 Coming up on D T and S Metas first metaverse adjacent product opens up to everybody. The EU makes a decent attempt at defining gig workers and has Kickstarter kickstarted the decentralization wave. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, December 9th, 2021 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from Studio Redwood. I am Sarah Lane from Austin, Texas. I'm Justin Robert Yon and I'm the show's producer Roger Chang. There is more than just Daily Tech News show that you can dream of in your philosophy or get by becoming a patron. Get good day internet patreon.com slash D T and S big thanks to our top patrons, including Degracia a Daniels Irwin stir and Ken Hayes. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Don't press that button. The prisoner has a last minute reprieve probably not actually how it went. But the US Court of Appeals for the ninth circuit granted a stay of the order to allow developers to link to third party payments. The judge wrote that Apple's appeal raises serious questions on the merits of district courts determination indicating a possibility of overturning it. The stay of the original order does not apply to the requirement forcing Apple to allow communicating with customers through points of contact obtained voluntarily from customers through account registration within the app. Of course, this is just a stay on that part of the order. A final decision on it will wait for the full appeal to be heard, which could take more than a year. Instagram announced the return of the chronological feed coming early next year. That's not exactly how they described it though. Instagram comms on Twitter. No less tweeted. We've been experimenting with favorites away for you to decide whose posts you want to see higher up and we're working on another option to see posts from people you follow in chronological order. What a great new feature. Instagram removed the ability to browse a chronological feed back in 2016. Italian antitrust regulators find Amazon $1.2 billion for abusing market dominance by promoting fulfillment by Amazon or FBA, its own logistic service. The regulator claimed that companies had to use FBA to access key benefits like prime delivery and to participate in Black Friday sales, considered crucial for success on the Amazon marketplace. The company called the fine unjustified and disproportionate and will appeal. Amazon says third party sellers can use their seller for full prime service, which gives them access to prime without requiring FBA. Following up on Wednesday's note that Apple would announce its first mixed reality headset next year. Analyst Ming-Chi Quo strung out a few more details that he has learned. Quo sources tell him that Apple will use four sets of 3D sensors in the device for hand tracking and object detection. The sensors are expected to be higher quality than what's in the iPhone right now, the one that's used for face ID, among other things. The sensors will supposedly also do eye tracking, iris recognition, voice control, skin detection, expression detection and spatial detection. The upshot of this is if Quo is right, you won't need a controller. Oppo announced a foldable smartphone called the Oppo Find N. Looks similar to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold with a large internal screen and a smaller outer screen to use when the device is folded. Oppo's external screen looks a little more like a typical smartphone than the tall thin Fold 3 screen does. More details are expected when the Oppo Find N launches on December 15th. That'll be the second of Oppo's inno days where it will show off its concept devices like a phone with a retractable camera. Alright, let's talk about matter the smart home standard coming together to make smart devices interoperable among the members and the members include Google, Amazon, Apple and Samsung, among many others. So it looks likely to succeed. That's becoming a standard next year. The verge notes that matter in addition to making your smart lock work with your smart assistant and your smart garage door opener includes a protocol for casting to televisions. Right now, there are about five different main ways to cast depending on what devices you use. The two main ways that you're probably familiar with are Google Cast and Apple's Airplay. Ideally, a matter protocol would replace all those, but it may not. I'll explain. Amazon is leading the development of Matters TV protocols which kind of makes sense because Amazon doesn't have their own protocol unlike the rest of the big tech companies out there and the Amazon Smart Assistant is one of the main ways of interacting with TVs by voice. So it has invested interest in making this work easier. The Matter spec as it's being written supports casting from a matter client. So like your remote control, your smart speaker, your phone app, etc. to an app running on a television or a television connected streaming device that supports matter. Now, if your app is running on a device that doesn't support matter, it can also support URL based casting, which means there doesn't even need to be an app on the TV side. The TV just needs to support Dash or HLS DRM streams and most TVs and devices support at least one of those