 Coming up on DTNS Panasonic has a VR headset You might not mind being seen wearing Facebook gives you more control over the ads you see and Verizon swears off bundling TV Internet and phone do we believe them? This is the Daily Tech news for Thursday, January 9th, 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt Oakland, California I'm Justin Robert young and I'm Roger Chang the shows producer We were just having a conversation about back pain and birds and Traveling to CES if you want to get that conversation become a patron at patreon.com slash DTNS Let's start with a few tech things you should know Mozilla updated Firefox to patch an actively exploited critical zero-day vulnerability researchers at China's at Chihu 360 reported the flaw It's a form of type confusion That causes data to be written to or read from memory locations that should be off limits This can bypass address space layout randomization or ASLR and Lead to control of an affected system by somebody who shouldn't have control of that system and also possibly just cause crashes Which is annoying the flaw is fixed in Firefox 72 point oh one point one which you can get right now So no joke users of Firefox should update immediately. This is a critical zero-day vulnerability being exploited Get the patch now Microsoft released a new tool in collaboration with the meat group roblox kick and thorn Codenamed project Artemis that scans online chats and pinpoints conversations that may involve Exploitation of children it's built off a Microsoft patent available to third-party and uses historical chat data to assign Probability ratings to chats companies can then use that rating to determine whether a human moderator should step in to review Lime scooters they a lot of people see them as leading the revolution in these rental scooters Lime tells Xeos it's laying off about 14% of its workforce. That's about a hundred employees and shutting down operations in 12 markets Lime suspended operations laid off workers in St. Louis in late 2018 But the company says it does plan to expand to new markets this year And there's lots of other scooter operators like bird and such out there So just just we've reached that point in the scooter market, I guess Justin All right, tell us about this weird thing that Panasonic has at CES. Oh Tom the prototypes. They're not done yet at a CES Panasonic is showing off a virtual or a concept virtual virality headset that looks like goggles and hopes to feel like wearing Eyeglasses it has a lightweight body So it does not include a headband and uses a micro OLED panel that supports UHD HDR The verge tried it and said it didn't feel stable when you tilted your head forward And the image is a small square with a more limited field of view than current VR headsets usually have Panasonic is aiming the development of the of the glasses at the commercial not consumer market think Arcades more than home use. Yeah, maybe theme park stuff like that And the verge said it didn't have the screen door effect that the the high resolution of the panels did make the the image look really good So there's some ways you could get around that smaller field of view. Maybe they'll be able to increase it This is obviously a prototype Maybe they'll fix that thing where it shifts forward on your head But that's an eyeglasses thing right when you don't have a strap around the back Classes can tend to move down your nose. So You you know, you trade in a little bit of Functionality for prettier form, I think I would suspect also if this is something that Arcades or theme parks would use you'd probably throw a a thing on the back just to make sure that probably stuff doesn't fall off your head You know, it's an interesting prototype. It's something that I think would probably be better used for Augmented reality if it did have a pass through even if you had something going in but I'm I don't know anything that is a smaller field of vision Even if it's crisper to me is a non-starter Immersiveness is the key. Yeah, and and I Hesitate to criticize this for that too much at this point because they really are trying to show off the form factor more than the Functionality and I get that this is this is a prototype They're saying look we can we can make something that works that doesn't look like you're wearing a ski mask And I think that that's the that's the point to look to look at here. I mean, it's the maturing of this market and like you say Mixed reality is what everybody is pointing to now. They're like, you know what? Let's not choose Let's not choose between virtual reality augmented reality or reality Let's just have have devices that can do all of that for us And and this certainly would be a slightly more acceptable to way to walk around then of course having a fully enclosed visor If you had proper pass through so I do think this is a good sign that that we're We're finally getting to the point where people are just experimenting with the form factor rather than you know Several years ago at CES Oculus was showing off something with duct tape on it Just to say like look we can do it that virtual reality thing you've been hearing about for decades We actually can do we're at the point where we're trying to make it look pretty now, which I think is progress I don't want to crap on it because I have not experienced it and 99% of these The of this kind of technology to me, you know it when you see it literally That being said this feels to me like they're trying to solve a problem form factor Before we have done enough to entice people to want to get in to these worlds The Oculus Quest to me is the leader in the clubhouse in terms of giving you an immersive free walking Experience if it is something that has that technology that has a smaller slimmer form factor now I'm excited but but until we can demonstrate that who knows that being said as far as a Canvas to paint on for larger like