 Coming up on DTNST is Black Widow, signal simultaneous release of movies at home and in the theaters, an open way to fight ransomware and robots get better at helping without hurting. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, July 12th, 2021 in Los Angeles on Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Happy birthday to my wife, Eileen Rivera. And welcome to the show, UK Associate Editor and Mac Observer, contributor Charlotte Henry. How's it going? Hello, hello. Thank you for having me. Thank you for getting me through this difficult, you know, post-match 24 hours in a difficult time in English, so thank you guys. Well, you're welcome. We've been distracting Charlotte with talk of dessert and tea on good day internet. If you'd like that wider conversation, become a member at patreon.com slash DTNST. Maybe it will help you too. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. The US Federal Communications Commission approved Amazon for a radar sensor to use with motion sensing and contactless sleep tracking. Amazon's filing with the FCC did not name a specific device that would use the radar, but said it wasn't a mobile device. The FCC granted similar permission for Google to use radar on Pixel phones. Samsung quietly expanded its ad supported TV Plus service. I actually don't know how quiet they were about it, but they didn't tell anybody about it. It's now there on the web. The mobile apps also get support for Chromecast streaming, initially TV Plus was only available on Samsung devices, particularly smart TVs. It expanded to Galaxy smartphones and tablets last year, and now anybody can get it on the web. At Google's Games Developer Summit 2021, the company announced a new feature in Android 12 that will let users begin playing games before a download is finished. The company already offers Google Play Instant, which lets users try out games by playing directly in the Play Store. With the new feature, Google estimates that players will be able to begin a 400 megabyte game in about half the time. Wall Street Journal sources say ByteDance indefinitely suspended its plans to go public after the Chinese government officials advised it to address data security risks. This is becoming a trend. We've been following the DDSHU thing thing. The company had reportedly been mulling a listing in the US or possibly Hong Kong. ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming decided to delay the listing until late March next year. Microsoft announced its plans to acquire San Francisco Security Company at Risk IQ, which helps businesses discover threats and networks and also supply chains. It's just the latest example that Microsoft wants to be seen as serious about security. The Daily Beast reports that Microsoft worked with ISPs to visit people's houses in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America to replace routers compromised by the TrickBot malware. TrickBot is used to run illegal operations on a botnet, including ransomware. Microsoft claimed to have cut off 94% of TrickBot's server infrastructure in 2020 ahead of the US election. Yeah, it makes sense to me that Microsoft would buy a ransomware oriented company to help stop ransomware, but getting out there in the streets is pretty interesting. There's also this little nugget here. Let's talk about the program coming to help bring some open data to the problem. High profile ransomware attacks are pretty common. They've been common for a while, but they're even higher profile, colonial pipeline. Kaseya, just two of the ones we've talked about this year on DTNS. These attacks also show there is a lack of information about the impact of decision making during a ransomware attack. Does paying a ransom actually help conventional wisdom in the FBI? Say no, but that hasn't stopped a lot of companies from paying anyway. How about some data we could all look at? Well, Jack Cable, a security architect with Krebs Stamos Group, noticed that nobody's been collecting public data despite there being a lot of it. The Bitcoin ledger, for instance, is publicly viewable. So he launched a crowdsourced ransom payments tracking website called Ransomware, spelled W-H-E-R-E. It provides a running tally of ransoms paid out in Bitcoin using self-reported incidents of ransomware attacks. Submitters have to show a screenshot of the ransom demand, Cable himself, then reviews the submissions for accuracy. Now, the site doesn't contain any personal or victim identifying information. So if you submit, you're not gonna be embarrassed nor will your company, but security researchers and law enforcement officials can download the database for free and use it to help inform their decisions and study the problem. Site currently lists more than $32 million in ransom payments for 2021. They list the most frequent recipients of the ransoms to kind of help track who's getting paid. And Cable himself wants to integrate data from companies in the security and blockchain space into this. So he wants to build on the data that he's got there already, wants to include ways to gather data on other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum as well, not just Bitcoin. Kind of fascinated by