 Coming up on DTNS Foxconn to build more cars, how a lack of rain is impacting the global chip shortage and what it was like in the great Australian news drought of 21. This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, February 24th, 2021 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane. It's all like city Utah. I'm Scott Johnson. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Shane. Joining us from Australia, Peter Wells, freelance tech journalist up early. Thank you for doing that, Peter. It's good to have you. Thank you, Tom. We were just talking about Poopmap, the app with Peter and many other things on Good Day Internet. If you'd like to get that wider conversation, Anthem, we were talking about that with Scott. Become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Judge John Mendes declined to grant a preliminary injunction requested by the telecom industry that would have prevented enforcement of California's Internet Consumer Protection and Net Neutrality Act of 2018. This clears the way for the law to go into effect in California after the DOJ dropped its own lawsuit earlier this month, but the lawsuit from the industry group is still ongoing. Ring announced the Video Doorbell Pro 2 offering a 3D radar for better object tracking and a bird's eye view of the area, a 1536p resolution camera wide enough to show the ground. The Video Doorbell Pro 2 is available for pre-order shipping March 31st for 250 bucks. Silicon Valley Staple, West Coast computer store legend Fry's Electronics confirmed Wednesday it's closing all stores nationwide. The manager told The Verge that Fry's employees got paid out through Wednesday the 24th. The manager survived by its trademark foe Fry's Food Stores in Arizona. They have the exact same logo, by the way, it really confused me the first time I went to Arizona. We'll no longer be surprised. Are you guys brother and sister? No, no relation. Amazon opened up its Luna game streaming service for anyone in the continental United States to try on supported fire TV devices using the service on Windows Mac, Android, and on browsers still requires an invitation, but if you've got a fire TV you can just jump right on in. YouTube announced the launch of an early beta of Supervised Experiences, which is a three tiered content filter designed to introduce age-appropriate YouTube content to minors outside of the standalone YouTube Kids app. Content in each tier will be determined by user input, also human review and machine learning, and a wider beta will roll out to more users in the coming months. Alright, let's talk about the great news drought. It's over. Facebook Vice President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg wrote a blog post Wednesday saying that Facebook plans to spend more than $1 billion. That's a billion with a B on the news industry over the next three years. The post also reiterated Facebook's position on the Australian media code, which is to say it would prefer not to have to deal with it. So it's making as many deals as it can now. As we reported yesterday, amendments to the code mean that existing commercial deals must be considered before declaring a company is subject to the law at all, meaning that if Facebook and Google make deals that Treasurer Friedenberg feels are up to snuff, they may not end up applying the law to any company. The Australian Senate passed the amended law Wednesday, sending it back to the House for a vote because the House had passed a version without the amendments, so they got to reconcile that. It is expected to pass. It will subsequently be signed by the Governor General, the representative of Her Majesty the Queen, and then become law. So Peter Wells, having survived the great news drought of 2021 and made it out into a land flowing with news and now licensing payments, how does it feel? Feels great, mate. It feels great to be finally back. I mean, not a lot changed in the world for me because I'm not on Facebook, but I did get to watch the commentary develop over the last couple of months and that's been really fascinating. So yeah, that's kind of, first of all, I just want to commend Daily Tech News Show for its reporting on this. I think it's been really great and even handed compared to some of the outlets because, yeah, the thing that I think you guys explained very, very well is that the ACCC, whether people who came up with this, this wasn't like, yeah, it's very complicated, of course. There are many actors involved, but of course News Corp were the people who originally kind of set the ball in motion because they're very powerful down here, but at the end of the day, it was handed over, the ideas behind it were handed over to the ACCC, which happens to be a really trustworthy organisation in this country. If this media code had come just straight from the government, everyone would have thought, yeah, that's Rupert's mates in the Liberal Party helping him out, but because it went through the ACCC, they've done a lot of good for us over the