 Coming up on Daily Tech News show why the Navy is moving away from touchscreens why Chrome's incognito mode still can be detected and Using a bog to create electricity This is the Daily Tech news for Monday August 12th 2019 in Los Angeles on top merit and from studio feline. I'm Sarah Lane And I'm the shows producer Roger Chang We were just talking about luggage and TSA security and Roger wearing a bathrobe to his own wedding If you want to know more about that well means become a patron of patreon.com Dtns and get the wider show where we talk about technology and more called good day internet That's patreon.com slash dts. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Oh Come on India's reliance industries announced a partnership with Microsoft Azure Reliance's at Geo will build data centers using Azure to provide things like natural language Understandings for all Indian languages and dialects, which is no small feat. There are many of them Geo will also provide free connectivity and cloud infrastructure to startups as well as plans for small and medium businesses For as little as 1500 rupees. That's about 21 dollars and five cents per month researchers at checkpoint software demonstrated using the picture transfer protocol over Wi-Fi or USB to install ransomware That's right ransomware on a Canon 80 D DSLR and encrypt the images on your SD card to prevent access Counterpoint and Canon have been working on a patch since May the researchers said that any cameras using the picture transfer protocol could be Vulnerable to a similar attack After Tyler Blevins aka ninja left twitch to move to mixer Twitch was using his old twitch channel to promote other fortnight players on twitch this weekend a Pornography channel managed to get itself at the top of twitch's fortnight recommendations and then got promoted to ninjas old channel Which as you can imagine caused some drama twitch reverted the page to a standard archival mode Which CEO Emmett shear said that the offending channel had been suspended and apologized directly to ninja You know sometimes when you get trolly you get trolled Sam some share of the European smartphone market rose from thirty three point nine percent last year to forty point six percent mostly on Increased sales of mid-range phones like the galaxy a 50 one of their top three sellers in Europe shall me also grew in Europe by 50 percent to nine point six percent of the market Everybody else had a harder time And as promised Huawei launched a device running its new hung meng or harmony OS the honor vision smart TV The 55 inch TV starts at three thousand seven hundred ninety-nine one or about us five hundred thirty eight All right, let's talk a little more about image sensor company Samsung has a new product Samsung it's got a new title every week Samsung unveiled the ISO sell bright HMX smartphone camera sensor Which offers up to 108 megapixels of resolution? That's a lot the sensor was developed with Xiaomi and is one of the largest smartphone camera sensors at about three quarters of an inch By default the sensor will use pixel binning combining four pixels into one to capture high quality 27 megapixel images It's 27 megapixel images this helps with low light performance The sensor also has smart ISO which adjusts the ISO levels to compensate for bright or dim environments The sensor is also capable of capturing 6k video at 30 frames per second and production of the new sensor is expected to begin This month Yeah 108 megapixel is going to be in all the headlines but the fact that you're getting better low light and light sensitive performance from from the pixels being used to create a 27 megapixel image is I think Going to have more of an impact if you get a phone with this sensor in it would be interesting to see if that smart ISO post processing Ends up being as good as it looks but that that could be pretty helpful as well You know coming at this from the positive end you're like hey This is a really big sensor for a smartphone which can do some pretty high quality image capture But but Roger when you compare this to actual camera sensors not that impressive is it It's it's it's up there with upper tier Point and shoots but not premium point and shoot So you're you're definitely getting a very large sensor for a smartphone But it is kind of on the small it is definitely on the small end For cameras. I mean It's roughly 33 millimeters And diagonally and comparatively like if you dealt with a like a Canon APSC which is a crop sensor that you're dealing with 329 millimeters So you might be asking well, what's the big deal? The big deal is that in order to get more sensitivity without having a lot of noise that kind of grain Artifacting that you get with your picture You need a larger sensor or you need to turn into a lot of post processing or software processed to kind of Eliminate a lot of that noise in the image before it gets to you the the end user So not every phone's going to be able to take advantage of this large of a sensor or is going to want to based on its design But but it would improve The quality of pictures in a lot of smartphones. No Yeah, definitely And you know it depends on how it's implemented, but it does have the the great potential to improve You know the the the shots that you take with your phone When you're you