 Coming up on DTNS LastPass is tracking you. Facebook is trying to decide whether to put facial recognition into its augmented reality glasses and how to fight Zoom fatigue. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, February 26th, 2021 in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. Also in Los Angeles, I'm Lamar Wilson. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chan. We were just talking about taxes, but also fun stuff. I think we've invented a university. If you would like that wider conversation, actually, there's some really good tips on shooting video in there from Sarah and Roger. Get our expanded show, Good Day Internet. Become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Start with a few tech things you should know. Bloomberg sources say that Sony will enable expandable storage on the PS5 by the middle of this year, activating the console's M.2 SSD slot and higher fan speeds. It's unclear what drive speeds and specifications external drives will need to meet to be compatible. Google introduced the Sleep API, which will analyze a phone's light and motion sensors on device, AI, to produce a sleep confidence metric at short intervals, as well as a daily sleep metric calculated after you wake up. Google hopes the API will save wellness app developers time when creating sleep tracking apps and users must give the runtime permission before any apps can access the data so you have control over it. Telegram announced in a blog post that it's adding new features for iOS and Android to auto delete messages in any kind of chat. It was previously only possible to do that in encrypted or secret chats. Messages can be set to delete from either 24 hours to up to seven days after messages are sent after you turn the feature on. If there were messages previous to that, they're still gonna be there. Telegram's also now allowing invite links that now expire and new support for unlimited groups. VMware issued a patch Tuesday for a remote code execution vulnerability in VMware vCenter server for Windows or Linux. Within a day of that patch, a proof of concept exploit was all over. There were about six of them, probably more in the wild. Researcher Troy Merch of Bad Packets wrote on Twitter that mass scanning activity for vulnerable servers had been detected. The vulnerability has a score of 9.8 out of 10 for severity on the common vulnerability scoring system. Users will need to update vCenter server immediately or implement recommended workarounds. Facebook's independent oversight board is binding when it makes decisions on moderation appeals, but its policy change recommendations need only to be considered. The oversight board made 17 policy change recommendations in relation to its six moderation cases that it decided at the end of January. Facebook has said it will follow or consider 16 of the recommendations. Facebook will not follow a recommendation to change its definition of imminent harm, so it's not applied as often to misinformation about global health. All right, let's talk a little more about LastPass tracking us. Lamar, are they looking at me now? They are, I'm also looking at you too. You look nice. All right, Exodus Privacy analysis, how many trackers are used by Android apps? Its security researcher, Mike Cookets, highlighted in a blog post February 20th that LastPass had seven. Exodus also found four trackers, each in Dashlane and Roboform, two in Bitwarden, and none in one password. Cookets said that the data tracked by LastPass included smartphone make and model and whether biometric security was engaged. LastPass told to register that the data was used to improve the product. No personally identifiable information is collected and users can opt out of the collection and events settings. Yeah, so if it's zero tolerance, this is good to know for you and you can pick one password because it's the only one that's not gonna track you at all. I personally don't have a problem with some tracking in order to improve the app. I get that like, hey, how people interact with the app is generally useful in making a better app. So I went and I looked, I actually really like Exodus' site where you can look and it will tell you what the tracking apps are, who runs them, what kind of data is collected. And the only one from LastPass that raised my eyebrow is Mixpanel. Mixpanel can be used just to tell how an app is used, but it can also be used for targeted messaging and advertising. And granted, LastPass gives me the ability to go in and say, don't track me at all, which I will do, but I don't love that they're using Mixpanel. Nobody else is using Mixpanel of the others that I looked at. I don't mind the biometric security seeing if that was engaged. I think that's a good thing. And maybe they're paying me to say, hey, we noticed that your iOS or in this case, Android, could be more improved. Because I know there's some apps like that now to say here, here's five ways you can improve your security. I think that's a good one. Yeah, or it could help them with adoption. Like, ooh, only 30% of our users have used biometric. Let's see what we can do to make it easier. Yeah, yeah. