 Coming up on DTNS, Watch Parties of the New Hotness, Twitter clarifies some of its new policies, and robots might be delivering prescriptions to a theater near you. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, May 28th, at 2020 from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane. In Lovely North Home said, I'm Rick Straffolino. From Oakland, California, I'm Justin Robert Young. And I'm Roger Chang, the show's producer. Tom Merritt has the day off today, but we have lots of news to get to. Jam-packed show before the show. In fact, we were talking about, gosh, going to concerts in our youth years and how to get away with things with your parents and all sorts of good stuff. You can get the wetter conversation on our expanded show, Good Day Internet, by becoming a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Indeed, Arizona Attorney General Mark Bronovitch filed a lawsuit against Google, alleging that Android devices recorded and saved location data in apps and search, even after users disabled location tracking. And that opting out of all tracking required navigating menus, the lawsuit alleges are deceptive. The suit asked for unspecified damages based on money made from personalized ads using this tracking information, and Arizona's any fraud laws allow for fines of up to $10,000 per violation. Ouch. Google spokesperson said, we have always built privacy features into our products and provided robust controls for location data. We look forward to setting the record straight. In a blog post, NVIDIA GeForce Now Vice President, Phil Eisler announced that the company's cloud gaming service will only feature games that developers who have opted in to the service. Game from developers that haven't opted in will be removed after May 31st. Previously NVIDIA included titles on GeForce now without express permission of the publishers resulting in sudden removal of titles from publishers like Activision Blizzard and Bethesda. HP and Microsoft announced the Reverb G2, a VR headset with a resolution of 2160 by 2160 pixels per eye with a 90 Hertz refresh rate and 114 degree field of view. Inside out head tracking is handled by the standard Windows Mixed Reality system, but HP did add two side cameras to supplement the standard dual front ones. It's available for pre-order now for $599 releasing this fall. The Raspberry Pi Foundation released a new version of the Raspberry Pi 4 with eight gigs of LVDDR4 RAM priced at $75 to better take advantage of the additional memory. The foundation also released a 64 bit beta of its Raspbian Linux operating system which has been renamed Raspberry Pi OS. It's a better renaming. Google and Microsoft are reportedly... The good change. Yes, it is. Google and Microsoft are reportedly considering buying stakes in Indian telecom companies. The Financial Times reports that according to sources, Google is considering buying a 5% stake in Vodafone IDEA, that's the second largest telecom in the country. Meanwhile, the Indian newspaper Mint reported that sources say Microsoft is in talks to invest up to $2 billion in reliance geo platforms. Back in April, Facebook invested $5.7 billion for a 9.99% stake in reliance geo platforms as well. All right, let's talk a little bit more about Amazon and the fact that, well, Amazon is keeping some people employed. The company announced it plans to offer permanent jobs to 70% of the roughly 175,000 temporary employees that were brought on to meet consumer demand brought on by the COVID-19 lockdowns. Amazon very publicly said we're gonna hire a lot of people and they did. Beginning in June, the company will offer 125,000 workers permanent roles with the remaining 50,000 workers kept on seasonal contracts that can last up to 11 months. So quite a few folks that may have joined Amazon, thinking, I don't know, I employed for a week or a month, getting a bit of a better deal. All around, as we watch a number slowly decline, both in cases and in deaths, we are beginning to take more seriously some of these moves that the businesses around the lockdowns are making. And this is a sign that Amazon, at least for now, nobody knows the future, but Amazon, at least for now, assumes that the kind of volume they've seen during the lockdowns is something that will continue to go at least throughout the year. I assume that that's probably where their projection is right now. Yeah, and it's interesting to note that as of the end of their last financial quarter, they had about 840,000 employees, and that's when they were still ramping up employment for COVID-19 kind of related surges. So looking at these additions that they'll brought on permanently, that's about a 10% to 12% increase depending on where exactly they were on their hiring spree at the end of that quarter. So a big investment in their workforce, but in context of how big Amazon already is in terms of its workforce, I think it's interesting to keep in mind as well. It's also the headline of Amazon's gonna hire all of these temp employees. This is so great. Well, I mean, they can also fire them if demand starts to weigh in in the future. So I mean, this whole kind of like goodwill thing only goes so far. Sure. Hulu and Plex both announced new co-watching features. Hulu Watch Party launched for