 Coming up on DTNS, Mozilla targets you with Instagram ads that describe you. Sony reaches break even on the PS5. And how can Facebook and others check facts if the facts aren't even known? This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, May 27th, 2021 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane from Austin, Texas. I'm Justin Robert. Yeah, I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. We were just talking about recency and availability biases. And their effects on your perception of the internet, among lots of other things on good day internet. If you want that wider conversation, become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Twitter said that it planned to push for changes in India's IT laws, saying that it had, quote, concerns with regards to the use of intimidation tactics by the police in response to enforcement of our global terms of service. The company received a notice of non-compliance with the laws for failure to remove posts related to the government's COVID-19 response, which could result in fines of jail time for Twitter's India-based executives. India police also recently served a notice to Twitter protesting labeling of senior BJP officials' tweets as manipulated media. Marvell announced the first NVME solid state drive controllers to support PCIE 5.0, PCIE 5.0. That's the important part there. The Bravera SC5 family currently sampling to select customers. They come in eight or 16 channels offering up to sequential read throughput of 14 gigabytes per second and random read performance of 1.8 MI ops. Acer announced a line of new products, including a rather beefy 17.3 inch predator Helios 500 with options for a 360, 360 Hertz refresh rate, starting at $2,500. There's also the 16 inch Predator Triton 500 SE with similar options, starting at $1,750 and the Predator Orion 3000 and Nitron 50 gaming desktops. So many cool names. All of these come with the latest from Intel and Nvidia. And Acer also announced the Cestus 335 gaming mouse, three new Predator gaming monitors and a Predator Connect D5 USB-C dongle that adds a 5G connection to any computer. Privacy and digital rights organizations Pi and Yab, Hermes Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights and Homo Digitalis have filed legal complaints in France, Austria, Greece, Italy and the UK against facial recognition company Clearview AI. Complaints say Clearview AI documents and collects data, much of it facial images from public websites in a way that violates European privacy laws. Privacy groups say regulators have three months to respond. Nvidia and Nvidia announced revenue was up 84% on the year. Gaming revenue grew 106% to 2.76 billion dollars. Data center revenue increased 79% to 2.05 billion dollars. And OEM and other revenue that includes cryptocurrency mining processors increased 137% on the year to 155 million. Nvidia also released a teaser video on its Twitter account for a G4 event at 10 p.m. Pacific time May 31st. Nvidia is rumored to be launching its new GeForce RTX 3080Ti graphics card that same day. The RTX 3080Ti will reportedly include 12 gigabytes of GDDR6X memory, a wider 384-bit bus and more memory bandwidth. I just realized that 10 p.m. Pacific means that this will be at midnight June 1st for Justin. Yes. Well, and 1 a.m. East Coast. It's is that weird as it's obviously not targeted at the US audience. It's a European audience. All right. Let's talk of some gaming news, Justin. Oh, Tom, there's lots of gaming news out there today. Bloomberg sources say that Nintendo will begin assembly of a newly updated Switch console as early as July with a release scheduled for September or October. Only a few people at Nintendo HQ in Kyoto know what it will be called. But Bloomberg sources have indicated it will have an OLED display and faster Nvidia GPU capable of 4K output when docked. We may get an announcement about it before E3, which begins on June 12th. Meanwhile, Sony told an investor group that it will start making money off sales of PlayStation 5's in June as the cost of its parts continue to fall. Sony also told investors that uncharted for a thief's end will come to PC soon and Sony intends to bring more of its popular franchises to mobile games as well. Finally, another interesting tidbit in the investor report is that PS5 owners without a Blu-ray drive spend more time on games than those with one. While PS5 owners with Blu-ray spend 17% more on actual game titles, they spend 62% less on add-ons. So the Nintendo stuff is is worth marking. We've been seeing these leaks come out mostly from from Bloomberg for a while. So it's not super shocking whether they'll be able to get the parts together to make these in large amounts, large enough amounts. They believe they can. They, you know, they aren't the top of the line. Display chips are still a little rare on the ground. Bluetooth chips are having some supply problems. Those would be the only ones that I could see causing a problem for the switch. But yeah, that's the idea that Uncharted is