 Robert Wallace has supported independent tech news directly for five years. Be like Robert, become a DTNS member at patreon.com slash DTNS. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, June 24th, 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio P-Line, I'm Sarah Lane. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. We have got new Raspberry Pi's. We have got new Samsung smart things. We have Google trying to help make the world better. Seriously, for real. All kinds of good stuff. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. The first public beta of Mac OS 10.15 Catalina is out now ahead of its expected July date. Catalina includes apps for music, podcasts, and TV to replace iTunes, as well as the Find My app and Sidecar for using an iPad as a monitor. Also, the public betas of iOS 13 and iPad OS 13 have been released early as well. Google's shutting down Hangouts on Air, which allows broadcasting a group video call live over the internet. People who have been watching us live might be familiar with Google Hangouts on Air. Sometime later this year, this is supposed to happen. Now, Hangouts on Air is different from Google Hangouts, the app, which is also going away for G Suite users in October to be replaced by Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet. This is not at all confusing. Google's message about the impending shutdown of Hangouts on Air points people to youtube.com. But that only works with a single video source and not group video chat. But it's real quick side note. We used Hangouts on Air to stream the show up until June 1st. And then shortly after we stopped, they decided to get rid of it. I'm just saying, maybe it was us keeping it around. Meizu announced its 6.2 inch OLED Meizu 16S flagship phone with an in display optical fingerprint scanner, 20 megapixel selfie camera in the top bezel, no notch, 48 megapixel Sony sensor in the photo and the camera on back, 7.6 millimeters thick weighs 165 grams and runs Meizu's FlyMe OS built on top of Android on a Snapdragon 855 processor. It has 3600 milliamp hour battery and up to eight gigabytes of RAM and sells for around $500. Just, you know, no nonsense, solid $500 phone. All right, let's talk a little more about that new Raspberry Pi, Sarah. Yeah, specs galore. The Raspberry Pi Foundation announced the Raspberry Pi 4 is now available with the faster system on a chip than previous models. The processor now uses the Cortex A72 architecture. It's quad core 64 bit ARM version eight at 1.5 gigahertz. The Pi 4's memory transfer speed should improve after the foundation switched from LPDDR2 to LPDDR4 RAM. Gigabit Ethernet is replacing Ethernet over USB 2.0. There are now two USB 3.0 ports, also two USB 2.0 ports and USB C port for the power brick. Bluetooth 5.0 now supported and two micro HDMI ports replaced the full size single HDMI port of versions past. That gets you support of two 4 key monitors with H.265 decode for 4K 60p, H.264 for 1080p 60d code and 1080p 30n code and OpenGL ES 3.0 graphics. The four pole headphone jack is pretty much the only thing that's remaining the same. The base model with one gigabyte of RAM cost $35. That's what it was before. And then you have two gigabytes of RAM model for $45 and the four gigabyte model for 55. Yeah, for ports, I think it's a net positive. Getting a couple of Bluetooth or a couple of USB 3.0 ports is great while preserving a couple of 2.0s for backwards compatibility, backwards compatibility on all the pin ports that you use for Asbury Pi stuff. The upgraded HDMI is good, although making them many I think are micro HDMI may annoy a few people. So one minor negative there and then replacing the micro USB with USB C. All seems pretty good, Roger. I know you're always attracted to these. You know, the great thing about the Raspberry Pi has always been it gives you a full fully functioning computer at an inexpensive cost, allowing you to use it for a lot of embedded or kind of DIY projects. Typically, before this, people would use like old laptops and some of the machines. They were bulky and you could they weren't necessarily what you would want. If you say wanted to make like a controller or maybe something to, you know, build the DIY door cam or something like that. I'm really excited. I am forcing my child is still at the age where she'll probably just throw it at me instead of actually try to figure out what it does. But definitely the kind of men in my sentiment, I feel like these are like the Legos for the 21st century. Yeah, in a way, they really are used Legos and very affordable. I mean, as you mentioned, you have to be a person who wants to tinker whatever your age is or have somebody help you to tinker, you know, buying a thirty five dollar one gigabyte Raspberry Pi four. You know, you just kind of got to look at it unless you know what to do with it. Right. This is not a replacement for any computer. That's an all in one solution, but but tractor pricing. Yeah, definitely. And and also, you know, you have to bring the storage. It doesn't come with any storage on board. So there's some additional costs there, but thirty five bucks. I think it was a fire dog, 12 and Twitch said cheaper than Legos. And some very much so because for certain, I know the reason why. But Lego has Lego. The company has increased their prices slowly over the past eight years. Yeah, could you use a red delicious apple as a controller with your. Yes, you can because it conducts electricity. And so we were actually back at revision three, Michael Hand. I'm sure Sarah is familiar with Michael Hand, who was an intern trying to come up with a way to use a banana and an apple as controllers for a very