 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you, including at Dale McKayhee, Scott Hepburn and Bjorn Andre. Coming up on DTNS, surprise, Facebook is getting gamed again, plus the latest on social withdrawal and noise canceling headphones for your face. This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, March 30th, 2022. From Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. From Salt Lake City, I'm Scott Johnson. And on the show's producer, Roger Chen. We've got a birthday to celebrate today and that birthday boy is Philip Lass. Philip, we appreciate your support and we hope you have a really, really nice day. Yeah, Philip Lass is more. Yeah, yeah. Today, you are more Philip Lass. Let's kick the show off with a few tech things you should know. The Wall Street Journal sources say that the cyberspace administration of China began drafting new rules for the country's live streaming industry. This would potentially cap daily monetary spending on digital tips and limit how much streamers can receive from fans. According to data from the China Internet Network Information Center, about 70 percent of Chinese internet users consume live streaming services. That's a lot. According to data from Counterpoint Research, Motorola became the third largest smartphone OEM in the U.S. in 2021, growing sales 131 percent on the year to a 10 percent market share. This rise came as LG's market share disappeared in the year that it exited the smartphone business. Makes sense, I guess. Apple held number one with 58 percent, with Samsung at number two with 22 percent. Intel will release its 12th Gen Core i9-12900KS on April 5th for 739 Bones, U.S. dollars. The unlocked CPU features 16 cores split between performance and efficiency, includes 30 megabytes of L3 cache and clocks up to 5.5 gigahertz on its max turbo frequency. Gamers get excited. Meta added support for shortcuts and messenger. That's Facebook Messenger, I guess now Meta Messenger using everyone or at everyone will notify everyone on a chat while slash silent will send messages without any notifications. Meta plans to add shortcuts for pay, gifts, shrug, and table flip in the coming weeks. Google began adding support for additional markdown syntax to Google Docs on the web. Good news for those of us who use Google Docs religiously. This will be done through the autocorrect feature. So text and markdown will be automatically formatted within the document. Docs already supported markdown for lists and will now support it for headings, links, and modifying text properties. Users can activate markdown corrections in their preferences. That's actually really good news, by the way. I think that Google Docs is always seen as good enough for what you need to get done, but I feel like they need to just add more features of that thing to make, I don't know, to make Microsoft's 360 a little less enticing when it comes to features. This is good. Yeah. I mean, as a Docs user every day, there are definitely things that I wish that they would add to their repertoire. And yeah, this is this is good news. All right, let's talk a little bit more about gaming Facebook, so to speak. So Motherboard wrote up a story about the Facebook Media Partner Portal. If you're not familiar, this is a tool that media organizations or public relations firms or other companies that care about the sort of thing can get access to and use streamlined channels for resolving certain issues with Facebook accounts. For example, media companies could request help if one of their reporters was getting doxed or otherwise harassed. They could report a bug to Facebook. They could challenge content removals. However, the portal could also be used to request that Facebook give verification to specific accounts on Facebook or Instagram, or to help those accounts claim an active username. You might say, well, what's the problem here? Well, it appears that various websites and freelance job listings are either advertising access to the portal or looking for someone who can use it to verify accounts. As Motherboard reports, one listing reads, quote, I need to hire somebody that has a Facebook Media Portal account who can guarantee verification of three Instagram pages and, quote, further, a dedicated website called Media Partner Panel is claiming to offer customers access to Facebook's panel for a fee, claiming that customers could then use that to access verified accounts, claim or change their usernames, unban copyright suspended pages and the like. And FAQ on that site, which is Media Partner Panel, says that it runs over 100 ghost agencies. In a telegram message, two Motherboards, a site admin for one of these services that was featured on the article, said, we saw how hard startup agencies and digital marketing freelancers have to go to get access to the portal. They're high demand for access. Once the user confirms order payment, we ask for their Facebook account email address so they can claim access directly from Facebook. Sounds to me like a virtual version of, hey, I have keys to the gym. You can sneak in and play basketball whenever you want, but don't tell anyone I gave you the keys. It's a little like that. One of these deals