 Coming up on DTNS, Facebook and Google take different approaches to sharing location information with epidemiologists, tech efforts to help you deal with COVID-19, and whether the internet is feeling more 90s-era. Is the internet actually a little nicer? This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, April 3rd, 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. Drawing the top tech stories from Cleveland Lockdown, I'm Len Peralta. I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. And joining us, it's been too long. Chris, Ashley, cohost of the SMR podcast is back. How's it going, Chris? Hey, it's going well. How you guys doing? We're we're doing as well as can be expected, you know, we're making it through every day. So glad to be back. Missed my DTNS fan. What up, though? Yeah, yeah, we got some good stuff to talk about today. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Trent Lowe and members of SECKC, a Kansas City based security meetup group, made a program called ZWARD Dial that automatically guesses Zoom meeting IDs and gathers information such as date and time, the meeting organizer and the meeting topic. ZWARD Dial avoids Zoom's attempt to block such searches by working through Tor. It can't find password protected meetings, though. So it can't find everything. The intercept notes that encryption keys are sometimes issued by servers based in China, even if participants are all in the US. And citizenlab.ca explains that encryption used the encryption uses nonstandard AES 128 key and ECB mode, which is nonstandard and more vulnerable to attack. Apple informed US employees that Apple retail stores will remain closed until at least early May with work from home procedures kept in place for that time. According to Apple, Senior Vice President of Retail Deirdre O'Brien, stores reopening will be determined by, quote, thorough, thoughtful reviews and the latest guidance from local governments and public health experts. A product screen in the Apple store for a Belkin screen protector briefly listed as supporting the iPhone 7, the iPhone 8 and the iPhone SE. That indicates that not only Apple's iPhone SE is real, but also that the screen size would be the same as the iPhone 7 and 8. Surprisingly, the listing has since been changed to only refer to the 7th and 8th. Filming of TV and movies in China has resumed for the first time since the country shut down in February. Traffic jams have returned in Shanghai and Shenzhen, though Beijing still has restrictions on transport. New film and TV productions are expected to be ready for release there in Q3 or Q4. Singapore has ordered schools to close all, but essential workplaces are ordered to shut starting next Tuesday. So kind of everything's going down. The country is one of the first outside of China to discover COVID-19 infections, but it managed until now to keep the spread low by tracking and tracing individuals. Prime Minister Lee noted that new cases were coming from people who hadn't been identified. The USFCC has approved a $200 million program to fund telehealth services and devices for health providers. Hospitals, other health centers can apply for up to a million dollars to help pay for space, equipment and personnel to begin or expand telehealth services. And a second 100 million program separate from the 200 million program was authorized to support long term telehealth efforts to be rolled out over the next two years. Students from the Swiss University EPFL have a bra as in brazier designed to detect early stage breast cancer and also designed to be nearly imperceptible. The smart bras it's known uses ultrasound waves generated by piezoelectric sensors embedded inside the bra instead of low energy x-rays that are used by mammograms and they run on energy generated when pressure is applied to the piezoelectric material. The students are working with a startup called Icosamed and they hope to bring the smart bra to market in 2021. And Google's rolling back at same site cookie requirements in Chrome that blocked most third party cookies unless they were specifically set by the website you're on. The idea of blocking them was to encourage sites to change their practices to protect privacy but with resources taken up with complications related to COVID-19, they are causing some login problems and website complications and Google is going to give sites more time to adapt. All right, let's talk a little bit about some location sharing happening between Google, Facebook and government health agencies. Google published a COVID-19 community mobility report analyzing its tracking data to show population movements in 131 countries. Google believes that health officials could use the data to shape recommendations on business hours or inform delivery service offerings, among other things, including things like transport. A disclaimer, however, on the publication notes that this data should not be used for medical, diagnostic, prognostic or treatment purposes or for guidance on personal travel plans, which has led a lot of people to accuse Google of doing this as a PR stunt. Google, however, is working with epidemiologists on a separate data set forecasting the path of the pandemic. The data in the publicly posted data set is from users who have turned on location history. The reports use differential privacy. So they add noise. They do not report full numbers. So you can't start to try to deduce who's in a group. And there's a