Tech News Weekly Episode 234 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show. 

Mikah Sargent (00:00:00):
Coming up on Tech News Weekly, Jason Howell is out this week, but don't worry. I, your fearless captain will take you down the path of tech news. We start with Scott Hanselman of Microsoft to talk about how Microsoft well, frankly, Scott worked to open source 3D Movie Maker, an application from yesterday year that still has a huge fan base of folks who want to make 3d movies on their computers. Then Misha Rykov of the Mozilla foundation stops by to talk about the latest edition to Mozilla foundation's privacy, not included guide it's all about mental health apps and their privacy policies and how you can keep yourself safe online. Then I do the rundown of Google IO, the biggest announcements from the event and round things out with a sort of, kind of reveal from Mark Zuckerberg for me's next mixed reality headset stay tuned

... (00:01:03):
Podcasts you love from people you trust.

Mikah Sargent (00:01:22):
This is Tech News Weekly episode 234 recorded Thursday, May 12th, 2022. This episode of Tech News Weekly is brought to you by new Reva. Traditional audio conferencing systems can entail lots of components. Installation can take daysh and like you might not get the mic coverage you need. That's complex expensive, but Neva audio is easy to install and manage no technicians required and you get true full room coverage. That's economical. Learn more@nareva.com also brought to you by net Foundry, reinvent the network and eliminate the w a N by decoupling security from infrastructure to protect our applications and data with open source zero trust, grab your free swag and free tier. Now by going to net foundry.io/twit and by new Relic, that next 9:00 PM call is just waiting to happen. Get new Relic before it does, and you can get access to the whole new Relic platform and 100 gigabytes of data free per month forever.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:29):
No credit card required. Sign up@newrelic.com slash T and w hello, and welcome to Tech News Weekly. The show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech news. I say we, but this week, I just mean me, Jason. How's not here with us this week. You should hopefully be back next week, but until then, you're stuck with me, Mica Sergeant, and I am honestly ready to get this show rolling, cause we've got some great conversations today. Up first we are going to talk about open source software and open source software that has been made open source by someone who I consider some sort of it's like the, the joy of the tooth fairy for youth mixed with the mystery of the Easter bunny, all wrapped up in internet memes, Beyonce love, which I adore and, and just delightful miss in general. Joining us today is Scott Hanselman. Welcome to the show, Scott,

Scott Wilkinson (00:03:32):
Thank you very much. And I very happy to be here. That was a lovely introduction for a fellow Beyonce, Stan, thank you for that.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:39):
<Laugh> indeed. So I have to say I was really pumped a while back. I follow this developer phone on Twitter and they had tweeted about Microsoft 3d movie maker. And we're kind of looking into the application and realizing that, of course this software made by Microsoft was not an open source application. And so we're gonna talk about that in a moment, but for folks who maybe weren't around at the time or who have never heard of it, could you start by telling us about Microsoft 3d movie maker? What is it, when was it created and what version of windows did you have to have to run it?

Scott Wilkinson (00:04:24):
Yeah, so 3d movie maker was a kids program. It was made around 1995 and it was part of the Microsoft home series of products. And there was a thing called the Microsoft kids subsidiary within Microsoft home. And in 1985, this program came out and allowed kids to make kind of like small films, almost like vines, small, you know, five to eight frames, a second. These were not super high res. This was not a high res 4k time. You know, and you had pre rendered 3d characters. So you see here, we have this little gentleman who lives in a 3d space and you'd get the different models that you could start with and you could animate them through key frames and then put together your video and then share it. And this is even pre YouTube, of course. So sharing them was, you know, you share them any way that you could get the files around, but what's so interesting about this now 27 year old product is people still love it and people still make crazy stuff with it.

Scott Wilkinson (00:05:21):
And if you go up on YouTube, you're gonna find all kinds of fan videos about 3d movie maker. And you needed like, you know, windows 95 windows 98. And as with all products, these things start to age and start to rot and then things go away. But the fandom lives on. And I think people were really asking for a a modern version of that. And F as a self-proclaimed soft software neck, romancer bringing dead things back to life, decided that it was it was their mission in life to make this happen.

Mikah Sargent (00:05:54):
I think that's fantastic. So I, I have to say I have some fondness of applications that looked similar to this. I can remember installing them on the computer. And there was, there was Crayola rock, I think it was called or Crayola art, but it had all of these floppy discs. You had to pop in to get it loaded up. And it, it looked so much like this, that that's also what kind of made me immediately draw in to, to pay attention to this and trying to create those videos using this this software. So I'm curious if you yourself have any fond memories of 3d movie maker, if you created any videos at the time or you know, played with it after it had come out, or if you know anyone that that did or does.

Scott Wilkinson (00:06:41):
Yeah. So I was already, I think in my in my twenties when this came out. So there's, it depends on the age that you were when you were experiencing 3d movie maker for a lot of folks millennials and folks, maybe just a smidge older. There was an opportunity when you're about 12 and it's like, I can make stuff and this game is unapologetically creative. So they would create videos of a certain kind. I think my videos were a little bit more dramatic. I think some of the fun videos that the younger people made were, were always rat themed. There's a lot of great rat videos. If you search YouTube for things like the huge rat, and it's like, you know, a, a two minute long tour divorce about a rat that terrorizes, you know, so there's just tons of rat videos because the rat model was really cool that came with 3d movie maker. And some of them are, are very V, like where it's like, here's the story of a rat in 20 seconds. And, you know, and people in the comments on YouTube will say it's high drama and this, this was of two or to fours. We need a 4k re rendered version of this <laugh>. Mine were mostly just driving around kind of like a grand theft auto style.

Mikah Sargent (00:07:47):
Oh man, I I've got a lot of YouTube videos to watch after this <laugh> because there are quite a few that have gotten so many views. I mean, this thing is clearly very popular even even to this day. So this is this is kind of where I would love. If you could share the story of what led you down the route of wanting or of, of working to open source this we, we talked a little bit about phone, but I'm just curious, you know, where were you when the tweet came through or when did you come across this and thought, you know what, actually, I think I can do something about this, cuz you also talked about that recently about telling a developer that they can't do something and what that does. So tell us about that. Yeah,

Scott Wilkinson (00:08:29):
Exactly. Well, so as you've, as you've mentioned before, I want to, we, we and the community want to give full credit to, to fun touring for their quicksodic quest to make this happen. This has been something that fun has been very vocal about over the years saying that this is something that should happen and I've made a couple of runs at it, but on April 6th, as you can see here, Fu said, Hey, Microsoft, give me the source code. And once it hits somewhere around 5,000 likes, I started feeling nerd sniped and nerd sniping is when you tell a programmer or a nerd that something can't be done. And I felt that this was a really great use of social media by phone to say that, you know, I bet you, you can't do that. Microsoft just give it to me like you, you know, and I'm like, okay, well why, why can't we?