this. And I really like the idea of this because, I mean, you rightly said at the top of the discussion on this, that we're just hearing more and more about it. And there must be a reason for that, right? Hackers don't spend time on stuff that doesn't make them money or doesn't have an effect, right? So clearly people are paying, but there's always been, you know, when I've looked at cybersecurity issues, when we read these stories, there's always a kind of perception, isn't there, that it's like a bit weak or wrong or what I misguided to pay out the ransom. But we've always had a suspicion, I think, that people are paying the ransom without making it public. And actually a little bit more of an open conversation, I think will probably go quite a long way in helping, as this idea says, make either better decisions or at least let us have a better understanding of what is actually going on. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the most interesting things to me about this is, yeah, when does a company, large company, lots of money, can pay the ransom, but should they and decides to, in fact, do it because maybe the public embarrassment is not worth it or perceived public embarrassment or just getting something to be fixed sooner than later is of the most importance. There are so many factors, but for another company to say, well, okay, we're looking at this, this almost like an F-to-company type of a situation where there are all these transactions that have happened in the past, maybe that is just a better way to inform companies going forward and saying, do we have to pay this ransom? Is this really our best option? Because I'm not saying that, oh, a company should never pay a ransom. I know it's very case by case, but the more information that you have about who has paid a ransom, who has asked for a ransom in the past and how that all played out, cannot be a bad thing. And you're not gonna know who. This does keep the company's anonymous. Sure. You're gonna know how often. Yeah, at least, yeah, the frequency. Yeah, and how much, how much is being paid out there? I don't believe ransom should ever be paid. They shouldn't because if you pay it, it encourages it. But I also know that every company believes that until they get hit with ransomware and then they're like, oh crap, maybe I should pay. And I said, it says, you can see the money in the bank account to get their stuff back. Colonial pipeline paid the ransom and still had to recover the files themselves. It didn't work for them. So paying the ransom doesn't always even guarantee that you'll be able to unlock the files. So I don't know. The answer here is not going to be today. The answer is going to be in studying it more and figuring out more about the problem and more data publicly available for people to look at and study, I think is gonna help us get there. So I'm glad that Jack Cable is doing this. Good stuff. PhD students, Rodrigo Otigame and Catherine Yea built an experimental interface for Google search called Search Atlas. It provides the same classic blank box as your Google homepage that you're used to, but the results screen displays three lists of links from different geographic versions of Google search showing the variation between search results and different parts of the world. Each query is translated into the default languages of each localized edition using Google translate. So for example, in searches for Tiananmen Square, the UK and Singaporean versions of Google show images from 1999. The US, Thailand and China based searches show more recent images with the square populated by tourists. A Google spokesperson says that the historical information about the location is available in all search languages and also location, but that some results will show more recent images when Google thinks maybe you might be wanting to travel somewhere not necessarily looking for historical context. Search Atlas also has maps and visualizations for how other search queries vary by country, like God showing results based on the local dominant religion or how to combat climate change revealing policy related results in Europe or stories on the imminent danger of rising sea levels in island nations like Mauritius or the Philippines. The search Atlas creators say that the project is meant to show that search engines aren't neutral actors or inherently objective. Yeah, my reaction to the story initially was like, oh, this is a good reminder. I didn't think they were neutral, but it's a nice reminder that you're gonna get different search results in different places. A lot of people may not be aware of that and the amazing awareness of that is great, but I don't know that I think this is necessarily something that condemns Google. It could go either way, right? It could be Google pushing an agenda or it could be just saying like, hey, if you're in Mauritius, the stories about rising sea levels are way more important to you than the policy ones, which might be more important say in the UK, right, Charlotte? Right. I mean, one of the things, the great advantages of Google or other different types of search engines is when you get a localized result, right? That's what's more