 coming up on D T N S our take apart laptops the next trend the truth about Facebook's newsfeed and is our password free future finally here D T N S starts now this is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday September 15th the Ides of September 2021 in Los Angeles I'm Tom Mary and from Studio Redwood I'm Sarah Lane it's all like city I'm Scott Johnson and I'm Roger Chang the show's producer we were just talking about our dreams not our hopes just our dreams if you want that wider conversation get our expanded show Good Day Internet become a member at patreon.com slash D T N S that is where you can join our top patrons like Mark Gibson Reed Fischler and Michelle Surge you yay all right let's start with a few tech things you should know Amazon now offers Prime members in the UK and Ireland access to Deliveroo plus for a year this will provide free food delivery for orders over 25 pounds the currency of the weights of the food Amazon has roughly a 12% stake in Deliveroo protocol sources say Comcast will launch its own X-Class branded smart TVs manufactured by Hisense hey if Amazon can do it Comcast can do it too these 4k TVs will come in 43 and 50 inches run Comcast X1 operating system the same one found on its set top boxes and include a voice controlled remote the Wall Street Journal previously reported Walmart will sell these TVs but we don't have a large data pricing yet Xiaomi announced its 11t series of phones the top end 11t pro comes with a Qualcomm 888 system on a chip 120 Hertz OLED screen that supports Dolby Vision and a 5000 milliamp hour battery with support for 120 watt fast charging able to go from zero to full in acclaimed 17 minutes the standard 11t comes with a MediaTek Dimensity 1200 Ultra SOC and supports 67 watt fast charging the budget 11 light 5G NE comes with a snapdragon 778 and one would assume more pedestrian charging speeds the 11t pro starts at 649 euros the 11t at 499 euros and the 11 light at 369 euros though no release dates but all models will come to European markets Nintendo added Bluetooth audio support to the switch in a new software update now supporting using Bluetooth headphones to listen to your audio on the portable console the switch can only use two wireless controllers when using Bluetooth audio though keep that in mind and Bluetooth microphones are not yet supported with the release of version 14 of the unicorn unicorn Unicode standard we got 37 new emoji some might say you would want some unicorns but what you do get is a biting lip a troll a saluting face a pregnant person the ever important heart hands and support for mixed skin tones for handshake are among the additions you could do do we have an emoji for heart on top of your head then where you do the heart full heart that's coming you got to be biting your lip at the same time I think yes there is a unicorn emoji but we could always use more let's talk about modular laptops we mentioned Intel's knuck for laptops earlier this week and our producer Rich and a few of y'all mentioned the framework modular laptop project will protocols source code podcast interviewed frameworks founder and you're off Patel who formerly worked at Apple and Oculus he talks to them about the business behind this how he thinks it will take off why he thinks he's done it right where so many people have done it wrong before but if you're like what is the framework the framework is a 13.5 inch clamshell laptop that you can take apart and replace or repair piece by piece there are four expansions and slots slide in modules that snap into USB can see connectors socket storage and RAM and of course a replaceable main board made up of the CPU and fan you can also swap out the battery you can swap out the screen and the keyboard and even the speakers when you order the laptop you can choose to order it prefab like any other laptop you can still take it apart later but it comes assembled or you can get it as a kit which starts off cheaper but depending on how you configure it can end up being more expensive than prefab not sure about that prefab is still as upgradeable as the kit those you just don't have to put it together yourself the prefab with a core i5 8 gigabytes of ram and 256 gigabytes solid state drive is $999 the top of the line model prefab is 32 gigabytes of ram a core i7 and a terabyte of storage for $1,999 and there's all kinds of configurable options in between there you can customize it to your heart's content of course because their module you can also change later after you've ordered it you know buy some extra modules default pricing includes for usb-c module but you can mention mix and match those you could have a usb-a display port or an htmi no thunderbolt 4 yet the main boards capable of it they just don't have a module for it just keep in mind there are only four expansion card ports however you can buy more than four modules and then swap them out for different purposes in fact lori grunen from cnet used that capability to change which side the usb-c port was on based on where her charging cable was going to be in a given situation because she was using the other ports for other things all information on modules is published so that repair shops can actually perform repairs they're trying to lean into the right to repair movement for a framework ships with a screwdriver that has a combo torx t5 and phillips head on one end and a wedge for pulling parts apart on the other also gives you some spare screws case