Coming up on DTNs, Microsoft kicks Korean kids off of Minecraft. Video camera app, mm-hmm, thinks it can make your work week shorter. And why Chile thinks your neural data is equivalent to your kidney. This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, July 7th, 2021 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. In Salt Lake City. I'm Scott Johnson. I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. And joining us, Owen J.J. Stone, NKAO Doctor, is back. You made good on your promise.  I'm not going to stop doing the show until Sarah Lane is on. If you're watching this, send help. I've been seeing this chair for four hours on. Jim, they have not let me go. If you can help me, please do so immediately. I'd appreciate it. Thank you. If you'd like to understand the ways of Odakta, how he got six hundred dollars off of people at South by Southwest by asking, get our wider show, Good Day Internet. Become a member, patreon.com slash D T N S. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. A new multi-year deal will see Peacock at movies from its corporate cousins, Universal Dreamworks, Illumination and Focus Films no later than four months after their theatrical premiere, streaming the films exclusively for the first four months, as well as the last four months of the traditional 18 month pay one window with the films heading to other services for the 10 months in between. Hopefully you've been taking notes on that. The deal starts in twenty twenty two and will also see Universal produce exclusive releases for Peacock. Bloomberg sources said that China Securities Regulatory Commission is leading efforts to require Chinese owned firms to get government approval before going public in Hong Kong or the US. Currently, a lot of Chinese companies use a variable interest entity model, which sees them transfer their profits to an offshore entity. And then that entity has their shares that foreign investors can own. But looks like they're going to try to close that loophole. Tick tock began testing a feature called Shoutouts, where viewers can pay to request custom videos from creators. The feature is only tested only being tested in select markets. And the app currently prevents users in some regions from even requesting a shout out. President Trump filed three proposed class action lawsuits Wednesday in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, one against YouTube and Sundar Pichai, another against Twitter and Jack Dorsey and one against Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. The complaints alleged that all three companies violated the First Amendment of the US Constitution by suspending users from the platform and the suit seeks damages on behalf of the class made up of users of all three platforms who have resided in the US since June 1st, 2018 and had their accounts censored. Apple added new language support for Apple Pencil and iPad OS 14 now supporting copy copying had written text in French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish with support for several national dialects as well. Copying handwriting features had previously only been available for English and Chinese languages. All right, let's talk a little bit about what's happening into the kid gamers of South Korea. Since 2011, South Korea has had a law in the books prohibiting people younger than 19 from playing video games between midnight and six a.m. in order to stop them from losing sleep. Now, they don't go around looking in people's windows to see if kids are gaming. They ask the companies to keep them offline. While some companies will try to check your age through technical means, quote unquote, Microsoft chose to just restrict all Xbox Live accounts to people 19 years or older. They're like, when you sign up, you got to be 19. That's it. But they did not apply that to Mojang accounts. So it did not affect Minecraft until now. Microsoft has started requiring an Xbox Live account to play Minecraft in South Korea, instantly meaning that nobody younger than 19 can log in to play Minecraft online at any time of day. That's of course, they're lying about their age, which I'm sure somebody probably does. Companies said it's quote working on a longer term solution for players younger than 19 with details to come later this year. Kim Bo-un wrote in the Korea Times that lawmakers are considering a revision to the law that would let children play games after midnight if under parental supervision. Maybe that's a wise idea. Meanwhile, over in China, Tencent announced it'll use a facial recognition system to prevent minors in China from playing its video games between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. Korean kids get a couple hours longer for more than 90 minutes a day. That abides by a law which the Chinese government passed in 2019 meant to combat excessive and unhealthy gaming habits. Law also prohibits minors from spending more than the equivalent of between $28 and $57 U.S. per month on in-app transactions. Scott, as a parent of video game players and a person with a Korean brother, what's your take on this story? Well, I wish my Korean brother was more of a gamer because it'd be a