 Coming up on DTNS House space agencies and fuel cell makers are among those helping fight COVID-19. Microsoft adds new features to Office 365 and gives it a new name. And while increased surveillance seems to help battle the virus in some places, can it work everywhere? This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, March 30th, 2020. In Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Very pleased to have joining us today, host of Marketplace Tech, Molly Wood. Welcome back, Molly. Aw, thanks, guys. I'm so excited to be here. It's nice to see all your faces. One of the reasons, I mean, we always want Molly on the show, but one of the reasons we especially wanted to have her today is it's the 15th anniversary of the first publication of CNET's Buzz Out Loud, which Molly and I hosted for years, way back in 2005. We started that. 2005. No big deal. Just one of the world's first podcasts, just saying. That was back when people left their house. It was a different time. In fact, we were just talking about supply chains and supply chain risk and masks and micron chips and all kinds of stuff with Molly. If you want to get that wider conversation, become a member and get good day internet at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Microsoft announced use of Azure services in regions with shelter in place orders increased 775% with use of services like Microsoft Teams, Windows Virtual Desktop and Power BI. The company announced last week it would be prioritizing Azure services to first responders, medical facilities and other healthcare applications. Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island, New York walked off the job Monday demanding better treatment during the COVID-19 outbreak. Workers at Amazon owned Whole Foods are organizing a sick out for Tuesday demanding paid sick leave for those who self quarantine, free virus testing and hazard pay. And the gig workers collective is calling for Instacart shoppers to strike today in a call for better sick pay among other things. Zoom updated its iOS app to stop sending device data to Facebook. According to a Zoom spokesperson, the company will eventually remove the login with Facebook SDK entirely and allow users to log in with Facebook through a browser. After shutting down a little more than a month ago, HQ Trivia returned over the weekend. Sarah, did you catch it? I didn't, but I followed the story closely because I want to know who paid all the money to bring it back to life. Yes, they announced that it was an undisclosed investor. We don't know who it was. Sources tell The Verge that more episodes will air in the future, although an actual schedule has not been announced. I really wish it were me, but I could just be like, surprise. Surprise announcement. It's me. I hope it's fun still. I don't know. I loved HQ Trivia. AMD announced the Ryzen 4000 series of mobile APUs at CES and the first reviews of the new chips are finally coming out. PCMag found that the 8-core Ryzen 9 4900HS chip from ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 laptop offered comparable or even better performance than current Intel i9 mobile chips, but significantly was also able to put the 4900HS into a 14 inch 3.5 pound laptop, nice and small. Reviewers also saw strong battery life from the Zephyrus G14 with The Verge getting almost nine hours on a charge with general use. Nothing too crazy. AMD has competed with Intel on desktop performance really since the launch of its Zen architecture back in 2017, but the initial Ryzen 4000 reviews seem to show that AMD is now competitive in mobile as well. And Alan Maldon with a consulting firm Telegeography wrote on telegeography.com about the impact COVID-19 is having on the undersea cable industry. Cable factories are running close to capacity to meet demand for undersea cables, but quarantines have led one manufacturer to close two major factories pushing back new deployments. Now the good news is the existing cable framework has plenty of existing capacity that can be lit up. The bad news is that these cables need frequent maintenance. More than a hundred breaks happen a year on average in undersea cables. Repairing these cables requires manned crews as well as more problematically permits from governments to access ports and territorial waters, something that was already causing delays before the virus. While access to networks has been a priority for those working from home, Maldon calls for governments to expedite the permit process to ensure the backhaul can keep up. All right, let's talk a little bit more about these Microsoft announcements, Sarah. Yeah, we got a bunch. Microsoft announced it will add new features to its Office 365 subscription service and rename it Microsoft 365. That makes sense. Along with the normal Office apps, you'll get Microsoft Editor and Office apps, which recommends word choices. More concise ways of writing something could be helpful. A PowerPoint feature listens as you rehearse and might recommend changes. You might want to say it this way. Excel can connect with banks to download spending