 Coming up on DTNS Blizzard suspends a player for his political statement. The US restricts trade with eight tech companies and in happier news PlayStation 5 This is the Daily Tech news for Tuesday, October 8th, 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio feline I'm Sarah Lane and from getting colder and darker Finland. I'm Patrick Bejo I'm the shows producer Roger Chang Despite the cold in the dark Patrick was giving us the scoop on his new Oculus quest And we were talking about the future of VR on good day internet So if you want that wider conversation that goes all over the place, you never know where it's gonna go You got to get it by becoming a member at patreon.com slash DTNS Let's start with a few tech things you should know tile announced a new device tracker called sticker that includes waterproofing and 3m Adhesive to attach to most metal and plastic objects tile sticker is available in twin packs for $39.99 or a pack of four for 59.99 also a new tile slim has a louder speaker and 200 foot range for $30 and the range for the tile mate and tile pro tags have increased to 400 feet Samsung is forecasting a drop in profits, but it is also not as bad as expected Thanks to strong galaxy note 10 sales sagging memory chip prices have hurt Samsung's profit But there are signs that the global memory chip business will stabilize next year as data center orders pick up Though US China trade issues will affect that sector Opera released the opera 64 browser which includes a tracker blocker and reportedly delivers roughly 20% faster page load times Opera's blocker uses the easy privacy tracking protection list Which covers a library of known tracker scripts, but does not auto determine which trackers are problematic Other features of opera 64 include an upgraded snapshot that lets you save sites as PDFs capture screenshots and annotation features like emojis selfies and text All right, let's talk a little bit about Google changing its requirements Indeed xda developers reports that Android partners must must load Digital well-being and family link or equivalent services as part of the Google mobile services requirements The digital well-being being app includes screen time statistics app opens and notification tracking It also has an app timer and the wind down feature that slowly turns the screen grayscale as it gets late There's also a focus mode and do not disturb mode family link includes parental controls If a headset handset maker wants to include its own solution It must be placed at top-level settings have an onboarding screen and include the same basic features as well-being and family link The new Google mobile services requirements also require full interoperability with standard USB C chargers including the USB PD fast charging standard That means you wouldn't need a power break from your phone maker in order to get fast charging You know, I mean first of all making it so that you don't have to make sure that you carry around You could use whatever charger you want if it's standard for fast charging is pretty cool. I like that I'm sure that the device makers probably want to push back against that, but that's a good one I really like making digital well-being app part of the Google mobile services say look If you're going to include Google search and Google Maps and all that You have to include some screen time management and parental control features as an option We have one you can use ours or if yours has the same features You can use yours and theoretically they could just find a third-party one that matches the same features and install that one But just saying like that needs to be available for users of any Android phone. I I like it I think it's a good idea. Well before the show I was like well, these are great features good on Android and Tom you were like well I mean they they've already been here, but this is more of just a mandatory type thing So I guess the pessimist in me is sort of like is this something on Google's side of possible liability Where you've got to give people this option and if for some reason you don't then it may come back that you know That you know the cell phone was was was in fact the reason that you know, somebody went sideways I don't really know that's probably An overly pessimistic view of this, but I wonder why this has you know become a mandate Yeah, it seems like a branding effort to me not branding but making sure that Android phones care about your Well-being as much as you know Google does So that you can't point to Android and say well those phones Don't give you that kind of information that you would need to know to understand your usage of the phone I'm also wondering if this is the only one of those services that That manufacturers can up doubt of if they provide the equivalent themselves It seems like an interesting choice for Google to say maybe it has to do with Monopoly issues they say okay, you need to have something it can be yours It can be ours. We will provide it to you But I don't think there's any other service on the Android ecosystem that Google says you have to have it But it doesn't have to be ours. I I think First of all, I want to say Companies can do something for purely selfish reasons that still ends up being good for us And I think this is definitely an example because I look at this and sir. I think you're absolutely right They said oh crap Apple's gonna market screen time and parental controls against Android phones out there Let's just make