 Coming up on DTNS, why you might want to pay for a game about to become free, a vulnerability that could melt your phone and whether Sony or Microsoft have your best gaming interests at heart. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, July 21, 2020 in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Joining us, we're very happy to have producer and streamer Trisha Hershberger back on the show. Welcome, Trisha. Hi, guys. Thank you so much for having me. It's exciting to be back. It has been too long. It has been way too long. Thanks for coming back. We've got some good gaming news. We've got some good hacks to talk about. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Adobe announced Monday that Mark LaVoy, the researcher who led the computational photography technology used in Google's Pixel phones, will join Adobe with efforts, quote, centered on the concept of a universal camera app. Now, Adobe already offers the Photoshop camera app. The Lightroom app also has a camera inside as well. So it remains to be seen, but it sounds like there are big plans in the works. LaVoy will report to Adobe CTO Abbey Parasnes. LinkedIn said Tuesday it would cut about 960 jobs or 6% of its global workforce. Lockdowns have had a sustained economic impact on the recruitment platform as many people have been hiring in greatly reduced numbers. Google's Nest Hub and Nest Hub Max now support Netflix. You can tell Google Assistant what should play or scroll through menus using the Nest Touch screen. Gesture control on the Nest Hub Max is supported for pause and resume playback as well. Spotify announced the global launch of Video Podcast Wednesday, which lets both free users and paying subscribers watch video contact from a select group of creator podcasts, at least for the moment. Spotify says users can also move between video and audio versions with audio content continuing to play in the background if you jump to another app or lock your phone or something. AMD is bringing its 7nm Ryzen 4000 chips built on the Zen 2 architecture to desktops. AMD will only provide the chips to manufacturers for pre-built machines at least at this point. Both the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 will use 7nm Zen 2 chips from AMD as well. Twitch reached an agreement with Entercom Communications to stream video simulcasts of top sports talk programs. First video streams on Twitch from the company will be from WEI Boston, WFAN New York, 105.3 The Fan in Dallas, Chicago's 670 The Score, 929 The Game in Atlanta, and 97.1 The Ticket in Detroit. After complaints about obscenity, vulgarity, and immorality, Pakistan has ordered the video app Beego Live to be blocked and issued a final warning to TikTok. Monday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 336-71 to bar federal employees from having TikTok on government-issued devices. The ban is part of the National Defense Authorization Act, which the Senate is expected to pass later this week. And for a few months, Uber has offered a service to give health officials access to data for COVID-19 contact tracing that's become public now. Service has been used by 40 locations outside the United States. Most U.S. states are not using the service. The Linux Foundation is also working on an open-source contact tracing software plan that uses the Apple Google Exposure Notification Platform. Part of that project includes COVID Shield offered to health agencies in Canada as a reference design for building apps, and COVID Green being used in Ireland where it has been adopted by a third of the population in just about two weeks. Alright, let's talk a little bit more about that melty phone thing I would keep talking about. Alright, let's. Security researchers at Tencent's Jean-Lou Lab published a vulnerability in the firmware for fast chargers that could lead to melting components or fires or other damage. Fast chargers detect how much voltage a device can handle and deliver the maximum safe amount. Bad power, as they call the exploit, tricks the firmware into delivering more volts than is safe. An attacker would need physical access to the charger for a few seconds or infect a smartphone or laptop that then infects the charger. Jean-Lou's team tested 35 chargers and found 18 of them were indeed vulnerable. Jean-Lou contacted all affected vendors. However, 18 of 34 fast charging chips analyzed couldn't be flashed with new firmware. Yeah, this is only for messing with people. It could turn into a vulnerability that gets data somehow, I suppose, but for the moment it's just a way to break phones. I mean, I suppose there might be some spy tactic where you want to stop someone from contacting someone so you hack their charger to melt their phone or something. But there are also people who just like to cause grief and that's probably where this would come about. Trisha, do you think this is something you're worried about? I'm not personally worried about it, but I could totally see, like if we're going to put the tinfoil hat on for just a second, I could totally see a major corporation sending people out to try to exploit all the chargers of a competitor. So they can be like, oh, it's the Note 7 all over again. Too bad your phones stink and ours are awesome. But it was really like the secret conspiracy to just hack all of their chargers. Yeah, there's some kind of corporate espionage that makes total sense. I mean, what else would it be used for besides just trying to be a jerk? Or like injuring someone, legitimately injuring someone. Yeah, that's true because it could cause a fire. So you might plan to cause a fire and maybe burn down somebody's house with this. And there's some bad stuff you could do. I was not too worried about it when it said that you needed to have access to the charger. That's easier to keep control of, although