 Coming up on DTNS, the Tech Reviewers' first thoughts on the M1-based Max, Twitter adds a Snapchat-like feature called Fleets, and Aaron Carson's here to help us understand the science of happiness. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, November 17th, 2020, in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Joining us, staff writer from CNET, Aaron Carson. Welcome back, Aaron. Good to have you. Thanks for having me. We were just talking about a little bit of our extended thoughts on fleets, but also who should be Monarch of America on Good Day Internet. If you want that wider conversation, become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Google is updating the COVID layer of information in Google Maps to show all-time cases, links to local resources, and real-time crowd info for transit routes. If you can order food through Google Maps, it will now factor in wait times and delivery fees, along with estimated times, until your order is actually ready. And Google Assistant Driving Mode is rolling out in preview to US users. Twitter user Maxwell was the first to point out that macOS Big Sur let some Apple apps like Apple Maps, for instance, bypass VPN connections. In Big Sur, Apple replaced network kernel extensions with network extension frameworks for handling filtering of network traffic. VPNs and firewalls, therefore, are required to use any filter data provider or any app proxy provider processes. However, ThreatPost found that about 50 Apple apps bypass those filters. That can be a privacy leak if you're using a VPN. You might not realize, though, your Maps date is getting out there. Somebody might be able to see that. And the researcher Patrick Wardle showed on Twitter how these apps could be used by malware to just send network traffic around firewalls. Microsoft announced Pluton on Tuesday, an advanced security coprocessing project designed to protect your data from being stolen by hackers or bad people. Microsoft is working with AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm to integrate Pluton into X86 and ARM CPUs in laptops being shipped to you in the future. Pluton is an evolution of the Trusted Platform Module, or TPM, that stores security related information about your OS and enables features like Windows Hello, for example. An estimated 159,000 Tesla Model S and Model X vehicles were built between 2012 and 2018 with Nvidia Tegra 3 chips. Those chips include 8 gigabytes of EMMC NAND flash storage. That storage is now nearing the end of its program erase cycle limit. Most flash storage have a limit, and the older the flash is, the faster it gets through that limit. The US NHTSA has received 16,000 reports of system failures because of reaching that limit. Now newer Teslas have Intel hardware that don't have built-in flash storage, but in the meantime, older Tesla owners need to get the over-the-air update, if they haven't already, to help reduce the rate the chips wear out. But eventually, those chips will have to be replaced. It's like tires for modern cars. Harder. TikTok announced new features for family pairing that gives parents control over teenagers' accounts, so parents can now set a teen account to private. They can control if liked videos are visible to others, control who can comment on a teen's video, and also turn off search. Family pairing already lets parents manage screen time and direct messaging and turn on a restricted mode that shows only safe, moderated content. So this is just one step forward. All right. Let's talk about the new Twitter feature that is making Twitter users in my feed say no, apparently. Twitter announced fleets. Fleets are tweets that disappear after 24 hours. They're not even really tweets. It's just stories. It's stories from Instagram. It's Snapchat-like stuff. Yeah. It's fleety tweets. They took it out of test. They're rolling it out on Android and iOS to all users. If you haven't got it yet, you'll get it over the coming days. Fleets sit at the top of the timeline in a stories-like row of bubbles. You can post text, photos, videos, or even share an existing tweet into a fleet. The company was testing the feature in Brazil, India, Italy, South Korea, and Japan. So if you're there, you probably already know about this, but it's coming to the rest of us now. Twitter also announced it plans to test an audio-based feature that's similar to an app called Clubhouse that would let people gather for live conversations as well. But that's our only in a test. You know, the fleet thing, besides the, well, once upon a time, the word tweet was sort of silly too. You know, when I first heard fleet, I was like, that's stupid, but like actually kind of clever, you know, fleeting tweets. But the idea that I would be able to be talking to you, Tom, Aaron, Roger, maybe we're all talking about something that's happening live, the Oscars, or a rocket launch, or something else that is, you know, a sporting event, something that's super, super live, where it really isn't relevant