 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners thanks to all of you including Erwin Sturr, Ken Hayes, and Philip Shane. Coming up on DTNS, Patrick Norton tells us if Starlink's service for moving vehicles is a big deal for van life, plus floating wind farms and robots with a sense of touch. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, July 1st. Welcome to July everybody, 2022 in Los Angeles at Tom Merritt. And from studio with with July 1st, I'm Sarah Lane. Somewhere in St. Louis, I'm Patrick Norton. I'm drawing the top tech stories from Cleveland, I'm Len Peralta. And on the show's produced, sir, Roger Chang. We are going to get a little spacey on this show. I'm not going to lie, but we're also going to go out on the ocean. It's going to be a journey. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Attackers used malware dubbed Session Manager to backdoor Microsoft Exchange servers belonging to government and military organizations from Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Apparently, since at least March of 2021, it's been used in the wild and wasn't detected until recently. Kaspersky said on Thursday, quote, the Session Manager backdoor enables threat actors to keep persistent, update resistant and rather stealth access to the IT infrastructure of a targeted organization and quote. And that's by gaining access to things like company emails, updating further malicious activity by installing other types of malware or managing compromised servers as well. Raspberry Pi just launched the $6 Pico W board that adds 802.11 Wi-Fi, hence the W to the $4 Pico. There's also a $5 Pico H, which adds a pre-populated header. Those are shipping now and for $7 you can get the Pico WH, which gets you both. That one ships in August. Founder Eben Upton noted in a blog post that the global semiconductor shortage has vastly accelerated adoption of the Raspberry Pi Pico boards. So it's been good for them, I guess. Instagram began testing turning video posts into reels with select users as a way to simplify and improve the video experience on Instagram. Instagram, it's no secret, wants to be more of a video network at this point. This will keep original video audio and converted video posts on public accounts and they can be remixed unless you block this in your own account settings. The not-for-profit software freedom conservancy backed by Google, Red Hat, Mozilla, and others has called for the open source community to move off of Microsoft-owned GitHub. The problem is that Microsoft's algorithm assistant co-pilot is proprietary despite being built on the OpenAI Codex, which was trained on public source code and natural language models. Microsoft has not disclosed much about how it generates its source code suggestions and the SFC is asking it to disclose the names of copyright holders and or names of Git repositories that were used as the training set for co-pilot. Microsoft claims training on public data is fair use. The European Parliament and EU states reached an agreement on the Markets in Crypto Assets or MICA law. Under this law, stable coins must maintain reserves to meet redemption requests in case of mass withdrawals. The European Securities and Records Authority will have power to ban or restrict crypto platforms if they don't properly protect investments or threaten financial stability. And firms also must disclose energy consumption for digital assets, something people blame crypto for a lot of the time. MICA doesn't cover NFTs, that is separate, so the law is expected to go into effect by early 2024. Alright, let's talk about wind turbines, Sarah. Let's save the planet. Yeah, we don't talk about wind turbines enough on the show, so let's do it today. You've probably heard of wind turbines. You've heard of using sea waves to power energy generators, wind turbines, you know, people are trying to get creative. Ocean waves are most commonly caused by wind. You know, there's tide stuff, but wind is a big factor. Some of the strongest winds are out in the open ocean where the sea is too deep to create a platform or practically operate something like a wave turbine. So it's probably not shocking that billions of dollars are being spent to become that first company to create the viable floating wind turbine farm. They can take advantage of those open ocean winds. They're wily, they're, you know, hard to tamper down, but if you can get them, probably pretty lucrative. You just need to solve the problem of stormy seas that wreck your platform. You have to deal with unpredictable weather because storms are storms. The need to tow turbines back to shore for repair and maintenance, that's also a factor in, you know, getting the heavy duty lines needed to get the power back to land, because otherwise what are they even good for? So who thinks they can crack that problem? Well, Wired has a good overview up called the race to build wind farms that float on the open sea. Totally worth a read. We'll have a link in the show notes. Norway's wind catching system or WCS is one entrant has a waffle shaped frame about as tall as the Eiffel Tower can accommodate 126 four rotor wind turbines