 Coming up on DTNs Boston Dynamics is finally selling a robot! Amazon wants to free you to use whatever voice assistant you feel like and why, I don't know, maybe you might not want the right to sell a used video game. Oh my gosh. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, September 24th, 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio P-Line, I'm Sarah Lane. And from a place where people can't wait for February 21st, I'm Patrick Bejo. And from a place where people eat lunch on the show's producer, Roger J. We were just getting Patrick's thoughts on the release of The Last of Us Part 2 date, February 21st, one week after Valentine's Day. And as you can tell, Patrick, you are excited. Am I picking that up right? I think that might be the understatement of the year nay, the decade. If you want more of Patrick's thoughts on that PlayStation announcement, as well as our thoughts on lunch, get the wider conversation at Good Day Internet, available at patreon.com. Alright, let's start with a few tech things you should know. The EU's top court has ruled that Google does not have to apply the right to be forgotten globally, meaning that after receiving an appropriate request, Google only needs to remove links from its search results in Europe. The EU court also issued a second ruling that links do not automatically have to be removed just because they contain information like a person's sex life or a criminal conviction. But such listings should be kept where, quote, strictly necessary for people's freedom of information rights to be preserved. Sanity has prevailed in my opinion. Transport for London has renewed Uber's license to operate for two months with new requirements for passenger safety. TFL has requested additional information from Uber, which it will evaluate before deciding whether to issue a full five-year license in November. Kicking that can down the road a little bit. Source tells CNBC that Amazon is working on wireless earbuds that can track metrics like distance run, your pace, your calories burn right from your ears. Earbuds are codenamed Puget, like Puget Sound up in Washington, and are expected to have a built-in accelerometer and be priced below $100. Same source also told CNBC that Amazon is working on a larger Echo device with better sound quality. Amazon has hardware announcement Wednesday. It's not known if these products will be part of that announcement, but I guess we'll find out tomorrow. Spotify also had a couple updates today. The Spotify for Artists app also now shows how many people worldwide are listening to a track for the first week after a new track goes live. There's also a new home tab and more info on gaining followers and getting added to playlists. For Spotify users, two new playlists have been launched on repeat, plays the tracks that you've played the most over the last 30 days, and repeat Rewind collects your favorite songs from a month ago so you can revisit them. Empty stuff. Alright, let's talk a little more about that Amazon initiative to free the voice assistance, Patrick. Amazon announced the Voice Interoperability Initiative with more than 30 companies pledging to make sure smart devices work with multiple digital assistants. Intel's 10th Gen Chips will support multiple assistants this year. Qualcomm said its chips support multiple wakewords now. Salesforce said they will work to put its Einstein assistant on any device. Maybe, you know, army devices as well. That comes under any. Exactly. It's a subset. Spotify said it wants to let users ask Spotify for things directly. Baidu brings its 400 million users of Dover OS to the initiative as well. Microsoft, Sony, Audio Group, Tencent, Orange and Verizon are among the other companies signed on. Google, Apple and Samsung are not. Those Samsung-zoned Harman is. Yeah, so I wouldn't be shocked to see Samsung join this. They already do dual assistants with Google Assistant and Bixby, and Harman's already part of this. So it's not like there's some corporate mandate that says no one in the cable can join. I wouldn't be, I would be surprised to see Google or Apple rush to join this, especially Apple. Apple just doesn't join stuff. But I like this initiative to a point. It's not an open platform. It's just an initiative with everybody saying we would like to cooperate with each other. And it's not saying you can swap out your assistants. It's saying devices can have multiples, right? So it's not the same as saying, oh, I'd like to run Amazon's voice assistant on a Google Home. It's saying my Google Home, and maybe Google's a bad example because they're not in this initiative, but if they were to join, my Google Home could have multiple voice assistants, which I feel like in some ways that's kind of cool because let's say Spotify has their voice assistant. I could just say Spotify play the song versus, hey, what's your name? Tell Spotify to play the song, which would be a little more, which would make more sense. But then if I had Cortana and Alex on my voice assistant and alarm went off, I had to remember which one I set the alarm with to know which one to tell to stop it, right? OK, so Amazon wanting to sort of be at the forefront of this, I get that that is sort of a, we're playing nice and competitive stuff going on here, even though we're arguably the leader in assistant technology, right? Or at least as far as consumer adoption. But why does Amazon want to do this exactly otherwise? Oh, I generally don't believe any company ever does something to appear