interesting. If I put what is the weather today, getting the weather where you are doesn't do me much good. Right, right. That's a really good example. Right, but I think the Tiananmen Square, which is always a very stark one that comes up a lot in these kind of conversations, actually we shouldn't be liled into thinking that things like that are neutral. I think it is very dependent on what the type of topic is. If it's a controversial historical or political topic, actually some semblance of formality and neutrality and uniformity is probably better. Whereas, as I said, there are some things where you want to know the most local and relevant answers to you. And so I think you're right to say that it actually doesn't just condemn Google. Google giving you localized or different results, depending on where you are on different subjects, isn't in and of itself a bad thing. But in some cases, some uniformity, I think will go a long way. Yeah, I could see a world where, because this happens all the time, right, where you search for something in Google and you might be, you're going down a certain path and maybe the results are like, okay, I have to change my query a tiny bit because I'm looking for something a little bit more specific. Sure. Many of us, we kind of get that, right? You kind of know what you're looking for. You're not necessarily blindly searching, but for, and this goes for any search engine, not just Google, but Google obviously being the dominant one, would me searching for Tiananmen Square prompt Google to say, are you looking for historical contexts? Are you looking for current weather? Are you looking for maybe that third thing that is a really common thing that we already know from data that people are searching for? There's a very different example of you searching, can tourists visit Tiananmen Square than just putting Tiananmen Square and wanting to know the history of that place and what happened then? I think what's interesting is that if Google isn't spiking the results, right? Like the whole assumption is that there's, you know, John Google over there, like, you know, tailoring the results. So in China, we won't have Tiananmen Square show up, but in the US we will. And what this shows to be is that, no, there is just an algorithm and it works maybe not neutrally, but it works the way the algorithm is supposed to work, which is like, oh, Sarah travels a lot. Let's show her images that are travel focused. Charlotte, she does a lot of historical research. Let's show her historical images. Maybe that's country by country, not person by person, but that would be the algorithm working without trying to push an agenda, right? Maybe not neutral, because algorithms themselves aren't necessarily neutral. That's not how they're created, but it would be blindly putting stuff up rather than trying to decide what you should, you know, without pushing an agenda, if that makes sense. Yeah, agree, but we have to always remember that algorithms are made by humans and humans are not neutral and therefore algorithms are never neutral. Yeah, I think it's really interesting that in the US, where we're all very familiar with the history of Tiananmen Square, it's like, man, just show them tourists. They're probably more likely to be wanting to travel there than need to be educated. But in China, that's the one that gets me, where Google doesn't legally operate, but they obviously are detecting IP addresses from China, maybe people using VPNs, I don't know, and presenting a China-oriented view. The algorithm does say like, oh, you probably aren't interested in the history either. Is that because Google is pushing an agenda or is that because the algorithm goes like, oh yeah, those people, they're never search on that stuff. They never interested in that part of history. I don't know. Let's talk about movies. Disney reported the film Black Widow made more than $60 million through Disney Plus Premier Access. That's online viewing in its first weekend. Disney Plus subscribers were paying $30 a pop to rent the film, while Black Widow took in $80 million in US theaters, which is massive for a post-pandemic movie, even bigger than F9. Also just pretty good for a Black Widow tier Marvel movie, whether there was a pandemic or not, it's about just really close, just a little bit under what Dr. Strange got. So what does that mean? Here's some factors to consider. Disney Plus or not, that theatrical number would have been higher without COVID. Not all the theaters are open, about 19% of them in the US are closed, and not everybody still feels comfortable going back to a big room filled with people, even if their local theater is open. Also keep in mind that people who paid to see it at home may not have gone to the theater if they had no other choice. They may have just skipped it, or they may have just waited for it to come to video on demand. We don't know the mix, but it's not as simple as adding the $60 million to the $80 million and saying, well, it would have been $140 million if it hadn't been available on Disney Plus. But these are both pretty big numbers, Charlotte. I feel like it maybe doesn't tell us definitively, but how do you interpret where this