subscribers on the No Ads tier and allowing for co-watching with up to eight people for on-demand content and integrated chat room at Hulu.com. The feature doesn't require a browser extension and each viewer can control their own playback with an option to click to catch up to resync viewing. Meanwhile, Plex's Watch Together feature launched in beta and lets users watch either Plex on-demand content or stuff from people's personal libraries. The feature syncs playback between viewers, but there is no integrated chat. The number of viewers depends on the Plex server's hardware, network connection, disk speed, and the streaming content. Watch Together is available on Apple TV, iOS, Android, and Roku support on the way. The feature is free while in beta, but will require a Plex pass subscription once officially released. Earlier this month, HBO partnered with the browser extension Cinder for co-watching with up to 20 people. Man, this is the new thing, isn't it? This whole idea of let's watch things together even though apps have been trying to do this for like a decade and nothing has really caught on. Is now the time, Rich, I know you've tried this out a little bit. Yeah, I've tried the Netflix Watch Party, which I guess was the original unofficial way that this kind of took off with everybody kind of staying at home. You know, it's interesting that this does have a long history. Like I believe the Xbox 360 had this integration. If everybody was on, it required like a ton of different checklist stuff. You could watch all stuff together and it was so popular that Microsoft decided not to continue what our Netflix did, you know, going forward. So there have been other attempts at this. My big problem with it is there's no like sit back experience with this. It's like I have to have a laptop open. The chat is always, you know, it's all browser based up until this point. Plex is the only one that seems to be figuring out, hey, maybe people want to sit back and watch, but that work is you either maintain a Plex server or have the one of their cloud servers or something like that. So there was still a technical hurdle that way. I'm interested when something like Hulu, if they can bring that kind of experience to a sit back experience, to me that's way more valuable and probably a lot more likely to use. Well, I happened to, you know, I've got a friend who has a pretty robust Plex server and I, you know, immediately when I saw the story, I was like, can we do this? And they were like, yeah, cool, great. Let me know when you want to watch a movie together, kind of thing. The idea that there's integrated chat built in, I almost feel like as a deterrent because a lot of people are like, well, that's not the way that we talk to each other right now. So now we like have to like figure out a new way to talk to each other type thing. I love the idea of this, I really do. I just, I have yet to be convinced that anyone really wants to watch a movie in, you know, concurrently with eight or more of their friends not being in the same place. We all think we do. Yeah, here's what we need to do. We need to develop a system for this. And by that I mean, I want to watch a movie on my television and have all my little friends down below so I can see their reactions and they can see my reactions to think that would be to me a transformative fun experience. Beyond that, I'm with you. This is, the good news is a bunch of people got on board with this kind of technology that wouldn't before hopefully that moves the entire genre forward because I agree with you, this is very half-baked. Yeah, it seems like all the companies are like, well, I mean, we gotta do a watch party because, you know, they all did. So, you know, if anyone uses it, it doesn't matter. Well, moving on to prescription drugs and the way that they might get delivered to you in the future, the autonomous robotics company Neuro announced it will pilot a prescription drug service service in Houston in partnership with CVS. The service will be based out of one CVS pharmacy in Bel Air, Texas, just the one and serve three zip codes using the company's fleet of autonomous Toyota Prius vehicles. Starting in June, online prescription orders in the area will have the option to choose free autonomous delivery and can add on that non-prescription items to their order as well. So, you know, throw in some candy with your drugs with identity verification required to unlock orders. Neuro also launched a Houston-based grocery delivery pilot in December with Walmart. Ah, Houston. What a hotbed for drone delivery these days with Neuro. I think this is a great application, to be totally honest with you. I think that this is a fantastic segment of the population that could really, really use this. This could, you know, for some folks who need prescriptions delivered and really rely on it, many of our seniors, many can't move as well if this means that that make sure they get medicine that they need faster and more reliably because it's done by a robot, then that's awesome. That is a tech-done-good story in your old boy Jerb's book. Yeah, I'm with you. There's definitely that kind of mobility or I'm just sick issue, or just the kind of like you want things to be under wraps. I mean, it is a very, in