 Coming up on DTNS, China's thriving indie publishers receive a blow, Google blocks a decentralized chat app and Apple makes an official password management extension for Chrome. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, February 1st, 2021. Welcome to February. Happy Patreon day in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane. And I'm producing the show today. I'm Amos. Yes, Roger has the day off, but Amos is in for us today. Rich Strafilino producing as well. We were just talking on Good Day Internet about jazz drives, TIFFs for our signatures and floppy disks, as well as school dress codes. If you want that wider conversation, become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Google announced it will shut down its in-house game studio that was meant to develop games for the Stadia Game Streaming Service. General Manager for Stadia Phil Harrison cited costs as one of the reasons and said Google will focus on deepening its business partnerships. Stadia Game Studio head Jade Raymond will leave the company, so didn't even give it a year. Ford and Google announced a six year partnership that will see the automaker adopt the Android Automotive Automotive 8 platform for infotainment on Ford and Lincoln branded vehicles starting in 2023 and also use Google Cloud as its preferred cloud provider. On top of bringing embedded Google apps to drivers, the partnership will establish a collaborative group called Team Upshift. Get it? To develop new consumer experiences and services using Android Automotive for things like maintenance, trade and offers and new carbine. We're having a good conversation in our Discord's Google channel about what the security update commitment will be for that. Xiaomi filed a complaint against the US Defense and Treasury departments in a Washington District Court over being added to a list that forbids investments with firms with alleged ties to the Chinese military. Xiaomi called the action quote unlawful and unconstitutional and said the company is not controlled by China's People's Liberation Army. A new feature in the iOS 14.5 developer beta that will allow for unlocking a device with Face ID while wearing a face mask requires also wearing an Apple watch that is paired to unlock the phone with users getting a haptic buzz on the watch when unlocking the phone. So very handy if you got an iPhone and an Apple watch. Users can also lock their phone from the watch. No, it's just unlocking your phone with Apple watch really is what that sounds like to me. In Nintendo's fiscal Q3 the company announced it sold 11.57 million Switch consoles. The Switch now has outsold the 75.94 million lifetime units of the Nintendo 3DS. Company also sold 76 million software titles in the quarter. Mario Kart 8 deluxe and Animal Crossing New Horizons have both passed 30 million units sold. All right, let's talk a little more about the latest in the tit for tat between Apple and Facebook on privacy. Let's do it. Apple is implementing an app tracking transparency tool in iOS this spring that requires users to opt in to have data tracked outside of company's own app. Apple has been very vocal about how it's trying to put the control back in the hands of users to get people to do this. Facebook is testing a new pop up notification on the Facebook and Instagram iOS apps. Obviously Facebook owns Instagram both ask users to opt in to sharing their identifier for advertisers. The pop up explains how Facebook uses personalized ads that if you opt in your ads will be more personalized. You will support businesses especially small businesses won't increase the data collected but if you opt out ads will be less relevant to you. It then gives you the option to allow or don't allow that triggers the Apple privacy pop up. You see that all the time especially when you download new apps that gives you the option to ask app not to track or allow tracking Apple's app store guidelines allow for these types of prompts quote so long as you are transparent to users about your use of the data in your explanation. Yeah I guess this is getting a lot of attention today just because of Facebook and Apple you know Facebook threatening to launch an antitrust suit against Apple and and and taking full page ads out against Apple and and so this is a tangible thing in this fight of this is what Facebook's actually going to do to try to get people to convince people to opt in and to me this this feels a lot more legitimate than taking out full page ads where you try to claim small businesses are your concern Facebook is bottom line as its concern this is saying to to people hey if you opt in nothing's going to change it's already data that that we're collecting on you I mean what would change is if you didn't opt in they would collect less data but all right you know potato potato and will your ads will be better that that is a straightforward proposition and apples pop up right after that is going to say like do you want them to to track you outside of this app or not you know like everybody gets their say and then you as a consumer can make a semi-informed decision. Yeah it's the it's the order of things that I think is a little wonky when you see Facebook's you know I've only seen screenshots of both of these but when you see Facebook's hey here's what's going on we want to support businesses you know a lot of the little guys work with