 Coming up on D T N S neuro and FedEx team up to have driverless cars deliver your packages razor switches to AMD for its latest gaming laptop and Christian Cantrell helps us find the interesting future uses of NFT. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, June 15th, 2021 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane. And I'm Roger Chang, the show's producer joining us Christian Cantrell, who runs design prototyping at Adobe and author of four science fiction novels, including Scorpion, which was optioned for film and just recently released. I was lucky enough to have Christian asked me to interview him for his book launch that we did online a few weeks ago. Christian, good to have you on the show. Yeah, thanks so much for having me back. I think we determined that it was 2014 that I was last on. So yeah, it's it's been a minute. So, you know, let's not make it so long. We were just talking about the Gmail, the new Gmail interface. If you if you want to hear live troubleshooting of Tom and Sarah trying to message each other over the new Google chat, get good day internet become a member at patreon.com slash D T N S. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. The UK's competition and markets authority announced an official investigation into the mobile device ecosystem, looking into the dominance of iOS and Android and the control that both have over at marketplaces. Results of the investigation are expected to be published within a year. The CMA previously announced an investigation into whether Apple unfairly favored itself in the iOS app store. The US Supreme Court has overruled a 2019 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals decision that had barred LinkedIn from preventing high Q Labs from harvesting personal data from public profiles. So if you're not following it, the decision was high Q Labs can harvest the details from LinkedIn and the Supreme Court said, No, we're throwing out that decision. The appeals court had ruled that the computer fraud and abuse act did not apply when no authorization was needed to access public user data. In other words, it's just there on the web. The ruling was sent back to the 9th circuit by the Supreme Court to reconsider in light of the Supreme Court's own June 4th ruling on the computer fraud and abuse act, which did find that someone could not be found guilty under the law for misusing information on the system they have permission to access. So it could end up with the same decision. It just needs a different legal justification. One plus announced the Nord N205G for $240 going on sale in the US to T-Mobile and Metro customers June 25th. It'll also come to Canada for $340. The N205G has a 6.49 inch HD 90 Hertz display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 480 chipset. So this is a budget phone with 4 gigs of RAM and 64 gigs of expandable storage. The N20 has three rear lenses with a 13 megapixel main sensor, 16 megapixel front cam, 5,000 megapixel front cam, and the N205G has a 6.49 inch HD 90 Hertz display. The N205G has a 6.500 pixel RAM and 64 gigs of expandable storage. The N205G has 3 rear lenses with a 13 megapixel main sensor, 16 megapixel front cam, 5,000 mAh battery is rechargeable using an 18 watt fast charger. In honor of Zelda's 35th birthday, Nintendo is launching another Game and Watch system. This is the legend of Zelda Game and Watch system. The the little portable game that predated the Game Boy is game and watch So this is a kind of a nostalgia play for that It includes the original Legend of Zelda the adventure of link the Game Boy version of links awakening and vermin the link version Plus a built-in interactive digital clock and timer because hence the name Featuring og link Nintendo also announced the sequel to the Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild will arrive next year 2022 I RL is a new ish social networks been around for two years has 12 million monthly users many of them under the age of 18 a lot Of college students as well focusing on group chats events polls and Supposed to be about people doing eventual things together like meeting up in real life Hence the name IRL CEO Abraham Schoff He tells the verge that the app builds Facebook groups and events for the generation that doesn't use Facebook Also says that the goal is to become a super messaging social network like we chat for the rest of the world Yeah, sir, and I tried it out. Sarah invited me to to a chat on IRL do it a lot a lot of that today Really really really wants your contacts like it asked me four times to access my contacts So, you know something to be aware. All right, let's talk a little more about the new announcements at e3 from razor What do they got Sarah? Well razor announced a new version of its blade 14 gaming laptop and for the first time runs on AMD not Intel specifically an eight-core overclockable AMD Ryzen 9 5900 HX CPU also comes with either a 1080p 144 Hertz or 1440p 165 Hertz display G4's RTX 30 60 30 70 or 30 80 GPU and acclaimed 12 hours of battery life shipping June 14th and Starting at one thousand seven hundred ninety nine dollars Razors calling it the smallest gaming laptop available at 12.59 by 