people leave bags out and stuff, so normal rules apply there. But when they said it could be done through a malicious app on your smartphone, then it became something that I think more people have to guard against. Again, best practices of don't download things on your phone from sources you're not absolutely sure of apply just like any other kind of malware. I don't think you would see people doing this too often. And hopefully the folks who make these fast chargers will mitigate them, but it is disconcerting that some of the chips can't even be patched. So if you have a fast charger, you might want to look up that vendor list and maybe replace your charger. And update your firmware on your charger in some cases as well. After seemingly an endless parade of small announcements, we haven't been covering all of them because they were just coming out every day. OnePlus finally made the official announcement of the Nord phone. It is here. It is very similar as we expected to the OnePlus 8, the Nord or the OnePlus flagship phone, with a couple of differences. The similarities, though, are that the Nord has a 1080p OLED display, 90 hertz refresh rate, so pretty smooth. The sub six gigahertz 5G modem, that's the one that T-Mobile uses here in the U.S. Fast charging and a 48 megapixel main camera sensor. So what's different? What brings down the price is the slower Snapdragon 765G processor. That's actually the majority of it. It's got the cheaper slower processor, but also as a lower resolution wide angle camera. It's slightly smaller, 6.44 inch screen. It's not curved like the 8. It's got a more chunky look. The Nord is available in blue and gray with 8 gigabytes of RAM and 128 gigabytes for 399 euros or 12 gigabytes of RAM and 256 gigabytes of storage for 499 euros available August 4th in Europe and then coming soon to India. OnePlus also plans to do a limited beta launch in the U.S. and will offer some limited ways to get it earlier in Europe. They're talking about a pop-up store and some other promotions. OnePlus also announced the OnePlus Buds, wireless earbuds with 30 hours of battery life for 79 bucks or 89 euros available for pre-order now in India, Europe and the United States. So we can't buy it in the U.S. yet, Trisha, but if you could, would this be of interest to you? Save a few bucks. Get a nice phone. I don't know. I mean, I'm always kind of looking at what that mid-tier slash maybe more affordable phone is out there, not necessarily for myself because I like to dabble in the flagships, but for family members who are like, oh, hey, you know, for example, in the Pixel line, that's a really nice camera you have there. Yes. And you can get the exact same camera just with a little less of the stuff you're probably not using anyway for a few hundred dollars cheaper. So I'm always interested to see what they're going to do. And so if this is the one from OnePlus and the Nord, it's interesting because I do feel like the slower processor would affect everything in some way. So everyone would probably feel that a little bit, but if you're not used to a flagship with a higher processor anyway, it might be faster than what you already have. Yeah, I wonder if it would slow down faster over time. I know the Verge got their hands on it, you know, just for a limited amount of time and said it felt pretty snappy. And a lot of that they attributed to the fact that it's got a 90 hertz refresh rate. So, you know, it's got that buttery smooth motion that the OnePlus 8 has. But usually that chip stuff comes in as you build up apps, as you build up things in memory, as you build up processes over time. Although if you go for the 12 gigs of RAM for 499 euros, maybe that mitigates that somewhat, I don't know. But yeah, I'm curious what the major reviews once people have had time to spend with this will be. Does this appeal to you at all, Sarah? I mean, I don't know. I am actually in the market for a phone as my iPhone 10. I'm like, what do they even call it back then? The X, the 10? Yeah, that's what I got. It needs some help. I'm not necessarily looking to move to a different operating system at all. But we have talked about OnePlus kind of teasing this. It's going to be a mid-tier phone. It's going to be really different. It does not seem that different than, as you mentioned, a flagship phone like the OnePlus 8. It seems like a pretty great phone. And yeah, if you're looking to get into a market where people are like, well, I'm not going to spend 800 bucks or euros in this point, but I might spend 600, then maybe there's a market that's untapped. Yeah, I think that's a good point. And that's what OnePlus wants you to think. They want you to think that this is almost everything you get in a flagship phone, but for cheaper. They don't mind cannibalizing their own audience a little bit if they keep them. Yeah, I mean, honestly, that's how I felt between the Pixel 3 XL and the Pixel 3 and the Pixel 3a. And I know that we're all kind of waiting. Well, maybe not all of us, but the team Android folks like myself are patiently waiting the 4a news and what's going to come after that because the Pixel 3a was essentially the same as their flagships phones just for $300 less or something crazy like that. Let's talk robots, shall we? Let's do. All right, 25 Kiwi bots will begin delivering orders from Shopify and OrderMark in downtown San Jose and the Buena Vista neighborhood, which is adjacent to downtown San Jose. That's in California. Kiwi bot charges $3.99 per delivery, which can be absorbed or passed on to the end customer. Any Shopify or OrderMark business can choose to take advantage of the delivery robots or not. San Jose's transit agency will also be able to locate and monitor the robots in real time so they know where they are. They know where they're going. Kiwi bots are semi-autonomous, meaning