 Coming up on DTNS augmented reality in a contact lens Apple hires a lobbyist for drones and whether the app to be used in the Iowa Caucus will end democracy spoiler. No, but it's interesting and risky This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday Wednesday the 16th of January 2020 in Los Angeles on Tom Merritt and from studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane from rainy Oakland, California I'm Justin Robert young and on the shows producer Roger Chang Hey folks, we were just talking about the breaking news about the Peacock announcement We'll have a little bit of that for you here, but we have more of it in good day internet We're also talking about pizza bagels and mayonnaise get it all by becoming a patron at patreon.com slash DTNS let's start with a few tech things you should know The New York Times reports that Turkey lifted a two and a half year ban on Wikipedia After the country's constitutional court ruled in a 10 to 6 vote that the ban violated freedom of expression in April of 2017 The Turkish government banned Wikipedia after it refused to remove content alleging that that that Turkey had given support to terrorist and militant groups Mozilla has laid off about 70 employees chairwoman and interim CEO Mitchell Baker Explained in an internal memo acquired by TechCrunch that a slow rollout of new revenue generating products was the reason for the cuts Mozilla is still looking into how this will affect employees in the UK and France in 2018 Mozilla corporation as opposed to the far smaller Mozilla Foundation Said it had about 1,000 employees worldwide Canadian telecom rogers started rolling out the country's first 5g network in the downtown cores of Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver Once devices start offering the 5g Roger plans to cover more than 20 additional markets by the end of the year Google announced it will bring more than 120 games to its stadia game streaming service in 2020 It also plans to offer 10 stadia exclusive games in the first half of the year Stadia has 26 games and one exclusive right now Google also said that the next three months stadia will get 4k Gamings on the web support for more than just pixel phones and wireless game play not the web with stadia controller Apple confirmed it's acquired Exnor.ai and a deal that Geekwire reports was worth more than 200 million dollars Exnor was a spin-off company from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allens Allens Institute for artificial intelligence and specialized in running on-device AI in lower power systems Exnor currently powers the people detection on wise cameras Although Exnor did terminate the contract with wise in November with the feature scheduled to be removed in a January firmware updates And as I mentioned just before the show NBC Universal announced details about its streaming service peacock Which will launch April 15th on Comcast's Xfinity Z1 and flex video platforms actually I think that's X1 and flex video platforms Before it launches to everybody else who doesn't have Comcast for cable on July 15th And that comes just a few days before the Olympics began on July 24th There will be a free ad supported version for everybody, but that won't have all the content It'll have most of the content But won't have all the content a full content version will go for free to Xfinity subscribers and $5 a month for others and if you want to get rid of ads You'll pay $5 a month if you're an Xfinity subscriber or $10 a month if you're not The two tiers you can pay for the extra content will include live sports Some soccer for instance coming in August and early access to the late-night shows You'll get those at 8 p.m. Eastern instead of having to stay up late and fall asleep All right, let's talk a little more about those contact lenses Mmm startup mojo vision demonstrated that a smart contact lens prototype at the venture Demonstrated to venture beat reporter Dean Takahashi, which provided a green monochrome micro LED display on a hard Solaril lens The demo showed simple green words and numbers hovering over real-world things the prototype required an external battery and processor to run and Mojo vision says any production version would probably require a separate accessory for a data connection and processor The contact would need to be sanitized nightly Charged by induction and be controlled by eye tracking Mojo is conducting feasibility clinical studies under the institutional review board approval It's also working with the US is FDA's breakthrough device program for medical devices Product is in the r&d stage But mojo vision hopes to have a product in the market in the next two years That's not a firm timeline. They're like yeah in two years we could we could have a product So don't expect one necessarily, but this is interesting This has gone from we could do to we're doing now We're doing maybe not practically, but the idea is this can be wireless right now It has to have electrical power fed to it from a battery So it you don't see pictures of this on someone's face because I imagine it probably looks pretty disturbing with power running into the contact lens But they think they can they can make the battery power work They can overcome that if they can make this, you know, producible at scale They've got the technology working for it to wirelessly deliver an image to you and Yeah, if it sounds like well just some green words hovering above real-world things is not that revolutionary They are pitching this as enterprise-level stuff Where it could just help label things and people at conferences that sort of thing and and visual accessibility So that if you need a little bit of Accentuation of things in your vision because your vision is impaired this this can help improve that and that's why they're working with the FDA as well Yeah This is the eventual solution as far as I'm concerned for how AR will work as seamlessly