 Coming up on DTNS Apple proves the first trillion is the hardest Instagram is helping you get less caught up and blackberry phones get a new lease on life This is the Daily Tech news for Wednesday, August 19th, 2020 in lovely Cleveland, Ohio I'm Richard Raffalino. It's got Johnson in Salt Lake City And I'm the show's producer Roger Chang We were just talking all about comic books Indie labels Marvel DC. So if you want to hear about that, you can get the wider conversation on our expanded show Good day internet by becoming a member at patreon.com Slash DTNS. Let's get to the tech news and let's start with a few tech things. You should know India's business standard reports that according to sources Apple is planning to produce some of the upcoming iPhone 12 devices locally in India The devices are expected to be made in Wistron's factory in Bengaluru and available in mid 2021 Very nice Samsung launch Samsung pay card in the UK It is a master card debit card that consolidates existing bank accounts and cards into a single card and digital wallet Samsung pay card uses the fin tech startup curve on the back end and gets access to features of the platform Including its go back in time feature which lets users move transactions from one payment source to another retroactively Instagram began rolling out the ability to generate QR codes that link to a profile globally The feature was originally released in Japan last year The QR codes can be scanned by any supporting third-party camera app and will eventually replace the previously used name tag system Oh Google updated its information that will surface on activity cards in its mobile apps shopping cards Will now show similar products that users have searched for As well as a relevant review of the product or reviews if you're looking for them jobs cards Will show new job listings that match previous searches and receipt cards Or excuse me and receipt cards were updated to show Related receipts to recent searches as well as surfacing thumbnail images I believe that's recipes Scott. Did I see receipt seats? Although a receipt card. It sounds like it would be very cool Oh, I got a really good spaghetti receipt. You should see In other news Lawrence Livermore national laboratory integrated a wafer scale engine chip from the company cerebrus systems into its Lawson super computer this chip is composed of 1.2 trillion Transistors and uses an entire 12 inch silicon wafer Usually those are diced up to make a bunch of little chips for comparison recent amd epic 2 chips have 32 billion transistors So slightly smaller the chips will be used to accelerate ai research at the lab wafers Lucid motors announced that it's upcoming lucid air electric sedan will support fast charging That can add 20 miles or of range per minute of charging. That's pretty good The air uses a 900 volt charger with a peak charging rate of over 300 kilowatts Lucid is partnering with electrify america to bring out these chargers To some of the company's 2000 charger network and we'll use combined charging system standard chargers Those of you who use these already will know what the heck those are lucid also said it's developing a bi-directional home charger For the vehicle which will allow owners to use the vehicle to power their home That's an interesting concept Uh an insecurity new security researchers at gardecore labs announced the discovery of what they believe to be previously Undiscovered botnet dubbed fritz frog the botnet uses proprietary code to infect ssh servers within memory payloads Then gathers multiple infected servers into a peer-to-peer network The researchers first spotted the botnet in january and believe it's infected over 500 servers including us and european universities And a railroad company All right, let's talk a little bit more though about the big story that you know We talked about a chip with uh 1.2 billion transistors, but uh if those were dollars that would be pocket change for apple Uh, you know what they say the first trillion It's the hardest in august 2018 apple became the first u.s. Company to reach a one trillion dollar market cap apple stock recently climbed now to 467 dollars and 77 cents setting its market cap at two billion dollars based on the number of outstanding shares at that price That's basically what market cap is apple is not the first company to hit this Target with the oil company saudi armaco reaching 2 trillion in december 2019 How does that compare to other tech giants you may be asking? Well microsoft has a 1.6 trillion dollar market cap amazon has a 1.6 to 1.65 to Cap alphabets a mere 1.06 trillion and facebook with a punny 757 billion dollar market cap Recent surge in the s and p 500 though saw the stock of all of these five companies up 37 percent since the start of 2020 despite you know all of this uh, COVID business while the rest of that index the s and p 500 I would assume that's what 495 companies uh fell a combined six percent So, you know scott, uh, I know you're a lauded financial analyst So I definitely wanted to to get your take on this. I mean certainly very It's kind of amazing that what apple was founded in the 70s And it took them until 2018 to hit that 1 trillion dollar valuation No, I know a lot of this is hey the stock price went up and you know, there's a little uh, you know The finance world is different than the real world in some instances But going from adding another trillion dollars in a matter of less than two years is a pretty remarkable feat and says A lot about the transformation that that company is continuing to go on You know, I think a lot of that uh is tied up as oh, they have the iphone and that totally transformed the company I think it's still it's