theme parks and arcades that seems reasonable Yeah, you're going from a ridiculous box on your face to steampunk goggles. Yes about that Data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology This is a government agency in China says Apple shipped 3.2 million iPhones in China in December up 18 percent From the 2.7 million it shipped last December 2018 This is good news for Apple because back in November counterpoint reported Apple share of the smartphone market in China had fallen from 9% to 8% Not a huge fall But not the direction you want to be going and there were worries that With the restrictions on Huawei from the United States government that maybe a backlash in China might hurt Apple and it sounds like They'd Apple seems to have recovered especially because this is coming from a government number which really has no Motivation to skew the number in Apple's favor one wouldn't you think anything's possible? I suppose but yeah yeah You know I Hesitate to try and square these numbers together to say that like okay Well, they might have fallen to 8% But there's so many more people that are constantly looking to buy smartphones in China that maybe an 18% uptick could could be Feasible beyond that. I Don't know if I'm going to read the tea leaves You know we do have a phase one China deal signing on the horizon between the United States and and China and maybe part of This is is a good faith Gesture to say hey look we're not impeding Apple's progress in China. We're like they're doing great 18%. Yeah, I suppose so also I don't think a a rise in sales in December on its own is surprising you have singles day November 11th So so that starts getting people interested in buying things China does does have a strong December buying season like the rest of the world and And so you would expect it to be higher. I think people were were worried that it was not going to be Higher because because it was just going to keep pushing Apple in the wrong direction And and so the news isn't like iPhone sales surging in China It's like no iPhone sales behaving as you would have otherwise expected them to if you weren't worried about anything Hey, I think we we had some technical difficulties, but Sarah Lane has finally been able to join us on the show. Hey Sarah Hello Fam Wow, that was a fun software updates Yeah You know software updates if you're if folks out there feel bad About them they they can happen to anybody at the worst time, so they really can yeah So sorry about that, but glad to be here. Hi Justin. Hi, Sarah. How are you? Oh, I I've never been better That Thursday rush what a rush it is You are just in time for Facebook news aren't you aren't you glad I really am what what's up? Facebook and Instagram will offer users an option to see fewer political and social issue ads It is kind of a vague announcement It's coming to the United States sometime this summer and it'll be a setting that says I don't want to see as many You can't turn them off But I guess you can reduce them more details will probably come later this summer when they launch the feature Later this month people will get the option to not just block all ads from any advertiser. This isn't political This is any ad political or not But elect or I'm sorry select the option not to be targeted by email address or phone number This is something that Facebook calls custom audiences from a list in other words. You can say I Don't mind seeing an ad from McDonald's as long as it's not being shown to me specifically because they know my email address and phone number It's a way to say don't target me I'll watch the ads that run for everyone, but I don't want to see an ad just because they know it's me So you'll be able to turn that off. I think that's very interesting even more interesting you'll be able to reverse that and Unblock yourself from seeing a company's ad sometimes a company says oh, don't we have this list of Customers phone numbers and email addresses don't show that customer our ad because we don't think it's effective for them Political candidates often do this to stop paying for ads to appear to people that they don't believe are ever gonna donate So why why waste their time and money on it? You'll be able to take yourself put yourself back on those lists with this feature. That's coming later this month I think that one's really fascinating and then coming sometime this quarter is a new feature in the ad library that'll just this is part of Transparency they're gonna add the ability for you to see how many people a political advertiser is attempting to reach Which is especially good for researchers are trying to figure out who's advertising to whom probably more so than than your average viewer So good good transparency coming there. What do you think of this Justin? Well, you know, there's there's there's a lot to kind of parse through my expertise obviously would be on the political side wherein Right now if you are in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina You are seeing a tremendous ad spend specifically from two candidates Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg who are spending Unprecedented amounts of money at this stage for various different reasons. The latest was over 200 million combined between the two of them, but by the time that this stuff comes around We're gonna be talking to DT and S listeners in Ohio, Florida Pennsylvania Michigan Wisconsin Very key battleground states that anybody in those states specifically Iowa, Pennsylvania and Florida know very well are Saturated carpet bombed with political advertising that I think for them being able to say we get it I know who I'm voting for I don't need to see any more ads That's good both for the prospective voter and to be honest the person who is buying the ads the idea of loosening some of the controls based on phone number and email which are often the most reliable valuable sets