 Coming up on DTNS will Microsoft by Discord the coming wave of government cryptocurrency and Peter Wells tells us when searching online is good for your mental health. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, March 23rd, 2021 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane. I'm Roger Chang, the Shoes producer. And as I just mentioned, freelance journalist Peter Wells is back with us. Welcome back, Peter. Thank you, Tom. Thank you so much for getting up early for us again and bringing us your story to talk about. It's awesome. Oh, thank you. Yeah, it was a fun one to write. We were just chatting with Peter and Amos and Roger about windowing of movies and the fact that Black Widow is going to come to Disney Plus in July and what that means. If you want that wider conversation, get our expanded show, Good Day Internet. Become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Microsoft released critical updates to fix for vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange servers on March 2nd. Despite Microsoft urging immediate attention to these zero day vulnerabilities, FSECure reports that only about half of those visible exchange servers on the internet have been patched and criminals are attacking tens of thousands of them per day. The UK's National Cyber Security Center recommends those who cannot patch right now should block untrusted connections to port 442 and require access through VPN. Microsoft has an automatic mitigation tool for unpatched servers available in Defender Antivirus. Facebook announced it will hold a one day virtual version of its developers conference on June 2nd. It'll be called F8 Refresh. Just keep mashing that F8 key. Isn't F5? Anyway, VP of Platform Partnerships, Konstantinos Papa Militiatis will deliver the opening presentation. So no keynote from CEO Mark Zuckerberg is planned. Niantic announced Monday it's partnering with Nintendo to develop a new title based on the company's Peekman franchise. The app will be developed in Niantic's Tokyo office and will launch later this year, including AR gameplay activities to encourage walking and make walking more delightful. Oh, finally, someone disrupted walking. Just get on the walk. It's great. China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the state administration for market regulation and a few other agencies have jointly issued new rules defining what personal information is considered necessary for mobile apps and therefore can be required from users in order for an app to function. Necessary data includes things like your address for delivery service. They can make you give that because you can get your delivery otherwise or a phone number and location for ride hailing. Gaming and education apps may only require a phone number, which is used as verification of identity in China. And some apps like news or your browser or your weather may not require any information in order to work. The new rules go into effect in China May 1st. Amazon announced a new Montreal based game studio Tuesday with plans to create original triple A games with an initial focus on a new online multiplayer title. This is Amazon's fourth studio and run by Ubisoft's Tom Clancy Rainbow Six Siege team. All right, let's talk about the OnePlus phone. OnePlus announced the 6.55 inch one plus nine. There's also a bigger 6.7 inch one plus nine pro and a more budget oriented 6.55 inch one plus nine are the nine pro and the nine run on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 and the nine runs on the 870. All three models have in-screen fingerprint readers and a base level 128 gigabytes of storage. The main differentiation in this round of one plus phones are the Hasselbad cameras. The pro has a 48 megapixel Sony IMX 789 main sensor, an ultra wide 50 megapixel Sony sensor and a 3.3 X telephoto camera. There's also a fourth monochrome camera that helps improve black and white shots. The nine is almost the same as the pro just doesn't have the telephoto lens, but it does have the monochrome one. Both models get Hasselbad pro mode with pro control over fine tuning, so you can adjust ISO, focus, exposure time, white balance and more. You can also shoot in 12-bit RAW. Most of the time, if you do RAW on a phone, it's 10-bit. The nine are, if you're interested in the budget model, is only coming to Asian markets. So it's selling for 39,999 rupees in India, for instance. That's about 550 bucks. The one plus nine starts at $729 U.S. and the pro at $1,069 pre-orders start March 26th, shipping April 2nd. One plus also announced its watch, the one plus watch has a round screen, 46 millimeters, you can get in silver or black. One to two weeks on a charge, depending on how heavy you use it, IP68 water resistance. It connects through Wi-Fi or paired to your phone, no cellular connection. Although it can store up to 500 songs, so you can be listening to music while you run without having to carry your phone. It can monitor sleep stress, blood oxygen saturation and heart rate, runs on its own operating system, just like a Fitbit, and pairs with an Android app, with an iOS app promised to come sometime in the future. It can also work as a remote if you happen to have a one plus TV and can even sense when you've fallen asleep because it's got sleep