 Coming up on DTNS, magically pivots to the enterprise, VSCO girls get a video editor and alternatives to back doors for law enforcement. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, December 10th, 2019 in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. And from the dark forests of Finland, I'm Patrick Beja. And from a still drying out Southern California region on the shows producer Roger Chang. We were just having a grand old time talking about graphic novels and movies and convenience stores and why Roger refuses to have a debit card. If you want that content, you got to get it at our Patreon, become a member and get good day internet at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Apple launched a previously announced new feature for Apple Card allowing card holders to buy a new iPhone and then pay it back over 24 months with no interest. Apple is also offering 6% cash back on all Apple purchases made from December 10th through December 31st, you know, cash in and on the holiday, which includes purchases made at Apple stores on apple.com or through the Apple Store app. Microsoft Teams is the first office app to come to Linux. Microsoft is releasing teams in public preview for Linux in .deb and .rpm formats. Neuro is starting another test program for autonomous delivery of groceries this time with Walmart for select customers in Houston. Neuro, we've talked about quite a bit on the show. It operates its own custom built driverless vehicles. Vehicles have a couple of compartments that can fit up to six grocery bags each. They've improved that over the years and you may have heard us talk about Neuro partnering with Kroger in Arizona, Kroger in Houston as well. So this is their second Houston partner. And in 2020, Neuro plans to not only continue its partnership with Kroger and add the Walmart one but partner up with Domino's Pizza as well. Walmart itself has partnered with a lot of other autonomous vehicle companies, including Udelf, Gattick AI, Ford and Waymo. Bike sharing company, Wheels says it will begin mounting bike helmets on the rear fenders of its bikes in Los Angeles, California. The helmets will have removable liners and riders who use the helmet will get 20% off their rides. All right, let's talk a little bit more about those VSCO folks, Patrick. Indeed, VSCO, the VSCO folks have acquired Rylo and not Kylo, Star Wars everywhere. A video editing startup founded by the original developer of Instagram's hyperlapse for an undisclosed amount. Rylo is known for its 360 degrees camera capable of creating cinematic video in 5.8 resolution. As part of VSCO, Rylo will focus exclusively on building out video editing tools for mobile. And the company tells TechCrunch, it will not continue to manufacture and sell its camera but will continue to honor the warranty on previously sold cameras. So kind of a disappointment if you're a fan of that camera that they won't be making that anymore. But certainly an attempted expansion for VSCO into taking what little video editing they have in the VSCO app and acquiring a pretty hearty video editing company. I've been using VSCO for quite some time. The VSCO girls joke aside, it is a great app. If you're into mobile editing of photos, it is the creme de la creme. It became a meme for a reason is what you're saying. Exactly, exactly. The idea of the company getting into video is smart probably. I was a little surprised. I was sort of like, what does VSCO want with something like Rylo? But I can see where, with the way that things are going in these days that's having a video and certainly some sort of 360, VR capable something is good for the company. I don't really know what it's going to look like. And Rylo camera as it's known now is going to shut down, which as you mentioned, Tom is probably a disappointment for the few people who used it. But yeah, it's interesting to see that VSCO is clearly trying to go into other avenues. Yeah, and the startup came from a couple of talented folks. You mentioned Hyperlapse, but the other co-founder came over from working on the photo editing apps at Apple by way of Instagram into Rylo. So it's pretty interesting. I was looking up VSCO girls because I actually didn't know it was a thing. But VSCO certainly is, you know, if you're as time has gone on, most of these apps have disappeared because the social networks and photo apps have integrated functions that are good enough, but VSCO has stayed there because it's very peculiar and very high quality and has developed a community in a certain style. I think they have maxed out their photo potential and they're looking at video because they need to keep growing, I suppose. Patrick, you need to subscribe to it'sathing.me, just saying. Tom, I'll make you a deal. Just add a day to the week and I'll do that. Okay, done. Excellent. Smart glasses maker North is pulling its focal smart glasses off of the market to make way for Focals 2.0, which is coming in 2020. The company's next pair of glasses will be 40% lighter with 10 acts of the resolution and North also promises to look nearly indistinguishable from standard glasses. We'll see. There's also the crooked statement that Focals will offer a world quote, where computing moves into the world around us. The current Focals use Bluetooth to display notifications in your field of view. You can control the display with a ring called loop and a built-in mic lets the wearer talk to Amazon voice services. The teaser image is essentially the glasses I'm wearing in a lot of ways, but just with some kind of attachments to the right and left that are there for the microphone and the projection. But they don't stick out too crazy. I'd