 Daily Tech News Show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you, including Father Kadan, Paley Glendale, and Dr. X17. Coming up on DTNS, how text messages can reveal what really went on between Musk, Dorsey, and Twitter, plus a bipedal robot's record-setting sprint to glory! And Dr. Nikki is here to tell us about 3D Color X-rays. Is that really what my screen looks like? This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, September 30th, 2022 in Los Angeles, I'm John Merritt. And from New York, I'm Dr. Nikki Ackermann. Hello. I've drawn the top tech stories from Cleveland and I'm Len Peralta. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chan. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. The USB Implementers Forum announced new branding for USB devices and USB cables. And those of us who cover this regularly are like, oh great, what do you got? However, I think they actually simplified things. You will no longer see the words super speed, which was totally unintelligible, nor will you even see USB 4 when you're looking at a package from a certified USB provider. Keep in mind, USB is an open standard, so not every company has to play along. However, if you're looking at a certified product, you will now see the highest data performance level that the product supports. So 40, 20, 10, or 5 gigabits per second. If you're looking at a USB cable, you'll also see the wattage of power that that cable supports, which would either be 60 or 240 watts. Now older designations for USB 2.0 and 1.0 are staying around, which means you will still occasionally on older products see USB high speed. That means USB 2.0, which is very much not high speed at 490 megabits per second. And the rules don't affect things like DisplayPort or Thunderbolt because USB can support those, but it's not officially part of the standard. So USB IF doesn't get to tell you when and where you say those things. Microsoft confirmed that two zero day vulnerabilities are being exploited in the wild. Uh-oh. It's not quite as bad as it may sound since the attacker would need to be authenticated in order to exploit the vulnerabilities, which means they're already inside your network. But let's be honest, that's not going to make anyone feel any better about it. It has mitigations available and detection in place for exchange online customers and is working on a package. Actor Bruce Willis has licensed his digital rights to a company called Deep Cake. They do deep fakes. To make ads, movies and TV shows that starred digital versions of Willis. Deep Cake trained an algorithm on Willis' performance in the 1990s. So movies like Die Hard and Fifth Element. The algorithm can map Willis' head onto another actor's body. So it's not full motion. It's an actor who does the part and then they make that actor look like Willis. The actor himself, if you don't already know, suffers from aphasia and has stepped away from acting. The company, Deep Cake, is based in Tbilisi, Georgia. It's incorporated in Delaware in the US and has already used Willis' likeness in an ad in Russia. I wonder if that'll be with or without hair, but anyway. It's without. The US Federal Communications Commission will now require companies with satellites and low orbits to de-orbit then within five years of completing their mission. Previous guidelines require de-orbiting within 25 years after mission completion. Of the 10,000 or so satellites launched since 1957, about half are no longer in operation. NASA estimates there are 23,000 pieces of debris larger than a softball orbiting Earth. That means there's more that are not as big as a softball that are as big as a baseball. Baseball, yeah. Zendur is launching a Kickstarter to sell a 6.4 kilowatt-hour battery on wheels. And you can stack up to 10 modules on it to get a maximum capacity of 64 kilowatt hours. The batteries are a dense lithium ion in a solid pouch, which Zendur describes as semi-solid state. The solvents used to make internal components stay in the battery after manufacture and harden into an interface that Zendur claims is less prone to chain reactions that cause fires. It can accept up to 3,000 watts of solar input and can be charged at a level two EV station. Has USB-C ports, 120 and 220 volt sockets, and a 12.6 volt 30 amp Anderson port if you have an RV. AC output is rated at 3,800 watts with a 7,600 watt surge. And then if you combine batteries, you can have sustained 7,600 watts. The mobile platform has running lights, voice control, and of course, powered wheels, because things are going to get heavy. The early bird price is 3,799 bucks or you can get a half size version at 4.6 kilowatt hours for 2,499 Kickstarter runs now until November 18th, and they're already met their minimum. So they are bound to make these catch it before it wheels itself away. Exactly. This deal will wheel something. Yeah, there. All right. Let's talk about these text messages. In the case of Twitter versus Elon R Musk at all, Twitter's legal team submitted some court filings that seem to have raised interest among the general public. One is a slideshow titled argument on pending discover motions. That details some interesting things about the use of signal by Musk and others, a