perfect combo. But he's not so into it. But I understand where all these things sprung from. It was especially prominent in some Asian countries to see these new stories hit of somebody played for 36 hours straight, didn't need her sleep, and they passed away while they were playing. And you only ever heard these stories come out of China and South Korea and other places. And I understand the need or the sense that, oh, no, we can't have, we can't be having that. So they want to clamp down on it. I think it's smart to make sure you include parenting in this strategy, whatever your strategy ends up being. I think it would be crazy to expect too many of these kids if you're under 19. I don't know how you're still a kid, but let's say a 18 year old kid who in the States is an adult. They're still going to play. They'll find a way. You just fudge that stuff and you're in Microsoft's way is maybe one step beyond just a simple little tell us what your birthday thing is like Steam does. But it's still not much more than that. The real to me in this article, the scary bit is 10 cent announcing the facial recognition system. I'm not, I don't mean to say that that panics me over too much surveillance. It's a surveillance state. I don't mean that. I just think that that goes just one tiny step too far and they should work harder with parents to come up with better solutions that, you know, don't involve you having to be on a camera the entire time you play. It's a weird dance to, you know, expecting people not to lie about their age. And Microsoft could easily say, OK, we're going to have Xbox Live accounts for people younger than 19, but they don't because it's just simpler for them. And they're they're probably not wanting to market two kids younger than 19. They for at least for Xbox Live, because they, you know, they're I guess they can use their parents' account to pay, but the parents could just make an account and give them a kit. I don't know. It's all a mess when you try to enforce behavior that like that. And people are just going to find ways around it. Side note here. I believe the nineteen is is because Korea starts you at one when you're born, so it would be the equivalent of 18. I haven't double checked that, but I know they do that sometimes. So that may be the equivalent of 18 in the US. Oh, and you've got a child. Does she play video games? Yes. And first glance, I thought to myself, this will be great. But why can't we just think of like a screen time thing like on your iPhone, where it just caps you if you've been playing for 24 hours straight?  Like the fact that somebody played video games for 36 hours. I don't know what's going on the rest of their day that they need that much escapism, but maybe we just put in like a timer that says, Hey, it's been 26 hours home.  But this whole thing of having the parents moderate things. They got to sleep too, right? I can't be up till four o'clock in the morning watching my kid play Minecraft. I mean, they ask you to, but I don't want to. My daughter begs me all the time to play Minecraft. And I don't want to do it, you know what I mean? But it's it's crazy. That's crazy. They just need to talk to Apple and get a time limit going on screen time and then put that in there. Well, the other the problem is then you're asking Microsoft Sony and everybody else to put in these some kind of features, and maybe that would be actually easier than enforcing this 19 year old thing. And maybe it would go further to let these governments know that they're serious about it. But I just think it's weird and messy. I mean, maybe I would just say, hey, kids, don't don't play as much. And I know that sounds like not a solution. That's why it's in your iPhone, because you screen time became a thing because you can't trust kids not to be on their phone. Or you can't. That's why you have it. So this is this is how you fix that. You just make some software. You put it in there. We have the technologies guy. We live in the future. We could do this. We go into some R and D, baby. Let's get it done. Save the adults from themselves. And I'm on board. Let's do it. All right, moving on. Let's get down to this story here about Phil Libin. I know that's his name because he's the guy. What made ever know if that sounds familiar? It did to me. Well, now runs a company called Mm hmm. All right. You like that, which acts as a virtual camera and video presenter, letting users easily create and record videos and graphics slides and more. So if you're now, you're all caught up on what that company does and what they do. The news today is that the company is announcing you got a hundred million dollars in funding. Now that's significant because here on DTNS, you rarely ever hear the show cover funding grounds. It's not really, you know, part of the tech news. So why are we talking about today? Well, because in Bloomberg's article, Libin says, he thinks mm hmm could help eliminate the scourge of so many workers schedules. The update meeting, you know, the ones meetings to have meetings in a lot of cases. Anyway, Libin says mm hmm will make it easier for people to record their updates for coworkers to watch at their