 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners thanks to all of you including Tim Deputy, Brandon Brooks and Hector Bones Coming up on DTNS why you will love I'm not even kidding the new Bluetooth LE audio standard a Risky move to go open with AI and I as act our plays which customer policy is worse This is the Daily Tech news for Tuesday July 12th, 2022 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio Redwood I'm Sarah Lane. I'm my as actor from New York City, and I'm the show's producer Roger It's good to have you on the show. It's been too long Thank you. Thank you. I never pronounce city that way, but that's what it said in the docks. That's what I said You take direction. Well, yeah, I've no Man who can follow follow a Well, let's do some tech news today starting with a few tech things you should know Nikkei Asia reports that Nikon will withdraw from the DSLR Camera market focusing its camera development on the mirrorless market the company will still produce and distribute existing DSLR models But Nikon's last DSLR release was its flagship D6 in June of 2020 in its fiscal 2021 mirrorless cameras accounted for half of the revenue from Nikon's imaging business Okay End of an era there Spotify is also ending the era of hurdle being independent hurdle is a game that is like wordel But you listen to it Spotify bought the app making it its first game acquisition game will remain on a standalone website for now Though it will link song answers to Spotify instead of to SoundCloud in the US UK Ireland Canada Australia and New Zealand Spotify plans to integrate hurdle more fully into its main app But did not give any specifics yet Twitter began rolling out its Unmentioning features to all users after testing it in April to a limited set Users can now select to get you out of this conversation option and the three dot menu on a tweet that they're tagged in Of course, this is the official Twitter apps their username will still appear in the tweet But they won't receive notifications after that once unmentioned you can't be tagged back into a thread either Yeah, I've been really looking forward to this one. It doesn't happen that often But I will definitely take advantage of me out of the canoe But then there's the the ones where you're like well, they'll notice if I took myself out They're just being it's gonna create a whole new thing Bad news for f commerce aka fast commerce aka instant delivery of things like groceries and restaurant meals One of its big stars air lift is permanently shutting down as of July 13th In May it started cutting back shutting down its operations in South Africa and going from eight cities in Pakistan to three Rest of world dot org attributes high operating costs and a global startup funding crunch among the reasons for the shutdown Tiktok planned to update its privacy policy in Europe on July 13th to no longer ask users for Consent to be tracked to receive targeted ads the Irish Data Protection Commission announced that after Engagement with the company it agreed to pause the update to allow analysis by the regulator Earlier this week Italy's data protection watchdog warned that the change would breach the e-privacy directive and GDPR Alright, let's play a little game. Shall we? It's called that that's kind of like a word show music. I'm not gonna use that here. How about this? Let's play a little game. Shall we? I don't know. Yeah Work on that. Maybe I should ask our video producer Joe next time instead of just going wild on my own Let's play a little game. Shall we it's called which is worse We're gonna present two new policies from companies and I as you're gonna tell us which one you like the least ready Ready. All right, Sarah. Give us the first case. All right So the UK's hive which sells smart home thermostats also smart lighting smart plugs smart sensors No longer sells home security products like cameras and water sensors But there is more to the story hive is discontinuing service for those previously sold home security products The leak detector will stop working as of September 1st 2023 so not tomorrow, but it is happening and the cameras and security systems lose support August 1st 2025 this isn't the first time this has happened Hive stopped direct sales in North America back in 2019 and devices there stopped working in November So to be clear hive is not going out of business. They're given a year or more of notice before discontinuing support Okay, are we mad about this Tom? What's the other case? All right compare this when I asked so we got hive Pull in your service BMW is making several car features available as a subscription in South Korea They've tried this before in the US with carplan. It didn't go so well But in South Korea heated seats 18 bucks a month heated steering wheel 10 bucks a month We converted the numbers from one by the way High beam assistant headlights, you know the ones that automatically brighten or dim based on traffic eight dollars a month There are a few more options like that Each option will give you a discount if you pay for a year or three years in advance and they offer permanent access For a higher cost for example the $18 a month heated seat subscription can be obtained permanently for $406. All right. I as so you've heard the deets Which is worse hive slowly discontinuing in support for its