lot of things about discussing data scientists and getting estimates of bot prevalence on Twitter. That's sort of fun to look through, especially if you're interested in this whole thing, but the bigger interest is a separate document of evidence labeled exhibits A through J. That's where we get actual emails and specifically in exhibit H. May I direct your attention to exhibit H? Text messages between folks talking about Twitter from CEO Paragagrawal to Musk and back between Musk and Dorsey between Musk and other people. It's it's interesting. There's lots to look at. Let's go over some of the highlights, shall we? And Len, by the way, if you have thoughts on this, please jump in. About a month before Musk offered to acquire Twitter on March 26, Jack Dorsey texted Musk regarding Musk's tweet is a new platform needed. So Musk tweeted that and Dorsey wrote back. Yeah, man. Here's what he said. Back when we had the activist come in and by activist, he's referring to Elliott management and activist investor back in 2020. Dorsey says, I tried my hardest to get you on our board and the board said, no, that's about the time I decided I needed to work to leave as hard as it was for me. So Dorsey admitting to Musk that in 2020 he decided it was time to go. This didn't happen recently, even though it actually happened recently. He was working towards it. He then writes, a new platform is needed. It can't be a company. This is why I left. And he said this publicly since then. I believe it must be an open source protocol funded by a foundation of sorts that doesn't own the protocol only advances it a bit like what signal has done. It can't have an advertising model. Otherwise, you have surface area that governments and advertisers will try to influence and control if it has a centralized entity behind it. It will be attacked. This isn't complicated work. It just has to be done right. So it's resilient to what has happened to Twitter. And Musk says, I think it's worth both trying to move Twitter in a better direction and doing something new. So it sounds like these two are like buddying up at this point, right? We're going to see what happens when Musk and Dorsey, I almost call him Dusk and Dorsey, get together. After it was announced that Musk was getting appointed to the Twitter board, which by the way, remember that he ended up backing out of that. But after after that was announced, Dorsey texted Musk, I've wanted it for a long time, got very emotional when I learned it was finally possible. And then added, and a lot of you may be surprised by this because of the public spat between CEO, Parag Agrawal and Elon Musk, Dorsey added, Parag is an incredible engineer. So what we're going to see here, I think is interesting is that Dorsey was promoting his friend, Parag Agrawal. This was not bad blood between them. This was like, Hey, you need to work with this guy. I think you can you can be the influence that Twitter needs. We've all had that. I love how this is unfolding like a soap opera. It kind of is. All right. So now we get the text between Elon Musk and Parag Agrawal. Musk says, I just want Twitter to be maximum amazing and admits, frankly, I hate doing management stuff. I kind of don't think I should be the boss of anyone. I think there are others who'd back in. But I love helping solve technical slash product design problems. In response, Agrawal says, treat me like an engineer instead of a CEO. And let's see where we get to. So Nikki, at this point, it sounds like these are two folks like, let's just work the problem, right? Yeah, I mean, so far so good. They seem to be in agreement. Two days later, two days later, on April 9th, Agrawal texts Musk. You are free to tweet is Twitter dying. Because that is something Musk actually tweeted or anything else about Twitter. But it's my responsibility to tell you that it's not helping me make Twitter better in the current context. So he's trying to say, like, look, I'm not going to tell you what you can and can't say. But that's kind of stuff doesn't help. He also adds, I hope the AMA, because they didn't ask me anything. If you remember, Elon Musk came and talked to the staff will help people get to know you to understand why you believe in Twitter and to trust you. So it really sounds like Agrawal is saying, look, man, this isn't good. It's not helping me inside, but here's some things we can do to fix it. Two minutes later, Musk texts back, what did you get done this week? I'm not joining the board. This is a waste of time. We'll make an offer to take Twitter private. Then he went and texted Twitter's board chair, Brett Taylor, fixing Twitter by chatting with Parag won't work. Drastic action is needed. So clearly Musk lost patience with Parag Agrawal at that point. Sounds exhausting. Dorsey, remember, in this play that we're watching was like, hey, this is my friend, Parag, you guys are going to a long rate. So he tries to smooth things over. He texts, I won't let this fail and we'll do whatever it takes. And regarding Parag says he is really great at getting things done when tasked with specific direction. So Dorsey's saying like, he's just the kind of guy. Yeah, I got to tell him what to do. He's not going to take the initiative, but