 Coming up on DTNS is Amazon's Astro Robot, a disaster. Valve might have a wireless VR headset in the works and why Netflix is getting into games. This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, September 29th, 2021 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 Chang. The show's pretty serene. We were just talking about TV shows, The Foundation, Morning Show, Star Trek. If you want that wider conversation, get our expanded show, Good Day Internet. Become a member right now, patreon.com slash DTNS. That's where you can join our top patrons like Dale McKayhee, Scott Hepburn, and Bjorn Andre. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. YouTube will now take down content containing claims any approved vaccine is dangerous and causes chronic health defects. Previously, the platform was only removing content from COVID-19 vaccine misinformation. Misinformation on other vaccines was demoted, but previously not removed. YouTube will not remove videos on vaccine policies, new vaccine trials, and historical vaccine successes or failures, as well as personal testimonials related to the vaccines. Now, we all love jelly, but you don't want it in your iPad screen. Some users have reported that the new iPad mini appears to refresh the left and right halves of the screen at slightly different rates when scrolling in portrait mode, creating what people call a jelly scroll, not a jelly roll. In response, Apple said this is a normal behavior for LCD screens, which do refresh line by line, causing a delay between when the lines at the top of the screen and lines at the bottom are refreshed. And of course, when you have it in portrait, you have the bottom and the top on the left and right. Ars Technica notes this issue is not noticeable on other 60 Hertz LCD iPads that it tested. About a month ago, Facebook announced it would test integrating Instagram Reels short form video content with its main Facebook app. Now, it's rolling out the feature to all users in the US. Creators can create Reels on Facebook itself and a new Reels Play bonus program will invite certain creators to get paid based on the performance of their Reels. Google announced new search functions Wednesday. It'll use its new MUM AI model to provide additional context about searched topics, a feature called Things to Know, for example. It will pull out answers to questions that things you might have about the search topic. It kind of does that now, this does it a lot better. It can also suggest further searches and include the contents of videos in those recommendations. Google Lens will let you add text refinements to visual searches. So you point the camera at a paisley shirt but you write socks with this pattern, for instance. And you'll be able to filter your shopping results in Google search by items that are in stock at stores as long as the store is participating. Google Maps will get layers for viewing wildfires, the density of tree canopy, which is helpful for city planners, and something called plus codes, which offers location information for places without addresses. A new notice by the cyberspace administration of China and eight other regulators lays out a three-year plan to regulate the use of algorithms in the country. The notice says companies should improve their ability to cope with emergencies related to algorithm safety and says that companies are responsible for any consequences produced by algorithms. The plan also encourages local governments to tighten their own algorithm regulations. I want to take a quick moment here. Stoic Squirrel, who's in our Twitch chat right now, loves Stoic Squirrel, great supporter of the show, bit of a curmudgeon, hard to impress, wrote, I do like jelly. And I take that as a personal victory. Now we got Stoic Squirrel to express. Thank you for the breaking news. Love for jelly. All right, let's talk about Valve. Evidence is building that Valve is developing a wireless VR headset. VR reporter Brad Lynch found reference to a device codenamed Deckard in SteamVR's publicly available branches as far back as January. Ours Technica sources say such a device is now being developed at Valve. Lynch found references to a standalone system layer implying that the hardware would need to be wired to a computer or SteamVR tracking boxes. Lynch also found a DLL, which currently includes calls about 160 megahertz wireless signals that seems to support a wireless headset, though it also matches the frequency used by Wi-Fi controllers. Lynch did find a string in the Steam VR Linux ARM binary, which hints at internal processing instead of sending calls to a connected PC. Additionally, Ours Technica's Valve sources pointed to public documents from Facebook about VR optics that allow lenses to be closer to a user's face, offering better performance and weight distribution. So a standalone Valve headset might use some updated optics technology. It does seem likely that