 Coming up on DTNS, a roundup of how tech is helping fight COVID-19, Mozilla's efforts to get publishers paid while you browse ad-free, and our picks for great things to watch, read, and play while you stay safely at home. We're in this together, folks. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, March 24th, 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. And from the forests of Finland, I'm Patrick Bejo. I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. And we were just discussing Patrick's experience using a trackpad on the iPad and how well that goes. Usually good, sometimes above dumb was sort of the summary of it. Also, I'm talking a lot about Sarah's glasses. You can get that and more by becoming a patron at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a lot of tech things you should know. Google announced the Stadium Makers program for independent developers, offering technical assistance from the Unity team, up to five physical development kits, and funding to offset development costs. The program is open to devs, building on Unity at 2019.3 or later, releasing a game either this year or next, and offering stadium support at launch. Better late than never, I guess. Development was a while ago. Apple now officially lets developers sell Mac and iOS apps as one unified app, which also supports in-app purchases across both platforms. Once Apple makes Xcode 11.4 GM available to developers, you'll begin to see universal apps appear in the stores. Apple released new updates to its operating systems, Mac OS Catalina, adds iCloud drive sharing, screen time measurement, and time synced lyrics for Apple music, iCloud drive sharing also come into iOS, and iPad OS 13.4, as does the aforementioned iPad mouse support. WatchOS 6.2 gets in-app purchases on the watch. Also in Apple news, Bloomberg reporting an internal memo at Apple indicates the company expects it will be able to reopen Apple stores sometime in the first half of April. Not clear which stores or in which countries though. HP and Valve are working on a VR headset with collaboration from Microsoft, possibly based on last year's HP Reverb, and potentially built for SteamVR's ecosystem. The teaser for the new yet unnamed headset coincided with the launch of Half-Life, Alex. Excellent Biola Counts, that game by the way. Computex's 14th anniversary event originally set for June 2-6 in Taipei will be pushed back to September 28-30. Around 120,000 people attend Computex each year. So I guess that would be why they're delayed. A critical security flaw found in all supported versions of Windows, including Windows 10, is being exploited by attackers in the wild and there's currently no patch. The vulnerability is in how Windows handles and renders fonts that works by tricking a user into opening a malicious document to let attackers then remotely run malware. Microsoft says attackers are launching limited, targeted attacks, so be careful what documents you open and wait for those patches expected to arrive Tuesday, April 14th. The Financial Times sources say that Facebook is in talks to buy a multi-billion dollar stake in India's Reliance Geo. Google reportedly also had separate talks with Reliance Geo and last year, Microsoft announced plans to partner with Geo to offer cloud computing to businesses. Facebook-owned WhatsApp already has 400 million users in the country and Facebook is estimated to have more Indian users than any other single country. China's wireless carriers reported drops in users. The largest carrier, China Mobile, reported its first debt decline since reporting began in 2000. Some 8 million subscribers lost. Some migrant workers may have cancelled work-related accounts. The percentage drop is still small compared to China's 1.4 billion subscribers for the top three carriers nationwide. YouTube is extending its European policy to the rest of the world, offering up videos in standard def by default. You still have the option to switch it to high def if your internet connection supports it. Also, Sony slowing the downloads of PlayStation games in Europe while still maintaining what they call robust gameplay. So just the downloads, not the actual gameplay. All right, we're going to talk a little bit more about a lot of different stories around COVID-19, kind of a roundup of a lot of different things and I think it's important to at least know what's happening. Startup MedShare, that's M-E-D-S-H-R, aids millions of doctors in diagnosis, has launched a nonprofit called Let's Beat COVID.net asking the public to complete a short survey about their health in order to provide better data to health authorities. Sydney-based nonprofit Rapid Ward has launched a supply, or that was launched by supply chain entrepreneur Milton Zhao, will work to get critical medical supplies, things like test kits and 95 masks from China to healthcare pros worldwide at cost. Ford announced it will work with GE Healthcare to increase production of ventilators. GM announced a similar partnership Friday with Ventec. Tesla is also in talks with Medtronic. An open access