Scott Wilkinson (00:09:16):
So I started making inquiries and I, I feel that my role as an old person on the internet, as well as a a somewhat visible representative Microsoft is to lend my privilege. And in this context, my privilege is access. So I started emailing people. I emailed the Microsoft open source office. I tried to find some of the programmers at the company that are still here now even years later, who worked on the original thing, Hey, do you know who owns this? And where can we find that? And where, where is the source code anyway? Like where do you put source from 1995? And how would we license this? And what would that look like? And what does open source mean in the context of something that's 27 years old? And it was pH's encouragement and guidance that allowed me to to, to feel emboldened, to ask that question. And then I found some supportive vice presidents and people at Microsoft who were like, yeah, you know, that would actually be kind of cool. Let's do that. So then we dug into the archives, we actually have a formal archivist and an archive system at Microsoft for products that are this old. And we, we dug 'em off of tapes or wherever that that dusty source code came from.

Mikah Sargent (00:10:26):
Wow. So was this in person the, the part where you actually were, were talking to the archivist or was all of this able to happen kind of in online exchanges, as you were trying to figure that out?

Scott Wilkinson (00:10:37):
That's a good question. I did not actually enter the end of Indiana Jones when they go into the giant Costco with all of the dusty stuff. I'm sure someone did that at some point. But I was able to do all of this remotely from my home in Portland. Everyone was very supportive and was very like curious because everyone likes getting nerd sniped and going, you know, I don't know if I could find that, let me go and look for that. Right. So what they did is they, they found the original stuff and it came on like 21 CDs. And then they gave me a dump and they said, here's, here's the dump, the unfiltered dump of it. And then I work with Jeff Wilcox and our friends at the open source office, and then we have to prepare source for release. So that means looking for swear words, looking for, you know, references to countries that don't exist geopolitically anymore.

Scott Wilkinson (00:11:23):
Oh we need to remove PII, right? You don't want to have a, an intern's name or email address in the, in the source code unless they ask. So we had to talk to each of the developers worked on it, see if they wanted their name and the comments or not. Some of them kept their names in and you'll see that in other places, you'll just see, I use a regular expression and I replaced it with asterisks all of those considerations. We run through any software when we, when we release it. And it's also worth pointing out that there is open source and then there is source opened. And I think it's fair to say that as we pointed out, this is an archived readonly historical you know, release of some open source with no warranty expressor implied with the intent that the community and phone and friends would pick this up and run with it.

Scott Wilkinson (00:12:12):
So what we did is we released it after it had been scrubbed parts of it built parts of it. Didn't there was no intent to get it, to build perfectly. You can't just take the stuff that Microsoft releases and build it because it's 27 years old and it needs old compilers. But then we immediately marked it as archived and read only with the intent that Microsoft's not gonna take poll requests. We're not gonna maintain this because we knew, and this is important and why Fon and their community is so important is that there, there was a welcoming ready community there. And if you go to places like 3d, mm.com, there's an active forum of excited people. And the top thread is the movie maker source code is here and they're like, let's go

Mikah Sargent (00:12:54):
<Laugh>, you know, so

Scott Wilkinson (00:12:55):
People were ready for it. It was not just to released for for reference, you know, it was released to have someone go and take it to the future. So if you click on 3d mm chat there, and then look at the top list, look at the, you know, people are like, look, 3d movie maker, source coded they're at the pin, the top pin one there and you grab that one and people are like, this is awesome. And <laugh>, and then here's another interesting point. Could scroll up just a smidge there. Someone said, this is amazing. I have no idea how to use any of these files.

Mikah Sargent (00:13:27):
Yes.

Scott Wilkinson (00:13:27):
Right? Because there's two different kinds of people that care about this. There are archivists and our software Andros like phone who are like, this is interesting source. This is a police piece of history. This is something I can build into the future and make new software with. I could maybe make a 4k version, make a modern version. I could get it to run on Linux who knows what our tech friends are gonna do with this code. It's MIT released. So we encourage them to enjoy it. But for those that just wanna make movies, they can go and check out phons release up on github.com/phone. And they made a thing called 3d movie maker forever at github.com/phone. And they're working with the community to go and make a forked version of this. That'll be able to to build. And they've had some success. I think they're having some challenges with sound right now, but I'm excited to see what they come up with in the future.

Mikah Sargent (00:14:21):
That's incredible that I, I was curious because you did mention using some regular expressions, how much of the process of, of sort of getting the code ready for release in this way was automated. And how much of it was you having to you and whoever else is helping you having to go in and check things because you that that's, I think what's cool about this is if it was just sort of a little, oh, I'm gonna try this and see if it can happen. Then I think that any bit of friction would've stopped some people up, but you kept going until it actually got out there. And so I, yeah. I'm curious about the, the process of actually going in and removing comments yeah. Or, or adjusting things. Was it a lot of work?

Scott Wilkinson (00:15:06):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> that is a great question. It, it was a lot of work and I appreciate, and, and we have processes for that. And the open source office was super helpful in helping me understand those things. I've open sourced things before, but not things this old. So things that I was surprised about are mentions of countries that no longer exist, like, like on the world stage. And the, the mention of the existence of that country might offend someone. So we have to think about those things. We noticed there were possible references to somewhat problematic terms because we, this was the nineties. Sometimes you'll get false positives where a variable name might seem offensive, but it's actually just a pointer to a file. And it's like, oh, that's not this word. That's this acronym. Right. And then you have to explain that to the lawyer who is saying, you need to change that variable name.