tracking and then turn off your one plus TV. Available April 14th for $159. So one plus getting expensive, still a lower price for a flagship phone, but this is not the, you know, super mid-range priced one plus anymore. And they have a nice round watch, too. Well, and I think that the camera stuff is part of the reason that they can, well, perhaps charge what they're charging it and people will buy it. This is a very impressive spec, especially just for the pro model. This is, I mean, we're getting to the point where now, sure, there are other phones that put a lot of emphasis on the camera. But this is a very, very nice device. Yeah, the one thing I would caution on is the use of the word hassle blood. They've licensed their name in a couple of different mobile phones over the years, and it's never really improved the picture quality. I feel that they're a little bit loosey-goosey when it comes to giving their name away to sell phones. But yeah, I mean, on paper, everything looks amazing here. Yeah, and one plus, what I will add to all of this is one plus is now, I think, a player in the flagship market right alongside Samsung, Google, Apple, et cetera. I think these phones are good enough. Like I said, they're still relatively affordable, $729 for one plus nine is not bad. But that's not far off what you'd pay for the equivalent Galaxy phone or even an iPhone. The one plus watch, I mean, I'm not in the market for a watch right now, but it is right again in that perfect price point where it's not cheap, but it's not crazy expensive. And it seems to do all the things that, for example, my Fitbit Versa 2 does. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see what the uptick will be on a proprietary OS. All right, VentureBeat sources say that Discord has signed an exclusive acquisition discussion with an unnamed company and Bloomberg sources say that that company is Microsoft. Supposedly, the talks value Discord at around $10 billion. Bloomberg reports that no deal is imminent with one source saying that Discord is still more likely to go public than be acquired at all. Yeah, my rational read of this is Discord wants to go public. But to dot their I's and cross their T's, they want a really good valuation. And so they're going through due diligence of like, OK, if we were to get acquired, who would buy us and how much would they pay? And if that turns out to be a better deal than going public, we intend to follow through on that. But let's go through that entire process to find out. My guess is they will still end up staying independent and going public. Yeah, but who else would buy them? I mean, I think maybe Amazon, if they bought them and rolled them into Twitch, could be a good solution. But I do think that Microsoft is a good kind of parent company for Discord. They've tended to be very hands off in their acquisitions recently. So GitHub, they've left the community to itself. And yeah, so this was one of those stories where at first I was like, oh, I don't like the sound of that. But then I thought, well, you know, this is a new Microsoft. I don't necessarily, I wouldn't be too worried about this. Yeah, Microsoft seemed like, I'd never really thought about who's going to buy Discord until, you know, 24 hours ago. But once I thought about it, I was like, yeah, Microsoft makes sense. But there's Microsoft teams. So sure, those two could work in tandem. They're not exactly the same platform. But there's some crossover that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Amazon is another company. I mean, Google, the list is quite short for who would actually buy Discord if it were to come to that. Yeah, Apple's got the money, but they wouldn't do it. Google's got the money. Could buy it for Stadia, maybe. Facebook has the money. I don't think they want to get into buying anything right now with all of the antitrust investigation. So that really does leave Amazon and Microsoft. And Microsoft would buy it to put into the Xbox. This is not going into productivity. This is going in with Minecraft and Xbox and Game Studios and all that, I'm guessing. And no one uses Teams as a social platform. There's, you know, I'm on a couple of different Discord's and Slack's that a community run. I've never seen anyone say, hey, join me on my community teams. Like, so that product is so different to Discord that I think that there is room for Microsoft to have both. And, you know, I see people in our chat throw in shade on Skype and deservedly so, but they've also done a really good job with things like LinkedIn and Minecraft. And so I would guess out of all the companies we've talked about who could afford a $10 billion value-aid company, Microsoft might be one of the better stewards there. I wouldn't be shattered if that happened. I'm still hoping and I'm guessing that Discord just wants to stay independent, at least for now. We shall see. Bloomberg sources previously said a new switch was coming this holiday season that would have a 7-inch, 720p OLED screen and output at 4K. Now we know a little more about how that output would work. A new report from a Bloomberg source says Nintendo will use an NVIDIA GPU that features DLSS, Deep Learning Super Sampling. That you may recognize from NVIDIA's RTX 20 series, GPUs. DLSS is great at