 Coming up on DTNS want to hit song think memes plus the Indian app that will soon sweep the world and why you do want a 4k Super Mario 64 This is the Daily Tech news for Tuesday May 5th, Cinco de Mayo 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio Redwood. I'm Sarah lean and In Helsinki not really but in Finland. I'm Patrick beta and I'm the shows producer Roger change Would you say you're Helsinki influenced Helsinki adjacent? Yes, I am Helsinki adjacent if a couple of hours by car qualifies as a sink ish We were just talking about the postal service the band and the place that delivers your letters Along with all kinds of other good stuff, including a secret podcast idea on good day internet Get all of that and more become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS Let's start with a few tech things you should know Apple announced its first virtual WWDC will start on June 22nd and be free through its developer app and also developer website in the past WWDC has been a paid event for most attendees after submitting tickets through a lottery system a new event Included this year is called a swift student challenge for younger developers 13 years of age and up also 95 Mac reports that 21 of Australia's 22 Apple stores will reopen May 7th at 10 a.m Local time the only one not reopening will be the flagship Sydney Apple store, which is closed in January for renovations Twitter is testing showing a message to people whose posts have words similar to tweets that have been reported The message will give the user a chance to reconsider the post the test will run for two weeks on English language tweets Amazon confirmed that a worker from one of its Staten Island warehouses has died of COVID-19 Amazon says the employee last was on site April 5th and Confirmed to have COVID-19 April 11th Amazon is not releasing numbers of cases of infection among workers The first known COVID-19 related death of an Amazon warehouse worker took place March 31st in Hawthorne, California a second Amazon warehouse employee died April 1st in Tracy, California Microsoft revealed its new Xbox Series X boot screen animation in a teaser video for gameplay event coming on Thursday May 7th a couple days from now Microsoft has promised to reveal more About the upcoming titles in July on its platform in response to rumors of delays though Microsoft says quote our goal remains to launch Xbox Series X and Halo Infinite this holiday Thursday's event will also include games that are optimized for the Xbox Series X including titles that support 4k 120 frames per second direct storage hardware accelerated direct x-ray tracing and faster load times Mozilla launched Firefox 76 on Tuesday for Windows Mac and Linux Users can download Firefox 76 for desktop from Firefox.com and existing users should be upgraded automatically Firefox 76 has a new Firefox lockwise password manager functionality Zoom improvements and a new developer feature and new developer features several of them Hey WunderList fans you might have been thinking tomorrow was a depressing day But I've got some good news for your WunderList founder Christian Reber announced a new company called SuperList You know it's better than Wunder Super It has the aim to make a productivity tool I'm gonna guess it has to do with tracking to do items But I don't know I'm just guessing Weber called the app an investment into the next generation of WunderList If you recall Microsoft acquired WunderList in 2017 and will shut it down May 6th California's Attorney General California's Attorney General sued Uber and Lyft Tuesday for classifying its drivers as independent contractors Several California cities joined the state in its lawsuit Alright let's talk a little bit about Amazon's first big Not on a tablet game Patrick Indeed this is a momentous for Amazon and gaming potentially Amazon's free to play PC multiplayer game Crucible will launch May 20 Players can choose from characters with specific abilities in three game modes Heart of the Hives is a four versus four mode with two players playing against AI controlled enemies Alpha Hunters puts eight teams of two against each other in a battle royale Harvester Command puts two teams of eight in a contest to collect essences and level up characters Amazon also plans to release an MMO called New World in August So Crucible sounds like they said what are the three most popular ways people are playing games right now Let's put them all in a game called Crucible Yeah it's difficult to know exactly what Amazon is doing with gaming because they have been talking about it for a long time Obviously they bought Twitch which is the mainstreaming platform for gaming and has been for a long time as well But they haven't released anything until Crucible I believe if they did it skipped right by me And this seems they had projects before that one was actually in beta for a long time as well But it felt like a checklist product and obviously Amazon has a lot of firepower But so far they haven't released anything that caught fire and they haven't released anything that well they have cancelled a bunch of things They want to go big on gaming and we've heard that rumors about the streaming service that's being worked on I believe it's called Tempo or something like that But it seems they're meandering a little bit so it's a mystery It's funny that you should say that because I haven't felt that they're meandering at all I had heard a couple of years ago they were going to launch a PC game and it was going to have Twitch interactivity This doesn't say anything about Twitch interactivity but other than that this just feels like oh they finally got to that point And I know this has been delayed a couple times but meandering to me would be putting something out and then it fails and then they pull it back I just maybe not close enough to this to notice that but it feels like this is now the start of something Well they did have a game that was released and that they interrupted For PC? Yes absolutely I can't remember the name I'm a bad journalist I'm sorry but there was one and I played it it was okay But it felt like something that was created with again kind of a checklist in mind And this as you mentioned kind of feels a little bit the same way but we'll play it soon it might be incredible But to me what it highlights a little bit is something I've been talking about for a while which is the gaming industry and the tech industry seem like They are very close and it should be easy to transfer from