2020 Daily Tech News Show


1	p to		TITLE: Xenobots Have Heart (Cells) - DTNS 3700	Guest:

2			Stories subject to change up until showtime
3			Coming up on DTNS Europe wants everybody to use the same phone charger, AI gets good at understanding the context of whole books and tiny biological robots made from frog cells.	Twitch Chat
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5			Today's date
6			This is the Daily Tech News for Friday January 17th, 2020. In LA, I'm Tom Merritt
7			From Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane
8			Drawing the top tech stories of the day from Cleveland, Ohio I'm Len Peralta
9			And I'm the show's Producer Roger Chang
10			Introduce Guest
11			Annalee Newitz - Author, The Future of Another Timeline and host of the "Our Opinions Are Correct" Podcast
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13			Get the wider conversation on our expanded show, Good Day Internet by becoming a member at patreon.com/dtns.
14	:31	TM	Let's start with a few tech things you should know...
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16			Quick Hits
17		sl	Sources tell the Wall Street Journal that Facebook is "backing away" from a previously announced plan to sell ads in WhatsApp. The team working on the ads has reportedly been disbanded with existing work "deleted from WhatsApp code." Facebook still reportedly has long term plans to put ads in the WhatsApp Status feature. Facebook will instead reportedly focus on business messaging as a rvenue generator.	https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/16/21069422/facebook-whatsapp-ads-sales-advertising-plans
18		tm	Meanwhile mobile app developers have filed a class action complaint in the US against Facebook. The suit claims Facebook “identified and categorized potential market threats, then extinguished those threats” by cutting them off access to Facebook data.	https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/17/21070318/facebook-developers-data-lawsuit-competitors
19		sl	Xiaomi says it has resolved its issue with Google integration and people can now use Mi security camera services with Nest devices. Xiaomi did not detail the cause of the problem but Google temporarily suspended Mi cameras from working with Nest after users reported seeing video feeds from other users.	https://www.thurrott.com/smart-home/228303/xiaomi-is-back-on-google-home-and-nest
20			Let's talk a little more about...
21	:33	tm	Google's Director of Product Management for Chrome OS, Kan Liu told Android Police's David Ruddock that Gogole is working to bring Steam to Chromebook. Liu said this was made possible by Chrome OS's Linux compatibility. Steam is available for Linux. Chrome OS users can install Steam using Linux compatibility but there's no official support and reported performance is not very good. More powerful Chromebooks are apparently on the way that would make playing Steam games viable. So gaming Chromebook at CES 2021 anyone?	https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/01/17/exclusive-google-is-working-to-bring-steam-to-chrome-os/
22	:36	sl	UK ISP BT announced that three of its service plans will come with Stadia Premiere Edition. That gives you a White Stadia Controller, Chromecast Ultra and three months of Stadia Pro. The plans that include Stadia range from £39.99 to £49.99 a month with speeds from 67Mbps to 300 Mbps. The offerings are good until January 30 with a new offering planned for February 7.	https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/grab-google-stadia-premier-free-swish-bt-deal-3970594
23	:38	tm	The EU Parliament held hearings on a new measure that would require a common charging standard for all mobile and portable devices sold in the region. Supporters of the measure says it would cut down on ewaste generated by chargers, and reduce the cost of devices to consumers, since chargers wouldn't have to be bundled with devices. In 2009, the EU set up a voluntary agreement with Apple, Samsung and Nokia to introduce a smartphone charger that fit all models, but that agreement expired in 2014. The EU identified USB 2.0 Micro B, USB-C and Apple’s Lightning as the dominant charging standards, and is scheduled to publish a study on legislative next steps in the coming weeks. Apple says a requirement of uniformity would "freeze innovation" and be "bad for the environment."	https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/17/apple-may-be-forced-to-ditch-lightning-charge-cable-amid-new-eu-rules.html
24	:42	sl	31 healthcare organizations in Shanghai are trialing a drug collection terminal with built in facial recognition. Pharmacists and buyers of controlled medications will be asked to verify their identity with a face scan, with the hope of identifying high risk buyers and preventing abuse by administrators. Shanghai's anti-drug agencies have been testing the machines since November, and The Paper reports that the city plans to achieve full coverage across all medical institutions in the next six months.	https://www.scmp.com/tech/policy/article/3046346/shanghai-introduces-facial-recognition-drug-collection-terminals-combat
25	:46	tm	One challenge for machines trying to understand text is to get the context. For example, the English sentence "I ran out." Does it mean you no longer have any of a thing, or that you left a location or that you literally sprinted away. You need context. Google has a model called Transformer that compares words in a. Paragraph to each other in order to understand the relationship and deduce the context for a particular line. Transformer uses a LOT of data space if it has to do more than a few thousand words. A new model that Google calls Reformer can understand the context of 1 million lines in just 16 GB of space. Instead of comparing all he words in a. Paragraph, the model uses locality-sensitive hashing to put similar words in a bucket, then then compares words within the bucket. It also uses reversible residual layers so it can store activations once instead of once for each layer in the training. Google says it can process whole books.	https://thenextweb.com/artificial-intelligence/2020/01/17/googles-new-ai-language-models-can-comprehend-entire-books/
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30			Discussion Story
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32	:50		Xenobots!
