 Coming up on DTS the music industry comes for twitch how to keep small businesses alive using tech and Facebook gets into game streaming This is the Daily Tech news for Monday October 26th 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio Redwood adjacent. I'm Sarah Lane And I'm the shows producer Roger chain Joining us today Brett round Savelle head of merchant operations at local laboratory, and I'd like to think friend of the show Hey Brett, how's it going? Yay BFF of a show. It's great to see you guys. Yeah, it's good to have you back, man We talked about keep Oakland alive comm on the show not too long ago So we're gonna dig in a little more to what that is and what it's attempting to do We were just talking with Brett about the rules of spelling and style guides And our own personal blocks on that you can get that wider conversation on our expanded show Good day internet at patreon.com slash DTS. Let's start with a few tech things. You should know Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey will voluntarily testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on November 17th to discuss recent content moderation decisions regarding the New York Post story on Hunter Biden's laptop Bloomberg's Mark Gurman and Debbie Woo report that according to sources Apple is working on updates to its AirPod and AirPod Pro Earbuds that have new wireless chips and new designs their sources are saying the standard Air Pods Will look similar to the current pros. So they'll take on that pro look with replaceable ear tips They'll have better battery life, but they still won't have no noise cancellation. That will be reserved as a pro feature They are planned for a first half 2021 release again according to these sources and the new pros would be designed to fill the Ear with no step. They'd get a total design change as part of Microsoft a planned deprecation of Internet Explorer starting with Edge 87 a list of 1156 sites accessed and IE would automatically open in Edge This includes YouTube Instagram Twitter ESPN eHarmony and GoDaddy though enterprise users will be able to set group policies to disable the forced loading One plus announced two new phones in its mid-range Nord lineup the 349 euro and 10 5g and the 199 euro and 100 the n10 has the snapdragon 690 sock Supports sub 6 gigahertz 5g and comes with a 90 Hertz refresh rate on its screen the n100 the one that cost 199 euros has a snapdragon 460 chip 5000 milliamp hour battery and three rear cameras both of these models have rear fingerprint readers and run Android 10 the n100 comes out November 10th in the UK and Europe with the n 10 arriving later in November and both are set to come to in North America at some point unspecified at this time Twitter began placing messages at the top of a user's feed to preemptively debunk misinformation about voting by mail with plans to Add a similar message about the timing of election results on October 28th Because this won't be a contextual notification alongside a specific tweet with it misinformation Twitter is calling this pre-bunking That's what I see what they did there What a bunch of jokesters. All right, let's talk a little more about Facebook rolling out streaming games To its website and Android app for some but not all US users These streaming games are basically Newer versions of the HTML5 games in fact you're gonna find them in the same place You find their current HTML5 games remember HTML5 games replace the flash base games This is kind of the next generation streaming games that support Facebook login for gaming on their own app can save your Progression between their app and the Facebook streaming version This is cool If you have an app say on iOS for a game that is also available on Facebook game streaming You could save your game between those two platforms the launch games will be free to play and latency Tolerance so these aren't things that need to have really fast action Facebook will take a 30% Commission on all in-app purchases This is part of the platform and as part of the launch Facebook will let users go by a player name and themed avatar Instead of your real name and photo Now your player name is still linked to your real name and photo But you can not have to have your real name showing up in leaderboards and in games and that sort of thing You do have to be logged into a game using Facebook to do that But it'll work both in Facebook games as well as games that support logging in with Facebook Facebook has no plans to roll out cloud gaming to the iOS app because Apple's app store rules Forbid linking out to or using a game streaming service as we've talked about many times on DTS and Facebook points out You can't even link out to a web browser to start a cloud-based game stream So if you're in the Facebook app on iOS, you won't even know these games exists the rollout is limited to California Texas and 10 states across the Northeast and mid-Atlantic as well as Washington DC Because they want to keep them close to Facebook's data centers Which is done usually to reduce latency and improve performance, but these aren't latency sensitive. So that's kind of interesting Yeah, I mean my first reaction was like, okay, this makes sense We know that Facebook has been wanting to lean into gaming a little bit more the fact that the rollout is limited and Facebook saying listen got to be close to our data centers I mean doesn't have Facebook doesn't Facebook have lots of data centers across the world Apparently they're they're in 12 states There's more to it than that but I had to kind of chuckle at that it sounds like yeah limited rollout Let's see if the sticks and then and then you know make it a bigger thing I imagine it's just back in the day