 Brett Lilly has supported independent tech news directly for five years. Be like Brett, become a DTNS member right now at patreon.com slash DTNS. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, June 17, 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Feline, I'm Sarah Lane. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Let's get ready for tech news. We've got a lot of stuff for you today. We've got some Huawei news. We've got some weird non-copyright but using lyrics without permission news. But let's start, Sarah, with some tech things you should know. Let's do it, Tom. Counterpoint research estimates the smartphone market in the Africa and Middle East regions in Q1 increased by 6 percent year over year, while feature phones declined 6 percent. More than 70 percent of smartphones sold in the region were priced below $150. China's transition leads the market with 90 percent share under its techno, ITEL and Infinix brands. It also offers digital media services like the music platform Boom Play. Huawei was the fastest growing brand of 27 percent year over year. Walmart began rolling out Delivery Unlimited, a delivery subscription that costs $98 annually or $12.95 a month. Customers could order through Walmart Grocery and select a delivery time window. Walmart previously offered online ordering with either a flat $10 delivery free or free in-store pickup. Samsung is closing its last smartphone factory in China, a decision attributed to declining sales of Samsung phones in China and made before U.S. trade restrictions came into being. Samsung stopped recruitment for the plant on February 28. Samsung's share of the Chinese smartphone market dropped from 20 percent in 2013 to 1 percent last year. Samsung has been expanding production in Vietnam and India and it opened the world's largest mobile phone manufacturing facility outside New Delhi last year. All right, let's talk a little bit more about Instagram. Trying to help you win your hack. Oh, let's do it. Instagram is testing new features to help account owners regain access after their accounts have been hacked. This is a thing that happens. It's happened to me, actually. Users will now be prompted to enter the email address and phone number linked to their account or the ones they use when they initially signed up for the platform, after which point Instagram sends a 62 code that will allow you to regain access. And Instagram spokesperson tells Motherboard, who reported on the story and quite a few incarnations, that if a hacker has access to the information to, quote, when you regain access to your account, we will take additional measures to ensure a hacker cannot use code since your email address or phone number to access your account from a different device. Yeah, I've known other people who have had this happen to them. Some successfully get it back. Some don't. Some say like I went through all the things they told me and I still don't have access. So previously, you had to do something like send a picture of yourself with a code in the picture and with manual review. And I think that's probably why it wasn't always working because manual review or whatever. So I I tend to think this is not a great solution because what you're saying is we used to have a person looking at this to make sure that it was working right. But we can't handle that. So instead, we're making up this automated version, which I think will be easier for the bad folks to manipulate because we we just can't make the one that requires human input work and going from less human customer support from from from human customer support to less human customer support doesn't make me more confident that Instagram will get this right more often. Yeah, there are a couple of things going on here to me. It's like Instagram is saying this is a rampant problem, you know. So we have to have some automated way to deal with it because we simply don't have the the humans involved to be able to to deal with us all. And also, Instagram thinks most of the time this is sort of a plug and play solution. Most of the time, the steps that a human would take to right the wrong is the same thing that we could automate. However, that that that that's not going to satisfy all of the cases. Yeah, I think being able to talk to a person to interact with the person is most important when you're so frustrated and upset if somebody takes your account away, right? You want to prove that it's you and having to go through email without even actually getting on a phone with with a person is frustrating enough. But now they're taking even away that little bit of human interaction. So I'm not I'm not sure this really improves things. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says his industry sources, which tend to be pretty accurate, indicate that Apple's three new iPhones coming in the second half of next year. That's 2020. He's already said lots about the 2019 phones, but he says next year in 2020, we're going to get a five point four inch, a six point seven inch, five G iPhone. That'll be the first five G iPhones next year and a six point one inch LTE model. All of them with OLED displays. This is a change in size, too, because currently the 10 S is five point eight inches. So if Kuo is right, it would get a little smaller, go down to five point four inches. And the 10 S Max is six point six inches. That one would get in a little bit bigger to six point seven inches. And Kuo thinks that in twenty twenty one, all the phones will have five G. So if five G is your thing and you're an iPhone user, you're going to want to wait until 2020 because you won't have a five G iPhone before then or you are going to have to get another one in 2020 when one comes out. Yeah. So a couple of things. OK, so there's there's a whole five G thing like, all right, I've got, you know, I've got my iPhone, you know, it's a Max or a plus rather. I get I get tripped up by all that phone nomenclatures. But the fact that it might be a little bit bigger. OK, maybe not the end of the world. It's already pretty big. But the whole five G thing being bundled in in twenty twenty means OK, in September of twenty nineteen, what's in it for me? Kind of nothing, right? But even in twenty twenty, what's in it for me? If I really want to make take advantage of five G also kind of nothing because if I'm lucky, it'll be happening in the following year or the subsequent years. Yeah, I mean, it kind of depends on what the pitch is from Apple for the twenty nineteen iPhones, because if there's no real like got to get features in twenty nineteen, then I would say like, hey, if your current phones working for you, just keep it. That's usually what I say. Five G, on the other hand, is something where just because Apple will bring it to the phone doesn't mean it's worth waiting for. Maybe you won't have great five G service where you are or maybe where you travel. You won't have great five G service. So it might be fine to wait a little longer until five G is ubiquitous. I know LTE was the same thing. The first phones with LTE and them from the iPhone were on four G from from T-Mobile, you know, the not LTE from T-Mobile or three G quite often in the early days. So it really wasn't worth it to upgrade to it right away. I think it's true of all phones, actually. Yeah, I, you know, I don't know if you're if you're traveling to South Korea on business or pleasure. Yeah, I've got a regular basis, right? Yeah, like it makes a lot of sense. But otherwise it is it is, you know, Apple has has really shaken up its own market over the last few years. There was a point where iPhones were very streamlined. We now have several models, lower end, higher end, depending on, you know, what market that the company is marketing to. And it's a it's a whole new world. I I'm I'm sort of in the market for a new iPhone just because I've shattered the back of this iPhone. But it works fine. And yeah, unless unless enough leaks come out before before Apple announces new iPhones for 2019, that really give me an idea. It sounds like at the bare minimum, I would wait till 2020. Yeah, I honestly wouldn't make 5G my determining factor in waiting or not. It would be whether the current phone has what I need or not. Unless you're somebody like Roger, who holds on to phones for, you know, three, four years, then you might think, OK, well, I might want to wait to get the one because I'm I'm going to keep it for a long time. Comcast is adding eye tracking to its X one platform as an accessibility feature. It'll let customers change channels, pull up the programming guide, set DVR recordings and navigate through other menus using their eyes. Comcast will support multiple eye tracking hardware and software products using two bold devices, sip and puff switches and other assistive technologies. Customers sign into Comcast web based remote control and then link to their cable account to enable it. Yeah, so this is this is really good. We're going on record Comcast doing a good thing because not only is it adding accessibility, which is important and doing it a way that is good for people who need accessibility but making it available to multiple devices. So you don't have to buy a Comcast eye tracker. You got a Toby device already that you could make it work with this. You're using sip and puff, you know, the thing that allows you to control things by by exhaling and inhaling. You can you can use that. So this, you know, and people who are very close to accessibility out there or rely on this every day for their job. Let us know if there is some cracks that aren't filled here. But it seems like the right way to roll this sort of thing out. Absolutely. And even for folks who don't need to use eye tracking to to to handle a menu. What if this becomes the best way to navigate a menu going forward? I mean, we all talk about gesture based technology and we've been talking about it more and more of the last several months. Is this something that is indicative of the way that we end up dealing with our cable menus in the future? Yeah, wouldn't it be great if finally accessibility like just avowately led the way? A lot of times accessibility functions are turned into like nifty tips and tricks for people who don't need them because they do nifty things. Other times people come up with stuff that are that are fun for most users and then like, oh, this could also be an accessibility feature. This is very much just an accessibility feature right now. You wouldn't use this if you didn't need it because of the way they set it up. You take your existing accessibility devices and you make them work with X1. But eventually