foreground Now we have lots of Wi-Fi and USB spec stuff that's going to really impact your life And it's good to talk about but let's start with something that probably won't impact your life foldable phones or Wanted because the nightmare the global nightmare that we've all been living in is almost over indeed After five months Samsung is once again letting customers Pre-register to purchase the Samsung Galaxy Fold which Samsung believes will launch later this month presumably at the 1980 American dollars price point it previously announced Pre-registering does not require any money at the same time Bloomberg reports that it has sources that say Samsung has a Different foldable phone in the works for next year The Samsung Galaxy Fold is a seven point three inch tablet that falls into a phone form factor But the new foldable that Bloomberg says is in the works would be a six point seven inch phone Form factor that would fold into a square like a flip phone It supposedly uses bendable glass where the Galaxy Fold uses bendable plastic Bloomberg Bloomberg sources say Samsung has entered a partnership with thorn brown on the looks and Lenovo is working on What sounds like it might be a similar foldable razor? So we are gonna get foldable more foldable phones although it'll be interesting to see if the galaxy fold a Gets anybody to buy it be if it passes through reviews and see if it doesn't do that Well, whether Samsung continues to push a foldable phone because to be honest the six point seven inch phone That folds up and it's pretty thin, which is what Bloomberg is saying Sounds like a more reasonable option for people especially if it's not a thousand nine hundred eighty bucks Yeah, I mean one of the problems with my my iPhone plus Max Pro whatever it's gonna be called in a week Is that it I like the screen size? But there are like tiny little purses or just little pockets that it doesn't fit into so if it if if I had an option to This is the exact same device But in transit it is smaller or perhaps the rear-facing cameras now are on the front given whatever situation I might be in That's really cool Yeah, I think the current generation of foldable phones of which there are a few Whether or not they do well doesn't really mean much for the future foldables The next generation or maybe even the one after that might be the one that decides it now It's really just beta not even beta. It's like pre alpha production Devices yeah, I think it's unlikely that that some kind of new form factor like what the Samsung Galaxy Fold is Attempting to do or the mate foldable mate is attempting to do really ends up taking off But just more practical things like flip phones We know flip phones were a usable form factor for a long time So if you can have a touchscreen and a flip phone, yeah, maybe I could see that working better CNET Steven Shanklin reports on the state of development of a Wi-Fi 6 and eventually Wi-Fi 7 expected to arrive in 2024 at Qualcomm's Wi-Fi day back in August VP of technology VK Jones said that Wi-Fi 6 is first improvement will be more capacity if US and European governments Open up radio transmission in the 6 gigahertz bands that may happen next year then an update to Wi-Fi 6 in 2022 Should do that for upload speeds should do for upload speeds What Wi-Fi 6 already does for download thanks to UL MU MIMO? And then upgrades to come in 2024 as part of 802.11 BE or Wi-Fi 7 would round out the changes That would have something called coordinated multi user MIMO or CMU MIMO Which if it works could use antennas from multiple devices together to get more out of the spectrum Good way to take advantage of mesh network systems Wi-Fi 7 could also be able to send data on multiple frequencies at the same time like 2.5 and 5 gigahertz simultaneously for instance and 4096 QAM could squeeze more information into the radio signal itself Yeah, so we did it was special on Wi-Fi 6 not too long ago If you listen to that, you know that one of the big advantages to Wi-Fi 6 is it can handle multiple devices at once So it's got the MU MIMO the MU MIMO, but that is tuned for download and so the UL MU MIMO that that's there just mentioned would be coming in 2022 would allow for better uploads and you could do streaming over wireless And that's when people start to talk about like at some point Wi-Fi is going to be as good if not better Than wired as far as latency and performance and then of course Wi-Fi 7, you know, that's that's not coming for five more years But they're they're they're working on it and if they get it working as well as they hope Would surpass wired in its ability to to transmit data, you know 30 gigabits per second You can do 1.3 gigabits per second with Wi-Fi 6 right now. I think I think I have that right It's certainly less than 2 so 30 coming over Wi-Fi that That that's a whole new world. Oh, I love the idea of Wi-Fi bypassing wired, you know, I mean for this office becomes the wireless office I don't know. I'm happy there