 Coming up on DTNS. Are you surprised that Huawei built a spy network in North Korea? Dora Dash continues to keep its drivers tips and picking a fight with the AI This is the Daily Tech news for Monday July 22nd 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Eric and from studio feline I'm Sarah Lane and from a sweltering LA County area. I'm the show's producer Roger Chang we just had a wonderful conversation about appreciating flight attendance and The salt content of V8 if you want good day internet the expanded show where you get a little more of us letting our hair down You can subscribe and become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS Let's start with a few tech things you should know The FTC announced a settlement with Equifax over its 2017 data breach that exposed personal and payment information on 147 million Americans Canadians and British nationals Equifax will pay at least $575 million submit to third-party assessments every two years and invest $1 billion to improve security the fine could reach up to $700 million with up to $425 million to compensate consumers and pay for credit protection services for those affected 175 million paid to 48 states and 100 million to the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau if this sounds like a lot of money Well, the settlement marks the largest fine ever levied by the FTC No more need to control shift escape or use that activity monitor to find out how much of your memory Slack has taken up because the latest update for Windows and Mac OS claims to launch 33% faster and use 50% Less RAM than before Slack won't create a standalone copy for each workspace as it's done in the past Which is one of the reasons that aid in dolly Iran Kenya has launched the largest wind power farm on the African continent surpassing those in Morocco, Ethiopia and South Africa already in business the Lake Taranka Window Power Farm will generate around 310 megawatts from 365 turbines and increase the country's electricity supply 13% around 70% of Kenya's national electricity currently comes from renewable sources like hydro power and geothermal What's that released its app for chaos phones? That's Kai OS which is used on phones like the Nokia 8110 Previously it had been released only on select phones like Geophone in India The app can be downloaded from the Kai store on phones with at least 256 megabytes of RAM and Includes the ability to text and make voice calls along with end-to-end encryption. So it's got the basics It'll come pre-installed on some chaos phones starting in Q3 ASUS announced the ROG Phone 2 with a 6.59 inch 1080p OLED display at 120 hertz that supports 10-bit HDR and claims 49 milliseconds touch response time inside the ROG Phone 2 has a snapdragon 855 plus 12 gigs of RAM and up to 512 gigabytes of internal storage A 48 megapixel camera and a 6000 milliamp battery The ROG Phone 2 global model will launch in the first week of september although no pricing announced as of yet All right, let's talk a little more about microsoft sinking a billion dollars into open ai remember open ai no longer a non-profit It's a capped profit company So a certain amount of money can be paid back to investors while open ai itself remains non-profit Open ai is getting the money from microsoft to help develop artificial general intelligence. That's come sometimes now abbreviated as agi It's an ai that can do things on its own without being supervised on what to do. It can be widely Applied to widely distributed economic benefits among other things as part of the investment the two companies will develop new ai technologies for azure And open ai will train and run ai models on azure While open ai will license technology to microsoft to commercialize and sell to partners significant move for open ai in that It doesn't want to sell products It needs more money as do all the deep mind does too as ai becomes more powerful It needs more computing resources and those computing resources get more and more expensive So this solves two problems for open ai. They don't have to go and try to sell things Because they're going to get this money from microsoft They get to use some of microsoft azure resources Which gives them some computing resources to run their experiments and allows them to keep that capped profit model so that they continue to meet the mission which is to try to Safely develop ai so that benefits humanity Yeah, one of my questions when I when I read the story was okay. It's called open ai Understood that it is a capped profit company And there is more capital needed to make sure that the company continues to to to to Evolutionize what they're doing got it. Does anybody feel like this is a sell-out kind of a situation? Working with microsoft obviously microsoft benefits very much and open ai Open ai is very you know, it's it's it's it is it is an effort that That many in the industry think is is is a good one Well, yeah, I think a lot of people have hoped that open ai would provide a safe route to handle ai and get its benefits Especially people like elan musk who worry about ai if it is done wrong And that's one of the reasons elan musk is giving money to open ai But it's a great question when open ai went to the capped profit model A lot of people were very upset about that because it lessened the purity of its of its non-profit mission I wonder if microsoft joining this makes that worse or not or if it's like no they you know when they did cap profit We knew stuff like this would happen. At least it's microsoft this not time and not another not a worse company I don't know