 Coming up on DTNSA Swiss Court rules that a like or even a share can be defamation an Indian politician deep fakes himself And can you really replace your laptop with the tablet? This is the Daily Tech news for Friday February 21st 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio Redwood I'm Sarah Lane drawing the top tech stories from lovely Cleveland, Ohio I'm Lynn Peralta and I'm the show's producer Roger Chang We also have with us today host and producer of the in touch with iOS podcast Dave Ginsberg Dave. Welcome. Good to have you in the show, man Thanks. Thanks for having me and I'm from Chicago Excellent excellent another Illinois person. Thanks for having me on show. Yeah, I'm looking forward to this We're gonna talk with Dave in a little bit about that idea of replacing your laptop Or even maybe your pc with a tablet We were just talking about Possibly sponsoring a pig at a state fair and all kinds of other stuff on good day internet become a member at patreon.com DTNS let's start with a few tech things you should know Samsung named former finance minister buck j1 as its board chairman the first time the position has been Filled by a non-executive director box served as outside director at samsung since march of 2016 and replaces outgoing Lee sang hoon who was jailed in december for interfering with union activities Sony and facebook both announced they will not attend the game developers conference next month in san francisco Siding concerns over the coronavirus facebook still plans to make the announcements It had planned for gdc through videos online question and answers and more It's odd because facebook's just a ride down the 101 from san francisco. So it wouldn't have been far But they just don't want to gather After being banned in columbia on february 1st uber is legally operating again in the country After a court cited with a taxi company that sued uber and ruled that uber had violated competition rules The company changed its model to allow riders to rent a vehicle along with a driver And will technically act as a point of contact between the two parties in columbia Let's not mince words Libra has looked like it's falling apart as a possible cryptocurrency but It broke the string of bad luck shopify announced it will join The libre association and invest at least 10 million dollars in libra's reserve operate a note on its network All the things you have to do to become a member of the libre association That puts them Different in a different position than voto phone visa mastercard stripe paypal mercado pago bookings holdings in ebay All of whom have withdrawn from the libre association in the last six months or so Libra association now stands at 21 members if you're counting Let's talk a little more about uh facebook wanting to give you some money Yeah, not a lot of money turns out to improve voice recognition Facebook announced a new program in its viewpoints market research app called pronunciations that will pay users to make voice recordings Users will record the phrase hey portal followed by a first name from their friends list Recording a list of 10 friends with each phrase spoken twice will earn the user 200 points in the viewpoints app Which could be cashed out when you get to 1 000 points for five dollars And that's through paypal five us dollars. Yep recordings will not be associated with a facebook profile So says the company and won't be shared without permission Pronunciation is available to us users older than 18 with more than 75 facebook friends It's funny. I floated this almost in jest by a couple of my friends who are not Huge fans of facebook and they were like great you get five dollars and facebook will be deep faking you for the rest of your life And I was like, okay. Well, that's a little silly, but but this does seem like okay it is good to uh kind of pull the crowd and see how The speech recognition could be better and what better than your own community But at the same time it's a little insulting the the money situation Considering what you have to do because whether or not it's anonymized. It is a personal experiment I don't know if it's insulting facebook already knows all this stuff about you already like the risk is almost zero here It's not a lot of money, but I guess it's better than them just stealing it. Dave. What do you think? Yeah, it's just I just can't see them stealing That easily. I mean the the funny thing is is the five bucks. I mean just just to record the voice the But I think it's gonna be good because you know people have trouble pronunciations It's just you're still worried about the privacy part of it. I think I mean the principle here is right You you need this kind of data to train this stuff to be better Uh, and people have said you shouldn't be taking my voice recordings You should be paying and so when facebook pays people still find things to criticize about Yeah, yeah, it's they're always going to criticize something about facebook. I mean saying, uh, hey Portal followed by a first name from a friends list is not very revealing You know and and you only have to do it 10 times. That's that's actually a pretty good hourly wage relatively speaking yeah, I think I think maybe the First name from the friends list is the only thing I kind of was like I mean If you're just trying to figure out speech recognition Why would it have to be someone's first name because you need to vary you need to vary it up And you don't want to use last name because that is more identifying Well, not a last name, but it could be lots of different words, right? Right, but first