products that people have already bought or BMW charging a subscription fee for luxury features that people thought were bundled in You know I've thought long and hard about this and the minutes we've talked about it And I will say that the BMW Plan is worse because I'm used to places discontinuing products or if you're in your home At least you can have the option of changing up what you're doing if you have a BMW and this thing actually catches on that Means other car manufacturers be like hey We're gonna continue this model and I think this model is horrible The idea you can unlock features and then isn't that just part of the cost of the car? Because you're buying a whole thing when I buy a house or I buy an apartment Sorry rent an apartment. I can equip it as I want and I know things will disappear like this is my Harmony remote and it's going away I mean there's gonna be support for a long time, but I gotta get ready for when things disappear from smart home But my car just don't have one this thing scares the heck out of me Yeah, the Wraith 86 was like how is the steering wheel optional to which we clarify we clarify heated steering wheel It's the heated steering you get the steering wheel. They haven't made that you can drive the car I don't know though This is all optional stuff. You don't need a heated steering wheel. You don't need heated seats They're nice to haves, you know But you can still drive the car without them. They're not like essentials Whereas hive is taking away the ability for the thing to work at all. I Feel like that that makes a difference. I mean when it comes to the car stuff, I have Luckily, I have heated seats and I have a heated steering wheel I don't use Any of that stuff half of the year during the winter. I definitely think it it's it's nice But I kind of I kind of equate this to I don't know the way I feel about Photoshop on creative cloud I can kind of come and go YouTube TV. Sometimes I'm like, I don't need live TV for a few months And I'll just like sign up later So I'm not paying for something that I'm not using so the subscription Version of the driving a car that has luxury features that I may use sometimes and not other times I don't hate that idea I think I'm probably gonna spend more and that is the whole point that BMW is going for here But yeah, I think that the The hive situation, you know for anybody who has hive products that is that's kind of the that's that's the nail in the coffin Yeah, I mean it BMW wants you to think of this the way you think of software in your computer, right? You know totally pay for creative cloud just like you said But people don't think of car stuff that way they think of it as I have a I bought it I have a heated seat it either works or it doesn't it it shouldn't go away with a software update You know, I shouldn't have to jailbreak my BMW to get my heated seats back And and hive actually has a good read not I know personally if the company has a good reason But most companies have a good reason to discontinue products that require Software updates require security updates making sure everything is working in whatever world is happening So let's say hive said, oh, yeah, everything's gonna work until 2025 a security update stop at a certain time Actually did say 2025 let's say 2030 if they didn't provide security updates and everything that that will change their business model So if hive is gonna shift to what they're doing they have to tell everybody well ahead of time Look, we're we're shutting the stuff down. We're moving away from this stuff And that while is while it's annoying for people who have hive products It definitely seems like at least there's enough notice You're not stuck with this idea of I have to subscribe to parts of my car Versus switching out a smart thermostat or switching out a smart light bulb in theory I'd imagine since I'm the the smart home community out there is Freakin really smart. So I'd imagine there'd be some kind of firmware Upgrades that could be done for these things so you can have continuous use if you really want to I'm not saying that's a good thing But it's it's an option and or you can change out the parts BMW you get that car and you're like, hey, I wanted this didn't need to be hot Oh, what's that my credit card changed my info changed and I don't have that right now. Oh, great Oh, wait, oh, yeah, the card expired. Yeah, these little things actually do mess up your experience I believe one of the things was like some kind of a headlight high beams It's like, hey guys, don't don't attach it to like adaptive safety features Well, that's something you can control on your own I don't have assistive headlights in my car and I'm able to turn the high beams on and off myself But but yeah, it's nicer if they just do it. Yeah, that's really speaking. I Don't know I get why hive is like these are security features and it requires staffing, right? Because they provide staffing to like respond to security threats even the water leak They'll they'll call plumbers for you and stuff like that I get them taking that part of the way of the service away But the fact that they're disabling them that these are just not gonna work at all anymore Makes me not want to buy any other hive products because what are they gonna take away next? Well, you don't buy hive then All right You