 Coming up on DTNS you've been saying a PlayStation button wrong or have you cloud flare admits It was selling services to bad people and California is close to passing a lot of make Uber drivers full employees This is the Daily Tech news for Wednesday September 11th 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio feline I'm Sarah Lane in beautiful Salt Lake City. I'm Scott Johnson and I'm the show's producer Roger Chang Hey, you know what a special happy birthday to Jason Howell of producer of buzz out loud tech news today Sometimes guest on Daily Tech news show. It's his birthday today, and Happy birthday Jason We were just talking about Buying things online and what we thought of the Apple announcement yesterday and all kinds of good stuff on good day internet That's the wider show that encapsulates Daily Tech news show You can get that by becoming a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know Uber laid off 435 people in engineering and product roles, which is about 8% of those departments This follows a layoff of 400 people from its marketing department back in July Uber employees around 27,000 full-time folks Uber also lifted a hiring freeze that was put into place last month and the company lost five billion dollars in Q2 well, although a large portion of that loss was related to one-time IPO expenses real real quick clarification that 27,000 doesn't include drivers at all. That's right. No good clarification. It does not at least not yet That's a lot of people. Yeah, not yet. Maybe in California soon. All right Hey, Mozilla is launching its Firefox private network VPN service to US desktop users of Firefox as part of the revived Firefox test pilot program Firefox private network is an extension that encrypts a connection to analyze it and or excuse me anonymize it and to prevent sniffing cloud Cloudfare provides the proxy servers to Mozilla. The service is free during this beta The Libra Association said it plans to apply to become a licensed payments system in Switzerland where it is headquartered The Swiss financial market supervisor finna said Libra appears to be more than just a global payment system And likely would be subject to liquidity and capital allocations for risk to management of reserves Remember, there's a basket of currencies that Libra uses as a reserve to back its Cryptocurrency that it's developing Libra told Reuters that finna's guidance quote now define what the Libra ecosystem is and what it is not Bloomberg reports three merchants that say several attorneys and at least one economist have been conducting interviews with people who sell goods on amazon as part of a u.s FTC investigation This follows an august 2nd report that john bumstead of minnesota was interviewed by FTC lawyers About the impact of amazon and apple's deal on his refurbished mac business Yeah, so it's wider than just the apple stuff looks like they're looking into all all parts of it according to these sources Let's talk a little bit more about Some of those under the under the radar apple announcements this they sometimes just release some things in press releases Like they did with the operating system release dates that we mentioned yesterday scott. You've got another one here Sure, this is less boring on stage, but uh interesting to consumers I think apple updated apple care plus with a new monthly subscription offering previously the extended warranty covered two or three years Which could pay uh, you'd pay that all at once when you'd pick up your hardware or go buy it or get it online Or you could do it in monthly installments. That's how it always worked then the change now offers the option to pay monthly until cancelled The user could cancel the subscription under certain terms or apple could cancel within 30 days notice If it no longer can service the items Or that you know get parts for the thing that's breaking for you This potentially means apple care could last longer than the usual two or three years Uh, how do we feel about a new uh subscription in our lives a service one If you're trying to wrap your head around this say the apple watch you normally get it for apple care for two years Period you can pay it in installments. You can pay it all at once But it's two years This seems to imply that it could last longer than two years because they're saying you pay monthly until it till you cancel Although I suppose apple could just decide there are no longer parts to service it at the end of two years I will have to wait and see i'm hoping that's not the case Yeah, sort of 11th hour kind of stuff reminds me of my current, uh least term For my apartment, you know my landlord has 30 days to be like you're out of here sarah, but but uh at the same time Having just gone through a big mac book mac book pro Display fixed that was 650 dollars was a lot of money because it was out of warranty And it was something that you know was that apple wasn't going to cover for me Even though it's a known issue, but that is beside the point Uh, you know I after you know, I did the math and I was like, okay Well, this sort of apple insurance would have saved me money in the long term had this had been available to me Before hand, which it wasn't But at the same time it's kind of like the way I feel about creative cloud You know, I'm paying every month for premiere and photoshop Uh, it's it's going to over the course of you know several years be more money than it would have been