5.66 by 0.66 inches. That's pretty thin But that's not all remember razors LED filled N95 mask Well, finally it has a ship date the hazel N95 as it's known will be released in limited quantities with the first batch Scheduled for this October since the announcement. They've also added an anti fog coding what they still haven't announced though is a price So it is coming in October, but we don't know for how much yet if after buying your new razor blade 14 and hazel N95 Mask you still have one hundred eighty dollars leftover Well, you're in luck because you can buy razors new 130 watt gallium nitride charger Small enough to fit into a pocket when plugged in can charge two USB C devices at 100 watts and two USB a devices at 18 Watts all at the same time International adapters are included in the box and it should be available sometime in the next 30 days Man at 180 bucks you'd expect them to include more in the box That's it's pretty pricey for that kind of thing which isn't a brand new kind of thing But it is really small and the plugs collapsible. So maybe you're paying for the design Christian of these three products, which catches your attention most well in terms of what I'd want for sure the laptop I I love these laptops. I love what they make and I'm super curious about these Ryzen processors I've not used one yet But this project hazel I think is super interesting because it's interesting to kind of launch this now, right? I mean, so I wonder what their calculus is, right? They're either betting that masks are a permanent part of life now where they're like betting on another pandemic or something or both Well, I mean, I was thinking the same thing Christian and I guess, you know When you're talking about airplane travel and you know, I don't know There's certain places where it's like sure We're not going to just masks aren't going to go away and does something like this very cool Hazel and 95 mask become some sort of a status symbol like a handbag, you know where You know up until now a lot of us are just like whatever mask I've got, you know nearest me is fine Right, and you have a few of them Maybe it becomes a kind of like special mask that sets you apart from the crowd I'm gonna guess that the LED filled N95 mask that if you have to ask how much it is Maybe you can't afford it because they haven't given us a price yet Is it necessarily marketed as a practical item, right? Like this is this is for people to buy because they just want to have it They they got people excited about it and and now, you know, it's not like masks like you said It's not like masks are totally gone. They're still used in a few places And so you can justify saying oh, I'm gonna get the mask Because you just want it because it looks pretty, you know a perfect mask to wear to the club I would I would imagine it there you go to go to clubs, which I don't But you know your mileage your mileage may vary Yeah, I'm with you on the the laptop being the thing that is catching my eye and Few people are in chat room. W's got us one among them saying like yeah AMD really does seem to be getting the advantage here showing up in more and more products Well folks, have you ever been included in a tweet and all its replies? You had nothing to do with and did not care to keep seeing I've had this happen to me Where I'll say something and someone else says something either saucy or critical in response And then someone else takes exception with to their response and then those two people start fighting in my app replies And I'm I have nothing to do with it because they're fighting with each other not with the thing I originally posted and I'm like can I please unsubscribe? But there's no way to do that. Well, you can mute the tweet thread in some apps But short of blocking the users which seems a little extreme in that case You usually just have to wait for it to fizzle out and sometimes like zombies old tweets like this reemerge Twitter product designer Dominic Komotsy has shared an early concept of something that might help with this an Unmentioned feature that would let you unlink yourself from a tweet and then prevent it from being used in future replies So not only remove yourself from the thread but stop them from re adding you to it if they decided they wanted to Which for abusive scenarios could be pretty important The mock-ups show that you can edit your mentions in the privacy and safety settings if you change your mind later So you could add yourself back in also if someone you don't follow at replies you you could prevent them from mentioning you ever again You could just not block somebody but block them from at replying you from tagging you Another proposal would let you restrict certain accounts from mentioning you at all and even pause all mentions of you For a period of time they they suggest one three or seven days might be the time You're like I don't want to block them from ever mentioning, but I don't want to hear from them for three days Boom there you go. None of these features are real. They're all still in the design stage They just want feedback from people. That's why they're putting this out there into the world They may or may not come to the