the the winner quote unquote of which is worst is it for you is the car That's correct. All right. All right Well, maybe this will brighten all of our spirits MIT review MIT technology review rather has a write-up on bloom That's a large language model similar to open AI as GPT-3 or Google's lambda GPT-3 is famous for powering things like dolly a lot of people have fun with that Recently creating pictures of cats orbiting space in a Ferrari or my favorite a cheetah jumping over a bus lambda is the one The the one that one of the Google employees thought might be sentient as of late Which we talked about on a show recently the similarity of GPT-3 and lambda is not that they're both large language models But they're both Preparatory neither group shares their code or models with the public So unless you've got the code you can't really do anything with it open AI says it doesn't offer access widely Because it's unsafe at this point to do so However, there's one large language model that is partly open and that is meta's open pre-trained transformer OPT 175 B making its code and logbook on training available on request But the license is limited to research purposes. So that brings us back to bloom. Yeah, so bloom is completely open Bloom stands for big science, which is one word inter kept Which is also the name of the product one one word inter kept that's the name of the project Anyway, big science large open science open access Multilanguage language model Multilingual language model anyway heads rolls right off the yeah bloom is much better Not only is the code available for anyone to download for research or commercial use So you can do what you want with it But they record their meetings on development as part of the project and upload that for anybody to review So you can find out what data it's being trained on how it's being developed how they evaluate its performance Something you cannot do with any of these other projects The startup called hugging face With some funding from the french government has coordinated big science with more than a thousand volunteers Selected from around the world trying to get a representative sample not having everybody all be in europe or any other one place And they've been working on this for about a year a project now is officially launched as of july 12th The aim is to change the culture of ai development and make access to cutting edge research available to everybody worldwide Bloom has 176 billion parameters. That's almost the same as gpt 3. It's actually a billion more It can handle 46 languages Including 13 indic languages 20 african languages And it's the first model of its size for spanish and for arabic It can write recipes make poems summarize text write code just like gpt 3 can it can understand 13 programming languages But is it dangerous to make something so powerful available for free to everyone? Have they thought about that sarah? Well, they have in fact the big science project folks understand It could be dangerous So they warn that bloom can suffer from the same biases and possibilities to export Offensive languages other models However, the hope is that by making it accessible it can correct those problems More easily and faster and big science is taking its own steps to help further that goal The group developed a data governance structure that makes clearer what it is used and how It belongs to and who it belongs to and it sourced multiple data sets from around the world as well as making sure to include A wider variety of volunteers It's also using a responsible ai license designed to deter bloom from being used to harm or exploit anybody Or be used in high risk sectors such as law enforcement or health care All right, so if you want to try it you can download it. It's available at hugging face.co Slash big science slash bloom If you log in to hugging face if you create an account there They'll let you play with it online and do do some some sample Queries and texts and and that sort of thing if you're recognizing the name hugging face They're also the company that did mini dolly, which was a an open source version of dolly 2 from open ai So so they they're doing a lot more than just bloom, but it it's the same folks same startup That's doing this. I as I don't know. What do you think is this feels like a big step in ai to have a big and You know fairly competent project Making ai accessible, but do you buy what open ai and others have said that that might be irresponsible? Okay, so You're always going to have bad actors with anything right you could use photoshop And and you could use a legal copy of it and create all kinds of horrible things with just photoshop So there's always going to be bad actors no matter what's going on with this I was looking at look I was taking a look at the license and it's it claims that if you use it for Usages that could harm others and particular other things you shouldn't be able to use the code base If the code base is open I could see anybody grabbing it and using it for nefarious purposes. I that again that could happen with anything I think it seems like it's about time something like this has happened though that we're going to have an open version of this if you have Never underestimate just like how many people have free time and they can actually help grow this kind of stuff In a