points us? I think it's right that you can't just add $60 to $80 and go, well, this is what it would have been if every cinema was open and that everyone would have just gone as they normally would have. Because there are definitely things where people might have gone. Do you know what? I can't be bothered to go down to the cinema, but actually it's on my TV, I'm here anyway. It's not very expensive. That's my Saturday evening, taking care of, I'll watch the new Black Widow and enjoy it ahead of time. And I've done it from the comfort of my own home. So I definitely think there will be people that wouldn't have ordinarily watched it, that went, eh, I'm here, let's watch it. So I think it's gonna be a really interesting thing. And I cover this a lot at the Mac Observable with Apple as well. How these streaming services are going to deal with having their content in multiple places, who owns what, when people get to see what and how much all of that costs. And does one degrade from the other? Do people make a decision not to watch a movie in the cinema because they wanna be at home? Or do they not bother watching? There's all sorts of considerations people are making now. And our perception I think of the streaming and movie going market is so distorted over the last 18 months, we truly do not know the answer. And it might take us longer than 18 months to find out the real answer. But. Well, I'm a person who watched Black Widow over the weekend from the comfort of my own couch. And it wasn't, sure, the idea of going to a movie theater, there's lots of, you gotta weigh a lot of things. But that wasn't the reason that I didn't go to the theater, I just didn't wanna go to the theater. I don't know, nobody wanted to watch the movie with me and I wanted to see it. And I actually felt like, even though I won't get into it, but like, wasn't my favorite Marvel movie I've ever seen. But I didn't feel like I had to wait for it to eventually come to the point where I could watch it from home. So that I felt like I was getting away with something. Like, oh, I can talk about this with my friends who all went to the theater. In fact, one friend did go to the theater and he was like, oh my gosh, Sarah, that's why you didn't like it. It was so much better in the theater. And I was like, you know, I didn't wanna go. I just, it was nice for us to both have that option. And I guess we got different experiences. There's probably some more factors involved, but I just don't, I don't think movie theaters are getting us back guys. I think we're at the point now where it's like, you wanna pay for the convenience of not going somewhere and ending up paying that much more for the popcorn and the sodas and the whole thing, people are gonna take it. And you said something really interesting as well, which was that you didn't want to wait to live eventually filtered through to the home release. And by which time you've read 700 articles about it, everyone's given you your opinion. And like the kind of the thrill and the initial release of it has gone anyway. And so you've kind of had your opinion formed or, you know, this time you got the opening weekend experience, but did it in a way you, for that particular movie we're happy with. And I think we're gonna learn a lot of things post pandemic that choice is the important thing. Yeah, and like, and what is the need to be in a theater really mean? Yes, you're always gonna get the people who say, the sound is better, it's more exciting. I wanna be around a bunch of people cheering and, you know, clapping at the credits and all of that stuff is still true, but I think we're getting to a point where people are gonna weigh their options. You may be fit. Well, I think $80 million tells you there's still a lot of people who are like, I don't care if I can get it at home. I wanna go to a theater. That's what that tells me is there's- Sure, but $60 million says, you know, that people like their options. If you release it at home, nobody will see it in the theater is put to the test here. And you got $80 million, which I think you would have gotten $80 to $90 million if you hadn't released it at home. That's my contention is like, you got $60 million more than you would have because you let Sarah get it at home versus if you hadn't, you just wouldn't have gone to the theater. They wouldn't have got your money at all. Maybe they got it later, but they wouldn't have got it this weekend. Yeah, I mean, again, it's somewhat of a new plain field where this comes from because so many of us were like, oh, theaters, theater, we miss theaters. Can't wait to go back to theaters, but you get used to not necessarily going to a theater for everything, even, you know, kind of the big movies. And then, yeah, you're gonna have more people saying, maybe not. And that's the point, isn't it? You said for everything. There may be some films in, you know, a month or two where you're like, this is one I really want to see on a big screen with other people. And then you will be part of the number that goes to the theater. I tell you, the lesson I take out of this is if you give people more options to watch your movie, more of them will watch your movie and you'll