know for a night on the town or if you're at like in a special occasion Or you just pull it out because you see something really awesome But again, I think a lot of the the feature set will be in the post processing of the image Well, and that's why they made such a big deal about that smart iso Being built in that means, you know, wall way does a lot of post processing. You know, so does android. So does the iphone But having it built in on the sensor, you know takes takes a little bit of the pressure It takes the pressure off, but it also guaranteed at least Ideally it should guarantee you the same image quality would regardless of what manufacturer implements that Yeah, right camera in the phone You know somebody who used to I used to really be into digital cameras before our phones were all our digital cameras You know, I remember when 16 megapixels was like, whoa, that is so cool Like that's the you know, it's so small And there are so many proprietary names for cool sensors You know the size is size and megapixels are megapixels, but I I I I can't be the only one who at this point is like if it takes good pictures in low light great Yeah, and that's what they're that that's what they're aiming at They're aiming for the consumer who doesn't want to think about specs who doesn't want to think about You know, how how many lumens I can get how dark it they just want to be able to press the button They get a picture that they can share with friends and families like hey Look, we have a birthday photo with grandma, you know at the night at chevies or cheeto chee chees went out of business Uh, pick your favorite restaurant that your family hangs out at Um, and that's all they care about and if it does that they're happy All right, folks touch screens away and by way, I mean away from our boats Uh, the us navy announced it will revert destroyers from touch screens to mechanical throttle and helm control systems Over the next 18 to 24 months This is because a crash off the coast of singapore between a livery and oil tanker in the uss john s mccain On august 21st 2017 killed 10 sailors and injured 48 and a comprehensive review by the navy found that the crew Had placed the touch screens on that destroyer in backup manual mode removing computer assisted help Because it gave them a quote more direct form of communication between steering and the ssc The the the touch screen console it also meant however that any crew member at another station could take over steering Causing control to shift in this case from the lee helm to aft steering to the helm and back to the aft steering And that's when they lost control of the destroyer the ntsb found that crews preferred mechanical controls because quote they provide both immediate and tactile feedback to the operator Uh, meaning they think they would have caught this situation a lot faster if they had had that tactile feedback Following safety testing the first new throttles are scheduled to be installed by summer 2020 The reports did find that fatigue of the crew played a part of this as well as uh in insufficient training on this particular touch screen console um this sounds this sounds like a really Kind of an object lesson and bad user interface. Yeah well and inadequate training uh, you know if if if there was a manual mode that it shouldn't have been in But but was because it was easier at the time when everything was going well That's you know, that's that's insufficient training to at least they should have known how to recover and what the risks of using that manual mode were Roger you were saying you found something that uh implied that these you worked differently on The interfaces aren't the same across all the ships and so Uh from what I've from I understand like there was really no guidance for for the contractors when they designed these like All all the interfaces like you know in star trek All the helms kind of look the same. They have bars that that navigate and not the rest So that was left up to the contractors and so you basically as as sarah was saying there was Not enough training to teach them on this specific system If there was a more standardized said then you could kind of train them in the process as they were up crewing Instead of just having it specific to the ship because there's enough ship specific systems that you have to learn Um, also, you know, if it's too complicated and I know this from very bad car dashes When you're tired things that normally you think would be somewhere Uh that aren't there really frustrates you and an emergency can be incredibly dangerous Yeah, you almost have to revert to muscle memory sometimes, you know the way that you wouldn't you wouldn't want your touch screen to be your brake pedal Yeah, imagine if someone flipped the brake and the gas pedal on your car You know, I mean like it's right, right It's not, you know, it's a little simplistic but You learn certain things and they're in specific spots and ideally they would have kind of Yeah, I mean driving in a country that drives on the opposite side of the road of your country While you're jet lagged Is is can be frightening right because everything's in the wrong place and you're tired Uh, I say that from experience driving in australia last year. So yeah, this is this this is no joke Uh, I think it I I