coming to the PC. Certainly has turned a lot of heads out there. And and Sony rightfully saying, you know what? We want to bring more people into the tent. I think there's a lot of people who are out there saying, yeah, it's about time. Yeah, specifically since that that's always going to be the the premier way to play the newest version of this game that you might have fallen in love with on another platform. I think it does make sense. I thought the idea that PS5 owners who have Blu-ray drives perhaps think of the Blu-ray, you know, you buy the game. It's, you know, the Blu-ray is a thing, a physical thing. And you think of it as more self-contained, like, well, I have the thing I don't need an add on, and it's a little bit different mentally than the folks who don't have the Blu-ray drive, who end up spending more on extras. Yeah, I mean, it's bad news for for Blu-ray fans, I suppose, because it indicates that Sony is going to have to prioritize the non-disc players because they make more money off of them. But I think it's because if you spend the extra money to get the PS5 with the disc playing ability, it's because you don't trust downloads as much as you trust a hard copy. And that makes sense to me that you would therefore not be as likely to want to spend money on digital add-ons that aren't part of that hard copy. And not that you would never do it, but you might do it less because, you know, you're you're a little more cautious on digital downloads. I mean, look, it was not long ago that both Sony and Microsoft were really pitching their next-gen hardware around the idea that this is the new media player, that this is the thing, the indispensable thing that we are so much more than just games. You really want us to be your all-in-one, best-in-class media center. And I think that, you know, Blue Ray is certainly a part of that between the idea of people not having the same kind of internet download speed. So maybe downloads go a lot slower. So Blue Rays are a lot more interesting. And then also there is just still a gigantic market out there for physical media as much as it might have phased out of a little bit of the mainstream comparable to 10, 15 years ago. Yeah, but we make more money off the other people. Now, yes, because they now now now and we've seen their their strategy already turn away from that over the last 10 years to say, no, no, no, no, no. Gamers, Capital G, gamer culture, gamers, rise up. We live in a society. It's all going to be streaming games eventually. Anyway, feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com for years. BitTorrent has been used to exchange copyright infringing material. And for years, BitTorrent has also been one of the more efficient ways to get a Linux ISO. And because of both of those things for years, people have joked that they only use BitTorrent for Linux ISOs. On May 24th, Reddit user NateNate60 says Comcast notified him of a DMCA claim, a copyright violation claim against him for downloading the Ubuntu 20.04.2.0 Linux ISO. The Comcast notification said that a company called Opset online antipiris claimed that NateNate60 had downloaded its intellectual property, which was named in the complaint as the Ubuntu desktop ISO. A hash value of the file was listed in the complaint. That hash value matches Ubuntu's own BitTorrent tracker. So there's no confusion. There's no, oh, we thought you had Lord of the Rings, but it turns out it was a no, they're like, we own the Linux ISO and you downloaded it. Comcast sent him a warning. Torrent Freak noted that Opset security is a German antipiracy company that does not appear to have any connection with Canonical, the makers of Ubuntu. And Ubuntu just, you know, given out for free anyway. The notice was only a warning, but if NateNate60 were to get more of those kinds of warnings, Comcast could decide to terminate his account. So what are the possibilities of what happened here? It could be a clever fake. Somebody sent this notice to make it look like it was coming from Comcast to fool NateNate60, but it didn't. In which case Comcast should clarify whether this came from them or not. And if it didn't tell NateNate60, you had nothing to worry about. Or what I think is more likely it's a mistake. Someone at Opset security pasted in an incorrect hash into their monitoring software or some other way caught an Ubuntu ISO in its net inadvertently. That happens all the time on YouTube where people, you know, accidentally put their own content in their antipiracy bot and then give themselves notices. These systems are automated. It's not the first time that they have made mistakes. Some companies have even served copyright violation notices to themselves because of mistakes like that. In any case, NateNate60 should dispute it. But he said on Reddit he won't because he doesn't, quote, want to risk them shutting off my internet access over this stupid thing. Oh, gosh. And I hear you, Nate. I really do. Because you listen to the story, you're like, this is crazy. Yeah, it's either a mistake