after that, you know, 24 hour period is over, if not sooner. This makes sense to me for anyone who doesn't use Twitter the way that I do, who's not really looking at timestamps and will see something later and not understand the context. I get this. I know Twitter also has said, you know, the folks who introduced fleets in certain markets ahead of time just to test it out said, this is actually really good for new users because they feel less pressure to like compose the most witty or smartest or, you know, best linked tweet because it's only going to be there for a little while. So you get a little bit more engagement with folks who are dipping their toe into the Twitterverse anyway. Yeah, I agree with that idea that a potential good use case could be something like you said Oscars or rocket launch or something like that. Something I'm curious about is, you know, we're at this point where there are more than a few social media platforms that have this ephemeral kind of storytelling feature. And I'm curious what the, with the like market saturation there is like how much content do you personally have to, you know, fuel stories on, you know, like three or four different different platforms? Well, I think the idea is that Twitter is like I'd like to take some of that market share from a Snapchat, you know, or the people posting Instagram stories. It's it's not so much like of like a us too. It's us instead. If you happen to like Twitter as a consumer, I don't feel I will have time to keep up on on fleets. I barely keep up on Instagram stories. In fact, I really don't. I occasionally will like pop in and look at one or two, but I don't keep up on them the way I do the main feed of Instagram or Twitter. I stopped doing Snapchat a long time ago because it's just it's just too much. Now, maybe that's me. Maybe that's, you know, that's not typical, but it feels like another thing in Twitter that I didn't ask for. And I'm curious if a lot of people are going to use it. I mean, even just, you know, as far as just features that companies are doing, because other companies have found success with it, Instagram Reels, great example. It's Instagram TikTok competitor. They've completely changed the mobile app, at least in iOS, so that, you know, I'm like, ah, we're, we're, we're all my buttons. Oh, I see. They're trying to put Reels front and center and they also want me to do shopping on Instagram, that kind of thing. This is not Twitter, but it's it's the same idea of a company saying, we know you like this feature in other apps from other platforms. We will now offer this to you and see what sticks. Yeah. I don't know if it works in Twitter, but I guess we'll find out if they roll it up. Twitter also named Peter Zatko, AKA Mudge as its new head of security reporting the CEO Jack Dorsey. Mudge is one of the world's best known hackers. Back in the 1990s, he worked on classified government contracts while at the same time being among the leaders of the Cult of the Dead cow group. They were famous for releasing Windows hacking tools to try to nudge Microsoft to improve its own security. He also worked for DARPA. He's worked for Google and most recently Mudge oversaw security at Stripe, which is probably by Dorsey Nose. Well, Huawei, oh, the saga does not disappoint. Huawei has agreed to sell its mid-range, youth targeted on our phone business to a company called Shenzhen Nishin New Information Technology, which is made up of a consortium of 30 agents and dealers. Now, Huawei won't hold shares in honor after the sale. It's out. But the state backed Shenzhen Smart City Technology Development Group will sell in honor may free it from U.S. restrictions on chips while raising money for Huawei to invest in its own chip making. Yeah. If people don't realize honor is another brand of phone made by Huawei, but it was an entirely separate business unit, which is why they were able to just take it and sell it. It had its own CEO. It has its own infrastructure. I don't know that having a state backed Shenzhen group is going to reduce the concerns that folks had in the United States government about Huawei, because Huawei's connections to the government was part of the problem there. But it might. And it certainly is going to raise some money for Huawei. And I think that's probably the biggest thing here. Raise some money and just, you know, kind of be able to get rid of a somewhat problematic arm of the company. You know, the Huawei itself said we sort of just like boxed out of this market, you know, we're having problems with getting components and not being able to partner with folks. So complicated time for the company. Yeah. I mean, it's having honor get out of the problems that Huawei has is the way that I would put it. Huawei is having problems getting these parts. And if they can sell off honor, they might have an easier time because they would no longer be under the restrictions. We'll see if the US slaps new restrictions on them. I'm a little skeptical on that, but