us we really count on you to allow those folks to be able to track you so they can you know put food on the table it's it's definitely arranged in a way where you go okay yeah this doesn't seem so bad but then when you see the apple pop up right after that is like allow Facebook to track you yes or no and so I think a lot of people by the time they see the second window they're like well no actually no maybe not maybe I don't want to do this because of course apple isn't trying to make it sound nice and rosy and yes Facebook and apple have been going back and forth about you know what's the what is the best practice for users in general when it comes to stuff like this so Facebook is definitely going to see some some fallout they are being extremely dramatic about how bad they think the fallout might be and I don't know I guess it remains to be seen but they're definitely going to be a good amount of folks especially you know people who say like well I don't trust Facebook even though I use it every day I don't trust them so that you know if I have any say in this the no don't track me I honestly there's some psychology going on here right and the psychology is we don't assume people are paying attention how can we set it up so they're more likely to choose what we want them to choose and what Facebook's doing is saying a lot of people will click allow because we made allow blue and we made don't allow gray and then when they see the next pop up from apple no matter what it says there'll be one that says allow and they'll be like yeah no I said allow and they'll double click and hopefully that will improve compliance it's sad but I mean this is the state we're in right now until we get some kind of other system that gives us control over our data rather than having other companies try to fight each over each other and try to trick us into letting them have access independent publishers thrive in China on platforms like WeChat and Toqiao there's a lot of a lot of independent publishing you may not realize how much TV shows and movies often made based on successful web novels if you know the Ten Mile series because sometimes called Eternal Love very successful web novel that was turned into a very successful TV show worldwide in China self publishers are often referred to as We Media which is both a reference to publishing on WeChat but also fan driven it's us we the people in 2020 360 million users read articles published on WeChat public accounts self publishers have always had to make sure that they don't attract the attention of Chinese censors but that usually meant just avoiding red light mind topics like China-US relations now that system is getting formalized and it's going to be bad for news a regulation published January 22nd by the cyberspace administration of China requires accounts that quote provide online news service to the public shall obtain the internet news information permit and other relevant media accreditation in other words they're cracking down on people publishing independent accounts of news on WeChat Toqiao 10 you know all those kinds of platforms by do say Sena Weibo TechCrunch notes that WeChat sent a notice to its users saying if your account lacks relevant accreditation you are advised not to edit report publish or comment on news about politics the economy military foreign affairs or other major current events it doesn't seem like this means you can't say something as a you know sena weibo user it's that you can't set yourself up as I am reporting things this may not affect the writers of Wusha novels but it will dampen independent writing about news which you may some of you may be surprised to know was happening there was some independent news bubbling up here and news permits are hard to get the authority only granted 761 of them from 2017 to 2018 remains to be seen where services like WeChat and Sena Weibo will draw the line on this stuff but it's definitely going to kick the can somewhere else those folks who like to publish independently in China will have to look for the the next new technology that doesn't have as much scrutiny well and what would a company like okay so WeChat says okay if you don't have the blue check mark so to speak you can't just start talking about news and disseminate it on the platform in you know you have to be vetted first and you have to get the go ahead how much is WeChat going to be regulating this because if if if so many people are using it this way and so many people are reading news this way and sure no matter where you are in the world whether it's China or the US or anywhere in between it is always problematic when citizens are just you know helping spread news sometimes that news is either just downright wrong sure or you know there's agenda or all that stuff so that all comes into play but WeChat doesn't want everybody to leave and and go to the next big thing that has not yet sort of been found out by the Chinese so does WeChat kind of tread a line here and maybe turn a blind eye and how much is is WeChat going to be you know how much is are they going to be taken to task for not doing enough the dynamics as I understand them and again I'm not in China but the dynamics as I understand them are WeChat will crack down on this pretty quickly and people will will fall in line because the the punishment for getting caught doing this isn't pretty and nobody