if you have a thought on how you feel about microsoft dropping a billion dollars into open ai Send us an email feedback at dailytechnewshow.com Analyst ben shactor noticed that the dating app tinder launched a new default payment process And it's android app that bypasses the google play payment system Users instead directly enter their credit card information into the app itself Once it's entered the option to choose google play as a payment method is removed In an email statement match group spokeswoman justine saco stated quote We will always try to provide options that benefit the user experience and offer payment options is one example of this Yeah, this is a this is a very interesting test case For the google play model as we all know Everybody's frustrated with apple because they say you use our payment model and give us 30 or 15 in some cases Or you can't have subscriptions or payments at all in your app the Alternative is to take all your subscriptions and payments as amazon does on the web And then they can show up in your app, which is not good for consumers google play has never done that But at the same time a lot of companies have just continued to use the google play payment system because they liked it tinder's pushing that boundary and i'll be curious if This works for tinder will more companies start to offer their own payments within will google then be tempted To go more the apple route and crack down on that Or will it not really catch on and people realize it's you know Nice or not to have to build it yourself and would that affect apple If if they showed like look you can let people take their own payments and most people won't because they don't want to have to deal with it I mean my first question is what is tinder charging for i don't know it's probably some Some plus i figured you would know that i assume they charge like for for membership perks Well, I don't um There's usually more. Yeah, you you you you're able to reach somebody and it In a different way there's a crease your number of matches you can look at at a time. Yeah, exactly exactly Yeah, you it probably just sort of widens the widens the uh The pool the the the eventual pool. Yes of tinder folks that you might be talking to but yeah, this is it it's interesting and we do talk about The you know the apple model of this and companies trying to get around it every so often So yeah, it's interesting to see but how how how this will play out for tinder Uh throne walled says you might be able to go back to someone you said no to and change your mind if you pay Oh Yeah, that's Been there throne walled The washington post and north korean analysis site 38 north published a joint report claiming that huawei partnered with chinese government owned panda information technology To build the north korean cell phone network coriolink back in 2008 huawei apparently provided the network equipment and uh managed uh some of the management systems and encryption systems Uh of coriolink while panda provided the software and actually took the gear Into north korea coriolink prevents domestic users from reaching the internet or making international calls While interestingly foreign visitors to north korea are prevented from making local calls Or viewing the state run internet so people in north korea get one thing people from outside north korea get an entirely different thing It does use huawei supported interception gateways to intercept calls text data and faxes for they think Around 5 000 targets, although it could be more huawei says it has no business presence in north korea And uh in fact the zte supported keng song network is much larger in north korea Huawei may have included us made gear in that equipment though Maybe some chips, you know and some boards If that gear made up more than 10 percent of a device It would have violated us export rules. So there's a question about that Meanwhile huawei told yahoo finance it expects to ship 270 million phones this year and become the world's second largest Phone maker so it does not seem to be daunted by the restrictions placed on it by the us which seem to be being eased right now But going back to this washington post story My first reaction had been well Somebody had to i mean if north korea has a cell phone network Someone had to build it and it's not a shocker to me that be someone who built it was a chinese company because China's kind of north korea's only ally Yes, there's a question of if they had more than 10 percent of us content in those devices That could be a violation of trade policy But it's not shocking or even controversial to me that huawei would build a north korea network I do think that the idea that they created Some intercept technology would be interesting to know for sure Because that would be our first clear evidence that huawei has developed that technology that kind of backdoor technology for its devices That people fear it could use in other parts of the world Yeah, I mean The whole huawei plus north korea together, you know makes for a lot of panic, right? If if if there is a bunch of hardware that was provided to the north korean government, right? Which is what is running most of north korea as far as telecoms go Then sure it has to come from somewhere The fact that it's huawei is you know, it's easy for people to say well, you know Now now now look at huawei's doing but if there is not a back and forth going on with with yes what these these um Variety of of hardware equipment could do then I I'm not sure Why it's a huge deal I I I guess it's a huge deal if it breaks trade law and it