Tech News Weekly 364 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.

0:00:00 - Mikah Sargent
Coming up on Tech News Weekly. Abrar Al-Heeti is back and we kick things off by talking about social media and beauty standards. This time we're talking specifically about TikTok and how the app has blocked teenagers from using beauty filters. We discuss the impact therein. Then I talk about an app that wants to help you figure out when you're gonna die, but don't worry, because it provides some health suggestions to make sure that you live a little bit longer Afterwards. Scott Stein of CNET joins us to talk about his time using X-Real 1 smart glasses and compares them to some of the other AR VR mixed reality headsets on the market, before we round things out with Joseph Cox of 404Media, who joins us to talk about an FTC ban on a company that is tracking locations and selling that data to the government. All of that coming up on Tech News Weekly. Stay tuned.

This is Tech News Weekly episode 364, with Abrar Al-Heeti and me, Mikah Sargent, Recorded Thursday, December 5th 2024. Ai app aims to predict your death. 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. We have hit the reset button on the month counter, which means we are back at the beginning of the month, which means we are joined today by Abrar Al-Heeti. Welcome back to the show, Abrar.

0:01:43 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Thank you. I can't believe it's December. It's scary and exciting all at once, but we made it.

0:01:48 - Mikah Sargent
I mean, time just flies, and you know this is one of the most stressful months of the year. Yay, we'll make it. We will. So, as those of you who tune in every week know, this is the part of the show where both of us bring a story of the week to the table, and I'm looking forward to chatting with Abrar about her story of the week.

0:02:18 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Yes, this was really interesting to me. So anyone who knows me knows I'm obsessed with TikTok, and not just consuming TikTok content, but also creating TikTok content, and most of my stuff is just kind of silly stuff here and there. But one of the things that I see very prominently throughout TikTok is people who use beauty filters that are making it look like they're wearing makeup when they didn't have to do any makeup at all. And not only that, but it also might make your eyes look a little bigger, your lips look more plump, or whatever it may be. I stay away from these filters because I know there's no need to get used to something like that. That isn't real right, and so what TikTok is now doing is they are actually blocking anyone under 18 from being able to use these beauty filters. So things like bold glamour, which is one of the really popular ones again can kind of smooth over your skin, make it look like you're wearing a full face of makeup, and they're very convincing. I mean, you see videos of people rubbing their faces and it's not glitching, which is terrifying and impressive all at once. But I think this is a really interesting move because TikTok is always under fire for a range of reasons.

Right, and one of the things that we have to think about when we talk about any social media, whether it's TikTok or Instagram or whatever it may be, is content that isn't necessarily real. It looks real, it's not real, and that includes beauty standards. And TikTok is a little bit more raw, I think, than Instagram. A lot of things are a lot more unfiltered. I think it was the first platform where I felt like I saw people just in their pajamas with their hair undone and just chatting away and video would go viral and no one would bat an eye. But there are still a lot out there on TikTok that is aspirational or that isn't necessarily real, and I think these filters play a role in that. That's something that can affect anybody, but especially children. If you get used to what your face looks like with a filter on and then suddenly you take a picture and you don't have that filter, it can mess with you. It can make you think, oh, but I don't look as good as I do when I have this filter on and you get really, really attached to it. So that, again, that can happen with any age, but I think especially kids under 18 are more susceptible to that. So I think it's really interesting that TikTok will now ban those filters for anyone under the age of 18.

And it comes at an interesting time right so, across not just the European Union and the UK, but also in the US, there's more crackdown on social media apps, especially TikTok. I mean, in the US we're maybe waiting for a TikTok ban if they don't sell, maybe maybe not We'll see what happens in January but they're always facing scrutiny for the impact on children. So this seems like something where we put aside the concerns about privacy and security, which those conversations will always be happening. But also I'd like to remind you that a lot of apps violate your privacy and security, and not just TikTok. But this is something that's much more immediate and for them to say we're going to do this now, we're going to get rid of this now, and it has a very direct impact on users. I think that's a very good step. Even if they're doing it for PR users, I think that's a very good step. Even if they're doing it for PR, I don't really care.

I think it's good to implement something like this and the other piece of it is okay. If you're betting this for kids under 18, how do you ensure that those kids aren't lying about their ages? Tiktok has said they're going to use machine learning very soon to have more rigorous standards for making sure people don't slip through those age barriers and lie about their age. We'll see how effective that is, um, but I think this is. This is hopefully something positive. What? How do you feel about this, micah?

0:05:54 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, and this is the thing about what you, uh, what you're talking about here is that this is the most convincing and sort of reasonable um, reasonable step that I've heard when it comes to where we stand on the effect of social media on young people. There's a lot, a lot, a lot of stuff out there and there's a lot of panic out there, and there's a lot of panic out there and there's a lot of misinformation out there and there's some disinformation out there and there is a non-zero there are a non-zero amount of people who are kind of trying to have a reasonable approach to those concerns and say, well, we did this with books when those first hit the scene. We did this with rock and roll music when it first hit the scene. We did this with video games. We did this. There's this panic of, oh, it's all affecting our kids, yada, yada, yada, and so sometimes these efforts can get lumped into that overall fear-mongering that is taking place about how someone could be seeing this in the platform, getting used to their face appearing a certain way, and then the dysmorphia right of looking at themselves without the filter and saying, now, I am not that ideal version of myself, it's not the person that I want to be. That can be really damaging to one's personal identity.