platform, but Sarah Do you want any of these to come to the platform? Yes, I do and Yeah, it's kind of like the scenario that you described Tom where you know, I don't know Let's say yeah, it's someone who I don't know tweet something I don't see the tweet but someone else replies to that tweet and maybe says something like oh Yeah, I remember when at Sarah Lane reviewed something like that on a show like a million years ago And then it kind of turns into this whole thread where I'm like well The one tweet was fine, you know But now there's sort of a conversation that has nothing to do with me and I'm not contributing at all And I could just like to quietly leave Actually just quietly leave so I think that the unmentioned feature specifically is great because yeah blocking is Blocking is appropriate in certain situations. Muting is appropriate in certain situations But an unmentioned feature specifically something that yeah might be part of an event Just you know, so you're you're on you're getting Unmentioned or you're you're keeping yourself from being mentioned for a set period of time Does does come in handy, you know, all of this stuff You know, there it's granular tweaks that I know a lot of people who use Twitter don't use or care about But I think they're really important for power users and people who really want to Customize the experience as much as possible. Okay, we can't edit our tweets ever But this is you know, still a step in the right direction. It's sort of editing you can edit yourself out Yeah, I I think yeah when you're you're like, listen, these are just two people that I don't necessarily want to block from being ever seen again I just don't want to hear this anymore. That seems useful to me Also, the ability to restrict anyone from mentioning you is not something I would see myself Necessarily having to use ever but there are people who get trolled who get, you know Massively trolled and they they couldn't possibly go block and mute all the accounts that are out replying them So that would be a way to just say like hey, just eliminate it all stop stop them all from showing up in my mentions Christian, you know, the the social media game is is fraught with peril for anyone who ventures into it. What do you make of any of this? I Just want my edit button No, I'm I'm in I'm in favor of anything that gives people more control over How often they're getting notifications all often they're getting pinged I mean one of the reasons why I'm not super active on social media is because it's I love interacting with people online, but you know, I need to sort of eliminate the distraction So any kind of features to give, you know more granular control over how to reduce the noise. I'm all for Yeah, I think there are probably some downsides in In how in the record of the tweet So the way this is working in these mock-ups is the at-replies disappear And you don't know that they were in there to begin with I I would rather see them just go gray, right? So they're no longer clickable. They no longer show up in the at-replies But but if I stumble across that tweet I can see like oh, they did at reply that person But it's no longer linked. So that person must have removed Themselves and blocking them from further mentions sure that I think that's that's fine But I do I do wonder about just having a clear record of what happened Maybe maybe that would be a tweak I would make otherwise. I'm not seeing too many downsides to this No, yeah, and and especially when it comes to the abuse stuff or just I don't know Let's say you're a you know, you're a journalist who's written something that has you know Sparked a spirited debate good and bad, you know, that sort of thing where it's like, you know My thing is out there and I don't need any death threats about this I can see where this this would be an extremely helpful tool. So you kind of don't get into the You know waste water of the social You want to participate for a while and then eventually you want to opt out right and this gives you that option. Yeah, yeah Also another option that neuro is expanding its partnership with FedEx to use neuro's driverless pods for last mile deliveries at large scale neuro has been conducting tests for about five years now with grocery stores pharmacies even pizza places Neuro started a pilot program in April with FedEx using its current neuro to pods and Tuesday It announced a multi-year partnership to deliver FedEx packages in the next generation of neuro pods in multiple markets neuro has an exemption from the US Department of Transportation to operate on public roads meaning it can where others can't and California granted it permission to charge for services in parts of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties FedEx is still developing its own Autonomous sidewalk robots called rock so in collaboration with Dean Kamen's deca company deca the project aims to deliver from retailers like hardware stores drug stores and restaurants to nearby residences one of the advantages of the neuro system would be that you can know or even Schedule when exactly do you have your package delivered? Extremely helpful and can also have robots come and pick up