Musk responds. Parag is just moving far too slowly and trying to please people who will not be happy no matter what he does. And Dorsey responds with at least it became clear that you can't work together. That was clarifying. So I think he gave up trying to persuade Musk at that point. A month later in Musk tells Moneyman Michael Grimes, one of the bankers involved, that Twitter asked no good questions and had no good comments at a meeting. He then asked to slow the deal down in case of World War Three. That one has been out there publicly before, but it's now documented here in the court filing. So I'll give you my interpretation on this, Nikki. I think what happened was Dorsey thought he had a kindred spirit and probably does in Musk as far as the vision and direction of Twitter and got him all fired up to go change it. And then Musk ran into people that he either doesn't like working with or doesn't feel like he could work with or realize, you know, Dorsey got me into this thing, but I'm maybe not as interested as I thought I was and starts backpedaling. And to me, because forget, Musk doesn't care about the dollar amounts. He doesn't care about court cases. That those aren't problems for him. Those are those are things that he can he can have people take care of. He wanted to do this thing because Dorsey got him fired up and then he lost interest in it. That's what these text messages pretty much show for me. Yeah, they give us a little bit more insight and background into what happened. And it kind of it's exactly what you said. It looks like, oh, this is really exciting. I'm going to read up and get the details and never mind. I'm not interested anymore. Yeah. And Musk is the kind of impulsive person to go ahead and make a cash offer before he's sure that he wanted to do it because he he thought there was something to it. So that that is what we're seeing now. And Parag Agrawal, to me, looks like somebody who is not so much in over his head because I think he's perfectly capable of being a serviceable CEO, but not in the same headspace as Dorsey and Musk. And that was irritating to Musk. Yeah, obviously he got a little bit too excited. Maybe. Yeah. Uh, a couple of side notes here before we move out of this. Uh, Jack Dorsey is apparently in Musk's contact list as Jack Jack. Thought that was cute. Uh, and at one point Musk tells Gail King of CBS Mornings, maybe Oprah would be interested in joining the Twitter board if my bid succeeds. Uh, I don't know how serious he was about that, but hey, you know what? Could be, could, could be worse business woman. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Uh, let's talk about Tesla making a humanoid robot, one of the centerpieces of its AI day announcement. Uh, they often showcase big bets on technologies that are maybe a little farther off in Tesla's future, you know, like reading the brain of pig, uh, this year it's the humanoid robot. While the Tesla concept is going to grab a lot of headlines, there is a robot whose feet are already on the pavement, uh, at Oregon State University. Nikki, tell us about Cassie. Yeah. So Cassie's a bipedal robot who set a new Guinness world record for the hundred meter dash clocking in a time of 24.73 seconds and an average speed of four meters per second or about nine miles per hour. So this is nowhere near human speeds. You know, Usain Bolt can hold the current record at 9.58 seconds, um, for humans on the hundred meter dash, but there's also faster robots. Um, but those ones have wheels. So even some robots that have legs, but not two legs, four legs, Wildcat is a prototype developed by Boston Dynamics, uh, is faster than, um, Cassie. And then MIT's four legged mini cheetah can also run faster. But like I said, Cassie's the fastest robot on two legs. So that's pretty exciting. Um, its design is made to tackle spaces that are designed for humans. So OSU professor Alan Fern said that the challenges with Cassie starting and stopping in a standing position are more difficult than the running part. And it's probably true for humans as well when we start to learn how to run. Um, and that's similar how taking off and landing are harder than actually flying a plane. Um, so Cassie isn't autonomous either. A human has to control it. And it's much like controlling an RC car. So you have a sort of piloted robot on two feet who can run kind of fast. Yeah. Uh, and, and, and like all robot stories, there's the fun part and there's the practical part. Uh, the fun part is where bio cow in our chat room is saying, Hey, you can still outrun robots for now. Yeah. But, but the practical part is this is a big deal that they have, it's not that they solved the problem. You know, there've been bipedal robots. Uh, in fact, Cassie has been around for, for longer in other forms as part of other robotic systems, but they're able to get it to do those hard start and stops in a way that they can have it run on two legs. Not, not, not a, you know, cheetah type animal like Boston dynamics, but, but on two legs, like, like a human or, or any other kind of Simeon, uh, over a hundred meters doing well. Yeah. And you know, I know every time there's a robot story, people get up in arms and are like, Oh, it's the end