 Coming up on DTNS, Europe might ban pre-installed apps, Nvidia can't win, and are you ready for some drone disinfected football? This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, October 2, 2020 in Los Angeles on Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. And from Columbus, Ohio, I'm Rob Dunwood. Drawing the top tech stories from Cleveland, Ohio, I'm Len Peralta. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. We were just having an unexpectedly delightful conversation about eight is enough on good day internet. You can get that conversation and more by becoming a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Google will soon roll out new features to its AR mode of Google Maps called LiveView, including new virtual cues, visual cues rather of notable landmarks in your field of view, and information about how far a landmark like the Empire State Building might be from you. LiveView will come to Android and iOS soon in 25 cities, including Berlin, London, New York, Rome, San Francisco, and Tokyo. LiveView will also improve context from transit directions, such as when you leave a subway station and don't recognize the intersection that you're in. IKEA announced Friday that due to concerns over waste and sustainability, it will stop selling nearly all non-rechargeable batteries around the world in October of 2021. The company says that certain products rely on tiny, non-rechargeable button cell batteries, and IKEA will still continue stocking those for now. IKEA says that alkaline batteries have far more pronounced environmental impact than rechargeable nickel metal hydride options when used in high drain devices like portable speakers and digital cameras. The UK Transport Committee of MPs announced that it believes e-scooters should be legalized on roads as a greener alternative to cars, but riding on pedestrian pavements, what we'd call over here sidewalks, should be prohibited. Private Leone e-scooters are currently banned in the UK, you've got to get them from a service, you can't ride your own unless you're on your own private land. The committee said the government should conduct a trial and note the numbers and types of collisions that take place. They also recommend local authorities monitor speed, encourage helmet use, and factor in pedestrian safety, particularly for people with disabilities. New data from Sensor Tower says global app revenue grew 32% year over year in Q3 of 2020 to $29.3 billion. Installs increased by 23.3% to $36.5 billion across Apple's App Store and Google Play in Q3, and mobile users spent 32% more than the $22.2 billion generated in Q3 last year. Sensor Tower notes that the quarters greater than typical growth reflects COVID-19's impact on consumer spending in apps and increased adoption around the globe. The logic reports that Apple is suing Ontario-based electronics firm, Geep Canada, alleging that Geep sold approximately 100,000 iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches that it was supposed to street down and recycle, strip down and recycle. Geep has filed a countersuit claiming that the theft was conducted by three rogue employees without the knowledge of the company, but Apple claims that those employees held senior management positions at the company. Twitter has been investigating whether the algorithm meant to crop images based on saliency has a bias for white faces. Twitter says, quote, our analyses to date haven't shown racial or gender bias, but that automatic cropping does leave open the potential for harm so the company is going to continue its analysis and plans to give users control over how images appear in tweets. Tesla delivered 139,300 vehicles in its third quarter, surpassing its previous record. It was also slightly better than Wall Street expectations of 137,000 vehicles for the quarter. The company said it produced a total of 145,036 vehicles over the same period. And we've been continuing to update you on the state of vaccines, usually on Fridays. So checking in on this again, we actually have a little bit of news. The vaccine from Novavax has moved into phase three testing, phase three testing. Of course, the final phase before approval for use, there are now a total of 11 vaccines worldwide in phase three trials. Four of those phase three vaccines even have a little bit of a limited use approval. CanSinoBio has limited use for Chinese soldiers, a vaccine from Cinevac just has limited use in China. The Wuhan Institute of Biological Products and CineFarm have limited use with health workers in the UAE and the Gamalaya Research Institute, which received very limited pre-approval in Russia. Other vaccines that are just in phase three trials include one from Moderna and the U.S. National Institute of Health, one from BioNTech, Pfizer and Fosun Pharma, one from Johnson & Johnson with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, one from AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford and one from the Murdoch Children's Research Institute and the University of Melbourne. All right, let's talk about graphics cards. Nvidia announces delaying the sale of the $499 RTX 3070 graphics card from October 15th to October 29th in order to ensure that there's more stock available. Last month, Nvidia apologized for shortages of the RTX 3080 graphics card saying that it underestimated