name is easy because like just look at your friend list and pick these words I suppose and that helps cover a bunch of different phonemes Uh, new mexico attorney general hector balderas filed a lawsuit alleging chrome books provided to schools in the new mexico area for free To schools as I said collect personal information from children younger than 13 years old without parental consent Uh, the complaint claims that google collected geolocation information Website visits internet history search engine records student contact lists voice recordings and use student emails for advertising purposes in violation of the children's online Privacy protection act and potentially a violation of new mexico's unfair practices act google denies the claims saying they are factually wrong And told cnet quote g suite for education allows schools to control account access and requires that schools obtain parental consent when necessary My guess is some of this is innocent. Some of this is google's a cloud service So you share your information with the cloud which means with google in order to allow the cloud service to work Teachers need to be able to access student information to make this all work. So some of this might just be overreacting They are also claiming that advertising was sold and advertising google says is not sold on these g suite accounts for education So either new mexico's wrong or google was doing that, uh, which is absolutely a violation of not only the law, but what they've said they do Yeah, it sounds like if google was actually doing that and knew about it. They would have said Uh, you're right oversight. We we have now reversed this action The company saying we don't do this. This is wrong Does lead me to believe that maybe someone in new mexico's is not understanding what's going on But again, it wasn't just accusing them in which the case you're right. They could say oops. Sorry oversight They found a lawsuit. So that takes away the option to say oops. Sorry oversight because that could undermine your case Right, uh, but it it seems like this would be something that someone would have noticed earlier I don't know. Uh, i'm curious what the facts are behind this. Dave. Does this bug you? Yeah, it's just I mean chromebooks generally kind of question what What they are going to do because they have it's wide open and even when these kids put the information in there There's no time what google's going to do to share with it. So I I yeah, it does bug me a little bit on that Well, this might bug you might not the federal supreme court of switzerland upheld a lower court ruling that likes and shares of content on facebook Can be considered illegal defamation In the case the defendant had liked and shared posts of fellow animal rights activist erwin kesler Defaming him as anti-semitic and a neo nazi the court cited the potential for such content to spread rapidly on social media Could make likes and share defamatory in nature and swiss law only requires that an act be communicated to a third party To meet the threshold of defamation The decision set a major factor in a defamation case would be how visible a shared post was outside of an immediate friend network Of the defamed individual. Yeah, so this is it's important to note what sarah said about in swiss law You only need to communicate the act Uh, you know only need to communicate to a third party to meet defamation If it's defamatory, obviously it has to be defamatory But once it's determined to be defamatory in the united states We have different laws a lot of times you have to show things like actual malice or you have to show knowledge that you knew It wasn't true. There's different standards So we're talking about swiss law and what the court's saying. I think is less controversial than the headline Which is they're saying the act of liking and sharing isn't The thing that gets you in trouble. It's when you spread it widely Uh, when you are are actually making this, you know go viral If you're just sharing it with a few friends and family Uh, and maybe you don't know then I don't think the court is saying that's what happens But once you've spread it widely then you are now communicating it in there if I'm reading this right You are you are now intentionally communicating it and under swiss law. That's all that you need to prove You don't mean to prove the person knew it was bad knew it was wrong or whatever if it's defamatory And you're spreading it then you're communicating it to third parties It's interesting that Again, we're talking about swiss law here, but that you know, the law is basically saying If you weren't paying enough attention, I don't know you liked something because it was from a friend and you know You it wasn't that you thought someone was a neo-nazi or anything like that swiss law was like Well, don't share things like that then you're gonna get in trouble too. It's not it's not a matter of Uh, sort of blindly liking and sharing and passing along information, which is how Lots of things on the internet work right now and people could say, I don't know. I'm sorry I didn't mean to do that or I don't believe with the you know, what the person the original original poster was saying So it's like you need to or you should not Engage at least if you are likely to share this outside of your immediate network Right, so if you if you keep things private or you just don't have a lot of people following you The average swiss citizen might not have to worry about falling afoul of this accidentally But with great power comes great responsibility. And so if you are