think it means that touch screens need more work on their design Uh before they are re-implemented I don't know that it means that mechanical controls will Continue to always be preferential Uh, it it just means that you you need to work a lot harder to make them foolproof literally Yeah, I guess my my overall feeling is The training could have been better, but hey if we're talking about destroyer ships Well, give give give the uh, give them what they want. Yeah, it's a big ship. Does it doesn't move quick? Yeah, right. It's just make it safe. That's what what it takes go for it at the def con voting village DARPA showed off an open-source secure voting machine being designed by organ-based verifiable systems firm Geloy the chips are being designed as open hardware with no proprietary components in order to make them the basis to a secure Hardware platform which would be useful for iot The DARPA machines ran on virtualized hardware this year with a basic interface provided by secure voting firm voting works The machine prints out selections with a qr code for a cryptographic validity check And DARPA plans to complete systems access at def con in 2020 The system offers a code repository at secure hardware.org and plans a small test board as well Yeah, so usually the voting village and this year's no exception Is a place where folks can hack away on election machines to try to find vulnerabilities so they can be fixed in the future and This one has had the opportunity for people to look for software bugs In fact, they had an open web server hidden in there on purpose Because they said hey, we want to see if people can find it and when they do We think we walled off the rest of the system So even when they find that server they can't do damage, but we want to know if that's that's for sure or not So this is all good stuff. This is making these voting machines more secure. I think even beyond that The idea of having a platform That is getting this kind of treatment and this kind of focus in the voting village But could also provide more secure hardware for internet of things For instance, there was a recent vulnerability in one of the internet of things operating systems that You just have to wait for your iot device maker to fix Otherwise you are really at risk and it's impossible for you to really know for sure The way things are you want some hardware security in these things and that could be a huge benefit for iot At least I think so Agreed. Yeah Looking forward to finding out What this looks like when they bring the actual hardware platform next year So try and help us remember to check in and Shannon Morse our guest tomorrow Who is that tefcon is going to give us a great roundup of all the other stuff that she saw and observed there as well In chrome 76 google fixed chromes incognito mode. We talked about this on the show before if you missed it Previously the chrome file system api was disabled in incognito mode So if a site wanted to be able to tell if you were in incognito mode They would look for that api if it wasn't there they would assume you're in incognito mode Well to get around this chrome 76 now leaves the chrome file system api enabled So that if you're checking for the file system, it'll be there and you can't tell if someone's an incognito mode or not from that However to preserve privacy because you don't want that file system sitting on a hard drive afterwards The file system is using a transient memory file system that's cleared when the session is closed If you know what a ram disc is it's kind of like that uh however This memory-based transient system leads to two new ways to detect incognito users security researcher vikas mishra Found that incognito allocates a maximum of 120 megabytes of memory to the transient file system And that's something that would normally only happen If the device storage was less than 2.4 gigabytes because it's usually based on a scale of relative to what you have on your machine so Knowing that most devices don't have 2.4 gigabytes of device storage. They figured. Okay. That's an easy way to tell That's 120 megabytes probably incognito mode another method discovered by researcher jesse lee Measures the speed of writing to the file system because writing to a transient file system in memory is a lot faster than writing to a hard drive That's why ram discs are are so cool because you can write and read from them real fast Microsoft edge developer eric lorence notes the new york times seems to already be using Mishra's code that detects the 120 megabyte file To detect incognito that you can see it in the in the code inspector Google told bleeping computer it will quote work to remedy any other current or future means of incognito mode detection And i'm sure the new york times and others with paywalls will work to immediately figure out a new way to tell if you're in incognito Yeah, I mean the you mentioned paywalls That's the main reason that a publisher or anybody running a site would care whether you're in incognito mode or not, right? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, there's all kinds of other like nefarious reasons that people targeting you might might have uh if they want to Build up a dossier of your illicit activities that you're putting in incognito mode, I guess But yeah, the most common reason That this is gonna you're gonna run into this is trying to get around a paywall So it's not necessarily the best most ethical reason But there is the principle of when you're in incognito mode, you don't want anybody to be able to tell that that's part of the Reason you're using incognito mode. You're incognito supposedly it's supposed to protect your privacy from anything out there Good or bad, right? That's that's kind of the point of it So this is this is difficult because yes, it's not ethical to use it to get around a paywall But it also is is meant to protect you from legitimate threats and right now there are two ways to get around that I I know folks who are in incognito mode 100 of the time. Yeah, just because they they're like, yeah, I don't need Like if it's an option, why wouldn't I just always use it? You know, it's not 100 full proof. But why why not? It's right there. It's just a little just a little switch It'll make your life a little less Practical because you know, there's certain things that make life easier when when a website knows who you are and can He's in all that sort of thing. But right If that's an option for a reason. Yeah, exactly Sony announced an updated version of its xav a x 5000 which is an in-car receiver This one lets drivers at a 9.95 inch floating touchscreen display doesn't actually float, but it can be adjusted It needs a single din to install din refers to about a two inch by eight inch opening that radios fit into So the opening needs to be a lot smaller than what the screen will actually be Kind of floats out in front of it. Yeah, exactly It's sort of like a you know, a tv mount that can tilt and and and go up and down The display can tilt and adjust the height and depth that features support for carplay and android auto through usb Hands-free voice control bluetooth connectivity and in future updates will support Abalta's web link platform as well. The display will be available in the u.s. In december for 600 dollars That's a pretty penny But it's it's cheaper than some of the comparable models of these sorts of things on the carfront Bosch is developing 3d imaging to future versions of its in-car digital displays using passive 3d tech That won't require you to wear glasses or require you as a driver to look from one specific spot So you're you know, it's not tracking your eyesight basically, uh, which is actually extremely cool Like like lean down and oh now I see the 3d, right? Yeah, right. We're you know with with my own car. I've got a uh heads-up display But if I deviate from where my car seat is just a little bit. I can't see my miles per hour You know, so it's it's all very it's well there There've been some tv's with the glasses free 3d where it's like you have to sit in right in front of it Otherwise it doesn't work exactly so alerts navigation Parking cameras can all take advantage of this technology when it is available And we don't have any word on consumer availability at this time You know, this kind of reminds me of that story you did a couple of weeks ago about how a lot of accents Involving automobiles drivers and their phone wasn't because There was the phone usage just because they were taking their eyes off the road And if you know if you can implement a system that kept people's eyeballs Straightforward and still be able to alert them That would be great because a lot of touchscreen still require you to crank your head over And then you got to mess with your you know mess with it a little bit with your hand in order to get To where you want and that takes sure that what this 3d display does Well, I mean because it's still down in the dash to your right But the way I the way I understood it is that when you looked at it It wasn't you didn't need you could you being 3d you would be able to see it slightly Not you didn't have to can't can't your head Maybe I'm misunderstanding the story then because I thought it was it was designed so that it could present the 3d projection a little bit Yeah, it's not like a heads up display. Oh, no. Yeah I think what's good about it is you don't have to point your head in the right direction to see the 3d Right, and so that's right. Okay, so when you know So it can do some 3d stuff and you don't have to like position yourself see it, but you're still looking down It's not it's not in your field of vision. It's like, okay So my heads up display will I mean there's some customization But it's like I got my mouse per hour and it'll also flash things like school crossing Signs just you know if I'm not aware that there's a school coming up. It's like 25 miles per hour You know tops and but that's something that I can only see in one place I could be like briefly looking at you know my Passengers side rear view mirror and I could see that alert because that's where I'm looking at that particular moment That's pretty cool. Well the the the 3d display doesn't do that does it? I think it just it just points right from your your console down down to your right if I'm looking at This display properly Well, no, I mean you that's the whole point is that you don't have to be looking in one specific place Well, no, I that means I don't have to be the 3d can I can see the 3d on the screen from any angle It doesn't mean that the 3d shows up anywhere. I look oh