 coming up on D T N S. Do you need a grocery concierge and a robot? Don't answer too quickly. Plus Patrick Norton is here to update us on the right to repair and why the future of Facebook is the metaverse D T N S starts now. This is the Daily Tech news for Friday, July 23 2021 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Marin and from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane. Some are deep in St. Louis. I'm Patrick Norton. And I'm Patrick Norton. We were just talking about fun sport team names, especially singular names. Good ones in the U S L that Sarah found. If you want that wider conversation, get our expanded show Good Day Internet. Become a member at patreon.com slash D T N S. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Apple added support for lossless and spatial audio features to Apple music on Android. The update also includes a new automatic version of Apple's latest iOS app, which is the latest iOS app that emulates Android's new single spatially. Yes on your galaxy. I DOS later. I DOS two is an iOS app that emulates DOS like you would have guessed and has been available in the app store since 2010 becoming I DOS two in 2014. The latest update was not approved because it executes I DOS package and image files, which perhaps I DOS should just make a progressive web app instead. Facebook's doing that. They're the latest bringing their cloud gaming service to iOS with the web app at facebook.com slash gaming slash play. Google Drive will now allow users to block other accounts from sharing files with them designed to prevent potential harassment and spam also preventing accounts from accessing any files that you have shared with blocked accounts. Google Drive. Corning announced it's bringing Gorilla Glass with DX and Gorilla Glass with DX plus to smartphone camera lenses having offered the glass composites on smartwatches since 2018. So, you know, they're figuring out how to make them bigger at cost. Corning says it offers typical Gorilla Glass scratch resistance while letting in 98% of ambient light compared to 95% of light led through by the company. Kaseya announced that it obtained a universal decryptor from a third party for the Revol ransomware that was distributed to its customers following a supply chain attack earlier this month. The company said it couldn't confirm or deny it paid a ransom. Revol dark web and clear websites went dark following the attack. Alright, let's talk a little bit about robots. Alphabet announced a new company called Intrinsic that will be used more flexible and more affordable. This is one of those Alphabet companies that starts in the moonshot factory and spins out to become its own thing once they think it's viable. Company's been testing automated perception, motion planning and reinforcement learning. The Intrinsic team trained a robot in two hours to make a USB connection. You may say, well, I can do it faster, but that's something that would normally take a long time. The impressive part really isn't the what though. It's the ability to make it easy for companies without their own robotics scientists to implement this. You don't have to know how to program it. It just comes with the ability to learn. You can show off stuff. Intrinsic hopes to partner with healthcare electronics and auto manufacturing companies and will be headed by Wendy Tan White who has served as VP of Alphabet's X moonshot factory since 2019 and has been doing this to make web development more accessible. Patrick knows somebody who I think would be very excited at this product. I literally forwarded this to a friend of mine who spent a big chunk of the last year and a half programming robotic arms to move things in and out of CNC mills and to create this process to speed up their production. And you know, if this works, it means it makes it. Yes, good. I want it to work. Please please work. Please don't kill it just as it gets interesting. Not that I get sad about Google killing interesting things. Well, this is, I mean, in a previous life, this would have been a Google X company, right? The idea that Alphabet now as the umbrella company for everything Google saying, we have enough of this robotic stuff that we want to make our own arm and this is the new brand. Intrinsic is the brand that this is going under is is I don't know. I mean, a commitment. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it says good things for for stuff ahead. Yeah, Wendy Tan White wrote in a blog post about this that they want to give robots the ability to sense, learn and automatically make adjustments as they're completing tasks so they can work in a wider range of settings and applications. That's what we're talking about. But also wrote none of this is realistic or affordable to automate today. This all hints at the potential for intrinsic software to radically reduce the time cost and complexity required to use industrial robots. So that implies that they're like, everybody thinks this is impossible, but we think we figured it out. It's also, I think, gives more points towards putting Google in the race to be Skynet. Well, Alphabet well, and also Alphabet saying everything we're doing years