someone that Has the potential to make something go viral then the swiss court here is saying then you need to consider that before you start Spreading something. I mean, I mean dave. I I feel like this is somewhat reasonable to say you are also responsible For the content you spread if you if you can spread it far and wide Yeah, I felt that I felt that right exactly. I mean, I'm not a swiss citizen So obviously like I don't have to follow this law, but I mean there's none these types of topics I would never like or follow in you know for in my lifetime. It's just not stuff I I'm into and I know there's people out there who like to have that stuff, but uh Again, I'm glad don't listen. I don't live in the swiss swiss Well, I I'd say it's a lovely country. It really is. It's lovely. I mean, I don't mind visiting I I I don't know that if I lived in Switzerland, I'd worry about this Too much and I am somebody Who has the ability, uh, you know, certainly on twitter to spread something far and wide But I I also know that even in the united states I could be subject to defamatory, you know Considerations given that I I do a podcast that is this is widely operated So I'm comfortable with that and I think we need more of these kinds of decisions that say look You you can't always blame the platform There are things the platform should be doing well and be doing better and there are things that individuals should take responsibility for I think that's an important point Earlier this week vice reported that india's bjp party. That's the party of norendra modi The the leader of the government right now partnered with political communication firm the ideas with a z factory to create a translated version Of a plea from the bjp party president manoj towari Asking for people in deli to vote for his party The original video was recorded by towari sitting in a chair The ideas factory then trained a lip sync algorithm on speeches by towari to learn his mouth shape That's what deep fakes do and a dubbing artist came in and recorded his speech in the harjan v Language something that towari doesn't speak That recording of the dub actor was put into the original towari video And the algorithm then modified towari's mouth to match the words of the person speaking harjan v So it wasn't faking towari's voice But it was faking his appearance to make it appear as if he were speaking in the harjan v language The modified video was then posted across 5800 whatsapp groups to reach people In the harjan v speaking migrant worker population in deli and attempt to persuade them to vote for his party in the upcoming election Now this sets off a lot of people because it's using a deep fake in an election But it's not the usual thing you assume which is someone using it to attack someone and make them look bad It's using them to make The leader of the party Look like they speak the language of a group. They want to vote for their party Even though he doesn't so it is faking it It's faking it for accessibility So that people can understand the message, but it's also Implying that hey look he speaks our language when in fact he doesn't Yeah, I think that I was trying to I was thinking to myself Okay, there are a lot more languages spoken in india than the us where we live But if this were a politician In the us that didn't speak spanish, let's say and it was a really good deep fake And it was attempting to persuade a lot of spanish speaking voters to vote for this politician You know, it gets the area gets a little gray, right? Yeah, there is an accessibility factor to this And and and a person who doesn't speak english Let's say if that was the first language that the politician spoke If they if they're now receiving a message that they're really on board with that's not necessarily a bad thing but it also is it's it's You're not lying But it's almost as if hey i'm one of you But but you're not and you didn't have to learn a language and you don't necessarily have a lot in common With the people that you're trying to get to vote for you So I'd be interested to see you know if anybody takes a lot of issue with this because it's clever But it's messy If it weren't political, I don't think people would have much problem with it, right? If it's if it's a cdc, you know the equivalent of a of a disease control agency Putting stuff out there and they're like look we we we didn't have time to film 15 different people We wanted it to all come from the mouth of the leader of our of our agency My people might have less problem with it. Dave. What do you think? Yeah, you'd have to run on head there and this political. I mean just anything that's political It's it you would everybody makes a big huge deal out of it if it was if it was nothing else then We wouldn't be talking about this right now. So it yeah, that's that's really why I see things. It's just right I I would add the one difference is that there are alternative methods For accessibility besides doing a deep fake to get your message across you could use Captioning you could use an overdub of someone else's voice If the whole point is to convince people that this person is authentically A native havarti harvon. Yep our biannese speaker. I think it's it's a little kind of a it's it's kind of like Yeah, just ingenious But also is is the whole point to convince people that he is a native harian vi speaker I imagine they would say no, that's not the whole point. The point is to have the words of our party leader delivered in their language Right, yes, you could have someone else read them, but then they're not coming from the