 coming up on DTNS. Do we need a competitor to the switch? The quixotic pursuit of instant grocery delivery and square becomes block. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, December 2nd, 2021 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane from Austin, Texas. I'm Justin Robert Young and the show's producer Roger Chang. We were just doing our best to skate the edge of controversy on good day internet. What did we talk about? You can only find out by getting the show at patreon.com slash DTNS. Speaking of which, big thanks to our top patrons, including Miranda Janell, Justin Zellers and Eric Holm. Let us begin with a few tech things you should know. What's up users? Consume book an Uber drive by sending a text message. That's all you got to do. Don't need the Uber drop at all. The partner program is being offered in Lucknow, India to start. In a statement, Uber said that even user registrations for its services can be handled through WhatsApp itself. The WhatsApp business platform already works in place of SMS to handle purchase invoices and related business information to users on platforms like Yatra and Book My Show. Yeah, we chat users are over there and trying to go in. You're just getting that. Tesla launched the Cyber Quad for Kids on its website, a $1900 small electric ATV designed for kids eight years old and older. It can go up to 10 miles per hour, 15 miles of range, charges in five hours. Shipping begins within two to four weeks limited to the United States for now. Tesla announced in 2019 that a full-size Tesla Cyber Quad would be available as an option with its cyber truck. It's kind of our first peek at it. Facebook announced it will make two-factor authentication mandatory for its Facebook Protect program. Facebook Protect provides advanced security for people at risk to account to account breaches such as activists, journalists, government officials and the like. Of the 1.5 million accounts in the program, 950,000 have enabled 2FA already. So Facebook will require the rest to enable it in order to log into their account. On December 9th, a week from when I'm recording this right now, Apple must allow app developers to show links to external payment options unless it can convince the US Ninth Circuit Court to issue a stay of that order. In a related court filing trying to convince that court to issue the stay, Apple says that if it's forced to do this, it may charge a commission on any transaction initiated from such links. That would still be consistent with the original ruling. It didn't say they couldn't do that. It'll say we will charge you to put that link in there. Google already announced a similar thing. They're charging an 11% commission on any external payments for the Google Play Store. Meanwhile, Bloomberg sources reported some other bad news for Apple warning suppliers that demand is lower than expected for new iPhones. Earlier this year, Nvidia announced that it would reissue older GPUs to help fill supply during the chip shortage. The company now announced a new variant of the RTX 2060 originally released back in 2019 being available on December 7th. This new variant will get some upgrades, including 12 gigabytes of RAM, 13% more CUDA cores than the standard RTX 2060. The 2060 launched at $349 and Nvidia said that it expects pricing to reflect that the new card is a premium version. Previous meaning you can get it maybe actually maybe not. Alright, speaking of chips, let's talk about Qualcomm. We've got a few follow ups on the Qualcomm announcements. Yesterday, we announced the new naming scheme Snapdragon 8 Gen one. And now we know that the Xiaomi 12 phone will be the first device with the actual new flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen one chip in it. The expectation is it might even ship in China by the end of this month. Of course, multiple models from many manufacturers, not the least of which include Samsung Galaxy S 22 series are going to follow right after that. But Xiaomi looks like it might be able to say first. Qualcomm also announced the Snapdragon 8 C X Gen three. Oh yes, these two names are so much simpler. And the seven C plus Gen three platform. These are for arm based PCs built on a five nanometer process. Qualcomm says they'll get 5G support for both sub six and millimeter wave service, multi day battery life, upgraded camera and audio functions and shipped to cloud security. And there's the Snapdragon G three X Gen one gaming platform as well for handheld gaming devices. It can support streaming games from an PC or a cloud as well as running native Android games. The Adreno GPU in it can handle up to 144 frames per second and 10 bit HDR can also support 5G USB C and 4K TV out. Not just the chip announcement though they did a smart thing and worked with razor that makes very pretty devices to create a very pretty dev kit available for developers that has a 120 Hertz 6.65 inch OLED display four way speakers and built in controllers. In other words, it's a handheld gaming device. You know, like steam is trying to make or like Nintendo makes with the switch for game streaming. It includes a 1080p 60 frame per second camera and dual mics. This is just for devs to be able to like mess with and see how it works and maybe come up with their own or build