 Coming up on DTNS, do we want a phone with no ports? How about a new Xbox with no disc slot and why 2020 may be the year of the mid-range phone? This is the Daily Tech News for December 5th, 2019 in Los Angeles for six years now. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood for about a month. I'm Sarah Lane. And in Finland in the darkness of the forest for what feels like forever. I'm Patrick Bezos. And I'm Roger Chang, the show's producer under some skies. Whenever you say in the darkness of the forest, I imagine moments around you for some reason. It's pretty much what it is. Yeah. We were just talking about an IPv4 heist on Good Day Internet. If you want to know a little more about that and also a lot of breakfast cereal, he'll talk. You got to get the wider conversation. Become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. The image hosting network Imager announced Melee, a smartphone app designed to provide better experience for sharing gaming related contents. The app lets users subscribe to specific games, which then populates their feed with related memes and gameplay clips. Content will have multiple layers of community and staff moderation. Obscene content will be removed. And Melee will have a strict no bullying policy. In 2020, the app will also add more robust profiles and the ability to promote streams. Melee is available now on iOS and coming to Android in Q1 of next year. Those gamers there everywhere. Huawei filed a lawsuit against the U.S. FCC in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, arguing the FCC's November 22nd ban on purchasing Huawei equipment with the Universal Service Fund violated its required due process protections. Huawei submitted, I'm sorry, Huawei said it submitted comments that such a ban would harm individuals and businesses in remote areas and that the FCC failed to produce any evidence that it was a threat to national security. Earlier this week, security expert Brian Krebs reported that iPhones were making use of location data, even if you had turned off sharing location. Apple told TechCrunch that this is caused by international regulations that require ultra wide band. That's the thing handled by the U1 chip to be turned off in certain locations. Apple says that iOS requests location for that specific purpose, even if you have location turned off, they want to comply with those regulations. Apple says the request is handled entirely on the device and it's not collecting that information about your location. But Apple is planning to add a toggle for Universal Wide Band in future iOS updates. I'm sorry, ultra wide band. Ultra wide band is that thing that enables precise location awareness. So Apple tags that have been rumored would use that, but there isn't anything taking advantage of that specifically in iOS right now. Alibaba based Chinese startup Auto X has applied to test self-driving vehicles without backup drivers in California, which would be the second company after Waymo to be able to do so. Auto X would be able to test self-driving cars with a backup provided by a remote human operator rather than a driver in the vehicle if granted the permits. Auto X, good to know, good to remember. Also, the co-founder of Alphabet's DeepMind, Mustafa Suleiman, announced on Twitter he will move to Alphabet-owned Google to work with Google's head of AI, Jeff Dean, along with Chief Legal Officer Kent Walker. Google told The Verge that Suleiman will work on AI policy, hence the need for the Chief Legal Officer to be involved there. A blog post from DeepMind's co-founder Demi Hassabis, timed with Suleiman's announcement, emphasizes DeepMind's commitment to long term research. So look at this through the prism of the changes at Alphabet at the top, and then this happens a couple of days later. Looks like some pieces are already starting to move. All right, let's talk a little bit more about Ming-Chi Kuo's latest, Patrick. Indeed, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says his sources lead him to expect that Apple will launch an iPhone without a lightning connector in the second half of 2021. If you're thinking USBC, you are wrong. That would be a phone that is completely wireless and portless, so no ports at all. Oh, please let this be true. Please, please, please let this be true. I was I was when I first read the story this morning, I was like, 2020. Yes, I'm glad I didn't buy a phone a couple of months ago. Now, it's a little bit longer than that. However, but it's still coming up fast and this is the direction we've all been moving in for some time. So I hope it's true. But yes, a wireless life, completely wireless, that that is that I don't have to give up too much other stuff to enjoy. I mean, 2021. Wait, that that was what disappointed you, the fact that it's 2021. Not right. You want it sooner. Wait, Sarah. I'm not sure I understand. You want a phone. I mean, OK, seriously, it's easy to make jokes about this. And I'm sure many, many people will. But do we really think that the world and by that, I mean, the infrastructure is ready for a phone that you cannot charge with a wire that you have to have a wireless charger when you want to charge it? Like if you don't, literally, your phone is out of battery, it will die. You can't charge it. And there aren't that many wireless charger chargers in the wild at home. I'm sure you