party leader And yes, you could put captions, but that's not quite as accessible if someone can't read as having it spoken Or you could have it spoken with someone else's voice over his voice I mean they do it all the time with translations Right, and so if you're going to do that why not make the mouth Match and just make it make it smoother Does it matter at that point when really it's the message and not the connection of the lips? Right and and and the point is being that is that the message is not at issue here We're not talking about there being any lies in the message. This is just a hey, please vote for us message right So I I could I could see where the line gets real fuzzy there of like well, wait If I could just have somebody else speak it Why can't I have somebody else speak it and match it up to the video of the politician like what what's so wrong with that We're not saying he speaks harian vi. We're not trying, you know, it's it's interesting There's there's a lot of it kind of goes back to swiss slide if you're not paying enough attention You might think he is Right and a and that's a fair point. It could imply a lot of things Google announced that starting on august 3rd new google play apps that request background location will need to pass a review Existing apps will need to pass the review starting november 3rd And the policy will apply to google's own apps as well Google says the review will look at if the apps core functionality Justifies the background location data gathering and developers can request feedback from google starting in may About the background location review This is the opposite of our other stories today and that I don't think anyone could disagree that this is a good thing Wow amazing Yeah, so you want background location. Well, why And then developers like well, here's here's here's my really good reason google's like, okay So we're not only asking people in the app if they want it to be on we're asking the app developer To justify why they even want to ask for it to be on and we're applying it to our own apps Not a lot of room for criticism outside of worrying like oh, well, maybe google won't really Be hard on their own apps or something like that But you know, who knows right at that point you can just you just don't trust google to begin with So I think this is doing all the right things All right one response to the growing trend against accepting cash is To pass laws requiring you to accept cash. So that's happening in a few cities in the united states We've talked about it before on the show as cashless becomes more popular They're saying look we're not going to let retailers not accept cash because that cuts some people out of society Who don't have access to cashless forms of payment? However in sweden where the society is already mostly cashless like 90 plus percent cashless The reichsbank central bank announced it is launching a year-long pilot of a digital currency called the e-krona The reichsbank says it wants to make a digital payment system that is accessible To everyone so they're coming at it from the other end saying well if we're gonna have cashless Let's make sure that everybody can access it somehow Now this test is just a test rick's bank rick's bank economist gabriel soderberg told technology review quote There is currently no decision on issuing an e-krona how an e-krona might be designed or what technology might be used This is the beginning right there. This is how they figure out all that stuff is like let's run a pilot Let's try some things. Let's collect feedback But I thought it was interesting as as a different approach to solving the accessibility problem Versus just requiring the existing system to stay to say well, let's see if we can actually make the new system work for everybody Yeah, and if it and if it does work if the e-krona can can can work in sweden and it is sort of a tested model This can apply to lots of other economies where the cashless society is a real issue for people who who need to deal in cash And it also keeps you know private payments from taking over the entire cashless system if the if the government is issuing its own digital money Then there is you know the trust of the central bank here in this case Behind that rather than having a Libra association or something like that Move in and take over what would otherwise be the normal central banks province. So there's that aspect of it as well Dave you have any thoughts on this? Yeah, that's that's welcome to see this I mean i'm i'm hoping this continues across the world cashless payments is just here to stay I use Apple pay all the time and it's it's cashless So, you know, it's uh, it's it's definitely something um that's looking forward to as long as you could make it where everybody can use it And that's that's no easy thing. That's that's a tall order But but this is how you investigate if that's possible by doing these kinds of tests Hey, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes Be sure to subscribe to daily tech headlines dot com We talked earlier this week about microsoft office bringing together all of their apps into a bundled app for ios and android And and there's a minimal version of it for android tablet. There's one coming for ios We're seeing more and more tools pitched toward not only mobile but tablet and Dave you you You do use a tablet as your daily driver. Am I right? I use I I can't I can't admit that I mix with I try to use. Okay. Okay. You're on your way Oh, yeah, I've been on my way for years to the presentation about it I mean, I've been I've always been