Valve is developing a standalone VR headset based on what Brad Lynch found and what Ours Technica sources are telling them, but as Sam Makhavek at Ours Technica notes, public-facing calls inside of SteamVR files do not guarantee a retail launch. No, it wouldn't be the first time we'd seen things like this and nothing came of it, but I do think that if Valve wants to continue to be a leading force, we'll put it that way, in gaming on VR or as a VR leader in general, they have to offer more than they do with just their high-end model. Right now, you can go drop 1500 bucks on their top-of-the-line VR setup, but it's very expensive and limiting by the boxes that have to be around you and the kind of setup you have and of course, being tethered to a PC. I also think they have all the numbers in the world to tell them who's connecting to SteamVR and with what device. Are they mixed reality headsets? How many vibes? How many of their own products? And certainly, how many times an Oculus Quest or Quest 2 are being tethered to the device or being used in any way with SteamVR? And because they know that, my guess is they know a lot of people like Quests and there are probably more Quests in circulation than anything they're making. So if they're serious, I think they would want to strike out a bit more. And this is one area where their hardware is considered very good. The index is widely praised as being the best headset you can buy with the best fidelity. And nobody complains about being plastic-ier or bad or whatever. Like they've had trouble with their controllers and their Steam link boxes and that sort of thing. So this wouldn't surprise me at all. I'm actually now very much looking forward to this because this feels like a probability, not just a possibility. Yeah, I mean, I'm a huge Oculus fan, but that's kind of because the Oculus Quest is the closest I can get to where I want VR headsets to be. It's definitely has a long way to go. It's too big, it's bulky, it puts lines on your face kind of thing. Any company that is seriously trying to develop a wireless, gotta be wireless VR headset in the vein of the Quest. And I mean, obviously if Facebook has public documents about VR optics, then the Quest is going to enjoy the next gen of VR optics as much as any Valve headset that would come to market would as well. But that's a good thing. That's a good thing for all of us. The headset wars kind of have yet to begin. There are a few, and I think the Quest is just, it's cheaper and it's a little bit more consumer friendly than some of the other offerings. But the being not tethered to anything is such a huge part of it, especially if you're doing anything with a VR headset on where you're not sitting. And if you're sitting and there's a lot of folks who are like, who really cares about that cord? Well, that's totally valid. I don't do a lot of sitting when I'm doing my VR stuff. Yeah, there are certain things I can't do unless I'm connected to a PC and that, you sort of cross that bridge when you come to it. But I think this is great. I hope this is a product. I hope this is a product that comes to market and I hope it gives Oculus a run for its money. Yeah, because it's tough to give Oculus a run for its money when the money it makes is off you, not selling you a Quest. Right. And so Valve can make money off you buying games. It can make money off you maybe on data some way, but it can't really compete with that massive Facebook social graph money-making engine. But maybe it can win enough support by saying we won't monetize you unless you buy a game. Yeah, and keep in mind, Valve's got the biggest library of any games content library on this planet. So anytime they can figure out a way to leverage that, even though they're not all VR titles, obviously, they do that. Let's move on to some more gaming news. This time in Netflix's backyard, Netflix acquired its first game studio, something we've been hearing about for a while. Now we know who it is. Night School Studio. That's familiar. You may have played these games. They made the narrative-driven titles Oxenfree After Party, Oxenfree 2 as well. Oxenfree shares a lot of thematic similarities with Stranger Things. Night School did work on a canceled Night, the Stranger Things game. They're known for being a cool little indie company making cool indie games. Netflix has it intended to add, quote, exclusive games designed for every kind of gamer and every level of play. That's the quote. That will be included with its membership with no ads or in-app purchases. Night School will continue to work with Oxenfree 2 or on Oxenfree 2 as well as a new set of game worlds. This is kind of exciting, but it's also a little weird. I'm kind of trying to get my head around it. I've played Oxenfree and After Party. They're great games. I would put this developer in the kind of middle space group of indies that are respected. And when they do new