 Coming up on DTNS, Tom Brady and Apple Zeddy Q launch an NFT company, a robot that can teach itself to walk and find. We'll talk about that monkey who's playing mind. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, April 9th, 2021 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane from Columbus, Ohio. I'm Rob Dunwood drawing the top tech from Cleveland, Ohio. I'm Len Peralta and I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. We were just talking about all kinds of stuff related to how famous Len is. No, we were we were talking about TikTok and all kinds of good stuff on good day. Internet, you want to get that conversation? Become a member of patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Microsoft is offering a preview of the 64-bit version of OneDrive for Windows. Microsoft's Ankita Kirti wrote, quote, we know that this has been a long-awaited and highly requested feature and we're thrilled to make it available for early access. The 64-bit version should be useful for anybody who needs to access larger files since 64-bit versions of Windows and now OneDrive can access more system resources than 32-bit versions. Verizon, working with the Consumer Product Safety Commission of the United States, will recall 2.5 million hotspot devices after an investigation found the devices lithium ion batteries could overheat and therefore pose fire and burn hazards. The models in question, which differ depending on consumer prepaid or postpaid plans, are the Ellipsis Jetpack mobile hotspot models. Look for MHS 900L, 900LS or 900LPP imported by Franklin Wireless and sold between April 2017 and March of this year. Bessemer, Alabama, Amazon warehouse workers voted against joining the retail, wholesale and department store union of the 3215 ballots cast. 1,798 votes opposed the union and 738 votes voted in favor. Roughly 55 percent of eligible workers voted in the election. The retail, wholesale and department store union is filing objections alleging intimidation and surveillance of employees, which Amazon denies. The US Department of Commerce added seven Chinese super computing entities to the US entity list. That's the one that restricts imports for a ties to building supercomputers for the Chinese military, including the national super computing centers in Wushi and Guangzhou, which each hold a top 10 ranked supercomputer. So this is a this is going directly at the Chinese government. These entities will now require a license from the Commerce Department to receive goods from US suppliers. Hyundai said Friday it will suspend production for two days started in Monday at its Asan plant in South Korea because of a chip shortage that includes supply conditions for semiconductor parts for powertrain control units. The Asan factory makes 300,000 vehicles per year, including sonatas and grandeur sedans. Hyundai last week also said that its main plant in Ulsan will shut down from April 7th through the 14th because of chip and components, supply issues there as well. All right, let's talk a little more about what's going on with Samsung. Let's do it. A couple notes from Samsung today. First, first MTN, ET News and Soul Economic Daily have all reported that Samsung is close to ordering millions of OLED TV panels from LG display. This would bridge the gap between using Samsung displays, LCD panels that it has said it will wind down and the eventual use of Samsung made quantum OLED and micro LED displays. So that's possibly a peek into the future of Samsung TVs. On the mobile front, Samsung New Zealand launched iTest.NZ. It contains a QR code that iPhone users can use to install a web app that emulates what it would be like to have a Samsung Galaxy interface on your phone, but you're using an iPhone. Most of the apps just launch popups, telling you what they would do if you actually had a Samsung phone. But the apps tour plays the demo videos. If you try to install, it's all very clever, to be honest. It will also let you change some things like the theme, what it looks like, simulates phone calls and messages and camera experiences as well. And Tom, you and I both played around with this this morning. It was it was I was quite impressed. Yeah, it's a web app. So it's it's just running, you know, you have to add it to your home screen. But then it makes your iPhone look like it's got the Samsung Galaxy launcher. Now, some of the stuff, like you said, doesn't really work. The weird one. I don't know if you used it long enough to get the phone call. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I did. Yeah, you answer it. I did. And I really I was really confused because it was like a, you know, like the plus sign six, six. So I was like, oh, this is like an international thing. I don't know what's going on here. It's clever enough to. Yeah, it wants to propagate your experience with, oh, you've got some messages. You got some phone calls. You know, you kind of see what it all looks like. But it was I was fooled into thinking that some like hacker was calling me this morning. And I was like, oh, God, what's happening here? But but in general, I I also, you know, as I as I was sort of clicking around and the camera app had this instructional video that someone who obviously Samsung had hired to to describe, you know, how everything works, I thought was very well done. It I mean, it's not necessarily going to make me want to switch to a Samsung phone. But if I were in the market for one and someone said, oh, they're really nice. And I was like, I don't know, though, maybe it's too weird and too different. I think that this is like the perfect way to get people to switch over. So I just wanted to make sure. And I think, Sarah, you confirmed that it was a nice display. It was it was a nice interface because I actually am not a phone user. I am a Samsung phone user. And I'll be honest, as soon as I get a new Samsung phone, the first thing I do is change the launcher because I don't like the Samsung interface per se. So at least it's not it's not that it's bad. There are just some really cool launchers you can put on Android devices. And I tend to go with them. So I just wanted to make sure that if they are showcasing this, that they are showing, you know, something that looks compelling because you could do a lot of harm by trying to show somebody something that they weren't planning on getting and you just their minds they're never going to. Yeah, as far as what you can change, it's pretty limited again. It's a web app, but you know, there are a variety of themes. And I I played around with them, you know, for a bit. And and yeah, I I I definitely I was not under the impression that if I were to get a Android phone that was made by Samsung, I'd be like, now I don't even know to use my phone. This is going to be so hard. We've we've kind of gotten to the point where it's sort of like a car, right? Most of the stuff works more or less the same way. But but yeah, it was it was I thought it was clever marketing, if nothing else. Yeah, I think the nifty thing about it is is not so much that it will convince you. But but like you're saying, Rob, you'll see like, oh, this interface is not going to be that much different than the interface I have on my iPhone. I could get used to that, right? And it's a chance to kind of show up some of their features and get some Samsung marketing at you. How many people are actually going to do this? I don't know. And then what percentage of them will actually decide to switch? No idea. But it certainly got people talking. And honestly, what I love most about it is a great example of what you can do with a web app. Like is it really this is just a web app. This is not an app. They have to download and install and it's super functional. I'm still waiting to see if I'm going to get a call home. Oh, yeah, I got a text message on my pretend Samsung. Was it from Logan? Yes, it was. Yeah, Logan. He was texting me too today. We're on to you, Logan. Well done. So CNN reports that Tom Brady will launch a digital collectibles platform called Autograph using NFTs for collectibles from celebrities in sports, entertainment, fashion and other areas of pop culture. So far, not that surprising. So how about this? Eddie Q., Apple Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services will serve as an advisor for Autograph alongside Lionsgate CEO John Feldheimer, Live Nation Entertainment CEO Michael Rapino, Draft King co-founders Jason Robbins and Paul Lieberman and Chief Content Advertising Business Officer at Spotify, Don Ostrov. So I want to be honest with you guys. I started really paying attention to NFTs when that $69 million collage sold, I guess that's what, you know, a month ago or so. Yeah. But this is kind of pushing me over. I think I just want to have one just so I can say that I have one. You're like, if it's good enough for Tom Brady and Eddie Q., it's good enough for me. I don't know if I'm going to buy one or if I want to try to create my own or whatever the case is. But I at least want to be able to say that back in 21, I created or purchased an NFT and I'll just hold on to it forever. That's why I bought one of Lens, is I wanted to go through the experience of buying it. And I knew it was going to like benefit a friend of mine. And I got a cool piece of art because Len makes great art. It's just sort of to the experiment of it. I suppose that with Tom Brady's name on this, you're going to get a lot of people curious as well, right? Willing to like give it a shot, try something out, maybe have the bragging rights of like, oh, I own a Tom Brady pass. Because this is not about an actual thing. It's not about copyright protection or anything like that, as we've talked about before. This is about bragging rights, right? Being able to say something that sounds cool. Yeah. And I really can see this working because I think to my youngest sister, when she was five years old, she was really in love with Penny Hardaway from the Orlando Magic. So my dad bought her like the rookie card set like the Topso rookie set that contained his card, you know, years and years ago. She has since gotten the rookie collection every year for the last 30 some odd years, you know, and it's like, you know, sometimes she gets a diamond in the rough. Sometimes it's just a box of cards that