it a standard. Oh crap. If we make it a standard We're gonna run into any trust issues again, right? So let's make it flexible. Okay, great Standard standard approved that that feels like a likely explanation for how this comes down You know but all kidding aside. Well, we're not really kidding But a lot of these features are really good whether or not you use them as as somebody who's you know Got a phone in front of you all the time It's kind of on you But they are they they are potentially really helpful for a lot of you know, and you don't have to use them Right, exactly. Yeah, it's just it's just good to you know at least be forced to have the option Blizzard suspended a Hong Kong based professional Hearthstone player Blitz Chung Chung Ying He was Hearthstone grandmaster He is no longer in a post-game interview on a Taiwanese broadcast on October 6th Chung wore a mask and goggles Hong Kong recently banned the wearing of masks in protest in Hong Kong So that itself was a somewhat a political statement and then Chung said one of the slogans of Hong Kong processors The broadcast cut away immediately and the video of the interview has been taken offline But Blizzard said that Chung's statement violated tournament rules against doing something that quote brings you into public Disrepute offends a portion or group of the public or otherwise damages Blizzard's image Chung has not only been removed from the grandmasters program But also had about $10,000 worth of earnings revoked and has been banned from participating in Hearthstone eSports for a year Blizzard in a statement said while we stand by one's right to express individual thoughts and opinions players and other Participants that elect to participate in our eSports competitions must abide by the official competition rules Now this is This is a tough one first I used to work for Blizzard I have a deep affection for that company and their games I've been playing them for a long time. So take everything I say with the grain of salt It is a really difficult situation when they're saying While we stand by one right to express individual thoughts and opinions But they must abide by the competition rules if those competition rules Essentially mean that you can't express your opinions. There's kind of a problem in the the the statement to begin with that being said it is obviously a difficult political situation that Governments tiptoe around and don't really call out China on Should it should blizzard Should it be blizzard roll to defy the Chinese government? Especially since they have a lot of business in China that whose licenses could be revoked Within a day. I Don't know. I don't like that. It's happening, but there are It's not a simple question. I think well, it's not and Unfortunately for blizzard in explaining this they have a a very clear and similar situation Happening with the United States NBA one of the NBA coaches tweeted something in support of the Hong Kong protests and the NBA commissioner said at first the NBA sort of Said well, that wasn't you know, that wasn't great. We apologize for it but then stood by The right of that person to say what they said on Twitter to the point that now NBA Broadcasts have been canceled in China NBA games that were going to take place and have been canceled in China and like Appearances by NBA players at schools have been canceled. So the NBA decided to go a different way and say yeah, this is gonna hurt us We're gonna lose money. We're gonna have things canceled But we're going to stand by a person's right to say something blizzard made a different decision here I wonder how much of the NBA's revenue is, you know, what percentage of it is a I will guarantee you without looking It's lower than the NBA's percentage of revenue from China for sure. Yeah, right I mean blizzard makes a lot of money out of China. So it it's not an equivalent decision. You're right but I you know Blizzard saying that this was violated tournament rules in Taiwan Which you know already we've got a situation rife with problems because it brought The person into public disrepute. Well in China it did outside of China It didn't offended a portion or group of the public well and offended the Chinese government. Certainly. Is that is that who you're I mean, that's the tricky part of this is I wonder if someone made a political statement about a Candidate in an election say or about Brexit would they have banned someone for that? I mean, these are thought experiments We don't know but no, I mean, it's tricky. Yeah, it's it's an interesting thought experiment that you mentioned these things But the the core of the matter is China is not the UK is not The US is not France. It is a very restrictive You know regime and that's the problem Now Blizzard could choose to stand up to them and maybe they should I don't know but it you can't compare it to situations, you know in in the US or the UK because the government is Not you can But it is it is a I mean what people will say is this is why you shouldn't be doing business in China Because then you're going to have to do things like this. There's there's an argument to be that's where the comparison is Yeah, I think a lot of this if I compare if I think of an e-sports player to a Physical sports player, right? They're not, you know, it's apples and oranges somewhat but but more and more the lens are blurred to have $10,000 taken away from you and to have certain rights revoked There are lots of things that sports player of you