When you were talking about that, it did make me think about something else that social media, and particularly audio and video based social media, is changing, and this is something that I know a lot of people experience, based on me talking to a lot of people about it which is that a lot of people, up to this point, spend many years of their lives not hearing themselves except as they're speaking and the first time they hear themselves from an external source. It is really jarring and many times people will have a viscerally negative reaction, not because their voice sounds bad or anything like that, but because it sounds different from what they're expecting. And this generation that's growing up it's interesting that they're probably many of them are not going to have that issue because they will be recording themselves or their parents will be recording them and playing oh look what you when you were this age, and so on and so forth, and here you are talking about and that is fascinating to me. But when I think about the viscerally negative reaction that I hear from so many people who experienced that, I can only imagine what that must feel like if their whole life. They're looking at things through this filtered lens and then they come to. They have to, you know, to come to understand that what they really look like versus what this you know beauty standard looks like are two different things that could be. I could imagine that being very, very damaging.

So this is, this is overall a good thing, I feel. And here's the thing, even if the platform doesn't go as far as what TikTok is doing with because there's that complaint like, okay, they can do this, but people are just going to lie about their age. That has always been a factor, that has always been something that's going on I think that making this change, even if they didn't go further in saying here's how we're going to detect, I still think that's a positive thing. To throw this out or say, well, this isn't worth it because people are going to lie about their age. No, the change is still taking place and ultimately, it is the responsibility of the guardians of these youths to, you know, be mindful of what they are doing and consuming, and you know, et cetera, et cetera.

So, yeah, I think this is a positive thing all around, which is an odd thing. I'm feeling sort of an odd feeling about it, because so much of this is stuff where I'm going. Let's slow down and chill out. We don't really understand the impact and there's a lot more research that needs to be done and the fear mongering is just causing damage overall. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Here I'm going rah, rah, rah. This really does feel like a smart change. So good on on TikTok in this case, I think.

0:10:54 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Yeah, absolutely, and yeah, I think it's because we see that direct impact immediately, because we've always known that. You know, people comparing themselves to either somebody in a magazine or on Instagram is unhealthy, but imagine comparing yourself to yourself, but it's not really you, right? And that's even more damaging because it's like, well, I see that I can be this thing, but it's not real and I can't, I can't really, you know, access it. So so, yeah, I think this will hopefully, you know, be an immediate change that will take a while to sink in for people, but once it does, I think, you know, hopefully a good move.

But, yeah, we've seen a series of updates from TikTok, instagram, like Instagram, for example, rolling out teen accounts not too long ago, which makes anyone's account under 18 private by default, limits, things like, you know, notifications at certain hours and more parental controls. But, you know, those things seem like things that will take a bit more time for, um, for people to accept but also to see, you know, what the impact might be. But I think something like this that affects your, your body image and how you see yourself, uh, hopefully more more immediate positive, uh, impact, because there, yeah, it's good to stay away from those filters, and if you don't even have the option, that's even better.

0:12:11 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, yeah, I agree. I also think of some of the beauty filter pranks that you'll see fly by, one that I've seen recently where someone will be pretending to do a friend or a significant other's eyebrows yeah, and then they put on the filter that really thins out their eyebrows and show it to them and they're very convincing. So the person sees this and is going, oh my goodness, what have you done? And again, that is another example of just how visceral and powerful an impact a change to our appearance can have on our psyche. You know that it's enough that people are making these recordings of it, because it is something where you immediately go and it can be shocking. So, yeah, this is so easy to see and show here is an impact that anybody can witness. Let's do something about it. I think is a positive thing. So I would like to see maybe some movement on Snapchat's front Other one that's common for a lot of these filters. That might be a good place to go next.

0:13:29 - Abrar Al-Heeti
That's a good point. I mean, that's kind of where it all began and I will note don't worry the bunny ears, all that that's staying because that's not normal. So you still have to use bunny ear filters if that's what you're into, but it's just the stuff that makes you look a little too polished.

0:13:47 - Mikah Sargent
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Alrighty, we are back from the break and I will be covering my story of the week. This is ostensibly about an app that lets you determine the day you'll die. So here's the thing about an app that lets you determine the day you'll die. So here's the thing there has long, long long been a subset of research that is devoted to longevity and devoted to sort of the economic impact, the financial impact, of lifespan on everything, and so there have always been or not always, but there have for a long time been sort of standardized tables, so to speak, that you could use to determine the average lifespan of a person in a given place. And, as they talk about in this Bloomberg article from Alexander Tanzi, the US life expectancy is actually rather low. Thank you, actuarial tables, wojo in the chat. The US life expectancy is rather low in comparison to quite a few other countries Japan, switzerland, sweden, france, belgium, netherlands, canada, austria, uk and Germany all rank, I would say, far above the US. But while the average and the sort of standardized actuarial table suggests one thing, we all know that every individual human body is affected in different ways by its environment and by a whole host of factors, including, you know, genetic factors and everything in between. And so, using that average life expectancy to say that, by the time, if you reach 85, or, excuse me, 85 years old, you have a 10% probability of dying within a year. 10% probability of dying within a year is accurate for some and not accurate for others. So this app, death Clock, has come along and it is trained on several studies that help to provide a little bit more insight into when you might die. According to Bloomberg, the app is rather grim. It displays a fond farewell death day card featuring the Grim Reaper. But still, death Clock is catching on because people are curious how different aspects of their lives can have an impact on their life expectancy.

