 Coming up on DTNS, Microsoft shuts down its retail stores, Verizon and Unilever join the move to pull ad money from Facebook and the best TV projectors for watching in your garden. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, June 26, 2020 in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. Drawing the top tech stories from Cleveland, Ohio, I'm Len Peralta. I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. And joining us, display analyst and co-host of AVXL, Robert Herron. How are you doing? Yeah, great. Thank you. It's really good to have you back. Robert, as I mentioned, is going to talk to us about projectors, big trend putting your projector outside. We're going to find out the pitfalls, maybe some model recommendations. We were just talking about prawns and the difference between prawns and shrimp and all kinds of good stuff on Good Day Internet. Become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. The US issued an executive order June 22, suspending some new visas, including the H1B visa granted for specialty fields. Technology review notes that this may affect US AI research as there are not enough domestic candidates. 60% of AI researchers in the US received their undergraduate degrees outside the US. 35% of H1B visa holders have an AI related degree. Canada, the UK, France, and Australia have no visa caps for AI workers. The Canadian government has posted billboards in Silicon Valley encouraging those with visa problems to apply for work in Canada. Yeah, McGill is going to have a great time with this. A leaked Microsoft document that showed up on Twitter by user xb1 underscore hex decimal includes references to Microsoft's upcoming cheaper and less powerful next gen Xbox console codename Lockhart. The document also mentions a Lockhart profiling mode, which the verges sources say is part of the Xbox Series X developer kit codenamed Dante, letting game developers enable a special Lockhart mode that brings performance down to 7.5 gigabytes of usable RAM, a slightly underclocked CPU speed, and around four teraflops of GPU performance. The Globe and Mail reports Alphabet may be acquiring Canadian smart glasses maker North after North's Fockels product sold rather poorly even after a price cut last year from $999 to $599. Over the last few months, North had been teasing a Fockels 2.0 successor, saying it would have a lighter and sleeker design, 10X display, and be 40% smaller. The return of the consumer Google Glass, Amazon announced the launch of smart stores in India that provide digital storefronts to retailers, deployed at over 10,000 shops at launch. Smart stores uses Amazon software to log inventory, which can then be viewed by customers using a QR code. Customers can scan this code, select inventory, see the customer reviews, and pay with Amazon Pay, including the Amazon Pay later installment plan. Amazon says it does not take a percentage of sales from either customers or retailers. Former Intel engineer Francois Piednoyle told PC Gamer why he thinks Apple switched from Intel to ARM for future Mac processors. Piednoyle said, quote, the quality assurance of Skylake was more than a problem. It was abnormally bad. Basically, our buddies at Apple became the number one filer of problems in the architecture. When your customer starts finding almost as many bugs as you found yourself, you're not leading in the right place. Guess not. And Amazon announced it intends to buy the self-driving vehicle start-up. Zooks, terms of the deal, were not disclosed, but Financial Time says it will be around $1.2 billion that will be changing hands. Zooks' latest funding round in 2018 valued the company at $3.2 billion. But what's important is Zooks will continue to operate as a standalone business within Amazon and keep its executive leadership in place. Amazon has previously invested in the self-driving startup Aurora and currently uses self-driving trucks developed by Embark to haul cargo on the 10. That's a highway. All right, let's talk a little more about the big news today. This is what woke me up. Well, it didn't actually wake me up. I woke up and then this was the first thing I saw. Microsoft, what are they doing? Knock it on your door. Microsoft announced it will permanently close almost all of its Microsoft Store retail locations. Stores in London, New York City, Sydney, and Redmond will be converted to Microsoft Experience Centers. The company plans to focus on using Microsoft.com for customer support, for sales, and for training. The company also said retail store team members will continue to serve customers from Microsoft corporate facilities and remotely providing sales, training, and support. Yeah, nobody seems to believe, well, not nobody. I see a lot of people like, so what is really going to happen to the store employees, but it sounds like Microsoft is like, we're just going to keep them on as support. Everybody's working from home anyway. So we might as well, if we're going to be paying them, pay them to do customer support and sales that they're trained for in the store. Just do it for our online store. And it does sound like this was in place to happen before COVID-19. And Microsoft definitely closes their stores like everybody else due to the virus, but all of the sources seem