we'll see. The new M1 based Macs are shipping and the reviews are in. Here's what people are saying. Matthew Panzerino over at TechCrunch says of the 13 inch MacBook Pro. This machine eclipses some of the most powerful Mac portables ever made in performance while simultaneously delivering two X to three X the battery life at minimum. These results are astounding. This thing works like an iPad. That's the best way I can describe it succinctly. So pretty positive words out of Matthew Panzerino and Matthew Panzerino isn't from what I could tell a big Apple fan person that would just always say positive things. But here's here's a jaded reviewer that I'm very familiar with the Verges Dieter Bone. He wrote of the M1 MacBook Air. It never groans under multiple apps. I've run well over a dozen at a time. It handles intensive apps like Photoshop and even video editing apps like Adobe Premiere without complaint. It has never made me think twice about loading up another browser tab or 10 even in Chrome. Them's fighting words. So he yeah, seems like he's pretty impressed with its ability to multitask. Boing Boing notes that YouTube reviewer Dave Lee said the numbers didn't make sense to me. I thought I was screwing up the tests in his own benchmarks because they were so positive. All right. But how about Joanne Stern? Joanne Stern used to work for the Verge. She's been doing this for years. She's to work for a gadget I think writing for the Wall Street Journal. Joanne Stern says I anticipated software and app issues as a result of the transition in Silicon. I was wrong. Thanks to Apple's Rosetta 2 technology, which is built into the newly released Mac OS Big Sur. All the Intel Mac apps I typically use worked well in these machines. Everything from Microsoft Word to Chrome ran smoothly. Okay. All right. All right. We will no one speak a negative word about the new M1 chips. Thank goodness for CNET Dan Ackerman who noted I had little luck in installing and running Mac compatible games from Steam and the Steam app itself ran poorly under Rosetta. So there you go. Ackerman's review was also mostly positive to be honest. I had to pull that out to find that one little critique. Also, we should note that Adobe released Photoshop for the M1 and beta and also for ARM based Windows machines too. If you're waiting on that. How about the M1 chip itself? Ars Technica's Jim Salter wrote, I feel confident in saying that this is truly a world leading design. You can get faster raw CPU performance, but only on power is no object desktop or server CPUs. Similarly, you can beat the M1's GPU with high end Nvidia or Radeon desktop cards, but only at a massive disparity in power, physical size and heat. Well, Jim Salter is a chip person. This is not somebody who was looking to praise the M1 and he's definitely praising the M1. Here are the critiques. There are some out there. The webcams still suck on these machines. They didn't change them. So that's no big surprise. Support for iOS apps doesn't seem that useful yet either because they're designed for phones and tablets and they just don't work well with a mouse or they're just not in the app store at all because companies can opt out. Only having two USB-C ports doesn't seem like enough and no external GPU support. But in the end, Dan Ackerman at CNET said, if you have a recent Intel Mac that still works for you, don't feel pressured to be the first person on the block with the first version of the new silicon. But if you were already about to pull the trigger on a new Mac, especially if you're a mainstream computer user, the better battery life is a big win and the fanless design on the air is long overdue. Erin, what are your thoughts on this? Are you in the market for a new computer at all? It's crossed my mind. I was actually thinking about this earlier because I have a MacBook that I bought right after I got out of grad school, which was pushing a decade at this point. Yeah, so reading Dan's review certainly is pulling me towards maybe a decision in the coming months. Well, full disclosure, I will be getting the new M1 MacBook Air first week of December, hopefully as long as things shipping dates stay as they are. We talked about this whole thing after the Apple announcement announcing the new M1 chips and where they were going into as far as MacBooks and MacBook Air and the Mac mini. I was the first to say, well, let's see how everybody feels first before I take a dip into something that's obviously expensive. Sure, some of this couldn't seem affordable depending on what you're comparing it to, but it's still going to be a chunk of change. It's not insignificant, but boy, these reviews make me feel better about the whole thing because I didn't want something that was going to be like, oh, this buggy mask because there are going to be all these things that Apple didn't anticipate with the developer community, and there may still be a lot of that down the road. It does sound like the whole run iOS apps on macOS has some work to