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Because as a LastPass user, I used to be a one password user, but it's all LastPass now. The company is pretty good about saying, here are some things we've noticed. Let's do a security check here. You might want to look at these two passwords that are a little bit similar kind of thing. So some basic, hey, we want to know if Sarah's using an iPhone and if there's biometric security that could be strengthened, I don't bother me. But like you said, Tom, it's all about, okay, well, what is tracking you and what could it do? And would this be at the very least annoying and at the very worst, something that would cause you to change password managers? Yeah, and honestly, if you're upset at LastPass for moving the free tier into being split between platforms, like we've talked about, this may make you go like, well, why would I even bother with whether they're tracking me properly or not? When I could just switch to another one like Bitwarden that only has two trackers or one password that has none. So I think it will push a few more people that direction. Yeah, I think so. Smart speakers have trouble working for people who have trouble using their voices. Atypical speech can arise for lots of reasons. Conditions like ALS, cerebral palsy, Parkinson's disease, hearing loss, just if you have a stutter, sometimes these voice assistants can't work with that. There's lots of reasons. Wall Street Journal has highlighted some tech projects to improve speech recognition for these millions of people who have this issue with them. Google product manager, Julie Katow, is collecting atypical speech patterns to improve training for voice recognition tools, and Google's Project Euphonia is testing a prototype that lets people with atypical speech train their voice recognition system themselves. In fact, those two are working together to help each other. In December, Amazon integrated its voice recognition system with Israel's VoiceIt. VoiceIt trains algorithms to work for people with speech impairments. So it's self-training, but it's built specifically for people who have speech impairments. And Apple's Hold2Talk feature lets users control how long Siri listens before interrupting them, especially for people who take a long time to speak, longer than normal, or maybe who have a stutter. That can be a problem where the voice recognition assistant gets impatient and interrupts you before you're done making your request. So Hold2Talk helps with that. Apple also published a study that showed they used 28,000 audio clips from podcasters with stutters to train an algorithm to detect stuttering automatically, something that would also allow them to not even have to use the Hold2Talk, but could be used to improve Siri. In other ways, Apple didn't say how they might use this, but looks like there are some moves being made to address this complex issue. I love this. As somebody who has embraced talking to my smart speakers for a lot of reasons, sometimes it's something as simple as a math problem that I can't figure out, and I don't feel like opening the calculator on my computer, I mean, there are lots of things I'm doing besides asking her about the weather, which is also another one. But it's not hard to trip up the smart speaker. Sometimes I'm kind of in the middle of something and I even say it weird, and the smart speaker is like, I don't know what your query was, which is kind of understandable, but there are all sorts of reasons that somebody with quote-unquote normal patterns of speech sometimes have a hard time with this. So if the speech pattern is at all off of that norm, that kind of median type thing, I can only imagine how frustrating it is. And the thing about speech impairments is they're not all impaired in the same way. There are all sorts of reasons that it's like, oh, it might be slower speech where the assistant needs to understand that it's just gonna take a while before they try to respond. You don't have all your information yet or something perhaps is a pattern of repeated words or words that are more of a staccato type of a thing or for something like cerebral palsy or Parkinson's, it might be something that's really depends on the person and what the specific need is. So for any kind of intelligent learning that can say here are a lot of known ways that this can deviate and how a machine trained to hear voice can be inclusive to as many people as possible, that's a super great thing. Yeah, I know how defeating it could be, even for myself sometimes to try to say something to my home pod and it just rushes in because I'm not fast enough. So being able to even tweak that on that or I love this whole to talk feature just for people who just talk slower, they're thinking about how they wanna say it. It's already intimidating to talk to this digital machine to begin with and I think any type of improvements on that it's just kind, it's just a kind thing to do. So yeah, that's my opinion on that at least. And atypical speech often can be a symptom alongside mobility impairment or the inability to use certain limbs in which case speech recognition becomes even more advantageous