 Coming up on DTNS, goodbye Harmony remotes, but hello, new Apple smart speakers, maybe. Plus, Nvidia takes on Intel with supercomputer CPUs, while Intel moves into Nvidia's space in autonomous cars. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, April 12th, 2021 in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. I'm Roger Chang, the show's producer. And joining us from the Big Apple New York City, it's seen at senior editor, Ayaz Akhtar. Hey, that's ever existed since Monday. Exactly, exactly. We were just talking about going to see a baseball game in real life, gonna do that tomorrow. We're talking about all kinds of good stuff on good day internet. If you wanna get that wider conversation, become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Alibaba's FinTech affiliate and group agreed to a rectification plan and will become a financial holding company. Meaning it will now be subject to the same regulations as banks in China. It will now need to reduce the size of its money market fund, which is one of the world's largest. And it will also provide users more payment options and stop practices that lure users into getting loans. Alibaba itself will pay $2.8 billion fine for antitrust violations related to restrictions on merchant selling goods on other shopping platforms. Updated Apple support documents show the company made mid production hardware changes to the A12, A13, and S5 processors in autumn 2020 to update the secure storage component. This second generation component includes counter lock boxes which would seemingly mitigate password cracking devices like GreyKey. Microsoft intends to acquire the cloud and AI software and services company Nuance for $19.7 billion its second largest acquisition expected to close by the end of this year. The two companies formed a strategic partnership back in 2019 to deliver ambient clinical intelligence technologies and have worked to integrate Nuance's Dragon Medical AI Assistant platform into Azure services. Nuance's software formed the basis of Apple's Siri voice assistant in its early days before Apple switched to its own system. The Federal Communications Commission of the United States released the FCC speed test app. For iOS and Android, it'll use speed test data to inform its efforts to collect accurate broadband speed information and aid broadband deployment. Current FCC broadband coverage maps are built from self-reported data from the ISPs. Google and Apple blocked an update to the NHS COVID-19 contact tracing app which would have prompted users to upload logs of venue check-ins if they tested positive for the virus. The terms of Google and Apple's exposure notification API used by the NHS app states that users must not share location data from the user's device with the public health authority, Apple or Google. All right, let's talk a little more about Logitech remotes. Logitech announced it will no longer manufacture Harmony remotes famous for making really good universal remotes. Although Logitech says support and software updates will continue, including adding new supported devices. They're not gonna just freeze it where it is. They're gonna do security updates, new stuff comes along, they're gonna add it to the database. Company said it does not see the move impacting current customers and plans, quote, to keep service running as long as customers are using it. Harmony remotes have been around since 2001. You might remember them as EasyZapper. That was what the company was called in 2001. It changed its name to Intrigue Technologies when the Harmony remotes became really popular and then sold to Logitech in 2004. So that's been part of Logitech ever since then. I was talking to Patrick Dorton over the weekend about this and he said that a lot of the professional installers out there that do like high-end home stereo installations have been courted by Logitech to put in Logitech stuff into their installations including Harmony remotes. And Logitech won't want to spoil those relationships. So it's likely that Logitech will keep its word on providing support because it wants to maintain good relationships with installers, at least that was Patrick's theory and it makes sense to me. But it is the end of an era and possibly signaling a change in how people are using their devices if Logitech doesn't see this as a worthwhile business. Yeah, I've never had a Harmony remote and it was not that long ago that people were saying, Sarah, you have four remotes. You think you need all of them and you just need the Harmony remotes. The best thing you'll ever buy. Never got around to it. I just kind of had my system. Now because, well, my TV is, while I voice control my television or I use my Apple TV remote, my TV remote has gone somewhere. Don't even know where my receiver remote is because I don't need that either. It really is perhaps something where Harmony just doesn't feel that people have this need as much anymore. Certainly there are a lot of people out there saying, well, I do and I like my Harmony remote and I'm glad that they're not discontinuing software updates. But yeah, it might indicate where this is all going. Yeah, I'm one of those people. Like when I saw the headline, I was like, oh no, what do I do? Because my tech setup is a little bit more cheap and put together in a way that doesn't make it super easy but the Harmony kind of takes away all those sins because you can have one button that switches from your AV receiver and then also turns on your HDMI switch to get everything all working at the same time. I liked how it really kept things away from certain users if you're