But this Bloomberg piece is not just about death clock, which we'll talk about, but it's also kind of talking about, you know, the grim aspect of lifespan averages and actuarial tables and where they came from, why they exist and how. In many cases it's tied to money the value per statistical life, which measures the cost-benefit analysis in areas like regulation of pollution or compensation for workplace accidents. So how much is this individual person worth and how much should they be paid based on how much they're worth, as well as tables that are looking at the value of statistical life for seniors. So in that case it might have an impact on insurance because as you age, you may need to spend more money on different health aspects, which, of course, is going to cost more money, which is why that might have an impact on your health insurance rate, and all of that stuff is really, in my opinion I think, probably the opinion of a lot of people awfully grim, awfully callous and a little bit it's a place I don't like looking.

I guess I'll say it's like I don't want to think about this with humanity. The death clock though $40 a year, and what it does is, while it provides a second-by-second countdown to your expected day of death, it also suggests lifestyle changes that you can make to, you know, kind of keep that to push that date out a little bit, maybe by a few seconds. You know, switch to more beans, add more beans in your diet and you'll add 30 seconds to the end of your life. What do you think about this, abrar? Are you at all curious to calculate your death date?

0:19:59 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Absolutely not. This would make me spiral. I'm staying far, far away from this. I think it's also interesting too, because it's like, even if you were to calculate, you know when it's going to happen. Uh, what if you get hit by a bus tomorrow, you know? And so I'm like I can't even there's no point in even bothering uh of when this will uh assume I'm going to pass away. But it's interesting how, how much people are into this. I mean, I guess it's not surprising. We're kind of fascinated by death as a society. I feel like, but, um, but it's, but it's interesting to see this use of ai, which it's. It's also fascinating that it can provide kind of a maybe seemingly somewhat accurate estimate as to what factors will play into how long you'll live. But the financial aspects that you mentioned, all those financial considerations, wow, that really makes life seem so pointless.

0:20:56 - Mikah Sargent
Oh I know, this is the stuff I have to bring to my therapist. I was reading this article and now I'm thinking about the value of my life and it's so much less than yeah, I don't like this stuff.

0:21:09 - Abrar Al-Heeti
No, absolutely not, but are you tempted to find out?

0:21:23 - Mikah Sargent
not, but are you tempted to find out? Here's the thing. I really I'm of two minds. There's the larger of my two minds I guess I don't know the one that's louder. The louder of my two minds is on your side and saying this is just going to make you spiral. But there's that smaller, quieter mind that can be so convincing at times, that really wants me to do it, Mostly because, but I don't want to pay $40.

0:21:44 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Yeah, that's for a free trial.

0:21:48 - Mikah Sargent
If it would, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know how it would get me to do it, because ultimately it's like you said you could get hit by a bus tomorrow, and I already have. Now I'm getting upset because I already have a problem. There are going to be some statisticians out there that are going to get upset at me for saying this, but I already have a problem with statistics in general, because you can say that there's a 0.004% chance that a live chicken will fall off of a chicken truck and lay an egg that perfectly rolls underneath the tire of your car and, because of the angle, it causes the eggshell to somehow stick into the tire, which causes the tire to pop, which sends you off the side of the road. And, yes, there may be a 0.0004% chance of that happening, but that means that you could be the person that's that 0.0004% chance of being, and so it could. Still, it doesn't matter how rare it is that it happens. If it happens, then it could happen.

That's where I'm like. I mean, sure we've got odds, but you could be the one that the odds are against or for, depending on what you're talking about. But I don't do the lottery, just so you know this would make you think that I do gambling and all that stuff. I don't, but I still am like what's the point of talking about percentage chance if it could still be you that that happens to? Anyway, so this in that way I'm like you could tell me I'm going to die at 94 because I have a high fiber diet and I stand up out of my chair regularly. But that doesn't mean that the chicken won't lay the egg that sends me off the road into a pit, or that somehow a tsunami from California reaches its way to Portland, and you know I go under it.

Yeah, it's just I don't know. Here's the thing the value this provides is maybe getting people to make healthier choices, and so if your way of motivating yourself to make healthier choices is to remind yourself that you will die one day and you can maybe maybe prolong that by, uh, doing this out of the other, than I think that's, that's a positive um, whether you need to pay 40 dollars to you know, why don't you just just um, just dollars to you know? Why don't you just just just make a fake death clock? I'm going to die at 87. And if I do these things that are recommended, then I'm going to live till 90 or something. Yeah, that might be enough, I don't know.

