 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners thanks to all of you including Howard Yermish, John Atwood, and Pat Coming up on DTNS should autonomous cars put the sensors alongside the road instead of in the car? Hmm bite dance takes on the meta quest worldwide and is it inevitable that popular social platforms will just This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday September 22nd 2022 Los Angeles I'm Tom Merrick and from studio Redmond. I'm Sarah Lane from Austin, Texas I'm Justin Robert young and I'm the show's producer Roger Chang folks We got some deep thoughts for you today hang around But first we must feed your brains with a few tech things you should know The UK's office of communications also known as off-com will scrutinize the roles of Amazon Google and Microsoft in the cloud Services market noting it will take action if there's any competition concerns the UK's cloud market is currently estimated at 15 billion pounds sterling approximately 16.97 billion dollars Would the three companies accounting for around 81% of revenue off-com will also Examine the messenger at and smart device market including WhatsApp zoom and smart speakers The regulator will begin the market study in the coming weeks And thus begins the reign of King Charles the third app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi Has been a leak and a lot of stuff lately the most recent is an early screenshot of Instagram Working on a tool to detect unsolicited nude photos on the social media platform The idea would be to give users an option to either view the photo or not before they have to view the photo You get to make your decision Meta confirmed to the Verge that the feature is in development. So it's real Meta said Instagram will not view the images themselves. Not like somebody be looking at them before They share them with third They won't they won't be sharing them with third parties either and will provide more details on the program in a few weeks ahead of testing DJ I announced the Osmo mobile 6 the latest model in its smartphone at gimbal lineup designed to stabilize videos and photos taken with Phones but this model features a new wheel control to make zooming and focusing easier and also a status panel to show the Gimbal's battery life on the go DJ I also has a new feature called quick launch when using the gimbal with iPhones designed to generate a push Notification to more easily launch the DJI camera app when it detects that a phone has been mounted In a blog post Wednesday Twitter says it discovered a bug It's been around for months that would leave some accounts logged in on devices after a password reset Twitter's password reset like most password resets is supposed to revoke all session tokens But it wasn't doing that on mobile apps web sessions were closed appropriately apparently And the bug has existed since last year Twitter directly informed affected users and hasn't proactively logged them out of all Open sessions in order to just reset the whole thing Google announced its Chromecast with Google TV HD coming with a remote So you don't need to use a smartphone to control it although you could if you wanted to it's oval shaped with HDMI and USB input The remote also has a Google assistant button. So that's easy for Google assistant folks only does 1080p Albeit with HDR, but it also only cost $30. It's basically the 4k model without 4k for $20 less Yeah, you wouldn't think people would be as excited about it as they seem but a lot of people are $30. Yeah, $30 Chromecast. Yeah, I got a remote amazing all right, let's talk about a VR headset that's taken on the quest to Pico Pico is a Chinese startup that bite dance acquired last year The parent company of tick tock Developed a new virtual reality headset the Pico for Pico for is gonna launch in several European and Asian countries for 129 euros. That's about $425 128 gigabytes of storage Pico 4 is smaller and lighter than a previous Pico Neo 3 link that was put out in May weighs about 586 grams uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 processor 8 gigs of memory 2160 by 2160 display per eye and they say you'll get three hours of use on a charge They're gonna put out the 128 gigabyte for 429 euros like I said the 256 gigabyte version Comes for 499 euros pre-orders beginning September 23rd in a few countries If you are in their system as an insider It'll start shipping at mid-October in those countries no plans to launch in North America though There is an FCC filing for this so no plans to launch in North America yet But you are gonna get it Jap Japan and Korea most of Europe and it's gonna be coming to Singapore and Malaysia later this year and Launching on September 26th for orders in China So it's gonna be curious to see what the new meta quest headset will come at Price-wise, but this seems to be on on the the higher and certainly not trying to Yeah, they're not trying to differentiate it on price per se Which means I assume that they believe that they can compete in terms of the product Which I would be very very curious to say it to see as a quest user Don't forget the meta quest to just add a price rise. So it's 499 bucks now Yeah, well, yeah, and that's what I'm curious as to what the what what the next edition is going to do I I imagine it will not be cheaper than 499 so so this this might be competing on on price barely But it certainly it certainly is not the slam dunk bargain unless I mean there's a chance that the quest comes in at 700 who knows I Mean is somebody who is a quest enthusiast, but also I play, you know three VR Apps regularly and I dabble in some others But you know, I kind of I like what I like and and and the ecosystem works for me what Pico could offer Somebody else, you know, I know it's not coming in North America right this second But let's say it did tomorrow in my first question would be like, all right. Well, what do I do? It's not like