software for somebody who's coming up with their own. But it has turned some heads out there. People people seem very excited about this, because a lot of people are attracted to the idea of gosh, I love the Nintendo Switch. I love its portability. But wouldn't it be great if I could play some games that Nintendo doesn't offer for the switch and an open platform might be a route to do that. You want to know Tom with the best design feature of the switches? What's that? It plays Mario Kart. You want to know what the second best design feature of the switch is? It plays Animal Crossing. Yep. The third one is Zelda. The fourth one is Metroid and so on and so on. There is nothing magical about the switches design. Indeed, when we first saw the design of the switch, it was looked at as something like, okay, well, they're going to go down the same road as as the Vita. That seemed like a form factor that had kind of worked itself out of fashion, considering we had a rise in phones and tablets and stuff like that. There's nothing magical there. Yes, there is a market for a form factor like this that can play things that are outside the Nintendo ecosystem. But I do have a question of exactly how big it is. Yeah, that's how big it is that space between Justin talking and me is exactly how big that market is. Listen, I know and I want those of you who are like, no, no, I want this to email us feedback a daily tech news show.com. But don't just tell us you want it. We know you want it. Tell us why you would catch on, you know, like, I want it because this and I think a lot of other people would because just you wanting it isn't enough to make it worthwhile. But obviously other people think it's worth pursuing because you see so many companies, you know, messing around with this including honestly, this just totally reminds me of the instance where the micro console was considered to be a viable gaming platform alongside traditional Xbox PlayStation Nintendo. And you had the oh yeah, you had a you had a crowdsourced funded, you know, Android based Android TV based gaming box. And Tom has one up in his hand. And it was supposed it was supposed to be super disruptive. Everyone came out shield TV. I have one. It was kind of designed to be a game changer. Ultimately, it just ends up being a really amazing content streamer set top box for, you know, 17 different streaming services and stuff I have. But I do see this platform having use outside of gaming, whether you can use it to control say a drone and still have a real live camera. That display would be perfect for it. And I can but at that point, sure, like, yes, something in that form factor could eventually be used for other things. I will certainly buy that. But it's the I am with you. It's not going to sell it will sell in the hundreds of thousands. If that it is not a million unit, you know, mark device that you see with with a traditional console unit. And let me say one that's all you know, dependent on the games, right? Exactly. That you know, Nintendo switch sold so many switches because people like Nintendo games. No, no, no, no. It's wasn't just because it sold so many games that it could play those games because it was the only platform that you could play those games. And also the games were good. Yeah, not good. It was like the Mario game was great. The Zelda game was great. Like like the Animal Crossing game came around at the right exact right time during the lockdown. So it's like they have had a run of exceptional games to make that platform work, which has kind of always been Nintendo's I think the idea of this is yes, but now cloud stream thing that yeah, I didn't have was the ability to cloud stream more powerful games than the hardware could support on its own. Plus we have advances in arm processing. Look at what Qualcomm is doing. You could actually do more on this machine than you could before. That's what they're thinking. I think it's still an open question whether that changes the dynamics enough. If I'm wrong, go on Twitter and call me a big fat stupid idiot. Now, the information sources say that Instacart plans to launch a 15 minute delivery service in a US city as early as February. Right now, Instacart offers two hour grocery delivery in most places in 30 minutes and some Instacart is supposedly talking to logistics companies for proposals on a system that would manage careers to bring deliveries from the grocery stores that Instacart works with. This would put it in competition with newer companies like Joker, Getter and Gorillas all offering instant or super fast grocery delivery. And if I Google says that none of these operations are close to even sniffing profitability at least at this point with the information saying Joker spends $80 to deliver a $10 order. Partly that's possible because of the massive scale and warehouse system needed to make such delivery possible, but also because competition is fierce where these services operate. So to be successful, you have to hope your competitors run out of cash before you do. And that often means offering big discounts on your order to get people into the customer base. Investors do think that this is something that will work. Joker just got $260 million in a round of funding and has a $1.2 billion valuation. Tom, you have