lower threshold on the number of people shown. So if it's just one person, you won't see it on the graph. That way you can't figure out who that person is. The data is compared to a baseline period from before COVID-19. And some example numbers, the US report for March 29 shows a 47% drop in retail and recreation 22% drop in grocery and pharmacy and 19% drop in visits to the parks. Italy, by comparison, shows a 94% drop in retail and recreation 85% drop in grocery and pharmacy and 90% drop in visits to parks and beaches. Now that's what Google is doing. Sarah, what's Facebook doing? Yeah, it's a related move, but not the same. Facebook is providing mobile data location to US cities and states to evaluate the effectiveness of social distance orders. The COVID-19 mobility data network with researchers from 40 universities has been studying the data and then sharing insights with California, Massachusetts, and New York City with more cities and states in talks to join as well. Facebook aggregates data several times. It strips identifying information, and then it provides it only to academics. The company has run a disease prevention maps program for almost a year and aid of other outbreaks like cholera in Mozambique. Smaller location tracking services are ready to provide input to the research research network as well. Yeah, we actually talked about that mobility data network on Monday's show. So there's a couple of different efforts here. It seems like Facebook is being more transparent about what they're doing with health care professionals while Google is being a little less transparent about that, but trying to give some data out there just sort of for public interest sake. Chris, what do you make of these two? So first off, I'm so torn by these reports because the immediate thing for me is like, folks, if you don't know by now that you're being tracked, then you know, right? Thankfully, yes, they are anonymizing the data. So you're not necessarily going to be exposed. But you know, this is what's happening with your data on your phone, right? You're being tracked. Now, with that said, the I understand the importance of what they're trying to do because this is important. But I'm wondering, what is the overall end game here? Because clearly, we're seeing, at least in this country alone, that if the state officials don't care, they're not going to give the orders to stay home. So what difference does it make anyway? Right? So I like to understand if they have additional information around this. So like, you know, which I did see in some of the reports, like they were saying, well, these orders were given here. So we contracted that the amount of movement in that timeframe. So that's good to understand. And then we can they can see that these people are just completely ignoring it, you know, where the beaches were open, everybody flooded the beaches, even though they shouldn't have if they were paying attention to anything that was going on. So man, I don't know, it's good news that we can track this type of information so we can make better decisions. But it's depressing news because even given the information, a lot of officials don't care about the facts and the information, they just don't do anything about it. So I don't know what to make about this overall. You know, the argument that Google's move is more of a PR stunt than anything, because it's not really supposed to inform decisions that, you know, people in the medical industry might make. I mean, it doesn't mean it's not valuable, though. I tend to fall on the side of, okay, that's a disclaimer because there's some legality and, you know, moral issues at stake here. But the information, and as you said, Chris, yeah, it's getting tracked, you know, doing something good with data like that in this situation, because we're not out of any, however, the bad the woods are that we're in, we're certainly not out of them yet. You know, I tend to be like, you know, let's figure out what we can make of this. Let's try to get a little bit smarter because we're all, you know, instead of panicking and not doing things correctly. But yeah, how important this data is going to be to the people who end up making the decisions. That's, you know, that's a real barrier to entry. That's the rub that I see is like, you know, we have the data. Great. We can track this information. Awesome. We can see, you know, what areas need to be more restricted. But when you have, then when you present that data, something has to happen, right? And the question is how confident are we that some that the people who have to make that thing happen are going to do anything, right? And yeah, unfortunately, I guess if they put this information out publicly, what like they're doing, and they're talking about it now, at least people who have connected brain cells can say, Oh, this is happening in my area. People aren't listening. Let me take extra precaution. Like I went to Home Depot this morning because my smoker, the lighter I use for my smoker was broken. And the parking lot was so packed. I didn't even leave my truck. I turn around and went back home. Yeah, you got sense. Yeah, I was like, nah, not doing it, you know, and I just grabbed my, my blowtorch and worked just fine. So I was like, Okay, cool. We avoided that. But I'm just like, but are other people going to think like that? Or the majority of people going to think like that, right? And so the data is there. Awesome. The