a package that you want to ship UPS is also testing an autonomous delivery truck system So your first experience with an autonomous car might actually be getting one of those packages that you're so used to a human and a truck delivering you Yeah, over the the many years since Christian was last on the show neuro has has risen from You know being one of the first to even test a Driverless car if you haven't seen the neuro cars. They're like short little mini buses. There's no space for a person in them So they don't have a steering wheel. They don't have a brake They are really just oversized sidewalk robots. They're big enough to be on a regular road But they're not huge and they go at a slower speed so they just go along, you know your residential streets and They've been testing them over and over. I think they tested them Arizona with Kroger. They tested them with CVS They tested them with Kroger in Houston and and in April when they started testing with FedEx I thought okay, that's interesting. They're getting a little logistics So this is the first time that we've seen them have an agreement that says we're going to we plan anyway to use them everywhere And one of the things FedEx is saying is places where it's actually more difficult to get to So, you know, your driver has 15 houses on a route And then there's one package that's like 10 miles out in the country You could send a neuro pod out there to deliver that one and not have to send that one truck all the way out there and back But I think the thing that appeals to me most Sarah is what you were saying about being able to schedule it to know That for sure this pod can bring me my package at this time when I'm home Yeah, you'd be able to check it on a map. You'd be able to get Notifications you'd be able to you know, if you have to run out maybe reschedule it I think this I think this technology is fantastic because you know a lot of this technology is really about Gathering training data, which you can then leverage for For other kinds of autonomous Transportation, right? So, you know, the more we can get, you know, things like prescriptions and pizzas Being delivered where the you know, if it's late or if there's an accident or something goes wrong The stakes are relatively low the better, right? And then you know that training data can can you know potentially be used for higher stakes things like eventually moving people around Yeah, I do I'm starting to think that having a package delivered to you by some kind of rolling robot That doesn't have a person inside might be most people's first interaction with an autonomous vehicle of some sort Mirovina in our twitch chat was like what's gonna keep trolls from tipping these things over. They're fairly big I'm not saying it would be impossible, but you might need a couple of people to tip these over They were not talking about the little star labs sidewalk Drones or sidewalk robots. I also don't think that's gonna happen as much as people think it will happen. I'm sure it will Hey folks, make sure that you don't miss the show next week all next week is Accessibility week each day. We're gonna feature a guest that will talk about technology accessibility from testing products to developing UIs It'll be the normal show news wise, but we'll have a special segment from each guest Talking about how important technology is to accessibility and how important accessibility is to technology it all starts next week Start money in the Monday June 21st. Oh We've talked about people's digital art We've talked about Kings of Leon albums and even Nyan cat all being sold as NFT a non fungible token Well NFTs are a way of almost permanently marking someone as the owner of something without restricting its digital distribution The most recent example is the World Wide Web itself Tim Berners-Lee just announced that from June 23rd until June 30th Sotheby's will conduct an auction of an NFT of the original source code for the World Wide Web That's about 10,000 lines or code or so bidding starts at a thousand dollars and proceeds will go to support causes Supported by Berners-Lee and his wife So mostly charities, but the source code of the web is open anybody can have it You can go download it right now. It's been open for a long time So it's tempting to talk once again about why would anyone pay to be called the owner of something that's infinitely copyable But Christian suggested we take a more interesting approach to NFTs this time right now people get a kick out of being able to say I'm the owner of Nyan cat or the web, but maybe that's just the thing that makes it popular Once that novelty wears off Christian. What else do you think NFTs are gonna be good for? Yeah, I mean, I think I think NFTs aren't extremely compelling alternative to To things like you know limiting distribution of content through, you know purely legal means Security by obscurity things like you know YouTube trying to prevent you from downloading videos And of course the big one is technologies like DRM, right? So so one of the biggest Criticisms, which you just kind of mentioned Tom that I see of NFTs is this sort of like the screenshot argument I call it right, which is like