nice unless they already have another motivation for it. And I think the motivation here is Amazon is behind Google in devices and wants to make their devices more operable and feels like, you know, even if this means there are alternatives to Google or to our voice assistant out there, we'll still sell more devices by having more ways into the tent. Well, let's put it that way. No device that can use multiple assistants is not going to have Amazon's assistant. Right. They're very secure in that belief, I'm sure. Yeah, exactly. So Google and Apple are kind of playing in a different field. But if this happens, Amazon will be even more everywhere. Yeah, and then they can market like we're the only one that lets you talk directly to the thing you want to talk to everybody else makes you go through their voice assistant. So, yeah. And honestly, I would attribute it to Microsoft. Microsoft was the first to open themselves up to this with Cortana and Amazon was the first to take advantage of it. ZD Nets, Mary Jo Foley found references at theartofresearch.org to a brand new data dignity team at Microsoft headed by Christian Lienzberger. Lienzberger is principal PM manager and advisor to Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott. So it seems like this team is inside the CTO's office. Previously, Mary Jo Foley had found a website now hidden describing something called Project Bolly, a research incubation project designed to give users a way to store, visualize, manage, control, share and monetize their own data. This is very similar to Project Solid over at MIT that you might have heard me talk about before. In a New York Times interview published today with Microsoft Chief Scientist, Jaron Lanier, Lanier mentions the term data dignity and argues that people should get paid for their personal data. So it seems to be right in there. Foley also notes that a Microsoft job posting refers to applying mixed reality to the practical use of deep learning and data dignity. So beyond the lookout for this, I love the idea if I know more details about this and it's open so that, you know, more people can be involved. That's why I like Project Solid. Maybe this is going to incorporate Project Solid somehow. I don't know. But yes, somebody needs to figure out how to make a good solid open way for us to manage our own data and be in control of it. And I think one of the big questions that comes in the next sentence is okay, but how much? And there was a paper just recently about the fact that we really don't know what personal data is worth. And the different ways of making estimates are so different and come to such different results that it's kind of not even we're not certain it's worth exploring. But another way of looking at it is maybe if someone manages to put this together, a system that lets you manage your data and maybe sell it and you put it on the market and you see how much it's worth. And after a couple of years, maybe you will know and people will decide if it's worth monetizing it or not and how it relates to when you do that voluntarily or not on websites that you use for free. Yeah, that part of it is the big question mark for me. I don't hate the idea of being more in control of my data. That sounds great. But it's sort of like, okay, well, if their ads serve to me that I find sort of random, they don't make a lot of sense. I mean, would that be part of me being more in charge of that? And if so, you know, like there's sort of a self serving thing that is a little hard to wrap my head around because we don't do things that way now. Right. Yeah. To me, more and more with digital content, I feel like access is the important thing. Don't worry about price. Don't worry about distribution access to the data. And what this would do, I hope is control access to my data to your point, Patrick, where what I get charged for the data doesn't matter to me. It's who am I allowing to see my data and what uses are they using it for, which to your point, Sarah would then allow me to say like, okay, these ads are weird. I'm not going to allow this company to have my data anymore because I don't like to see that kind of stuff or be able to control what ads you see. You know, it's true out of the five or six words that are describing the features it would do. I only focused on the last one, which is monetize. But there's also store, visualize, manage, control and share, which are equally as important. Also, I love the term data dignity. I think it's super catchy and it's a great way of naming it. It's a little bit highfalutin, but yeah. Yeah, but I see how it could catch on. Xiaomi announced the Mi Mix Alpha, which it calls a concept smartphone with a screen that wraps around the side and most of the way around the back for a 180 degree percent screen to body ratio. Network signal and battery life icons display on the side, which also has a pressure sensitive volume button. There's only one camera since you use the screen on the back for selfies using the 108 megapixel Samsung sensor rather a small scale production begins this year for sale December starting December for twenty thousand one, which is about twenty eight hundred US dollars. Xiaomi also announced the Mi nine pro five G that can charge wirelessly in 69 minutes. The phone starts at thirty six thousand one or about US five hundred twenty dollars and coming to China first. Yeah, so I mean this is a the Mi nine pro five G is really just the Mi nine pro with five G and a few well bells and whistles. But