 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners thanks to all of you including Philip Shane Paul Boyer and Brad Coming up on DTNS. What's app plans to become a super app Netflix introduces gamer handles and what apples really up to with mixed reality This is the Daily Tech news for Monday August 29th, 2022 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane I'm Roger Chang the shows producer and joining us the chief technology officer at Skidmore Owings and Merrill Rob DeMillo. Welcome back. Thank you folks. Nice to see everybody. Good to see you, too Let's start this show with a few tech things you should know NASA delayed the launch of its space launch system rocket after an engine bleed issue caused an engine to not reach the appropriate temperature range at launch time the next attempted launch will be Friday, September 2nd at 1248 p.m. Eastern they spent so much money on it Sony acquired the mobile game developer savage game studios. The studio hasn't launched any games But its co-founders worked on some games you probably played clash clans angry birds, etc With that acquisition Sony plans to launch play station studios Mobile which will operate separately from the console division in order to quote reach new audiences Unfamiliar with play station and our games and quote to which I add and give us money Late last month Pinterest launched the invite only collage making app shuffles on iOS The app is quickly proved popular hitting number one in the lifestyle category and in the top 20 of non gaming apps in The US on August 21st Sensor tower reports it's now number 66 overall in the US app store and tops the charts in Ireland New Zealand and the UK Elon Musk's attorneys subpoenaed whistleblower and former security chief of Twitter at Peter Zatko aka Mudge We talked about Mudge last week on the show and the complaints that he filed with the US sec Accusing Twitter of among other things material misrepresentation and omissions about security and privacy protections built into its platform Among that were some allegations about the number of bots on the platform something that Musk has been on about a lot Zatko has been ordered to provide documents related to the impact of spam on Twitter's business any documents related to Illegal activity at Twitter as well as materials related to the end of Zatko's employment by Twitter Musk's lawyers will depose Zatko on September 9th So he has to give the documents and then they'll interview him about stuff and that will be under oath The trial is set for October 17th India's top mobile carrier Reliance Geo said it will spend 25 billion dollars to roll out 5g service in the country Starting this Diwali, which happens in October the rollout will deploy standalone 5g architecture Not relying on existing 4g networks plans to extend 5g to every town in India by the end of 2023 Speaking of reliance one of the biggest companies in the world They've got something going on on WhatsApp, but before we get to that it's good to remember that in many parts of the world There are super apps that everyone relies on users in China, for example Do everything in WeChat they pay the rent they buy tickets to things like sports and concerts They get food delivered super apps generally make their money off the payment processing fees off of subscriptions to premium features And of course ads So while WeChat is definitely dominant in China Meta's WhatsApp has a big giant footprint in India with more than 400 million users That's about 20% of WhatsApp's global user base a lot of Indian. What's up users? Meta sees business messaging as its way to make money and in April the company received approval from the National Payments Corporation of India to extend its use of UPI payments on WhatsApp in India from 40 million to 100 million users Giving it the ability to let companies set up a variety of shops on the platform for starters The good old reliance industries We were just talking about is setting up a grocery service called Geo Mart on WhatsApp J I O M A R T to try it out if you're in India You can text hi to Geo Mart's number and you'll get an in-app shopping experience without having to leave what's up So like Instacart, but you don't have to go launch Instacart users will be able to browse Geo Mart's entire catalog Make UPI supported payments and arrange delivery all within what's up Super apps obviously huge in China huge in large parts of Asia But they are almost entirely we chat like that is the example right Rob I everybody talks about a super app you talk about we chat Yeah, we chat we chat in China is what what's up is trying to be in India, right? And it we chat has the support of the Chinese government in various ways. So it makes sense The the gamble here for Meta is that folks in India who are used to bouncing from app to app to app Are going to want to stay in one app to do all the purchases Yeah, and and this is this is what everyone who's not we chat wants to replicate, right? They there's a grab is trying to be a super app in Indonesia and Singapore You've got Meta who've been trying to figure out how to make what's up into a super app somewhere They've been doing things in Brazil to probably, you know Try to increase payments there and they've run into trouble with Brazilian courts over and over this looks to be the most Likely way to become a super app do it in India where what's up is incredibly popular So you already have the user base and partner with the biggest tech platform in India Particularly a giant in the telco space. So people who are using Reliance Geo for their service are likely to want to use Geo mark Yeah, this seems very Smart on what's up's part Or I'm meta's part I guess This just seems like a slam dunk you have so many users who at least are using what's up Reliance Geo and potentially both probably both and You can do everything from within the app. Is this a good idea, you know to give meta that much more power I mean you could you could argue that super apps are too dominant But it's also about