could be a huge deal if it in fact They developed something specifically for north korea that could be used exactly exactly if they if that's what happened Well, that's different But the fact that there's equipment in the in the country itself Not sure that it is caused for For outrage at this point maybe maybe not I mean panda information technology Which is state owned is the one that did all the configuration they they created the software It's as likely as not that panda did the intercept technology and and huawei just made it possible I don't know if that makes you feel better or not But uh most of the stuff that would be really controversial for huawei to do could have been done by panda Since panda said look, we're just going to buy the equipment from huawei We'll take it into the country and get it all set up for you yeah And at the risk of sounding like some sort of like huawei apologist You know, I don't know what's going on here. Um, I'm trying to think of like what is the what what is the scenario that is That is least upsetting to everybody. Yeah, and what what what is actually going on instead of Jumping on something and saying like oh because it has this name in it We must panic Let's let's wait and and not panic unless we have a reason to panic And I don't know that there's too much reason to panic here. There are a couple points for concern though And I think that's worth paying attention Speaking of panic. Well potential panic. Anyway, china's bite dance maker of tiktok Perhaps you've heard of it plans to open a data center in india to address concerns over indian user data Particularly from tiktok users being stored in overseas places such as singapore and the us tiktok has more than 300 million users In india now india's ministry of information and technology has asked bite dance to explain How it collects that user data tiktok was briefly banned in india in april you might remember that by a court directive That was shortly overturned Yeah, there's there's a whole political aspect of this Involving the ruling party and some feelings of nationalism and whether in how that's feeding tiktok There's also just the generalized fear of what the new technology is doing to our kids that happens in every country Regarding tiktok and other social networks. So it's a kind of a complex situation. It'll be interesting to see if Merely opening a data center in india and saying great. We won't store your data overseas It's all going to be here under your government's control Helps to dampen that tiktok. I mean bite dance had a big win when they got that court directive overturned Because it looked pretty bad for them when they when they got banned originally So they must have some sway and influence To get treated fairly if that's any indication It's also it it's interesting that you know, I I sort of liken this and I know I'm an old person So tiktok is not really in my wheelhouse these days, but I think about you know a social network that's hot with the kids Uh in the u.s Nobody is like hey is the data center not in the u.s. That's what we're worried about It's more of like kids are doing crazy things on social networking and parents can't keep track of it So the the fact that this is something that could perhaps Uh, you know sort of squash some some some some some upset feelings over tiktok is really interesting Yeah, I mean we don't worry about the data center not being in the u.s. Because they're almost always in the u.s If we had a bit of data stored in data centers in china or russia You bet you'd have this same kind. All right. Well. Yeah, that's a really good point then. Yeah It's it's something that you know, we we luckily Haven't worried about but but I also think that a lot of this sort of you know What is the youth doing on these social networks and and older people, you know get you know feeling like Well, you know, there's there's there's a lot of data being thrown around and we're a little bit worried about it And we'd like it to be uh more internal to make us feel better is something that we're going to hear more and more about Yeah, I mean and you're hearing that happen in europe where they're saying we need data of europeans Not to be stored in the united states because we don't trust What companies are doing with it there same thing in brazil you've heard that so that that is less of a part of this It is a part of it And I wonder if just moving it into india Helps with those other fears of like this. What is this doing to our kids that more conservative aspect of it new york times reported andy newman became a i'm sorry new york times reporter andy newman became a food Delivery person for several services in new york city to see what it was like I love this kind of journalism. Uh, george plinton, of course made it famous by becoming a troit lion and playing football and all On the ground delivering food. So he really did like all right. I'm gonna try this. I'm gonna see what it's like uh among the many things he confirmed Is uh that same thing we reported back in march I I actually didn't remember it, but sarah did march 8th that door dash keeps its drivers tips in some cases Newman found and he writes here's how it works If the woman in the bathrobe had tipped zero door dash would have paid me the whole six dollars and eighty five cents That's what he was going to get paid for this delivery Because she tipped three dollars door dash kicked in only three dollars and eighty five cents She was saving door dash three dollars not tipping me This is what's called a tipped wage It's a practice used by many bars and