one to the other and a lot of tech people think it will be an easy thing to do And what we've seen over and over again is that it's not such an easy thing the gaming industry is very specific requires a lot more expertise and know how and understanding than people think And so even big big players have found middling success and I think I would put at this point Amazon kind of in that category potentially Well speaking of middle-end success Bloomberg's Mark German sources say that Facebook's Oculus division is building multiple potential smaller and lighter versions of the Quest VR headset But that the device may be facing development and supply chain delays due to the impact of COVID-19 The headsets reportedly have redesigned controllers and are more comfortable to wear their lighter Facebook also has said to have wanted to have wanted to launch the new model around its annual Oculus Connect conference which happens later this year However delays could push that to 2021 You know I was just thinking about this the other day because I've got a quest I'm in deep notes mode for my next Live With It segment And I mean there are so many nice things I can say about it but the one thing is it's bulky and after a period of more than 30 minutes I want it off my head So something that's lighter and you know it is more comfortable like that's gonna be the number one issue for anybody you know whether you like it or you know are a huge like you know fanboy or not But but yeah this is a great example of supply chain pushing things back It's definitely something that will need to happen to try and push VR even more than it is now because the Quest is for my money the best compromise and the best option Especially since you can now use it as a wired headset as well But yeah it is bulky I will myself into having it on my face for a couple of hours But when you take it off you remember what your head is like without it on it and it is a joy I guess you get that as a reward for having kept it on your head But if it was you know if there is a lighter smaller model it could become really an incredible version of VR And that was you know my first reaction you know when I first put it on and this was my only VR headset you know at least that I owned personally and you know I was being able to judge You know it was like wow this is way cooler than I thought it would be but after some time you know you take it all off you know you got like marks on your face and it's like This is the first version you know it's like it's like Apple Watch V1 you know people are like this is really great it's going to be like a whole new product category but there's some issues Like I see where Quest is in that situation The big advantage with the Quest was you're not tethered and it still looks good And I think the other thing that's fascinating about this is that means they can possibly get you to upgrade to a new Quest VR that doesn't have that much different internally Which makes it easier for game developers who don't have to adapt to a new platform if it's mostly the same inside and has the same screens etc But you'll still want to buy a new one because it's more comfortable like that's that's an aspect that you don't see with consoles where where if you want to get people to buy the new console You've got to give them a new platform which means developers now have to adapt to that new platform I mean I wouldn't mind more you know computing power Sure no I don't think anybody would but I guess what I'm saying is you might not you might still upgrade just for the comfort Because of the fact that it's like well I can get 30 minutes to an hour a couple hours maybe but what if I could wear it all day long I don't know maybe you don't want to do that Maybe not You would if it felt better Yeah you would okay good to know We'll be doing the show in VR soon I can tell you that right The UK's National Health Service is testing its centralized contact tracing app among 142,000 people on the Isle of Wight Starting Thursday it will record when people are within two minutes two meters of each other for more than 15 minutes so this is similar than to a lot of the efforts out there However the UK is doing a centralized system not a decentralized system like Apple and Google propose So with the UK system the first part of the user's postcode will be stored in the app in the app and each device will have a fixed code Not a rotating one now this will be an anonymous code but it means that if you were able to figure out who was behind the code then you'll have all the information Whereas a rotating system like Apple and Google work on would be harder to crack because you'd have to find all the different codes France is also using a centralized system not the Apple Google system and that means neither France nor the UK can take advantage of the API Which helps let apps access Bluetooth in the background So if you're using the Apple Google platform on iOS you can access Bluetooth in the background meaning the app won't hog the battery The UK and France apps will need to wake to record contacts which means they will drain the battery a little more There's more chance for interference and something to go wrong Some people think that it's possible that an Android phone would have to be nearby for two iOS phones to even wake up each other France's Minister for Digital Technology Cedric Oh told BFM Business TV quote Apple could have helped us make the application work even better on the iPhone they have not wished to do so France's app is expected to be ready for testing May 11th It actually won't be ready on May 11 it was initially expected to be ready but it won't be And that story both the UK and France's choice are baffling because they know how it will work without access to constant background access to Bluetooth Which we suspect will be not very well it won't work very well And so they're in a position where they're arguing that the app is useful Which some people are arguing that it wouldn't be but they're saying it would be useful even with low usage But they're choosing a method that will limit its capability It seems to me like some kind of long term political play rather than an actual technical choice But either way if you can't tell I don't understand that decision And it's very hard to make sense of However you know whatever Cedric Oh is saying It's very difficult to understand why you would go that way especially if the app supposedly could help ending sheltering and things like that Yeah it's