if not both. In addition to casting from your phone, the Matter protocol could let smart devices like your door lock or your doorbell send a notification to the TV without you having to set up communications between them. Even showing a video feed from your doorbell say it doesn't rely on the cloud, just your home network, Ethernet Wi-Fi or the thread protocol. The spec will need apps to build in the support first. That's the gating factor. On the TV side, it can work with URLs like I said, but it will work better if the TV is matter compliant. Samsung, TCL, Panasonic and LG are all involved with matters. That's good news, but Vizio, Sony, Toshiba and Roku are not. And keep in mind that a member company doesn't have to support every single part of matter on every device they make. So Apple and Google don't need to support the Matter TV casting protocol, but if Amazon does, you would still be able to cast from a phone running Prime Video, an app that Amazon makes, to the Prime Video app on an Apple TV or Google TV because they make the app on both ends. They use the Matter protocol there. I don't know how much this really matters to most people except in the fact that if it all worked out, they would no longer have to guess which button to tap to cast something from a phone to a TV, right? Yeah, and more specifically, it will be simpler and hopefully encourage people to use these devices interoperably more. What I think is remains to be seen is the rubber still has to hit the road on exactly how many of these features are going to be supported per device and that I think will be tied to how these companies want to differentiate their products and what features they do want to keep exclusive be they things that we already have or new features that they want to roll out. Yeah, in the case of Google and Apple, I can see where the company is. I mean, I don't know. I don't know how much these companies feel the need to participate. I know both companies have said, yes, we're happy to play along, you know, going forward. And the promise of matter is takes out the guesswork for the consumer. But like you said, Tom, there are already certain certain televisions that are matter compliant. Other companies have not gotten on board yet. And I think as the end user until this is just something where it's like, oh, something goes from one device. And I would like to it to show up on another device, you know, namely my television, at least for this conversation. If you have to think about it too much, then I don't think matters, you know, ready for prime time yet. Well, and I want to want to roll back here and point out that for smart home devices, Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung, they are all on board for putting matter compliant on their devices. So I don't think it's going to cause a problem for smart home stuff. Most most of these devices are going to say matter compliant, they're going to support matter on them. That's why they're all in this consortium. But when you're talking specifically about TV, it's not against the rules and I wouldn't be shocked if Apple's like, yeah, we're not going to put matter compliant on the Apple TV. Although there will be some pressure to be like, Hey, wouldn't you like Apple TV to be a smart home hub? You want it to be matter compliant? If you want it to be a smart home hub, maybe they do, maybe they don't. But that's where Apple might feel some pressure is like, gosh, yeah, we do want to be part of matter because I think matter will work for the vast majority of what you consider smart home devices. I think Google will probably make their devices matter compliant on the video streaming side. I could see Apple trying to figure out a way to be like, we'd rather just stick in the airplay universe because we just think it's better. We'll see. Hey, you want to know what else we're going to see? The fact that meta has opened its VR social platform horizon worlds to all quest users in the US and Canada 18 years or older. Users will need a Facebook account and they can then hang out with up to 20 people at a time. The focus is on social interactions, but it also includes a Roblox or Minecraft s element that lets users build things. It also has sub games like a battle royale shooter for building things. It offers something called script blocks, which are kind of low code ways to add interactions to objects. Meta makes the type of script blocks by request and plans to release a free library of them. Horizon also uses humans as guides in each world to help new users. It strikes me how much just a couple of years ago, what you just said Justin would make no sense. Not at all. That's my problem with this is it would make a lot of sense because VR chat was around. Like a lot of this stuff is not necessarily really even new. And for a company that wants to be charting the future of the metaverse, it strikes me and has struck me from their, from their announcement how limited their imagination is on this. Yeah, the thing that people seem to be reacting to is that script blocks thing you mentioned, like, oh, that's kind of cool. Like I can, I can build a leaderboard for my thing. And Roblox and, and Minecraft people are like, sure, cool, cool story, bro. I, but