wanna see them on an actual face to be sure, but they're certainly better than a lot of other stuff we've seen out there. They look like glasses. They look like glasses and even the display is kind of interesting if it indeed works as they advertise it. It looks like something, I would say it's probably the first non-AR headset, but just glasses type form factor that looks like it could have some actually useful information on there. It's a little bit like what Google Glass was promising to be, but just better. Except Google Glass was projecting stuff right in the corner of your eye. This feels like it has enough real estate by using the entire glass. Maybe it's gonna be obstructing your view, but it has enough real estate to actually do more than just a small icon. You know, the Google Glass promise, I think, I mean, it was ahead of its time to a fault. But also there are, and I've had this conversation with people recently because I was having a debate with folks about, what smart speakers are good for? And I was like, they're my life. And a friend of mine was like, can you just look outside and see what the weather is kind of thing? Or I'm like, okay, well, that could be your argument. But in my car, for example, we have a heads up display. So I can see what my miles per hour I'm going in, even though I can look down and see that as well. It's like, it's just another kind of AR component that isn't necessary, but it's very nice. So I wonder what in the glasses sense, what is really necessary? Probably not that many things. Yeah, we'll see what the price of these are and how well they're received, but this is one end of the AR market. It's the end of notifications. We're gonna put notifications, heads up display, like you said. Magically it is one of the companies at the other end trying to make something that changes the world around you. That's what I consider fully augmented reality, where it's putting things in the world around you. And Magic Leap announced it's replacing the Magic Leap One Creator Edition, which is sold for $2,295, with a new version called Magic Leap One, but it uses the numeral one, not the word one. And otherwise is almost exactly the same as the old version and sells at the same price. What is new is an operating system update and software suite targeted at professional users. In fact, they have an enterprise suite version of the headset that's a little bit more expensive about $700 more expensive, $2,995. But that one comes with dedicated support, device management software and a rapid replacement program, things that companies want if they deploy hardware in the enterprise. The Verge says Magic Leap is aiming at four categories, virtual communication and collaboration, 3D visualization, remote training and assistance, and location based experiences. Magic Leap is going to have to take on the existing Enterprise AR folks, Epson, Microsoft, Fusix and more and emphasize their ecosystem independence. They're not dependent on a particular ecosystem and ergonomics, because Magic Leap is a little bit more comfortable than some of those other headsets. It is tempting to point and laugh. And I think for good reason, which I might indulge in at some point, possibly even now. It seems like emergency pivot that is not just a pivot of, oh, we were trying something and it didn't work out. So we're trying something else that we think might work out. It's kind of a, let's try to save what we can because the direction we were going in is not here yet. Maybe it will be there at some point. But if any other company was doing this, it would be all cool, good for them. But Magic Leap has promised so much. And to be honest, I've heard a lot of people talk about those private demos they've had. I still don't understand what the product is. So I wouldn't recommend necessarily this one until I've seen a little bit more to anyone. Yeah, if anything, I look at this if we were going to say it charitably as Magic Leap admitting that they aren't that much farther ahead if at all ahead of others and enterprises where augmented reality is right now. You can compare it to computers of the 70s and 80s. Yes, there are personal computers back then but they were very niche and AR is still very niche for the consumer. But it does have a viable product map in the enterprise and Magic Leap is finally admitting that and leaning into it, which I think they had to. And it seems like there are other players in that space but it's very early. Oh yeah, there are plenty. There's gonna be merchants. Magic Leap is playing catch-up in that space now. You're right. Exactly, but it's so early that they might end up being successful. The difference with fridges and computers in the enterprise is that I guess you could imagine what it would be for consumers, like a smaller version that would help you do things like this, in the case of Magic Leap, we don't even know what they're trying to achieve is because no one has explained it, no one has understood it. Maybe they do have a secret, wonderful product in development and in research but which is unknown. All right, hand tracking is coming to the experimental tab in the Oculus Quest settings as a free update by the end of the week. Actually, I believe it's already implemented or maybe it's coming. Anyway, it's very soon. At launch, it will only work with the Oculus root menu system and SDK for hand tracking will go live next week and it will not work with Oculus Link. So the Oculus Link is the thing that enables you to connect your autonomous Oculus Quest to your PC to use Oculus Rift PC dedicated games on your Oculus Quest. Are you following? Yes, sort of. So in other words, when I've plugged