off. So, you know, if we don't have a win in the next couple years, don't worry we're working on it, you know, that kind of thing. That also matters. This is Alphabet doing what it was supposed to do, which is allow the X projects space outside of Google and Google's focus on bottom line to spread their wings. Sometimes they work like Waymo. Sometimes they don't like Loon. Well, let's talk about food, shall we? Specifically groceries. Online grocery options ever ever changing. So here are a couple of new developments to be aware of. Over the next 12 months, Instacart and its technology partner Fabric plan to begin building warehouses for supermarkets that will use robots to gather items and Instacart's workers to pack and deliver orders. Fulfillment centers like this will keep stock and delivery shoppers out of store space. So it's, you know, kind of putting everything over, you know, in one area and generally cut costs enough to be profitable within a year of operations. Sounds pretty good. Instacart not alone here though. Albertsons and Spartan Nash are also building their own warehouses for online orders at their stores. And Albertsons has partnered with Uber and DoorDash on grocery delivery in the past and currently as well. There are operations that are warehouse only like SoftBank owned Puff also another company called Wee which does the same. But what about you as a shopper? What about me? Yeah, exactly. Is anybody putting together some technology to help you on your end and make your life easier? Actually, Tom, the answer is yes. Thank goodness. TechCrunch wrote an article about a German startup called Kitchenful that wants to help you with the meal planning end of things. So when with Kitchenful you choose your type of diet, any restrictions that you might have, low calorie options, gluten, nut, you can choose that sort of thing and it creates meal plan for you each week. You can review and customize the meals once they're approved and Kitchenful then creates a grocery order at a partner supermarket near you. Kitchenful makes a little money off of you. Of course, they wouldn't do it otherwise for paying for the meal and recipe planning and a little off the supermarkets for sending customers their way. So everybody gets a little bit of a cut here. If you're asking, do they have any decent grocery stores? Well, it depends if so far Kitchenful has partnerships with REW in Germany and Walmart and Kroger in the U.S. In the U.S. that's going to cover a pretty large swath of folks who have grocery stores near them. All of this points to a future where your grocery concierge, plan your meals and orders your groceries and a robot packs it all up for delivery and sends it to your door. Oh my gosh, that sounds amazing. It does. I know. I want this. I want Kitchenful to be really good. I don't know if it is, but I want it to be really good at saying, yeah, we know what you like. We know you're trying to keep your calorie count down here. We know that your wife doesn't like this kind of food. You don't like that kind of food. Here's a meal plan for you to approve. You go through and you're like, no, actually get rid of that one and put in spaghetti and meatballs perfect. And then it just orders the groceries for me. They show up at my house and I've got the recipes and everything I need for the week. That's great. I love that idea. I feel like we've been getting there's so many not grocery well, yes, grocery delivery options exist, but also, yes, meal services exactly. I'm thinking of like blue plate or whatever or blue apron where there's a little bit of a barrier to entry. If you're not much of a cook, then you might say this is pretty great, but I'm not going to end up cooking all these meals and some of it doesn't apply to me. Maybe some of it doesn't appeal to me. All that stuff. Kitchenful sounds like the sweet spot that many of us have been looking for. And Tom, you mentioned something like, oh, my wife doesn't like this sort of food. It almost like a mattress, right? Like if kitchenful could be good at saying, well, so here's a meal plan where everyone's happy on either side of the dinner table. Then it becomes pretty smart. Kitchenful saving relationships. One meal at a time. Yeah. I mean, I love the tavala meals I get because I can order some lower calorie items that are enjoyable and still I feel like I've eaten a meal. They're easy to prepare, but I only do a few of those a week and the rest of the time I either, we have to go order out or go out or make it ourselves. And we've got some good meals that we make ourselves on the regular, but, you know, varying it up and having the ability to try some new things, work some other recipes in there. I guess where this would break down is when we do like, no, no, no, we want to do this Korean, you know, kimchi jong that I saw. Can you put in your own recipe? Can you modify it easily to, you know, to include your own stuff in there? Because if you can, then even better. Yeah. I, I, I, I plan and cook for one currently and I'm pretty, you know, I kind of tend to buy the same things week after week. Sometimes I go a little crazy, but I have my staples, something like kitchen full to say, I know