 Coming up on DTS, HTC makes a lightweight Vi VR headset for some body. The U.S. Senate all-star team gangs up on Amazon and Facebook's big open AI project to make AR actually worthwhile. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, October 14th, 2021 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane and the show's producer Roger Chang and joining us. UK associate editor at Mac Observer. Charlotte Henry is back on the show. Welcome back, Charlotte. Hey guys, thanks for letting me join you. I miss you guys. How's it doing? I haven't spoken to Tom for at least four days. I know. It's been since Monday, so yeah, go check out media plus podcast. And you can hear Charlotte and I talk about Ted Lasso with Jeff Gamet. Go do that. You could also get good day internet and hear us all talk about trains and moving to Hawaii. That's if you're a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. That is where you can join our top patrons like Matthew Stevens, John and Becky Johnston and Chris Benito. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Microsoft announced it'll shut down the version of LinkedIn that it's operating in China or was anyway. In a statement, LinkedIn said it was facing a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in the country. New research from counterpoint shows that in Q2 of this year, iPhones accounted for only 13% or if you want to be positive, all of 13% of global shipments accounted for 40% of global smartphone revenue, but 75% of profits. While impressive, it's lower than Q4 2020. Apple's revenue share back then was 50% up from 28% in Q3 2020 and profit share reached 86% up from 51% in the previous quarter. WhatsApp is rolling out an option to let you encrypt your chat history backups in iCloud or also Google Drive. Users in every market where WhatsApp operates will now have two options to encrypt their backups. One lets users manage the encryption key by storing it offline or in a password manager. The other option stores the encryption key in the cloud protected with a password that only the user has access to. In either case, you lose the key. Itself or the password to unlock the key. There is nothing WhatsApp can do to recover it. The way it swaps to be to be secure. But you know, you should know that Apple silently fixed a gamed zero day vulnerability in iOS 15.0.2 Monday. Apple addressed the bug, but did not acknowledge your credit software developer Dennis Tokarov for the discovery, even though he reported the flaw seven months before iOS 15.0.2 was released. Back in July, Apple also silently patched an analytics D zero day flaw in iOS 14.7 without crediting Tokarov in the security advisory. But at the time promised to acknowledges to report in security advisories for an upcoming update. Spotify has opened up its car thing to the US. Remember car thing? It's an $80 music and podcast player for vehicles, which Spotify originally rolled out as an invite only and as an invite only basis and only charged users for shipping during the test phase. Now it is the real thing. So if you were on the car thing waitlist, you get vert dibs on the device. Although it's still in limited release for now. Car thing requires a premium subscription and a smartphone for connectivity for anyone else interested enough to move forward. All right, let's talk about a big project from Facebook. Research project called ego for D ego refers to first person video, not to Facebook being arrogant in this case. The project is meant to improve AI analysis of first person video to help you. It uses an open data set so others can take part in this by by using this data set. The data set was collected by 13 universities. It includes 3,205 hours of video recorded by 855 individuals across nine countries, including Colombia, Saudi Arabia and Japan. It's the biggest data set of its kind. Previously, the biggest had a hundred hours all shot in a kitchen. This is 3,205 hours shot all over the world in many kitchens, as well as non kitchens. Participants either volunteered or were paid to wear a GoPro or similar camera and augmented reality glasses to record unscripted activity. In other words, they just went about their daily lives as much as you can with a GoPro strapped to your head before the data was put in the data set. Faces were blurred and personally identifiable information was removed. So the project from Facebook, the ego for D project has said some benchmarks that it hopes to use this open data set to achieve. These are things that existing systems can't yet handle reliably. One is called episodic memory. That would help you with questions like, where did I leave my keys, right? So the AI monitors your augmented reality glasses, let's say. And then if you're like, where did I leave my keys? It knows and can tell you. Another one's called audio visual diarization, which is not as bad as it sounds by the name. It just means remembering who said what and when, which would be good for things like meetings or having an argument. There's also forecasting. The example given here is you've started to add salt to a recipe and it predicts you're going to do that. It says, hey, don't