years. We get, if you buy an iPhone in Australia, you get a three-year warranty because the ACCC said, hey, you spend $1,200 on a phone, it should last for three years. There are all constantly stories like that coming out on what the ACCC has forced some big business to do, and generally it's always good for the consumer. That's their role, and so, yeah, I think it was fascinating to watch because for so long, it was just this nebulous, weird media code thing that no one really understood or wanted to pay attention to because it was such a boring story, and then in the last week, it was like, oh, Google seemed to be accepting of this, and then when the Facebook ban happened, just all public sentiment went against Facebook. It was just, you bullies, you've just proven their point, you know, we know how much you make, just like, would it kill you? I mean, I know that doesn't make any legal sense, and I completely understand the rest of the nation, sorry, the rest of the world, looking at our nation and going, what a backwards little nation that doesn't get how the internet works. But it really, yeah, on the ground here, it was a lot more just like, everyone just immediately switched from Facebook's side, and part of that is, as you discussed, them wholesale taking down kind of basically any verified account, like any health and human services accounts were taken down as the vaccine rollout was happening. It wasn't a good look. It was so easy to write a negative story about Facebook. It wasn't a great look for Facebook's algorithmic prowess, right? Because they either did it on purpose and took a wide shot, or their algorithm is really bad at figuring out what a news outlet is. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, this is the company that can say that, you know, I open up in an app and it can track me in a second to a database of a million data points on where I've been and send me the perfect ad for what I should be seeing in that second. That's its pitch to marketers, and yet, yeah, I can't tell the difference between the Red Cross and the company it's been fighting for the last six months. Doesn't it seem to add to the, I don't know, I don't know how it feels there, but here it feels like, oh, Facebook feels like they can just do whatever they want, like this is what people are worried about with them and others like them. And they get in front of Congress here and in front of other governments, and they sell a certain version of themselves, but really at the end of the day, they're feeling really powerful right now, and they feel like they can just sort of wholesale do what they want. Do you guys get that same impression? Yeah, absolutely. And that is, you know, I don't expect anyone to have read the 92-page kind of ACCC document, and I certainly didn't either, but I've read some really smart people who have read it. And, you know, and part of this was that there was never supposed to be the forced arbitration. It was always supposed to be, go off and make deals. You earn way too much money in this country, and you've kind of decimated this industry over here. So, go off and make deals, and then we won't legislate you, because we just think it's an, you know, a decent thing that you can do. And yeah, Facebook, it's really frustrating as well. Like, I was so bored with this story by the time it came to a head that I was just like, I know what's going to happen here. They're going to, at the last minute, make the deals, but they're only going to be for like three years, and then we're just going to have to do it all over again. And that's pretty much exactly what happened. Yeah. And this law will be on the books, even if it isn't activated. So, we'll see if they, you know, if they pull it out again in three years, I guess. Yeah, and it's very similar to a whole bunch of other, you know, laws that the ACCC have in place where it's like, you know, if a company and an employer has some kind of issue with each other or employees have some issue with each other, first there's arbitration. If they can't do that, then it goes to a certain area that, you know, figures it out for you. So, Australians, I think, are a lot more acceptable to that rule over a society than the US is, which is probably why it sounds so foreign to a US audience. Well, in other news, HP, the maker of everyone's first laser printer, maybe inkjet, announced it has agreed to acquire Kingston Technologies HyperX Gaming Peripherals Division. So, this is a peripheral division owned by Kingston. This is not them buying Kingston. Kingston will keep the DRAM flash and SSD drives for gamers. HP gets the other accessories like headsets, keyboards, stuff, microphones, all that kind of thing. HP told the words of the ingenuity app used with its HyperX products will continue and not be rolled into HP's Omen Control Center app, which will sort of take over those rules. So, if you haven't seen, let's see, do I have one right here? Oh, I was hoping I haven't reached, like Tom always does, but I have a