that doesn't mean that you couldn't also integrate this into other devices and expand the ability to do some eye tracking in a responsible, non-invasive, non-tracking your private information kind of way to make the interface better for everybody. Yeah, I have it in my heart that I want this to actually be the coolest way to do it, you know, so the rest of us, we have to get on board rather than someone who needs accessibility to have to do things differently. I, you know, and again, as Tom said, let us know, let us know. Yeah, feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com. What what do you think as an accessibility user about Comcast adding eye tracking to its X1 platform? You don't have to be a Comcast user just to have an opinion about it. But I have to believe that this is leading the way. And we're not saying that Spectrum and Charter don't have their own accessibility. There's their screen readers out there. And all of those companies are doing something. But this is certainly the most advanced that I've seen yet. Samsung's US support account tweeted out that Samsung TV owners should run the built-in virus scanner every few weeks to prevent malicious software attacks on your TV. The tweet, which included an instructional video, has now been deleted. Why was it deleted? My guess is because the Verge ran headlines like Samsung Smart TV virus scan malware attack tweet convinces you should own a Samsung Smart TV. The reaction seemed to be, well, Samsung, if you have to tell us to run a virus scan every two weeks, then maybe we don't want your platform, which I think is unfortunate because really anything can get a virus. And the fact that Samsung has a virus scanner built in and raising awareness of it is good. I guess my first question is why isn't this just on? Why do you as the user have to go? Autoscan a setting that you can set and forget. You know, especially if they set it up so it runs in the like at night when you're asleep, because I'm sure there might be a noticeable lag on menus or any kind of OS. Yeah, if it understands that no one's watching anything, that would be a great time. But if it auto updates itself, you should be able to run that scan at like, you know, 3 a.m. in the morning, unless you're watching. Well, although that would mean your TV would have to turn itself on. Some people might not like that. It's true, but, you know, most TVs generally have a soft on and off like they're still pulling current so they can instantaneously be turned on like my my Samsung TV. So, I mean, or just have a giant sticker says run this every week. I, you know, I think having the option for it to be auto run is a good thing. I think some people may not want it. So you should also have the ability to turn it off if you want. But but yeah, it's you should be able to just have this thing auto run, especially because way more people use TVs than understand the ins and outs of running antivirus. And so it should probably be on by default unless you're clever enough and tech thinking enough to want to turn it off for whatever reason. I just love the fact that the tweet had an instructional video. I mean, Samsung put some thought into this. And then we're like, ah, never mind, people are getting it wrong. Well, and that's the other thing is deleting this tweet because you got like people making fun of it or bad press. That's not a good thing either, because no, it is necessary to let people know like, hey, this is this is an important part of having a connected device these days. Well, sure. And it also, you know, it it introduces questions like, well, was it bad advice or what's going on? Or, you know, were they not ready with, you know, their antivirus initiative? So. No, I think they just didn't like the blowback. The implication of that that that verge headline that said, literally, let me I'm trying pulling it up so I can read it if you if you may put it up there. Samsung security reminder makes the case for not owning a Samsung Smart TV. They're like, oh, well, we don't want that tweet up there because it sounds like we're telling people not to own a Samsung Smart TV now that the Verge has made that headline. I'm not saying the Verge is irresponsible for running that headline. I'm saying Samsung, just ignore it. Just yeah, yeah, or come out with a software update that allows you to auto run the virus. But TVs can get viruses like that just because you're protecting your device doesn't mean your device is insecure or bad. Well, enough about Samsung. Let's talk about Huawei. No problems there. No, I think that CEO Ren Zhengfei says that revenue will be 25 to 30 billion dollars less than expected for the year at about 100 billion dollars total. Ren said international smartphone shipments fell 40 percent last month, not insignificant. Ren still expects revival of business in 2021 and will not cut research and development spending because of that. Now, this was in company with a couple of Americans at a session, Nicholas Negroponte, former MIT guy, the one laptop per child guy was there and he was saying that these restrictions on Huawei are bad for all of us. But, you know, it is significant that Huawei publicly saying this is hurting us more than we expected and this is going to hurt our bottom line. And there is one perspective that the way the reason