 Coming up on DTNS, what Apple's VR headset might be like, Facebook's Supreme Court faces its big test and one messenger app to rule them all. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, January 21st, 2021 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Marin. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. From Oakland, California. I'm Justin Robert Young. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chan. We were just talking about Super Bowls and sports and all kinds of cool stuff on good day internet. Get that longer, wider conversation. Become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. The Raspberry Pi Foundation released a $4 microcontroller called the Raspberry Pi Pico. The first device using the foundation's own RP2040 dual core, 133 megahertz arm chip. The Pico microcontroller includes 264 kilobytes of RAM, 26 GPIO pins, a micro USB port and a temperature sensor. It can be programmed in C or micro Python. Samsung Display plans to release the first 90 Hertz OLED screens for laptops. Manufacturing begins in March in large quantities with, quote, several global IT companies expected to release models with the panel later this year. The initial panels will be 14 inches, though aspect ratio and resolutions were not announced. The security firm Corellium released a port of Ubuntu Linux to run on M1-based Macs. The OS boots into the full desktop interface and includes USB support, although there isn't any hardware acceleration and networking requires using a USB dongle. The Ubuntu build and tutorial to get it running are available on GitHub. Yeah, I had to use a dongle to get internet access when I ran Xandros on my Thinkpad back in 2004, so same thing. Google reached an agreement with APIG, a group representing about 300 political and general information press titles in France on a framework to pay the publishers for the reuse of snippets of content in compliance with the 2019 reform to copyright law. France's competition regulator ruled back in April that Google couldn't just not show snippets. It's against the law for them not to show snippets because that would be an abusive dominant market position and so ordered Google to negotiate payment terms. A non-tech note that Intel's incoming CEO, Pat Gelsinger, who takes over on February 15th, has already started making some moves. Retired Intel senior fellow Glenn Hinton, who was co-lead architect on the Nahalem CPU Core, is coming out of retirement to work on an exciting high-performance CPU project. Hinton said on social media that, quote, if it wasn't a fun project, I wouldn't have come back. As you know, retirement is pretty darn nice. Oh, look at Hinton. All right, let's talk about this big messenger thing. I'm so excited. OK, so if you harken back to the days of trillion, adium, pigeon, whatever you might have used to get a bunch of I am messaging services together in one place, instant messaging on the desktop, ruled conversations, remember those days? Well, then phones caught up and then lots of people move their conversations to WhatsApp or Line or WeChat or Signal or Telegram or iMessage or Hangouts or all of them. And now, if you're one of those people, you have to remember which person uses which app before you send them a message and make sure that you don't miss a message from that person. So if you remember Pebble, not a messaging app, that was the power efficient watch that worked with any device and had a battery that lasted days, also shut down December 7th, 2016, and then Fitbit bought the IP. OK, we're coming around, coming for a circle here. Pebble founder Eric Migikowski is now trying to solve the messenger problem for all of us and has launched something called Beeper, a universal chat app that promises to bring 15 different chat platforms into one single interface, but not for free for $10 a month. Beeper runs on Android, iOS, Windows, Mac OS, Linux. It can access 15 networks with more to come. But starting with the big ones, WhatsApp, Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Android messages, Telegram, Twitter, Slack, Google Hangouts, Skype, IRC, Matrix, Discord, Signal, the Beeper network itself, and Apple's iMessage. Now that's turning some heads, right? Because Beeper promises to let you access iMessage on Android, Windows, and Linux. If you have a Mac, you install the Beeper Mac app, and then it acts as a bridge in order to get everything together. Some people might not have a Mac. If you don't have a Mac, Beeper supposedly has 50 iPhone 4s, jail broken already, and ready to send customers to act as the bridge. Now, okay, 50, that's a little bit silly, but it sounds like the company's saying, listen, we're trying to make sure that we are reaching people who want the service, even if you don't have all the required hardware. The rest is all done using the open source matrix messaging protocol to bridge all the gaps with Megakovsky, hoping it will lead to people using Matrix chat, so we don't all exist on separate networks. Now, I know this sounds like a utopia. Is it possible? It may very well appeal to you, but it's open by invitation only. If you are interested, you can go to BeeperHQ.com to learn more and get on that waiting list. That's why you can get