simple program on screen display. Yeah, where you do you touch the apple and just touch it. And you get the electricity, right? Yeah, you know, delicious. Good for something good for something. Tell it right, you know, yeah, this is great for learning, great for experimentation, all that sort of thing. Samsung launched a new SmartThings Cam for eighty nine ninety nine. Not a bad price for this sort of Nest Cam competitor type of thing. It's not the cheapest one, but it's not bad. Captures full HD video with HDR, infrared for night vision, two way audio, all the usual things can detect. People has a hundred forty five degree field of view, twenty four hours of free cloud storage backup for up to four cameras. And Samsung is offering thirty day backup. So you get it twenty four hours of backup for free, thirty day backup for up to eight cameras for eight dollars a month or eighty dollars per year. Samsung also announced a eighteen dollars SmartThings Wi-Fi smart plug. So cheaper than the Amazon one, actually. And a ten dollars smart things, smart bulb. You do have to have a bridge for the bulb, but ten dollars for smart bulbs. Pretty good. All three are available today for use with the SmartThings ecosystem. The Cam and the smart plug can be used with or without the SmartThings hub. The smart bulb uses Zigbee three point oh, that's the one that needs the hub and the devices work with Amazon, Google Assistant and Bixby voice assistant. So you can control them with your voice. Good good prices, especially for the bulb and the plug. Yeah, this seems like the prices were specifically meant to be super competitive. There are no specs here where people are like, whoa, I can't get that anywhere else. But you've got, you know, ten dollars off here and there. I I also know for anybody who's like cloud storage, don't want that. You don't have to opt into that. That's something that you can you can either choose to to have for free or not. And of course, if you want more of the 30 day storage, you've got a subscription model. But yeah, track your prices. And this doesn't give me just this just gives me stills. It doesn't give me video storage. So it's it's pretty common to have to pay for that stuff. But a lot of people don't want to. They just want to they want to connect directly. There are other cameras for that. But if you're the kind of person who's fine with that cloud storage, because you don't want to meddle a trying to open ports and get into your your camera yourself, then these kinds of cloud storage offers are, you know, are appealing. And Samsung, as far as trust goes, at least isn't as motivated to make money off your personal data as Google or Facebook or others would be. They just want to sell you the things, the objects, the hardware and the service. And the service. Well, they don't necessarily want to sell ads based on you, although I wouldn't put it past them if they could figure out how to monetize it. Don't get me wrong. Yeah, there's something very compelling about a lower price tag. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Well, and all these ecosystems, they know that if I were to get a smart things cam and, you know, maybe a couple of bulbs and I get familiar with using the app. And and I, yeah, I have a good or better experience with with Samsung's products in general. I'm just kind of going to stick with it, because otherwise you're juggling a bunch of of smart ecosystems that sometimes don't work great in conjunction with each other. Yeah, Google Assistant and Amazon have made it easier to just use all this stuff together. I have Lifex and Philips and Techsy and all kinds of stuff in my house. Yeah. And I just I just use the Amazon Echo to control that. But some folks may not realize that or just not want to risk it and have to deal with multiple systems. And so, yeah, once they get you in, it's easier to keep you. Google is expanding its Be Internet Awesome Children's Digital Safety Program to include media literacy. What does that mean? Well, new elements help children evaluate sources, identify credible information or information that is not credible, fact check, avoid phishing attacks, learn what bots are and what they do, spot fake URLs and others. It was developed by Ann Collier, executive director from the Netsafety Collaborative and Faith Rago, PhD and co-author of The Teacher's Guide to Media Literacy and co-founder of the National Association for Media Literacy Education. Children are taught that an expert in one topic, not always an expert on everything. And, quote, if you can't find a variety of credible sources that agree with the source you are checking, you shouldn't believe that source. The new curriculum is available online for both teachers and families to use. Courses are offered in English, Spanish and eight other languages. This was a breath of fresh air when I read this because it's detailed. This is meant for children and the lesson plans are designed for children. There are other media literacy movements to help educate adults. But all of the stuff is the kind of thing we should be educating all of us on. An expert in, you know, physics isn't an expert in ecology. You know, and you see things cross possible. This is a scientist. Well, yeah, OK, but is she a scientist in this discipline that you're trying to claim? That's a big one you have to watch out for. And even to the to the subtlety of teaching children, hey, if you see one source that you usually think is credible and you can't find anybody else talking about this, maybe don't believe it yet because maybe they got it wrong. This is good stuff. The kind of stuff we need to look at. Yeah, exactly. In fact, we there was there