 Coming up on DTNS, the tech challenges of vaccine passes, Belkin's phone mount that follows you and why we need to study what Snapchat filters are doing to teen self-images. This is the Daily Tech News for April 2nd, 2021. In Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chan. Also joining us, Chris Ashley is back. Welcome back, Chris. What up, what up, what up? I'm back. Like my man AZ said, I'm back. We were just talking with Chris about King's Hawaiian rolls and sausages and grilling and all kinds of good stuff on Good Day Internet. If you want that wider show, become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Sony updated its YouTube banner to announce that it will launch a new Xperia product on April 14th at 4.30 p.m. Japan time. It's unclear what the device will be, but rumors have pointed to a new flagship potentially named the Xperia 1.3. Apple added 30 new titles to Apple Arcade, including Fantasian from Final Fantasy creator here in Nobu Sakaguchi as well as new versions of NBA 2K, the Oregon Trail and World of Demons. Apple Arcade now includes two new categories as well, timeless classics and App Store greats. Now totals catalog size of more than 180 games. Reuters sources say that 10 cents TME studios, which makes video games like Honor of Kings and Call of Duty Mobile, generated revenue of $10 billion last year. That would make TME the world's largest developer as it looks to expand beyond mobile games and develop triple A titles on desktops, Sony's PlayStation, Nintendo Switch and Microsoft's Xbox. 9 to 5 Google reports that Google's upcoming phones, including the rumored Pixel 6 will be among the first devices to run on the GS101 Whitechapel chip. That's right. Whitechapel is Google's own system on a chip effort and will be used not only in Pixel phones, but also Chromebooks. In a document seen by 9 to 5 Google, Whitechapel is used in connection with the code name Slider, which may be a shared platform for the first Whitechapel sock. So Google getting into that game, making their own chips, everybody's doing it. The cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase will go public with a direct listing on April 14th with the company sharing its Q1 financial results ahead of that on April 6th. As part of its S1 filing Coinbase reported revenue of $1.2 billion in 2020, which is up 130% on the year. All right, let's talk a little more about what people have been spending their money on during the pandemic. Sensor Tower reports that folks in the US spend an average of $138 on phone apps in 2020, which is a rise of 38% on the year. That's also the biggest rise since 2016. People bought a lot of apps last year and it's not done. Sensor Tower projects the average $180 per person on apps in 2021, which would be another bump. Worldwide, Sensor Tower estimates people spend a record $111 billion on both iOS and Android apps last year. And AppAnnie, which includes some Chinese third-party stores in its numbers, estimates that number at $143 billion. Most of that money was spent on gaming. We're probably all wanting to distract ourselves from 2020, makes sense. US users spent the most money on puzzle games, specifically, followed by casino games and then strategy games. The second highest US category was entertainment driven by the likes of Disney Plus and HBO Max. The rest of the top five was made up by photo and video, social networking and lifestyle. Yeah, so I don't think any of this is shocking, but it is a lot of money. I didn't buy a whole lot of extra games. We did buy Animal Crossing, New Horizons for the Switch. Mobile-wise, I just played a lot more solitaire than I used to because I wanted something simple and familiar that I could just zone out on. Yeah, I didn't find myself buying a lot of new apps and games last year, but the most interesting part of this is not what happened last year to me. I mean, no one, I think, would be surprised by any of these numbers. The interesting part to me is what are these guys gonna do to keep that ball rolling? What are they gonna come out with? What new features and angles are they gonna come out with to keep this ball rolling? Because that money's coming in, so what are they gonna do? That's the part that's kind of exciting to me. Yeah, developers are going to want to keep that river flowing and as we hope by late 2021, most of the world might be heading back to normal, spending less time, playing games, not gonna buy as many things. So are you thinking we might see them try some in-app purchase stuff, try to trick us into spending money, like that kind of thing? I think it's, honestly, I think it's gonna be a combination, right? I mean, it's gonna be the in-app purchases. Hey, here's this piece to get you to buy, but I'm wondering if one or two are gonna do something outrageous. Uh-huh, uh-huh. The old outrageous maneuver to get people, to hook, to keep people