its demand. Yeah. Oh boy, I was going to say, but my friend tells me this is all right. No, no, I was just going to say people are pretty angry about that. They're going to set you up for your take. Yeah. People are pretty angry. And I had to remember, I was on the show a couple of months ago and we talked about all the hardware that would be purchased because of Flight Simulator. So I was thinking that there's probably a lot more people that are upset about this being delayed a couple of weeks than there are people who actually are going to purchase it. But then I started thinking about Flight Simulator and I was wrong on that one. So I'm thinking that, yeah, there might be a few people who are upset because this is something that's going to allow you to play that new Flight Sim game. And I would imagine that if you are upset, you were somebody who's been waiting to get this so you can play that game. Yeah, there are people who either didn't want to spend more than $500 and were fine with a 3070 or people who have given up on spending more than $500 because they just can't get a 3080 or a 3090 and we're looking forward to this October 15th date. But I personally will say that NVIDIA is probably doing the right thing here. Rather than if they think it's not going to go well on the 15th and they think a couple extra weeks will help them cut down on the bots, make sure they have enough in stock, talk to stores to make sure the stores have more in stock, that to me kind of backs up the idea that NVIDIA really just didn't expect the demand. They knew the demand would be high. They just didn't think it was this high. And now they're adjusting for that saying now that we know it's that high, give us a couple of weeks to make sure we can meet what we think the demand actually is. And honestly, pardon me, given the anger that has arisen, it's an overall good thing for NVIDIA. People want their cards. People want to give them money and they're mad that there aren't enough to go around. So this is, it's a temporary kind of a PR situation. Like let's make sure that everyone knows that we're on the case, but in general, they're not also sitting around wondering who's going to buy their graphics cards because nobody did, it's the opposite problem. People wouldn't be mad if they didn't want the graphics card. So yeah, that is definitely true. HP announced the Spectre X360 14 convertible laptop, another in the line of laptops with Intel's Evo certification. As a reminder, Evo certified laptops wake from sleep in less than a second and support fast charging. The Spectre X360 14 has 11th gen Intel Tire Lake CPUs, Intel's Z graphics, Wi-Fi 6 and a Thunderbolt 4 ports. The screen has a three by two aspect ratio for 20% more vertical viewing space. The Spectre X360 14 can also detect when it's in a bag and then use Intel's dynamic tuning to prevent battery drain because you're probably not using if it's in the bag. HP claims it offers up to 17 hours of battery life as well. And the laptop starts at $1,199 shipping in October. HP also is adding a 5G capable Spectre X360 13 coming in early 2021. Yeah, and they announced a bunch of other Evo certified laptops. I mean, that's been the big trend with the laptop announcements all this week. It's getting those Tiger Lakes in there, getting that Evo certification out front and center. But we talked a lot in our prep meeting about this idea of like, do you really need it to know when it's in a bag? And my speculation was that because it's Evo certified, it has to wake from sleep in less than a second. So being able to do that means it probably has to stay a little hotter, but if it knows through some kind of light sensor or something, I don't know how they're doing it. But if it knows it's in a bag, it can go into a deeper sleep because it knows it's going to be a while before you pull it out and open it up to use it. Yeah, that's true. You know, I'm glad you walked me through that because I was wondering like, why does it need to know that it's in a bag? But that actually does kind of make sense. And the thing that stuck out to me is that these are not incredibly expensive laptops. I mean, they are, I would say upper mid range, but you would think that this technology would come in machines that cost, you know, in that $14, $15, $1600 range, and they're coming in quite under that. So I was kind of impressed by that. Yeah, that's been true of the Dell's and the Lenovo's too. This week. I mean, HP's is pretty mundane here. It's not a, it's a nice looking laptop. It's not folding like the Lenovo Fold or anything like that, but it's good specs for, like you say, a really decent price. Who doesn't love that? All right. Financial Times reports an early draft of Europe's Digital Services Act. This is early folks, but an early draft would forbid companies from offering pre-installed apps on devices like laptops and phones if there are a third party alternatives. Users would have to be given the choice to install apps like music or browsers. Now again, early days, devils in the details. We don't know how they handle this, but it sounds like they're circling around something along those lines. It would also stop companies from forcing other companies to solely install their software, something that is essentially Google's Android licensing business model. So that