what your staples are. And here's where we can, you know, give it a little flare here or there. That would be great. That is something that I'm looking for. And, you know, again, at least in the US partnering with Wal-Mart and Kroger is that's a I would love to know if, yeah, it's a pretty big start and if anyone's using it and likes it, let us know. At the end of June, Mark Zuckerberg told Facebook staff the company was committed to creating the metaverse. I'm not joking. Those were literally his words. The word metaverse is usually an allusion to Neil Stevenson's book, Snow Crash where people can coexist in a virtual world that melds with our own. Zuckerberg said that all Facebook divisions who work with communities, creators, commerce, VR would contribute to the goal saying, quote, our overarching goal across all of these initiatives is to help bring the metaverse to life. So, what does he mean by metaverse? Well, in the interview that he gave, he cited VC Matthew Ball who defined it in a popular essay back in January 2020 as four main things spanning physical and virtual worlds, so augmented reality, containing its own fully fledged economy. So, you don't have to cash out to work inside of it. Fully interoperable I'm going to return to this one. No matter which platform you use to access it it works. You have to be able to take your avatar and your goods with you if you switch platforms and still be able to see everybody else or it's not a metaverse and run by no single company which is like the internet row. No one company runs the internet. The metaverse would be a kind of internet. The Verges Casey Newton talked to Zuckerberg about that presentation. They discussed the things you might expect, 3D concerts, the infinite office where VR lets you have as many screens as you want. Zuckerberg admitted that VR headsets are a bit clunky now but he thinks he'll get there and on the way the metaverse will be quote accessible across different computing platforms. So, you'll be able to get to it on your phone or your laptop on the way to having better gear to access and of course I'll throw in there. You can add a lot more data about people in VR like how they're standing, what they're looking at or how long. Zuckerberg didn't talk as much about that saying only quote there will be privacy questions and there will be intellectual property questions. But on interoperability, Zuckerberg said he really hopes it's all going to be interoperable. That's what he believes it should be but he warned and I quote, I think sometimes people may be a little idealistic about assuming that this will develop in a certain way. I'm going to have some companies that are trying to build incredibly siloed things and then some that are trying to build more open and interoperable ones. Which makes me wonder which one will Facebook choose to be? Mark? I mean, I go ahead Patrick. I was going to say it's like one, I think you have to give a shout out to Neil Stevenson for coining the idea of the metaverse much like William Gibson coined the phrase cyberspace and ironically in the metaverse in Snow Crash the novel it was pulled out of the 1992 novel was pulled out of the metaverse was basically owned by one company and it was you strapped on goggles and you had this immersive experience and somewhere at the perfect version of this is putting a jack in the back of your neck or trodes on your head and having a fully immersive you know cut out neural cut out that allows you to experience things in a truly virtual environment but you know I've been joking literally since since Facebook bought Oculus that you know it was all about taking the next step towards virtual makeouts and securing generations of teens want to experience life through Facebook and this is you know it's cute to see Mark talk about open environments and I almost I tried not to burst out laughing when you talked about how the internet is not run by any one company because it's not but we've managed to contain so much of the interaction and a couple of different platforms pound Facebook so I'm really curious like what it ends up being and how deeply tied into Facebook it is it's also kind of on his part because he's basically saying like this is the future this is what we're doing I think that's fascinating that he's looking at Facebook and realizing if they keep going the way it is now there's an end right there's there's a place where it just doesn't grow anymore and starts to get old and people move on and and so it's smart to be looking at where can the technology take us and how can we take the things we've learned as a company to do well and create the next thing and get ahead of it and I think that's really smart I'm sitting here pointing at the cameras are saying that because you know if everything happens and there you know that your life is if the government forces Facebook to make your online life portable so that people can interact outside of Facebook the way they've been kind of locked into interacting in Facebook you know they can create a they can create a barrier to entry outside of Facebook because you know things just work better when you have Oculus and Facebook and you can use