where you don't think about it at the time. It seems like a perfectly reasonable place for people to have media access or for these media types to have access to go and do the things you'd listed at the top of our discussion here. Those are valid and important. But like anything, people start going, oh, wait, what if we use this for that? Or what if I know a guy or what if we, you know, exploited this access because so and so gave us, you know, an email that we could use for the weekend or whatever. And I normally, I think this is something a company would maybe go, yeah, we probably had to tighten that up. Let's change how this works. Let's make it more verifiable as to who's using it and when. Make sure we have trusted partners, that sort of thing. Instead, I think they're probably not going to care about this because I don't think it really affects much of what happens over at Facebook. They is on Facebook. Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't either. Or Instagram, brother. Yeah. Yeah, I, this definitely seems like, okay, well, here's an example of, you know, the folks that say like, you got that blue check mark, that means that people are going to pay more attention to you. You can sell more things if you're, you know, a business or, you know, some entity where you're making some, some form of your business is happening on Facebook. I, I definitely, I definitely get that. I think that Facebook, and we've covered this quite a bit, it's easy to say, ah, Facebook, of course, you know, the company that doesn't care about the people, you know, that, you know, letting all this stuff come through. But I don't think, I don't necessarily think that Facebook was really paying a whole lot of attention to the media partner portal. I mean, it, it serves a purpose. The purpose is great, you know, it's, it's fine. Facebook obviously cares about media entities and their relationships with them. But where there to be this whole kind of second market about figuring out how we become part of this portal and get stuff, you know, siphoned through is, is, is probably a surprise to a lot of people. To me, it seems like a little bit of, we're now, they're, they're starting to have to pay for the feature creep that Facebook is known for when you, you have, it's a big company and there are a lot of people there, but it's easy to lose track of all the little nested things they have in people's profile settings and their privacy settings. Like Facebook is not one simple page of options. It is a lot of stuff. And that includes stuff like this that's more behind the scenes that we as just regular users never see. Right. And I'm sure that that stuff doesn't have some vigilant 24 seven person watching over the whole thing. Um, it's reminds me a little bit, not too long ago, uh, my Twitter account, which is at Scott Johnson is something I got from a guy named Scott Johnson a long time ago. He wasn't using it. I reached out via email said, Hey, can I have your account? You're not using it. Sure, no problem. I don't like Twitter anyway. I get it. I almost immediately get verified. So I get verified status, didn't ask for it just happened. And then the same guy came back to me about four months later and said, I'd like the account back now. And I said, Oh, why? And he goes, well, because it's verified and I really would love it if I had a verified account. I'm like, yeah, it's not a good enough reason. I got to go by and we didn't do it. But, uh, but it's one of those things, right? People go where they think the rubber meets the road faster and verification is a meaningful piece of clout still to this day. And I, I'm not surprised people are gaming that system a little bit. Well, and, you know, Facebook is not the only social network where we're having this ongoing conversation of, okay, what's legit? How do you, how do you parse what, what is, what, what you should pay attention to versus what is just some sort of marketing scheme? And there's a lot of gray area, you know, in, in, in lots of places. I don't want to single out Facebook entirely here. However, it does seem like for Facebook to have this like, here's our portal for exactly how, you know, you can be our best media partner possible, but also other people are gaming it and figuring out how to make, uh, make news that might not, uh, surface to other people. Otherwise more relevant is, you know, it's problematic. That's a little bit of a problem. Well, here's the thing that I don't think is a problem and that's that we're getting deliveries faster, I suppose. FedEx is testing a new delivery method to move goods between starting and ending points beginning this next year. To do so, or sorry, this is the whole idea of this speeding up delivery processes overall. So this isn't like, Hey, this is the only way we're going to deliver. They're just trying to beef up the system. So to do this, FedEx has partnered with Elroy Air, a company developing a vertical takeoff and landing or VTOL cargo drone. We've talked about these on the show before to transport packages between sorting centers through autonomous flights. So non manned flights. Elroy Air unveiled the Chaperole C1 drone in January of this year and