might have one. And it doesn't matter because you will get one with the phone anyway. But Sarah, you're confident that no, I am not confident. I like the idea of being completely wireless. I hate wires of all kinds. But yes, you're right. Even if I have got real set up at home, it's going to take years for the airport terminals to get on board with us, not to mention airplanes. And yeah, yeah, when you're out in the wild and for some reason, you're you're stuck somewhere. It's almost like having an electric vehicle that only has a short range. You've got to like really plan. Ahead of time because no, no, no, no. You just you just carry your wireless charger with you, you know, you want to use it as charging. You just you just hold on to the wireless charger to the back. Oh, you're right. No problem at all. Yeah, you're right. You know, everyone's got pockets big enough for this stuff. Actually, if there is like a magnet system on the back of the phone and you get the small wireless charger that you have a cable for in case even smaller than what you're showing on screen, which is what about four inches. This is the high rise that I've got right now, which is not on screen, but I think it's on screen maybe by now. And and it's it would have a wire coming out of to cut the wire off of it right now. But but yeah, you could just you can use this. I'm a little being a little bit ridiculous saying I would use it while I'm using the phone. But I have taken this on a plane and plugged it in to the plane's power port and used it to wirelessly charge it can work. So what what we mean is that you would go wireless with a sort of wired option in case you have you really need it. But in general, the hope is that also Apple adopting a technology fully would precipitate the availability of that in other places. And that's why this is 2021, right? Because Apple knows that wireless charging is not there yet. But there. But Quo is saying that Apple thinks that by 2021 we'll have enough wireless charging out there. It'll be built into more cars, coffee shops, airports, etc. Because because wireless charging is more prevalent now that they'll be able to say you don't even need that port anymore and will provide you know, some ways to deal with it for the gaps that do still exist. And like you say, it'll drive more adoption. It feels to me like it's more like USB type C where even now, years after Apple has introduced it, it's not really there yet. We want it more and it's coming more and more, but we're still, you know, a year or two. Yeah, there were way too early on that. Yeah. But wireless charging is in more places now than USB-C was when Apple added USB-C to its laptops, I think. OK. And Apple will have a very affordable wireless charger of the job. On Wednesday, users of WhatsApp in Kashmir begin to disappear from group chats. Buzzfeed News reports that the reason is that India shut down internet access in the region four months ago, and many users are now subject to an inactivity policy that removes a WhatsApp account if the user does not log in for 120 days. That policy is meant to maintain security, limit data retention. Users may lose chat logs and shared images. If they haven't been backed up, however, India is WhatsApp's largest market with an estimated three hundred and forty million users. And Kashmir has approximately three million smartphone users. So, you know, small small region in terms of overall India, but a lot of users. Yeah. And there's there's a lot of politics behind this. Kashmir is a disputed region for India. They they they are have recently taken away its autonomy. And as part of this move that has been controversial, they took away the internet and that that has led to this unusual practice. And without getting into the wares and whys of the Kashmir situation in India, I think it is interesting to look at WhatsApp and say, should you make an exception? These are not people just not using it for nefarious purposes. These are people who can't use it. I will predict that they will make an exception. It seems like this is a very special case and it feels like, first of all, unfair for all of those users to lose their WhatsApp accounts, because, you know, that's actually a very prevalent tool in many parts of the world. And also, if all of them lose their WhatsApp accounts, maybe when the internet comes back eventually at some point, it's an opportunity, an opportunity for another messaging app to swoop in. So there is a business incentive for WhatsApp to make an exception there as well. I mean, maybe WhatsApp's so dominant in India. It's hard to say, but but yeah, maybe. Technology Review reports that estimates from the Center for Security and Emerging Technology or CSET indicate China is likely spending less on AI than has maybe been assumed. Most of the money spent on AI research in China, according to CSET, is going to fundamental algorithm development, robotics research and smart infrastructure development. The majority of what the United States spends on AI research goes to defense purposes specifically. Now, there's a lot of overlap between these two. But CSET referenced China's Ministry of Finance's National Expenditure Report with other government agencies expenditure reports. They cross-referenced them. The good news for the US is that its use of AI for defense looks like it's better funded than