 This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you, including DeGrasier Daniels, Erwinster and Ken Hayes. Coming up on DTNS, Section 230 hangs in the balance of sorts. Do we need AR laptops? And Dr. Nikki Ackermanns has the latest on Smell-O-Vision. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, May 18th, 2023. From Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. From Lovely Cleveland, Ohio, I'm Rich Drafilano. I'm from Sweet Home, Alabama. I'm Dr. Nikki Ackermanns. And the show's producer, Roger Che. Good stuff. We're all here in various parts of the world. Nobody's having any tornadoes, so to speak, you know? Let's see how we fare by the end of the show. But first, let's start with some quick heads. Montana Governor Greg Giaforte signed a law making it illegal to distribute TikTok in app stores within the state. The bill bans downloads of the app but doesn't touch on app updates or web access. App store operators face a fine of $10,000 per violation per day, though citizens won't face fines under that law, which goes into effect on January 1st, 2024. And even after that, people in Montana can continue to use TikTok if they already have it on their devices. TikTok says it will fight the ruling but didn't announce definite plans for a lawsuit. Internet Trade Association NetChoice, which is fighting laws regulating speech in Texas and also Florida, called the Montana law unconstitutional. Governor Giaforte also directed the state's chief information officer to ban Telegram, WeChat, the shopping app T-MU, and ByteDance-owned CapCut on government devices as well. At its YouTube Brandcast event, a can't miss event, YouTube announced it will start running 30-second, unskippable ads before top-performing content when watching it on a connected TV. These ads will be available in YouTube Select, which targets the top 5% of content on the platform, so this will be ads for top-performing content. There's a reason for the new ad format because it turns out 70% of YouTube Select impressions come from TV. So the top content is getting watched on TVs and they want to put unskippable ads in front of it. YouTube will also start testing ads that show up when you pause video. Nvidia launched its mid-range GPUs based on the Ada Lovelace architecture. The good news, no price increase over the previous generation. The less good news is that the cards only offer mild performance increases. The RTX 4060 Ti starts at $299 for 8GB of RAM coming on May 24th. The 16GB 4060 Ti costs $499. The $299 4060 will go on sale in July. Well, we know how the cookie will crumble, or at least the third-party variety. Google announced some plans to roll out its privacy sandbox its replacement for third-party cookies. This is designed to group users into cohorts based on browsing patterns while letting users manage their interests and is designed to provide greater privacy and anonymity. In early 2024, Google will migrate 1% of Chrome users to privacy sandbox and disable third-party cookies. Google says this will provide real-world data to assist developers in getting ready for the change, which is still planned for the second half of 2024. The company consulted with the UK's Competition and Markets Authority on the rollout plan to get ahead of regulatory headwinds on the rollout. A lot of people say in 1% that's nothing. When you're Google, that's something. OpenAI published a chat GPT app on the iOS app store in the US offering almost the same functionality as the web version, but supporting speech input using OpenAI's whisper speech recognition system. The app will roll out to other markets in the coming weeks. But don't worry, OpenAI ended their blog post announcing it with P.S. Android users, you're next. Chat GPT will come into your devices soon. Pominous. Phew! No, we're good. Alright, let's talk politics. The US Supreme Court issued its rulings in two cases that affect Section 230. That's the safe harbor law in the US. We've talked about this on DTNS quite a bit in the past, but Rich, let's talk about the first situation that is unfolded. Yeah, so let's break down Twitter versus Atomna. The court dismissed the allegations that Twitter violated the US Anti-Terrorism Act by failing to remove posts before a deadly attack. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion for the unanimous decision, so everybody's on board, saying that Twitter's failure to police content was not a quote affirmative act. He made comparisons between Twitter and things like email and cell phone service, pointing out that phone carriers are not liable for illegal drug deals made over their phones, just using the infrastructure. Specifically regarding Twitter, he wrote, there are no allegations that defendants treated ISIS any differently from anyone else. Rather, defendants' relationship with ISIS and its supporters appears to have been the same as their relationship with their billion-plus other users. Arm's length, passive, and largely indifferent. So basically, Twitter is not preferencing that content in any way, just treating it the way it would any other. He even touched on the main issue from the other case, algorithmic recommendations. He wrote, quote, the algorithms appear agnostic as to the nature of the content, matching any content, including ISIS's content, with any user who is more likely to view that content. The fact that these algorithms match some ISIS content with some users thus does not convert defendants' passive assistance into active abetting. So again, this kind of distinction between active assistance. We saw affirmative act earlier