 Coming up on DTNS, Allison Sheridan shares her experience with Tesla's full self driving beta. Microsoft finishes a bad week on a high note and what the tears of joy emoji says about all of us. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, December 3rd, 2021 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane and this is Allison Sheridan from the Podfeat podcast. Draw on the top tech stories from Cleveland. I'm Len Peralta. And I'm Roger Chang, the show's producer. We were just talking about glow in the dark dogs on a good day internet. If you'd like that conversation and all the other things we talk about, get patreon.com slash DTNS. Big thanks to our top patrons, including Carmine Bailey, Vince Power and John and Becky Johnston. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. DD Global plans to withdraw from the New York Stock Exchange. The company debuted on the exchange back in June, but Chinese regulators quickly delisted its apps and suspended user registration soon after the company announced on its Weibo account. It will start preparations for listing in Hong Kong. You just got here, DD, but, you know, I guess they're in the transportation business. They move around. Storing data in DNA has been appealing because of its extremely high density and durability researchers at the University of Washington's Molecular Information Systems Laboratory, along with some folks from Microsoft, published a paper detailing the first nanoscale DNA storage writer, which could help bring usable write speeds to DNA storage. This is one of those, you know, 10 years down the road. It's going to be amazing. And this is a big step forward. The DNA storage writer in the paper could write data a thousand times more tightly than previous writers. And the next step is to embed digital logic in the chip to let individual control of millions of electrode spots happen to write kilobytes per second of data in DNA. So we still got a ways to go, but they're making progress. According to documents seen by Bloomberg News, a draft EU proposal would presume that any worker whose job is controlled by a digital platform is an employee. Obviously, this has been a hot topic over the last couple of years. Platforms would have a legal obligation to prove otherwise. The rules are expected to be made public next week and would further require support from EU countries and the European Parliament before becoming law. Interesting way of approaching that law instead of just throwing all freelancers in the same bucket. Twitter is getting headlines for removing 2,160 accounts that were fighting against allegations of human right abuses in China. But those accounts had no followers and pretty much no effect. Getting less attention. But in the same announcement where 268 accounts in Tanzania, who would find content posted by human rights groups there, then copy it and publish it on an external website, but set the date to be before the original tweet. Then go to Twitter, submit a copyright violation complaint to get the human rights content taken down. Quite a lot of stuff to go through. That's a special kind of evil. It is, really, yeah. Twitter also removed accounts for misinformation in Mexico, Russia, Uganda and Venezuela. Esports commenter Ludwig R. Ren made a splash in his community when he moved from Twitch to YouTube gaming on December 1st. December 1st. He made another splash when his live stream was suspended December 2nd. Ludwig believes the takedown happened because he was reviewing the 50 most popular vintage videos on YouTube. Probably some, some copyright issues there. And the content ID seems to have triggered shortly after playing a few seconds of baby shark. I'm sorry in advance for even saying that out loud. He expects to remove live streaming on Saturday. Resume, you mean, right? Oh, you know, they should take down baby shark. She said, that's your solution. Don't take down Ludwig. Take down baby shark. All right. Let's talk a little more about NVIDIA. Does not look like it's going to get armed. In September, 2020, NVIDIA announced a deal to acquire chip design maker arm. That deal isn't done yet. And at this point, looks like it may not happen at all. Thursday, the United States Federal Trade Commission voted four to nothing across party lines. Let that second to file suit in its administrative court to block NVIDIA's proposed acquisition of arm. The suit alleges that the deal would give NVIDIA anti-competitive control of chip technology and designs needed for competing chips. The FTC believes that would then result in higher prices for consumers, reduced choice and stifle innovation in new technologies for things like data centers and cars. Even if the FTC's court finds in favor of NVIDIA, that that decision isn't coming soon. And so the merger isn't happening soon. The administrative trial is scheduled for May 10th. Administrative law judges are independent decision makers who hear FTC complaints first, but they're within the FTC. Their decisions can only be appealed to the full FTC panel first, then they go on to the U.S. Circuit Court and enter the more traditional court system. So this could go on for a while. The Wall Street Journal points out that chip company mergers