information is there. The correlation is there. But are the right people in place to affect change because of this information? That worries me. Yeah, two couple of notes before we move off this. Google's only doing this if you have your location history turned on. So you this is a great reminder that you might have turned it on. So go check and maybe you want it on right now to contribute to this data set. But it's good to know whether you have location history turned on. You did have to opt in to do that. But there's a lot of reasons you might have been nudged to turn it on and then forgot that you had it on. You know, I completely forgot. I prefer to have it on. But but it was one of those things where I was like, oh, yeah. Yep. So that that is a good reminder that you are being tracked in a lot of cases. And then I mean, to your point, Chris, the good thing is Facebook and Google both sharing information with epidemiologists. So they're getting it to the right people. And those people know what to do with it and what recommendations to make. And that, you know, and then you leave it up to the epidemiologist to try to make their case, right? Right. Kind of related to this on TechCrunch AI expert, Mark Minovich is laying out principles for using AI systems to help fight the virus. That includes using AI to examine data sets like the one we were just talking about. The principles he lays out are data anonymization, like we were talking about, purpose limitation. In other words, it's only going to be used for fighting the virus. You won't run these AIs and go, you know, they're really good at this, let's use it for this other thing too, like just just keep it from mission creep, knowledge sharing and open access so that everybody can see the data and start helping to draw conclusions, see how it's being used, and a time limitation to prevent temporary measures from outlasting the reason they were begun, put a sunset on it so that it can't keep being used. That also helps to put the purpose limitation as well. The United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute is working to advance these principles that already had been before this for use of AI. And this just makes it even more important that they continue to do so. Yeah, so I love that, by the way. Yeah, the idea of like AI only in an emergency, then it cannot, it will not wake again. So we really need it. And that's the thing we always have to be careful of, right, is when we have powerful situations like this, you know, attacks, this is where we start giving up our liberties. This is where we start giving up, you know, our own personal control in the vein of being safe and never again, right? Yeah, I'm glad that these type of guidelines are coming out earlier and earlier and earlier. And I just hope that they continue to be championed, you know, just like when you see a lot more with the surveillance cameras, and people are you know, trying to create guidelines around how that data can be used. You know, I love that they're doing this early and hopefully they continue to do it louder and louder. Yeah, it's it's like putting out a fire with bathwater, but not throwing the baby with it. Right. Right. Keep the baby. The New York Post rounds up some of the smaller attempts, but still important and cool attempts being made to help all of us deal with the virus. Designer Steve Brooks has developed something called a hygiene hook small enough to fit into a pocket made from non porous material. So it's easy to clean and helps you open doors without touching handles and spreading germs. California's CAD crow launched a contest for practical devices to help people deal with the virus. Among the 65 entries is a wrist mounted disinfectant sprayer, half gloves for knuckle pushing of buttons and a device for opening cab doors without touching the handle. The designs are made available for free to download and a Seattle company called Slightly Robot adapted an existing wristband device meant to stop things like nail biting into a device that buzzes when you bring your hands near your face. That is something that I need. Sad but true. I love this story. We talked a lot about the things that people are doing to 3D print masks and N95s and ventilators and that stuff's incredibly important. It's the most important. But I love the story too, Chris, because it shows that there's some people out there innovating to help you in your everyday life with this. So I know you guys had to have talked about all the people that are trying to take advantage of this emergency situation, you know, gouged price gouging, but I love the other side, right? The more fun side, the hopeful side, right? Who's going to create the next technology from this that blows up and becomes a part of everyday life? And that's why I love this story, because a, my daughter and my wife are notorious finger biters and I can't stand it. Right. So just the fact that from that, it was like, oh, wow, I could put this on their wrist and keep them from biting their fingers like, you know, and keep their hands away from their face. Exactly. That's right. Right. That's what the problem is, right? You touch your face and we touch our face constantly and spread bacteria. So I was like, wow, you know, just an idea of just to start beeping when I get close to my face. That is awesome. And hey, Apple Watch, why not? You know, at least we can govern one hand and keep it away from our face. So that that aspect