 Coming up on DTNS, Apple and Zoom fulfill Chinese requests over content removal, Snapchat steps up their augmented reality game and Uber and Lyft lose a battle over calling their drivers contractors in California, but the war ain't over. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, June 11th, 2020 in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. From Alamina County, I'm Justin Robert Young. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. We were just talking sandwiches, getting haircuts in the time of pandemic and a whole lot more on Good Day Internet. Get that expanded show by becoming a member at Patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. A screenshot posted by app researcher Jane Manchin Wong shows that Twitter is developing a new feature that would let users react to tweets with emoji beyond just likes or retweets. If this sounds familiar to you, well, the company did try something similar back in 2015. Real quick. I declared Jane Manchin Wong a national treasure. Carry on. Thank you. Yes. Apple confirmed that it's all virtual WWDC 2020 event starting on June 22 will include a keynote address, platform, state of the Union, 100 plus engineering sessions and all new developer forums, one-on-one labs with more than 1,000 Apple engineers and Mueller, the keynote will stream quote directly from Apple Park. Adobe released Photoshop camera in the iOS app store and on Google Play before you could get it in public preview, but now it's there for everybody. It includes AI powered features, custom lenses, some tricks like face light that optimizes lighting to remove the sharp shadows, uses Sense AI to recognize the subject in a photo and it can recommend and automatically apply adjustments. Go get it. I was hanging out with that earlier. It's a nice app. It's a bit of a departure, but that is a story for another time. A year after he quit his position at the company over differences with CEO Mark Zuckerberg over Facebook's direction, Chris Cox is returning to the company as its chief product officer. Facebook says that Cox will resume his duties that include overseeing the core Facebook app, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp along with marketing. The internet archived announced in a blog post that it has ended its national emergency library programs two weeks earlier than originally scheduled due to an ongoing commercial publisher lawsuit. The internet archive will revert to a controlled digital lending or CDL model that it's been using for almost a decade prior to March where only one person can digitally check out a book for each physical copy the library has in stock. The UK postponed a test of the second version of its contact tracing app on the Isle of Wight. They were supposed to launch this June 1st, so it's been delayed. BBC sources say the apps are having difficulty using Bluetooth to estimate distance. In fact, BBC did a really good technical breakdown of all of that. Ministers in the UK are reportedly considering switching to making an app that works with the exposure notification platform developed by Apple and Google. Intel revealed specifications for its first hybrid x86 platform called Lakefield, which pairs one higher power Sunny Cove CPU core with four efficient Tremont Atom cores and a stacked arrangement using Intel's Forveros technology. Lakefield has already been announced for use in the Samsung Galaxy Book S, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold, and the Microsoft Surface Book Neo. The European Food Delivery Company Just Eat Takeaway announced that it has agreed to acquire Grubhub in an all-stock deal worth $7.3 billion. This comes two months after Takeaway acquired Just Eat in an $8 billion merger. Bloomberg reports that Uber had reportedly been in talks with Grubhub about an acquisition prior to the COVID-19 lockdowns, but concerns over US regulatory approval delayed that deal. Just Eat Takeaways hopes to use Grubhub to launch its services in the United States market. Wall Street Journal sources say the European Commission plans to file formal antitrust charges against Amazon, alleging it used data from third-party sellers to compete against those third-party sellers. Charges would take about a year to investigate before the Commission decides if they're true, and even if they are true, Amazon could still appeal them in court after that. The eventual fine, if the charges withstand all of that, could be as much as 10% of annual revenue, but it would take years to get to that point. All right, let's talk a little more about what Amazon's doing to try to say we're giving you good news. You're right, Tom. Amazon announced that it will not let law enforcement use its recognition facial service for one year in order to give government time to introduce legislation about the ethical uses of facial recognition. The US House Committee on Oversight and Reform has held a number of hearings on the use of facial recognition technology, but has yet to introduce a bill. The Washington Post reports that Microsoft President Brad Smith said that Microsoft will not sell its facial recognition technology to police departments until a federal law on facial recognition has passed. Facial recognition is frequently trained on databases that reflect existing bias. So we've been covering the drumbeat of this from the exposes of which companies we're doing what to IBM saying we're just going to pull out of the business. We'll keep supporting existing contracts, but we won't sell anymore and pushing for legislation. And now we're now we're seeing Amazon and Microsoft's approaches. Amazon is saying a year moratorium, so you can't use it anymore for a year, but that's just to give the feds time to put in the legislation and then we'll bring it back. I think that's an attempt to kind of keep law enforcement from signing a new contract with somebody else, which is one of the things I've been saying is look, if the big companies pull out there will be other companies fill in. So you got to take that into account, but