capable of megawatt each on a floating platform. Most of these usually just do one at a time. So it's an interesting approach. The design packs the turbines really close together. So they actually generate more wind as they turn helping to power each other. Another example is Scotland's Equinor, which has already built the first floating wind farm with five turbines on blasted cylinders. The company plans to build a larger floating farm capable of one gigawatt power off the coast of Norway. The larger installation will have a triangular platform for each turbine. In the US Trident Winds proposes a two gigawatt project off the coast of Grace Harbor County, Washington. That is, if it can get a federal lease to do that. And Seamus Garvey at the University of Nottingham developed a design called Tetra Float. That's meant to bring down costs and make installation easier. The list goes on. And that's part of the problem. No one design has yet emerged as the favorite one. And the technology is untested so much so that its impact on ocean life are still unknown. So Patrick, what do you think of wind farms? I love wind farms. It's been interesting because you mentioned how different designs and I'm thinking what is it, 580 used to be the wind farm on the hills where they had like 20 different types of In California, yeah, yeah. And now those are all being shut down because they've kind of figured out, well, it's three blades and they make them really big. I'm excited. I'm also as a surfer or former surfer, not a lot of surfing in Missouri, kind of curious how it will impact waves. Because that's always, surfers are always like, oh my God, if you reduce the amount of fat, sure if you break up the wind, it's going to ruin the Because surfers are like that when they're not super well. Would this be better for surfers? Because instead of being the fixed ones have to be close to shore, these could be like farther out at sea. Yeah, I would wonder how it would directly impact someone who's like looking for some offshore winds. Yeah, I mean, I'm curious. I'm also curious how the, as somebody who sails and has dealt with big boats, kind of curious how they're going to mark them as hazards to navigation because Nothing could really screw up a megawatt of power like, you know, a giant ship skipper having a bad day. Oh, yeah. I mean, how often do we hear about undersea cables that get cut that then somebody has to send out and repair. I mean, it's not every day, but we hear about it from time to time. So if you have a lot of these, which that's the idea, right, you want to have a lot of these, you need to make sure that those heavy duty cables don't get cut. I'm envisioning the difference between accidentally cutting a fiber optic cable and accidentally covering cutting gigawatts of power and welding. I think hopefully they'll be deep enough and buried deep enough that that will not be an issue. Yeah, but that's a cost to make sure that they're thicker than fiber optic cable. That's for sure, right? Even bundled. And it's going to be a cost to get them out there. What I do like about this story is there are so many people working on it that, you know, that we've increased our chances that one of these designs is going to be the one that's like, actually, yeah, this is practical. We can make this happen. And we've even got that company in Scotland who's put one out there as a test and they want to do another one in Norway. So I think I don't think this is the solution, but I think it certainly could be part of it. Well, lots of folks out there and you might be one of them having some fun with some pictures that were taken of about five cruise autonomous taxis. So, you know, ones that do not have a human driver bunched up in a lane of Goff Street in downtown San Francisco on Tuesday around midnight. If you're not familiar with Goff Street, it's a thoroughfare. It's a one way street. It's a three lane street. It's when it gets clogged. That's tough for a lot of folks getting from point A to point B. Crews employees showed up and moved the cars. The company's acknowledged the incident, but hasn't said what happened yet. What is the explainer? We don't totally know. But yes, crews with the was the same company that a police officer tried to pull over back in April because the car's headlights were off. And that didn't seem right either, even though Cruz is like, what do I need those for? Cruise taxis are permitted to operate without human drivers on select streets in San Francisco between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. That's also weather permitting. So it's a limited test, but it does exist. So that's robots behaving, I guess, kind of badly. I mean, they're not killing us, but it's also not ideal. So yeah, like how about something nicer, Tom? You got anything in mind? Something more human, something a little bit more touchy-feely on a Friday. I have just the thing. Tokyo's motion lib is partnering with India's TCS. That's Tata Consultancy Services to develop haptics that can let you feel what a robot is touching. I mean, y'all want that, right? Depends. I mean, I can't think of any situation right