I love. And then the the hand sanitizer, you know, all I could think about was Spider-Man. When I when I read that story, it was like, hold on, how far can I shoot it? Can I shoot it to the person in front of me whose hands look a little funky? I don't know. But, you know, just being able to do things like that. And so, you know, I tell you, when I go, I travel a lot for work and nothing creeps me out more than when I get to a bathroom in the airport or at a restaurant and I have to touch the door handle. I'm like, why does this still exist? Trapped at the bathroom like, oh, come on, somebody leaves, I can get out of here. The last plane trip I took was to San Jose right when the first coronavirus cases were being reported there. And I have never felt like more adversarial to an airport door. I was just looking, I was eyeballing that thing like, how am I going to open you because I'm not grabbing you. This is not happening. I can't tell you how many shirts I've had to tuck my arm inside of. So, you know, any type of technology because one of the thing they talked about was, you know, being able to wave your arm and then open doors and stuff like that, which, you know, that type of stuff kind of exists already. But, you know, making it more this could make something like that more mainstream, right? And, you know, so a lot of the things that they were mentioning in here and some of them were adapting, you know, like the mail-biting stuff, right? It was like, you know, we're just building this to help people stop biting nails, but we can adapt it to help remind people not to touch their face while they're out, right? Yeah, I know. It's good stuff. I love the fact of this story and I love everything about it. Hey, folks, I forgot to tell you at the top of the show, we have a wider show called Good Day Internet where we talk about all kinds of stuff. Sometimes it's expanding on the stories we talk about here. Today, Chris and Len were given a clinic on barbecuing, lots of good information. If you want that wider show, just become a patron at patreon.com.com. Also, reminder that next week is Science Week. Starting Monday, April 6th, we'll be featuring a science guest each episode. We're always talking about science on this show because it intersects with tech, but we're gonna have some great guests. We'll be talking about things like Mars colonization, tech and archaeology, tech used in paleontology, maybe even some tardigrade tech. All of that and more coming up next week on Science Week. All right, technology reviews, Tanya Basu and Karen Ha have an article titled, Why Does It Suddenly Feel Like 1999 on the internet? And I think I misspelled it was Karen Howe, so apologies for that. They cite things like the DJ D'Nice Club Quarantine, Instagram live streams, people trading baking tips, strangers getting together for happy hour hangouts as examples of stuff that has the feel of the early internet, that late 90s, 2000s internet. Stay at home orders have removed some of the glossiness of Instagram, they point out too, where you're seeing celebrities in their house with kind of bad lighting and not properly framed shots and it's just making it feel a little more like those primitive early days. Early internet was that way in a lot of ways because it was limited by slower speeds. There were just fewer people using it. They point that out in their article and they quote Leah Leverow, a professor at UCLA who studied social change in the internet saying that what seems to be emerging right now is an unprecedented sense of community. Here's the quote, we're seeing that we don't have to be physically present to mobilize. It's not that the physical infrastructure, the internet is doing this, it's what we're doing with that technology. And of course, I think what she's trying to say there is because we're forced to use this to connect because we can't go travel and meet people to connect now, it's making us see other sides of the technology that we either forgot we could use or in some cases never did. I think this could be overstating it and I'll give Tanya, Basu and Karen how the benefit of them saying like maybe it's just us and we don't wanna overstate it but I personally have noticed this sort of feeling of like oh, I'm talking to people on Twitter the way I used to talk to people on Twitter at the end of the 2000s. And I'm feeling like there's more of those kind of early day sharing of information and good-natured kidding, not trolling and not just angry. Not that that bad stuff has disappeared. I'm not trying to say everything turned into sunshine and roses overnight but I've felt, I've had those passing feelings of like oh, this is the way it used to be more often. Is it just me and Tanya and Karen, Chris, Sarah? And with you guys 100% actually and I actually started to know this just a couple of days ago. So folks on my friends list on Facebook are posting significantly more than they would normally post and some of these posts are super funny and it seems like everybody's trying to make everybody laugh and put pictures. I saw a post of a parent that was working and the kids were tied up on the floor because she couldn't deal with stuff like that. So it just, and people are posting relevant information to make sure everybody has proper information and then comedians on Instagram are posting way more content than they normally would post to make people laugh and people going and then the D-Nice concert and