of data for Political campaigns to give you an example Brad Parscale is the man who is running Donald Trump's campaign now If you want to go to a Donald Trump rally and again these things are held in Arenas and they pack them out you need to give your email and your phone number As well as fill out some demographic data so they know how to contact you This is not a revolutionary idea in terms of harvesting that's those specific data points But making them less valuable is I think Facebook's way and a not Unintelligent way of them saying look We're going to make this less Targeted we're gonna give you the ability right not be targeted if you don't want and that is a very interesting Interesting and at the same time it feels very convoluted to me It's not as if Facebook was like you know what this is just too much We're not going to do this. That's not in Facebook's business interests but the the the variety of settings that are offered to the public now and I think that they're in good faith These are all settings that if you understand those settings you go. Okay. I actually have more of I have more power to make Facebook my own experience depending on you know how I want to use it That's all fine and good the messaging to the greater public of Facebook That's the that's the part that gets Challenging Yeah, and as I said some of this is only going to be useful for for people who are doing research And and trying to uncover things and that's good It's good to have transparency even if only a few people use it because then they can tell the rest of us What's going on? But these kind of controls over the custom audience from a list is fascinating as they are to me Sarah I think you're right most people aren't going to want to dig in and figure all of that stuff out Are they but but I I would agree with both of you I would only add this one little bit of color to the idea that it is against their business interests. I Also think it is the most Facebook version of this solution where they're well, obviously, you know very engineered, right? Exactly, right. We're gonna we're gonna offer you ten more options. Aren't you happy exactly because to them to the engineers a Problem is when I don't have a switch to flip. They're giving a switch to flip. What more do you mouth breathers want? Verizon Fios announced that it will no longer offer bundles of internet and TV services and will no longer require contracts Contracts to purchase its service instead Fios will offer three internet levels from $40 to $80 a month with speeds of a hundred megabytes to gigabit separately TV packages will run from $50 to $90 a month depending on the channels you can get from YouTube TV for $50 a month Verizon says that there will be no additional fees only taxes and you can add a home phone for $20 a month and 24-7 support for $15 a month. Oh, that's expensive support Well, you get still get support during business hours, but this is like hey, you want to be able to call us anytime, right? For all your internet troubles we're giving you yeah It feels more like a business offering to me, but I guess maybe they'll get some some consumers to pay for it I don't know This is this is Verizon firing the first shot in the unbundling wars and saying you know what will be the first to try it No ISP wants to try unbundling because the theory has been when you bundle it together You get people in the tent at a reduced price and then after their year contract is up The price goes up and no one bothers to call at least very few you know you out there bothered to call But nobody else did Have the internet and TV bundles Actually have cheaper bundles in the beginning than those of us who were like I don't want TV I just want internet. Yeah, you know and the company says but don't but but but you'll get TV for a reduced rate And I'm like nah not for long not for long Yeah, because it ends up if you don't if you're not, you know vigilant It ends up costing people more and the average cable TV internet bill is ridiculously high We've talked about that before on the show So this is Verizon's way not so much of even saying you could save you money although there's an ours technique article out today I think it's one of the writers in Massachusetts tried to get this new bundle as an existing customer because he's like I'll save money like getting the butt getting the individual packages from them will be less than the bundle I have now. I would like to do that He couldn't get customer service to figure out how to make the software give him the new offering I have a feeling that is more to do than with the fact that it's the first day and Verizon just doesn't have their stuff together for this offer yet, but But it would be have been cheaper for him to do this new one more more than that though I think it's just about clarity saying like alright, we're not gonna make you try to figure out Okay, well, I remember to call in and keep the the trial price or talk them into keeping the trial price Well, I will I can I compare apples and oranges if I switch they're saying look what you pay is what you get No hidden fees is a big part of this. We're not gonna give you a local sports fee. We're not gonna give you a rental fee It's just you pay for the service and the tax the tax is on top of this So that's just generally the way it works for anything in the United States Well, and as you mentioned Justin YouTube TV 50 bucks a month. I pay for that If Verizon can it can somewhat match that okay I pay Verizon somewhere between 50 and a hundred bucks a month for whatever internet is right for me You know, you can go a little higher if you want something crazy But and then you're somewhere in that $50 range for television as well. Well, Verizon's like, okay Well, we've got a lot of competition people are sort of branching off into other Options for those people who go well, let's just do it all in one place This