 Coming up on DTNS machine learning may cut down the time you spend in an MRI machine Our cyborg future just got a little closer and our best guesses at the epic end game This is the Daily Tech news for Tuesday August 18th 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio Redwood I'm Sarah Lane also Los Angeles. I'm Lamar Wilson None the show's producer Roger chain. Ah, we were just talking about film Photography Sarah had a very cool find if you want to hear us talk about that go check out good day internet become a member at patreon.com DTNS let's start with a few tech things you should know The latest Microsoft flight simulator is out on Windows 10 on Xbox game pass for PC the Microsoft store and steam This is the first flight simulator since Microsoft flight in 2012 the company is building it as a relaunch of the franchise Players can claim a free aviators club Library set for Wednesday Yeah, it's a plane people probably understand it better than me livery set for Wednesday August 19th through September 30th 2020 in the in sim marketplace Sarah you look like you're in flight simulator right now Apple announced its renaming its beats one streaming service to Apple music one That's original and is launching two new hosted stations within the Apple music app Apple music hits and Apple music country. Don't worry Zain low is still hosting on Apple music one calm down worldwide The download page for notepad plus plus is now banned in China Users there will see a message saying the page contains content prohibited by local regulators the ban which started August 12th seems to be in reaction to a Stand with Hong Kong edition of the software released last month. However notepad plus plus also released a free Uyghur version last October so it could be in response to both of those Nvidia's cloud gaming service g-force now is now available in beta on Chrome OS and uses web RTC That's web real-time communications to stream games in the Chrome browser without needing a dedicated app Nvidia says users need at least 15 megabits per second though 25 is recommended Samsung announced it will provide three generations of Android updates to its newest gallery galaxy headsets Which include the galaxy s series galaxy note series galaxy foldable devices Galaxy a series and the tab series of tablets which all will receive Android 11 in September as update number one Samsung only committed to two generations of Android updates in the past. I'll look at sampler Anyone who has driven the large empty spaces in the United States that include nothing but a highway probably no loves truck stops Or as they are known now loves travel stops Electrify America has announced a partnership Tuesday to install electric vehicle charging stations at loves locations across the US The stations will charge at rates of up to 350 kilowatts at about 20 miles of range per minute First five locations are up and running in, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Utah, and Florida Axios sources say that snapchat is testing a feature that would let users share snapchat content off of the platform Even if it isn't their own such as original shows content from discover partners and our stories Which are photos and videos around a particular topic or event The Financial Times reports oracle might be interested in acquiring tiktok's business in the US Canada, Australia and New Zealand and it's hope preliminary talks with tiktok's parent company bite dance already That joins the previous reports of Microsoft and Twitter being interested as well Meanwhile tiktok launched a one billion dollar creator fund in Europe to give grants to those with at least 10,000 followers and 100 views Sources close to the show report quick acceptance of applications Sorry, would that be all right Let's talk a little more about a change to how you log into an Oculus device Let's do it Facebook will remove support for Oculus accounts in October That means new accounts made after that time will have to be through Facebook Existing users with an Oculus account can keep using that account until January 1st 2023 then they'll too be forced to merge their Oculus account with a Facebook account All users can maintain a VR profile in Facebook with a separate friends list Now if you don't merge the account your headset will work, but some games and apps won't function in the future Oh, and even if you do keep your Oculus account future Oculus devices will require you to use a Facebook account to set it up So Facebook is gonna make it really hard for you not to just use a Facebook account with okay Yeah, I can already hear people jumping to the conclusion that this is some how Malicious and who knows maybe it is but if it weren't Facebook the way I would interpret this is a company wants to manage its privacy policy its data retention policy all of the policies on that are that are needed to operate user login and user identification Simply and if you can combine Oculus and Facebook as one log in that makes it that much simpler to manage And when you're talking about Oculus and Facebook, they have a very huge number of People to manage so anything that simplifies it will probably save them quite a bit of money Yeah, when I got go ahead Lamar, I'll just say real quick Google did a very similar thing with nests, you know The nest status a separate sign in and they just kind of unified that for similar reasons So, you know as long as the VR profile