by with only 50 iPhone 4s, because he just won't take too many invites, but that is a hang up, because that's not a sustainable thought to be sending people jail broken iPhone 4s, I don't think. But I don't want to dwell on that part. I want to distract myself and look at the promise of fixing this problem, where we all could just have one messaging app and we could choose our platform. We could all be on, you know, I could be on Signal, you could be on WhatsApp, but we could still somehow messaging each other through Beeper. That sounds great. Oh, yeah. I mean, I was a big trillion user back in the day when I kind of switched over from Windows to Mac OS. I hopped on Addium for years. I, most people really were using AOL Instant Messenger still at that point, but not everybody. It was really, really helpful. I, when I first heard the story, I was like $10 a month. Absolutely not. I mean, how hard is it to turn on notifications for various apps? I also really only have, let's say, three different platforms where I'm getting messages regularly that are really important to me. So sure, I can pledge notifications here and there if I want to, but I pulled some friends this morning like, Hey, Windows folks, is this interesting to you? And a couple of people were like, Oh my gosh, yes, you have no idea. This is very interesting to me, especially because I'm kind of sitting at my computer most of the day. And it can be sort of a mess. Also, another friend said, you know, the group text stuff, let's say WhatsApp, just as an example, he's on like 15 different group chats on WhatsApp. I am not. So I don't get the hellscape that it must be to be getting notifications when you really don't want to miss a message on something like that. And so sure, I can see we're having a central place where lots of content is coming in and you can manage it a little bit better and not have to just be pinged on your phone every five seconds is possibly worth the money. Yeah, I think this is an interesting idea. I don't know if this is the value proposition that it is positioning itself as. I do think it might be the future. However, specifically, as we look at a lot of these antitrust conversations that are coming down the pike and the fact that our walled garden chat ecosystem seems to be breaking down a little bit more than it has been in the past. The idea of all of these platforms being fed into something else, including Apple's iMessage, might be something that we see in the future. I don't know if it will happen via a third party app or if maybe Apple itself will have a new beefed up iMessage that will take advantage of a lot of these other platforms, APIs. I see people in the chat room saying like, I can get a desktop app for all the messaging apps I want to use. Why is this a big deal? Well, if that was the case, no one would have loved Trillion because you could have a desktop app for Yahoo Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger and AIM. It wasn't just I don't get notifications or I want to run three apps. It's fine. It was I want one place. I only want to think of one place. I don't want to have to remember like, oh, I'm messaging Sarah. Do I launch Yahoo or do I launch AIM? Which one do I need to have? You just want one place. That sounds to me like it might be worth $10 a month if it really works, which is a big if. I'd be willing to try this. I don't know if I would continue to use it. That remains to be said. All you need is one missed message because you decided to try to aggregate. Well, I messaged does that on its own anyway. Yeah. And and people get frustrated with that. Not that I mean, not that often. And listen, it used to be impossible to talk to anybody using an Android phone. It is now much easier. So we are inching toward some sort of more unified world. But yeah, I don't know, 10 bucks a month. Not for me, but anybody anybody who gets in there, let me know how it's going to change my life. You and your 49 friends with your jailbroken iPhones, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman sources say that Apple's first VR headset, codenamed N 301 may launch as early as 2022 and will operate as a standalone battery powered device running on its own power efficient chips. The size will reportedly be close to the Oculus Quest with a fabric exterior to save on weight and include a cooling fan. Some prototypes also include external cameras for AR features with Apple testing, hand tracking and virtual keyboards. The headset is expected to be an expensive device with some at Apple forecasting initial sales of less than 200,000 in the first year. Apple has about a thousand people working on AR and VR currently. Dang. Uh, yeah, some things to unpack anything that is Oculus Quest like because I have a quest. I have the original quest, not the quest to. So it's even a little bit bigger than than what Oculus is doing, but uh, I, it has brought me a lot of joy and I think that anybody who's understanding that form factor is going to be like, okay, yeah, this is dope. Having external cameras for some AR capabilities. Interesting to me. What would that look like? You know, I mean, there's only so much you're sort of doing real world integration. Well, that would be for the