this seems smart to me. It is it is good. It also represents two things very quickly number one there is a Now a concerted effort from Verizon I would expect from the other telecoms to try to get themselves out of the basement of the worst company of the year awards for Which they are early Residents of and to it is a sign that their worst fears were not realized But five ten years ago the worry was with the rise of YouTube that there would be a Tremendous amount of user-generated content for which would totally kill cable that that all these I all these shows and stuff that people love will now just fall out of favor and While that might be on the horizon at some point in the year of our lord 2020 We still like watching Bravo. We still like watching ESPN We still want these channels and Verizon wants to sell them to you And I think it's a smart move to do it at a non crazy inflated price Going across the pond across the Atlantic a new menu of default search engines is coming to the setup process for Android Smartphones in Europe the three alternatives to Google on the menu were determined by a bidding process Duck-Duck go and info.com will appear on the menu and all 31 European markets Bing will appear on the menu only in the UK Cezna Yandex and I want will be options. It's a Q. Quant Quants, sorry, so no will be options in some markets as well Yeah, so this this is of course raising a lot of opposition of like the fact that Google allowed people to have Bidding to get on this ballot, but we knew that was coming We knew it was gonna be bidding and we knew people to object to that It is interesting to see duck duck goes splash out for this And and and they are sort of the darling of privacy advocates And these regional ones like that. I think it's check The shesnam and Russian is Yandex. This is in Europe. This is in the European Union and Qantas French So kind of a regionalism to search engines is a little bit fascinating to see Yeah, I Don't know if bidding is the best way to get people the best search results but obviously Google has to make a Make a show of the fact that they are not totally dominating search on their Android phones And so here we are. I hope that all the regulators are pleased Well, the bidding was was Google saying like look fine. We'll open it up But this is a very valuable relationship We should be allowed to put a price on it because if we're not gonna get the money that we would get from people using our search Engine for this free operating system. We need to get that money somewhere. That's Google's argument here. I Wonder if just like the browser ballot for Windows This will just end up with most most people picking Google because that's what they're familiar with Yeah, I mean I would assume so and also yeah, it's a reason Exactly. Um, it's good to have options I think that that that the you know that the opening up of hey, you've got some options for browsers Google can't just say it's Google. You can choose Google if you want. I mean, that's the one that I choose But it is nice to have options Warner Brothers pictures says it will use a project management system from Synolitic, which is a a company targeting motion picture companies and production companies To help make decisions about which movies to green light This doesn't mean that an AI will be picking what movies go into theaters What it means is that the Synolitic machine learning algorithms will be used by Warner Brothers to project revenue Wait the value of the names associated with the project and recommend the optimum premiere date something they used to have associate producers do And spend a lot of time on and now they can free them up to do other things because they got this software to do it for them So you say that this will not be choosing which movies will go in theaters But these are all the decisions that go into choosing which movies go in theaters, right? It's a whittling it's a whittling down of you know some movies that are never gonna make it into theaters It's the equivalent of you know you Justin someone saying read these 30 scripts over the weekend and tell me which Five are like maybe worth my time. All right So then let's let's remove the semantic crutch that no a computer is not just going to say This now goes here. The computer will give a report card It's more weeding out the stuff that just can't work. Think of think of the think of this scenario, right? Jeff Warner is sitting there in his Warner Brothers office Deciding what movies go where and he's like how much revenue do we expect this to make? Pam AP and and by the way, I see Scarlett Johansson is on here Just how much is she worth these days? Also, I want to know when that we think this should premiere before I make a decision about all these movies instead of Pam coming in and telling He's got a printout from the software Sure, Pam. Yeah, and then you like factor in actor schedules Award season. Yeah, summer blockbuster stuff. I mean when you really kind of get down to it This is pretty genius Even though yes, there has to be a human involved and many involved in the creative process But just to kind of get to the point where it's like this might be worth your attention for these reasons This might be a hit. Take a look. It's not genius It is it is something it is something that we we would be applauding people that they're using Microsoft Word like at the very It is something that That will do a job that they should be doing in a Quantifiable way that they can use data points to make decisions But the only reason what we are talking about this right now is they decided to make a press release out of it And the only reason they decided to make a press release out of it is because of Netflix Netflix has famously from the moment they bought their first Independent show House of Cards. Why did they do that? Because they noticed that Kevin Spacey movies got replayed. They noticed that