 Coming up on DTNS, Facebook acquires an open map company, IBO learns a new trick, and we salute some tech pioneers who made the tech we have today possible. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, Juneteenth, June 19th, 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. From Studio Colorado, I'm Shannon Morse. Drawing the top tech stories from Cleveland, Ohio, I'm Len Peralta. And I'm the producer, Roger Chang. We were talking a lot about dealing with burnout and stress in the world today on Good Day Internet. And I think it helped us all feel, maybe a tiny bit better. You could feel a little better too. Become a member and get Good Day Internet at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Japan is ready in its COVID-19 contact tracing app called Coco, which stands for COVID-19 Contact Confirming Application. Japan commissioned a team of Microsoft developers to create the app based on Apple and Google's API. Tokyo-based company Code for Japan was originally leading the project, but because Apple and Google only allow software to be managed by a public health agency, the project was transferred to the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, while a new developer was found. We have been following Apple Store openings and closures as a bit of a canary in the coal mine for tech retail during the pandemic. Most of the news has been about openings with 154 of 271 U.S. stores, but Apple does plan to close 11 stores as well in Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, and South Carolina, out of an abundance of caution. Mozilla introduced its VPN service Firefox private network last year, then expanded it to Android devices offering a free VPN app, and Friday, Mozilla announced its now-named Mozilla VPN app, and will be open for beta testing on Windows, iOS, and Android nationwide in the U.S., and launching publicly in a few weeks. The browser version will also transition to a subscription-based plan for $2.99 a month. We mentioned on the show yesterday that Twitter was taking some heat for not providing accessibility options for its new audio tweets feature. Twitter software engineer Andrew Hayward noted that Twitter has no formal accessibility team. Instead, it relies on employees to voluntarily develop accessibility features. The company told The Verge it's exploring creating a more dedicated group. Germany's parliament amended its Network Enforcement Act to require online platforms to report to the Federal Criminal Police Office content that indicates the fulfillment of criminal intent or that will have a long-lasting impact on the freedom of expression by other users on the platform. Similarly, France's constitutional counsel has deemed a law governing illicit content online as unconstitutional. That law said that any content considered as an offense or a crime in the offline world must be removed from online platforms within 24 hours of being flagged. The French court ruled that the time window would make it difficult for platforms to rule on illicit content. It basically said they didn't have enough time to do it, which would mean some platforms would censor content too quickly infringing on freedom of speech. All right, let's talk a little bit more about IBO. Hey, Shannon, IBO still exists. IBO does still exist. It's so surprising. Sony released a software update to the IBO that will let the robot dog meet users whenever they come home. Users assign a meeting place to the IBO with a vocal command. They say, this is where you should go. And the IBO lowering its head for a virtual sniff, which will show that the location is actually stored whenever a user goes to the assigned place and says, I'm home, the IBO will come up to greet the arrival. And over time, the IBO will learn a user's typical schedule and wait at the spot to greet its owner. And just a reminder, the IBO sells for twenty nine hundred dollars. Man, that's too expensive of a robot dog for me. But I love the idea. I really do. And I have a real dog. So if it gives me any pleasure the way that, you know, a dog greeting its owner and happy to see you back at your place of residence. I mean, I love I love the kind of the the the the schedule part of this, that, you know, the idea that the dog will kind of learn your routines and, you know, be happy for you and, you know, wag its tail and do its IBO stuff. But yeah, I don't know. It's almost three grand. Fifty dollars per bag of dog food, that bills and toothpaste. That's a good point. I mean, I don't know. It depends on how long the IBO lasts, whether it's actually cheaper or not, because it doesn't have any ongoing maintenance. I think, you know, more seriously, it is an interesting robot that we forget is out there in the public, right? We think of IBO as like, oh, that weird thing Sony had back in the late 90s, early 2000s that went away. And then they're trying to bring it back. But this is now using machine learning. It's using voice recognition. It's using a lot of the things we see in a lot of different products altogether in one product that may not be specifically practical yet, but it's showing off a lot of what this can do. And I