 Coming up on DTNS Australia wants to scan your face to verify your age for certain websites Why Google agreed to buy Fitbit and teaching rats to drive cars This is the Daily Tech news for Friday November 1st 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio mystery I'm Sarah Lane Drawing the top tech stories from Cleveland, Ohio. I'm Len Peralta. I'm the shows producer Roger Chang And of course, we're very happy to be joined today by Peter Wells tech journalist at Sydney Morning Herald and the age Peter It's been too long. Welcome back. Oh, thank you so much Tom. Yeah, it's really really great to be back We are going to have some good talking today folks. We've already had some about Sarah's need to eat top ramen yesterday and more if you want to get that wider conversation, of course You need good day internet become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things. You should know Google began rolling out incognito mode in Google Maps for Android users when in incognito mode Google won't save location information to a Google account update any shared location history or use account data to personalize maps China's three state-owned cellular carriers China mobile China Unicom and China telecom began offering 5g service in the country Pricing is based on speed with China Unicom offering a gigabit per second speed for the equivalent of $45 a month Beijing currently has 10,000 of 13,000 5g base stations installed and the central government wants 5g coverage over Beijing Shanghai Hongzhou and Guangzhou by the end of 2019 China mobile claims will offer 5g service in more than 50 cities this year Sources tell CNBC that NBC Universal's peacock streaming TV service may be free for all users with ads Comcast has said it would make the service available for free to its cable TV and internet subscribers But is not weighed in on non-comcast customers NBC is considering making the ad supported version free for everybody and charging for an ad-free version as well There may also be other tiers of service to pay for with premium content Peacock will air between three and five minutes of advertising per hour Waterfront Toronto has decided to move forward with five months of consultations about alphabets Sidewalk labs proposal to create a 12-acre community on Lake Ontario called Keyside Sidewalk labs wants to show off its smart city technology with AI driven heating and cooling robotic freight Transportation a lot of sensors that kind of thing Toronto's government will maintain control of privacy and data policy for the area All right, let's talk a little bit about Google announcing Friday morning It has agreed to acquire Fitbit in a deal worth 2.1 billion dollars Google SVP of hardware Rick Osterloh Wrote that it is quote an opportunity to invest even more in wear OS as well as introduced made by Google wearable devices into the market and Google makes Laptops it makes tablets or it has its make makes phones makes headphones It has not made its own watch yet. Sounds like now it will Google bought part of fossils research and technology group in January so that will fit right in there for its own part Fitbit wrote that it quote Will continue to put users in control of their data and will remain transparent about the data It collects and why Fitbit also specified that data collected by Fitbit devices will not be used to target ads for Google and Fitbit pledge to remain platform agnostic You're not going to lose your iOS support says Fitbit deal is expected to close Sometime next year's I always like to follow these sorts of stories up with the reassurance of nothing is changing today It'll be months and months and months maybe a year Before this is actually closed and we'll try to do our best to tell you the day that it closed But Sarah it does sound like that Fitbit you've been wearing on your wrist is going to be a Google product at some point Yeah, and I have no problem with that especially if if if the if if If the company is saying nothing will change for iOS users because I am an iOS user And that does matter to me is going to change at least not in the short term That's great Fitbit has done an extremely good job And I am I am currently testing the Versa 2 is my live with that segment over the course of the next three months We're probably about halfway into it now So I have been paying a lot of attention to the the sort of Fitbit activity tracker Ecosystem especially When you compare it to something like the Apple watch and they are different, but it is a very robust ecosystem I would hate for it to change but Fitbit needed to be bought the Rumors were that Google was going to buy Fitbit or was at least sniffing around for months now So this is not a really big surprise. I just yeah I will be interested to see how this changes anything for Fitbit going down the road because we have seen Google buy Independent companies in the past and things have changed Yeah, this is a smart thing for Google to do right which is get into the wearable business by The way they're doing their other things which is they provide the operating system Chrome OS Android wear OS But make their own flagship version and instead of starting from scratch buying the expertise of a brand that's very well respected in Fitbit Yeah Fitbit probably isn't going to hurt from getting the boost of being part of Google They've