own leisure, maybe at a faster speed, leaving meetings to be a little bit shorter and full of actual brainstorming. That's the idea. Libin claims it has saved 90 minutes a day because of mm hmm and companies are giving it a try. They're all giving it a try. Mm hmm corporate customers include Axel Spring, excuse me, Axel Springer Porsche APX and Cisco Systems. And as a content creator, I'm interested in trying the technology out and messing about with it for live streams and other stuff. But I refuse to call it by its name. I can't stand the name there. I've said it. We can talk about everything else around this now. Oh, Scott, I hear you. I do think it's really, it's interesting for this company to say, listen, if you just record a video and your company that whatever you say in the video might be really interesting and they can watch it at their leisure, it is not unlike kind of like the podcast format, right? You don't have to make everything a physical medium. It can be a, here's what I wanna tell you, watch it and then get back to me later. I think this is brilliant. Except people won't do it. The only reason they hear your update is cause they're forced to go to the meeting. There's gonna be so, I mean, some people will do it. There's gonna be so many people who are just like, oh, right, I never listened to that. I never watched that video. I didn't have time to watch the video. I missed it. Well, but, I mean, okay. Same as an update email. Nobody reads the update emails either, which is why they feel like they have to have the meeting. Well, okay. So all that said, why is this such a great idea? I know Phil, he's a very smart guy. I wouldn't, I can't bet against him cause there's been things where he's done in the past. I'm like, that's not gonna work.  But this is like, who's not gonna fall asleep listening to regular people trying to make this update by themselves. A lot of the times you have an update, at least you can kind of gauge the room or the call or the situation, what's going on. So I'm just gonna sit here and record this update that's boring and nauseating and you're not gonna listen to it or you're gonna fall asleep or I've got follow-up questions. Now you've got 92,000 follow-up questions in email. Can we just stop having meetings all together and just like update it themselves? Like, can we just reboot ourselves? I really do think though that, you know, the idea of, hey, here's the update, please watch or listen or read.   I think that, I think this makes sense. It does and is not the only company who is doing it. I guess you're right, Tom. There'll be a lot of people who say, well, if I don't have to do it, I won't watch or listen. But I think it gives a little bit more control to somebody who is working on their own time. Well, plus you're in an era now and I'll, I don't know, everyone's still trying to navigate it, but we're in an era now where a lot of remote work is going to stay remote and because of that, different services are going to come around. They're going to try to have an angle on that. This seems like an angle on that. And whether it works or not, who knows? I still think, and I don't want to make that big a deal out of it, but the name's terrible because imagine me saying, Sarah, have you checked today to see if there's any updates on, mm-hmm, you're going to say, I don't want to use that yourself. Yeah, yeah. So it's murder. I mean, I feel like if you and I, Scott, we're using the product that often, we wouldn't have to say that to each other all that often. But yes, I get your point. Yeah. EverNote, great name, EverNote. Ever, take notes, keep them forever. EverNote. Two things really quick. One, Sarah, this is why I love your positivity. Outlook on things inspires a value and belief. And second, Scott, go ahead and say the name for one more time. I didn't catch that. Tell me what it's called. It's called mm-hmm. That's the name. Mm-hmm, yeah. See, every time you say it, get happier. Scott, think about it. Mm-hmm. I'll kidding aside, I'm all for fewer meetings and maybe mm-hmm will be so entertaining because you can do all those slides and fun over-the-shoulder graphics that you'll build a culture where everybody will look forward to watching the update videos. So I'm not going to count it out yet, but we'll just, we'll have to see. Hey, folks, you want a DTNS hat or a hoodie or a mask or a mouse pad? You don't have to make it yourself, although if you do, send us a picture because I want to see that. We have all of that and more at the Daily Tech News Show store. Go check it out, dailytechnewshow.com slash store. It's all waiting for you. Lombork sources say that Ubisoft is developing an online platform for a video game franchise, Assassin's Creed, that evolves over time. Currently, Assassin's Creed game storylines revolve around specific historical settings, but Assassin's Creed Infinity, as it's reportedly known inside Ubisoft, may include multiple settings and expand over time, although if it sounds great to you, it isn't expected until about 2024. It is something that's happening internally. Unlike an open world like Fortnite or Warcraft, there would be individual games on the