to indicate that Microsoft was looking at doing this anyway. Yeah. And if it was because of this, they might have done it at a different time. I don't know, but it sounds like they're just realizing that they don't get enough sales out of these stores. And the ones that they do get a benefit from don't really get a benefit in actually selling units, but get a benefit in exposing people to their products, and that's what they're going to do with these experience centers. Yeah, I mean, imagine if Apple was like, yeah, we're closing all of our retail stores, but we wanted to anyway, before the coronavirus hit. That would be a huge deal. Microsoft doing this, you kind of go like, yeah, they were, you know, most of the sales was probably online anyway, or at least somewhat lackluster, you know, as far as foot traffic goes. And maybe there was no real expansion plan. And the fact that they are going to keep some flagship stores in a few major cities where Microsoft has, you know, a good present as experience centers means, you know, it's not as if they don't think anybody can benefit from a hands-on experience or, you know, getting a little bit more information about what the company's got going on. But this, yeah, this sounds like the whole pandemic part of this may have hurried some plans that had been in place for some time. Robert, have you ever been to a Microsoft store? Not once. I couldn't even tell you shut them down where one was. However, I do see the reviews online by people I trust the products do seem to be getting better, but I'm also not an Apple store user either, but I'm not a huge Apple user. So yeah, I mean, it's just, it seems like the right time for them to do this. And if it can help them, I doubt it's going to lower the cost, but just simply add more profit. I think they're going to sell pretty much the same number of these devices. It's simply in a more convenient way, like online shopping. Those experience centers will be interesting. I went to one for Samsung in Tokyo, and it was just like a lot of fun things to do to get you to like the Samsung products, and they didn't have stuff on the shelves. You could order one, but you were still having to order it to be mailed to you in that. So I'm wondering if that's what Microsoft's going to do. In downtown Seoul, Samsung actually has like a technology center that was half shopping where you could buy some of the most latest devices if you're willing to pay for it. And have that initial experience in a place. I never, never saw that replicated again anywhere else, but it was nice to at least see that, have the very latest devices where you could actually put hands on and play with them. And if you want to take one home, it was doable. Of course, none of you have fallen for what I'm about to talk about, but a lot of folks out there have been fooled into thinking that Apple and Google are installing contact tracing on your phone without your permission. As with all good lies, there is some truth mixed into it, making it more convincing. One of the truths is that Apple and Google have, as we've talked about on this show, added support for exposure notification to their operating systems. That's just it. Support. The operating systems now include an exposure notification setting that you can turn on. It is off by default. And even if you turn it on at this point, it doesn't do anything unless you choose to download and install an app from your local government that takes advantage of it. And you have to install that app yourself. And most regions of the world don't even have an app that is going to be able to take advantage of it. XDA developers published a list showing only 19 countries have Google Apple-compatible exposure notification apps in development. In the U.S., only four states. So U.S. counts as a country, but only four states are developing one of those. And only 10 countries have released an app that works on the Google Apple exposure notification platform. Those include Uruguay, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Poland, Philippines, Latvia, Italy, Germany, Denmark, and Austria. My Pixel phone had that update about this month. I think it popped up. And it made it very clear that nothing was enabled, and it's simply the back-end support for applications like that. Well, I mean, this is, you know, you can kind of see this one coming, you know, people who are like, I don't want to be tracked, you know, my privacy is of utmost importance. And the fact that there were so many and continue to be different versions of contact tracing or exposure notification apps. And in some cases, certain governments have pulled back from one and gone to another. Apple and Google obviously have gotten a lot of, a lot of, you know, it's been a high-profile project that has been picked up by some companies in some states and some private companies as well, that, you know, it's, it doesn't surprise me that a lot of people are confused and saying, you know, I, I, I do not want to be part of this. Well, you don't have to be. You've got the, it's probably a good idea to be part of it. So there's more data to keep everybody safe. But, but yeah, this is not the kind of my rights are being taken away that, that some people have gone to. I really appreciated