man, really. Yeah Sorry Yeah, I can do things like, uh, you know show you the map that you're looking at In 3d so that you can see clearly like oh, it's not this turn. It's the next one stuff like that Yeah, and and well part of the stuff I think part of what's going off is because some of the photos actually show the dash Like the the instrument dash and not just the screen is also being 3d So yeah, I guess you could put it in the in the rear view mirror You could put it put it in a three in a heads up display and it would be a little nicer and pop out to you Um, I mean, you know, it's better than one of those paintings where you actually had to start it for a couple of A couple of seconds to actually see the effect But uh, I think uh, I think 3d is more than just You can set up a system of alerts where depending on on how 3d it is It's more important and less important easier to catch your attention They also say parking cameras could give you a more accurate 3d view as you're as you're backing into a space That kind of stuff. So yeah, the the 3d stuff is interesting that Probably not as practical or as every day interesting as the sony Thing where you can get an aftermarket big big old touchscreen, which is I mean so many Did there at least four or five companies that have something similar but not like oem style where Hey, this is all the stuff my friend has and I didn't need to buy a new car Yeah All right, and gadget has an article on using bacteria to generate electricity Microorganisms called geobacter purify water by consuming waste and then excrete electrons Which can be harvested as energy Geobacter grow in mud and biologist designer and artist theresa van dongen found a very well thriving ecosystem of geobacter in a water filled bomb crater in the dutch countryside And has created an installation called mud well Van dongen has placed a telescope like device with one end in the water And the other end out where a viewer can look through it and see a light display oscillate Powered by the geobacter now she's worked with geobacter before but she usually needs to give it vinegar for fuel Whereas the mud well has enough geobacter growing that it's self-sustaining Wow First of all vinegar for fuel. Okay. I got a lot of that in my kitchen But this is this is so incredibly cool as as not just you know some sort of art installation, but but actual You know thinking ahead I don't know the all of the mud that we avoid for the most part for this to actually be contributing to electricity In some form that would would serve a lot of folks at some points is is really cool Yeah, I and you know, I love this idea that an art institute. It's being it's being funded as an art installation Is bringing to light? Ha ha The idea that hey, you know what, you know, we've known that geobacter exists And we've known that that they provide a little bit of power But we've never really seen it at scale and she has worked with it enough that she's like this is the the the biggest Electrical output of any geobacter I've ever worked with you know the fact that I don't have to give it any fuel Uh, it means that it's self-sustaining and it you know granted I don't know how practical it is to go around and you know dig out bomb crater size holes and fill them up with water Hoping a bog of geobacter, you know trying to see to what geobacter is Uh, but it's certainly worth investigation and it's nice to see Art bringing our attention to something that then can be investigated for that Yeah, I mean there's plenty of low land areas where you would think that this kind of micro Microorganism would be thriving in other parts of the world as well Yeah, and We're always looking for new battery tech too, right? Like who knows if if maybe after some some more research is applied to geobacter And I'm not trying to apply that there isn't a lot of research on geobacter going on right now But maybe if it gets a few more eyes on it, we start to figure out Uh, and how to make biological batteries and then suddenly those those battery issues we have with lithium ion batteries Which we've been stuck with for decades now Um Finally gets replaced. Maybe not, you know, maybe this isn't it either But I'm always fascinated by that and if nothing else it's it's a way to show that there There are a lot more power sources out there to be explored than just the typical solar Uh coal oil, etc And wind I don't I don't know this is going to work for me though. We don't get enough water It's probably to stick with solar ship. Yeah We don't have enough bogs in LA. We're bog deficient. Yes. We are Well, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes Be sure to subscribe to daily tech headlines.com Hey, thanks to everybody who participates in our subreddit you help us choose our stories every day Keep it up submit stories and vote on them at daily tech news show dot reddit.com We're also on facebook join our group if you haven't already facebook.com slash groups slash daily tech news show All right, let's move on to chris christensen the amateur traveler has some fairly big news for those of us who fly southwest And also like a good deal. This is chris christensen from amateur traveler with another tech in travel minute I don't know if you know, but not all budget airlines are listed in the online search engines like