China's. And the good news for China is that it is likely to advance fundamental AI research faster because it's spending more of its money on that. It almost seems like the two countries could help each other out. Well, and that's one of the issues that has brought up in this technology review article is international cooperation may be being reduced if the United States shifts too much on military because you can't that's confidential stuff. You don't want to share your military secrets. Whereas your fundamental research, you're more likely to want to share. It seems like the fundamental AI research would be, at some point, be made more public indeed. I wonder if the Chinese government would be willing to do that, especially in the current geopolitical client. Sure. After they've already moved on to developing the next thing, I'm sure they'll be happy to let everyone else try and play catch up with them and maintain their lead. That's the way I would I would look at it. And and, of course, fundamental research also benefits military research. So yeah, it's like robotics. You think at some point, the fundamental research is going to be necessary for pretty much anybody who wants to further their their AI road map, whether it's for the military or not. All right, let us move on to game consoles. That's always fun. Kotaku reports that according to four people briefed on the plan. Microsoft is working on a lower cost optical disc free version of its projects. Scarlett's next generation game console code named Lockhart. Game developers speaking to Kotaku compared the performance of the Lockhart to the PlayStation 4 Pro and containing a solid state drive. So that would improve performance in the case of the new console. Microsoft reportedly wants developers to support both console versions. The with a performance target of 1440 P resolution and 60 frames per second per second on the Lockhart. The higher range console would be 4K. So that would be the Anaconda, a.k.a. Project Scarlett. Yeah, that would. So so this would be the successor to the Xbox One S, right? This is probably the successor. Yes, to the Xbox One S. There have been rumors before that there would be two versions of the next generation console from Microsoft. They were a little bit KG at the introduction at E3 last year. But this is an interesting move, because if you have a diskless version, there's already actually an Xbox One S called the old digital addiction edition, which is sold. Well, we call it the Xbox One sad because it's all digital. It's a little bit sad, but honestly, it makes sense for some people. And in the context of the next generation, if you take into account the the streaming services, even if that console is less powerful, a PlayStation four pro level of power is a little bit disappointing for the next generation. But even if it is less powerful, it plays the same games. And if you have access, if you have a strong internet connection, you might have access to the streaming service, which means you can choose to either play the game in lower fidelity on your console. That is cheaper or higher fidelity with your streaming service, which could mean they position this console as the entry level. You have both options if you have a good connection. And it's a way to sell a next generation console at let's say two ninety nine when it launches, which is very low price for a brand new generation console could be right now, whether it's rational or not. This feels like a better way to get people into cloud gaming to say, look, we're going to give you a decent console at a lower price, but it doesn't have disks. But hey, you can get Xbox Game Pass and X Cloud. I see more people saying, you know what? I'm in the Xbox universe. I want to buy an Xbox, but maybe I'll save some money and get this this one without a disk drive and sign up for X Cloud. Then I see people saying, you know what? I want to take a flyer on Google Stadia and just use whatever I have. Because you know that your Xbox is going to be powerful enough to run games no matter what. And it's it's a the entry into game streaming with a full back. If your connection is not working at the moment, you just launch the local version rendering locally. Sure, it's not as good looking, but you have the full back where whereas with Stadia, you don't. And it is the subscription aspect of it is really important as well. Of course, as you mentioned, the Xbox Game Pass is incredibly popular as it should be. It's super, super value. And I know a lot of people I'll address it before we get the emails. I know a lot of people are thinking, well, I need my disks because my connection is not fast enough for, you know, other issues like that. I understand that for some people that will be the case. Obviously that machine won't be designed for you. But even the people who buy disks nowadays are used to putting that disk in the console and having a 15 to 50 megabytes download anyway for the patches and stuff like that. So the idea that you can live in a world with local media only is kind of a fallacy already to an extent. So yeah. Shall we talk about 5G? Sure. All right. The US Federal Communications Commission announced the creation of a $9 billion fund to support deploying 5G in sparsely populated areas or rugged terrain or other hard to serve places. At least one billion of that is set aside