 Coming up on DTNS, Canada rules on the Huawei CFO extradition, how the HBO Max launch is going, and we analyze Twitter's decision to label a tweet from the U.S. President. This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, May 27th, 2020, in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. In Salt Lake City, I'm Scott Johnson. And I'm Roger Shane. The show's pretty ser... I wanted to be talking about how we all just watched the launch of the SpaceX Dragon capsule with Bob and Doug on board, but they got scrubbed for weather. So we all just talked about how disappointed we were that they got scrubbed for weather and how excited we are to watch it on Saturday. That's all on Good Day Internet. Become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start this show with a few tech things you should know. Samsung announced Samsung Money, a Mastercard debit card from SoFi. Samsung users sign up for a money management account from SoFi, which funds the card. That account doesn't have any fees and also accrues interest. Users get the card at their Samsung Pay app, as well as a plastic card for use at locations that don't accept Samsung Pay. Samsung Money launches in the U.S. this summer. Wall Street Journal sources say Amazon is in advanced talks to buy autonomous taxi company, Zooks, which was founded in 2014, in fact, and has been deploying, excuse me, developing both hardware and software to create electric-powered robot taxis by Zooks. Quibi has updated its iOS app to support Apple Airplay. So you can actually watch Quibi on a television. The video service launched without the ability to watch the video anywhere. But in the app, Quibi also hopes to have Chromecast support in June. YouTube Kids is now available on the Apple TV, both on 4K and HD versions, if supported. YouTube Kids launched on mobile devices in 2015, but the curated selection of age-appropriate content and previously came to some smart TVs and also launched a desktop version. VentureBeat and Bloomberg report their sources say Sony is planning a PS5. That's PlayStation 5 for the Wandering Event. On June 3rd, the company is reporting also planning follow-up events, including a state of play that will focus on both next and current gen games tentatively set for early August. Facebook released an experimental app called Collab. It's an invite-only beta for iOS that lets users create short-form music videos that are split into three simultaneous sources. So a single user could play three instruments in one video or the three videos can be split up with different instruments from different users. Videos are initially posted to Collab, where users can then take those individual parts of other people's videos and create their own video from it. Maybe replace the singer or replace the the guitar, essentially allowing a kind of remix, though you can't remix the underlying music and any part you use in your creation automatically gets credited to the original creation. Facebook says after you share on Collab, videos will then be allowed to be shared on Instagram and TikTok. Everybody's a DJ. Windows 10 May 2020 update, a.k.a. Windows 10 version 2004 is now available to devices running Windows 10 versions 1903 and 1909. You'll need to update using Windows Update to make it happen. And Microsoft will slowly increase availability over the coming weeks so that not all end users may see it right away. Yeah. So if you go look at it, you don't see it just wait a couple of weeks. All right, let's talk a little bit more about creators making some fat cash on Instagram. Indeed, Instagram announced it will share ad and badge revenue with IGTV creators, that's Instagram TV, as we'll start showing up on around 200 English language creator partners and creators will get 55 percent. Let's see, Instagram will rely on Facebook moderation staff to review every IGTV video before expect accepting it for monetization. Next month, some IGTV creators will also be able to start selling badges. The badges cost 99 cents, about 99 or 499 and show up before a user's name when they comment. Creators will be able to keep all the revenue from badges during the test phase, but it will eventually be shared. You know, Lamar Wilson, who's a frequent guest on on on this show, loves IGTV and was so bullish about it when it started. And there are a few other really cool, fun, awesome creators who feel the same way. But I don't know where all the IGTV creators are. This is not like the place to be. And maybe that's what Instagram's thinking. Sure. Yeah, nothing brings a few more creators along than saying you could make money doing this, right? Totally. And you could make money before with sponsorships and that sort of thing. But but this is a lot easier than having to go out and get your own branded stuff. So I feel like that's that's the play here, right? Yeah, also makes me wonder if this isn't the next. I mean, it's not like Instagram just came out of nowhere and they're just now being seen as a place for people to get huge followings and and all of that. That's obviously old news. But maybe this is another place that isn't YouTube where people can branch out and try something new and try to bring something unique to the platform. It does feel right now like YouTube's a little saturated, at least in my world, if it comes to like games, coverage, games, journalism, any of that stuff in that in that