was like You know, there were there were lots of games that you could play on Facebook and a lot of that ended up being kind of data you know data issues and Just kind of spammy and that whole thing Facebook obviously has an opportunity as it does with you know lots of other things that have caught on on other platforms to be able to make a dent in this market and This makes a lot of sense to me But it's it seems kind of limited it seems like Facebook is like dip in a toe rather than and making a big splash about this I was also surprised by their lack of splash But what surprised me the most was that they were sticking to their 30% guns like in a world where we're having a lot of high-profile battles over that 30% on the app store It was a real opportunity to come in at like even 25% and be able to suck in all those developers Yeah, I get the sense from this that a lot of people forget that Facebook has games But they're very successful and so Facebook was able to say even though you don't hear about Farmville anymore We got lots of developers who want to make games Let's make it easier for you to use the game you already have and you'll just run it off our server Right, so so bread. I know you've done a bunch of you know web development apps You've you've been involved with a lot of apps Before if Facebook came to you instead instead of creating an HTML5 game for our platform You can take the app you have now and just have it run off our servers would that seems like it would be an easier implementation I mean it really depends on what you're building, right? If what you're building it doesn't need that kind of infrastructure Then all you're asking of the developer is to do more development to move it over to that platform Well, I'm what I'm guessing the pitch is you don't need to do development Just put it on the server and we'll take care of running the servers, right? I could be sure Yeah, I guess my point is there's there's really no such thing as no development. Yeah, that's right. That's fair Yeah, there's always something you have to do even if it even if it's simpler Yeah, I think comparing this to Stadia and stuff I'm sure Facebook would like to get there someday, but this seems like a smarter move for Facebook To say we're not going to get into competition with Project X cloud and Stadia and Nvidia We're going to just upgrade our HTML5 games to say like oh if you've got an Android app You can now launch that instead of having to make an HTML5 version And and they'll build from there and maybe they'll turn into a Stadia someday They say they're not ruling out doing premium games at some point Or not, maybe it'll just continue to be casual games that run on the Facebook platform like they have now Variety obtained a letter sent to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Twitch CEO Emma Shear by the RIAA SAG-AFTRA, which is a very big entertainment industry union and several other recording industry groups claiming that Twitch has failed to properly License music the letter claims that twitch's new soundtrack tool Which provides a library of tracks from independent labels for streams lacks lacks proper sync and also mechanical licenses the letter also says that twitch let streamers use other music without authorization as Well as not responding or even acknowledging infringement notices that it receives and response twitch says it pays royalties to performing rights Organizations and licenses to labels for the use of music into which projects and productions Maintain soundtrack is personal properly licensed and says it also responds to all valid DMCA notices Yeah, so I mean point one to remember here is music licensing is complex situation There's not a music license you you get a license for a recording you have to also pay a license to the composer of that recording and There's something called the sync license that Sarah mentioned Which is even though I have the right to Stream this song and I've paid for the composition I may not have the right to sync that up in other words using it with other video behind it Which is what you do on twitch right? You're talking on video and music's playing behind you that Technically is sync usually it's meant for movies and stuff, but it's fits the profile So it's not surprising that twitch might have thought they had all their licensing issues covered and The music industry would come in and say well no actually you need to pay for this other type of license as well What I think is really going on here is the music industry is looking at twitch and saying we're not going to ignore you anymore You're a huge organization and the like we turned our attention to streaming services like Spotify a few years ago We're gonna turn our attention to you right now and try to get the best deal out of you possible We're gonna do a full court press pressure on you Yeah, it seems to me that it's would fill pay a little bit of money And everyone will kind of go back to their corners and that will probably be at least the short-term solution to this OLED TVs usually have a pixel per inch measurement Usually on televisions is about a hundred to two hundred PPI Phone displays are usually a little higher because they can afford it's a smaller screen They can afford to beef it up to like four hundred to five hundred Researchers from Stanford and Samsung had developed an OLED display with a density of more than 10,000 pixels per inch this display uses OLED films to emit light Between two reflective services and I'll get back to those reflective surfaces and why you need two of them in a second one of the surfaces though called the metasurface has 80 nanometer high pillars so very very very very small pillars Spaced less than a wavelength