as possible You know that the this particular venture beat article pointed to you know color contact lenses Some people still wear them But you know they were kind of a they were kind of a feature back in the day and people are sort of like You know you just wear them or you don't but they don't really do anything other than that They're not helping you see better, but they're but they're changing something for you the idea Tom You mentioned seeing people's names. I don't know. I forget people's names all the time. That'd be great You know like just very simple You know Contextual information doesn't have to be crazy enough to you know, I don't have to go crazy about it But but something that I'm wearing and whether I'm wearing it or not doesn't change how I look to everybody else that that that seems Like where we're going you nailed it Sarah the problem with Google Glass wasn't that that information wasn't helpful Wasn't that that information wasn't timely the problem was you looked like a ding dong where That is it's if this can eliminate that then I think even a more Scaled-back version of some of this information will be helpful and people will be into it Fitbit confirmed it's enabling red and infrared sensors for blood oxygen monitoring on the versa the versa light the versa 2 the Ionic and the charge 3 users will begin to see blood oxygen Saturation data in the Fitbit app which can also track asthma It can look for signs of a heart condition and indicate breathing variation in sleep Which is an indicator of sleep apnea now if you don't realize it one of the things that we're doing for patrons is a segment called live with it Where Sarah we buy a device Sarah uses it for three months and then reports on it And the thing you're living with right now is a Fitbit. Yeah. Yeah, the versa 2 is has become a part of my life I don't think I have sleep apnea. Although I guess now you can find out. Yeah, right? It is, you know, somebody somebody sleeping next to me would probably be like, well, you're snoring a lie You probably should get that looked at but but yeah, the more Anything that can be tracked And of course you can toggle this on or off Based on what you're interested in and what your fitness goals are but but yeah, I'm pumped about this especially because Not that I want, you know to be told that, you know, I've got a heart condition But I'd like to know if my fitness tracker that I don't worry about one, but if you want to know about it, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah Yeah, we're really we're really getting to the point where you know, how many steps you've taken a day Well, okay, you have your own goals. That's that's all kind of that's sort of a personal thing but but but real health data based on something that you're wearing and is fairly innocuous and and out of the way is is is It's a I don't know it kind of excites me Yeah, I think that there is there is a real market here that I've seen in terms of adoption of these devices That it becomes a no-brainer if there is vital information that you can know if there is Preventive Information that you can know we can all make fun of oh, I was moving my arm and it gave me 50 steps But if it we're able to quantify the idea that hey, you should see a doctor and you should ask about these specific things And by the way here are hard. Here is at least preliminary data that you can give them That will that will get them to give you further tests that might reveal something big now you go from curiosity and maybe over a quantifiable Fetish for for Quantifiable data to something that could save your life on a realistic level and and that is important and good Interesting to see them adding a feature like this through a software update Something they must have planned for but these sensors are there and these sensors can be used for other things as well But I like the idea that you know you bought your Fitbit for one thing and now it can do more and you're not having to pay any extra for that Microsoft announced it plans to spend more than a billion dollars over the next four years to fund ways to reduce Capture and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and you may yawn and say corporate trying to sound like a good citizen This is got more interesting the more I read about it Microsoft plans to use developments from the funding itself as part of its own goal To become carbon negative by 2030 that means they would remove more carbon from the atmosphere than they admit and To have removed all the carbon it estimates it has ever emitted by 2050 Now I don't know if that goal is achievable, but that's that's certainly a bold goal Part of the goal is to be entirely powered by renewable energy by 2025 that help them get part of the way there But they would have to be removing carbon dioxide at a large rate, which right now is very costly. So Microsoft which has considered itself carbon neutral since 2012 by purchasing carbon offsets is Charging its business entities a fee based on their emissions So they already do this if you're you know making Xbox's they charge you a fee for some of the emissions associated with making the Xbox They will now start to charge its business units for emissions along the entire supply chain including consumers This will help fund this innovation effort So the idea there is you're gonna get charged for the emissions of the electricity used by consumers who are using the Xbox to play video games and That will put the pressure on them to try to figure out cheap ways to remove carbon dioxide to relieve those costs Which is why they're spending a billion dollars on Funding innovations in how to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere because it's estimated Microsoft will emit 16 million metric tons of carbon dioxide This year which at the current rate would cost them 9.6 billion dollars to remove dang Yeah, sorry BRB fam. I'm gonna go set up a place