to outright Just buy the the product in the first place Which is how we used to do things but we've all gotten so used to subscription models Yeah, I I uh, I wonder if there isn't a future where If you're invested enough across the board I guess if you're a business and maybe they already have some of this and I don't know but Paying a monthly fee to just sort of covered all of the stuff branded under that name Whether it's apple or whoever Microsoft whoever wants to do it that seems like a thing I wouldn't mind as a can as a consumer or a kind of a prosumer of products That seems like that might be a a way to deal Yeah, I don't think this this works that way though I think you have to tell it what you're covering and then the price varies based on that but yeah I'm usually one who thinks that these things don't exist to Protect you so much as make the company money So I'm very skeptical apple does have one of the better terms where they will actually replace things and fix things Some of these warranties try to kind of nickel and dime you on that stuff even when when it's covered But uh interesting to see that with a sort of a no end I wonder if being in cahoots with goldman sex on the credit card Provided them any insight and in the math behind offering this Google's chrome 77 is rolling out to windows mac ios and android this week one new feature Let's you right click on a link where you can choose to send the link to another device where you use chrome So in other words not just opening the same page as you have open But like I can send the link from windows to my android phone And when I go open chrome on my android phone, it'll be right there Now the feature has shown up in windows android and ios though in ios You have to have chrome open to see the prompt to accept the shared link So it's a little jankier there And it hasn't showed up on macOS desktop yet But it will supposedly chrome 77 also has a new site loading indicator in the tab that uses the site's fave icon So it's a little more obvious when a site's still loading Yeah before the show I I was like this sounds like a great feature Was this not already a feature and tom you'd clarified? Well for some people they're like don't don't I already have the good ability to do this? But no it's yeah being able to share the link is actually a step forward or firefox does it if you were thinking of that Maybe I don't I don't know they've they've had that i'm a chrome user across all devices currently so Yeah, there is a isn't Okay, I may be totally wrong here and I hope I am so someone to correct me But it seems like I when I've jumped around with different browsers on my phone including chrome and firefox That the apple link share stuff still kind of works So you get that kind of mac icon that pops up and goes Oh, you've got something happening over here on this other device. Do you want to open it here? And I swear i've done that. Yeah, that's an apple thing though. You can't do that with your android phone I think that's what we're thinking of is what i'm saying. Oh, yeah, maybe that's the experience I had that that could make me think I've done it and that I actually haven't done it It's not exactly the same thing, but yeah, that could be what you're thinking of right Oh Scott I have potentially good news or bad news for you I'll let you tell me what it is playstation gamers Count yourself among them who have been calling the console's x button The x button are in for a surprise because sony says this is actually called the cross button In fact on twitter sony's official account said quote if cross is called x and then they said in parentheses It's not then what are you calling circle? And that referred to the fact that a lot of gamers call the o button the circle button Yeah, this is a thing that didn't some people are downright upset about it I mean well, so sony did a poll where they said what do you call it wink wink? Well, that's what you're wrong. Yeah, it's almost like they brought this on themselves, but it's also I mean they did It's a it's a it's a pr thing. It is definitely a pr thing, but here's the thing like it's so Weird to get wrapped up in a pedantic thing that has been in place for 20 plus years We've been calling it the x button since the day in 96 that I went home with my brand new playstation 1 And then return it a week later because the fan was bad. But anyway, that's not part of the story We called it an x button then I've heard sony in presentations at e3 and other events say the x button As they're describing what's happening in games and so on so I know they know it So this is just a way of getting everybody to talk about their playstation I guess and I don't know that it's the best way to do that It seems like a lot of negative cloud over this thing or does it make you cross? No, it makes me I'm all x'd out over it Well, when you think of it, you're like, okay, of course because of naming conventions of competitors. Sure You'd say, oh, yeah, call it a cross rather than an x but as you point out, Scott Sony itself hasn't done this for many years now. So it's a little silly. It's super silly and it's not It's not so much that We're completely adverse to change if they came out and said it's really important You call it the the cross button and for now all games will just refer to it as that And you'll see it in all of our documentation if they were going to do that. All right fine. We get used to it But