done a good job of hanging in there But there were some questions if they could really hold out in the wearables market on their own So this gives them a boost Peter, what do you make of this deal? Yeah, I am remembered. Sorry. I remember about two years ago I sat down in the same week with the CEO of Fitbit and the CEO of GoPro And I thought that they were really two interesting Companies kind of on the verge of an existential crisis because they were both seeing their market kind of being eaten away by Smartphones and and the Apple watch and I don't know I just remember saying to the Fitbit CEO that like look mate. You've got to Move into software because now that I own an Apple watch I'm never going to use your platform and I used to love your platform I used to love Fitbit lean into software lean into what you do well or you're dead and Funnily enough that was the last interview I ever got with him Yeah, I just kind of at that point I just thought well, you know, they're gonna get bought by someone and so I think it is a good fit like you said Google Needs a boost in its wear platform because it really hasn't moved much in a long time So and and Apple has clearly become the market leader when it comes to wearables Yeah, it is a bit of a good fit Moving on to some Apple news or some former Apple news anyway Reuters has a story about former Apple wireless chief Ruben Caballero who is now the chief wireless strategist for a company called Kisa if you haven't heard of Kisa The company is developing a wireless chip meant to transfer data as fast as wired transfer by placing two devices next to each other Caballero also wants to get rid of cables inside a phone broken connector wires Say a to a camera for example made inside a phone can interfere with cell reception Instead Kisa's chips would use high frequencies that don't cause interference at all The LG v50 uses a Kisa chip to connect to its second screen and the company is also working with video display makers and LiDAR sensor makers Yeah, this is I mean I think all of us want to get rid of cables, right? None of us want to have cables, especially those of us using dongles for everything with a Mac Pro But I think what's extra interesting about this startup is the idea of getting rid of the cables inside of the phone in order to make it a little less likely that something wears out of breaks and also reduces interference I Mean to me that's a that's a that's a pretty huge Advantage and adds to the durability of your phone Absolutely, and oh sorry go on. No Peter, please go Well, it's just gonna say absolutely and I'm sure Apple would love to you know Squeeze down their devices even smaller as well if they could get rid of some of those internal wires and connectors I mean all manufacturers would You know, I am you know, I joke with friends sometimes where I'm like I don't even know where a pen is or like a pad of paper like I the wireless office is Something that you know was promised to us a while ago And it doesn't really work yet, but we're getting there and this is just one more reason that I'm like, okay We're getting there and so I'm all for it Yeah, and like you say Peter if you've got a little more room in there you can actually Have more battery more room for more battery is great Well scientists at the University of Richmond wanted to study the effect of environment on learning in rats unlike previous studies involving mazes The rats in these studies were taught to drive I'm not joking a robot car kit was equipped with three copper wires connected to an aluminum plate on the floor of the very tiny car and Three copper bars above a rat standing on the aluminum bar and gripping any of the bars would engage the motor One bar turned it to the left one made it go straight one turned it to the right The rats learned to drive after eight weeks of three five-minute driving sessions a week The study would then vary the starting position of the car the orientation of the car where they put the treats and Afterward that when they were done with all of those experiments rats were allowed the opportunity to just drive around on their own With no food present just to see if they would do it One group of five rats and this is the point of the story one group of five rats lived in a large cage with multiple levels and objects to play with and Another group of six rats lived in pairs so three pairs in standard cages And the idea was to see if they had the stimulating environment did they learn faster? Did it affect their stress levels? Versus the ones that just lived in pairs in regular cages the five that lived in the more interesting environment learned to drive faster And we're more interested in driving even after the food was gone Turned out the stress levels were about the same for all the rats You know, I don't know but as a rat lover, I know not not everybody loves rats, but man, this is so cool Just just to you know just to kind of Download the idea that that the rats were so able to Kind of adapt in such a short period of time. I mean, they're smart animals, right? That's that's why They're they're often used in science experiments, but I For for myself welcome our new rat driver overlords Absolutely. Yeah, I mean they look they look to drive faster than I do They don't drive well if you look at the video they run run into things a lot Rats