many ways, getting prescription medication is a private situation and you don't want to stand in line at the pharmacy because it's not really all that private when you do it that way. I wonder about a lot of pharmacists who would, I mean, not that they're actually delivering anything to anyone's door, but how this might affect their jobs going forward. But yeah, it seems like, and then I think of almost like a self-checkout thing at the grocery store where it mostly works, but if something goes wrong, then you have to have somebody who works there come up and like figure something out for you and how's that gonna work with like pharmaceutical medication at your house. So, pessimistically, I wonder how this is going to happen. Yeah. Yeah, with the identity verification, I do wonder if that's going to be a hurdle because, I mean, obviously a lot of people that might be interested in this are my people that do have mobility issues, seniors and stuff like that. And if there's some sort of technical challenge to overcome with that. You know, they have every incentive, obviously, to come up with a system that's easy to comprehend and that kind of stuff. I also wonder what the monetization plan is for this. If we've seen other delivery startups kind of struggle, we can get it technically to work no problem. How does that work? In emergencies, obviously, if it's an absolute emergency, you need the medication, usually the money is there for one way or the other. But for everyday deliveries, I'm thinking of, I do wonder if there's some scale to this. I mean, obviously Nero is looking into a number of different ways, you know, looking at the grocery, prescription and stuff like that. They're not just betting on this one use case. I will be interested to see, once the technical feasibility part is completed and we're sure of that, how they turn that around into an actual business. I mean, CVS does have a huge network, so maybe scale is the answer. Well, I'm with you, Sarah. Privacy does matter and a drone will never wink at you while hitting a sea Alice of prescription. Yeah, I mean, that was what I was implying kind of, but yeah, it's, it is, it makes the most sense, you know, of all of these autonomous delivery services that, you know, everyone's trying to get off the ground in various cities in limited runs and we all kind of go, when's it gonna happen? Yeah, pharmaceutical drugs seems like a great way to do it because again, it's, you know, are you, do you have that much of an issue going to the pizza place to pick up your pizza? You probably have more of an issue going to the pharmacy to pick up your stuff. All right, well, Wednesday, Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey explained on Twitter, appropriately enough, why Twitter decided to add fact-checking labels to two tweets about mail-in ballots by President Trump. Dorsey said the tweets felt a foul of Twitter's integrity policy by misleading people to think that they don't need to register to get a ballot. Twitter's policy on such posts required the tweets to be deleted, but Twitter doesn't delete posts from world leaders as a matter. This may explain why Twitter created a new class of label in addition to previously explained deepfakes and COVID-19 related tweets. So, you know, this has obviously, you know, we talked a little bit or not, but it was the main discussion on the show yesterday and, you know, it's interesting to see Twitter kind of taking this ad hoc approach, it seems like from the outside approach to these kind of rulemaking versus maybe other social media platforms that are, you know, a little bit more embedded within their own bureaucracy, maybe as a shield on some of the scrutiny that Twitter is definitely getting now as a result. Yeah, Justin, I was wishing very much, not that I don't always want you on the show I do, but yesterday in particular, gosh, I wish Justin was here because we were unpacking this whole, okay, well, Twitter did sort of lay the groundwork saying there might be some COVID-19, you know, restrictions in place going forward, not talking about anything governmentally specifically, and the fact that their policy says, well, you can sort of do this, and if you do something wrong, we're gonna take the tweet down, but if you're a world leader, we're not going to, it's a, yeah, what do you make of this? Sarah, as the kids call it, it's VBAD. This is not good, you know, we saw mixed messages from around Twitter yesterday that the reason why these tweets were labeled were because it was COVID-19 adjacent, i.e., we would not be having mass mail-in ballot conversations had there not been lockdown and worries of a pandemic, but now it's about civic integrity. In my opinion, and listeners to this show know that I am very much a believer in the hashtag hell portal, hashtag portal to hell conversation, when it comes to fact-checking, when it comes to a platform trying to arbitrate truth, it's even worse when you are not being as transparent as possible. I was critical of Facebook's go at this, and they at least demonstrated forethought and explained a plan that seemingly tried to address some of the loudest voices about these conversations. Twitter doing it ad hoc to go into our conversation that we're about to have after