been in this game a long time. I don't know in my grocery delivery game. The tech, the tech world, right? The internet world, the world of internet based services, specifically direct to consumer. I don't know if there has been a greater holy grail for which it wrecks any and everyone. Billions of dollars burnt incinerated in the goal of 15 minute grocery delivery from Webvan to now all have come in many with gigantic amounts of cash, different ways of doing it slightly all have failed. I only regret that I don't have a Webvan like container or my Cosmo.com keychain at hand. It is shocking that you don't. Look, this is one of those things where it's very easy to just go like, oh, overvaluation, those VCs are dumb. This will never work. They do think it could work, but even I am looking at this going right, but the only way even you say the math works is if there's only one left. It's like Highlander in the end. There can be only one. You have to have a massive operation and you have to get a huge percentage of the populace to adopt it. You have to take those already razor thin margins of a grocery store and slice them deli thin. Then yes, it'll be worth $1.2 billion. Not all of these are going to work. That's how VC works. You put a lot of bets. You know a bunch of them are going to fail, but the one that works is the one that makes up for all the rest. I say to you, get those discounted 15 minute deliveries where and when you can, folks, because I don't, this is one where I just don't see how it plays out. The technology is not new. It's just the attempt. It's logistics. The one thing that is different is that now we live in a world where there are a lot of people who are out there that want to deliver things. That is different from the other models. Webvan was there's going to literally be a van in your area with a small bodega inside of it, or at least that worth of stuff. You're able to order the things and it will be able to drive over. There was a similar thing called Rocket Spoon that happened in the Bay Area for a while that was doing that for food. You could get it delivered faster than anything else. This, I mean, I guess that's the only thing that's different, but still, man, like I don't know what the material difference between $15 or 15 minutes and 30 minutes is. I don't think that there's necessarily a gigantic market to pay a premium for it. I don't know. To me, this just seems like yet another, it will be yet another pile of bones on the side of this cursed highway. I mean, as somebody who wants a burrito when she wants it, the idea of getting it within 15 minutes sounds great. Me and lots of other people I know who live in more rural areas, there is not, there is not somewhere within 15 minutes drive, if I was driving to go get that burrito, it just can't be done. We're not talking about burritos. We're talking about the makings of burritos, right? Not even a burrito. Like a can of beans, four tortillas. Yeah, like whatever it is. Like I can't, I can't go to the store with, well, I can kind of go within 15 minutes, but then I got to go 15 minutes back. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, this is for the city, right? And so they're probably going to launch it in either New York or San Francisco or something like that. So it's like, but again, it's, it's, man, I don't know why that everybody just keeps coming back. This was one of the original ideas, the original web service ideas. And everybody can help us get into the stove again. The idea is so great. It's like I don't own a store, but maybe I can get whatever I want from the store in 15 minutes. That sounds great. It's the flying car of service logistical enterprises. Well, we have some good news in Microsoft land, everybody. The new office UI that was showed off in June is rolling out to all Office 365 and Office 2021 users now. This includes more rounded design to match Windows 11, theme matching, also some tweaks to buttons here and there. Not significant changes away from the ribbon interface, but, you know, some changes nonetheless. In other news, users report that Edge on Windows 10 and 11 displays prompts when navigating to the Chrome download page, rendered natively by Edge as a system popup, not available to other websites. The popup has different versions of text. One reads Microsoft Edge runs on the same technology as Chrome with the added trust of Microsoft. Another reads, that browser is so 2008. Do you know what's new? Microsoft Edge. That's saying another cool. And another example reads, I hate saving money, said no one ever. Microsoft Edge is the best browser for online shopping. Each one has a button with text related to the message like shop smarter now. Google displays messages on some of its own websites, encouraging users to switch to Chrome if it detects other browsers, but it doesn't add popups to other websites. So that's where things differ a little bit here. Yeah, it only does it on its own website when it shows up and detects Edge or Firefox or something, but Microsoft is putting it over someone else's website, which I find rude. I'm not going to lie. This bugs me. It's not along the lines of like a security breach or anything like that. It's also, yeah, there are some of their messages are a little too cute. The one that just