Scott Wilkinson (00:15:56):
And it's like, that's not a bad word. That's a, whatever that is just, that is just manual grind, long email threads about stuff. And then the other issue that people don't realize and why I'm getting requests for other products to be open sourced. And like, why can't you just do that? And I want this open source product is that they have third party dependencies. And one of the things that I want to give phone another shout out for was brokering a deal with a gentleman named JE San from artics who wrote a thing called be render, which is a line of a legendary 3d engine. And that is a fundamental core part of the 3d movie maker. And along with phone's help, we found JE who is now I believe kind of retired and chilling and said, Hey, we'd love to open source, you know, movie maker, but the heart of it is this, this 3d engine. Can we opensource that too? Getting that third party buy off is super important. And, and, and, and food facilitated a lot of that as well. So credit to them as well.

Mikah Sargent (00:16:58):
Awesome. well I think that you know, this is a very interesting story and I appreciate you taking the time to, to kind of walk us through it. And certainly we'll be keeping an eye on the, the GitHub there and paying attention there. I did, I have to ask because if I don't then they'll be mad at me. Mary Jo Foley and Paul Thurrott of Windows Weekly here on TWiT. They said, oh, oh, Scott's gonna be on tomorrow. Oh, can, can you ask him anything you'd like to tell us about build <laugh>, which is coming up very soon. <Laugh>

Scott Wilkinson (00:17:34):
Yeah, I would encourage folks who are listening and our friends on the internet to register for build that's coming up the 24th and 25th. In two weeks, it's gonna be virtual. I live here in Portland, Oregon, but I will say that I just got back from Seattle last night. And I got them to give me a, a camera crew and I was wandering around anywhere that I could get badge access to and seeing if I could get some behind the scenes footage. You know, I think that cool builds and Google iOS are very formal and they're very much like here's a vice president talking to some people. I was running around behind the scenes, like catching people when they step off stage, Hey, can I talk to you about something? I got some footage, my friends I'm really excited. I've done a thing called build after hours. So you're gonna be able to watch build, and then as it winds down, we're gonna wander around backstage and we're gonna talk to not just vice presidents, but the people who build this stuff. And it's some of the, some of the work that I'm the most proud of. And it's gonna give people a level of access and, you know, Gonzo footage of just I'm on my iPhone talking to somebody that you wouldn't ordinarily see at a tech conference. And I'm pretty excited about that.

Mikah Sargent (00:18:42):
Yeah, that sounds amazing. I'm looking forward to that. Alright. So of course, folks know that you do great work for Microsoft if they wanna follow you online and check out that great work and also listen to your podcast, where should they go to look for all of that?

Scott Wilkinson (00:18:57):
I appreciate that you can check me out@hanselman.com and from their jump off to my YouTube and my podcast called Hansel minutes. And then I would also encourage you to follow phone at F O O N E, and check out phone.org for their great work in this, in the software archivist kind of genre.

Mikah Sargent (00:19:14):
Awesome. Thanks so much, Scott. I appreciate your time today. Thank

Scott Wilkinson (00:19:17):
You. Good to see you.

Mikah Sargent (00:19:20):
All righty, folks, up next, the Mozilla foundation takes a look at the privacy, or I guess, lack thereof of mental health apps and services. Before we get there, though, I do wanna tell you about Narva who are bringing you this episode of tech news, weekly, complicated and costly. That has been the state of audio conferencing for larger spaces for a long time. Choosing a traditional system might entail difficult design software and selecting from a dizzying array of separate mics, speakers, DSPs, and more, and installation usually requires outside technicians and is often highly invasive and expensive. It could take your room offline for days. The industry was definitely primed for the same type of leap and technology that had transformed and simplified other sectors. NA Reva made that leap when they created revolutionary microphone missed technology with this patented technology one or two integrated microphone and speaker bars fill a room with thousands of small virtual microphones.

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Mikah Sargent (00:21:29):
All right. You have probably seen a whole host of advertisements or Instagram posts or Twitter tweets flying by that talk about different mental health apps and services. There are a lot out there that you can check out that you can download that you can use, but what about the privacy considerations of these applications? Have you thought about how these services may or may not be sharing your data online? Joining us today is someone who is considering the privacy implications of these apps and services from the Mozilla foundation. It's Misha Rykov, welcome to the show.

Misha Rykov (00:22:14):
Thank you. I am happy to be here

Mikah Sargent (00:22:17):
Glad to have you. So I would I would hope that you can kind of kick things off by telling us because maybe folks who are tuning in they hear about your, your focus here on mental health apps, but this is part of a larger guide called the privacy not included guide. And this is a wonderful source for anyone to go and check out if they want to. Could you tell us about the privacy not included guide please?

Misha Rykov (00:22:43):
Sure. So this guide started in 2017 by our lead gen <inaudible>. She looked at mainly at consumer guides and she found out that there are of, of like connected devices, microphones, and smart home devices, smart doorbells, and these things, she found out that there are a lot of data points about their size and about their volume, but there is almost no information about how they treat and data. And if they're, if they're secure at, at all. So she came up with this idea to do a shopping guide, to help users choose devices based on the privacy and security of such and I, I joined one year ago. And with me, we look now no, not only at the, at the actual physical devices, but also at the apps. So mental health apps and prayer apps is our recent addition, but in the past, we also looked at dating apps and video call apps and such

Mikah Sargent (00:24:01):
Understood. So, okay. This, this is interesting because I think that the smart home is one of those places where folks maybe are a little bit more front of mind, especially if you put a camera in your home. I know lots of folks who are sort of suspicious of Amazon echoes in people's houses. And so it's no surprise that that kind of was the kickoff for this guide, that, that we can look at those and say, Hey, here are how these apps are collecting or not collecting your information, here's where it's being stored. But then you had to kind of step further into things and look at how apps are doing that as well. Because I think a lot of us tapped the little allow, allow, allow, okay, okay, let's move past this. I've definitely read the terms and conditions and the privacy policy, except could you tell us about when did you, when did you end up adding mental health apps to the list and what made you folks want to add mental health apps to the list? What made you wanna study these mental health apps?

