 Coming up on DTNS, Microsoft and Amazon set dates for their big announcements. Uber says it just won't worry about that new California labor law. All right. And Huawei calls the West's bluff. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, September 12th, 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Feline, I'm Sarah Lane. From the shores of Lake Merritt in Oakland, California, I'm Justin Robert Young. And I'm Roger Chang, the show's producer. We were just updating the Good Day Internet folks. They know where my solar installation is. They know all about the show's succession on HBO. And if you want to be part of that conversation, don't get left out. Patreon.com slash DTNS to get Good Day Internet, which includes this here show, Daily Tech News Show. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Slack introduced a new dark mode all the rage these days for desktop users on Windows, Mac OS and Linux. Users need to update or relaunch the Slack desktop app to find the new dark mode options in the themes part of their settings. Slack also added a new nocturn dark mode theme for both desktop and mobile users. Google agreed to pay 945 million euros to France to settle a four-year long investigation of whether Google failed to pay dues to the state by not declaring all activities in France. Budget Minister Gerald Darminian told Le Figaro newspaper that the settlement creates a legal precedent and talks are now underway with several other companies over tax obligations. HTC announced the Vive Cosmos VR headset shipping October 3rd for $699. It's the first PC tethered VR headset from HTC to use inside out tracking cameras. Six of them on the headset, so you don't have to put out those external boxes. The headset offers a combined 2,880 by 1,700 resolution, not revolution. It's evolutionary, not revolutionary, let's be honest. A pair of LCD panels with a 90 hertz refresh rate, 110 degree field of view, and comes with an updated set of hand tracking controllers. Amazon sent out invitations for an event on September 25th. Now, Fire TV devices were announced last week at EFA in Berlin, but new echo devices and possibly new services or service updates are expected. Microsoft sent out official invites for its event in New York on October 2nd at 10 a.m. Eastern time. ZD Nets' Mary Jo Foley reports that the event will be about devices and experiences. New services are expected along with possibly a smart speaker and maybe Windows Lite OS, a Chrome OS competitor, and a Centaurus, a dual screen PC. Alright, so nothing could possibly go wrong with letting Amazon just let people answer all your questions on an Amazon Echo. Wrong! Well, then I guess it's time for Justin to tell us about this story. Oh, what a parade of news. After an initial private beta, Amazon publicly launched Alexa Answers in the U.S., which surfaces answers provided through a community vetting process. When the voice assistant itself doesn't have the answer, content generated from answers comes with the preface according to an Amazon customer, contributors to answers through a web interface with a 300-character limit, responses receive up or down votes with users receiving consistent down votes, getting to answer fewer questions. Amazon will filter out responses with obvious profanity and not post questions with obvious political angles with human editors and algorithms filtering the content. Amazon's Vice President of Alexa Information, sorry folks, Bill Barton says we're leaning into the positive energy and good faith of the contributors and we use machine learning and algorithms to weed out the noisy few, the bad few, but we're not going to suppress the magical experience that we can give to 99% of our customers because one person had something different in mind. Oh, you know, it's a good press release when they have to be like, please don't worry. There's going to be bad actors. There are just so many more good actors. Yes, they're great. Positive energy. That's going to help. It looks like a total disaster, but still hold my beer. I would love this idea with a few tweaks, right? I mean, if this was, we have a very strict vetting process. We require submissions to have citations. We have a panel of our own editors constantly going in and reviewing, but no, what they're saying is like, you know, if there's a machine learning at it, that'll catch most of the bad stuff and what could possibly go wrong when we all know exactly what could possibly go wrong because it's playing out on so many other platforms right now. That doesn't mean that Amazon Echo is going to lead to, you know, the undermining of democracy or anything else because I don't think it's used quite in that same way. But it's just really, it's just not a good situation. I'm glad they're telling me when an answer is coming from an Amazon user so that I can question it strongly, but not everybody will. All right. I'm up two minds here. Number one, I'm actually for this, if we are going to understand exactly what it is, that this is user submitted, that there's some Wild West stuff that's happening. I'm cool. We know what Wikipedia is. We know that there can be a bad apple here and again, and yet it is a tremendously useful thing. That's not how people tend to look at corporate stamped information, however. So if they