a little confusing I see the story now that you're mentioning on Barons That they said it will not be ready for May 11th it'll be ready for June 2nd But that's also what Reuters says which is ready to be deployed June 2nd but begin testing May 11th Either way the point is the same which is that you're not going to get even the centralized app until later Yeah and the problem is even when you do end up getting it It's not gonna I mean us technical people will understand that on iOS if Bluetooth is locked down and you can't access it in the background Then your app is not going to be very efficient at tracking Bluetooth and that is maybe they found some kind of partial work around But it technologically and health wise it seems like a strange decision Yeah it feels like what the what I'm feeling from the UK and France is very similar to what tech companies were doing for years Which is hey but you can trust us we won't do anything bad so let us have a little more data we can do a lot more good with it Trust us and of course the tech companies have lost that trust and are saying in this case we know that people don't trust us so we're going to really limit this stuff And it's an interesting flip of the roles between government and tech in this particular situation Yeah and in this specific case the issue wouldn't necessarily be with this app because they have vowed to keep it open source and to have a bug bounty program So I'm pretty sure this app wouldn't be an issue for security and for personal data The issue is that it opens the door to if you've made an exception for tracking background Bluetooth for this app Then the government asks for this in another situation that's a little bit different or another government asks for a different situation And it's more difficult to say no at that point so yes Well as we know Facebook didn't allow people to use third party data and yet someone went and gave someone third party data So if in the Apple Google situation if there is just no way to track a number back to a person It's really difficult for that to be subverted whereas if there's a centralized server with a number that is identified with you There's more possibility for something to go wrong Yeah we could talk about this for a little while but yeah it is baffling for a number of reasons Alright Indian company Glance has reached 100 million daily active users in 21 months Glance provides video news games and other content on Android lock screens Machine learning is used to personalize what gets shown Glance says about 25% of its users play games on the platform and users spend an average of 25 minutes a day on Glance content Glance has deals with multiple Android phone makers in India including Xiaomi and Samsung Glance is available in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines with plans to go global in the next few years Yeah I just wanted to make sure we mentioned this because 100 million daily active users in 21 months is incredibly fast And it's the kind of company where like they're just adding users they don't really know what their monetization plan is Other than licensing to phone makers so it reminds me it fits the profile of the kind of thing you'll be hearing about in the future Of like oh my gosh this Glance thing which was really popular in India is now sweeping the world To just file that one away in the back of your mind to keep an eye out Might end up being nothing or not who knows And also you know for those of us who are like oh content on lock screens that's interesting Clearly it works for a lot of folks like this is you know how back in the day it was like oh should we all download that app that no one's ever heard of From that company we've never heard of this is how it all starts A YouTube channel called Unreal posted a 12 minute gameplay video of a fully functional native 4k version of Super Mario 64 for PC powered by DirectX 12 It's not been emulated has built-in controller support the entire game appeared online over the weekend Hard to find though depends on where you look fans worried about Nintendo cracking down on the port not sharing links Decompiled Super Mario 64 code leaked last year which might have led to the ports and ports are rumored to be coming to the switch later this year as well Patrick this yeah this is one of the seminal Mario games is essentially the first 3D Mario game which was very innovative at the time And it's kind of playful to do these things it's not uncommon of course you can imagine that these kind of things would happen the fact that it runs natively on PC is impressive But it's been available through emulation for a long time so it wouldn't you know it's not like it's changing the relationship to Mario 64 Nintendo has been notoriously is notoriously litigious about these kinds of things so I understand why people don't want to share links but it's a it's a fun interesting thing It's not like oh we can finally play Mario 64 on PC we could already do it it was just through emulation so I will have a ray tracing version thanks to this thing and that could be interesting I've seen a lot of people just glowing about how good it looks though compared to the emulated versions and and in fact I can't remember it might have been polygon It might have been somewhere else that said this is the way you remember Super Mario 64 looking even though it never did like in your child like imagination This is this is what you thought it looked like back then which is interesting and like you said just that subculture of Reddit not sharing something to protect the sources is fascinating to watch You you think of the internet as the place that just can't hold back right and can't control itself and this is an interesting switch on that Hey if folks if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes be sure to subscribe to dailytechheadlines.com Music blog consequence of sounds Meggy Gates wrote an article titled embracing a future where memes choose hit songs the fate of a pop artist now belongs in the hands of twitch twitter and tiktok She notes that hit songs now are not arising from poor you know being pushed by onto DJs like they were in the 50s or or having an association with with hot brands and and and movies But they're arising on the internet lyrics are being tailored to Instagram captions you want to promote that song make sure you got a lyric somebody can snip out and put in the caption of their Instagram videos need to have tweetable screenshots that you can throw a meme on