frame, it's so well and overly covered in the world of YouTube in YouTube video, video on demand. I wonder if maybe there could be more high production stuff done for IGTV that despite its format or where you have to watch it and all of that, I don't know, gives gives people more of an option if you're trying to find a place where all the creative, all the good ideas are already taken, if you know what I'm saying. So like maybe this is a new place to do it. I don't know. I haven't really explored it over there much or looked into it as somebody who creates content. But I don't know. Maybe it'll be a great start for somebody who's got a cool idea and they're sick of just doing the same old thing on YouTube. Well, full disclosure, I spent a good part of my morning going down a really weird rabbit hole of TikTok gangs and the step chickens and the green versus purple and they're all fighting each other in GTA. And there's a whole thing going on. And in fact, I hope if Rich Drafilino will join me, I'd like to discuss it in more detailed tomorrow's show because we've got other stuff to talk about on today's show. But yeah, the idea that there are stars and folks who become idols of some kind. And maybe it's a huge deal where there's millions and millions of people who follow you. And maybe it's less so, but it's something that you can make money off of, which kind of goes back into our conversation about cameo with Patrick Beja yesterday, that there are more and more options for people to kind of figure out like what's my niche? Who are my people? And how do I leverage that and make a little money? Yep. Zipline was one of the first companies to deliver products by drone. Back when Amazon was was getting on 60 minutes saying they would like to do it someday, Zipline was doing it in Irwanda in 2016 and later in Ghana. Well, Zipline has now received approval to deliver medical supplies, including personal protective equipment to hospitals in North Carolina. The idea is they'll come from the warehouse once they get delivered from the factory and be able to go out to the hospital immediately through the air. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration gave Zipline emergency waivers to operate two routes for this purpose. The drones can carry up to almost four pounds of cargo and fly up to 80 miles an hour. This is so cool. You know, I know it's emergency waivers, but I can't imagine that I mean, as long as nothing terrible happens, that Zipline will then get that that line revoked, you know, so this just sort of looks to me like, OK, well, this is how things are going to go in the future. We just have to figure out how places that are, you know, emergency locations like hospitals are able to to use technology like this. Just for fun, I looked up my Amazon buying history and I know this doesn't need to do with Amazon, but I looked in there to see what I buy typically and how small it is. I'm looking for pounds because when you said there's a four pound limit, I started to think, oh, is there anything I ever get that's under four pounds? The truth is a huge amount of what I get is under four pounds. So I was at first bothered by that limit, but I think that's kind of what we all do. We're all getting little memory cards here and a cable there. And, you know, a little skin cream here. And it's not really that big of stuff. So yeah, I don't know why it has been doing this for more than four years. Well, almost four years at this point. And and yeah, the FAA goes very slowly on approving things. But because this is something the hospitals need faster, I'm glad the FAA was willing to do an emergency waiver. This is perfectly safe technology, as long as the routes are clear with the F which the FAA can be sure of. There's no reason not to give a one off exemption here as a way to kind of prove the technology. That's one of the things that some of these stories pointed out is a lot of things that are being done right now to adapt to COVID-19 will accelerate stuff because it allows, you know, not just in the pharmaceutical area, but but in this sort of area, it allows you to to have a reason to try something that you might have dragged your feet on because it's like, well, it's not an emergency. Now it is. Well, many of you may have heard that HBO Max launched in the United States on Wednesday, and that was yesterday. Most HBO subscribers, you'll get an update in your app. It'll give you the option to access HBO Max at no additional cost or stay with just HBO now for the time being. In my case, all my apps just converted and ran like they were HBO Max and ready to go. I think that's because I'm already pre-signed up for the $11 cheaper price for the monthly thing. But anyway, who knows? HBO Max includes all of HBO plus additional content from war media, including DC movies and TV shows, not all of them, though. There's some that are missing. Some of that may come later. HBO Max is not available on Roku or Fire TV, though. For new subscribers, HBO Max costs $14.99 a month. The same price as HBO now or HBO does as a standalone. It is HBO. It doesn't matter whether it's now go or anything else. It's $14.99 a month. You'll just introduce confusion if you try to explain HBO's business model. I simply want to insert word, confusion, but it's already confusing. I have HBO through the HBO Now app on iOS. And this morning, first thing I did