neural network called COVID-Net shows promise at identifying signs of COVID-19 infection in X-rays. It's not production ready, but it is open for qualified individuals to help make it so. Mobile carriers in Italy, Germany and Austria are sharing anonymous aggregated data with government and health authorities, map concentrations of people and movement in hot zones. The projects are compliant with the GDPR, similar efforts underway in the UK and Poland as well. Dr. Eric Perraxlis of Harvard Medical wrote in TechCrunch of the importance of involving healthcare workers on the front lines in the development of any of these technology solutions, also building in privacy from the outset, focusing on consistent automated and standardized data collection, taking advantage of free metadata and tech capabilities as well as pre-existing purpose-built tool sets. Dr. Perraxlis has experienced fighting Ebola outbreaks in West Africa and the DR Congo, so he's speaking from those experiences. Three more things. The European Space Agency put the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter Mars Express Orbiter cluster, which orbits Earth and the solar orbiter missions all on pause. The spacecrafts will power down and remain in stable orbits. This will let limited personnel who are in mission control focus on remaining missions. They're limiting the number of people who can be in mission control, and there's some things they just can't do from home. Strategy game Plague Inc., which has players try to infect the world with a pathogen, is adding a new boat, which requires players to stop the world from being infected by the pathogen. It's probably a good move. And Yelp is partnering with GoFundMe to add donate buttons to the profiles of businesses affected by shutdowns, restaurants, nail salons, etc. Yelp and GoFundMe have also created a $1 million fund to match some of those donations. So a lot going on, just in our little section of the world, as far as trying to help fight this disease. Listen, this might be too soon. It might be completely dumb. But hearing the story about the European Space Agency putting those two projects in rest mode, I started thinking, imagine what amazing science fiction will be written once all of this is done and something happens on that space orbiter. And it might be aliens. It might be amazing stories to be written. Yeah, I did. I'm with you, man. What happened while it was asleep? Did it dream? Were the things that happened that we didn't know? It's a better way for your brain to go than spiraling down a hole of despair. I'll give you that. I think there's some really positive efforts going on here. There needs to be coordination. There needs to be organization of these efforts. But the more of these kinds of things like COVID net, that open access network, the more startups that are helping with the supply chain, and the more ways that doctors can have more tools available, I think it helps. Really, really enjoyed that article by Dr. Eric Paraxlis of Harvard Medical on TechCrunch. That is absolutely worth a read. You know, overall, I do think that it's, as you mentioned, very easy to spiral down, you know, in the drain of despair. But I really think that a lot of really positive things are happening around all of this. And even though sometimes it seems like everyone's doing the wrong thing, I think actually most people are doing amazing things and the right thing during this crisis. And of course, you know, that kind of thing is always skewed in people's perception because we like to see the horror everywhere. But I really think that things are going pretty well, all things considered, all over the world. Not perfect, but pretty well. Yeah, there's, I mean, there's so much momentum in the medical industry and community to, you know, to help as much as possible and think outside the box, you know, so to speak. The idea of Yelp and GoFundMe is just one example also of, you know, it's an industry, you know, this is, you know, often restaurants and services that are just hit hard by not having foot traffic, not having people come and patronize your business. And it's funny, I have a bakery that's fairly near me. It's a small independent bakery. They make great bread. And I thought, gosh, I wonder how they're doing. I looked at their website. I'd never been there before because I've always just gone in when I'm driving by. And they have this whole thing where it's like you can order, you know, a loaf of bread or something like that, they're hours ahead of time and they're scrambling and then they're going to deliver it to you and it's a whole thing because they're trying to somehow stay in business even though they can't have people in their bakery. And I thought to myself, I'm really glad I went to their website randomly because I wouldn't know that they were doing this or that this was an option necessarily. So something like Yelp where you tend to go for, you know, knowing that a lot of different restaurants and services are going to be there somewhere to have something that's a little bit more standardized