was a story last week where Tom was like, I don't know, where's the second source? We found one eventually. But it's you know, you you you learn to be wary of anything that that that is not backed up by other credible sources that over time you realize what those are. And I downloaded the PDF of the curriculum and you know, scan through it. It's quite long and quite involved. So it's not as if I've been able to teach a child this. But it also wasn't written like cutesy kindergarten speak. I think this is something that's designed for people who who might just kind of be new to this. Doesn't mean you have to be five years old. It just means you might you might be an adult who's who can get something out of this as well. I think that a variety of ages could benefit. Yeah, the real silver blade in the Twitch chat says this should be in classrooms. That's exactly what this is designed for. This is designed to be in classrooms, which is which is what's so good about it. And I like that Google isn't just doing it themselves. They're they're working with people who know this area and are experts in this actually experts in this area that they're trying to do. So that's that's good. And like you said, these tips go beyond not tips even just just a skill. The skill of media literacy goes beyond what a child needs. It's it's what a lot of us needs because we just didn't need to be as media literate as as we do now back in the day. There was a natural gate, right? You had three TV channels, a couple of daily papers and a few radio stations. And the ones that didn't at least get it close to right didn't last. That was easy. Nowadays, you've got thousands of sources. And another thing they try to teach children is don't just believe something because it looks like it has a credible name. Anybody can come up with a name that sounds believable. I think I was going to add one of the really interesting bits was the little test where they give like it's like a multiple choice test. But you mark down which of these websites look credible and they'll have things like the Washington Post. But Washington is spelled incorrectly in the area. And so I thought that was actually brilliant because oftentimes it's not that people don't or trust are very trusting of sources that they've never seen before. But to be sure that you're actually on the site that you believe that you're on. Yeah, spotting fake URLs as part of this curriculum, right? It just feels I was very happy when I saw this because a lot of times I all see something like this and I'll think, well, this is a little oversimplified. Well, they're kind of missing a few things. But this one doesn't seem to be that this seems very well thought out and very well done and so much more of the kind of thing we need to do to get to the root of the problem. As I often do when we talk about fake news, knowing the effects of fake news are important in helping to combat the effects of fake news. And we don't know what the effects are. We haven't studied it very well. But being able to help people just avoid it, that's the best solution. Teaching children at a young age, this is what not to believe. We'll just make that fake news wither eventually. And understanding that tactics will change in order to try to fool you. I mean, we all like to think of ourselves as, you know, you never get one past me. But just over the weekend, Dropbox wanted me to change my password. And it was some phishing scheme that, you know, I was able to identify. But this is the sort of thing that you have to stay up on all the time. You don't just go like, oh, I understand it and it'll never be an issue. It will be an issue. And as long as you're educated and and understand what, you know, what the curve balls to avoid, it's really helpful for all of us. I believe we'll live in a world one day where you won't have to be constantly vigilant about everything you read and every email you get. But we're not there yet. So you kind of do. IHS market analyst, Jeff Lin, says Apple will release a 16 inch MacBook Pro in September, 16 inches. I didn't read that wrong. We'll supposedly have a 3072 by 1920 LG display LCD panel. Not on OLED, according to Jeff Lin and a new CPU. That makes sense. Ming-Chi Kuo also said he hears Apple is making a 16 inch laptop. So Sarah and Roger and I were racking our brains for a real reason that one might want a 16 inch laptop over, say, a 15.6 or a 17. Seventeen just was gigantic. I remember you had one of those, Sarah. So maybe they were trying to get bigger without getting too big. I don't know. Yeah, you know, it's funny. My 17 inch MacBook Pro, which I still use kind of as a backup laptop, although it's very long in the tooth. Now, originally I bought for video editing and I ended up using it for kind of everyday stuff more than the editing. And it was big and unwieldy. And I don't miss that form factor at all. It's too big, but I also use an external monitor for most things unless I'm traveling. So I can see where someone say, no, 16 inches is great because it's still that larger screen for a lot of the, you know, maybe content creation and creative stuff that I might need, but a little bit more compact than the 17 inch. But I also think and is the 15 inch just too small, then they they probably got a pretty good deal or they got a deal on on the monitor because when you make a especially for for laptops and other screens like TVs and monitors, they make the size based on how many how many pieces they can get out from a huge single piece of glass, the mother glass. And so that might be the the the only size that was available for the resolution that they wanted. So if they wanted if they wanted something lower res, they could have gone with a bigger screen, but you would have it wouldn't have gotten that that pixel density that they would have wanted. And that's the pure speculation on my part. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense, except Apple doesn't do things that way. They don't like get a good deal on laptops screens and then build a laptop around it. They pay extra for things because they think that's the right way to do it. So my guess is it may be a little of both, right? It may be that they wanted to do 16 inches and then and we're debating maybe on the fence, I don't know. And and it worked out that they could they could get them easily. But again, I don't know, even when I'm saying that Apple doesn't care about whether it's cheap or easy, they never do. They just want to make it the way they want to make it. So they have a reason if they are going to do a 16 inch MacBook Pro why they want to do it. And my guess is it'll be close to what Sarah was saying, where, oh, you need a little more screens real estate, but you don't want it to be that huge. That's too big. And maybe poke fun at themselves for the 17 inch laptop or something. Well, it's not as if Apple is going to make the first 16 inch laptop either. So it might have done enough market research to be like, that's a sweet spot for folks who are buying other manufacturer models. Oh, yeah. Beemaster points out small bezels means they might say it's it's more screen real estate in the same size as this 15 inch MacBook we used to make, et cetera, et cetera. That's a pretty compelling Apple type pitch, I feel like. Well, IHS markets, Jeff Linn, he's been busy. He also tells Forbes that Microsoft plans a foldable surface device for the first half of 2020, which may run Android apps and Apple's iCloud service. The new surface could have two nine inch screens and a 4.3 aspect ratio and run the Windows Lite OS. That's sort of the going rumor at this time. The device reportedly will also have Intel's 10 nanometer Lakefield processor and have always on connectivity by either LTE or 5G. Of course, no price pricing or processing as of yet. But this sounds intriguing. Yeah. First of all, if they add iCloud support directly to Windows, I mean, you certainly use iCloud in lots of ways with Windows. But if they added it as a service in Windows and Android apps, I would imagine they would be doing it for more than just this device. That seems like the kind of thing you might want to tout across a lot of devices. But I get what he's saying here is this is going to be that Windows Lite OS. And so it will be a Chromebook competitor. It will be foldable in that it will be able to do more things like like like a hybrid, like a like a yoga type laptop. But it will mostly be, I think, targeted at Chrome OS saying, look, the advantage of Chrome OS is you can use all your Android apps. Well, guess what? You can't on this, too. Don't you think? I mean, unless it was priced in some exponential way, I it sounds like it would it would be extremely valuable. Yeah, I think this is a I think this is a believable rumor. And we heard reports about them doing a foldable and what that might look like and having the keyboard and one of the nine screens. And to me, pitching a laptop or tablet as a foldable, I think is an easier pitch than pitching a phone as a foldable. In fact, I look at the fold and the mate both as as fold as unfoldable or foldable tablets rather than unfoldable phones. Finally, Amazon unveiled an online beauty supply store for licensed professional stylists, barbers and other estheticians. It sells supplies typically used in salons and spas from brands like Wellacolor Charm and Rusk to OPI Professional. Buyers do need their state issued cosmetology or barber or esthetician license in order to purchase products. So this isn't meant for you or me. This is meant for your barber, for your stylist to be able to get the supplies they need cheaper. Now, Ulta beauty and their chain are not going to use this because Ulta is a supplier, but it's already hurting Ulta stock because Amazon, when they move into anybody's business, is usually seen as the kind of a harbinger of doom of a sort. Yeah, you know, it's it's funny. I I I get this fancy shampoo whenever I go and get my haircut, you know, once every six weeks or so. And it's it's products that they're there, they cost what they cost. And that's the way it works. OK, well, if that salon can buy these products at a lower cost, will those savings be passed on to me? I don't know. But it's certainly advantageous to to the people at the salon who are buying those products. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it will make it easier for your salon or your barber to pass the savings on to you. That's your individual shop will decide how much of that savings they can afford to pass on and what they want in the market. Remember, prices aren't dictated by supply. Prices are dictated by how much consumers will pay and what their competitive choices are, not just supply. So if they can still charge you, they're still going to charge you. But they might be able to give you more discounts. They might sell you the products for cheaper to kind of keep you in the store and say, hey, you know, it's cheaper than you can get online. Imagine if they were buying from Amazon at such bulk rates with discounts that they could sell you in the shop for less than you would pay. And they'd show you on Amazon itself. Here's what you'd pay if you bought it from Amazon. But because I get it from Amazon, I can charge you less. I mean, that's not impossible, right? I actually pinged a friend of mine, who's the founder and CEO of Style