do that. You already added salt. Kind of a weird example, but I get it from that example. Yeah, like, don't over salt your recipe. It can predict what you're about to do. OK, helpful. Yeah. Hand and object manipulation that could be used to teach you something like playing drums, for instance, and social interaction, stuff like helping you understand someone in a loud restaurant. Facebook hopes the open data set will spur other augmented reality development, the way that ImageNet, a big open data set, spurred image recognition. And it could be useful not only for helping humans, but also robots, because its emphasis is taking in visuals, first person visuals and interpreting them. I mean, stuff as you were talking, I was getting more panic, Tom. Like I'm not going to lie to you. I understand I can see as you were giving me examples, I can see the genuine use cases like and I can see serious kind of care settings, for example, and things like that, where remembering, you know, it's annoying for us to lose, say, where are my keys? But actually, there are some situations where that's really those things are difficult for people and actually having this kind of technology could help people live more independently for longer. I get it, but I think I would be a lot more comfortable with it if it wasn't Facebook in control of this data. And this sounds like an awful data leak waiting to happen as well, doesn't it? I mean, if something like this went wrong, it would really go wrong, right? But well, OK, keep in mind, this is Facebook not in control. It's an open data set, right? It is created, collected by universities Facebook project. Facebook is is is kind of guiding the project, but the data is meant to be released. And the universities involved were the ones who took care to protect identification. So if there's any problem with the data set, we'll know right away. And it doesn't seem like there is yet. I get what you're saying. If this story is Stanford or Oxford announced a research project, you're probably not having that same reaction as you are because Facebook is involved in it for sure. And also this just from the kind of business point of view, this clearly is part of the Mark Zuckerberg metaverse kind of play, isn't it? It's the one element of his big drive in this AR field, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's certainly meant to encourage that the thing I don't want to lose sight of because I I think because Facebook's involved in this, it is quite natural to just need your right to criticizing it. But yeah, right, Facebook. Yeah, there and I think the people involved in this are doing it right, which is open data set can benefit a lot of people. Yes, it's going to benefit Facebook. And what Facebook does with it will be interesting to see. But the project itself, I think is probably a good thing. You're probably a much you are a much more reasonable person than I am. Well, Charlotte, you might like HCC's new announcement of the standalone Vive flow VR headset that looks like an oversized pair of goggles and is also super light or at least designed to be super light when you're wearing them uses dual inch arms instead of a strap. So you wear it the way you'd wear glasses. Also has a fan to pull hot air away from your face. You know, if there's too much fire in there. Why not? The Vive flow VR is also emphasizing comfort in a big way. So resolution is 1.6 K per eye with a 75 Hertz refresh rate and up to a 100 degree field of view also has a 64 gigabyte of storage capacity and runs on the Qualcomm XR1. It weighs 189 grams, partly because the only battery that it's meant to keep is going for a couple of minutes while you swap out external batteries. That is why it's so light. It can be powered by a 10,000 mAh per hour USBC power bank and HCC will sell those separately. There are two pass-through cameras on the outside that handle motion tracking and eventual hand tracking as well. But you need a pair to Android phone for control. The flow can also mirror Android displays so you can use mobile apps like Netflix, however, does not pair with an iPhone and write only at least for now. Apps also also don't have to come from the phone itself because by flow will have 100 to 150 apps available, many in the wellness and mindfulness category like Mind VR and Trip. Trip with two two P's, for example, you can also subscribe to a flow specific $5.99 per month version of VivePort's app subscription service as well. So the HTC Vive Flows up for preorder now for four hundred ninety nine US dollars shipping early in November with a carrying case sold separately for forty nine dollars and a seventy nine dollar external battery pack, giving you an extra four to five hours of life also sold separately. Who wants this? I can't say I'm going to be spending six hundred dollars on this. If no, no other reason that I have an iPhone or an Android phone. But I think the kind of very and it's come up in both the stories we've discussed so far, the kind of innovation in this AR VR headset kind of space. I mean, Tom City wearing his way Facebook Wayfarer is now like that the way this space is