of the world. But I also love to look at the other side as we often do on DTS and think about all the things, the innovations this can bring for, I don't know, mobility, people with disabilities, replacing boring jobs that we don't want to stand up for. Like there's a lot that can be done with this. And I'm sure that's why they're developing it. Although I'll be honest at this point, if they're asking me like, okay, would you, would you like, uh, a robotic prosthetic, uh, for, for mobility? I'd probably choose the wheels. What about stairs? Yeah, there's elevators, most place, you know, not everywhere, not in the New York subway. That's true. No, I guess the quadrupedal is the best compromise. You get the speed, but you can also still do. You replace one leg by four mini legs and then you have the optimum leg. Yeah, uh, let us know what you would choose feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. Uh, you can also join the conversation, start chatting about this with the other folks in the audience in our Discord, which you can join by linking to a Patreon account at patreon.com slash DTMS. CERN has been the source of many scientific research innovations, you know, because they're always slamming particles together over there. Uh, but one of these is the repurposing of x-ray detector chips for medical imaging called spectroscopic x-ray imaging. Nikki, tell us why this is such a big deal. Yeah, as you know, Tom, I'm a big CERN nerd. So I jumped on this story when I saw it. So the concept for these solid state photon counting energy resolving detector chips is that they work like a camera. That's a bit easier to say too. They, they detect and count the individual particles as they hit the pixels. So these chips actually allow for really precise imaging and detection that produces super high definition images. So not only is that good for particle detection, but it turns out these qualities make them really good at showing the composition and density of different human tissues when these chips are integrated as part of an x-ray CT scanner. So if I understand you right, it's the specificity of like, we can, we can just see the particles as they hit. Yeah, that, that makes sense. Now, aside from sounding darn cool and, you know, having high resolution, just like with TVs, people are like, wow, do I need 4K? Like, what advantages does that give us over current x-rays that we have now? So normal x-rays that we had before that we still have, they can tell you differences in densities. And if you've seen an x-ray, they're kind of hard to read because it's like variations of grayscale, but you don't really know what is what. This new technique, because of the photon detection, can distinguish density, but also composition when it's scanning something like your body. And that way you can tell different structures apart much better. And then they assign colors to them using the algorithm. This is the color x-ray part of this technology. But these chips in the medical field have a really great potential for monitoring things like bone healing, because you can see the precision much better, placement of metal implants and progression of diseases like arthritis, specifically this machine is for wrist. So they're looking at the tiny crystals that go in between your bones on your wrist, which you can see with this kind of resolution. And really importantly, they can distinguish different tissue types without the use of contrast agent. So I don't know if anyone's ever gotten a CT scan, but sometimes they inject a radio dense liquid into your veins to try and see your blood vessels better on the CT. And so if you can avoid an injection of radio dense material that's better. And on top of all of that, the photon detection processing improves the image definition, but it requires less x-ray scans. So that's a lower dose of radiation, which you also want. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, for one thing, I was going to make a joke of like, oh, so now you don't need a radiologist to read these because I can see what's on them, but you still do. What it does is it means like the stuff I can see, you don't need a radiologist to see. But the radiologist can now see more things, right? More things for the radiologist and better. Like the radiologists can now have more information, but you probably would not be good at reading it. You need trainings. You still need the training, but the training will get you farther. Which bone you're looking at. Yeah, that too, right. Are there any non-medical uses to this besides CERN's original use, obviously, but for the x-ray, particularly? It's so cool that this is being used in all types of fields. So they're actually adapting this in the art world. These chips have been installed in an x-ray scanner that takes high resolution pictures of artwork. And specifically, they took images of Raphael's Madonna and Child at different x-ray wavelengths. And this allowed the researchers working on this project to determine the elemental composition of the paint. It's going really deep. And in doing this, they're able to finally authenticate the painting to Raphael after 800 years of disputed claims, because they didn't know if it was like