Seat, Melody McCloskey, who, if you're not familiar with Style Seat, is an on-demand service where you could book a hairstylist or a cosmetologist or a barber or an esthetician who might have some time in their week without having to call the salon and see if that person is available. And she said, yeah, brands haven't been able to deliver a wholesale or retail commerce at any scale, despite the size of the industry, which is huge. So she thinks the disruption will help the consumer and the professional. She also says her company plans to either work directly with Amazon or with wholesalers directly now that this is more of an option for them. I guess the downside of the story would be Amazon getting into yet another segment of the industry and are we getting to the point where Amazon is controlling too many pipelines if they do drive a lot of other suppliers out, right? Yeah, I mean, we've been talking about that for some time. But yeah, beauty industry, it is a big one. It's a big industry. It's beauty and it's Amazon the beast. That's the question. And then as there arose involved, I have no idea to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to dailytechheadlines.com. Also, thanks to everybody who participates in our subreddit. You can submit stories and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. Hang on on Facebook. Join our group Facebook.com slash groups slash Daily Tech News show. All right, let's check in with Chris Christensen, the amateur traveler who's sharing a news item on United Airlines. If you fly United regularly using AI to help passengers connecting flights. This is Chris Christensen from Amateur Traveler with another tech in travel minute. One of the sharp eyed members of the DTNS community read spotted a great article of how United is using AI in its connection saver project to increase the chance that you're going to make your connecting flight. It's a complicated problem. Airline gets penalty if you take off late. Flight crews are on a clock in terms of how long they can work. If you're holding a gate, then that can slow down people coming in. Of course, if you leave late, that can make a problem for the people catching a flight at the other end. But the AI version of this program, when they match it head to head with the human operators, has made 30 percent fewer missed connections. They're still rolling the program out to different airports. But if you make your next tight connection, you may have an AI to thank. I'm Chris Christensen from Amateur Traveler. Well, I'm seeing having had a missed connection problems with United that led to me not flying on them anymore. I hope this works because this is the kind of problem that AI can be really good at solving, for sure. Yeah, I actually fly United. It's kind of my number one airline because I don't know. I'm a sucker, but missed connections, not a huge problem. But but but having gate issues, very much a regular problem. So it sounds like this could this could iron out a lot of issues. Missed connections belong on Craigslist. That's right. Yeah. Keep them where they belong. Let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. Chad wrote in and mentioned the conversation we had last week. We were looking for somebody who had experience with upgrading legacy systems and enterprise settings. Chad says, I don't currently do this. Thank the powers that be. But I spent seven years doing this for a medium sized organization where my sole job was to take old outdated legacy systems and get them up to date were possible and mitigate impacts where it wasn't possible. I could tell you tales of maintaining legacy VB6 code into 2017 to a five year project that required us to rework the majority of our automation before we could even get the project completed. In many cases, it's not that companies don't want to modernize their technology stack. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as running an upgrade installer or pulling the old one out and putting the new one in. Often there are API changes, legacy code bases, outdated programming standards and languages, all of which has to be balanced with the what have you done for me lately mentality of the business that doesn't understand why the IT department is spending all their time on old stuff. Yeah, that's you know what? I definitely want to do an interview and maybe it'll be with Chad. We got a couple of other emails from people who are in the same predicament and have done these kinds of things. And it's important for us to try to understand why it is that a company is still running Windows XP. It may not be because they're dumb or don't get it or or cheap. There's lots of other reasons like the ones Chad we're talking about here. Thank you, Chad. Thank you, Chad. And thank you to everybody who supports us on Patreon, patreon.com. Slash D TNS if you're wondering, hey, what's that editor's desk thing you just mentioned? It's a weekly audio column that I do for patrons at the five dollar a month level and up where I talk about how we think about the news we cover. So by all means, if that sounds interesting to you, if you want a little more thoughtful take this past week was about Libra and why we covered it the way we covered it and how we covered it. Check it out. Patreon.com slash D TNS. If you've got feedback for us, our email address is feedback at daily tech news show dot com. Email us early and often if you'd like to join us live we're live Monday through Friday for 30 p.m. Eastern 2030 UTC. Find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live back tomorrow with Patrick Beja talk to you then. This show is part of the frog pants network. Get more at frogpants.com.