I don't skin on this idea. Yeah, I'm sure population one, which has been doing maybe because I haven't done it. I don't realize that it is so much better than what's in Roblox and Minecraft, which seems like it might be the case. But otherwise, yeah, it's like, you could do all this in second life. Just a little clunkier, right? Well, I mean, obviously there is an immersive factor with VR that, that does make things different. Like it is functionally different to play Dimeo than it is to play a tabletop game that would give you a lot of the same experience. It's, it's functionally different to play VR golf that VR mini golf than regular mini golf. That being said, the idea here is that meta wants to kind of bring this to the masses that they want to show that what, what the world of a virtual addendum to our physical domain can do. And maybe I'm being over critical and I'm being over cynical and I'm rolling my eyes when I don't need to say that this is a tepid first step, but it is a first step and this is what they want. This is what they envisioned. Their version of VR chat can be, despite, cause VR chat is admittedly a bit of a cesspool. Yeah, I, when this was something you had to get an invite for, I didn't try, I just didn't care. But now that it's open, I have precious few friends on the quest, but I do want to try it out. I'm not sure how much stuff I'm going to build. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it will end up being more fun than I think, but the social platform stuff I messed around with some of that, even just kind of like, I don't know, hanging out with strangers in a movie theater is weird, but, but still it's like, there's something there. We're just in the early days of that and, and meta isn't the only company to, to try it. But, and I know there are a lot of folks who say, well, you need a Facebook account, not going to be me. And that's fine. But, but I'll, I'll give it a shot. You know, we're back. Messages question and I will hang out with you. Good. In the next 12 months, will we have a DTNS pre-show meeting in Horizon worlds? I mean, now that you've asked, then yes. Yeah, that's, that's definitely what we need. I don't know if everybody in the pre-show meeting has a quest. So there might be an expensive. You should be able to call in, right? They did that in the, in the demo video. Oh, is that right? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe we'll just make a point of doing that just to, just to try it out. I think we're going to regret it. Kickstarter announced the development of an open source protocol that will essentially create a decentralized version of Kickstarter's core functionality, living on a public blockchain and enabling everyone, including competitors to Kickstarter into the crowdfunding space to use or build upon the technology. The protocol will be built on CELO, C-E-L-O, an open source blockchain using proof of stake. CELO claims to be carbon negative through its use of offsets. The new platform will have an independent development organization and governments lab, governance lab rather. Kickstarter will fund the development organization and also appoint their board. The governments lab will develop rules that Kickstarter and other, that Kickstarter and other platform operators could use for the protocol, as well as publish research on best practices. Wants to be pretty involved. So basically Kickstarter will open up the way that the platform works mechanically, but also the way that it handles the rules and processes for how you propose ideas, make decisions and resolve conflict. Maybe one of those or both will be a decentralized autonomous organization or a DAO. Kickstarter expects to move its own service to the new platform in 2022, though the user experience should stay the same, which was my first question was like, okay, I have never run my own Kickstarter campaign, but I know plenty of people who have, I've certainly been involved in, you know, the crowdfunding part of it. How does this change that experience? Yeah. This isn't designed to directly change Kickstarter. It's designed to make it so that Kickstarter can improve itself maybe faster in ways it wouldn't have otherwise. So as a user of Kickstarter, you would notice in like, wow, Kickstarter got really good, really fast. All those things I used to complain about are gone. If this were to work in an ideal world, which I'm guessing it won't, but that, you know, that's kind of the idea is that it just rising tide lifts all boats. Let's decentralize this. And so our moderation for lack of a better word, you know, what projects we allow, what our rules are, that gets better because we have an open and governance model. There are more platforms out there driving innovation in the open source platform. That helps Kickstarter and Kickstarter specializes itself by saying the service we provide to you as a seller or buyer is what distinguishes us from the others. The actual mechanics and the governance become something that's just done by the community in general. And I've been waiting for this trend to catch on. We've seen inklings of it with Twitter's Blue Sky, with Mastodon, with all kinds of projects out there. But Kickstarter saying we're doing it and we're