would be helpful for businesses who are in real trouble right now. All right, let's talk about Mozilla. They announced a wider release of its Firefox, of their Firefox, better web extension, rather with Scroll in the US. The extension combines tracking protection with subscription ad-free browsing from Scroll. For five bucks a month, Scroll lets you read sites like BuzzFeed News, Business Insider, Salon, Slate and Vox without ads. Scroll keeps 30% of the money and publishers get a share of the rest based on which site users visit. Scroll says publishers are bringing in more money through Scroll than they would have with advertising. Firefox Better Web with Scroll has a six months special at $2.50. That's $2.50 or $2.50 if you speak normally a month. $2.50. Yeah, this is kind of like the Brave browser except it's an extension and it's Firefox. Brave is kind of an all-in-one solution, but it's also partnered with big publishers right now. They say they're going to have an automated way for smaller publishers to sign up in the future, but another one of these attempts to supplement, they know people want to block ads. This is a way to try to make sure that publishers can still get paid while you aren't bothered by ads if you don't want to be. Yeah, I think that's why a lot of folks don't use ad blockers because it's like, I'm not supporting journalists and publications that I actually respect and have a lot of... I get a lot out of it. This is yet another option. If publishers end up seeing more and more revenue from models like this, I wonder what the advertising situation is going to look like in a year or two, but for now, $2.50 a month, for some people you say, who cares? I have other options, but I think it's low enough that it's a viable option and it does sound like scroll has pretty good traction so far. I would say that for publishers, if it is easy enough to implement and I have no reason to believe that it wouldn't be, it seems like something that could be easy to put together, there's no downside to implementing it. Maybe some managing, but the ad per person, the ad revenue per person is very likely ridiculously low, so it wouldn't really... You get more money from some people. That's what scroll is trying to say anyway, so yeah. Instagram announced a couple things. First, the company said it will expand its measures against misinformation with an educational alert from the World Health Organization at the top of search results, stickers that promote accurate information, downranking and removal of COVID-19 content based on evaluations by third-party fact-checkers, and Instagram also announced co-watching. This is a new feature that lets you browse the app with friends over video chats while you're direct messaging each other, so if you're in a DM video chat, you can look at saved, liked, and suggested photos and videos with one another. Co-watching, man, it's time. We were talking about this on Court Killers on Monday. Everybody kind of forced to have to try these things out, that in the past, the story, we would have been like, but do people really want to do this? Well, right now, a lot more people want to do it than would otherwise. I have heard from several different people that they do live video chat, damn it, like get going, quote-unquote, out for drinks. Oh, yeah, like virtual cocktail hour kind of thing, happy hour, yeah, yeah. I guess this is for the Instagram enthusiasts who are already chatting with each other on Instagram, and they probably naturally come up with like, oh, did you see this post and want to show it to their friends? And if you're using the device to chat, it's harder to show it. So this is a way to build in the functionality that says, now you can. Now you can easily show them that thing you were talking about. Yeah, I mean, it's sort of the taking out the cumbersome part of copying and pasting a link, famously, and Instagram doesn't really work that well, or taking a screenshot and then sharing it. If you're, you know, my thing is always like, oh, but I'm never like wanting to video chat because I'm busy when someone else isn't busy. But I mean, if you're chatting and it's some sort of real-time conversation, you know, it's like any instant messenger, you know that they're there. So this does come in handy like, oh, hold on a second, I'll show you. I've got it saved. It's in my favorites. This video is really funny. Tom and I were kind of laughing before the show. You know, as usual, I'm like, yeah, I don't really spend a lot of time in my DM. Somebody will message me every once in a while, or I'll message somebody. But I don't think that I'm probably the target audience for this, but many folks, and this is really before some of the other chatting options got started. I almost want to say not before Snapchat, but at one point it was like all the, you know, the younger generation didn't want to talk on, you know, via SMS or in Facebook Messenger, it was all Instagram DMs. So I guess that's alive and well enough to want to roll out some new features. Yeah. As India heads into lockdown, Vivo