sensors. You know, I would imagine that would be for like doing motion tracking, doing that, that kind of because you have external cameras on the Oculus as well. Yeah, that kind of like inside out tracking. Well, yeah, the quest to you can see through. And, and especially when you're setting your boundary at the beginning of play, you came with the original quest as well. I guess you're right, Sarah. The cameras are for AR features, so it's going to show you the outside room while you've got the headset on. Maybe, maybe, because I also think that if Apple is going to do this, considering how much time and effort that they've put into AR and they have used AR as a demo feature at every press conference for the last five years, it feels like I could see them looking to push this as more of a, especially in a work from home world, a slap it on your head. It's not just for gaming. It's also for productivity. You can leave it on. You can see through it. It can give you information in real time. And that's very Apple, isn't it? I mean, Apple, you know, Apple being like, oh, it's hardcore device. It's like, that's not really Apple. Apple possibly selling a, I mean, if you're comparing it to iPhone sales, a pretty small number of these in the first year, that, you know, some people were like, oh gosh, that sounds pretty bad. There may be some supply chain issues. I mean, lots of companies are going through that right now. But this is also, it is a new form factor. And, you know, again, I can't say it enough. I mean, I love my quest, but there are things about it where I'm like, I wish it was just, you know, the glasses that I'm wearing on my face right now, rather than this whole thing. And I'm sure that Apple is taking a lot of that into consideration and the price point, very important because Apple historically makes very nice things and also prices. A lot of people out of those very nice things. Yeah, look, I love the Oculus Quest 2. I think it is a game changing device for VR in terms of its casual ability. I have begun most of my days over the last week playing putt-putt golf with my friends, Brian Brushwood and Andrew Heaton in the morning. We play 18 holes and BS and then just take off our headsets and get to our day. That is magic and fantastic. I love it. That being said, I loved my sidekick. And then the iPhone came out. And I don't want to take away from how important the sidekick was. I think the sidekick was, you know, if it weren't released in proximity to the iPhone, it would still be heralded as a massive game changer because it did bring an internet experience that was here to fore kind of unseen in terms of how you were designed to interact with it. This feels like the time when Apple senses a ripe, mature marketplace and decides to supercharge it with a lot of power and a lot of polish. Yeah. Two thoughts on the price, too, with the price in the sales. Apple Watch didn't sell very well at first until it started selling really well. And people thought it was too expensive early on. People definitely thought the iPhone was too expensive. When people forget, 2007, oh, yeah, I didn't get an iPhone for like two years. I was like, ridiculously expensive. Yeah. And and now people complain about the price still because people always complain about prices. But it is not necessarily that much or even more expensive than similar flagships. Yep. You know, the Apple Watch is a good example of this. Like you said, not, you know, selling like hotcakes, you know, at the offset. But then word gets out of like, oh, this is actually really helpful and hear all the reasons why. And then, you know, the company, of course, is iterating. The first Apple Watch is very different than the current Apple Watch, which has a lot more features. But the VR thing, Justin, I'm with you. I don't play a pep golf. Well, that sounds really fun. Should. But it's it's it really is. And I know I sound like a broken record sometimes and, you know, tell me to shut up. But it's like, you don't know how fun it is until you play around with it. And then you're like, oh, OK, I get it. I get how I get how cool this is. This Bloomberg story talks a lot about how this thing, they're having a hard time making it comfortable. So if it comes out, it's because they figured out that form factor that you're like, oh, your Oculus Quest is going to feel like wearing a brick after you pay a thousand five hundred dollars for this Apple headset. Take my money. Gosh, all right. Amazon Chief Executive of Worldwide Consumer Business, Dave Clark, sent a letter to the US president offering to help reach the goal of vaccinating 100 million people against COVID-19 in 100 days. Clark offered the leverage of the company's, quote, operations, information technology and communications capabilities to the effort, noting that Amazon has an agreement with a licensed healthcare provider to administer vaccines at its facilities. Amazon, however, is not taking part in the Washington State Vaccine Command and Coordination Center, although Starbucks, Costco and Microsoft are. The letter also made the case that essential workers at Amazon fulfillment centers, AWS data centers and Whole Foods market stores should get the vaccine early. In October, Amazon said