that third-party headset but hey you're going to have to sort out the problems because that's their headset not ours kind of a feel I mean on the subject of VR just because I mean it is cynical but I mean you should be cynical when it comes to Facebook but I mean I am a VR I mean over the last year in fact I just got like my one year like Supernatural was like hey you've been a member for a year I was like okay so I've had my Oculus for just over a year now I mean I am such a convert but I also find it to be like borderline dangerous because you put it on and you're like new worlds real world no longer exists new world and I get where this metaverse could thrive in that sort of situation where sure Facebook was a screen and you see you know there's a feed and you see updates from people and yeah we're kind of one step into this verse of sorts something where it's truly immersive and I don't really know how that you know how Facebook becomes that thing especially if Facebook's like oh it's not just one company you know it's a whole metaverse type of thing like a lot of questions still to be answered but it is the general progression of all of this or at least the one that science fiction has been pumping us or have you read Ready Player 2 yet there are thoughts about this whole emerging concept in area very good I'll just have it ready that's as much as I can say without having someone in hating me well before we move on you may be wondering about Twitter's role in the future metaverse what are its plans well those of you wondering CEO Jack Dorsey told Twitter investors Thursday that Bitcoin will be a quote big part of the company's future so hey metaverse needs an economy Jack you know you happen to be the CEO of Square that works out nicely in the fourth and final installment of our seniors and tech mini podcast series Dr. Nikki Ackerman's will introduce us to Dr. Ruth Ports whose career includes running IT from multiple particle accelerator and physical physics labs rather and developing the World Wide Web just a little thing she did in her off time pretty cool stuff it all drops this Saturday July 24th in the U.S. Federal Trade Commission voted to increase its enforcement of laws against repair restrictions that prevent small businesses workers consumers and even government entities from fixing their own products the FTC said specifically it will target repair restrictions that violate antitrust laws enforced by the FTC or the FTC acts prohibitions on unfair or deceptive acts or practices the commission also urged the public to submit complaints of violations of the Magnus and Moss warranty act which prohibits among other things tying a consumers product warranty to the use of a specific service provider or product Patrick I know you've been you've been following the story feelings you're familiar with the fight the fight for the right to repair controversies so what is your take at this point I'm delighted because when I'm delighted number one because everyone voted for this and the FTC commissioners are a mixture of Republicans and Democrats and anytime they all you mean the FTC commissioners voted unanimously for something yes okay wow yeah when you said everyone voted I was like oh you mean the people no no the FTC commissioners all agreed on something that is significant yeah I mean unless I unless I misread I think you're right yeah and that's just like that's what that's what you know what how long has it been since that happened but this is this is a big deal right because the FTC is basically said oh look we have a stick we don't know who we're going to hit with the stick we don't know where we're going to hit them with the stick but you guys may remember we have a big stick and we would like you to play with consumers and this is right this goes back the FTC put a report in front of congress and I think the best line from you know the best kind of line to come out of that whole study was there is skin evidence to support manufacturers justifications for repair restrictions you know because it's always it's always it's for security it's for the children it's because people can't figure out how to do things it's because we don't have third parties to do that and part of the problem here is that all of this has been battled out in the automotive industry decades ago and every other industry wants to be like no no no no no our our products are too complex or our standards are too high or or security it's also really funny when companies that have a pathetic security history are trying to use the threat of security issues for justifying not allowing people to fix things with third parties or intellectual property doing the same thing yeah yeah yeah so there's there's a lot going on here right so there was a there was an executive order signed by the president and you know like a week two weeks later the FTC makes a big statement and you know it's crazy this is you know literally days maybe 90 probably not I guess it was probably a month after the new commissioner was sworn but they they used big heavy words you know restricting consumers and businesses from choosing how to repair products can substantially increase the total cost