do yet. A lot of companies have just opted out of doing that, at least for now, just being like, that's not what we developed for. We're going to make you do it, keep your experience on mobile or desktop and not a hybrid of the two, but overall, it sounds like Apple has, no one's saying you promised this battery life that you can't deliver on. It sounds like it's pretty close. Yeah, owning the software and the silicon seems to have worked for Apple in this case. We'll see if other people can replicate that on other ARM based platforms. Remember, this is Apple's own ARM design, and they can design it exactly the way they want to work with the software that they also write and own. Thanks to everybody who participates in our subreddit. You can submit stories and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. Keep in coming. Amazon launched Amazon Pharmacy in the US. If you had any doubts that Amazon would truly launch every single marketplace it could, this one lets customers order prescriptions for home delivery. Amazon Pharmacy will accept most insurance and accept flexible spending accounts and health savings accounts depending on where you work. Sometimes those are perks that the company gives you. Amazon Prime customers get free two-day delivery and access to 40 to 80% discounts on prescriptions. Amazon will not deliver scheduled to controlled medications, so not every single thing will be delivered by Amazon, but a lot of medications will. Pharmacists will be available by phone or online chat, and Amazon will also screen for drug interactions, try to help you out as best they can. It won't launch in Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Minnesota, at least for now, although Amazon says it hopes to get permission to launch in those states over time. Well, you dodged a bullet there, Aaron. You're local pharmacies will not have to compete with Amazon right away. But what do you think of the idea of Amazon getting into yet another vertical? On the one hand, it's normal for a retailer like a grocery store or a Walmart or a Costco to add a pharmacy, but Amazon is now causing stock prices to drop amongst pharmacies because they've entered this. Right. I mean, the way that I think about Amazon sometimes is just this idea of like they kind of want to be your everything. And so, I mean, there's a lot of folks out there who make regular use of their pharmacy, you know, if you're getting your movies and your groceries, and you're just about everything else. I think for them, it's probably a question like, well, why not add that to the list too? Yeah. And I, Sarah, you and I were talking a little bit earlier about before the show about antitrust. I'm not sure how this affects the perceptions of antitrust, because on the one hand, it's them moving into yet another market. And that could be seen as, you know, abusing power. But it's also a very separate market. They had to buy a company called Pillpack and use that infrastructure to get into this market. So they're a new entrance. They're not guaranteed to win in that market. Yeah. I think the whole sort of healthcare industry, especially because Amazon is facing antitrust issues in a variety of places. Most recently, the EU, who launched not just an investigation, but is opening up court hearings about it. I think that the Amazon pharmacy is, it's a tricky one. I certainly, I actually don't get anything knock on wood from a pharmacy for myself, but I do get quite a few things for my pets through a compound pharmacy, which I go through Arizona for because it's more, it's cheaper. I would be interested to see what Amazon might be able to cover me for in that arena, because depending on where you get medication for, you know, humans, pets alike, the prices vary wildly. And the whole idea with Amazon pharmacy, I'm sure is to undercut pharmacies, you know, if I've, you know, if I'm getting prednisone, right? You know, something that's like, I'm going to need to have it refilled, you know, somewhat often. And Amazon can give me more of a discount than my regular anybody could give me. Well, it's the exact same thing that Amazon worked so well within the past, whether it be books or electronics or clothing or, you know, anything that you get on Amazon now, it's, it's often cheaper. So what will that make this industry look like, especially because it's heavily regulated? Yeah. And that's where Amazon could run into trouble with antitrust is price. If they're abusing their marketplace to bring down price pressure, which 40 to 80 percent, that's a steep discount. Walmart does similar stuff to you. Well, back at the end of October, Aaron did a story for CNET called Why Science Says the Pursuit of Happiness has a dark side, the pursuit of happiness. And today, CNET has a story from Allison Dinesco-Raeon called This Is How to Be Happy According to Science. So Aaron, in both these stories, let's start with, what are we talking about? What do we mean by happiness? Yeah. So, you know, happiness is kind of