way that you wouldn't expect open source software We've seen The amazing things that can come out of that or hacker community is what you can actually build There's home assistant for smart home like osaka more earlier There's all of these ways that you can create new usages and new use case scenarios If you have millions of people of access to it So i'm really curious how this is going to move all of this forward But i'm also concerned about how other tools could be I want to say manufactured but created using this technology Yeah, I don't think we're going to see bloom necessarily outpace open ai or google or meta In its competence, but you might see a lot more Companies take advantage of it do do more innovation Around it because it's out there at the same time that also might mean You'll see more malicious uses than you would see of the other more lockdown This this is not a case like security where you know if you lock it down only the bad guys have it Because right now it's very difficult to get access to lambda Or even open ai they they they hold it very close to the vest So this will be available for everybody to use for good or ill Well folks next week is special guest week here on dtns If you if you like stories about people using technology for ill and then maybe getting caught You probably like dark net diaries and we're going to have jack resider on from dark net diaries We're going to also have will smith from foo vr quinn nelson from snazzy labs joel telling the 3d printing nerd It's going to be a heck of a week folks lots of new faces So help us promote the show make these special guests feel welcome with a big old audience Tell your friends to watch or listen to daily tech news show all next week Well, if you've ever wished that your wireless headphones could have better battery life or share listening from one device We have good news I wanted to do that in twin peaks voice, but it didn't work out the bluetooth s i g or sig has completed the bluetooth le audio specification Manufacturers can now start adding support for this standard to devices Which should start hitting shelves by the end of the year Let's run through some of what is new in bluetooth le audio eyes The big one is lc 3. That's a codec It can deliver higher quality audio at the same bit rate as the current bluetooth classics s bc codec and sig claims It can even still do better audio than sbc at half the bit rate That means higher quality audio is going to use less power love it love it I have said before many times on this show. I have a tin ear So the higher quality is lost on me. I went over to bluetooth.com's audio codec demo And I trust people who tell me that it sounds better at half the bit rate. It all kind of sounded the same to me But if it can save my battery life I'm in 100 for it. Oh, yeah for sure. Yeah, I I'm kind of with you tom I mean I listen to so many podcasts these days that as long as I can hear what people are saying I'm not I'm not I'm I don't spend too much time thinking about how the audio quality is unless I'm listening to music And even then, you know, I'm kind of like uh bluetooth whatever, you know, it works But the the better we can do with battery life and also audio quality because I know a lot of people out there really care about that That is good news Yeah, I'm thinking if you have a lousy connection, your bit rate's not very good and you're using this codec At least the audio will sound decent and not crunchy or terrible or just cut out that to me I I just want consistency. I want this thing. I want to be able to hear As I'm walking around outside because there's going to be tons of interference no matter what if I have a little bit rate I can still get when I'm listening to it could sound good There's also a feature called aura cast a u r a c a s t Which lets unlimited audio devices so speakers and headphones Connect to a single audio source for instance Everybody in the gym could connect their own wireless headphones to a single tv Everybody in a theater could actually wear earbuds and get improved movie audio connecting to a single source Uh users can select aura cast like they would a wi-fi network This could either be done in the operating system androids including support Or it could be done with an app The connections can be password protected So if you just wanted to share this with a few friends, but you don't want other people to be able to access it You can put a passcode on it You'll need an assistant probably most often a phone But it could be a smartwatch to select the broadcast, but then once it's selected the headphones connect directly Uh and get it from the source aura cast also supports connections by qr code and nfc I hope even though I don't a lot. Oh go ahead is Thanks. I hope this works. Well, I this has been like a The bane of my existence in the small apartment of like how do we listen to something of the televisions? I had to use my samsung phone which allows you to have two different pairs of headphones Widely so attached to it to a roku with private listening That's not the way stuff should work If aura cast works the way they're claiming it works. I will be super thrilled I don't know if it'll work somebody in the chat mentioned. This is like the silent disco kind of model I want it to work. I really wanted to work But if you guys remember