upscaling, though it can also output 4K native as well. Games have to have code that supports DLSS in order for it to work. So it probably would only work on newer games. It has to have some code in there. But when it does, Roger Chang, our producer, was pointing out in our pre-show today, like sometimes it looks better than native 4K. Like it really does work well. The new switch would also include, according to Bloomberg source, an upgraded CPU and some more RAM. You gave me a heart attack there, Tom. I'm so excited for a new switch, a new 4K switch. And at the start of that story, I thought you were going to say that it's not coming at the end of the year. I'm really excited because I've only got a switch light, and I miss being able to plug it into the TV and play it with my kids. So yeah, bring on that 4K switch. I want to play me some 4K Zelda. Linked 4K, absolutely. Yeah, I think this is, I mean, obviously this is still leaks. This is rumors. It's not even rumors. It's leaks, but it's from reliable sources. So it does feel like we're definitely going to get a new Nintendo model. It's going to be capable of 4K. I think it's fascinating to see the Nvidia GPU talk in here because that's got everybody guessing, like, okay, is this going to be an RTX 20? It makes sense that it would be DLSS because then you can get a more power efficient GPU in there that doesn't have to do full load 4K, but it can do the upsampling. That way, Nintendo can keep battery life and power consumption and cost of goods down. Yeah, and the original switch shipped with off the shelf Nvidia products in it. So again, that all makes sense that Nintendo aren't the kind of company or at least modern Nintendo don't seem to be the company that wants to reinvent the wheel every time. And that's one of the ways it keeps the cost of its hardware down over years is it really has embraced that idea of just buying what's off the shelf to keep those prices down. It's going to have a cute name too. It's not going to be the Switch 4K. It's going to be like the Switch Ultra or Pro. Everyone has Pro these days. Yeah. Switch Plus. No, Nintendo never goes with the expected though. So I don't know. Send us your ideas. Switch Cute. Switch Cute. Switch Super Cute. What do you want to hear us talk about on the show? One way to let us know is in our subreddit. You can submit stories and vote on them at DailyTechNewShow.Reddit.com. Well, Peter Wells, we're so happy to have you on the show today, especially because you just wrote a column for the Sydney Morning Herald called How Searching for Help Online Can Be Healthy. And I think we all agree that the last year has affected us all sometimes not in the greatest of ways. Mental health is a big concern. So if you want to help yourself, do you search online? Well, aren't you supposed to talk to a doctor? Isn't it kind of dangerous to self-diagnose? But Peter, you found some recommendations that searching for help with mental health online isn't always a bad idea. And you just have to go in certain directions, huh? Yeah. Yeah, it's really important to kind of evaluate the sources. Like anything on the internet, if you're... There's going to be fantastic advice out there. And there's also going to be really, really terrible advice. So the trick is to figure out how to tell those two bits of advice apart. I was reluctant to kind of name any sources as being... You can trust everything that these people say because I'm not a doctor myself. So I felt very uncomfortable offering that advice. But I guess the rule of thumb that I found in the last week looking at this stuff is just ignore the stuff that says that, hey, we're going to cure you of your anxiety or your depression by the time you get to the end of this YouTube clip or whatever it is. Anything that says that it's going to be an easy fix, I think starts to feel a little bit kind of self-help guru-y and not so valuable. But I found that there were some really, really great sources. And to be honest, this all did come about because Google did an update to their search product where if you do a search on depression in both the United States and in Australia, you will be presented with this nine-question questionnaire which is used to screen potential patients at psychology departments around the world to see kind of where you fit on the depression and anxiety scale. And so it's a really useful thing that Google are throwing in there to say, okay, these are the symptoms you've put in. Here is where we think whether you need to speak to someone else. And I think that's the key thing is the speaking to someone else has to be the next step. You don't want to spend weeks, months on end just Googling symptoms and thinking, oh, I've got that. Oh, I've got that as well. Because actually, I spoke to some therapists as I was writing this story. And they said that in first year, every psychologist gets to the end of first year and thinks that they have every disorder that they studied that year. Because you can see yourself in anything, really. So there is definitely a danger in spending too much time kind of researching. But I think the nice thing about some of these tools out there is there is still that stigma, there is still that anxiety about going to seek mental health help. And so