if it can recognize what you're saying, right? Because you could just tell something to do something instead of having to type or move something yourself, go turn on a light or whatever. So making it useful, I think it has a multiplier effect in this situation. Well, speaking of voice activation, Facebook announced that you can now use the wake word Hey Facebook on its portal smart displays as an alternative to Hey Portal. Okay, Facebook makes portal, now you have a choice. Facebook is also rolling out Hey Facebook to Oculus Quest devices. So you can turn it on in the experimental features panel of your quest. The double tap voice command app isn't gonna go away if you prefer to use that instead. You do not have to say Hey Facebook while inside Oculus, but it's a new option. Farther down the road is the idea of building facial recognition into smart glasses. Buzzfeed reports that Facebook's VP of augmented and virtual reality, Andrew Bosworth said at a company-wide meeting that Facebook is trying to determine the legality of offering that feature. Bosworth said, quote, face recognition might be the thorniest issue where the benefits are so clear and the risks are so clear and we don't know where to balance those things. Bosworth said on Twitter, we are going to have to have a very public discussion about the pros and cons. Yeah, you think? So what do we think here? Do we want glasses to be able to tell us who we're looking at? As a person wearing the glasses, I would probably say, oh yeah, that sounds really helpful. As a person who might be identified by someone else wearing glasses, I say, not so fast. Yeah, for Lamar, what do you think? It has seemed like the promise was, oh, augmented reality, it'll help me remember people's names. Yeah, first of all, just for the record, I just want to be on the record for this. I will never say, hey, Facebook, after the sentence, it just will not happen. You know what, maybe they're like, come on, I'm not doing that. I don't know if it was when I owned a Google Glasses, I was one of the first people to own that. I believe they were trying to have something like that where you could eventually look at someone, it'll pop up and see, hey, that's Tom Merritt right there or so. And again, as a user, you're like, hey, that's a great idea. It's great augmented reality. I get to see who these people are, but how scary is that for the person? I sort of agree with you, Sarah. I think on the other side, it's that weirdness of someone's like, oh, hey, you're so-and-so, if you're not a known person to have someone do that to you, it's a little bit shocking or, I don't know, that's not a good word. It's scary, it's a little scary, I would think for that person. If you were to say, do you, Sarah, have a problem with, you're going to, you know, post-pandemic world, right? You're going to a physical networking event. It's gonna be in like a banquet room, all the people there, instead of wearing name tags, which is, we're all kind of used to that, right? We're going to be able to, you know, be able to tell who each other are because everybody's got these biometric glasses. Maybe they're yours, maybe it's something that's given out at the event, whatever. I'd probably be like, okay, I'm into that. I understand what's going on. That's what I'm saying yes to. If it's just me walking down the street and any old person can like look me up online because they know my information, like that's totally outrageous, of course, like that that's never gonna fly with me. I'm like, like disgusted at the thought. And of course Facebook knows that. Facebook's not, they're not going to give at, you know, the world a pair of augmented reality glasses and it's like, well, privacy is dead. Sorry, we're Facebook, you expected this from us. It's like, there's no way. But yeah, where's the middle ground where it does make sense? Wouldn't it be cool to have some kind of list or like on Facebook you'll go in and say, hey, fuzz out my face or fuzz out the name if someone is using. The question from the employee was, are we going to let users exclude themselves from the database? Okay, okay. And Bosworth was like, we're not even there yet. We're still trying to decide whether this goes in at all. So they're right there with you. I feel like all of this has to do with the fact that we, none of us feel like we're in control of our data. If we were in control of our data, we wouldn't care, we would love this feature. If we could say like, oh, I will be able to stop someone when I'm walking down the street from recognizing me. I'll be able to easily to have it turned on when I go into the conference and I do want people to recognize me. Then no one has a problem with this. The objection is, I don't think I have that control. I don't know who does. And I certainly don't want Facebook to be making that decision for me. So, I mean, it gets to the root of the problem is, we need to have user data control for these kinds of very useful functions to be trusted. This is really interesting. Yeah, yeah, I don't, listen, I don't want to say terrible idea, scrap it now Facebook. You're only going to get into hot water because I