Misha Rykov (00:25:07):
Yeah, so you are right. I mean, when, when you look at privacy and, and security, it is, it is easy to get this professional deformation get a bit more paranoid about, about, about stuff. For example, just before I start, I was talking, you did some introduction of some sound system, and you said that everyone can hear everything everywhere there <laugh> with this system. And I guess you made, like, you meant this as a, as, as a cool thing. But when I look from privacy perspective, I'm like, okay, but do they ask for consent of people? Yeah. Do they like, how do they store this data for how long? And then have a lot of questions in your mind every time you work with such things. And with application, indeed, it's, it's even harder because with apps, the developers are often not that transparent.

Misha Rykov (00:26:12):
And then the device itself does not tell you that much, like Android can tell you a bit less than, than, than, than iPhone, but even they cannot force developers to truly provide all of this data. So when we saw all the news about mental health apps being like really a hype since a few years, really like the next bus, big business model for this startups, where we saw the huge investors from Silicon valley invest in, into such and also invest into the prayer apps. We had a big question. Okay. But is it just about business or is it also about privacy and security and safety and, and not even talking about actually doing the mission and, and helping people with their mental health. And then we thought, okay, soon as may Mays mental health awareness month, why don't we do this research and we a reviewed 32 apps to 27 of them are mental health apps and five prayer apps, the apps for praying to God.

Mikah Sargent (00:27:31):
Oh, okay. And how I think folks would want to know kind of what is involved in the process of doing the research for these apps, because this is one of those things where you know, an average user might not have the time to go through and do this. And now that this guide is available, they can make use of it. But what what, what steps do you folks take in adding these different apps to the privacy not included guide?

Misha Rykov (00:28:02):
Yeah. So do we have like different layers approach to it first with staff with just minimum security standards. We look at five things. We check if apps have encryption, if they require strong password, if they push security updates, if they manage it to their abilities. And here, ideally we expect the, the developer to have back body program, into invite security researchers to write to, to them. And then we check if the app has privacy policy that's, these are like simplest things. And since a few years to so that most of the apps, most of the devices, they meet this five. So then we look beyond that will look into the actual privacy policy. And then we check what data is collected and why, what rights people have, like, can people delete this data for, how long is it stored and how do apps use this data?

Misha Rykov (00:29:10):
Like, we would love to, to see that they do not sell it and do not a, they do not share it for advertisement with our co consent. That's just one of the examples mm-hmm <affirmative>. And lastly, we have what we call like a Facebook check. Like even, even if the app does all of that, then, then we just look into the, in the news, what's the history of how they treat data. For example, a giant like Facebook has decent security and privacy division, but they also have a huge, like just track record of data leaks. And then we, we, we put it as well into the guide. And then based off on this three things we can put DS and then we can put an overall D on the, on the, on the app saying that we think that is this app. Privacy is not included.

Mikah Sargent (00:30:12):
Yeah. And in fact going through and clicking on some of these, you can see the, the thumbs up or thumbs downs, how people feel about it is a really interesting thing. I like that you've included this voting mechanism to, to determine how someone feels about it. And then as you noted actually going and finding these news pieces gives people so much information that they can use to really kind of take steps to better understand it. And I, this, I, I like props to you and the team for working on this, because this is, I, I can't even fathom the amount of work that this takes, but it's such an incredible guide. And that's part of the reason why I wanted to have you on so that more people could know about this. I, I wanna shout this guide to the rooftops and say, Hey, you've gotta check this out.

Mikah Sargent (00:30:59):
You've gotta see what's there, because I think that that advocacy that we do as you know, working in this space, but then the ability for people to take the take it within their own hands and, and make, make this happen. I'm curious if any particular mental health apps stuck out for you as having GLAS glaring violations of user privacy, if there were any that you thought, why does this app even exist, or why does this service even exist at any kind of stick out or was, were they all kind of not, not doing what needed to be done, or maybe you were pleasantly surprised that a lot of them did protect user privacy?

Misha Rykov (00:31:39):
Well, mental health apps are, are like in general, like the worst privacy wise type of product that we looked at and privacy doesn't include exist since five years. So that's quite bad out of this 32 apps that we looked at, we can recommend only two. And we say that only four are kind of, okay, so most of the apps are bad and that's like, now you are throwing it. And everywhere you see the exclamation mark in a triangle mm-hmm, <affirmative>, that's the app that we don't recommend at all.

Mikah Sargent (00:32:19):
Wow.

Misha Rykov (00:32:20):
A lot of apps allowed just password of 1, 1, 1, 1 app just allowed one, one. And there was also one app where I could just where I could just sign up my partner without like telling her. And she was like, thank for signing me up. But I didn't know because the app didn't require email authorization or any kind of password, I just type in her email and then look, and then use this app as her app. And disclaimer, that was a prayer prayer app. So most of the big apps didn't meet our, didn't meet our expectations with basic privacy. They, they, they share data to advertisers. It's unclear how to delete data from there. They collect more data than they, that they kind of need their privacy policies that very complicated and complex. And you really had a huge amount of time speaking with lawyers and encrypting what they mean there.

Misha Rykov (00:33:32):
And the lawyers are also confused. Yeah. So to all our particular ones, again, like all the biggest ones, we have problems with them. So, so if you look at talk, space, pattern helps seven cups, model health. They earn, they did earn a Dean. And the particular app to highlight was trade.com which is there for people to pray, but it earned all the things that we have. So, oh, wow. They had a huge data leak. They share data, the with advertiser, for commercial purposes, they didn't answer us. So we don't even know if they managed security to their abilities. We didn't find any link, any link to, to send them hello, you have this and their bag. So yeah, maybe pray.com is the one to highlight is unfortunately the one that just checked all of our boxes for being, not that careful about privacy of data.

Mikah Sargent (00:34:44):
Understood. And I think to, to round out our conversation, I was wondering if you could provide folks with now, now that you've done this research and, and continue to do this research someone watching this who says, oh, my, you know, I, I was using one of these apps and I am concerned about my privacy. I'm concerned about protections. What are some tips on how users can protect their privacy while they're using these apps? And is there any advice you would give on understanding a privacy policy or terms and conditions?