not gonna be picking me up in a noob or any time soon You probably don't want it do But then again, you're losing sight of the fact that a rat is driving when you say that, right? This this idea that that rats just you know pushing levers can can move a car around to get to the treats Is is pretty great and it shows that Stimulation and environment plays a part a lot of times people like wow What does it matter what you put on the walls and how you decorate yourself and It does it matters people respond better to to more stimulating environments. It makes a big difference Well on the subject of Driverless cars or whether you know, you would have nobody or a rat in front of you tech crunches Ed Niedermeyer has a report on a Waymo car kind of the update on on Waymo's Test that's been going on in the Phoenix suburb areas of Chandler, Arizona No driver no driver in this car. This was not on a closed course. It was not pre selected routes It was not a press demo This was a car that was hailed using the Waymo one app for a 10-minute ride from a park to a coffee shop Made by a real person doing a real thing in the real life These cars are now available for for a few hundred members of Waymo's early writer program The writers must live in a certain zip code can only get driverless rides within a geo-fenced area So it is still limited, but it is real. They also must sign NDA's They're not charged for the ride as well His ride started with a call to a human writer assistance team to address any Any questions Niedermeyer wrote that he was impressed by how it handled a non-protected left turn Even inched forward at stop signs to indicate it meant to proceed and was over Also overly cautious at trap at traffic spacing and what he called overactive path planning Kind of just sounds like a cautious driver to me the things that it didn't do as well And neither by even sounds like the kind of thing that you'd want your Uber driver to do if they were it by in the wheel Right, you know, you're like I'd rather you'd be cautious than weird and Niedermeyer wrote that well These are weird things that you don't expect normal people to do but Niedermeyer even said he's like most people probably wouldn't have even noticed them It's just that he's paying close attention. He's like, okay I don't know if a human driver do that so and I found this fascinating because He was already moving on in his article on the idea of okay So what should the experience be when you get into one of these cars, right? He's like I'm now in this car that feels like a dream because no one's driving it But it's making left turns and keeping pace with the other cars And he's like I'm already on to to the idea of like how do you make sure that the environment works? Like what is the interface people should have when they're in the car? Where should they sit should they have human action interaction at all points because we're used to talking to a driver and saying Oh, hey, can you you know let me off here that sort of thing like now we're getting to those kinds of questions. I think that's fascinating I Think also what's fascinating is you know the The idea that the car is being overly cautious you go well, that's good of course, you know You want you want you want that with the driverless car You want it to be you know as safe as possible because we're all trying to get used to you know our new normal But if that was a person behind the car You might be like pick up the pace man like we might be you know having to sort of Recalibrate to a safety first version of driving that humans have have have not been respecting for a long time Peter would you get into one of these I? Would I would and I am you know I drive like an old man But so so I would very much appreciate a slow driving driverless car But yeah, I like that idea of actually that driverless cars means the rest of society needs to kind of slow down and pay a bit more attention because I'm I'm terrified of other drivers on the road I'm much I would feel much happier with a bunch of driverless cars than some of the people I see driving and texting and speeding and all of that kind of stuff Yeah, driverless car can text while driving because it can multitask literally But I mean something as simple as saying well the speed limit is 65 miles per hour, right? Okay, well you could you could do that You could go a little under there and hopefully stayed to the right of the road or you could speed But driverless cars aren't going to be able to do that. They can't do that legally so we're gonna we're gonna have a reality where things are actually Working much more on the grid Then then what humans actually do which is I don't know it's kind of fascinating to me And I I don't know how it's gonna work. I'm sure people will grumble about it But you know in general safety first Cove a caveat here, of course, this is a small area pre-planned route in a dry state I mean, we're not saying driverless cars will go everywhere tomorrow But this is a significant moment. I thought it was worth paying attention to like wow You we've got people getting into cars that don't have any humans in them right now And that's pretty that's pretty amazing Apple TV plus launched Friday for four dollars and ninety-nine cents a month Though you get it free if you bought a phone tablet Mac or Apple TV from Apple since September 