want those situations where it is beneficial to people. As long as, again, like you said, Tom, that I as a user would have full control of whether I have opted into this experience or not, whether or not I have these glasses type thing. Cause that's another issue, right? It's like, if someone pays for, like, I don't know, somewhat expensive glasses not going to be free. They shouldn't be able to know who I am just because they got this cool tool type thing. I just, I, yeah, it's such a tread lightly type of a thing. Very, very. I'm not going to say it right now. Facebook, put your money where your mouth is, your virtual mouth and join the Inrupt project. Based on MIT solid and say, we'll do facial recognition and augmented reality controlled by you with an Inrupt container and I'll buy in, I'll be ready to do this. But until you actually join something like Inrupt or something else that's giving me control over the data, it's all going to be like, okay, you just want to try to trick me into giving me, giving you information that I don't want to give you. That's going to be, that's going to be the attitude. Yep. That's why no one owns a portal. Well, except for the one person in our audience who's like, hi, I want a portal, but yeah, you know, rare. Oh, I'll get the emails. I know. Hey folks, tell us if you disagree, if you're like, no, I want Facebook to recognize my face all the time. It's right there in the name Facebook. Joining the conversation in our discord, which you can join by linking to a Patreon account at patreon.com slash D T N S. Scientists at Stanford University have been studying why video conferencing is exhausting. We're all talking about it. They published their findings in a paper called Non-Verbal Overload, a theoretical argument for the causes of Zoom fatigue. It's in the journal, Technology, Mind and Behavior. They looked at previous psychological studies that bear on the issue and proposed four main ways that video conferencing might tire you out. Number one, because you're doing extended eye contact because everybody's facing you, unlike in a real conference room or a panel table, faces are larger, they appear close to you, that stresses you out. That's just a natural physical reaction. When you have a face in your face or when you can't feel like you can break eye contact, that's stressful. Number two, non-verbal signals like nodding require more effort to see and be seen in a video window. When you're normally in physical proximity with someone, you just nod naturally and you don't check to make sure they saw you, right? Number three, seeing yourself in the video box causes something called constant self-evaluation. This has been studied in mirrors and it's been shown to lead to negative emotions because the longer you look at yourself, the more likely you are to start critiquing your appearance. And number four, you tend to stay in one place when you're on a video conference. So you can see, so people can see that you're there and you're paying attention. Whereas in a real conference, you might get up to stretch your legs, get a glass of water, but everybody can still see you're still in the room listening. If you get up on a video conference, it looks like you left. So the scientists next step is to gather more data to determine just how much of an effect these different elements have and use that to make some evidence-based recommendations to help reduce exhaustion. However, the scientists do have some recommendations in the meantime while they refine those models. One, they say, hide self-view. You're just gonna stress you out. Once you know what you look like, don't look at yourself anymore. Number two, shrink the video window to make people smaller, try making it about a third of the screen. That way you don't get that in-your-face effect. Number three, spend time ahead of important meetings, making sure you like your shot and you're sitting in a comfortable position. That way you don't get tired out and you're not worried about it. Number four, turn off the camera during long meetings for five minutes, just to give yourself a chance to get up and move around because if you turn off the camera, then it's not as clear that you're not there, right? It's just that the camera's off. Number five, work with your coworkers to make audio-only meetings more frequent. You don't always need to be looking at each other. Sometimes all you need is to talk and that's less stressful. Yeah. I saw a funny tweet about this study this morning what was like, Silicon Valley invents phone call. You know, to sort of, you know, wrap this up but really good points here. And I think that, you know, as I was going through these, I was like, I think I have to try slightly harder to imagine what this would be like if I didn't just do video, what's the somewhat equivalent of video conferencing every single day, you know, on a live, you know, program. Like, we're all really used to this. So it's not that we're not affected by this on some level but much more desensitized, you know, if we even think about it at all. But the extended eye contact really resonated with me because yeah, if you are, you've got, I don't