0:24:48 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Absolutely, and I think you know the value and to go off of what you're saying here in terms of how this can be helpful for people from a health perspective, maybe having like a vague idea of you know if you don't eat healthier, you're not going to live longer, maybe that's too vague for people. Maybe knowing a date and knowing an age is what really scares people into you know, getting their health in check. Gosh, I don't want to die that early. Let me actually get serious about my health. So. So perhaps that that like ominous factor can actually lead to some good, but but not for me, for somebody else.

0:25:26 - Mikah Sargent
Well, yeah, now that I think about it, psychologically speaking, I I can't remember now which which book it was I think I wish I could remember for sure but I interviewed an author a while back and I talked about different ways to avoid those end time scenarios, many of them human caused. And at the root of the issue with all of it, with much of it, is the fact that we as human beings are psychologically unequipped on average to not only put ourselves in the shoes of other people empathy is a learned skill but also put ourselves in the shoes of ourselves in the future. We aren't even good at that. It's why people procrastinate because me later will handle that, yeah. And then you later is like why did you make me? It's why we do so much of that, and so if me right now is not inconvenienced, me in the future will take care of it, yeah, and that because that that sort of compounds whenever it's someone else. So so you know my. You can talk all you want about, like you know, one's progeny, living in the future in a world where the earth is crumbling to dust. You can say that you feel that and you know people who have learned and earned their empathy due to a certain extent, but on the whole we're just not very, we're not very good at it. And so this, what you're talking about there, I think that you're right. This does make you reconcile a little bit and pay more attention to future you or, I guess, the loss of future you to say, I should make these healthier changes right now, because it's more real at that point.

And we often, as human beings, do need object lessons because, looking at our history as humans, you know the thousands on thousands of years that we've existed as modern Homo sapiens, the way that so much of who we are today and what we are today has come about is by way of object lessons.

You go and you eat the berries on the bush and it kills your friend Svlok and Svlok is dead. And so now you don't eat those berries on the bush and you know and you tell your tribe you should not eat those berries. We're going to go over here and try these, and those ones don't make you feel. And so we are just like programmed to learn that way and I know we're getting really deep into this, but it's just, it's kind of you really set it off there with that, that point of yeah, I think sometimes we do have to have that very real thing to grasp onto. So who knows, maybe this is just secretly done by somebody who's like trying to better humanity by, you know, putting forth this idea that you know just make not only would be great if it's like if you make healthier choices, but also you'd be nice to someone out in the world today that will help you live longer.

0:29:02 - Abrar Al-Heeti
There we go. Everything, everything would be fine. Well, listen, if that quieter voice in your brain wins and you end up doing this, please keep us posted.

0:29:10 - Mikah Sargent
Oh, absolutely, I will definitely let you know. Yeah, maybe I'm trying to think of how I can raise $40. I could sell a few crochet projects or something, but I don't have to do it myself. Abrar, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. It's always a pleasure to have you on the show. I hope you have a lovely rest of your December. We'll see you again in January. In the meantime, if folks want to stay up to date with what you're doing, where should they go to do so?

0:29:42 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Yeah, you can follow me on X at Alhiti_3, and on Instagram  Abrar Al-Heeti. And, because we talked about TikTok, I'm also on TikTok at Abrar Al-Heeti, and thank you so much for having me, Micah.

0:29:52 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, all right. Well, we'll see you later, thank you. Thank you All righty folks. We're going to take a quick break before we come back with our next piece. It's an interview with Scott Stein of CNET, but I want to tell you about Experts Exchange, who are actually using the products in your stack instead of paying for expensive enterprise-level tech support.

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All righty, we are back from the break and now it's time for my interview earlier this morning with Scott Stein. All righty, it is time for an interview I am looking forward to. In the past, we had Scott Stein of CNET on to talk about Meta's Orion project. Well, Scott is back and I am so excited to have you here. Hi, Scott, hey, good to be on, good to get you here. So you are currently rocking some interesting glasses and I was hoping that you could tell us, before we even get into the questions, what's on your face.

0:33:26 - Scott Stein
Right, this is the year of wearing all sorts of glasses and I thought I'd just wear them on because I have an early version here that I'm trying out. These are the X-Real One glasses, which are coming out this December, and I'm actually connecting them to the MacBook right now. So I see you as I'm zooming. It's basically casting a monitor and I can basically, if I turn my head, see this curved, ultra-wide monitor for the Mac, and they're display glasses, but they're adding things that are starting to feel more like AR, and that's what's interesting to me is that we're seeing this idea of AR glasses kind of already emerging in bits and pieces.

0:34:06 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely. So yeah, let's talk about you know what are the kind of key advancements in the X-Real 1 and 1 Pro glasses compared to the previous models that were on offer, now that it's got that X1 chip especially?

0:34:22 - Scott Stein
Yeah. So yeah, there's a built-in custom chip and I can also take these off and see you in the actual without glasses on and unplug them. But they're tethered and they still have this design which is like these angled prism lenses. They definitely don't look like regular glasses but from the outside they can. They're perched over my glasses now because there's no prescription lens inserts yet because they're pre-release.