opportunity and, oh, sorry, Patrick, yes. This was, I just wanted to tell Sarah I sent her a DM on Instagram. Oh, thank you. I'm glad I interrupted Tom for that. No, it's important because otherwise Sarah wouldn't have seen it. So you're right. As India heads into lockdown, Vivo opportunity and Samsung announced they would pause production at their factories until March 25th. That seems short to me, but okay because it's 24th as we're recording this. LG said it will pause production until March 31st and Xiaomi and Motorola also announced pauses, but we don't, at least from what I have read, we don't know how long they would be. This is similar to the pauses we saw in China. Foxconn and others put in place pauses of production to sanitize equipment and prevent infections. If you recall, they did come back to work very shortly. It was only a day or two where they were down entirely, but it took weeks for them to get back to close to capacity. Even after they came back from the original pauses in China, they only came back in a limited fashion. So I imagine this is what's going to happen in India as well. And obviously this is happening in a lot of industries and a lot of parts of the world, but it bears on our show particularly because India is next to China in being one of the biggest manufacturers of consumer electronics for the world. It's easy to laugh at the desire for them to be back up and running relatively quickly, but I don't know if it's because I could take the line that, well, it's the world economy, things have to run, it's important for everything else. Or if it's like, but I want my gadgets to be there towards the holiday period. Well, if they're doing fever measurement, track and trace, social distancing within the factories, which is why they can't be at full capacity, Foxconn showed that you can actually keep production going even while staying relatively safe. So it's important to have manufacturing going if you can. If you can, being the operative for sure. Hey folks, don't forget, you can get the headlines every day in about five minutes or less. Just go subscribe to dailytechheadlines.com. Stephen King has posted for free a reading of the chapter of his book, The Stand, that describes the spread of the fictional pandemic superflu in the story. This may or may not be what you want to pass the time reading, but it's there if you wanted. A lot of people are taking advantage of it. Also, the Internet Archive has created a national emergency library, 1.4 million digital books that normally have wait lists. Most online libraries, if you don't realize, have wait lists just like real libraries. They're limiting the number of people who can access a book at one time. They are getting rid of that. The National Emergency Library at the Internet Archive will suspend wait lists for e-books until June 30th. So if they have the book, you can get it immediately until June 30th without having to wait. Patrick had the excellent idea of trying to turn our attention away from the headlines for a moment and talk about things that we're enjoying as we're all trying to stay safe and usually at home. So books, games, movies, TV shows, we're going to give you some of our picks and maybe those will help you pass the time as well. Let's start with you, Patrick. What kind of picks do you have to pass along to folks? I would recommend three things. First, an audiobook called Tokyo Vice. I'm sure you can get it in actual paper form or even reading electronic form as well. It's by Jake Adelson. And it is a fascinating dive into the world of the Yakuza in Tokyo in the early 2000s, I believe. And it has the added interesting factor that J.K. Adelstein is the first non-Japanese journalist to be made a permanent member of staff of, I believe it's the Yomiri Shinbun, one of the big Japanese... Yeah, yeah. It's like the New York Times or London Times or yeah, yeah, it's huge. And it is super, super interesting. He's really embedded into the crime and police life of the city for years. It's a fascinating read or listen. So I highly recommend it. It's also being turned into, I believe, a TV series. So you can say with confidence when it's released that the book was better. Yes, thanks to Patrick. Thanks to me. I also would recommend a series, an animated series called The Dragon Prince on Netflix. I'm sure many of you know it, but now you might have kids that are stuck at home and not sure how to entertain them with something that's fun and quality and appropriate. And The Dragon Prince is really great. It is kind of a spiritual successor to Avatar. Some of the same people worked on both shows, Avatar and The Legend of Korra. The thing I really like about those shows is that they are complex, interesting and accessible to younger audiences. I think it starts around seven, but also they are fun for adults as well. Not in a, oh, here's a joke that the kids won't get away. It's just genuinely an epic storyline that you can appreciate for the same reasons your kid appreciated, I think. So that's called The Dragon Prince. It's on Netflix. And I use