10 Launch titles are the morning show see for all mankind Dickinson snoopy in space ghostwriter Helpsters as well as the documentary feature the elephant queen and Oprah's book club talk show Dickinson has the whole season for all mankind just has three episodes and will come out weekly Other series vary on on that as well Most of them are weekly the shows are available to download for offline viewing some users are already reporting trouble getting the free offer Mac rumors comm says if you're having this trouble go to TV dot Apple comm and log in on your desktop using your Apple ID The free 12 month Apple TV plus subscription offer should then be available and then after accepting it on the website You can go back to your iPhone sign out of the Apple TV app close it relaunch it sign in again And then you should see it there Apple says customers need to have their device updated to the latest version of iOS Which may be causing some of these issues, but it's there in a hundred plus countries worldwide Who's excited? I'm excited if there are shows that I want to watch, you know, just like any other service You know, we've been talking about Apple TV plus for some time even before it was called Apple TV plus and You know now that it's here. It's almost like wow really okay, cool And there are some shows that I mean I haven't seen any of these shows. So I have zero opinion There are celebrities that I you know and actors and actresses that I Like and respect that are that are part of some of these vehicles. So I I hope it's a good thing But I I mean, I think it all depends on what's the hit. What's the hit, you know What's the hit that you know that Hulu had or the Netflix had or that Amazon? Had and the Apple needs the same thing Yeah, I think the AB club has got some incredible reviews of all of Apple TV's content So if you are interested, I think they've written up some of the best stuff so far And they haven't been particularly kind to most of the shows that that Apple have launched Although they they do say for all mankind is absolutely a fantastic show to at least try out So, yeah, that's that's the only one of the least that I am interested in obviously Ronald D. Moore You'll watch whatever Ronald D. Moore makes if you were an old BSG fan. So Yeah, that's that's all I'm Kind of here for at the moment, but I guess that's all you really need like I mean HBO has gotten Gotten along very well with just one key show that everyone needs to watch that, you know, it's part of the conversation that You know and obviously Netflix goes the other way where they have so many shows you can't even keep up But yeah, I think if Apple can just make sure even if they spend a helluva lot of money and make Apparently the morning show is terrible But you know, they can have these failures as long as they have just that one key show that becomes part of the Zeitgeist that we all need to talk about and we all need to watch Well to wrap this up my wife loves the morning show. She's she got a sneak peek at it from Ron tomato So she's she's going against the the current there Everybody seems to agree about for all mankind and the point of this is Most of the Apple users out there probably upgraded some piece of equipment since September 10th Because of all the new equipment that came out So a lot of people are getting this free for a year Students get it as part of their Apple music subscription now So Apple is is building up a bunch of people into this universe very quickly Especially as it's going to continue to sell these new devices Into the holidays it almost doesn't matter what quality these shows are at the top people are just going to have it They're going to experiment with it. And like you say, they'll probably find one maybe two that they like Hey, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes Be sure to subscribe to daily tech headlines dot com Australia's Department of Home Affairs has proposed using facial scans to confirm a user's age before letting them access adult sites like gambling or porn The idea would be to match the facial scan with home affairs data like a driver's license photo Which are part of the document verification service and face Verification service being set up to fight identity theft. So you'd be using that service for another purpose Of course that service is not up and running yet It's waiting for the passage of the identity matching services bill of 2019 Which was just rejected by the bipartisan joint intelligence and security committee because they wanted it to put in better privacy Safeguard so you're not going to get any of this right away, but Peter what what's your feeling on? Australia approaching this in a different way than the UK did but the UK ended up backing off of its plan Yeah, it's bizarre the way we're heading down this path after the UK spent I think two years trying to to push this through and after two years And I don't know how many pounds or euros that they spent on it. They decided that it just wasn't worth the effort Yeah, in terms of the entire so yeah, you do have to look at this as of course the the porn angle gets all the dimensions and the clicks Because that's the interesting side of the story But it is part of an overarching and kind of scary bill that that was introduced and I don't know In the words of Bart Simpson, I don't have pride in