humans do the path planning and take remote control at traffic crossings or if there are problems. So humans can step in at any point if necessary. Human operators manage up to three Kiwi bots at a time from headquarters in Columbia. Amazon also announced the expansion of its Scout robots to deliver to select customers in Atlanta and Franklin, Tennessee. So you might hear about the bigger company doing this, but it turns out we've got some bots from various companies that are on the ground right now. And I like what Kiwi bots is doing where they say, look, it's $3.99 per delivery. You can eat that cost if you're a restaurant or a store or you can pass it along. That's up to you. We're just providing the platform. We're providing the robots. We're sitting here in Columbia making sure the robots aren't driving out into traffic and keeping it safe. But if you're just, you know, Jason the Goatman operating your cheese restaurant in San Jose and you don't know how to deal with any of this, but you can use OrderMark to take orders, now you can choose the robot option and have your stuff delivered by robot. That's pretty cool. Do you want to start a restaurant so you can use robot deliveries to either one of you? The only time I've actually seen this work very successfully is at CES. And, you know, at CES. So, you know, I've had, you know, things delivered to my hotel room and I'm like, yay to the robot, you know. But it's, I love the idea of this happening more often. It obviously can only happen. It's kind of like autonomous cars, right? It's only going to happen in certain areas where I live right now. There aren't even sidewalks. Like there aren't going to be Kiwi bots coming up to my door anytime soon. But I do love the idea of the rollout and Tricia, I'm not sure how you feel about this as well. But in the world we live in, I just, I want to see, you know, little bots giving us the things, our little necessities as much as possible. Yeah. On one hand, I'm like, oh man, this is so cool. And on the other hand, I'm like, it's the animatrix. So I'm a little split on it, but definitely intrigued to watch and see what happens. Well, this next story won't make you feel any better. Scientists at MIT's Center for Advanced Virtuality have published a deep fake video of President Richard Nixon reading a speech that had been prepared in the event that the Apollo 11 moon landing had failed. So the speech was real. It's in the archives. They had it prepared in case something went wrong. And they made a deep fake of Nixon reading it as if it had actually happened. The project is called In Event of Moon Disaster. An actor read the speech to give it all the inflection and everything. And then the deep learning algorithm altered the voice to make it sound like Nixon and matched the facial movements to match the words. So it looked like President Nixon was reading it. The video was first presented at an art installation last autumn. So this is the first time it's been available on the internet. The full project aims to help people understand how deep fakes work, how to spot them, how to become aware of their potential misuse and more. The project was supported by a grant from Mozilla's Creative Media Awards. And you can explore that project over at moondisaster.org. You know, before the show, Tom, we were talking about, I was like, looks pretty real. And you're like, well, there's some things about the voice that might make you wonder if it is real. And I have to believe because this sort of stuff actually really scares me. And nothing has happened to the point where I'm like, look, look what horrible thing happened because of this deep fake. But it will. And really the only right thing to do is to make the public more aware of what is possible with technology. How to spot some inconsistencies. It's the same thing we talk about when we talk about something, me and Photoshopped. Even though it's video, so it's different. The technology is different and it's much more advanced at this point. I feel like the more we see stuff like this from research teams, the better off we are. Trisha, what do you think? Could not agree more. I love that they're doing this. I mean, deep fakes are a thing that have been on the internet for a long time. And a lot of people that work on the internet and are public facing can probably find deep fakes of themselves out there because there's so much video footage that exists on the internet of your face talking and moving. It's pretty easy to do, you know, people have all the information that they need. And so when you're someone who works in this space, like Tom was saying, you know, there are little things you can recognize and say, oh, that's obviously not real. But to the average person who is not in this space and believes what they see as real, this could be used to enormous detrimental effect, basically slander, like all sorts of different ways this could affect people. So the more we can educate people to say just because you see it doesn't necessarily mean that you should believe it and take it at face value. I think that's awesome. So educate, educate, educate. Great job at my team. After this summer, Rocket League will transition from being a game that you play for $19.99 to a free to play game. When that happens, Rocket League will disappear from Steam and release on the Epic Game Store. However, people who buy on Steam before then will still be able to play the game. And anybody who pays for Rocket League before it goes free gets legacy status, which includes all DLC titles, item upgrades, and some other perks. The game will also add cross-platform support for stats and purchases and unlocks through an Epic Games account. So Trish, what do you make of this? I mean, it's clear that they want to go free to play, but why wouldn't they leave free to