for 5G to support precision agriculture. The fund will replace the current 4.5 billion mobility fund phase two, which was designed to expand 4G rollout and use a reverse auction format. As part of the assignment announcements, rather, the FCC acknowledged a report that Verizon, T-Mobile and US Cellular had inflated their 4G coverage maps with only about 62 percent of driving tests and less than half of stationary tests achieving minimum download speed shown by those coverage maps. A senior FCC official said its investigation could not determine if this exaggeration was deliberate or not and that the investigation did not show a clear violation of any specific rules. The FCC confirmed that Chairman Adjit Pai will issue an enforcement advisory to the broader industry. Yeah, and the carriers themselves have said we've been saying since you gave us the definition of how we are to report this, that this was going to result in over reporting, which they have. So, you know, give them credit for at least sticking to their story. Saying we can't we can't be accurate. That said, wouldn't it be great if everyone just agreed to try to be more accurate? And maybe there were some teeth in this more than just an enforcement advisory to be like, you know what, we'll get really mad if you do this again, especially when you've got nine billion dollars relying on this because that nine billion dollars doesn't go to any areas that are covered by broadband. But this shows you that 50 to 60, you know, 62 percent, I guess 40 to 50 percent were listed as covered when they weren't properly covered. And under this new situation, they'd lose out on money to develop the rural broadband for that. That's not fair. Thankfully, they caught it. I mean, 50 to 60 percent, I have a hard time. It seems like there was a lot of eyes that remain closed that didn't want to see the problem. But we don't know that for sure. The the thing I'm taking away from this story is it seems 5G is seriously becoming the focus now, which is probably the best thing to do, especially for those specific areas and users. So hopefully that will help the deployment. Yeah. In fact, that leads us right into our main discussion today. So don't forget, folks, if you want to keep up on just the headlines each day, kind of get you through those busier days and still be smart about what's going on technology, you got to subscribe to daily tech headlines dot com. All right. T-Mobile USA launched its nationwide 5G network in the US Friday. It's available to about 200 million people. That doesn't mean all 200 million are going to subscribe to it. But 200 million people could get it if they if they use T-Mobile and have a $900 one plus 70 pro 5G McLaren or a $1300 Samsung Galaxy Note 10 plus 5G. Those aren't cheap phones, and it's probably too early to jump in for most people anyway, because this is the slower version of 5G. CNET has some good reports showing it to be slightly faster than LTE, but not even all the time. Next year, things are going to change. Coverage is going to get better millimeter wave will come in. Phones will have the ability to take advantage of the higher speed 5G. And Michael Simon at PC World argues that all of that combined with the announcement of Qualcomm's 765 midrange chip. We mentioned that on the show previously. The 765 is the step down from the 865. 865 is the flagship. 765, however, is pretty powerful. So much so that it may be the more important announcement from Qualcomm, not the 865. Simon says most of the speed benefits offered by the 865 will likely be negligible based on what people use their phones to do, especially since the 765 integrates a 5G modem, and the 865 does not. That means better battery life for a phone running on the 765, such as maybe the forthcoming Pixel 4a or a Samsung A50 successor. Those could become popular 5G phones that have good battery life, good performance with the 765 chip and don't cost you as much. Simon says by the second half of next year, there could be as many midrange 5G phones and carrier stores as high end ones. Dieter Bohn over at the Verge agrees. Dieter says I hope 2020 is the year when people stop assuming the fastest processor with the most features is the best one. And Anantek points out that Qualcomm did this for a reason, but it may not have the effect that they wanted. The X55 5G modem has been out for months. That's the one that you have to get separately with the 865. If you want to make a phone with 5G using the 865, you have to get the discrete X55 5G modem. The reason they did that is it fits the development cycles for handset makers. Handset makers need to get their RF systems, their antenna designs and their certifications going all in order and having the modem earlier allowed them to do that. And now they can add the 865 at the end of the process in a way that means they'll get these phones to market faster. So we may see the high end 5G phones with the 865 come to market first. But by the middle to the late 2020, we may yet see these 765 powered mid-range 5G phones available, like I said, as a very compelling alternative. I mean, honestly, the question here is the power of the CPU, which we've reached the point in phones where the power of your phone is inconsequential for your users unless you are gaming. That is, that defines, I would suspect, the there's even a 765G, though, that's