my government for once, but I do have less shame that they rejected this bill outright like that the bill itself was kind of pushed through by Peter Dutton who is a very Defensive figure in this country. He's he's not a very well liked politician in most capital cities So and of course, you know, he's lovingly referred to as the potato because his head kind of looks like a potato So when when the news first came out, Twitter was just full of people like drawing smiley faces on potatoes And holding them up to their webcam. So Yeah, it was very quickly kind of rejected and mocked and I think that the public sentiment there was Thank thankfully there was that porn angle or that that's silly angle to for everyone to kind of suddenly mobilize and It meant that there was so much pressure put on the over overall bill that Yeah, as you say the bipartisan committee just said look this this bill is so badly written. It has no Protections in place for what you're trying to roll out because yeah, so Peter Dutton is also in charge of borders So what he was wanting to do was basically put on facial recognition cameras that they're using In the passport areas of airports on like in every shopping mall. It was a little bit scary so I'm glad to see that the the entire bill was rejected outright and You know, we as Australians we accept a hell of a lot more kind of Intrusions into our privacy than I think Americans would ever do Why do you think that is? Honestly, I don't know. I don't know. I just think that you've You've always had the idea of you know, Liberty and and free speech and all of those kind of things built into Your very being whereas, you know, we don't have free speech in in any part of our I mean, we do have free speech as a concept, but it's not written down anywhere like it's and You know, it's one of the reasons and we do have actually very strong defamation laws, which means You honestly can't say a lot You can't say the kind of things that say South Park gets away with we could never have a show like that on Australian TV So, yeah, it's it's an interesting It's one of those things where we differ very much as as people but Even so even so we've had there have been times in our history. They're back back in the 80s. I'm old enough to remember this but back in the 80s The Labor government actually wanted to introduce what they called the Australia card, which would be Basically like a driver's license, but with all your other information attached to it So your social security and your Medicare details and all of that kind of stuff And you had to the idea was that you had to carry it at all times and you could be it could be scanned at any point And again, that was one of those things that I have no idea I can't remember why it was introduced or discussed But it was outright rejected after a really long and bloody battle of this is insane This is an absolute overreach of of of kind of looking into our privacy. There's no way We're going to accept that so I kind of kind of do feel that this is going to be the same way that this bill plays out that a very very tough on crime tough on borders Former ex cop like Peter Dunne is gonna try his best to get this through because this is clearly his passion project But the rest of the country It helps that he's doing it because no one likes him I think the rest of the country is probably going to Reject most of most of what he proposes and and and to be clear like this isn't Collecting faces. This is saying we already have this stuff on record. We want to use it for these purposes So I think the idea of using it to fight identity theft probably not controversial Using it to then log whether your can log into a gantt Let's just say gambling site to be even less controversial That's something people like wait. So what are the privacy protections? Like, okay? If you want to make sure to verify it's me fine, but then where is that stored? How is it used? Who else can access it? And that's why it got rejected for being too vague and I think that's probably right Hmm. I think the the the one thing to take away from this is voting is really important So if please America if you haven't enrolled to vote yet Enroll to vote and next year vote because we're all watching and we're a little concerned and that's all I'll say Well, you know some people who are concerned but are also our allies certainly on this show are The people who participate in our subreddit you could submit stories and vote on others at daily tech news show dot Reddit comm we also have a Facebook group It's fun join it if you haven't already Facebook comm slash groups slash daily tech news show Let's check out the mail bag. Let's do it Scott wrote in about our conversation yesterday And it was you know largely in part of you know my sort of harrowing last week and it sells service being down and and and you know what wanting To understand what companies that we're supposed to blame Scott says, you know, it works when the power goes out long after cell phone batteries and tower batteries and generators go down My landline Not the VoIP lines from bondage and cable companies But an honest to goodness copper pair from the telco Telephone lines are self-powered and around here at least where Scott lives are often buried So they keep working where everything else has stopped. It's a tried-and-true technology