work, people get excited about it. But they're miles away from anything I would call AAA or sort of that big. And I'm not exactly sure what they'll make for Netflix that will define Netflix's gaming strategy. So I'm not negative about it. I think it's an odd pickup, but it's no more odd than the dozens of others I could have chosen from that are a lot like this guy. I figured it out. I figured it out. Yesterday's news that Netflix was releasing just casual games that had nothing to do with their shows shook me. It shook me to the core of my belief that Netflix was only into games to extend its existing properties. But this has clicked for me. What Netflix wanted to do was be Gamefly. Remember Gamefly? Gamefly was the Netflix of video games. You could have a video game sent to you, you play it, and then you send it back, you get another one sent to you. What Netflix is doing is pretending as if it used to be Gamefly. Because what it did with videos, TV shows, and movies was transition you from we have all the shows on disk to we have a bunch of shows on streaming to we have original shows. You can't get anywhere else on streaming. I think my new theory is they are leapfrogging into video games the way into the stage where they buy Miller World to start creating content for Netflix, where they are going to just start making games, some of which may extend their properties. They will take advantage of that synergy with Stranger Things and other, I imagine they'll continue, but also to just be the Netflix of games in the way that they are the Netflix of TV shows right now by having great original shows, not necessarily relying on libraries. I totally agree. In fact, I couldn't agree more now after hearing about this acquisition. Keep in mind, Oxen Free 2, which is not actually published yet, will likely publish as a Netflix published title. Anything they're working on right now, they're not gonna go change and reskin to be oranges of the new black themed. They're gonna keep making the games they make. In some ways, this is like- It's like a Scorsese film coming out in the theaters with a Netflix thing. Exactly, it's not unlike Microsoft's thing with their acquisitions lately. They're buying a lot of developers, but they're sort of saying, all right, well now we own you, so we're gonna publish you and we're gonna leverage our platforms with you, but you're still gonna make the games that may just wanna buy you. And I think that's what this is. And I hope that's what this is, because that's what it needs to be for me to be on board. So I think it's gonna be interesting. See how that goes. Well, Anthony Colangelo from the main Engine Cutoff podcast, gives us some good information from time to time. And he sent us some information on a company called Link that can emulate a cell phone tower from a satellite providing satellite connectivity to an unmodified LTE phone. Link was recently successful going in reverse and sending data from a phone to a satellite connection and Anthony has more info. Anthony Colangelo back again from mainenginecutoff.com to follow up on the cell phone satellite connectivity story that I talked about a couple of weeks ago on the show. At the time I was putting some water on the rumors that the iPhone 13 would feature satellite connectivity. We now know that is the case, but at the time I also told you about a company called Link that is Link with a Y who is testing satellites in low Earth orbit that can communicate with unmodified cell phones. And I talked about the test that they ran in February of 2020 where they were able to send a text message to an Android phone on the Falcon Islands. But what we didn't talk about was the other direction, the cell phone communicating with the satellite. This was the big thing that they had not yet demonstrated at the time. Well, they just announced today that over the last several weeks with their fifth satellite, they've been testing exactly that. Cell phones being able to communicate through the satellite, send messages up to the satellites, rather than just receiving messages from their satellites. They were able to do these tests with several different cell phones in the United States, the United Kingdom and the Bahamas. They also say they were able to reject cell phones that were not communicating with the satellite in these tests, which is important to be able to figure out who is and who is not communicating with them at any given time. So they have completed their end-to-end flow here on their test satellites, their test cell phones. But once again, this is unmodified cell phones communicating to satellites in low earth orbit and back down again, the full flow that they need to be able to offer service. They've signed a couple of agreements with a couple of different carriers in a few countries at this point. They have five satellites on orbit right now, hoping to have about 10 by next year. But it's not until they