to sell carbon offsets Well, and I think that's what's interesting about this to me It wasn't just like Microsoft's gonna buy a bunch of carbon offsets. They're doing that But they're also saying we're gonna put our money into people who are developing cheaper ways to actually remove the carbon Carbon dioxide not just this carbon offsets, but sometimes gets criticized as a shell game They want to actually create some technology that makes it cheap to to capture carbon or remove it in other ways I I think that this is admirable. I think that there is Obviously Microsoft wants to put their money where their mouth is in terms of clean energy That I think is a full step in the right direction and I applaud the idea. I think that however, you think of Legislation like the Green New Deal. I think that there's probably room for some, you know, green moon shots ideas, you know, seeing where technology can continue to affect our Effect our planet in a way that goes beyond just damaging it with the carbon emissions So if Microsoft wants to lead the way with this then I for one think that they are doing a good job Yeah, and I love two minds about this, you know, there's a part of me that says this is a lot of talk Makes a great press release and these goals don't strike me as easily achievable So it's great to say like we're gonna be carbon neutral for our entire history by 2050 It's a whole other thing to figure out how to make that happen But there are a couple parts of this that that that work for me Which is like actually charging your business units for the for the cost of carbon dioxide Which is usually just externalized onto the rest of the world with no charge That's that's pretty interesting. That's putting your money where your mouth is and saying, you know what? We're not just gonna wait for somebody to invent a way to make this cheaper We're gonna use some of that money that we're charging our own business units to fund people to try to speed this along and And hope that somebody comes up with a cheaper way to do this and famously look Microsoft has had One of the most revered R&D departments in all of technology for many many decades Them turning some of that brainpower to to this cause is something that we should have faith that they will lead and innovate in this Apple has hired the head of law firm Hogan Hogan levels unmanned airport or aircraft system practice Lisa Hellman to represent Apple's interest in Washington. In other words, she's a lobbyist Hellman also co-founded the commercial drone alliance Bloomberg reports that Apple has lobbied the government since 2017 on unmanned aerial vehicles autonomous vehicles and unmanned aviation Apple uses UAVs for mapping and sells DJI products in the Apple store and Apple reportedly has a team working on Satellites and this points to that being the case certainly Yeah, I Okay, so you could look at this and say look before you get all crazy and think Apple's making a flying car Keep in mind that that Apple already sells DJI stuff So they might want a lobby for retail, you know Against retail restrictions on the sale of drones They might not like the some of the restrictions put on commercial uses because they use the UAVs for mapping and that's all true I'm just not certain you go pay Lisa Hellman from Hogan level Who's started the commercial drone alliance to be your lobbyist if that's all you're worried about you You might have a more a more I don't know more a more general purpose lobbyist for that sort of this thing It does does imply to me that there's there's this is extremely important to Apple and again Not that they're necessarily doing flying cars But that there's a lot of research into commercial uses of drones that that maybe we're unaware of especially when it comes to their lot previous lobbying for Autonomous vehicles in the same space as unmanned aviation Yeah, but also Maybe they just want to hire a really big lobbyist Obviously, this is her specialty. This is what she's been known for but folks in in the 2020s We are going to see serious challenges on antitrust for a lot of major tech companies And that is just the stuff that is on our radar right now I think that there is going to be a massive even more than we've seen now staffing of lobbyists And I think the most high-priced lobbyists are and the most incisive and aggressive lobbying efforts are going to be done from Silicon Valley This may or may not just be hey look we like Lisa. We want Lisa on our team Lisa Would you like to get paid by Apple has fat stacks of cash, so why wouldn't they hire Lisa Helman? I mean, this isn't the apple kind of apple can afford Lisa, you know Whether or not this is about DJI stuff on store shelves or something That that that goes a lot deeper down the road It's not as if the company, you know, it's it's if they want if they want her to work for them Then you know, this is this is affordable, but you're probably right, but at the same time giving her her Accreditation and her history it does It does seem like there is more to the story than just like oh, you just want to make sure that we're, you know Lobby and you know our our drones that we're selling in the future. I know there is something to the idea that Tim Cook said I don't care if Lisa Helman cost a grip get her Yeah, yeah, Lisa you're worth every penny Forbes discovered a search warrant from October 16th 2019 that noted under property taken that a USB drive containing software called Gray key derived forensic analysis of an apple iphone 12.5 12.5 being the model number of the iphone 11 pro max the serial number of the phone listed in the warrant confirm the model This appears to be the successful execution of a warrant to crack into the iphone meaning that data was obtained The FBI wanted the data from the phone of Barris Ali Koch Koch's lawyer told Forbes that the FBI didn't have the password And didn't force coke to use face ID to unlock the phone Yeah, so this