were going to do this, I would say start with one vector. Just do congratulations. As of today, we have vetted sports information. If you want sports information, we've vetted all this and people can contribute to it, but we're going to do it a vertical by vertical. This is doing neither. One thing about this, and it'll be interesting to see how it plays out, is Amazon has a gaming problem in the sense of people trying to get their products bought more than other products. By gaming the system. Yeah. Gaming the system. Yes. So it really depends on what's the answer you're looking for. Is it, hey, what's the best smart speaker for my new house kind of thing? It's like, this is going to be a disaster because you just can't have the community getting involved in this sort of thing. If it's more of like, I don't know, always sky blue or something that you could, you're not going to have a whole lot of muddying up from the community. If Amazon has an answer, they won't be using this model. It's only for the stuff that they don't already have an answer for. Oh yeah, or where the speaker is confused by. Well, yeah. People, Amazon just wants more times that you ask your device something that it has some kind of answer. That's the reason. These are innings eaters, literally. And Thrumwall has it in our Twitch chat. They need the Wikipedia Stack Exchange earned trust model for this. If they had that more on the back end, and if they were saying, if they were prefacing it, not just with according to an Amazon user, but according to an Amazon user, the answer might be to give me a little bit of that uncertainty. I think that would be good. All right, let's talk about that Uber answer. In a press call, Uber's chief legal counsel, Tony West, said that California bill AB five does not, and I quote, automatically reclassify any rideshare drivers from independent contractors to employees. And he's right. The bill doesn't specifically call out Uber drivers, but every California lawmaker that voted for this bill seems to think it will bring Uber drivers health care over time and other benefits. So there is a disconnect between the legislature and Uber's chief legal counsel. The bill, if it becomes law as a refresher, we talked about this yesterday, but it would require Uber to show that its drivers are one, free from control of the hiring company, two, have an independent business beyond the contracted job, and three, work outside the company's main business. They'd have to show those things in order to prove that they are, in fact, independent contractors. Now West says that Uber's business is, and I quote again, serving as a technology platform for several different types of digital marketplaces, scooters, driving, delivering food, right? And a driver just drives a car. Those are different businesses. So he says they do work outside the company's main business. How he's going to prove number two that they have an independent business beyond the contracted job. I'm not so sure. Anyway, in short, Uber plans to fight this out in court, which it will, because AB five allows a city having a population in excess of 750,000 to file for injunctive relief. If Uber is found to be violating its provisions, guess what city has more than 750,000 people? Just it's San Francisco and Uber driver Angela McRae has already filed a class action lawsuit for having publicly stated that Uber intends to defy this statute. She's like, they're misclassifying me and they're going to ignore this law. So I'm filing a class action lawsuit. Now that one might get thrown out of court for various reasons, but the assault has begun already. And it's not even the bill hasn't even become a law. And when it becomes a law, I won't go into effect till January 1st, but it's definitely going to happen. Uber has fought laws since it began. There's a reason why initial investors were wary on the business model because they assumed that there's no way you could get through local regulations. There's no way you could get through tax unions. They have done it with a very aggressive business mod or very aggressive legal strategy, obviously under their founder and former CEO, not necessarily the leadership that is here now, but I don't think Uber has a choice. Like they're going to fight this law as far as they possibly can fight it and whether or not they're initially going to fight it under whether or not they are classified under it and they'll force the state to say that they are. And then they'll fight it as far up the legal chain to the Supreme Court if they have to because quite frankly, their business model depends on it. For Uber to say outright, straight faced, our drivers are not the core part of our business platform. We do lots of other things is ridiculous and everybody knows that whether or not they can do this legally remains to be seen, but even if they can, what does the public perception turn into at this point? Because Uber has had a lot of bad press. I'm still an Uber user. There are other options. People feel one way or another about this sort of thing, but that's I think what's more important about what this looks like in six months. But but look, Lyft, Caviar, DoorDash, they're all going to have to do the same thing at least in California. Lyft has already teamed up with Uber on a referendum