Misha Rykov (00:35:21):
Yeah, unfortunately, it's really hard to give tips on understanding privacy policies, because we do not understand them ourselves much. We just call out this clause is impossible to UN understand, and that's the issue by itself. Like they say, we will not sell you data unless, and then they write something that doesn't make like logical sense, at least to me. And I started to mathematics. So I had some classes in, in logic. Yeah. So it's, it's it's really hard to give people advice on that, but I would, I would recommend to really just when you open private S try, how quickly it takes you behind all of this language to find, answer to simple questions, and the simple questions is, do they sell data? What a consent is and how they ask for, for it? Can you delete data and how do they provide you an email to just write hello? I want all of my data erased do they collect, do they collect? And they combine data with, with third party sources. And if they write for which purpose, what kind of data they collect from you, if you can find answers to such silk simple questions quickly, then it's nice app. Yeah. If it's, if you, if you open the policy and you don't understand a word, and, and then you say that they say, we may share your data for such reasons, and then you see 1000 words

Mikah Sargent (00:37:10):
<Laugh> 

Misha Rykov (00:37:11):
Yeah. Then probably they can, what they mean is we can do whatever we want with your data. And we just write it in such a way so that no one can Sue us.

Mikah Sargent (00:37:26):
That's really good advice. That's

Misha Rykov (00:37:28):
The truth, I guess.

Mikah Sargent (00:37:29):
Yeah. Thank you so much for that. Yeah, I think that's that's really good advice. Again, everyone needs to head to the, we'll include a link in the show notes so that everyone can check out the privacy not included guide. Do you have any links or, or social media that you wanna share with our listeners where they can keep up with the work that you're doing?

Misha Rykov (00:37:50):
I really just go to privacy, not included.com. All right. And that's where we have everything.

Mikah Sargent (00:37:58):
Excellent. Misha, thank you so much for taking some time out of your day today, to talk to me and hopefully we'll be able to have you back on in the future as you continue to build out the guide.

Misha Rykov (00:38:08):
Thank you. Thank you for having me

Mikah Sargent (00:38:12):
All right. Up. Next is my first story of the week. Before we get there, though, I do wanna tell you about net Foundry, who are bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. Networking has traditionally been handled by dedicated teams and personnel. You could say network security has been deemed too important to leave in the hands of developers. One of our sponsors, net Foundry, they believe differently. Secure connectivity is too important to be taken away from developers and has forced dependency and stifled innovation and business velocity or unnecessarily trades off security. For those benefits, therefore net Foundry created and maintains open ZD, providing an open source. We were just talking about open source software earlier today, free and easy way for the world to embed zero trust, networking into anything. It provides everything you need to spin up a truly private zero trust overlay network in minutes across anything directly in your app on any device or in any cloud.

Mikah Sargent (00:39:21):
I can't say enough. Anys here. It works so many places it's built on principles of extensibility, flexibility and scalability tax from in attacks from insecure networks can become a thing of the past external network attacks, including DDoS attacks, brute force, credential, stuffing CVE, or zero day exploits, BGP, hijacks, fishing, and more can be stopped. This is truly zero trust of all networks. There's no need for expensive and risky reactive patching agnostic design patterns ensure you only need commodity internet, outbound ports without needing networking engineering skills. To implement it. Say good, buy to complex firewall rules, inbound ports, public DNS, static network, access controls, and VPNs. Yes. You could even say goodbye to VPNs spring for shell and windows. RRP C RCE are recent exploits or CVEs. The recommendation is to cloud inbound ports, but open ZD allows you to have no inbound ports at all.

Mikah Sargent (00:40:27):
Open Zeti was mentioned in Java magazine about how they Zei the spring boot for any Java app. What's the moral of the story. Those who make themselves dark cannot be exploited by spring for shell or other network attacks. Eliminate the tug of war between developers and security. The former can work programmatically with software while the latter have isolated apps driven by policy visibility and logs, they require zero. Trust is a journey. So start wherever you need, based on your priorities. Open ZD offers numerous SDKs tunneling apps for popular OSS and edge routers in cloud marketplaces. If you don't want to host open ZD, use the net Foundry SAS, including free forever tier for up to 10 end points. My goodness, that is a lot of free, free, free head to net foundry.io/twi to grab some free swag like stickers, including the Zeti itself. Look at it, look at it.

Mikah Sargent (00:41:31):
It's so cute. And check this out. You've got my open ziti shirt. This is Ziggy the mascot so cute with the waving. The wand says get an invisibility cloak for your apps d.dev. So grab some free swag, learn more and get started. That's net foundry.io/twi. That's the URL you wanna use, cuz you'll be letting them know that you came from this and get your free swag shirt, some stickers who knows what will come your way. I also got a, a net Foundry mug as well. So join their net foundry.io/twit. Get your free swag and the free tier. Now thank you so much to net Foundry for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. All right, folks, you may have heard, you may have even watched as we had some coverage here on the network of Google's I O keynote kicking off Google IO this week, this is Google's developer conference that they hold every year, similar to how apple has a, a developer conference where developers come and learn about what's coming to Google and the platform in general.

Mikah Sargent (00:42:52):
But it's also, it tends to be a time when Google announces some new, some new hardware as well. And that is the case. Yet again, this year for Google IO, 2022, where the company announced quite a few bits of software or hardware, excuse me. The first one is the Google pixel six, a this is Google's latest pixel six. They have the pixel six, the pixel six pro and the pixel six, a as, as the verge calls at its mid tier phone, this is a $449 phone. It comes in Sage chalk and what's the third color. Let's see there, charcoal, Sage, chalk, and charcoal. So it's not like cuz I've got a, a pixel six here and this one's called sort of sea foam. And you can see there are two different colors involved in this to glass back and I believe aluminum sides on, on the Google pixel six.

Mikah Sargent (00:43:57):
So this one is, is available for $449. It is a little bit more price conscious than the phones that Google offered early on. And with this it tended to be in the past that these pixel six, a phones had cameras that were a lot like the pixel six and six pro, but they just didn't have as good of a, of a processor. But this time Google flipped the script as the verge notes where you don't get as good of cameras, you get a, a 12 megapixel camera versus 50 megapixels. And you get instead the same processor, which I'm not surprised because Google has been working on its own tens or chip. And of course included that in the pixel six and six pro and continues to iterate on this technology bringing it in line with Apple's own Silicon that it offers.