still being transformed. You know kind of in this in this moment Yeah, it is and it's weird. I always wondered if you know after steve jobs passed if we would truly see what a lot of people predicted Which is A change in the company that would lead to a leveling off or even a downward spin or something that that may be tim cook style and his method of management and Vision wouldn't match that of steve jobs and they wouldn't be able to keep up With that mythos that was the jobs era And I think that's all been proven wrong at this point I mean say what you want about apples say what you want about all this hubbub lately with them and epic and everybody else in the 70 30 split They are At the top of their game and they continue to break records and I also think there's something about when you hit a certain plateau And then you wonder while wow, how could they double this in that short amount of time? It's because the now that momentum now means you're just going to see exponential growth I mean there's always a chance things could dip but If anything they've been helped by covet a little bit people have been home spending money in their app store buying their devices Using their services and they've kept drawing those services. So I guess i'm not that surprised by any of this I'm just more i'm more surprised how how wrong we were about jobs You know jobs dying and tim rise taken over An interesting moment that uh as they're having this spotlight kind of shown on them with epic spotify all these other companies Kind of question their app store policies right as they're you know, they they top the two billion dollar mark Yeah, and for the record. I meant tim cook not tim rise. All right moving on Zoom announced its video conferencing app will be available on the amazon echo show. That's the one with the screen folks Facebook portal and google nest hub max later this year. That sounds like a lot of competing things Well, you might be right and that's what we're going to talk about zoom arise first on Facebook portal which will arrive in september with a dedicated zoom app in addition to other video conferencing apps announced today From blue jeans go to meeting and webex some of the usual suspects there Portal devices will also now support logging into facebook Or to excuse me to a facebook workplace account Google will automatically pull in zoom meeting from google calendar and allow users to join calls with a voice command Echo show devices will get a similar integration allowing for devices with linked calendars to join by voice without entering in any meeting ids or passwords Pretty interesting Yeah, and you know, there's I think there's two big components to this scott. Uh, the first one though is just the sheer Uh, market presence that zoom has in this video conferencing space, you know Those are three companies that don't usually want to get along on anything. They certainly don't get along on any, you know Cross uh platform video conferencing yet They're all opening themselves up to kind of better integrate with what has seemingly become a de facto standard in zoom I mean certainly speaks to the power of zoom in the marketplace Yeah, like I didn't I don't know about you, but I thought this zoom this love affair We're all having with zoom I know some people are still annoyed at it and are worried about security issues But aside from that it's become like the term Kleenex or bandaid people use it More and more often as a way of saying we need to have a meeting now They're saying we need to zoom or we need to have a zoom meeting Um as annoying as that may be for some of us to hear that usually speaks to the ubiquity of a product And it means that they have made serious inroads during this time. So I'm not surprised by all of that What surprises me is the likes of facebook and google or anyone else willing to play ball like this It must be formidable enough for them to go. Well, we can either keep fighting this and trying to force people down our systems Or We can be a little more open and have our systems But also there's two and i'm actually surprised This isn't a story about facebook trying to figure out a way to buy zoom Or even google for that matter because it does seem like the kind of company They might just want to throw a bunch of cash out and cash out and you know Remove them from the from the competition Well, the the other element that I think is really important here is the pivot that facebook is quietly making and it's kind of hidden in this announcement Now all these companies have their own blog posts about this But you know facebook portal has been on the market for a couple of years They have the the weird ads where the dad's helping make pasta or something like that and has some cool tech You know does the the crop in the video to follow you along and and some interesting stuff But this is a huge pivot for them to say, okay Maybe that consumer market's not taking off. Let's bring in, you know, blue jeeds. It's owned by verizon It's an enterprise power or it's an enterprise presence when it comes to video conferencing go to meeting webex Or you know enterprise standards when it comes to that zoom used to be that And now has a wider consumer presence to me integrating it with workplace This is facebook kind of quietly pivoting that product and going Hey, if you want dedicated zoom hardware, guess what you now have it effectively with the facebook portal as well Yep Next up here a netflix confirmed to the verge that it's been testing a shuffle button on the service since july The exact appearance of the feature has not been finalized with some users seeing a shuffle play button on the profile selection screen So you would select that before