you lose a few some parts like the screen bezel are even magnetic don't even have to use a screw each framework module that is proprietary you got things like the ram that are just modules like like you would have in any laptop but there's some like the main board for instance that are proprietary and they put a qr code on it to take you to a page with info about that part helps you install it know what the specs are etc no part is under another so there's none of that like I had to remove this to get to that kind of thing in a real machine and yet the whole thing is 15.9 millimeters thick and 2.3 pounds it's certainly not the slimmest laptop you can find but it's pretty average framework laptops are available now at various configurations with clear shipping dates on the website so as you're ordering it it'll tell you like ah well this configuration is in phase three of shipping most of those seem to be in October when I was looking at this earlier I'm excited about this and I'll tell you why I think the future of computing is probably modular and I don't think we're anywhere near it yet this is a step forward things been tried in the past some works mom didn't or come a long way but I'm excited about the concept of I need to have what's best for me and what's best for me is the size of screen or this much storage or this little storage because everything's cloud based or whatever it may be that's I believe that is ultimately the kind of choice we're going to want as tech users we're not going to want the kind of choice that is strictly brand or sub brand multiple models which color all of that let us choose from components that are so well standardized in terms of assembly that anybody can do it including me I would love that I'm here for this I don't know that this will take off like crazy I think this is incremental and a step toward what will ultimately be the way this stuff works but this is a nice step seems all right many have gone down this road before though yeah go ahead sir I was gonna say so I'm not I'm not that much of a hardware tinkerer I mean I am in some you know facets of my life but when it comes to like the modular laptop it's that's not by itself a huge selling point for me because it's like you know I I don't know I just wanted to work right but the idea that a repair shop could be able to fix my laptop more efficiently and more cheaply and and faster that actually that seems to me you know having had a couple of years ago my my MacBook you know had to go into the shop for like the better part of two weeks and who even knows what they were doing I you know it was it was a display issue at the time and luckily I had a backup computer so I was able to continue to do work but that kind of stuff I think that makes a lot of sense yeah especially if for instance maybe the problems your USB C module if the repair shop is like I can repair your module just leave it here keep your laptop or just pop out that USB C module maybe they'd even give you a loaner module in the meantime you don't lose a port if you only had one yeah a car dealership or something all kinds of interesting things here now these modules that the RAM and things that are already modular on most laptops those those are not proprietary but the the modules that are like the like the USB C for instance those are proprietary so that may be a downside for some folks but remember in most laptops you don't even have the choice of pulling out that USB C module at all so it's at least a step up and it would be cool if framework because they seem to be fairly open about specs and repair ability if maybe if this got off the ground they they started licensing out to to multiple parties to make other modules but I think right now they're saying look let's just get let's get people to buy this laptop at all first before we get there this is how our robots are going to be made we'll start now I want different parts for different robots speaking of trying new things that maybe will be the future Microsoft launched passwordless sign-in for all consumer Microsoft accounts it was available for commercial accounts starting in March so there's this has been around for a bit but now we all can use it instead of a password users of outlook comm and one drive can sign in using windows hello biometric authentication or a security key like UB key a code for Microsoft authenticator app or a code emailed or texted by SMS you'll not be able to use passwordless login in office 2010 or earlier some of the older stuff is kind of busted up windows 8 or earlier or remote desktop or the Xbox 360 platform but that tells me right there that the newer Xbox platforms will indeed support this I think this is a huge step forward I wish the whole world is like this let's help this is the example it seems to be and maybe everybody does this yeah this is a dream long time coming on know a little more dot com we've done episodes about the Fido Alliance that there's been a long plan by multiple tech companies not just Microsoft to to push forward a passwordless future of course Google driving force behind Fido Alliance this is a big step it was I said the same thing in March when we announced that we had the news that Microsoft was making this commercially available but at that time I said when it really takes off is when everybody can do it and this is everybody can do it yeah there's a few older things like Xbox 360 in office 2010 there's a security issue with remote desktop that