 Coming up on DTNS, the $600 million cryptocurrency heist that has mostly been given back, and Samsung announces its most durable and affordable foldables yet. DTNS in gonna fold. This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, August 11th, 2021 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redward, I'm Sarah Lane. In Salt Lake City, I'm Scott Johnson. And I'm Roger Chang. The show's pretty sick. We were just talking about Hawaiian food and fa and how Costco originated on Good Day Internet. If you want to get that wider conversation, become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. There is where you can join top patrons such as Johnny Hernandez, Hi-Tech Oki and David Mosher. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Facebook's oversight board told Facebook to restore a post from a user who criticized the government of China. That user appeared to be in Myanmar and posted in Burmese back in April, mostly referring to events around the coup in Myanmar back in February. The post also used profanity when referring to Chinese policy in Hong Kong. It wasn't reported by users. However, four content reviewers reviewing a translation believed it qualified as hate speech and thus removed it. The oversight board noted that the importance of context and recommended that Facebook make sure, quote, its internal implementation standards are available in the language in which content moderators review content. Yeah. Maybe get somebody who speaks the language. It seems like a good idea. Court records show Apple settled its lawsuit with the security company Corellium. Apple had claimed Corellium's virtualized iOS device violated its copyright. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Corellium did confirm its virtualized iOS offering will remain available. Instagram announced two new features. Hopes will help reduce abuse that users receive on trending posts. Limits is available now and lets users hide comments and also DM requests from users that don't follow them or only recently started following them. Hidden Words lets users set up DM filters based on flagged words with messages placed in a hidden folder. The messaging app Signal now lets users set its disappearing messages feature as the default for all conversations. The browser could previously be used on a chat, but only on a chat-by-chat basis. OpenAI released a new software tool called Codex, which can be used to build simple websites and rudimentary games using natural language, translate between programming languages, and also process data science queries. Codex is initially being released as a free API. It's currently a waitlist and the company plans to eventually charge for access. Alright folks, let's talk about that big ol' hack. The decentralized Poly Network finance platform disclosed that someone stole the equivalent of $611 million by exploiting proxy lock contracts of the Poly Network on the Ethereum, BSC, and Polygon blockchains on August 10th. If you're like, wait a minute, wait a minute, what is this Poly Network? Poly Network attempts to connect different blockchains together. So Ethereum, a lot of people don't realize has a lot to do with contracts, not just tokens. The tokens are contracts. So you can do a lot of different things on Ethereum. And Poly attempts to say like, well, you could use the Ethereum contract with another blockchain. We'll do the translation between the two. And the aim is DeFi, DeFi meaning decentralized finance, making lending and borrowing more efficient and cheaper, not requiring brokerages or middlemen. However, a vulnerability in that Poly Platform was exploited to get $611 million worth of cryptocurrency. Now, this is a little wonky, but according to rect.com, rekt.com, Poly had not prevented users from calling an Ethereum data contract that let a user pass the owner check. So there was a vulnerability there. And it let users input any function if the user could match the first four bytes of a hash, which the attackers could do by just grinding out a bunch of combinations until one worked. So it was a brute force attack there because they only needed four numbers. Simply put, two unknown vulnerabilities in how Poly let blockchains interact with each other were exploited. The security firm Slow Mist tracked the money as it changed hands and said in a tweet that it had grasped the attacker's mailbox, IP and device fingerprints and are, quote, tracking possible identity clues related to the Poly network attacker. Stablecoin Tether after this froze about $33 million worth of Tether coins because it's a centralized network. So it could do that Wednesday. The attacker used a cryptocurrency transaction to send a message to Poly saying they were, quote, ready to return the funds. Poly published three addresses on Twitter to which they could be sent. And the attacker has been sending messages that way explaining why they did what they did and returning the money. CMBC reported about $258 million had been returned by 11 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday. DeFi oriented attacks like this are on their eyes up to three