are not popular these days. The U.S. Blocked Broadcoms acquisition of Qualcomm back in 2018, same year China nixed Qualcomm's own acquisition of NXP Semiconductor. NVIDIA is based in the U.S. ARM is based in England. It's owned by Japan Softbank, but it's based in England. And they are under investigation around the world. The UK launched an investigation of the deal in November on competition and national security grounds. We mentioned that on the show then. The EU began an investigation in October of whether the merger would restrict access to ARM's technology. And China is also reviewing the deal. So ARM does the architecture and the design of the architecture, they don't actually make any chips. So what do you picture the concern is for NVIDIA owning the architecture? Yeah, I think that's kind of fundamental to the concern, right? If people don't realize what Allison's referring to is that when you talk about an ARM chip, it's never really an ARM chip. It's a Qualcomm chip or it's an Apple chip or it's a Samsung chip. But it's using ARM's technology, might be its design, it might just be some of its architecture, but it's made by somebody else. It's even likely to be partially designed by somebody else. Apple just kind of licensed the instruction set from ARM and then designs the chip itself. So that's what they're concerned about, Allison, is this is the design Switzerland of the chip world. And ARM designs are on the ascendancy. Intel is kind of, you know, there's a question about how much how much it can grow in the future. So if NVIDIA were to control ARM and NVIDIA also makes chips itself, then there's a concern that, well, now it's no longer Switzerland and playing equally with everybody, it might prefer NVIDIA. So anybody who makes chips wouldn't be allowed to buy it, probably. Well, you know, I mean, who knows? We don't even know if NVIDIA will be allowed. Maybe they will be. Maybe maybe they'll win their court case. But that if you make chips, it sounds like you're going to have a harder time getting approval the way all of this is going. I mean, my initial question when the story broke yesterday afternoon after our show yesterday was sort of like, I don't personally care if NVIDIA buys ARM or not. I don't need that to be a win for NVIDIA. I don't work there. But OK, if that is something that can't be done, is that a bigger win for consumers? You know, as a consumer, I want the best chip architecture I can get. Yeah, you know, and I'm I there are certain companies that I that I buy from more than others. But there are other companies who are also benefiting from ARM architecture. So is this I mean, who's besides NVIDIA itself, who is rooting for NVIDIA NVIDIA here? Well, SoftBank is for sure. OK, yes, everybody everybody on that side. No, that's a good point. NVIDIA would argue that ARM will do better as a part of NVIDIA because NVIDIA can make sure to fund them properly. NVIDIA is doing great as a company. And ARM can only get better with NVIDIA's resources behind it. And NVIDIA has said over and over, we promise to continue to offer ARM licenses on the same level that they're offered now. If not better, they say they have no intention of shutting it off. And this is a change in the regulatory environment. In the past, it would have been, well, let's get that in writing NVIDIA. Let's make sure you can't shut people out from ARM. But then we'll let you have it. Now it seems like the regulatory environment worldwide, not just in the United States is, you know what? If there's a hint that even though you say you won't, you could. We might not allow it. And that could be bad for ARM if ARM can't survive on its own. If ARM is not able to make a go of it on its own, which, you know, the fact that SoftBank wants to get rid of it means that SoftBank doesn't see it as a particularly lucrative part of its strategy right now. I don't think ARM is suffering or anything. But, you know, that that can happen where if you don't get sold, then you start to have problems because you don't have the resources. Well, let's talk about watches, shall we? Smartwatches, in fact. Insider has seen documents and talked to sources who say that Google plans to launch a smartwatch next year. You might have a smartwatch. You might not, but Google wants to get in the game. Codenamed Rohan, the watches and testing with Google employees has a round face with no physical bezel and health and fitness sensors. It's unknown where what the watch is going to be eventually called, but it's unlikely to be branded as a Fitbit as it's expected to cost more and compete a little bit more directly with the Apple Watch. So the Fitbit version of Google's business kind of a different category, supposedly, than this new watch. In addition to the watch, Google is reportedly working on Project Nightlight, which would integrate Fitbit OS features into Wear OS at launch of this new watch. This also follows emerging Samsung's Tizen into Wear OS 3. Google announced its first wearable OS back in 2014. The company's been at this for some time, but it hasn't made its own smartwatch until possibly soon. I love this idea. Pretty idea, isn't it? Yeah. Well, yeah. As much as I try to claim that I think the Apple Watch is