nobody wants that to happen to them so I imagine that that WeChat probably won't have too much of a problem enforcing this my my question is the reason we had this happen is because this was a new technology that bubbled up and the slow moving wheels of government bureaucracy hadn't caught up with it there there's always new technology right so and we've talked before about China trying to crack down on live streams and the and the branding stuff there not the not the news situation there but is it like a cloud you know like a crowd space kind of situation is it is there some other social network that we're not hearing as much about right now and that's that's where all these folks will go I imagine there is I just don't know what it is well some good news for folks who use iCloud iCloud well it is the iron cloud hopefully that's iCloud passwords uh apple released something called iCloud passwords a chrome extension to make password stored in the iCloud keychain available in the chrome browser the extension is available for chrome on windows and mac os with passwords created using the extension on windows syncing to iCloud yeah this is this is big on the surface this doesn't feel like that big of a deal like oh apple make an extension to make it easier to use your passwords but that windows part to me made me sit up and take notice I think I think it was on smr podcast this weekend I was hearing the the the guys talking about messaging and why iMessage hasn't been made cross-platform why why for goodness sake haven't uh he has an apple made iMessage for android they could take over and and the conventional wisdom has been well apple doesn't make any money doing that so why would they but this is an indication that they don't have to make money to make something worthwhile so as apple moves slowly into services and they want to get more money on services they have a vested interest in making their services including their operating systems be more attractive which is of course you want to use your passwords on safari but you might not want to use safari password management if you also use a windows machine well guess what we're going to make it easier for you to do that I I don't want to over interpret this this could just be apple saying like hey we're all about certain security and privacy no matter where you are so we want to encourage that but it does get me one step closer to saying well now I wouldn't be too shocked if we started to hear about an iMessage for windows or an iMessage for android out there because apple may be loosening that up and saying you know what we we're not banking on devices and we're slowly going to transition into being you know the operating system that the world runs on no matter where they are yeah yeah infiltrating the way that people use devices whether they are apple made devices or not computers uh you know mobile devices all the stuff I think is really smart for apple and even though I don't use a windows machine on a daily basis because well I actually kind of switched to firefox I don't know I'm all over the place but safari is the browser I use the least not because there's anything wrong with it it's just kind of my workflow and I run into problems sometimes where I'm like oh crap yeah that's not going to work here on chrome this just makes it that much more seamless for switching between a lot of devices because more and more we're all doing that and I think apple recognizes that sure it would like to tell us what is the absolute best way to do everything and that's all apple stuff but that's not the reality of a lot of their customers and it's more attractive when people have more flexibility yeah and and yeah for me it's not really going to work either because I I want last pass or some I'm actually what I use because it's on all the operating systems that I might possibly use but this is a step in the right direction hey folks if you want to join in the conversation in our discord like I said we were in there talking about uh android automotive earlier today joined by link into a patreon account at patreon.com slash dtns friday google blocked an app called element from the google play store uh supposedly because of abusive content you may say okay this is what we're doing now and going after all these apps who don't moderate properly the interesting bit here is element is an app that accesses the matrix chat protocol element doesn't host or control matrix chats it's a decentralized or federated open source chat protocol it's a lot more like irc than it is like whatsapp ours technical points out it's a bit like banning a web browser for the content of a website element does host some matrix servers including the home server of the matrix dot org foundation itself but element says it strictly enforces its terms of service on those servers element has a full-time team dedicated to abuse reports so they do moderate what they're in control of but element lets you access all matrix chats and they're not in control of all of those that's kind of the point of a decentralized chat system and elements not new it's been around for a while you may have heard it called riot dot i am back in the day used to be called that it interoperates with slack and discord it's used by millions of people including governments including the governments of like france the us the uk several universities so this isn't