data. And family safety will let parents monitor their kids' screen time on Windows, Android, and even Xbox. It shows which apps are being used, offers change of location alerts. There are also third-party integrations with software from Adobe, Headspace, and Bark. And the price stays the same when it becomes available on April 21. It'll be $6.99 US per month for an individual plan and $9.99 per month for a family of up to six members. So this is taking a cue from the enterprise version. Microsoft 365 is already a name they use there. And I think the fact that everybody was like, okay, but how much, but how much, and they're like, it's the same price. If you already have Office 365, you're just going to get all the extra stuff. It means that I think this is probably just nice to have extras that Microsoft is providing. Molly, what do you think? I mean, I was listening to you read this and thinking, did it seriously not have all of that already? Like you're telling me Excel couldn't connect with banks to download spending data until now? Like you better not charge more for that. Great feature ads, guys. Like this is just a fancy software update. I mean, these all sound great. These all sound great, but I'm not giving them any points for not changing the pricing. Because this is all just like, yep, stuff they should totally have. Good call. And it's all a lot of AI stuff. I mean, the bank stuff, I think you could do some downloads, but now it'll actually be able to categorize stuff for you and do some smarter stuff. And particularly the PowerPoint and the Microsoft editor features are using AI. So that's Microsoft's big pitch is where we're putting smarts in your stuff. You could do some basic stuff before, but now it'll be able to do more stuff on its own. That PowerPoint thing I'm very suspicious of. I'm a little suspicious of that. I do want to know more about Bark. We've all sat through enough PowerPoint presentations that there are a wide range of styles. So I'd like to know, yes, how my PowerPoint, my future PowerPoint presentation, might be made better by the Microsoft software man or woman. I hope exactly. Too many words. Too many words. Too many words. Too many words. Bad points. Stupid image. Microsoft also announced a consumer version of Teams that will launch later this year, including tools suited for families and small groups. A lot of emphasis on families and groups. Along with the expected features, there will be some specific ones such as sharing grocery lists, organizing family calendars, storing things like Wi-Fi passwords, and other account info shared in a family or a group. Microsoft Teams for Android and iOS will get these features in preview in the coming months. So if you're wondering, hmm, we haven't heard about Skype. What's going on with Skype? Microsoft's corporate VP for modern life, search and devices, Youssef Mehdi told TechCrunch, quote, we remain committed to Skype. Skype today is used by 100 million people on a monthly basis. The way I think about it is that Skype is a great solution today for personal use. A lot of broadcast companies use it as well. Yeah, it's funny how the coverage here, Microsoft was like, hey, we've got cool like family stuff for teams and every tech outlet was like, are you killing Skype? Is that what you're trying to tell us? And they're like, no, not yet. It seemed to be the response. I mean, if Skype was elegantly rolled into Microsoft Teams, I wouldn't have an issue with it, as long as you could use it as a standalone product the way that, I mean, we're using Skype right now. So I get why Microsoft's like the Skype brand is too strong for us to do anything too crazy with it, but it makes sense that they would want to roll it into a, you know, a big fat suite of a bunch of apps that are supposed to help us connect with each other. It doesn't, it feels like such a strange, that feels like such a weird statement, like an almost like a pre-coronavirus statement to sort of be like, Skype is a great solution for personal use and a lot of broadcast companies also use it as well, such as like, guys, do you not realize how badly your lunch is being eaten by Zoom right now because everybody needs a video chat solution? Like it's such a strange, faint praise for Skype at a time when this is like everything. I think the team's family is trying to say like, hey, everybody can use this. You can use, you could do Teams stuff just like Zoom and some people are. And yeah, they could have leaned into that a little more. I, my guess from what Mehdi said is that Skype is going to be positioned as an individual, like a chat tool, not a, not a Teams tool, but an individual tool. And maybe they finally will acknowledge that all of us use it for media stuff and tune it to that. That would be amazing. Yeah, good point. Some browser updates for Microsoft as well. The Chromium based version of Microsoft Edge is getting vertical tabs in its preview channels within the next few months. It'll also get smart copy, which can let you do things like preserve table formatting when you copy from a website into some sort