as I was saying pre-show it's separate from My friends list on Facebook like I don't want those two interacting with each other As long as they maintain that like to me is fine like they're gonna do it on Instagram eventually too I'm sure. Yeah, that's just one account. Well, and there's a lot of Facebook integration on Instagram that didn't used to be there as well When I when I got my quest a few months ago Oculus quest I had the option to just kind of sign in and get into the app store for Oculus easily using my Facebook account And I was like, oh, okay. That's fine. I mean to Facebook company. It didn't seem weird to me so I'm kind of of that I'm I'm in the The the the folks who are like, oh, so nothing changes. That's cool. I don't have a separate separate Oculus account I'm using Facebook as it is But yeah, if for some reason you really want to stay on Facebook or you don't like the idea of the two being intertwined It doesn't I mean you it sounds like a mild annoyance more than really anything that's gonna change your Oculus experience Yeah, and if that was the issue that you had you probably should have got a vibe Because they've always kind of owned Oculus for like several years. Yeah Yeah, if you've been using Oculus an Oculus account to log in you've been giving your data to Facebook even this is like saying I'm Done with Safeway. I'm only shopping at pavilions same company. So, you know, like it's it's the data is on the same data center It's accessible to the same company. They're just Simplifying the login route and making sure that the policies are clear on both So now at least honestly, it's probably better because now it's very clear that you're giving your data to Facebook Whereas before you may not have realized it because you're like, oh, no, but I'm using Oculus Maybe you didn't know Facebook owned Oculus. I don't know. Yep. There you go So Uber and Lyft are both considering changing to a franchise model in California And the plan would have the companies provide their technology platform to operators of vehicle fleets Those operators would then be responsible for employing drivers. I see what they're doing So Uber and Lyft contend that they only provide a platform for drivers to connect with riders And this will remove the companies from the drivers one more step Both companies say they prefer to keep the current model if possible So I yeah, I see what they're doing here It's it's a it's a slick way to kind of circumvent the that the California rules And I think we're asking earlier in a pre-show like where would these fleets suddenly come from? I know Amazon Amazon for their delivery has different outsourced fleets I they come to my house all the time and it's like, yeah I think it's clear they're not working, you know with with Amazon. It's a third-party company That has the idea of an Amazon truck coming and pick me up for my Uber ride. Yeah Yeah, yeah, so yeah, so where do these fleets come from? Are these new businesses that you created? Well, so I remember when Uber was in its infancy. It used to be called Uber taxi started in San Francisco I knew some folks who were you know, who had founded the company And so I was a very early adopter and back in those days You got limos all the time because basically you were just hiring somebody who was driving, you know A you know kind of black car service. That's what it was. It was a taxi rival And that's why they ended up having to drop the taxi name eventually So that would be a fleet, right? That was something that already existed This was a platform that could leverage The existence of these drivers kind of waiting around to you know to to be able to pick somebody up and get some money But I mean we're on such a larger scale than those days at this point. Yeah, it's sort of like How many fleets are there? Do they crop up out of nowhere because now there's a demand but more importantly if Uber and Lyft want to be like You know what? We cannot deal with hiring all these people as employees. Let's just have the fleet do it Does the fleet want to do that either? I mean you're just passing this headache on to another company who may not want to do it either That's a right, you know hadn't even thought about black car and taxis like there's your easy ones Right, especially if they can make their peace with taxi companies and say like hey What if we you know, what if we included you because we've done it in other markets in Japan your Uber ride is a taxi That's the only way they're allowed to do it. Yeah They they integrate with certain taxi companies, so maybe they can cobble enough They already have a bunch of deals with black car services already That's now the you know the more expensive version of Uber that you never pay for because it's like $200 a ride That's the that's the black car side of that. Yeah, so maybe that have you really? I've been in one that someone else paid for But but yeah, like that's maybe they they Expand those deals. Maybe they add some deals But would that be enough to cover California or would that be the point is like fine We're just a fleet service now and guess what California now. You don't have as many ride options. I don't know Let's talk about Indiana four cities in Indiana filed a lawsuit August 4th against Netflix Disney Hulu Direct TV and Dish network the cities of Indianapolis Evansville Valparaiso and Fishers, Indiana Three of those cities I have actually been to all