will sit under a bad or in a storage locker somewhere. But this is kind of interesting because, you know, you know, people are going to move to the future and they're going to start buying these things. So I think Tom Brady might be on to something here. Yeah, I'd like to. Yeah, I'd love to know more about what kind of collectibles we're talking about, because, sure, Tom Brady is, you know, a football star, but entertainment and fashion and pop culture in general, especially with the other names that are attached to autograph. It sounds like it's going to be a lot more like film and music than necessarily sports. Well, you got Tom Brady, so that brings in the sports. Then you got those other advisors we mentioned that brings in that film and music. Yeah, I want to see the roster. I'm curious. I'm curious. Yeah. I won't I won't ditch it yet. Lots of demos of robots walking out there and and they're impressive. Almost all of them, though, are the results of fine tuned programming, which is, of course, still impressive that you can even do that. But we got something even more impressive. A team that includes Cal Berkley's Jean-Yu Lee has taken it one step. Well, multiple steps further with Cassie, a robot that teaches itself how to walk through reinforcement learning. It's the first time reinforcement learning has been used to teach a robot to walk from scratch, from nothing. You didn't give it any kind of programming. You didn't do any fine tuning. For a long time, simulations could train a robot to walk on its own, but the Sims couldn't perfectly replicate all the real world conditions like the exact way friction works on the ground. And so when they'd go from the Sim to the real world, you'd have to tweak stuff. Otherwise, they'd fall down and run into stuff and letting a robot learn from scratch in the real world is dangerous to itself and those around it. So Cassie, they took a different approach with, trained it virtually using a database of actual robot movements. So things taken from the real world, maybe replicating things a little better. Cassie then went through a second round of virtual training with something called the Sim Mechanics Database. That mirrors real world physics a lot better, but it works slower than it does in real life. So using it on its own is not a good idea, but using it in combination with the other database worked. After those two rounds, Cassie had learned enough that it could safely start walking around in real life without risk of bashing into everything and everyone around it. And it did well. It could walk without slipping, even on rough or slippery terrain, carry unexpected heavy loads, just kind of squatting down and recover from being pushed. It even accidentally damaged two of its motors in its right leg, but was able to compensate and keep walking. Well, kudos to you, Cassie. Another one of those stories where it's kind of like, I feel like people are either on the side of, well, this is scary. Now robots are teaching themselves to walk. And then the other people like me who are like, this is great. Robots are teaching themselves to walk and being able to carry heavy loads that you didn't tell them that they were going to carry or recover from getting knocked over in some way type of thing. I think that this is, listen, the singularity is, I don't know, inevitable. But until then, I think all of this is going to end up helping humans a lot more than hurting us. So I remember watching a, that's 60 minutes a few weeks ago and there was a story on Boston Dynamics. One of the things that the founder of the company said is like, he essentially said that, no, this is not the Terminator. These are not thinking machines. We instruct them to do every single thing that they do. I think this is kind of taking it to the next level. So I will jokingly say, it's like, did you not watch the movie Terminator? You just go to build it knowingly. But when I get serious about it, this is really cool because where I can see this kind of technology going is that we're going to start sending robots to Mars and to other rocks that are not Earth. And if they can kind of figure out how to navigate around on their own without having the 15 to 20 minute delay for us to actually give it an instruction and then it do one thing and it can kind of figure it out on its own and just report back to, you know, how it's doing. I think that, you know, that's, this is pretty cool technology. Yeah, cause it's, I want it here, but someplace else. This isn't generalized intelligence. It can't think about anything. It can't even think about walking, but it can learn to walk. And that's a great example of the benefit is if spot or big dog are put in an unusual situation that it hasn't been rightly fine tuned for, you might have to fine tune it again. Boston Dynamics has done a great job of avoiding those situations. It works at a lot of different situations, but Mars might be one of those. And this is something that you can put in any situation and it's going to be able to adapt and learn as it goes. I just love the idea of one day we all have robots. You know, it's like, what kind of robot do you