HyperX headset and it's awesome. I really, really like it. I'm not entirely sure why HP wants to get into the successories business by acquiring this company, though. Well, because it makes things that people love, like you, I suppose. Maybe, but I mean, like, like, I don't know what HyperX's sales are like. I don't know. I know that they're respected and they're also affordable. You can stop right there. Omen is not, is not making it for HP. And I think it's clear when they say like, Oh, no, no, no, we're going to keep HyperX separate. We're not going to merge them into Omen. We're not going to merge the ingenuity into the Omen Control Center app. They don't, they can't make Omen work. So they wanted to buy a brand that people actually like. Yeah, it's interesting because the headsets themselves are super affordable. They're not on the high end of price. But if you go check things like Wirecutter or other sites that review game accessories or just PC accessories in general, quite often their products rank number one. And at the very least, they end up in unrolled mentions or in the sort of bang for your buck category, which is why I bought one. I'm like, well, if I can get one of these for $69 and have it sound like a $300 headset, that sounds great to me. Wirecutter, let's give it a shot. And I did. And it does. It sounds amazing. And the microphone's not that great, but they don't use it anyway. So it's for me, it turned out to be the perfect purchase. They also have this deal, at least where their name is on the HyperX eSports arena at the Luxor in Las Vegas, which doesn't get a lot of traffic in COVID days. But in its time, we actually rented that out for an event. It's a very cool place. And gamers just have a high opinion of that brand. So I hope it does for HP, what they hope it does for HP. I mean, this, this to me is just a little bit of a stretch, but this is like Disney buying Marvel, right? Disney had a lot of great stuff. But when it bought Marvel, it made sure that it could expand into cooler, other great stuff that would eventually be associated with it. It's a little bit like that. HP is like, yeah, we have a lot of great printers. People love our printers, but that'll, that is not going to last forever. And so yeah, HyperX, good, like, by the top of the market, most respected brand. And then it'll make your company better, I think. Yeah, hope so. Hope they don't mess it up. Foxconn has agreed, has reached an agreement, rather, to build electric vehicles for Fisker. Fisker's first car, the Ocean SUV is due at the end of 2022 and is being built by Magna, which also assembles an electric SUV for Jaguar Land Rover. Its second EV to be built by Foxconn is due out in late 2023. Fisker told the Wall Street Journal, the car might be built at Foxconn's Wisconsin location. Foxconn is also building cars for China's largest private automaker, Guili. Let's, let's just, right now, let's just go, it's not going to be built in Wisconsin. Like, I don't know why Fisker wanted to get a quote into the Wall Street Journal. I would be very surprised if this thing gets built in Wisconsin. I'd be very surprised if anything gets built in Wisconsin, but, but, but, but I do love this story because it's showing that the electric vehicle market is becoming more and more similar to the consumer electronics market, not just because Foxconn is assembling a car, but you saw, you, you heard Sarah talk about Magna making, making the other Fisker car. And now Fisker's like, oh, well, you know, just like Apple uses Wistron for some things and Foxconn for others, Fisker can use Magna for one vehicle and use Foxconn to assemble another. You know, we're seeing this, just like we have a chip shortage in auto and in consumer electronics. I mean, we've, for years have been saying automobiles are becoming a consumer electronics product, but they really are. Yeah. It's like, it's like, what's the Nvidia card, you know, that's going to be like, well, you know, what kind of Fisker are you looking for? Like the real, like base model or like, you know, the Radeon. Yeah. I do, I do like how these industries start to cross. You know, we usually think of these things traditionally as very separate kinds of endeavors and, and when I guess, I don't know, electronics and tech have crossed into everything. So it's impossible not to see it, but you start to change your, your sort of, you know, how you think of the car business when you realize that, oh my gosh, computer companies are going to make cars or, you know, Apple might make a car or, you know, what is Tesla, if not a tech company making a car? And it really does mix it up, kind of disrupts things a little bit or at least makes us as consumers go, oh, well, this isn't just Detroit or whatever that means anymore. Like this is so much more than that. And I kind of like that behavior and tech. It's fun to watch. Well, and you mentioned Apple, you know, Apple making the car and what that's going to look like and what the company will ultimately, you