dark dramas got replayed They noticed that David Fincher movies got replayed. So what do they want to do? They wanted to put together all these all these elements together in a show It was a massive hit for them The only reason we are talking about this is because Warner Brothers wants to raise their hand and says we do data too And I have no idea what it gets them They might as well be walking around with their hands outstretched going beep-bop boop where computer I think you're absolutely right like this is a this is ace kind of story Which is like oh, we're moving on from from making some of these decisions by hand But to having machine learning because in some ways this is a positive machine learning story Which is machine learning isn't just a bunch of bogus crap It can actually do decent projections that we used to have to do by hand and yet won't be perfect But neither was the way we did it by hand So here's an example of machine learning providing a valuable service to make Pam's job easier as an associate producer But instead we're getting a press release like you say that's like we're using AI to help us pick movies Which is is like saying like hey instead of having the typing pool Make the scripts. We're using computers to make the scripts. In other words, they bought printers Exactly and one last thing here no matter what comes out on that print out the person who's the head of whatever A division if not the network the studio itself They're going to be making the final call because guess what the computer's not going to get fired if the movie bombs The studio heads going to oh, yeah, no and Warner Brothers is very clear I want to be fair to Warner Brothers. They were very clear that we're like we're not saying this computer program's making the final call We're just saying we're using it to assist in that Hey, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes Be sure to subscribe to daily tech headlines dot com And thanks to everybody who participates in our subreddit submit stories And vote on other stories that you care about and you want us to care about as well Daily tech news show dot reddit.com also joining the conversation in our discord You can join by linking to a patreon account at patreon.com slash dtns Let's see what's in the mailbox. Oh, let's scott wrote in about our iot conversation at ces yesterday with bill debtweiler and shannon morse And the push for a no bridge solution. We saw a lot of that at the show this year Scott says a hub is a critical component that provides a bridge between wireless technologies Suitable for things with wall power or the ability to be frequently recharged and things that must operate for months off of battery charge Without a hub one has to rely on wi-fi iot devices and wi-fi is just too much of a battery hog for a positive iot experience Scott says there's bluetooth, but bluetooth itself requires a hub and it's inferior to zigby and z-way for iot purposes What is so bad about a tiny little puck that plugs into your router? Especially considering all the benefits it enables scott says i use a samsung smart things bridge With the one app that i connect to and control my video doorbell my other cameras my thermostat And my 40-something odd battery powered sensors throughout my home I checked out wisecams, but to this day they don't interface with smart things making them as a doa solution for me It seems fewer and fewer things support smart things and work solely with the voice assistance Those devices will never be put in my home. So to this day all those smart homes that require voice assistance Are the day that I get out of iot Yeah, so scott is very passionate about hubs And the one thing I will point out is that some hubs use wi-fi I use wi-fi Enabled devices without a hub and their battery runs sometimes you can also have wi-fi enabled devices that are wired So and you know, I change the battery. I don't know once a year Maybe over a five-year period. I might end up changing the battery six times But it you know, it's it's doable, but it's it's getting better But scott's right For for battery life the hub system is better and certainly the wired system is even better than than that But the hub system if you're using zigby or z-wave not wi-fi Is a little better on your battery life. So so scott speaking up for hubs I had an email exchange with scott about this and I pointed out sadly that the world seems to be against scott Because the world seems to not want the hub. He's like but but a hub He's because I'm like look people see it as easier if you don't have to use a hub He's like but a hub makes things easier. It's it's harder to configure wi-fi for a thing. I'm like, hey, I'm not you're not wrong scott but At least scott fights for the hubs in this this increasingly hubless world if not for scott who would exactly exactly Hey, shout out to our patrons at our master and grand master levels Include in ruchon brantley adam kahr and bjorn andre and also thanks to justin rubber young Sorry guys. I missed half the show. I'm sure it was just Amazing as usual justin where can people keep up with what you've been doing up these days? Well, of course, you can always follow me justin our young on twitter, but Really the big thing is guys if you've been waiting to to listen to raise the dead my historical podcast named best podcast one of the best podcasts of 2019 by podcast maniac calm uh then now's the time because the finale is out and If you want to listen to all six episodes one after another after another you don't got to wait Any more time it is there for you right now raise the dead podcast Dot com get the entire first season in your life as soon as you can I'm very very proud of it And thank you to all the dts listeners that have already listened to it and and said really nice things if you Haven't man. What are you waiting for? 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