like, hey, yeah, you're five. Just hit the button on the right. It'll work, everything will work. Don't worry about knowing about AV one and knowing that the game is this way and then we're using CEC on another thing. Like that was all behind the scenes. But Sarah, as you mentioned it, when it comes to all the voice control stuff, I find myself using Google Home products, using Alexa devices a lot when it comes to control but the Harmony has been that little middle ground, little bridge that can make it all happen. I'm really hoping that there's gonna be some form of continuation when it comes to other universal remote. CEC is quite good. You can control devices through your HDMI cables as long as they're connected in a chain. I just don't know how great they are when you have a really complicated setup. Either I gotta get simpler or I gotta find a better product. Yeah, I'm like you. I have a Harmony hub that kind of controls all my multiple stuff and I haven't actually touched the actual remote part of that system since we moved maybe. Like, you know, when I put it in the dock, I just rely on the Harmony hub to interact with Amazon Echo to control all that stuff. So I can see where Logitech is coming from and I can see that a lot more devices are working directly with voice assistants whether it's Google Amazon or something else. So it may be that they're just not seeing as many people buying this. It's become a much more of a niche product than it was, you know, even a couple of years ago. Well, NVIDIA announced a whole lot of things. At its GPU technology conference, it announced a CPU. NVIDIA has developed an energy efficient ARM based CPU called Grace named after computer scientist Grace Hopper. Grace is a data center CPU powered by ARM Neoverse cores and tightly integrated with NVIDIA GPUs meant for supercomputer level AI including natural language processing. It uses 4th gen NVIDIA NV link for 900 gigabyte per second connections between the CPU and GPU, 30 times faster than today's leading servers. NVIDIA said Grace is 10 times faster at natural language processing than its x86 based DGX servers. The Swiss National Computing Center apps super computer built by HP Enterprise and the US Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory will both use Grace powered systems when they launch in 2023, but that's not all. NVIDIA also announced an ARM energy efficient, sorry, somebody did something in this rundown and tripped me up. NVIDIA also announced an ARM high performance computing developer kit with an ampere Antra CPU to NVIDIA A100 GPUs and two NVIDIA Bluefield two DPUs aimed at faster networking, security and storage. The US Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Lab and Taiwan's National Center for High Performance Computing are the first customers for that. And NVIDIA announced a partnership with AWS to integrate NVIDIA GPUs with Amazon's ARM based Graviton 2 processor to run Android apps natively and stream games to mobile devices. On the business workforce front, NVIDIA announced a new line of pro ampere CPUs for workstations, the RTX A5000 and A4000 GPUs for desktops and the A2000 and A4000 GPUs for laptops. There are also T1200 and T600 GPUs based on the multitasking oriented Turing architecture and new A10 and A16 GPUs for data centers. Closer to most of our homes though, NVIDIA is partnering with MediaTek on a reference laptop platform for Chromium, Linux and NVIDIA SDKs. MediaTek will simplify its ARM chips to work with NVIDIA GPUs and obviously this could show up in Chromebooks but also in game devices, smart TVs and more. Yeah, like I said, a lot of announcements there and I apologize, I'm the one who edited Alps. Don't do that while I'm reading. Bring it off. The main line here though is that NVIDIA is making a CPU. It's not the first time it's made a CPU but it's making a CPU for data centers that directly wants to get big, big companies to spend money when they're building supercomputers with NVIDIA. That is NVIDIA moving even farther away from just being a GPU company to being a full-on chip company that provides high-end chips to enterprise and that's a big deal. NVIDIA is really good at this stuff and so I would expect that you don't get the Switch National Computing Center or the Los Alamos National Laboratory to sign on unless you've really showed that you've got a energy efficient CPU that can do what those enterprises need to do. In addition to that, it's ARM-based, right? This is another chink in the wall against Intel where ARM can say we have more supercomputers running on ARM now because of NVIDIA. Yeah, I saw this news and I was like, okay, what's going on? I saw that CNBC was reporting that Intel was stock was taking a hit based on the news which is not that surprising because Intel does have a stronghold when it comes to data centers and if NVIDIA is coming after it, that's to be frightening to any investor in general because NVIDIA can be quite aggressive. I mean, when it comes to power and efficiency, they're really good at it. When I think about something like the Tegra 1, this thing came out years ago, it's still powering the NVIDIA shield and it's still as fast as ever. It's still powering the Nintendo Switch. So even when NVIDIA is just kind of tinkering with something, they can have a product that'll work for way many years and I think that was even anticipated. When it comes to Intel stuff, you're really looking at cycles. You're trying to wonder if, will this survive? Can I use this regularly? If NVIDIA is coming after data centers, Intel's got to figure something out quickly. Yeah, we have something