know, choose as its partners still totally up in the air. But when, when you look at, okay, Foxconn's working with Fisker, Fisker is working with Magna. Magna has, you know, been, been doing all sorts of other things. It starts to make a lot more sense where it's like, well, sure, I mean, if Apple is interested enough, there's, there's a supply chain here that is getting proven by other automakers. And they just have to make the deals that make it work for them rather than everyone sitting around being like, is it even possible? Does Apple have to like build its own cars? Right. I think is it going to be in Mountain View on the campus? Like crank it out? But this is what they do, Sarah. You're totally right. Like they wait around to see just how viable it is, how much of a hold the market takes, like all of that stuff. And then they go, Oh yeah, we're doing this too. And, and they'll use the same, you know, they're not going to build it in the ring. They're going to do it through these partnerships and just like to do all the other stuff. So we'll see how it goes. Speaking of big companies overseas, hold on, hold on. I got you got to let other people have a place to talk to Scott. That's why we have our discord. If you want to go join in the conversation in our discord, you can talk about all this stuff too by linking to a Patreon account at patreon.com slash D T N S. Man, I'm glad you brought that up because while you're in that discord channel, you might also have your TV on. This is a terrible transition. I'll just LG announced it agreed to license. It's smart TV OS web OS. You've heard of it before probably certainly on the show to brands, RCA aeons and conca. These manufacturers will use powered by a web OS TV platform based on the web OS 5.0 platform, not web OS six, which LD display at CES 2021 just recently web OS six gets rid of the slide up blades in favor of a more typical scrolling home screen. I really hope my LG upgrades to that because I do not like the slide up blades. Anyway, the move is licensed out of web OS, putting LG in competition with the likes of Roku Google TV and Amazon's fire TV for dominance in the TV OS space. I actually like the blades. I'm going to miss the blades. I hate them. I don't mind if I'm using them though. Like if you're using the blades, they're great. But when I'm just trying to turn on the Xbox and I fire up the TV, it's like, Oh, the blades are here until I exit them. It drives me drives me crazy. And you're it. You're anti blade. I'm anti blade. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I mean, I love the displays of LG TVs, but I've always had it there always. So it's like that I feel like that they're licensing out the worst part of their experience. Well, the they will probably eventually upgrade to web OS six. My guess is they want to license it out as web OS five because six isn't ready to roll out. They'll roll it out to their TVs first as a little bit of a perk. But I think it is significant here that LG has decided, Oh, we're not just making an operating system so that we have good TVs and can compete in the TV space. The money that Roku is making. We talked about this last Friday is in controlling the operating system so you can sell advertising and LG sells advertising through their operating system now. But if they have more TVs out there with the LG web OS on it, they will sell more advertising. So I, you know, I see this as LG realizing, Oh, we, we're, we've got to get involved in this revenue stream, which means this is the new battleground for television technology is who's going to control the operating system really doesn't matter whether you want a box or a dongle or a TV, who's going to run that operating system on it. And are they monetizing you or are they making their money off subscriptions or something else is that that's the battleground. That's the question. Yeah, my TV normally doesn't leave the HDMI port of the Apple TV. And it did the other day as I was switching around tonight. Yeah, it was the first time I saw an ad in my this is a Samsung TV, but down in the bottom strip where all my favorites are, there was this giant ad for an app I didn't want and I was like, Oh God, that's when did that stop when people started clicking on them? Yeah, I mean, it's funny because we were talking before the show like this push to make our TVs the end all be all the minute you buy it all the things you'd ever want to see are built into it still doesn't sit right with me because after about a couple of years, your TV is still the most viable piece of electronics that you're watching your entertainment on. But what's built into it often is not it'll still display what you need, but that 4k TV doesn't have the apps I want anymore or the OS doesn't upgrade anymore. The firmware is too old or whatever. And that's when people go, well, either it's a new TV with the latest greatest built in, or I got to buy me a box. And then they usually buy the box and then people just say, well, I'll just buy the box in the