have 100 satellites or more than that, where you'll be able to kind of rely on it in a more consistent manner every five to 20 minutes, you'll have connectivity. Up until that point, it's going to be pretty spotty, couple of connections a day, but still very good for use cases where you're out beyond connectivity. You need to get a signal out in an emergency. So Link is looking like a company that you should really be paying attention to over the next several years when it comes to your cell phone providing messages when you're over the horizon of any given tower. Thank you, Anthony. Good info and good breakdown of that story from that company. Again, you're not streaming video from this company. That's not what it's meant for. This is meant to say like, hey, you're in the middle of nowhere with connectivity. We'll basically be able to float a cell phone tower above you in space and you'll be able to make contact for a short period of time. So that's pretty good. Before we move on, you wanna expand your Spanish tech skills or maybe you speak Spanish? Well, NTX's Dan Campos is here to help. Hello, friends of DTNS. It is time for the World of the Day brought to you by Noticias de Tecnología Express. Today's word is artilugio. It can be translated as gadget or device and it usually refers to artifacts that have a certain level of complexity like the gadgets or electronic tools that we use today. Artilugio can also be used in an respective way if you want to imply that somebody is cheating by using their calculator instead of doing the math in their head. After all, what kind of tricker is that? You can learn this and more words by listening to Noticias de Tecnología Express available every Friday. Motherboard obtained documents and talked to some people who worked on Amazon's Astro Robot who didn't have entirely complimentary things to say about it. Motherboard, it took issue and it's right up with how Astro can register the faces of users in a home and try to identify them when interacting. And I've seen others taking issue with this as well. It's an optional security mode. Think what you want, but keep in mind this is not something that's always on or has to be on, you turn it on. And when you do turn it on, it causes Astro to investigate sounds or smoke or follow a person it doesn't recognize after 30 seconds of trying to recognize them. It'll then record audio and video which it uploads for users to review. It's a security camera basically. Users can turn Sentry Mode on or off by the app or voice. You can say, if you've got friends coming over like, hey, turn off Sentry Mode and it'll turn it off. The robot could also be sent to periodically patrol when in a way mode. That's when your phone is not detected as being at home. It goes and starts patrolling and looking for unknown people. It's meant to be used when you're not there, basically. One developer who worked on Astro though said, the person detection is unreliable at best making the in-home security proposition laughable. So it may not even be that useful. That same developer and another said the robot falls down stairs a lot. Amazon has indicated that Astro is best used on a single floor, though it says it can detect stairs and avoid them. So maybe they improved on it since the developer stopped, maybe not. That developer also claimed the periscope mast locked and broke on several test devices and that the facial recognition did not work well. Amazon's senior PR manager for devices and services Christy Schmidt told Motherboard, these characterizations of Astro's performance, mast and safety systems are simply inaccurate. Astro also makes a map of the home it operates in. That includes heat maps of highly trafficked areas where the robot might get stuck or run into humans. Motherboard was sort of taking issue with that saying like, oh, okay. So it's gonna track your behaviors in the home. Schmidt told Motherboard that Astro does quote, a lot of the data processing on the device including the images and raw sensor data it processes as it moves around your home. So that doesn't leave the device, it doesn't make it into an Amazon advertising database at least according to Schmidt and facial identification is also processed on the device if you're thinking about that. So I don't know. This makes me not worried about Astro being a spy in my home. I think people are overreacting a little bit in my own opinion about that. But it does make me wonder how useful the thing is gonna be cause I could buy that, given the state of Arumba's ability to detect stairs that Amazon might not have made great strides. Yeah, the Motherboard article reads, it could kind of read a couple of different ways. One is a disgruntled developer who thought the project was stupid and maybe there were decisions made that the developer wasn't happy about and says, you know, this is probably not a very good device anyway. But assuming that some of this