you know right now it's not safe to do it that way but honestly this is great Windows hello works very well for those of you who haven't haven't tried it it works incredibly well but I like that they're saying look if you don't have Windows hello that's fine we'll do these other options I hope that you can make it so that you don't have to have SMS information as a fallback I haven't checked on that because SMS is of course the least secure of all of these but if SMS is the only thing you can use it's certainly better than than not having anything at all and better than you know using the same password everywhere or forgetting your password or something like that I love that we are finally beginning to see the glimmers of an actual passwordless future as somebody who I I I'm very good at losing things something like you know yeah a Yubi-Ki for example seems like something I would misplace and that's not actually a way that I'm logging into any system but the idea that passwords are they're just not they're not safe you know what I mean you can make them safer you can do your absolute best to make them as safe as possible but the idea that you would have something on your person or yes biometric information that you could use to sign in that is just better than a password is something that I think I don't know let's say 10 years 10 years from now we'll all look back and say remember when we used to do that and there were all these password managers and and all that stuff it it does seem like not only the future but the future that's rapidly approaching yeah security keys built into your phones NFC oh yeah see I just want to wave my I want it my watch I want it my actually I want it my eyeball can I stare into your little sensor and biometric all right hello it already exists your whole face that's right hey folks remember we did an experiment week at the end of August thanks for for playing along with that's giving us a feedback the first of the experiment week shows is launching Thursday the tech John a podcast featuring Rob Dunwood Terence Gaines and Stephanie Humphrey takes a second look at the week's tech headlines but delivered from an African-American perspective received so much positive feedback that Rob has made it a full show in its own RSS feed and everything so folks if you are one of the folks who emailed us and said I want more of that go get it right now the tech John dot com episode zero from experiment week is in there now and the first official episode one will be in the feed starting Thursday that's the tech John J A W N dot com Wall Street Journal has been doing the Lord's work covering Facebook they got a hold of a bunch of documents have been running stories all week long today they're reporting that in 2018 Facebook announced another change to its news feed algorithm that's not the news we'll get to the news in a minute but remember it noted publicly that research suggested that passively consuming professionally produced content was harmful to your mental health and it wanted to encourage people to interact more with friends and family Mark Zuckerberg said publicly that this shift of emphasis might reduce time spent on Facebook but it was the right thing to do now I supported the idea of like okay connected with friends and family sounds good I'm sure they have their other reasons for doing this too and apparently they did the Wall Street Journal's internal documents show that Facebook shared graphs and trends noting that engagement was valuable to advertisers was down and that this new algorithm would increase it so yes help connect you with friends and family but also made the more money so it appears the change was made to increase engagement and get a PR bump at the cost of time spent on the platform that was a fair trade for everybody it seemed professionally produced content seemed to Facebook to be one of the things that lacked engagement if you read a Washington Post article or a Fox News article you might not comment much on it so they prioritized it instead Facebook promoted posts based on a score of how meaningful it was a like would be worth one point a reaction emoji happy face sad face mad face or reshare that was worth five points and a significant comment message or RSVP if it was an event that was 30 points multipliers were added on top of all of that based on how close your relationship to the poster was family member counted the highest a stranger counted lowest post with more comments and reactions started shooting up to the top of news feeds anger was more likely to get a lot of comments and reactions so more angry and outrageous posts were promoted that's always been human nature while time spent on the platform did decline daily active people as Facebook calls it rose exactly as Facebook hoped and while users found content by close connections more meaningful those benefits were countered by the rise of these angry posts publishers started to notice that their traffic plummeted they'd been deprioritized more divisive content they published however took off in autumn of 2018 BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti emailed Facebook concerned that the most divisive content that BuzzFeed published was doing the best on Facebook he said you're incentivizing us to make more divisive content and less good balanced content the Wall Street Journal has internal Facebook documents that show a team of the Facebook data scientists flag Peretti's email and noted that