hooked in. Yeah, and just because you have to switch from, hey, there's nothing for them to do, they're buying our game, that's awesome, to we've gotta keep them wanting to buy the next one or keep them playing so they make those in-app purchases, et cetera. Augmented reality filters are fun, right? Put some bunny ears on yourself, make yourself look like an alien, or give yourself a small nose, big eyes, clear skin, and big lips, beauty filters. MIT Technology Reviews, Tate Ryan Mosley has a story out titled, Beauty Filters Are Changing the Way Young Girls See Themselves. AR filters on social media apps like Snapchat and TikTok can sharpen, shrink, enhance, and recolor your face and your body. Even Zoom has a touch-up-my-appearance feature to smooth out your skin, and they are popular. Hundreds of millions of people use them every day. Facebook and Snapchat won't release specific numbers on beauty-related filters, but they are the most popular. And nobody knows for sure how the technology changes the way we form our identities, represent ourselves, or relate to others. And these are very popular among not only teams, but even preteens. Claire Prescott, who studies preteen social media behavior, so we're talking 10 and 11-year-olds at the University of South Wales, has found that boys tend to see these filters as fun, just fun things to be goofy with, while girls, and again, not all boys and not all girls, but girls tend to see these filters as a way to improve appearance. Prescott believes filters can have a positive impact by letting children try on different personas, but there's no education of how to put those effects in context, how to try on a persona and then put it away, not start to think you are not as good as you should because you don't look like the persona in the filter. And that could lead to anxiety about how you really look. We do know digital representations affect behavior. That has been studied in other arenas. Jeremy Balanson is the founding director of Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab and found an effect in virtual reality called the Proteus Effect, where people change their behavior based on the physical characteristics of the avatar they're using. So people with taller avatars tended to act more confident than people with shorter avatars, no matter what height they, yeah, doesn't matter what height you are in reality, that was an effect they found. A 2019 study published in the Journal of Behavior and Information Technology found video game players that use the opposite sex avatar, whether it was male or female, behaved in a gender stereotypical way for that avatar. Now, Facebook banned what are called distortion effect filters, ones that really enlarge your lips or your eyes or smooth out your skin too much. In October 2019, after there was a controversy over a surgical app that would like mark up your face for cosmetic surgery. But Facebook in August 2020 rolled that back to apply only to filters that explicitly promoted cosmetic surgery. And not much else has been done. And what Tate Ryan Mosley points out in this MIT Technology Review article is we haven't done a lot of research on what these effects are. So we need the research to be done on the effects of beauty filters on young women so that then we can decide, oh, these are the things that are okay for them to play around with because like she said, it helps with a persona or it's yours just good fun. And these are the things we have to be careful of provide context and education and maybe there's some things that shouldn't be used at all. I'm actually really glad that they're doing this type of research because this is something that speaks to me personally. You know, I have a young daughter who like many other young girls in this world are always succumbed to the pressure of looking or acting like somebody else. And she, my daughter is gorgeous. She's got long, beautiful curly hair but for months and months and months she was asking, I wanna straighten my hair, I wanna straighten my hair. I'm like, why do you wanna straighten my hair? Cause all my friends straighten their hair, their hair is straight and mine is the only one that's curly. And I'm like, you just wait a couple of years and they're gonna be paying hundreds and hundreds of dollars to make their hair look like yours. Your hair is beautiful. You know, appreciate what it is. So that's just something as simple as hair. You know, I can't imagine what, you know, now she's been wanting to wear makeup forever. And now I gotta actually have to start contemplating, okay, how much do I let her do at this age and you know, how much not? And, you know, does she feel like she has to do it in order to fit in and look good or can she just do it because she feels like it enhances it so much to this. And I don't know the answers to everything. So I'm really glad they're at least