But there's a chip on board that Xreal made that does a three if you follow the industry it's three degree of freedom, position tracking. It sounds like a small thing but it's actually kind of a big thing. It means that normally you'd see a display in front of your face like a floating TV and it would move when your head moves, like glued to your face. Now it'll anchor itself in one place and if I turn my head it'll stay there. For TV and movies I don't think it's that big a deal, but for working on your computer or doing something like that I find it very useful Because I don't want my computer pinned to my face as I move. But there's a new ultra-wide mode that's similar to what the Vision Pro is getting that puts this whole ultra-wide monitor out there. You can only see a part of it at a time, but it does mean that I can basically cast my MacBook with no additional software, and I found that was kind of a really interesting magic trick.

0:35:43 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely. Now, how does this kind of user experience differ from traditional VR headsets? Because you're kind of talking about how it's a little bit in the middle there, like that, virtual monitors, like gaming. Can you game on this thing and count on, you know, the frame rate being where you need it to be?

0:36:01 - Scott Stein
Yeah, so I mean it's a full plugin. It's a 1080p display, micro OLED, and it is a full USB connected display If you plug it into things that allow USB-C video output and the Nintendo Switch doesn't do that yet directly from the Switch. I say yet because there is a console supposed to be coming next year. Who knows if we'll have that? Steam Deck, macbooks, pcs, your iPhone, USB-C, android.

It works and it just treats it like a display, but it'll mirror it in the same vertical or whatever formats that your devices have. If you play movies, it'll go into a widescreen, similar to if you mirror from your phone and do that to a monitor. What I think is interesting is that it's not VR, it's really display glasses with enhanced audio. But when you use Vision Pro when I use Vision Pro, I'm really using it a lot of the time to watch movies and cast monitors from my Mac and even though it could do all these other things, I think it's killer apps are really those. And what's interesting is that the X-Reel 1 is doing some of that stuff now well enough that I think I would use it and take it with me somewhere and you know, I feel like, and the video quality looks good enough and it's pretty small.

0:37:16 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, that's the thing that's. What really stood out to me is how small the device is. On the face it doesn't look. I had a lot of discomfort with Vision Pro, and so something like that that just feels a little bit lighter would, in theory, work better. Now you mentioned a little bit about the field of view. Let's talk about what XREAL's founder is hoping to achieve 70 to 80 degree field of view. What would that mean? You know what's the significance of that improvement and what are they working on to get to that point?

0:37:50 - Scott Stein
Yeah, it's a bit of a mystery how they'll get to that point. But I got to talk with Chi Xu, who's the CEO and founder of Xreal, in my story with CNET and in a video and it was really interesting because we were talking about Meta's, orion glasses and other things in the landscape. Field of view is important because it's basically like letterboxing your reality. You're used to seeing a whole world with all sorts of stuff around you 180 degrees. Vr is like a scuba mask, so it's about like 90 degrees, maybe 110 degrees in that zone, and AR has been more narrow, so it's, you know, it's been as low as 40 degrees. Now it's getting out into 50 and 57, which is kind of feels more like this, but it's good enough for a video. And the bigger you get, the more things you can fit around you. And it doesn't feel like in the days of the first magic leap in HoloLens. You felt like you were kind of fitting this little window and moving around until the cool ghost appeared in your world through the little window and that window is getting bigger and bigger.

So she was saying that the goal and they are planning to get up to into the 70 to 80 degree field of view range. I mean MetaOrion is 70 degree field of view with a very custom and expensive technology. You know special lens material and it's not something that's at all ready for consumers yet. But it's also fully transparent and it's all built into this thin lens. But maybe there'll be ways through these kind of prism lenses to do things like that and kind of bridge the gap for displays. But I think he agreed, and I think Meta agrees, that 70 to 80 is really kind of where you'd want to be to get these to be really, really useful. So it's still kind of a stepping stone.

0:39:38 - Mikah Sargent
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Now let's head back to that interview. Now another thing that I noticed and you talk about. You know USB-C connectivity to treat it as if it's a display, but that also means that the device is tethered. Is there a future for X-Reel where they want to move past having a tethered device? Are they trying to let you kind of roam freely about the cabin, so to speak?

0:42:57 - Scott Stein
Definitely. I mean, that's the goal. I think it's interesting because, you know, the tether is annoying. It does kind of feel, though, sometimes like old-fashioned headphones, and so if you're playing a movie on the go it doesn't feel awful, but you do have to bring out that cord. I think there's probably a couple of things at play. One might be video playback reliability, but there's already things that can do that wirelessly. But it's battery life too.

Right now, meta Ray-Bans, which just do audio and camera, last maybe half a day when I wear them, and the Snap Spectacles, which are full 3D AR that are for developers, last 45 minutes. It's nothing, and that's why they're not for everyday people. So I think that the moment and where the battery goes, the moment you put battery on this, at the moment, I would imagine the battery life would be really short or you'd have to have a battery pack Plus. They're putting like a new chip in here, so there's more processing on these. There's just a lot going on.

It sounded like for now, and I would expect that a lot of these glasses that come out will probably have tethers. It's a total guess, but you know, if Apple's doing a next-gen vision device that connects with your computer and phone and other things. I can't see how that will work without a tether or a big honking battery pack Right, and at least you know. So I think we're going to kind of see that in between zone, but I think it's a good reality check. Talking with Xreal, I think about some of the things that can happen now that are surprisingly good, and some of the things like they're dabbling in AI next or they want to with this plug-in camera module, which is what a lot of glasses makers are doing.