says its hybrid electric system has a range of up to 300 miles and can carry a load of up to 500 pounds in its cargo pod. This is interesting as a plane alternative, which is how export exports or transports rather happen with FedEx now. That's a huge part of its current cargo business. The drone has 12 electric motors, 12 propellers and the Chaperole says it doesn't need specific infrastructure like an airport or dedicated charging stations to operate company added that adopting the aircraft lines with the goal or with its goal of making operations carbon neutral by 2040. So that's cool. If tests go well, the plan is to start test flights in 2023 in Fort Worth, Texas. So this is a, you know, continuing effort to see this stuff go two ways. Autonomous, more efficient and faster. I don't know how soon you or I are going to get our packages via a drone with this news, probably not any sooner than we would have. But this is, you know, another huge step in that direction. Well, I guess it depends on how far away you are from the distribution center where it's starting from. Right. This has always fascinated me. Every time I get on a plane, well, not every time, but many times I've gotten on a plane, often very early in the morning, you know, and you kind of look at the window and go, FedEx, yeah, I wonder where they're going today. You know, there, I mean, that is the plane distribution of all things FedEx is, I mean, globally, a huge part of why we why we expect things to come within a couple of days, you know, I paid my $15, you know, service fee. I want my thing, no matter where in the world it's coming from. So the, you know, a drone being able to take something from the center to my house within 300 miles is not going to make too much of a dent in what the global infrastructure for a company like FedEx already has, but it could definitely cut down on, you know, planes coming, you know, I don't know, from Southern California to where I am in Northern California. It's about 300 miles. Oh yeah, like that. And that's the important thing to note here. This isn't so much a point A to point B, point B being your house so much as it is their back end infrastructure for getting large loads back and forth and, you know, quantities back and forth. That's about to change pretty dramatically with this, at least in theory. And 500, 500 pounds of cargo per pod is a lot like that's a lot to take from a distribution center to another distribution center that you used to have to go, all right, well, what are we going to do? Well, plane here first, but then what trucks? Okay, trucks like as there's cost, there's timing, there's people, you erase traffic, those weather, you know, all those factors suddenly go away, although I don't know whether may have an impact still, but but I love the idea that we're getting closer to this that more efficient stuff. We're talking about electric air vehicles. We're talking about autonomous vehicles, which hopefully means efficiency and, you know, less issues and accidents. And, you know, where else would that makes perfect sense. And if they're going to hit any kind of carbon neutral status, it's only going to be through initiatives like this. This is it. Yeah, and I think it's what interests me most about this is, yes, we have, you know, cargo ships, we have cargo planes, we certainly have cargo trucks and anything that can be a little bit more efficient, at least in that, I mean, I don't want to say last mile because 300 miles is still a significant amount of journey to take. But but anything that that disrupts the status quo a little bit that is, you know, more energy efficient. And certainly on FedEx's part, but, you know, more cost effective makes a lot of sense. And that's, you know, as we talk about like, what are drones good for? This is, I feel like a perfect use case. I agree entirely. As some people know, there's still a big conflict happening over in Ukraine. And we got some news about that. Because of ongoing sanctions against Russia for invading Ukraine, game developers from both countries are currently blocked from accessing their accessing their money on steam. So if you're a dev in one of those companies or countries, and you've got a small or large or medium sized game on the steam store, you are currently not able to get payments for that. And that's all part of, you know, steam and valve trying to adhere to sanction rules. Polygon reports that the steam owner Valve email developers that the banks the company uses in those regions have instituted new regulations temporarily halting access to affected accounts. Furthermore, banks will no longer be able or be allowing rather payments to Belarus. Polygon, the website polygon.com goes on to say the developers can either wait for Valve to understand the new rules, which will take through the end of March. So this is part of what we're waiting for is about to get their head around it, or move their financial accounts to banks outside of Ukraine, Russia or Belarus. One affected Russian game developer told users in their private game, or sorry to pirate their game as a workaround while this is happening. This is all according to a story in Ars Technica, four