believe that the companies violated the Indiana state law Because they did not pay the cable franchise fee of 5% gross revenue per city That's the state law in Indiana if you operate a cable service in a city you owe that city 5% of the gross revenue you created off the citizens of that city The law applies to companies that transmit video programming quote Through facilities located at least in part in a public right-of-way now when that law was created It was I'm a cable company. I string my cable through the public right-of-way City gives me an exemption for that and because of that I have to pay this tax the cities are now arguing that since the services run on the internet and The internet is delivered at least for wired using public right-of-way That the law should apply to them Which is a little bit of an inside-out logic because the internet service doesn't have to pay this tax only video service So an ISP doesn't have to pay this tax to use the right-of-way They may have to pay a different tax but not this one But they're saying because Netflix runs over those lines and those lines are in the public right-of-way now Netflix has to pay that tax a similar case in Creep Corps, Missouri is pending in circuit court Most of the legal experts that John Broadkin at ours technical talk to think this probably will fail in court And even if it didn't once it gets to the federal level FCC law very clearly prevents this sort of thing But it's a it's an interesting attempt So what's the point? What are just to get these try to get that tax money because nobody has cable anymore Lamar So the revenue they're getting from that five percent off cable service has been going down every year I'm just I wonder how far the argument goes of Okay, well, it's not delivered the way cable was delivered in the past But it's the same bundle more or less, you know, at least not not necessarily Netflix Disney Hulu But direct TV dish you you start getting you know, and there are there are other Dish they're saying direct TV and dish have apps and therefore those apps are delivering video over the internet Well, no, no, I mean, I I'm saying that they might have a little bit more of a leg to stand on with those because it's it's more of a Here's a bunch of different networks that we are providing to you like a cable service, you know Disney might say well, they're not trying to tax the ISP, right? They're going after each company individually Yeah, I mean listen, I don't know if if this this case goes anywhere, but I can see where Indiana's like Well, hold on, you know the rules are different Maybe they need to be rewritten a little bit, but we'd like some money, please We're we're missing, you know, ten thousand to a hundred thousand dollars a year off this this tax And we need to figure out a way to get it. Maybe we can get it out of Netflix in Disney They seem to have a lot of money. I mean didn't Indiana just get gravity. I didn't know they even had internet Hey now. Hey now. Oh, okay. I'll settle down Chicago That was a Chicago Actually, I was like gravity the movie what's that? It's not about New York. Let's shift it here A collaboration between New York University and Facebook AI research called fast MRI Used machine learning to accelerate MRI scans of knees Now algorithm was trained to eliminate redundant imagery using about 75% less data. It's pretty incredible Evaluations from expert radiologists were not significantly different when using the fast MRI versions of scans now without knowing which were which Radiologists judge MRI scans. It's gonna be a fast MRI scans to be of higher quality I have been in an MRI machine We all have been along. Yeah, I like to be no long. So The faster the better I'm supporting the fast Because that's that's that that's an experience boy Yeah, I mean, I know this is just knees for now, but as somebody who for This not recently thank goodness, but for a time I was having MRIs a lot and they are if you are even mildly claustrophobic They are really unpleasant And if you're very claustrophobic, they can be Sort of impossible but necessary. I used to have to take like anti-anxiety medication Just so I could like because I knew I was gonna be there for a while, you know And just you know kind of not freak out and anything that can speed up that process and you know Just be you know better data wise and and help the people that are supposed to be helping the patients is awesome Yeah, I mean if you're trying to wrap your head around this and the study use knees Because that's the data set they have but once they have this working they it could work for any body part So wouldn't necessarily be limited to knees But it's like lossy compression on an mp3 the mp3 Gets rid of all the parts that you're likely not to be able to hear now audio files say I can tell the difference, right? but but most of us can't and that was what they were doing here is saying there's a lot of redundant information that the MRI scans the machine learning can figure out what that is and get rid of it and then we save we save the data We use less data for that and it speeds the process up and when they tested it the radiologists Only one of the five they tested could even Tell higher than random which ones were done by the machine learning But they all agreed that the machine learning versions were actually higher quality because they got rid of noise By accident when they were making the images So