his trained people. I forgot the name. The other people who he trained to paint, who did it, or if he had done it. His apprentices or something. Yes, thank you. And because of this x-ray, they were able to do that. Oh, that's cool. And on top of that. So this pixel, sorry, this chip is a master of medicine. It's a master of the arts, and it's also in space, because why not? So the TimePix detector in the International Space Station is based on these chips and detects radiation from different sources in space, because there's tons of different radiation sources in a similar way that it is used to detect x-ray wavelengths. So this chips really have all kinds of applications. And I just find that really exciting. Yeah, that's that's very cool. And and I think one of the better examples, and there are many of them of, well, why are we doing this? Having ancillary uses. I don't like to make those arguments too often because there is also a good reason why we're doing the particle accelerator for the purposes of its main research. But you also get these kinds of side benefits as well. Yeah, basic science is super important, but I understand why some people wouldn't care about particle acceleration, not you, Tom, but other people. And those people, though, might care about getting a CT scan because that's going to happen to you potentially at some point. Yeah, I I hesitate to make that argument too much because you you can't predict what these ancillary uses are going to be, right? So it's not like, well, we should do the particle accelerator because it's going to lead to you not having to be injected. But it it does show that there's you get more out of it than just what you originally did it for. So yeah, it's a good example. And that's why a lot of basic, basic science is needed. You have to start somewhere so that your future inventions can build on the thing that you started on before. Yeah, and Stealth Dave points out not to mention their utility and capturing ghosts. Well, yeah, and opening portals to health and opening. That's my favorite part. All right, this one is kind of funny. It's also really scary, but because it ended up being OK, maybe still kind of funny. In Brisbane, Australia, one of wings, food delivery drones accidentally landed on an 11,000 volt power line. And well, it caught fire and fell to the ground. Energy firm Energex had to disable the lines to respond to the incident, which left about 2000 people without power for around 45 minutes, which is not nothing. It's you know, it's not great to be without power for 45 minutes. Could have been worse, though. Energex spokesman Danny Donald told ABC Radio Brisbane the meal was still hot inside the drone's delivery box when the crew got there. I'm sure it was having caught on fire. It's worth noting that there was no permanent damage to the network. This thing fell off the line. The only reason they turned off the power was to deal with safety issues while they put out the fire. Energex is not going to pursue any action, any damages against wing. Wing said the drone made a precautionary controlled landing yesterday and came to rest on an overhead power line. And that it reported the incident to Energex. So it sounds like something went wrong with the drone. They brought it down, not realizing the power lines were there. So it probably wasn't even in its normal flight path. As of earlier this March, wing has made a 200,000 deliveries in the area without setting anything on fire or causing power outages. And Donald from Energex told ABC News, this was the first time Energex has seen this happen. So it's not a common occurrence. Actually, I don't know what the laws are like for drones in Australia, but I wonder if implementing no fly zones above dangerous areas would help this. I mean, I know it was an emergency landing, but maybe that would help. I imagine this, I'm going to guess that this was a no fly zone, that it only landed on these power lines by accident. I'll be curious if wing releases more details about that. But I imagine you're right. There's got to be no fly zones that say, hey, don't fly your drone here. Although there could be crossings at some point where it's like, well, you got to fly over. So, you know, do it at a perpendicular angle and do it do it quick and get out of there. I there are legitimate questions of like, OK, but if you made a precautionary landing, why did you do it on the power line? Yeah, who knows? Maybe it lost power or I guess accidents happen. I don't really know what else you can do about this other than like making the laws. I'm going to guess it was an autonomous landing and it didn't detect the power line. And it was probably off course. That's that's that's the way that makes the most sense to me. But yeah, I mean, people lost power for 45 minutes. Those people suffered a small amount, certainly. But otherwise, mostly came out as a as a good story. And the meal was still hot. Thank goodness. Gross. Would you eat it? Yeah, I don't know if they finished the delivery. They didn't tell us to. Extra charboy. What about the person's burrito? Did they get a burrito? Did they get a refund? That's what I want to know. There's more to the story. Hard hitting stories. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Andrew wrote in and by the way, Justin Robbie untexted me yesterday after he said that cloud gaming was bad on the show. He's like, I knew I welcome the emails and Andrew obliged. Andrew said there is nothing wrong with cloud gaming overall. Stadia's model was ridiculous and none of the programs were worth the subscription by themselves. Xbox Game Pass, however, is absolutely great. Good price, ability to install games or play in the cloud and easy to turn on or off when life gets in the way. Cloud gaming is absolutely the future, writes Andrew. But Google had a weird model for the business that was hard to understand. I don't think even Justin would argue that Google's model was not the best one, right? Yeah, I mean, growing pains. Yeah, people are going to try a bunch of different stuff until they get the right fit. And I what I would say, Andrew, is that certainly nothing is guaranteed, but Xbox cloud gaming and Nvidia GeForce now are probably the better tests of is cloud gaming something people actually want. If you're going to disprove Justin from yesterday, those are the two services most likely to do it. In fact, I wrote that all up and the fact that I still think Stadia was a success for Google and my substack, techtom.substack.com. You can go check that out. All right, let's look in on Len Peralta, who has been busily illustrating today's show. What have you drawn for us, Len? It's a mashup, Tom. That's a ton of things on you. So many cool things you talk about today. So yes, I want to do a mashup of the bipedal robot. I want to do a about the X-rays. I did want to do a mashup about keeping the food warm. And of course, Jack Jack. So this is this is called RoboDash mashup. And there's all this stuff. There's the bipedal robot. There's he's using an X-ray to look at the order that is being ordered from RoboDash. OK, it's going to know why they put the order in a box. He has to use an X-ray to look at, but OK, all right. Technology seems like a bad UI, but you know, that's what they did. So this is this. That's the future time. You don't understand that's for security, right? Exactly. Exactly. Well, this if you're interested in this print, this is right now over at my patreon, patreon.com forward slash Len. You get it if you if you're a subscriber or you can just go the old fashion way and go to my store and order it. Len, parol, the store dot com. By the way, I am selling the on the front page. I have my custom drawn holiday cards. No, it's early, but get in there early and you can wait. How did you work Jack Jack in there? I missed that part. Oh, it's Jack Jack's order. Oh, it's Jack Jack's Jack Jack ordered it. I see. So he's keeping the food hot with the X-rays in the body. It's all there. It's all there. It's always so surprised about how fast you get those done. But um, yeah, you guys can find me too. My website, Dr. or Nicole Ackerman's dot com. I'm also on Twitter at Ackerman's Nicole. Just switch it around. Excellent. That's it. Thank you, Dr. Nicky is great chatting with you today. It's so fun to be on the show. A special thanks to our top lifetime supporter. Well, not the top one of the top one of the many top lifetime supporters. Mean Buckley. Thanks for all the years of support. Mean appreciate you. And folks, we haven't had a new patron in a couple of days. So the space is clear on the deck. You want to be that person who gets bonus episodes, who gets the extended show, who gets the editor's desk, who gets the rewind that looks at the news 10 years ago in the light of what we know today. You can get all of that and more plus our discord by becoming a patron. Patreon dot com slash D T N S patrons. Stick around that exact show that I just referenced. Good day. Internet is coming up. And we might talk about frogging with Len. You can also catch the show live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern twenty hundred UTC. Find out more about that at daily tech news show dot com slash live. We're back on Monday with Andrea Jones Roy talking about a New York law mandating testing for bias in a I this week's episodes of Daily Tech News Show were created by the following people. Host, producer and writer, Tom Merritt, host, producer and writer, Sarah Lane, executive producer and Booker, Roger Chang, producer, writer and host, Rich Strafilino, video producer and Twitch producer, Joe Kuntz, technical producer, Anthony Lamos, Spanish language, host, writer and producer, Dan Campos, news host, writer and producer, Jen Cutter, science correspondent, Dr. Nicky Ackermans, social media producer and moderator, Zoe Detterding, our mods, beatmaster, W. Scottis, one bio cow, Captain Kipper, Steve Guadirama, Paul Reese, Matthew J. Stevens, a gadget virtuoso and J.D. Galloway, modern video hosting by Dan Christensen, video feed by Sean Way, music and art provided by Martin Bell, Dan Looters, Mustafa A. A. Cast and Len Peralta, live art performed by Len Peralta, A. Cast ad support from Tatiana Matias, Patreon support from Dylan Harari. Contributors for this week's show included Patrick Norton, Scott Johnson and Justin Robert Young, and our guest this week was Chris Mancini. Thanks to all the patrons who make the show possible.