that this is being put in place doesn't have to do with security, although that is the valid reason. There's a theory that doesn't have to do with security has to do with trade negotiations and the way those trade negotiations would resolve it is if they feel enough pain that they give in on whatever it is that the trade negotiations from the US want them to give in on. And if that's your perspective, then you want to you want to see this happen, you want to see that be pushed so that it gets resolved. And I'll have to admit, I I don't see how this gets resolved any other way than a big deal between China and the United States on a bunch of other things. Otherwise, it's just going to stick around. Yeah, I mean, the the short term effects are not insignificant, as I mentioned before, and not surprising either. Twenty twenty one, is this all going to bounce back? Well, I certainly don't know. It remains to be seen. It doesn't look great, but again, we're in twenty nineteen. So two years from today, a lot of things can change. Yeah. And we heard earlier about Samsung shutting down their last phone plant in China, not related to the trade dispute, but not not a good thing for China to be losing that that amount of Samsung and losing jobs and stuff like that. And they're moving that capacity to Vietnam and India. That kind of paves the way for other companies to look at that and say, well, maybe we should move to Vietnam and India could be great for India. If there is a downside to this for the rest of the world and an upside for China, Roger, what would that look like? So I posited a theory that potentially, and this is no sure bet, that this could stiffen resolve within the Chinese tech community to insource or develop a lot of these components internally themselves. Now, of course, that takes time and takes money, something they could basically ask the Chinese government for. But, you know, this is one of those things that even though, say, it gets resolved in twenty twenty one or twenty twenty two, depending on optimistic you are the aftershocks will be felt long after then because what a lot of these companies will have determined possibly is that they need to hedge their bets and not necessarily invest their capacity all in one specific country or region where either due to political or some sort of economic shock, they would be like caught short like, oh, no, we can't develop enough LEDs or we can't develop a fab enough processors. So, you know, how that looks in the future will will still up there. But I doubt it will look as much of the we're going to have all our capacity in only one country or in only one region. Yeah, I mean, it could end up being a kind of situation where companies in the future decide to locate things in neither China nor the United States, simply because they don't like the uncertainty that that this sort of thing could happen. It's it's it's definitely an interesting thing to keep an eye on. You were saying that a similar situation exists in weapons manufacturing because of restrictions. So, you know, if you're in the weapon base, you're the US is notorious on attaching a lot of strings to the stuff that it sells, even to big allies, if you buy a major weapon system, actually by most weapons systems from the US, you need approval if you're going to sell it again. So like I bought a plane from you. We're done with it. We can still make some money by selling off to another country. You have to get State Department approval. If you build a jet, for example, Sweden, they build these sub gripping. But the point being there are restrictions on sales from the US that cause people to want to buy things from other countries. Not, you know, France. France is famously well known for saying, hey, we sell it to you. You don't have to worry about do whatever you want. Works with anyone works with Russian weapons, works with American weapons, French, British, whatever, stick it on. We don't care. You know, make sure you own the bank that you signed the check on. Now, that's weapons. That's that's a whole different situation. But the effect could be the same. The effects is similar. Oh, I guess is that we're going to see this resolved before the timeline that would really start to push companies into considering that immediately, but it could become long term thinking. It's not impossible. My guess is it won't. It'll it'll just be resolved before then. The Wall Street Journal reports the genius media group, which runs a website with song lyrics on it, has filed complaints against Google for antitrust and violation of terms of service. Genius claims its traffic has been dropping because Google publishes song lyrics as an info bar in search results. That's that little thing that shows up. Sometimes it's on the side. Sometimes it's right in the main thing that says, oh, here are the lyrics. You don't even have to click through. We'll show them to you right away. Not only that, the genius claims that Google uses lyrics from genius's own site without permission. Genius notified Google in 2017 and again in April that this was happening. Google says the lyrics that appear in its info bars are licensed from partners, that it has not been stealing them from genius. But genius being called genius watermarked its lyrics by alternating the apostrophes between straight