platform that might look and feel different, but all be connected. And instead of each game being developed by a different team within the company, the Quebec City and Montreal teams have been unified to work on Infinity with the Quebec City team in charge. A spokeswoman for Ubisoft acknowledged Infinity's existence, so that's probably happening, but declined to discuss details saying only that Ubisoft aims to, quote, exceed the expectations of fans who have been asking for a more cohesive approach. So this is super interesting, and it's been all the talk in kind of my circles, gaming circles over the last day or so, and the reason that is, is this is a fairly controversial move for what has been a pretty reliable game release. It's usually every couple of years, sometimes every year, back in the day it was yearly, lately it's been every two years, but the game comes out, it's usually a big historical setting with a little bit of the modern animus stuff. If you've played the game, you'll know what I'm talking about, but it's like future historians are looking back on these events and then kind of working through them to find out about a bigger conspiracy. That's a very simple way of saying it, but all of these games play with those tropes as well as really heavily explore the historical setting they're in. Currently, it's Vikings prior to this, it was Greek culture, prior to that, it was ancient Egyptian and so on. And they're usually very standalone in terms of their protagonist, their story elements, their touches with history and so on, beginning, a middle and end, some DLC, sometimes a multiplayer mode, but that's kind of what the game is, that's the release. And in terms of like, how they pay for it on the back end, they have some stuff you can buy in game, but mostly cosmetics. So that's kind of been the model up till now. If they're planning on doing this, this takes it into the territory more like games like Destiny or Destiny 2 more currently, but even games like Fortnite, games like Apex Legends, games that are, games as a service, so everything you wanna play and do is happening probably free to play. We don't know that, they didn't say, and the Bloomberg article didn't quite unmask that, but probably it'll be free to play, if not a low barrier to entry.  What it won't be in my mind is like an MMO where you start at level one and you work your way to a level cap and then the new expansion comes out and you work your way to that level cap. I don't see that happening, but I could see the world being added onto, players being able to jump between time epochs, that sort of thing. There's a lot of content in the previous games that you could bring forward and make interesting here. Like you're actually kind of interested in it, but the usual gamer freak out is happening where this changes their venerable series that they love and they don't want it to go this direction and video games are becoming more cloud-based, more service-based. If the servers go down, you're all down. There's no offline mode, too much focus on multiplayer. Like all those existential gamer worries are certainly bubbling to the top after this announcement or not even an announcement after this leak. As usual, we're in a position where we just kind of have to wait and see what it is. So I'm actually kind of excited to hear what they have to say about it. We'll probably hear before the end of the year more now that it's sort of out there and they usually respond when that happens. I am curious how it differentiates itself from like a Fortnite or something like that in a way that's compelling, because it sounds really cool. It sounds like taking an anthology and then connecting it all together and giving me an open world to just kind of run around it. Yeah, it does. And if they can wear this with different than your differ from your traditional Warcraft model, there won't probably be a monthly fee, but there will be ways. The whole idea of these games, the reason they do this is to make them more profitable, longer tail. Not just single releases, you can play, beat, win and move on. They want this to just keep going. And it's kind of the holy grail for everybody. This is an interesting series for them to be messing around with. So I don't know. They got to be careful. If they nail it, we're all in fat city. If they blow it, it's big trouble. So Grand Theft Auto, Assassins is what I'm doing. I mean, Grand Theft Auto and Assassin's Creed are a lot like that. I'm putting it, like all the other games you mentioned, don't even come close to what it sounds like. They sound like Grand Theft Auto. And in general, my first fear if I was going to have a fear would be after a while you just collect these checks and you don't innovate anymore.  So I, all the excitement that you have, again, that's the positive mindset. But the thing that people worry about is that GTA model where it's like, dude, you haven't put out a game in seven years and they still love it. People still play it.  They're like, I want you to keep iterating and don't give me the same game for nine years until I can go back on a boat and then travel across the country. I was a white dude in England.  