have? Oh, you got a Cassie? Cool. How's your Cassie walk? Oh, good walking. Very well done. You know, it's kind of turns into something that's a little bit of a bragging right for you. And it's just good for machine learning in general to be able to have self learning because that is something that is easier to implement and will result in better situations in other areas as well. So it's a machine learning advance too, not just a robotics advance. Before we move on, let's take a break for Dan Campos, host of Noticias Tecnología Express, our Spanish language weekly daily tech headlines, weekly tech headlines. Dan has a word for us. Hello, friends of DTNS. It is time for The Word of the Day, brought to you by Noticias de Tecnología Express. Ah, waiting or using something for the first time. You know that feeling, right? In Spanish, we have a verb for that action, estrenar. It applies for more things than clothes and has a similar meaning to premiering something like a new film or launching new features in a platform or an app. If you use TikTok's new automatic caption, estás estrenando una nueva función. Also, you can say that when TikTok releases such option, TikTok estrenó una nueva función. You can learn this and more words by listening to Noticias de Tecnología Express available every Friday. And now you can read the title of today's episode. Facebook targets ads, that's not news. Facebook targets ads based on a lot of factors including gender, also not news. For instance, one-a-day vitamins might want its women's multivitamin ads to show up for women users and the men's multivitamin show up for men, that's fine. But there are some areas of advertising we're discriminating by gender is not considered fine. For instance, only showing housing ads to men, not women, that would not be okay. That would be against the law. An audit by scientists at the University of Southern California found that Facebook's ad system can result in ads for jobs not showing up the same for women and men beyond what would be justifiable based on qualifications. The study bought ads advertising for delivery drivers for Domino's Pizza and other ads for Instacart. These ads did not have any requirements that you'd be a man or a woman and were roughly the same requirements for what you did need to have experience-wise to get the job. And the ad by itself, this is important. The ad by did not specify gender targeting. They found that Instacart happens to have more female drivers and Domino's just happens to have more male drivers. And apparently Facebook knows that because the study found that Facebook targeted the Instacart ads towards women and the Domino's ads towards men. A similar experiment on LinkedIn showed the same number of ads to both women and men. So it was definitely only a Facebook thing. The study also tested Facebook ads for a software engineer at NVIDIA, a car salesperson, a Netflix software engineer and a jewelry sales associate. Now you're gonna guess and you're gonna be right that the jewelry sales associate showed up more often for women and the car salesperson showed up more often for men but the NVIDIA job also showed up more often for men while the Netflix job showed up more often for women. Facebook told the Verge it is addressing these issues and these issues are slightly more subtle because they're happening in the algorithm not in the ad by than what happened when Facebook settled a lawsuit over charges of housing discrimination in 2019. At that time Facebook had something called ethnic affinities that lets you target groups by ethnicity and those were allowed to be used on groups seeing house and job ads. It has since dropped that tool from being used on housing and job ads because if you did that would be illegal but this more subtle gender bias targeting I don't know what you would call it Sarah is definitely happening. Yeah, what you said about, I'm trying my, I'm like where do I start here? The example that you gave about the vitamins and as a woman, if I'm getting a one a day I'm like I want the woman one, that's fine. There's nothing about that that bothers me. When it comes to housing ads or particular job ads that should not be affected by anyone's gender at all does it really affect me personally? Most of the time still no. Most of the time I am not personally upset by this but in general, yeah you get into, it gets gray areas and then into, yeah straight up illegal areas where this should not be happening. Facebook saying, hey, we're gonna figure this out. That's pretty much Facebook's M.O. That's, this is what Facebook does. Facebook says, hmm, well our algorithm is doing this thing let's fix it and most of the time that seems to be happening behind the scenes but yeah, it's sort of fascinating how this ends up happening on a certain platform and again, can't be replicated on other also large platforms where people would be looking for jobs, in the case of these delivery jobs. I understand how the algorithm works so I get that these are the kind of decisions that the algorithm is making. You get a ton tested there. But this is one where for anything where ethnicity and race or gender should