the other thing is they only did this on images that had been scanned. They didn't actually Apply this to the scanning as it was happening. So nobody benefited from it But the the point is if you can do it to the image you can do it to the data as it's being created But they still need to try that. They still need to do that part of it So it's not quite ready for everybody to use yet, but I think it's really interesting well on the note of the future and also what everybody isn't using yet But we'll be very interesting when we do because we all want to have electronics implanted in our brains, right? We can merge with machines. We can become bionic Everybody wants this and for some reason you don't the implants will fix that for you because Because it is just making more fun But one problem is that the usual micro electronic materials silicon stainless steel for example They can cause scarring up there. You don't want that not good for your brain It can also interrupt the electrical signals, which is the whole point of the implant in the first place So it could be very messy But a study led by the University of Delaware material science professor David Martin may have a solution for all of us They coated components in a conjugated polymer called P dot PEDOT Often sold as an anti-static coating for electronic displays The polymer did not cause scarring lowered impedance for increased signal quality and battery life of components So this will likely find its first use in medical implants that monitor for tumors Treat nervous system disorders, for example But Martin wants to control how to deposit materials on a surface like circuits and then put them in a living organism Like a brain. So we are always out yet, but someday we will be machine people You all are excited about that. Yeah, I think any kind of I mean, yeah, this is definitely humorous But I was thinking of it like just to have some kind of device that will let you know of a blood clot is traveling Yeah, right up to you know brain like like those are those are precious seconds You won't know a lot of times until you you know, obviously it's too late like some aneurysm or something like that So yeah, I if I would I would prefer be less cybernetic for recreational reasons and more for health reasons if you get something that that can you know Yeah, say aneurysm is coming something like that. I will yeah. Yeah, no This will be incredibly helpful for medical implants right away because the scarring is an issue for a lot of reasons And if and if this passes muster and gets the FDA approval and all of that then this should be a big advantage It will eventually be be used for you know Everyone's talking about implants that will deliver augmented reality and and actually dr. Martin who worked on this research Talks about putting AI in your brain as an assist as a way to kind of give you that that radiologist Would wouldn't even need the machine learning algorithm, right? He could just look at the image in the machine learning a like reinterpret it for him So so yeah, this is this has got some science fiction e sounding uses and I will be the old man saying no I'm not getting an implant kids. You can't make me, but this would make it safer and that's good Research can you can you imagine? You know 95 year old Tom, you know all the kids are like why you still talk to that smart speaker? For me you hold a phone in your hand. What's wrong with you? The old ways I like them. Hey folks If you want to get the the future in your head for five minutes at a time at least before the implants come Head to Daily Tech headlines. You can get Daily Tech headlines five minutes a day at Daily Tech headlines dot com All right, let's catch you up on epic and apple we mentioned a little bit yesterday But just just to catch you all the way up last week Epic used a server side update to provide an alternate way to buy in-game currency That didn't use the apple payment system and avoid sharing a 30 cut with apple and apple said that's against the rules They removed fortnight from the epic app store and epic suit apple and then the same thing happened with google and epic suit google monday This is what we talked about briefly on the show yesterday epic said apple had told them they have until august 28th to change their fortnight app to comply with app store guidelines In other words take out that server side input that gives you a second way to pay that's cheaper Or epic would lose their membership in the apple developer program in a statement apple said quote We very much want to keep the company referring to epic as part of the apple developer program and their apps on the store The problem epic has created for itself is one that can easily be remedied If they submit an update of their app that reverts it to comply with the guidelines They agreed to and which apply to all developers We won't make an exception for epic because we don't think it's right to put their business interests ahead of the guidelines That protect our customers Now epic could continue with their lawsuit and comply They could they could change this get back in the app store and still sue apple saying they should have let us keep the change right it doesn't hurt The case but instead what epic did was filed a request for a preliminary injunction to stop apple from removing it from the developer program until the court case between the two companies has settled epic highlighted