convenience for people I mean if you if I had this sort of situation where I could do a lot of things with an apps that I'm already using for just kind of chatting socially with my friends or you know various communications. I Love that idea. I love the idea of not having a bunch of separate apps for a lot of different things But it just you know it did There are a few different ways you can look at this Yeah, I don't know I don't know if the catch is on in the US or Europe because of the privacy culture here, right? There's so much more Suspicion of one app having everything and what they're going to do with that data There's almost an allergic reaction at any time an app moves in that direction here Well, it's also usage patterns right here. Everyone is everyone's got 300 apps on their phone Right and so they're used to bouncing between door dash and yeah the cart and a bunch of other things So I think staying inside of one app is going to feel a little claustrophobic to people in the US Yeah, and my if they could build up the trust then they would have to overcome That usage habit of like no, no, but I go to this app to do that. I don't stay in it And yeah, I I wonder if a super app will ever catch on in the US or Europe Honestly, either one. I just don't see it happening. I mean if we don't we just don't So what's up? I I get notifications from what's up every so often And mostly from my friends who don't live in the US It's not an app. I'm using on a daily basis just because there aren't enough folks that I know who are using it I guess iMessage is kind of you know, my main app because I'm an iphone user we chat. I don't use at all but You know, I'm I'm quite familiar with with how much people love it for all the things So, yeah, I yeah, I don't I don't know about the us here We we we seem to beat to different drums than the rest of the world on many things Yeah, I was I was just in italy for a couple weeks and we chat I'm sorry. We chat what's up. They need to change the name. What's up was everywhere Right there. I I didn't see anything that was using it as a super app yet, but it definitely Every shop vendor had a whatsapp You know placard outside with a with the qr code. So It might gain some acceptance there. Yeah, it could make some inroads. I could I could I could see that I just I just don't know if it can overcome like you say the the habits. It would it would take a lot Not impossible, but it would take a lot Like it like starting a new game service for instance Oh gosh. Yeah, so netflix's efforts to get into mobile gaming have been Fairly modest so far. We've certainly talked about it on this here show But it's steadily added to its catalogs of games that subscribers can access add free some of which already were based on existing netflix intellectual property The company made a bit of a bigger splash back in april when it announced it would launch an exploding kitten original series in 2023 based on a mobile card game that a lot of people love The first time one of its games would proceed streaming content with the same ip Yeah, so they they will make exploding kittens content after the game comes out one of the hallmarks of a robust gaming ecosystem Though you see this on playstation You see this on xbox is the gamer tag the gamer handle what you call yourself your gaming handle Let's you present your identity to the world Separate from your actual name or even your username It's used for knowing who's on your team and multiplayer games as well as seeing who's on the leaderboards because You always got to know who's winning Yeah, so netflix has launched the ability for users to create gaming handles So granted for now it lets you use them in games like mahjong solitaire Bowling ballers heads up Into the breach you might be familiar. You might not In fact into the breach was the first to get it on july 19th So your profile name and your icon aren't being used instead other gamers see the gamer handle A lot of people think that the gamer handle is really important developer steve moser first noted the feature And has also found references in the netflix app to the future abilities to invite users to play games And of course there's the whole leaderboard thing This goes along with the recent news that netflix has been hiring people with backgrounds in cloud gaming netflix is taking this pretty serious They're going slow They're they're not trying to gain attention at this point, but but we uh, we opined with scott johnson not too long ago that That's what netflix is up to The way they started their streaming service in 2007 by just putting it out there and saying hey If you find something you want to watch on there, it'll you know, if you've got it in your dvd q it'll show up there Maybe you'll want to use it and then eventually it took over the world, right? I think that's what netflix is hoping they'll do here is just kind of slowly test things out try things out hire Some cloud gaming stuff until they finally have things where you turn around and go well, wait a minute I want to play that. Oh, and they've got gamer tags and and and all that kind of stuff great You I didn't even know they had built that I expect people to say if you're not following every little nugget as it Leaks out like this Yeah, it's I'm of two minds about this it There's there's part of me, which is you know, hey netflix stay in your lane Right, but but there's another part that understands the idea to use the technology that they already have in place to try and increase their ad revenue The issues I have with this are sort of analogous to the super app concept Like their market is, you know passive viewing Right, just sitting in and sitting on your couch and having a beer and watching a movie or whatever it is that you're doing It's it's not necessarily the same audience that will Take up gaming So it's they obviously did the research and they obviously think that there is a market there for it So I'm probably not right. It just doesn't seem to it doesn't seem to flow for me I mean, I