of a document. It looked pretty cool actually. Password Monitor and Edge will notify you if it finds one of your passwords has been stolen and then direct you to the proper page to change that password. Microsoft also announced its collections bookmarking feature will come to mobile later this year. All right. Let's do a roundup of what technology is doing to help fight COVID-19. We've been doing this almost every day for the past week or so. Medical device maker Abbott has received emergency use authorization from the US FDA for the use of its existing ID now lab in a box for COVID-19 testing. This uses molecular testing to look for viral RNA and can be used outside of a hospital and return results positive results within five minutes or an all clear within 13 minutes. Abbott hopes to be able to deliver 50,000 tests per day by next week. Fuel cell maker Bloom Energy is delivering 170 certified repaired ventilators to Los Angeles that had been in storage since the mid 2000s but did not work properly when they were delivered. The original manufacturer said it would take a month to fix them. So the governor of California went to Bloom and said, what can you do? And Bloom was able to do it in a couple of weeks. Bloom believes it can refurbish close to a thousand of these a week and is starting to look for others that it can help repair. The German space agency DLR announced it successfully tested converting its aerospace grade 3D printers to make medical equipment like ventilators and face masks. The work comes from the agency's system house technique engineering group which used crowdsourced and open source templates for manufacturing. We talked about a lot of those efforts last week. DLR is sharing what it learned with other institutions to help them ramp up production as well and is working on getting their products certified by health care agencies at the same time. Finally, the lab management company Battelle received special emergency authorization from the US FDA to implement a system to decontaminate N95 respirator masks so they can be reused using concentrated hydrogen peroxide. The masks are designed for single use, but the decantamination system lets them be used up to 20 times. Process takes two and a half hours and Battelle currently has capacity for 80,000 masks per day. The company is partnering with the Columbus Ohio based Ohio Health as its first health care system partner. You hear a lot about shortages of ventilators. That last one was amazing. You kind of go like, oh, of course, you know, if the right solution is applied and all germs are killed, of course, but it's nice that we're hearing about it now. Get it done, get it done FDA. I mean, that's yeah, that right there will save lives. I mean, almost everything on that list will save lives, which is a pretty incredible time to be living in in some way. It's like, wow. Yeah, and it's none of these are silver bullets. I think a lot of times people see a headline and they're like, well, that's not enough. Like the German space agency is not going to be printing these in large amounts. It's in the tens, but they've showed like, well, we can do some. And if we share what we figured out with other people, then they can do some and they can do some. And if we get these certified, then they're useful. And this is building on what we talked about last week where people were coming together and say, let's just share information about who can do what, who's got plans. Let's make those plans available. And DLR was able to say, oh, those are the plans. Great. Well, we can do that. Let's start talking with people about what we can do. And this, this is how you get a group of people who are willing to actually work on it to do things that make stuff better. Yeah. And it's just a, you know, it's just more of an argument for everybody else staying home because the more we can slow this train down. The more we buy ourselves time for the kind of ingenuity that we've never seen throughout human history before. Yeah. Like humans can do this. It's going to take a lot of coordination. And thankfully the internet makes that possible. So let's make sure that backhaul stays repaired so the internet keeps working like it takes all of us. Like we're in this together really, like we really are like the entire planet has never before seen this amazing to watch. Hey, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to dailytechheadlines.com. All right, let's talk about testing and tracking as sort of the thing that people have been saying people who are in a medical health positions of expertise say or what you need to combine to fight this. Germany hopes to launch a smartphone app within weeks to trace people infected by the coronavirus. We've told you about the one they do in Singapore called Trace Together. Germany's is going to be similar to that. It's voluntary. It uses Bluetooth to detect when you're near each other. The Fraunhofer Institute for Telecom's Heinrich Hertz Institute is working with others in Europe to save the duration and contact between people on your phone for two weeks