my Oculus Quest into a PC, I can't use the hand tracking and when I am not plugged into a PC, I can use the hand tracking to optimize my settings, I guess, until that SDK comes out. Yeah, but it is, you know, the launch is minimal but the promise is extremely exciting because modeling your hands inside a VR world means you have that much more of a direct connection with the environment you are immersed in and as good as the controllers are and they're pretty good, having your hands themselves modeled could be easier, cheaper and even more immersive. So it's still early days, but it's early days is something that actually works and we can understand. It's like the slow march to the merging of virtual and augmented reality, you know, being able to see a little bit of the real world in the VR. I think that's cool, I like it. I don't know that I would call it merging with AR because the controllers actually try to emulate your hands anyway. You end up with those weird gestures where you have your fingers pointing out and stuff like that. It's, to me, it's more just the control scheme that becomes more natural. Epic has delivered Fortnite for Android outside of the app store since August of 2018. On Monday, nine to five Google reported that Epic intends to submit Fortnite to the Play Store with a request for an exemption from the 30% cut that Google takes from in-app transactions. Epic told The Verge it wants the exemption for all developers, not just itself and said that the tying of the payment service with the fee is illegal and notes that the developer distribution agreement does not require developers to use Google payments at all. Epic only takes 12% of its own from its own game store and the $490 was recently rebranded as the Epic Games app. Patrick, I hear you chuckling. When Epic says, you know, we want it for everyone, not just for ourselves. So it's not self-serving at all, right? I mean, sure they do. Why wouldn't they? It can't hurt, yeah. Of course. I mean, that being said, we should not underestimate Epic. They are extremely aggressive. It's not the first time they are doing something kind of like this. They were railing against Microsoft with the Windows Store that they were afraid would make them more isolated and make it more difficult for developers like them. It's not 100% clear, but they already have a way to sideload Fortnite slash the store on Android. And so they have already gotten all the people they could, I suppose, through that way, but they also want to be available on the official Play Store, which is understandable. I think we're getting to a point where those 30% are a little bit difficult to live with, because in an open ecosystem like Windows, Epic could actually go in and challenge the incumbent steam with their own store and get a lower cut to enticed developers. Obviously on mobile, it is just not possible. So that's where we get into the monopoly issues. Yeah, it seems to me like the strategy here is Epic withheld Fortnite from Play to put some pressure on it because it could see that it wasn't gonna get any of the money. Now it's coming back to the table to say, well, wait, wouldn't you like to have some of the money instead of that none of the money that you've been getting? Let's talk. Google's holding the line and saying, we're not gonna talk. It's 30% for everybody, that's all there is to it. But I think the other thing that's interesting is Epic rebranding the Fortnite installer as the Epic Games app means if they were to win this, they would then be able to have all their games through that installer. So there's a little more on the table for Epic, and I think that's why they're pushing this now. Yeah, of course. And it's, I mean, the problem that Google is having is that if they agree to it for Epic, then there will be more exceptions. So that's a Pandora's box, they don't wanna open. Same with Apple. And that's why Epic's saying we're doing it for everybody because they know Google would have to do it. Both of those giant companies fighting it out are actually doing it for everyone. Yeah, they are. They're so kind. Hey, folks, if you wanna get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to DailyTechHeadlines.com. Well, Buzzfeed reports that Facebook sent a letter in response to U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, U.K. Home Secretary Preeti Pratel, and Australian Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton, and former U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kevin Macalinen, saying it would not weaken end-to-end encryption across the Facebook messaging apps. So that means mostly WhatsApp and Messenger. Barr had sent the letter to Facebook in October on behalf of the others, saying that end-to-end encryption in WhatsApp and Messenger would prevent law enforcement agencies from finding illegal activity, such as child sexual exploitation, terrorism, and election meddling. So trying to show the things they're like, hey, we won't be able to catch these horrible people if you don't give us away into your encrypted messengers. The U.S., U.K. and Australian governments have all asked Facebook to let law enforcement gain access to user content. They've gotten a little cagey about it over the years, not asking specifically for a backdoor, just saying, we don't care how you do it, but you should let us be able to find the information of criminals with a warrant, to which Facebook is saying, we can't. If we do end-to-end encryption, we don't have the keys, and there's no way for us to do that otherwise. Messenger's Director of Product Management for Privacy and Integrity is testifying before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee today, which is having a hearing on encryption and lawful access. Apple's sending someone to Manhattan's district attorney is going, and the Facebook representative is proposing ways to work with law enforcement without weakening encryption. Facebook has been highlighting its use of AI and even human moderation as ways to catch bad activity without breaking encryption and saying, we'd love to work with law enforcement more on those approaches. Other companies, like you may have heard of the NSO Group before, offer actual malware to governments and law enforcement agencies that can be planted on target devices. That can have legal difficulties, depending on what country you're in and how you're going about it, and the vulnerabilities they exploit eventually get patched, and then you don't have your information anymore. It also has to be targeted by device. Malware that works on iOS is not gonna work on Android, et cetera, et cetera. Technology Review describes another alternative to breaking encryption. This one comes from an Israeli company called PIC6, P-I-C-S-I-X. It's a 10-year-old company that specializes in data interception. So instead of tapping the encryption by breaking it, instead of putting malware on a phone directly, they make devices that interrupt the connection and try to force the target onto another less secure platform. So for instance, it has a device called the P6F-15 that works on GSM, 3G and 4G, to create a fake cell tower. Now, not to intercept the communication, because if you're using Signal, that fake cell tower isn't gonna do you any good, but what it does is it makes it glitchy. So you start a call on WhatsApp, and then like five seconds in it drops. Then you start a call again, and it goes 20 seconds and it drops, and it keeps messing with the connection. They have proprietary technology. They won't talk about how it does it, but anybody who's used technology knows that it can do that sometimes. And the idea is to get people frustrated enough to move off that secure platform, whether it's WhatsApp, Signal or whatever, and make a call or send a text message that can be intercepted because it's not encrypted. This is a standard method of surveillance that people use in the real world as well. So this is them applying it to the digital world. And of course, that tower can be used to inject Trojan horses as well. So if you did have malware from the NSO group to infect the target device, you could do that. We're gonna skip past the idea of breaking encryption undermines it for everyone. I think we've made that point plenty of times on this show and go to, if we can give law enforcement a compelling way to get information without breaking encryption, that's good for all of us because we don't want a weakened encryption. Patrick, do any of these seem like likely candidates to be useful? I think it's definitely an interesting way to go about it. I think that law enforcement, when they want to break encryption, they're thinking about slightly wider net type of applications. They see troves of data and in many cases, they think those, if they could access whatever they want in those enormous amounts of data, it would be obviously very useful. The tool that PIC-6 is selling is very interesting because it's a different kind of novel approach when applied to digital communication, but it's still very targeted. You have to physically be within reach of the device, the person you want to hack. You have to know which person you want to hack. So it makes law enforcement work more possible, but I'm not sure it fits what the agencies are asking for when they want to break, when they want back doors or we don't want to know how you do it, but we want to be able to read those. Basically, they're saying if Tom commits a crime, we want to be able to go to Messenger and say give us all of Tom's messages. We want to look through and see who he's been talking to. We have a warrant, right? Facebook's right now is saying we can't do that, because well, let's use WhatsApp. WhatsApp's saying we can't do that because Tom's messages are encrypted end to end. He has the key, we don't. There's nothing we can do. It's just the way the system is set up. We'd love to comply with your warrant, but there's nothing there but gibberish because it's all encrypted. What the police are saying is we would like you to give us that anyway. You shouldn't have a system that doesn't allow you to give us that. We don't care how you do it. It doesn't have to be a backdoor if you could figure a way that doesn't involve a backdoor. This, these opportunities, especially the one from Pick Six, say, well, why don't you just go and spend some more effort and force that target? It's the one target. It's Tom, go camp outside his house in an unmarked van that he won't notice and force him off. That is a legitimate way to go, but it's more effort. It's not as easy as going to the company and saying just hand them over. It has more risks because you might be seen, you might be uncovered, and it doesn't always work. Maybe the person doesn't get frustrated. So I get why law enforcement is like, no, no, no, we don't want to do all that. That's a lot of legwork. But the other side of it is we weaken encryption for everyone in a way that will eventually cause breaches that harm innocent people. Well, that's obviously the core of the debate between encryption and backdoors. And that hasn't changed. And what law enforcement is asking is, Tom is a suspicious individual. We want to see all of his messages. What this solution is, is certainly better than not having anything, but it's closer to regular, traditional law enforcement efforts where they