misinformation toxicity and violent content are inordinately prevalent among reshares political parties in Europe Taiwan and India started to find it harder to communicate directly with supporters because their messages would be deprioritized and started to create negative posts because at least those would be seen in news feeds political parties in Poland told Facebook they had shifted actual policies to resonate better on Facebook which meant they increased their negative content from 50 50 to be 80 percent of their posts now okay lots of negative posts but were people more satisfied with their experience no a 2018 Facebook internal survey after the change found that people felt the quality of their feed had declined Facebook did try to adjust its data scientists proposed multiple changes to reduce the algorithm tendency to reward outrage and lies mark zuckerberg said he would support changes as long as they didn't hurt engagement in April 2020 Anna Stepanov proposed removing a boost for long chains of reshares and last month Facebook announced it would expand some tests that put less emphasis on these kinds of signals for political content in April 2019 one data scientists recommend reducing the spread of deep reshares that's when you reshare something from somebody you don't follow Facebook made that change but only for civic and health info in spring 2020 and saw reduced false content in those categories however zuckerberg resisted expanding it outside those categories because it might reduce engagement former Facebook employee James Barnes told the Wall Street Journal that the platform had grown so complex he believes the company doesn't understand how its changes might backfire and just takes a gamble on what'll play well in the press y'all are angry out there let's do what will make it less angry even if it doesn't work a 2020 memo said Facebook quote never really figured out why its metrics had declined back before 2018 so who knows if these changes would even work because they didn't figure out why it was declining in the first place overall the Wall Street Journal paints a picture of a company that has employees that want to do the right thing but executives that are worried about killing the platform if they overcorrect and a lack of any actual certainty about what works and what doesn't and what effect it might have whoo yeah that was a mouthful i mean i think one thing i maybe learned from this um is that they they know how to steer the ship when the priority is engagement as an example you brought up engagement a lot now zuckerberg doesn't want to lose engagement so they know how to steer that ship into engagement that tells me that they know also how to steer the ship away from problematic troubling or otherwise stuff that could be a have a negative effect in a really you know a really measurable way on their users but they don't do that they they avoid anything that is an engagement but if engagement includes stuff that makes people behave poorly or at least gives them the opportunity to behave poorly which is just a numbers game they'll they'll do that and if i i i know that's kind of a simplified takeaway from a lot of data that they don't exactly share process of and all that but at the end of the day it tells me they do know how to avoid the the problems with uh with facebook and they won't because engagement matters more than fixing those problems if there's a storming of the capital on january 6th then they will for politics if there's an outbreak of a pandemic then they will for health but only when they get public pressure right i also i i found it interesting that uh we are you know as consumers of news it's easy for me to kind of look at something to be like uh buzzfeed clickbait news wow you know for for for buzzfeed buzz feeds uh jonah peretti to say to facebook hey these are the kinds of stories that we're getting the best engagement on something is wrong here we don't we're uncomfortable doing more of those we'd you know yeah i mean that that that really tells you not only how strong facebook is as a platform for sharing news and content but but uh but the precarious position that a lot of publishers are in when that is one of the ways that you get the most clicks yeah this is why for years now i've been saying you need to find out what the problem is before you can fix it because what will happen is facebook will react to your public pressure which may or may not be the right pressure point they'll say oh you're mad about health great we'll do it in health but they won't fix the problem the problem still exists elsewhere oh you want to do it about politics we'll do it narrowly about politics but you're still getting everybody angry elsewhere and i don't think facebook causes all the divisiveness but it certainly aggravates it and if facebook isn't going to figure out what the problem is then facebook needs to let academics have access to their data so the academics can do the job because right now the only people who really know what's going on with facebook are the data scientists within facebook and they're not allowed to talk to everybody else about all of their research facebook if you really want to pressure facebook in my opinion if you really want to pressure facebook to do something change stop being angry about them about whatever you're angry about and say you need to stop people saying the thing i disagree with start putting pressure on facebook to open up all their data to