play on Steam? Probably because of a deal that they have with Epic Games on the back end, that would be my guess. Epic has been doing a really strong job of pulling in developers and being very advantageous and lucrative for developers and publishers to choose Epic Games as opposed to Steam. And as someone who uses both stores, I was someone that was like, I don't want Epic Games for the longest time. I didn't play Fortnite, so it didn't matter. And I've been a Steam diehard for decades now. As someone who has since then used both stores in order to know enough about them to speak about them, Epic Games gives out free games all the time that are good. They get one-year exclusive on games coming up that you're excited to see, and they are making themselves almost a necessity for gamers worldwide. So I would assume that they probably sell the popularity of Rocket League, particularly with younger gamers. I feel like when Rocket League first came out, everybody of all ages was super into it, and it was the hot thing. Now most of the people that I see as your diehard Rocket League players skew a little younger. And if you're targeting that demographic, it's best to make it free to play because a lot of those people don't have their own credit cards. They might not have their own purchasing power of any sort, and it's much easier to get them when they can download it without asking mom or dad for a credit card. Yeah, and Epic Games recently, I can't remember if it's a distribution or publishing or whatever for Rocket League, so it makes sense. You know, they don't want Steam to get that money. They want to keep it in-house. And they're trying to do as much as possible not to anger people by saying you'll still be able to play it on Steam. You'll even get more cross-platform than you did before. You won't lose anything. You just won't be able to buy it anymore. So, I mean, Sarah was asking this question at the pre-show. I was wondering, too, like, is there a reason to buy Rocket League between now and the time they make it free to play? Like, why would you? I guess because they said anyone who does get legacy status, you would get all the DLC, all the titles, item upgrades, et cetera. So that's why, you know, that's what they're doing to entice you to buy it right now. But a lot of people that are the die-hards probably already have a lot of that stuff. Yeah, and this is mostly about people like, if you already have it, don't worry. You're going to be able to keep playing it. Hey, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to DailyTechHeadlines.com. Last Thursday, we mentioned that Microsoft's Project XCloud Game Streaming Service will arrive in September as a free add-on if you pay for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Microsoft Xbox Chief Phil Spencer said at the time that XCloud will eventually be available separately from Game Pass Ultimate, but that's how it's going to launch. This follows Microsoft saying that for the first year at least, Xbox Series X games will also be available on PC, Xbox One, and XCloud. So they're trying to make a game situation where it doesn't matter what you have, as long as it's Microsoft, you can play the game. The backlash is that requiring developers to be compatible across the platforms could hold back Xbox Game Development, because they're having to develop for the lowest common denominator. That's the fear anyway. Phil Spencer told GamesIndustry.biz on July 10th. Frankly, held back is a meme that gets created by people who are too caught up in device competition, adding the highest fidelity PC games rival anything that anybody has ever seen in video games. So the idea that developers don't know how to build games or game engines or ecosystems that work across a set of hardware, there's a proof point in PC that shows that's not the case. And what the fact is, Sony's going to be perceived as having the highest quality games, since there will be many PS5 exclusives designed for that more advanced platform. Microsoft's betting that wide appeal, the fact that you can play it on anything, will make up for that. Tricia, who's right? Call it down. I have to preface any opinion that I give on this with I am a PC gamer. I have been a PC gamer first and foremost for, I don't know, since middle school, probably even younger than that. I do own consoles in my house because I work in the video games industry, so I have a Switch, I have a PlayStation, I have an Xbox. But as someone who's primarily a PC gamer, I love Phil Spencer's approach. I love what Xbox is doing. As someone who frequently comments on the industry as a whole, to a lot of people, it looks like Sony is winning the next-gen console wars because what we've always measured this in before is units sold, right? So we've looked and said Sony outsold the Microsoft, Microsoft outsold Sony, and that's who the winner is of this console generation. Whereas Microsoft isn't even taking that strategy at all. In fact, in a, you know, post-pandemic, if we make it out of this recession, where people probably won't be able to afford a huge beefy new console, I'm even more for the Xbox approach where we want our games to be accessible to everyone, no matter what console you have. I think that's incredibly gamer-friendly for a wide array of reasons. Also saying cross-play, cross-platform play through all of those things, again, is incredibly gamer-friendly. So I think it's more the traditional console wars I'm fighting for my home team mentality that's giving them that backlash right now because Phil's right. There's a proof point that people can design games across a variety of different hardware that are going to look supremely beautiful on the highest tier set of hardware. Now that being said, everyone I talk to when you're like, hey, are you going to get an Xbox Series X or are