when bluetooth was rolled out a long time ago, oh boy, did that not work? Well, so i'm really hoping that aura cast when it's pushed out and everyone supports it including apple apple. You better support it I hope that it works as well as they claim it does because if it doesn't oh, is that going to be frustrating? I I'm already thinking ahead of my use cases and there's plenty of them that are that that will be just fine like the Not that I go to a gym but the gym audio style like maybe at a hotel or a bar Or something, you know where you want to hear the the sports broadcast but know it not everybody else at the bar does You know that I was thinking like movie theater. I don't know about all that but yeah the yeah like Listen to sports at a bar that's loud. You know somebody's talking next to you type of thing I mean some of this my initial reaction is like well, doesn't that seem like you're not being You know, uh, I don't know friendly to your fellow humans But if everybody's kind of on board and this is just the norm. It's not that weird. Yeah. I'm also I sometimes just want to share Songs off my phone or podcasts off my phone And it's weird to have to like either repair somebody else's headphones or hand them your earbuds It's gets a little dicey, you know. Oh, yeah. No no sharing of earbuds Not my home We have a few other notable features here from the story bluetooth le audio Also lets each earbud maintain its own connection with the source device So you don't have to rely on one of the earbuds passing the signal to the other My jabras do that. I'm used to it, but it can be a little wonky at times Apple already does this with its own method, but now more earbud makers can do it license free as part of the spec Bluetooth le audio also claims 20 to 30 millisecond millisecond latency versus bluetooth classics 100 to 200 milliseconds. So nice feature if you're a gamer And it's better at managing packet loss when you're at the edge of the range So you don't have as many interruptions to your connection and le audio also supports hearing aids and implants And that is good news for for those in the accessibility community. Yeah, that's a huge one That's one of the been one of the impediments to to using hearing aids with with phones and stuff like that. So that that's huge And the packet loss thing. I mean, it just seems so simple when you read through it But they're like, yeah, bluetooth is is meant to like hold on to packets for data uses In case you need them which when you're transferring data over bluetooth like a file you want but with audio Once that packet is a few seconds old, you don't need it anymore for your audio And it's just delaying everything else if you're waiting to try to get it So so le audio when it's doing music and things like that says Oh, if this if this packet doesn't arrive within a short amount of time, we'd stop looking for it and move on to something else I think that's super smart All right, so how can we get this stuff? How can you get it? Well, I'll tell you some devices may be able to support bluetooth le audio with a software upgrade Android 13's beta supports it already most likely though. Yeah might need new hardware Yeah, they're probably gonna make us get new hardware and apple like said apple Please put it in the next ios. That would have been nice if we already knew it was an ios 16, but there you go all right I just want to watch some crickets Tom i'm glad you asked a group of indian farmers set up a fake indian premiere league or ip l Cricket tournament you might say why did they do that? Well, they wanted to trick russian audiences into making real bets in order to steal their money The times of india reports that the fake games took place on a farm in the state of gujarat With 21 farm laborers and unemployed teens who were each paid around 400 rupees or five dollars us To impersonate pro cricket players from well-known indian teams Apparently the farmers live streamed the tournament to youtube over the course of a couple of weeks And even set up a telegram channel dedicated to the games where they took bets from russian gamblers Located in to vir france and moscow and a bit of red flag for anybody paying attention Since the actual league's 2022 season ended in late may So if you're paying attention, you might say this isn't kosher a lot of people didn't know Even still the farmers managed to trick quite a few folks by setting up five hd cameras halogen lights around the field sound effects that mimicked the noise from a real crowd It seemed real Eventually indian police busted four of the people running the sham event during the tournament's quarter finals Which were taking delivery of 300 000 rupees for about 3775 us dollars from russian betters Before they were shut down now listen Scamming people out of their Harder money is and yet is bad is bad There's nothing funny about a dozen farmers pretending to be one of the world's most popular And yet it's sports. It's kind of It's not funny at all. I'm not laughing about this. Not at all not funny And yet This is fantastic in so many different ways and also it's fantastic The fact that we can report this because if you are looking to bet on sports at all Make sure it's in season at least and make sure you have a reputable booker I guess I don't bookie excuse me. I'm like this is wow I mean, I