and then passive business as usual actions here. So as we said, back in February, after the oral arguments, the decision on Twitter would have an effect on Google. So Sarah, can you break down how that went? I can. Okay. So in Gonzales versus Google, the plaintiff alleged that YouTube was on the hook for terrorist content because its recommendation algorithm constituted editorial selection and therefore should be considered direct speech and not covered by Section 230 protections. In an unsigned opinion, the court wrote that the quote, liability claims are materially identical to those at issue in Twitter also saying since we hold that the complaint in that case fails to state a claim for aiding and abetting, it appears to follow that the complaint here likewise fails to state such a claim. And we therefore declined to address the application of Section 230. So the claims in Gonzales were also dismissed. What stood out for me looking in some of the either back from the oral arguments or now looking and looking at those from the lens of this ruling is kind of a seems like a universal agreement among the justices or a lot of the justice kind of across the ideological spectrum in that they really think this is something Congress needs to take care of. But at the same time that this law is kind of exceeding whatever like this. This law is providing more coverage than it was originally intended back in 1996 when the telecommunications telecommunications Decency Act was first passed. So this interesting act, but we saw statements from back in February, Justice Kagan and Justice Kavanaugh basically saying like this really needs to go to Congress for, you know, to actually like clarify where we think the line for liability should be in a lot of these cases. Nikki, I don't know how much you've been following the stuff, but what what is your take on where we are today? I mean, I've been following it very lightly on the surface. So my take may not be super insightful, just that like it's complex and and it'll be interesting if it does go to Congress, because we saw what happened with TikTok that nobody really knows what they're talking about. So it's a little bit worrisome in that aspect. But I tend to agree that like the platform can't control every single thing that people are saying on there. And so. Right. And that's what every platform will tell you. Right. We can't we can't possibly do this. I thought Justice Thomas's notes that, you know, putting Twitter in a different category from something like email or cell phone service, where I mean, who are you going to sue? Who are you going to be made liable for the sort of thing can be very convoluted? That said, you know, platforms have been have been pushed towards doing more of this for some time now. Yeah, this this doesn't undermine 230, but it really just sidesteps the issue and really points the finger. The fact that like we don't know what to do. Yeah. Well, it's interesting in the in the first case, the Twitter versus Tom in a case in that they basically say like using the infrastructure of these platforms does not constitute active abetting, right? So like it sets a very high bar for being like you have to if you're going to sue, especially under the U.S. Anti-terrorism Act, you're going to have to show that there was some sort of beyond just, you know, beyond just recommending content or using their services to say that it's not enough for a failure of moderation, right? For this for this content to be available. It's more that it has, you know, there has to be something beyond that something more active. I think Justice Thomas was very clear on that. All right. Well, one of the big stories that we've been covering over the past couple of years really are the big promises of augmented reality. Many headsets released in the speculated have promised all sorts of things. One of the big ones though, the ability to eliminate fixed screens kind of using AR for your screens. We've seen AR and mixed reality headsets from Microsoft, Meta, Magic Leap and companies that don't start with M that offer this kind of functionality. The startup, Sightful, is taking this to a little bit of another level with their new Spacetop device described as an augmented reality laptop. They're claiming the first. I don't think anyone's disputing them on that one. Basically, it's a laptop, no screen. Instead, it has a hardware set of customized and real glasses that the company claims offer a 100 inch equivalent screen inside the laptop. It offers 2020 Android flagship specs. The SOC is a couple of years old and it's running a custom Spacetop OS didn't find a lot of details about that's Android or something else underneath here. Nikki, the idea of, hey, let me throw out some glasses. I have my own private 100 inch screen. Does that seem more appealing than, I don't know, a 13 or 15 inch laptop? You know, I feel like we might run into the Google Glass problem where it's just like people don't like wearing stuff on them. I don't, I mean, I don't know. I might be wrong, but like I don't necessarily want to wear glasses for my office all day. I feel like that'll give me a headache. Like when I'm going to watch 3D at the movie theater, I could be totally wrong. And this might be way better than a screen, but it feels gimmicky right now. And I'd be interested to see where it's going. You know, so, okay. You know, I love VR AR. I want it to succeed. I think I want it to be good, right? That's, yeah, I, I, I, there are certain use cases that I think work really well. As far as, I don't know, replacing my laptop, oh, hard