know in many certain disciplines can do for that to happen This is not one of them that at least I'm familiar with so I wonder how much more of this will be seen based on You know what company's own these sorts of franchises? On a pizza note It's actually less about pizza more about accessibility the US Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from Domino's Yes, the pizza maker over web and mobile accessibility requirements That means the ruling by a panel of the ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals is going to stand the panel ruled That the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act does apply to online platforms Guillermo Robles sued Domino's after being unable to order food from the restaurant's website or mobile app Using screen reading software Robles is now clear to bring his case against Domino's to trial Yes, this is a follow-up for us I remember we did talk about this when when the the lawsuit was Proceeding through the lower courts and we knew it was probably going to end up at the Supreme Court. So What this does is say you are Subject to the ADA act Domino's you can't just get out of the entire lawsuit by saying that ADA only applies to physical locations This is this is a website So it doesn't mean that Domino's has lost the case They could still pretend potentially win at trial to say but our website didn't violate the ADA They were trying to get out of having the ADA applied at all and that's not going to work And essentially that means the ADA applies to websites in general. I suppose with That's that precedent correct and and it should Yeah, it seems like yes and no. I mean yes, what when is it? When does it know? Well in spirit? Yes, it should but also a law written in 1990 with no contemplation of the website is probably Not suitable to the task for good or ill right? It probably doesn't protect things It should protect because it wasn't written for that That said I think that they reasonably said well, there isn't another law. So this is the law you've got I think you probably need a new law to to apply more specifically to how websites should be accessible But this is this is what you got for now All right back to China Sorry, the US placed eight Chinese tech company on on its entity list which restricts US companies from trading with them That's the same list while we got put on so without a license You are not allowed as a US company to sell any of your products to these eight companies The companies include Hick vision a lot of you might have some cameras from Hick vision in your house They are more of a enterprise surveillance and camera company Dahua is another one between the two of them They make up about a third of the video surveillance camera market in the world facial recognition company sense time Their technology is used in your oppo and your vivo phones if you have those The world's most valuable AI startup is since time so it hits another one really hard face plus plus maker Megvi facial recognition company Preparing for a Hong Kong IPO that that hits them in a very inconvenient time voice recognition software maker iFly tech data recovery company may a Pico Micro and nano fab equipment maker Yixin science and technology and facial recognition company Yitu The US accuses these eight restricted companies of facilitating human rights violations Against quote Uighurs, Kazakhs and other members of Muslim minority groups in China There are also restrictions slapped against government institutions of China as well many more of those but this is about the Accusations of oppression in the western part of China against these groups China's vice premier Liu he arrives in the US Thursday for trade talks and the US Commerce Department did say That the addition of these eight companies to the entity list was unrelated to the talks It's what they said Yeah It's another one of those. I mean obviously we're back on China and what's happening To the Uighur especially is pretty horrendous Is that Kind of being leveraged by the US government to put pressure on the Chinese government, maybe Doesn't make it less objectionable Yeah, I here's what I'll say I I have been one to to very carefully look at the evidence for Huawei And I am suspicious that the Huawei restriction has as much to do with real securities concerns as it does with leverage Or maybe there's something else going on behind the scenes But I don't think Huawei's security vulnerabilities are as obvious as some of my very close friends believe right I'm not saying they're impossible, but I feel like that is an accusation built on a lot of assumption Whereas these are companies that were in fact Undisputably providing technology that was used in these vocational centers as China calls them In the west of China and so if the US as it does believes that this is a human rights violation Then punishing these eight companies makes perfect sense Whether you know the timing is because of the trade restrictions. Come on. You can't tell me It's not give me a break, but I kind of feel like they would have put these restrictions in in any case to be honest I don't know that I mean I'm sure there are many many different companies and tech companies and other types of companies That have some relationship with the US that also aid the Chinese government in those camps I mean, maybe possibly I Haven't you're right. I haven't looked in it to find out if these eight are really the eight But this this definitely feels to me like