anonymously without using location data. The Bluetooth tells you when you're near the person, right? The effort has gained support across party lines. Now, over here in the United States, the Wall Street Journal says our CDC, state and local governments, have used anonymized location data from mobile ads to aid in pandemic response plans. Data is received through the COVID-19 mobility data network project coordinated by Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Princeton and other schools with the goal of creating a portal with information on up to 500 cities in the U.S. So, this, again, is anonymized location and aggregate to tell how many people are where or do we see people, you know, gathering together. Are these different? In a recent Engadget piece, Violet Blue points out that while South Korea and European Union countries have turned to smartphone apps and services to track citizens, these countries have strong privacy legislation that puts limits on the long-term impacts. European countries have to meet GDPR requirements to collect data. Singapore has privacy laws that require individual consent. That's why the Trace Together app is voluntary. In Korea, people know what was collected, how it would be used and, importantly, when it would be erased. In fact, on March 9th, South Korea's Vice Health Minister, Kim Ganglip, said public participation must be secured through openness and transparency, adding that his team was making efforts to respect creative thinking and use cutting-edge technology to develop the most effective means of response. The tracking is also only worthwhile when it's combined with testing and any other efforts to help people. Violet Blue writes, most of the countries showing success with coronavirus tracing have unique current legislation specific to pandemics with provisions on data collection. Here in the United States, I think it would be charitable to describe our privacy protection as patchwork at best. Molly, is it even possible in countries like the United States who don't have strong privacy protections to make something like this work? I mean, we talked about this a little bit with respect to Singapore. I talked about it on the show today. The thing about the MIT has that app where they're hoping to get people to voluntarily download it and report information. The Singapore app works similarly, but the thing is, like, there is a strong central authority in Singapore that can basically say, everyone has to do this. We do not, put charitably, have that in the United States. Like, there is no one person who can say everybody needs to do this, and then everybody will do it. So while the technique is sound great, on the other side of the equation, we have a massive existing surveillance network with crap tons of useful data in it. And so the idea that governments, including ours, are going to sort of sit there and be like, well, it would be better if we did it in a voluntary way when this thing is like moving like wildfire. And they're, you know, like on the one hand, yes, you're going to have people who take advantage of it, profiteers who say, great, this is our chance. We've been wanting this data all along for law enforcement and a million other reasons. So this is our chance to sort of like weaken these protections and take it. But it also is this kind of dilemma where they're like, but the data is there now and if we access it now, we have the potential to do real good with it. All that adds up to the likely end of privacy, but I can also see the reasoning. Well, and that's the problem, right, is we don't have a trustworthy system to begin with. So when there is the data that would be incredibly useful. Again, if there's proper testing to go along with it, which is a whole separate issue that has to be there as well. But let's say that we fix the testing issue. We're getting there. And we have the ability to collect the data. Look at Germany. Germany is a country that historically is very anti-surveillance these days. You were seeing Germany leaving the effort to create GDPR. But because of that, when companies say or when the government says we need this information now, we would like you to give it to us and we promise that we will respect GDPR and it will remain anonymized, etc. People believe them because they're like, we've been fighting for this for a long time. We trust that this won't erode our privacy too much because we have protections in place. But in the United States, because we don't have those protections. When someone says, look, we just want it for now, we promise that this will go away later. People don't trust it because we have had the opposite experience of people saying they weren't doing things that, in fact, they were doing that or worse. Yep. Exactly. I mean, I just don't... Like the best thing that our government could do for us now, paging Ron Wyden, America's, you know, the Internet Senator, Senator of the Internet, is to enact legislation that says whatever data is collected and used now will be deleted. Like just give us a deletion date. You know, it'll be deleted