 Daily Tech News Show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you, including Daniel Dorado, Howard Yermish, and John Atwood. Coming up on DTNS, Patrick Norton has some tips for moving a TV without crack on it. Microsoft tries to appear okay with unions and the tech of COVID tests you can do at home that are more accurate than those ones you've been using. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, June 3rd, 2022 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. And from Somewhere in St. Louis, I'm Patrick Norton. I've drawn the top tech stories from Cleveland, I'm Len Peralta. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Cheng. All right, let's get right into the things that you should know about the technology. GM's autonomous vehicle unit, Cruise, received a driverless deployment permit from the California Public Utilities Commission. Cruise will now operate paid passenger service from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. on select streets in San Francisco, with speeds capped at 30 miles per hour. Cruise has offered free driverless rides in the area since February. Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology set a new data rate record transferring at 1.02 petabits per second. I like the drool off up 10 terabits per second from the previous December 2020 record. That's fast enough for get ready for the analogies. 10 million channels of 8K broadcasting per second. Wow. This uses a custom cable with four fiber optic cores. You're probably not going to see it in anything you can buy anytime soon. But researchers say it is largely compatible with existing fiber optic infrastructure. The Wall Street Journal reported on details relating to Metta COO Cheryl Sandberg's decision to step down later this year. The journal reports that the departure was the culmination of a years-long process in which she became burned out. It mentions that Mark Zuckerberg blamed her for the Cambridge Analytical Scandal back in 2016. The article also says that Metta is investigating her use of corporate resources to plan her upcoming wedding. However, a Metta spokeswoman said that she didn't have anything to do with Sandberg's personal decision to leave. Alright. Canada's Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. So I guess that was redundant for me to say it was Canada because it's in the name. Anyway, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada released the results of a 2020 investigation into the data collection of Tim Horton's Coffee and Donut app. It's Tim Horton's Coffee and Donut Store, the app. In May 2019, the app began collecting location data and used a platform called Radar to deduce more than are you near a Tim Horton's. They were finding out where you live, where you work, when you travel, and when you might be visiting a competing restaurant like, say, Starbucks or McDonald's. At the time, the app claimed to collect location data only when the app was open. So that's the problem. They weren't even telling you they were doing this. The data was anonymized and was never used to target ads or offers. So they didn't use it. They just collected it without telling you. And the commission has now ordered Tim Horton's to delete any location data and limit future collection. The Tim Horton's app currently only uses location to identify locations for placing orders, as it has said it does. And the commission uncovered no evidence to the contrary. So it seems like they're behaving themselves now. The New York State Senate passed a bill on Friday that will stop companies from getting a permit to operate a fossil fuel power plan in order to mine proof of work cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin. The bill doesn't apply to renewable energy or cryptocurrencies that you use proof of stake. And now heads to Governor Kathy Hookles desk to sign or veto. Another New York news. It's the first state in the country to pass an electronics repair right to repair law rather passing the state Senate on Wednesday by a vote of 59 to four kind of a lamp. Wow. Also, I also passed the assembly Friday afternoon by a vote of 145 to one. And now goes to Governor Hookle for final passage. That's a pretty popular bill right there. I would call that New York's New York State Senate if it had been me. Let's let's talk unions. Apple retail stores in Maryland and New York City will hold union elections in the coming weeks. Apple's been trying to fend off the move by holding meetings, trying to convince workers why union is not a good idea. They've even implemented some of the benefits that organizers are pushing for saying, look, we can just do this anyway. You don't need to unionize multiple tech organizations are experiencing union drives. Apple's not alone in March. Google fiber contractors in Missouri became the first unit of the alphabet workers union to bargain for a contract. And in April, an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island successfully unionized in all these cases. The companies are either trying to persuade workers not to join unions or, in Amazon's case, actively fighting against union votes. Yeah. So Microsoft taking kind of a different approach here. There are no new union unionization drives at Microsoft itself and Gadget notes the last big union