you going to get a PS5? Everyone says, well, I'm going to get a PS5 because I need those exclusives. So Sony's strategy works, but I think that Microsoft's strategy is more gamer-friendly in the long run. Yeah, and there's the idea of the loss leader, right? Like Microsoft will sell a lot of games because you can still buy the game on the console you have or the rig that you have versus having to upgrade, but they might not sell as many consoles at the gate. What do you think of this though? I think this plays into it a little bit too. When we were talking about XCloud being part of Ultimate Game Pass last week, we brought up the idea that a lot of these game systems, Stadia or Crucible for Amazon, are demonstrations of cloud power. And if you consider that such an Adela says, cloud, particularly Azure, is the be all end all of Microsoft. That's everything points to that. That's where they make all their money. I can see them backing out a calculation where they're saying, well, what shows our cloud prowess something like XCloud? So let's give it away. Let's just give it to people as an add on. We don't need to make money. What else shows cloud? A lot of gamers. Well, it doesn't matter if we sell the new console, as long as we have a lot of gamers out there playing our games, whether it's on XCloud or their older devices, and it's all leading towards Azure. Do you think that that's part of it? Me? Yeah, I definitely think that's part of it. I think that's a really good theory to go the Azure route. But honestly, I just think that they are trying to do things gamers have been asking for for years to go in a different direction, whereas Sony is going the direction that we've been used to forever and a lot of people still rely on and in their gut, they feel like that's how you do games. So it's certainly a gamble on Microsoft's part and they probably will face negative press when the numbers for the next gen console sales numbers come out and Sony appears to be way in the lead. But it might be a better long term play. Yeah. Also, I believe if I'm not mistaken, Sony is using Azure for their cloud gaming. So Microsoft kind of wins either way. Yes. And as I saw people saying in your live chat, Game Pass is a tremendous value so they can always lean back on that. And the people who are diehard Xbox people over PlayStation often say, yeah, you have exclusives, but we have Game Pass, which is this killer value. Well, thanks everybody who participate in our subreddits. Lots of game stories always there as well as others. You can submit stories and vote on others. Let them rise to the top so we can all see them and know what you care about. DailyTechnewshow.Reddit.com. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. This one comes from Nick and says, in the details about that Twitter hack, talked about it last week, ad nauseam, they were discussed on today's show. He's talking about Monday's show yesterday. What Nick found most interesting is that the hackers went after eight non-verified users. Nick says, I have to wonder who were these eight non-verified users? Were they just eight random people that hackers used as a test? Were they maybe people that are enemies of a government? I could see something like the Chinese government potentially targeting eight dissonants and then trying to cover up the attack by making it look like some young experienced hacker out to try and make some cash. Yeah, you can come up with a lot of scenarios. And what seems most likely based on the work by Brian Krebs in the New York Times is that sim swappers from the OG users forum, which we talked about last week, were after short user names because that's what OG users are. Short user names like at six, the former Adrian Lamo account. So my guess is those eight non-verified users were all those short accounts that they were trying to get for the glory of it, for just showing that they had owned one of those OG accounts. I don't know that, we'll have to wait and see, but that seems to fit the facts best and explains why they went for non-verified because they had status for owning those accounts in another way. Shout out to patrons at our master and grandmaster levels, including Michael Akins, Chris Allen, and Jeffrey Zilks. Also big, big thanks to Trisha Hershberger for being with us as you mentioned at the top of the show. It has been way too long. We missed you. We're so glad to have you back on the show and let folks know what else you're up to. Yeah, again, thank you guys so much for having me. This was a nice break to come and just chat with y'all. I miss you guys. And you let me talk about gaming, which you know is my passion, so thank you. Yeah, if people want to find me online, I am that girl Trish with no I in the girl, so just that GRL Trish. Pretty much everywhere on all the major social media platforms with the exception of YouTube and Twitch, where it's just my full name, Trisha Hershberger, all lowercase, all in word. And I have been mostly streaming on Twitch through all of this. So my YouTube has taken a back seat in the last couple of years to my Twitch. So come on by if you like hanging out on Twitch. Come visit twitch.tv. Trisha Hershberger and I'll see you there. Thanks, everybody, for supporting the show. There's so many ways you can support. Just listening to the public feed with the ad supports the show. If you want to support us more and really like feed the bottom line and get rid of the ads, you can support us on Patreon, patreon.com. We also have cool stuff in our store. We have mugs, we have hoodies, and we have masks. You want to wear DTNS on your face? We can cover that need. Go to dailytechnewshow.com slash store and have a look around. Our email addresses feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. 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