sell. But, you know, if I'm thinking of, okay, my, my screen is, you know, what I'm wearing on my head. Let's just say that I'm fine with that. You know, I'm going to have to have a keyboard of some kind or some extremely good within the VR experience keyboard. Can I work? Can I use less space in my house? You know, is this something that can be put away more easily? You know, laptops are, you know, we're all used to that. So it's like, I mean, a laptop isn't taking up a lot of space. You know, and if you're using some sort of a situation where I'm using now, I'm like, I've got a big desk. I have all sorts of things. So that would be different. But something that, and also, I mean, call me crazy. But when I, you know, crane down on my laptop all day, every day, sometimes I feel pretty crappy at the end of the day physically, you know, my neck hurts, that sort of thing. Could this be an ergonomic solution for some good way to sell it? Well, and an ergonomic and a privacy setting too, because I could imagine, you know, like they, you know, there are screen protectors of this day that will limit your, your field of view to like basically right in front of you. So if you're, you know, you're working on sensitive stuff in public or, you know, you know, you throw on these glasses, nobody can see you. That being said, one of the things that I've always loved this, this idea is going back to like the hollow lens, like, oh man, just throw screens everywhere. And you know, you don't, you can be totally untethered. But the key is the field of view. And the Virtus Monica chin notes, she had some hands on time with this, that the field of view, you can't see the whole 100 inch screen at any one point when you're like at a regular working distance from the laptop. So then you're like, she had instances where she couldn't find the mouse pointer, you know, because it was a part of the screen that she couldn't see and stuff like that. The other aspect of it is there's, it's 1080p resolution, which is good. But that's the max you're ever going to get. So if you're looking at the whole hundred and screen, it's a hundred inch 1080p screen. That's where a lot of these fall down. You know, this with the MediQuest Pro and some of that stuff. Like there's only so much real resolution you have, even if you virtually have this giant screen, like actually using it because you don't have that resolution gets a little tricky. I mean, I don't know 1080p sounds great to me, but maybe that's because that's all I know. Yeah. Well, but like, I think about it, I have a 65 inch 4k TV in my living room. But like, if I'm at a working distance of that, that it would work on a laptop. I imagine I would, you know, like depending on how many things I was trying to have. If I'm trying to have up like four different windows, like the whole idea is you're replacing multi monitor setups with this. I feel like that would get to you after a while at 1080 at up at a hundred with added in the boxed in effect, you know, with the field of view. Again, this sounds like it's very early access. Like it's a wired connection to these third party, you know, AR glasses. Who knows if this, you know, when the ships as a product, if there's any advancement on that in terms of that kind of stuff. So right, I like the idea. I do like the idea of let's let's use this to to expand the work surface. I just think I don't know if this is the thing as we've we've been seeing from sightful right now. Well, I bet that many people in our audience think something or other about this exact idea. Do you want your next laptop to be VR? And that's what you do. If so, email our thought your thoughts to us feedback at daily tech news show dot com. All right, for over a century, movie theaters inventors have all been twined with the idea of technology to release aromas, you know, things that you smell, aim to specific sequences during a film so the audience could smell what was happening on screen. I mean, olfactory senses are pretty big deal. The most famous was the smell of vision technology introduced in the 1960s movie, scent of a mystery. Well, a team at the City University of Hong Kong have developed a lightweight, flexible and wireless olfactory interface for use with VR experiences to deliver, hopefully precisely smells such as lavender, pineapple or green tea to users at appropriate time. So, you know, it, it, it, it makes somebody feel something. So Nikki, you've been following when the story explained to us what they are doing. Yeah, so, like you said, smell of vision and the in the 60s wasn't I wouldn't know if we would call it tech. Some of their solutions, we're putting a wad of cotton that was soaked in perfume and sticking it under the seat of the cinema or pumping perfume into the ventilation system which people said made them confused more than anything else. Overall it was kind of a bust but kind of remains in this sort of fixed in glass sci fi ideas. Personally, I have, I don't since forever always wanted to have some kind of smell recorder and emitter system. Like I've always dreamed of this this is why I put the story up here but like every time I make fresh baked cookies I want to text someone with the smell of the cookies Why can't we do this it doesn't seem that hard right. But so I'm a little bit skeptical about this because we haven't done it yet but so what are these people doing. So, I will explain. An article in nature came out by engineer shingo you and the colleagues at the University of Hong Kong, which developed this lightweight flexible all factory interface that should