doing it next year or early next year means this is the next step you would need to see to see a wave of decentralization. We've had a wave of centralization since the late 90s, right? Everything's been getting more and more centralized. This is the pendulum starting to maybe swing back. This is what you would have to look for. So I it's too early to say this will be the thing that makes it swing back. But but this is a sign that the test of that is beginning. Yeah. And there's not a ton of risk for Kickstarter to create a lot of smaller, lesser known competitors for themselves because they have an almost, you know, a Coke or Kleenex like dominance in their genre. The kickstarting is almost synonymous with the concept of crowdfunding. What this will do is effectively bring an element of verifiability and trust that I don't think Kickstarter has a problem with now per se, but now would remove any doubt going forward and would allow people to see, OK, exactly in each moment. How much came in? Where did it come from? And there is no server that that can be fudged even internally within Kickstarter. And the governance lab is is got echoes of that that Facebook oversight board, right? Where it's like we are not the ones deciding who gets to be on the platform and not. We've got a wider group governing this for all crowdfunding platforms as part of this open source organization. I mean, it would have to catch on and use it when Indiegogo size up for this. Y'all maybe start to be a believer, but yeah, I would love if every major tech company had its own autonomous court system that constantly argued with the company itself like Facebook's oversight board did. I think that would be healthy and good. Folks, we love getting ideas from you. We do it every day by looking at our subreddit. It's actually a place where I in recently answered a question where somebody was confused about why they were getting certain episodes in a feed. And I explained like that is a problem with that feed. That's not the way it's supposed to work. Go on our subreddit. Let us know what you want to hear us talk about on the show. It's dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. The European Commission proposed a directive which could lead to gig workers across the European Union. You know, your Uber's your delivery drivers gaining legal protections of the class called workers in the EU, which is slightly different class than employees in the United States. Workers have rights to a minimum wage, paid leave, unemployment and illness benefits, pensions and collective bargaining, which is different employees have all those rights and some other rights as well. The commission also aims to increase transparency over how employees are managed by algorithm, including giving workers the rights to contest algorithm based decisions. So transparency, this is how the algorithm makes its decision and some kind of mechanism for you to challenge that if you need to. The key here is to lay out criteria to determine when a platform is simply an intermediary like indeed, right? They're not employing the contractors. They're just helping contractors find jobs. And when it's acting more like an employer, which is Uber and Deliveroo, where they kind of tell you where to go and what to do. The criteria in the directive include determining or setting limits on pay. If you do that, you might be a worker rules on appearance telling you what you can and can't wear rules on conduct towards the customer. Always greet them with this phrase. We're not talking about health and safety here. We're talking about things outside of that supervising and verifying the quality of the work, restricting freedom to choose working hours and choose absences, refusing tasks, whether you can or can't do that without penalty and whether you can use a subcontractor or not. Something Uber doesn't want you to do. Restricting the ability to engage directly with customers outside the platform is another big one. If a platform meets at least two of those criteria, then it would be presumed to be an employer rather than an intermediary and people engaged on that platform would have the status of worker in the EU. Platforms would have a chance to rebut the determination for their platform, but the burden of proof would be on them, not the state, to show that one of those criteria was misapplied. The proposal is now going to be debated by the European Parliament and the European Council and then would have to be adopted as a law by individual member states. So we're talking a couple of years before this really goes into effect. I got to say this is the first rule that I look at and say, ah, yes, this says there is a legitimate contractor marketplace out there. Yeah, but there's also this new thing with platforms and it tries to define it by the platform instead of trying to classify workers based on what the worker is doing. Yeah, you know, most of my EU takes Boyle down to Boyle. Do they like rules? And I believe that they like rules so much that they create even more rules, but I do think that this ruling, if you are going to have a ton of rules on employment no matter what, then it does make sense to subdivide this pie a little more thin and saying not only are gig