or something strange where he wasn't fooled. And it's sort of nonsense. And he should say, hey, Comcast, this is nonsense. And Comcast should say, yeah, let's strike it from your record. Just in case, yeah, there's some other infraction down the road. And, you know, we don't end up shutting your account off. But we all know what it's like to give Comcast a call and try to explain the most basic of things. So this, I mean, think of the customer service represented on the other side of the line going, wait, what happened? OK, I'm going to need to put you on hold for a year. I don't blame Nate for saying I'm just not going to fight anybody on this because what I really want is for my internet to stay up. Yeah, I think the troubling element here is him saying, I don't even want to engage in this system because I'm afraid that a kangaroo court will ban me from the internet. I think that's that is something that indicates a problem where some of our larger system. Yeah, I I'll be honest, made in 860. I'm not casting aspersions on them, but it's possible that maybe they have used BitTorrent for something else in the past besides the Linux I show. And so maybe they don't feel like calling attention to their account more. So I totally get it. I get one of just run under the radar. Apparently, I don't have confirmation on the seminar. Chatroom said that Opset security said on Twitter that it was a spoofed notice. Again, if that's the case, Comcast should say that. Comcast should come out and go. Yeah, yeah, we know we never sent that notice. OK. Well, you may recall when Signal said that it was planning to run ads on Instagram that use targeting information about users. So you'd see an ad that actually described you like you got this ad because you're a newlywed Pilates instructor and you're crazy about cartoons. Now, Signal said that Facebook suspended its account before it could run these ads. Facebook said Signal never tried to run the ads and there was some other issue and we still haven't really gotten to the bottom of that. However, in the meantime, Mozilla is running ads just like this on Instagram. It's the first money that Mozilla has spent on ads on Instagram or Facebook since 2018, Mozilla's ads are a little less specific. They all feature the star sign like the zodiac sign of the person being targeted, along with a fairly broad identification of one of the things that it knows about this targeted user. But just enough for you to go, hey, how'd they do that? Examples include Virgo, congrats on the engagement or cancer. You're the expert on cute animals. They all end with we get you. We're also targeting you. And the caption of the ad clarifies a little bit more about the ad and offers a link to a page on Mozilla's website that explains how data driven advertising actually works. For instance, the cancer cute animal ad has a caption that reads, your heart is big enough for the entire animal kingdom and your IG feed is here to prove it. Want to know how we know? The ad is targeted at people who have the star sign cancer. Cancer is a June or July birthday, plus interest in animals. That's why you got the ad. Mozilla disclosed it will spend $10,000 to run five versions of this ad. Oh, I hope I get this ad. I have a June birthday. I love animals. I have a cancer like this is great. I'm going to be refreshing my Instagram feed constantly, hoping that I end up with this and then screenshot it as soon as I do. I am glad that someone is doing this campaign that signal didn't end up doing for whatever reason. I'm still confused. One of them is lying. Signal or Facebook, I don't know which one. So I'm glad Mozilla is doing a similar thing. It's it's lighthearted. It's good at raising awareness about ad targeting and how it works. And of course, it certainly is self-serving from Mozilla because that page is going to say Firefox is a great way to protect your privacy. Here are all the tools that they can afford you, which it is. I mean, I agree. Firefox is very good at protecting your privacy. This has been another interesting trend where instead of the features given to you up to and including better advertising, quote unquote, by way of tracking and personal information being hoarded by a lot of these companies, what we've seen is arise at least in the idea of advertising products that we want the opposite of that. Deny yourself a few features to get the ultimate feature, privacy, that this is an existential threat here in Austin, Texas. On the side of the road, they've got billboards for Duck Duck Go highlighting the fact that you indeed can be truly anonymous on this service in a way that you cannot on Google. So the idea that they are doing this is certainly part of a larger trend. My question is, and I would love to have advertising experts who are listening to this right now, whether or not it's effective in pointing out that these targeted ads can indeed be creepy, something that we all kind of know, but could probably be served to be reminded in a more stark relief. Will it also be effective in saying, I now need to try another service? Or is it just something that makes you creeped out about the internet? Right. Or somehow angry at Mozilla for, you know, being so nosy. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that that is actually, I know plenty of folks, if they saw something like this, they'd say, what is this Mozilla? No, that's bad. Mozilla, you know, there are some sort of a crazy watchdark kind of thing. And and I mean, I'm only really half kidding. But I think this is extremely it's the whole thing is very brilliant. You know, it started with signal. I'm like you, Tom. I I wish I kind of knew what happened between signal and Facebook's Facebook claims, oh, you didn't pay your bill. And so your account was paused Facebook claims that they never walked that that that was in the past that the account problem was in the past and they never blocked it. And they never submitted the ads for running. And signal says, yes, we did. Right. Yeah. It's it's I don't know. I mean, maybe they'll get their acts together. But in the meantime, I'm I'm glad that Mozilla has picked up the torch and run with it in hopes that people will all become smarter about how they're targeted online. And yeah, there's probably some folks who say, did not know you could do that. And and they're about to learn a whole new world. Well, I've been searching Mozilla and Firefox on my Instagram and I haven't got to come up yet. So I have to like a few more cute animal photos. Yeah, they should they should tell you what you are. They should say you're you're somebody who likes who's looking for that summer bod and you are this amount this age and you've been married for this long. And that's that's what we know about you. Folks, if you're interested in learning more about the incredible group of people that bring you DTNS, there is more than just the ones you're seeing on your screen right now. Check out our about us page. You can find links to all the companion shows. We just did live with it. Sarah Lane's review of the Roomba little background on all the contributors and co-hosts. That's all at Daily Tech News Show dot com slash about Facebook announced Wednesday that it will derank the accounts of and limit the spread of posts from users who repeatedly share content that has been debunked by its fact checkers. These kinds of users are sometimes referred to as super spreaders. Facebook has not said how many times an account would have to share debunked and voter qualify for restrictions. They say they don't want users gaming the system. Also, Facebook says it will unrestrict an account after a period of time. Doesn't say what that period is. I think we all agree, though, that if someone is posting legitimate scare information that we all agree is untrue and would would cause harm. We'd be fine with that information being restricted. And as we've discussed on the show before, not everybody agrees on the gray area, the middle ground. While the majority of fact checking is solid, there will be examples where something is thought to be false and later found to be true or even more likely thought to be false and then slowly appear that maybe it's not false, but we don't know for sure. Or worse, we never have known the actual facts, but public pressure pushes companies one way or another, which is what is happening with the idea that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a virology lab rather than in the wild. Since February, Facebook has banned posts that assert that SARS-CoV-2 was man-made or manufactured. Starting in February, they said, you can't say that. Now, as of now, Facebook has changed its policy. People no longer have your post removed if you say SARS-CoV-2 was man-made or manufactured. Why? Loads of reasons. One of which, probably the least controversial of which, is a letter published in the journal Science May 13th from 18 biologists, immunologists and other scientists calling for continued investigation into the possibility of a laboratory spillover. Now, you're probably marshaling your arguments right now, one way or another, about why you do or do not believe the virus came from a lab. But that part really doesn't matter for this discussion. The fact is, and always has been, we don't know. We've thought certain scenarios more likely than others. And we've changed that likelihood amount, but we don't know. And we haven't known no matter what you've read. Since early in 2020, most scientists have believed, based on the genetic markers in the virus, that it most likely evolved in nature. Most likely, though, is not the same as certain. A lab spillover has never been ruled out. Right before the WHO's investigatory team left China, when it was under the most pressure from China, not to imply that a lab leak was possible, the WHO said it was quote, very unlikely that the virus could have escaped from such a place. Now, while that is quite an impressive bit of dissembling, even then, in China, the WHO didn't say it had ruled it out. And the team, after it left