an advocate of wanting to use it when we say tablet I think we're talking about an ipad because it it That's why I wrote this in here. I said, how do you identify between a tablet and a tablet? That's a laptop because you know, I work with with people that have Tablet laptops and a lot of convertibles out there. Yeah, they're then pull away keyboards It's a full-out tablet just like an ipad. So that's why I said are we using that instead of Instead of using ipad as opposed to a A lab the laptop tablet. Let's take the ipad as our example tablet for the for this case If somebody says look, I just want to use the ipad. Well, they're gonna have to get a keyboard, right? Have to get a keyboard have to get don't I can get a mouse now and they've made that accessible And there's a touchpad availability for it as well. So Yeah, you do need to get that if you want to be the most productive, you know typing on the screen keyboard can be cumbersome hard hard to maneuver after time So you're definitely going to want a keyboard But there's so many of them out there that even if you know, we saw bridge at at CES They they have they're coming out with their new one with the pro plus with the entire case and everything and plus a touchpad built into it. So So there's really where I thought we're really going to kick it in the high gear with the start to making an ipad You know a full-time daily driver I think a lot of people assume well if all you need to do is email and web surfing then sure I can use a tablet But yeah, what about power users? What about enterprise users? Well, yeah, the power users we get I mean There's a ton of great software out there You know podcasters are using ipads as their daily driver for doing their podcasts Video editing and forwarding huge huge things and as well as productivity you talked about Microsoft office Earlier this week. I've talked about it on my on my podcast just yesterday So it's a Microsoft office is a really big driver of of ios I really like seeing it and and having as a standalone app with all having the standalone apps but now you have the All-in-one app, which is is going to be great and and the the cool thing too is it does work an enterprise I did test it so um And with when we if you drive over to enterprise a little bit, you know You talk about systems that are designed more for mobility in my they have the access systems And that's where the challenges enterprise systems meaning there are specific applications that are that are not outside the On the other world the internet I think the one thing that that trips me up in the idea of relying on the tablet Uh, well two things one is just just the processing power Sometimes I just need a bigger one and and I don't think there's any way around it That's that's just maybe over time going to go away But that's that's the same as choosing between an ultra light and a more powerful laptop So it's almost a false comparison But the other thing is The ability to do quick window switching And I know that's getting better all the time But even still even with mouse support in ipad os It just doesn't feel as fast and fluid as the time-honored window interface that that you get on a good old-fashioned laptop No, I agree with you on that. Um, the mouse right now is I don't know if I can just say it's usable at this point I mean you got to go deep into accessibility just to get to it To set it up so but the nice thing is like I said with these bridge keyboard touch pads I think it's going to be more fluid I'm really interested if they haven't got I've been really set out into the market yet But uh, be interesting to see how how that touchpad will interface with it And you know hardware itself there's so many choices Adding to the ipad but as far as going back to your point about the processing I think the processing has actually has gotten a lot faster And I find it almost equivalent to some laptops that I've I've tested As far as that goes Yeah, where is the line because I know you can definitely do video editing Uh, but you can't really do 3d rendering you can't you can't do some of the higher end stuff you can't process There's a limit to what you can process. Yeah, I mean those are going to be the extreme pro pro users And yeah, there's no way an ipad's going to do that for them No good at video editing and just using iMovie or any type of video editing. It's out there Is going to be be good. So I'll touch a little bit more on enterprise why Why ipads would be ideal is uh, you might get into situations where High-risk locations have to be traveled to like like china russia Then you know the ipads are the way to go because they you know, those two governments want to Encrypt your device and you can't keep it with a password. So iPads, they don't have choice Yeah, and honestly, I that's another advantage to the chromebook is because you have to log in with your account Uh, you you can have separate accounts You can log in with a with a not a dummy account per se but sort of a travel account if you will And that's that's a nice thing about the ipad os as well and and even android Android tablets can do the same thing. So let's say very good point. Well, thank you, uh, Dave for For walking us through that i'm i'm curious what what people out there think Especially if you are someone who uses a tablet more often, uh, send us an email feedback at daily tech news show dot com Also, thanks to everybody who participates in our sub reddit You can submit stories and vote on other stories at daily tech news show dot reddit dot com You can also join in the conversation