doing some type of research to kind of give folks insight into the apps, but I think it'll also speak more broadly to our social connections as well. I mean, I'm not a young girl, but I am female and I definitely think that there are certain pressures. Again, yes, I'm generalizing a little bit with genders, but certain pressures on females. For example, you know, if I didn't put my mascara on the show yesterday, I was like, ah, I look terrible. No one else cares, but I kinda care. So there's already that going on. Something like an AR filter is not the same as actual body modification, but it sure changes your look at times depending on the filter that you use. And let's face it, there are filters to make, you know, people's eyes teal blue, right? How many filters are there to make people's eyes brown? I don't see any. Maybe they're out there, but it's a certain kind of, oh, this is a cool body standard that you're never going to get to in real life, but this filter can make you look this way. And what does that do to somebody down the road after extended period of time? Yeah, I think that is the extra thing with these filters that needs to be studied, which is it's one thing to be seeing all the people in the magazines that don't look like you and think you should have to look like them. We've talked about that for a long time, but actually seeing you look like that in a picture and then looking at yourself in the mirror and going, ah, but that's not what I really look like, right? You can be forgiven for thinking, well, it's harmless, you just put that out on the internet, but if it starts to affect, and this is why it needs to be studied, if it starts to affect your self-identity, especially when you're forming your identity as a young person and you start to feel like the way you look, like Chris, what you were saying, though, that the way you look isn't right, then we need to pay attention to that. Absolutely. All right, let's move on to talking about some accessories. What do you got for us, Chris? So, Belkin announced new accessories for the iPhone 12, including the 6499 magnetic phone mount with face tracking. This uses a companion app to recognize your face and control the mount with a base that can swivel 360 degrees in either landscape or portrait orientation. It only works with the Belkin app, but that can link to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, among others. It will sell for $65, though no date was announced. There's also a fitness phone mount that can attach your phone to a magnetic surface on indoor gym equipment. It can do 360 degree rotation and will cost $35, no date on either one, on that one either. I mean, everybody's talking about this one that follows you around with the facial recognition, which is great for your TikToks and your YouTube videos and all of that, but I thought, Chris, you might be interested in the fitness one, right? For your workouts. Definitely had to look into this a little bit deeper. And when I looked at it and I was like, they're onto something here, especially after COVID. And in fact, if they had dropped this last year, they probably would have been blowing them out the doors. Why am I saying that? Because one of the things that has become hugely popular and especially with COVID going on is the remote instruction. So you've got a lot of these professional bodybuilders and power lifters that take on clients and do everything remotely. And one of the things you have to do is you have to record your lifts, squats, deadlifts. And through the video, they can check your form, they can tell you, you know, you're leaning too far forward on your toes or you're too far back on your heels or whatever. And one of the things I always see when I was going to the gym more regular is people trying to position their camera just right to record what they were doing so they could post it. So this, you're 100% right. This gym mount one I think is gonna be the real winner. Yeah, the influencers will like the 360 degree face tracking. And it is cool. I have to admit, I was like, oh, this is fun, especially if you're doing a cooking video or something where you're moving around. But I think that fitness mount as well is something that's gonna come in useful. I hadn't even thought about the whole pandemic era of having to video with your trainer because that's gonna continue. Some people go back to the gym and meet their trainer in person, but a lot of people will wanna get a trainer that isn't local, a lot of trainers that wanna widen their market, you know, and that'll help with that. That's right. I mean, I can't tell you how many fitness TikToks I watch regularly. Oh yeah. Very few of them do I follow in any capacity, meaning, you know, physically follow. Like do the thing that they, yeah, yeah. I don't do the thing, but I'm like, oh, that's a really good, that's a good idea with