 Coming up on DTNS, Amazon joins the drone delivery game. Netflix lowers the paywall just a bit, and IFA is on in Berlin. That means new Lenovo tablets and the first hot new trend. Is it cheap phones? This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, August 31st, 2020, in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Our wider show, our expanded show, Good Day Internet covers all kinds of things, more tech news, more talk. We were just discussing why you shouldn't feed squirrels or trust them. You can get that wider show at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Walmart announced the sale of two of its online brands, shoes.com and lingerie brand, Bare Necessities. The private equity firm Critical Point Capital acquired shoes.com and Bare Necessities will go to the Israeli apparel maker, Delta Gallel Industries. Although items from both brands will still be available through Walmart's third-party marketplace site. Walmart sold its modcloth clothing brand back in October, also shuttered jet.com earlier this year. According to Bloomberg sources, however, Walmart isn't considering selling any of its remaining e-commerce sites. Raising a little cash for something, tic-tac, tic-tac. Google and Facebook announced they will revise their proposal for the Pacific Light Cable Network under C Internet Cable. It will no longer include Hong Kong, citing privacy concerns raised by the president's administration. A revised proposal now calls for the companies to run cables to the Philippines and Taiwan. In June, the US Justice Department asked the FCC to deny the link to Hong Kong. Google announced a new mode for Android tablets called KidsSpace, which provides kid-friendly features, content and UI as well as parental controls. KidsSpace will include a customizable avatar, offer apps through dedicated make, play, read and watch tabs with parents able to add apps through the Google Play Store. Parents can also manage KidsSpace through the Google's Family Link app, and the first device with KidsSpace will be Lenovo's Tab M10HG Gen 2 with more devices planned in the future. More on that tablet in a minute. Samsung has started mass production of fast 16 gigabit LPDDR5 mobile RAM chips, the first memory to be made using extreme ultraviolet lithography. That gigabit is a measure of speed of the RAM. The chips are 16% faster than 12 gigabit chips, and about 30% thinner when you make a 16 gigabyte package out of them. Back on August 28th of Remember That Day, Apple terminated the developer account of Epic Games with all remaining Epic titles now removed from Apple's App Store. The move comes in response to Epic's violation of Apple's guidelines regarding in-app payments and Epic's ongoing lawsuit against the company. As ruled by a judge in the lawsuit, Epic's secondary developer account, which manages the Unreal Engine, is still active while the legal proceedings continue. Yeah, I remember there are multiple developer accounts, and so this is exactly what we expected. Everybody freaked out when this came out, like, oh, they're banning them after all. No, the judge said, you can keep Fortnite out of your App Store, you can't shut off the developer account that lets them do Unreal Engine, and that's exactly what happened. 5G works fastest in millimeter wave spectrum, but that spectrum also has short transmission distance, or it did, Qualcomm announced its millimeter wave transmission technology has achieved a 3.8 kilometer transmission distance in a test in Victoria, Australia, using a Snapdragon X55 modem and the QTM 527 antenna under ideal conditions, of course, but still, that's twice the range it previously promised. The transmission does not work for mobile uses, like phones, but it does work for fixed wireless systems like your home broadband modem. Little more Google News. Google is updating Google Images to make it easier to license photos or pictures that are covered by copyright. This can help publishers, photographers, artists, and people in general have better access to photos on the platform. Licensed images provided by a publisher will now appear in search results with a licenseable badge over the thumbnail. All right, let's talk a little bit about what Netflix is trying to do to get a few more people into the tent, launching a watch-free website at netflix.com slash watch-free. It has a selection of original content that could be watched by anyone without an account. Don't need to even log in. Content includes a pre-roll highlighting Netflix's offering, so you gotta sit through that, but then it'll show you stranger things, first episode, Love Is Blind's first episode, When They See Us, Grace and Frankie first episodes, as well as movies like Bird Box, Murder Mystery, and The Two Popes. Watch Free is available on desktop and Android browsers, but not on iOS or smart TVs, and it will prompt you to sign up for Netflix after the