before I even got out of bed was I grabbed that phone and I was like, all right, open HBO Now. It was HBO Now. All right, maybe I need to do an app update. So I go to the app store, I search for HBO Now. It shows me HBO Max and it says open. I'm like, well, that's weird. So I tap open and it opened HBO Now. I was ready to go on a ramp. I was ready to be like, it didn't work. But then I go, I'm like, let me try this again. I go back to the app store. All that had happened is it thought I had the app, which I did, but it hadn't quite checked with the server to see if there was an update. So when I went back to the app store, it said update. I'm like, OK, boom, update. Went back to the app, the app now said HBO Max. And the first time I launched it, it said, hey, you have access to HBO Max and all the wonderful things if you want it, tap here. If you want to stick with HBO Now for the time being, tap here. So I did. I tapped HBO Max, went through all the HBO stuff is still there. All of the extra movies from HBO Max, the new originals, like the movie, the new movie that's out, the romantic comedy is in there. All the DC stuff that they offer is in there. I was thinking Harley Quinn from DC Universe might be in here. It wasn't. So not all the DC Universe, in fact, very little DC Universe stuff is in HBO Max. But I did notice my continue watching was empty, Scott. Yeah, I had a tiny story. I'd started a movie and got halfway through it yesterday on HBO now. And then when I launched this this morning, got the update and I thought, I wonder where that movie's at and I went and to watch it. And the big, the big ringer is it does not remember where it was. It absolutely started over. There's no memory for it. So if you were in the middle of a series or you were someplace in HBO and you think that will just sort of pick up where you left off or show a few history based on your HBO viewing, it does not do that. Best I can tell, at least in my case. British Columbia Supreme Court ruled that Huawei CFO Meng Wangzou's extradition proceedings to the US on charges of fraud can indeed continue. Associate Chief Justice Heather Holm said that Meng's alleged crimes would also constitute a crime in Canada, which is a principle known as double criminality. Meng is accused by US authorities of bank and wire fraud in the US and misrepresenting Huawei's relationship with a subsidiary doing business in Iran, violating US sanctions. A second hearing on whether Canadian officials followed the law while arresting Ms. Meng is scheduled for next month. If the court does recommend extradition, Canada's federal justice minister would make the ultimate decision. Yeah, so we're a ways away. This could have all ended today if they said, nope, it's not double criminality, Ms. Meng can go free. And then we would add a lot to talk about as it is. The court case will continue based on whether there was actual procedural problems with the with the arrest. She might get out on a loophole that way. If not, then it would become a political decision. The federal justice minister could decide, even if the court says, yes, she qualifies for extradition. The justice minister could say, but we're not going to pursue it at this time. It doesn't seem likely that that would happen. It seems that Canada has dug in on this and is is willing to extradite her, or they wouldn't have gone through this. But you won't really have an extradition until that happens, until the justice minister signs off on it. So it's it's not as much to talk about today. If the as if the decision had gone the other way, it's more. All right, now now we wait for the next court date. Yeah, court stuff, not known for its speed in any country. So sit back next month. Next month is when the next court date is. Yeah, there you go. Mark your calendars. Yeah, mark them now. Hey, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to dailytechheadlines.com. All right, folks, yesterday, Twitter put a fact checking link on a post from the president of the United States. Now, it's tempting to get into what the post said, whether it was true, what the fact checkers said, whether what they evaluate was also true. And that's a conversation that should be had. And there are no shortage of places to have it. Our mission here is to help each other understand technology. And my contention is that from the technology standpoint, it matters less what was said, but how the system worked. Because it's important to understand not just whether the system worked the way you thought it should this time, but how it should work other times with other people making other statements. So if you're mad about what the president wrote, or if you're mad about what Twitter did, I ask you to take a moment, set that aside for later. And then for the purposes of this, swap your position. Imagine a president you like wrote something you agree with and Twitter labeled that. Likewise, imagine a president you didn't like wrote something you thought was wrong or even dangerous and Twitter did not label it. Because that's what this is about. It's not about this one instance. It's about how does this work for leaders through time? And what are the implications? Here's what happened. Tuesday morning, the president posted on his personal Twitter account I don't think this gets enough attention. There are two accounts. There's an at-potus for the president