workers separate from a salaried employee, but even further that there are other criteria that need to be met on whether or not you are effectively being, you are getting gigs out of this machine or if you are being connected with somebody that would then give you a gig and at that point that entity would take upon the responsibility of any of these burdens. I think it makes sense in a world where you already have a lot of obligations, rules and promises that are being made from the government to the worker. I don't know. I mean, when I look at the criteria and I know that two of the criteria if they indeed are so, then sure, you've got a worker rather than an intermediary situation. It seems like there wouldn't be very many intermediaries under these criteria. Well, I think that's the key and this is what I like about it is it starts by saying if you're a platform, it doesn't start by saying if you're a worker because and I'm taking this personally now in California, they created a law that defined employees based on certain criteria aimed at Uber that Uber then went and got California to put an amendment, you know, a referendum that exempted them from that rule, leaving me subject to that rule, but not Uber and I'm not a platform. So what I love about this is it starts by saying you're a platform connecting people. Great. Are you a marketplace for contractors? Or are you really actually employing people and let's this is the criteria? I think you're right. I think it leaves indeed and you know, fiver and those exempt because they're not telling you how to do the work but then says, yeah, everybody else, all those other gig workers, those are workers. Yeah, I mean, again, we get into I want the conversation that people take away from this to not be about thinking about the laws that people that the EU applies to these employment classifications because that's another separate conversation about you know, whether that help or hurts business, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is about the classification itself and I do agree it is a reasonable way to define it at least in terms of you know, a gig machine versus a place where you find gigs. Hey, you know, for years is company Microsoft. You ever heard of them? They've been pushing notices through its network. When it detects that somebody is using an unauthorized copy of their popular product office warnings of security risks that pirated copies can have encouraging them to get a legitimate copy. But now Microsoft is almost bribing the pirates pushing a message with a link to get 50% off a Microsoft 365 subscription. That brings it to $35 a year or $50 a year with a family subscription. Get off the streets, kids. Get legit. No street drugs here. Now with Microsoft. My first my first reaction to this was like town. I wish I didn't already have a subscription. I'd go pirate a copy so I can get 50% off. Yeah. You know, the big thing about this is is I don't this is not a move that they would have ever made in a pre subscription model. And I wouldn't be shocked if you saw things like this from other heavily pirated software like like Photoshop and stuff like that. That also have moved to subscription models because they're probably going to make money more money off you if you even tried to go legit and then cut it out of your life then they would have ever trying to sell you a one time version of this product that then they were going to offer a new version and they were going to bug you to upgrade that one. And they don't take the PR hit of a bunch of people who are like, I didn't realize I bought a pirated copy. I was defrauded by someone and then Microsoft shut me off and I which is why they don't just shut them off now. Yeah, they feel like it's it's better for them as a company to just try to convert people because a lot of the people using pirated companies probably don't realize that they're pirated copies. So I mean a lot. And a lot of them do but then what are you going to do? Shut them off and take them to court. That's a game of whacking hole. So yeah, I mean it's the same thing with like password sharing on on these other subscription services. It's like if you don't come in knowing that that's the case then you're just going to piss off a lot of people. Well, if you are going to be in the Kentucky area of the US it's a big area. But if you're looking for something to do while you're there Chris Christensen has a tour idea for you automotive tech enthusiasts. This is Chris Christensen from amateur traveler with another tech in travel minute. Going to talk about a place to go again. If you like tech, you should do an auto factory tour. It is really fascinating. You'd see how automobiles are built these days with all of the automation and the robots that are involved in that. I've done a couple of them. But my favorite by far is the Corvette factory tour in Bowling Green, Kentucky. If you've really got a lot of money you can build your own engine and drive your car right off the factory floor and be the first one to put the key in. Or you can just go on the tour. There's also a privately run Corvette museum pretty much across the street from the factory that you can visit as well. I'm Chris Christensen from amateur