also pushing for legislation and Microsoft taking a more of a hammer approach saying, look, we're just not going to sell it until there is legislation. Yeah, I mean, the year long snooze button is an interesting way to put it. There is obviously a sunset on their self-imposed restrictions on when they are going to put stuff out. What I would love to see now, though, is for a lot of these major players and some of the people behind it to say, you know, maybe talk to privacy advocates and come up with what they want to see in this legislation and be forceful with it and don't just say, well, the feds have to act, but the feds have to act a certain way. Yeah, and that's something Microsoft has been really good at. They've put out some very detailed papers. Brad Smith particularly has put in some blog posts about what they need to see in that kind of facial recognition. Yeah, I think unity on this particular situation would be big because right now, pardon me if I don't exactly see literally every move that is being made in this very highly charged environment as exactly being for pure motives and not just to stay out of the fire. But I would like to see Amazon get behind something like that. Yeah, it would be cool to see multiple companies come together on and work on proposed legislation as outside advisors. It'd be lovely to see a government that welcomed that. Indeed. Well, Snapchat made quite a few announcements during its annual developer event Thursday, including Lens Voice Search, which will let you ask the app to find filters that do something like change your hair color or take you to the moon, you know, fun Snapchat stuff. Or Snapchat also announced partnerships with PlantSnap and DogScanner to identify plants and dogs with the camera inside Snapchat. It's actually very interesting because I have standalone apps that do both of these things. If I could do them inside Snapchat, I might actually launch the app more often. Later this year, Yucca will provide nutritional content when you can scan product labels within Snapchat as well. SnapMe lets developers bring their own neural net models to transform the environment in images. For example, wannabe will bring its foot tracking tech to let users try on sneakers within a lens. Prisma applies artistic styles to the world. Local Lens is a geography based specific AR system that will use public snaps to help create 3D maps of the real world. This will enable persistent AR in larger public areas. Obviously, that is something that a lot of companies are interested in doing. A new design for Snapchat also adds an action bar at the bottom to make navigation more clear and change based on what screen that you're on. Snapchat, for instance, will appear to the left of the chat screen. And then the map will introduce places that let you can let you find local businesses, other locations, find out information, order food, for example. And then you discover section replaces shows adding happening now instead, which is a curated section of shows at the top and a section to highlight originals. Snap also announced that snap originals from a variety of, you know, big places you've heard of ESPN, NBC, Viacom have some shows with viewers in the millions. Tens of millions. I mean, this is those are numbers that Quibi would like to see. And they are. So I mean, that the snap originals is interesting, especially in this world of like, who could possibly do short form video that will work and snap is over there quietly doing it. But this augmented reality stuff really stands out to me as, you know, we sort of poke fun of the fact that Snapchat a few years ago said we're a camera company. But I feel like they really are an augmented reality company. Like the idea that you can just tell Snapchat, hey, make my hair pink, and it'll make your hair pink. It's kind of impressive. The idea that you could just use it to augment reality of the world around you based on user contributed snaps that that you can point snap, eventually at anything and it'll tell you what it is like we're starting with plants and dogs, you know, but but that's just the beginning. That's why they want to have the snap ML available for people to add different functionality. This is one of the more exciting Snapchat announcements that I think we've had in a while. Yeah, I mean, I I bailed out of Snapchat. I don't know. I probably haven't opened it in a year. I mean, except for like research purposes, but not for fun. And that was because I remember Snapchat as a very different thing, you know, where it's like, oh, you know, you have a lot of you vomit or rainbow or, you know, like silly stuff. And that was and that was fun, but it kind of ran its course. And then something like the physical snap snap spectacles came out. And you know, I remember thinking, well, maybe this is the new thing. And I don't know anybody was wearing those. But I also was like, huh, this company is really thinking outside of the box, the AR part of where these initiatives are going are really interesting. You know, it's not about making your hair pink because it's a cutesy app. It's about being able to do things like that. And that's what I think, you know, it the again, the sort of idea of like, yeah, I don't look at a plant and be able to identify it. That is a real thing. I do that all the time. That if I could think of Snapchat as a place where I do things, lots of things like that, then then it becomes much more powerful. If you want to get a sense of how much snap has done work with AR, then please go ahead and download the snap camera, which is a camera for your for like, you can use it on zoom and stuff like that. But it really gives you a sense of how much work they've done and how fun some of the lenses can be. And do check out the video version at youtube.com daily tech news show to see Justin say all that as a pickle. Apple has removed pocket casts from the app store in China saying the cyberspace administration of China determined the podcast app could be used to access illegal