show, because that's the whole point here. I think the reason it's not on iOS is because of the way the Safari browser handles the Netflix website. Even if you log into Netflix, you can't watch Netflix video on iOS on Safari, you have to go to the app to do that. So I think there's just something in the way Safari handles the stream that doesn't work, but anything else that treats it like a desktop browser, including Android, will do it just fine, and you can watch some stuff for free. And listen, I mean, as somebody who, I watch a lot of first episodes of shows where I'm like, eh, I'm either in or I'm out. Yeah, you know, it's interesting or it isn't. Netflix doesn't lose a lot here. You know, if you get somebody to be like, stranger things is awesome. I wanna watch the whole thing and I'm going to sign up to Netflix afterwards. Great, if they bounce, then you didn't really lose anything to begin with. You know, you're not getting somebody sort of freeloading off of your content. So yeah, I mean, I thought there's just sort of a curious move when the news came out this morning, but I don't really see why Netflix would fail at all. I mean, you're trying to reach a certain market that was like eh, you know, I'm not sure if we're ready to, you know, part with $10 per month for your service, but maybe we would be if we got hooked on a show. Yeah, Netflix has put first episodes on YouTube before for free. So this is just- Yeah, that's true. This is just a different take on that. I think the YouTube thing's probably more effective because people are more likely to just run across it. Here you have to go seek out this website, but you know, if people are like, let me check out this Netflix thing, but I don't want to sign up. This is the way they can sample it. And you get full movies too. I mean, the first episode thing, like you say, makes perfect sense. You know, give me that free sample and then maybe I'll want to finish it. But you can watch all of Bird Box, all of Murder Mystery with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston and not pay a dime. I guess the idea is you like them so much, you're like, what else do they have in here? Maybe I should sign them. Well, moving on to TikTok news, you thought we'd get through a day without having some TikTok news, but that is not this day. CNBC sources say that TikTok has selected a bidder for its operations in the US, New Zealand and Australia with a deal that could be announced as early as September 1st, which would be Tuesday. On August 28th, the Chinese government updated its list of technologies that requires a government license to export and to include technologies for recommendation of personalized information services based on data analysis. TikTok's parent company, Byte Dan says, it would need a license from the Chinese government to sell TikTok to a US company as the company uses artificial intelligence technology as part of its recommendation engine. That's the twist. The TikTok story has a twist. Yeah, over the weekend, China said, yeah, you're not selling stuff unless you get our approval. So we're adding something to our list of things that require our approval that apply specifically to what you have, which is the algorithm. That's the thing that makes TikTok work, right? Is that algorithm? You don't get that algorithm. You're not getting any of the magic of TikTok. You're just getting a video service. Anybody can do that. So yeah, China stepped in and the question will be, do they just want something or do they wanna scuttle the deal altogether? And I guess we'll find out later this week. Yeah, I wish I could say I knew it was going on, but at this point I'm like, all right, just tell me what you're selling to. Yeah, if you're not watching any of those free Netflix programs, grab your popcorn and watch this because the drama continues. Exactly. The US Federal Aviation Administration announced that it has approved Amazon to operate prime air delivery drones. Finally, welcome Amazon late to the game. Authorization gives Amazon approval to use unmanned aerial vehicles to make deliveries quote beyond line of sight of the operator. In other words, they are now approved to have the drone just go off and you can't see it anymore, which is essential to this sort of situation. In its initial FAA petition, Amazon said drone deliveries would be in low population density areas with packages that weigh less than five pounds. That's pretty standard amongst the folks who are doing this sort of thing, usually suburban areas at best, not city centers. Amazon said it will use its certification to widen its testing. It's been doing some testing on its own properties. Now it can actually go out in the world and do some testing. Amazon has been testing its drone delivery since it did that 60 minutes PR stunt in 2013. UPS, FedEx, Zipline and Wing are among these several companies already with