quarters, the developer of the indie game loop hero, which by the way, was my game of the year for 2021. I loved that game, a little tiny little indie game that just blew our minds. We loved it. Anyway, they've been incurring Russian or encouraging Russian customers to pirate the game in a post on the Russian social network VK. The post included a link to a copy of the game on a Russian torrent tracker. Ars Technica notes that users outside of Russia will still be able to get the game via steam. And if you already own the game and games like it, you don't lose access to any of this. Like I think that's worth saying here that this is really just a bank regulation, adherence rule thing. And it may not even be a long term thing. It's down to Valve and its fleet of lawyers to figure out what they're supposed to do. Unfortunately, these small devs get affected while that happens. Yeah, no kidding. And I think that's definitely been something that as I've been following this conflict as well, it's in the for the purposes of DTNS, it's kind of like, you know, who in what tech sector, you know, I'm not talking about the big, the big guys. I'm talking about, yeah, like smaller game developers that may just happen to have incorporated in a country that now has a lot of issues. How does that reflect on, I don't know, in your circles, Scott, does that reflect poorly on these folks? I mean, is there probably some way to get around this? I can tell you this, they are increasingly some of the most respected game content creators are coming out of these regions. There are some amazing Russian developers, Polish developers and that are massive now, like CD Projekt Red went from tiny little studio to humongous over there, the biggest thing going in that that part of the world, Ukraine also. In fact, there was a game coming to Game Pass, a day one release on Microsoft's Game Pass, as well as everything else, Stalker 2, which is a huge sequel to the original game that is all but shut down at the moment. And so even that one's going to affect big boys like Microsoft and others who have banked a lot on the release of this game coming this year. So that thing's delayed to who knows when. It's a real bummer because these are these are really smart, creative, interesting companies that are just trying to make games and have a passion for these games and games that grew up playing and they you can see it how it how would influence it, influence their work. I can't say enough good things about Loop Hero. It's an amazing little game and deserves all the credit in the world for just being this incredible little game. And they did really well with it while the banks were open. So they probably can afford a little bit of time here to do this nice act and let their fans get it that way or whatever. Yeah. But I really hope they resolve it soon. I just don't think that these are other small companies of any kind really should be so affected by this stuff, even when we're trying to do broad sanctions like this. I I know it's complicated and I'm no expert in this field, but I hope this stuff lets up. Yeah, I also wonder how much you know, acquisitions that may be sort of a surface thing might be able to help some of the companies going forward. You know, I don't have a specific example of that right now. But to to to figure out, OK, how do we how do we help you be a great game developer that, you know, people know and love already? Yeah, I think that's possible. Well, if you have a thought about anything that we talk about on the show and you'd like to know our email address, well, here it is. Email us at feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. Your email makes our show better every day. Thanks to everybody who sends in questions, comments, feedback. Keep it coming and thank you in advance. The growing awareness of something called Kihiki Mori, which is the Japanese word roughly translating to social withdrawal, might be more relevant than ever because many people will tell you modernity is making people depressed. You might not be depressed, and that's great. But some people are from watching TV, from eating alone quite a bit more than they may have in the past, etc. Some writers like Harvard evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman say the inactivity brought about by technological innovations is what is to blame here to unpack this a little bit in a wired story about technology and loneliness. It points to research by anthropologists in 2002. So way back almost 20 years ago. At the time, anthropologists at the University of New Mexico and University of California, Santa Barbara started the Chimene Health and Life History Project, which combines anthropological and biomedical research with medical care and other humanitarian aid. The Chimene are people numbering around 16,000 people who live in the Bolivian lowlands down in South America. They're mostly agrarian society and are described as tropical gardeners. One of the key findings of the study was loneliness. The Chimene have a low amount of technology permeating their lives. It's speculated that less than half a percent of the population have a smartphone, so somewhat off the grid. What's surprising