first place. If I'm going to have to swap all this out anyway, and make the TV last longer, like to me it's confusing. Turns out that's not really the way human behavior is though. People just buy TVs and use what built in unless they're enthusiasts like us, which is why LG is not making a box right out of the gate. They might they might make a dongle at some point out of web OS, they might license to somebody who makes a dongle or a box. But most people do end up using the thing that's built into their TV. And then unless it stops working because it gets old and then they buy then they'll buy a box maybe. It totally reminds me of when I was younger. And it was just sort of like, okay, are you like a cool person who has like components for your stereo, where you have like everything in the one stereo. And that's what most people had because they're like, I want to play tapes, maybe you still have a record player up top. You know, and now you got a CD, like that whole compact disc CD disc, it's been a while. You know, but the whole idea was like, well, it's better when you can isolate all of them. But then you can swap them out and you don't have to swap out the whole stereo every time. It's like exact same thing, except most people are like, but I don't want all that stuff. I just want the TV. No, it's very, very similar. That's a really good analogy. Real quickly, the global chip shortage continues and a water shortage in Taiwan isn't making it easier. It's been a typhoon free summer there, meaning reservoirs in the central and southern regions are below 20%. TSMC, United Microelectronics and Vanguard have all taken steps to truck in water to their factories. None of them think it will affect production at this point, but it's a concern. And the supply chain in general is a big concern. The president of the United States signed an executive order Wednesday for a 100-day review of the supply chain of critical materials, including pharmaceuticals, large capacity batteries, rare earth minerals, and semiconductors. The aim is to develop a plan to prevent future supply chain shortages like the current chip shortage. Possible remedies could include things like a job training program, business loans, encouraging domestic production, possibly limiting imports. Public-private partnerships, the Defense Production Act, cooperation with allies, those are all options. U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said work has begun on a package to address competition with China. In particular, Senator Schumer said, we cannot rely on foreign processors for the chips. We cannot let China get ahead of us into production. This is politics. It's a lot of talk, a lot of saying words that might make your polls go up a little bit. We'll see at the end of this 100-day review if there are any substantial recommendations. But tech companies have been asking for this, because there are some substantial things the government could help with. They're not, you know, things that are going to make a major effect overnight. But this is worth noting that it's happening. Yeah, if it isn't enough or if it isn't too many monsoons, it's not enough of them. That's my favorite part of the story. It's a typhoon. Typhoon, I meant. I did it again. Sarah was doing this before. Now I'm doing it. We're all, we all have monsoons. Oh, I have to throw me out of the bus. Geez. I did nothing. It was all me. It's true. It's true. I made the same mistake. Now we're all doing it. Monsoons, baby. Well, but you know, all kidding aside, the, the summer where normally Taiwan is like, we should have had a lot more water in these reservoirs. You know, this is an issue. And this is an issue, sure, on one hand for the people who live in the general area, it's a global issue for lots of other reasons. And that's just one reason that, of course, certain people in the US of A are going to say, uh, this is going to keep happening and we have no control over that. There are a lot of natural disasters and all sorts of things, not that typhoons are natural disasters, but things that can affect natural life that we have no control over. But you can at least control stuff that's a little bit closer to home. Yeah, although if you put import restrictions on, it's just going to make things more expensive. Uh, so I don't know. I flew the typhoon once outside of Hong Kong. And at the time I remember wishing with my eyes closed tight in the plane, I wished I'd never seen another typhoon. Maybe it was my fault is what I'm saying all these years later. We're suffering now. That's what's happened. Oh, yeah. I mean, you got to get snappier wishes before we move off of this real quick. The, the Taiwanese manufacturers, if you lost it in our conversation, are not having problems because of the water shortage. They've all been able to ship in water so far. Uh, so they're just concerned that if it gets worse, then maybe there could be. But right now it's not having an impact. We'll see. Well, something that is having a bit of an impact for