content in the country. Apple informed pocket cast of the decision in advance two days before the removal, suggesting that pocket cast should contact China if they wanted to find out what content was being considered objectionable pocket cast says it believes podcasting should be free of government censorship and will not take down content at China's request. So even though they don't know which podcast it was, they don't sound that interested in finding out the Castro podcast app was also pulled from the Chinese app store on June 6 but podcast one of the biggest ones to have this happen. In a separate but related story. A lot of people are reporting that their zoom accounts were suspended or meetings were disrupted because of some connection to China, even though the meetings may be held involving people outside of China or even originating outside China. For instance, Xiaofeng show a leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests who now lives in California had his accounts suspended after taking part in a commemorative stream. It has now been restored. Zoom says they regret the error. A Hong Kong activist had his account deactivated and a meeting on June 3 commemorating Tiananmen Square was deactivated midstream. Zoom says it's complying with local law but added quote, we regret that a few recent meetings with participants both inside and outside of China were negatively impacted and important conversations were disrupted. Zoom says it will modify its process to better protect users. So zoom has moved on from security breaches to censorship controversies as they continue to learn on the job because of their newfound popularity. Man, they are speed running controversies. They are they are in the advanced dungeons and dragons portion of how to get in trouble in terms of the public. But look, as we let off with that story, this is something that Apple and Google deal with every day. A lot of these major companies are constantly dealing with the requests or I mean, you can Well, I'll correct you real quick. Google doesn't because Google doesn't operate there. But sure. Yeah, not the play store anyway. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, certainly not. Yeah. But these are things that you have to do what you play ball in China. You want to access that market you play by their rules. I believe their rules are very bad. And I think we are seeing now how complicated that is on a platform like zoom that erases physical barriers. And that means getting into extra legal territory when you have conflicting ideologies and governments that enforce them. Yeah, no reason you're seeing zoom have this controversy when maybe you're not seeing other competing products is a lot of those competing products don't operate in China to begin with for various reasons. They may have a conscientious objection to it, or they may just not want to have to deal with the different set of rules, or having to partner with a company on data storage, whereas zoom is is trying to straddle that line in a product that doesn't respect lines because it's on the internet and wants to interoperate with everyone. Crazy that China would disrupt a zoom meeting about a thing that didn't happen. That's nuts for them. I see what you're saying because it didn't happen, according to some people. Yeah, right. Interesting. The technology coalition was formed in 2006 with the goal of stopping child sexual exploitation and abuse. It's 18 members include Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter. The coalition published The Project Protect, which includes five goals, including investing in new technology, holding annual forums with governments and law enforcement, funding independent research into changing trends with child exploitation, creating new systems to better share information and new threats across the industry and share insights on reporting, including a way for firms to benchmark their progress. The group says it will spend millions on research and publish annual reports on its progress. The companies are trying to show that these issues can be dealt with without resorting to weakening encryption. Yeah, not to undersell the importance of what they're doing. And I think there's a genuine usable effort here to combat a rising problem. We're seeing these platforms like Facebook and Twitter being used more often for exploitation like this. But one of the reasons that they have a clear motivation to make this work is that what about the children argument is used whenever a backdoor for encryption comes up. It's like we want to catch these horrible people. And the argument is we can do it easier if we can break encryption. And the fact is it's arguable whether that's true or not. But these companies have to show that there are other ways to catch a predator than just putting a backdoor in encryption. If they want to win that argument, that is. Yeah, I mean, this is, I mean, tough subject. All of these companies should be doing what they're doing. I'm glad that they're working together to try to be smarter in the future. Well, and it is an important encryption conversation as well. Because this is the one thing that you will always politically be able to turn the dial on is protecting kids and specifically in situations where we know that they are being targeted and exploited. But at the same time, the onus is on these companies to prove that it's not something that they got to cut a hole in the backdoor in terms of the security and protection that I think all of their users deserve. Facebook is testing a version of Facebook search that displays factual information in the sidebar when searching for certain topics like public figures or movies or TV shows or places of interest, et cetera. The information displays work similar to Google search knowledge panels. So if you know, if you know how it works in Google, it's probably kind of look the same. At least Facebook wants it to look the same within Facebook pulled from publicly available sources, including Wikipedia. This is an outcome