think the whole netflix stay in your lane thing is exactly what netflix has been doing very successfully for some time And now understands that Streaming services there are many to choose from and a lot of people aren't going to keep paying for netflix if they have other choices And other places that they want to watch things Where other streaming services aren't really getting into this yet is The whole well if you're already here, maybe want to play a game based on some ip that netflix is part of I think that That as as slow of a rollout like you mentioned tom as it has been I think That netflix thinks this is where we become Unique again Where we can offer something that nobody else is offering they're testing it. They're learning. They're in learning mode They're they're not ready to convince people to come play games at netflix They're just sort of floating things out on the water to to see what stays afloat and what sinks And and that's what they did with streaming In some ways it's different in some ways it's similar But when netflix started streaming everyone said stay in your lane netflix people want dvds They want to watch on dvd. Nobody can stream nobody has enough bandwidth Nobody can stream a video and netflix played a long game knowing that eventually people would now video games are a little different They're the same and that it's like hey, it's entertainment, right? One's lean back one's lean in but You know, we're in two of the biggest entertainment industries in the world movies and tv and possibly video games On the other hand going from dvds to streaming was a technical barrier that they surmounted Going from tv shows and movie making to video game making Is a creative boundary and and and as you rightly pointed out rob. It's a different type of content It is i mean that you know that i'm i'm not following the analogy of staying your lane from dvds to streaming because it's still content delivery When you're talking about moving to gaming you've now got a two-way connection I mean i'm i'm pretty well versed in in cloud technologies at this point and i've also hired folks from cloud gaming technology companies to to work on some of my stuff It's it's it's not the same animal Right, uh, so they are obviously putting a lot of time and effort and research into this and keeping an eye on Stadia to see how stadia's market is picking up which it is by the way. It's it's kind of interesting um But they have to they have to try carefully they have to because it is so extremely different to have a two-way communication between The viewer and the and the and the servers. Yeah, I think you're right that to point out that it's a different business Netflix has done different versions of its business, right the delivery method was different between dvd and streaming Uh, the content acquisition aspect was different between buying things from stars and creating house of cards But video games is is a much Different enterprise than tv shows and movies and they've never gone that far out of their lane. Sorry sarah. We have to keep saying it It's fine. I'm i'm used i'm used to those sort of jokes But one of the things that i'm not currently a netflix subscriber. Um, just for various reasons i'm i'm i'm i'm i'm in other streaming services But when I think of netflix, I think of how you said rob like having a beer Sitting on the couch watching some stuff, you know, maybe binging some stuff And I think for me the whole idea of netflix gaming I'm like am I sitting on my couch with like a remote control like playing a game? Well, maybe But I mean the mobile gaming thing is is it's important to at least remind myself that Oh, yeah, I mean netflix is accessible in lots of other ways besides me sitting in my living room in my underwear You know watching something passively and there are a lot of there are a lot of opportunities Not just for netflix for a lot of companies to to be able to make the most of this So so netflix has hit like It's first real competition Since it it started at streaming service, right and disney plus and paramount plus and and hbo max whatever Zaslaw is going to do to hbo max, right? But So they've got some they've got some uphill work to do in their production and and content delivery methodologies and I would be More vocal against this if if I found out that they were stealing my production side to to to fund this stuff Especially in times like this because their productions You could say what you want about them, but they're excellent the sandman is excellent, right? like it it's it's They've done a lot of really really creative interesting things and that that should not get rob. You should rob peter to paypal Well, uh folks, uh, if you want to know if netflix should stay in their lane Rob peter to paypal or just they survive on its merits Let us know feeling social get in touch with the dts audience on the socials dts show on twitter and dts pics dts pix on instagram As we get closer to the expected announcement of apple's much reported on mixed reality headset We keep getting some new information just dribs and drabs We've heard that the software has been in development for a long time bloomberg reported on references to r os back in 2017 apple referenced reality os in pre-release builds of ios 13 back in 2019 And it looks like maybe that name reality os is going to stick around Showing up again this year in app store upload logs. What else have we found sarah? Well tom, i'm glad you asked we also recently received some Possible details about the name of this mixed reality hardware bloomberg reports that trademarks were filed for reality one reality pro And reality processor in the us the eu the uk canada australia new zealand saudi arabia Costa rica and uruguay All filings reference virtual and augmented reality headsets goggles glasses and smart glasses Now these trademarks were not actually registered by apple. They were registered by immersive health solutions Which was incorporated in february by another company called the corporation trust company