know, 10 coworkers, you all got to be in the meeting. Everyone's got their video window open. It looks like nine people are interrogating you, right? They're all right there in a grid looking right at you. That wouldn't be the case in a meeting, you know, you're all around some sort of a table of some kind, you know, in some sort of a semi-circle, whatever it might be, it is different. And that kind of, yeah, like who do I look at? You know, like I want to be polite. Do I always look at the person who's talking or am I kind of looking at myself again, being like, I look weird. Why do I look weird? And I can only imagine how distracting that is for folks who are like, I don't like this. This is new and uncomfortable for me. Yeah, so if you think this is difficult for adults, imagine children. I was thinking about this. I left a classroom in 2006 and I was just, I was thinking when I saw this, I'm like, my God, if I had to deal with this, well, I've been thinking about this all year because I've been checking in with some teachers and how stressful it is to have a, you know, teaching kindergarten or first grade with, I mean, heck, even high school, just to have, you know, kids on the camera and having to deal with that, just how stressful it is on their end to, you know, because they want to move around and things and it's like, these are very helpful tips just for, you know, the kids themselves, because I know some teachers demand that the camera always stay on so they make sure they're there and it's like, you know, but there's some that are a little bit more realistic. It's like, hey, if you need to turn off the camera for a little while, you know, it's understandable. So I think doing a better study of this is good because I think for a lot of people, Zoom is not going anywhere. You know, even homeschooling may be a thing for a lot of people in the future after this. Before we move on from this, Zoom did announce a feature that doesn't look like it'll help with Zoom fatigue necessarily, but it will help with accessibility. This autumn, free Zoom accounts will get support for automatic English captioning, something that paid accounts already have. All the accounts are going to get it. If you're a free account holder who doesn't want to wait until the autumn, you can even request it directly from Zoom right now. So you might want to go do that. Nice. Tell us about the USFCC. What are they up to, Lamar? Oh, the thing had glitched on me. I apologize. The US Federal Communications Commission approved an emergency broadband subsidy of up to $50 per month for low income households and up to $75 to households on Native American land, as well as $100 discount on a computer or tablet. Now, the program will be available within 60 days, although the FCC still needs to sign up ISPs. At least 18 million people in the US still don't have reliable home internet connections. Can I stay real quick for you all jumping? I actually thought out of the, what, 330 million people there in the US or so. I thought it was much more than this number. And it might be. The 18 million is counted by saying, if one person in a zip code has a broadband connection, then that entire zip code is counted as having a broadband connection or an internet connection. I don't understand how that could be legal. Oh yeah, so the 18 million has got to be a super low ball number then. Yeah. It depends on your zip code, but very rarely a zip code is one household. Right. And we're talking about reliable home internet connections. So one, I could see them saying, like, look, if there's an internet connection in the zip code, then it's probably available for everyone. But one person in a zip code doesn't represent reliable for everybody. And it certainly doesn't represent affordability for everybody. Yeah. My other point was this, this is a very positive story. It's $50 a month is a good number. I would love for, I know, is one of those socialist things maybe, but when the government just, hey, if they got the money to take care of this many people, why not work to have public internet for everybody? I know that's a lofty thought, but $50 to $75 is a lot. I mean, we probably pay that for our internet or more. I know I do. I pay 120 a month when I'm talking about that. But like the average household, I mean, there's some promise here. Oh, for sure. I mean, yeah, for video streaming, I gotta be probably above that. But for years, I was around 50, 60 bucks for good internet. It definitely makes an impact. Well, let's talk about citizens reporting on other citizens or at least knowing what's going on in their general vicinity. Citizen is actually an app that provides info on local criminal activity. It's not free. It's actually 20 bucks a month, but it announced Friday that it's introducing helicopter tracking to the app. So if you happen to live somewhere where either infrequently or frequently there's a helicopter overhead and you wonder why citizen might help you figure it out. It tells the verge it's already employing a 24 hour group to review 911 communications. That's kind of what the app does, but it's going to expand to also review police helicopter