was that the level of loneliness in the community noted by the researchers was kind of a strong predicator of depressive symptoms. We're including injury and social discord. As Wired writes, quote, a physical injury can torpedo a person's productivity, making them feel useless. Meanwhile, the importance of social bonds means that unresolved conflict can eat away at a person. So we got a couple of things going on here. Certainly physical stuff can be a huge indicator in how you're feeling, but mental as well. So if we think about other studies that link technology with mental health issues, according to Amy Irwin, who is a psychologist at the University of Cambridge, who looked at a research article published in 2018 regarding 500,000 US teens, their technology use, and also links to depression, the mental health measures were quite haphazard. She feels that researchers in these studies make subjective decisions regarding how to measure mental health and control variables, making mental health decisions. In a study of the millennium, cohort to study a study data set, Amy and a collaborator discovered 600 million ways to analyze the data that could allow authors to design, and illicit to produce any results that they wanted. Analyses. Analyses. So what the wired article was trying to point out was that a lot of these studies that were done to kind of show some sort of correlative connection between technology use as well as depression, their data sets weren't as robust as you would have thought. In other words, there was a lot of confirmation bias that could have been implicit in coming up with these decisions. As Amy was doing the research over the millennium cohort study, which is a big data set that covered a lot of these areas. And the reason why the Chimene are so important was because they are a population that is devoid of technology, but they still suffered from a relatively high level of loneliness. And it's because they were afflicted by a great number of things, including health and wellness, so injury, but also, you know, infection, stomach illness, you eat something that went bad, but also social discord. So if your bonds with other people aren't so hot safe between a mother and children or perhaps brothers, siblings, that kind of effect. I mean, if anyone has ever kind of gone through a fight with close family members or friends, you know how that can kind of eat away at you. And so kind of what this argument is, is that not that technology isn't to blame that a lot of these studies don't really show a strong correlation? And more importantly, in the case of the Hikamori, the study with one of the studies that they did, one of the ways they got one of the individual out of his home, out of his kind of comfort zone of being at home all the time, you know, 365 days a year was to have him play Go Pokemon, you know, the Pokemon where you go outside with your phone and you try to capture them all as a way to get them outside. And so I think what's important is to not treat technology as the source and the be all of all these social ills, but as rather to treat it in a very objective manner and kind of look at it more of is technology, is this technology use symptomatic of something else rather than the cause of it? Yeah, I could see that. Also, I just, I worry about the pandemic combined with our greater use of technology, especially during that time to sort of make it work and get classes together and have work happen and all that, that stuff's great. I'm glad that we had it when we had it, but my sister who's a psychologist, a working psychologist says we are, our fuses are all about like this and we don't know it yet and we're gonna be dealing with this for like the next 10 years if we don't do something now and we gotta figure out what to do to help each other and it's, there are no great, solid, simple answers, but efforts like this is, yeah. And I think with the distance learning because I had to do this with my kids or my eldest daughter, I think too much emphasis has been put on the negative effects of distance learning and technology and using Zoom rooms. And it's more of like, you're in the middle of a pandemic you're all the social things that you used to be able to do are non-existent. So it's not that technology is making it worse is that we're using technology to paper over all those cracks and all those things that have been broken because of it. And it's like blaming a plumber because your toilet doesn't flush anymore even though that's why you call them out there. Yeah, I would say my, I mean, my internet use is pretty high is a general rule, but certainly during the pandemic, it became much higher and I had somebody say to me recently like, Sarah, do you leave the house a lot? And I was like, no, I really don't. And it's not because I'm afraid to, it's just because I've gotten used to this new normal of ours and it'll change and evolve hopefully with any luck for the better and not the worse. But yeah, I think that affects people a lot of different ways. Well, let's talk about smart headphones that also can be smart for your health. Dyson announced a pair of air purifying noise canceling headphones on my kidding. It's