already, but yeah I mean, this is I also like the the the being able to not have to choose between 2.5 and 5 gigahertz Which are both good for different reasons 5 gigahertz kind of works for me the most but there are certain instances where I switch back and forth and Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's it's interesting that Wi-Fi 7 isn't the official name, but I don't see why they wouldn't call it that They've been working up. Oh, it will numerically in increments for some time now. I I mean wireless it will always be a little bit more susceptible to Issues in the in the spectrum less in your house than weather Changes if you're using it outside But beyond that, you know, I really think they should just have worked on Wi-Fi 7 and you know At the time instead of Wi-Fi 6 what just waste time just just do Wi-Fi 7 and Actually, you know what they should scrap 7 and just start working on 8 now I don't understand why they they are being so inefficient. It's yeah, right Why are you working on incremental? Just give us the best possible Wi-Fi right now No, I I'm very excited about Wi-Fi 6 because I use a lot of devices as I think more and more people do At once and and under, you know, 802 11 a x the previous Wi-Fi, but I guess it's Wi-Fi 5 now retroactively It it can get clogged if you have too many things trying to communicate at once So Wi-Fi 6 is going to alleviate that Wi-Fi 7 is gonna leave you at that even more that whole thing You talked about with sending data on multiple frequencies at the same time Taking advantage of antennas even if they're not on the same device. That's that's all gonna help latency So yeah Patrick like you say in the home Or in a you know a fixed location versus out and about that's we're talking we're talking about a Different kind of thing than say 5g This this could really just end up replacing wired which as a longtime wired believer I'm wired right now because I fear Wi-Fi That's the old people in us Feeling that way, but certainly Wi-Fi 6 seems like one of the biggest jumps we've had in wireless technology in a while The other ones were cool as well, but 6 does a lot Mozilla launched Firefox 69. Why not 70? Launched Firefox 69 for Windows Mac Linux and Android Monday It includes the enhanced tracking protection on by default now So that'll block your third-party tracking cookies your fingerprinting your crypto mining among other things by default when you Install a new Firefox. It's just there. I'll also prompt you when you install Firefox 69 69 also improves performance on Windows 10 gives you better battery life on Mac OS And it will ask for permission before running flash Which is part of the eventual retirement of flash from use in Firefox in 2020 Firefox 69 for desktops available for download on Firefox.com Existing users can upgrade automatically and Firefox for Android rolling out slowly to Google Play users And of course as I mentioned Firefox 70 coming in mid October. Let me ask a really dumb question Just crypto mining off on by default to block it on by default Would I ever there would there ever be an instance where I say I'd like it off I'd like people to crypto mine in the background of my Firefox instance I did that's a great question I want drive-by websites to mine coins because I want to support them by letting them mine coins on my machine You're joking but there might be an instance where this is actually the case Which you can then go and whitelist versus Having crypto mining blocked by default Right. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not saying. Oh, it should just be blocked always I'm just wondering in what circumstance would I want the option like just let them all crypto mine. It's all good Yeah, I'm in a good mood today. Make some money guys All right, let's talk more about standards and communication and Wired this time the USB implementers forum announced the completion of the technical spec for USB For the successor to USB 3.2 That means companies can start building projects that use it devices with USB 4 are expected to arrive in late 2020 USB 4 will be capable of speeds up to 40 gigabits per second partly By incorporating Intel's Thunderbolt 3 USB 4 devices are also required to include USB power delivery also called USB PD That should help reduce the confusion over USB C cables and devices and USB 4 cables will be passive up to 0.8 meters though active cables will be an options an option USB 4 will be backwards compatible with older USB standards and it will use the USB C style port This is gonna solve so many things. It's not perfect It's not gonna solve every single problem you have with USB But the big cable confusion that you have now with like wait, that's a Thunderbolt cable not a USB C and not a cake USB cable Oh, wait, this USB cable has has a little power thing in it, but this one doesn't I thought that's why it's not charging That eventually goes away with USB 4 saying everything should support power delivery