coming up a little later in the show that may indicate one of the things that they're trying to figure out. But first, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman's sources say Apple is working on a couple of new smart home devices, one of them a HomePod speaker that includes Siri, of course, and the functions of an iPad. So it's a HomePod with a screen. The screen might be mounted on a movable arm described as a robotic arm that could automatically follow your face during video calls similar to the new Echo Show or just be adjusted for better viewing angles. The other device he says is coming is an Apple TV with an integrated smart speaker. It would have all the normal Apple TV functions but also include a speaker that could be used even when the TV is off as well as a mic and camera. That means you could ask Siri to do things, presumably all the normal things you might ask Siri plus Apple TV specific things like launch a particular app or watch a particular show. Camera would be useful for video calls on the TV as well. So they're thinking, oh, if you've got this hooked up to your TV maybe you're gonna talk to grandma and the kids or whatever. These products are in development. So final features and whether either device will ship is still not determined. This is Gurman saying my sources say they're working on it. Doesn't mean they're gonna ship them. Apple did recently discontinue the original HomePod though and previous reports indicated a new Apple TV with a redesigned remote control was expected sometime this year. So maybe these are products that would follow on those expected announcements in a year or two but the kind of thing that I think raises an eyebrow because people have been wondering why can't Siri do more and why is the HomePod so limited? This indicates that Apple at least is thinking along the lines of making more functional smart speakers. You know, when I first got the Echo show and that was for a Live With It segment and I've come to love it a lot I had to kind of train myself not to keep wanting to pick it up and take it with me somewhere. You plug it in, you leave it there, you pick the right spot and that's where it lives. You can talk to it from certain areas but if you wanna touch it or look at text you kinda gotta be right there. So I was like an iPad that you don't take with you and sit on the couch with unless there's a perfect spot right next to the couch where you can look at all your apps and do things with an iPad. My first reaction was like, ah, that seems annoying. It'd have to be in a perfect spot but there's probably a lot of people who are like most of the time my iPad is docked on my desk or in this convenient place for me. So in that sense, it would be pretty cool. Yeah, I'm just thinking if you're gonna have an iPad that's stuck let's say it's based on iOS or something similar to that with Apple's I guess renewed interest in widgets. I think that could be a really helpful thing for something like an iPad. So you have this glanceable information instead of just sticking with these tiny icons you can see the weather really large or you can see sections of your house through the home app or other ways that would be better on a larger screen. I've had, I have yet to get a smart display in my house. I have a bunch of smart speakers but I don't really think I need one of these devices. I think it makes a lot of sense for Apple to do it because some of the commands for Siri I think are a little bit strange, the hard to figure out. I think you could have a lot more teaching involved when you have a screen on there and also they have a great supply chain so when it comes to using old displays that you would never want on an iPad you're not really worried about like how close is the digitizing layer to the actual glass you're not worried about that on a home pod display. You're worried about that on a phone or an iPad so maybe they can use some of this cheaper tech to make these speakers stand out in a way that would be different from the competition but again you got Alexa and Google out there or Amazon and Google with really polished products at this point. I think these show that Apple has been thinking logically about this product line. An app, don't think about it as adding speakers to an Apple TV, think about it as a home pod mini complimented by a home pod with Apple TV functions that you could hook up to your TV. Think of it as a speaker that can also act as an Apple TV and you see Roku doing this as well putting out speakers that have Roku functionality in it and same goes for that display. The smart display, I don't think they want you to think of it as an iPad that stays in one place. They want you to think of it as a home pod with a screen and when I think about it that way the idea of having some iPad functionality in there is very appealing. I've got an original Echo show and we use it in the kitchen, it's great. We watch Netflix on it, we listen to music on it, we do recipes on it, play YouTube on it but it's limited. It's limited in what it can do and sometimes you have to remember like, okay how do I get it to play the thing off Hulu? I have to say it exactly right. Being able to just have all the iOS apps available on this granted maybe it won't but if it did it would be leaps and bounds more functional than either the Echo show or the Google smart displays I think. The only one thing about the Apple TV that would have smart speaking capabilities is I look forward to a new Apple TV. I don't even have the latest Apple TV. I'm one gen behind so I'm hoping for a better remote. It'll look like the