 Coming up on DTNS, the worldwide chip shortage explained and why it might get worse, why everyone's excited about an Echo show. You can stick on a wall and CD project Reds fight against ransomware. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, February 9th, 2021 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane. And the show's producer, Roger Chen. Joining us, senior editor at CNET, Ashley Esqueda is back on the show. Welcome back, Ashley. Thanks for having me back, guys. Happy 2021. Happy 2020. Also to you. It's good to have you. We were just talking about historical baked goods, like making beer and bread and things from ancient yeast. That was on Good Day Internet. If you'd like that wider conversation, become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Google removed the popular barcode scanner app from the Play Store after security researchers at Malware Bites found the latest release contained Malware. The app had been downloaded more than 10 million times and was previously part of Google's official PlayPass program. Two months after acquiring Uber's autonomous car business, Aurora announced it will partner with Toyota and Auto Parts supplier Denso to create a fleet of RoboTaxies. Aurora will integrate its system into a fleet of Toyota Sienas for testing by the end of 2021 and the three companies intend to eventually market their vehicles to ride hailing networks like Uber's. Qualcomm unveiled two new 5G modems, the Snapdragon X65 and X62, both which promised better battery life with the X65 supporting downloads up to 10 gigabits per second, as well as aggregating several sub six gigahertz networks for a faster connection. The X62 supports a 4.4 gigabit per second download. Shopify announced a partnership with Facebook to bring its shop pay payment option to merchants on Instagram in the US, followed by Facebook a few weeks later. When checking out using ShopPay on the platforms, users will receive a confirmation code on their phone, which they can then enter in the app to complete the transaction. In an interview with Bloomberg, OnePlus co-founder Carl Payes at his new company called Nothing, plans to release a pair of wireless earbuds this summer with other products following later in the year. Payes said that Nothing is planning a full ecosystem of devices that connect to each other. Payes former company OnePlus, which he left in late 2020, released its first pair of two wireless earbuds last year. Pay left one plus again in late 2020. What are you leaving one plus for? Nothing. Literally. All right, let's talk a little more about that weird echo show thing. Well, it's weird or cool. Will you be the judge? Bloomberg sources say Amazon's lab 126 is developing a wall-mounted smart home control panel with its voice assistant built in. The display would be 10 or 13 inches. Who knows? Maybe both similar control panels are available from control four and savant, which can control things like lights, your locks, play your music and some models that can also do video chat. Amazon's device would reportedly include a camera and a mic. Now, Amazon supposedly hopes to bring it out by the end of this year, perhaps next year for between 200 and 250 dollars. I'm a little befuddled why this is getting so much attention. Like I saw it everywhere. Everybody's real excited about an echo show. You can stick on a wall, which I get, I guess, but you can do that now with some kits. It's not as nice as having it from a company. And if this was Amazon announcing it, it would be interesting to me. But Ashley, do you have any insight on why people are so excited about this now when it's just a leak? You know, no, no insight on why people are so jazzed about this. Um, I like, I guess, like for me, I'm really surprised about the chatter just because, you know, Facebook portal, like people did not like this idea of having this like big screen with Facebook watching your house all the time. Like, and so I'm surprised. This is like kind of a similar thing. Like obviously there's smart home functionality built in that Facebook doesn't offer, but it really surprises me that people are like, Oh yeah, okay. Well, this I can get on board with. Like I'm, this is not a problem. I mean, maybe the pandemic has made us all a little prime, a little prime, primed for prime and primed for Amazon. And for home things. Yeah, doing these things. Um, and, uh, but I also find it really hilarious that it seems like the older millennials who grew up watching Disney movies, like smart home or smart house are now like making these products, which is basically like, it reminds me of like that exact thing where it's like, Oh, this is going to make your whole house so smart. It's going to talk to you. Um, I do hope, uh, let me ask you this. Okay. So would this be more or less interesting to you if it, if they offered a really cheap version of this that did not have a mic that did not have a microphone or a camera people would almost pay more for not having those, you know, you just definitely two camps involved. This is this one, I don't