Everything can support Thunderbolt 3 although it doesn't have to so there might still be some confusion in there But it's just part of the spec now Your your cables will be passive Just shy of a meter. So you'll know if you're like, oh, I bought an extra long cable That's gonna have some electronics in it. That makes them less hackable if they're passive USB 4 backwards compatible means that your dongles and everything still work and It's just I I find a little not to love about this particular spec upgrade and I welcome it coming into my life in 2020 Well, the confusion bar was pretty low so Yes, we are we are moving in the right direction. I USB is I mean I I have a desk full of dongles just under me now And I've just gotten used to it because yes, this is an issue I and I still managed to rummage around being like, where is that one that I knew worked because this one doesn't work For all my various devices that are plugged and unplugged on the daily, but but yeah, it's the less confusion the better I have to admit for all the doom and and Naysayers or doom callers. I haven't had issues with usb-c And I was I'm very afraid every time I buy a cable But there are people whose lives have not been made more complicated by usb-c And as I say this, I know that tomorrow I'm gonna have you run into that situation Yeah, I've only run into it like once or twice if you're a professional reviewer I think this is a bigger deal because you have so many cables in your life And it is really hard to tell them apart by by viewing them So I think for most people it's not as big of a deal But this is definitely gonna help make it make it simple and it's gonna allow for usb-c hubs now So so that you can just if you only have one usb-c You can easily have usb-c multiple outlets instead of going to usb-a for your hubs So this is good. I'm very pleased The New York metropolitan transportation authority or MTA tells the Wall Street Journal It's considering a public service announcement asking commuters not to take their airpods on or off when entering or exiting train cars You know, you're commuting you're in a hurry. It's busy. Someone jostles you. What do you think happens? The number of lost earbuds rose significantly starting in March with the new version of airpods and Retrieval efforts causing delays the journal says on a recent Thursday MTA maintenance received 18 Request to fetch lost items that fell onto the tracks six were airpods Workers used a eight-foot pole with two rubber cups on the end to grab small objects like airpods Although some people wanted to do it themselves with one passenger using a broom and some duct tape Also very dangerous, I mean, it's not news like like Nick with a CSA in our chat room news small thing easily lost It's not news that it's easily lost. It's that the number of them Is increasing so much so to the point where they're thinking, you know what? We need to have an announcement that tells people not that the announcements really gonna do that much good Because they're probably just falling out when people are sweaty and running for the train or whatever, but yeah But yeah, it's it's it's a big deal People to pay attention. Yeah, maybe yeah, I think it's I have wireless earbuds They're not airpods because I've been told as somebody who's historically any of apples Wireless or or wired headphones just don't fit in my ears I've been told well neither will the airpods But my job is fit real nice But I have to assume that this is a widespread problem with anything wireless and people's ears I think many of the wireless air You're not the airpods, but your phones Fit better. Honestly, I love my airpods. I use them every day real of them But they they are very Apple like and that as you said if they don't fit you and they slide very easily I wouldn't be surprised if the Use to slipping ratio is higher on airpods than than it is in That would be interesting to find out like they call them airpods But I suspect it's a little bit generically like how many of these are airpods I would I would suspect it's the vast majority of them and how many of them are other other brands It's an easy solution Patrick just get ears like mine, and then they'll fit perfectly Duck tape While commuting like that smart person on MTA did the other day to get their You're both giving me a lot to think about I will take it under advisement I can't wait to hear the announcement that is That was a follow-up Wow, you sound just like him To get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes be sure to subscribe to daily tech headlines at com Researchers at Facebook are developing a virtual assistant to help minecraft players Now really this is to help develop a I if you're like with these lazy minecraft players They can't be bothered to play the game themselves. It's like well, okay That's not really the point Players type in requests in natural language to an in-game avatar and then the assistant can carry out requests like build a