Harmony remote. My Apple TV is mounted behind my television and it has been for years. One somebody who installed a TV in my wall at some apartment years ago was like, do you want me to just hide this with some Velcro? You've got room and I was like, that's awesome. As long as the remote still works but it does. So I'm like the camera is actually kind of a neat idea since I talk remotely with people a lot more often than I used to and it would be pretty cool to sit on my couch and see them large on the TV but then my Apple TV would have to be placed differently. It's a little thing but something I think probably other people would have issues with too. But it would look like speakers. So maybe it wouldn't be as big of a deal. Yeah but it's nice to just not see it and it just is there. It makes it feel like it's just the part of the TV. Well folks, what do you want to hear us talk about on the show? We could talk about all kinds of good technology stuff every day. One way to let us know is in our subreddit, submit stories and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. Today's a good day for autonomous car companies to announce what they're gonna be doing in the next couple of years. Intel's Mobile Eye will partner with Udelve to launch a full scale, fully driverless last mile delivery service by 2023. The service will use a cabinless vehicle. In other words, there's nowhere for people inside. It's called the Transporter. Mobile Eye and Udelve plan to produce 35,000 of them between 2023 and 2028. Transporters will have a 65 mile an hour top speed and use Mobile Eye's self driving system which includes 13 cameras, three long range LiDARs, six short range LiDARs and six radar and be equipped with a data crowdsourcing program called the Road Experience Management System to use real time data to build out a global 3D map. Meanwhile, GM's crews struck a deal to become the exclusive operator of a RoboTaxi service in Dubai between 2023 and 2029. The crew's origin shuttles operate at highway speeds with no steering wheel or pedals. Crews plans to scale to 4,000 vehicles by 2030. And if you don't wanna wait until 2023, Domino's announced that customers near one of its restaurants in Houston can start requesting deliveries from a self driving Neuro R2 autonomous car. It's the only vehicle allowed in the US by the Department of Transportation to operate with no human controls. During limited time periods, if you live near the restaurant, you can request a Robo delivery. Not everybody gets them, but if you are selected, Domino's will give you a pin to unlock the chamber on the car when it arrives with your pizza. Neuro has been operating autonomous grocery deliveries in parts of Houston and Arizona for years. They're very experienced in this. We've talked about Neuro on the show before they do deliveries for Kroger in a few places like Houston and Arizona. So a near term actual autonomous delivery from Neuro and a couple here, one to carry passengers in Dubai and another giving Intel a little room to move in on NVIDIA's autonomous car business to be like, hey, our mobile eye division is no slouch. Yeah, I don't know which one's cooler. You know, it might be pizza, which I lived in Houston. In fact, it's very difficult to find information on which Domino's location it is, cause it's only one. So says the press release, but doesn't say which one. So if anyone knows, let me know. Cause I got a friend in Houston and I want him to try this out and send back notes. But yeah, Robotoxyservice in Dubai, exclusive partner starting in 2023. It's a six year term, but that's exciting. I wish I knew somebody in Dubai who could check it out and let us know how it goes. By 2023, we might actually be able to travel there and try it. Who knows? Indeed. Yeah, it could be a DTNS meetup of sorts. But yeah, the transporting service kind of makes the most sense to me. This is gonna make a big difference. The future is here, or at least in two years. I mean, I don't know what it says about me that I'm more excited about the pizza than anything else. I know we're talking about driverless cars. We've got like cargo trucks that could change the world. We're talking about maybe changing where people are working. They're not gonna be in the cabs of these vehicles. They'll be doing other jobs. But pizza showing up with nobody there. I mean, it takes away one of the things I've really disliked, which is human communication. So this is fantastic. I absolutely love the idea of Robot showing up with, I want more of these. And I'm hoping that if you're watching right now and you get your kicks at a kicking robots, don't do that, okay? You're gonna ruin it for the rest of us. We need the robots to give us the food so we don't have to talk to each other. That's very important. Veruna Singh in our Twitch chat lives in Dubai and is skeptical because there've been a lot of announcements in Dubai of autonomous stuff. But honestly, striking it with cruise is a big deal. And cruise does have legitimate autonomous cars that could do this. The cruise origin is a real shuttle that is being tested. So Veruna, if there was an announcement in Dubai that seems like it might actually come to fruition, I'd put my money on this one. That said, I think the Mobileye is the most practical one, right? The Domino's is very limited, whereas the Mobileye, that's about last mile delivery. Obviously it's attended delivery because there's nobody in the truck to bring the package to your doorstep. So you're probably gonna have to come out and put in a pin or something like you do with the pizza. But that is a real problem