FAA approval for drone deliveries in the United States. And of course, several companies have been operating drone delivery in other parts of the world for a long time, including Interwanda. Zipline's been operating or Wanda medical deliveries for almost a decade now, I think. Also some mail in Switzerland. There's some stuff in the UK. You can, my nephew can order a burrito delivered by drone in Australia for instance, a lot of stuff going on there. You know, besides the kind of like novelty and again, as you mentioned Tom, this is not new. Amazon is not reinventing the wheel here but for so many people who rely on Amazon for like, especially ongoing stuff. You know, I have like auto send me garbage bags and toilet paper and just things that my household needs on a regular basis. And it's not super heavy, but I don't, you know, if I kind of had this like checkout do you wanna do drone or by land and perhaps the drone delivery, you know, if they're trying to kind of figure out if it's working or not and get people on board is a little bit cheaper type thing. That could- Or faster, yeah. Exactly, faster and cheaper. I mean, if it was more expensive, I don't know who would do it. Well, with Amazon it's always free. Like if you're a prime member you never pay for shipping anyway, right? Sure, sure, sure, sure, that's true. But yeah, I just, I wonder how people are incentivized going forward. Let's say this all starts to work out a little bit better. You know, those of us, and there are so many of us who are just like, yeah, Amazon. I mean, Amazon delivery is three times a week, you know, minimum. What that looks like in the air and how people save, you know, words the company just save. Yeah, I think it increases speed. I think that's the big advantage here is like instead of having to send a truck out which might take an hour or two, which is what Amazon was after before the lockdown they're slowly starting to get back to. You might say it's 20, 30 minutes to get prescription medicine or a burrito or something like that. And of course, the big advance here is Amazon has made a big deal about it this so that a lot of people think the Amazon's the only one doing it even though they haven't been doing it and there's lots of other companies who have and we try to highlight them on DTNS. Amazon moving into it finally with real approval can change this entire game and make it commonplace in a way that it's not right now. And I think that's another thing to pay attention to here. Well, we mentioned that Apple had announced several changes to its App Store review policy at WWDC earlier this year. Two of those changes have now gone live which is interesting considering the news as of late. Apple will no longer delay bug fix updates to apps over guideline violations except for those related to legal issues and will also let developers suggest changes to Apple Store guidelines as part of the App Review Appeals process. Yeah, these were after Hey had its big dispute because remember Hey had bug fixes that got held up because Apple said, yeah, but your app violates our guidelines because it's just an email reader app and you can't actually get the service. And there was a whole thing earlier this year and they said, look, from now on, we won't hold up bug fixes. If you're in our store, we won't stop your bug fixes which actually is one of the reasons they had to suspend the Epic developer account for the App Store. Otherwise, under these new rules they would have to let Epic continue to pick push bug fixes to Fortnite. And I don't think they want to do that. They just want to kick them out all together and tell people not to use it. It's an unsupported app. But these are not in response to Epic in Fortnite. These were planned at WWDC and if anything, they're in response to Hey earlier this year. Right. So yeah, that's one of those weird timing things. I guess Apple already had it in the works so they just had to announce it. I mean, listen, that was June. This is going on September. So good on Apple for making good on things that they said that they would do. And sticking to the timeline. All right, head of IFA in Berlin. By the way, someone in our chat room in Twitch was asking if IFA is partly in person, small crowds, very limited in person, mostly virtual, mostly online. But in Berlin, ahead of IFA, Lenovo announced a slew of new products including a new flagship laptop line, the follow-up to the beloved Yoga C940 is in the Yoga 9 series, including the convertible two-in-one Yoga 9i available in 14 and 15 inch models. 