of repairs during a harmful electronic waste and unnecessarily increase wait times for repairs in contrast providing more choice repairs could lead to lower cost reduced e-waste by extending the useful lifespan of products enable more timely repairs and provide economic opportunities for entrepreneurs and local businesses this is a big deal for me because for example in my home state my current home state of Missouri the agricultural lobbyist i.e. the farmers who pay a lot of money and have a huge representation in the state have been able to get right to repair bills keep them alive in our legislature where the consumer electronics ones have just been sort of filed off into a midi to go die because this is and so that's really frustrating because I get having political power I also get the idea that if you don't harvest the corn because your tractor's broken because you have to wait two days for John Deere to send out a license technician or your local John Deere dealer to do that you know it wipes you out financially that said there's a lot of things where it could be much easier to repair things and keep them out of landfills and make life less expensive if other organizations work together I've also heard some people have made some some fair arguments discussing like well you know there are issues with the quality of repairs or the cost of making parts available and all this will kind of sort itself out over time I'm just delighted because so many of these fights at the state level are a case where massive companies with huge budgets that want to keep things expensive and difficult to repair so that either their dealers or the company themselves gets the money out of it or they just people are kind of forced to buy new things are now in a position where they're actually being told you need to make this easier you need to make this simpler and the best part about this is saying is not saying we need new laws it's saying we just need to enforce the ones we got the Magnuson Act says that vague terms in a warranty are construed against the drafter that's not the way it has been going in practice warranters cannot require branded parts that one gets violated all the time and warranters cannot decline coverage because a previous unrelated repair was attempted in other words that sticker that says if you try to open this you void your warranty no you don't the law says you can open your electronics without voiding the entire warranty even if a sticker implies otherwise so this is them finally saying we're going to enforce that tell us if anybody is abusing it will go after them they're going to use that stick so I'm I I think this is a wonderful step in the right direction this is also you know this is laying down a gauntlet by the FTC and they're basically you know politely suggesting that lots of organizations step up and make things easier for consumers and you know now it's time to see what the response is and what the next step is this is a long game of chess but this was a huge move on the chess board yeah two spaces if I could open it up security reporter Kim Zetter's zero-day newsletter has an excellent breakdown of what the NSO surveillance list is and is not to catch you up NSO group makes spyware called Pegasus it sold to governments and law enforcement agencies for spying on whoever their clients define as criminals DTS covered the tech of this earlier this week but lots of other outlets ran with the more sensational part of the story which is a 50,000 phone number list and that list includes phone numbers for several heads of state journalists CEOs other big names like that media outlets working with forbidden stories identified about a thousand of those numbers the people behind about a thousand of those numbers and was able to do forensic analysis on 67 phones and found evidence of Pegasus infection on 23 of them with a further 14 showing an attempt at infection in other words text message was sent but the phone wasn't vulnerable to the vulnerability that's 0.07% with at least an attempted of infection that they found of the 50,000 could be more but that they found it's an incredibly low percentage NSO group denies knowing anything about this list they say we don't even know where that would come from who would be from so what is it Zetter says one of the best possibilities is a database from an HLR lookup service HLR stands for home location register it's a service that can verify if a phone is on and what region it's operating in now before you say that sounds creepy that would normally be done by a business wanting to send an SMS maybe a marketing message or something and you only want to pay to send messages to active phones in the area you're doing business you're an L.A. car dealer and you want to make sure those phones are legit on they're not canceled accounts and they're in L.A. and it's relevant however HLRs can also be used in surveillance to make sure that the target you're sending your spyware to gets it so someone with access to an HLR company's database could have queried countries that are known to conduct surveillance in a phishing expedition to collect a list when inevitably have a few numbers that were