and curly in a particular sequence. Genius claims that the straight and curly stand in for dots and dashes and can be converted to Morse code spelling red handed. You know, I love this story just for that, because that is super cool. After the Wall Street Journal article on this was first published, Google said it was investigating and would terminate agreements with partners who were not upholding good practices. That makes me think that Google wasn't taking things from genius without approval, but that some of its partners might have been. And so in other words, think of it this way, an unscrupulous Google partner steals genius's lyrics and then through the partnership with Google provides those lyrics that show up in the info bar and the curly, straight pattern is preserved throughout that transaction. Man, the partners of the large companies who do these bad things where the large company goes, well, that was a bad partnership. Sorry, it wasn't us. They're they're really they're amassing themselves, aren't they? Yeah, I mean, this one isn't as bad as a Cambridge. Right. Yeah, we're talking about that. But but it is something where companies are going just for their own benefit. They they should look closely at the practices of partners. And that's not the way we thought the Internet was going to work back in the 2000s. It would all just happen automatically. You sign up the partner, partners show up, they do the things. And the bad act, the bad information would get driven out somehow. But that doesn't seem to be the case. And it's interesting, too, because these lyrics belong to the songwriter. Yeah, in order to be able to put them on your site in the first place, genius and everybody else have to get a license to do that. So they don't belong to genius. But what genius is claiming is because Google puts the lyrics in the search info bar, it's antitrust. They're using their dominant position to drive down genius's business. And it also violates their terms of service that says you can't take these lyrics off our site and use them yourself. And it's not as if Google wouldn't have a group of people in arm that would be working on this. But it does make more sense that it would be sort of like, all right, we have bigger picture fried. This is an interesting thing for search results. Let's hire this company to do this for us. And that company might be working with genius in a way that genius takes issue with. Yeah, yeah. Well, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to DailyTechHeadlines.com. Also, thanks to everybody who participates in our subreddit. You can submit stories. You can also vote on other people's stories at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. We're also on Facebook, Facebook.com slash groups slash Daily Tech News Show. Let's take a look at the mailbag. You know, I mentioned our Facebook group and we're going to pull from some from our Facebook group today. So John, who wrote us over the weekend, said, remember the story about John Deere not allowing farmers the ability to repair their electronic farm equipment. I was watching Smarter Every Day and Dustin, who is a host on the show, made a profound statement that I think might not be understood by normal people. That statement is, quote, when a farmer's equipment breaks, they can't wait for help. They know their equipment and they fix it themselves. John says Smarter Every Day is an awesome show. If you haven't seen it before and then he links us to a wired article. Yeah, there was a good and I felt very respectful discussion amongst people to say, well, there is a limit to that. You know, there are certain hydraulic systems and things that would be dangerous for a farmer to fix themselves. And if that breaks, then they have to call somebody. And and very rightly, the debate then becomes, OK, yes, that's true, but is electronic farm equipment at the same level of as as as like dangerous, dangerous mechanical equipment? If it's I could fix it, but I'm prevented by DRM or the law versus I'm prevented because I'm afraid I'll take my own hand off. I think that's a really different thing. But there was a good discussion about that in the Facebook group for sure. Well, keep it coming, everybody, Facebook group alive and cake. Yes, indeed. Thank you, John. Thank you, everybody there. And I want to give a shout out to Mr. Six, Jay Six Toes on Twitter, who used one of my editor's desk episodes to teach the difference between informational text and persuasive text. It's a summer school. That's awesome. That that's what that editor's desk is for. You get it delivered if you're a patron at the five dollar a month level. But the idea is you should be able to use it. It's it's it's not DRM that's freely available and make use of it. And I was so glad to hear that. So thank you, Mr. Six for using that. If you would like to be getting that editor's desk delivered to you directly in your RSS feed, become a patron at patreon.com slash DTNS. Got a question, got a comment, got any feedback whatsoever. Well, our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com and we welcome them. We're live Monday through Friday at 4 30 p.m. Eastern 2030 UTC. You can find out more until a friend 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. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.