academics open up the data to independent research that will let us figure out what's actually going wrong and get to fix it instead of just playing this game of like we'll put pressure on facebook because we're mad about something facebook fixes that but doesn't fix the underlying problem yeah yeah it's uh i couldn't agree with that more and um it you know if you guys are really gonna tout that you're using scientific methods and that you're on the up and up and then not on the up and up that you don't have you've got the best interest of people humanity and your reach in mind then show us have peer review have have transparency and without that you're just i don't know what i don't believe you yeah and you don't facebook you don't have to do this in fact most companies wouldn't do this i get it but you're not most companies anymore nope that is true well who would like to talk about electric vehicles let's do it let's do it let's do it so ev charging if you if you happen to have an ev vehicle might be easy for you you might have a garage even you have a driveway maybe there's a cord kind of thing that leaves out a lot of people who live in new york tech crunch has has a write-up on that company called gravity that's converting a 29 space indoor parking garage on 42nd street in new york city between 9th and 10th avenues in manhattan into a fast charging hub for evs cars pay the cost of the electricity that they use while they're parked the company had to work with conhead to pull power from two separate utility ropes to bring in the 24 000 amps of power that was needed and it worked with environmental architect jasmine ranger on the building designed not to make it just that some dingy gray space that you're used to kind of make you know a place you'd like to go gravity will also charge a fleet of tesla model y yellow cabs overnight in the space kind of proof of concept there and gravity isn't the first company to do this will not be the last this is a new thing that people all over the world are going to have to deal with especially if they live in urban areas so revel which operates uh shred emopeds opened a fast charging hub with 25 spaces for cars in an indoor outdoor lot rather in brooklyn last june gravity is expected to open its lot in a few weeks and the company hopes to open five to ten fast charging sites in mehattan over the next six months yeah this is a uh this is an interesting take on this obviously it's not you know 29 spaces is dropping the bucket that's not that's not going to fix it but i think this is the proof of concept to say hey we want to do a bunch of these and if we can do a bunch of these here we can do them anywhere because it's new york uh and by anywhere i think they mean the other boroughs you know queens brooklyn et cetera but yeah i i think it's a it's an interesting take to say we'll let people park and charge because anybody who doesn't live in a dense area thinks like oh you just charge overnight at your house and then you never have to charge when you're out and about in new york you might have to do that the opposite way you might have to go park in the parking garage during the day in charge and then not charge when you take it home because you don't have a charger where you park it yeah it's i mean i obviously don't live in new york city but um you know tightly packed uh areas of cities are gonna always kind of be a problem for electric vehicles to really take off and um even here i still get a little nervous about it i've got a friend who has a tesla and he charges at home and then he looks for charging stations and stations and he's got it all mapped out and got this very careful sort of way that he gets around when he travels and that sort of thing and i don't know it's always been just this thing where like until we can really guarantee the ease that is every corner has a gas station um you know evs are just gonna not they're not gonna have the hold that we ultimately think they'll they'll have or at least they want as quickly uh as they would have had this state of new york to sign legislation saying every vehicle sold in the state of new york has to be zero emission by 2035 so you got a lot to figure that out yeah you're gonna do that yeah you you better do it i guess it's it's a pretty great business honestly yeah start your engines yeah so to speak all right let's check out the mail bag let's do it we got a couple good ones we'll start with mike and steamy dubai uh mike hope you're doing well good for your porous mike says i've been unsatisfied with the quality of the seven inch and nine inch tablet market since my nexus seven second gen gave up the ghost back in 2016 i got a samsung eight inch tablet that was okay for reading but after about a year it crawled to a snail's pace and samsung stopped updating it when apple priced the 128 gig ipad mini as more than the 128 gig ipad regular i just couldn't bring myself to pay more for a smaller screen i've tried amazon tablets i've tried lower end samsung tablets but i found they frequently crash reading the kindle app but they're just too laggy i love my samsung tab s7 but it's big and it's bright it's like turning on a spotlight when i'm reading in bed so the mini talking about the ipad mini is great for folks who commute on subways like the fact that it's close to the size of a book and can take notes without the entire room reading your screen i'm a dedicated android fan says mike but i will be running out on or close