of the United States. That is not where the president usually tweets the things that get coverage. On his personal Twitter account, he posted claims about mail-in ballots. Tuesday afternoon, Twitter added its standard fact-checking link to the bottom of two posts about mail-in ballots. The link the Twitter ads reads get the facts about mail-in ballots. That's all it says. And then you click on it. When you click on it, it goes to a page that says the claims the president made are unsubstantiated according to CNN, the Washington Post and other fact-checkers. Here's the first thing. We don't know who all the fact-checkers are in this case. Facebook's very good about telling you who all the fact-checkers are. We don't know that here. Now, this page also has a long list of Twitter posts from other people talking about the situation, talking about mail-in ballots. And Twitter told our second cut that this page was created and managed by its global curation team. They may have used algorithms to help figure out what to put in there. But it was humans that put the page together. That's another important part here. So did it follow Twitter's system? It's hard to tell. Twitter has a separate policy for world leaders that gained attention in January 2018 and again in June 2019. The words of world leaders are considered newsworthy and therefore posts that might otherwise break rules will be treated differently. Twitter's trying to say, look, if we removed posts from world leaders, then that removes the ability to have a conversation about what they said and hold them accountable. So their policy is to let things stand if it's a world leader. In January 2018, they wrote blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial tweets would hide important information people should be able to see and debate. That's talking about blocking or removing. That's not what happened Tuesday. They also wrote, we review tweets by leaders within the political context that defines them and enforce our rules accordingly. No one person's account drives Twitter's growth or influences these decisions. This was Twitter defending itself that they were being too easy and not removing posts from leaders that people thought should be removed despite the fact that they're leaders. And that has been the argument up till now is that Twitter was being too soft. In June 2019, Twitter announced that verified accounts from government officials or candidates for public office or position with more than 100,000 followers who made a post that would otherwise be removed would receive a notice that the post violated the rule but was left up in the public interest. So they would label that as we would have removed this. But here's why they defined who a public figure was. Had to be somebody running for office, up for an office or in office and 100,000 followers. And they said, that's when we'll put this label. But again, this is only for removal. February 2020, Twitter introduced rules about labeling synthetic or manipulated media. So this is the first time they talked about labeling something. We'll tell you that this might be misleading because it was manipulated. But again, not about a straight post. This was about manipulated media, synthetic media, deep fakes. March 16th, 2020, rules relating to information about COVID-19 were first discussed. Twitter wrote, we may also apply the public interest notice in cases where world leaders violate the COVID-19 guidelines. Now we're getting closer to what happened to Tuesday. OK, we have COVID-19 guidelines about what you can say and what you can't. And if a world leader violates that, we might put a label on it. So that's the first situation where they say labels and world leaders. March 27th, Twitter's Vijaya God told the Washington Post the social media platform wants to find a way to keep tweets up for their newsworthiness while also noting if a tweet violates their rules. She said, one of the things we're working really closely on with our product and engineering folks is how can we label that? How can we put some context around it so people are aware that content is actually a violation of our rules and it is serving a particular purpose in remaining on the platform? So again, talking about labels with world leaders where they leave it up or otherwise they might not. May 11th, 2020, Twitter wrote earlier this year, we introduced a new label for tweets containing synthetic and manipulated media. Similar labels will now appear on tweets containing potentially harmful misleading information related to COVID-19. This is the system that balances misleading, disputed and unverified with the potential for moderate or severe harm. Moderate harm from a disputed or misleading post leads to a label. So now we're closest to Tuesday. We've got the idea of misleading information getting a label if it's in Twitter's opinion, misleading. But it's only about COVID-19. On May 11th, Twitter head of site integrity, Yole Roth, wrote, today, we're introducing new labels and warning messages on harmful misleading information beginning with misleading discussions about COVID-19. So that indicated that they're trying it out on COVID-19 and they might apply it someday to other types of misinformation. He also wrote that day, these labels will apply to anyone sharing misleading misinformation that meets the requirements of our policy, including world