these weights I have in the corner of my garage. I should do that. Yeah, it makes all sense. Yeah, good stuff from Belkin. All right, before we move on, Dan Campos has a word for us. Hello friends of DTNS. It is time for the Word of the Day, brought to you by Noticias de Tecnología Express. I am sure you know about fake news and if you want to do a literal translation to Spanish, you can call fake news Noticias falsas, which we also have a wonderful word to refer to that term. Today's word is paparrucha, which means exactly that, a hoax or a poorly reported event. You can also use it to refer to silly things or nonsense. You can learn this and more words by listening to Noticias de Tecnología Express available every Friday. That's right, it is not paparrucha that we have Spanish language tech news coming at you weekly from Dan Campos. Go subscribe at dailytechnewshow.com slash N-T-X. Well, vaccines are in development, but so are vaccine passes. The idea is to be able to securely show who has been vaccinated to enable return to normal faster. Israel introduced a vaccine passport back in February for attending events and restaurants and gyms and the like. Estonia and Iceland are using passes to let visiting non-citizens skip quarantine. New York is working with IBM on an Excelsior pass that could be used for people to attend crowded events like concerts and weddings. IBM is also one of the biggest likely to become a standard, but there are also other projects, like from the Vaccine Credential Initiative, the WHO, the State of Hawaii, the World Economic Forum, the Linux Foundation, Walmart and other pharmacies and airlines like Lupanza. Europe is developing a digital green certificate to allow increased tourism. The African Union and African CDC are developing my COVID pass for easier cross-border travel on the continent. The US will develop standard recommendations but won't create a federal database or centralized operations. So among the many problems with the passes, a standard and interoperable system is the first and it's the biggest. Carbon Health CEO Aaron Bollie told Protocol that the best system would be to have a small number of data providers, possibly healthcare outlets doing the vaccinating like carbon, that integrate with other systems like Apple Wallet or airline profiles or others. And that's all before we get to how data is stored, which is obviously very important, how it gets secured, obviously very important as well and how privacy is protected. But the idea itself isn't exactly new. Many countries require vaccinations to visit them. The WHO administers the International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylactix, Prophylactix rather, to show how you got them. So there is data that has been recorded in the past and we can build off of that. But yeah, vaccine passes. It's part of our new normal. And it's already controversial here in the United States. A couple of hours ago, Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida signed an executive order prohibiting businesses from requiring proof of vaccination in order to provide service. So putting a regulation on businesses that say you cannot choose your customer based on vaccine or not vaccine. Yeah, so I didn't think that this was something that would be a controversial topic, but me and the boys were rapping about this the other night. And it turns out that we all did not agree that they should be doing this. So I was kind of shocked by that. I thought this was a no-brainer. But I could kind of see the point of it. You wanna make sure you're not ostracizing people. You wanna make sure that this doesn't become a wealth gap where those with can get these and prove it and those without can't prove it and don't have the means to do that. But I would think that your businesses would want to do this so that they can promote that they're a safe location for people to come and eat and hang out. So I'm kind of, I don't know where this is gonna go. Yeah, my first concern is with the security and privacy. When you have this many different organizations doing it, it's harder to keep track of who's securing the data. Is it positively secured, et cetera. That's, I like the idea of having the folks administering the vaccine, the healthcare companies be in charge of the data because we have some pretty good practices around health privacy, at least here in the United States and a lot of other countries around the world. That seems like would be a good way to go. Security and privacy is important. It does become an issue when all of these conversations are about your phone. Oh, you'll have a thing on your phone, which sounds great to me, right? I've got a little QR code from where I got vaccinated and being able to show that on my phone is great, but not everybody has a phone capable of that and you shouldn't be leaving people out who got vaccinated. There