why it's you're part of the of the popular culture in a way that few Companies are and certainly in gaming. That's a that's a thing that sticks forever We already know it for what it is It was already weird to use symbols and not abc ab x and y like everybody else was doing And has continued to double down on this weird symbol thing The only part of it that made sense to us was x and occasionally o instead of circle So don't take that from us. Let us have this like Like normal conversation about we all know. Yeah, it's the 10 button Yeah, and i'm never gonna tell nick. He's never gonna go dad. I can't get out of this level Well, hit the cross button first Yeah, hit the 10 button. Well, and also, I mean, I know this is nitpicky, but When I see x that often means like abort Right like it doesn't mean cross to me It's like you you you should have kind of planted the seed about the fact that you wanted us to all call this a long time ago Yeah, and other controllers have x. It's all just weird. So I don't know why they did it tom's right It's pr. It's weird pr though Let's talk about something more serious I agree and documents related to its plans to issue public stock cloud fair disclose potential economic and trade sanctions violations and such To the u.s. Treasure treasury department the filing says the disclosure was made to the treasury in may The filing also says that customers that have been designated by the us as terrorists and narcotics traffickers Or are affiliated with governments who are currently subject to comprehensive u.s. Sanctions Used and paid for cloud fair services But for us says it's adding additional controls and screening to remediate the problem And uh or remedy rather no remediate cloud fair also May disclosures over potential export control violations to the commerce department and census bureau So, I mean really this is cloud flare Filing its paperwork not covering things up saying hey, you know, we did our due diligence. We looked in the background It looks like some bad people may have taken advantage of our services And we're we're taking measures to try to stop that from happening in the future But this is no different than what happens on facebook and youtube in my opinion where you have an automatic system For signing up for something and it works at a scale that is larger than humans can review and that is a problem And you know, I I don't think there's a moral judgment to be laid on cloud flare here Other than to say like well if in this world where technology works at that scale This is something that is going to happen. And yes, we need to figure out how to make it not happen Uh, but it's easier said than done and uh, and and it's interesting to me that you don't you don't see a bunch of Outrage about cloud flare out there That that you might have if this was a facebook or a google Doing it because cloud flare has been very good about protecting your data and being a good steward or at least appearing to be so in the past Yeah, isn't it also good that they I mean the benefit from being on the tail end of these other Stories like we had one last day even it feels like every week there's at least two or three of these because outrage exhaustion Partly that but also they can come in on the back end and go well in spite and they're not saying this but despite all of those things We're doing this The right way we believe here is our due diligence. Here is our here was our transparency. Here's how we're trying to do this Isn't that better than what you've seen before without having these are just these are they're not doing press announcements about this They're not out there saying look at what we're doing. These are just they have to file this. Yeah Yeah, but even then like it's just a better look for them that they weren't the first to get To get hit with like hey, wait a minute. There might be potential terrorists using your common systems I mean that's that's true of any online service at all like that's not specific to cloud flare That's true. Yeah, I think this is less of a like look at what cloud flare did right and more of a this is our new normal Yeah, right or wrong either one Uh developer steve trout and smith he of the finding evidence of future products and developers things fame Posted a screenshot of a read me file from the ios 13 gold master that describes how employees can run Stereo augmented reality apps on an iphone when you don't have access to apple's headset What headset is that? Steve trout and smith asked as he read this read me refers to something codenamed garta Garta has also been reported in leaks by nine to five mac and mac rumors as a codename for an ar headset Uh garter seems to be a stereoscopic ar headset based on the content of the read me ros 13 code also has a game controller framework gamepad profile that trout and smith describes as For a device meant to be used while using stereo augmented reality apps The controller profile has a clicky trackpad a trigger button and a system button which trout and smith thinks might be a home button But yeah, it looks like at least internally apple has been testing an augmented reality headset of some sort And a controller to go with it And this is something that we've been you know hearing rumors about for some time But this is our our our best evidence that this is a real thing that is in testing Yeah, not only that but you know everybody we were talking pre-show about how It feels