times as much as all of 2020 already so far this year. And the story illustrates that the anonymity of blockchains is not really complete protection. Yeah, but for sure is not. Absolutely. The first thought even came to my mind here was, was how little I know about crypto. Number one, I always, I always, I have to come into every kind of conversation with that acknowledgement and then knowing, I know in my heart of hearts, the future of crypto and all the associated technologies and our ability to trade freely between the crypto currencies themselves, Ethereum to Bitcoin to whatever is going to depend on this security. Like this seems actually in a weird way to be a positive development to me because it's early still, we're still in the Wild West days of this thing. And it's a chance to go, ooh, that's really bad. And it was too easy. And those are two points of vulnerability we can never have happen again. And my guess is it probably won't. And it's a good thing. Once in a while, when these things happen, it's weird that he's giving the money back slowly and not all at once. It's weird. He's given the money back at all. Assuming it's one person, it's probably more. But all in all, I see this as like, no, you're going to have some of these fails before you get this exactly right because you got to one day. Like, I know that much about crypto. We have to be good enough to be secure enough. And we're not, well, yeah. And the, and the, yeah, sort of trickling in of money, although the, the increments are getting larger with each trickle. That, that is odd. It's also odd to me that someone, let's, let's, Scott, you Scott, you're probably right. There's is probably more than one person involved, but let's just say it was one person for that person to be like, yeah, I'm, I'm caught. You know, I've been, I've been found on the ledger. I'm going to go ahead and return the money. Like, that doesn't excuse the fact that you took it in the first place, you know, it'd be like a robber, like robbing a bank and then like bringing the money back and being like, sorry, we're good, right? No, you're not good. So at this point, I'm, I'm curious to know how, how the sort of thing becomes a prosecution situation. I, I think, okay. So there's a Google doc that is collecting all of the crypto blockchain conversations between Poly Network and the hacker and or hackers, and either it's PSY ops where they're trying to pretend to be something, which absolutely could be, there's no way to verify, but the tone that's being struck in the messages really is of someone who stumbled into a vulnerability by poking around, which is what hackers do, realize they could do something, did it, and then wasn't sure what to do next and thought, well, crap, I've got all this, I'm not going to be a jerk and just make off with it. I did this for the lulls. What can I do next? Can I give it to somebody good, you know, for a good cause? Could I spread the wealth? Could I shut down DAO? Could I, you know, there's a lot of that in this conversation. And then eventually starts to realize, okay, this is bigger than I expected. Maybe I need to back off, but you know, I'm still in it for the lulls. What else can I do? So they've done very long posts of Q and A's, like why they did it, for instance, Q, why hacking? A, for fun, Q, why Poly Network? A, cross chain hacking is hot. This is somebody who's at least striking the tone of somebody having a good time poking it with stuff and then not sure what to do, which is why they're giving the money back, but they're giving it back slowly because they're still keeping some options open and they're saying like, why returning slowly? I do need time to talk with the Poly team. Sorry, it's the only way I know to prove my dignity while hiding myself identity and I need some rest. So maybe they're using the rest of the money as leverage, you know, don't come at me, please. I'm giving, I'm going to give it all back. Says I would like to give them tips on how to secure your network, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Also says they don't use emails. So if you see people pretending to be them at email addresses, it's not them. It says they've never asked for bounty from the Poly network. Says everything I've said is on the chains. Again, there's no way to verify any of this stuff, but it is fascinating to see the pose being struck on the chain itself by whoever's doing this. Yeah. And the, the idea to Sarah's point, the idea of going after this person is really hard at this point because he's super anonymous. Nobody knows where they are, who they are, what's going on. So even if they do get all the money back, they're going to have to talk about how they're going to find the guy and the very nature of cryptocurrency makes it hard to find stuff. Well, I mean, yes, but it does appear like slow mist has a lot of detail on them. And I think that has spooked them of like, we think of the blockchain as, oh, it's anonymous. How can you ever find them? But lots of people have been found through the blockchain because all of the transactions are public and you can glean a