And the corporation trust company Despite its orwellia name is actually kind of well known as a company that files trademarks On behalf of other companies who want to avoid people knowing that they filed those trademarks, right? You you sign a deal with corporate trust company and they say great We'll file the trademark and agree to give it to you as soon as you're ready for it They are the same company that filed a trademark for reality os, but it's a fair bet That they are filing these trademarks on behalf of apple Either that or we have another sisco iphone situation brewing, but i'm guessing it's on behalf of apple And just a reminder that although the device isn't expected to be announced at apple's event next month Analyst ming chi quo who has a very good track record on all things apple now expects apple to make it public Early next year. We just don't know bloomberg's mark gurman expects that apple's first mixed reality headset We'll use an m2 system on a chip and 16 gigs of memory on the headset Yeah, and if you're like wait next month, I thought it was in a week That's those are both true like it's it's it's not quite september yet. So yeah, we're not we're not going to hear about We're not going to hear about apple's Reality os at the announcement coming up next week. I wouldn't think According to i mean maybe a teaser, but that's very unapple. Yeah, it's not. Yeah, they wouldn't do that Yeah, oh apple What do you what do you think we're going to see from apple? It's very bold and very apple-like to call something reality We're the company with the reality that operating system for reality the headset called reality I mean, it's a better word than meta. I'm gonna give it to them. Okay If that's what it's gonna be, I don't know rob. What are your feelings? I've said this on the show before that i'm a big proponent of ar I i'm less excited about vr For a thousand reasons that we can we can list off here. I I think there's a couple things happening. So Apple's been trying to get into this game for a while literally since google glass actually maybe a little before that And right so that so it's been going on for a long time. They're they're realizing how hard it is All right, it's it's really hard to track objects in the real world and interspersed cgi on top of it into a user's visual field Without having them throw up Right and and so they either have solved something or they believe they're going to solve something very shortly Um, I also think that the the marketing uplift that you get from any apple product Uh, you know again apple, right? Uh is going to help The entire market float up if they're successful Yeah, the the reality One or the reality pro, uh, could do to the quest What the iphone did to blackberry, right? Which isn't immediately squash it But just pull the rug out for a month. Yeah reimagine what everybody's used to Yeah And sarah, you're right. I mean, it's first of all, it's a better name than meta And I suspect it will be a better experience than meta I mean, I you know, I got to say I am a I am a quest uh user um on an almost daily basis And there are things that I don't love about it, but I mean, I also think it's just one of the most fun Uh ways to you know have uh immersive reality Whatever apple shell company was calling it for you know immersive health solutions on your head immersive health solutions Which in a way it really is because I'm doing a lot of like this is going to be like exercise stuff You know, yeah, that that could be true, right? Yeah, but uh, but uh, you know, I also welcome You know, let's see. Let's see some competition. Let's you know fight to the death Let's make this all better for everybody The health the health market. It's a smaller market um and Approaching, uh, you know healthcare providers and using this as as almost an enterprise Insert into that world is very similar to what google's doing with the next generation to google glass It's a very limited audience. It's very enterprise based. It's not a it's not a public release yet but going into these sort of Quiet It's like covered environments Um We'll give both those companies a chance to work on these products to to make them consumer ready I I don't like doing predictions as much as scenarios in a scenario that I think could fit the facts is Uh, the reality one Uh is akin to the apple watch, right? It does a lot Apple's been working in this space by measuring your health It also is it also is going to work great with apple fitness and it's for your home health And exercise and they they orient it towards that saying yeah games the metaverse like neil stevensson We're not there yet This is something you can do for real that will help you now the way they have marketed the apple watch And then the reality pro is what you're talking about rob where it's like and then in a more clinical setting for the professional use When you're rehabbing, etc. Etc We've got the reality pro that that helps you do that. I I think that's a scenario that fits a lot of these facts We'll see Well switching gears just a tad If you're not familiar with the ivory trade, uh, it's been illegal for decades globally But that has not stopped elephant poaching To do something about that 17 year old onika puri spent two years creating something called l saw Which is short for elephant savior a machine learning software prototype that analyzes the differences In movement patterns between elephants and humans in thermal infrared videos because drones are looking for this Um, but she noted well humans and elephants move very differently. This is something that we could improve upon l saw uses a $250 f l i r 1 pro thermal camera with 206 by 156 pixel resolution plugs into an iphone 6 Then is attached to a drone Then the system notes in real time whether objects on the ground are human or elephant Four times more accurate than existing drone detection methods on existing footage Says puri, but still needs to be tested on raw video Could also be used to track populations of species or just