China, said something a little less dissembling. Dr. Tedros, the head of the WHO said on March 30, that all hypotheses remain on the table. He also said he didn't think the idea of a lab leak had been investigated enough. None of this is saying it did come out of a lab. None of it is saying it didn't come out of a lab. It's a scientific uncertainty. And a social network moderator's nightmare. The answer to what is a fact in this particular case is we don't know. And no, you don't want misinformation that this has been determined one way or another. But if you want to police the quote unquote facts, which is that we don't know. How do you police that? Do you ban statements of certainty? Yet another step down into our hashtag hell portal, hashtag portal to hell, which is now no longer a prophecy, but indeed something that is being operated by Facebook, because if they are the ones deciding what comes behind and in front of the wall of truth, if they are the ones determining that indeed, we have always been at war with East Asia, then they are the ones that have to deli slice the truth in a world of uncertainty. And that's what this has always broken down to. No matter where we are in the moment, no matter where we are in our personal priors and our beliefs, there are situations. And dare I say it's more than the average person would assume that we simply don't know definitively. And so either Facebook has to decide that we are a place in which we can discuss uncertainty or there will be elements of uncertainty that due to public pressure, we are going to police. And that's when you get into trouble. That's when you start defining truth in a world where we may not know it. And this is a great example of them saying feeling sure that one thing was one way, and then having to make the awkward moment where they say, Well, let's let's take this back in front of the curtain, because maybe it's not, maybe it's not determined. It's it's it's unwinnable. Unwinnable. I have railed against this idea, not because I am I am against the idea of truth or facts or common understanding, but because it's a Kobayashi Maru. The only way to win is not to play. Right, because if you're willingly spreading misinformation, that is different than if you're spreading misinformation that you honestly believe even if it's not true. So those are, you know, that's two different categories that Facebook has to figure out how to deal with differently. Facebook and any, any network, any platform, you know, that has you know, kernels of this sort of thing going on. And then yeah, there's the, well, I was told it was true, but now the tide is turning a bit. And what you know, how now is that post that I made when I thought something was true, but now there's more information defined by a platform. Is there an update that has to be made to my post? You know, does it get a label of some kind? The platform would have to do it. I can't tell users to do things like that. It's an absolute mess. I mean, I actually think there is a, a, a border that you can draw to say, okay, we aren't going to allow these things to be posted without fact checking, because they are very clearly not true. I think there is, there's an argument for that. This, however, is not on the other side of that border to me. This is, you know, you can say like, I'm pretty sure it's this, but you can't say it is. And in those cases, I don't, it becomes a political thing and political pressure and public pressure and popularity thing and a mood thing that you make these decisions. And when that happens, you see this vacillation. You see them say, well, the public pressure in February was that we shouldn't say it, but now the public pressure is shifted because this other person that I, I like all now says the other thing. And that's not the way to have an objective moderation of anything. And that's been the problem since the beginning is these decisions weren't made, you know, technocratically, they were made because of public pressure, because also technocratically, they want every bit of information to be out there, because the more bits of information they have out there by tonnage, the more that they can advertise on. So every element moving in this direction is due to public pressure. And with this lab leak stuff, it was the road to hell being paved by good intentions. It was the elements of racial bias, it was elements of prejudice that they were trying to stamp out. And this was a conspiracy that led to it. We've continued to have these conversations of the necessary conversations about Asian hate, and these were tied into those. So the reason why you move in that direction is the public pressure that in that moment is relatively inarguable to a certain point of view, unless you have a religious doctrinal commitment to saying, we don't know. And so we're going to allow this conversation. Facebook doesn't have that. And now we're here. Yeah, it's it's who's in charge. Do you want to talk about the South Pole of the moon? Yes, please. Good. I mean, you don't