your profile And others seeing a place something option on the sidebar menu kind of once you're logged in and viewing the main netflix interface When shuffling netflix provides an explanation about what uh, what in your viewing history inspired that shuffle selection So let's say we played this because you liked umbrella academy or something like that The test of the feature is currently only running on tv devices So don't expect to see it on your phone anytime soon, but scott is this Like is this something that's been needed in your netflix experience Do you want less thinking when it comes to selecting your netflix content man? I'll tell you what rich I have all kinds of questions about this and whether it will work for me Mainly I have an account that I use and this is my own fogs I never set up a second one, but I have one account where I use for my own Viewing pleasure of whatever I want to see and that same account I use when I watch these horrible movies I watch on a show called film sack And that show was all about taking bad old sometimes new but movies that are controversial sometimes they're good But whatever it's a huge mix that really messes with their algorithm it has to And so I don't know what they're going to try to feed me like they're going to say I'm going to finish an episode. I don't know some old tv show and it's going to say Maybe you want to watch killer clowns from outer space or you know, where's it going to take me? That's a big question. How much control will I have on that? Is it just purely random where it's anything in the system? Can I do parental controls and say look, I don't want anything that's outside of a pg rating For for kids to see or in my case, I may not want to see You know, I don't know hard of dixie again because I hate that show My wife loves it. I can't stand it. So don't put that in my shuffle So I have lots of questions about how they're going to integrate this in theory though If they really know me and know what I like Yeah, why not? Especially if I'm just doing some kind of background watching the other concern is this though Let's say I'm just watching away And I'm doing it kind of in the background and it's been fine. I'm watching cheers or something And then I'm working away and then beep it changes over to a show that I know I want to sit focus and binge on Well, I can't do that right now. So what am I supposed to do? I just hit skip Do I like what do you there's a lot of details? We don't know but I'm very curious about it in action Yeah, and and there's I think two different mentalities when it comes to the ui's that they're using for this I think the play something where it's integrated into your profile already That kind of takes care of the parental control situation a little bit, you know So if you're in a kid's profile, that's presumably would only play kid friendly content And then you can just you know keep feeding that kid that content sugar pill all day long until you know Their eyes are bugging out of their head Uh with the the shuffle play something though that to me solves kind of the sit back tv experience problem I mean the the play something where it's in the main menu does that as well But having it when you just first boot up the netflix app on your tv or something like that You know the first screen that you see is that profile selection if I can just say, you know what I just want something on I just want noise, you know scott to your point about having some background stuff Um that to me signals to that approach, which I do think is lacking I mean I always say that my favorite thing to watch on netflix is scrolling through the menu and actually not selecting anything for an hour and a half While i'm eating a bowl of ice cream or something like that like legit This is half it's it's the new blockbuster, you know, where you're just waiting you're just waiting through all the vhs To try and find what you want to watch. Um, I I do think this is this In part, uh, you know, it's kind of similar to what the music industry has had with discover playlists and that kind of stuff where Netflix just has such a huge content catalog That's seems to have no sign of slowing down and they need to get in front of people's eyeballs And you know, you might you know, you hover over it the autoplay thing comes up and kind of a noise You go, uh, I don't know. Do I want to watch this thing about these medieval warriors? I don't know I I think by okay, I'll give this 10 minutes to try it's related to another show that I really like that I binge and stuff like that Helps to solve that. Um, but again to your point it needs to be time aware It needs people need to have better profile integrity for lack of a better term because I could see definitely see You know, whether you're watching as a couple versus yourself versus everybody just watches under the same profile Who caused some big problems or or just cause it to be not useful and that problem's just not useful Yeah, the last thing I would say is they do need something like I think peacocks got it right with channels I think that uh Pluto has spawned all of these ideas of having a more random experience They do need something like that whether this is it or not. You will have to see in 2018 instagram rolled out a caught all up Your caught up or your caught all up. No, i'm saying it wrong. You're all caught up is what i'm trying There you go scott Geez that all was jumping around. Anyway, uh, this is a little notice that appeared when a user had scrolled through all the new Content on their feed. This is news to me. I didn't think you could actually do this But anyway, that's about to change the instagram and asked it will now start showing suggested