leaders. So he implied that they might expand the category on COVID-19 and definitely said these labels will apply to world leaders. Do you don't get a pass the way you would about removal? All right, so how was it applied on Tuesday? We don't really know. A Twitter spokesperson told The Verge the label is in line with the new policy introduced May 11th, the one about COVID-19, aimed at limiting the spread of potentially harmful and misleading content related to the pandemic. So it's in line with that. But Twitter never put out a policy that said we are now going to start applying it to other categories of information. What happens next will be very interesting. Nadine Strossen, former head of the American Civil Liberties Union, told Fortune, it's a fool's errand, it's doomed to fail, and it's never going to satisfy everybody. And that's the thing, if it's not about whether you think it should have been taken down or not, it's about whether we can have a system where everyone agrees. Well, I'm going to think my favorite person's tweet should stay up. But is there an impartiality out there? And Twitter has not gone to the extent of Facebook to, in my opinion, maybe overengineering a solution by creating an entirely separate court independent of itself to evaluate these kinds of things. Twitter, in fact, didn't say that this is the kind of category of tweet it would start labeling. It just labeled it and it labeled it in the context of another tweet that we're not even talking about today being demanded to be removed. And we can see why they wouldn't remove. They've been very clear about we won't remove things from world leaders. But instead they labeled this one as misinformation in what seems like a new category of policy. And they aren't telling us who the fact checkers are and how the fact checkers come to their conclusions. So again, if you think this was the right move, then, you know, that's done, you don't you don't need to know anything. But if you want this to be fair to your favorite candidate in the future or you think this was the wrong move, you want to know how they came to this agreement. And and so that's where I would like to set it down is to say, look, none of us are going to agree ever on everything that should be moved or removed. We are in a new situation where Twitter feels like a public square, but is a private company that can do whatever they want legally and are now trying to navigate public opinion as a way to appear unbiased. And that's where I start to agree with the former leader of the ACLU. I don't know how you do that. This is this is something where in the past you would have said, well, it's my newspaper. I can print whatever I want in it. But Twitter, Facebook, they have moved beyond that and they have been pushed beyond that by the way people use them. Well, the way the thing that jumped out at me today that became the grand illustration of why I think this is going to be a really weird uphill battle was the amount of people immediately jumping on one of two camps and forgetting about all the politics of it, the one camp. Well, you can't take it out completely. But the one camp was this doesn't do enough. In fact, it looks like a promotion of the ideas that were just said in the tweet if you just glanced at it. If you didn't click through, it doesn't look like a warning. It doesn't look like anything other than, hey, get some more information. It feels like an ad almost. And then I heard other people say, this is tantamount to silencing the president and therefore destroying the First Amendment and rights of speech and all this other stuff going completely the other direction and asking like this is just tantamount to the worst possible crime you could commit. And I realized the distance between those two opinions and what's probably somewhere in the middle is so vast. I just don't know how you ever find consensus with how to do this right. I mean, the truth is part of me is like, you know what, Twitter, just let anything be said anywhere. But I don't really mean that. But I do think that sometimes that's your easiest way out of all. That's what they did for years, though, right? You're right, they did. And if you really want to go back and historically, like retroactively apply these new things, holy crap, we're in for a really interesting ride. They're not going to do that probably, but yeah. Like I don't know how this, I don't know how this resolves. I wish it was an easy thing to predict. And I'm certainly not the one to do it, but I'm really curious about what Twitter is in five years. If this is a thing they're going to keep doing, then how does it progress from here? Why was his the first one they tried? Why didn't seven or eight of these go out at once to world leaders of various types or prominent big number of people on Twitter, which is really who we're talking about here. They're not going after somebody with 20 followers. And then just me saying the words going after is going to imply something to somebody else who's going to commit me and say, that's not going after. They're just, you know, so there's no, I don't know how. Listen, one of the problems, let me short circuit you here because I can tell you're starting to spin around a little because it's a confusing situation. One of the problems here is that Twitter is not responsible for the content of its users, but people have