restaurants to pay workers less than minimum wage since they can expect to make it Up in tips nbc news in the los angeles times previously reported out instacart and amazon flex Also used tips to make up pay instacart has since ended that policy The verge confirmed that postmates grubhub seamless and uber eats all say they do not use tips To subsidize pay and there is a class action lawsuit. That's what we reported on back in march 8th Between door dash delivery drivers and door dash over that policy and door dash is holding to it they say it's a Standard way to do it. They don't always use the tip to subsidize the fee. They say that most drivers don't mind I don't know if I believe that maybe they don't mind because they don't know what's happening. I don't know But it definitely makes me a not really want to use door dash Which I don't really use anyway because I've had some other problems with them And b if I were to use door dash I want to chip cash and maybe I'll start tipping cash anyway for these places Yeah, and this whole kind of shared economy thing just because it's exploded so much and I am a person who I mean I get delivery to my house Several times a week not even gonna lie. This is this is something I don't know if it's enhanced my life, but it certainly made it more convenient. So um and and and and many times The you know the folks that you're you're looking at them on your phone You're watching the route that they take by the time they get to your house half the time You feel like you already know with them, you know, you want your food and everything so The the the idea that a door dash a courier could be like well that doesn't make sense and some very very like For the end user some competing services aren't doing this You I I wonder how much door dash is going to to to to feel sort of a bleed away of of their workforce I'm not I'm not a big believer in in calling for legislation every time there's a problem I think there we should always try other ways to fix things because it's more elegant and more permanent And laws have a bad way of not adapting with the times, but I do think it might be worth considering legislation that says transparency if a tip is made The end user should know who gets the tip and the driver should know whether they're getting a tip because what happens here is They don't really know unless the person tells them whether a tip was made or not And or if they get one and few people tip these delivery drivers anyway, so maybe it doesn't matter To drivers much, but I kind of think I kind of guess it does I am a tipper I I understand that that there are a lot of reasons that people tip the way that they tip and and that's that's fine I cannot live with myself if I'm given the option to like, you know Press the button for a 15 tip for that ramen that the uber eats guy just just delivered to me with a smile I'm going to do that The fact that a company might take that from the driver That is something that I feel like is going straight to the driver because I am trying to be you know a good citizen and and I thank him or her for for Doing their job And and knowing that it's you know, it's it's you know, it's a somewhat thankless job as you mentioned So yeah, I I I understand that door dash has its reasons for saying, well, you know, this is what we do it and and Don't worry about it But if you were a driver and again if you have the option to Maybe just drive for a different company who doesn't have the same policies I I don't understand why you wouldn't if it bothered you Yeah, and and maybe there doesn't need to be legislation Maybe I should just as a consumer say look, I'm only going to use The the companies that make it clear who gets the tips And and post that right out front make make me know because it's one thing when I leave a few dollars on a tray And I see the waiter take it away. I know she's got that money Now, maybe she's not allowed to keep it. Maybe she's not but at least I know share I tipped her right Whereas with these computers. Yeah, the whole point is I don't want to have to carry cash around I can do it all in my app. But if the driver doesn't even know that I tipped them. Well, that's not good So, oh, yeah, that's you know, it's it's a good will measure in many cases It's not even really about the money. It's the fact that you're being like, thank you very much This is a thank you measure totally And places in the world that don't have tipping. Well, yes, you can send your snide comments about why it's so much better Where you live and you'd be justified. That's right. You probably all see is the magic system That well, yes Let's talk about baseball shall I mean The unaffiliated atlantic league baseball organization has been testing using trackmen That's an ai to call balls and strikes Something that's very popular in baseball if you're not familiar with the game The test is part of a three-year deal with major league baseball to learn how it works for eventual consideration In the majors now in its first game test high point rockers pitching coach frank viola jr Sounds like very much a pitching coach Was ejected for arguing that human empire at tim debtweiler should have overrode the computer calls Which he had the authority to do York revolutions ryan dent had walked on five pitches three of which were on the edge of the strike zone as well Yeah, so uh frank viola jr. Getting into it. I get a good day Not only just getting into an argument but getting ejected and then going on twitter and saying uh, this this is great I believe in this technology, but we should get it right before