0:44:45 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, in fact, that's what I was hoping to talk about, or what I'm hoping to talk about next is, you know, ai. That's the big buzzword, and it seems like if you've got a product, you better have AI packed in there somewhere. So what are these snap-in cameras? What is their future AI integration plan? How is that going to be involved in this? Their future AI integration?

0:45:03 - Scott Stein
plan. How is that going to be involved in this? It's an unknown as far as integration plan, but you know it is a module, it's a little. You know it's a little camera can do like 1080p or 12 megapixel, plugs right in the nose bridge and looks pretty innocuous. But you know, besides photo and video, it is meant to be used for AI purposes and right now, if you look at some of the early products that are doing that, particularly the meta Ray-Bans, a lot of that is this multimodal AI that everybody's talking about. It's using the cameras as well as the audio inputs so it could take a photo, analyze the photo, translate something, tell you what something is.

I find that when I use that with Ray-Bans it's very hit and miss and I kind of forget about the future and move on. But it's definitely an experimental landscape where, you know, I think we're at a point now, definitely with AI, where everybody's trying to wedge AI in in so many ways to try to make it work for people. And you know, this multimodal stuff is another part of that. Apple's going to have camera-based visual intelligence on the iPhone, google's done that on Lens, and so I think that they're putting their foot in the door at that. But my question is what platforms and what systems will work with that AI potential? Xrail's making the hardware, you know, but what about all the software and platforms out there?

0:46:21 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. But what about all the software and platforms out there? Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. I wonder how some of the behind-the-scenes stuff with AI, how that can help with battery life, how that can help with performance, as opposed to the flashy features that are more about the consumer in the end. Now, the last thing I'll ask you because I think it's the big question, so I made everybody wait till the end is how do these glasses kind of compare and position themselves in the landscape of AR and mixed reality and VR devices that are out there, like the Apple Vision Pro, meta's Orion glasses? You talked a little bit about it throughout the piece, but or throughout the piece and also throughout our interview. But overall, you know, having had a chance with Meta Orion, having had a chance now it sounds like a lot of time with the Vision Pro, where does this stack up and can you see this kind of fitting into your day to day?

0:47:16 - Scott Stein
Well, it's kind of like VR headsets and mixed reality. Vr headsets have kind of hit a little bit of a wall in the sense of their size and their battery life. You know, reality VR headsets have kind of hit a little bit of a wall in the sense of their size and their battery life. They're advancing, but they're pretty big but impressive for what they do. They last about two or three hours, but usually more like two on a charge. That's not enough for anything like everyday use. And then you're seeing this shift where everybody ambitiously for years has wanted to go to glasses and it's pretty darn tough. And you're seeing these little stabs at it through companies chipping away in different directions and I think that the idea is how much can you do, or is it going to be something more gradual.

You know the stuff I've seen recently. You know they're much more limited. These are just display things compared to a VR headset, but the video quality is good enough that I'd want to watch movies in it. It feels richer, something that I still don't really feel all the time, especially with the earlier Quest headsets. More so with Quest 3, I feel it's better. Vision Pro looks great for movies. This looks pretty good for movies. I like it, but all the rest of the stuff? You're looking at this evolutionary path. Snap Spectacles are more advanced and do 3D stuff, but they're just a developer kit for now and they're very experimental. And then Orion is not even a developer kit. It's like a little moonshot experiment to say here's the prototype we built. Technically this can be done, but you know, no one's getting their hands on it yet. So I think that's almost like the path over the next maybe three years or four years to where things are going to go.

0:49:00 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely Well. Scott, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join me this morning to talk about your time with X-Reels glasses. As always, it's a pleasure to have you on. If people would like to follow along with work you're doing, where should they go to do that?

0:49:11 - Scott Stein
You can follow me on Blue Sky, which is my frequent spot now, and you can also check me out at CNET all the time where I'm there writing stuff and doing all sorts of things.

0:49:24 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely. Thank you so much and we'll see you again soon. Bye-bye.

0:49:28 - Scott Stein
Yeah, thanks.

0:49:29 - Mikah Sargent
All right, thank you, Scott, for joining us Up. Next, I've got Joseph Cox of 404Media here, but we'll take a quick break so I can tell you about 1Password, who are bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. A quick question for you Do your end users always work on company-owned devices and IT-approved apps? Yeah, I didn't think so. So how in the world do you keep your company's data safe when it's sitting on all those unmanaged apps and devices? Well, 1password has an answer to this question. It's called Extended Access Management.

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Check it out at 1password.com/twit that's 1-P-A-S-S-W-O-R-D.com/twit, and we thank 1Password for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. All right, we are back from the break, and that means it is time to talk to Joseph Cox of 404Media. Welcome back to the show, joseph.

0:51:30 - Joseph Cox
Thank you so much for having me.

0:51:32 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, pleasure to have you here. I was hoping that you could start by telling our listeners about the company that you were talking about in this piece Venntel. What is it and what does it do?