really have a choice, but I thought I'd be nice. General Motors and Lockheed Martin announced a partnership Wednesday to put astronauts on the South Pole of the moon. Yeah. The joint project would develop next gen lunar terrain vehicles or LTVs for NASA's Artemis program with a plan for one female and one male astronaut on the moon South Pole by 2024 GM will develop an autonomous driving system and batteries for the vehicle. And the project is in anticipation of NASA's upcoming request for proposal for a lunar vehicle that can go significantly farther than a few miles. That's what they've done in the past and reach the rugged terrain of that South Pole of the moon. If the project is selected by NASA, it could be part of the first crewed mission. Moon mission since Apollo 17 back in 1972 to the moon to the South Pole of the moon. I think that's why everybody gets excited. It's like, it's not just the moon South Pole. Let me drive it around. That'd be nice. Do some donuts. Yeah. All right, let's check out the mailbag. We got a nice one from Dustin. We had talked about some Microsoft 365 updates. One of those was teams earlier this week and asked folks, if you do a lot of work within teams, do write in and let us know what you're stoked about. Dustin says, I work for a large company, Fortune 50. We have we are heavy users of teams. I'm on eight to nine hours of teams calls per day. We've collapsed many functions into teams, but one of the external data features I could see very handy just as an example would be to allow people to pull in their LinkedIn information into their company org chart, which entirely lives in teams. Frequently, I find myself looking at departments org chart and teams and trying to find somebody to help with a particular issue. So seeing say a proficient in this or they used to do this in their profiles would be immensely helpful. So I don't get bounced around to four to five people just to find somebody with the skills I actually need. That's great. I totally understand that a little more now. Thanks to Dustin. Also, Thor and Mohan were among a few people. I think Alan char also pointed this out. But we'll read Thor's email to represent all of you. Thor in Norway wanted to add to the conversation on the Steam Pal. If it does actually hit the market running Linux, some Windows games may still be played on Steam via Steam's proton. And we didn't mention that yesterday. It's a compatibility layer for Microsoft Windows games to run on Linux based operating systems and several games work quite well for anyone moving over to a Linux OS. I recommend checking out proton db.com. It's a list slash database of how well a given game runs under proton based on user reviews. Apologies for for for not mentioning that in our discussion yesterday. But thanks everybody for being really nice and pointing it out as added information. Really appreciate that. Indeed. If you ever have feedback on anything we talk about feedback at daily tech news show.com is where to send your most burning questions or thoughts or anything at all. Shout out to patrons at our master and grandmaster levels today. They include Dr X 17 Linnell Lane and Tim deputy. We'd also like to send a special thanks to Miss Music Teacher, who's one of our top lifetime supporters for DTNS. Thank you for all the years of support Miss Music Teacher. And by the way, want to hear your name on this here very show become a patron. We promise we will include you at the end of a show. We do for always shout out the new bosses. So you want to hear your name on the show tomorrow become a boss right now. Just do it. There's an ironclad way to make sure it's done. Thanks to Justin Robert Young for being with us today. Justin, you are ironclad in many ways. But what can people expect from you these days? Well, you can do more than expect. You can you can depend on an episode of politics, politics, politics that was released yesterday featuring the one and only Tom Merritt talking about cybersecurity. We had a great conversation about where the federal government can and should go in terms of key infrastructure and also beyond that, whether or not there should be broader federal protections for ransomware because it has become more of an issue. Tomorrow's episode features a great conversation that pursuant to what we were just talking about today with Joe Yuzinski of the University of Miami. He's the author of the book American conspiracy theory, one of our favorites. But not only do we talk about this lab league situation, but also in general, exactly how much social media is affecting misinformation and the belief, fanning the beliefs of conspiracy theories and spoiler alert, it might be less than you think. Well, we are live on this show Monday through Friday at 4 30 p.m. Eastern 2030 UTC. That's no spoiler. You already knew that, but if you want to join us live, find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We're back tomorrow with Shannon Morse and Len Peralta. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com.