lot for every transaction that's being made, which is another reason why, given it back slowly, may or may not be the greatest idea unless the person thinks the jig is up, they're going to find me anyway. Let me feel, let me, let me figure out if I can get them to promise not to punish me. Well, and that, that really does speak to the idea that someone was like, oh, look what I can do. Huh. Look, look, look what I have done. And then, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Like I'm, I'm, I don't have an offshore account. This is going to take it back, but slowly, while I take a nap and, you know, assess my options. Yeah. It'll be, it'll be a while before all of this shakes out. My guess is we'll figure out, somebody will figure out who it is and that story will come out. I'm curious who, where, what, why I'll, all those normal journalism questions about this story. Hey folks, if you want DTNS as a video podcast, you're like, man, I imagine what Sarah and Tom look like, but it'd be great to see their faces. Well, get the video, RSS feed, dailytechnewshow.com slash subscribe. Samsung, lots of announcements from Samsung today. Let's go through some of them now, shall we? The company announced the $1,800 Galaxy Fold, Galaxy Z, pardon me, Fold 3, which has two 120-hertz screens, a 6.7-inch cover screen, and a 7.6-inch unfolded tablet screen, so one of the foldables. It has a 4-megapixel under-display selfie camera. The company reduced the number of pixels above the camera, which is noticeable. Samsung tries to point out that this is less noticeable than a hole-punch camera would be, you know, going after the competition here a little bit. And it's mostly meant for video calls. That's at least what Samsung is marketing it as. Also supports the Fold Edition S Pen and S Pen Pro, which has gestures and also Bluetooth features. Both are sold separately, though. You'll need one of these because they have a retractable rubber tip that helps protect the Fold 3's screen. A promised 80% stronger protective film on the folding screen. That's good. Gorilla Glass Victus on the cover screen, 10% stronger armor aluminum hitch, almost at aluminium. IPX8 water resistance that's emerged for up to 1.5 meters for up to 30 minutes. That is pretty good for a phone. Also, if you've heard IP68 and wonder why Samsung says IP+, without the 6, it's because the 6 refers to dust. Samsung uses nylon brushes to keep dust out, but doesn't meet the IP spec, so that's a distinction to be made. I know 6, got it. Yeah. For water resistance, it had to go with the lubricant. Samsung says the lubricant should last for 200,000 folds before it begins to wear off. That's a lot of folds, but you also might use your phone a lot. For the screen, it uses a pressure-sensitive adhesive that will let water flow between the screen and the two bodies of the phone and into the hinge. The hardest part to seal were the wires between the two sides of the phone. Samsung used an air-cured sealant around the wires, and the Verges-Dieter Bone described that as like a flexible epoxy. And yes, the water-resistant tapes and glues mean it's not easily repairable. You have what you have. Software-wise, there is a new labs feature that lets you force any app into a split screen or a pop-up view on the tablet interface as well as customized aspect ratio. You can also pin the edge panel to the side of the screen like a dock. Samsung also showed off moving your WhatsApp conversations between an iPhone to a fold and flip. That worked nicely. It's an Android feature eventually coming to all Android phones, and Microsoft has been working with Samsung to make it software-foldable aware. For instance, teams can display a PowerPoint on one side of the screen while keeping teams up on the other side. And team supports S-Pen on the foldables as well. So that might be good news for you, depending on where you work and what you got. Black, green, and silver options of the Galaxy Z Fold 3 pre-orders are open today, shipping August 27th for $1,800. Yeah, so the WhatsApp things seem to catch a lot of people, especially because they know it's coming to other phones, to be like, oh, I can finally move. Because there are so many people that really need to preserve their WhatsApp transactions, and if they switch from iOS to Android or iAndroid to iOS, they don't move them. Not a big concern for me, but that seemed to get a lot of people really excited. But mostly what this is about is Samsung proving we finally made a durable version of this. It doesn't feel plasticky. It's not going to get covered in fingerprints. It's got strong hinges. It's, in fact, even water-resistant, which we had to work really hard. So we sat down with lots of journalists and explained how we did it. And it looks like they really have tried to plug all the holes, put gaskets and tape and all that. That means you probably want to get that extended warranty because it's going to be really hard for a third party to fix this thing for you. You're going to have to go to Samsung to get it fixed if you break it. But they do, with their extended warranty, provide a screen, one