enough to have like some cool VR headset that I could afford that's moderately comfortable on my face Which which headsets are, you know, they're they're just scraping by at this point anyway It's it's what can we do, you know, yeah with with these and yeah, like what what do you tap into here? What's the app store? What do I got? Well, I mean but beyond the apps I do think that you pointed out a few things that could very much be immediate differentiators if if the field of vision is Wider if the image is sharper if the headset itself is lighter that allows you to spend more time with it on your face Then I do think that like from the second it came out of the box. You would immediately feel the difference Yeah, the couple other things to note about this it can connect to a PC and play steam VR games You know which the quest can also do stuff like that And there is going to be one with eye tracking called the pico for pro and a pico for enterprise coming later this year But yeah in the end The biggest advantage to this because because apples to apples it feels like you're looking at two apples like This is this feels like the big advantage is it's not from meta Yes, uh, it is from uh bite dance We have a bite dance which you might have other issues, right? Yeah, do you like apple poison or apple poison? This hasn't been peer reviewed yet this next one So take it with a grain of salt, but the approach is interesting So I thought it was worth us bringing up deep mind has a chat bot called sparrow That was trained on a large language model in llm called chinchilla But sparrow is the name you need to keep in mind. That's the name of the chat bot One of its main aims is to talk to and inform people without saying things that are false That's a good goal Without encouraging people to do harm to themselves or others. I'm behind it And without just being downright offensive So, uh, those are the high goals of chat bots these days Instead of being trained on a large amounts of human text Some of which is made by humans who exhibit those bad behaviors sparrow is trying to use google search Some text training and immediate feedback with humans to train this so justin. How does this work? Tom i'm so glad you asked sparrow does a search and presents multiple answers to a question with citations It is prevented from giving financial advice making threats or claiming to be a person human participants then say whether they thought the answers were plausible and whether the chat bot provided sufficient evidence Like links to sources the chat bot learns from each interaction it tests Uh in tests a gave well-supported plausible answers 78 of the time and human participants got it to break the rules Only eight percent of the time. So I might be I you know, I I feel like I interact with chat bots when maybe I am Trying to talk to some customer service, you know Chatbot situation for a company. Maybe I've bought something. There's a discrepancy that sort of thing I've never had a chat bot be offensive to me Or you know, like encourage self-harm. I I Probably just haven't Encountered the right chat bots, but this seems like a great idea sparrow is saying. Yeah, yeah Let's make the chat bot not Psychotic It's a fair point the chat bots you're going to run out into in customer service situations are very locked down Uh, and and sometimes you run into those limits The chat bots that are offensive are the ones from other ai companies like deepmind that have put been put out There like hey everybody try our chat bot one of the most famous was from microsoft You know five or six years ago. Hey, yeah, tay. Thank you. I couldn't remember the name That just started insulting people and using racist language and stuff. So in in these wider open more capable chat bots Uh, that has been a problem in the past. Well, and and let's be clear Those were examples of people actively trying to break the chat bot. Yes, they were they were trying They were maliciously trying to we assume sarah doesn't do that with her customer service Yeah, I just want to refund For anybody I mean, I'm sure everybody who's listening to this certainly knows this But if you have you encounter anybody in your life chat bots are not just waiting on a hair trigger to turn into horrifyingly obnoxious racist monsters if you are actively trying to either corrupt their model Or exploit an element of their model that has these things in it Then you are going to find it but but you have to go by that said, you know If that does happen you go, hmm. Well, this shouldn't happen again The chat bot needs to get better. Absolutely. Yeah, and that that's what they're trying to figure out is how do we get the advantage of not Controlling what the chat bot does that's the whole thing with ai is that you know, we just train it and then it does things Uh, but dissuade it. So they they did a little bit of locking down Well, you just can't do these behaviors although apparently people are able to trick them into breaking those rules and then encouraging them to Present more than one option and say well, which one is the best so that I get better at presenting these options site sources I think that's an interesting way to go about this. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see if anything comes of that approach My suspicion with this is that we are we are going to find a computational solution to it before we Have a human assisted curation. Well, this is a computational It's just using it's incorporating human feedback as part of its learning method, which is not human oversight No, no, no, sorry. Yeah, I didn't I didn't mean to insinuate that Well a company called soul robotics is developing an autonomous vehicle system that is not putting sensors in cars But along towers On roads that those cars might be driving down and then broadcasting the data to the car Which only needs connectivity to be autonomous So it would I don't know get a lot of pressure off of car makers I suppose if this works out well level 5 control tower has cameras and lidar and connect to the cloud to process data And also send that data to the cars The argument is that the system can know a lot more about what the safest path forward is For a vehicle than any single car can know because it's got context, you know Because there's a lot of cars and that data can be shared to the other cars on the road as well The buzzwords associated with this would be ati for autonomy through infrastructure and v2x That's vehicle to everything communication. Yeah It's possibly more efficient to do it this way since you only need a few hundred sensors to automate all the cars passing by a tower So if you're in a parking lot Or on a factory where you're managing a fleet That could be really useful instead of having each car have to have its own set of sensors But you'll have to get the car makers to cooperate if you're going to do this So far solar robotics has deployed its tech in automobile manufacturing facilities So they're getting the car people on board that way the bmw7 series has been equipped with this BMW is deploying it to its automate its last mile fleet logistics at their manufacturing facility in munich Solar robotics says it's also working with mercedes-benz Qualcomm volvo and lg plus as well You also need the infrastructure to be set up if you want to use this outside of a limited area And to that end solar robotics is deploying sensors to detect vehicle and pedestrian traffic In parts of asia europe and the united states particularly here in california florida and tennessee right now This is being pitched as a great way to gather data for governments You know like pedestrian traffic how many people are obeying the rules where where are their problems in the flow of traffic And for last mile fleet automation like we were talking about bmw do it feels like a long shot That autonomous cars would come from infrastructure built along roads Instead of from within the cars, but hey, we we had to build roads everywhere So we did that part of the infrastructure. Who knows? I don't think that it's a crazy idea Uh specifically if we are in a world where you have a lot of self-driving cars that have the the sensors on the cars themselves I could see the infrastructure being built around it But I kind of feel like it will happen in that order if just because Consumers and manufacturers will feel better with all the tech that could go wrong being in one place as opposed to a connection between Uh the road and whatever state that is in with the car itself Yeah, my first thought was okay if I expect, you know autonomy as i'm driving and let's say I'm driving down the 101 south and you know between my house and getting to san francisco It's fully autonomous because we've got you know all this stuff But then it isn't anymore because then I get onto surface streets and the whole thing changes That might be sort of frustrating, but like you mentioned tom this sounds like it makes the most sense for certain areas of road where There are a bunch of cars who are not going to do particularly anything all that crazy And and the data getting from just the flow of traffic and again pedestrian information Super helpful as well that that's where that's where where this makes a lot more sense and also Uh takes the pressure off of the consumer to be like all right Well, I have to have like, you know the autonomous car and you know pay more for it myself Yeah, the uh I don't think this is going to end up being that it does feel like it's a it's a local enterprise level Factory floor parking lot maybe yeah kind of thing And it's cheap enough that you could put it in Autonomous cars that also have sensors just to make it cross compatible Uh, if you were to think about this as like crazy future, maybe this is the way we get autonomous cars It would have to be like cell cell phones, right? Like it would actually be easier to roll it out in urban areas on surface streets than it would be like to like build it out You know across highways And things like that Folks, if you want to join the conversation in our discord, you can uh trade some ideas about this as well Link your patreon account to discord and we'll just show up like that patreon.com Slash dtms The verges russell brandom has an article called how platforms turn boring He's bemoaning the age old complaint that when something gets popular the things that make it special get watered down And then it's not that cool anymore. He uses tiktok as an example Saying quote at first tiktok was exciting because there was a culture that could only happen there But now the actual content is getting closer to what you see on every other network random has a test for this He calls it the bootleg ratio So how much content is created by users specifically for a platform versus clout chasing accounts Drafting off of the audience. So for example instagram used to have a unique hustle culture all its own Brandom argues the culture has tipped toward reposting and become a place for distribution not creation As counter examples, he puts forth reddit and twitter They don't have as large of an audience as facebook, but the audiences are stable and each has a very unique culture And he acknowledges that the ratio can tip too far one way or another in the cases of vine and tumbler that had Unique niche cultures but struggled to say viable He also points out that youtube seems to actively fight for balance in the form of creator subsidies to encourage original content Yeah, most recently with shorts, right? It's hard to see what you could do about this though If bootlegs or reposts or viral hogs as brandom variously refers to it are a wasteland Then why do the user numbers rise? The money is going to follow users After all which is why these Wastelandish platforms are more successful if the unique culture of twitter or tumbler is preferable Why