what I can just screenshot it like screenshots the new the new art theft Things like that, but I actually think that that's their greatest strength, right? So NFTs in my view work with the the infinitely copyable nature of digital content Right, whereas whereas I would argue that DRM fights against it So I love the fact that NFTs allow you to verifiably own something But also potentially at the same time share it with the world if you choose to right and it's no accident That someone like Tim Berners-Lee is is looking at NFTs for a way to get to get something out there, right? That's not you know, he sort of famously did not patent a lot of this technology That he's now giving away. So this is you know, you can kind of see where there's some overlap there I recognize that that The NFT model is not going to work for for everybody and for all kinds of creative digital content But I think it can provide Some creators and some some content consumers with a really compelling alternative To to what I consider to be sort of more brute force Concepts like DRM. Yeah, we'll have a full explanation of NFTs In fact, it's already up if you want it at our sister show know a little more calm But for the purposes of this conversation How how can NFT work instead of DRM because I get what you're saying DRM tries to fight against infinitely copyable By locking things up, which as often and has not punishes the legitimate user As it does the pirate how can NFTs work for? content Authenticity yeah, I think that NFTs Create sort of a new kind of content distribution, right? Whereas DRM tries to turn digital content into sort of a physical good where there's only one of them, right? But that's we all know that that's not how digital content works So I don't think there's a 1-1 correlation necessarily between You know sort of the physical world and NFTs and that's kind of what's exciting about it in my mind So what you can do with an NFT is you can mint it you can sell it on one can buy it You can trade it, you know all of those kinds of things But you can also choose a License around it potentially and by the way, this is a little bit forward-looking, right? I mean there's still so many pieces that need to be that need to be put in place, right? And in particular I just mentioned licensing licensing is something that that is still Somewhat opaque and fairly murky so these things need to be worked out But in theory you could create something you could create a track you could create a comic you could take You know if you're a photographer you got there and create photos and I think that a lot of us You know a lot of content creators, you know, it could be a book, right? It could be you know, it could be anything We really want to share these things with with the world, but we also want some sort of monetization strategy We want to support what we do at the same time and I think that NFTs create a new way to do that because There's nothing about the NFT that makes something So that it can't be copied, right? And that's the thing that again as I said before people tend to criticize I think that's a strength because what you can do is You can you can give your work to the world people can enjoy it people can you know use your meme or you know User whatever it is for a background or they can share they can get value and enjoyment out of it But people can also buy the deeds to it great in some in some sense, right? They can they can invest in the ownership of it and and I feel like for some things not everything But for some things it it can really give us the best of both worlds Yeah, one of the things we've experienced with Daily Tech news show is there are people who listen to the feed with ads But still support us on patreon because they want to feel like they have an interest in the show They want to express their support of the show. I could see people Feeling like hey, yes, this e-book is free and I don't have to pay for it But I want to pay for the NFT in fact I want to pay for the NFT of the e-book so I can prove that I supported the artist You know the bragging rights is not as silly in that respect where you're saying hey I'm not just showing that I'm some kind of owner Because this isn't the only NFT of this e-book. I'm showing that I supported my you know my author And I think for a lot of fan bases like you say it doesn't work for everything But for a lot of fan bases, that's the kind of thing they want to be able to show it's a badge of honor It's like a membership card if you will Yeah, yeah for sure. I have vinyl albums, but I don't even own a record player And I and I and I do that to support the artists, right? I have a I have a Tyco album right right over there on my wall actually because I love Tyco and I love what he does And I want to support it So I really think that you know, there's and I want to emphasize that there's so much that's still missing from this, right? There's there's a content authenticity problem You know when you look at something high-profile like people or like grimes or like Tim Berners-Lee You know you see you have to go to a Sotheby's or Christie's or something You know and you do that because you're sort of You know, that's