of light apart That's a very very small amount of space between them and those pillars are bundled together to make up the pixels of the screen So because those are so very very small Your pixels are only 2.4 microns wide which means you can fit a lot of pixels per inch in a screen Each pixel is also divided into four equal sized sub pixels Which can reflect red green or two of them can do blue So it's it's a pixel, but you can kind of turn on and turn off various parts of it to make it either be blue Red or green RGB right the light reflects back and forth between those two layers I mentioned to increase the luminescence so it kind of amplifies it and makes it more luminous Researchers say the display offers twice the luminescence efficiency of standard OLED displays with a higher color purity And that actually seems to be the big advantage of this technique researchers are saying you could use such high PPI for virtual reality augmented reality headsets To make it better immersion because you're well beyond what the eye can see no more screen door effects Based on their research the theoretical limit for the tech could be as high as 20,000 pixels per inch They think they can get it there although there's a trade-off for brightness as you make that additional density now This is not the only high PPI System out there micro LED Not in practice right now, but theoretically in the labs can also reach 10,000 to 30,000 PPI But the researchers here say we think our system with the little pillars has better color purity If you want to read up on this the findings are detailed in the October 22 issue of the journal science So dumb question, but if you say Yeah, and it will be dumb. I'm sure if you say all right We researchers are working on an OLED display with a density of more than 10,000 PPI If you go to 20,000 that's theoretically possible as well But you've got a trade-off of brightness because you have additional density Wouldn't it be brighter because there are more pixels That is a very good question. I don't know the answer. Yeah, no, and I don't put you on the spot I guess is that even though you still have the reflection in the luminescence Having to cram those in means that you are you're maybe have less power So the so the the the output is not as much at the start It also might be the relative proportion of the space between like the pillars themselves and the actual pixel So you might end up with like more of the space between relative to the actual pixel size of that density This all seems so academic though, like I can't I'm almost 40. I can't even pick out leaves on a tree What do I need 20,000? That's always the thing is like well, I can't see the difference What's what's the point and usually there there are other things you can do and say like ah, but when you see motion blurring That's because we don't have enough pixels and then and you are telling the difference even though you you know Maybe that but that's usually refresh rate stuff I would like to I would like to hear from stuff from folks in the audience who work on this stuff like yes You can't see the difference between 10 and 20,000 pixels per inch But this is what it would be able to do that would let that would bet you would notice Generally with pixel density, you'll notice there's a term called the kel factor and basically what it says is You can sit closer to something for a given resolution the tire The the pixel density is because you do not see if the image seems tighter and sharper but it comes in a resolution that is comfortable for you to see and That could allow you to do an AK display that is effectively in your face and you don't feel too close Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah That's why they want to do it in virtuality and augmented reality Folks if you want to join in the conversation in our discord, maybe you can let us know all about PPI in there Join it by Lincoln to a patreon account at patreon.com slash DTNs Back on September 29th, we did a segment about Technology being used by small businesses to help them through the pandemic Because we talked about how many small businesses have suddenly had to become e-commerce companies Even if they're allowed to be open just not as many people come into the store as there used to be While some have turned to existing offerings like just becoming an Amazon merchant or Shopify has has done some outreach to companies New platforms are also arriving tailored to the needs of small businesses themselves to help them make the transition We mentioned one such effort keep oakland alive comm which aims to connect local consumers with local shops in the Oakland area To do some online shopping Brett Rounseville. You help get this effort started That's why we wanted you to come on the show and talk a little more about it Let's start with tell people what keep Oakland alive is and why you all decided to start it Yeah, the reason the reason it came about was because Happened like the first couple weeks of lockdown I have a two-year-old and a four-year-old and the four-year-old was three at the time So I was like well if I'm gonna be locked in this home with this little girl I'm gonna front load birthday presents So we at least have something to do for who knows how long and so I walked down to the local toy store Adventure toys in Oakland to to pick something up and they were closed obviously because it was locked down I don't know what I was thinking so I just bought some stuff on Amazon and then immediately felt like a jerk and Only kept feeling worse about myself as the weeks wore on and I would walk the dog and see the shops closed with Like steep discounts in their window Everyone trying to figure out where the next sale