would be interesting if they made it against the law in Europe for Google to make you install Google stuff on Google Android, which is really that and getting support directly support updates from Google. Really the only thing you're paying for, if you're paying Google for Android, because the rest of it's open source. Another part of the draft would require companies to let users uninstall pre-installed apps. Again, this shows that it's a draft. They're like, we might just ban pre-installed apps, but if we don't, we'll require companies to let you uninstall them. That's actually pretty common now. Depends on what they mean by that, of course. iOS lets you hide a pre-install app. It doesn't actually take it off. So I don't know if that makes a difference. And there's another part of this draft that would limit businesses with dominant websites or markets from using data obtained from clients for anything other than the purpose of the platform. The most common effect of this would be on advertising to say, like, OK, Google, you can get data so you can do ad targeting for a client, but you can't go use that data in other parts of your business. This is all part of a lengthy public consultation period on the legislation. So if you want to make your voice known in Europe right now, you can still do that. And this is a very amorphous situation. But I don't know. I think all of us are sort of in partly on the idea of fewer bloatware type apps. But I don't know, Rob, there's some apps that you want on there and you don't want to have to think about it. There's a lot of apps that you just want on your device. So what I'm hoping this doesn't become is that you have to make a decision on what browser do you use? What email client do you use? What calendar app do you use? You know, all these different apps that just kind of you think of as core functionality on your phone are actually third-party applications or, you know, company-specific applications. But if they can't be pre-installed, particularly on a phone, that is going to really hamper, in my opinion, user experience and they're going to have really capable phones in their hands. But you're just not going to feel like you like it because it doesn't seem like you can do much until you go and install all the stuff and get the phone acting the way that you like it to act. Yeah, and especially if certain apps are free and then other apps that are similar apps are pay-for apps. For example, my calendar app and my Twitter app and my weather app on my phone. I've also I've paid all of those companies a few bucks and because I like the app the best. But if you if you get a new phone, you know, a new device, you're setting stuff up and you're like, what, I why am I paying for this stuff? But then a lot of the free alternatives, in my opinion, are not necessarily as good. So it turns into, oh, do you only get suggestions for other apps that aren't for pay? And then it gets a little squirrely, like, OK, who are the five companies that are going to be recommended by Google if they can't just give you their own, you know, the browser? I just want to say I hope that at the very least there would be a checkbox or a radio button or something that say you want the Google suite of apps or you want the Apple suite of apps so that you can just start using your brand new device right off the bat without having to think about all the things that you never think about because those things come pre-installed. Yeah, the devil's in the details there, right? Like I said, I I I can see it not being a problem. If it says, would you like to use the manufacturers pre-installed apps? Check here. If not, click here and then it could take you through a selection screen. That's where it gets messy is because we just saw the whole search engine default search engine auction happened again in Europe and and Duck Duck Go was raising holy hex because they weren't able to to get on as many devices as they were on before and Bing was on a bunch more and and all of that. But but a selection where I'm like, OK, look, let me pick some of them. Music app, that's fine. I'd like to have a different browser. I'd like to have a different email. I don't know if I want basic functions like messaging and phone to be part of that. I can install my own WhatsApp later. I don't need you to make that part of the setup process. It's got to not make the setup process a pain, right? People don't want to think that much when they set up a new phone. Absolutely. Honda is leaving Formula One racing again. They've done this several times now to focus on zero emission power trains. Honda's last F one season will be in twenty twenty one. It makes engines for Red Bull racing and Alcatari. Honda will shift the hundred and forty million euro a year. It spends on F one engine program to developing carbon free technology for road cars, including battery and fuel cell electric vehicles with the goal of carbon neutrality by twenty fifty. For no Mercedes AMG and Ferrari are the remaining suppliers for F one. And apparently there's a lot of guessing going on of who Red Bull would switch to given that they they're going to they're getting left in the lurch by Honda here. And it's it was a shocker for a lot of people. I think if you're not into Formula One racing, it's probably makes sense. Like, oh, they