says this runs on Edge runs on the same tech as Chrome. Wouldn't you like to just stay right here? You got all the best parts. That one's not as egregious, but really I don't like any of this. Like fine, when you go to Microsoft.com, you could say like, hey, we see you're not running Edge, switch on over. But to tell the Edge users don't go seems a little desperate. It does. It's like I'm trying to break up with you. Can you please just take it with dignity instead of instead of begging and pleading? If you're using Edge to download Chrome, it's being done for a reason, presumably. I think this is also just part of a larger trend of never in, especially when we came through Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it feels like apps and ecosystems have never been more brazen in using the ability that you are on their service to advertise directly to you to use push messages or pop ups and stuff like that. It's like, look, I have no problem with there being a marketing message here or there, but man, it feels like, and I guess it's because we become so effective at blocking out other forms of marketing that now this is just the only place that they know we're paying attention. Boy, is it annoying. Made me launch Vivaldi. That's all I'm going to say. Hey folks, have a thought about something on the show, but don't know our email address. Well, it's feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com. Right around recording time for DTNS on Wednesday, Square co-founder and CEO, still CEO of Square, Jack Dorsey announced that the company is going to change its name to Block effective December 10th. So it's still called Square right now, but on December 10th, it becomes Block. If you're looking for the stock ticker, don't worry, it'll still be SQ. Apparently, they couldn't get BLK or BLOCK or anything like that. Dorsey said in the announcement, we built the Square brand for our seller business, which is where it belongs. So the merchant selling services will still be called Square. If you use Square, that will still be called Square. It's the parent company that will become Block. Square Crypto, which actually doesn't really have anything to do with the merchant stuff, it focuses solely on Bitcoin, is going to be renamed Spiral. Everything else Square owns Afterpay, Weebly, TBD, Tidal, will all keep their names. TBD, if you're wondering, is the business that is focused on making a decentralized Bitcoin exchange. The newly dubbed Spiral is building open source projects to make Bitcoin a preferred currency. So they're both focused on Bitcoin in different ways. So BLOCK, right? It obviously means blockchain. Not just. Company statements said it also means building blocks, neighborhood blocks, and their local businesses, communities coming together at block parties full of music from Tidal. A blockchain, of course, a section of code, and obstacles to overcome. You know, when this when the story broke yesterday and it was right after our show, you know, I was trying to make some sense of it, and I do have to say as someone who uses Cash App regularly to send and receive money, I sort of forgot that Square owned Tidal. I do see where there was a little bit of a disconnect with the overall branding. It's like, what's the company? What do you own? So I kind of, I get this. At the same time, it's a very coincidental timing for, you know, Square to sort of say, well, we're now called BLOCK, and that's just what we're doing. And I don't know if anybody else has ever done such a thing to name a parent company something new, but we're doing it. Sarah, I think that what you're eating around the edges on is that Jack Dorsey is, as the kids say, on one. He is having a weird time of it, leaving Twitter. He is renaming Square. I guess here's my only thing. Got a new haircut, pierced his ear, yeah. Yeah, I get why Facebook went to Metta. They want to get away from this idea of them being this content leverage data acquisition play and using the worst elements of society to do it, and rather say, hey, our real focus is the future. We have so many great engineers. We have this hacker culture. We want to help build the future, and so trust us to go out to the frontiers and do it. The thing with Square is, especially through the pandemic, when contactless payments became something, you know, exponentially more a part of, I think, the average consumer's existence, Square has a great brand. When you think of Square, like for me, when I see a Square reader, and I forgot my wallet, it means I don't have to go back to the car and get it. I can just use my phone. I don't quite know why you would take all that goodwill and say, no, now we're blocked, but that's still Square, and also we're renaming this other thing. Well, but I mean, it sounds like the Square brand for what you're talking about, Justin, doesn't go away. Square ran for this contactless payment stuff. It's just that the parent company now is blocked. Sure, I guess, but my thing is like, if I hear block owns, you know, block, if Square buys a new thing, I'm like, oh, I wonder how that's going to interact with this thing. I like block buys it. I'm like, oh, I don't even know what block is. That's why you do it. And if you to get away from all that goodwill, I think people over emphasize, I