a squishy idea. But for researchers, they really look at it in kind of two main frameworks. The first is hedonic, which is basically this idea that the more pleasure you have in your life, the happier you are. And you can define that however you want. And then the other one is eudaimonic. And really, what that is kind of getting at is a general sense of well-being. You know, like, are you living a good life, good with a capital G? So in other words, hedonism or just feeling good. Yeah, like dopamine hit or like, you know, meditating a lot type thing. Right. Right. Yeah, the dopamine or, you know, cracking Play-Doh and seeing what's good. And you wrote in your story about how pursuing happiness, quixotically or ironically, can make you less happy. And you used a couple of interesting examples in there, one of which was, you know, trying to achieve the happiness you perceive everyone on Instagram say happy because everybody looks like they have the perfect life. And so you're trying to achieve that and you can't. Another more traditional example is advertising. Advertising shows you, you know, like, oh, if you just, you know, buy this car, you'll be happy. And then you buy the car and you're like, why am I not happy? What effect is technology having on us in that way? Yeah. So, I mean, it's interesting when you look at, you know, social media, for example, it can be a really double-edged sword. On one hand, this is a great way to connect with people. And particularly at a time when, you know, a lot of people are feeling kind of isolated and right now, relationships are super important. It gets tricky when you are looking at social media and kind of like you said, Tom going like, oh, I want to take that vacation or, you know, I want like a new car or I need to make some like, you know, hot cocoa and clutch the cup with my nice fuzzy sweater, you know, I've seen that one. Yeah. You know, you set up this kind of question it's like a false expectation and you get too focused on happiness as like a goal in and of itself. And in the past like 10 or so years, there's been all this research that has been done that's basically saying like, if you are way too dialed in to asking yourself like, am I, am I happy? Is my life making me happy? It's going to have adverse effect. So, the way to kind of work around that is to focus on the things that you like and you enjoy and you care about that bring you happiness. So, essentially like happiness is a byproduct. So, if you have hobbies, if you like to sing, be in a choir, if you like to paint paint, if you want to spend time with your friends do that, you'll find happiness that way versus like constantly checking in with yourself and, and, you know, scrolling and wondering like, what have I done? So, would you say that the research basically points to the eudaimonic way of being happy is the right way to approach life? Yeah, I think overall that's kind of the way that it leans. A lot of this research kind of indicates that for many people what really kind of brings them happiness or the feeling that they're living a good life is relationships. And so, for example, Harvard has had this longitudinal study about happiness that's been going on about 80 years. This is like the longest, you know, study that's been done about happiness and their big takeaway. It's like it's about the quality of your relationships and not necessarily if you know like 100 people, but if you have some really solid bonds, you know, with immediate friends and family and, and that's kind of what the research points to is, is, is deriving some satisfaction and some well-being and whatnot. Not from the cars through the vacations or, you know, 5,000 Facebook friends, but being tight with a circle of people. Yeah, I think it was maybe this week in science recently was talking about a study that your strong relationships add, add years to your life. You know, people who, who eat healthy with other people had better effects from eating healthy than people who ate healthy alone. And it's, it's those relationships, which is an interesting thing with technology when we're like, Oh no, we need to cut down our screen time. We need to, you know, turn off social networks when those social networks, they're not perfect, but in a time of lockdown, they are your social connections. So it's not as easy as like, Oh, if you just delete all of those, it's, you need to be able to find the valuable relationships through technology. Well, and that's something like, I mean, I, I give Facebook a really hard time because in many ways my news feed is a cesspool, but there are certain Facebook groups or, you know, my family has, you know, a closed little private, you know, there's five of us and we talk every once in a while. Like that stuff is actually very valuable. Yes, I could do that in other places. It just happens to be Facebook, but there are platforms that depending on how you use it, and depending on your, I don't know, I mean, your, your, your need to connect with