Like, what are we doing? Are we transforming here? Is there a time loop? Like what I need to know? Your positivity will not trick me. I know what they're doing. They're just going to loop me and take all my money, Scott. You got to see the future from the past. That's what history teaches us. You're probably not wrong in some of that. But we'll see. Like it is interesting, GTA is a weird comparison, but it's also in some ways kind of apt. So we'll learn more soon and then we'll know what they really are after here and whether gamers are going to go along. We'll have to see. Exactly. All right, let's talk about your brains. Neurotechnology is in its earliest stages. You'll see headlines that say we can read minds, but we can only do that in so much as we can detect some impulses, some electric activity and then kind of reinterpret that to do things like control a cursor, maybe actuate some prosthetic limbs or cause a tube to blow more air to float a ball in a game, stuff like that. These are far off from actual mind reading, but what we can do now felt like science fiction a couple of decades ago. So we're making progress. Rest of world's Abu Wajman Paz reports that as part of Chile's redrafting of its constitution, it is considering a bill on neuro protection. In Chile, if this were to take place, neural data would be legally treated the same as organic tissue.  You can't be compelled to give it up and its collection requires explicit consent. It also could not be sold, only donated for altruistic purposes. Your neural data would be like your kidney. It may seem early to regulate neural data, but it's already starting to be collected and we kind of let personal data get out of the barn before we started worrying about it. So maybe this is a good time to start thinking about it. Companies in Chile, Peru, Argentina and Brazil are considering using mining threes smart headwear that monitors worker fatigue in order to prevent injury. Now that's just a single thing, but it's already causing some workers to say, yeah, I don't want that. To encourage countries to adopt these kinds of rights, Rafael Uste, co-director of Columbia University's Neurotechnology Center and international law attorney, Jared Gencer have encouraged the United Nations to create an international science and law expert commission on neuro rights which could use Chile as a working template. Now granted, this seems a little sci-fi out there, but like I said, this is stuff that's in the lab and getting better every day. Owen, when would you like people to step in and would you like your neural data to be treated like your kidney? I need protections right now. My brain is very big, very vast and the information inside is crucial. The only thing I'd say too is, can we get like a rights to life thing? Cause I just want to scan mine now and just save it for like 50 years just so I can reboot me and put me back in something else. Like I don't think that the technology is there yet, but if they are collecting information, that is something that needs to be protected because you don't know what level of information they can retain just to have the information. Maybe they can't do anything with it yet, but if they're scanning it and collecting information, yes, protect me, protect me now. It's like what Tom said earlier. I mean, it was either in prep or even just now and kind of reiterated it, but the idea is that we don't know yet how this stuff could be used. We know how a kidney might be used if it's taken from us unwillingly, but we don't know how, let's say, I don't know, you could harness somebody's willpower. It's just an example, it's a bad Scott analogy, but let's just go with it. Harness somebody's willpower because we're that good at neuro thought capture and we've got it now and I've got awesome willpower and somebody says, hey, I'm gonna use that willpower. I'm gonna duplicate it and use it for a whole bunch of other things that I didn't get permission for. We wouldn't want that with any other organ or part of our body or expression of ourselves in that way. So why would we hear? I think it's really important that we think about this stuff before it happens. It's no different than any other kind of tech. They try to do it. The only problem is when they try to do this in the past, sometimes you get stuck in old rules that have changed millennium copyright act, the stuff that happened in the 90s when it came to digital protections. They need to be looked at a lot, iterated on, fluid as you can be, but yeah, you gotta think ahead. If you don't think ahead, then somebody's gonna, I don't know, what thought do you want not taken? Think of that and then decide whether you're for or against a little bit. That's the issue that I have with this being compared to something like a kidney. It's like, if your kidney is working, fiery and on all cylinders, right? Great, okay, fine. The brain is not the same kind of situation as a kidney. My brain is working well and Scott's brain and Tom's brain and Owen's brain, all very different brains. Sure, I understand that the treat this as a organ and put rights around it makes sense, but how are any of our brains even in the same situation? I think what they're saying, you can get too hung up and the analogy will break down like you're saying, but I think what they're trying to identify is what you think and how your brain works. The data around that is part of you. It's part of your identity.  