in a year and a half. It'll be deleted upon receipt of a vaccine, whatever. But there's no... And I say this with a heavy heart. I'm not, you know, in no way am I sort of trying to say that this is an okay outcome. There's no scenario. Like we created a massive global real-time surveillance network. Privacy experts have been telling us for decades that it was only a matter of time before somebody turned it on. And today is that day. There's no way they're going to be like, nah. Because the thing is like, yes, it is more efficient if it is attached to testing, but even without testing, you can see where people are congregating. You can predict hot spots based on the failure of social isolation. Like there is still information that can lead to predictive analytics that can be gleaned from smartphones now even in an absence of testing. And health officials are going to push for that too. They're going to be like, give us all the data because we'd have none and anything will help. I think it shows another gap in what we've got going on because you're absolutely right. We can have that anonymized, aggregated data. That stuff, like we mentioned from the CDC, can be helpful in showing where people are. But what you've got in Korea, what you've got in Taiwan, what you've got in Singapore are knowing who got infected when, where they went and who they met with so that you can lock that down immediately. And you don't have to overcompensate by making everyone stay at their home because you have a better handle on it. And we don't have that because people abused the privilege. And so we fought against collection and collection actually was never that good to begin with as it is if you have people openly, transparently, voluntarily helping to fight this. In Korea, people want to do this again because they know what's being collected, what it's being used for, and when it will go away. And if you have those three things, then people are willing to give you more than they will ever give you if those three things aren't there. Yeah. I mean, honestly, besides you and I and Sarah and Violet Blue and a couple, you know, and privacy experts who have been mad about this for a long time, let's be real though, like Americans long ago said goodbye to their privacy. Like they just did. And I don't know. I mean, I'm now I on 15 years after we started buzz out loud I sit around a lot and think about the stuff that I just the battles that we have lost over the years. Like, we have lost a lot of battles and it is possible that we have lost the battle for privacy in this country. Well, and so many, so many of those battles, you know, they're so convoluted, right? It's not like, do you care about privacy or not? It is the fact that your privacy is being violated worse than all the fun stuff, you know, and interesting stuff you can do with this product that's been built. And there are many times where I'm like, hmm, not sure. Or yeah, I guess my privacy suffers, but I think I'm benefiting more on this side of things. So a situation like this, as you mentioned, Molly, it's very hard in a extremely uncertain and scary time, you know, for people to be like privacy first always. Well, some people do say that. But in general, this is, you know, it's a tougher question to answer. But once it goes, it's not going to come back. And that's, you know, that's the reality that I think your point being made is for the most part, this is less privacy than ever. And it is uncharted territory. I don't know. I keep saying that term because it just keeps being that. It's the worst of both worlds, though, right? We haven't lost enough privacy to be able to fight this virus effectively the way South Korea is, for example, or Taiwan or Singapore. But we also haven't created systems that protect our privacy so that you are trustworthy that like, OK, if I give this privacy up, I know I'll get it back, right? Because we don't have those safety nets. So I mean, that that's where I'm at is like, gosh, if we had fixed this problem, then we could get people to give up privacy in the in the short period. But we can't. And that's because a lot of privacy was lost already. Like you say, Molly, but unfortunately or fortunately, but not enough to actually be able to use that data to solve this problem because they don't have the granular data that they could get if everyone voluntarily trusted a system and was willing to contribute information to it. Right. And so because it's imprecise and it isn't paired with testing, it's going to be way broader in terms of collection. Then it needs to be right and this being America. There will also be those who take advantage. There will be the absolutely be those who say this is my chance. Well, if you would like to solve that for us, email us feedback into the technical show dot com. We and the rest of the country would appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, or you can you can bat around some ideas in our discord. It's social distancing, but it's like you're with a bunch of friends at the same time you can join by linky to a patreon account at