0:51:45 - Joseph Cox
Sure. So Venntel is part of this massive location data industry right, where they will harvest location data from ordinary apps installed on your phone Maybe it's a web app, maybe it's a sat nav or something like that, and I'm actually looking into some other ones at the moment as well and Venntel gets all of that location data from the different app providers, it bundles it up, it cleans it and then it basically sells it to the government, and the government is able to rifle through that without a warrant. And what makes Venntel particularly interesting because, as I said, there are a lot of companies in the space is that Venntel provides the underlying data not just for its own tool, but for other ones that then sell to the government as well. So the way I see it is that Venntel is something of a beating heart of the location data surveillance industry.

0:52:34 - Mikah Sargent
Wow, okay, that's interesting then Selling it to the government. Then a government organization is banning Venntel. Can you explain the significance of the FTC banning it from selling sensitive location data?

0:52:51 - Joseph Cox
Yeah, it is funny because there's a lot of different arms of the government going on here, right? So I should just preface with, when I say Venntel, selling data to the government, that includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ice includes Customs and Border Protection, cbp, the Secret Service as well, the DEA and the FBI, have also purchased, if not Venntel, data stuff that's very, very similar to it. Now the news is that the FTC has basically banned Venntel and its sister company, or parent company, I should say, gravy Analytics, actually gathered the data and what the FTC is saying is that, hey, you, ventel, you have to stop collecting, selling, transferring sensitive location data and you have to delete all historical location data. And I've read over that part of the complaint and the action several times and I still can't quite believe that second part, because you're asking a surveillance contractor to basically destroy your entire product and we're going to see what the impact of that is later and I'm sure we'll get into a little bit here, but it's a massive demand and action from the FTC.

0:54:01 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, that kind of blows my mind a little bit in terms of is that not wiping out an entire company? I mean, how does the FTC's order address concerns about data being used to track visitor or visits to sensitive locations in particular? Is that kind of, I guess, more I'm wondering do we know what caused this in the first place? Like, why did the FTC suddenly go okay, now we're taking care of this and we're not just saying stop doing it, we're saying stop doing it and get rid of everything you already have.

0:54:34 - Joseph Cox
Yeah. So this is sort of the latest and probably the most significant action in a pretty increasingly long line of actions against location data companies. Now a while ago, the FTC also acted against a company called Xmode which I revealed was getting location data from a Muslim prayer app and then its customers included US military contractors, which is obviously a pretty controversial combination monitoring people who are probably going to mosques and selling it potentially to the US military. The FTC told that company you have to stop collecting data about sensitive locations such as places of worship and healthcare facilities, which presumably would include abortion clinics, that sort of thing. So the FTC is also doing that to Venntel and saying that sensitive data, you can't do that.

But I've never seen a list quite this long. There's like a lot more sensitive locations in there. There are homeless shelters, domestic abuse, survivor shelters and I think very interestingly for the incoming Trump administration shelters that deal with refugees or immigrants as well, and they're saying you can't have that data either. Even schools are also in there, which I found particularly interesting. So it's the continuation of those enforcement against different location data companies, but I think this is broader, wider and potentially more significant as well, and we will get into this, I'm sure, but I should just preface straight away they have included an exemption for quote national security and law enforcement. We have to wait to see what that actually means, you know like. Does that undermine the entire order or is there certain national security use cases you can still use the data for? We'll have to wait and see on them.

0:56:19 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, now, I guess then, to sort of double down on this or to clarify even a little bit more, that means that what the FTC is saying is we've got a list of sensitive locations that you can no longer collect. This data for tracking and collecting can still keep tracking grocery store visits and I don't know well, maybe not even dentist office visits, but whatever else is left there, I don't know. Visits to a park, those are still allowed to be tracked.

0:56:53 - Joseph Cox
Yes, broadly speaking, at least in the way that the order is written and the way I'm interpreting and I think other journalists are as well is that they can still do their business once they delete the data and they don't do those sensitive locations. But I mean, the crucial part is that Gravy again the company that's related to Venntel they don't sell it to the government. They do kind of what you're suggesting, which is well, footfall traffic to McDonald's or Burger King or whatever, and you want to see how many people went there. The FTC is generally okay with that if they got proper consent from the people. They're getting data from which the complaint alleges they didn't, because you open up a normal app and there's one in there. The FTC doesn't name the app, but you can look at it and the privacy policy, the disclaimer doesn't say, by the way, we're collecting your location data and we may sell it to the government. Obviously they're not going to say that, but the FTC takes serious issue of that.

0:57:48 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah. Now, on the flip side of this, you may have some folks who would say, okay, this data is being used by multiple US government agencies who need it for this, us government agencies who need it for this, that and the other. Does this have an impact on government surveillance practices like a real impact, or is it just the case that this is one in hundreds of companies that the government can buy this location data from?

0:58:18 - Joseph Cox
It could have an impact on US government surveillance operations and we will see again, sort of with that carve out for national security and law enforcement. We'll have to see how effective that is, but I think at minimum that at least brings up the conversation of well, maybe they should get a warrant for this and at the moment the Secret Service as I've covered a bunch and other parts of DHS I mentioned they've been querying this data without getting a court order, a subpoena or a search warrant. You just log in and you look up locations. There have actually been leaked videos of one of the tools that use this data and we saw, for example, the people who used it and they leaked to us. They looked up phones at an abortion clinic and you could just see phones crossing straight state lines. No warrant, nothing. You just do it, do a few clicks of your mouse and that's it.