this, not only do I think it's bad business, but I think does open themselves up to some of the criticism that will lead to wherever we go with this executive order that might come down the pike. All right, well, let's get into the next story, but before we do, let me remind you to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes. It's our companion show of sorts. Go to dailytechheadlines.com and hit that subscribe button. Okay, this is kind of breaking news here, so I'm going to make as much sense of it as I can. President Trump, US President Trump has signed an executive order designed to limit legal protections to shield social media companies like Twitter or Facebook or others from liability for the content that users post on those platforms. What the administration is saying is that social media giants such as Twitter receive unprecedented viability shields based on the theory that they're a neutral platform, but they aren't. That, again, is coming from the US government. President Trump said, quote, we are fed up with it, it is unfair, and it's been very unfair. Okay. All right, Justin, before the show, Rich and Justin and Roger and I were all sort of like, okay, well, there will either be an executive order signed or there will be one potentially signed and we'll kind of create our discussion based on that. So what are your first thoughts? All right, so let's explain where this is coming from and what it would actually affect. Before we get into the constitutionality of it, let's understand what it says. Effectively, this tries to redefine what we understand in our internet relevant conversations is safe harbor, i.e. that you are held harmless from liability if you are a platform for which you have user-generated content coming in, you are not going to strain that on the way in, you are not going to check for all, but maybe the worst or malicious code kind of element, things that could take down the platform coming in. In terms of free speech, it all comes in, you then moderate it based on internal flagging systems and stuff like that. What this executive order would seek to redefine is that if you are showing that you can, or are making decisions, and partially like we said with Twitter, if you are making decisions that are not well communicated, that take away a certain element of free speech from a political perspective and whether you are alerting people as to why they're being punished, giving them a say on how they are going to be punished or to give their own perspective on things, then at that point you would put yourself at jeopardy of losing those safe harbor protection. So it's not like safe harbor is there all the time, no matter what, like all these platforms, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, they all have to make conscious decisions to stay within guidelines to maintain safe harbor. This executive order would hem those in farther. And I think it's interesting to note that this isn't something that just was, we heard all the rumors that were leaked drafts of it coming out on media outlets and that's kind of what we were looking at earlier. I mean, this dropped literally just before the show started, the official signing of it. But the idea that versions of this had been out there for a while, this particular draft was essentially circulated last summer. So, I mean, this isn't, again, this is something that certainly these platforms knew that there was some governmental scrutiny about and wasn't something that, again, just kind of came out of nowhere. And it's interesting to kind of look at the various prongs of it. I think that's, Justin, as you were saying, it certainly does very much focus on section 230 and looking at that. But there are a number of different ways, I guess, that they are scrutinizing that. They're going to have, you know, the FCC is gonna be doing a review specifically of that section. You're gonna have the FTC getting involved in terms of complaints. And so, what I'm saying is, I guess, that it is not a, you know, the perception of this changes things overnight. This begins to turn some governmental levers and stuff like that to that effect. But that this isn't something completely new or, to be quite frank, unexpected by many of these platforms. And certainly that dictated, I think, a lot of the behavior that we saw in terms of reactions from Facebook and Twitter up until this point. Well, you know, let's not get ahead of ourselves in terms of what will happen. Yeah, because there is certainly enough voices out there that seem to make the case that this is beyond the constitutional authority of the president. This would require an act of Congress. So likely this is going to be something that goes nowhere. More specifically, this is a shot across the bow from the administration to social media companies saying, this is the framework that we're going to begin this conversation on. And either you are going to understand that this would be the way that we would try to hem you in, and therefore you make changes based on that or understand that whether it's an executive order or an act of Congress, this is something that can happen. Now, part of this I think is an element that if it weren't for the fact that there is a tremendously polarizing person in