of Facebook's transition from graph search with used Facebook user data to keyword search. The test is running for some users of English language Facebook on iOS and also the web. Yeah, the graph search thing really fell out of favor in 2016 after the Cambridge Analytica stuff hit and people said, well, hold on, you're doing what with our information, you're sharing it how and Facebook has really dialed down. They haven't got rid of it, but they've dialed it way back and focused on keywords where it's not using any particular user data. It's just saying, oh, when you search this word, we'll show you relevant Facebook groups, we'll show you relevant Facebook posts. And now they're doing this, which is like, and if it's something that it's just a generic term, like, what is that movie? We'll show you that. The Tecrunch article on this says that it has variable quality. Some things don't turn up anything at all that you might think they would. So it may be that it's in its early days. But when it works, it seems to, like you said, Sarah, it works very similar to the Google Knowledge Panel and just shows you an excerpt from something that is, you know, fairly uncontroversial. It's funny to think that Wikipedia, the thing people used to throw stones at for like, yeah, I can't trust Wikipedia. It's made by people is now seen as a more reliable source compared to Facebook. Well, it's funny because I think of am I ever in Facebook and being like, huh, I don't know that term. Maybe I should look it up within Facebook and see if I can get some contextual info. I would just never do that, but it's never been offered before. That's something that I would bounce out and do within Google or, you know, I don't know, I mean, choose your search engine. But but it the the idea that people would get start getting comfortable within Facebook to do stuff like that would keep them within Facebook. And so it makes perfect sense. Yeah. And I think it also I'm curious to know what the Facebook what what searches they were seeing that that made them think like, OK, people are just randomly saying like the War of 1812 and and stuff. But that because that that's what this kind of this kind of solution would be good for is telling you things that aren't just searching for your friends, family or groups, which is the only thing I've ever used the Facebook search bar for. Yeah. Well, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, don't forget about daily tech headlines. You can go get it at dailytech headlines dot com. Let's catch you up on California, a B five and contractors as full time employees for years. Right. Hailing services like Uber and Lyft have contended that they are just the technology platform that connects independent drivers with independent people wanting rides. The drivers, in their view, are not employees. California passed a law called a B five that laid out new rules about how to determine if someone is an independent contractor or an employee. Uber and Lyft contend that even under these new rules, drivers are independent. Dig down into California a B five just briefly for you because it bears on whether you agree with Uber and Lyft or the state of California on this. California Assembly Bill five made a California Supreme Court case, which is called Dynamics Operations versus Superior Courts into law. It's interesting because Dynamics was a same day courier service that in 2004 just suddenly decided all of its employees who were drivers were now contractors. Drivers were paid per delivery. They could refuse deliveries, but only if they acted immediately. They had to notify in advance what days they wish to work so they could quote set their own schedule, but only with conditions and they can only quit with three days notice. They couldn't just stop taking report with taking jobs. Drivers also had to buy a lot of equipment like uniforms with the logos of Dynamics on them and a next telephone to keep in touch with the dispatchers. So it's a little bit of a different situation that Uber where you just turn on the app when you want to work and you turn it off when you don't. Now the court ruled against Dynamics and set the precedent that workers should be presumed employees and the burden of proof to show an employee is in fact an independent contractor is on the employer. That's a really important point to consider here is Uber and Lyft have to prove that their drivers are independent contractors. Otherwise you assume their employees under this ruling. California legislature basically took that ruling and made it law in AB 5, AB 5 window effect January 1st. So there's a three part test to prove that an employee is a contractor. One and you have to meet all three. One the individual is free from direction and control and under his contract for the performance of service and in fact. So you can't just say he's under contract and then boss him around. The individual has to be free from direction and control. You say we want you to do this thing. How you get it done. That's your deal. The service has to be performed outside the usual course of business of the employer. That's where Uber and Lyft say hey our business is just connecting people. We don't actually drive anyone anywhere. That's they're trying to meet that part of the test. And then the third of the three is the individual is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, profession or business of the same nature as that involved in the service performed. In other words, the person does this sort of thing for other people. It's not just for your company. So in Dynamics case, you can't say like, oh, they're an independent contractor, but their only client is us and their only client has ever been us. That would fail that test. Now, exemptions to AB5 can be granted for certain occupations. And they have been granted for doctors, dentists, psychologists, insurance agents, stockbrokers, lawyers, accountants, engineers, and real estate agents. And they can be granted if you can show that the price of your service can