that needs to be solved for grocery delivery or a lot of other things. And I think what this says is we're now getting more and more of these circling around in nearer terms. And even if they don't all come to fruition by 2023, we're getting closer to these becoming widespread and at scale. Well, the NFT craze has hit sports and sports entertainment, everybody. TOPS will launch its first NFT-based baseball card collection, 2021 TOPS series one, baseball NFT. On April 20th, coming right up, the MLB approved cards will include themed animated backdrops and 3D team cubes and use the Wax blockchain. Meanwhile, the WWE held its first NFT auction for a four-tiered set of tokens that feature movements in the career of the Undertaker. I, as you're probably familiar, with a platinum tier unique NFT going for $100,000 down to a bronze tier available for $100. I am familiar with this. They were running ads for Undertaker's NFTs during WrestleMania the weekend. If I was not in this sector, I would think this is a joke, right? There's no way you're selling a video clip of the Undertaker doing something, but yes they are. I honestly, I've looked into this topic, the whole field of it, I find this to be like an emperor's new clothes kind of thing. I don't know how long this is gonna last. This is like, but good on these, good on the companies for making money where they can. I still think this is just not, I think you're not investing in anything. That's a whole other issue and we don't need to get into that. I'm sure there's many, many topics. Yeah, yeah, we've definitely kicked around NFTs for several weeks now, like everybody else. But I don't know folks, I think this one's gonna stick around more than other people think. Obviously the NBA is making a go of this, hence MLB and the WWE wanting to get in on it. I am a baseball card collector myself, but I prefer to stick with buying old burger chef collectible baseball cards off of eBay. That is my thing right now. But I'm still positive about NFTs. I do think NFTs are gonna stick around. I don't think they're flashing the pan. We'll find out. All right, let's check out the mail bag. Let's do it. A few people responded to our electric vehicle round table episode with questions about collision repairs. Alison Sheridan who was on the panel tells us, 11 days after I took custody of my Model 3, I was rear-ended. It was a bit more hassle because at least at the time that was two years ago, you had to go to an authorized Tesla repair facility. It's not that you couldn't go to a non-authorized place, but they were prioritized so low in getting parts, you just never get your car fixed. That was definitely a shortage of parts back then. So not sure if that's still true. My repair took about a week and the place that I needed to go was a very reputable body shop in my area that I had used years before with my Honda. It was a fascinating experience because the guy we worked with let us go on a tour. We got to see about 40 Teslas mid-repair, which made me think of going through a hospital ward and a battle zone. It was only there that I got a full appreciation of the battery underneath and what it takes to lift one of these cars. Good to know. Thank you, Alison, for sharing that. There were so many good topics to get through on that round table. I know we missed a few topics. So keep those coming. And forwarding questions relating to the EV round table to Bodie, and Bodie has said, I'll cover these on the kilowatt podcast. Also got an anonymous email from someone who works for a trucking company that runs parts from suppliers to a major foreign automotive manufacturing plant in the United States, saying, it was shut down the week of March 29th through April 2nd and will again be shut down from April 19th through the end of the month. I know the supplier that I go to ships primarily to the automaker that I deliver to. This shutdown is going to affect more than just the employees at the automotive manufacturing plant, but also most, if not all of the employees at the smaller parts manufacturing plants. Most, if not all of the smaller suppliers can't afford to pay their employees when the supplier is not being paid to manufacture and ship parts. So yeah, it definitely has knock-on effects for sure. Got a lot of feedback over the weekend. And we love your feedback. If you have questions, comments, anything about past shows or future topics, feedback at dailytechnewshow.com is where to send that email. Thanks in advance. Also shout out to patrons at our master and grandmaster levels. Today they include Mike McLaughlin, Reed Fishler and Mark Gibson. Also special thanks to Patrick Cohn who is in the top lifetime supporters for DTNSList. Thanks for all the years of support. Patrick Cohn, also big thanks to IazAktar, our former co-host. So nice to have you back in that trifective greatness. If I do say so myself, let folks know where they can keep up with your work. Well, thanks for having me. This was fantastic. I go to youtube.com slash CNET at my latest videos about LG. It's not really the rise and fall because I don't really think they rose but definitely also check out CNET's video on the Optimus Prime robot that transforms itself. It's really cool. It's not my own video. I don't really care. It's really cool. So I say you should watch it. So youtube.com slash CNET. We are live on this show Monday through Friday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern and that's 2030 UTC. You can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live back tomorrow with Seth Rosenblatt. 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.