to the 24th to snap up a new ipad mini apple pencil and folio cover this moment has been years in the making congratulations mike i finally i'm glad you finally found your tablet love i hope it all works out i wish you wish you nothing but happiness with you in the ipad mini that's great i know that's the excitement he's like finally this is what i've been waiting for i actually i kind of read the email and i was like maybe i should think about this a little bit more closely it is it is pretty great yeah not that i'll be on a subway in a time soon but anyway david over in the uk said as someone who has worked for airlines for over a decade i see one glaring problem with amazon one the palm scanning tech in the concert venue remember we announced they're coming to the colorado red rocked amphitheater uh david says any event whether it be concert or even boarding a flight requires crowd management using palm scanning to verify someone has a valid ticket is fine but then when through the turnstile the person will need to make their way to the seat this may involve staff having to direct the person to certain doorways aisles or staircases scanning your palm will speed up the entry process but it assumes the person knows their seat number or assigned area and will remember it this is highly unlikely what is most likely to happen is after scanning their palm the person will still need to check a paper ticket or digital ticket on their phone to find out their seat number so they can be directed correctly this renders any time saving almost pointless as they will need to revert to a paper or digital ticket on their phone anyway if you sent thousands of people into a stadium with just their palms and no other ticketing info i would bet the event would never start with a pandemonium that would ensue as people attempted to find where to go for their seat yes david no they are not getting rid of seat numbers they're not going to write it on your palm the palm tech as i understand it is really just to speed up the line to get into the venue and i i have to say i disagree i don't think the need to double check your seat number after you get in the venue makes the speed up pointless for any event i've been to the biggest line is getting into the venue not getting into your seat once you're in the venue so i i feel like if that palm thing can speed that entry up that it's worth it even if you do have to check a digital ticket later on your phone agree you ever seen a convention like a comic con the way those things try to funnel people in immediately all at the same exact time it's a nightmare this would speed that up and i think that's what they're trying to do i don't know i'm kind of with david on this one i you know think of haven't flown recently uh but the uh i you know it it always kind of it it always struck me as sort of silly that when everybody was getting checked in from from the desk you know at the gate um in a in a reasonable fashion and then we all just sort of stood in the hallway for however long before we all got onto the plane sure a lot of that is like actual physical logistics like you know people putting their you know luggage up top and you know getting into their seat but i know i understand what he's talking about i i get the idea of like sure you get out of the gate but then the bottleneck just happened somewhere else i i think the red rocks amphitheater has more room for people than the airplane that's all indeed yeah airports amphitheaters a little bit different well listen we love your feedback keep it coming it helps us make a better show every day feedback at daily technewshow.com is where to send that feedback we also want to thank a couple new bosses mark devaral and robert osborne both just started backing us on patreon thank you mark thank you robert's and once again uh we've had a streak of this mark and robert are picking it up for other folks there's always somebody who hits a little financial skid or the budget gets a little tight and they're like man i'm sorry we hear it all the time i'm really sorry i have to back off my patreon for a while and so it's important for us to be able to keep doing the show for folks like mark and robert to step up and pick them up so mark and robert have kept us in the positive patreons instead of reduced number of patreons so we're really thankful for that it's like a new hero every day really enjoy it you are our heroes there's a song about that i think uh but i won't sing it right now thank you to scott johnson for being with us today also a hero scott what have you been uh saving people on outside of dtsns lately because of my heroism uh uh yes uh i spend my heroic days and nights uh making a bunch of content so if you like content and i know you do because you're on listening to dtsns or watching it and you're consuming and you're going oh this is good content i do other content that's like daily and weekly and everything in between so if you're confused about any of it or want to know what it's all about go find it it's over at frogpants.com and you can find me on twitter as well at scott johnson excellent well folks we're live monday through friday at 4 30 p.m eastern that's 20 30 utc you can find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live i will be off tomorrow but tom will be here with justin rubber young and the crew talk to you that this show is part of the frog pants network get more at frogpants.com i hope you have enjoyed this program