just want to make, you know, electric vehicles or what not. But but this is kind of this is if there weren't other big news happening in the world today, this would be certainly amongst racing fans, one of the biggest. Well, in our pre-show meeting you because I I don't know as much about Formula One racing as maybe the next person that it's extremely expensive to be part of this. Honda wants to put a bunch of R and D into zero emissions power trains. Well, you know, you got to choose your battles. Yeah, this that's exactly right. I mean, it's it's ridiculously expensive for these engines that are running these cars. And even though you don't generally see somebody driving down the freeway in an F one racer, the technology from those engines eventually ends up in consumer based cars. Well, you know, we're 10, 12 years away from where people just aren't going to be buying cars that run on gas anymore. So to continue to put enormous amounts of development into a technology that ultimately is going to it's never going to die out, but it's just not going to be what it is today. And they can put that into into batteries. You know, who knows, maybe they'll actually get the electric racing people to actually start paying attention to it or something like that. I mean, I mean, even in Formula One, I mean, a lot of the technology isn't all that applicable to to your production car. I mean, they're dealing with, you know, energy or saving systems that literally take kinetic energy and then translate it back into electricity. There are all these things that in some ways seem like they would dovetail nicely with production car technology. But like as you're saying, reciprocating engine technology is on its way out and spending. I mean, these crate motors are like 10 and a half million dollars. I mean, and someone has to buy that like you don't have a lot of customers on hand willing to to offload your investment during a race season. So I mean, it just it makes sense in so many financial ways. Well, with the release of Mac OS Big Sur later this year, Mac users will be able to watch Netflix and 4K HDR using Safari. Maybe depends on what kind of Mac you have. According to a Netflix support document, 4K HDR content from the streaming provider will only be available on 2018 or later Macs, so not mine, equipped with the T2 security chip. While Netflix's documentation doesn't state why the chip is required, the verge speculates it may be due to performance issues. Apple has said the T2 makes transcoding HEVC video up to twice as fast as the previous generation. 4K HDR content is also available on Windows 10. If you use Microsoft Edge or the Netflix Windows app with a powerful enough CPU and GPU. I guess this is just simplifying it, saying like, look, you need a powerful enough CPU and GPU for the 4K video to perform sufficiently well, because nobody likes buffering. Nobody likes clutches in your in your decoding of video. So it's just like in Windows, it's saying if you've got the powerful equipment, we can do this. And apparently the powerful equipment is the T2. That's that's what you need in the Mac. There's a you know, when you start thinking about it, there's a slimming Venn diagram of people who will care. It's people who predominantly watch Netflix on their Mac. And that might be somebody with a Mac mini attached to a television, in which case they're out of luck, for the most part here. That could be somebody who just tends to watch Netflix video on their laptop, which I know there's a bunch of you out there that do that and your laptop happens to be Mac. But it also has to be somebody really, really wants 4K and they're not getting it right now. So it's somebody who's got all of those situations and has been saying, gosh, I really want 4K HDR versions of these shows because it's not like you can't watch Netflix. You just can't watch it at that higher resolution. I've got a friend who this is exactly the person who was upset about this today. I asked him, he's he just doesn't have a TV in his house. He lives in a small apartment. He's like, why is it weird that I watch stuff on my laptop because I just don't do that, but I have a separate TV. And so I kind of compartmentalize the stuff. But I know a lot of people are like, it's my computer and my television and where I watch movies and it's all these things. And some people really do care about that quality. And it just kind of sucks if you don't have the right Mac to be able to take advantage of it. Yeah, you're not missing much because it's not like you had it before. So great. And like, maybe you're like, how good are your eyes? It's not like they're turning this off. But someone who's on the other side of your friend I actually have a fairly high end 35 inch monitor that I could perfectly be fine to watch Netflix on. But I never do it because if I want to watch TV, I'm going to go away from where I work and I'm going to go to where I just enjoy life and watch it on something much, much bigger. Yeah. And I have a 28, a newer Mac laptop that could has the T2 chip and all that hooked up to a 2K monitor. So I'm not going to do me any good there. I can disconnect it, I guess and watch it. But yeah, I'm like you, Rob, I go watch it on the big screen. Hey, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day and about five, use a pair of drones