like people are on eggshell sometimes at the apple saying well When are you going to show your hand in the vr stuff that we know you're at least researching or working on? That's what they do they went for everybody else to put products out and then they come out and say well Here's how we think we're doing it right And they just haven't really done much even though there've been weird patents flowing around and strange drawings and now this But I think this leads me to believe anyway that what we'll see is a company continue to push ar Uh, they've had a lot of that happening with the phone and with their ios devices Why not apple to be the one that comes out with it at the very least in a ar solution if not some sort of mixed reality headset And maybe maybe sooner than we think or this could be like any other thing like apple cars where you just never see anything So i'm not holding my breath, but i'm excited that there's something well. Sean Hollister over at the verge Suggest that this could be like a cardboard style device something you put your iphone in Uh, if you if you read the read me in a certain way it could work that way Which might be just a test device He doesn't think and I agree with him that apple would ever release a cardboard style augmented reality device for an iphone So we may be a little farther down the road than we think But if you're like well wait, I already knew apple it was making an augmented reality device because I saw all those headlines Well, there's been a lot of people leaking things and speculating. This is solid evidence It's referenced to the headset in a read me file released to public developers So this is different than somebody said or somebody told me or I think I heard or I saw a leak like this is This is actual evidence We we've sort of lost the ability to distinguish those things over the years So I feel it's important to point that out Hey folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes Be sure to subscribe to daily tech headlines dot com All right back to california state senate passed bill ab five That bill if it becomes law, it's not law yet would make some contractors into non-contract employees You'll see people refer to it as full-time But there could be part-time employees that are that are assigned benefits The point is they get benefits they contractors don't get benefits If you're a full employee a non-contract employee, they have to give you a certain amount of benefits The bill would affect companies like uber lift door dash postmates Even interpreters and translators possibly some taxi companies who hire people to drive as contractors Under the proposed law to be considered a contractor a worker in california must meet the abc test This was laid out in a court case last year and is now being kind of beefed up and turned into law So the abc case is you are free from control of the hiring company The hiring company doesn't tell you how to do your job. They just hire you to do a thing That's if you're a contractor. Yeah, this is how you qualify as a contractor Two you have to work outside the company's main business if the company is a trucker, which is what the the court case was about And you drive a truck It's going to be harder to prove that you work outside the company's main business And the third thing you need to do to prove you're an independent contractor is have an independent business Beyond the contracted job So you can't be like, oh, no, my only source of income is this contracted job Then the legislation is going to say well, then you're not a contractor AB five specifically exempt some categories though So freelance writers are exempt real estate agents lawyers among others These non-contract employees in california if they're found to be not contractors must be paid a minimum wage receive overtime sick leave family leave and contribute to social security and medicare And if they're using their own vehicles like with uber and lift then they'd be required to be reimbursed for mileage If they're using their own car for company business Also, don't forget that companies with employees have to pay payroll tax for employees On top of the money taken out for wages. A lot of people don't realize that There's the withholding that comes out of your payroll But then the company has to pay a tax just for employing you on top of that Why that's called a payroll tax But why Because the government wants to have more money. So I'm just as somebody who's never paid this tax I'm like, that doesn't sound like something I want to do. No, but uh, I pay this tax because I employ you Exactly. Yeah as as a privilege of employing roger and sarah. I pay the payroll tax uber and lift say they plan to take a referendum in california voters to create a new non-employee Classification for drivers next year that would be their their way of fighting back on this The bill now goes back to the state assembly For kind of a reconciliation. They have to approve some amendments that the senate put on it It's expected to pass there and after that it would go to the governor who is in full support of this So he was expected to sign it and if passed it'll go into effect on january 1st Oh man, so many things to think about with this and I know it's only california, but I work with so many californians That I have a lot of questions about how this might affect me. It does sound though like for example, if somebody hires me And I'll speak just because