that's kind of a proxy for for for guaranteeing the authenticity of it So so there are a million problems to solve there are million technological problems There the issues with marketplaces there issues obviously with the you know the carbon footprint of the cryptocurrencies that share these things up I mean, you know, we can we can go through the whole list But what what I like to do is um whenever I see sort of a new paradigm like this I like to ask myself this question of You know, can I imagine a future without this technology, right? So once you kind of get a taste of it and you and you see it, you know, whether that's something like, you know AR VR or you know something like that, you know, there are all kinds of problems with these technologies early on, you know I mean AR, you know causes Sorry VR causes these you know sort of VR headaches and you know motion sickness and stuff like that but once you once you sort of see these things and you can you can The important thing is not to sort of enumerate the problems with them in my mind The important thing is to really figure out what they can enable what the strengths are and then entrepreneurs can come in and people can come in and start Fixing a lot of those problems. That's where I see NFTs. I think there's tremendous opportunity in NFT I think we're still long ways from getting there but the there's a there's a new kind of ownership that this creates that Uh that allows people to to share in digital, you know creativity Without it being locked down without it being, you know, onerous But also have you know bragging rights have ownership and investments too And there's nothing wrong with speculative assets here, right? There's nothing wrong with saying, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna pick up some early versions of this and you know Maybe I'm a fan. Maybe I'm investor. Maybe, you know, sort of like an art investor, right? Maybe I'm gonna sell this stuff later on that you know, it's nothing wrong with that either I I think it's it's too early to say all the things that it could be used for but What I try to do with NFT because it's easy to take potshots at it It's easy to poke holes in in what won't work with it But what I try to look at is but what benefits from proof of ownership? Yeah, it's not going to stop you from copying something. No, it's not going to stop somebody from taking a screenshot But that's not really what it's good for it's good for proving you paid for this right And and what are the other things that it could do if you got ideas if you're like wait That gives me an idea feedback at daily tick news show.com. Let us know what it is Uh, well, you might think that smart bulbs are pretty smart But the site next hack posted pretty smart little project It was an Ikea trod free smart led bulb Ikea has smart bulbs like a lot of companies do and it was running doom The game had to be modified to run on the light bulbs 108 kilobytes of ram That's yeah, that's what it was with an actual display and game buttons added to the bulbs MGM at 210 l rf board However, don't get too excited. The post was subsequently removed with next hack posting It had a request to remove this post an all public material. I wonder who requested that It can't think of Can't think of well pie Ikea But it's just hacking the bold come on Ikea I don't I mean listen. I don't play on it. That's amazing. I don't know that for a fact Yeah, we don't know that's right. We shouldn't we shouldn't throw Ikea under. It's a very tiny bus yet Very tiny flat, but if you've done anything like this, we do want to hear about it We really do do not delay email us right now at feedback at daily tech news show dot com in fact emails with Any questions or comments on anything that you hear on our shows or discussions with our guests Something we might talk about on a future show and anything in between We also like to shout out patrons at our master and grand master levels including Irwin stir Ken haze and philip shane today We also have a brand new boss garov pie who just started backing us on patreon Guava Right now at this very moment guava pie is my favorite person in the world See could be you tomorrow could be you I gotta do is back Could be although where I'm still gonna be on the then you're just gonna have two favorite people tomorrow Maybe even three. Well, I'll have 4,964 or whatever Favorite people really but he's my most recent favorite person. It's a it's a great club to join Thank you so much. Thanks to all our patrons. Also. Thanks to christian contrail for being with us today Christian, where can people find what you're up to day to day? Yeah. Well, thanks so much for having me christian cantral dot com You can find my books and other things that i'm up to and i'm also at cantral on twitter Excellent. Well, thanks for being with us. We are live on this show monday through friday 4 30 p.m. Eastern 20 30 utc is when it happens find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live And we'll be back tomorrow with the one and the only scott johnson talk to you then This show is part of the frog pants network Get more at frog pants dot com I hope you have enjoyed this program