pretty, I really think round watches are prettier than square watches. But I keep thinking about that when Google first started making the Pixel, it was kind of like, okay, this is a reference design. It's boring. It's like, okay, whatever. But the sexy stuff will be made by other people. But now the Google Pixel's are the sexy phones, right? So maybe Google has got its game on in design and can really bring a smartwatch that's pretty to the Android ecosystem. I also, I feel like, I wear a Fitbit watch. I've never had an Apple Watch, but I feel like unless you're really paying attention, you kind of glance at somebody's wrist and you go, oh, they have that smart watch of some kind. But they all mostly look the same unless you're really showing somebody some great thing that your watch can do perhaps that theirs can't. The idea that there are more form factors that people will love, especially if they just never got on the smartphone train before, like you said, Allison, the idea of a round watch. I mean, that sounds like a small detail. And to me, I'm like, that kind of seems weird to display information because you're better in a square sense. But again, all depends on the person who's wearing it. Lots of people have tried the round watch for smartwatches. Obviously, tried it for all kinds of watches, but lots of people have tried to do the smartwatch round and it just never seems to stick. And the fact that Apple, the people who focus like design first, then will fit function into it, haven't done it, makes me think that this is tricky. Maybe Google's cracked it though. Maybe that's why we're seeing this leak here because they're so proud that they just can't help talking even off the record about it. Well, the other thing is all of the round watches that I've looked at are like the size of a dinner plate. They're huge, they're bulky, they're thick, they're giant. So if they can make one that's sleek and round, that's asking a lot of stuff. And presents information properly, yeah. Yeah, I think we might have to give up on that part. The information presenting thing is like, that's just what gets me every time. And I'm not saying we can't crack the code, but if Allison sends me a text and it's sort of a paragraph and I'm reading that on the watch, you don't want it to be round, that make any sense. Yeah, that's a good point. Allison, that's a good comparison. Of course, the watch face I have is a round watch face, except then I've got complications tucked in the four corners to make sure I get as many on as possible. So yeah, maybe we'll find out. But I like the idea of Google getting into it, that's cool. And they're definitely proud to talk about it because the Verge was able to get direct source information as well after the insider came out. But somebody's out there like, I can't go on the record, but let me tell you, oh my gosh, we're so excited about Project Rohan or whatever. Well, the whole idea of Google saying, okay, well, we've acquired Fitbit and that is, I mean, I'm a Fitbit user. There are many of us. And that's great. And that is now our IP, but we want our new flagship smart watch to be something else entirely. It's very Google of them. Yeah, well, they haven't had a flagship of their own. They've only made the operating system. But like if you think of it like, compare it to like the Pixel line, it's, you know, there's some similarities there. Yeah, that's what I think is interesting is that they're finally going to do that for the watch. They finally feel confident. They almost did it. And then they were like, nah, this isn't very good. We'll just let LG sell this on their own. We're not gonna put our name on it. So they must be really proud this time. Yes, round watch users, I see you in the Twitch chat. Send us your thoughts, the feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. Windows 11 has required you to navigate a series of screens and settings to change your default browser. It makes you change the default browser for .htm and then also change it for .html and then also change it for .shtml and so on. There are some ways to trick it into being done by clicking on a link and doing it in the right way, but it hasn't been as easy as it should, but that won't last for long. Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 2209 still lets you assign by extension type if you want. You're not losing that, but it adds a make this browser, Chrome, Firefox, et cetera, your default browser as an option with a simple set default button. Developer Rafael Rivera discovered the change earlier this week and Microsoft has confirmed. Yes, that's in our test builds of Windows 11. We intend to make that change and let users set a default browser with a single button. It's not clear when this would get pushed out into Windows 11 proper to become available to all users, but it looks like you will get a very simple thing back. So I'm not sure why you thought it was better to do it the other way, Microsoft, but well done in changing it back. Now to be clear, if you're running Edge and you try to download Chrome, it will still tell you, don't leave, don't leave, please. One thing at a time. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think they've changed that yet. That was the verb, it's like, don't you want to be cool? Stay with Edge. Oh yeah, no, there were multiples and they're still there. That was earlier this week, so let's focus on the positive for the moment, but yes. Other ways of doing it, it just seems so reminiscent of the 1990s, doesn't it? No kidding, right? Well, I get the giving you the option of like, hey, your default browser is Chrome, but maybe you want PDFs to open in Firefox for some reason. Here, we'll give you that control. That's great, love that. Yeah. But don't take away that default button, but just, that was silly. Maybe the nerds did it. I don't think maybe that's what actually happened in this case, right? They're like, oh, we'll just give you all the controls. We don't need a default button then, right? Yeah, we still did. Turns out, and they're responding to that, so good for them. Hey, what do you want to hear us talk about on the show? You got a link, we've been getting great links in our subreddit. OpenBio's in there giving good stuff, KV's giving good stuff, we appreciate everybody doing that. Get into the subreddit, submit the stories and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. Well, known Tesla enthusiast, Alison Sheridan, worked very hard to get into the beta for Tesla's full self-driving software and has thoughts. You can read them at podfeat.com, but we wanted to have her on to give us some of the top-line thoughts right here. There are only about 12,000 beta testers out there, so let's start with what you had to do to qualify, Alison. There was an algorithm that you had to make happy. Is that right? Yeah, in order to try to get into the beta, you have to turn on this thing they call safety score. And for, I think it was 30 days, 30 day rolling period, the car actually judges how well you're driving. And the people who got out of 100 during the first period, they got the beta test first. And then they went to the 99s, they're starting to roll it out to the 98s right now. I got to 99, but the safety score is really interesting. You can speed as fast as you can and you won't lose any points. You can cut off pedestrians, you can do all kinds of awful things and still get a 99. But what you can't do is if it gives you a collision avoidance warning, your score just goes in the pooper right away. And it can be real or it can just be doing it because it's wrong. It got mad at me for hard braking because I stopped for a yellow light. I could very safely stop for the yellow light. And if you can, you're supposed to. But if I had spent through the light, which I'm not supposed to by California driver law, that I wouldn't have gotten dinged on my score. So. I feel like the algorithm is like your grandpa, like, well, you shouldn't have been driving that fast in the first place. You should have slowed down earlier. Yeah, so it sounds like they were like, of course speeding is not part of the full self-driving software because the full self-driving software limits your speed, right? So they were only testing you on the things you would have to do to take over. That's what it sounds like to me. Isn't though, Allison, isn't, wouldn't collision warning scores also factor in how the car is driving around pedestrians? Yes, but it, I've never seen it give a collision avoidance warning when I was near a pedestrian. It's more often than not, it's phantom. Steve got one, we were on the freeway, we were going 65 miles an hour and there wasn't a car within 20 car lengths of us and he got a collision avoidance warning. So that unfortunately is a fairly unreliable measure and it's the most damaging to your score. Okay, but you were able to figure out the system, you got the 99, you got into the beta and you took it out for a spin. How's it work? What are the settings, tell us all about it. So the thing that amazed me about it is how unready it is. I described it in my blog post as being a student driver who is also drunk. It's tentative at a lot of times, like it goes too slow or it's real jerky, like somebody who hasn't learned how to make a smooth left turn, it kind of goes, you know, or the light turns green and it takes a really long time to start up or it pulls into a left turn pocket and then slows way down, which is basically a way to get killed in Los Angeles, right, if you slow down as you get into a left turn pocket and you don't go and make the light. It makes a lot of mistakes, a lot, lot more than I expected. And I would say about this, Sarah, if you had a self-driving car, what would you like to feel like emotionally when it's driving? Very chill, chill, relaxed, right? Yeah, my heart is pounding when it's driving. My palms are sweaty because and I'm glad they only give it to people with good safety scores because there's no way I would take my eyes off of the road. I take it out of full self-driving when I wanna relax because it's, I'm just really surprised that it's as bad as it is. It was really shocking to me. Even though it's called full self-driving, it's supposed to be a driver assist. It's not supposed to be autonomous, right? But even driver assist should make you feel like it's making your driving better. And you're saying the beta isn't there yet. Still got some kinks