think we're running hot for that, so. Kind of, yeah. I don't know. Hey, folks, what do you want to hear us talk about on the show? One way to let us know is our subreddit, submit stories, and vote on them right now. Go on over there, dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that an updated iPad mini should be a go for a fall release this year. We've heard lots of rumblings about this, so this is the latest. He characterizes this as the biggest redesign that the device has received, with a similar design similar to the iPad Air and upgraded to the latest A-Series CPU. The overall design of the iPad mini has largely remained the same since it was introduced back in 2012, so it's been a while, with hardware last refreshed in 2019 with the addition of the A12 bionic system on a chip. Last year, Apple analyst, Mengqi Kuo, said the Apple would release an iPad mini this year with an 8.5 or even nine inch screen, so kind of in line with what we've heard so far. Gurman also said that an M1 powered iMac with a larger screen than the current 27 inch version is still in root. This could either have an M1X or M2 chip in it, both of which Tom's guide sources say that are still in the works. Now, the distinction between the two is the 10 core M1X is expected to show up in the 14 and 16 inch MacBook Pros later this year, and an eight core four nanometer M2 in 2022 reportedly in a new MacBook Air. But we're also in a chip shortage, right? Nobody can get chips anymore, so we don't know what effect that will have on planned timelines at Apple, but this is the latest. Yeah, Apple has tend to, in typical Apple fashion, has seemed to ride the chip shortage way better than most of its rivals for all sorts of different reasons. Seems to have done, so far it hasn't not fallen over that yet. I mean, we may get to a point where it can't maintain that, but so far Apple seems to have done well. I'm slight, I get that it's gonna have the A12 barnacle, the latest A series chip and a CPU in it. I'm slightly surprised they're not moving if they release a new mini, that that doesn't get an M something chip in it as well. You know? It pushes it more towards the mobile. They move the iPad pros to that. Yeah, yeah. We're seeing a lot of the Apple tablets are moving to that silicon, so I'm slightly surprised that that's a holdout and just makes me all a bit more confused why they're still bothering with the iPad mini. Like, I know people, lots of people that have them do love them, they like the size, find it easy for reading and stuff. I guess no one's doing any serious kind of typing or document or that kind of work on it, but it's kind of convenient for email and a bit of reading and whatever. I mean, I'm with you on, well, I'm with the people who, you know, haven't been super excited about the iPad mini for a while and you know, maybe that's because it hasn't been updated significantly in almost 20 years, but once the iPhones started getting bigger. Exactly. Once we started getting our Max's, our pros, the whole thing, I was like, the iPad mini form factor doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It's actually great. So, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it would be interesting to see Apple give this another push, but the form factors in sort of a gray area I don't totally get. Yeah, and it speaks to a larger kind of weirdness. We've heard rumors even about 16 inch iPad pros going around and I just, I'm kind of like, Apple is slightly confusing me with what it's doing in the tablet space that are at the moment. Is it making tablets? Is it making laptops? Is it making, I don't even know what phrase I would use to talk about the commodity. So for a company that we normally expect has such a clear picture on everything, the kind of iPad space to me feels a bit messy and murky at the moment. Well, let's talk about robots then because you talk about messy and murky. Using a robot to help humans get dressed would be great for assistive healthcare. It's something humans do easily, but it requires dexterity and safety and speed to be effective. Unfortunately, for safety reasons, robots have been programmed not to permit any contact. That leads to the freezing robot problem if it gets too close where it's like, you know what, I just can't do anything. And that makes it difficult for a robot to help someone get dressed and reduces the effectiveness of other assistive functions as well. But researchers at MIT CSAIL developed a new algorithm that lets non-harmful safe impacts happen. The algorithm uses multiple models for different situations, combining set theory, human aware safety constraints, human motion prediction, and feedback control to keep people safe while still allowing the robot to create efficient trajectories. So it can help someone get dressed even when they're using a phone and know the difference between an incidental bump, which before it would have just frozen at, and a collision that could actually cause injury. It's not gonna tear into somebody, but it knows that like, oh, if that person bumps into me while they're moving their phone, that's fine. Researchers hope this could open the door for robotic assistance across a