now where I would need that. But yes, if I was a doctor and maybe a robot was doing something remote, that would be, that's a great example. All right, let me tell you more. The technology comes out of research by Keio University's Kohe Onishi, one of the founders of motion lib. It can quantify things like firmness and resistance and then convert that to force tactile sensations that can simulate minute sensations better than your conventional haptics, which tend to just bump you around. So these are a lot more subtle, a lot more precise. Early demos include things like being able to pick up a balloon or a potato chip or handle cake without damaging that, without smushing the cake, without cracking the potato chip. It works through a chip that communicates with cloud processing. So it takes the algorithm, takes what the sensors are giving, processes it, sends it through the cloud to the user. And then you, through the haptics, feel what the robot is transmitting. Motion Lib is testing it with Japanese companies for things like plastering walls, performing COVID PCR tests where the robot sticks the thing up your nose, which sounds frightening, but hopefully it works well. The company envisions it being used for things as sensitive as even feeling organs during remote surgeries. Right now you can do a remote surgery, but you can't really feel where you're going, you know, so it limits what those surgeries can be used for. They also plan to create what they call an Internet of Actions data bank. So they will store all of these procedures that they do as skills and then take that tactical data and they can download it to robots who will then be able to perform delicate tasks unsupervised. So a human goes through like, oh yeah, when I touch here, that means this and then the robots will be able to use that data themselves. Motion Lib and TCS hope to launch globally in 2024. I'm torn between this is so amazing and, you know, the idea of being swabbed by an autonomous robot just after the story about, hey, we're just going to park here on golf to see how many agitated people on the north end of San Francisco we can create. I want to be, I mean, your literal mileage may vary depending on the algorithm, right? No pun intended. But I mean, the idea of actually having the sensitivity and that it's it's like a William Gibbs and novel it's fascinating right you know if you've ever read the peripheral. But on the other hand it's just me personally it's going to be a little it's going to be I have to work my way up before I let a robot, you know poke my spleen, or maybe I'll have no choice because it'll be the only way to have a surgery. You'll be out you won't even know. Yeah. And keep in mind that the earliest test case cases for this the earliest uses not even test cases for this. Are human controlled. This is the robot. This is basically telepresence right the doctor is conducting the surgery. It's the robot is be able to give him more and for her more information to be able to do the surgery down the line. They want to be able to try to take that and make autonomous uses for that but the PCR test is not autonomous the PCR test is someone at a distance that is safe distance operating the robot. Well, you know and we've we've heard so many cases of you know if you are a frontline healthcare worker. Yeah, you know you you're you know you're vulnerable, even though you're just doing your job trying to make everybody else's as safe as possible so when you think of it in this these terms like okay as long as the robot doesn't go crazy, you know and block me in the parking lot when I'm done with my PCR test. Yeah, one more swab hashtag not all robots right one one is good at PCR test block in the parking lot they're different robots so if you haven't thought about this we want to hear it. Are you are you cool with tactile sensation and feedback with the robots again try to separate the autonomous robot from the telepresence email us feedback at dailytechnewshow.com The US Federal Communication Commission authorized SpaceX's Starlink Internet service to provide access to vehicles in motion. That includes airplanes, ships at sea, recreational vehicles and commercial trucks. The kit is a little too big for your passenger car but you can have it in an RV you can have it in a truck and preparation for the approval SpaceX sign deals with Hawaiian Airlines. The charter provider JSX and has been testing Wi-Fi service with Delta. Couple other companies are doing similar things if you're like hey wait a minute SpaceX isn't the only one. Yes, Southwest Airlines is using VSats version of this kind of service coming to their planes later this autumn. Kepler Communications also received approval to install its space based internet service on ships at the same time that SpaceX got their grant for Starlink. But Starlink had to agree to accept interference from any other users of the spectrum band not to cause interference itself. But Patrick this is a big step because this isn't I can take my Starlink with me stationary this is I can have the Starlink working as I'm rolling down the road. Yeah, I mean. Okay, first of all, it's