posts When a user is scrolled through their content and they want to see something new And they'll get a mix of new organic posts and ads, of course I'm not going to keep the ads out of there instagram said that for many users To follow a large amount of accounts So they never see the your caught up ad or the notification anyway And I never did and I use enough instagram. I follow a lot of artists on there Um, it's mostly why I use instagram and I never get this notice ever it never says i'm caught up And I didn't think you could I thought it was a bit like tick tock where there was a virtually unending Supply of content that was just going to flow in front of my face And it would be based on what I watched what I looked at and what I might look at next And so just makes a zero difference to me But there's somebody out there who every day dutifully goes through their feed hoping to catch everything and then when they do They get this notice and I guess now We're telling them they got to keep going. I don't know. I don't know if it's good They must keep going scott Yeah, that that's so it's interesting to me is yeah If you follow like a couple hashtags or something like that odds are you're never I've never also seen the you're all caught up. I think I try not to spend too much time in instagram I fail at that frequently and I think things like stories also kind of just kind of give you this constant Stream of content that if you follow any number of people you're kind of never had a loss What's interesting though is let's think about when they introduced that you're all caught up in 2018. That's when You know google facebook Every apple all of them are introducing their own, you know, kind of digital wellness initiatives trying to You know, let you know how much screen time you're sending on stuff You know, how much time you're spending in apps that kind of stuff And there seem to be this this moment of okay, these devices are maybe addictive or Can you know people are using them? Maybe more than they want to want to give people control over to not spend so much time in apps and on their devices And then this is instagram going Listen, you're at home You're going to use one of our competitors if you're not using us So here's some ads and some some new content just in case you ever get to the bottom It's a weird moment to me to see that rolled back when Seemingly everybody was very gung-ho about it for not too long ago. Yeah, I think it's just that they never got there So Most people if they never saw this ad or they never saw this notice anyway, I guess it makes sense to get rid of it Why do it? Yeah, and we'll see if that's a trend going forward We see other kind of rollbacks on that and to your point with with tiktok not seemingly worried about that It does put them out. Maybe an attention disadvantage Paul ford at wired meanwhile wrote up an interesting column looking at the rise of low and no-code platforms Comparing what the software can do versus quote-unquote real programming language like, you know C sharp or swift or anything like that Low-code platforms are hardly new with apps like microsoft access and file maker being around for decades at this point Essentially providing a simple database with a form-making interface on the top of that New services like zapp year coda api pie and air table build on that by integrating other online services to kind of Feed the database essentially Large public cloud providers have also gotten into the game with amazon launching honey code on aws Just a couple weeks ago and google acquiring the no-code startup app sheet earlier this year In the piece ford argues that real programmers often undervalue data as opposed to overvaluing code Which these platforms which these know when low-code platforms emphasize and that the majority of programs Of a programs code is actually focused on moving data to and from databases anyway So scott, I mean do you have any kind of familiarity with any of these platforms? I'm just kind of curious about you know seeing the value of this versus a quote-unquote real app Well ages ago when I work in a in an office I remember very distinctly in the late 90s There was a big push for well, it seemed like everybody was making their own Microsoft access databases their own front ends for that I had a friend who ran his dental office entirely off of A homemade microsoft access build that he put together with a friend of his that You know, he's a dentist. He shouldn't be dabbling in there But at the time it seemed like wow look at this a tool anybody can use if they can learn some of the fundamentals They can actually make something that's pretty workable and usable and it was really quite common Then I feel like there was a switch As the internet started to mature Languages started to mature new languages were coming we're coming out that were a little bit more focused on rapid web development and this sort of thing and you saw I don't know kind of a separation again of Somebody who just needs to get something together That's sort of spreadsheet but maybe a little bit more advanced needs a few UI elements or whatever Now they've got to go back to hiring a full-time programmer. They got to go back to contracting this out or whatever I like the idea of this coming back around and I feel like these days We've got the tools to do it faster More efficiently like I'm all down for this. I would like to build more things for myself With this. I know you were talking earlier about building a database for something. I was just noticing this the other day I have got so many Collectibles that I've been sent over the years and I don't really know where they all are I don't know what some of them