certain iRobot Rumba vacuum owners is iRobot confirmed to the Verge, iRobot makes Rumbas, that a recent firmware update to its i7 and S9 Rumba vacuum robots, and not all of them, but a couple of the higher end models, is causing navigation issues such as the robot spinning itself around, bumping into furniture, clean and strange patterns, getting stuck in empty areas, and not being able to make it back to its dock. Some users are also reporting that the floor plan maps that the Rumbas had previously made and were following seemed to have been wiped out by this update. iRobot says a new update to fix the drunk bots should roll out over the next several weeks. Ah, and that update was called a pint of IPA, right? You know, when I first saw the story, because I am, I'm, I'm playing around with a Rumba, it's a Rumba 675 for my latest Live With It trial period, so it's not affected by this, but my first thought was, aha, that's why. And then I was like, no, my Rumba just runs into things a lot. Your Rumba can't blame the firmware. Yeah, don't blame another firmware update, Rumba. My Rumba is just quirky. I had so many robot vacuums to review over the years, and not one of them has made it through the weekend without like hanging itself on the on the courts behind my TV. So I still just use a stick. It's fine. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's check out the mailbag. This one comes from Nick with a K. Nick said the story, this was from a couple days ago, the story of spot the robot being equipped with a paintball gun and then being controlled remotely by players from around the world made me think of this game I heard of a while back. Isotopium Chernobyl is a game where you control RC tanks from any PC in the world that are racing around a scale model based on the ruins of Chernobyl and the city of Pripyat. I haven't played it myself, but it seems really cool. And also another example of remote controlling real life things in a game on the other side of the world. Yeah, I mean, it's got that tilt shift look because it's a model, but you're actually controlling like little tanks. Well, it's this is cool. This is a cool looking game. Yeah, this is awesome. It reminds me of that Nintendo game with the, you know, the Mario Karty thing. And it's not that different, except that you're not in the same room. I guess it feels like doing drones. You know, like what's it like to be a drone driver? It's like a drug meal. Isotopia.com because I know there was one person out on their dog walk going, what was the name of the game again? There you go. They might get ahold of you because we've had a few dog walkers get ahold of you lately. Well, if you hear anything we talk about on the show and you go, that is so cool. You know, it sounds like something that I think they might dig. Tell us about it. Feedback at daily tech news show.com. You can send questions, comments, anything you'd like. Also shout out to patrons at our master and grandmaster levels today. They include Ms. Music Teacher, Mike McLaughlin, and Reed Fishler. Thanks to Scott Johnson for being with us. Scott, what's been going on with Fred and Ken? Oh, lots of stuff. New comment going up today. It'll be the first since we finished up our little let's go hiking in the snow storyline. And it should be a lot of fun if you like webcomplex about things that are weird and odd, like the relationship of a single guy that lives at home with a sentient can of expired cream corn. Boy, howdy. Good news, everyone. Fred and Ken.com is the place to go. You can find everything else. I'm up to over at Frogpants.com and of course I'm on Twitter at Scott Johnson. Thanks also to Peter Wells. Peter, we're glad that the news situation in Australia is at least reaching some sort of a, I don't know, whatever it is. A vague conclusion as they kick their can down the road. A vague conclusion. Yeah, that's good. Thanks for letting us know how things are going and your part of the world and how can people keep up with everything that you do. Yeah, on Twitter it's Peter Wells. And if you are more curious about that poop map story, we did a full 12 minute deep dive in the Delhi show on the help desk today. So, yeah, we spent as much time talking about poop map as we did the media code this week. That seems fair. So, go check that out, thehelpdesk.com.au. Patrons, did you know your ad-free RSS feed on Patreon can have just DTNS or just Good Day Internet or both? Check your tier on Patreon to see if it says DTNS, GDI or all. And if you want to change to something else, just change your tier to the one that has the name that you want, dailytechnewshow.com slash Patreon. Everyone, guess what? We're live Monday through Friday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern, 21.30 UTC. And if you want to join us, please do find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Back tomorrow with Justin Robert Young, Len Peralta and Rich Trafalino filling in for Tom. We'll talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com.