a fly by night app trying to get around the rules google also didn't block other matrix clients just element and the suspicion was that google uses bots to primarily review apps and this was a bot making a mistake it couldn't tell the difference between a chat that was on under elements control and one that wasn't often bands are based on content displayed from the web in google because they don't have enough humans looking at this stuff there was a video player recently banned for supporting the dot ass video format for example late saturday element tweeted quote we just got a call from a google vp who explained the suspension was triggered by a report of extremely abusive content accessible on the matrix dot org server our trust and safety team had already acted on it and the app should be reinstated shortly and it was relisted saturday evening so it sounds like yeah probably was something that was on a server under elements control at matrix dot org possibly but that they were on top of it so maybe not a bot maybe maybe an itchy trigger finger but it does bring up this question of are we going to see trouble with decentralized apps i think a lot of people thought like well if if something like parlor can get taken down because parlors in control maybe the solution is something like mastodon or something like matrix where there is no single element in control but this shows that even those decentralized apps can still run afoul yeah the whole the whole it you know was it a bot or wasn't it google isn't being super clear about okay here's what happened here's how we don't want something like this to disrupt the service that a lot of people and governments and universities may be using because of something that may have been caught from the web because again it's like i don't know if a browser can can access something that is extremely abusive content then you wouldn't have anything in any app store right yeah browsers you wouldn't have you know social networks you wouldn't have anything so that argument doesn't really work and google isn't saying here's how we're going to make sure that this never happens again it's just sort of like oh yeah yeah yeah here's what happened we reinstated it all as well and it all happened pretty fast but you know i mean whatever a couple weeks went by what if it was a little bit of a smaller company and yeah for element to say we're you know this is just a protocol that it's not even ours i mean it's we're just one of many apps and services that might be able to access the matrix servers also bots aren't perfect everyone knows that it's going to get better over time but i don't totally know what the solution is for this not to happen again unless google says here's what we've done specifically to make sure that this doesn't happen again yeah i think that bothers me too we didn't have google come out and say oh this was a mistake or it was a misunderstanding we didn't have google come out and say anything and granted i don't expect google to come out and make a public statement on every single moderation decision in the entire google play store that's unscalable but this is a significant one i would like to hear it it's a hot button issue and when element tweeted on saturday they said the suspension was triggered by a report of content on a server they controlled well okay that's not a bot necessarily that's something that was under control the argument with parlor was that they didn't have enough moderation in place is that what google was saying here they didn't have enough moderation in place was it some google staffer who like just acted too quickly and google looked at it later and like no no no they have moderation in place and it's enough because elements saying our trust and safety team already acted on this like we didn't we didn't wait we acted on it but we got yanked anyway uh it's i i think you're right there we need to hear more from google about it microsoft opened its azure quantum service to the public this will initially provide cloud access to dozens of cubits on ion trapped based quantum computers from honeywell and ion q with plans to offer designs from quantum circuits as well in the future microsoft plans to eventually use its own quantum computer designs for the service and is working on a cubit controller chip called gooseberry to govern thousands of cubits at once i really like the name initial commercial tests of azure quantum will focus on the always popular molecular engineering finding more efficient carbon fixing and working with car maker bmw on optimal electric charging station deployments and also as we previously mentioned auto part supply chain logistics quantum computing might not be mainstream just yet but as your quantum now joins google clouds q network and aws's bracket as quantum computing offerings from the big three public clouds as well as systems from ibm d wave and others yeah this is this is just interesting to note we have gone from you know 10 years or so ago wondering if a d wave computer was really quantum or not is it really a quantum computer is it just a classic computer that uses something that's kind of quantum two full systems available in the cloud from all three of the big cloud vendors microsoft amazon and google as well as ibm as well as others out there like this i was comparing this to where we were with mainframe computers in the late 