are worth the ones I should put on ebay or shouldn't Where's the five ones I can't find Maybe it's time for me to build something again And it would be cool to finally have some tools where I feel like I wasn't Way in over under you know over my head because I'm not a programmer Yeah, I you know to your points guy. Yeah, I'm putting together a Database or a tracker for things that are in my deep freezer But I want to use barcodes and stuff like that an air table, you know It does make it a fairly simple to set that up as nerdy and dorky as that sounds I need to know how old that ground beef is Scott But what what changed though? I think it from businesses may be using microsoft access is mobile, right those platforms really couldn't weren't designed to kind of speak to mobile and Combined I think with the rise of really quality, you know software as a service Things where okay, this isn't exactly what I needed But hey google docs is free and I can do some you know, I can do some scripty kind of things in that platform Those do reach their limits and things like, you know, maybe zapper is not the best example That's more of like an ift kind of thing But especially like air table api pie really does focus on allowing you to set up kind of basic mobile apps Really does allow You know businesses and consumers to a large degree to kind of okay Here's my intent. I have this very simple thing that I need it to do It doesn't need to be overly complex But I need to be able to to track data do conditional things with data And these platforms do have a a lot of utility and I think it was ray ozzy I saw i'm commenting on this on twitter He was saying that you know back in the day like apps like uh visi calc and excel You know these were kind of the springboards for people to explore more You know kind of business coding applications way back in the day And so and you know, I think paul ford's point was instead of programmers sneering at these are kind of saying Oh, you never really can do anything too complex with them is to look at these and go, okay This isn't this I think calling them low code. Maybe it's a mistake or no code The code is not the point the point is to be able to get like value out of data And that's I think essentially what a lot of these are focused at I think maybe it's a semantics thing that is causing maybe some of the Confusion or ill will perhaps. Yeah to me. It's just like art or you know filmmaking or anything else The tools are made for more and more people to use them and that's where we're headed with code Earlier this year tlc tcl rather tlc is a both a channel and a way to think about life tender loving care But tcl opted not to renew its license to keep producing blackberry branded phones Leaving it unclear if more handsets with the prominent brand would ever be produced. Well the austin based on word mobility Yeah, that's right on word on word be mobile announced It would it had reached an agreement with the blackberry and f i h mobile limited to create a 5g blackberry branded device With a physical keyboard like the old days Armored mobility plans to target the phones strictly at businesses and enterprise professionals with a specific focus on privacy and security Armored mobility plans to release the phone in europe and north america sometime in the first half of next year So you're gonna run out and get one of these dude. You all set to take business to the next level with your physical keyboard blackberry device Well, I am set to become an oil and gas executive scott, so I will definitely need A secure handset to be able to do that But like that's the that's the interesting thing to me is like, you know onward mobility We can I mean it's an amazing name. First of all, like congrats austin based on word mobility But you know, there there's someone no one has ever heard of but there are a ton of companies like that that make these super specific, you know Totally lockdown devices for oil and gas executives government officials You know anyone that has like highly secure needs that need to also have mobile hardware There are a lot of companies out there that can do this and having that blackberry brand Which has a lot of equity in the business still has a lot of goodwill Somehow I think maybe I don't know maybe i'm speaking at a turn in that business market I think this could maybe still work as a very niche play. I mean clearly that's why tcl isn't making it They're making their own branded phones at this point. Um, is they they see their own brand having more Uh, cash aid with consumers at this point. Um, but you know, I'm I'm intrigued to see what they will do with probably not something That will you know, we're not going to see the verge reviewing the latest blackberry phone or anything like that But you know, uh, good to see the brand and uh, hey, if you if you need that physical keyboard There's still a blackberry waiting for you all the way I'd always look at this It's just like look at a company like IBM when personal computers took off And we moved away from mainframe computing to the norm being something on your desktop they Lost out they got behind even though they led in the in the mainframe market They couldn't transition well To this other thing and software companies started to dominate it and before you know it We are where we are today and you could say the same thing about the phone race and Blackberry like IBM of old got behind and there was not a lot they could do So I think it is a good niche play For this other group to license it and do it if they can find the customers that are really interested in just that Just the benefits of the platform I think it's actually harder to argue that these days because you