a very plausible situation of the majority of the equipment provided here was from these eight companies and let's you know Let's target them and by the way the fact that they're also a you know a nice collection of AI companies in there That doesn't hurt, but it's not eight AI companies So it feels more plausible to me that this is this is really the majority Providers of the tech because honestly if I was going to create the kind of surveillance tech They're talking about I'd probably use these eight companies. They're they're strong companies strong contenders Make sense make sense. I Guess my final point is that the the ultimate responsibility for all of this is the Chinese government Hmm and maybe going after it directly is more difficult So this is a good way of doing it, but the ultimate goal would be that well They are all as I mentioned, they're also going directly after Chinese institutions as well Like government institutions directly and restricting their ability to buy this stuff, too So it's all part and parcel Folks if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes be sure to subscribe to dailytechheadlines.com All right, the heavy news is now done Sony's president of Sony interactive entertainment Jim Ryan Announced in a blog post that the next PlayStation console will be called as you probably thought the PlayStation 5 and will be available in time For the 2020 holiday season Patrick. There was a bunch of other revelations along with that. Tell us about it Yeah, there's some interesting stuff a lot. We already knew or suspected for example, as you mentioned The name is gonna be PlayStation 5 The ray tracing which they said the PlayStation 5 would be capable of will indeed be hardware based There were questioned about that. It will include a US UHD blu-ray Drive so if you're hesitating on buying a Blu-ray drive maybe wait for the PlayStation because you can get both a game console and the drive The other technical tidbits that I thought were interesting They talked about the SSD and what it can do of course until now all consoles Modern consoles have had hard drives This is gonna have an SSD and not only does it help with blue time loading time Streaming they seem to be pushing into streaming quite a bit It also saves a disk space because what developers are doing which I didn't realize with current Hard drive technologies is copying the data at multiple spots of the disk image So that the the head doesn't have to travel too much to load the data that the data loading is a big issue for developers So that's gonna make smaller sized Installs, which is good. They're also going to facilitate Modular installs for games So if you have a multiplayer and a single player components, you could choose which one you install If you're done with the single player and want to keep the multiplayer you can remove that one So that's gonna be interesting They're gonna improve the data sharing across the network so that you will be able to know what Specific activity in game your friends are into and maybe join them more easily something that we've seen in other Gaming systems on the PC especially, but it's nice to see it's gonna be arriving on the PlayStation 5 and Maybe the most interesting Evolution is the controller as is often the case with new generations of consoles It's gonna have adaptive triggers with haptic feedback that according to the wired journalists are very convincing They managed to convey the feeling the different feelings You have maybe in a car if you're driving on a road or in dirt or stuff like that it works pretty well it's gonna have Better speaker and a USB type-c which as you mentioned on the yesterday's show everyone now loves so That's a good chunk of different Not Not revolutionary changes, but interesting evolutions. Yeah tasty tidbits here Theater monkey was pointing out in the chat that a lot of people have swapped out their solid-state drives themselves which will improve your speed but The I don't know that the games know that you have a solid-state drive since they aren't expecting one So I don't know that they don't still do the multiple saves So you're going to see a not only faster load times, but but smaller Installations because they don't have to plan for that magnetic drive I feel like that's probably the most impressive part of this is is hey just yeah It makes me go like why didn't you do a solid-state drive before well? I know why it was expensive, right? But it's it's great that they can finally take advantage of that and and I hadn't thought about that idea of saving space Because you don't have to try to tweak your load times by duplicating data That's amazing there and with the modular installs. They were talking in that wired article about And we'll see if this really ends up being this case But they're like this is like having a cart you used to put your cart into an old console And it would load instantly we're getting we're getting back to that I doubt it's gonna be quite that fast But it's nice to hear them saying we're gonna be close anyway and the the SSD generation Technology generation is is more advanced than the ones we have now So that is also playing into this the speed which is Significantly higher than what we have even with an SSD today the timing of the announcement is interesting it's a little bit out of nowhere and Sony has been known to do things like that for PlayStation without big big events to announce some things I Guess it could be seen as a way to keep