called the Dyson zone. This uses a removable visor that goes over your mouth to stream filtered air into your mouth and your nose without direct contact, but they're also headphones. Dyson says it can filter out allergens, pollutants and other particulates, makes no claim on contagions though. So it stopped short of, you know, something that a doctor might recommend. Also no word on exact pricing or availability as of yet, but these are expected to ship this fall. Unsurprisingly, over the past couple of years, air purifiers have seen big surges in sales, seen a 50% increase in 2020 alone, not a huge surprise, it was 2020. Of its product though, Dyson says, quote, originally a snorkel like clean air mouthpiece paired with a backpack to hold the motor and inner workings, the Dyson zone air purifying headphones evolved dramatically over six years in development. More than 500 prototypes saw one motor initially placed at the nape, become two compressors, one in each ear cup, and then the evolution of the snorkel mouthpiece into an effective contact free visor that delivers clean air without full face contact. A brand new clean air delivery mechanism. Yeah. Who's in? I mean, I don't know. I kind of want to hear what the headphones sound like, but beyond that, I'm okay with the way it looks. It looks kind of cool. I do it. What would you do, Roger? As someone who used to walk to work well after getting off BART and then walking to work, I kid, I wouldn't mind what I mean. I got a lot of stuff in my face as I walking through like second and third street. I will say there is a market for this. I definitely believe it. I mean, there's a company called Vitality Air that's based in Alberta, Canada, and they sell canned air, like fresh air in a can. You buy it and you crack it open and you get a big whiff of clean, fresh BART and air. It's like that company that sells liquid death and it's just water. Oh yeah, the water pit. We tried that. I actually really liked that water. They also come in scented. They have glacier mist, damp air, flavored oxygen. But I mean, yeah, this type of thing, it wasn't too long ago, five years ago, let's say. If somebody were to be wearing this, I don't know, in public on a plane or somewhere else that I would see them, I'd go, wow, okay, well, you're taking this a little too far. I don't really feel that way about a lot of this stuff anymore. I mean, we have definitely entered into a phase where instead of kind of looking at somebody and saying like, what's wrong with you or why are you taking this too far? I think we're now exploring better ways to be as healthy as possible in public. And I don't know, even at your own house, if you feel like the air quality isn't that great and that's something that I deal with because I live in a place that has a pretty regular fire season with bad quality air days. I love this. Especially if the headphones work as advertised. Yeah, that's a big trick for me. Also, look, if someone approaches you and said, what the heck is with this weird thing? Say you're a DJ and you're spinning hits and dropping beats later at a giant arena show or something. Like, you look cool, so you'll be fine. Exactly, yeah. And you can kind of be that much more anonymous. Like, yeah, you don't see anything. Well, listen, thanks to everybody who supports us all the time. We love our patrons. Big, big thanks to all of you. But first, big thanks to Scott Johnson for being with us today. What's been going on over in your role the last week? Well, as you know, Sony dropped a big new bomb this week. We were expecting it, but we weren't sure when we were gonna get it, but they announced the changes coming to the PlayStation Plus subscription program. There are now three tiers to the thing and not just one. And there's a lot of controversy about what it actually is and what it will do for gamers and whether or not it makes a dent in the subscription space at all. We're gonna talk about that in depth on Core, show that we do on our network that's all about video games, top to bottom from mobile all the way up to the AAA, the expensive thing. You're running on your hot new PC. If you wanna hear us do that discussion and much, much more, check it out at frogpants.com slash core or just search for Core wherever you get your podcast. It'll be in there and we'd love to have you on board. Excellent. Well, glad you are turning away at Core. Also, I mentioned Patreon. Thanks to our brand new boss, Michael. Michael, we see you. You just started backing us on Patreon and we want to thank you. Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Michael. And just a reminder for folks, we've changed things around a little bit for all that listen live and also subscribe to our podcast. There is a longer version of the show called Good Day. Internet available at patreon.com slash DTNS and it starts right after we wrap up this here show. Speaking of this here show, we're live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern, 2,800 at UTC and you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We're back tomorrow with Len Peralta and Justin Robert Young. Don't miss it. See you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.