was going to be and so my north star in all this after talking to hundreds of shops in the Bay Area and trying to figure out where we could help was was just as simple as what if What if there was a store that I could Visit online where I could put in like a light bulb and some clean underwear and a children's book or whatever I need and Buy it all at the same time It all shows up my at my door in the same package in two days Just like I would expect But I knew that all of those items were coming from my local retail stores And I knew that all of the money was staying in my local economy Then it would be my first stop ten times out of ten even if they had a fraction of the inventory I would never think to go to Amazon first Yeah, so so in other words give people the convenience of shopping at Amazon people the reason people use Amazon is I get quick delivery I can find everything I need all in one place But have it be local folks which some people might want to do just out of Alterism but other folks might be wanting to do because they rely on that they're like well, I'm used to going to adventure toys I know they have the stuff I like Yeah, and it's it's a difficult problem right like even while I was building it the a star their new season I was gonna buy a new A's hat if there's one thing. I'm gonna buy locally. It should be an A's hat So I sat down my computer and was like I I don't know where to start like I don't know which URL to type in that is going to connect me to a shop that I will know has an A's hat and To be able to aggregate all those people is a it's it's an it's an enormous undertaking Which I happen to know now Yeah, I mean did what what you've said about the fact that Amazon kind of made you feel bad is like It's not that you didn't get what you wanted there because of course that's where you can get everything But the fact that you saw personally, you know walking by local businesses and people who were running those businesses They care about and you're rooting for Hurting if you I think almost everybody if they knew enough about these sorts of options would say Oh, yeah, of course also support the local business I've just been doing it the other way for so long that I didn't really realize that I had other options So how do you get the word out on something like this? Especially because it's hyper local So somebody like me, I don't live in Alameda County So I can't really participate But how do you get someone like me to get get kind of you know amped up about this so that we can we can Offer similar solutions in other areas Yeah, there's there's a lot of community effort that goes into it I mean one thing that you have to consider is like even if you use the most The most covid tainted numbers you're going to see that like online sales account for maybe 25 to 30% of sales Which means that 70% of sales are happening in stores all the time anyway And so all of the people that shop in a local community Know that those shops exist. So those shops have some sort of contact with those people already They just have to tell them that there is this other additional Easier way to shop with them that other 30% of the time So a lot of it is is kind of this rising tide that lifts all ships effect when it comes to people talking about other people and then the other thing you have to consider is that When you really think about it at scale with these shops working together in some way There there is no advantage that Amazon has outside of pricing They're always going to be the leader on pricing because there's no way that a local Shop is going to reach the kind of scale that they have But when it comes to like customer service like knowing their demographics knowing their communities Providing like a vibrant space for their community members being able to deliver stuff quickly and in good condition There there's nowhere for Amazon to win on that if the shops are doing their part as as well as they can how do you get the shops to sign up because you know if I'm a Merchant that's you know been there for 30 years. I got an omron cash register I'm not hooked up to the internet except maybe on my phone or a browser on the PC in the back You know, how do you get somebody like that to say like here? Let me help you become a part of this online e-commerce situation even if they're desperately wanting to because they have to Yeah, there's a couple tranches of shop owners and it's it's because What makes it complicated is exactly what you're saying There's a lot of you shop owners who own brick-and-mortar stores because they want to own brick-and-mortar stores Not because they want to be online businesses They they either aren't interested in that or aren't interested in technology in general And so for the for the former it's pretty simple. We can write some software They'll like help us use their online store to to create our online store and interact with them and in their own Workflows for the shops. They're not online at all. It's more a function of being able to point to to the advantages of working with the other shops, so everyone knows That brick-and-mortar is broken during the pandemic and everyone knows that when the pandemic is solved No one's going to have a vaccine for Amazon. So it's a given that they have to come up with some other solution So the trick is giving them as low impact of a solution as all as possible when when I was building this I Wanted to make it I mean the goal was to make it completely hands-off for the shop owners The last thing I wanted to do in the middle of a pandemic election year was to give people another channel to manage So for a lot of folks Even the ones they're offline all they have to tell us is yes We would like to be