really interesting watching Starlink roll out right this announcement hit yesterday. Sarah I think you all covered the review the Starlink RV that posted on the Verge last week I think he covered that on Monday. And it was just back in May that home users got a $25 per month portability option for the Starlink residential version. And folks were definitely dragging their Starlink dishes out of their house before that but now it's legit. And as somebody that did full time RVing, this is a huge deal. And that's a completely separate deal from Starlink going after the, you know, the transit bus train and most importantly the airline market. You know, it's, it's really fascinating if you've never had to rely on mobile data right you know it's unlimited no it's it's not your cell phone plan is not and often the data you get that you can hotlink to a laptop or something is a tiny subset of the actual data will stream to you right. Starlink RV it's uncapped, assuming you don't get categorized as an abuser as somebody that used to RV full time this is a huge deal right I have a subscription to the mobile internet resource center RV mobile internet.com. Just because of all the work they would do to track the vague and shifting sands of data caps availability speed hardware. And to put this into perspective right you're talking like $135 a month for Starlink RV uncapped, and typically you're paying 100 usd or more per month. You know, sometimes as little as 60 sometimes you know, as as little as I've seen, you know, 10 gigabytes a month for 60 or 80 bucks a month. You know, so to have unlimited service which I had from AT&T for two years before they killed off the program, it was miserable speeds, but it was uncapped. This is a big deal, you know, the other kind of major option these days is membership from a group like the Calyx Institute, they offer unlimited mobile internet as membership benefit. They used to use Sprint now they do T mobile, like getting back though to vehicles in motion that part of the FCC announcement. I was kind of fascinated because the, you know, you hear about, you know, SpaceX launching more Starlink satellites. And then you hear about how huge swaths of the US are on the waitlist right because the local cells are in capacity. As a matter of fact, Southern Chile, a little tiny patch of Brazil, you know, the Ukraine, they all have coverage minimum capacity and if you're watching the video and you see the map right now. Huge parts of the world have not been lit up right. Most of the current coverage in Europe, Australia and chunks of the Western US are not saturated so there's a lot of bandwidth available there. Most of South America, Northern Europe, Northern Canada and Alaska aren't going to come online until Q1 2023. And then hopefully later in 2023, Africa, India and large portions of the rest of the globe are going to come online for Starlink. And, you know, and also they plan to add more satellites over the US and elsewhere to bring more capacity. Which certainly is something that that you know people in the United States and apparently parts of Brazil and Chile definitely want. You know, so to put this into perspective currently Starlink can handle about 100 starlings per 300 square kilometer that's about 115 square miles. So saturation is definitely a thing, especially if you're in fairly dense rural areas. And when you look at the United States, any, you know, ostensibly rural part of the country that actually has a bunch of people parts of Colorado, you know areas north of south of Sacramento and the mountains. And you know me any place it's kind of a resort destination is totally saturated at this point. So wait a minute so you're telling me you can only handle 100 users in an area, you know the size of St. Louis to Effingham and up to Quincy like. But yeah currently there's it's funny right because there's when you look at the plans for this and I was I was digging into this because you look at that number and you're like that's not enough they were talking about getting and well okay. You know there's 2700 ish satellites up right now they're supporting 400,000 subscribers. When they finish phase one they're supposed to have 4400 satellites in place by phase three we're talking about 12,000 satellites and in lots of places. They're talking about the possibility of having as many as 42,000 satellites I don't know that capacity is going to go up as they launch more satellites. In theory right the capacity I mean in theory they're supposed to have the entire world covered in 2021 based on some articles but in theory. By the end of 2023 yeah by the end of 2023 they should have pretty much the whole globe lit up except for maybe I think you know parts of the very northern part the very southern part. Although it's kind of hard to tell from the map. It's interesting right because huge net dish radium in Marsat they've all been providing you know week I will I will categorize him as week better than nothing but kind of incredibly expensive for what you get coverage or just insanely expensive. It's been interesting I had a conversation with somebody who was kind of like I make