never be considered for, just turn this off, just turn it off. If LinkedIn can get it right, Facebook should definitely be able to get it right. This is something where they just need to, they need to fix this one quickly. Yeah, I don't think Facebook was maliciously doing this. I think it's a side effect of a very good algorithm. Facebook's algorithm is better than LinkedIn's honestly, is probably what this means but now that they're aware of it, the response isn't, we're gonna address this, the response is turn it off. Turn it off for these categories, loans, housing, jobs, don't use the algorithm for those categories. Only allow legal targeting at the beginning, don't use the algorithm, just turn it off, turn it off. I'm with Rob, Facebook, come on, it's easy fix. All right, let's move on to a new sensor, Rob. What do we got? The US National Institutes of Health issued a grant to scientists at General Electric to further develop a sensor capable of detecting COVID-19. The sensor would use organic solvent customized with certain nucleic acids of a particular virus with different sensors theoretically able to detect different viruses based on the solvent used. The scientists will spend the next two years refining the fingertip size sensor for use inside devices like phones, watches and thermostats. Yeah, I think this is great. Obviously using it for COVID right now seems like a very compelling use. It's gonna take a couple of years for this to get out of the lab, probably another year or two to market it. So by then, hopefully knock on wood, COVID isn't as big of a concern as it is right now. It'll probably still be a concern, but it won't be as big of a concern. And I would like to be able to use this on other viruses, you know, like the flu to be able to tell like, oh yeah, something's there. I need to clean that surface or stay away from it. Definitely, and I don't wanna say that I'm not concerned about COVID, but for this technology, not so much. I'm concerned that this can pick up stuff 10 years, 12 years from now that we're not thinking about this ultimately gonna be able to stop another global pandemic. So I am all for this technology and anything they can do to keep people safer, keep people healthier and keep people from catching stuff that shuts earth down for the better part of, I'm not the better part for over a year. I'm all for it. Yeah, I mean, I think there's so many instances where, you know, I don't know, I heard about some super spreader events, you know, and how could they? And it's like, people aren't trying to get sick. They just don't realize that they might get sick by doing this thing, going to this place, touching this thing. And to have more information at the onset, as you mentioned, Rob, going forward, you know, for years and years, this sort of issue that we're dealing with right now, yes, well, we're gonna get past it. It's gonna take some time, but there will be others and the more you know. Yeah, the more you know. All right, it's the time of our show where we talk about monkeys. Oh, okay. The Brain Interface Startup NeuroLink published a video showing a macaque monkey named Pager using an installed brain implant to play video games such as Pong. NeuroLink monitored Pager playing the game with a joystick and then analyzed brain activity to model how the implant should decode signals without the controller, requiring only a few minutes of activity to calibrate the implant. Yeah, so. And there's a video and you all have to watch it, please, it's adorable. I wanna get all these things out of the way because I know they're going through a few people's minds out there. This isn't new. This isn't the first time it's ever been done. This is technology that has been slowly being developed over decades. And so for a lot of people, it's the first time they've seen it. A lot of times the first time they've heard of it, but NeuroLink isn't the first to do this and this isn't the out of nowhere situation that it might appear, but it is impressive. It's well done. It is one of the best examples, one of the best demonstrations of it. And Elon Musk is very good at doing this. He didn't invent rockets. He didn't even go into space, but he made it really good and he made it really popular, right? So he does two things. He makes something look better by presenting it well and he improves on it. And I think both of those things are true in this case. I'm all for this technology. It definitely is going to be able to, you know, allow other primates to play Pong with us, but fortunately, there are folks who have back injuries, where they, you know, maybe they're paralyzed or maybe they're paralyzed there. This ultimately may help them control things that they physically can't do with their legs or physically can't do with their arms and hands. They'll be able to control things and allow them to be more mobile. Additionally, and on a personal note, I am a fan of all types of games that are like mech warrior type games. All these games have a neural interface that you got to put a helmet on and that allows you to interface with, you know, your giant robot. I know I'm saying it's tongue in cheek, but this is where this technology goes to where you're going to ultimately be able to put a helmet on and control large machinery with it. And to me, that is just something that is, you know, very cool to do. So I'm all for this. As you said, it's not new, but it's very impressive the way that they've done it. And if you can popularize something and make it accessible to people, I think that's important. So I don't discount what Neuralink is doing here in any way. It's still an impressive advance for sure. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. This one comes from Doug who wrote in response to our discussion of display drivers being one of the bottlenecks for the chip shortage and how they're built on older 16 nanometer processes. Doug writes, there are a lot of reasons for this and certainly cost is a big one, but another factor is heat. Most consumer grade chips are rated for 85 degrees Celsius while automotive ideally would like to use 125 Celsius or perhaps 105 if we must. So for example, Doug says, a car that's been sitting in the sun all day with its windows rolled up, even in moderately warm and sunny climates can have a very high internal temperature. So the bottom line of this is that older processes are more mature and have had time to have optimizations for higher temperature radiance. Industry is working hard with silicon vendors to get newer processes to work at the higher temperatures, but it's still a bit of a transition time in the industry right now. Some vendors are capable, others are not. It's getting to the point where complex active cooling liquid systems are even being considered for mainstream cars. Oh man, who doesn't want a liquid cooled infotainment system in their new car? This reminds me of how NASA uses older chips for similar reasons, right? Because those are the ones they know will work in space and it takes a while for them to adopt new chips and new technologies because they have to make sure they'll handle the radiation and the stresses of space a little bit less of an extreme environment, but still a somewhat extreme environment. If anybody's gone inside a car on a hot day, you know that. Yeah, this is the ultimate, go with what you know. Like you said, Tom, there's a reason why NASA uses old tech in space. They know that it works. So if they can extend that to things in cars and just give you longer life on stuff because you can't work on a car like an old mechanic. These are all computers these days. This is just going to further technology as far as how we drive, how we get around. And I'm all for a liquid cool infotainment system in my car. That to me would be the coolest thing. Heck yeah, no kidding. Shout out to patrons at our master and grandmaster levels, including Justin Zellers, James C. Smith, and Ms. Music Teacher. Also special thanks to Brad, Brad with 2Ds, who is in our top lifetime supporter list for DTNS. Thank you for all the years of support, Brad. All right, let's also say thanks to Len Peralta, who has been busy drawing during today's show. What have you drawn for us today, Len? Well, it's a day like today, Tom, that I have to say thank you. Thank you for these stories. They're amazing. We had a self-taught walking robot versus a monkey playing pong via Neuralink. Who would win in this fight? Who do you have? And yeah, I don't know. I gotta say personally, I'm gonna take the monkey playing pong, honestly, because I think anybody, any animal that can control something with their mind is gonna take out that robot, so. The monkey will certainly will win if the game is pong. I don't know about anything else. We'll see, we'll see. I mean, we're not too far, man. I'm telling you, this image is now available at my online store at LenPeraltaStore.com, also at Patreon at patreon.com forward slash Len. And during this show, I made it into an NFT because we're also talking NFTs. If you go to openc.io, search LenP, you'll get something different. You'll get this plus, you'll get the original ink file that came with it. So check it out. Very cool. Thank you, Len. Also thanks to Rob Dunwood for being with us today. Rob, what's been going on since we saw you last? I have been redoing my basement. So the reason I'm not in my normal spot for the show this week is because my basement is currently under construction. There's a ton of studs and stuff like that down there. So hopefully next time you guys see me, I'll have an actual studio with you. Nice. That's exciting. Well, where can people keep up with your work that you're doing wherever you happen to be? smrpodcast.com. That's my home where I do a, you know, podcasts I've been doing for about 12 years now with a couple of the knuckleheads and get me at all things at Rob Dunwood. Well, thank you very much for everybody on the show today. We are live Monday through Friday for 30 p.m. Eastern 20 30 UTC and you can find out more at daily technewshow.com slash live join us. If you can, we'd love to have you and we'll be back on Monday with I as actor. Have a great weekend. Talk to you then. This show is part of the frog pants network. Get more at frogpants.com. Hope you have enjoyed this brover.