put pressure on Twitter, Facebook, and others to become responsible for it. And as soon as they start taking those acts, we've talked about this for years, now suddenly they take the heat for what someone else said or they take the heat for allowing someone else to say it or not. And suddenly they become arbiters and now you are seeing legislation being proposed to remove the safe harbor protections of CDA 230 and say, let's run this through the courts. Let's make Twitter responsible, which I don't think is the best way to do this because suddenly you've got millions and millions of people who can say whatever they wanna get Twitter in trouble. I don't know that that's the solution for it, but it is essentially a quasi public square that is not subject to the rules of the public square. Yeah, it's a new category, I guess. I mean, we say that it's 10 years, you know, 10 plus years old, 12 years old, whatever however old Twitter is. And we're not even talking about other social media platforms so much today, but yeah, it feels like we're at the early stages of what that's gonna look like. How do you, how do you juxtapose those two without everybody losing their minds? And I see a few people saying like, hey, Twitter's private company, they can do whatever they want. That's usually said when you agree with what they did. Yes. Soon as they start applying this to somebody you don't agree with or don't like, then often the tune changes. Well, I don't think this conversation is over. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how interested you are it is, it has just begun. We will circle back though as things unfold. For now, if you wanna join in the conversation in our Discord, we talk about, well, I mean, politics show up there, but lots of things. You can join by linking to a Patreon account at patreon.com at slash DTNS. Let's check out the mail bag. Oh, let's. So Chris wrote in and said, kinda has a plea to see if anybody has some advice for him. Says, we're gonna be returning to our physical workspace soon. And I was hoping we could use technology to keep things safer and help meet employer requirements. What we need to do is track who enters and exits a room and when so that we can do contact tracing if necessary. I was hoping we could employ NFC tags so we could keep logging contactless and avoid the suggested use of clipboards as they can be a disease vector. Are there any applications that anybody's aware of that could assist in this and make an exportable log in the event that it is needed? I'm envisioning placing NFC tags outside each room and then having employees tap in and out. I've used trigger in the past for NFC tags but I can't see a direct way to log an event to a Google sheet or something similar. So if you have advice for Chris, we'd love to know. I mean, it just sounds like card key access, right? Kind of. There's all kinds of systems that use card key access and logging but particularly he wants it to be easy. He wants it to be contactless and he wants it to log to a Google sheet. So I don't know if anybody out there is like, oh yeah, I know the thing that will help Chris. Email us feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. Also shout out to patrons at our master and grandmaster levels including Kevin S. Morgan, Dandorotter Hankins and John Johnston. Also thanks to Scott Johnson. Scott, what's been going on with you? Well, busy stuff all around but this month or this week, coming weekend, we finish the full month of May free art classes for kids that we were doing. My daughter and I were doing during the COVID-19 lockdown, we had a bunch of kids on Saturdays with nothing to do. Decided to have some drawing time for them. So that ends our five week run. That'll be this Saturday. We do it at 1 p.m. mountain time. You can find all the details over at our website which is frogpants.com slash art class. And if you haven't been to any of them, all of the previous classes are up in video archive as well as galleries of the stuff folks have been working on, lots of pictures from kids. It's great. We had a really good time with this. And if you wanna be there for one more, that's this weekend, 1 p.m. mountain again, film set, sorry, at frogpants.com slash art class. We know more and more people are going back to work the way Chris was in our email. But a lot of folks are still gonna be working from home for a while. And so Patrick Beja and I have started a new podcast from the fine folks at Subrillion LLC, makers of Daily Tech News Show comes work in sanity where Patrick and I share our experiences working from home for 10 years or more in both cases. So if you wanna take a 15 minute break from your work day and hear some folks chat about all the things that you've been facing and maybe share some tips that'll help you out, you need this in your life, workinsanity.net. And of course, you can continue to support this show directly at patreon.com slash DTNS. Yeah, don't short us, support us. Yes, please. Our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com If you got some on your mind, send it over. We'd love to see it. We're also live Monday through Friday at 430 p.m. Eastern. That's 2030 UTC. And you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Back tomorrow with Justin and Robert Young. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. The club hopes you have enjoyed this brover.