folks slash maybe loneliness level, especially this year, et cetera, et cetera that, you know, there are really good tools that are at our disposal now. Right. And I think that, you know, I mean, these days you hear a lot about this idea of mindfulness, you know, or whatever, but I think there is something to be said that if you're scrolling through Instagram and you've got like the bad feelings kind of welling up, like put it away, but if you're talking to your friends, then that's, you know, it's an entirely different use. Yeah. I definitely recommend reading both Aaron and Allison's stories over at CNET. There are some tips in there, some things you could do. Just being kind to other people apparently has been shown scientifically to increase happiness. That is good stuff. And yes, money will make you a little happier, right? But it's not, it's not the biggest problem, Tom. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's all relative. A new phone might make me happy though. Speaking of relative, what about relative sizes? Oppo showed off the Oppo X 2021 concept phone. So concept phone, but it has a continuously variable OLED display. See if you're like, what does that mean? It means a button causes the phone to switch between a 6.7 inch and 7.4 inch screen size or anywhere in between by rolling or unrolling the screen in a demo for end gadget. They made the transition while video played and was resizing itself on the fly. It looked pretty cool. Twitter also switched between its phone and its tablet interface using the same form factor. It rolls by rolling a laminated OLED panel around a 6.8 millimeter diameter tool motor into a hidden compartment. And boy, if you haven't seen the video of this, and yes, again, kind of just we're in demo stage at this time. It's pretty cool. Looks like magic. I mean, the fact that the video keeps playing while they're opening it up and closing it, that's that's good demo stuff, right? Yeah. Like, I don't know how useful that is in practice, but I like this better than folding. I feel like if it was the difference between a small smartphone and a fairly large tablet, I'd be like, oh, this is what I need. The difference in size is not super significant. So yeah, in practice, you'd be like 6.4 7.4. I mean, what do you 6.7 7.4. I mean, yeah, it could be smaller though. It could. Yeah. And then get bigger. Still a concept though. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. So yesterday, we mentioned that doctor had written in in our discord saying, my computer is waking up even though I have it set to not wake. I don't know what's going on. It's supposed to be asleep. What's happening? And we got we got some got some answers. Chris said, or at least some suggestions. Chris said, I heard doctor's question and I had the same thing happen, even though I had disabled everything. Turns out it was a Bluetooth device causing it probably some headphones or a device in a nearby car that was broadcasting. And then Rico had another suggestion about the phantom playback on a listeners laptop. Rico wonders, could it be magnets? So I've got this Asus Chromebook, the type that flips around into a tablet mode. It has magnets all over the body. When I close the lid, when I'm watching a video on YouTube, then I lay my computer on a metal table, the magnets get quote unquote aroused. It triggers the OS to start playing the video, even with the lid closed, because it thinks that it's open because the magnets are making a connection. I don't know. Yeah, it's either one of those, but that's cool. I had mentioned my MacBook Pro did this to me the other day. I'm not sure either of those things are my issue. Maybe the Bluetooth though, that might be something to look into. Well, we love your feedback, whether you have questions, comments, where you're trying to help out a fellow community member of DTNS, we really appreciate it. Keep those emails coming feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. Also want to shout out our patrons at our master and grand master levels, including Ken Hayes, Tony Glass, and Jeffrey Zilx. Also, big, big thanks to Aaron Carson over six months. Since we saw you last Aaron, it's been too long. Let folks know where they can keep up with your work. You can always find me on Twitter at Aaron Carson or hanging out on CNET.com. Excellent. Make those social connections at Aaron Carson. Hey patrons, did you know your ad-free RSS feed can have just DTNS or just GDI or both? Check your tier on Patreon. If it says DTNS, you're just getting DTNS, and you can switch to one that says GDI or all. If you want to change those tiers, just go to dailytechnewshow.com slash Patreon. We are live folks Monday through Friday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern 2130 UTC. If you can join us live, we would love to have you. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Back tomorrow with Dan Benjamin. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. I hope you have enjoyed this program.