tower 15 blocks high with a smiley at the top stuff like that It's to see if you can get an assistant that can understand these sort of vague Requests as you know if you have a voice speaker in your house You have to know how to ask at things right and so what they're trying to do in Minecraft is carry out Sort of like natural language requests We don't have to know how to ask it how to do something and the researchers like to using Minecraft for this because of the Simplicity and here's a quote Instead of superhuman performance on a single difficult task like playing go or something We are interested in competency across a large number of simpler tasks Specified perhaps poorly by humans the developers are designing the assistant to learn from mistakes and get better as it's used Something that's often referred to as unsupervised learning which is a big deal in machine learning an early version of the assistant is available on GitHub if you wanted to play with it in your own Minecraft installation Patrick, what do you think of this idea of games being a training ground for AI I? think it's absolutely fascinating and the Task that the tasks that they are setting these assistants on seem like something that is What we are we should be? Aiming towards if we want to have actually useful Virtual assistants right because I never really thought of it until they actually said it But do we need a computer to beat everyone at chess or to be super humanly good at go? Or well, maybe we do but we would probably get Better use out of a an assistant that can understand me when I'm asking for coffee right and the really interesting thing about the Gaming environment is that it is a simpler rule set Then the other options we would have which are the real world we out yeah, so it's kind of training wheels for Artificial intelligence to perform complex Complexly expressed tasks Without having the amount of variables that would maybe make it impossible if it wasn't Kind of a sandbox type environment Yeah, I think the reason go and chess were attractive It was can we get an algorithm to understand the complexity of something? It's simple rules, but it's a complex behavior having to project chess moves and go-go moves Is it complex behavior? But it's defined enough that we can do it with Minecraft It's it's like they're they're saying okay, what if we have simple things for them to do But it's wide open how they're requested so the complexity that they're trying to master isn't the playing of the game the complexity is understanding humans and so they want an arena that's got simpler a This is a simpler situation than then chess or go which again, it's all about like what can we make them the program do I don't know how simple The tasks and requests are though Certainly, it seems to us with human brains easier to do those than to play go or chess and I wonder if the quest for having AI's that are better at those kind of extreme intellectual activities Isn't a byproduct of us thinking they are the pinnacle of intelligence just because they're really difficult for us But I don't think that if you can ask an AI and we don't know exactly how well it's doing in Minecraft But if you can ask it to do anything that is possible in Minecraft, it seems to me like a really really complex thing for an artificial intelligence to meet to achieve if I can actually ask a program to do Something in Minecraft and it will do it with a reasonable rate of success no matter what it is. I don't know if this is less impressive than an AI Winning it go. Yeah, I know. I think you're right. It's impressive in a different way One of the things that the the researchers said in one of the interviews I read was Minecraft has a large number an impressively large number of things you can do But there's a much smaller subset of what people will practically want to do in the game And that's the simplicity is like we we can we can make sure that the algorithm knows how to move a block around and Put a block on another one the complexity like you say Comes from when a human says well I want you to do this and it's a much more complex version of these these simple things that the machine knows how to do and That's where like you say it becomes really impressive because if it can understand The vagaries of our request like make a big tower with exactly on it You know being able to understand that is impressive and that's what they were and And using video games as as well we were saying simpler versions of Situations or environments is really interesting now. I want them to train these AIs There are a couple of games that would be interesting. I'm sure listeners could come up with their Suggestions for games that should be trained some of them We shouldn't like you know first-person shooters like doom or modern warfare Maybe not but things like job simulator or vacation simulator and teach them how to do these things actually wait a second I hope there isn't the podcast simulator Becomes