coordination was back in 2014. And bug testers at an outside firm called Lions Bridge formed a union and within a few years, all 30 or 38 of them were laid off. Didn't work out that well. But a similar situation is kind of on the horizon. The QA team at Activision Blizzard voted to unionize last week. And Microsoft is in the process of seeking regulatory approval for an acquisition of Activision Blizzard. And Thursday, president and vice chair Brad Smith posted a set of four principles related to unions. Interesting timing. At the very least, Smith told Geekwire that the union voted Activision was part of the constellation of developments that we've been paying attention to, as well as lots of other things. All right, so Tom, I know you've been digging into this. What are these principles? Listen, if you want to debate or think about whether unions are a good idea or a bad idea, head to the political orphanage hosted by Andrew Heaton. That's a great place for those kinds of discussions. He's very level headed on those sorts of things. We're just going to look at Microsoft and try to figure out, okay, what do they actually mean by this? The first principle is that leaders have an open door policy and will always listen to employees, which I don't know. I feel like, sure. That's not true. Well, or if it is, it's like, yeah, and they always say that, and that's not new or anything. Sorry. It's not the wrong principle to have or anything. I don't want to criticize it. It's the right thing to say, but yeah. It's not getting you very far. Okay, so what's new? Shouldn't be necessary. Should already be a thing. Also, could you all come in one at a time into my office so I can persuade you individually instead of all collectively bargaining? Second is that Microsoft acknowledges employees have a legal right to choose whether to form a union and the company will not benefit from resisting that. That's a bigger deal. Well, the first part is like, well, thanks. We also have a legal right to lots of things, but saying the company will not benefit from resisting that is at least going part way down a road, isn't it? Yeah. Well, I mean, given it has been interesting to watch how many organizations have done things that are fundamentally under federal law illegal or at least could be interpreted as being illegal, you know, in terms in the way they are trying to. I'll just flat out say crush unionization bust would be the word bust. Yes. So, you know, saying at a high publicly visible corporate level that that were, you know, yep, they got the legal right to do that and yep, it's going to be problematic if we fight that. I think is a nice. If you want to read this real close and then Gadget said this like they didn't say they wouldn't resist it. They just said they wouldn't benefit from resisting it. Third Microsoft is committed to creative and collaborative approaches with unions when employees wish to exercise their rights, including with private agreements, which is a little weird union collective bargaining agreements are typically public. So I'm not sure what they're after there. Smith wrote that the company wants to quote make it simpler rather than more difficult for our employees to make informed decisions and to exercise their legal right to choose whether to form or join a union. I mean that can benefit the company if they're like, you know, let's just fast track this and and everybody put their cards on the table, possibly but but mostly I think that's a good principle. Fourth, it will maintain close relationships and shared partnership with all employees, including those in unions which is getting us back to the first one a little bit like service. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure you'll maintain close relationships with people who employed no matter what because they're employed at your place of work but I don't know. Sarah, what are union supporters making of those principles. So if L CIO President Liz Shuler said in a statement that Microsoft's quote collaborative approach to working with its employees who seek to organize is a best practice that we look forward to seeing implemented and vote. All right. And Gadget also asked Microsoft if it would agree not to hold captive audience meetings, engage in union of widens law firms or voluntarily recognize union drives. Microsoft said it had nothing further to add beyond Smith's blog posts. They're like, oh no, we're not crazy. We're not going there. We're not going to give up our leverage baby steps, baby steps. But I like the AFL CIO is like, we look forward to seeing it implemented. Boy, you're saying lots of right things. That's great. I mean, Microsoft is saying all the right things right now, I feel like. Well, you know, it depends on how you feel about unions, but certainly if you are a worker who's interested in unionizing, there could be worse companies to work for. Yeah. And let's go back to what you said. They want to get the activation blizzard thing. Not too. Like you mentioned. So that is also part of this. Don't forget that. It would be interesting to see what actually happens. Or if anybody actually tries to form a union, it's, it's, I don't know, this is, it has been interesting to watch some companies. Primarily, I'd be most of the unionization I've been