to try to create something to replace this law. So yeah, this this fight is far from over. Google Photos launched a new tool that resurfaces old photos and videos based on anniversaries. The feature is called Memories and begins really not to users today. Photos will appear at the top of a user gallery as small circles, kind of like Instagram's design. As for what surfaces, as a memory, algorithms will pick out a selection based on a variety of signals, according to David Lieb, product lead for Google Photos. So you can now also share photos to as direct messages to friends and order four by six photo prints directly from the app and pick them up same day at CVS pharmacies and also Walmart. And Canvas prints can be shipped to your home in three sizes, eight by eight, 12 by 14 and 16 by 20 for anybody who still likes to put pictures on their wall. Yeah. So when that picture of your acts shows up, you can order a canvas print. I can be like, oh yeah, this is the service I have reminded. I don't like anymore. It's funny that the whole memory thing, and we were talking about this before the show, anybody who uses iOS, we get that surfaced every once in a while. I'm never really understanding why I get them like three times in a week and then I don't for another three months, but time pop was a service that I used to like a lot until, yeah, I was reminded one too many times of a memory that I didn't like very much. So I like these services for the most part, but I don't hear people clamoring for more of it. I just had one of these happen on Facebook where I got reminded of a time gone by that I was glad to have in my past and I was just like, oh god, gross. I just have such a bad feeling. Look, I understand that these product leads need to increase engagement. If you're not increasing engagement, then what are you doing? You got to figure out a way to do it. This is Google joining a trend that has obviously begun from long ago on the social media front. I don't know how useful they are, but I guess for some folks, it brings you back into the app. It creates more app opens. My cynical comment earlier aside, I actually end up getting notifications that bring me lately, just in the past several months, to Google photos that I'm like, oh, that's a nice memory. So it can work that way and it probably does work that way for some people. Yeah, I think the biggest problem is that for the most part, there are nice memories that don't need to be shared. One of the most, and I'm going to throw a Facebook on the bus here. One of the most annoying things about my news feed is someone being like, hey, in 2014, I was doing this, and I'm like, literally no one cares. You don't have to share them. It's just going to make them show up at the top of your photos app when you go there. No, I'm saying it's a feature that people take advantage of. And I, as a friend of that person, I'm like, no one cares. I get these notifications. It is a tool to heighten her knowing friends. I promise not to share these notifications when they go. And I know, and I don't want you to think that you shouldn't. I just, I find that, you know, it is a feature that is easily abused, even though it's well intended. Nintendo announced details around its ring fit adventure, a turn based RPG that uses the flexible ring con and joy con equipped leg strap to make physical activity turn into in game actions. The player must actually jog in place with leg speed, matching the speed of the character on screen. There are also various exercise moves that correspond to the turn based battle against color coded enemies. Ring fit adventure comes with the Nintendo switch October 18th with an $80 package that includes the ring con and leg strap accessories. So from the company that sold you cardboard, now they sell you straps. Exercise straps. Exercise straps to make you Lord of the Ring. Nintendo has been trying to get you to exercise in front of your computer for as long as the power pad. Anybody remembers the power pad? Oh yeah. You had to, you had to run in place again. They just love making you run in place and do calisthenics man. Nintendo is always, that they've been about this life for as long as they've been making hardware. There is something in their marketing data that says we sell X percent more consoles when we have a fitness message out there. So that's why, that's the only thing I can figure that explains this. I wonder how much of it is just as long as they do this every once in a while, does it ease the mind of parents to be like, I'm not just, I could explain the data. Yeah. Well, and I think it eases the mind of everybody, you know, because you're like, man, I don't want to just sit around in front of the TV gaming all day, but I'm exercising at the same time. That's got to play into it too. Yeah. When a parent is like, I don't know, they want a game console. This one looks like you sit down and shoot people violently. This one has you up and exercising. I'm buying that one for them. Yeah. I wonder what everybody's favorite version of this, like between We Fit and the like Power Pad Olympics and this, like, what is everybody's favorite version of that? DDR. Feedback. Feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com. Let us know your favorite version of them. We now know Rogers. It's