at least when you're looking on your phone or listening to a podcast or watching a YouTube video, you're doing that privately. No one else has to know. And if that's the first steps that you take to get some help, then that's fantastic. Yeah, I think one of the things that I thought was interesting is, like you said, even with physical ailments, you've got a sore arm. You start searching sore arm. And the next thing, you're certain you have some wild, rare disease that you'd never heard of before because you're searching. But with mental health issues particularly, taking the step to even search or to talk to someone is important itself. Like that is helpful in itself to kind of getting you out of the issue and starting to deal with whatever your issue is and helps you to feel less stigmatized. So like, oh, maybe I shouldn't complain or maybe I don't have a problem. Yeah, totally, totally. And the other thing I found really interesting was I jumped into so many groups on Facebook to see what kind of advice was out there. And it's not going to surprise you to hear that you get a really mixed bag of advice on Facebook. And so, you know, I've said in the article something like, in the same way, I wouldn't necessarily trust vaccination information I found on a Facebook group. I wouldn't also necessarily trust any of the recommendations I would see in some of these self-help kind of or support groups that I found on Facebook. But the very nature of just joining into one of those groups and seeing that you're not alone in any of the anxiety or depression that you might be feeling because this has been a really trying year. As you said, Sarah, that this, it's not surprising if you're doing it tough at the moment and there is absolutely no shame in looking at that, admitting that and seeking help. And yeah, whatever you can do to take that next step, I think is probably a very, very positive thing. I know one thing that I always do for myself just because we do so much news gathering, specifically tech news gathering, you know, for the show and some of the other podcasts that we all participated in and produce. But it's, I try to think of it the same way. You know, it's like my shoulder hurts. My shoulder still hurts. I'm a little worried about my shoulder. Well, let me go online and see if I can get, you know, some help from an expert. Well, does the shoulder expert who's telling me what I should do have credentials? Do they work for a publication that I like and trust? You know, is there a history of information in the past that has been helpful? It's like, it's all kind of the same thing. And it's easy to say, oh, we'll just do it that way. But I think for a lot of folks, it's an ongoing process. Totally, totally. And, you know, the final thing I would say is just psychology and therapists can seem very, very expensive, but I didn't include this in the story because it had to be for print, so it had to be shortened. But you go to psychology in your state and do a Google search there. You'll find there are always kind of free clinics or free support out there. And quite often universities will have low cost people that you can see as well. So, you know, explore what is out there in the physical world as well as online, but online is a great place to start. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will publish their research on prototypes for a digital dollar platform coming up in this July. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said such a project could help Americans who don't have access to the banking system. This is a way to make digital payments work for the unbanked. Several banks, however, are lobbying against this effort, while companies like Visa and MasterCard want to make sure any new currency works on their networks. They're fine with it as long as they get a cut. And lawmakers, the U.S. Treasury and the Fed, have not approved any rollout for digital currency or determined how it would exist with the global payments network, so any implementation would be years away. But multiple countries are investigating similar systems. The Bahamas launched its sand dollar last year. That's an actual cryptocurrency. Brazil's digital real is expected to start circulating in 2022. Sweden is piloting an e-crona. China is piloting its digital yuan. These efforts take advantage of cryptocurrencies technology, things like Bitcoin, in not needing a complex behind-the-scenes transaction that you currently need for digital banking. That includes things like instant settlement. Right now, if you transfer between your banks, you know it really takes three days. They have ways of faking it, but the actual transaction takes three days. This would speed that up. There would be fewer opportunities for fraud because there would be fewer chains in the system and public ledgers like blockchains are hard to alter. But it would not have the uncertainties of cryptocurrencies value because it would be backed by a government just like paper money. The MIT Boston Fed project will include at least two prototypes that show how to move, store, and settle transactions. And when they release them in July, everyone will be able to look and see and build on that code. It's just meant to show what's possible. It's not trying to do a