can you can make a pretty strong argument for iPhones and android-based phones And say look here are the security You know, these are the measures that are in place plus plus these are mainline phones that you can do a lot of other things with And that's not like, you know some weird archaic thing But if they end up with a blackberry Maybe this is the way to solve whatever small niche that is and when we say small niche we could it could be a You know multi-million dollar company and that's enough It doesn't have to be in the next trillion dollar leader in the market. It could be a little guy And Scott to your point IBM still sells billions of dollars of z15 mayframes every year So, you know just because it's it's no longer the the new hotness doesn't mean someone can't make a business out of it Somewhere and hey if you want to get caught up on all of the tech headlines each day in about five minutes And sometimes hear my voice you can subscribe to daily tech headlines at daily tech headlines dot com And of course you can join in the conversation on discord Which you can join by liking us at patreon, uh, or linking it to a patreon account at patreon dot com slash d t n s Of course scott It wouldn't be an episode of d tns without a little mailbag action And we have a great email from dwayne who wanted to weigh on in the whole uh epic apple battle It's not an epic battle. It's an epic epic apple battles. There we go. Uh, so he said 10% is not just to facilitate the specific transaction But the fee that funds the economy of the app store if apple allowed free apps to be in the app store and receive all the Value of the ecosystem without contribution by allowing in-app purchases outside the app store It would be a windfall for large developers and shift the cost to smaller developers who can't afford to facilitate their own payment system Either apple would have to support the app store economy as a loss leader or small developers alone would be paying for the stk Not wholly covered by the relatively low cost of the developer program fees the hosting cost of distribution the app store editorials The marketplace ratings etc etc This said I think apple should allow developers to side load apps outside the app store if they choose Or if they want to use a payment system other than apples However, these apps shouldn't be listed in the app store as such they wouldn't get featured in editorials Be listed below other apps using apple's recommend recommendation algorithm won't be listed in app store rankings won't be automatically updated You know you get the idea Yes, I know that many developers would then complain that this solution is unfair because of all the value in the app store But then doesn't that prove the apple's point that the app store offers value commensurate with the 30 revenue share? I love a good email with commensurate as a as a side of duane Uh, I I think it's an interesting argument. I I don't think there is a easy answer for apple here Um, we you know google does allow the side loading thing and they're still getting sued by epic For delisting them from the google play store now admittedly under a different rationale and stuff like that But I don't think that wholly solves the problem You know, I I know um John gruber over on his blog has been kind of breaking this down and and kind of looking at um the the From a developer standpoint some of the uh economics of the whole app store kerfuffle that's currently going on He is a smarter man than I so if you want to check that out You can always go over there and check that but thanks duane for sending that email. Good stuff. That's a great email I just want to say again How great the thinking is here and I actually kind of agree with what he's saying and I kind of wish they would do What he says it's a great idea well done Uh, another thing that's well done is this shout out to our patrons at our master and grand master levels Including philip shane paul reese and high tech okey The last thing of course scott that we need to do is say Thank you to you scott you were an amazing co-host on this uh journey Across the daily tech news. Um, I knew it would be but we're still at our destination And I I treasure the journey that we went on together Where can people find more of your great stuff if they're so inclined? Well, there's a few things going on One of them is we're about to launch uh this hot new season starting with episode two of current geek Which you'll find over at frogpants.com and current geek.com. Um, so watch for that rich helped us write the thing Uh, we have a we have an editor. We have me. We have tom. We have all kinds of rad stuff to show people So be ready for that if you already have the feed you'll just get it You don't have to do anything special if you already subscribe to it on itunes or wherever you get it Apple play wherever google plays what I meant you can get it. It's no problem all these names today throw me off Anyway, all of that and more at frogpants.com go check it out And if you're interested in dumb daily musings you can find me on twitter at scott johnson And remember you can always support our show at any level at daily tech news show dot com slash patreon All right, our email address is feedback at daily tech news show dot com We're live of course monday through friday at 4 30 p.m Eastern 20 30 utc, which is how I keep track of it find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live And remember tune in tomorrow. We're gonna have justin robert young on the show good times We'll be had by all until then remember everybody. Have a super sparkly day This show is part of the frog pants network frog pants network get more shows like this at frogpants dot com