to disinfect fan seating and other areas after upcoming events. The purpose built D1 disinfecting drones are being provided by Lucid Drone Technologies and use electrostatic spraying nozzles to distribute the non-toxic disinfecting chemicals. They claim it reduces cleaning time by 95 percent when compared to folks with backpack foggers walking around and trying to cover everything. The drones will debut after the Falcons upcoming at October 11th home game against the Carolina Panthers. Speaking of the Panthers, the Panthers themselves have a little technology at work disinfecting part of their stadium as well. They play at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte and are using a robot from Zenex Disinfection Services that shines UV light, UV light damages virus DNA in areas like locker rooms, weight room, rehab area, suites and offices. So they're not doing it out where the fans sit, but they are doing it in the places where the players congregate and need to use. Seven teams in the NFL right now are allowing varying amounts of spectators to watch their games in person in this coming week, including Carolina. Atlanta is not playing at home this week. But as we mentioned, they will be having a limited amount of ticketed spectators on that October 11th game. And that's when the drones will fly in after their people leave and disinfect everything. I kind of love this. It all I feel like it depends. There are some factors here. How many people limited number of people? How many people get to come in? How far away are they all going to be from each other? How well will the drones after the fact be able to kind of know where where folks were? I would assume that they'd be scattered enough that you just kind of do a blanket thing as a drone. But there's also the, I don't know. I mean, if we've all gotten so germ-phobic, if you weren't already, about being able to cover the entire. If I was sitting in a seat at a stadium and they were like, yeah, the drones came in earlier, I'd be like, that's cool. But I'm probably going to wipe off my own seat a little bit better just because that's what I'm going to do because I'm here. I also just wouldn't go. I'm not ready for that in general. But I think that this is this is the slow march forward to something that resembles normalcy. Yeah, I agree with you, Sarah. I'm not ready to go back into a stadium yet, but I look at just the tech of this. We've been hearing about all the cool things the drones, you know, can do or doing will be able to do. And this is one that's just going to be very visible. And when you think about it, it's not going to be a terrible expense, you know, for Atlanta to implement this. I mean, they've got two drones. I mean, it's going to cost some money, but it's not going to be billions of dollars that they're spending to make this happen. So if they can just make their, you know, their fan base that is coming in to watch these games feel a little bit more comfortable knowing that, hey, we've got these these super high tech flying devices that come in and disinfect seats that you're sitting in. It's going to make people feel a little bit more comfortable. So I'm I'm all for it as far as just seeing how drone technology continues to advance and reduces liability to, I mean, frankly, if somebody does get infected and they want to point the finger at a stadium and they were at the stadium operator is going to have to show that they were taking precautions, you know, in line with public standards and laws and all of that. So this this helps to do that as well and reduces the folks who might have been disinfecting saying, well, I got sick because I had to disinfect. You know, it's like I was out there exposing myself. Yeah, if you were here, even the better. I breath breathed in the fog. When I first saw this story, it made me think of the old cartoon, the Jetsons. You know, whenever like dirt, we get spilled or something, we get spilled on the floor. The robot will come out and clean it immediately. And clearly this is not doing that, but it's it's darn close. I mean, they've got flying robots that are going to clean the stadium. That's that's kind of awesome. Well, Carolina's got actual Rosie, the robot walking around in its wake room, shining UV light on it. So yeah, it's not that it's not that far off, which honestly, even Corona aside, that's just a good idea. You know, that you know, it's you got you got sweat, you got people, you got, you know, exercise bacteria, just regular flu, all of that stuff. Yeah, absolutely. I I think it's it's important to point out that, you know, as we learn more about the virus, they have found out that touching surfaces, which they thought at the beginning might be the primary way it spread is not probably the primary way. As again, we're learning more all the time. This is all brand new, but they think it's probably more the airborne particles and these these pieces of tech don't do anything for that. So you don't want to get people to false sense of security. They need to maintain their social distance and wear their masks and all that. But it's not it's not a bad thing to be disinfecting the surface. It's definitely not bad because this is good for flu. Flu absolutely comes from touching stuff and then touching your face, touching your mouth, touching your eyes. So this it