to work out. I don't know if I would call it driver assist because when it's driving, it's driving. If you grab the wheel and take control, it stops driving. So it's not like it's just assisting me. It's either it's driving or I'm driving. So it feels more like it really thinks it is supposed to be doing the driving. Now, as bad as this is, one thing I did wanna say, I had it on full self-driving and I came up to a T intersection. There was a car came from my left and there were two lanes in my direction. So there was a car pulled up on my right. This car comes from the left, my car let it go through, but then my car didn't go because a pedestrian was starting to walk into the crosswalk. But the guy to the right of me blew through the stop sign. He did not slow down. A human drove significantly worse than this self-driving car. And so what I just have to keep reminding myself is this car is gonna get smarter. Humans are not getting smarter, right? Yeah, right unless you're like, you need to be a better driver and think about this every day. Humans are gonna do what they do. Your car did the right thing in that moment. But also that's confusing data for your car. A good point, good point. Luckily the smartest person was a pedestrian who was playing complete attention and did not step out in front of the car that blew through the stoplight. So, or stop sign, I was very, I was scared because I saw that guy come and I could tell he wasn't gonna stop. I just got 10.5, the first version was 10.4 and it was supposed to be better. It's a little better at accelerating from a stop. It tends to accelerate from a stop too slowly and it comes to a stop too quickly. It does really like it's accelerating right up to the light. And one of the things that's kind of interesting is the model that I have has radar and optical sensors. And if you go into the full self-driving it's only using the optical sensors and the newer models only have optical sensors. And both, Steve and I feel like it's dumber because of that. It's not, it's like it's not seeing things that we think it saw before especially things that are farther away. Well, in the end, this is a beta and it's using a new way of using sensors going camera only and instead of radar like you said. So, are you still a believer in full self-driving? I hope so. One of the things I look for in a beta program, I love to beta test software. It's a little more terrifying than beta testing like text expander or something. But what I look for is a good feedback mechanism and the funny thing is, the way you're supposed to do feedback is you're supposed to press a button on the screen that sends a video to Tesla. So here I am driving with a drunk student driver at the wheel and I'm supposed to take my eye off the road, reach over quite a distance and find this two centimeter pixel icon on the screen to press it. I have done it on occasion when I can safely look away for a nanosecond but I also use, there's a scroll wheel on the steering column that you can click and you can say bug report and if you speak really quickly you can tell it what just went wrong and I do that more often because I can safely do it while I'm still driving or while my drunk student driver is driving. But yes, I'm a believer, but we are so not there yet. Well, where we are is emoji land, everyone. If you consider yourself Gen Z or under, you might have some potentially bad news here depending on how you use emojis. The Unicord Consortium has issued its list of the top 10 most used emojis of 2021. They do this over here. Tears of Joy is still the number one emoji. Now I apologize on behalf of all older generations because we love to laugh and we also love to cry while we're laughing. Apparently the Gen Z folks don't use this emoji as much. Of the 3,600 emojis, the top 100 account for 82% of those used. So most emojis aren't really getting used very much anyway. We don't have a lot of emoji range out there but besides tears of joy and the ubiquitous heart emoji, I use it every day, all the time. Here's what continues to trend. Thumbs up sign, loudly crying face, folded hands. Also notice the prayer emoji, face blowing a kiss, smiling face with three hearts, smiling face with heart shaped eyes, smiling face with smiling eyes. So smiling faces, hand based, emotion, power, flower emojis, still the most popular. Country flags, the least used. So no Skull for smiling, no cowboy hat for feeling awkward. I got a friend who sends me a Skull for everything. It's his way of saying that was funny, Sarah. I'm dying, Skull. That's very Gen Z to use the Skull. He is a Gen Z person. Oh gosh, it's different. It's just different, depending on how you use it. What's interesting too is that they said these haven't changed in the past couple of years so it's pretty consistent in the mainstream anyway. I think a lot of it also has to do with, at least for me, it's like when I want to send somebody a reaction, it's like, what was my recently used? And then I do that again. Yeah, maybe they're all in the recently used and so this is so fulfilling and it'll never change because we don't know this, I didn't even know there was a Skull there. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. All right, let's check out the mailbag. In the mailbag, John from quiet Chile, Massachusetts had an idea about who might be interested in the new Qualcomm gaming system on a chip. John writes, there are a number of arm-based handheld retro emulation consoles released yearly by companies like Ann Berenick, OkDroid, Odroid and PauKitty that run Linux or Android. While not a huge leap market, they have a large enough following worldwide that they keep making these consoles. Do the costs associated with Qualcomm system on chips most run on MediaTek or RocketChip SOCs and processors. This has led to some stagnation in the market, not helped by the semiconductor shortage and compilations with shipping complications rather. I suspect, says John, that these companies are gonna be using this new gaming focused SOC in their handholds within the next year. No, that's a great point, John. Thank you for pointing those out. There are a bunch of, we talked about the niche-ness of this yesterday. There are a bunch of niche models out there that are now going to probably switch to Qualcomm, which is actually bad for RocketChip and MediaTek. But that's good info. Thanks for that. And thanks for sending along the links as well. Indeed, yeah, links are in our show notes. And if you do have feedback, anything that we've talked about on the show, you got something to contribute, we want to hear from you. Makes our show better. Feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. Thank you in advance. We would also like to thank our brand new boss. And that brand new boss is Mr. Brains. Mr. Brains just started backing us on Patreon. Thank you, good sir. See, you got Brains, you back us on Patreon. Right there in the name. Good stuff. Also, thanks to Len Peralta, who has been illustrating the show. Good to have you back, Len. Let's talk illustrations. What did you draw for us today? Well, you know, I use the shrug emoji a lot, but, you know, I can see why crying tear emoji would be big. I actually think that the crying tear emoji might be the one who was behind the self-driving car here, who is obviously in this drawing chasing after a pod feed after Allison. And, you know, that's one thing that I didn't hear, Allison, you didn't chase you down. So you stayed in the car at least, but this is my depiction of if the crazy emoji were chasing you down. Tears of joy at chasing Allison in an autonomous car. It's a little bit clear, isn't it? It does have the summon mode, so we could enact that. Yeah. Exactly. Well, this drawing, if you're into emojis and to self-driving cars, this is on my online store at LenPeraltaStore.com. It's also at my Patreon, patreon.com.com. I also should mention I'm still drawing custom-drawn holiday cards. I'm taking those orders until the 20th. So you may want to get those in because my bandwidth is getting very thin on those. So good luck, everybody. Well, thank you, Len. Good stuff as always. And also thanks to Allison Sheridan and helping us understand a little bit more about how it is to drive with an autonomous Tesla, among other things. Let folks know where they can keep up with your work. Well, I'm glad you asked about that, Sarah, because I've been hearing a lot about meta in the metaverse and I wanted to understand what it actually was. So I asked a gentleman named Tom Merritt to come on Chit Chat Across the Pond Lite with me and try to convince me that this is actually real. You can find that in your podcatcher of choice under Chit Chat Across the Pond Lite or at podfeed.com. Well, that's excellent. It's always, it's good. You know, we're, I don't know. I was trying to make a supply chain joke about how we share resources and it wasn't coming together. But we are live on this show Monday through Friday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern 2130 UTC. You can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Do join us live if you can. We'll be back on Monday to talk with Brian Brushwood about the work around the problems brought about by supply chain delays. Talk to you then. This week's episodes of Daily Tech News Show were created by the following people, host producer and writer Tom Merritt, host producer and writer Sarah Lane, executive producer and booker Roger Chang, producer, writer and host Rich Strafilino, video producer, Twitch producer Joe Kuntz, associate producer Anthony Lemos, Spanish language host writer and producer Dan Campos, news host writer and producer Jen Cutter, science correspondent Dr. Nikki Ackermanns, social media producer and moderator Zoe Deterding. Our mods beatmaster W. Scottus 1, Bio Cow, Captain Kipper Jack, Shid, Steve Guadarrama, Paul Reese, Matthew J. Stephens and J.D. Galloway, modern video hosting by Dan Christensen, video feed by Sean Wei, music and art provided by Martin Bell, Dan Looters, Mustafa A, A-Cast, Creative Arts and Len Peralta, live art performed by Len Peralta, A-Cast ad support from Trace Gaynor, Patreon support from Stefan Brown and contributors for this week's show were Rob Dunwood, Scott Johnson, Justin Robert Young and Allison Sheridan. Thanks to all our patrons who make the show possible. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Well, I hope you have enjoyed this brover. Hehehehe.