my Apple TV, by the way, to watch that. I know many people rile against the remote on the Apple TV. I like it. I really like it. Oh, you're all crazy. Tom likes it. Patrick likes it. I don't know if Roger has much of an opinion, but I rile against the dreaded remote. Probably between my couch cushions right now. You could get The Dragon Prince on Netflix from a Roku or a Fire TV or something else. Absolutely. But you don't have to suffer through the curse of the Apple TV remote. And then one last quick thing from you, Patrick. Yes. You know what? You don't have to choose one game. Just get a subscription to the Xbox Game Pass. It's going to cost you around $10. And you get access to hundreds of incredible games, including my favorite game of last year, Elter Wilds, which is a voyage. Just go jump in, explore. You'll enjoy it, I hope. All right, Sarah. What about your picks? All right. So anybody who is a regular GDI listener might have heard me talk about a podcast called Everything Is Alive. The URL is really easy. Everythingisalive.com. But it's a podcast, so you can subscribe anyway you want. I have a variety of podcast apps, and I always go back to the iOS podcast app, because I don't know, I'm lazy, and it ended up on my home screen at one point. But the show... I feel about that app the way you feel about the Apple TV remote. So now we're even. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that's... Babe. It's everything subjective. So the podcast itself, it's a Radiotopia podcast. Radiotopia makes some of my favorite podcasts. I like pretty much everything in their whole library. It's a conglomerate of podcasts made by really cool people. This show is sort of bizarre. We're a human. It's the same human every time, the host of the show. It's a man. Interviews an inanimate object. For example, a stethoscope, or two parts of a Sharpie marker. Like, there's a tip, and then there's the marker itself, and they're kind of married, and they talk about their relationship and why they need each other. He talks to a satellite that's up in space, and she's really worried that, you know, she's going to go to the satellite graveyard, you know, up in, you know, some outer space pretty soon, because she's kind of an older model. And you think like, all right, well, is this just sort of like gimmicky and whatever? It really manages to almost like bring tears to my eyes every once in a while, because there's a humanization of what... something that has a very specific purpose might see in the world that you would just never think of as a human. For example, I don't think this is a spoiler of any kind, but for example, a microscope can't see the hearts that he listens to all day. So he has this idea of what a heart looks like. But no one ever showed him, and he never really thought to ask. And he thought that a heart looked like your face, because that's, you know, what keeps you alive. And so he was really upset when he was, you know, when he found out that a heart, he was just like, oh, this is awful. You know, it doesn't look like anything, you know, it's so important. So anyway, I just, I can't recommend it more. It is just, you can just blow through it. I also go on really long walks. So these are the sorts of podcasts that I love, because I really get into my own head and start thinking about what does it all mean. Love it, called Everything Is Alive. A series that I love, and I will say this before I say anything about it, rated R, not for kids. That said, Aquafina is Nora from Queens. It's on Comedy Central. I watch it through YouTube TV, because I have a subscription to YouTube TV, which she is part of. Very funny. Aquafina, the only thing I had seen her in previously was Crazy Rich Asians, a very popular movie, but I wasn't familiar with her. Tom, I know you're a big fan. I love Nora, yeah. Nora, she's great. Yeah, and it's, you know, it's Nora from Queens, Queens, New York. And it's just a funny comedy about Nora, who's played by Aquafina, who's, you know, early 20s type. Kind of somebody somebody who's still trying to make her way in the world and figure things out and very heavy on kind of nerd gaming humor, stuff that I think a lot of people in our audience would like, but weren't she at times? So just know that. It might not be for everybody. Very funny though, I'm glad I gave it a chance because I was a little late to the game, but I believe the pilot aired originally in January, so I'm not too far behind. And then finally, this is something, I mean, Patrick, Tom, Roger, I'll leave it to you. I know that a lot of people that like games and that does not include me, because I just, I don't know, I run out of time, rave about Stardew Valley. So I'm just gonna go ahead and pass it along that that seems to be a cool game. I know Animal Crossing is your jam, Tom, but Stardew Valley is something that I just keep hearing about over and over, StardewValley.net. And when you ask me what platform I watch it on or I play it on, I don't, but it seems to be on pretty much all of them. Yeah, I don't get to play Animal Crossing because