more than 19,000 of its workers had tested positive for COVID out of its 1.13 million employees. That was back in October, so it's definitely higher now. Amazon is also expected to report its first $100 billion quarter on February 2nd. They've been making money during this pandemic. Amazon's also spending money. They spent $7.5 billion on COVID related costs in Q3. And they're expected to report another 4 billion of expenditures related to COVID in Q4. This is a fascinating developing situation for a couple of different reasons. Number one, without a question, Amazon is probably the world's leader in terms of logistics. They have by design from their earliest days put strategically close distribution centers so they could get you your products as fast as possible. That means that they have facilities and theoretically parking lots at the very minimum for which they could allow for vaccine administration. But speaking of administration, you can't not think about the fact that Amazon is almost assuredly and some, including myself, believe maybe the most open and shut case for antitrust. We have new leadership in Washington, D.C., a leadership that based on those that are currently employed there would seemingly have a more friendly relationship with big tech, including Amazon. And it is very interesting to see whether it be a PR play or something that could be used as a, well, look at who stood up when COVID raged and the vaccine needed to be distributed. Amazon stepped up in our era of invoking the Defense Production Act for private companies to do public good. They stepped up and did it. They didn't even have to be asked. There's there's a lot going on here. And I feel like we want to keep an eye on the relationship between big tech and the White House in general. And this is a huge step forward on that. Yeah. And you want to pick where you step up? The state of Washington only has one attorney general. If you help the federal government, you're helping the whole country. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know enough about the mechanisms of the state consortium because, you know, everything is local. But in terms of them doing it nationally, A, they're not wrong. They could probably do a lot of good in terms of distributing things as far as them getting their own people vaccinated first. That's a much larger question on exactly how much we want to wait, quote, unquote, essential workers over larger populations. If what we want to do is get as many people vaccinated as fast as possible. Well, folks, we want to know what you want to hear us talk about on the show. One way to let us know is our subreddit. Get in there, submit stories and vote on them at Daily Tech News Show dot reddit dot com. Facebook has referred its decision to indefinitely suspend President Donald J. Trump's account to the independent oversight board that it had set up last year. Facebook's Vice President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg said that the company believes the decision was right. But given criticisms by world leaders such as Chancellor Angela Merkel, the company thinks that it is quote important for the board to review and review it and reach an independent judgment on whether it should be upheld. A five member panel will take up the case and share findings with the full board. Majority approval will be needed on any decision that must be made within 90 days. The board will evaluate whether the content in question violated Facebook standards and whether the removal respected international human rights, including freedom of expression. Statement from the pages administrators can be submitted arguing why the suspension should be overturned and public comments will be taken. In the meantime, the suspension remains in place. Facebook will have up to seven days to implement a decision once it is published and 30 days to respond publicly to any policy change recommendations. Oh, this is this is the test case. We were talking when we were preparing for this show how we haven't heard anything about this oversight board. They've they've been working. They've been reviewing cases. But nothing has caught anyone's eye until this. And this is likely one of the biggest cases that this oversight board could possibly face because it's a world leader. And it certainly is the case that's going to set the precedent. How they deal with this is going to point this oversight board in a direction from now on. Without a doubt, I think that there is a massive, massive question that we have to ask ourselves right now. Will we respect this decision? No matter whether or not we agree or disagree with it. Well, Tom, you sort of made like a, you know, sort of a semi joke at the beginning of the show of it, you know, being like the Facebook Supreme Court. But really, if you think about it this way, it's, you know, the company saying, OK, we're, you know, we're getting into these kind of hot water situations. That's the whole idea of the independent oversight board. And yeah, you don't really hear much about the board. They are doing things. I'm sure there's plenty of stuff that would be very interesting to us that we just haven't heard of. This is just such a high profile decision that, yeah, you're