free screen fix if you drop it and break it, all that sort of thing. But if you are into the fold, like Daring Kitchen is way into the fold, this is a great upgrade. If you weren't already into the fold, I'm not sure they did anything here, except maybe the pen, even though you have to get a special pen for this that might bring you over. Yeah. I have to admit, Sarah, saying 200,000 folds is a really nice number to hear. And then I started to think about how many times I open my phone a day. I'm not sure it would last that long, you know? Yeah. It's like how many times do you blank each day? It's a lot more than we realize. Yeah. But still, it's still a huge steps forward in all ways. The Z Flip 3, the one that unfolds like a flip phone, this thing gets 80% stronger screen protection film, IPX8 water resistance and a 6.7 inch, 120 Hertz primary screen and four times larger, 1.9 inch cover display. So that all sounds like nice. It weighs 183 grams, just a bit more than the S21 and comes in black, green, lavender and cream with gray, white and pink colors available exclusively from Samsung.com. Pre-orders are open now and shipping August 27th for 999 bucks. That's a pretty good solution for many years. Oh, that was the thing that got everybody's attention was like, oh, this one's below four figures. Still really expensive, but you know, I guess relative to $1,700, it definitely feels real cheap. And I think this one actually makes more sense to people, which is I'm not trying to find a use case where I need both a tablet and a kind of thicker phone. This is a flip phone, but also works like any other slab phone once it's open. Yeah, yeah. I think that's about personally that if there's a gimmick to be, I hate to use the term gimmick, they're obviously all in on this foldable stuff and they're going to keep pushing it and it's great because I think that'll just innovate and get better and everybody will probably do something like this in the future. But it still strikes me as gimmicky and not that useful for me to have a foldable phone, but a two-screener like the end result of a fold, the folding out part of it seems interesting to me. I don't know if I care how much seamless it is. I just need two screens. So I'm excited to see this evolve, both from Samsung's point of view and the rest of the industry to see what comes of it. By the way, I did the math. I have an average of 72 pickups a day according to my phone. So that 200,000 opens that would last me seven and a half years. See, that's pretty good. That's really good. That's about right. Yeah, you might want to replace your phone for other reasons before seven and a half years go by. The flip phone thing is, I know that we say, oh, like a flip phone because that's what we all remember a lot of phones being, that was the design, but for totally different reasons. I love the idea of this. I have an iPhone, I don't use a case because I'm an idiot, but like even if I did use a case, that's really for, it's not covering the phone entirely. The idea of having a screen be totally protected, but that screen being very thin and light and it's very much a cool new form factor. That really appeals to me. I feel like that is where phones should go in the future so that people talk about cracked screens that much less in the future. And Samsung was really positioning this as the flagship to compare to whatever the next iPhone is. Look at what this can do. It's beautiful, it feels good in the hand, and it's compact and you can keep it small and still see text messages and stuff with that bigger screen that's on the cover now. I think they did a nice job with both of these. Samsung also announced the Galaxy Watch 4 and the premium Watch 4 Classic. Both come in versions with 1.2 and 1.4 inch circular screens. It's not a square watch, uses the XNOS W920 system on a chip, 40 hours of battery life, running Wear OS powered by Samsung, otherwise known as Wear OS 3, includes its one UI watch interface, make it look like Tizen, even though it's Google underneath, made a big deal about Google and Samsung teaming up and using Wear OS, and Samsung's still gonna put their own interface on it. That means Google Apps like Maps and YouTube Music work. It does not mean Google Assistant. You're still stuck with Bixby for voice on the watch for now. But Samsung Pay and Smart Things are on there still. The Watch 4 Classic has a physical rotating bezel, comes in 42 and 46 millimeter versions. The Watch 4, the less expensive one, has a touch sensitive bezel. It doesn't move and it comes 40 and 44 millimeter versions. Both watches have a bioactive sensor that combines an optical heart rate sensor, an electrical heart rate sensor, and impedance analysis to do things like detect AFib or your blood oxygen level, or do an EKG or blood pressure in some markets, we're allowed, not in the US unfortunately. It also, that impedance lets it do body composition features, like measure your skeletal muscle mass, body fat percentage, metabolic rate. And it's got sleep tracking that uses the blood oxygen level measurements and compatible smartphones to detect the