then the rap battles and the DJ battles, you know, Manny Fresh versus, I can't remember the producer, Scott Storch, they did a battle and posting who had the better top hits. So yeah, all of this stuff is just kind of reminds me of when these technologies were starting to just blow up and people were just figuring out what they could do. So we're doing everything and it was, but it was good-natured and it almost reminds me distinctly after 9-11 happened because, you know, as a person of color, I walk around and I do view the world differently, right? I, you know, I'm kind of on guard all the time and I'm like, and I remember after 9-11 for weeks, not feeling that just like, hey, we're in this together, we gotta deal with this together. And that's the same feeling that I felt then that I'm feeling right now during this crisis is that like when I just turn on Facebook and it's not, oh my, you know, this, that and the other or this happened or that and it's like, no, hey, here's something to make it laugh. Oh, here's a trick to get you past this. You know, hey, where can I find toilet paper? We found it here, we found it there. Just all helpful and fun and good-natured stuff. And I'm really enjoying it, you know, like just way, way more fun than it has been. You know, I think of 1999 as, oh yeah, that was before that first big.com bust. So sure, it sounded pretty nice. Yeah, 1999, we were just babes in the woods way back then. Wasn't even Y2K yet, although I guess people were worried about that. But so I don't know if it's an era that I feel like we're harkening back to but I also feel like there are a lot of positive vibes being sent out. And not like, oh, everyone's all of a sudden really nice but I think, Chris, you're touching on this, a lot of the social media posts, we've all kind of gotten into our groove over time. And it's sort of like gaming the system and how do you get the most likes and how do you reach your audience in the most effective way? It's very strategic. And I think because of so much uncertainty now, a lot of those are kind of breaking down and it's a good thing because people feel more human and they're just doing things that are a little outside their comfort zone. Yeah, whether it's cooking, whether it's here's where I found a deal on toilet paper, thanks friend, that kind of stuff. It doesn't mean much little by little, but collectively there is some warm fuzzy stuff that I'm getting from people who, I mean, they weren't jerks or anything before, but there is a shift in sentiment. I mean, there's a lot of eye rolling too. People are sort of saying, pat me on the back for this thing that I did, I want you to know about it. But people are like that anyway, I do get that. And maybe the time is not so much, oh, late 90s when everybody was nicer, but yeah, there is more of a, hey, we don't have it all figured out all of a sudden again. Like we used to not have it all figured out and maybe we tread a little bit more lightly and listen to each other more. And that's overall cool. I feel like there's a couple of reasons people turn to social media, to turn to the internet. And this has been true from the early 90s on, which is I want to share information. Either looking for information or I'm putting information out there or I want validation on something. I want to join with somebody and say like, do you feel this way too? Prior to all of this, when you were sharing a lot of that information, a lot of it was adversarial and you'd share it and people would pick on you. Now, there's still some of that, don't get me wrong. But there's more likelihood that people are like, oh yeah, that's a good piece of information that I needed to know thank you, right? That's happening a lot more often. And even more than that is the validation. Before, a lot of the validation was, hey, I'm against this person that you are all against and let's have a fight with the people who aren't against them so we could feel validated. Now the validation is I am scared and alone in my house too. And everybody's like, yeah, me too, right? And so again, I don't want to overly paint it as rosy because there are fights going on with both of those things I just mentioned, but it's at a different scale because more people are like, yeah, no, I'm with you. I want to share information on baking bread and there's not going to be a big fight over what kind of yeast to use and that just makes for a friendlier conversation. Yeah, you know, this is Len here jumping in. One thing that you said from that story was that the glossiness of the internet is sort of gone. If you think about it, the internet has become about celebrity. It's become about, yeah, just this, everybody has the same technology and everybody can do this amazing stuff. Some of that's kind of gone away. And I feel that the power of the internet has now been put back into the hands of people who loved it, right? That's maybe what it's all about. It's just about normal everyday living and it's not about the greatness of us and everything else. It's about just survival, really. So that kind of brings it back to where it was early on and I think that's the glossiness, that patina that's disappeared over the past couple of weeks. That's just my take on it. Well, you can join in the conversation in our Discord. Lots of conversations going on there. It's a lively group, a lot of fun folks. Very supportive community. You can join by linking to a Patreon account at patreon.com