going to get a lot of folks who, no matter what it is, who are happy or not happy with that. And will the oversight board be able to say, well, sorry, I mean, you can't go any higher than us. That's just the way it is. And everybody kind of calms down and goes on with their life. Or will this become either something that, you know, makes people leave Facebook, which is unlikely, but sure, maybe a few, or say that the oversight board needs to have oversight. I think not only do is the public reaction to this important, but also if this does not come back in a way that Facebook likes, will Facebook even adhere to it, right? Because they have they have their own personal decision on how they take the ruling by the oversight board. Yeah. If Facebook doesn't implement the decision that then they should never have even bothered. So they have to they have to implement whatever decision. Now, the policy recommendation is where they have wiggle room. The policy recommendation isn't binding. The decision is supposed to be. Facebook is committed to whatever decision they say, leave it up, take it back down. We will follow. And if they don't do that, then yeah, this whole thing was a charade. If, however, they say you you can you can continue to do what you were doing. But we think in the future, you should change how you do it. That's where Facebook can go, OK, we'll take that under advisement. Fact of the matter is I already see people in our chat room saying this is bad. I don't know what else they could do, right? Short of having governments pass laws on what moderation decisions should happen, which you know, we have a whole section to 30 special about stuff like that. I just don't know. Facebook said, look, we'll set up an independent board. They get to choose their members. They make decisions, actual decisions we will follow. Like, you know, is it bad or is it I don't think they'll rule the way I think they should rule. So I think it's bad. That's and that is the question. That is the million dollar question. And there are very few ways that you can make everybody happy on this particular subject. Well, yeah, you can't make everyone happy because you have to make a decision. So the only the only way to win is not to play. But you know, that just leaves things the way they are. Yeah, people are mad about that, too. Yeah. Well, in 2015, Instacart hired some of its workers as employees. So they had to pay the extra payroll tax. So they cost more than than other employees that aren't full time employees that are contractors. When you have an employee, you have to offer protections like minimum wage. At the time, Instacart CEO approved of Mata said, quote, our shoppers require training and supervision, which is how you improve the quality of the picking. You can't do that when they are independent contractors. That was six years ago. That was 2015. 2021 Instacart thinks, well, we don't have to employ them. Somebody else could. And so Instacart has announced it will eliminate 1,877 employees, including 10 union workers in Illinois, which they can do because they're just eliminating the positions and is going to shift toward letting retailers use Instacart tech to have their own employees prepare orders. Instacart says it will attempt to place the 1,877 employees at partner retailers or elsewhere within Instacart where possible and they have severance packages for anybody that they can't place. Yeah, this is a this is an interesting story because okay, say I'm an Instacart worker. I am a freelance worker. I'm not on staff. I sounds like my job kind of continues because Instacart is working in a lot of places. If I was somehow an employee and it's like, shoot, your, your, your job has been eliminated. But you were always working out of this whole foods and we're trying to integrate our tech closer into this whole foods and let's just Kroger just because yeah, it's owned by Amazon is a whole different thing. Yeah, okay, sure. Kroger, fine. Wegmans, you know, all of the all of the supermarkets. But there's a place for you there. And you'd be able to do a lot of the stuff that you learned with us because the technology that you're good at and you know, they'd like that could be fine. It's probably pretty often not going to be fine for a lot of the folks that that lost their jobs. And also Instacart just kind of saying like, yeah, that employee thing just didn't work out for us. And there are a lot of other gig economy companies who have been going through this for the last few years. So kind of an interesting precedent if there is one. Yeah. And look, God bless the union organizations in our country. They stick up for workers and they're very good at making sure that the press learns whenever a union worker is fired. That is that is partly what they are there for. That's a lot of the headlines here, despite the fact that it's only 10 people. The larger tidal wave that I think causes this particular issue is the fact that even though we're in a world where home delivery of your groceries has become more of a regular situation than we have ever seen it here in America. The trend has been to go to the grocery store through the grocery store itself as opposed to using third parties like Instacart because