the way Google presented it to me on my update. It simply said, Hey, look, in the future, if this ever occurs, you totally have the right to completely opt out of this. And here are the controls for it. And I can't complain. If only people read all the words. You know, okay, that takes a long time. Yeah, I know. You know, well, Thursday, the Anti-Defamation League pointed out that a Verizon ad appeared next to a video from a conspiracy group pushing anti-Semitic content. Verizon had joined several other companies and pulled its advertising from Facebook properties. That's where the ad showed up. Unilever said it will pause advertising not only on Facebook properties, but also on Twitter. Unilever told the Verge, quote, continuing to advertise on these platforms at this time would not add value to people and society, end quote. Last week, several organizations called for an advertising pause on Facebook in July and protest over moderation practices. The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook sent advertisers a memo last week saying it does not make policy changes tied to revenue pressure. However, during Facebook's weekly all hands meeting, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced new measures regarding misinformation. Facebook will add a label to post now from politicians that otherwise violate policies noting it was newsworthy. A prompt will be added before sharing to let people know the content violates policies. And Facebook will also add false claims regarding elections and threats of voter interference to a list of postband, no matter who posted them. An ad that claims certain types of people are a threat or suggest that those groups are inferior will now be banned as well. Those are all fine moves, I suppose, by Facebook. None of them addressed the problems that Verizon, Unilever, REI, Ben and Jerry's have, which is that their ads were showing up next to conspiracy theory content, not showing up to other ads, not showing up next to posts from politicians that were showing up next to content that should have been removed in these companies opinion, but wasn't. So Facebook announcing all this stuff is great, and I'm sure it's leaked out of the all hands meeting in response to these advertisers, but it doesn't address their concerns. Robert, what do you make of all this? I left Facebook a few years ago, and the only reason I maintain an account is simply because I have a couple of companies and businesses I work with where I need to access their profiles and things like that. But otherwise, get the hell off of there. And what use to anyone really is it? If you really need to keep in touch with people, you should be doing that on a far more personal level than, you know, blowing out the latest. What the hell am I doing update? I think it was the very case Casey Newton who tweeted this morning like, listen, ad budgets have shrunk significantly this year. You know, why not get some accolades for something that you might have been doing anyway? So there's there's probably a little bit of that going on with some of these companies, although, you know, the I understand that if you're Verizon and you're like, whoa, we don't want to be associated with this Facebook, like do better that that that is a legitimate concern. And you leave her when as far as you leave her when as far as to say our budget will be the same. We're going to spend the same amount of money. We're just going to spend it in different places. I would hope this would be like a heads up for folks that's like, hey, look, there are better places to spend your ad dollars. And that service is really in essence of no good in the net gain or loss to its service to our society. So if they burn and die, I, you know, I think it's going to take a lot more advertisers moving to really put a dent in too many people feel like the real silver blade who say too many people I know use Facebook, I can't leave it. And and you may disagree with that, Robert, but that's how a lot of people feel is like I'd like to leave, but it's the only way I can talk to my grandma. It's the only way I can keep in touch with family, share photos easily, whatever it is. Granted, there are other ways of doing it, but they're not as easy. And especially when you're dealing with people who don't want to change. So I don't know unless we keep seeing more Verizon Unilever is huge Verizon's huge. If we see more of those on this bandwagon, then it may start to hurt Facebook. And we may see them change their policy. But even right now, I'm not sure it's going to have much of an effect. Input magazine notes that the new icon interface design in Mac OS is an example of a new wave in user interface design called new morphism. That's N. E. U. Morphism. It's predecessor skew morphism focused on realism in textures and surfaces. You remember skew morphism. It's when it's when you'd see a real to real player on an audio icon, right? Designs reaction to that was to skew morphism was the flat design that freed designers from having to emulate a 3D object. So that's when you could just put a music note on a flat design. New morphism focuses on bringing back 3D with light. In other words, instead of simulating objects, it simulates light. So instead of going back to a real to