15 inch model offers up to a 10th generation Intel i9 processor, two Thunderbolt 3 ports and can be equipped with an Nvidia GTX 1650 Ti Max-Q GPU. The 14 inch 9i offers Intel's Tiger Lake CPUs and Thunderbolt 4. So that's your C940 follow-up. Both will be all aluminum with a glass palm rest and an optional leather-covered lid. The line will also include a non-convertible 0.54 inch thick 14 inch Yoga Slim 9i. That will be called the IdeaPad Slim 9i in North America. It has similar specs to the non-Slim 9i, the standard 14 inch Yoga 9i, but the Slim is only 2.77 pounds. The Yoga 9i's come out in October with the 14 inch 9i starting at $1,399. Of course, that doesn't give you those max specs. You gotta pay more for that. They haven't said how much, but you gotta pay more. The 15 inch will start at $1,799 and the Slim will come out in November starting at $1,599. Lenovo also announced a gaming laptop, the Legion Slim 7i with Nvidia's RTX 2060 Max-Q graphics and Thunderbolt 3 support for eGPU The Slim here refers to the fact that it weighs 3.9 pounds and is 18 millimeters thick. So Slim is relative to other gaming laptops that can handle at RTX 2060. The Legion Slim 7i starts at $1,329 against starts at that coming in time for the holidays. There's also a couple of new tablets, a second generation Tab M10 HD and an all new Tab P11 Pro, both running Android 10. The M10 is kind of similar to the previous N10, aluminum and glass construction, but the resolution is less, 1280 by 800. They do add in Dolby Atmos speakers and it's serving as the launch for that Google Kids space project that Sarah mentioned earlier in the show. That's the curated profile into Kids. The new Tab M10 HD arrives in October for 130 bucks so it's not super pricey. The Tab P11 Pro is higher end. That one has 11.5 inch screen, 2K HDR10 display, Snapdragon 730 system on a chip, dual front and rear cameras, LTE, Bluetooth 5, Wi-Fi 5 and can be equipped with a separate Lenovo Precision Pen 2 and a trackpad equipped keyboard cover. But without those, the P11 Pro is $499 available in November. So that's similar to an iPad. Finally, the last product Lenovo announced is the Smart Clock Essential, a $50 Smart Clock with Google Assistant built in. It uses LEDs, like a good old fashioned LED alarm clock to show the time. So no screen other than that. It can also show you what date is, the weather and the current temp. It does not have a full LCD display. It does include dual microphones though so you can talk to Google Assistant. It's essentially a smart speaker with an LED alarm clock display. Single three watt speaker arriving in September as we said for 50 bucks. We're gonna get more of these kinds of announcements coming out of IFA. Any of these Lenovo products turn your head? I'll tell you that Smart Clock Essential, I'm like, this is exactly what I need by my bed. Just the clock. Right now. Yeah, well, it's less than 50 bucks. But just, I can't tell you how many times I'm sort of like, in the middle of the night, where's my phone? What time is it? I don't know what I'm doing. I need something like this that's simple, has an assistant built in so you can do some stuff. But is not too fancy. As far as laptops, I don't know. I mean, we're getting to the point where you read off the specs of Lenovo's new Yoga Lion and it's like, these look really nice. They're not cheap, but they look really nice. Do you need a new laptop? Do you want something from this particular company? The Lions are getting a little bit more blurred to me than they ever have before. Because it was, again, and I sort of had an Apple whore. But it was like, oh, well, if you want Apple, you're just going to pay more. And everyone was like, that's so dumb. Why would you do that? But now you have all these other products that are really nice and provide options that you wouldn't necessarily get on another ecosystem. But they're not super discounted either. You're paying for good things. Yeah, and this Lenovo line looks great. The C940 was very popular. And it looks like the Yoga 9i and the 9i Slim will be popular as well. Yeah, and Android tablets certainly not popular, but a lot of people are going to need them for school. And so Lenovo having a couple of new options out there. Yeah, these are not light your hair on fire exciting products. They're serviceable, good, decent products. They deserve credit as such. But yeah, they're not the ones that are going to get all the influencers talking on the Instagram about how it's pretty there. If you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to DailyTechHeadlines.com. All right, a few other announcements coming in advance of IFA. And I think we're seeing our first big trend out of IFA in Berlin. It's budget phones. Motorola announced its first 5G phone for the US market, the Motorola One 5G. This is a 6.7 inch phone with a 90 Hertz refresh rate, FHD plus display. You know, nothing fancy, but it's nice. Snapdragon 765G processor, four gigs of RAM, 128 gig storage, micro SD card slot, 5,000 milliamp hour battery, a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack. I know that makes a bunch of you happy. NFC front of device has a dual hole punch camera, 16 megapixel main, eight megapixel ultra ride. The