Sony and the PlayStation in the conversation as Microsoft and Google are readying tests or even launches for their streaming services So that keeps them in the conversation as I said I also wonder if this isn't the Because the developers are getting more developers are getting dev kits and the controller which had been closely guarded a secret until now So they're messaging things the way they want to to make sure things don't leak and You know get reported here and there and Maybe this is the least interesting info they have to give us Getting it out of the way now and their big announcements will have more interesting and different things a mind boggles Yeah, because the the controller seems to be getting the most attention and in headlines and stuff because of the idea of you know It's not just a rumble pack anymore and that that sort of adaptive trigger sounds really interesting You know and making it feel more realistic when you're shooting a bow and arrow versus pressing a trigger on different kinds of guns All that sort of stuff, but you're right. I think they are doing both I in fact, I'm convinced now that Microsoft announced their dual screen devices More than a year in advance because of developer interest They want to drum up your interest and that makes sense to me that they're like, hey, we're gonna be shipping out these controllers to devs Let's avoid some leaks and also drum up some more interest and excitement by talking about them now That makes perfect sense to me And I'll add that they did indicate that they'll have more to say over the coming months Which means we're gonna get more of these little announcements from Sony They're gonna try as you said to keep the PlayStation 5 in the conversation by doling out interesting tidbits You know a little bit at a time rather than having it all leaked and then trying to have a big announcement when everybody's like Yeah, but that's what all the leaks said. I think that might be smart Yeah, it's a pretty good move Well also full of interesting tidbits is our subreddit community. Thanks everybody who participates You can submit stories and vote on them at daily tech news show dot reddit comm We also have a Facebook group, which is very lively join it's Facebook comm slash groups slash daily tech news show Let's check out the mailbag. Oh, let's do it Josh wrote in about our story that we were kicking around yesterday about California's 60-day rule on deep fake videos on social media before an election and the fact that 60 days is a bit of a cutoff point But before the rules get a little bit more stringent Josh says this seems consistent with what I've always heard with FEC rules for Advertisements yard signs and the like that 68 rule pops up in a lot of election ad staff What's more curious is why the other law based on your coverage doesn't make it doesn't seem to make distribution illegal Just creation that creates a lot of plausible Deniability because who really knows where something they blindly share really came from Yeah, I know you're right about the distribution They don't want to get into a safe harbor situation where Facebook says well wait We're technically distributing it But we didn't know it was there and then and we're safe harbor and if you tell us to take all that stuff I think that's why that's not there. You're totally right about the 60-day now I still think you just make it illegal to do this kind of stuff to post this kind of stuff But if you're going to have a limit that 60-day rule Absolutely must be because that's just the standard for election rules. Yeah, I was situations I was screaming at my car listening to the show yesterday or this morning I was surprised that you weren't aware of the 60 days, you know, it's two three months usually You were surprised that I wasn't aware of something you knew. I know I know everything But I don't I mean it's no I mean it seems like to me It seems like such an obvious thing and maybe it's because the overbearing French government does things like that all the time But protecting the the the speech and discourse around election time is something that is Pretty obvious. We have a ban on Political ads and stuff like that. Yeah, that are so that seemed like I completely understand the 60 days window Yeah, I think I'm just like well if it's deceptive in the first place that yeah, right down on a year round But yeah, but you you mentioned that in the show as well Then it becomes too restrictive for freedom of speech because you can't do humor. You can't you know, so Elections are special time and yeah, yeah I'm curious if a parody if there would be a parody exemption within the 60 days because it's Intent to deceive and a parody wouldn't have the intent to deceive Anyway, we could go on instead Let's give a shout out to Degrassia Daniels John Johnston and Chris Smith For supporting us at the master and the grandmaster levels. Thank you all and everyone who supports us on patreon.com Thank you everybody. Also. Thanks to Patrick Beja for being with us today Patrick. Let folks know what they can keep up with your work I would say if you enjoy the discussion about PlayStation and other gaming topics go check out pixels Our show MVGB sadly is going away. You can listen to the latest episode in the feed It's up now, but if you want to continue the lovely gaming podcasting experience Pixels is on your podcast app and it's a pretty fun show Yeah, go check out pixels folks. 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