that exists and is available now Not in my house. It's not We've just been moved to the NBN and part of that the national broadband network Which I know you guys have talked about a hundred times, but part of that is they cut your landline. So oh damn Yeah, and and landlines can also go down and landlines are going to help Sarah when she's Evacuating from her house on a mandatory evacuation From her car to check to make sure her mom is headed in the right direction So yeah landlines are great in emergencies in a lot of cases But I don't think that excuses the carriers from not putting in proper battery backups And not making sure that they can extend the time that mobile service is available Which is which is what our story was about yesterday. Yeah, well Scott, I mean you make a good point and landlines are a dying breed and It's funny when somebody else asked me on Twitter. Well, did you have a landline? You know if you had to call somebody and I was like, huh, I don't know I didn't ask I don't think anyone had one So, you know, it's kind of a funny thing that, you know, we're all kind of dealing with in times of strife Yeah, and and and honestly like, you know loudspeakers also that you you know that you have in your house Could could help too that there's there's lots of things that can help, right? But but I don't think that excuses the mobile companies from getting out of doing something that would have helped people in an emergency Absolutely not. You know who does help our patrons, especially our master and grand master level patrons, including Chris Allen, Ken Hayes, and Brad Schick All right, let's check in with Len Peralta who has been illustrating today's show. What have you drawn Len? Yeah, you know, I'm glad to hear that Australia kind of wised up and didn't You know kind of rejected the idea of facial recognition for gambling and porn sites So, uh, but in case it ends up coming back up again I think that uh, this is something that I think we should all maybe consider at least if you're in Australia Which is uh, I'll just call it the spank shield the official aussie spank shield Which is basically just a bunch of masks that protect your identity and line This is Articorps set up for Australia. You got your Russell Crowe. You got your Nicole Kidman Your Chris Hemsworth that you can wear while you're looking at gambling with porn sites Or basically just a koala that fits both male or female So it was interesting to find out when they ended up launching this five years from now that only koalas were logging into gambling It's a very interesting thing. Yes a very interesting scenario. So, uh, yeah, this might be a good, uh Something to put up on the wall just to remind yourself that maybe eventually we may all want to be fitted for koala masks I mean, I could just cut them out Can I get a print size version please? Yes We're all gonna we're all gonna do this. This is all gonna be part of part of uh, it's gonna be just like government issued I think um, but this is available right now in my online store also at my patreon patreon.com Forge slash Len and I also just want to remember remind people that the naming rights for the dts rise of skywalker inspired poster Is still available. You can go to my store and lend for all store.com It's right there on the front page You have until 11 15 to get your name on the poster and it's a really cool collectible too. So there you go Oh, Len great work as always. I mean, we're just an awe of your Of you know, I wish I was a drawer, but I don't know. But you know, I'm just thinking of protecting all of us That's all I'm doing. That's why we have Len, you know and koalas who's what not to like speaking of koalas Hey, peter wells Good to see you today. Um, it's been too long Let folks know where they can keep up with the rest of your work Okay, uh, yeah the easiest place is twitter, of course. Um, I just deleted my facebook account, which feels so good Please do that if you can. Oh, wow Yeah, yeah, it actually wasn't as painful as I thought it was just messenger I did it go the whole way and deleted instagram as well, which broke my heart, but uh, anyway, um Yeah, sorry if you go to peter wells, uh on twitter, uh, I linked to I've got two columns a week now for the paper So one is about technology and the other one is about podcasts So I think probably two areas that your listeners might be interested in So, yeah, feel free to follow me over on twitter We have new patreon rewards. They shipped out today if you are at the two dollar level or above, uh, you can see the new DTNS GDI cookbook Download link at patreon.com slash DTNS go over there and get it right now Also, we got uh links went out for people to watch our show run down I see a few people peeking in there, uh, right now If you want to see us put the show together every day and it gives you access to all the previous shows tabs as well Behind the scenes chats are available for people sign up right now at patreon.com Slash DTNS if you have feedback for us our email address is feedback at daily tech news show dot com We're live monday through friday 4 30 p.m. Eastern. That's 20 30 utc And you can find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live see y'all monday This show is part of the frog pants network Get more at frog pants dot com Time and clubs who have enjoyed this program