DDR. I was a dance central fan myself. That's good exercise. No, my, my, my wife is like semi-professional at DDR. Really? Yeah. Yeah. No, she like, I actually had to stop playing the game because the only time I had it set up, which was many apartments ago, my downstairs neighbor was like Canyon Ox. That was the end of that. Voodoo, that's V-U-D-U, Walmart's video streaming unit, introduce new tools to skip scenes with sex or nudity or violence to play up its family viewing features. Family Play, which lets viewers automatically skip or mute objectionable content, now offers ratings and reviews from common sense media along with the kids mode. Family Plays is available on iOS and Android devices, also web browsers, recent model LG and Samsung smart TVs as well, and Microsoft Xbox One with more Voodoo apps to follow. The company also launched a reboot of Mr. Mom. Remember that movie? Now it's a series with the first couple episodes now available. Also on September 27th, Voodoo will exclusively debut the first three episodes of Nickelodeon's Blues Clues and You Revival ahead of the premiere on Nickelodeon in November. So Voodoo used to be my, my serious, my service of choice because they were members of ultraviolet and movies anywhere. Of course, we don't have ultraviolet anymore, only movies anywhere. So it kind of took some of the wind out of those sales. But it is interesting to see Walmart doing something to position Voodoo as the family-friendly movie service. Voodoo's available across platforms. You can get it on the Fire TV, you can get it on the Apple TV. It's interesting that you don't have the family play service on those platforms or the Roku yet. That must be a little more difficult for them to implement on those platforms for some reason. But yeah, seems like a smart move on the Voodoo side of things to get more people interested in using it. Mr. Mom is free with ads. You can also pay to buy it as a series. It's just a few dollars and then you get it without ads. We are in a saturation point for streaming services. You know, there was a tweet that went viral about, you know, adding up all of the different streaming services together to get like a $90 bill that I think does get you a ton of content for, for what it's worth. Although that went viral because it was like, oh my God, we have cable again. I think it's smart. It's smart for Voodoo to position themselves as we are the Waltons of streaming services. If you care about family values, if you, and this is a lot of Walmart's, you know, look, Walmart is very, very popular in areas that would very much appreciate keeping this kind of filth outside of their precious children's eyes that they are parents who want to make sure that their kids are raised right. And that part of that is monitoring what they watch. I think that this is, this is a good move to be the family friendly streaming service. I mean, they literally are the Waltons because it's Walmart, right? Exactly. No, they are the Waltons. Absolutely. Yeah. I think it's, it's good. Also, it's the reason why Apple wound up cleaning up so much of their content famously of, and they're not going to launch with the Dre thing that they're taking certain like religious imagery out of it, because as we saw this week, they want to make this as free as possible or as cheap as possible, which means that they're going to have a wider audience and they don't want it to be, oh, the free show that's delivering horrifying images to your kid. Yeah, blues clues, Mr. Mom. I mean, it's pretty clear that that's where they're headed and it's free. You can pay if you want, but you don't have to to get the content. And most of the content you have to pay for because you buy movies through Voodoo, but then they're available across the various platforms. Hey, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to DailyTechHeadlines.com. And we're back with Huawei at a press conference with the economist in the New York Times throwing down an interesting gambit. Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei suggested that Huawei could license its 5G technology to another company for a fee, and that company would be free to change the software and sell its own 5G infrastructure equipment worldwide. So if you're like, wait, so they're not giving it away, that's, no, no, no, no, you're missing the point. What Huawei is saying is, look, you don't trust our equipment that we build and ship? Fine. What if we license it to a U.S. company or a European company? They build it. They can look at the software and make sure there's no backdoors in it and they can sell it to you. We'll rake in money off the licensing fee as is only fair, but then you deal with them and you don't even have to worry about whether we're in the arms of the PLA or not. It is a very interesting suggestion. Now, according to people after the conference, they said, yes, this is a genuine suggestion. He didn't just throw this off the cuff. It's been thought through. It would include ongoing access to 5G patents, licenses, code, technical blueprints, production engineering knowledge. It's not trying to trick you into being hamstrung like, oh, you can have the worst version of our stuff. They're like, no, we want to do a full licensing agreement kind of like an arm does. You build