slash DTNS. Yeah, there might even be some good bread tips in there. Who knows? All right, let's check out the mail bag. Professor Metcalf was inspired by your editor's desk Tom segment to send in a quick note. So he did. He says, I work at the school district for Foothill and DeAnza Community Colleges in California. Northern California, in fact, my dad went to Foothill College. Our community colleges are going totally online for the upcoming quarter, they're on a quarter system. For those of you who have some flexibility in your schedule, you might wanna consider take one of these online courses. Some colleges are what we call basic aid, meaning virtually all of their income is from local property taxes. However, many rely on state subsidies, which are directly tied to the number of students. You might not know this, but as the economy does well, some community colleges end up struggling. Student population tends to be inversely proportional to the overall economy. In other words, people go back to school when there's an economic downturn. In the district that I work for, we've been seeing annual budget reductions for more than 10 years. A lot of community colleges will be severely impacted this year and taking an online class can both help stabilize budgets and give you an opportunity for some interaction with other people who share similar interests. Both Foothill and De Anza College are on the quarter system, spring classes began on April 13th, that's a week from Monday. Then he says on a personal note, something that's been really helpful over the last three weeks has been fighting comfort in pieces of my routine from before this began. DTNS, one of those things. I wanna thank you all from the bottom of my heart for helping in this way. Thanks Prof Metcalf. And this is a great thing. Even if it's Foothill and De Anza aren't particularly for you, look at your local colleges, look at your local schools. We've been talking about all kinds of online resources. And if you can, go check out De Anza and Foothill because that'll help Prof Metcalf out as well. Great idea, thank you, sir. Appreciate that. Shout out to patrons at our master and grand master levels, including Phillip Shane, Jeffrey Zilx and Michael Keper. All right, let's check in with Len Peralta who has been illustrating the show. What have you drawn for us today, Len? Well, the word of the day is throwback. And that's exactly what I think I've drawn here. Trying to do my best 90s impression, even though I'm not a child of the 90s, I'm trying to remember what that was like. This one's called log on like it's 1999 and it's got the old virtual hand slap. It's got the kid with the crazy jeans and the backpack and the parted hair in the middle looks a little bit like the dude from Save by the Bell. The shirt is suitably baggy, that's good. Everything's baggy, he's got a disc man on him. It's all good, man. This is a good throw. It's good to go back. It's good to be nostalgic and pretty soon this is gonna be like the new fifties or whatever, you know, the new thing that you go back there to. So yeah, so this is available right now on my Patreon, over at patreon.com forward slash Len. Also at my online store, lennperaltastore.com. And I'm also, you know, my wife's birthday is this weekend and my sister-in-law's is today. There's birthdays, there's anniversaries, there's all kinds of things still happening. And if you're looking for a nice way to reach out to somebody, I am doing custom drawn cards at my store, lennperaltastore.com. They're on the front page, check it out. And thanks for listening. Extremely cool. Also thanks to Chris Ashley. Chris, it's been a while. So glad to have you back today. Let folks know where they can keep up with all the other stuff you're doing. Hey, you guys can always come catch me and the boys over at the SMR podcast. We just put up our latest episode this week. Check us out at smrpodcast.com. Come hang out with Rob and Rod and get down with us. SMR podcast has now become my Saturday morning workout podcast. No, it's true. It's motivating because you guys go long enough where I'm like, if not for you I probably would have ended earlier. So thank you. That's funny. I always end up listening to it while I'm working out too for some reason. It just times out that way. We're going to talk about something with exercise. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was great. It's great. Hey, folks, we've been taking the end of this show to highlight places that need your attention, that might benefit you as well. We're looking for suggestions. Send them to us feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. I've been mentioning some of my favorites. If you like music, one of the most fun, most creative, and just most damn enjoyable musicians on the internet is MikeTV. He does albums, lullabies, live streams on Twitch. So much fun. Go support MikeTV. Get some fun music at patreon.com. Slash, get set, go. And if you've got feedback for us, our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. We love those emails. Keep them coming. If you'd like to join us live, well, you can do that too. Monday through Friday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern. 2030 UTC is where you can do it and you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com. Slash live. Monday starts Science Week with Aaron Carson talking about Mars. We'll talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.