Eileen has the switch and is playing Animal Crossing anytime, all the time. So that's not me. I real quickly, mine are on the Kindle, I read the Kindle on the Kindle app on my iPhone, Star Wars from a certain point of view. It's an anthology of short stories, all written by amazing authors, everyone written by a different author. They're short. If you're having a hard time focusing right now because you're just worried about stuff, these are great to kind of distract you, but not have to get drawn into a full novel. Another way that I've found incredibly comforting television is just watch old episodes of Cheers. They're on CBS All Access, Hulu, Netflix, you can find them everywhere. Then you get to, it's like going to the bar, right? With a bunch of friendly folks, little dated sometimes don't get me wrong, but it's still fun. And I would be remiss if I didn't point out that I have a novel out, a science fiction novel about a time traveler who's guilty about what he had to do to save the universe and his time ship convinces him to save the universe again. It's called Trigger, T-R-I-G-O-R. You can get it wherever books are sold. You can also read Roger's Patreon column from last week where he touches on a similar theme with ideas and resources of things to do with kids sheltering at home. You can get that at patreon.com slash D-T-N-S. Hey, thanks everybody who participates in our subreddit, get a lot of ideas from you as well, submit stories and vote on others at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. All right, Chris Christensen, the amateur, not currently traveler, has a tip for people under shelter in place who still wanna work and also exercise at home. This is Chris Christensen from amateur traveler with another tech in not traveling minute. When I am not traveling, like now, for instance, I have been working at home for over a decade. Tom suggested I put together some working at home kind of tips. And the first one is for Sarah. Sarah, you mentioned thinking about getting an exercise bike for home. I actually use an exercise desk bike at home. It's the Exorputic ExorWork 1000. And unlike the one you were looking at that costs $1,000, this one actually only costs $244 on Amazon right now and I'll send a link for that. But this gives me a chance to get some exercise in while I actually get work done. I spend an hour or two each day doing that laptop kind of work while sitting and cycling and find it works well for me. This is Chris Christensen from amateur traveler. You know, we saw, it wasn't this year because we had kind of less time to walk the floor, but Tom and Roger and I saw a few of these types of exercise slash desk concoctions at CES. And I remember saying, oh, this is great. I'm totally getting one. And then I kind of forgot about it. The only problem, yeah, exactly. The only problem I have, because he mentioned laptops is I would like one for this desk, which is very, needs a much bigger footprint. But yeah, I'll look into that. I did not buy that $1,000 exercise bike, by the way. It was just a pipe dream. Shout out to patrons at our master and grand master levels, including Juan de Hernandez, Jonathan Price and Michael Aikens. Also thanks to Patrick Beja. Patrick, where can people keep up with your work? You know what the easiest thing to do is to launch your podcast app and look for pixels if you're into video games, or look for Philius Club, just a P-H-I-L-E-A-S. The last episode we had was with people from South Korea, Italy, France and Finland for me and the U.S. and we talked about how each population dealt with the arrival of the pandemic. It's, I think it was really enlightening. So if you think that might be interesting to you, go look for Philius Club on your podcast app. I'm gonna start using this section at the end of the show to talk about other creators out there doing excellent things that you might wanna follow and support. We, of course, still need your support. If you can give it, of course, so do many others. And today I wanna highlight the podcast that shall not be named from the Virtual Uper. He's an EMT and tech in Michigan's upper peninsula, the UP, UP, hence the name Virtual Uper. Usually his musings are quite enjoyable, but of late they've become extra fascinating as the pandemic reaches even into the most remote parts of the country. So listen in at the link in our show notes or search for the podcast that shall not be named. There's one that's about Harry Potter, his is the one that is not about Harry Potter. Just wanna share the love. A lot of creators out there that need your attention right now as well. If you have ideas about podcasts that we should listen to, maybe need a shout out or just have some general questions or feedback or email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. We're live Monday through Friday. That's 4.30 p.m. Eastern, 2030 UTC. If you can join us, we'd love to have you and you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Back tomorrow with Scott Johnson, talk to you then. Bye. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.