will go, as you described, to your house and try to get your future communication. Even if they are successful, they'll get stuff that you will do in the future, not your history, all of your contacts you've been in communication with and stuff like that. So I mean, it's much closer to, it's not having the benefits of the online world. It's closer to the way law enforcement is. It's closer to the way you do it with a phone where you can't find people's old phone calls, but once you tapped it, you can get everything going forward. And I think you made a great point about the fact that this doesn't allow a phishing expedition. I can't just go like, give me everything that uses the word Jordan in it, which is something we've seen them want to do. And apparently that's a lot of the courts don't like it when you go on phishing expeditions. So that is probably something they're not gonna admit is a frustration for them, but would be. Hey, thanks everybody who participates in our subreddit. If you haven't been there, you should go. Fun place, submit stories and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. You can also join in the conversation in our discord happening right now, which you can join by linking to a Patreon account at patreon.com slash dtns. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it, Kevin. He calls it meterologically indecisive Manchester, Kentucky. Got it, I feel your pain, Kevin. Kevin says it was so cool to hear about old Bob and people's rural telephone cooperative on the show today. He's talking about Monday's show. Kevin says, I live 20 miles away from that single traffic light that you mentioned. I'm in neighboring Clay County and I thought I'd share with you some boots on the ground insights. I've purposely driven to the most remote areas of Jackson and Owesley counties to see if they really brought fiber to everybody that they claimed. I've sat in my pickup gobsmacked to see mobile homes that were in terrible disrepair, but had a fiber lion running from the nearest utility pool all the way into their homes. The terrain is steep, it's deeply wooded, mules can pull heavy lion through that terrain much more safely and effectively than ATVs. Once they finished their rollout in Jackson and Owesley counties, they began moving into my county and deployed their service to the neglected underserved areas first. Speeds offered by our telco were on average 1.5 megabits per second to three. Surprisingly, Mark and I roll, says Kevin, within months that telco was able to at least double everyone's speed within a matter of months. Like you always say, competition is good. I thought you might appreciate the telco's best efforts. To give some perspective on how economically desperate this area is, here's a story from 2014 where our counties were named the hardest places to live in the United States. He links us to a New York Times article which will be in our show notes. Kevin says, below I've included where I last emailed on the show in 2016 where I could coincidentally was about Old Bub. I thought Sarah and Roger might wanna see Old Bub since that was before their time on the show. Yeah, thank you, Kevin. And I had forgotten that you would email us about Old Bub three years ago. And it's good to know that Old Bub's work is finally done. Good job, Bub. You know, I was giddy listening to the episode from yesterday because this is exactly the situation the area I live in is. And the efforts were definitely community driven. And the fact that in the US, those efforts are consistently squashed by the big, well, by many actors is infuriating because it can work and it can help communities. It can help people. And that is definitely one of the options that should be available to those communities. It's infuriating that it's not happening because yeah, it works and it's fantastic. Well, thanks to Kevin for writing in and thanks to everybody who writes in. Also, special shout out to our patrons at our master and grand master levels including Dustin Campbell, Andrew Bradley and Tim Deputy. Also thanks to Patrick Beja for being with us this fine Tuesday. Patrick, I know it's late where you are. Hopefully you're holding up. What's been going on in your worlds? I guess I would recommend the pixels because it's the end of the year and we're doing the end of year episode very soon. So if you enjoy video games, go check that out. Pixels is an easy word to remember to type into your podcast app. Less easy to remember is the Phileus Club but go to frenchspid.com and we're recording very soon the third episode of our Brexit saga where we talk to people, different people from the United Kingdom on the interesting adventure that Brexit has been and continues to be. So that's, I'm not gonna spell it out. Just go to frenchspid.com and get the link. We have new Patreon reward merchandise to celebrate six years of DTNS. January 2nd will be our six year anniversary. I'm Peralta created a six year anniversary DTNS logo and you can get it on a mug, on a T-shirt, on a poster, on a sticker depending on what level you're backing at. So you support us at patreon.com slash DTNS for three months at the same level and then Patreon sends you one of those pieces of merchandise. It's pretty cool. You can find the details at patreon.com slash DTNS slash merch. Our email addresses feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. Email us early and often. We're also live Monday through Friday, 4.30 p.m. Eastern. That's 2130 UTC. And you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Back tomorrow with Scott Johnson. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Well, I hope you have enjoyed this program. Goodnight Rob.