know. I mean, I have an echo show. It was a previous live with it, uh, review and I like it. You use it all the time, but it is that it's form factor. Sure. It could be mounted on a wall. It would stick out a bit because it's, it's a, it's not super thick, but it is a wedge shape because you got a speaker in the back and the whole thing you'd have to hide the cord somehow. I mean, there must be enough of a market or Amazon at least think so of people saying, well, I really like that, but you got to put it on top of something. And I'm like sick of putting things on top of dressers or, you know, having a shelf on the wall that this would be part of almost like the new TVs, you know, that we've been seeing over the last couple of years at CES that are thinner than ever and designed to look like a picture frame, but it's a TV and it's like, well, I mean, it's a TV, but the form factor is cool enough for people go, hmm, we're reimagining this. I, I prefer the Echo show that I have. I, I've had it in all sorts of corners of my house just to kind of see how it works in different places. I would greatly prefer being able to have something that is going to do exactly what this device is purportedly going to do, you know, can control my lights. I can do video chats. I can look up things on the internet. I can add to my grocery list. I can do all the Amazon-y things that I want to do. It just wouldn't be super flush with a wall if I put it there. There must be a lot of people using their Echo shows for a smart home wishing like, ah, man, if only I could put it up on the wall. I wouldn't you want something more versatile? Like for, OK, so like here's a good example, right? So I have like literally right here, I have Mobile by Peak Design, which is like, you know, they use the magnets, it's like a mounting system and you can like, they have a wall mount that's really strong and you can just throw your phone or your tablet up on the wall. Like that's great. Why would you just buy a fire tablet and do that? I guess, right? Well, or why wouldn't they just make an Echo tablet? Like that is specifically designed like sort of what this would be, which is what this is, but then make it versatile enough to take it off your wall. Like you don't have to wall mount it, you know what I mean? Like it has a system where you can just pull it off the wall or you just pop it back up there. Well, folks, we invite you to break us out of our bubble. If you're like, no, no, no, you're missing it. This is exactly why this is great. Send us an email feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. A worldwide chip shortage is growing. NXP and Infineon both say that chip constraints are no longer limited to just their automotive lines. Apple and Sony both have said their newest models are affected by production bottlenecks, component shortages. How did we get here? Well, the automotive sector felt the pinch first. We've talked about that before on DTNS. Car makers cut orders when the pandemic hit and when car demand returned, the chip factories were all maxed out making chips for consumer electronics, which never experienced a downturn. In fact, they experienced a surge as people began working from home in greater numbers. As a result, car companies have felt the pinch. GM has had to temporarily shut down three North American plants, Ford estimates a 20% drop in output because they can't get the chips they need. And demand for consumer electronics has not slowed in part driven by a stronger than expected demand for 5G devices. There's also a cascading effect of stockpiling. Huawei began stockpiling components in order to survive the US trade restrictions that caused other companies, including Apple, to create their own reserves because they didn't want to get caught unable to get their parts. And as the situation continues, more companies that make products with chips from phones right on down to air purifiers have started to stockpile their parts to avoid uncertainty. It's the same phenomenon that causes toilet paper to disappear from the shelves. Everybody's worried they're going to run out so they start stockpiling, which causes a shortage. Plus, all the chip plants are hitting up against new capacity limits caused by social distancing and other COVID-19 protocols that allow them to stay open and working, but take a different approach to how you use the space. Now, the usual way you would boost production is open a new production line or a new plant, but that can take years. The shortages are expected to spread to more sectors as economies reopen. In fact, Minnibi Mitsumi's CEO noted Friday that airlines are scrapping a lot of their older planes right now because consumer demand is so low, but they will eventually bounce back and possibly cause a spike in demand for aviation components. That's just one example of other industries that aren't in a chip shortage now that could contribute to this. U.S. officials met Friday with the Semiconductor Industry Association, including representatives from Qualcomm, Corning and TSMC to discuss the situation. But