patreon.com slash DTNS. All right, let's check in with Chris Christensen, the amateur traveler who's not currently traveling who's got a tip for those working for home perhaps for the first time and getting used to some remote working software. This is Chris Christensen from amateur traveler with another tech in not traveling minute. If you are working at home and that is not something you're used to you may also be getting used to tools like slack, which is a messaging program that helps you stay connected with your coworkers. One trick for getting used to slack is you probably should go into slack and spend some time customizing the notifications by default slack will notify you when anybody says anything in any channel you follow. And while you won't be missing out on things, you may not get anything done with those settings, but you can go in and change the settings on a channel by channel basis for some like the hobby channel just turn off the notifications and check when you have some time. Some channels you'll want to hear everything and other channels maybe only if someone mentions you hope you're safe. Hope you're productive. This is Chris Christensen from amateur traveler. Yeah, man. I managing slack notifications is it is a skill. I think it's it's or even an art. I don't know. It's one of the dark art. It is a dark art. Every working works when slack first started to you know really gain in popularity. It was like the early days of AOL instant messenger where you were like turn off your sound notifications. Did he did he did he did he every two seconds. But yeah, I'm I'm if you add me directly or you DM me on slack, I will see it. Otherwise, I'll get to it when I get to it or not at all. Yeah, let's check out the doesn't work. Let's check out the mailbag. Rob in Iranian cold Toronto a suburb of Toronto rather Rob says just want you to know how much I appreciate GDI because you and your regulars and your guests are such good human beings. Thanks, Rob. GDI has grown my affection for you and my appreciation of what a great tech show you have created. I've learned so much about the tech world, not just the news, but what it might mean and how it fits into how we live, how we act, how we think as people living together in this time. Truly enjoy the banter before and after the show and what you share with me and your other listeners. Thank you. Thank you, Rob. Of course, he started the internet, the extended show. We get a lot of good feedback from folks, but every so often I'm like, that was really nice. Thanks, Rob. You're a cool dude. Shout out to our patrons at our master and grandmaster levels, all cool people as well. Kevin S Morgan at Dandorado Hankins and John Johnston are our star pupils today. Also, thanks to Molly Wood. Molly Wood, not sure when you've been on DGNS Last, but it's been a minute. Let folks know where they can keep up with why you're so busy. You can't come on the show that often. I know. I'm so sorry. Even now you've probably seen me slacking. Marketplacetech.org is the daily radio show and Make Me Smart.org is the podcast that I do with Kaira Rizal, which has gone daily to basically just try to make sense of every single day in coronavirus times. So you can get a little daily 15 minute update and make me smart feed. Excellent. Thank you, Molly, for fitting us in today. I really appreciate it. Happy anniversary, man. Happy anniversary. That's amazing. We've been taking the end of the show to kind of shout out people doing amazing stuff that you might want to know about so you can help support them. Matt wrote in and said, I can't believe it's been 15 years. I started listening to Buzz out loud on CNET when I was an undergrad. Now I'm a father, husband and school principal, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of the news information and calm perspectives. I'll be upping my Patreon pledge this week to cover for those who can't continue. I appreciate all that you do. I wanted to let my fellow audience members know about our open classes for K through 8 students. My school's teachers are posting all of their lessons at DaVinciTree.academy.onlinelearning for anyone to join. There's no fee, no sign up, no registration. We simply want to help kids whose schools don't have the resources to broadcast daily lessons during the shutdown. Lessons will range from 20 minutes for kindergartners to 2 hours for middle schoolers, and while our production value is nowhere near DTNS, we hope we can offer some hope and benefit to our online community during these stressful times. Thank you, Matt. And again, that is DaVinciTree.academy, D-A-V-I-N-C-I-Tree.academy.onlinelearning. Don't forget, you can also support the show Patreon.com slash DTNS, and that's it for us. Our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. Keep the feedback coming, and if you can join us live, if you're Friday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern, that's 20-30 UTC, and you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Back tomorrow with Patrick Beja. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com.