huge amounts of money. I want to be able to do video from the south end of Baja during the Baja 1000 and it's like yeah it's going to cost you like $300 an hour and he was like, I do not want to send video from Baja. No longer have this desire. Thank you. Well starting because it sounds like Starlink will help with stuff like that though it's just going to take a while for the capacity to be ready but but it looks like it works right. I think it's going to be really interesting because you know when I hear I think the quote that came out of a SpaceX vice president said it's based 2022 connectivity on airplanes is something that we believe is right for an overhaul. They said that earlier this year and I hear that and I see we can rip the lungs out of the existing satellite, you know providers for the aviation industry and we can still make a ton of money at it right. Yeah, that's what that's good that's what that's code for anytime somebody. Yeah, and it's, it's interesting because some of the some of the you know it's if Starlink can get 3% of the global internet using population. You know, they can make $13 million a month and it's like I think they're making probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $44 million a month already. Of course they're also spending an astronomical amount of money launching satellites into the sky which is an incredibly expensive thing to do. Now from a practical point of view, you know this is a this is a pole. Usually so you're just going to mount it on top of the of the vehicle. You've got what like a six foot or four foot by by one foot box that it's like a few pounds it's like 9.2 pounds. So you've got to put this on on a vehicle that can carry it. But if you can, like an RV, right. You're right. Well, yeah, I think the bigger challenge is when you're talking about van life when you're talking about full time RVing, especially in the months when it is sunny out you generally want to camp in places where there are trees trees do not work well when you're trying to talk to satellites in the sky. So there's this you know there's this what's interesting about the RV is you know you can turn it on and off per month which is great. They allow you to roam all over your continent which is great. But the other thing is is it's because they are not guaranteeing the same speed levels or because they're also kind of what in Starlink speak degrading the service you're getting they're not as it does not require as broad a view of the sky it's more acceptable to having a view of fewer satellites. You're also getting lower speeds and your speeds are going to be all over the map depending on you know if everybody heads to Yosemite guess what the performance is going to drop because a whole bunch of people are trying to share it. Everybody always says I just want to be able to connect until they connect and then they say I just want to be able to get on with capacity until there's capacity and then they say I just want a little bit better speed until there's better speed and then they say I really want better upload until there's better upload. So we're at the beginning of this journey but but hey we're we're we're on the journey finally which is kind of cool. It seems so familiar. Yeah. It's a good thing though. Well something else that might feel familiar is what has been added to Nintendo Switch Online's expansion pack tier membership received a few legendary Sega Genesis games for its final June 22 update including Zero Wing you might say Zero Wing. Yes. What's that? That's of all your base or belong to us fame. Zero Wing is not only a game that was developed by Toplon but a classic side scrolling arcade shooter but maybe most importantly a very early on popular meme that continues to this day. Yeah. Classic game comments. Ask your parents who set us up the bomb. Yeah. And then when they explain it to you just say OK dad. Classic game comic zone also in the expansion pack as is Mega Man the Wily Wars also Target Earth included originally released as assault suit Lainos in Japan when it first was released. Yeah. Well this just makes me want to take off every thing. So I'm excited. Good stuff. All your best. That's all we're doing. All three of us right now just have that running through our head. I was trying not to say it out loud. Our belong to us. Let's check out the mailbag instead. Shall we. Let's do it. This is this is from Jonathan who writes in response to our GDI conversation. I think also from Monday's show this week a couple days behind Jonathan says but there was a discussion of clothing with pockets for a phone because Roger and I were talking about the fact that if you have like nice big pockets in cargo shorts for example I mean depending on how you're walking phone kind of ends up hitting your leg. Jonathan says I love these golf shorts and they fit my iPhone Max with a case very nicely. And he has linked us to those very shorts at golf apparel shop.com in our show. Hey you know what I mean you Scotty vest is great but sometimes you just need a simple pair of shorts. Tis the season you know people are wearing shorts and they got phones on one of