something to keep an eye on is, your products may get a little more expensive or maybe a little harder to get a hold of beyond just the PlayStation as this chip shortage unfolds. I mean, on the surface, it feels very supply and demand. Right? Like, okay, we're out of balance, at least, how companies feel comfortable or have felt comfortable up until, you know, the last year plus at this point. So it'll even out. But yeah, how long and how much will consumers either not be able to get the products that they want at all or be faced with price hikes that are, you know, not sustainable either? Go ahead, Ashley. I cut you off. No, no, I agree with you. And the thing is, it's it's really if you see it like it's Tom, you mentioned the toilet paper thing is exactly what it is, but with technology and parts. And if we end up, you know, in a place where we're actually in a similar place right now that we have been for a while with graphics cards, right? So it's like people cannot get these products. And so it just for me as a person who needs, you know, maybe an upgrade this year, my desktop PCs five or six years old now, like it's it was definitely time. And then, you know, just by circumstance now, I cannot upgrade like it's just not available. The things I need, the components I need are not available to me. And so people, like you said, Sarah, are either going to be charged more, which is which means maybe less people can afford to buy in because lots of people are unemployed, underemployed. You know, they just don't have the ability to shell out that kind of money right now. They are or it's it's what we're seeing, which is bots who are going out buying, you know, these components like graphics cards and then reselling them for an obscene amount of money, which again, prices people out. Or people just say, well, I guess I'm just going to have to wait, which also does not put money like back into the economy. And it just it's like a weird spiral that is not good. Like it's such a it's such a not great situation for everybody, like not just, you know, I know that like somebody like my mom might be like, well, a worldwide chip shortage. Like, well, I have a computer, it's fine. But it's like it really does affect, you know, like if if she wants to do business with somebody who hasn't upgraded their systems and needs to or if she, you know, it's it's just a really it's a really large problem. And it's it's really scary like that. Now everybody's stockpiling, which makes it it's a shortage is even worse. And it's just it's no good. It's no good at all. And I don't know what I don't know how you fix it. Right. It's like, how do you how do you fix that problem without fixing everything else? I mean, just the companies from being able to buy too many things. You know, that might be a cap. Yeah. I mean, and the thing is like it's a problem of behavior. The capacity is fine. We probably have enough capacity. Maybe we could add a few more plants, but we probably don't even need them. We just need to get through this part. But that's the big question. How do you get through this part? The only way out is through. Yeah, yeah. Well, Relogic, if you aren't familiar, it's an independent game developer outside of Louisville in rural Indiana. It's a small company, but it's been releasing games since 2011. It's been around for a while on multiple platforms and is best known for publishing a 2D action adventure game called Terraria. Relogic has a YouTube account, has a lot of its own game trailers on that account. Last time I posted to the account was three months ago, so fairly recently. However, three weeks ago, YouTube sent Relogic an email saying that there was a terms of service violation. Relogic's founder, Andrew Spink, said that the email said it was likely accidental and his account would not receive strikes. OK, but then three days later, Relogic's entire Google account was disabled, including Gmail. Not good. Spinks tried multiple methods to get support, made more difficult by not having access to his email account. And after three weeks, Spinks gave up and announced on Twitter that his company will stop developing Terraria from Google Stadia and no longer support any Google platforms going forward. He was frustrated. I mean, this is this is the perfect example of the problem with Google's customer service. If you aren't big enough or if you're not in the Bay Area and have a friend who works at Google, you get lost. You get left behind and all the shouting on Twitter. I mean, Ars Technica did a great job of analyzing how the YouTube support Twitter just failed him by misunderstanding the problem and giving stock answers. This shouldn't be the way it happens. That, you know, we talk a lot about the need for human moderation. There's also a need for human customer service. And this is a really unfortunate example of why that is absolutely true. It's a mid-sized company. There's 12 people there in, you know, rural Indiana just outside of Louisville. So they're not in a big place and they don't have friends they can go knock on