watching recently has been people I know who work for media companies, especially a whole bunch of them out of New York, most recently wire cutter, and to have watched the foot dragging and the manipulation and some of the other stuff and also watching a lot of people in Amazon warehouses and Starbucks. It has been fascinating to see the efforts a lot of organizations, highly profitable organizations have gone to fight unionization. And it has also been fascinating to hear some of the things I will primarily attribute to major shareholders or shareholders have said that I guess basically. I think that, you know, people should be grateful that they're being paid anything and have, you know, it has been really interesting to watch all of this. I'm very curious to see what happens. If anybody, for example, in, you know, an activation or blizzard attempts to form a union after this or if anybody inside of Microsoft. Yes. Beyond the one that they've already formed. Yeah, like once it's once it's done. I will give Microsoft credit for striking a very different tone. That alone is, I mean, that's just incredibly unusual. Because usually it's say nothing and spend all of the money to prevent unionization from happening in your organization. Well, something that we have heard relentless things about over the last couple of years. These are cova tests, the verge has an in depth article written by Victoria song about over the counter molecular cova tests. These are tests that have the at home convenience of an antigen test, but with the increased accuracy of a PCR tests, because there are a lot of different tests that you can get out there. So let's remind people of the difference Tom. Yeah, antigen tests are most often the ones you see in a pharmacy, they're the ones the US government sent to people. They work by detecting proteins on the surface of a virus, but they're quick, they deliver the results in 15 minutes. They are not as sensitive, because the virus may not be present in high enough amounts to trigger the protein detection. In other words, there's a small chance of a false negative with an antigen test, which is why sometimes you have to take more than one. PCR tests are the ones where they stick the swab up your nose, and then they send the swab to a lab. Those are also molecular tests. They work by using lab equipment that heats and cools the sample to try to encourage replication of snippets of a virus's nucleic acids, part of the genetic material, until you get enough of them that they're detectable. PCR tests can detect much lower levels of the virus and catch positive results that antigen tests miss because you're amplifying what's in there. But PCR tests take trained technicians several hours to cycle the equipment, which is why they aren't always ready the same day and you have to send them off to a lab. So what about these lesser known tests? Yeah, the US FDA has approved three over the counter at home molecular tests, which work on the same principles, but use a different method, namely a small machine that can amplify a genetic material at a steady temperature. But they're about as sensitive and therefore accurate as a PCR test, fairly straightforward to operate as well. You take a nasal swab, stir it in sample vial, just like an antigen test, you place it in a machine, and that does the genetic amplification. So of the three, where are the differences? Yeah, so Q Health is the most expensive and kind of straddles the line between ease of use and such. This is the one Google gives to its workers. You have to buy a hub to operate it and the hub is not cheap. It's 249 bucks. Each test that you buy is $65 each. They bundle the hub with three tests for $444. If you're going to use it a lot, Q offers you subscriptions starting at $10 a month. Now, you do have to have an app to get your results for this one. It gives the results pretty quickly, though, 20 minutes. And you can pay an extra fee to have those results verified if you want to use this for purposes of travel, something you can't really do with an antigen test. It's an easy system. You do the nasal swab, you stick the cartridge in the hub, you wait for the results to appear in the app. Probably the trickiest part of the Q Health one is Bluetooth, but like you said, Sarah, Al, $249 just for the hub. The second one is cheaper. The detect COVID test has the same procedure with the swab and the cartridge. Results take longer, 75 minutes, but you can spend that time enjoying the savings because the hub costs $39 and the tests are $49 each. So it's cheaper on both ends. A starter bundle of the hub and one test sell for 85 bucks. It is a little less automated than the other two. You have to do a little more eyeballing. You have to, you know, flick the glass and make sure things are settling. It's not just as easy as plugging in the cartridge. And you have to observe the lines yourself. It's not going to just immediately go yes or no. The third one from Lucira Health is one of the three that works without an app. So this is accessible for people who don't have or don't want to use a smartphone. To record your test, if you want to, you know, put it in a database, you follow a QR code. You can take a photo of your test and you can upload it. You also don't buy a reusable machine, so