33			Meet Xenobot, an Eerie New Kind of Programmable Organism Researchers hope the living robots, made up of masses of cells working in coordination, can help unlock the mysteries of cellular communication.	https://www.wired.com/story/xenobot/
34			--	https://www.technologyreview.com/f/615041/these-xenobots-are-living-machines-designed-by-an-evolutionary-algorithm/
35			--	https://mobile.twitter.com/mbeisen/status/1216573171681251328
36			Scientists from Tufts University, the University of Vermont, and the Wyss Institute at Harvard published early research in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about robots made from heart and skin cells derived from frog embryo stem cells that they call xenobots. A Xenobot is less than 1mm wide - one type uses two stumps to propel itself through water - another has a pouch to carry things ATTRIBUTES - lasts up to 10 days - biodegradable GENERATED - evolutionary algorithm created solutions then picked and mutated the most promising ones - Ran 100 times. Best designs created out of frog cells APPLICATIONS - Soft robotics - self-healing robots - clean up micro plastics - digest toxic materials - deliver targeted drugs ETHICS - could be made from nerve cells and potentially have rudimentary cognitive ability
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40		sl	Thanks to all those who participate in our subreddit. Submit stories and vote on them at dailytechnewsshow.reddit.com and join in the conversation in our Discord which you can join by linking to a Patreon account at patreon.com/dtns	http://dailytechnewsshow.reddit.com
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43		tm	Let's check out the mailbag
44	:59		Mailbag (feedback@dailytechnewsshow.com)
45			y’all mentioned Hipmunk will retire on January the 20th. Being an avid flier, both business and personally, what are other services out there that will sort by comfort level (the major metric that Hipmunk used to rank flights was comfort: it grouped flights with no/short layovers, shortest flight times, easiest time to visit an airport, etc and not just pricing)? This made Hipmunk my goto as I would be happy to spend a touch more to be in a pleasant mood and less stressed when arriving. Maybe this would be a great question for The Amateur Traveler? -Justin ----------------------- Chris Christensen weighed in: Yes there are similar features on some other service. On TripAdvisor flights you sort by FlightScore. On Kayak and Skyscanner, the closest they have is their sort of "Best" vs cheapest, quickest, etc. Google Flights does not seem to have a similar feature.
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50		sl	Shoutout to patrons at our Master and Grand Master levels including ...
51			Chris Allen Deigratia A. Daniels Ken Hays
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53		tm	Check in with Len Peralta	lenperaltastore.com
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55	:02	sl	Thanks to... Annalee Newitz	https://www.amazon.com/Future-Another-Timeline-Annalee-Newitz/dp/0765392100/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Future+of+another+timeline&qid=1579213898&sr=8-1
56				https://www.ouropinionsarecorrect.com/
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64		sl	Our email address is feedback@dailytechnewsshow.com! We're live M-F at 4:30 PM eastern/21:30 UTC find out more at dailytechnewsshow.com/live.
65		tm	Monday we're off for MLK day but we're back Tuesday with Patrick Beja	Good Night Rob
66			END OF SHOW
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71			POST GDI	That's Not Justin Bieber, It's Toomgis