not simulator and then just right right This is a terrible idea Facebook is is doing things that they shouldn't be let's stop it right now Thanks everybody who participates in our subreddit better than any simulator would ever be you could submit stories like a real human and Vote on others a daily tech news show dot reddit.com. We're also on Facebook join our group Facebook comm slash groups slash daily tech news show And now let's join in with Chris Christensen the amateur traveler He's got some insight on how blockchain is removing confusion between hotels and some travel management companies This is Chris Christensen from amateur traveler with another tech in travel minute Blockchain has been an important keyword in tech stories even being overused on stories that don't have a lot to do with it But one thing in the travel space that actually does make sense is a use of blockchain That's being done by travel port working with IBM and three hotel chains That is using blockchain to reconcile Commissions that hotels pay travel management companies and so the idea being that there would be information on this blockchain Registry in terms of who booked what through who that would be visible by all and would be auditable And so therefore it would make people feel better that they're getting paid what they should be paid Just what blockchain should do. This is Chris Christensen from amateur traveler Yeah, I think we're gonna see more of those those kinds of uses of blockchain and hopefully that brings down my hotel rates All right, let's check out the mailbag Mike in dusty Riyadh wrote in about our conversation last week about Windows Machines being in tablet mode He says I'm actually using a Windows 10 laptop in tablet mode while listening to this conversation Mike says I'm flat on my back due to a back injury and I wanted to monitor Twitter for work being able to read in Portrait mode is nice some of the Microsoft apps work well in this format However, during the course of drafting this email I've switched keyboards three times due in part to my screen being too big to type comfortably and Gmail putting the Compose window in the bottom third of the window and not adjusting for an on-screen keyboard This brings me to the biggest flaw in Windows as a tablet the lack of software or hardware support for Windows in tablet mode While I use my computer in laptop mode 90% of the time I find it helpful in tablet mode for note taking or reading or drafting on the fly Cramped in the back of a car. We're flying in coach Hmm good insight from someone actually using it and having to use it Thank you Mike and then Gary wrote in said a few weeks ago. You were talking about low cast Low cast is the non-profit effort to bring you your local channels in your local market streaming over the internet Gary said I'd never heard of that before so I checked it out. What a great service I like football but don't have cable or satellite So it's gonna shell out money to YouTube TV sling or one of the other providers so I could watch games But with low cast I don't have to since you saved a bit of money. I decided I should Thank in the form of patreon. I just signed up and I'm happy to support independent journalism instead of paying money to large corporations Thank you, Gary. Hey, I've got and I hope low cast wins their court fight Which was the story we were talking about so we'll keep you updated on that as well very cool Everybody wins. You know who else is a winner one Patrick Beja. I'll tell you what? Patrick let folks know where they can keep up with the rest of your work Ah Well, I we will be recording a new MVG be very soon where we talk about games with our good friend Scott Johnson But if you can't wait to hear stuff for me You could either go to Loan de Vutek if you speak French and want to hear tech news every week or If you speak English go check out the Phileas Club of which we recorded Recorded a new episode last week. We discussed news With people from different countries in the world and confront opinions in a respectful and friendly manner That is available at French spin comm if you want the spelling of that show It's Phileas like Phileas flog of fog around the world in many days French spin comm French spin comm go check it out folks Also, we are thinking of changing our patreon rewards Wouldn't change anything for current patrons so much, but we came up with a proposal We want you to look it over so let us know if there's anything you just can't live with You can find the proposed patreon reward changes at daily tech news show calm slash patreon Our email address is feedback at daily tech news show calm. We welcome it. Keep it coming We're also live Monday through Friday 4 30 p.m. Eastern. That's 20 30 utc Find out more at daily tech news show calm slash live back tomorrow with Scott Johnson as our guest talk to you then This show is part of the frog pants network get more at frog pants calm Club hopes you have enjoyed this bro