it's more wasteful, but you don't have to buy a hub. Each test is just 75 bucks. And it's the easiest. You swab, you put the vial in the disposable machine, wait a half hour, you got your result. Bang, bang, boom. Yeah, so considering the fact that a lot of the stuff can add up monetarily, antigen tests may require you to do them more often to account for false negatives, as Tom mentioned. And PCR tests cost $130 or so, even more at times. So these over the counter at home molecular tests seem to have a potential market. And all three of these companies have plans to adopt their systems for testing of other diseases like STDs and strep throat. Yeah, I feel like this has the best potential to become the way we now can test for things at home that we used to have to go to a doctor for. I mean, I'm all for that. Yeah, I'm all for that too. It was interesting reading Miss Song's article because or Miss Song's article because one of the things she talks about is having to fly to South Korea, but South Korea won't accept any type of home test and dealing with the verification and whether that's accepted by an organization or government or an airline. The other thing was I think it was Mitra, the company that makes Lucera Health pointed out that a PCR test typically costs $130 and compared to $130 for PCR test, the costs on these, you know, look lower than compared to say, you know, a free test that was sent to you by the United States government or, you know, 10 or $25 to pick up an antigen test from your local CVS or, you know, wherever you buy your test from. Some of these may even be covered by your insurance. It's so variable on that sort of thing. Some of them may be count under flexible spending accounts, which are a way to get some reimbursement and stuff like that. But yeah, really, I think these are for I do I do the cheap antigen tests because I need to know on a regular basis for whatever reason. But every once in a while I need to have a more accurate I need to be absolutely sure or I need something that is at least, you know, Air Canada uses these and allow on their employees and they allow you to use it for flying as well. So maybe useful in certain situations, obviously not in Korea, but, you know, other other kinds of travel situations it might be useful for. So it's not the be all end all of COVID tests, but it's another way to, you know, strike the difference of more accurate than the antigen but not as expensive or as time consuming as the PCR. I think the thing that's mind blowing to me is the fact that, you know, this is for use at home. You know, most of the things in most of the Bluetooth devices I've run into in the health sector have been over like incredibly underwhelming but this, I mean, this is you know what normally takes, you know, a zillion dollar lab and train technicians. Yeah, you can do by wiping your nose and stuffing a thing in the box. Yeah, I would say if you need to if you think you're going to need a molecular test regularly go with Q health. Otherwise, then it's either to detect or look here and look here at Lucera would be the the one I would say if you're like, needing it rarely and you know I don't want to invest in a hub I just want to grab one. Hey folks, you got thoughts on this? Let us know on the socials. You can get in touch with the DTNs audience on Twitter at DTNs show and on Instagram at DTNs pics. All right, Patrick on a recent episode of AVXL you and your co-host Robert Herron. We're talking about moving TVs as in physically moving televisions. Maybe you're moving apartments. Maybe you're, you know, going to another room in your house might seem simple, but if you can move a 55 inch or larger TV without cracking or scratching it, you're doing a great job. Not as easy as it sounds though. It's not actually. So I had to take a it was a 16th television and I was taking it to be e-cycled and I was in a rental car because I was out of town was helping somebody and you know I kind of origami, well I didn't origami it but I managed to figure out a way to fix this thing fit this thing in the back of the car. Tetris, thank you. Don't worry about me your flat pedal TV. Immediately my thought was, no, no, no, no terrible, terrible choice of verbs. But you know it was one of those cards where you, you fold down the back seat, you lift up the trunk and you can slide it in there, except that it was wide at the top and narrow at the bottom and I'm, you know, I get the television in and so there's two narrow points about in the middle of the television. And I think to all I could think was, if I cared about whether or not this television survived, this would be the worst possible transport method ever, because, you know, on one hand, televisions are kind of sturdy. On the other hand, if you if you bend them in the wrong way, they can be incredibly fragile, especially as televisions have crevices and and get lighter and lighter. Well, you know, televisions get lighter because, you know, they're they're trimming away material they're figuring out ways of, of, you know, you just you're losing structural rigidity as televisions get thinner and lighter, which is great when you're hanging it up to a point but when you're moving a television right it helps if you have the original box if you don't have the