recommendation of policy. I welcome the e-dollar, whatever we end up calling it in the future. As far as folks who are unbanked and need more options, this just makes sense. It just makes sense to me. And the whole sort of like, yeah, you got to wait three days. That's how banking works. And the fact that some banks are pushing back on the idea of this because, of course, it's not surprising. This is where we are going in the future. Some countries are farther ahead of it than others. But this is what's happening, everybody. Get on board. Yeah, it felt like this was always the end game for the Bitcoin idea. Because the idea of Bitcoin of like, why does it make sense that we value things based on gold in a vault is on paper, something that does make a lot of sense. But Bitcoin always felt like something that was, I don't know. I mean, I've been proven wrong for the last decade. But it felt like a flash in the pan. And I really wish when I was listening to Buzz Out Loud, back in the day, I should have bought some of that Bitcoin that you guys kept talking about. But, well, here we are today. Research scientist Janelle Shane used OpenAI's language generator, GPT3, to generate pickup lines. Yes, that kind of pickup line for people looking for love using DaVinci, Ada, and Babbage models. Shane previously created pickup lines by training a neural net on a host of human pend lines that already existed. Of the latest experiment, Shane says, quote, I've resisted trying neural net pickup lines again because more competent means more human-like, which in this case means worse. Or would the neural nets might even copy existing human pickup from internet lists, which would also be terrible? Human-written pickup lines are that bad. But, by the way, one of the pickup lines poetically read, this was by the DaVinci model, the AI model, was, I will briefly summarize the plot of Back to the Future 2 for you. DaVinci had some of my favorites. Like, you have the most beautiful fangs I've ever seen. It sounds like Shane is nicking the AI here. So I think actually Shane is just trying to pick up the AI. Yeah, there's, yeah. I mean, it's all a little bit silly. Okay, Pete, tell me if this would work. DaVinci sidles up to you at the bar and says, I once worked with a guy that looked just like you. He was a normal human with a family. Are you a normal human with a family? Well, you struck out there, buddy. How about, do you like dot, dot, dot pancakes? Well, yeah, no, okay, you help me there. I mean, that might work on me. I'd be like, aw, I do. That was maybe the most effective one. Kind of? Yeah. Your eyes are like two rainbows and a rainbow of eyes. That's a cure. I mean, the joke here is that, I mean, pick-up plans are so silly. Sure, they're, you know, they very wildly, but the, the AI version, someone was like, I want to summarize the plot of Back to the Future. I'd be like, all right, I'm listening. Try it. Yeah, let's see, you know, are you good at this? You know, we might go out for pancakes afterwards. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. This one comes from, oh, who does it come from? I forgot. Didn't put that in my notes. I will check in a second, but was talking about, if we had heard about the PACT Act, P-A-C-T Act, this poorly acronymed, because there are others, Bill, is another set of proposed changes to CDC 230, sponsored by the Thune, by Thune. He's a Republican in South Dakota and shots a Democrat in Hawaii. Not read the bill, but one that I write up that I saw, by the way, this comes from Mike. Thank you, Mike, for showing yourself in real time in the spreadsheet. Good stuff. Mike says, I haven't read the bill, but one write up that I did see was it was good only if you graded on a curve comparing it to other bills that wanted to gut the law. It requires companies to have acceptable use policies, human manned 800 numbers, a site for tracking disputes, and a whole lot of other administrative burden, as well as requirements to take down court-directed illegal content within 24 hours and 14-day responses to UAP violations. Mike also links us to more about the PACT Act, which we will have in our show notes. Thanks for a heads up on that. I know there's a lot of efforts like this out there, but we appreciate Mike putting this on our radar. Indeed we do. And if you have anything that you'd like to be on our radar, questions, comments, all the good stuff, feedback at dailytechnewshow.com is where to send those emails, and we thank you in advance. Also shout out to patrons at our master and grand master levels. Today they include Brad, Ken Hayes, and Tony Glass. We also got some brand new bosses. Shonda Benak, Sean Sartain, and Christian Sauchler all just started backing us on Patreon. So thank you to our new bosses. You're the best. Also thanks to Peter Wells for being back with us today and telling us a little bit more about what you're up to. Where can people find the rest of your work? Follow me on Twitter, Peter Wells, or check out the help desk wherever you get your podcast. It's a daily tech podcast, but it's short and right to the point. So get on in. Excellent. Hey patrons, did you know that your ad-free RSS feed from Patreon can have just DTNS or just GDI, or both? 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