traveler. Guys going to get your Corvette at the factory. I mean, I've built my own engine but I don't think I can swing it for Corvette. All right, let's check out the mailbag. This one comes in from Russell. Russell's always got really good on the ground stories for us. The latest on my nightly neighborhood wanderings Russell says I came across this new store front for something called fridge no more which looks to be another entry into the 15 minute delivery space. Russell also attached a photo for you watching the video feed of this. Russell says it was interesting from what I could see it was a waiting space in the front with bike delivery people kind of hanging out and then a room and back with a bunch of shelves. It was in a pretty pricey building. So your conversation about how these startups are burning cash makes sense. Thanks as always for the great work and I'm looking forward to the year and shows. I kind of first of all, thank you Russell for always like being out and about in New York capture and cool stuff for us like this. Fridge no more is such a pitch such a Manhattan pitch of like do you do you reclaim that space? Don't even need a fridge anymore. You just dial it up from us. Ice cream will bring it to you before it melts. I totally see that resonating with people. I doubt you want to really get rid of your fridge though. Yeah, I don't think it's I don't think it's it's ditch your fridge just yet when it comes to fridge no more. In fact, if I were to take my bets, I think that you're probably the fate of that company will be just losing the fridge from their name. Or I don't know. I mean, sure. This is this is New York. We're talking about where for a lot of people, space is extremely limited. The idea that sure, there's certain things I need in my fridge, like, you know, my creamer for my coffee and, you know, a couple of things. If you could make it a lot smaller, the things that you actually do need in your space because fridge no more or a company like it is going to provide all the other stuff that you just want on demand. That's it could work. Certain markets much more than others. You're right. You could doubt you could possibly like I'm kind of with with just it on this, but you could possibly make this work for like, oh, you don't need to keep things in the fridge so you can have a smaller fridge. But yeah, I'm not I'm not dialing up fridge no more in the morning to get the just the amount of milk I want to put in my coffee. So I mean, here's the thing. I don't I drink my coffee black when I say that, but still even if but if I did all of these companies think that these logistics are just so easy and they're so brilliant. They're the ones who are going to crack it and there are logistics people. I know this audience is smart and there are logistics people in this audience that like me are having a hearty belly laugh as they lemming like go tumbling off the cliff. I will say if fridge no more is in a is in a pricey building my guess is they are available for the people in that pricey building because you know what? You could you can get it up to him fast because you're right there and if they can afford to live there they can afford to pay your premium prices. Only no fridgers in the building. It's like sleep no more but just all fridges. Ooh, sleep no more for fridges. Yeah, we're very off on guard. If you have a few if you're on the ground you're hitting the pavement and you see something that we might like on the show you want to take a photo like Russell did please do so or if you have any feedback for us at all anything that we talk about on the show or might talk about in a future show we'd like to hear it feedback at daily tech news show dot com is where to send those emails. We also have a brand new boss and we'd like to thank that brand new boss Bayu Esmara who just started back in us on Patreon. Thank you Bayu. You're the best. They get this applause all to themselves today. That's right. Yep. Standing out for Bayu. Done. Thank you. Thank you for slipping in there under the under the wire too. Yeah, exactly. Thanks to Justin Robert Young as well. Justin, you are a busy gent. What have you been up to? Oh, well, you know me. Jentin' around town busy as always. The Politics, Politics, Politics show is live tomorrow. And I know that the supply chain is something that's been talked about a lot on this program. Friend of not only me, but also everybody else in the show. Brian Brushwood comes on to give a real inside perspective of what it's like to run a web store, specifically one that does a lot of bespoke stuff where a lot of supply chain issues have pretty much crushed his business to the tune of 45% down year on year. Here about all of that in intricate detail, that kind of stuff interests you on tomorrow's episode of Politics, Politics, Politics. Yeah, if you liked Brian on the show Monday talking about that on DTNS, he's going to get into it even deeper with Justin. So it's it's the perfect companion to that appearance. Well, we are live on this show Monday through Friday 4 30 p.m. Eastern 2130 UTC. Did you know? Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Join us if you can. We're back tomorrow with Shannon Morse and Len Pearl. Talk to you then.