think it is in some ways a template for what maybe some more practical robots could do in the future. Because being able to say that learn this, this is the place and have it over time start to figure out, oh, that's that's when he usually shows up at that place. I will go wait for Tom there. I that that's a big advance. That's a big advance in a practical demonstration of machine learning. May not be particularly useful. It's just entertaining, but I think it's worth keeping an eye on. Well, and and entertaining, but also a sense of companionship. I mean, we talk so much about how, you know, robots will, you know, help us, you know, get tasks done more easily or, you know, turn on your lights for you or, you know, there's all sorts of ways that the AI is like, this is how you help my life get easier. But maybe just that, you know, sort of feeling of happiness, some endorphin rush, you know, it's it's there's something there too. Definitely. Well, this Monday, this coming Monday, we're going to find out the latest things that Apple wants you to know that it's doing some of it. We probably won't hear about, but we will hear about some other stuff because it's WWDC. Today we have a couple leaks from a couple of reliable Apple followers. First, he's kind of new, but increasingly reliable Apple leaker John Prosser posted two images of what he says are product C68, which is the charging pad from Apple that would do what the once promised air power would have. Apple kind of talked about it and then it went away. Charging Apple Watch, AirPods, iPhone, one charging pad would be very cool if that was indeed announced. The other leak is from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who published an in depth report of Apple's roadmap for both AR and VR. Gurman says that Apple is working on a headset code named N301 for next year and a pair of lightweight glasses codenamed N421 for 2023. So that's out of ways a bit, but it sounds like Apple's still working on that AR project. Yeah, I feel like there's a there's a shot we might hear about this charging pad on Monday at WWDC, although they may wait to to announce that for a hardware related announcement. WWDC is usually focused on the operating systems. Sometimes they do hardware, sometimes they don't. I found the Gurman article much more revelatory, right? It's kind of cool that they might do a charging pad. The roadmap for AR and VR we've all been wondering about for a long time. And this idea that what they've been waiting on is sort of a balance between design. There was a lot in here about how Johnny Ive wouldn't let them do certain things that they wanted to do because he was like, you just can't make that work well design wise, which is typical historical Apple tension, right? Where design and function kind of combat for what you should do. And the fact that that because of that, we might get a more scaled down virtual reality headset, but one that really has high resolution, has great immersiveness. I'm very curious to see where we're going. And I wonder if we'll get any hints. We always get a little augmented reality news at WWDC. I wonder what kind of hints we're going to get this year. Well, the fact that the whole show, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Shannon. Oh, it's OK. I just from an Android perspective, I do hope that Apple brings some kind of new AR and VR technology and maybe does make these glasses something that's actually acceptable because I was in the camp of I really liked Google Glass and I thought that would be really amazing to have that kind of heads up display. So I would love to see them continue it and make it popular for this large amount of consumers that use Apple products so that eventually maybe it'll be acceptable at Android land as well. And Apple's just had a weird year as many tech companies have, you know, stores closed, stores opening. You know, the WDC is now virtual. I wonder how much this will change what what we, you know, as you said, Tom, at WWDC, you kind of hear about certain things and not others because those are reserved for events maybe later in the year at different times. Maybe it'll kind of be business as usual, but it's hard to say. Swedish crowd sourced mapping and street imagery startup Mapillary announced Facebook is going to acquire it. Before you freak out, though, listen to the rest of the story. The team will join Facebook's existing open mapping efforts. Facebook already was doing open mapping and the Mapillary team says it will stay committed to open street map continuing to provide a global platform for imagery, map data and improving all maps. Now, that's good. That's them saying the right things. But I bet some of you are still saying, yeah, they say that. But how open will it remain? Listen to this. The company also updated its free license to allow commercial uses as well. Mapillary used to let you have free open access to maps from Mapillary as long as you weren't using him for commercial purposes because they needed to make money now that they're part of Facebook. They're like, we don't need to make that money anymore. So everybody can use them for pretty much whatever they want. Facebook recently also acquired Scape, which develops a visual positioning service beyond GPS. And I think Mapillary is probably going to play into Facebook using mapping data, not only for business listings, which you might have guessed, but also for augmented reality because of Scape. Hmm. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like Facebook is doubling down on map efforts. The AR stuff makes a lot of sense to me. Is this something where, you know, you acquire the right companies? Am I going to be opening up Facebook maps in, you know, using my car play, you know, apps in my car in the future? I mean, it sounds a little farfetched now, but why not? That was my biggest concern is, are people actually going to use this because Google Maps and Apple Maps as well have such a duopoly on the entire world of maps? Is there a place for this standard of open street map? And I think it makes sense commercially, because as Tom and I had previously discussed, this would be great if it was implemented in cars and things like that. But when it comes to like a consumer's perspective, just on your phone, is this something that people are going to go for? Or will they just generally go with what they already know? Yeah, I don't think Facebook intends to come out with a Google Maps or Apple Maps competitor. It sounds like what they want to do is they want to not have to pay those two companies to use maps on its business listings, and they want to have really good map data for augmented reality. And we know through Oculus, Facebook really wants to make good, you know, in the world augmented reality. And they can now promote open street map as a better alternative to Google Maps, because remember, Mapillary is one of the main contributors to Open Street Map. Open Street Map is used by a lot of applications out there. A lot of Android applications use it because it's open and they don't want to have to pay the license. And now that Mapillary's product can be used by commercials services that will help not only adoption of Open Street Map, but adoption of Mapillary, which provides competition to Google Maps and to Apple Maps. So I think that's where Facebook, it's through Mapillary and Open Street Map where Facebook now suddenly is competing with with Google and Apple. And I think that's good because it forces the system to be a little more open instead of being dominated by these two closed systems. Microsoft Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith told Politico that investigators should look at app stores that have created higher created higher walls than anything that existed 20 years ago. He mentioned tools as high as 30 percent. Who could he be talking about? He described the Apple Apple store without saying the app store specifically. But Microsoft confirmed to Bloomberg later that, yeah, Smith meant Apple. So why do you think that Brad Smith is going after a company that is charging tools as high as 30 percent today of all days? What could possibly have been a story we've followed all week long on Daily Tech News Show that could have led him to that? Well, it's the base camp story. It's the Hey email story and it continues today. Apple sent a letter to base camp Thursday, laying out a little more clearly why it will not continue to allow the Hey email app into the Apple store without modification. And I have to say this letter now makes sense to me. I'm not sure I agree with it, but it makes sense. It was not making sense to me earlier in the week. As you may recall, Hey is an email service from base camp that costs $99 a year. Apple says, Hey must include the Apple in app payment system as an option to subscribe or they can't have the app in the app store. Base camp doesn't want to do that because of that 30 percent cut that Apple takes that we mentioned earlier. Even if they just take 30 percent from the iOS app, base camp doesn't want to give them anything. This is odd, though, because as we talked earlier in the week, Apple allows other apps like Kindle and Netflix to exist on iOS without including any option for subscribing. Apple explains in their letter that those are reader apps whose main purpose is to give access to previously purchased content and content subscriptions. So that makes the reader definition a little more sensible. This is like, oh, you theoretically would already have stuff and you need the reader app to access it. In the letter, Apple says example of reader apps are magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video, access to professional databases, VoIP, cloud storage or approved services such as classroom management apps, not email. Apple points out that hay is none of those things. And as such, if you download the hay app, it doesn't work from the app store unless you know to go buy a subscription on the hay website. So in the letter, Apple says, look, if base cap wants to avoid offering in app subscriptions, they could add the ability to access IMAP and pop. Apple is trying to help them out. They're like, look, just put the ability for hay to work as an email client for for anything and we'll let it out. Then you can still sell