that This removal wouldn't just affect fortnight. It would also affect the unreal engine And this is something i wasn't sure about. Yeah, that's big unreal engine is the code developers used to implement 3d graphics It is made available for free a paid license kicks in if your software makes more than a million dollars But a lot of developers just use it for free to put 3d graphics in their games And other things thousands of games use unreal engine Including many of the games in apple arcade, but there are also non-game applications that using educational apps and visual effects software also running on mac and ios In its request for an injunction epic wrote that it quote Would be unable to develop future updates to the unreal engine for use on ios and mac os And speculated that quote by spring 2021 It is likely that apple will refuse to accept any new apps and updates to existing apps that use the unreal engine Due to epics inability to access those tools in other words Unreal engine will keep on working for now Even if they get kicked out of the developer program But epic would be prohibited from updating it as ios and mac os stk's change And at some point unreal engine on ios and mac os would be so out of date That any apps that use it wouldn't pass review or possibly even work Now developers could decide to switch to the unity engine, which is already more popular for mobile and is free for software that makes less than $100,000 and julie But that's what epic wrote in their injunction is this could force everyone to switch to unity which would hurt our business So you need to stop apple from hurting our business in advance of this court case because we think we're gonna win now it seems like Epic in the beginning of this was a couple steps ahead of apple, you know, they they knew what was going to happen They had to lawsuit. Oh, they had a hand. They had to commercial. It was a fortnight event Okay, that was that was good I wonder though did they expect this move because this isn't It seems that two shouldn't go together where apple's trying to keep them out of the developer program because Those two things aren't related. It seems like apple's like, okay We're gonna find something to kind of stick it to you I'm not surprised that apple kicks him out of the developer program because they are Unrepentantly violating the terms of the developer program, right? It wasn't like, hey, we had to kick your app out of the app store. You may not have realized it But it's illegal not to use the apple pay And and epic said, oh, sorry. Our bad. We're resubmitting epic said no, we're gonna sue you We're not going to change it and so at that point apple can say well This violates your agreement with the developer program I mean the the agreement to follow the app store guidelines are in the developer program Yeah, it's hard to say who who I side with with this because it's like it's a little bit I just kind of want to let the titans fight fight it out and Whatever, you know, it's all about money. I I'm sure epic just wants a better deal I mean amazon prime video got a better deal Netflix doesn't have to go with these terms, you know, so Yeah, is apple being a bully? Sure. It's their store Uh, they can you know, they can play whatever they want So I'm not sure where the lawsuit is going to go with that since it's a private company Um, but yeah, I I don't know who this feel is simply 34 here Well, I mean, I I know what epic is going for Listen, we want app store policies to change google's as well. Not just apple But you know, their primary fight is with apple right now And look at all of the third party smaller software developers who are going to be hurt by something like this going forward It's not just us It's a whole ecosystem of folks who are getting screwed because if you can't use something like our unreal engine You know people are going to have to start over or they're going to you know, the apps are just going to sort of fall apart Or not get updated and get supported anymore And you know, there's talk of of epic kind of trying to rally some other troops of companies who have been in public Spats with apple in the past for their own reasons So I think that you know that exactly spotify is one of them And spotify has been actually vocal I think it was last week that the company came out and said that they were supporting epic in their fight against apple Because spotify has has had some of the same issues with the company So, you know that whole kind of like rally the troops thing that epic is doing I think is is very smart I still don't know how they beat apple in court because You know the rules are the rules sort of thing and that's been working for apple You know thus far, but I don't know I I do see some folks saying well epic, you know, you don't like the rules go develop somewhere else But I there's there's so many people involved potentially in something like this that I don't think it's is as cut and dry as two companies. Who do you side with? Yeah, I as we said on friday show I I think there is definitely basis to file an anti competitive lawsuit here, right? It's clear that apple is controlling the app store and not allowing competing app stores on there Whether that is in fact anti trust is a whole different situation that involves are they abusing their market position? Does it hurt consumers that they're doing this and we talked about that if you want to listen on