aren't they succeeding? You know is brandom just making a more elaborate version of the argument that the band you like was cool before everybody Else started to like them Or is he on to something where where a balance of culture With virality like he describes youtube attempting is the secret To avoiding the eventual decline that seems to come to every platform You know my space is still out there, but it's not much used and frenster is long gone I is my space still out there. My goodness. Yeah, all right. Um I think it's a little early to say like ah tiktok's over. It's lame now. Um, I That said I have definitely noticed um and brandom makes the same claim in in this very thorough article That's worth reading that uh, you know for the for you page for anybody who's familiar with tiktok That's just kind of like hey, we're gonna serve you stuff that you're gonna like based on what you've what you've liked and interacted with before it it has Definitely gone more what I would call That viral looking for clicks Hoping for some revenue type thing and I don't think that that's that is not unique to tiktok at all I see it everywhere. Um instagram's been you know plagued by this for years But the but the the question of well, so then why Do more people end up, you know going to that place? I think it's a couple of things first of all Not everybody is just a first, you know You know it a first responder of sorts, you know of the new of the new social hotness Like it's gonna take a lot of people a while to sort of get there because they're gonna hear about it enough And they're gonna go check it out also The stupid meme accounts that I still follow on instagram that have become less and less interesting to me because i'm like Okay, I get what you're doing. I mean they they have the most engagement that that is that is a way to make Maybe not revenue for a long time, but revenue in the short term so You know any social network that is buzzy I don't know. I mean be real. Look at that. But why are they buzzy right like that? That's the question is like Brandon's trying to say I think be real is interesting right now because it has a real culture But at some point, you know the viral hogs will come for it and then it will be a vapid wasteland But apparently when that happens these platforms get more popular They get more popular and then they kind of don't because you go I mean it's not that interesting Well for that to happen look at face it does it does take a while and I think I think that's That's kind of you know to the heart of what we're talking about is All right. Well if there is an ebb and flow to all social networks, uh, what you know, I what whatever the I don't know, you know, you know, whatever your unique thing is that you say well We're different than the other social networks and here's why People are always going to come for you because they want to make money But what came first the viral reposting accounts Or the people because my thought on this is It's when your user base widens out that not only do these viral accounts Understand that there is money to be made by serving you the thing that you know that you that they know that you want regardless of what platform it is but also It is the content that may not that that is more palatable for a new user that comes in The second third fourth fifth seventh eighteenth fiftieth wave of people that show up to something They need something that is comforting to them Because they might not be totally into everything that was happening on it before at a certain point This is about welcoming in New users and of course I I as tom pointed out here This is probably a little bit of being upset that this culture isn't exactly what you want You know, you you can never go home again as they say. Yeah, I mean, there may be just something as simple as To appeal to a mass audience You can't be as specific. Yes, and if you want a mass audience, you're going to you know water down The content and if you're the person who loved the thing at the beginning when it was more specific You're not going to love it when it's watered down. There's that's just I don't know. I don't know, uh, you know when imagine dragons were playing just tiny little shows You know and somebody's garage somewhere But uh, you know, they're enjoying a lot more success now that they have mass appeal But those people from the early days go, uh, not the same Yeah, exactly. Well, what are you going to listen to your imagine dragons albums on though? Tom good question record maker record player maker victrola has been in the biz for Over a hundred years more recently making entry level turntables that built-in speakers kind of retro designs that type of thing victrola's newest item though is the stream carbon $800 turntable that can access a sonos system So you can stream your records in various areas if you're home got a home got a bunch of sonos speakers It would all work even if you're not near the record player itself once you connect everything over the victrola stream app You can also control the stream carbon using the sonos app itself or a control knob that's on the device Victrola told engadget it works with any sonos speakers So even if you have the older ones that should be compatible Under the hood the stream carbon has a belt driven turntable with an aluminum platter And an order font 2m red cartridge ethernet a built-in preamp and rca outputs if you happen to have Old speakers that work perfectly fine. It would work with those as well You can pre-order the stream carbon now for shipment in october I have hooked up my record player to the sonos But I had to use those rca outputs to go into a an amp and then out of the amp with a line out into the Line in on the sonos and then I could only use it We're using the line in on the sonos which sonos didn't want to leave on because it was line in and it was like No, you want to use these other things instead, right? So