real, it would put some 3D effects on the on the music note. So leaving it in the flat design, but just adding some depth to it. Those in favor of new morphism say you can take the positives from flat design and make them 3D critics might say it's just adding drop shadows and outer glows unnecessarily. And it doesn't help you. I in fact, it might confuse people. You know, Tom and I were talking before the show that that this is just one of these things that doesn't get us fired up either way. It's sort of like whatever the icon is, I'll get used to it in a day or two kind of thing. I asked a friend of mine who is who is a designer of this type of thing, you know, by trade. And I said, what do you think of new morphism? And he goes, it's skew morphism again. That's all it is. They're just yeah, they're just they're adding some effects to something that was flat because everybody gets tired of flat after a while because all of the operating systems kind of, you know, people follow style trends, just like you follow style trends all all, you know, in all parts of life. And when everything starts looking the same, then someone gets the edge to kind of, you know, pull away from the pack. And I said, okay, but do you do you like them? And he said, well, it's Apple, you know, it's it's let's see what what new morphism looks like when yeah, it is a crappy drop shadow. And it doesn't look that good. And it isn't helping anybody, you know, further, you know, the the the way modern design is a little bit of it. Exactly. Yeah. I don't know. I think they look fine. Mostly we just wanted you to know you're going to hear people talking about new morphism. Now you know what it is. Exactly. The iOS 14 beta included a security feature to alert users when an app reads information on that user's phones clipboards. So you know, it's like a copy thing. Users of the app, TikTok reported that they were receiving notifications about clipboard access by the app every few seconds. In fact, there are some videos that floated around where it's like, you know, TikTok saved something, TikTok saved something from your clipboard and you know, kind of freaked a few people out. In a statement to the Telegraph, TikTok said that the notifications were the result of systems designed to identify repetitive spammy behavior, and that the app had submitted an update to the app store to remove this anti spam feature. The company also says a similar system was never introduced on its Android app. Only iOS nine to five Mac reports that other popular apps that read clipboard content include Starbucks, Overstock, AccuWeather and several other popular news apps. Yeah, I don't know how you feel about this, Robert. I always assume that anything I'm putting on my clipboard could be read by any program on my device. But at the same time, I don't assume that those apps are going to be constantly looking at my clipboard. That does seem to be excessive and I'm not sure how it really helps identify spammy behavior because I don't see a whole lot of other apps doing this. What do you think I would never allow a general application to have that kind of access? And I would hope at least on the Android platform that they would provide in something similar to what iOS is doing with 14 and just giving you that notification saying this is what the app is doing. And with at least on the Android platform, anytime those events occur, it gives you those three options. It's like allow only when the app is running or prevent it every single time and or or whatever you'd like to do. But it gives you that choice for each individual app. And I'm now super curious if if and what apps do have access to the clipboard function on Android. Well, all apps have access to your clipboard, but they don't they should only be looking at it when you want them to write. They shouldn't be able to just go spy on your clipboard while you're copying the password from your vault, right? Oh, that or or you just made a shopping list. And suddenly it was like, oh, hey, that thing you cut and paste into your shopping list is now popping up as advertising on these several platforms to better target you, because that's that's really what we need to do. And yeah, it's a free thing. And I'm really glad to see iOS doing something to make it easier for the user just to at least see it and respond appropriately. Yeah. Well, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to DailyTechHeadlines.com. And what are the hot trends out there right now? As people are like, not wanting to go out as much or maybe not even be able to go out as much depending on where you are right now is to put a projector outdoor so you can get a big screen outdoor. Enjoy the summertime movie projection apologies to folks in the southern hemisphere. You'll get this next year. But listen to Robert and remember it for when summer comes to you. Robert, what are some of your recommendations for outdoor projectors? Number one, every projector, no matter what its price point really technically can be used outdoors. Now there's a level of risk where you probably don't want to take the fanciest projector outside. You want something if everything goes wrong and it slams into the ground while it's running, you won't have a conniption fit. So number