is being reported by Forbes and others as an example of well, the FBI has Evidence like there's evidence. This is a warrant. It's a handwritten note saying we used gray key to derive the forensic analysis of the stuff We asked you for the warrant for a judge To get stuff off an iphone 11 pro max if you can use gray key to crack into an iphone 11 pro max Why would you be beating up apple about needing help to get into an iphone 5? because There's probably more paperwork and clearance needed internally by these law enforcement efforts to use something like gray key and so they would Prefer it if they were allowed on a much freer level to have a backdoor that was provided by the manufacturer apple. So Yeah, it's it's lazy and it is a circumventing At the very least we could use the bureaucracy of our federal law enforcement as some kind of Guard for our civil liberties that if you really really really really really want to ask somebody's phone There are tools and you have to go a little extra To to get a hold of these tools to to use them because they are Expensive and prior and likely internally require a little bit more handling Hey folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to dailytechheadlines.com The Iowa caucus takes place here in the United States on February 3rd Justin will be there covering it for politics politics politics And part of what's going to be happening is the democrats will be receiving Their vote counts and sending out results using a smartphone app running on the personal phones Of caucus precinct and party leaders. Now the party has said almost nothing about these apps Uh, they haven't talked about who designed it what the security features are or whether it's been vetted by security professionals The chair of iowa's democratic party trey price has said that his organization worked with the national party's security team And harvard university's defending digital democracy project to create the app But that's about all he said Uh, he did did say he would reveal more closer to the caucus security professionals are criticizing that as Security through obscurity. They're saying not having transparency doesn't make you safer But this isn't the first time we've had an app at the iowa caucus And there's lots of implications for it to help us understand it. Justin. First of all, what's a caucus? Uh, well It is a very peculiar tradition here in our american presidential system Of before we get to what a caucus is. Let's also understand why iowa matters. The iowa caucus is the first stop On the presidential trail to the white house to get your party's nomination Obviously, we have an incumbent republican president Which means that we will only have a deputy president Which means that we will only have a democratic caucus Uh, traditionally not only is iowa Very important in terms of momentum and press attention, but on the democratic side specifically It is predictive of who will get the the nomination not so on the republican side as much But certainly on the democratic side Even the up starts who win iowa tend to go on and win their nomination So understanding now how historically important those results have been let's understand the process A caucus is not like a primary nor is the iowa caucus particularly Like many other caucuses like we're going to see in nevada later in february The iowa caucus goes by very specific and arcane rules wherein you walk to your precinct You then at the threshold Go to a certain part of the room think red rover red rover Said a a voter on over right to your specific preferred candidate at that point There is a head count Not kidding a literal head count that is often time disputed by the very very passionate supporters of the various Different candidates and if you are determined to be on us in in a corner of the room That is under 15 percent for viability You now have a choice in realignment You can either go To another candidate who is already viable You can decide that you are all en masse going to walk to another non viable candidate therefore making them viable Or you can just walk away and leave and go home This then determines how many delegates will go To vote for that particular candidate at the state convention, which then elects the national convention delegates Don't worry about that so much because that usually winds up running linearly. The big issue here is It's long It's very very contentious And it has been something that has been the bane of not only the democratic party By the way, the republican party doesn't do this. You walk in you vote They figure out the delegates by the big bang boom. That's it. You're done And even then on that side Iowa has had a problem with reporting results and that theoretically is what you are going to see here Remember that four years ago on the republican side Uh, sorry eight years ago on the republican side mit romney was thought to be the winner After like past when all the networks went off mid romney was declared the winner And it was only a week afterward that they realized that uncounted votes had made rick santorum the actual winner of iowa Uh, this is something that the app is hopefully supposed to take care of but but that in in a nutshell And so the idea is it takes so long to figure all this stuff out Then it sometimes it's late and the the results of the the precinct get locked in ted's trunk Let's have an app. So as soon as you're done you submit that result It all goes and gets collated uh super fast and we we have no doubt about who is winning the caucus Theoretically but now we get into the very very thorny issue of technology in politics and specifically We are at a point culturally with the democratic party where there are Very very very contentious elements within it that believe that the party leadership does not have their candidates best Uh of intentions at heart or that they're tipping the scale and also let's remember That the democratic party