sound of snoring for more insight on your sleep patterns. The Watch 4 starts at $249. The Watch 4 Classic at $349. Each of those is 50 bucks more expensive if you want LTE built in. You can pre-order them now shipping August 27th. Basically all the new announcements from Samsung ship August 27th. Does this seem okay? I keep waiting for a smartphone or a smartwatch. They seem great. Yeah, they seem really good. I need these things to poke into my arm though and test my blood sugar. That's like the last thing we need and they can, nobody can get that approved. Yeah, they just need to get it approved. I always make jokes about like, what can't the smartwatches do? And it's like, I don't know. I mean, that list is shrinking. They're figuring it out quick. Also, those prices are awesome. That's the other thing. I double took the prices. They're good. No, but they're cheaper than the competition. They're really not bad. No, these are nice. I don't know. I've always liked the Galaxy Watch series. Still rocking my Fitbit. I'm good with it for now, but there are a lot of things. We're going to get to a point where what's next type of thing. And these are, I was really impressed. I think moving to Wear OS was the best decision Samsung's made. Being on Tizen was a business decision, not a consumer decision. And for whatever reason they made this decision, this is consumer friendly. It means this watch is going to work easily with your Android phone, even if you're not in the Samsung ecosystem. It's going to have more apps. It's going to be a little faster. Doesn't seem like it's much faster, but it doesn't matter. Samsung makes beautiful watches. They've been doing that for a while, and now they're more functional. This is a match made in heaven. And I think the Galaxy Watch is really going to start dominating watches because the Apple Watch is limited by, you know what? You kind of need an iPhone if you want to use it. You kind of need to be in the Apple universe. Now for the Samsung Galaxy Watch, you don't have to be in the Samsung universe. You can be in the wider Android universe. Yeah. And they're also just good looking. Look at these things. Like, I want round watches. They're making a comeback, baby. Let's see. Let's see more round ones. I like it a lot. Finally, the Samsung Galaxy Buds 2. Remember these? You stick them in your ear, right? You got some sweet music going. Okay. Well, guess what? The Galaxy Buds 2 with a smaller design, an active noise canceling. You're going to offer five hours of music, noise canceling, and so on. 7.5 with it off, by the way. Sweat-resistant IPX2 on that one. Colors include dark gray, white, purple, and green. Galaxy Buds 2 are up for pre-order right now and shipping August 27th for $150. Yeah. I noticed a lot of people almost forgot that they announced these. They're nice. You know, they've got a couple of features that the Buds Pro didn't even have. So like the active noise canceling. If I had a complaint about the previous pair, was the size. They were just kind of weird and big looking. Yeah, these are a little more compact. These look a little more like, yeah, you can put these in your ear and not have people wonder if you've got some kind of, you know, strange appliance on your head. It's also very, I mean, this is a very middle of the road price point. This is what all the other earbuds are priced. You know, you might save $20 or pay $20 here or there, but this is Samsung saying, buy our earbuds. Will you? Perfectly competitive. That's right. Moving on to robots because why not? Starship Technologies is adding four new universities, schools to its robots on college campuses this coming fall. Those universities are the University of Illinois, Chicago, University of Kentucky, University of Nevada, Reno, and Emory Riddle Aeronautical University's Daytona Beach, Florida campus. Now Starship now operates on 20 college campuses in 15 different states. And the company says it facilitated over 1.5 million deliveries worldwide since its founding back in 2014. If you're saying, well, what are they doing on college campuses? What kind of stuff is the robot delivering? Partners include Starbucks, Panda Express, Freshi, Subway, Antionis, Panera Bread, Baja Fresh, and Qdoba. Ah, yes, burritos. That's the food of college people coming by robot to you. We've had a few people in the audience send us pictures of Starship robots in their area, especially back when they were being tested in neighborhoods more. If any of you are on a college campus working or studying and are using these or seeing these, I'd love to see them in the wild. I feel like Starship, we've been covering it for years now on DTNS, has something. And it's just waiting for that moment to break out and everybody to want it. And because if you don't know how they work, they're little coolers on wheels. Yeah, they're just, they're not the hard problem of having a car navigate roads. They're just little coolers that navigate the sidewalk. Yeah, if anything, it's a pure beginning in college, like hot or not turning into Facebook is not nearly as cool as, hey, these are awesome robots