one, it's good to have that projector that you are comfortable having these special projects with and one of them is bringing it outside. And there are a lot of ways to do that quite easily. One, you're going to need some kind of power source to run it out in the backyard. And it's good just to have a sturdy extension cord with plenty of wattage because you might also be driving other devices, be it a source device to connect it to. And that can be anything from a game console to a portable device to say even like I doubt you're going to drag your cable box outside. But for other things, in addition to a projector that's already consuming say 350-400 watts, I would say number one, have a good extension cord so you can put it securely where you want it, keep it set up. And then like I mentioned, think about the video sources you want to connect to these devices. It is very flexible in terms of any HDMI device you have can literally plug into these devices and display a picture 10 foot across or 10 foot diagonal, no problem. Now you think about things like game consoles, but on the back of many projectors nowadays are USB ports that can drive if required the additional power that might be needed for a plug-in device like a streaming stick from any of the competitors. And on many projectors nowadays, especially ones that aren't at the very bottom of the value bucket, they do include more than one HDMI port. So not only can you have your cable running right into it with your source device, but also your other maybe streaming devices as well, gives you a little more flexibility. But in the case you go with a value projector, you can always connect something like an inexpensive video switch to it to provide multi-device input through a single cable. And some of these affordable switching devices also provide ways of extracting audio out to external devices. Many projectors nowadays, especially value projectors, do incorporate speakers built into them. Now they may be like three to 10 watts in power. They probably won't sound awe inspiring, but it is better than nothing and it's super handy when you need just a quick and dirty setup, especially for things like game consoles in a room. Now for screens, you can literally point a projector at anything. You can point it at closed drapes. You can point it at a blank wall. It generally helps to have a neutral colored thing. But it should be flat. My head is probably not going to work well. But yeah, ideally not overly textured. So you're not suddenly focusing on the screen itself rather than the projected image. But keep that in mind. You can I use a portable projection screen that's about 80 inches in diagonal. It sets up in about five minutes and I can take it down in about five minutes. I love that size in particular because it's smaller than say a 10 foot screen. We're talking just 80 inches instead of 120. When you can compress that image down with the focus or with the zoom on a projector or in some cases you literally have to just simply move the projector closer to get it to fit right. You get a brighter picture with smaller screens. Now for outdoor use sometimes it's nice to have that portable screen. And if you look around on Amazon they have great screens at all price points. I've seen outdoor screens that I would even recommend starting at 50 bucks for like a 10 footer that you literally just tie off the corners make sure it's taught and flat point your screen at it and go. Now when it comes to basically gaming itself latency can be an issue on some projectors a lot of projectors are really made to just simply be fed a quality video signal and it will it will display it if there's latency involved that can all be hidden on the back side and sync properly. But when it comes to gaming you really do want to look for projectors that at least have maybe a game mode or a way to provide lower latency in terms of that audio video presentation. So if you are going to play the latest Twitch games you have a better than average chance of having really good performance between what your hands are doing and what you're actually seeing on the screen. Now picking any projector the first thing you want to look at is overall where it works the best in terms of screen sizes and distance from the screen it needs to be to project that particular size damage the calculators that are available online either from sources like projector central dot com or if you go to any manufacturers website they will give you an estimate based usually on say like a hundred inch screen what the distance that projector has to be to or from the screen and that'll tell you something also about the lens setup on it whether or not it even offers something like a decent zoom or not at all. It kind of gives you an idea for the size image you want where that projector has to be to give you something worth doing. Some projectors also incorporate over the air tuners. LG is famous for this just about every one of their home cinema projectors incorporates an over the air tuner where literally you can connect a pair of rabbit ears or a cheap antenna and have live TV right on that same device. Other projectors also incorporate apps and other things built right into the projector. You'll generally pay a little bit more for