original box you really have to be careful. You always want to transport televisions vertically facing up and down if you can. If you have to lay it flat, make sure it's well supported underneath like some televisions are super skinny for like half of the screen and then all the electronics are bulge in the end. You don't want to lay down that flat and have it bouncing on the two edges and potentially cracking the middle of the screen. You don't want to wedge a television in between, you know, the front seat and the back seat and have the screen facing towards the seats. It may sound obvious but it's kind of I've seen some terrible things involving televisions possibly the worst one Costco parking lot brand new 65 inch television fairly spendy one. They pulled it out of the box is shoved it in the backseat and they were kind of, I think they had been moving it around couldn't quite get it to fit and they finally slam the door. So the box was that made it too heavy to fit. Well, they couldn't fit the TV in the box and like, well, there's always padding around the television so they took the box and the styrofoam off and had that they put the television in the backseat of the car. And, you know, when they went to get the door closed they slammed the door and the door basically hit the side of the television screen bent the frame and cracked it. At which point they got to test Costco's return policy. Not even out of the parking lot. Yeah, I mean it was really I was it was it was just it was awkward. You know, if you don't have the box. Again, you want to transport it vertically, if at all possible and you want to protect the screen so you haul makes a foam flat screen TV cover you can get that off of Amazon.com you can get that from your local U hop shop. They're incredibly well reviewed and basically, you know, it's a good start you put that over the screen and in my case I'll usually put some sturdy cardboard over that and tape it around the edge of the frame. Basically so you don't have any hotspots the worst thing is to have something, you know, pointy or narrow, pushing into the front of the screen, especially if your television is going a long distance because it's amazing. I've seen pictures of screens where you know objects were rubbing against the screen and while the while the truck or whatever bounces down the road literally like rubbed a hole through the front of the LCD. So, you know, I probably mentioned vertical like 18 times already but again if you can transport it vertically. You know, in the back seats okay as long as you're not facing you know as long as the back of the television is against the screen stuff pillow behind it if you can if it's a particularly fragile looking vertical TV. You know, something Robert was talking about if your TV is several years old you might want to consider, you know, selling it or gifting it or recycling it and buying a new television because in the case of the TV we were talking about that I was recycling. It was dead. But it had been like a $2,500 TV when it was new, and today's $1,000 TVs are vastly brighter almost two times as bright. Have HDR or Dolby vision support have vastly better processing have a vastly better set of apps built into them. So it makes more sense to buy by the new TV rather than, you know, transport this old dinosaur. So, but yeah, you know, keep it vertical. Mind what the screen is facing. Try to avoid laying it down flat, if possible, you know me if you can put it in the back of a pickup truck, again protected with the screen protected on a blanket, or you know in the back of the van that's one thing, just be careful. They're just, they just don't like to travel once they're out of the box. Man, yeah, that's good advice. And back in college days, and these were tube TVs, I used to definitely put the TV with the screen towards the seat so that the seat would protect the screen, which luckily never bit me. But this was a 20 27 inch television. It's fairly manageable to that. We're talking with a 19 inch television. Yeah. Yeah. Big old box. Yeah. But nowadays that's you don't want anything against that screen. If you can make sense to me. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. We got a good one from Big Jim, the trade nerd who sent us some additional information on the idea of gray market goods related to Russia's attempts to get around sanctions. On yesterday's show, a question of whether or not Silicon chips imported into Russia would be able to come from questionable third party countries, dubious black markets, etc. I would like to point out that it is still quite illegal if you're a US company and your goods end up inside of a sanctioned country. So if you do have Silicon chips, if you do have processors or units that you actually manufacture and export out of the United States, even to a third party country, and they end up in a sanctioned country's hands. You could be facing DOJ as well as Department of Commerce coming down and looking for fines, penalties and possibly restrictions on your capabilities to export as well as import. These items are also something that is controlled within the dual technology sanctions area by the Department of State. So it would be a good idea if you're shipping to somebody you have not done business with before