be delivering smells to VR users. They cite being able to emit smells like you said lavender but also things like durian coconut and pancake and mojito. So they went a little crazy with their smell testing there. But basically how it works is that you've got like a thick silicone band aid type thing under your nose, and there's little paraffin wax pads in there that are heated, they contain the odor, and they're heated by an electrode to melt at certain certain temperatures and then they'll release an odor straight into your nose. It actually has two versions so it's got this sort of band aid size version, and then it's got a bigger one that's more like a face mask. So the band aid one allows you to emit only two choices of odors and the bigger one has about nine. And they say that you can combine all these odors separately into about 30 different smells I don't know what happens when you combine durian and coconut milk but I don't know if I want to know. So Nikki I mean hearing all of this I'm like this is interesting you know I mean sense of smell for many of us is like ooh that's how you remember a memory. Yes. You know that's you know that's that's how you were catapulted back to 10 years ago at a certain time where you were driving down the road, you know, like so so so what is the goal. They have one of their main goals is selling it as VR. They do try to broaden it out and they say we could try and use this for applications that involve evoking emotions like you said, which is deeply connected to memory in the hippocampus in the brain and I actually covered this in my last class so I'm like all up to date on it right now, but they're suggesting this as an aid for depression. For example, you know trying to evoke positive memories to see if that would do anything. They also said that it could be a great tool for avoiding smelly environments. So if you work in a sewage plant maybe you could get one of these stick it under your nose. They also are trying to miniaturize the system and make it about 10 times smaller in future iterations because it is still, I think from the design right now it looks really not really practical. Maybe you have to. Yeah, the face mask is okay, but yeah. What is the response time look like for this because I know like smell just doesn't like travel the same like, you know, like we can turn on the light and it's like immediately hitting our eye like what yeah, how fast does that get around. So they managed to make it quite fast because it's directly under their under your nose they say it's about a second and a half which is pretty good. Considering until now any applications like this have just been like really miniaturized perfume bottles that'll basically like spritz something in your nose but this is actually melting and releasing odors. They didn't really clarify but I imagine you would have to replace the paraffin eventually because it evaporates. So, looks like again this is kind of just like the AR goggles in the sense that like it seems cool maybe it'll go somewhere I feel like I'd be down to test this but I don't know if we're there yet. At CES, they had like, I think it was Toshiba had these very interactive like VR suits right where it's like every element you know you could have a chest thing and arm thing so you could feel different you know to add that sense of touch and I could see next year, you know building on this because they already have like this crazy mask and stuff like that so you can you get face capture and stuff like that too. So I could imagine them adding the smell of it but it's the therapeutic stuff I think that really fascinates me because because you're absolutely right like that. That sense of smell to put you in a time and place like I know I am there with with certain things where I'm like oh I'm back I'm back in the NICU this is like I'm about to cry now or something like that. It happens real fast. I had never besides nostalgia until you said like this could combat something like depression you know or you know other you know issues where you know people are trying to kind of yeah get out of that this this makes a lot of sense. It makes sense. I'd be careful with this kind of thing so I'm interested to see where they go with this but yeah interesting. Well speaking of going somewhere. You're going to love this one Nikki North Carolina based company pair wise has edited the DNA of mustard greens engineering them to be less bitter than the original plant. If you are familiar with mustard greens, you might like them raw. People say no no no can't do that. So it's the first crisper edited food on the US market. That's that's notable pair wise says it hopes that consumers could start choosing something like these less pungent greens over less nutritious options like iceberg and butter lettuce. Not to throw all the other lettuce under the bus. But it turns out the mustard greens just have a lot more vitamins in them so you know the pair wise is saying you should eat more of it. If you don't like it we're going to help you the greens will initially be in select restaurants and outlets in the Minneapolis, St. Paul region, St. Louis, Springfield, Massachusetts pair wise says it plans to bring them to grocery stores the summer didn't have a lot of details on that but said likely in the Pacific Northwest. Always a good place for the biggest sort of now pair wise also says after tackling mustard greens, they would like to improve fruits, creating seedless blackberries pitless cherries for example. How do we feel about this. I, I like this because people freak out about