data. Citizen also lets users add their own videos and comments about an incident. So it's not just what everybody saw. It's a combination of the folks who live in the area and also police reports. And when possible, the citizen team says that they'll include a related incident for a helicopter spotting to give more context such as an open missing persons report that may be connected to the fact that the helicopter has been over your house for the last 45 minutes. Yeah, if you don't live in an area that is not Los Angeles or mostly Los Angeles, this is the first place I've ever lived where I have helicopters over my house. A helicopter went over my house earlier in the show. I don't know if you could hear it on the background of the mic, but half of the while here. Living in LA, you don't even hear it half the time. But you know, where I live, I live in a rural area, but I'm near the Russian River. There's several bridges and we get helicopters overhead. I mean, it's not daily. It's not even weekly, but sometimes they're looking for somebody or there might have been somebody who went over the bridge and they're caught in the river or something like that. It does happen. And I always kind of go like, well, I mean, I can't like wave down the helicopter and be like, hi, can I help? But I am kind of curious. So I can see this coming in handy. I use Twitter for this because there's some local Twitter accounts that keep on top of this kind of stuff. But when I saw that, I don't really love Citizen, but when I saw that Citizen was doing this, I was like, all right, maybe I'll have to look at it. But then when I saw it was 20 bucks a month, I was like, no, I'm paying 20 bucks a month just to find out why that helicopter is over my house a little more. When I can go to Twitter and probably find out the same thing. But it's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. All right, let's check out the mail bag. What do we got there, Sarah? Oh, we got a nice one from Norm. Norm heard our latest bonus show. We do those once a month where we flashback to what the news was five years ago in whatever current month we're in. So our latest bonus show was February of 2016. And Norm says, I love them. I love the flashback shows. Very entertaining. It might get lost in the great content that you put out, but the monthly walks down memory lane, I like any mention of what happened in February. In fact, February 29th, five years ago, makes me smile because it's my younger daughter's birthday. Between these, good day internet, editor's desk, the thread wire posts, the early access to new a little more, even special interviews, I feel like I'm getting great value for my monthly Patreon pledge. Aw, thank you, Norm. Made our day. I know. Yeah. Yeah, really good. So if you're like, hey, how do I get those bonus shows? Co-executive producer level or above on Patreon. They come out once a month and we were literally looking at our rundowns from five years ago and going like, oh yeah, Apple was fighting the FBI encryption thing here. And this was the Apple rumor at the time. Did it end up being true? It's a lot of fun to do. And I'm glad Norm and others like it. Yeah, we have such a good time. I keep waiting for the point where we catch up to when I started doing the show full time. Oh, right. Yeah, we haven't got there yet. We have more than a year to go. So, you know, don't hold your breath, but that'll be fun where I'll be like, I said that, didn't I? Yeah, yeah, this is turning to some point. So this is- Oh, go ahead. No, no, I was gonna ask you all, because I haven't seen these, you all don't, you're not just replaying that old episode, you're- No, no, we're looking at it and talking now from our perspective five years later. Okay, okay. Well, because some of the stories you're like, oh my gosh, this is when that started. And other stories you're like, what? What were we even talking about? That never materialized. That's awesome. You know, gotta love tech. If you have ideas for what, I don't know, some technology from five years ago that you sure wish had shown up on an old DTNS, send those ideas to us or any ideas really. Feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com. Also like to shout out patrons at our master and our grand master levels. Today they include Dustin Campbell, Andrew Bradley and Brad. Thanks to Lamar Wilson also for being with us. Lamar, always a pleasure. Let folks know where they can keep up with your work. Thank you. One central place, lamar.tv. That's my new URL, Lamar with two Rs. I've started streaming on Amazon Live if you could believe Amazon has streaming. I'm not talking about Twitch, Amazon Live. Yeah, follow me there. Check me out. It's really fascinating. I love it. Hey, if you like video and you want DTNS as a video podcast, we have that too. You can get the video RSS feed at DailyTechNewShow.com slash subscribe. Folks, we're live Monday through Friday on video. We're audio. Do either 4.30 p.m. Eastern 2130 UTC and find out more at DailyTechNewShow.com slash live. Back on Monday with Nicole Lee. Have a great weekend. Talk to you then. Bye. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.