their door to ask. And so Google just let them drop through the cracks. It's it's it's not satisfactory. This is I mean, it's it's bizarre, honestly. I mean, the whole hour, isn't it? Yeah, it's it's sort of like term to service violation. You kind of go, huh, what did I do? And the company goes and yeah, well, it's glitchy. We'll we'll figure something out, right? Maybe that's some sort of can dancer that they got from the company who really knows. But for it to suddenly escalate into can't get into my email, which is really important for a lot of people. And, you know, the company won't pay attention. We're being treated like we've done something terribly wrong. And there's nothing we can do except, you know, walk away and disgust. I mean, yeah, maybe Google just has so many customers. They simply don't care. But it seems like Terraria probably isn't big enough for them to really miss it on Stadia, but that shouldn't matter either. No, it shouldn't matter at all. And I like Google should actually I argue on Stadia like. They're just as important as the really big developers because the thing is, is indie games are what keep people coming back to to to gaming products, to gaming platforms in between those really big AAA launches. And and for them to just say, you know, 12, let's say they have, you know, you said 12 people on staff. It's like, OK, well, Relogix, Google account was disabled. OK, so I'm guessing they probably pay for Google apps through that account, which means now their entire company's email is cratered. They have no way of, you know, having none of them have professional access to their emails. They have no access to Google Drive, which could have a lot of really important files on there for them. And it's just, I mean, it's unreal to me. It's unreal to me that these companies do not have. Appeal options that will get you to a human being at some point, you know, like another example that is not the same. I have I didn't have an account disabled, but my grandma passed away in 2017. She designated me her legacy contact on Facebook. I chose to quit Facebook last year. I did everything in my power to try to transfer that legacy contact to my mom, which is her next of kin would make sense. And there is no option to do so. They just no longer you no longer have the option to manage their account. You have you have nothing like. And it's just, well, we hope that their legacy account doesn't get hacked. We hope that there's nothing weird on their page. We hope that boxes don't start spamming it like, sorry, too bad. Like, and it's just unfathomable to me that these huge companies who are making billions of dollars a year cannot find it, you know, cannot find the pocket change that it would cost to one, add some jobs to the economy and two, put some people to work helping people on their platforms solve problems as opposed to just saying, oh, well, that server over there will handle it. That will just process some AI stuff and whatever it decides. It's out of our hands. Like, I'm really hoping the problem is they're trying to fight fraud, right, and edge cases like the ones we're talking about, even if they're legitimate, are also appear similar to people who try to do fraud. People who try to do fraud try to claim that they're, you know, a relation. They try to claim that they were unfairly banned on YouTube. Like, and so what I'm saying is the companies over correct is because they're like, well, if we set the policy here, we get rid of the majority of the fraud and we lose some of the edge cases. Fact is those edge cases are actually be people and that gets lost. People, I want free logic to get enough attention from this so that I understand what happened at Google. I just want to know, you know, clearly something went wrong. Maybe Google doesn't care. But for him to know himself, he doesn't know either. So yes, well, I mean, maybe there was some 90 day trigger that was like, oh, this is an inactive account and then maybe somebody else posted a Terraria trailer and YouTube thought, oh, this is new. Like, who knows? Who knows? But we that's the point. We don't know. What we do know is one of the reasons we talked about this today is because you posted it on the subreddit. You know who you are. You could also be the person I'm talking about if you go to our subreddit and participate, submit stories, vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. CD Project Red, makers of Cyberpunk 2077, posted on Twitter Tuesday that somebody gained unauthorized access to its network, attempting to lock up its data and left a ransom note. CD Project says it's restoring the affected data and will not pay the ransom. The company doesn't believe any personal data of players of its games was accessed. The ransom note claimed it had source code of Cyberpunk 2077, Gwent, and Witcher 3, including an unreleased version. It also claimed to have access documents from accounting, administration, legal, HR, investor relations, and more. The attackers gave 48 hours or they would sell or release the source code and send the