I don't know that it's worth 800 dollars to solve that but this certainly does simplify it And if you've seen those victrola like suitcase looking record players the very old timey, that's not this This is very sleek. This is very modern looking What do you get for the hipster who has everything this christmas? It's pretty much it. Yeah, yeah I mean that my my first reaction was like I need this because I I have a lot of sonos speakers Even though I have a pretty small house It's like oh the idea that you know put put a little something on the on the turntable And I can hear it throughout the house. That is very attractive 800 dollars is kind of steep victrola did say that uh, uh, it is working on Similar type models that would be Perhaps a little bit cheaper didn't say that specifically but one would guess Because I think a lot of people are going to be like oh, that's that's a little steep But hey, if you're already in the system, if you already have sonos speakers in your house You're used to parting with money. So there you go. I I have a friend that just bought a new house He's got sonos speakers and he's a gigantic vinyl head. I don't know if I love him 800 dollars We're gonna find out between now and christmas Larry in atlanta says wouldn't a bluetooth adapter do the same thing? Um, my record player has bluetooth in it. They that's not the point. The point is this works with sonos, right? Yes, you could do line in you could do bluetooth There's other ways to do it and they're cheaper But this is built into the system and and again, maybe not 800 dollars worth of convenience savings But but a convenience All right, let's check out the mailbag. All right. This one comes from susanne. This was a patreon message Thank you for being a patron susanne susanne says we have two h e b stores here in austin texas That let you scan your stuff with an app you just check out a special kiosk You scan a qr code it sends your order to the kiosk Usually it requires a cashier to come scan three to five random things in your basket But it takes way less time than the regular line or the self-check out. It's wonderful Yeah, I've we've heard from a lot of folks who've been talking about things. Uh, some of them even going back into the 90s That have done similar things to that app and scan and pay system I asked susanne if if she knew if the one that h e b was using was the instacart one because they've had that available for a while But I haven't heard back whether it is or not you haven't happened to use this have you justin I have not I've always wound up doing self-checkout at h e b But I do know for a fact that h e b has their own tech and development department So, uh, it would not shock me if this technology was developed in house Interesting. Yeah, or or or from some other vendor that's that's more white label or something. Yeah Yeah, yeah, I mean I've I've I've spoken I got into a conversation locally with with somebody that that works in there and the way that they were describing it They are fairly hands-on With their their their their tech stuff. So who know meanwhile Ralph's and all you kroger Associated stores out there like Ralph's Suffer along with me where they're like, no we insist you use kroger pay Which nobody yikes. In fact, I can't even make it work at Ralph's Oh my gosh. Remember like Walgreens pay their everybody had to pay at one point. Yeah, I've been some of them are still, you know going strong Well, thanks to everybody who does write in with on the ground reports really really appreciate them Also, thanks to you Justin Robert Young Let folks know where they can keep up with the rest of your work You can download my uh new ish podcast where not wrong featuring myself Jen briney and andrew heat in a panel show discussing two stories each and every week Uh, it's really kind of been a hit for us And so we're really really happy that it is uh rolling along go find it Wherever you find your podcast on this week's addition to the program We are not wrong about ronda santis's migrant flights and whether or not as joe biden said on 60 minutes The pandemic is over I uh On my editor's desk for the patrons that just went out today I talked about all the podcasts I subscribed to and I talked about we're not wrong And how one of the things I love about it is that you all three sometimes can disagree with each other from three different methods And have a rousing discussion of it and then just go like all right friends. Let's go on to the next topic It's it's a great example for humanity If nothing else Yeah, it's fun. Well, we're not wrong any of us. Nope type thing Special thanks to jeremy taran who's one of our top lifetime supporters here on dTns. Thank you jeremy for all the years of support Jeremy jeremy. Well, we know patreon isn't broken. I was I was wondering if patreon just wasn't giving us notifications because we we've gotten One person deleted their account Uh, another one readjusted their account down by 24 cents Uh, I don't know if you were just trying to actually see if the notifications worked, but thanks What would be a better test is a new patron if you're out there And you're willing to raise your hand step forward and say I will become a new patron of dTns Just to see if the notifications are broken or not head right now to patreon.com slash dTns Speak at a patron stick around for the extended show called good day internet where we talk about All the things a lot of it comes from dTns and then we and we kind of you know make it free form You can catch this show live monday through friday at 4 p.m. Eastern That's 20 hundred utc find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live if you can join us live We'd love to have you and we'll be back tomorrow talking to factor off myths with shannon morris and lent peralta This show is part of the frog pants network get more at frog pants dot com Diamond club hopes you have enjoyed this program