rear has four cameras, including a 48 megapixel pixel binned main camera, an eight megapixel ultra wide, a two megapixel depth sensor, and a five megapixel macro with an integrated ring light. The phone also features a power touch side button with fingerprint reader. And you can customize that with different functions based on how you swipe or tap it, nifty. The Motorola One 5G will be sold through AT&T and Verizon in the US and will offer a special millimeter wave variant if that's the service you're getting from those. Motorola did not announce exact pricing, but said it will sell for less than $500. So this is a mid-range phone. Samsung also made its mid-range 6.7 inch Galaxy M51 available for pre-order in Germany. They're selling it for 360 euros in one cent. I don't know why, I didn't quite catch that. Maybe someone can explain it to me. It runs on a Snapdragon 730 chip, but the feature that differentiates this is not only the 360 euro and one cent price, but it's got a 7,000 milliamp hour battery in it. Yeah. And then Qualcomm announced a follow-up to its gaming focused mid-range chipset, the Snapdragon 730G. That's the one that's in the Pixel 4a. This new platform is the 732G with a clock speed that's 2.3 gigahertz up from 2.2. 15% improvement in graphics rendering over the 730. The CPU is built on the eight nanometer process, has two performance cores, six efficiency cores. The 732G is launching on a new Poco smartphone. That's a sub-brand from Xiaomi. So yeah, it feels like, I mean, obviously we're gonna get other products being announced there, but it feels like the opening salvo is, we know you all don't have a lot of money, but here you can have a nice phone without spending a lot of money. Well, and you know what? I appreciate that because in this day and age, I would like a nice phone without spending a crap ton of money. It's funny, it's like you rattle through the specs and again, it's like there are certain things that someone is going to want from a phone and not every phone will deliver. They're not all exactly the same phone, but they're so similar at this point. And getting like a really strong battery and again, that headphone jack for some folks in the Motorola arena, people are gonna be like, yay, thank you. It has sucked for us otherwise. This stuff, it looks nice, integrated ring light. Kind of interesting, like okay, well, selfie cameras were always like the crappier camera because it's like, well, the good camera's in the back because you're normally going to be pointing at something else besides yourself, but then there's a selfie camera for this and that. Wouldn't even call it the selfie camera until not that long ago. But knowing that people are more and more, especially in the mobile interface, using these tools to work is interesting to a little gimmicky, I suppose, but to see what companies are coming through for folks in that arena. Yeah, we've talked before on TTNS about the idea that mid-range phones are kind of becoming the popular ones here, that they are certainly, for a while they've sold better than the flagship phones unit-wise, but you make more money off the flagship phones because they sell for more. And also the flagship phones set the tone and make somebody who's like, oh, I'd really love to have that top-level iPhone, but maybe I'll just buy the SE and then eventually I'll get close. But I wanna be in the ecosystem as a halo effect like that. It feels like this is validation that that mid-range trend certainly has got momentum behind it. And companies are paying more attention to the fact that, hey, you know what? Some of these companies like Xiaomi and Samsung make a lot of money off those mid-range phones because they sell so many of them. Right, right. And so you're seeing Motorola kind of try to get into that and say, hey, and they're not the first to do this, to say, hey, you can still have 5G service as it rolls out without having to break the bank. That is not a flagship phone feature. We can put that modem in here. I mean, in a way, it reminds me of how cars eventually downgraded a bunch of features like air conditioning, power locks, power windows, as something that you could only get on a luxury trim or a luxury automobile. Now it's just like, oh, okay, I can get any kind of a condo box and it will have power windows or power locks, power steering, air conditioner. So you're saying that Motorola 5G is the Camry of phones? Yeah, in a way, I mean, I think it speaks to how mature, at least in North America, the cell phone market is that all these things are now kind of expected. Like, I want a decent camera. I don't want to suffer through a very poor quality camera, but I can't afford a super amazing camera, but something that does better than something three years ago. Yeah, I mean, the AC comparison is a good one, right? It's like, people are like, I need to take good photos. I don't