friday show We went through that what I think is happening here. Lamar is I think you nailed it. This is a negotiation Tim Sweeney blasted microsoft over the windows store in march 2016 And eventually microsoft eased up on the universal windows platform and now epic hearts microsoft according to a recent interview on venture beat In april 2019 epic promise to end its epic game store exclusive if steam would raise its revenue cut for developers They were pushing to get more money to all developers not just epic sound familiar Now valve didn't do that. In fact steam may have been spurred to improve itself because of the competition So he didn't win that one. He won with microsoft. He didn't so much with valve And this venture beat article where he said I heart microsoft in in may of 2019 Has some very interesting quotes. I want to finish on these He said I think there was a time when everybody looked at apple and their 30 take with a deal of envy That's being increasingly questioned. There's a realization that open platforms are more trusted by developers So he's signaling where he wants to go back then Uh, he said publishers and developers can invest with much greater confidence because we know that we will be able to Receive the fruits of our labor when they're talking about open platforms. He sung windows praises He says on windows. There's a windows store. There's steam. There's origin. There's battle net. There's epic games And you know having multiple stores keeps every store honest and creates a really healthy competitive dynamic So there's an out for apple if they want to just you know what apple is probably going to win But maybe they don't want the trouble and the bad press Why don't you let some like you let amazon have a special exemption for video? Have a Store exemption for streaming games like stadia for epic games And then uh, if you're wondering why sweeney is not mad at consoles that also take 30 and lock you in He says they're television attached gaming devices as opposed to general computing platforms You're not doing spreadsheets there. It's a different experience and generally consoles over their history are subsidized hardware So that seems to be what he thinks is the difference. I think he's pushing for some kind of exemption like that Yeah, fascinating Well, thanks to everybody who participates in our sub reddit not surprisingly This is one of the stories that's been at the top of the page lately You could spit stories that you care about and want others to as well and vote on stories at daily tech news show dot reddit dot com All right, let's check out the mad bag Let's do it. Russell lives in the uk and had some thoughts on our uk exam story from the show yesterday And it's great Russell. We really appreciate this because you're on the ground Russell noted a few details that lended to the outrage that was happening In those parts particularly from students and teachers such as teachers complaining that their estimated grades and rankings that they spend a lot of time on Were barely used in the data Independent private schools were usually smaller in size because you know the cost more So they ended up using more data From teachers skewing the results and that the uk algorithm was specifically targeted at reducing the grade inflation to zero Which in turn had generated many unfair downgrades to make that happen Balanced by other unfair upgrades. Russell says big data isn't perfect It'll probably always have bias so you can only use it for automated final decisions If you're happy with the inevitable mistakes using ai to put the right news in my feed It's fine. Even if it's not perfect using ai alone to prosecute prosecute criminals Not okay because errors are considered unacceptable Turns out that messing up the careers of many young school leavers to avoid being overly generous to others also not acceptable Algorithms are not completely outside the control of non-technical Policy makers and they should not get away with it was the algorithm side of our hands They can still choose to lean towards false positive or false negative And they get to decide whether to use algorithms as final decisions Or as a screen before detailed checks policy makers could ask face recognition technicians, for example To set the confidence very high avoiding false arrests But letting more criminals escape the uk government might have avoided all of the fallout in this particular case By individually checking that there were that students were that were more than one grade up or down You know take a closer look Russell says basically I see this as a policy question not really a technical one even if the uk exam algorithm was also flawed Well said russell. Thank you for that on the ground report Very much so keep them coming everybody Always good to know how people feel in parts of the world that we are not in Shout out to patrons at our master and grand master levels including miss music teacher christ smith and tim ashman Also, thanks to lamar wilson two weeks in a row lamar. I know you're a busy man. Where should people follow your work? I will be back every week. Tom just doesn't know it yet I would welcome that Well, yeah, you can check me out on twitter just for my general feed of cool stuff I upload and and lots of different genres including tech. That's at twitter.com slash lamar wilson. Thank you Keep it coming folks. 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