documents to journalists. Project Red says we aren't paying you. We won't. We don't have a sheet with terrorists. The company seems to be pretty confident that what was being offered for ransom was not worth paying the money. But Tom, you and I were talking before the show about this whole idea of paying a ransom, a company who can afford to pay for it, just getting their data back and kind of sweeping it under the rug seems to be on the decline. Yeah, ransomware payments actually declined in Q4 for the first time in a long time as companies are getting better at pre-defending, you know, having backups to the point that a lot of these attackers are now trying to use embarrassment as their leverage rather than the actual encryption of files. In fact, in the ransom note that was published by CD Projekt Red, the attackers say, we know you probably have backups, but we're going to send this stuff to journalists and they're going to see all your secrets from HR and accounting and how you're on your company and that's going to embarrass you and your source code's going to be out there and we know that's really valuable, that's the crown jewels for any game development company and so trying to get them to pay that way, which is even riskier because a lot of times with that stuff, even when you pay, they go ahead and release it anyway or it can't control it and it gets out anyway. I think as part of what the thinking is with CD Projekt Red is let's focus on how to deal with this stuff getting out and not pay them to maybe not let it out. Let's just assume it's out there because that's the way it works on the internet. Once that data's out there, pretty much out there. You got to assume that if they have it, it's going to come out. Like regardless of whether you pay or not, it's going to come out no matter what you just assume that and I think that they did the right thing. Also, can we talk about this ransom note because opening with, you've been epically pwned, 1999 called and wants their vernacular back. They're opening ransom note. You're opening ransom note vernacular and also it seems like 13-year-old children wrote it. I don't know. I was reading it and I'm like- I don't know that that's unusual necessarily. It's just we don't get to see these ransom notes all the time. Sure, yeah. It just seems like so simple. So it's just very, I don't know. There's just something weird about it to me that I was just like, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, ransom note writers, get professional for goodness sake. Have some self-respect. See if you're like, okay, like, you know, here talking to your phone, you're just like doing dictation. You're just like, you have been epically pwned, exclamation point. Like here, dictate this, like write this down. It's just so funny to me. Imagine all the executives like shaking in their boots like, oh no, we've been pwned. Just thinking you are just the hottest. Give them all the money. I'll show them for releasing a buggy version of Cyberpunk on my PlayStation 4. Like it's just very funny to me. Yeah, I'm curious what else CD Projekt Red will do. I mean, they're obviously cooperating with law enforcement and all that. I wonder if they might open source. I've seen that happen before where companies just go ahead and open source things when something got stolen. I can see them doing that for Witcher 3. I mean, that game's been out for a long time. I mean, Cyberpunk, it does make sense that it's a game still in active development that they would want to protect that and not open source it. But you know, Gwent, like it's a card game. I mean, like I could see them doing that if they really wanted to. Yeah. But you know, I can also see them just like leaning hard on law enforcement and being like crush them. So who knows. Let's just try to get rid of this. Real quickly, Snapchat is adding a new feature called Friend Checkup. Shows up as a notification on your profile screen that says Snapchat is for real friends. Tap to review your friend list, which as you might expect brings up your friend list so you can see if there's anybody on there. That shouldn't be. This could prevent people from seeing your non-public snaps or your location info when you no longer want them to. Of course, you can always check your friend list yourself, but it's common for people to forget who's on there. So Snapchat, just using this as an opportunity to kind of nudge you to take a look. Friend Checkup rolling out to Android in the coming weeks and iOS in the coming months. My friend list is empty on Snapchat. You know, yeah, I'm not much of a Snapchat user these days. I mean, I haven't opened it in quite some time, but if I did, I might see somebody where I'm like, oh yeah, I talked to that person for whatever reason a long time ago because I'm not a daily user or really even a monthly user. But maybe I was and Snapchat's audience skews young and that might be a great opportunity for the company to be like, you know what? We can use the least amount of drama when bad things happen to people who have somebody on