Chorus is should be good for tiktok dance moves we are seeing music catering to this because the songs take off if they have these aspects examples include Lil Nas X Old Town Road Drake all of Drake every Drake ever Lizzo Zach Fox is used as an example of someone who rose to fame with the ridiculously catchy song Jesus is the one parentheses I got depression they even note that Carly right Jepsen's call me maybe was an early example of this sort of take off on the web with all the O.D. the example of this yeah you know it's it's this is this is interesting because I know that in many cases the artists that are being called out as will their meme artists now the artists themselves don't necessarily have to subscribe to this whole methodology but you know in Lizzo's case like how many times have you seen someone be like just took a DNA tense you know like you've seen it so many times like because it's just 100% super whatever yeah exactly yeah so it's like it's you know there's certain things that just catch on based on the tools that we have now and obviously anybody who is trying to get as much attention particularly not known artist beforehand will try to figure out okay how do I get the most attention the way that you would get the most attention by having it you know a grabbing headline on YouTube or you know all of those things like all of the ways that social media management actually already works but the fact that it works for popular music now and you know and is kind of turning into this new thing is pretty fascinating I wonder if some people hearing this are thinking uh where is the art where is the artist's freedom to express the art the art's already there the artists are doing that thing right well I think first of all yes I disagree with those people who say this and and it's also yeah there there were always let's say there have always been a certain segment of the music industry and artists even that cater their art to being as catchy and popular as possible and there will always be even now people who don't really care about that and who make the music that they they want to make I think among those artists we mentioned I don't think we look at them and maybe that's something that's a little bit different I don't think we would view them as like products made by manufacturers like producers that want to hit song they seem like genuine artists and and so I don't know that that worry would really hold up to scrutiny it's an interesting thought right because in the days when you had to convince a representative at a label to push you to make you successful the perception was they're not successful because they're good they're successful because the label spent a bunch of money on them and that's not legitimate and so I'm an artist who's who's you know true to the music but this situation is different this is popular appeal in a in a more direct way this is this is saying it's not a label deciding whether I'm successful it's all of the users of tick tock and instagram and twitter and so there's a there's a different criticism that can be had about that about you know lowest common denominator and man you know massive popularity versus you know doing it for the art still I mean that's still there but it's it's less about well you're not a legitimate artist because you just got picked by the money people it there there's a popular appeal here and a lot of artists I think they make their song and then figure out how to promote it well artists like Lil Nas X are like no man I designed this song from the beginning to be memeable like I wanted to lean into that I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Well and you know in the last few years I remember there was you know a video that went around the Internet's about the fact that like look at this Nickelback song versus this other Nickelback song it's the same song that you know that the guts of the song are exactly the same they just changed the lyrics because the song was already popular once this is exactly what's going on here like you figure out what is a you know like what is going to be a hit and a hit now meaning what is going to be socially popular and you're going to see a lot more of that. Yeah. And the gatekeepers are not as powerful as they used to be and are more distributed so it's it changes the landscape. Thanks everybody. Yes. Sorry just to finish up on this. I think we have to figure out how to make podcasts memeable. That's where we have to go. Have we have we not darn it. More memeable one more thing to do. Hey thanks everybody who participates in our subreddit. In fact, if you want to make our podcast more memeable that would be a great place to do it. You can submit stories and vote on them at daily tech news show dot Reddit dot com. Go for the stuff you like. Submit the stuff that you want and help us make your show tomorrow. Do we have any memes in the mail bag. You know it's funny that you asked Tom we do Gary Fisher. Hello Gary friend of the show has a weekly podcast called diary of a senior geek that he submitted to us because we've been asking for folks who are doing their own stuff like hey let us know what you're doing so that we can share with the greater good. He says it's less than 20 minutes long recently been an eclectic mech mix of stories from my life stories from my dad's life and also personal takes on life. Gary draws from a long life in it along with the wealth of other experience so you probably have a little bit in common with Gary and thanks Gary for letting us know that you're doing your thing. Yeah, go check out diary of a senior geek anchor dot FM slash Gary dash Fisher and we'll have that link in our show notes at daily tech news show dot com as well. Also want to take a shout out to patrons at our master and grand master levels including Erwin stir Justin Zellers and Tim deputy. Also thanks to Patrick Beja for being with us today. It's late where you are. It's not that late where we are Patrick working people keep up with everything you do in between. Great, great. And thank you. You know what? If you speak French, or if you want to speak French, or if you want to practice French, just go check out learn the tech. You enjoy tech so you probably know about half the words we use. So it would be an easy way to do all of that. The rendezvous tech is at French spin dot FR and on your podcast app. Of course. And big appreciation to everybody who's able to continue to support the show. 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