I only know what I could do but somebody hires me says, hey, we're doing this children's book We need an illustrator. We'd like you to do it Probably gonna be okay Like that's still a Under these definitions and these changes. It's still a thing You're the writer is pulling in an artist to do a thing and then the writer's Done and that guy goes away contract complete, right? What they're trying to kill are People who may want to keep me around to do illustrations for something every month still call me a contractor But depriving me of whatever rights they think they're depriving me of I think that's how I have it in my head And people take advantage of it, right? Like yeah, I mean this is this is definitely targeted at an industry And that never has unintended side effects. Does it no Yeah, I mean this whole story, you know, you keep hearing the term gig economy Economy workers you see you go like oh uber and love drivers or you know, somebody who's working for postmates or you know, somebody who's working for uh, you know, it's it's it's it's that certain sector of workers which Sometimes it's full-time. It's often not full-time. So companies that are of a large scale What do we say earlier in the show that uber has like 27 000 full-time employees none of which are drivers big company And in many cases this is the bread and butter of somebody who is working for that company So that I see that it makes a lot of sense But you know tom you used uh the dts team as an example and there are a lot of uh small private companies Who will be affected by this and not necessarily in good ways Yeah, I mean It makes uh, it hard for me or scott if he's using somebody that lives here in california Like when I co-host current geek with him for instance, uh, it makes it harder to decide well, wait a minute Do you fall into this law? I mean, you're not a freelance writer. So you're not exempt there But you like for me it's easy to say like oh, I have my own business I had I had to actually fight this out with a company that had hired me to do something And wanted to make me an employee and take out uh medicare and social security and all that and I was like Wait, wait, wait. You're hiring my company And you're not hiring me and eventually what they did is they're like, oh, you should be a vendor not a contractor And they they switched it all up and it's fine But it is causing a lot of consternation outside of this and I guess what makes it a tech story is a lot of non uh malicious technology Innovation happens because of the freedom to be like. Oh, yeah Let me just hire somebody to do that for for a minute that doesn't require a lot of paperwork and consternation And at least in california This is going to add a few layers to that or at least put people at risk if they're like well as long as nobody complains I guess it's fine. But what if somebody does complain down the road, right? It just just adds a little uncertainty in there Yeah, I hope uh, I hope it doesn't have I mean, here's what here's what usually happens with these kinds of changes and also existing laws People find loopholes as you were describing this. I was thinking about let's see if Is tom really a contractor when I do current geek payouts? Probably not like I know I'm a vendor. I'll you something you're hiring sub brilliant llc Uh to provide a guest for your show Exactly. See there's always this stuff. I learned this if I've learned anything from my magical accountant And one day it may get him in trouble. I don't know but he has this way of finding all the ways around It's like oh well for that you just say this for that you just do this you show this It's not like lying or deceit. It's just Yeah Yeah, exactly like If if if there is somebody like sarah for instance who's like, oh no, I tell her I don't tell her what to do. No one tells sarah what to do. But you know, I I'm like you have to be here every time Right, uh, and and and I want you I want you to write up some stuff that and and and you're doing 40 hours a week work Then you're a full-time person and I get that and this is this is trying to make sure the companies are debusing this So I'm not saying I'm even against this law, but it does Change the way a lot of other things are going to happen I know they they carved out lawyers and real estate agents because they knew those would be screaming the biggest freelance writers too because the media Uses that a lot so it'll be interesting. Yeah, also. I'm glad I'm glad that they're not worried about how poorly People who are on their own Soul proprietors ships treat themselves. Do you know what I'm saying? Like there's no way I'm being fair to myself. I get crappy vacation time My pay is not that great if you look at hours spent versus what the totals are Like I'm a terrible example of mismanagement of my employee if I count it. I'm really glad I don't and I hope I never do Well, I hope you never do either And and yeah, I mean, I I guess we didn't talk enough this about like the actual what this does for writers But it could reduce the number of writers that these companies employ On the other hand, it's definitely going to reduce the exploitation of these writers Who have been complaining more and more that the deal gets worse all the time that the more they work They're not making that much more money As the ferris change. So it'll be interesting to see how it shakes up. Yeah, I mean Freelance writing especially it's like free