needs to be a way to have a fraud-preventive way to do a non-electronic version of this, like that WHO yellow card, as it's called, the vaccine card that shows you've been inoculated before you travel. So this isn't new, it's just, we've never had to do it at this scale before. I also don't think the government, in my own opinion, this is just my own opinion, the government should not be involved in deciding who gets to do what with the vaccines. They shouldn't mandate the vaccine passes to be required for things, but they also, I don't think they should prohibit a business from saying, look, I'll serve you food, I just won't let you sit inside unless you've been vaccinated because there's a bigger chance of transmission there. Well, we do require vaccines to go to school though, right? Yeah, we require vaccines for all kinds of stuff, right? School is just one of them. So this is going to become a political football. I can tell already that it's not gonna be about what's true and what's right. It's gonna be like one side's gonna pick a thing and the other side's gonna pick another thing and we're not gonna actually do what's beneficial for people again or what technology can provide us. At least that's what it looks like already. Yep. All right. We have an echo, an echo I can hear going all the way back to 2003, Chris, what is it? So in 2003, a company called SEO applied to prove that IBM illegally copied UNIX source code into Linux. SEO lost that case and in 2007, it was proven that SEO never even owned the copyrights to sue UNIX anyway. I mean, sorry, didn't own the copyrights to UNIX anyway. So in 2011, a company called UNIXIS, now called ZNews, I believe, bought SEO's UNIX products and IP and everyone thought that was that. That was the end of it. And they even said, when they bought it was like, oh, we're not gonna care about suing, you know, we're buying it because we bought a product. But folks, that which is dead may never die. Zenos is now suing IBM and Red Hat for illegally copying Zenos software code. This time it's about UNIX where an open server from 1995, not their original UNIX code, but still. I really, really, really never would have guessed that I'd be covering. I would have never guessed that we would be covering SEO in 2011, much less 2021. So I couldn't resist. We had to talk about this on the show. I've covered this almost my entire career. It's crazy. This isn't a hilarious story because I was reading, I was like, you know, my first instinct, and this is just how I'm made up. I'm like, I'm for the little guy. Go get your money, boo. I read it and I was like, oh man, come on. You don't even have the rights to it. And then the excuses. So like, ah, well, this is just fairness and about these guys bullying us and taking on software. I was like, no, you guys are broke. Yeah, Zenos is basically saying, we haven't been making a lot of money this year. So we started to look long and hard about our position about not suing over this stuff. But it's gonna cost them money to sue and I don't know they're gonna win. So I don't know if it's such a good idea. Except for that little twist because it seems like in the article, they said Microsoft kind of backed the original lawsuit. Oh, I wonder if that's happening again. Oh yeah, that was back when Balmer was running things that they were very anti-Linux. Microsoft's very pro-Linux these days. So I don't expect any help from Microsoft's go. Well, speaking of Microsoft, Xbox Series X, many fridges are going to be a thing. So get ready. We don't have a whole lot of details about it, but this is according to Microsoft's GM of Xbox Games Marketing, Aaron Greenberg. There was a bit of a marketing competition that happened on Twitter. It was a brand competition. Xbox One, it was in first place, Skittles. Skittles in second place with about 49.5%. So Xbox was like 50.5. So it was a very close race, but Xbox did eke it out. Although Greenberg didn't offer any prices or photos or availability in his Twitter announcement just said, listen, I use this as a fun way to get more votes and we won and so now we're gonna make this fridge. Greenberg says the first fridge will go to Skittles, that candy maker, second place. Walking away, you know, it was a valiant attempt. And so this was like a March Madness style tournament for brands that Microsoft won. Is that right? It was, yeah. I mean, it was totally off my radar until somebody said, my, wanna Xbox mini fridge? And I was like, what? Why? So instead of going to Disneyland when they won, their thing was we're making fridges for everybody. Making fridges, yeah, making fridges. Well, apparently making fridges for whoever would like a fridge, but not a lot of details, but Chris, would this be something that you want if you could get it? As much as I would love to enjoy this story and be like, oh, I'm gonna order a refrigerator just to be