your subscription separately and not use the in app payments and it's fine, but it has to be functional when someone downloads it. Apple writes, quote, under this approach, what you sell on your website is clearly an email service separate from the function of your app as distributed on the Apple store. Your move, base camp, you can add pop and IMAP. Or Apple is going to yank your app from the store. I don't suppose Apple would be cool with base camp saying in the description of the app when you download it from the iOS store. Hey, here's the situation. Here's the link to go get a subscription. You can't do that. Because that would totally. And so and that's the thing is like that would actually be. I don't know. I mean, maybe it's not a great user experience, but that would be the easiest way for the company to get with exactly what they want and explain it to an end user who downloaded the app and is like, how does this work? But you can't do that. So, yeah, I I I think I think hay is going to have to go ahead and and cave here. That that's my that's my thinking of how this is all going to play out because Apple, I don't think Apple, you know, even though there's been bad press or certainly polarizing press about like, you know, who's right and who's wrong in the situation. You know, is Apple being a bully and, you know, should hay have known better kind of thing. I don't think Apple cares that much. Well, Apple's always been extremely strict when it comes to the online store, the iOS stores. But the thing is, even though they are so strict, that also protects consumers in so many different ways, including when it comes to security. So the fact that they have a walled garden to me isn't necessarily a bad thing because the protections are there and it's kind of a safety net in some senses. Yeah, that's true. And I think Apple's walking a very fine and only makes sense to Apple line here, which is like, OK, we don't want to stop people from accessing a database and Kindle is a database. Netflix is a database. Your email is not a database. It's an ongoing service. And if you provide a free version of that, then sure, we'll let your client in because it can access the free version. Whether it's a free version of Hey, or just like, oh, you can also configure it for pop and I'm at. I mean, it's a really Apple is trying to give them an out here to say, like, look, it's a really easy fix. I do get the idea that Basecamp wants to die on this hill. And they want to they want to make a really do. And so I doubt they're going to add I map and pop and they're going to poll Hey, but they also really want Hey to be successful. So yeah, I'm not going to know. Oh, yeah, I will. I will await the next move by Basecamp and or Apple with breath was abandoned. Apple's trying to clue them in the NBA is expected to resume. It's 2020 basketball season in July on July 30th in Orlando without crowds. And according to a memo seen by the athletic, the players are going to be offered the aura, a little smart ring that tracks temperature, heart rate, respiratory rate and sleeping patterns. And that data from the ring would be combined with an app developed by West Virginia University's Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute, which collects other metrics like stress, anxiety and memory. So scientists from the Institute published a study in May that showed their platform could predict the onset of COVID-19 symptoms three days in advance with a 95 percent success rate. In fact, a couple of folks in our audience, JB and Dewey wrote in after we touched on aura that they are actually a part of the test group. Yeah, so cool. Yeah, I mean, I knew this was legitimate. I think it was at CES 2016. But getting those emails from people saying, yeah, I'm out in San Francisco. My fiance is part of the test group or I'm part of the test group. That made a big difference in me kind of understanding like, oh, yeah, this is a real thing that is doing a study. It's not just a press release. It's not just a press release about the NBA. Like, oh, yeah, is including the NBA in a wider or I'm sorry. Or, or a tornado. I knew this was going to happen. Sorry. Or was was has been doing this. And some people have been criticizing them like, hey, maybe you should give this to people who need it more than millionaires playing basketball. And they are they're testing it in a lot of places. It's just they're also going to test it in the NBA, which I don't think there's anything wrong with. And, hey, man, I mean, sports will continue. You know, we're we're we're going to try to get back to some semblance of, you know, safety and it is a brave new world. And so if you're if you're a player and you've got this option and it helps you feel better about the fact that you're going to be in close physical contact with a lot of other people, even if there aren't crowds there, you know, it's it's the game itself. I mean, I think that that that is, you know, however you feel about how much, you know, professional sports players are paid, that is, you know, that that's something that can help them sleep well at night as well. I don't even care about sports