targeted by users of Pegasus like maybe with a success rate of 0.07% not zero so that would mean that the list was meant to expose NSO groups target but it wouldn't have had to come from NSO group I got nothing the story is I mean it's vast and continues to unfold it's been interesting to hear NSO group saying I mean we just it wasn't us we've done nothing here that's what this is saying somebody created this list in order to embarrass NSO group or expose NSO groups practices which have been well covered but haven't got the amount of attention they've gotten this week certainly and that list wouldn't have needed to have come directly from NSO group I think my favorite comment on this and I apologize because I can't find the security professional I follow that tweeted about this but they were like well the reason that the US and the Russians aren't on this list is because they have their own homegrown internal systems that are way better than anything NSO can sell and the other one that was so great was somebody I think it was NSO was making their version of the hammer argument you can hammer a nail, you can hammer a human skull we just sell hammers that's what people choose to do that are beautiful, beautiful hammers well and they do I'll give them that they only sell their very dangerous hammers to certain people they don't sell it to everybody, it could be worse they could be out on the black market selling this to any Tom Dick or Harry that comes along they don't, I'm not excusing what they do but that is true now certain governments can define criminal differently than other governments and whether it's ethical to sell them the hammer or not is a whole different situation well if you're planning on getting on an airplane soon you're not alone, a lot of people are and Chris Christensen is back with a tip for an airlines app to snag before you hit any airport snags this is Chris Christensen from amateur traveler with another tech in travel minute if you're going to be flying domestically in the United States at least you're definitely going to want to have the app for the airline on your smartphone before you get on the plane it's a couple reasons for that some of them like United you can use some of the onboard entertainment through your phone or through your tablet or whatever device you have and so that's useful but all three major airlines in the US, United, Delta and American all are doing contactless sales if they're selling you a meal on the flight they are no longer going to be selling it to you using even a credit card you've got to be paying for it with the app so you have to have the app and you have to have your credit card in the app so that it knows about you if you want to purchase something on the flight I'm Chris Christensen from amateur traveler put the app on the internal server that serves your wifi some airlines do that and I commend them but come on make it easy for people to get your app so they can spend their money for good to seek alright let's check out the bell bag this one comes from Madgeek this was actually a tweet in response to our daily tech news show twitter account from our Wednesday show with Scott Johnson Madgeek says quick feedback on Netflix I think AR excuse me Netflix gaming is what Madgeek is referencing Madgeek says I think AR might be well in the cards if building games off of IP pointing a phone camera at a screen and seeing what shows up a camera to identify one of four possible screens for example easier to do a who's that sort of a trivia a trivial pursuit game or jack box type games sorry for brief points but this is just twitter yes and we appreciate your lead speak yeah no I love I love Madgeek's take on this which is it makes perfect sense to give an AR game that you play with your phone while you're watching Netflix on your TV right and it becomes a companion game not just something you play later to extend the experience I love that yeah I know we keep trying to come up with ways where this is going to make sense for Netflix going forward Pat do you have thoughts I feel like every 10 years or so a couple of things happen one of which and YouTube was talking about this you know last week how they're going to allow people to one-click order from certain YouTube channels at this point you know because I remember when people were doing that 20 years ago or trying to do that on satellite television systems to I just I just want to pay attention to my delete expletive show and I can see where you could create something I know but they're going to do something where I have to use the game to get some pivotal plot point they do that they'll upset so many people can you imagine being like do you want to know what happens at the end of Ted Lasso play this game do not do that get your torch Sarah we're marching on whoever's house made that decision it's true I know I really I'm curious for everyone it's true it's true if you if you have I know right that's what I'm doing my friend and I yay sushi for all if you have ideas feedback questions comments anything that we talk about on the show we'd love to hear it really helps us out feedback 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