not bad. Right. And so the difference between PCs and phones is that on phones, you have the longevity of the battery and the power consumption, which is a factor. So having a less powerful CPU is actually an advantage in many cases. And this, the 765 seems like the perfect, you know, the perfect piece of hardware for a huge majority of everyone. It seems like this will be the catalyst, according to everything we've heard. So yeah, wouldn't be surprising at all. Yeah, it's close enough in power to the 865 that, as Simon pointed out, most people aren't going to notice. Motorola... We don't notice now anyway. Right. You really notice when you see the benchmarks and you can parade your numbers in front of your friends. But really, that's any phone that is a couple of years old, most people don't notice the difference when they change. Roger, you just bought a new phone and you went from a flagship phone that was a few years old to a mid-range phone. You ended up getting the what, the Pixel 3a? Yeah, I got a Pixel 3a and I bought it one because Samsung basically stopped supporting supporting my Samsung Galaxy S6. And two, the Pixel 3 is a great value. Granted, I bought it on a Black Friday sale. But typically it sells for $3.99. Black Friday I got it for $2.99. So I saved a hundred bucks off of it. It's it's it's moderately faster than my Galaxy S6 has a much better camera for for low light shooting. And it has the latest Android OS on it. So all in all, I needed an upgrade and that was a good fit. And I only really do a certain amount of tasks on it that don't require a huge amount of CPU cycles to crunch there. I'm done you folks. 2020 could be, you know, the cresting of the popularity of the midrange phone we've seen it building for years. Maybe this is its year. The ultimate commodite commodite commoditization. Easy for you to. I liked the way you did it. It was kind of like, you know, you're a DJ. Yeah. Exactly. Lots of 5G stories always in our subreddit, as well as lots of other tech stories that are really, really interesting. You should participate, submit stories and vote on them at Daily Tech Newshow.Reddit.com. You can also join in on the conversation in real time in our Discord, which you can join by linking to a Patreon account at Patreon.com slash DTNS. What's in the mailbag today, Sarah? Oh, Chance the Hacker, our old friend Chance says, in regards to focus mode, that was our story yesterday that Google had rolled out to help us all focus better. Chance says, to me, this feels a lot like one of those things I think I really need. But once I get it, I'll never actually become useful. On my Pixel, I currently use Google's wind down mode. I love the blue light filter. But then I also have a grayscale mode that I set up to turn on at my bedtime. Every night at bedtime, it flips on. I get annoyed and then I turn it off. This has gone on for over a year. It's been on since I bought my Pixel 3 last year. I'm still shutting it off every night. I'm looking forward to setting up my focus mode so I can start shutting it off each day as well. He also sent us a picture of Lulu the cat wrapped in a blanket. Thank you, Chance. It might just be me that appreciates these cat photos, everybody, but they are still appreciated. And then John, regarding our conversation from a couple of days ago, said I'm hunting for a browser plugin that when I go to a website, I specify will throw me a message that I specify. For example, just give me a reminder that this link is from the onion or reminder that this is political. So I should check the author, that type of thing. I don't need it to be curated by anybody else, but I don't trust me after a few drinks or a long day at work to double check every source 100% of the time. Of course, he's responding to our discussion of how to know whether you can trust a source and the fact that we all said every once in a while, every one of us has been at least momentarily fooled by a satirical article, possibly from the onion. So John is like, give me a give me an extension that I can say remind me any time I'm looking at a link from one of the following sources. I think that's that's pretty clever. It is the season holiday parties. Let's get this extension going. But yeah, I think I have, especially we've all been there where you're like tired and you kind of go, okay, this story looks legit. Oh, wait, it's from four months ago. Gosh, darn it. So yes, that would be helpful as well. And it's like date outdated, outdated article. Shout out to our patrons at our master and grandmaster levels, including James P. Callison, Juan D. Hernandez and Jonathan Price. Also thanks to Patrick Beja, who's here on a Thursday rather than Tuesday. It's upside down world. But it was fun nonetheless. Patrick, what's been going on with you? Well, I guess I should tip my hat to raise the dead by our good friend, Jury. So go check that out if you haven't already. And otherwise, check out Pixels, my gaming show. It's gaming season. It's the end of the year. All the best games are out and waiting for you. So Pixels is the show you want to listen if you're interested in that. And if you're interested in reasonable, political political discussions, go check out the Phileas Club. That is a show that you might enjoy. Those are both available at Frenchspin.com. 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