that is saying oh, don't worry. We've worked. We we've got our our stuff together Is the same party that got their email hacked and materially affected a presidential election And and we reported on daily tech news show about the microsoft app that was used by both parties in the iowa caucus in 2016 Which caused lots of confusion and delay and and people didn't quite know how to use it and all sorts of things I mean i phones are a little more pervasive than they were four years ago I suppose but we know even less about this app going in then we did about that microsoft one And that's I think where there is very legitimate criticism. There is no security and obscurity They they really need to and I think even at this stage Either put out this source code and let the let let let the public and security professionals Look over it because what we are talking about now With this situation is a lot of trust that you are putting on your party and the legitimacy Of coming of iowa a very very very important Uh contest could be tainted and only bring further disharmony To the winner going forward And that's the that's the real point here is it's it's not that the result will be Contested, uh, you have a paper trail. You have people in the room who remember who went to what corners? There's lots of checks on this It's the confusion that could be caused if the app isn't working or connectivity is out or somebody doesn't properly know How to operate it and maybe you think somebody's winning and it turns out that they didn't That's where the problem comes in and it erodes that trust that you're saying is already eroding Absolutely, and then it also is a breeding ground for hints and whispers that might come out afterward And remember that all of this stacks up really quick I know the people who've been hearing about politics for a year now And they they think that it is just slow moving amorphous A blob that will never end but when we hit iowa caucus time The next week is new hampshire the next week after that is nevada the next week after that is south carolina Everything that happens a new story that can last for more than three days will materially affect how voters in those successive contests Think about those candidates This to me is Bad, and I hope that iowa and the democratic party do something about it Well, thanks to everybody who participates in our subreddit Sometimes the stories are political sometimes They're not submit stories and vote on others at daily tech news show reddit.com You can also join in the conversation in our discord Which you can join by linking to a patreon account at patreon.com slash dtns What we got out of the mailbag today. Oh tom. I'm glad you asked arthur who says he's he's in the unfortunately not so frozen north says I find it hard to believe that today in the year 2020 many many years since discussions about pros and cons of dm Have gone stale youtube still doesn't have the means to allow creators to proactively show proof of license for media used in posted videos if a creator has gone through the Process of purchasing rights to use a song or video or whatever in their videos Is there no electronic proof of purchase provided a media company like youtube should provide a means to post that license on the youtube account Or on individual videos this would immediately resolve or at least cast the shadow of reasonable doubt on dmca takedowns Such as the one that recently affected scott's talking about scott johnson Arthur says not being a creator myself I'm not fully familiar with the nuts and bolts in the dm licensing and youtube machines Can you suggest any reason that this type of solution has not already been implemented? Yeah, and arthur and I had a great Email exchange about this. Uh, you know my response originally was uh, the reason they don't have a solution for this is it's There's no monetary interest in them doing so they have solved this problem for all the major corporations And that means they're not getting sued anymore That means the major corporations don't get their videos taken down And so the amount of complexity it would take to develop a solution that was robust and ungameable And and work with ascat bmi and the other licensing agencies to create digital certificates that they accept Just isn't worth it for them. They're they're not going to get that much money out of it And they don't see it as being worth the press A positive press that they might get the pressure on them has been to stop piracy not to help Small creators and and I think that's unfortunately the answer I I love what arthur is suggesting, but I just don't think there's any motivation for youtube to do it Well, thanks for the email arthur good discussion and thanks to everybody who emails us all the time Also a special shout out to patrons at our master and grand master of levels including Wandy Hernandez Jonathan price and michael akins Also, thanks to justin robert young for bringing his political wisdom to the show as he does every thursday Justin where can people keep up with the rest of your work? Well, as I mentioned politics season is heating heating up and I will be on the road to cover it I will be in iowa. I will be in Nevada and folks if you want me in new hampshire and you want me in south carolina as well Join the crowd. This has been a huge groundswell of support We are looking to get to a certain level the 1776 level on The politics patreon and you can head there and support it if you would like as well take politics seriously Dot com three dollar level gets you four total podcasts Every single week at your customer assess feed Greatly appreciated to everybody who has already supported. I know there's a bunch of dts folks in there already if This is the season for you to tune back in then Go ahead and take it take a look take politics seriously. Dot com listen folks I know people in the u.s. 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