the White House right now would be something that I think has a little bit more of a broad appeal amongst people that are frustrated by social media that don't feel that there is enough transparency in their decision making and do feel that oftentimes these decisions are made kind of willy-nilly. But again, what I do want to get across here is that this is not the government mandating certain things can or can't be on there. This is a restriction of the coverage that this liability offers. And then from there, as you mentioned, Rich, the enforcement engines of that would be with the FCC and the FTC, either of which for the record, I think, want anything to do with it. They do not want anything. I mean, if they were to lose safe harbor, effectively what happens is now Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, YouTube becomes as liable for things as a blog, a newspaper, a television station do. That these are all elements that people operate under but for now, people, it depends. What do we want these sites to be? Do we want them to be television? Do we expect them to be television or do we expect them to be more like a telephone? And there are conversations here that are relevant. It just happens to be wrapped in a very ridiculous political candy shell. Exactly, and as you mentioned, Justin, we can't get too ahead of ourselves and what does this all mean? It might not mean a whole lot for how social networks work for you and I in the future. It might mean a lot though. And if it does, what is it that people want to have an issue with something unsavory or far worse being on a social network that they're a part of? A lot of us are like, well, that sucks. I wish that wasn't there. Well, okay, but if you make sure that it isn't there, what kind of laws are in place that also make sure that other things aren't there? And it gets very sticky. And I think as Scott Johnson was mentioning on the show yesterday, it's like in theory, you just kind of let them do their thing. There's good stuff and bad stuff and that's just the way the world works. But we've come into so many situations on social networks with people who are in positions of power. And I'm not even talking about anyone specifically but just somebody who's got a voice and a platform who's like, well, this isn't right. I don't want to see this anymore. The rules should change. And if they do, are we better off or are we not? Yeah, we will find out. Yes, we will. Well, I wanted to say a quick thank you to all of those who participate in our subreddit. Remember to submit stories there and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. We should check out the mailbag, Rich. I think we have an extremely important message here and it comes from a one, Allison Sheridan. We are all familiar with her. She's a delight. I predicted that someone, she writes, sometime on DTNS would say that VR is in its early days. It took till February 22nd. By the way, my birthday, you're welcome. For me to catch someone saying it, I know this was one of my giveaways, but I enjoyed it. Let's hit it. Yeah, I feel like if I had to guess, virtual reality right now is in the Commodore Amiga stage of personal computing. So I love this. So if anybody was like, what, I need context here. We do a tech prediction show at the end of every year, kind of during our holiday break about what we think is going to happen over the next 12 months. And this was one of Tom's predictions. And the rest of us were like, you can't predict that someone's gonna feel some way about VR. Is that really a prediction? And he was like, it is. And so Allison's pointing out, indeed it is. I predicted it and Tom said it and there's your proof. So good stuff. I need to make a prediction that someone will write in and argue that saying it's comparable to the Amiga does not mean it's synonymous with the early days of computing. So please send in your emails to feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. We apologize in advance to all Amiga fans worldwide. Shout out to patrons that are master and grand master levels, including Chris Smith, Jeff Wilkes, and Sonya Vainin. And of course, as always, a very special shout out to Justin Robert Young. Thank you so much for being here, Justin. I think you do something with politics. Is that right? Indeed. And if you want more conversation about Twitter, it's very much a continuation of the conversation you guys had yesterday, which was very apolitical on DTNS. If you want the more political side of that conversation, Tom Merritt was on PX3 yesterday. So I would encourage everybody to go ahead and listen to our episode and conversation about that on the most recent episode of Politics Politics Politics dated May 27th. Excellent. If you want to support our show and so many of you are and we cannot thank you enough at any level, you've got so many options, you can go to dailytechnewshow.com slash Patreon to find out more about how to keep our tribe alive. Also, if you haven't gone to our store in a while, maybe you need new hats, maybe you'd like a t-shirt, something like that, dailytechnewshow.com slash store. Our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. Amiga fans, I need to hear from you. 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