range of tasks. That's probably something not a lot of people think of, but, you know, robotic algorithms right now are safety first, which prevents them from doing things. But as we get better with nuance in AI, with it kind of knowing these fuzzy cases of like, oh, if I bump into them there, it's okay. Versus if I'm going at this speed and bump into them there, it's not. That's a good improvement for robotics and it means they can do a lot more. Yeah, I mean, I think anything that, look, we know robots are going to be a key part of healthcare of, you know, general, maybe old age care, those kind of things as we move forward. And so finding a way they can do more safely is obviously like self-evidently a good thing. I mean, you know, I think in certain cases, particularly around healthcare, human contact is going to remain absolutely essential. And, you know, you can't, however clever the robot is, that can't replace kind of human interaction and those kinds of things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ideally, this allows for more human contact, right? The human can be talking to the person and engaging and listening, and instead of spending time on the tedious stuff of helping them put their sweater on. Yeah, and that's a kind of great kind of sense of moving forward and also, you know, even things like maybe less infectious disease environments. Right. Wouldn't you rather a robot could go in and do them putting a healthcare worker in that situation where, but they can still do other things, you know. All sorts of industries we know are going to be increasingly dependent on robots and all sorts of things. And so the cleverer and the safer they are is clearly better, but I think we kind of lose sight of the importance of human interaction at our peril. Yeah, don't lose sight of that. That's important. Speaking of humans, we like to hear from them. That's why we get emails and read some on the show. Let's check out the mailbag. Today, over the weekend, Kappy wrote in about our conversation about Pokemon Go. That was last week. And why there's so much activity at Pokemon Talk. Pokemon Talk. Well, we were talking specifically in a post-show GDI about why there's so much activity going on at cemeteries. That was kind of a Pokemon Go hotspot. Why? Starting with Ingress, Kappy says, this is what Pokemon Go is based on. Kappy says, in the early days of Ingress, players submitted portals to a game. We quickly figured out that there were a lot of historical monuments that qualify for a portal. Being that these areas are dense, it made it to be an easy area to farm progress. This also translated into Pokemon Go, and that's why you see so many people in herds walking through plain in particular areas. There was so much Ingress traffic going through the graveyards that it drew far too much attention. In many locations, police were involved. It was confusing people. As a result, many players turned to public college campuses where it's not so crazy to see a group of people standing around on the phone. Yeah, I knew about Ingress, and I knew that's why the cemeteries were the gyms or whatever. I did not realize that it was because of the historical monument thing. I hadn't put that together. Thank you, Kappy. That's interesting stuff. Yeah, it's good stuff. And if you have feedback, like Kappy does about Pokemon Go or anything that we talk about on the show or might talk about it on a feature show, we would love to hear from you. Feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. Thank you in advance. We also like to shout out patrons at our master and grandmaster levels. Today they include Brad, Kevin, and Paul Thieson. We also got three brand new bosses. Dr. Druidge, Chris Jenkins, and James Van Asdale. All just started backing us on Patreon. So thank you, the good doctor. Thank you, Chris. Oh, thank you, James. Yeah, okay, so usually this point in the month, we may be down a patron or two on average, as people have to leave for whatever reason and new people come in, but we are up. We have net gained one patron because new folks have been joining us and we make a big deal out of it when you do because of that. So thank you, Chris, James, and Doc. We appreciate all three of you very much. We sure do. We also appreciate you, Charlotte Henry. Where can people keep up with all the fabulous stuff you do week to week? Thank you so much. Yeah, join me over on themacobserver.com. You can listen to my podcast called Media Plus where we look at Apple in the digital media landscape. Got some dude called Tom Merrick coming on this week. Don't know if he'll be any good, but he'll let any people join. I'm at Charlotte Henry if I'm on the Twitters and if you look for my name on Amazon, you might find my book not buying it as well. Very good. Well, we appreciate your presence. As always, come back soon and often. We are live Monday through Friday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern, 2030 UTC. On this here, very show. You can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live and we are back tomorrow with Nicole Lee. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. The Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.