may not directly help for COVID, but it will definitely help for other things that are, you know, potentially deadly to people as well. And it'll still help a little for COVID, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, if you've got thoughts on this or anything else that we talk about on our show, you can join the conversation in our Discord. It is popping. You can join by linking to a Patreon account at patreon.com slash DTNS. Hey, Sarah, is that the mailbag? You know, it is Dan, the software engineer in wonderfully fall Rochester, New York. Just drop this into our laps today. Dan says, this is in response to the idea of the gamers being in crunch mode and having to work six day weeks. Dan says, I'm a software engineer that works outside the gaming industry and in my experience, crunch time is a normal part of the job. In my case, it is frequently, but not always, associated with law changes where deadlines are out of my employer's control, although they usually wait until the last minute to start that work. I'd also like to suggest it's not just a work-life balance issue, although that is important. In many cases, the people that are being forced to work six day work weeks are salaried employees who won't see any overtime pay. I've even seen people lose vacation time because they weren't allowed to take, allowed to take the vacation time during the crunch and hit their cap. No, Dan, you're right. It's video game software developers get all the attention, but those folks working on compliance software and CRM also have crunch time. These are great points. Rob, I know that you've lived this. I've lived this, so 25 years of my adult life has been involved in software development. This is every piece of software, every software developer goes through this. A lot of it because, as stated here, things change and you have to adapt to it at the last minute. Another big part of it is just human nature to wait to the last minute to get stuff done. You know you've got a deadline, but you're going to be way more productive at the end of that deadline than you are at the beginning. And I know that there are all kinds of project management strategies out there that tie to help from that, but there's always a crunch in software development. And oftentimes that's when you get some of the most brilliant ideas that go into your software. Shout out to patrons at our master and grand master levels, including Paul Rees, Martin James, and Degracia A. Daniels. All right, let's check in with Len Peralta, who has been drawing today's show. What do you got for us, Len? You know, stadium disinfection? Awesome. What's next? Fan disinfecting. I posit this in this image. This is what it may look like. Drones going over each and every single person who's allowed back into the stadium and ruining their body paint. It's going to be. Yeah, his body paints just dripping off. It's going to be awesome. Is he holding a fence? Yeah, defense. Defense. Oh, defense. Oh my gosh, that's so funny. Yes, it's going to be hard on the body painters, I think, with these drones as they go over each. And I got to be honest with you, maybe some of the football fans may could use some of this. I don't know. I'm just saying. This piece is available right now at my online store and also at my Patreon. If you're a Patreon member, you can get this right now, patreon.com. I also want to remind you that this month, I'm taking part in October and my Patreon backers get to see 31 original pieces before anybody else does for Inktober. So if you want to go over there and kind of check what's happening, already five are up. So I've, you know, you can take a look and see before anybody else does, patreon.com forward slash Len. 31 flavors of Len. Yeah, it's wonderful. Awesome work. Also thanks to Rob Dunwood for being with us. Rob, you're a busy guy, fixing software and doing your own podcast. Let folks know where they can keep up with your work. You can reach me over on the SMR podcast and doing the show going on 11 years this coming December. So we've, I think we're on episode 470. I will say that we are a mostly weekly show that goes for, I don't know, 90 minutes or so. And it is three guys who have all worked in the software industry that we get together. We're all really, really good friends when you just get together and talk about tech like we would talk about football or sports or anything else. So yeah, just come over to SMRpodcast.com and check us out. Excellent. Don't forget, folks, we got all kinds of good stuff in the DTNS store. If you need a mask to wear to that Falcons game or anywhere you'd like, or just you want a hoodie, you want a mug with DTNS on it, go check it out, dailytechnewshow.com slash store. And thanks again to everybody who has been generously either upping their pledge or jumping in and getting that commercial free RSS feed from patreon.com slash DTNS. If you've got feedback for us, our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. If you can join us live, well, we'd love to have you Monday through Friday, 4 30 p.m. Eastern, 20 30 UTC. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Creator week starts Monday. Mark Johnson from playing for change on telling us about producing music ensembles with musicians from all over the world. 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 brover.