egregious. Aaron, if you're listening to this show and I suspect you are, my man, I don't wanna hear Xbox guys doing anything else, but ramping up the production of the series Xbox. It is outrageous that people are still hunting down the Xbox, ridiculous. Dude, no refrigerators, more Xboxes, please. But the fridges are so much easier to get. Little bit of, not free on, what's it? R95? Yeah, yeah, exactly. All right, let's check out the mailbag. This one comes in from Thor, who says, hello from sunny Oslo, Norway. Thor, we were talking about Clubhouse the other day with Scott Johnson on the show and just the idea of this kind of platform and where it's gonna go from here. And Thor says, wanted to point out another podcast I listened to that's been doing live shows and audience participation for nearly 400 episodes. Linux Unplugged, they've been going strong, using Mumble as their platform and the way that they structured their show. They use chat tagging for participants to summarize what they wanna say, allowing the host to make a smooth transition to the participant that then wants to talk. Thor says, I've heard a couple podcasts experiment with Clubhouse and just wanted to draw some attention to a group that's been doing it really well for a long time now. Full disclosure, I'm a patron of both DTNS and Linux Unplugged, so I'm biased to good content. Well, we're glad you are, Thor. And that sounds great. I love this sort of thing where people are like, look, maybe it wasn't as easy as pushing a button on Clubhouse, but we did something a long time ago that does that same thing. And it works great for us, it does even more. I love this kind of stuff. So good for you, Linux Unplugged. Thanks for bringing that to our attention. Indeed. We also were talking about more selectable Siri voices, no default voice anymore and more voices to choose from. And that reminded Pat that many years ago, Pat says, I worked on cockpit avionics safety systems. There was research at the time, this was about 25 years ago, that male pilots would respond faster to an audible alert if it was in a female voice. I don't remember, but I think there may have been no difference for female pilots. So the new system we worked on incorporated female voice to audible alerts. On a personal note, my wife was the voice of the prototype and demo system. Pat says, I can attest, everyone listens when she speaks. Unfortunately, she lost out to a professional voice actor for the actual production. Oh, that's too bad. That would have been amazing if your wife ended up being that voice. Yeah, no kidding. Yeah, interesting stuff. And we got a lot of feedback about this particular story. So yeah, if you've got anything to contribute, you can send that contribution to feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. Anything that we talk about on the show that you have something to say about, got a question about, want to hear more about in the future, please do email us because we love to hear from you. Also shout out to patrons at our master and grandmaster levels. Today they include Paul Thiessen, Kevin and Paul Boyer. And thanks to our brand new boss, Courtney Robertson, who just started backing us on Patreon. Thank you, Courtney, you are our new boss. Also thanks to Chris Ashley for being with us today. Chris Ashley, what's been going on in your world? Hey, you can always come find me in the homies over on SMR Podcast. We're your favorite podcast, favorite podcast. Three fellas just talking about anything you could mostly tech though. Come check us out. Excellent. Well, we are live on this show Monday through Friday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern. That's 2030 UTC. And you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We're back on Monday. Have a great weekend. Talk to you that again. This week's episodes of Daily Tech News Show was created by the following people, host producer and writer, Tom Merritt, host producer and writer, Sarah Lane, executive producer and booker, Roger Chang, producer, writer and host, Rich Strofalino, video producer and Twitch producer, Joe Coontz, associate producer, Anthony Lemos, Spanish language host, writer and producer, Dan Campos, news host, writer and producer, Jen Cutter, social media producer, Shannon Morse. Our mods, Beatmaster, W. Scottus One, Zoey Brings Bacon, BioCow, Captain Kipper and Jack Shid. Modern video hosting by Dan Christensen. Video feed by Sean Wei. Music provided by Martin Bell and Dan Looters. Acast ad support from Trace Gaynor. Patreon support from Stefan Brown. Contributors for this week's show include Lamar Wilson, Scott Johnson, Allison Sheridan and Chris Ashley. Guests on this week's show included Trisha Hershberger and thanks to all our patrons who make the show possible. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. The Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.