has merit, it sounds to me like, you know, using this as a, I thought you'd appreciate that, using this as a security device when you're not home. So putting it in that century mode. I don't know how much security unless it was sort of, I don't know, half behind a curtain in the corner silently recording a thief. You know, it's pretty, it's gonna, it's the robot is going to announce itself pretty easily. If somebody is in there stealing your jewelry, it's not gonna be like, oh, that robot coming up to me and. Yeah, yeah. That's true. Although cameras act as a deterrent. So a rolling camera might be even more of a deterrent. I don't know. Or just something that you check out the front door or something. I don't know. This doesn't, it just doesn't, it seems like something that would be a great way, such as the Amazon drone we talked about yesterday that flies around inside your house. Something to just kind of check on stuff when you're not around. That I get. I also like the idea of personalization when you are home where it's like, I'm looking at you, Sarah. I know some of your preferences. And so I can customize what I spit back at you. You know, when you're trying to get information from me. That's all cool. I just don't, I don't know how much the complaining about falling downstairs. Yeah. Is any different than really any other device that shouldn't fall downstairs? What I, what I want out of this, if I wanted it all, and I'm not sure I do and not at that price anyway, but the future of this is like you mentioned, Sarah, something that can kind of take a look at things while I'm not around or whatever that may be if I'm out of town or whatever, but also tied into other devices that are enabled to work with Amazon services. So for example, to know that there's maybe a sudden increase in temperature in the house and it doesn't know why. And it's, it knows that because the thermostat told it that something's up. And so it notifies you. It doesn't need to tell Astro. Right. It doesn't. Well, that's true. See, this is the point is those things are already kind of telling my phone anyway, but I guess the robot could like go over to the other side of the room where the, where the furnace is. Take a, take a look for you and show you like, Hey, here's what's going on at the furnace. See anything weird? Yeah. Yeah. No, that's true. The idea of that less is a security thing and more is a way to spy on my dogs once they get used to it and don't try to chase it. But I bet there are unanticipated, non-creepy uses of it. I could see for instance, maybe saying, Hey, Astro, come here. I want to look at my schedule and it rolls over and looks at you or you're sitting in another room and you want to listen to music and then there's no echo in that room. You're like, Astro, come in a living room and play me some, my playlist. I want to hear that new Olivia Rodrigo song or whatever. It feels like a, it feels like a device that may have forgotten we have phones. You know what I mean? A little bit, like if I need to check the schedule. This way you don't always, people want to reduce their phone usage. This could, you know, it's ambient computing. That's what Amazon was talking about. But then you're like, pull your phone out. You're like, it's in my pocket, but the robot's favorite rooms down. It doesn't need to be in your pocket. Maybe you can, you don't have to carry it around. Oh, you'll always be. Yeah, go ahead. The main, well, the main problem is the price for me, but the second problem, you know, that perhaps the bigger problem is, this is clearly not something that can get downstairs. So you don't put the robot up on a shelf or tuck it away. It's kind of got to be, you know, in the have a direct line of wheel motion from wherever it kind of hangs out when you're not using it. And that requires space, not too much space, but you'd probably want to have it up against a wall or in a corner. And it's like, if you've got a house full of things, I don't have one corner to spare. You already have three vacuums over there that you don't use. I'm talking about myself there, but yeah. Maybe when it vacuums, then we'll, then we'll talk Amazon. All right. Let's get to this really interesting story. Top Astro on top of a Roomba. Yeah, exactly. The High Court of Australia ruled on September 8th that because media companies encourage comments on their Facebook posts that they publishers or the publishers of those comments must moderate them or be liable for the contents. CNN, now CNN has become the first U.S. media organization to restrict Australian users from accessing its Facebook pages. Australians will not be able to access Facebook pages from CNN, CNN International, or pages for individual shows from CNN. According to ComScore, CNN gets 2 million of its 166 million unique users from Australia, though it is unknown what percentage of those 2 million come through Facebook. The Wall Street Journal's