in our discord. It's the best community around Which you can join by linking to a patreon account at patreon.com slash dtns Let's check out the mailbag Well, duane wanted to weigh in on our discussion yesterday about apple's app store policies and what is working and what needs to change Duane says apple's policy is an attempt to strengthen and maintain the ios economy If large developers were able to place their free apps in the app store and permitted to be processed externally Then the large developers would be able to take advantage of the entire ecosystem without contributing anything to the ios economy Large developers would get for free app store editorials the developer tools wwdc entry all the overhead of making and growing the platform more egregiously It would mean that small developers would be subsidizing the ecosystem for everyone apple solution may not be the best But I do think that putting up a roadblock for developers to prevent the willful bypass of contributing to the app store ecosystem While providing the opportunity for small developers to put up free apps for distribution without cost Put apples policy in a more egalitarian term as opposed to a pure money grab duane and I had a a great email conversation about this because my my response to him was Yes, and all of the big companies Still take advantage of all of those attributes that you mentioned Without paying amazon prime video audible comics ology. They're all in there without paying Fandango in there without paying netflix now in there without paying So they're doing all the things that he says And he had some good points about the fact that yes, but It does hold the line and it sets the precedent and and it makes him space For for those small developers But it was an interesting point to say like look there is a there is a reason to hold that line I think where duane and I ended up in our email conversation was wouldn't it be nice if there was some compromise if there was a way To say look we need you to contribute To the upkeep of the app store But also in a way that didn't hurt us as users and make us like You know and just don't make it illegal to link to something is because kind of where I sit on this Anyway, Dave. I'm curious where you sit on this idea of not allowing anyone to even link out to another way to pay for something Yeah, apple gets really weird with the payment stuff. I I think It's it's gonna be interesting to see where this goes Again, like you said putting something and putting What people want as far as their apps and what they do they give apple taking control of it is Definitely a big thing. But uh, yeah, this is gonna be interesting. This is definitely gonna be interesting to see where this goes Shout out to patrons at our master and grand master levels including de gracia a daniels ken haze and brad schick Len Peralta has been with us as he is most fridays drawing during the show What have you been inspired by this week? You know in a couple weeks I'm going to be putting this tablet versus laptop To the test as I go out to seattle to draw live in front of an audience And I have to agree with most of what you're saying, you know the computing power things like that But really what it comes down to is just creativity. What do you want? What do you feel comfortable with and that's what this is sort of it's sort of like can't we all just get along here Tablet versus laptop. Why do we have to put them? You know against each other and because I don't want to have to carry both I know I know but but look at these guys. These are look at their little tablet and computer faces We can coexist. Yes, they can all just just get along and that's what this is all about. It's called tablet versus laptop It's available right now at my patreon. If you're a patreon subscriber Uh, and it's also at my online store at lennperalta store dot com And also I want to mention I will be at convey ux in seattle in a couple weeks putting this to the test And we will see how I do so uh, stay tuned Sounds good. Len. Thank you so much. Also. Thanks to Dave ginsberg for being on our show today Happy Friday to you Dave. It was so nice to have you let folks know What you're up to and how they can keep up with your work Yeah, happy Friday to you as well. Thanks for having me You can find me on my website in touches ios.com. That's my podcast I've been doing that for about two about thumbs three years now having a lot of fun doing that talking about ios and then If you want to reach out to me on twitter, I have twitter handles dave g 65 Folks, you can get a whole lot more out of daily tech news show For just two bucks a month If you are listening to this on the public feed and you've heard some ads You can get an rss feed out of patreon that doesn't have the ads It includes extra shows like our bonus show where we look back at old lineups or or live with it Where sarah and roger talk about spending a lot of time with gear and giving in-depth Reviews of that time that they've spent and the only way to get that stuff is to become a patron So stop down right now. And uh, if you've got two bucks that you can afford to spend this month We'd love to have it patreon.com slash dtns We'd also love your emails. You have some feedback for us Our email address is feedback at daily tech news show dot com We're live monday through friday 4 30 p.m eastern That's 21 30 utc and you can find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live back on monday talk to you then This show is part of the broad pants network Get more at frogpants.com Club hopes you have enjoyed this brover