involved and then from there they hand it off to us and we do everything it takes to you do all The management and all that well They do their own inventory management, but we we tap into their inventory management system So enough of them are using some kind of inventory management you could tap into presumably yeah And and there there is like the most hands-on version where it's a shop owner who writes like handwritten receipts And doesn't use a credit card processing system at all And for them it like it does involve filling out a a spreadsheet and then once their spreadsheet is filled out Then we can take over gotcha if if if folks are Looking at this and saying gosh, that's great, but you know what's still more convenient Amazon like You don't have all the shops at one or or or I you know I don't know I don't know if I trust you guys even though, you know There's a lot of trust issues with Amazon. How do you get people to to make this into a habit? I guess Yeah, I think it comes with building that utility that you were talking about so We don't need to be able to solve the problem every single time that Amazon can solve But if we can solve it a given percentage of time more than 50% of the time Then there's a reason to stop at your local shops first And if we can rewire that part in your brain then every single step we make towards having greater utility Is just going to solve that problem more often when you come and I think that's key I think I think really like people want to support their communities Their shop owners keep their communities vibrant. It's just a matter of making it as easy as possible for them Well, and how cool if anyone It gets familiar with keep Oakland alive and ends up loving a store and what their offerings are and Maybe has never visited the store even if they were a neighbor and now can do well We'll be able to do that safely in the future. That is such a win for you know that the local the local folks Yeah, absolutely. I mean that's even happened with me just in in building this system I've discovered shops that I didn't know that I've shopped at dozens of times in the last couple months So How do you get this beyond Oakland? I want to finish on that question like it If you get if you get this working for Oakland great Is it does it scale? Can you move it to Berkeley and Forestville and Portland and beyond? Yeah, that's the hope. I Don't see any reason why we couldn't we're pretty focused on the holiday season in Oakland but Yeah, reach out if you're interested All right, there you go folks Well then let's check out the mailbag. Oh, let's do it Adam from still sunny San Diego Yes, Adam you are among friends Says I feel like not enough attention is being paid to the possibility that the iPhone 12 could ruin any cards with a magnetic strip Am I the only one who thinks this is a ticking time bomb to angry customers in a month or two when their cards? Their hotel keys their licenses get messed up Mag gate anyone in case there's not a magnetically shielded Will will be a risk it Any case that's not magnetically shielded will be a risk depending on how they're situated near the phone If the magnet is strong enough I went to an Apple store via appointment today And the rep said he couldn't answer if it was safe to put a credit card next to the 12 or not Why how do they not know? Support documents for Apple state that users should remove wallet accessories before connecting to the MagSafe charger The phone doesn't seem to be as much of a problem. It's the charger citing potential risk of damage to magnetic strips or RFID chips So they're more worried about hotel key cards Honestly, then they are credit cards first of all credit card magnetic strips are a little tougher and secondly Most credit card readers are using the chip not the magnetic strip these days Apple's own magnetic wallet accessory Has some protection on it so when it's on the phone you can stick your credit cards in it But they still say that you shouldn't stick the accessory to the cards But yeah, it's something we've had to deal with for a long time Is that you don't want your phone next to your hotel card or your credit card because it might wipe off the strip And it has for me over many years I've gotten really used to putting them into very two different places So yeah, no valid question Adam and thanks for the email also Thanks to everybody who emails us whether they're questions or comments something on your mind You got a cat photo. I know I ask for it every once a once a quarter So feedback at daily tech news show comm is where to send those emails Also shout out to patrons at our master and our grandmaster levels including Andrew Bradley Ken Hayes and Brad Also, thanks to Brett roundsville. So nice to have you on the show telling us about keep Oakland alive We know you're very busy. Let folks know where they can keep up with your work Yeah, you can reach out to me a Brett at keep open the live comm or you can follow me on Twitter as am checker am tre KK er do that and reach out if you want to keep Berkeley alive or or if you're an iOS developer or a front-end developer very good very good good to know Hey folks. Oh, yes No, I said there you go. You got you know, they're hiring Would you like a DTNS hat hoodie or mouse pad? We even have masks you can find all that more at the DTNS store daily tech news show comm Slash store and always support the show at daily tech news show comm slash patreon We are live Monday through Friday for 30 p.m. Eastern 20 30 UTC We'd love to have you join us if you can you can find out more at daily tech news show comm slash live We will be back tomorrow with Charlotte Henry This show is part of the frog pants network get more at frog pants calm