expedia The one in the u.s. That is most noticeably missing is southwest airlines Southwest has never allowed their flights to be listed and as someone who used to be the director of engineering at trip advisor flights Let me tell you that this announcement that they're now going to let them be listed On two different back end systems is a hell freezes over kind of moment You probably haven't heard of travel port in amadeus, but they're used to the back end of some of the online flight search engines This will happen in 2020 and it means that as you're searching for your flight You'll find southwest flights along with the other flights And that will give you a better booking experience. I'm chris christensen from amateur traveler Yeah, I've been back in the day every flight search. I did was Everything and then southwest. Yeah. Yeah, and then it was expedia and southwest or kayak and south Whatever I was using at the time, right? Yeah, still is to a large extent Although southwest doesn't always fly to the places that I need to direct And I I like to you know as I get older put a little more emphasis on the direct flight But this is great to know this is this like he said is a hell freezes over a minute, right? Yeah It's I I it had been such a part of my looking at flight experience I I stopped feeling inconvenienced by it. It was like, oh, yeah, and let's also look at southwest. Yeah, it just becomes a muscle Yeah, all right. Let's check out the mailbag Let's do it make an australia weighed in on our friday discussion with raj de ute on satellite internet in australia What's good? What isn't good and mix says for him? It's not a speed issue so much as data caps and restricted timing mix says satellite broadband prices are high In comparison to fixed wired or wireless nbn a small amount of monthly data is allocated Then is then further split into peak and off peak off peak gets the lion's share of the allotted data But that's from like 1 a.m. In the morning to 7 a.m. In the morning $135 a month for 150 gigabytes 130 gigabytes of that is off peak 15 gigabytes at peak So 15 gigabytes to do homework or to use social media or to watch netflix and other streaming It's just not possible prior to sky muster nix says being launched We had nbm satellite on even worse plans the 80 gigabytes per month for $90 That's what he paid with peak and off peak times It was stressful having to watch the data limits every day to make sure the kids could do their homework Prior to that australia had what was called abg australian broadband guarantee again satellite based and only about 30 gigabytes per month for $80 Mick finally says there are only really two options even though he lives five kilometers outside the center of his nearest town Satellites or faking our address so we can get a 4g modem We have to use external antennas for only available in certain locations very limiting nix says We finally feel like we can use the internet for fun now with this new plan for 500 gigabytes per month of data Which was a recent upgrade. Yeah, no matter what you talk about there's always somebody left out So Mick thank you for for sharing that that perspective with us appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely also. Thanks to all of our listeners without you We would be nothing Yes, exactly. Uh, in fact, I want to meet some of you if you're going to be in Dublin Saturday august 17th. That's this saturday at 6 p.m. Dublin time Come on by laguna laguna is right in front of the mayor square nci stop on the lewis red line I can go to laguna.ie if you want to find out more information on how to find them But thanks to paolo for helping me figure this out and Let us know feedback at daily tech news show dot com if you plan to come Because we want to get an estimated count. I know of a couple people who are coming for sure But yeah, it's it's going to be a lot of fun And it also means that I will not be on daily tech news show But for starting tomorrow for a week and well two weeks basically, uh, I'll be back on on the 26th So, yeah, uh, I'm going to be going to world con for sword and laser covering the the world con Which is where they give the hugo awards for science fiction books out And then I'm taking a little vacation and then I'm coming back. So Do come meet me in Dublin again saturday august 17th at 6 p.m. And everybody else Like sarah said, thank you for supporting us. We have, uh, A very small independent operation here, but we're able to do bigger and bigger things like those bonus episodes We did this weekend about amazon ring and their issues about libra and the reality behind it because you are our bosses Uh, and you were the people we're answerable to so if that makes sense to you come and support us at patreon.com Slash dtns if you're excited for sarah and roger and all our fabulous contributors to Keep the ship afloat while tom is on vacation and doing his meetups Well, write us our email addresses feedback at daily tech news show dot com We're also live monday through friday at 4 30 p.m. Eastern 2030 utc find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live Back tomorrow. We'll be shannon morris with them. I'll talk to you on the 26th This show is part of the frog pants network Get more at frog pants dot com The club hopes you have enjoyed this program