the grocery stores themselves are pushing this very, very hard, including Whole Foods which through Amazon and their own process as very good at trying to figure this kind of stuff out. So I think that these are larger business issues that are causing them to reshuffle their business model which means like, hey, take a Instagram trained person and put them on your payroll and that way we can supercharge your ability to Instacart although they might be on Instagram as well. Instacart I apologize. But you can supercharge your grocery delivery operation that much faster if you have one of our people in your midst. Well, I think what's really going on here is Prop 22 has made it safer to use contractors as delivery drivers and Instacart wants to shed off any interpretation that picking the groceries is not part of the delivery that's protected by Prop 22 in California and they want to have closer partnerships with the grocery stores. They've become the official partner for several. So the grocery stores are saying, yeah, we'll employ the people who pick the stuff, prepare the order and you just send the driver that way falls under Prop 22 for you. We have more control over our inventory and who's picking the stuff and don't have random people, you know, clogging up the lanes in our store and works out better for everybody that way. Yeah. All right, let's check out the mail bag. Let's do it. David wrote in about our conversation on Tuesday with Rob Dumblaid about what's up privacy messaging, how it might have been handled differently. David says this is easy. The first time you go to the chat with a company to which this new policy applies, let's call the company Taco Deli, prompt the user that their chat session with Taco Deli will be stored on WhatsApp servers and may be used for future advertisements on Facebook properties. If you want to be extra nice, they could ask for permission once or always and even give away to opt in for all businesses to which this applies. Even if you don't give an option to opt out, this would greatly simplify the messaging similar to the feature on iOS where apps asked to use the camera upon first use. I don't use WhatsApp much says David, but I suspect most users don't chat with companies to which this applies. So those folks won't be bothered until they do. David, I love the solution, except I don't think it's legal. Lawyers who handle terms of service, let me know, but I don't think you can have terms of service only kick in when someone access access as a feature. I think you have to have the terms of service agreed to ahead of time, whether you access the feature or not. And I think that's what WhatsApp ran into is they had to get people to agree. They could have just made it a like, click here to agree and we won't tell you anything until you use the feature, but they decided to be transparent about it up front, but they still would have had to get people to agree to this, even if they never use the feature as I understand it because the way David describes it would be great if you know if that's the way it worked. Well, if anyone has ideas of how to make apps better like David or questions or comments or anything we talk about on any show or future show feedback at daily technewshow.com is where to send those emails. We'd like to shout out patrons at our master and grandmaster levels, including Ali Sanjabi, Paul Thiessen and Kevin today. Thanks to all. Also special thanks to Justin Rubber Young for being with us today. Boy, we're almost through inauguration week, Justin. I know you're you're you're tired, but you got stuff going on. Yes. And and and the the big thing, of course, aside from Joe Biden becoming the 46th president of the United States in the new administration beginning is you can get new merch. Yes, politics merch.com is where you need to go get shirts, hoodies, masks, mugs, laptop cases for three of the shows that I do. Politics, politics, politics, raise the dead 1960 Nixon versus Kennedy or raise the dead 1964 Johnson versus Goldwater. I've got my mask on the way. There's a new mask mandate. You know, you want to update your mask game head on over there right now, politics merch.com. And by the way, folks, folks who think, hey, man, I want to be involved in podcasting. You got a couple of opportunities out here. Daily Tech headlines is looking for someone to help Rich Strafilino. Not an easy job. But if you think you have what it takes to bang out some accurate, well-selected headlines and record them, let us know. Feedback at DailyTechnewshow.com. And you might want to listen to politics, politics, politics tomorrow as well. Because Justin may be looking for a little help, too. Well, for anybody who need just the headlines, though, check out our related show DailyTechheadlines.com. Sorry, go ahead. No, I am sorry, Tom. Please accept my deepest, sincerest apologies. If you'd like to join this show live, because we're live and stuff happens. We're live Monday through Friday at 4 30 p.m. Eastern 21 30 UTC. Find out more at DailyTechnewshow.com slash live. We'll be back tomorrow with Kiki Sanford and Len Peralta. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at FrogPants.com. Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.