we put it In a real game. Well, I mean, that's why they're trying it in the atlantic league No disrespect for the atlantic league, but you have to start trying it somewhere K zone and stat cast have been doing this for a long time on television So it's time to try it in some games and yours was the game they tried it in that said the next web showed A representation of where those balls were and they were right on the edge I don't know why umpire debtweiler did not override at least one of those that looks like it's actually in the strike zone Because that's how we improve the accuracy of these things as we get through the agreement, right? I always uh, I Full disclosure. I always kind of like secretly have wanted to be an umpire Yeah, because I don't understand how people get these jobs and I know that it requires a you know Good hand-eye coordination and and and and and really following a game very closely That's it You you know, there's so much about sports and it varies between the sports, right baseball's Baseball has a certain rules basketball football And and so on and so forth Where there are a certain amount of challenges and sometimes the umpire's law What they say goes even if the crowd is booing and you know throwing things at the field type thing AI and and again I don't want to you know upset anybody by saying well umpires are you know, they're they're Their days are numbered but this seems like a great situation for something to be Not disputed it it is or it isn't Yeah, I mean anything where The question is not Uh a judgment call the question is was it actually inside or outside tennis? For example, was that did that ball hit the line or was it out? Right and we can know that with more accuracy than ever with cameras and sensors Uh, just put that in the hands of computers. It will be right more often I I I agree with that It's a little weird with the strike zone where The the definition of the strike zone is over the plate between the letters And the waist and you know where the letters are. I mean, it's actually the where the Bottom of the armpit and it depends on the body types of the picture in the yeah It's an attempt to approximate Uh a hit-able ball versus a non hit-able ball, right to say like well generally if it's in this area It's probably hit-able. I I submit that at some point we're going to get away from like well Let's have an ai that can tell whether it's in this definition or not You could actually train a machine learning algorithm whether a ball was hit-able or not And and and redefine what a ball in a strike and add all that data Body types into that equation right to say like oh this guy's six one With his knees up here like that's a hit-able ball for him that's left Even if he's got a long reach. So maybe it's off the plate a little bit, right? Like I I don't know if we want to go down that road, but I do think these definitive things probably will be computerized at some point because Humans are fallible if it's a judgment call like a balk or something and that that sort of stuff That's different and I think we should always have human umpires on the scene to make a judgment About the computer judgments the computers to just do the easy stuff And that's why I'm so disappointed with umpire delweiler here Is that it looks like he should have been like no no no i'm going to overrule that i'm going to make the human call I think I think he should have Who would have been precedent setting if he had? Yeah Delweiler No, I mean who knows I haven't heard his side of the story. Maybe maybe the sun got in his computer I I mean I still want to be at a national uh baseball umpire Don't get me wrong and I and I think that I will I'll get there eventually I'm saying you shouldn't replace the umpires. You should just know yes the system like any like you don't expect A pilot to fly your plane manually anymore because the computer can do so many parts of it without But you don't want that pilot removed from the cockpit yet, right? You want him to be able to step in That's the umpire in a much less self-driving cars Right the same idea, you know, does anybody really want no human interaction? No, we still we still want some of that To make sure that you know that that that that we're that we're being safe, but we are moving in that direction Well folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes You got to subscribe to daily tech headlines dot com Thanks everybody who participates in our sub reddit. Sometimes there are baseball stories Many times there are non baseball stories But we welcome them all submit your stories and vote on others at daily tech news show dot reddit dot com Help us make our lineup every day. 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It was perfectly legitimate 10 years ago But the system isn't like that anymore. So, uh, if you're like, wait a minute, what is going on with the e-waste? What should we be paying attention to? Uh, the the whole thing about mountains of circuit boards in in foreign countries is not the story anymore And you got to listen to that daily tech news show dot com Thanks to our patrons for making the show possible. Tom Tom How do we thank them adequately enough? We don't uh, but we try we give them all kinds of perks Uh, and we thank them at the end of the show and uh, if you want to become a patron, uh, we will thank you You means the world to us And it's a dollar a month out of your pocket for you and uh, if that's not that much to you It would help us tremendously. You'll get exclusive episodes. 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