And then that data gets collected, they use it to market like, oh, it sounds like you're imagining a hamburger. Here's a coupon. That just should not be allowed because that's your identity. And if you lose control of that, that's bad for everybody. Yeah, I could see that. I just, I still feel like your analogy of the kidney is a pretty good one. And I hope that- It's only good in so far as like, how to protect these may be similar. Right, right. Well, and that's, I guess it's just a mind, it's funny we're talking about minds here, but it's a mindset. Do we think it's important that I control where my kidney goes? If the answer is yes, I think it's probably just as important if I decide where my neurons go. They're mine, I made them, they're in there. If you're gonna use them for something I should know and I should approve it or not, or you can't have it. Like to me, it's just, to me, it's black and white, not a hard decision. It starts to break down when you say, only donated for altruistic purposes. Like, okay, but what does that mean? There's some really, really good private research that you might want to allow your brain to be scanned for. Is that altruistic? If the company itself makes money, just like pharmaceutical companies do, it's not clear cut, but I think the point of this is really good, which is we should be having these kinds of conversations now well before this becomes a problem and somebody's already got everybody's neural data locked up in some server somewhere. I agree. All right, let's check out the mailbag. This one comes in from Jason. He had a very nice note for us. Jason says, I just want to thank you for the daily joy your chemistry on good day internet provides, along with the knowledge from your exceptional reporting and the daily tech news. Thank you, Jason. Jason says, your commitment to the fans brought even more joy when on an 18 hour road trip, I heard Sarah's exasperated voice in my ear saying, Otis, come on, give me a break, rerouting. While listening to Eat East Meets West, after the confusion, I realized I had added your voices to my Waze app months ago and just forgotten about it. From that point on, every pit stop had a reason to smile.  They were made by Apollo, I think. And we recorded them for him. He packaged them all up for us. So thank you again for making those and we'll have a link in the show notes. You can get me, Sarah, Sarah Funny, Roger and DTNS, like just overall DTNS stuff. So go check that out, patreon.com. The direct link will be in our show notes. Indeed. And if you're like, why was Sarah yelling at her dog? That was part of the funny thing. That was a funny thing. It's good times, it's good times. Yeah, thank you to everybody who sends us email, whether it's a question, comment, feedback, all of the good things. Feedback at dailytechnewshow.com is where to send that please, send it. We love reading your feedback. Also shout out to patrons at our master and grandmaster levels. Today they include Phillip Lass, Daniel Dorado and John Atwood. Also, thank you to our brand new boss, Daryl Harris. And Daryl, Daryl, Daryl, Daryl, Daryl. Thank you, Daryl. Thank you, Daryl. Daryl was not a boss when Owen was last on the show yesterday and now is. Daryl's now our boss. See how quickly the stuff happens, people? Good times. Well, thanks to everyone who made Today happen. We'll start with you, Scott Johnson. Thank you for making Today happen. Where can people keep up with the rest of your work? Well, I like to be responsible for today, so thank you very much. Yeah, if you guys wanna see what else I have going on, I've got webcomics. I have podcasts by the mouthful. All sorts of fun stuff. You can find all of it at frogpants.com, as usual. And if you're looking to just track me down out there in the public, you can find me on Twitter. I'm at Scott Johnson. Excellent. And Owen JJ Stone, a.k.a. Oh, Doctor. Good to have you two days in a row. Let folks know where they can keep up with your work. So I'm on the internet. You can find me somewhere on my YouTube is an interview I did with Sarah. If you wanna know all her secrets and hidden things, it's live on the internet. Tom, too, I gotta get Scott in the booth with me so I can learn all his secrets, so I can tell you the people. You can find me at IQMZ.com. And I am so thankful that I get to be free from this chair. And I got to spend the day with Sarah Lane, because that's the only reason I had to stay here for 25 hours until she showed up. So I missed you too, Scott. Missed you too. Thanks, thanks. Oh, I know. I'm convention. OK, so we're live on this show Monday through Friday at 4 30 p.m. Eastern 2030 UTC. You can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We are back tomorrow, because we do it every weekday. Tomorrow, Jess and Robert Young will join us. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. I hope you have enjoyed this program.