be negotiated. There's direct communication with the customers. Earnings are at least twice that of minimum wage. But again, this is a defense to prove someone is an independent contractor when you can't meet the three-part test. California is not the only one with this kind of law. New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Connecticut have similar laws as well. So that's AB5. Uber and Lyft applied for one of those exemptions. They said, look, we meet all three parts of the test we think and we pay people better, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Well, Wednesday, as part of a document on rules for transportation networking companies, which is what California considers Uber and Lyft, the California Public Utilities Commission ruled that it considers Uber drivers to be employers. In other words, no exemption for Uber or Lyft and other transportation networking companies. They all have to provide workers' compensation for all employees by July 1 or be in violation of AB5. And if they're found in violation, the state could revoke their operating authority. California's attorney general and the city attorneys of San Diego, San Francisco and Los Angeles have already sued Uber and Lyft even before this decision over non-compliance. And this decision will help bolster their case. Meanwhile, Uber and Lyft are pushing for a ballot measure which is on the ballot in California in November to overturn AB5 at the ballot box and say, no, that shouldn't be the law of the state of California. All right. So Justin, that's where we are. Yes. In a word, on AB5, I would say, boo. I think this is a very bad law. And I think that it has overreaching consequences. I think it's overbroad. If you are relying on the state to give exemptions, then I don't believe that that is efficient for people to be able to do their job legally. Although I think there are two things here. Number one, the perceived or reality fairness of a deal that somebody gets when they work with any of these companies for which you are able to turn on an app, get work, and then turn it off when you're done, Uber, Lyft, Krabhub, all these things, right? If the workers want to negotiate or strike or communicate or the state wants to facilitate the ability for these emerging gig workforces to interact with the platforms for which give them money, I'm OK with that. But when you're making it illegal to do that kind of work without defining them as employees, which fundamentally changes part of the worker bargain that you get from this, which where you are able to define your own schedule, then I think that that is it was a bad idea when we had a great economy. I think it's a increasingly terrible idea now that a lot of people are out of work and need quick money to continue to move on with their lives. I don't want to sound like a broker record, but this needs a new law. AB five is not the law for gig workers. It's a law responding to a company trying to basically break the rules, Dynamics, and it doesn't apply well to Uber and Lyft. The same token, Uber and Lyft drivers need some more protections than a normal independent contractor. This is different than somebody you get to come and put up drywall in your house. Uber and Lyft are more like employees than your normal independent contractor. And I think state laws would rightly recognize that and say, hey, we need to have a system for this new way of doing work that doesn't have the downsides that Justin just said about limiting choice, but also provides a safety net, provides at least a recourse for drivers who may not be able to push the companies to do the things that will help make their lives better and protect their rights as workers. And so I think that's why we have AB five is the system wasn't working well for the drivers, but they overcorrected. And now they've made it so that, you know, Uber and Lyft are not wanting to hire people in the state. And also it affects other industries. And I have a conflict of interest talking about this because I hire people. I pay people to come on the show like Justin. And he's not a full time employee. So where does that put me? Like, how do I make sure that I can do that legitimately without running a foul of this law? There's a lot of unintended consequences going on here. They tried to carve them out with an exemption, but that becomes a game of chasing your tail. Well, thanks to everybody who participates in our subreddit. Unsurprisingly, the story was among many others on our subreddit this morning. You can submit stories that you care about and vote on others at daily technewshow.reddit.com. Also, shout out to patrons at our master and grandmaster levels, including Brad Schick, Paul Boyer and Dustin Campbell. Also, thanks to Justin Robert Young. Looks like you're going to get on a plane pretty soon, sir. Yeah, I'm going to head on out to Tulsa, Oklahoma next week as the first campaign event since the lockdowns happens in Tulsa. So I'll be out there doing that. You can hear all about not only my my trips out back to the front lines of our our burgeoning general election, but everything else that's happening in the world of politics at politics, politics, politics.com. Hey, folks, we got so many good reviews on the Apple podcasting app. And I just want to thank you for that and encourage those folks who are going to get around to it to get around to it. It really does help people find the show. Even if you don't use the Apple podcast app, a lot of people just go in there to find shows and they may subscribe to them in a different app. So please, if you think about it and you want to do it, pop into that app and just leave the stars. You don't even have to write anything. Leave the stars to help people discover Daily Tech News Show in the Apple podcast app. And thanks to everybody who continues to support us at DailyTechNewsShow.com slash Patreon. Our email addresses feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com write us early and often. 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