60s early 70s that's where we are now with with quantum computers they're they're available for you to rent mostly for research purposes still not terribly practical but we've moved we've moved from concept to actual services and tom if i could jump in here real quick uh the one of the interesting things with microsoft you might say they're late to the game to the last public cloud ibm and d wave have been doing this for like you said for for years now they put out q sharp which is part of their quantum sdk kit all the way back in late 2017 and so that was you know there was doing quantum simulation but setting the software groundwork so that when something like azure quantum services comes out developers can hit the ground running or at least have gotten their feet wet a little bit still extremely early days but they have been working on the software side of this as well that's great to know thank you rich strafflino producer of today's show as well nikey wants to save you all a back bend or two or three or all of them the companies go fly ease sneaker is hands-free totally hands-free meaning that you can step in and out of your shoes which look like running shoes they're not slip-ons they're not slides using a by stable hinge the go fly ease can snap into place thanks to a tensioner it's sort of a giant rubber band type thing that sits above the midsole kind of goes all the way around the shoe and works the same way in reverse if you want to take your shoes off now nikey initially made the shoes for people with disabilities limited mobility making it easy to get shoes on and off but it might be pretty attractive to you as it is to me because I often have a lot of things in my hands when I'm you know at the front door I want my shoes to be able to get in and off but I want them to be nice and sturdy a soft launch is set for February 15th for select nikey members they'll receive invites to purchase and a wider launch is set for later this year all right so my immediate jaded reaction to this story was here we go again with nikey and doing a publicity stunt with with some shoes that aren't really you know any kind of blah blah but then the more the more I looked at it the more I realized that this is in fact something that I absolutely would want to have I love them we are a household that takes our shoes off immediately when we come in the door and like many households around the world not all but but many so I I love the idea of having some shoes that I could just step in to walk out of the house step out when I walk back in yeah I you know I do a lot of jogging and you know anybody who's I mean even if you're doing like longer distance walking your shoes have to fit just so and laces are a big part of that especially if you kind of break your shoes in it's like you know you kind of you need to make sure that it's nice and form fitting and and it's good for your feet with something that's a slip on you know my first thing is like how snug is it going to be without being too snug but put all that aside I think they look really cool and I would love these shoes well there you go you got us again Nike all right fine yeah make them available the problem with all these things is these stunts are never available like I never see them available for purchase anywhere they're always select members so we'll see what happens all right let's check out the mailbag let's do it on Friday we had Lamar Wilson as our guest on the show and Tim wrote in and said on Friday show Lamar seemed surprised that Alabama had so much to do with space Tom mentioned that Huntsville Alabama has the space and rocket center but there's more to it than that Huntsville Alabama also has a rich history with space Werner von Braun and his team developed and tested the Saturn V rocket Saturn 5 rocket in Huntsville much of the U.S. military weapons and space technology comes from Huntsville and just two weeks ago Huntsville Redstone Arsenal to be exact was chosen as the headquarters for the new space force there's so much more that connects Alabama to space if you really want to come visit Alabama Tim says even if you don't Lamar we'd love to show you around yeah I I have very fond memories of going to visit my uncle who lived in Sheffield out of Alabama when I was I don't know it was about 12 years old and going over to Huntsville and seeing the space museum I mean that was back in the early 80s and I yeah it's it's only taken off as they say since then so yeah shout out to Huntsville Alabama I know we have listeners more than more than just Tim there so so thank you folks out there in Huntsville Alabama for for all you do for the space program good stuff thank you Tim for keeping us up to speed I've never actually been to anywhere in Alabama so Tim will hold you to it detain us coming through one of these days if you have some feedback for us questions comments or anything feedback at dailytechnewshow.com is where to send those emails we also like to shout out patrons at our master and grand master levels today they include David Mosher Reed Fishler and Mark Gibson well folks it's patron day first day of the month so this is when patreon pays us out they the funds that you have given so generously to help make the show possible and to reward people who stick with us we're happy to offer patreon loyalty rewards you 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