think people overemphasize why they think meta changed its name. This is at the first time a parent company has changed its name because they want to not be associated with one brand. You do this because you're like, people say Square bought title. How does that work with Square? And Square is like, it doesn't. It works with a different strategy. And so if you say block bought title, you're like, oh, what else do they own? Well, you know, what's their, what's their purpose? Same with meta. Meta isn't just, I mean, yes, they probably are hoping there's a little change in perception, but meta also is a change to say like, look, Oculus and Facebook don't necessarily always have to interact with each other. We have different things that we want to do with Oculus. We have different things that we want to do with research and development, different businesses we want to get in all together because that's what big businesses do. They don't want to limit themselves. And so you change that parent company name to disassociate it from the brands and let the brand be the brand. So nobody goes like Square and title. That's weird. They go, oh, Square, that's the payment thing. Oh, title. Oh, block owns them both. That makes sense. Because most people don't know what parent company names are. What's the parent company name of Daily Tech News Show? Subbrilliant, LLC. Okay. Well, you two work for it. That's why you know it. But most people would know. Well, I mean, you just, you know. Well, I mean, come on. Yes, but it doesn't always have to be like that. Was I smarter than Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg and named my company something different than the main brand? Yes. But look, they finally gotten around to doing it right. I definitely, I get your point. I think, truly, I really think that Square has too many businesses for Square to make sense. It makes sense for kind of the merchant side. That's certainly what I, you know, if I see a Square kiosk in a store, I know exactly what to do with it. It's kind of thing. It's good. I use the apps. It's very good vibes. Here's the thing. Disney didn't need to change their name when they bought ESPN. Nobody was like, what is ESPN going to be cartoons now? Like, like they were, it was just a does cause confusion though. People are like, they have a good feeling. You have a good feeling whenever somebody buys, whenever Disney buys something adult, they're like, wait, so the, this kids company is going to, it does cause that Disney doesn't care. Because it doesn't matter because by and large people like Disney things, but that it doesn't matter cuts both ways. Right. It's like, so nobody's going to remember that it's called sure. I know, but we're paid by Subrillion LLC to talk about these things on the internet. Also, also like five people in chat wrote Subrillion by Subrillion LLC. Justin, the heck am I doing here? Yeah, don't tell her that. No, let me, let me, let me change the subject so we can move off this whole payment issue. A new report by the UN's International Telecommunications Union found that the number of people using the internet globally has increased from 4.1 billion in 2019 to 4.9 billion in 2021. The report cited the COVID connectivity boost leading use internet users to grow more than 10% in 2020. The largest annual increase in a decade, 76% of urban dwellers globally use the internet compared to 39% of those in rural areas. 37% of the world or about 2.9 billion people have never used the internet. Yeah, because some of the people that are counted is using it may not have it in their home. They may share a device or something like that, but they use it enough to 37% never use the internet. To me, there's all kinds of conversations you can have on the back of that, but to me, this is just a number to have in your pocket. And I feel like, okay, where are we when we talk about how many people have the internet? There was a big deal when we passed 50% years ago. So this is where we are. We're about just under two thirds of the world. You know, at this point, we are getting to the element of some of the bottom billion kind of like poorest people in America. And the more we can, I think connect some of those communities in the world. Sorry, the better off the world will be. I think that the internet has a tremendous leveling effect that beyond all the social media kind of migrahms that we tend to think about in terms of negative elements, I think it is a fantastic resource for everybody. Well, and that 37% of the world who has not used the internet yet. Okay, huge market. You know, imagine, I don't know, a couple of years ago when it was like, wow, look at all these folks who just are mobile first, just didn't have an office in their house, you know, didn't set up some desktop computer, you know, as being, you know, that was how they got online kind of thing. Totally leapfrog that whole thing. You know, what will that 37% be and how will they use it? Yeah. And you saw how much internet usage changed when we passed that 50% mark, when we penetrated the mainstream over the past 10 years or so. What's that last third going to do? It'll be interesting, it'll be interesting to keep an eye on. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. This one comes in from Mike Mills. Hello, Mike. Mike says, this isn't the same company that you talked about, he's talking about yesterday's show, about doing 7-11 deliveries, robots, but I can help answer the question of who is using this? I offered the Starship robots at Northern Arizona University. Turns out college kids don't really like to lead their dorms. My niece told us about this when they first came out. I was recently on a campus on the campus for a tour and I saw them all over the place. There was even one time when the robot was surrounded by our tour group and I was fascinated watching how it dealt with a non-moving crowd. Took a few seconds, but I speculate that after about 30 seconds a remote driver took control and started having the robot say things to alert people to its presence and asked them to move out of the way. While Waymo was testing their cars in Chandler, Arizona, which is right outside of Phoenix, there isn't much weather there and the roads are mostly in a grid system. The NAU campus, the Northern Arizona University campus, gets a fair amount of snow in the winter and the roads are winding and spread out over a few square miles. I have to believe this tech will take off at other colleges and universities at a minimum. Maybe it doesn't make sense in the suburbs or crowded cities, but I do believe there is a place for our robot delivery overlords. Yeah, I wish I would have mentioned Starship yesterday. This is great. Thank you for sending this, Mike. There is Starship on other campuses as well as office campuses doing the same thing. And you're right, Northern Arizona, great place to test this in weather. I once ordered Jack in the Box in the snow in Flagstaff, Arizona. So go lumberjacks. Quick side note, they actually have these over by my parents at the local supermarket and you can see them crossing a six-lane highway every now and then. Really? You see them crossing a six-lane highway. A six-lane highway? Because the way you say that makes it sound like they just plow across the interstates and they're slamming on their brakes. It's like, you know, three... Gotcha. Okay, okay, okay. At a light. At a light, not a highway. I mean, at a stoplight. Yeah, stoplight, four-way, so. So what you're saying is, yes, what I'm saying is right, they are in other places and one of them is where your parents are. Yeah, and it works pretty well on the subway. I mean, lots of driveways, lots of people driving in and out. Yeah. From Brian, following up on the discussion in Good Day Internet. Now, folks on DTNSU wouldn't have heard this, but we were trying to remember the name of the disease that spread through World of Warcraft years ago. Brian says, the virtual disease in World of Warcraft was corrupted blood, a debuff that jumped containment in a raid and spread to the overworld. I wrote an article about it for friend of the show, Russ Pitts at the escapist back in the day. Russ Pitts! We'll have a link to Brian's article on that in the show notes as well. Thank you for that, Brian. And thank you for clearing that up. Scott was very pleased when I forwarded this email to him. If you have feedback, questions, comments, you'd say, I know what you're thinking of. It's that word. I've got corrupted blood. Please do send it our way, feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. And today, we have some good news that we have four new, brand new bosses. Dennis Horton, Janish Hoffman, Tyson Lee, and Karen Deshmuk. All just started backing us on Patreon. Thank you, Dennis. Thank you, Janish. Thank you, Tyson. And thank you, Karen. Yeah. I don't know what levels they're at, but if they're at the co-executive producer and up now, I just changed out the merch for the loyalty program. So every three months, if you stay at your level, you get a thing. It used to be at the analyst level and up. It now starts at the co-executive producer level and up. So more people getting merch, new designs from Len Peralta, all fresh at Patreon.com slash DTNS. Well, thank you also to you, Justin Robert Young, King among men. Have you been up too lately? Well, two things very quick. Number one on the Politics, Politics, Politics episode that comes out tomorrow, I will teach you what the Grinch can explain about our modern political landscape. And I wanted to congratulate Brian Brushwood and everybody else who helped work on the series that we did called World's Greatest Khan. Yesterday it was named in the top 50 of all podcasts that were subscribed to in 2020 by Pocketcast. So thank you. I know that the DTNS listenership was a huge part of that, a huge part of our launch. Thank you to everybody who downloaded it, specifically those on Pocketcast because you guys gave us a really cool title to move forward on and season two is in the works. Well, that is great news. Congratulations to all of you. Well, on this show, we are live Monday through Friday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern, 2130 UTC. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live and we'll be back tomorrow. Alison Sheridan is going to talk about Tesla's self-driving experience and Len Peralta will be with us as well. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Broadpants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. The Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.