developing and the commitment serious companies are putting into it is really interesting. And so even if this product that you've just described there is not the particular one for me, at some point, there's going to be things that are actually compelling, you know, for different users. Yeah, it's difficult for HTC because they can't subsidize their product the way Facebook can. Facebook can just lose money on it, but hope to monetize the data it collects from an HTC doesn't do that. This definitely feels like it's an accessory for business travelers, even though it's not enterprise. It's sort of when you're on the plane or waiting in the lounge or or or at your hotel, it's a way to have a nice big screen to watch some video or do some meditation to unwind after a hard day of work. So they're not going to sell a lot of these, but it's the stepping stone of like, sure, this is all it can do this time. Hopefully it catches on enough for us to do a second generation that we can pack some more functionality and maybe even a battery. You know, part of this, you know, the the what you mentioned, Tom, as if you're traveling, sitting on a plane kind of thing, it makes perfect sense. There are so many people who are not doing that right now that I, you know, I wonder if this is the sort of product where it's like, let's get it out there because everybody's going to get back into this, you know, sort of business travel where this will make a lot more sense, where now it's like you kind of have to convince people, here's why you need this. I'm going to throw another thing into the mix as well. There was quite a lot of emphasis on the kind of mindfulness element of this product. Actually, that kind of mindfulness time, if I do it, one of the things I like about that kind of practice is that it's one of the parts of the day that of my day that doesn't involve a screen. So actually involving a screen in it actually is for me a negative. Yeah. And that's a hard sell. Although, you know, people who use Peloton or Apple Fitness for meditation, maybe this looks, you know, and lots of people. I mean, that's my question. That's my question of the meditation, but they've added to Fitness Plus as well. Yeah, there's someone on a screen again when actually you might want a bit of time not looking at a screen to clear your head. Well, you're not going to want to get a PS5 thing because that's another thing for a screen. You see the problem is I do. This is the problem. Ah, well, Sony knows it's not going to be able to make enough PS5s to meet demand this holiday season. So it's starting registration programs. There's one launching in the US that PlayStation Network users can sign up for the opportunity to buy a PS5. So you need to have a PlayStation Network account to sign up. Invites will be chosen based on previous interest and PlayStation activities. This is all meant to combat bots. You got to have a PSN account and a bot can't just sign up for a new PSN account. They're going to look and see, like, have you been playing games? Do you use your account? Those are the people who are going to get invites. So not everybody is guaranteed to get an invite. But if you're a PlayStation diehard and you sign up, you have a good chance, right? And once you score an invite, you're in, right? No. Each invitation, according to Sony, is open for a limited time. So act fast if you get one. Oh, and you can only get one console per PSN ID per transaction. You can't buy two or three. Let the Hunger Games begin. Oh, my gosh. This is so insane, insane in lots of different ways. And much of this is not Sony's fault. I do, I'm not in the market for a PS5. So I am on the sidelines, so to speak. But I have a lot of friends who are like, oh, yeah, on Craigslist, you can get aftermarket PS5s. Obviously, you're going to pay a little bit of a premium for them. But that is how a lot of people that I know have them now. The company itself saying, here's how we kind of make it more of like a gamification of getting this thing that we just don't have enough units for. That's a little weirder. I mean, we're all used to not being able to get the exact, you know, every Christmas ever for time and moment has been, you can't get the hottest thing this Christmas. But I mean, fair play to PlayStation and Sony. As you say so, it's a great bit of kind of gamification and let's be blunt PR, isn't it? To kind of whip up like the fact that we're talking about it. We wouldn't is kind of quite a clever way of, you know, putting this strategy in place. And also I wonder if it will encourage existing users who might have slowed down their usage, but be tempted by PS5 to engage a bit more with PlayStation in the hope of being bumped up the list for the PS5. Yeah, we're going to have like PS PlayStation account mining. This is where we're going. Well, they're doing the best they can to keep them off Craigslist, right? They're like, we want these to go to people who actually play. And this is our attempt to do that. Sony will not confirm whether it will hold a giant game of red light green light to award PlayStation 5 games to people. Oh, gosh. We'll just have to