source said CNN asked Facebook for the ability to disable comments on its pages in Australia, but Facebook said it could only help disable Australian comments on a post-by-post basis. CNN chose to disable all access rather than moderate comments on a post-by-post basis in the end. Yeah, I mean, this could be a little bit of sour grapes on CNN's part and it probably is a little bit. They probably can't help but be a little upset. Like, okay, fine, if you're going to do that, we just cut it off, cut off Australians altogether. A little bit of bite in your nose despite your face there. But on the other hand, Facebook doesn't make it easy for you to block a country from comments. You can turn off comments altogether for everybody in the world, or you can leave them on. And what Facebook's is saying is we're not going to make a special feature to block Australians on all your posts. We will try to help geo-restrict comments on a post-by-post basis. Although I wonder why. Wouldn't it be easier for Facebook to just build in some new functionality to give CNN a checkbox for that? I feel like that would be easier for Facebook, too. So I must be missing something. Well, then they could apply. You wouldn't be one... Well, it would kind of be a one-size-fits-all solution. So if it works for Facebook, or excuse me, for CNN, then pass it around to everybody else who wants to do this. Other media organizations that do Facebook posts in the country let them have the same option. I think they should do that. I hope they do. Sorry, Sarah, I cut you off. No, it's okay. At first, I kind of didn't understand this. I was like, hold on a second. It's sure it's like one little extra step, but every time CNN posts something, they could just say, disable comments, case-by-case. But I wasn't thinking about country-specific. That would be something that I would think Facebook would have to build internally. But then that would be a great thing. It would be a great thing for lots of publications, and it's going to be the only publication that runs into this. And Australia's not going to be the only country where this is a problem. I understand it's a complex thing, but yeah, I mean, besides disabling comments across the world, it seems like a tool that needs to be built. Yeah, VPNs are a whole... I guess I could see Facebook resisting it saying, but if we build this tool, then other countries will be more likely to put in new rules. So let's not make it easier for other countries to put in rules about who's responsible for comments. That's a good point. Make it seem as hard as you can for as long as you can. But with people being able to use VPNs, half the time, not half the time, but some percentage of the time, you're not going to know where they're actually logging in from, whether it's Australia or not. So stuff gets really in the weeds ultimately. And I don't know who that's on the most, but my guess is Facebook will resist, like Tom says, for those reasons. They'll resist doing much here, if I had to guess. Well, if you have any feedback for anything that we talk about on the show, anything we might talk about on a future show or anything in between, do send us an email, won't you? Feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com. We also want to thank a brand new boss, and that brand new boss's name is John Haslett. John just started backing us on Patreon. And we thank you, John. Yes, we do. See? We thank you. Oh, yes. Thanks John. Man, John, I just realized John started a brand new streak. John, John Haslett is the first of a brand new streak of new patrons, because we didn't have a new boss yesterday. So John got all the accolades to himself, but you could have them all to yourself tomorrow. Patreon.com slash DTNS. Indeed. Thanks also to Scott Johnson for being with us. Scott, how's it been since we saw you last? Well, it's been pretty good. I don't ever plug this particular show on here, but I'm going to do it today. I do a show on the weekends called Film Sack, and I've been doing it since 2009. Me and my three co-hosts, where we talk about usually older movies, movies that are good, movies that are bad, something in between, things we've never seen, stuff everybody's seen. It doesn't quite matter, but we love doing it. And this weekend, we're doing Alien 3 as we continue through our four Ripley's Canon of Alien movies. If that sounds interesting at all, or you want to check out our back catalog, it goes, like I said, back 11 years now, 12 years. Go check it out. That's over at FilmSack.com. And you can find me on Twitter at Scott Johnson. Excellent! Well, we're live on this show Monday through Friday, 4.30 p.m. Eastern, 2030 UTC. Find out more at DailyTechNewShow.com slash live and join us live if you can. We'll be back doing it all again tomorrow with Justin Robert Young. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at FrogPants.com. Hope you have enjoyed this program.