everything and we support you in building it. That would be costly. It would likely, according to most analysts out there, rack up costs of around $10 billion or so. This is something that wouldn't be cheap, but you would theoretically rake in profits by selling the devices you made based on those licenses. It would be a way for Huawei to monetize markets like North America, Western Europe, and Australia where they're not making any money right now on this 5G infrastructure at all. It's only a net positive and income for Huawei. Whether it's going to receive resistance in the US or not is a question. Already, some independent analysts out there are saying, wait a minute, China's National Intelligence Law requires a Chinese business or any Chinese citizen to surrender any data or communication tools they have access to when requested. Would this apply to licensed equipment and software? So if Nokia licenses the Huawei 5G patent and builds equipment, would they be subject to this? That is a question that hasn't been answered. Would a licensee ever feel like it truly had avoided any software impropriety? That's a lot of code to go through. Remember, UK has an entire unit devoted to just looking at Huawei code, and they have never found a malicious backdoor, but they have found several bugs that Huawei they call incompetent in not fixing. So I don't know, maybe it'd be an improved software. Anyway, Zheng Fei told the economist, a balanced distribution of interest is conducive to Huawei's survival. So they see this, or at least publicly they're saying this is important to Huawei continuing. Competitors in the 5G infrastructure equipment realm that could potentially pay to license this include Nokia and Ericsson. They're the two leaders along with Samsung or even ZTE, but of course, if ZTE licensed it, I don't think that would achieve what Huawei wants to achieve here because they're also a Chinese company. If you're thinking Cisco, Dell, EMC, HPE, yes, they have 5G tech, but they're not infrastructure equipment specialists. They usually get their equipment from either Nokia or Ericsson. So you could see them license this to get into the business of competing with the Nokia and Ericsson, but that's probably unlikely. Side note, Huawei equipment uses something called polar codes, which it claims are easier on connecting devices, batteries. So when you're connecting to 5G equipment from Huawei, theoretically, your handset doesn't use as much power. Nokia and Ericsson use low density parity check. And if polar codes was more widespread because someone had licensed Huawei's implementation of it, of course, Huawei would earn more patent fees from the device makers who support it. So there's another chunk of change Huawei could rake in on this. I think, of course, that a lot of people's minds go to, how does this impact trade negotiations? Does this affect? Because it feels like Huawei's trying to call the US's bluff here, Justin. There's a couple of things. All right. So let's walk through things that are definitely true and then we'll get into the things that might be true that I have some speculation on. Things that are definitely true. This is Huawei crying uncle to a certain extent, that this is not them holding the line to say, no, we absolutely don't have anything to do with the PLA. We are here to sell equipment. They're saying, look, they're moving on. We're not even going to try to do it. Let's just go ahead and make a licensing deal with somebody else. Speculation. This might be a hole in the sheet for the United States and China to work out what is not only on the Huawei side, but also on the IP in China side of a very sticky trade negotiation that is happening right now. It's not all just about tariffs. So not only would it give Donald Trump a way to say, look, we kept Huawei's 5G backbone out of America. We don't have to worry about that. We have another company that has a much stronger United States presence that's building all this stuff, but also from China side, it's saying, hey, look, we're going to have one of our companies take their IP out of our country and put it in somebody else's hands. Maybe now that is reciprocating a new era of how China handles IP that comes from foreign countries, including the United States, that has been one of the biggest sticking points of these negotiations. I don't know which way this is going to go. I could easily see the United States digging their heels into the sand and saying, we don't trust your software either. I could also see other considerations that publicly have been said to have no effect trade negotiations suddenly make this an acceptable situation. It's interesting though that Nokia, Ericsson, and maybe Samsung are the most likely to do this, none of which are US companies. Does that affect the calculation? Does a Cisco or Adele step up and say, we want to get into this business? If so, that's a much slower process in building up that business, one that maybe would require them to buy someone else's business in order to really get it up to speed fast enough. So there's a lot of moving pieces here, but I think you're right, Justin, it is Huawei taking a step back and going fine. We know we're not going to win this trade war or not. We're not going to be in North America. We're probably not going to