it's it's arguably, you know, super affordable at five hundred twenty dollars. Whereas the Mi Mix Alpha, I think, Sarah, you were saying in our pre show today how it's just showing that now we're just coming up with new ways to make a phone look different. Like I don't know if I need this, but you know the selfie thing. I was the first thing I'm like, well, that's kind of practical and it certainly is pretty though. Yeah, it's pretty, but it's like, is it functional? And and I don't have this phone and it might be. And you know, I think that this is the we're in the area of, you know, we're at the point where phone manufacturers, at least the companies who have enough money to do enough R&D are like, OK, how do we differentiate ourselves? Let's get weird. And this is one of those things where I'm like, I don't know, it sounds a little weird. Might be cool. But we, you know, we as consumers would need to be trained into why it's cool rather than wanting this feature. It's something that a company is like, hey, we did this. Do you like it? I think it's fair to say that without being talking in absolutes, it's probably not incredibly useful of a feature to have a phone wrapped in a screen. I think I might be wrong, but I think it's OK to say it's probably not. And it's a concept, a concept phone there. They usually don't go to mark concept designs, don't go to market as such. It's a fun thing to try and see if something might come out of it. But I doubt that as it stands, it would be considered a must have feature. It's very useful for selfies. Sure. You could just have a screen on the back for your selfie needs. Well, this one does. It's really pretty. Yeah. I'm just excited about wireless charging in 70 minutes, guys. Yeah, right. I know. Let's go to the talk about practical. I don't know where to put my fingers on that old screen phone. It's that's you'll get used to it. You'll get used to it. And sort of launch apps as I'm trying to dial for something. In other news, Facebook announced it's acquiring CTRL labs or control labs maker of software to let people control a digital avatar with their thoughts. Control labs uses a bracelet to measure neuron activity in a person's arm to determine movement that person is thinking, even without physical movement. The bracelet broadcasts that information, which is used to create movement on a digital screen. It's not as whiz bang as the neural nets that, you know, Elon Musk is involved in investing in where they put stuff in your actual head. But this could be incredibly useful and certainly in prosthetics. It has a very obvious implementations. Why Facebook wants it? I don't know. Sarah has documented reality, virtual reality, something like that. Yeah. I mean, I think I think Facebook is demonstrating that it is very interested in the future of this. Also, the idea of implanting something while cool, medically, scientifically is a harder sell for a lot of people wearing a bracelet that's like, your arm will tell your brain what you're going to do before you do it. And then your little avatar on the screen is going to do something. That's that's fun. You know, that if it works correctly and it's something that Facebook can, I don't know, incorporate into their overall experience, I think that that is that that is a much easier adoption rate for the majority of people who use Facebook. I think there are a million use cases for this. One of them, which came to my mind immediately is VR or AR even if you think of the future, what they're doing with Luxotica Lux, the Oakley company for an AR headset. The problem with AR is how to control it. That would answer it. But even in general, controlling something. And of course, for now, it's just movement. And it's relatively simple, but maybe they're hoping that you could control more things just by thought, which is way more speedy than actually moving your hands and can have applications in many different scenarios. I see, I mean, I think controlling through thought is kind of the ultimate user interface. If it works precisely enough and complexity enough and all of that. I'm not surprised at all to see Facebook or anyone jump on something that shows promise in that field. Well, speaking of promise in a field, SoftBank owned Boston Dynamics is selling its first major robot. Companies with a good idea can apply to purchase one, codename Spot. Four-legged robot that goes where you tell it avoids obstacles. It can also keep its balance in extreme conditions. It can support up to four hardware modules to add capabilities like a methane detector, a mesh radio for long range connectivity, LiDAR for 3D mapping. Boston Dynamics is working with Cirque du Soleil on possible uses in entertainment as well. However, Spot is meant for closed, controlled and largely human-free spaces. Boston Dynamics is well-known for its impressive demo videos and one of those came out as well showing the 330-pound bipedal Atlas robot doing some impressive gymnastics tumbling. So they're working on multiple robots. Spot is not necessarily consumer-facing. Atlas is the one you're going to see on YouTube today. Spot is actually the bigger news, in my opinion. Boston Dynamics Spot is Boston Dynamics finally addressing the big criticism, which is, you make great viral videos, Boston Dynamics. You never ship a product. And Boston Dynamics is shipping a product. Now, granted, it's prototype. You can't just go in and buy it even if you're an industrial customer. You have to talk to them about how you're going