keep our eyes on it. Hey, folks, if you need just the headlines, some days you don't have 30 minutes even, I get it. Check out our related show, Daily Tech Headlines, all the essential tech news in just about five minutes from Rich Drafilino and or Jen Cutter, DailyTechHeadlines.com. On Wednesday, we talked about the allegations that Amazon copied products from businesses in India, the businesses on Amazon India. Thursday, a report from the Markup alleges that Amazon frequently places its own products higher in Amazon search results. Amazon denies this, saying the Markup is confusing featured listings with search results. Amazon often shows items that it labels featured from brands, from its brands featured from its brands and sponsored listings before going into the natural search results. Now, while the featured in the sponsored listings are labeled as such, they're not wrong. They show up under the word results. So if you're not paying close attention to that small gray text, you might just think it's a search result. The Markup says that 60% of the time a sponsored listing shows up at the top, 20% of the time a featured from Amazon brand shows up at the top, and the rest of the 20% is just actual search results at the top. Well, the US Senate is targeting that and other platform-preferencing behavior from not only Amazon, but Apple, Google, and others. US Senators Chuck Grassley, Amy Klobuchar, Lindsey Graham, and Richard Durbin, kind of an all-star team of bipartisanship, have backed a bill Thursday that would prohibit tech platforms from favoring their own products or services. It would also attempt to stop platform operators from discriminating between businesses on its platform in a way that harms competition. Here are the four main things the bill would prohibit. Offering preferred placement in exchange for buying the platform operator services or goods. That's kind of targeted towards Google. Hey, if you pay our Android fee, I will give you a better deal. Misusing a business customer's data in order to compete against it, that's squarely at Amazon, but it could also maybe apply to Apple. Preferring the platform operator in search results on the platform, that's certainly at Amazon and also probably at Google. And preventing a business's product from interoperating with the platform. This is similar to a bill of, yeah, and that's Apple. This is similar to a bill approved by the US House Judiciary Committee earlier this year. That bill has not reached the house floor for consideration, but this new Senate bill is even a little stricter than that one was. So this does seem to have momentum behind it, given the senators who have attached their name, Grassley and Klobuchar, the senators sponsoring it. Senators Graham and Durbin are backing it. It does seem like this has a chance to become law. And as we all know, when it becomes law in one country, like the South Korean law about the Apple App Store, it does tend to push a company to change its policies worldwide. Yeah, the Japan example is the one for Apple that kind of changed how, you know, the reader apps thing happened in Japan and then they basically put the policy around the world. And you're right, the South Korea Apple Pay stuff is also gonna be really interesting to see how that develops. I mean, this is just, we could have picked one of these stories almost any other, every week, this people are really going after these big tech firms quote unquote, aren't they? And they kind of, whether rightly or wrongly, lump the four you named Tom in together and they all have slightly different businesses, but they seem to be thrown in together. I wrote about this for the Mac Observer earlier and it's, it is an interesting one to watch. It came from the Senate Judiciary, correct me if I've misunderstood how your system works, politics works, but it's the Senate Judiciary Committee's Anti-Trust Subcommittee, isn't it? And as I understand it, Amy Klobuchar and her colleagues have been very big on this stuff for quite a while. And as you said, there was one from the House and they might be able to get this one over the line in the Senate. It's just an ongoing kind of terrain now of legislation against big tech companies. And I think eventually the dam is gonna burst and we're gonna see some quite significant changes even beyond what we've already had like the reader apps and things like that. Cause you know, I know the NFT chip and Apple pay is one thing that's in a lot of lawmakers in various country sites. You know, stuff is gonna change eventually either because the companies make the decision that they can't be bothered to fight this and they're gonna make the change preemptively or because politicians in various countries go enough is enough, you know, the EU there's a constant stream of the stuff from the EU as well. Yeah, I think, okay, if you were to make the argument against this bill because this bill is going to be incredibly popular because there's such anti-tech sentiment out there. There's such a feeling that these companies don't offer fair play. But the argument against it, if I can try is that the platforms compete with each