in the past. Check out their credentials, do background checks and validate information. But that's just my two cents. For the Tech and Trade Minute, I'm Big Jim. Thank you, Big Jim. That's a very good point. You, as a company, are responsible for doing some due diligence to make sure that your products are not sold onwards by someone else. So I asked Jim what a company would have to do to show that they had done everything to prevent the goods because sometimes they might show up in the sanctioned country despite your best efforts. And Jim said, for the most part, you need to document your policies. Make sure you have notation on all paperwork that says something like not for export to any sanctioned countries. Any diversion on cargo must be rerouted through the United States. Like make it clear that you've told everybody that this can't go anywhere. And then, as he mentioned, do some basic screening of who you are selling to so that once the shipment leaves your custody, you can show that you were fairly confident that it wasn't going to be sold in violation of the sanctions. Thank you, Jim. Thank you for keeping it up to date on that. And Len Peralta, you are not sanctioned. Well, you're sanctioned in the way that we sanctioned you to be on the show. Yes. Right? Yes. What have you been drawn for us today? Well, you know, I'm always being a big fan of propaganda posters. You know, the one of that comes to mind is Rosie the Riveter. And you talked about unions a little bit earlier, and this is where this came from. If you're a fan of Rosie the Riveter. This is Power to the Programmers, which is a little bit of a, you know, the pro pro union poster basically saying you can't do it without us because I mean, what about the Linux folks? Oh, yeah. Where's the penguin? Can you get a penguin? You know what? I just took the ones that were from the story. Exactly. But you get the idea. No, no, no, it's good. It's good. I like it. Thank you. I'm actually very proud of this one. I have to say, if you, if you'd like to get a copy of this, if you're a backer at my patreon, go to patreon.com forward slash Len, it's right there for you now for the taking, or you can do it the old fashioned way. Just go to Len PeraltaStory.com and you can buy it and have it. It's a perfect gift for Apple's worldwide developer. Absolutely. Well, Len, good stuff is always, always happy, happy to have you on the show. Patrick, where can people keep up with what you do? Up on Twitter. I'm still at Patrick Norton or you can go to avxcel.com to find the podcast. Robert Herron and I talk about, well, home theater and audio and headphones and all that good stuff. We're just search for avxcel, avxcel on your favorite pod catcher. Excellent. We also want to extend a special thanks. Even my Amazon assistant got excited about this. Charles Reader is one of our top lifetime supporters for DTNS. Thank you for all the years of support, Charles. You are our Friday Gold Star winner. And keep those new patrons coming, folks. We know that there's a lot of folks with financial difficulty. So if you aren't having financial difficulty and you get some value out of the show, support us at patreon.com slash DTNS. Also, our old tech TV buddy, Patrick, Roger, Sarah and I, we all worked with this guy, David Chung. Messaged me today and said, Hey man, I work with a guy who listens to your show. Can you give him a shout out? So I was like, of course, David Chung. Big shout out to George Ray in Florida. Thanks for listening, George. We'll give you a little applause. It's always a, you know, we can't get away from each other. It's the tech TV mafia curse. Yes. Exactly. Reminder there's a longer version of the show called Good Day Internet. Roles right in after we wrap up DTNS and available at patreon.com. But just a reminder, we're live on the show. If you can join us live, we'd love to have you Monday through Friday, four p.m. Eastern. 20 hundred UTC. You can find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live. We are back on Monday with Nika and Terrence of the snob. Us podcast for the start of the apples. W. W. D. C. Watch you then. This week's episodes of daily tech news show were created by the following people, host producer and writer Tom Merritt host producer and writer Sarah Lane, executive producer Booker Roger Chang, producer writer and host Rich Strafilino, video producer and Twitch producer Joe Coons, technical producer Anthony Lemos, Spanish language host writer and producer Dan Campos, news host writer and producer Jen Cutter, science correspondent Dr. Niki Ackermans, social media producer and moderator Zoe Deterding, our mods beatmaster W. Scottis one bio cow, Captain Kipper, gadget virtuoso, Steve Godorama, Paul Reese, Matthew J. Stevens and J. D. Galloway. Modern video hosting by Dan Christensen. Video feed by Sean Wei. Music and art provided by Martin Bell, Dan Looters, Mustafa A. Acast and Len Peralta. Live art performed by Len Peralta. Acast ad support from Tatiana Matias. Patreon support from Dylan Harari. Contributors for this week's show included Chris Ashley, Scott Johnson, Justin Robert Young and Patrick Norton. Our guest this week, at least via recording was James Thatcher. 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. I hope you have enjoyed this program.