to use it because I think they want the usage to feed into their research. They also don't want it to be used for military uses. Search and rescue and stuff like that to police departments fine, but they don't want it to be used in actions that could harm someone. They just don't need that right now. And yes, it has to be something where human interaction is controlled because while this can avoid obstacles, it's not really meant to avoid injuries. So I'm very curious what they do with Cirque du Soleil because they could just have a whole stage full of dancing robots out there. And that would be pretty interesting. But yeah, there's a lot of practical uses for it as well. And we're actually going to see them in the wild now. Right? You know, we're going to start seeing videos of people interacting with them, like with actual robots if they're in the field or somewhere, possibly somewhat unattended. It's not like it's going to be out at the mall or your airport or anything like that. Do you know that? They said specifically that it will not be in situations like that because it's too dangerous. So that's to be like a controlled situation. All right. Well, never mind. Closely closed, controlled and largely human free spaces. Well, Boston Dynamics. In one, on one hand, I'm disappointed at the same time, I'm kind of happy that the takeover of our robots overlord is delayed a little bit further. Well, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day at about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to DailyTechHeadlines.com. Do it now before the robot overlords come. All right. Last week, we mentioned that Valve had lost a Paris district court case in France over whether steam customers in Europe had the right to resell their digital game purchases. Now to oversimplify the EU rules that require the free movement of goods within the European Union, prohibit a company from deciding if you can resell a product you bought from them and the court said those rules applied to digital copies of games. Valve has three months to amend its terms of service to comply with the ruling. However, steam is appealing the case and the ruling will not need to be followed while the case is on appeal, so don't get ready to sell your digital games from steam quite yet. However, it does bring up a very interesting question. Whatever the courts end up deciding is a good thing or a bad thing to let people sell used copies of games or any digital media. Now you may be tempted to say it's obviously a good thing Tom for us the consumer, but Patrick, I don't think that's the end of the discussion. Is it? I would say it isn't. As you said, it's very tempting to think, well, if I buy a thing in the physical world, then I can sell it to whomever I want. Why shouldn't things work like that in the digital realm? And I think that's a very fair point. And maybe at the end of the day, the result of that conversation is that yes, it should be the same. However, I would like to propose a few things for your consideration. I think the idea that people get in their head when they think we're going to be able to sell digital items, let's say a movie or a game. Many games are bought digitally is, you know, I want to go to Craigslist and say, hey, I have this game I bought a month ago. I finished it. Who can give me 25 bucks for it? The reality is that the way it will work probably is automated auction houses. So because all of these things develop and people make things automated on the internet. So you go to an auction house and you immediately have access to the entire offering of the entire world for all of these games and you automatically select the lowest price for that thing. So you can't really even selling at a higher price than the lower price because people who are buying always have access to the lower price in the country at a minimum possibly in larger areas. So already here, I think this puts a dent in the idea that you're going to be able to sell it in the way that you sell a physical game. The other aspect of this, which I immediately see is the industry has kind of integrated the fact that these goods can be resold and the price chain has adapted to that fact. The prices of games go down very quickly and within a couple of months by 30% or something like that and within six months you have sales that make the prices deal a super bargain. And those kind of take the place of second-hand prices while still getting money to the creator because the other big issue in second-hand sale of course is the creators don't get the money. So those prices are still there if you want to buy it but they still give money to the creator. So I don't know that the consumer would be better off if those things disappear because since you can resell the games anyway then the initial prices and the sales kind of get more difficult to be competitive. So there are these two elements there are a few more which make me think maybe what's actually happening in the current marketplace is that there is sort of a natural selection that took into account the fact that a digital good is sold and then not resold to create the best possible version of the marketplace around it and changing it might not get the results that we would hope. Yeah my problem with this is that I come from a place where I don't see digital media as equivalent to physical media and that has always been and still is my problem with digital rights management with DRM. It is an infinitely copyable medium and I think it's silly to