this kind of thing when this is just accelerated natural selection like you could have bred this out of mustard greens. Part of me is like if you don't like mustard greens don't eat mustard greens but right apparently they're more nutrition. So you know you have you have it in here like just so you know these aren't GMOs genetically modified organisms that is made by adding genetic material from a different organism into this material into this organization. Right, right. People get a little weirded out about that sometimes. I don't really have to. I think the only danger that this would have is if they're planting this somewhere and the seeds escape and cross pollinate with other seeds of mustard greens. You might get some not spicy enough mustard greens, but it's not going to go in and crisper your skeleton or whatever so don't worry about that part. Now Rich, I don't know how you feel about mustard greens or salad in general. I mean, I'm a salad fan. I'll eat all salad. I love mustard greens. Me too. You know, when they they use the example of like, maybe you could, you know, you know, take the place of iceberg lettuce. I'm like iceberg lettuce has no taste at all. But do not come from my butter lettuce. Okay, we are going to have butter lettuce is fire. Take your take your iceberg. That's fine. We're good. We have peace there but don't come from my butter lettuce. I mean, if you're if you're someone who says like, I love iceberg lettuce, don't that that's not what this is about. This is about making people who, you know, maybe, I don't know, I mean, let's use the, you know, more accessible lettuce. Yeah, like more accessible lettuce. Exactly. Accessibility lettuce. Like if they could, you know, I'm thinking like kale, for example, you know, characteristically very bitter or something like that. They could do something like that and you could, you know, it makes it easier for, for some people to enjoy it. That's great. Where they need to go though, cilantro. Okay. For the people, the non cilantro people rich if they can, if they can breed, you know, make emails about this one. They can crisper the cilantro to make it non soapy for the soapy cilantro people. Are you a soapy cilantro person? I am not. I love the cilantro. I will eat a sprig of it. But people do. With my butter lettuce. My butter lettuce. You know what? That is a great use for this. That's what I'm saying. Make cilantro not taste like soap. There we go. And make everybody have a better taco today. I'm surprised they didn't start with that honestly. Cilantro peace paralyzed. We're counting on you. No crap. All right. Let's check out the mail bag. Okay. So this one comes from Jeremy talking about companies who are trying to put VR in cars. Not the car companies themselves, but we spoke with Alisson Charity yesterday about a meta specifically saying, yeah, yeah, people want that. Jeremy says autonomous customers have to do something when they're in cars and they're not driving and potentially even data could be sold through the 5G or 6G connections besides data collection. Funny how you talked about this. The same show as the Tesla autopilot. Yeah. Well, Jeremy, we didn't put the two and two together. We didn't not do it. But, but yeah, at first I was like, no, no, somebody still has to be, you know, operating the vehicle. But if you are talking true autonomous, you're sitting in the back seat, even if you're sitting in the passenger seat, maybe that does give somebody something else to do. Sure. Why? Why not? More options the merrier as long as there's no motion. Yeah. All right. Well, Michael sent an email and he's been one the way to hail an Uber with a phone call. He writes in, he says, I'm not completely blind but pretty close. There are several incidents when I'm outside and the, you know, son's not being my friend. I'm trying to order a ride having a number and then say, you know, hey Siri call Uber and hopefully the call can just operate like, hi, Michael, are you at address blank and want to be picked up. And you could say, you know, give some direction, you know, give some more specificity and then get a direction that, hey, John and a red Honda Civic will arrive in five minutes. So that would be Michael's ideal interaction with that kind of a system and Michael's also hopes he can record more info. For the driver. Yeah. For the driver saying, I'm visually impaired wearing an orange baseball cap, green jacket, you know, giving some more information and some context. Please come to me instead of me trying to find you. Yeah. Michael, I love this idea to make that happen. You know, that would be a real big boon for people with a visual and a whole bunch of disabilities. Me too. Michael, I'm glad you wrote in when Tom and Allison and I were, you know, kicking this around yesterday. We were like, this will obviously be good for a lot of people. But this is a really good use case of Michael being like, this would help me so much instead of having to like navigate a nap, you know, whether he's in the sunshine or not. And, you know, and just, you know, having other options is good for accessibility. Absolutely. Well, Dr. Nikki Ackermans, you are great for our accessibility because you tell us all the nice things every time that you're on the show. You always bring the knowledge. Let folks know where they can keep up with your work. Yes, ma'am. They can find me at nicoleackermans.com. Pretty simple. And I'm pretty active on Twitter these days still at Ackermans, Nicole. So that's it. Very cool. 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Talk to you then.