be in Australia anytime soon. And you're certainly damping down enthusiasm for us in Europe. And just today it was revealed that they were going after Huawei in the Middle East trying to convince Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates not to buy Huawei equipment. That has been stepped up as well. So it is Huawei saying, well, what if we did this instead? And then you don't have any questions. The campaign against Huawei won. And no matter what, Nokia, Ericsson, and Samsung all have far more of a presence in the United States than Huawei does. And you can still spin that as a win for American workers if there is some element of it that benefits people that are living here in the good old US of A. Thanks, everybody who participates in our subreddit. Some of you are in the good US of A, old US of A, somewhere in Australia, somewhere in the United Arab Emirates, all over the place. Submit stories and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. We are a global community. We're also on Facebook. Join our group if you haven't already, facebook.com slash groups slash Daily Tech News Show. Shout out to you, Belgium. Let's check out the mailbag. Yeah, Chip from Boston wrote in about the new AppleCare Plus subscription plan and said, I buy a new phone every year. Yes, I'm that person. And I always buy AppleCare. Since it's a two-year plan, I only keep the phone for one year. I have to call Apple and ask them to refund me the prorated amount every year when I get the new iPhone, which they do, but it's a process. With the new subscription option, I could just cancel when I get the new phone. Great. However, when I looked into the pricing, the monthly option appears to be more expensive. Prices are not out for the iPhone 11 or 11 Pro yet, but they are available for last year's 10R. And the tier plan cost $149 outright or about $6.21 per month. The cost of the monthly plan is $7.99. So not a ton more, but it's more. If you paid monthly for the same 24 months, you'd end up paying $191.76, which is $42.76 more than if you had paid up front. Thank you for the math chip. Also, Chip says, the pricing structure is the same on other products like the Series 5 watch. So I can presume it'd be the same for the 11 and 11 Pro as well. It's a fairly large premium to pay if you plan on keeping the phone for two years or less, especially knowing that they'll prorate or refund on the full amount if you sell it before the two years is up. And I don't think a lot of people know that. So that's actually a good tip, Chip, and a good warning all in one. Good chip, Chip. Yeah. Good chip, it's not surprising to me that the more flexible option also is the more expensive option because they have to hedge those bets, right? Of course. Yeah. And then regarding the great controversy of what to call those two crossed lines on the PlayStation controllers, Mike wrote, I have to imagine that some of your British listeners or viewers have already mentioned this, which they hadn't, Mike. You were the first about the buttons on the game pads, but the X being a cross absolutely must leave the O being a not. I think that goes back to the old tic-tac-toe game, nots and crosses. No. Oh, mind blown. That's a game that was called nots and crosses this entire time. Yeah. And if you hop across the pond and use a spanner in a lift, you play nots and crosses. I mean, I'm still getting used to every time I hear Zed. I'm like, oh, yeah. Okay. That's what other people call it. But I did not know this. This is new information. Thank you, Mike. And no, no one had mentioned it besides you. Mike, it's this kind of foolishness that forced us to leave. What's the British word for square in a triangle? I'm waiting on that one. Thanks, everybody who writes in your feedback is the best. Also, thanks to Justin Robert Young for being with us today, Justin. Let folks know where they can keep up with your latest work. Well, if you want to hear more about politics, then you can find my podcast, Politics, Politics, Politics. We are obviously on a debate night, so I'll be live streaming my reactions, but also I will have a reaction podcast that'll be up in the feed immediately after the debates wrap up. So go ahead and check that out. Politics, Politics, Politics is the podcast. And folks, thank you for all of the great feedback we've gotten on our proposal to change the Patreon reward tiers at Patreon.com slash DTNS. In a couple of days, we'll stop taking those comments and update you with our reactions to some of those. So we're going to tweak some things. We're going to take some things into account and where we won't be taking suggestions. We'll give some explanations of like, hey, this is why we're not doing this right now. So thank you, thank you, thank you. And if you do have some thoughts and you haven't given them to us yet, you've got a couple of days, go to dailytechnewshow.com slash Patreon. Make your voice heard. Our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. Love your feedback. Keep it coming. We're also live Monday through Friday. Join us if you can for 30 p.m. Eastern 2030 UTC. And you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Back tomorrow with Engadgets, Nicole Lee and Len Peralta illustrating the show. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com.