that will bring you your burrito. And they look red. Some of the campuses are, they're laid out in a certain way. There's easy paths that the robot can take. Yeah, walkable and then not a lot of, probably, vehicle traffic. It is a perfect idea for expansion. And then you have all the college kids being like, you haven't heard of Starship? It's like the only way I drink my Starbucks. Dude, I can just be on the quad and order a burrito and it just rolls right up to me. It's just comes to you. I'm just worried about that one. You're going to hear a new story. You'll probably talk about it here or somebody just wrecks one of those things, just destroys it just because they want to see how bad they can mess it up. Oh, I feel like this will be a TikTok. It's already happened. It happened in Philadelphia. Like this is everybody always says this. Very few people do it. It always happens once. That gets more attention than it deserves. It happened in Philadelphia. That story already happened with, I believe, even a Starship robot itself. So it might not have been Starship, but yeah, I mean, they already go wider. You go wider. You're going to get, I don't know. It'll happen. It's a negative way of looking at it. People like, like to break things. Yeah, they do. Yeah. When they're new, but once they become, for good and for bad. Once they become normal, then it just won't happen that often. Yeah. You just sort of sidestep. Oh, it's a robot getting somebody else. All right. Let's check out the mailbag. If you really want that burrito, you want to get in there and get that burrito. I'm not saying you should. With a baseball bat. Yeah. I'm not saying you should. That's dealie and Scott. All right. So in the mailbag, Tony, Hi, Tony Wang. Tony had some feedback on the Amazon products rating story. We talked about back on Monday show. Tony says, as somebody who worked a couple years in a marketing company that sold through Amazon and other online retailers, it's safe to say that the one and five star reviews are mostly if not all paid reviews, either by giving the products away in the form of a PayPal refund or an Amazon gift card in exchange for that five star rating. Online sellers also fight each other for the buy it now box by leaving each other negative one star reviews because they're trying to get the other guy out of there. Other online stores have their own online review programs that vendors pay a hefty price per review on top of giving the product away just to get approved verified reviews. So at the end of the day, you might only really trust the three star reviews. Love the show. Tony, from inside the belly of the beast, it's probably not even as bad as he says, but it's true. It all happens. It's true. Yeah, I mean, you'd hate to be like five star review, you must be a liar, but you know, you gotta pick and choose what you listen to. Real quickly, Daniel mentioned our story on Monday's show about Ikea reusing furniture. Reminded him of a similar project that the techie audience might find interesting. The lack rack, basically the lack LACK coffee table, happens to be almost exactly 19 inches between the legs, making it pretty simple to use it as a small rack to mount a server switch or other rack mountable device in a home lab. There's a website with more info and pictures that we'll link to in the show notes. Thank you, Daniel. Show us your LACK racks, everybody. I know Shannon Morse was just putting in her own rack mount servers in her house and sharing pictures. We'd love to see if you're doing this as well. We sure would. Thank you, Tony. Thank you, Daniel. Thank you. Everybody who gives us feedback every day really helps us make our show better. Keep it coming. Feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com. Also, I want to give a special thanks to Matt Zaglin. Matt is one of our top lifetime supporters for DTNS. Thank you for all the years of support. Matt, he's a new rock. Yay. Thanks for sticking around. Come here, please. Thanks, Matt. Also, speaking of somebody who sticks around, that one's got Johnson. Scott, we love you. We're glad you stick around with us every week. What's been going on since how you last? I stick around like the smoke in our valley right now from the Oregon fires. Hey, lots of stuff. All sorts of cool projects happening. Great big updates on the recent Kickstarter I did for a card game. If you're part of that, you're going to want to check those updates out. A lot happening this week, surprisingly. If you want to find out about that and everything else, check out my shows, check out my comics, check it all out. You can find it at frogpants.com. And if you want to reach out in person, just find me on Twitter. I'm at Scott Johnson. Excellent. Well, we are live on this here show, Monday through Friday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern, 2030 UTC. Put it on your calendar and find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. And guess what? We'll be doing it all again tomorrow with our guest, Nate Langston. Talk to you that. Tony, edit this out. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com.