treat it like an MP3 is like a record. When you sell a chair you sell the usage the access the wear and tear all of it at once and then you have that chair so it makes sense to have a right of first sale where you can say hey I get to sell this chair to someone else because everything passes to them and the person who made the chair got the compensation for making the chair the first time they sold it. I don't think that's the way digital media works and so because I don't like that with digital rights management I also don't like it with reselling used digital copies because they're not used there's no wear and tear there's no way to differentiate one copy from another unless you add DRM which I don't believe is a great system so I have real problems with this because to me digital as I mentioned earlier in the show digital media is about access you sell you can only sell access I don't think you can treat it like individual products so I have problems with the basis for interpretation. And that's the essentially what they're doing today they're really selling you the access they're selling you a license to use a game or whatever and I think that's also where the issue comes from because the nomenclature might be the issue they're saying we're selling you this item where in reality they're not so maybe the solution is as technical and simple as we could imagine it redefining what that sale is and just saying we're selling you the access for 50 years or whatever and not the game itself and make it more clear because as it stands it's been decided and judged by the courts that this is tantamount to sale at the moment so maybe it needs to be more clear and also we're moving to more and more subscriptions so that Google Stadia other subscription services like a million of them especially in gaming. Well thanks everybody who participates in our subreddit sometimes they're gaming stories sometimes they're earned you can submit those that you think should catch our eye and also a button on others at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com we're also on Facebook join our group if you haven't already facebook.com slash groups slash dailytechnewshow All right we had an update from Chris Christensen yesterday that has some very serious implications in our mailbag. Yeah and Rob wrote in about it and said I was on a flight from London in the UK to Atlanta back in 2003 and an elderly gentleman did in fact have a massive heart attack in the lavatory and died. They discovered this because a line had begun to form which prompted a flight attendant to finally come around and knock on the door didn't get an answer unlock the door we had to make we had to get a flight attendant to see landing in Canada and then sat on the runway for three hours because they had to refuel and also get a new flight plane to complete our trip we couldn't deplane because Canada was neither our country of origin or destination so letting us off the plane would have involved processing us through customs Rob says I don't know if the system described which Chris did describe as potentially making this whole process possible healthy necessarily but says would have allowed them to make an earlier intervention and it would have made a difference in the outcome I can certainly see where it would be potential benefits. Yeah so the system yesterday was sensors that would allow flight attendants to tell how long a bathroom door had been locked right and yeah may may not have helped in this case but it's certainly the kind of thing where it would be good rather than maybe have a little alert that goes off that says hey you know they've passed a time limit you might want to check on them. Exactly well thanks to Rob for writing in about this safe flying in the future and also thanks to Patrick Beijoff for being with us today Patrick let folks know where they can keep up with your work. Well if you go to frenchspin.com it's very easy to remember it's French and spin that's frenchspin.com you can find pixels which is a show I do about video games and you'll probably like video games and you will also find the Phileas Club for which the latest episode is a special on China in Africa and we've all heard about China and Africa and I think many of us have wondered exactly what it's about well wonder no more go check out that episode and I think not only will you learn a little bit but also you might enjoy what you hear and have a good time so frenchspin.com for both of those shows. I listened to that episode when it came out last week and it is both entertaining and extremely informative if you're the kind of person who's like man how do I break outside of my bubble I want to know some things that no one else will tell me turn off the TV don't read a local newspaper go subscribe to the Phileas Club and that will help expand that horizon. Folks we're changing our Patreon rewards starting October 1st so you have less than a week to sign up for the classic rewards or you can just wait until October 1st and get the new rewards current rewards will be delivered after the end of this month and the new rewards first to be delivered November 1st and if you want to know what's coming in October head to dailytechnewshow.com slash Patreon our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com write us early and often we're live Monday through Friday 4 30 p.m. Eastern that's 20 30 UTC and you can find out more and tell a friend dailytechnewshow.com slash live back tomorrow I'm Scott Johnson talk to you then