Mikah Sargent (00:45:03):
And so I'm not surprised to see that included in this phone as well. And when the company's looking for cost cutting options, if they want to make sure that every phone features the tensor chip to kind of focus on their own technology, then I'm not surprised that they kind of looked for other ways to be able to remove cost. Interestingly, there's no headphone Jack in this phone. Meanwhile just last year they were very happy to talk about how their pixel, what was it, the five a or the, the, the, the pixel of year of the year past did include a headphone Jack. You do not get it this time around. So everybody's all locked in on the no headphone jacks kind of phone and yes, as chicken head is pointing out in the chat. It's very courageous.

Mikah Sargent (00:45:56):
It will be available let's see, July 21st available to pre-order. So if you are looking to pre-order the pixel six, a the more cost friendly phone, you'll be able to do that in July late July then folks, I think were kind of curious if Google was going to announce it because it was taken a while to get around to it, but they did announce the Google pixel watch the Google pixel watch won't be coming until the fall when the pixel seven and seven pro are announced, but they gave us a go ahead. They went ahead and gave us a, a look at it, given the fact that this watch had kind of already leaked due to a, I left it in a bar situation. I do love that it's the circular design. I, you know, I've rocked an apple watch since series zero and they've never done the circular style.

Mikah Sargent (00:46:56):
And I do like the circular style with this really pretty domed glass on top. It also features your standard crown on the side which I do believe is also twistable they call it the tactile crown instead of the digital crown is apple calls it, and it is an extension of your pixel devices. That's definitely how they, they see it as kind of in addition to the experience and gives you the ability to do a lot of what you can do on your pixel device right there on your wrist. This is going to be Google's first built from the inside out watch because of course there's Android wear that provides the software for different third party Android watches to use. And some of them, of course, didn't even use that software, but here you get to have the Google pixel watch as scooter X points out in the chat.

Mikah Sargent (00:48:00):
There's no word yet. If the pixel watch will connect to an iPhone. That is an interesting question because of course apple provides the apple watch to, and it works, you know, perfectly with the iPhone, but it actually requires an iPhone to get it set up. And it is a device that only works if you're in that if you're in Apple's kind of walled garden. So if people would be able to buy a pixel watch and download an app to their iPhone, that would then interface with the pixel watch. That would be interesting. That could, man. Now, I, I'm kind of curious when this comes out, if they're going to end up doing that because that's sort of one more look at how apple kind of keeps its own little thing over in its over in its corner and does not have any interest in sort of playing ball with the other places.

Mikah Sargent (00:48:56):
On top of those, I, I thought this was kind of funny. Google's hardware seems to leak no matter what all the time and other Android devices end up leaking all the time. And so I think Google was like, you know what? We might as well just be preemptive about this <laugh> we might as well just go ahead and show you it. That's not coming out until the fall, but they went ahead and showed the pixel seven and pixel seven pro which they look very pretty. They've got this really nice aluminum back of course, upgrades to the cameras as you would expect. And they also seem to feature the, the glass back that you would be used to with the more premium devices. But yeah, you, you gotta first look on stage and they showed those off.

Mikah Sargent (00:49:50):
They'll have the next generation of the Google 10 sort chip in it, which I'm not surprised about as well. That that makes perfect sense. So we'll see that very soon as well. And then after the Google pixel seven and pixel seven pro were shown, they also revealed a new pair of Google pixel buds. These are called the Google pixel buds pro and they provide the pro features that one would expect from some in ear, true wireless headphones. I have some Google pixel buds and they are fantastic headphones already in ear in earphones, I guess they are, they, they sound, they sound fine. They, the connection has never been an issue for me. And they're very comfortable and the battery lasts a long time these new ones, which will be available for $199. A reminder that Apple's own AirPods pro are $249.

Mikah Sargent (00:50:55):
So we we're, you're paying less for these ones. They have active noise cancellation and because of the chip that's built in, it's got an audio processing chip built into the actual earbud that will listen to the environment and do the necessary noise cancellation that takes place. And they're not doing one of the things that apple does with the AirPods pro is there's a microphone that faces the inside of the ear canal and then microphones that face out and the built in chips in those listen to the noise inside of ear and outside of your ear to be able to keep the noise down. Google did not mention any microphone inside of the ear listening in the ear canal, but they did mention a technology that is supposed to block outside sound from coming into your ear. If you don't have a good seal on your on the buds themselves, it's unclear what that meant.

Mikah Sargent (00:52:02):
It was all very hand wavy and, and sort of vague, but I'm curious to hear people's review of these as they come out, they are also gonna be available for pre-order on July 21st. And I'm sincerely thinking about getting them, given that they they have this active voice cancellation, and I've had such a good experience with the pixel buds non-pro then there's also the new pixel tablet. This got a very, very mention, and in fact, it hasn't been approved by the FCC yet. So it's, you know, kind of in not early stages, but early enough stages. And what I found fascinating about this device is that it looks like someone took a nest hub max, and just ripped the screen off of it, and then handed it over and said, here you go, because it's shaped very similar similarly to a nest hub max.

Mikah Sargent (00:53:02):
And it also has the camera built on the the landscape side of the tablet instead of the portrait side of the tablet. So that's unlike the iPad of, of any size or variety. And it'll be interesting to see how the pixel tablet ends up coming out and looking given that the company has in the latest versions of Android really focused on that tablet experience, or in some cases you've got a, an foldable or foldable device that also plays a role. And then we got at the VA as if that wasn't enough. One more thing, one more thing, one more thing at the very end. They showed Anthony what's that company that makes the glasses the focals by north. Yeah. At the very end they showed what seems to be the next generation of the focals by north. So of course, Google purchased this company and you know, we kind of wondered, Hey, what was gonna be happening next?

Mikah Sargent (00:54:09):
And they showed off a a pair of AR glasses that were used for translation during a conversation. So they're wearing the glasses, they're talking to someone in front of them and on the glasses, they are able to see the text of the translation up here in front of them so that they can say, oh, I understand, you know, what the person's saying and be able to talk back to them. It's unclear what other features there might be in the future, how these would work. But I think that what Google was really showing off here was this was an opportunity to say, here is one very clear and realistic implementation of these glasses in the real world, why someone would want to put these on their face and where them around this was able to show that that functionality and say, oh, okay, this is one real world use for AR.