them. I mean I can't tell you how many pieces of clothing I'm have where I'm like yeah I don't really want to bring my purse but like where am I going to put my phone. Listen folks. Jonathan what Jonathan is explaining to all of you who don't get the extended show on Patreon. You're missing out. There's all kinds of practical information happening over there. Thank you Jonathan. And indeed thank you Jonathan and if you have feedback for us we always want to hear it feedback a daily tech news show dot com. Thank you Len Peralta for being alongside today it's good to have you back I know I know you're going to be gone for a while again too so we cherish the time with you. Thank you I cherish the time I have with you guys too so. So this week what I decided to do you guys talked a little bit earlier about robots and touching things and different ideas. And this might be this might show my weird sense of humor I don't know if you guys will remember this. Do you remember back in the day and you go to a haunted house like a friend's haunted haunted house and they make you close your eyes and they give you appealed grapes. And stuff. It's eyes it's good. That's what I feel that maybe a reason for having a robot that can touch things for you is to actually be able to touch the dead man's eyes and. That's what this image is here. I don't know is it up. On the audio they can never hear it anyway so just describe it for us. You can come and see this image. You see the eyes and the brains and the intestines and things like that the virtual. Do you guys remember this I was totally good. I was like hopefully I wasn't the only person that did that. I remember going to a friend's haunted house and. Oh yeah I definitely did that as a kid. Yeah. Well now you can do it with with a robot. There you go. Fantastic. Where can I get that picture. Actually if you're a patreon subscriber at patreon.com forward slash Len it's right there for you right now. You can download it or if you go to my online store at Len parol to store.com you can down you can just purchase it and download it and get it for yourself. Fantastic. Thank you Len. Thank you. Good stuff Len as always and good to have you back also good to have Patrick Norton back on the show with us. Patrick what else have you been up to since we saw you last. We're going to do an AV Excel with Robert here. If you excel dot com or patreon dot com slash AV Excel we talked about home with home theater and audio and you can also tweet at me at Patrick Norton on the Twitter's reminder I mentioned yesterday that I have launched a talk show. The first episode is up. We're talking to Andrew Heaton from the political orphanage about tribalism and how we think about it so go find that out at a word podcast dot com. We also have a brand new boss to thank on this here show that bosses name is Rick and you might say well hold on a second you already thanked Rick yesterday and we did but this is a different Rick. Two ricks in a row. I don't know how many ricks are required to be in a proper Rick roll. But we're on a roll of ricks is what you're saying. Yeah. That's kind of what I'm saying. Yeah. So thank you Rick and thank you Rick. All the ricks. And if there's another Rick who's like you know and I'm not a patron yet. This is a perfect. I mean you're in like a cool club already. There's like a Rick club. Even if you go by Dick or Richard and sign up as Rick. Yeah. Everyone sign up as Rick. Yeah. Let's keep this street going. Ricks. Rise up. There's a longer version of the show called Good Day Internet. It's available at patreon.com slash DTNS where we talk about all sorts of things like this and much much more. But just a reminder DTNS is live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern. That's twenty hundred UTC and you can find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live. Now Monday in the U.S. is July 4th. It's a holiday. So we will see you Tuesday and we'll have Shannon Morse joining us then. Have a great weekend everyone. This week's episodes of Daily Tech News Show were created by the following people. Host producer and writer Tom Merritt. Host producer and writer Sarah Lane. Host producer and booker Roger Chang. Producer writer and host Rich Strafilino. Video producer and Twitch producer Joe Kuntz. Technical producer Anthony Lemos. Spanish language host writer and producer Dan Campos. News host writer and producer Jen Cutter. Science correspondent Dr. Nikki Ackermans. Social media producer and moderator Zoe Dutterding. Our mods Beatmaster W. Scottis 1. Bio-Cow. Captain Kipper. Gadget Virtuoso. Steve Guadirama. Paul Rees. Matthew J. Stevens and J. D. Galloway. Modern video hosting by Dan Christensen. Video feed by Sean Wei. Music and art provided by Martin Bell. Dan Looters. Mustafa A. Acast and Len Peralta. Live art performed by Len Peralta. Acast adds support from Tatiana Matias. Patreon support from Dylan Harari. Contributors for this week's show include Lamar Wilson. Scott Johnson. Justin Robert Young. Patrick Norton and Chris Christensen. And thanks to all our patrons who make the show possible. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.