those kinds of features but it's it's a it's something to consider if you want kind of more all in one I'd rather it be more TV than a device where I'm adding things to it to get to work the way I want. Finally when you go to set this all up I highly recommend you have a decent base stand to put everything on. There is nothing worse for a running projector regardless of the technology to have that accidentally somebody trip on a wire or to have it fall while running. It is almost guaranteed to cause some damage that is undesirable. So and also these devices give off a little bit of heat and that's something else to keep in mind if you plan on stacking devices or having it sitting right next to the gaming console. It might not be the greatest idea. Especially during the summer you know when you're outside. Now for just where you put a screen in the backyard or wherever if there's an option to put it like under something with shade it will improve the image quality dramatically. Like if you have a tree or an awning or something that at least by the time say four or 5 p.m. rolls around and the the sun is starting to go down that more shaded area will make the picture pop even more so. And thank you Robert. We've got some recommendations from Robert on exact models if you're like wait but which one should I get. He's got a couple of Tomas an Epson home and an LG and those will be in our show notes at daily tech news show dot com. You can join the conversation in our discord which you can join by linking to a patreon account at patreon dot com slash D T N S. If you have some outdoor projector tips that would be a good place to tell your peers. Let's check out the mailbag. Oh let's do it. So yesterday on Good Day Internet with Justin Robert Young we were talking about wanting good and trustworthy and local sources of COVID-19 data like specific enough down to the county level rather than state level depending on where you live sometimes state information isn't super helpful for where you are specifically and we got some really good tips. Got Nate in discord suggested at covid act now dot org we're going to have all these links in the show notes by the way Alan emailed in and suggested world of meters dot info he said he found it in a reddit thread and he thinks it's pretty helpful. Norm suggested weather dot coms corona virus section and also public health dot LA County dot gov obviously that's where he lives but certain counties may have similar information that will help you as well. Actually that's not where Norm lives but he was suggesting that for me because that's where I live and he was saying you might look at your local county and you might get some good good stats there. I really like covid act now dot org that got Nate suggested that's a really good one that I had not been looking at so but thanks to everybody for suggesting all of these. Absolutely. Hey shout out to patrons at our master and grand master levels including Philip less for Frederick Huebner and James P. Callison. Len Peralta has been illustrating the show. Len what have you drawn for us today? You know I have been thinking about doing an outdoor theater since we have room in our backyard. So having Robert on the show was a huge boon. I have a lot of questions for him probably after show as well. But this image is called the great outdoor cinema. And it's it's how I sort of envision it going right. Like if you do a good enough setup right. You got to you got someone coming through like a like an usher coming through is going to ask hey can I see your tickets on. Can I use your bathroom too. I mean because he doesn't live in your house. Yeah it's just well he's just you know it's just going to be field. You know we get so get a nice popcorn machine back there. That's not sure should be wearing a mask if he's going to go right. Yes. You're absolutely unsafe. Russia wasn't even thinking about it. You know it's yeah I'm I'm excited to to try maybe to convince my family to do it and we'll see if that happens. This image of course showing the one of my favorite movies the Blues Brothers is available to my Patreon patreon.com forward slash Len or at my online store at lennparaltastore.com. Excellent work as usual Len and excellent information from Robert Herron Robert so nice to have you on the show today and let folks know where they can keep up with all that you do. Hey follow me on Twitter is one of the best places to get a hold of me at Robert Herron or you can check me out at AVXL.com when I do the occasional podcast with Mr. Patrick Gordon. Yes absolutely go do that folks and also don't forget you can support this show get exclusive content like Sarah's live with it or my editor's desk where I attempted to tell the history of Google messaging apps this week live with it has a three month comprehensive review of the Oculus Quest that's all available at patreon.com slash DTNS Hey guess what our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com if you haven't emailed us before now's the time got something on your mind send it to us we're also live Monday through Friday 4 30 p.m. Eastern 2030 UTC and you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live see you all Monday this show is part of the frog pants network get more at frogpants.com