Mikah Sargent (00:55:05):
And now if you're watching, you can see this person gets very excited as they see the text showing up on the lenses inside of their vision. So I'm, I'm obviously looking forward to seeing as companies this year, and I think next year, start to reveal their AR their take on AR and their AR technology. Lastly, Google announced a whole heck of a lot about Android 13. They talked about Google wallet returning, and also providing a feature where you can use virtual cards on different sites. So they'll automatically generate you, you know, you have your one actual card and then the system can generate a card that is specific to a different site, depending on what you're visiting. So that can help keep you from having your credentials taken. And then a lot of focus as is usual on AI.

Mikah Sargent (00:56:09):
Google's search features, including multi search it's photo search and everything in between got, got mentioned on stage as they continue to improve upon those technologies. So there was a lot that was there at at Google IO that was announced this year and a lot worth checking out. <Laugh> in fact, yes, there's a, there's a site a page you can go to 100 things we announced at IO. So check that out to see what I may have missed. I just wanted to cover the highlights there and that's that, all right, folks, we're gonna take another quick break before we come back with the rest of the show, my story of the week as we round things out I wanna tell you about new Relic who are bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. If you're a software engineer you've been there, it's 9:00 PM, or maybe it's later, maybe it's midnight, maybe it's 2:00 AM.

Mikah Sargent (00:57:12):
You're finally unwinding from work, your phone buzzes with an alert, and something's broken your mind's already racing at what could be wrong. Is it the back end or the front end? Is it global? Is it the server? Is it the network? Is it the cloud provider we're asking? So how many questions? I, we don't know the answer to. Do we have slow running queries? Did I introduce a bug in my last deploy? Now, the whole team, all over the place, scrambling from tool tool and messaging person up to person to find and fix the issue, get this according to new Relic, they did a, they did a, a study and the report says only half of all organizations are implementing observability for their networks and systems. The report showed how maintaining network observability continues to be an issue for companies around the world. That's not gonna happen.

Mikah Sargent (00:58:03):
That won't happen. If you get new Relic, new Relic combines 16 different monitoring products that you'd normally buy separately. So engineering teams can see across their entire software stack in one place, you'll get application monitoring APM, so unified monitoring for your apps and microservices. You'll get Kubernetes and pixie instant Kubernetes observability with pixie distributed tracing, see all your traces without management headaches. So you can find and fix issues, fast network performance monitoring, stop guessing where performance issues start and ditch data silos for a system wide correlated view. And so much more, more importantly, you can pin point issues down to the line of code. So you know exactly why the problem happened and can resolve it quickly. That's why the dev and ops teams at DoorDash at GitHub at epic games, and more than 14,000 other companies use new Relic to debug and improve their software.

Mikah Sargent (00:59:08):
Whether you run a cloud native startup or a fortune 500 company, it takes just five minutes to set up new Relic in your environment. That next 9:00 PM call is just waiting to happen. Get new Relic before it does, and you can get access to the whole new Relic platform and 100 gigabytes of data free per month forever. No credit card required. Sign up@newrelic.com slash T N w that's N E w R E L I c.com/t N w in case you forgot new relic.com/tnw. And of course, my thanks to new Relic for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. Appreciate ya. All right. The last thing I wanna talk about, I was just mentioning VR AR mark Zuckerberg decided to show off some new technology from meta called the meta Cambria or project Cambria. And this is an interesting take on something that meta has been working on with the current Oculus quest two it's this mixed reality headset where it is it it's kind of fascinating because so AR the idea with AR is that you have something that augments your vision, it's called augmented reality, meaning it lays something over your vision, but it doesn't completely take over your vision.

Mikah Sargent (01:00:35):
So a pair of glasses that have the, the time and the date and the contact detail that pops up when you are walking into a meeting that is with the different people on your calendar, VR, virtual reality is something that completely replaces your vision with something else. So like an Oculus quest two, you strap that thing on your head and you can't see anything that's around you in the real world. But instead, see what's in this virtual environment that's placed in front of you, what Facebook is working on. And again, what they already have started to do with the quests two is providing this technology. That is a mixture of both because you put the headset on and you can be in virtual reality, but then you can also be in an augmented version of virtual reality. It has these high quality cameras built into the headset that shows you what's around you physically, but then because it is a digital view of what's around you, instead of the actual view that's around you, then they are able to easily overlay images in an augmented way.

Mikah Sargent (01:01:49):
So it it's, it's like VR asterisk, and then underneath where the asterisk is in tiny text that says or maybe it's, it's AR asterisk with a tiny text below it that says actually VR, because technically you are looking at a virtual reality in front of you, not the real thing. Now this this, this true feature set is going to be on the Cambria whether that's what they end up calling it or not, it would be the meta Cambria. But you can use some of these features already on the Oculus quest two. And as mark Zuckerberg's post says, there will be some software that will be available for folks to use on the quest two. So right now, if I put on the Oculus quest two headset, I can double tap on the side of the display and it shows me a black and white view of the space around me, not color, excuse me, not full color, but it shows me a black and white view of the space around me.

Mikah Sargent (01:02:56):
And that is primarily used to make sure that I'm not running into something, or I know where I'm standing and what I'm trying to see, but what they have added over time is the ability to have different things in the real world appear inside of your vision in that virtual space. So my dogs, for example, if I am wearing the headset and I'm in one of my marked out spaces in say my living room and the dog walks in, then that dog can be overlaid into that virtual space so that I can see, oh, I don't want to step forward and accidentally step on Missy's Paul. And that technology is going to be implemented further. They've already also offered the ability to you can sit at a desk and you can put your desk in virtual space that remains still virtual, but then you can have a keyboard and mouse in virtual space as well.

Mikah Sargent (01:03:56):
And those will appear there for you to be able to type on and to see what you're doing. That's very handy. If you want to work at your desk and be able to use the Oculus virtual desktop features where you are computing in virtual space. So all of those are some really cool features that already exist that are in this sort of mixed reality zone that you wouldn't get otherwise. And Cambria is seemingly going to take that to the next level, because again the way that it works now is it's a, it's a black and white view. It is not this full color view, but when the Cambria comes out, it's supposed to offer this in, in full color that you would get these these actual visual experiences of what's around you. So I, they, they announced it at, they originally announced this headset or gave like a, a brief glimpse of the outline of this headset at the last Oculus event. And I know Anthony, you and I were kind of talking about how it was, you know, something that we're keeping in the back of our minds because I've thought a few times about getting an, another Oculus quest too, so that my partner and I could both have one. But I've held off because it, I, I want this Cambria

Speaker 5 (01:05:18):
I've been waiting. I'm ready.