necessarily need like that much storage. So, you know, or maybe battery life is not as important to me as it would be. My RAM could be smaller. Seems like battery life is one they're able to put in these mid-range phones, but RAM is always smaller. Your phone's going to be slower if you get these mid-range phones. Right, right. It's funny, it's like, it really comes down to like, there's a lot of marketing play that goes into this at this point because certain companies do better in certain regional markets. We know this already, but as more phones are available that are pretty good and pretty similar price plan, it's like, all right, how do you figure out how to market to folks who have roughly the amount of dollars that they need to buy one of your phones or a competitor? Yeah, if you like mid-range phones, maybe we should start a mid-range phone channel in our Discord. Maybe we should. I'd be in there. If you wanna join the conversation or Discord, talking about mid-range phones or anything else, you can join by linking to a Patreon account at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's check out the mountain. Let's do it. Got a bunch over the weekend. Thanks everybody for sending those in. First one comes from Drew in Rainy, Kentucky Bluegrass. Hello, Drew. Says, per the conversation around sticking that camera behind the display, that whole camera under the display, no notch, no nothing. Drew says, here's the biggest win, FaceTime IOS. The major issue today with FaceTime or Zoom or all those front-facing camera video conference apps with smartphones is that weird looking slightly above or below the screen. That makes video conferencing awkward. Apple tested this in iOS 13 developer beta, an AI eyeball adjustment specifically to combat this weirdness. I didn't know that, Drew, thank you for letting me know, but it didn't make it into the final release. Moving the camera behind the screen gives the potential to stick it just in the mid-screen. So you're looking at the other party in their eyes. I'm excited for the potential. We'll see if it can deliver. Yeah, I was excited for that AI adjustment too, but then I was also nervous like, but what if I don't want that? Cause I have so many setups where I don't need it to. And AI quite often thinks it's smarter than it is. Just put in the phone in the middle, you're right, Drew, that absolutely helps it. It also helps folks like this emailer who didn't give us their name, but we asked who cares about notches. And one of our emailers wrote, I am the guy. I'm the guy that refuses to use any display that has a notch or hole punch. I use a Pixel 3. I wanted the 3 XL, but I didn't get it because notch. I think iPhones are great. Won't get one now cause notch. I won't buy the Pixel 4a or the upcoming five probably because of hole punch displays. I am the type of person that cannot watch TV or a movie with subtitles cause I find myself reading everything instead of paying attention to the action even though I can hear just fine. The times I have used a phone with a notch, I found myself staring at the notch instead of what's happening on the screen. It's an ugly, cluggy way of engineering and I think they were lazy for it. I am fine with a forehead or a chin on a phone as long as my display is uninterrupted. If the tech is perfected for under display cameras, I would be fine with that. If I had to have a phone at this moment, I would get an iPhone SE, affordable price, no notch. Well, there you go. I wondered how you felt out there, whoever you were, and thank you for letting us know. I know, I was so excited to get this cause he was like, it's me, I'm the guy. And you know, like even though there are a lot of things where I'm like, I just wouldn't bother me. I feel your passion and I know you're not alone. Shout out to patrons at our master and grandmaster levels. They aren't alone, but today we're highlighting Jeffrey Zilx, Steve Ayadarola, and Chris Allen. And you could be on that list. If you joined up at that level, you get all kinds of other perks as well. DailyTechnewshow.com slash Patreon. Go check it out. You not only get, I mean the biggest thing you get is supporting the show directly. If you get value out of the show, you can give some value back, but you also get an ad free RSS feed. You get a few other pieces of content. You get some content early. You get access to bigger shows if you want them. You don't have to though, you can just get DTNS. Again, DailyTechnewshow.com slash Patreon. If you have emails that you'd like to send us, please do, cause we love reading them. Our email address is feedback at DailyTechnewshow.com and we are live Monday through Friday, 4 30 p.m. Eastern, 20 30 UTC. You can find out more at DailyTechnewshow.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. I hope you have enjoyed this program. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.