their list that probably shouldn't be there and things that weren't supposed to be public, becoming public. There are always workarounds with these sorts of social networks, but it's not a bad thing to just say, you know what? It's sort of like the screen time, you know? Maybe take a walk around the park, take a break. You could ignore it if you want to. It's just a simple nudge to kind of remind you like, hey, look at that. I've definitely had that happen on Facebook years ago where I looked at my friend list and saw somebody like, I don't remember who that is. Like I must have met them at a conference and added them and sadly, you know, we didn't really interact any after that, so. Didn't hit it off. Not a bad thing. It's like PlayStation 5, you like log into a game you haven't been logged into for a really long time. And then it's like, oh, hey, here's the stuff you're supposed to be doing right now. Like that's really helpful if you were saying, Sarah, like if you don't use something very often, that's actually a really great feature. And I expect fully and completely, I fully expect Facebook to copy it and paste it right into Instagram within the next 60 days. Yep. And then say, we care about you and we want you to be healthy. So healthy. So very healthy. Well, I don't know who out of this group watched the big game last Sunday. Yep, talking about football, everybody, the big one, the Super Bowl. It was the most streamed NFL game ever. However, it also had the lowest viewership number since 2007. The NFL championship drew in a total audience of 96.5 million viewers. That's down 5% since last year. Though streaming was up by 65% over last year. Some CBS All Access subscribers, you might've been one of them, experienced technical issues during the game, probably contributed to the drop in viewership on some level. It also wasn't exactly a close game. So yeah, streaming, it's up. But viewership of Super Bowls that aren't that exciting down. Yeah, it's up. It's good, but not the regular overall viewership. All right, let's check in with Sarah's next, Live With It. Well, we got a lot of submissions. Many of you had wonderful, well, you all had wonderful ideas, but one of the ideas that we get every few months when we solicit new Live With It ideas is one of those robotic vacuums. And I'm such an idiot because it's upstairs and I'm downstairs right now, so I don't have it in my hand. But it is the iRobot Roomba 675. The Roomba has quite a few in its line of, in its model line, the 675. It's kind of, you know, it's middle of the road. Got high scores on Wire Cutter. I've never had a robotic vacuum before. I have a cat and a dog and they both shed a lot. So I am the perfect person to try something like this out. I plugged it in last night. I gave it a little whirl. And boy, do I have thoughts, not 24 hours into it. So I'm gonna be trying to put it through as many sort of strange tests as I can to see what works and what doesn't, but this is gonna be a fun one. Yeah, if you wanna find out how Sarah lives with the Roomba, she'll be trying it out for three months and then you'll get it as a patron, patreon.com.com slash DTNS. Well, we won't give you the Roomba, but we will give you my review. Correct. If you have questions, comments, maybe there's a Live With It segment in the future, you just really need us to do. Feedback at dailytechnewshow.com is where to send that email. Also shout out to patrons at our master and our grandmaster levels. Today they include Hi-Tech Oki, Tim Ashman and Brandon Brooks. Also big thanks to Ashley Askeda. Thanks so much for being with us, Ashley. I feel like it's been a really long time since you were on the show last, but you keep busy. Where can people follow your work? Well, obviously you can catch me on DTNS whenever I show up, but no, I'm on Twitter. I'm on Twitter almost all the time. I feel like I'm constantly there. That's where, instead of going out now, that's what I do, I just hang out on Twitter. Obviously my new hangout place. And then I do a comic book show in my spare time. I work with CNET, so if you go check out the CNET YouTube channel, please do that. Like, comment, subscribe, all the YouTube-y things that you would do. And then in my spare time, I do a comic book show called The Comic Book Squad. And that is on every other Wednesday night on Twitch. Twitch.tv slash The Comic Book Squad. And this week we're talking about The Inkel, which should be really, really fun. It's a French comic. And if you like comics, come hang out. Excellent. Speaking of stuff coming out, know a little more is coming back. If you're a patron, you'll get it in your Patreon feed. If not, go to know a little more.com and we'll be explaining HDMI 2.1 in the first episode back. So check that out, know a little more.com. We are live Monday through Friday, 4.30 p.m. Eastern. That's 21.30 UTC. And you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We are back tomorrow, and we'll be joined by Scott Johnson. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Bob, I hope you have enjoyed this program.