thought those stupid phone calls were annoying. I'm like, oh, you're you're warranties expired. It's like There's a whole league set up Wow, very very ingenious It's ingenious the the the lengths they went to with the fake jerseys and the and the commentator like The commentators Yeah, we're not people were like, oh, yeah, I want to bet on this game. Yeah, this is this is good This is gonna make somebody's like searching around for betting sites So like in the shady corners of the internet found a pirated feed and was like, oh, this is too great I can I can make so much money. You know what? I wonder if some people made money betting on this Did they pay out ever the farmers did? Yeah the farmers farmers But well until they got busted, I guess, but yeah, yeah, you know, it was fun while it lasted You know again not not don't do this. It's not funny. Don't try this at home, but also kudos They can hope I hope they get their stories optioned soon. Let's check out the mailbag Let's do it. So associate producer Dan white from what he says is hot and humid Bristol in the UK Wanted to follow up on our AI assisted screening conversation in yesterday's show Dan says for several years I worked at the quality assurance program for cancer screening In the NHS I worked in the cervical screening program But the principles are broadly the same across all cancer screening services You don't want a false negative result But it can in fact be as bad if you encounter a false positive regarding the AI assisted program Let's say a woman received a false positive result for a cervical screening test Depending on the severity of the result. She may refer to a biopsy sample to be taken This would mean the woman would have to be subject to an Ultimately unnecessary invasive medical procedure with very small but real risks of complications Like hemorrhaging, infection difficulties with future pregnancies in rare cases Would be required to undergo a general anesthetic, which is itself Has a very small but non-zero risk of complications and or death Before I scare anyone away from going for a screening test says Dan I would like to emphasize It is incredibly important the risks involved in not attending screening massively outweigh the possibility of any complications Yes, having an AI as an automated second opinion is undoubtedly a useful tool They need to be continuously trained and corrected when they get it wrong if we are to avoid false results Yeah, so if anybody didn't listen to that that show, you know, the point of the study that we talked about was Radiologists on their own outperform the AI But radiologists in the AI working in tandem where the radiologists identified Screenings first and then the AI would step in if they thought the radiologist Didn't identify a positive score That improved at 3.6 So and it reduced false positives Which is to to Dan's point a really good thing false positives While screening is important if if you're false positive and you get the biopsy and it turns out oh, you don't have it That's great news But also now you've had to undergo the risk of the biopsy which is small but still a risk that you wouldn't have had to undergo Anyway totally Anyway, thank you dan for for sharing that info with us good points Yeah, thank you dan. Um really really great email and um, you know, uh, thanks to everybody who writes in with questions comments thoughts Updates on anything that we talk about on the show. Please do keep that feedback coming You can email us at feedback at daily tech news show dot com Also, thanks to you. I as actor for being with us today It's been too long My man, let folks know where they can keep up with what you're up to lately Well, I mean if you're looking for me on c-nets, you're not going to see that anymore I'm not with seeing that anymore. So go to like twitter and follow me at ias or you go to is dot tv Which I have to like rebuild all week. What am I working on this week? I have no idea I was on dts today if you missed it go listen to it again because you just heard it So go to twitter.com slash is and you'll know what i'm doing before I do Well, we're so glad to have you and I can't wait to see what you're going to be doing Over the next few months. Also, we have some new bosses to thank today We are on a roll this week everybody. We've got mark. We've got trevor and we've got jacob All just started backing us on patreon. Thank you mark. Thank you trevor and thank you jacob Yeah, yesterday. We're like tomorrow. It could be you and mark trevor and jacob. We're like it in fact Is me Yeah, so thanks y'all If you'd like to see ias on more often become a patron You know the more patrons we get the more chance we can have or we can we can we can play around and do cool things Reminder there is a longer version of the show called good day internet We roll right into it after dts closes patreon.com slash dts is where you can find out more about that But just a reminder we do the show live if you can join us live We'd love to have you monday through friday 4 p.m. Eastern. That's 200 utc And you can find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live We're back doing it all again tomorrow with scott johnson joining us talk to you then This show is part of the frog pants network Get more at frogpants.com Diamond club hopes you have enjoyed this program