Mikah Sargent (01:05:20):
Yeah, exactly. I'm ready. I'm ready. Cause I have to say, I have enjoyed the Oculus. The, I can't think of what it's called now. The meta meta horizons meta world. I can't think of what it is, but basically it's this virtual world that meta created that is supposed to be, you know, part of the metaverse and it has all these tools for building up your own world, your own environment, your own stages with games and all this stuff that you can play. But I always get after a while kind of cluster phobic in that, and I'm curious if something that provides an AR view will make a difference for me.

Speaker 5 (01:06:02):
Yeah, I think so. You know, even when, like we we've tried the more AR what was the 

Mikah Sargent (01:06:12):
Hollow lens,

Speaker 5 (01:06:13):
Not <affirmative> hollow lens, not hollow lens. The other one that like was magic leap, magic leap. Yeah. We got to try that out and, you know, like, you know, definitely interacting, like more, being less isolated and interacting in your environment definitely, you know, makes it different and interesting in its own ways. Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (01:06:30):
That's, that's what I'm hopeful for. I, I know that that one did get kind of overhyped and that the HoloLens has gone completely corporate. But it seems like these companies, Google Microsoft, perhaps, and apple and meta are all focusing on either doing both or they're focusing on AR because I think that that value proposition is much more reasonable than saying, Hey, put this thing on your head and disappear. You know, you, you're not, you're not part of <laugh>, you're not part of your world anymore. We want you to go away that can kind of, I think, cut some people off. And so I'm not surprised to see this headset, which can serve as both. I, I like that idea that I can go completely VR if I want to, but I can almost like flip up a shade and I'm suddenly in, in a mixed reality space. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:07:27):
The other challenge with the, the actual error headsets is like, they can only get it framed in like a tiny window in your view, but mm-hmm <affirmative> with, with the VR aspect, like you get the whole like camera view and you can't put all the AR stuff. That's

Mikah Sargent (01:07:41):
A really good point

Speaker 5 (01:07:42):
Areas, you know? Yeah,

Mikah Sargent (01:07:43):
Exactly. And, and then it's got that sort of object tracking too, where if I put something behind me and I turn, it's not still in the corner of my vision, it's stuck behind me where it's supposed to be, so I can turn around and go back to the, the whiteboard or whatever it is that I have up in virtual space. Yeah. That's a, that's a really good point. So that is what we know now about metas mixed reality headset that should be coming or should be announced at some point. I think this year will of course be keeping an eye on that as well as that comes around Tech News Weekly, that is now coming to an end. It publishes every thursday@twit.tv slash TNW. So you can head there to subscribe to the show in audio and video formats where available on apple podcast, Google podcast, Spotify, YouTube, we're in all the places that you want to get your podcasts.

Mikah Sargent (01:08:37):
And we try to be at least I should mention too, that if you'd like to get all of our shows ad free, there is a way to do that. All you have to do is check out club TWI, twit.tv/club TWI for seven bucks a month. You get every single TWI show with no ads, completely ad free content. You get that warm, fuzzy feeling, knowing that you're supporting us. That's why you don't get ads, because instead you are paying for the show and you also get access to the TWI plus bonus fee that has extra content. You won't find anywhere else. That includes AASS that includes fireside chats. That includes everything between lots of great stuff there worth checking out. And last but not least, you get access to the discord server. That is a place where you can go to chat with your fellow club, twit members, but also those of us here at twit my co-host on Iowa today.

Mikah Sargent (01:09:31):
Rosemary orchard is incredibly active in the club, twit discord, and I am supposed to be getting something this Sunday that is a popular, but hard to find item that has to do with gaming. And if it does come on Sunday, I'm planning on kicking up a little live thing in the discord to do an unboxing of it before we do a full review with everybody else who wants to be involved with it at, at TWI. So I, there there's a little, little hint or not even a hint, just a, a little reason for you to go and check out Club TWiT again twit.tv/club twit seven bucks a month to check it out. And if you would like you can subscribe to individual shows on apple podcasts. If you use apple podcasts, just type in tech news, weekly and apple podcasts, find the audio version of the feed, you'll see a button you can tap to subscribe for 2 99 a month, and that gets you an ad free version of the audio feed right there.

Mikah Sargent (01:10:45):
If you'd like to tweet at me or follow me online, I'm at Mikah Sargent on many, a social media network, or you can head to Chihuahua.coffee. That's chihuahua.coffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. Of course you can check out on Tuesdays iOS Today, which I record with Rosemary orchard, and I should be back in studio this Saturday for the tech guy, the radio show that I co-host with the one and only Leo Laport, where we take questions tech questions from around the United States and elsewhere. So that should be fun. And Jason Howell will be back next week, fingers crossed and now's the time to thank our TD today, which is Anthony Nielsen. Are you also editing the show today?

Speaker 6 (01:11:29):
I am.

Mikah Sargent (01:11:30):
All right. Well, thank you for that as well. You're welcome. And of course, always a huge thanks to Burke, who is one of the studio engineers, and who typically does the setup calls with our guests to make sure that they sound and look good without him, Tech News Weekly would not happen. And if it did happen, it would not sound as good as it does. And, you know, we've had, we've had some calls in the past that have had dropouts and stuff. So just imagine what it would be like if we didn't have Burke <laugh>, then the call would sound like somebody has a can of green beans up to their mouth. And there's a, a piece of ya running to the other one. Hello and Walker trucker. So thank you Burke for making sure it doesn't sound like that until next time where we will see you again. This has been, and we'll continue to be Tech News Weekly. Goodbye, everybody. Goodbye. And I guess I'll fist bump myself there.

Jason Howell (01:12:22):
Don't miss All About Android. Every week. We talk about the latest news hardware apps, and now all the developer goodness, happening in the Android ecosystem. I'm Jason Howell also joined by Ron Richards, Florence ion, and our newest co-host on the panel when to Dow who brings her developer chops, really great stuff. We also invite people from all over the Android ecosystem to talk about this mobile platform. We love so much join us every Tuesday, all about Android on.