from control of the hiring company working outside the company's main business. Everybody does that You know have an independent business beyond the contracted job Everybody does that, you know, unless things are going badly. So yeah, a lot of gray areas here still Well, but the but freelance writers are exempted So they don't they don't have to worry about it. All right, but anybody who falls under that Same moniker is you know, I think that there are a lot of companies who will be like, well, are we really controlling you? And the freelance person might say well, I think you are see that's my point It becomes these start thinking of these loopholes and like oh if you define it that way, like that's why this stuff's so hard to regulate it is What isn't hard to regulate our wonderful subredditors You can submit stories and vote on others at daily tech news show dot reddit dot com We use those stories to help bolster our show. So thank you in advance We also have a facebook group join it if you haven't already facebook.com slash groups slash daily tech news show Let's check out the mailbag Let's do it. Ted wrote in about using Vivaldi as his main browser for over a year and Ted So he has some really good thoughts He says all the features of chrome But none of the google most of the web apps that I use are optimized for chrome and since vivaldi uses the chromium rendering engine It works just as well Vivaldi can also use any extension in the chrome app stores. You can get all your favorite customizations You could also sync your personal data outside of the google cloud If you prefer not to have google holding the keys to your whole digital life Vivaldi's cloud services are free and privacy centered Ted also says web panels are a little expandable are a Little expandable windows along the side of the browser perfect to show in an online to-do list or a notes app Or any other site that you want to have handy but also hidden And then Ted says cool customizations in the browser interface itself If you wish your tabs or address bar or windows looked and worked a little differently I really like how the tab bar bar will match the color of whatever site you visit I also like the ability to mosaic multiple browser tabs so I can interact with them at the same time Finally, Ted says built-in screenshot and nice native developer tools as well Now I mentioned yesterday We had an email from Allison Sheridan that we didn't get to read while Allison was on the show But uh, she says i'm sure there are people who just don't like change So don't want microsoft to do but that's not it for her She's a wonder list fan as microsoft has been working on to do Allison writes i've jumped in and back out to test functionality Earlier versions were missing a most critical feature the ability to share a list with someone The next big thing missing was the ability to organize lists into folders Now I tested folders when it came out last month and thought they finally had it ready for prime time But the painstaking organization I created didn't go across to my other devices eventually that worked too But then things started to disappear from my lists and lists move back out of folders I think microsoft will get there and I'll keep trying to move over but as of a month ago It wasn't even reliable. So if there may be wonderless people like allison who are like, yeah, I'd move but it just doesn't work yet So yeah, I'm I found myself in the same boat. I did. I don't know if I told you guys this I moved completely over to one drive and away from a box and I've been Thrilled with it. It's been great zero problems light weight no weird restrictions None of the weird newness of all the cranky or the crazy stuff dropbox was trying to do I'm not anti drop box good power to everybody. But for whatever reason, I feel like one drive Stepped in nicely and said, oh, you liked all those simple features. Well, here they are Well, thanks to ted thanks to ellison chariden and thanks to everybody who contributes to our mail bag We love your feedback keep it coming also. Thanks to scott johnson for being with us today scott Let folks know where they can keep up with your work head on over to frog pants.com There are many shows that you can get there are also multiple kinds of cool things like artwork and other projects video projects Things that are going on all the time over at frog pants.com and as always if you'd like to talk to me on the regular You can find me on twitter at twitter.com slash scott johnson as I keep mentioning We are changing our rewards some of which have been around for five years For the first time and we have a proposal up That we want you to look over and let us know if you can't live with anything in it We've gotten some great feedback great ideas. So probably this friday Will address those ideas and incorporate some and if we don't kind of explain why we're not doing it at this point But you can find the current proposal at daily tech news show dot com slash patreon I mentioned we love mailbag entries and our email address to send those mailbox to is feedback at daily tech news show at dot com We're live money through friday 4 30 p.m at eastern. That's 20 30 utc And you can find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live Back tomorrow with justin robber young talk to you then This show is part of the frog pants network. Get more at frogpants.com The retirement club hopes you have enjoyed this program