ball, to be honest. But the fact that they are that aura is going to work with NBA with the athlete athletes. I think that's so smart because athletes already are tracking so much data about their health anyway. They will have this wonderful base palette of information from a whole history of information that they can track. So I feel like it might help them get a much better statistic as far as this COVID-19 symptoms that they'll be able to track. Maybe it'll get even better than 95 percent success rate. Maybe it'll get up to 98 or 99. It'll be very exciting. That's the idea. Like this isn't just doing this. This these are these are scientists doing research. They want a wide representative database. And so I think, yeah, I hope lots of the NBA players take part in this. And at the worst, you know, they might get a false positive and they just go get tested and then they get tested and they're like, oh, you don't have it. And it's like, oh, OK. And I don't think that's, you know, a horrible burden there. Hey, folks, if you want to get all the tech news each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to dailytechheadlines.com. I love history. I love tech history. And I love taking a moment to look back at the people who helped create the technologies we benefit from. We always hear about the Steve Jobs in the Bill Gates's. Even the Robert Metcalfs who worked on Ethernet. But there are so many folks who were instrumental in developing the tech we all use that don't get mentioned as often. So we're going to mention some of them today. Starting with peripherals. If you've ever plugged something into a computer, you want to thank Dr. Mark Dean, who co-created the ISA bus, allowing multiple machines to connect to a computer. Dr. Dean also worked on IBM's Color PC Monitor and led the team that created the first one gigahertz risk CPU. In the graphics arena, Dr. Mark Hannah, if you haven't heard of him, he's the co-founder and chief scientist of SGI Silicon Graphics, Incorporated, developed the geometry engine at Stanford with Jim Clark, that early SGI systems were based on. Dr. Hannah also was a pioneer in 3D effects, big pioneer in 3D effects as well, and created an MP3 player for the Game Boy Advance. Collaboration platforms and tools. I mean, we are using those currently to do this show. And one person that we have to thank for that is Dr. Clarence Skip Ellis, the first African-American to earn a PhD in Compsi at Illinois in 1969, who pioneered office talk at Xerox Park and operational transformation for real time collaborative editing, which paved the way for collaborative tools like the ones we use now, Google Docs. Satellite images are something that we were talking about earlier when we were talking about street maps, right? They all use satellite images. Well, Valerie Thomas was responsible for developing the digital media formats, image processing systems used in the early years of the Landsat program, and she spearheaded development of the first satellite to send images from space. We wouldn't have any of those maps if we hadn't figured out how to do that. She also patented the Illusion Transmitter, which simulates a real-time three-dimensional viewing of an object using parabolic mirrors. You know, I think when you say Microsoft, who does that? Microsoft, name a name, people say Bill Gates. Well, John W. Thompson is a pretty big deal at Microsoft as well. He's Chairman of the Board of Microsoft and is focused on stopping cyber attacks. He's also the former CEO of Symantec. And we wouldn't be anywhere with any of our software programs if it didn't have, if we didn't have coding, if we didn't have programming. So Kimberly Bryant is someone who was an electrical engineer at Westinghouse DuPont, Genentech, and she founded Black Girls Code, which is a organization that brings young black women into programming programs to teach them coding. You know, I like dipping back into the 19th century. So let's talk about Lewis Howard Latimer. Latimer helped develop the patent for Alexander Graham Bell's design of the telephone. And then after working for Bell said, well, let me work for Thomas Edison, too. He was the only African-American member of the Engineering Division at the Edison Company and developed not only the flush toilet, but also a method to make carbon filaments for light bulbs. If you hadn't figured out how to make those filaments, it wouldn't have the light bulb. Roscoe L. Coontz created the pinhole gamma ray camera and collatimer used to align two or more devices to set towards a proper focus. Collimated, rather, laser beams use this technology. And one of the first groups of health physicists through the Atomic Energy Health Physics Fellowship training program at the University of Rochester was Dr. Coontz as well. All right, who's using a microphone right now? Oh, that would be all of us. All of us. James Edward West. He developed more than 250 patents for production and design of microphones and techniques for creating polymer foil electrics. His compact, efficient mic designs are still used in telephones today as well. And game cartridges. We all kind of miss game cartridges and blowing on them to make them work and they wouldn't ever have become game cartridges and popularized video gaming like they did if it hadn't been for two people. Ed Smith, who worked on cartridge based video games and a competitor for Apple in the early days called the Imagination Machine 2 and Jerry Lawson, who helped really pioneer cartridge based video games at Fairchild Semiconductor. Thanks to all these people we've mentioned for their contributions to the tech we have today. We literally could not have done this show without the work and contributions of these people. So happy Juneteenth. Hey, joining the conversation in our discord, which you can join by linking to a Patreon account at patreon.com slash dtns. It's a fun group in there. Think you'll like it. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Oh, let's do it. David actually sent us a message on Patreon and said in response to our story yesterday about Twitter adding audio tweets and is this a bad idea and accessibility issues and all sorts of stuff. David says, I'm looking forward to them. I work with the blind as an assistive technology instructor, and I think audio tweets will be super helpful for short demos of using a screen reader or bugs or demos of audio games for the blind and more when dealing with disabilities, there's often a spectrum and situations where one tool aids one group but doesn't aid another. So obviously audio tweets would really benefit from automated transcription at some point for the deaf or the deaf and blind or others with hearing impairments, but it doesn't mean it wouldn't be great for low vision and blind folks who have no hearing impairments now. In other words, it's a process and every company goes through this. Often features are iterative and given Twitter's track record. I think they'll add those a 11 y features much as they added ALT text stuff for pictures. I think that's ally. The a 11 why it's just a way of writing. It's very leet way of writing ally. I thought I thought I was trying to be lead, but OK. Yeah, yeah, I could be wrong about that. I may be making a fool of myself right now, but that's my guess. Hey, thank you, David. That's a really good perspective. And yes, Twitter can do better. Twitter has said it can do better, but that doesn't mean it hasn't done some good. Thank you for reminding us of that. Shout out to patrons at our master and grandmaster levels, including Bjorn, Andre, Tim Ashman and Philip Shane. And Len Peralta has been drawing during the show. What have you drawn for us today, Len? Well, first off, Tom and company, thank you so much for that great discussion story of those notable names and technology. I felt that I had to do something that was as as interesting and and relevant. And this is called notable names and technology. The Juneteenth edition. And I think it's a good example for people to remember that these these names are are important. Like you said, you wouldn't be able to do half the things you do if it wasn't for these notable names. These are names that should be known. And, you know, I was really super proud to be able to participate and draw them and let people know more about them. This is incredible, Len. Thank you. I have a little story about this was crazy. Maybe I'll say that for the after show. But this piece is notable names and technology. Juneteenth edition is available right now at my Patreon at patreon.com forward slash Len or my online store at Len Peralta store dot com. Also, thanks to Scali 2909, who said the A11Y equals accessibility. I asked how to pronounce it. And they said, I don't know. That's why I don't have the mic. So but but it has to do with accessibility. So thanks for that that correction there. Also, thanks to Shannon Morse for being with us today. Shannon, we missed you. It's been too long. What have you been up to? Moving in and making this place look spick and span. But I'm always up to new videos over on YouTube, YouTube dot com slash Shannon Morse. Most recently, I did a whole historical look at QR codes and how you can use those for logging in and for authentication. Pretty interesting stuff. And you can also check out my review of Google Stadia. Excellent. Excellent. Thank you, Shannon. Don't forget you can support this show at any level at dailytechnewshow.com slash Patreon. I know I wasn't here yesterday because I was working on that new series. Know a little more. And if you haven't listened to it yet, go check it out. In the first episode, I explained 5G, what it is, what it isn't, how it may or may not benefit you. Know a little more about 5G. Look for it either in your Patreon feed or subscribe at know a little more dot com. Our email address for this show is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. And we love your feedback. Please keep it coming. We're also live Monday through Friday, 4 30 p.m. Eastern. That's 20 30 UTC. And you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We are back on Monday with Terrence and Nika from Snobo S. Cast to cover WWDC. Talk to you then. Happy Juneteenth. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. I'm in the club. I hope you have enjoyed this program.