Now, maybe the abortion example is a bad case, but let's say there's the recent shooting right of the United Health CEO in New York. Maybe the FBI or other law enforcement agencies will want to use this data or similar to maybe find out where a mobile phone went. Okay, sure, we can debate about that. I think everybody could probably agree they should probably get a warrant for that. Yeah right, then there will be some sort of probable cause, there will be some sort of check and balance in place and maybe, if the data still continues to be used by various government authorities, perhaps they will now have to get a warrant as well, and we'll just have to see on that.

0:59:47 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, now, we talked a little bit about this before, the big problem here being informed consent for using consumer data. Is this not kind of a clear and present example that there's a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes that's a little bit obscured without user consent involved?

1:00:13 - Joseph Cox
Oh yeah, absolutely I mean. But it's even worse than that and I'm sure when you first take the user of the app, they download the shopping app or whatever. As I said, the privacy policy is not clear. That's not informed consent there. But I've even spoken to some of the people who make the apps, who then sell the location data, and even they don't know that they're actually selling it to the government. It's like an entire series of pinky promises and sort of people not really asking the correct questions. So even the people collecting the data, or even the people collecting the data, or even the people making the apps to get that, they don't even know. So how could you ever expect users to be able to provide informed consent when the app developer doesn't even know? It's just a series of people not really paying attention to what's going on.

1:00:55 - Mikah Sargent
And then I guess I would ask too because we're seeing FTC act against mobile wallah is this a trend of focusing on this that you've seen now for a while, or has this just started enacting, and do you think we're going to see a shift away from focusing on ruling against and providing regulation for these data brokerage firms?

1:01:21 - Joseph Cox
So this is the fourth or the fifth in a very, very quick succession over the past 12, 18 months, something like that.

You bring up the Mobile Wallah case and what they did was that they basically surveilled Black Lives Matter protestors and then essentially boasted about it in marketing material. What makes that action much more well, more interesting in some respects is that it was telling Mobile Wallet you cannot collect data from the real-time bidding process now, and whereas Venntel got it from apps installed on people's phones, mobile Wallet got it, at least in part, from the advertisements that appear in your apps. So maybe you're playing a game like Candy Crush I'm not saying it's specifically Candy Crush, but something like that and you get those very weird spammy adverts inside the mobile game. Those can potentially get your location data in such a way that there's all of all of these companies vying to get your attention and the FTC basically said you have to cut that out. And that could be hugely significant because the other companies also do that sort of surveillance as well. And if the FTC is saying you can't even do that type of surveillance at all, that could impact other companies as well.

1:02:30 - Mikah Sargent
Wow. And then I guess the last question is, as you foresee it, with the companies that have been banned up to this point and what has happened with them. What challenges arise in enforcing these bans, ensuring compliance, given that this is kind of a wide-reaching part of the industry and also is one that I think not enough people are paying attention to?

1:02:55 - Joseph Cox
Yeah, I mean, I think it's probably. The FTC can obviously only really act against US companies, right? And we live, thankfully, in the age of the open internet and the open worldwide web, where you can download software from all different sorts of countries and jurisdictions. That, of course, is a double-edged sword, where you could be downloading a Chinese or a Russian or a Taiwanese, it doesn't matter, you know just some sort of app from a country the FTC does not have any sort of power over. Well then they could collect the data, sell it to a company who could then still sell it to US law enforcement. Anyway. It's very much a whack-a-mole situation. I think it'd be unfair to expect the FTC to entirely solve the problem, but it seems to be taking steps where it can do them, and it could be significant.

1:03:40 - Mikah Sargent
Wow. Well, I want to thank you so much for always shining a light on this important area. Of course, people can head over to 404mediaco to keep up. Is there anywhere else they should look to stay up with what you're doing.

1:03:55 - Joseph Cox
Definitely check out the 404Media podcast. Just search for that in your podcast app of choice. And we talk about our own stories every single week where you literally can't read them anywhere else. So if you don't want to read, you can listen instead.

1:04:07 - Mikah Sargent
Nice. Thank you so much, joseph, we appreciate it.

Thank you All righty. That is going to bring us to the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly. Our show publishes every Thursday at twit.tv/tnw. That's where you can go to subscribe to the show in audio and video formats. And, of course, I want to remind all of you out there about Club Twit.

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If you'd like to follow me online, I'm at Mikah Sargent on many a social media network where you can add to chihuahua.coffee that's C-H-I-H-U-A-H-U-A.coffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. Be sure to check out iOS Today and Hands on Mac, which publish later today although I think iOS Today is already out, which is awesome. Hands on Tech, which I record on Sundays, where I take your tech questions and answer them and also do gadget reviews and again tune in in just a couple of hours as we're recording the show live for Emily Forlini's AMA, looking forward to having a chat with her. Thanks so much and we'll catch you again next week for another episode of Tech News Weekly. Bye-bye.