other that they aren't silos, right? The fact that this is targeting essentially three different companies for, if you throw Facebook in here somehow means that it's not a monolith that it's after. And if I operate a platform, you know if I operate a department store, I can have house brands and I can put those house brands on the end caps and up near the checkout registers. Why is it not okay for Amazon to put its own brands up at the top? Even if it's providing a platform for others it doesn't have to provide a platform for others, does it? You can listen to overcast but the podcast app's already there. What Apple's providing you access to both. Google's saying with its podcast app as one example. Yeah, so again, I think the argument is that you are correcting a market dominance abuse by passing this law, but it is a law. It's not a court case. It's not taking them for an antitrust violation. There are movements to do that as well for these same things. But this is saying, well, let's just change the law so we don't have to take them to court that we can just make it against the law for them to preference their platform. I'm curious what people think out there. Feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com. Do you, if you think this law shouldn't be in existence or if you do, tell us why? Because I think everybody likes the idea of fair play and there's a little bit of a shouting for it about a bloody nose for a big tech company, but should it be the law that a company has to not preference its own product? You wouldn't require most companies to not preference their own product. And does it ultimately make the experience for us as users better? Yeah, and maybe that's the little mis-test. Hey, that's not the only tech-related action in the US Congress. House leaders are expected to introduce a bill Friday called the Justice Against Malicious Algorithms Act, which would change safe harbor laws as described in section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act of 1996. Section 230, pretty famous out there, but if you don't know it, let's platforms moderate content without becoming liable for what is posted by users. Before section 230, if you moderated, the court's considered you liable for it, and so they wanted to encourage companies to moderate, so they said, look, if you moderate, we won't consider you liable. We'll still consider the person who posted the content liable. The forthcoming bill would make platforms with more than 5 million monthly users still liable. They would take away that section 230 protection in cases where an algorithm, either knowingly by the company or recklessly by the company, recommended content that caused a user, physical or severe emotional injury. It would not apply to user-specified searches or infrastructure like web hosting. They're trying to narrow this onto social media. 5 million people means it would only be big companies like Facebook. This bill does not appear to have the widespread support. It would need to become law, but it's interesting nonetheless. All right, let's- I think we all need to get jobs as tech lawyers. There's gonna be a lot of work up there for lawyers at tech firms. I think that's what we should do guys. Yeah, we picked the wrong discipline. Also, which might need lawyers, is the Vision 60 units. If you're not familiar with this robot, it's a quadrupedal robot built by the U.S. firm, Ghost Robotics. Also capable of carrying a gun made by small-arm specialists, SWORD International. The gun, known as SPUR or SPUR, short for Special Purpose Unmanned Rifle, is designed for various robotic platforms with a 30X optical zoom, thermal camera for targeting in the dark, and an effective range of 1,200 meters. SWORD International's website says, quote, the SWORD Defense Systems SPUR is the future of unmanned weapon systems, and that future is now, end quote. You may believe that, you may not. But if you're wondering about practical use, the 325th Security Forces Squadron at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida was the first unit in the Department of Defense to use unarmed quadrupedal robots in regular operations. Doesn't mean they had guns. No, they didn't, yeah. Just mean they were unmanned. Uses them to patrol the paces perimeter and navigate difficult areas, so how do we all feel about this? So, before Charlotte freaks out too much, we should point out the robot doesn't operate the gun. This is just an attachment. Oh, that makes it better, okay. It makes it a little better. Charlotte was like, I don't like this story. The robot is just starting to fire. The robot is just a mobile platform and the gun is operated by a human remotely. I feel like you guys chuck in robot stories whenever I'm on the show just to freak me out because you know I have a thing about those robots that can open doors and stuff and this is just the next level. This one doesn't open any doors. We don't need to. Unless it shoots them open. It shoots through the door, so you don't need to open it, it's so cool. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, I do, I feel like, and on the show yesterday we were talking about a robot that can walk and also fly. This is, it's just a, it's the next step in AI hardware, right? This is the equivalent of the Visa mount for a monitor. It's like, hey, we created a thing that can mount your remote gun on a robot, in that grade. And listen, there are times where this is not scary but you would be happy to have it. Not totally sure what those instances are at this point, but yes, I see why this is something that is being developed. If I'm being serious and containing my free count momentarily, there are obvious circumstances in combat situations, security situations, various other situations where you would prefer a robot to deal with said situation than a risk a human being. There you go. And I totally understand if you are the US Department of Defense or a firm that is involved in robotics, but that's an area you look at. I do get that, I think, not sure it necessarily reduces the level of freak out, but I can see, like I understand how and why people have got here. Right, right. All right, let's check out the mail bag, Sarah. We got a good one from Paul in Edinburgh, Scotland, who was thinking about Apple's reluctance to move from Lightning to USB-C on their iPhones. We talked about that earlier this week, like what's up with that? Paul says, I was wondering if this is somehow tied to their licensing of the proprietary interface to third-party manufacturers, maybe as part of the Made for iPhone program that's now called MFI. Apple may have made a commitment to support this interface for a number of years or iPhone models. This would make sense given the investment that these manufacturers have been building products that use a Lightning interface and the cost that they would have had incurred as part of the MFI program certification. Paul says, just a thought, pure speculation. Yeah, my first reaction, this is a fair question. My first reaction in thinking about this was that if that were true, I don't know that they would have gone USB-C on the iPad, but I guess the argument against that is on the iPad, they're trying to make it a little more like a laptop, and so they would wanna go USB-C where they might wanna keep Lightning on the phone, but they have MFI participants on the iPad too. So if it was simply keeping people in the program, I'm not sure that would be it. I don't know, Charlotte, you follow this stuff pretty closely. What's your take on this thought? Yeah, I mean, I try and move beyond the cynical take, and I'm pleased Paul has done the same of, oh, Apple just wants you to buy a load of new accessories and chargers and stuff, because I think there tends to be reasons, and the reasons they tend to do this kind of stuff is around speed and efficiency and power, and often it can be a simple thing with Apple as what allows them to make a device thinner or lighter. There's lots of things that Apple taking into consideration with its industrial design that we think one little element wouldn't have an effect on, but for them, we know how the kind of Steve Jobs and Johnny Ive tradition of designing Apple products was, and I'm not sure that mindset has totally left. So it could be something like the made for iPhone program where it's trying to keep people on board. It could even, but it could equally just be a simple thing around efficiency, power, design, all those kinds of things come into play as well. Yeah, they might just look at the jumble of wires and be like, yeah, USB-C it's ugly. I'm like. Well, if any of you have some feedback to pile on to what we've already talked about, we actually would like you to do so. Feedback at dailytechnewshow.com is where to send feedback, questions, comments, anything related to the show. Thank you in advance. We love your feedback. Keep it coming. Also, we would like to extend a special thanks to James Thatcher, aka Big Jim, who's one of our top lifetime supporters for DTNS. Thank you for all the years of support, Big Jim. We love you. Yeah, Big Jim. Hey, you don't have to continually support us for years like Big Jim, if you're brand new to the show, because we know you probably don't have a time machine. So just become a new supporter and we'll mention you on the show as one of our new bosses. That's easy. Patreon.com slash DTNS. And we'll thank you immediately. We'll also thank Charlotte Henry for being with us on the show today. Charlotte, so good to have you back. Let folks know where they can keep up with the rest of your work. Yeah, I love coming to join you guys. Check us out over at the macobserver.com and the Media Plus podcast, which actually had one top merit on then the latest episode, we were rounding up Ted Lasso season two, which was good fun. So yeah, go check us out there and at Charlotte A. Henry on the Twitters. Excellent. Well, come back soon. For the rest of us, we're live on the show Monday through Friday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern. That's 2030 UTC. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live and we'll be back doing it all again to most like Walter. Talk to you that. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Well, I hope you have enjoyed this program.