general research as well So elephants great example, but this could definitely Do other things puri's project won the peggie scripts award for science communication and a top award at the competitions earth and environmental Sciences category at this year's regeneron international science and engineering fair if you're not familiar It's the world's largest international pre college stem competition Yeah, this is this is genius because what what puri did Was say well when you're looking at this video as a human you're looking at pixels and those pixels move But you might be hard pressed to tell if it's a human or not We can train machine learning and say this is how an elephant moves This is how a human moves automatically tell me whether those pixels are a human or an elephant in a way that a human can't and Looks like it works In which case if it works, then you can train it to look for like Oh, we just want to tell how many monkeys are in this population because they're endangered And we can track that with the drones as well because you can tell by by movements Which monkeys are which and track them this is this is great stuff Yeah, I think this is wonderful and the fact that she's a teenager Makes it even more wonderful. There's a there's a long storied history in well long in the last five to seven or eight years Where teenagers can get a hold of advanced technologies and they learn very fast. There was um and choy right and created created a prototype for a prosthetic arm that that basically ran off of brainwaves to move the arm and part of their motivation If you look at all the event the teenage inventors over the last few years is to help humanity Right, they don't have they don't have a profit line that they have to worry about and I would argue They're even more altruistic than university researchers who have to deal with with grant money and the rest of it Well, and yeah, there's a little bit less of like but this is the way we do things Right, which as adults we all we all can fall into that that trap To to have somebody say well, um, and if you if you read Her story in the smithsonian mag.com which is we'll have it in our show notes It's a really great story. She said I went to india with my family and I saw all this You know these kind of you know things that were made out of elephant tusk ivory for sale And I was like, isn't this illegal? Why is this happening? Well, what's going on with the poaching? You know trying to crack down on the poaching industry. What's wrong? Well, they've got drones, but the drones don't work very well And here's how it can work better and it's genius Yeah, yeah, it is good machine learning is available to everybody at this point. So You know the fact that she's used that it's just great. There's there's no There's no downside to the story at all. It's good innovation. Thank you young people All right, let's check out the mail bag. Let's do it. This one comes from jeffrey jeffrey Was writing in about Our conversation of a camera that could perhaps blur certain things out of an image and leave other things in an image Particularly video jeffrey says sarah mentioned teaching it what you looked like and blurring you out And then tom mentioned it might be a bit hard to do and get everybody to use that camera So everybody's using the same thing jeffrey says I for one would like that. I have cameras outside my house Wouldn't put any inside But if I could have it edit me out, then I would get it in a heartbeat Clearly this won't happen for a long time to be able to make my own camera that edits me out of my house But it's a great use case for when it could be possible now to be clear Uh, if you didn't hear this story, you may not realize this was a camera that was built physically Not to reflect the photons of a particular object We weren't sure if it could be used for humans We were speculating because once this camera is built It can't be changed like whatever whatever you train the machine learning to design the lens not to see that lens Once you build it doesn't see so it's not it's not like on the fly editing Uh, but but I like what jeffrey's saying. He's like, yeah, just build all the cameras in my house So they can't see me and then i'm fine. I can walk around my house I thought that was pretty good smart smart idea jeffrey good idea jeffrey Thanks everybody who writes in with a lot of great ideas all the time Keep them coming feedback at daily tech news show.com is where to send that email Also, thanks to rob demillo for being with us today rob Where can people keep up with your latest? Well, there's uh, you can probably go to the about me for me It's if you go to if you go to about me slash, uh, rob demillo, you'll find me You can find me at swm.com under the people's page So i'm pretty easily easy to get hold of Well, it's so nice to have you back on the show. It's been a while been a while. Yeah, don't wait so long next time Also a special thanks to harrison ward harrison is one of our top lifetime supporters for dts And we love to shout y'all out when we can thank you harrison for all the years of supports Yeah, uh, you know with it's not no surprise that people are cutting back right now And so we are you know, we we are down a few patrons on the month Quite a few patrons on the month Going into september. So, uh, we really really appreciate folks like harrison sticking with us and Any of you listening on the free feed who want to get a little extra stuff get the ad free version If you can't afford it, we appreciate you always at patreon.com slash dts Speaking of patrons stick around for our extended show. Good day internet. What joys will we talk about? Probably food You can also catch this show live money through friday at four p.m. Eastern. That's 200 utc find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live We're back doing it all again tomorrow with alison sheridan joining us talk to you then This show is part of the frog pants network get more at frog pants dot com Diamond club hopes you have enjoyed this program