 Coming up on DTNS is Apple developing a search engine. Joe Budden has beef with Spotify and a TikTok deal seems near. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, August 27th, 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. I'm Oakland, California. I'm Justin Robert Young. And I'm the show's producer Roger Chang. We were just talking about grocery supply chains in the days of pandemic license plates and a little bit about nudity on Good Day Internet. If you want to get that show, you got to become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Amazon announced that its first Amazon Fresh Grocery Store in Los Angeles's Woodland Hills neighborhood will open this week by invite only with a broader opening in the coming weeks. The store will test Amazon's dash cart technology, which lets shoppers check out without waiting in line. But it doesn't use the just walk out technology used in Amazon Go convenience stores. Samsung officially announced Unpacked 2 or Unpacked Part 2 will take place on September 1st at 10 a.m. Eastern Time. Samsung says it will explore in-depth the groundbreaking features of the Galaxy Z Fold 2. Sequels. Sony announced that customers can sign up to receive pre-order invites for the upcoming PlayStation 5. On the PlayStation website, users can submit their PlayStation network username with users being selected, quote, based on previous interests and PlayStation activities. Pre-orders will be limited to one console per PlayStation network ID. No pricing or exact release date has been announced for the console, so you got to not care about that part. Chinese electric vehicle maker X-Peng launched its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in the U.S. on Thursday. The Guangzhou, China-based automaker has offices in Silicon Valley and also San Diego, California. X-Peng has delivered more than 20,000 vehicles as of July 31st and special thanks to Russell Manthee, who sent us some photos of the NYSE banners for X-Peng. So appreciate that reminder from you, Russell. Hey, shout out to Russell. T-Mobile is offering a 5G phone called the Rebel 5G for $400. If you switch to T-Mobile or add a line of service, you can get it for $200. The Rebel 5G has a 6.53 inch FHD plus screen running on a Snapdragon 765 processor with six gigs of RAM and 128 gigs of storage. And of course, that sweet, sweet 5G modem. But what will that 5G modem get you? OpenSignal issued a report on 5G speeds in 12 worldwide markets. Saudi Arabia, take the crown, take a lap. You've got the fastest 5G download speed at an average of 414.2 megabits per second. Yikes. South Korea is second at 312.7 followed by Australia and Taiwan. The US takes the crown for the slowest average 5G speeds at 50.9 megabits per second. Second slowest was the Netherlands at 79.3. Saudi Arabia also has the highest availability with users able to connect to a 5G signal 34.4% of the time. The UK had the lowest connectivity with users connected to 5G 4.5% at the time. Man, I'm jealous. Technology Review has a write up on the increasing popularity of card that's card spelled C-A-R-R-D, which lets you make one page websites with an email address card and similar services link tree bio FM have millions of users creating pages with links often to activist causes that are easy to share on social networks. And ours Technica reports its readers note that HBO Max has stopped working in browsers on Linux, and it appears to be another example of wide vine DRM, not recognizing some Linux distros as a known platform, a problem previously affecting CBS all access, which once CBS was made aware of immediately stopped being a problem because there's a setting you can do to recognize Linux kernel. And so maybe HBO will do that. Alright, let's talk about another thing coming from Amazon. Indeed, Tom Amazon launched an invite only early access program for a fitness service called Halo. Halo comes with a halo band, a water resistant fitness tracker and an accelerometer, a temperature sensor, a heart rate monitor, two microphones with on and off buttons. There is no screen, just an LED and it lasts a week on a charge. The Halo service uses a smartphone to capture 3d scans your body and machine learning to estimate body fat. It can even estimate what you'd look like if you gained or lost weight. It uses the halos mics to listen or monitor your emotions for a measure it calls tone, which measures things like energy and positivity. Halo also uses the band to monitor sleep and track cardio with a weekly activity score. Amazon says the body scans are deleted from servers after processing and only stored locally on your phone. Voice is analyzed on the phone and deleted immediately after analysis. Other health data is encrypted in transit and in the cloud and can be deleted at any time. Halo profiles are kept separate from other Amazon accounts. Halo will cost you $99.99 plus a $3.99 per month subscription with an early access price of $64.99 since extra bands cost $15.99 or $19.99 for cloth options. Pretty smart, don't you think? Yeah, I mean, wasn't it just yesterday we were like, look at fitness trackers. They're starting to get into that, you know, stress arena and figuring out, you know, how you feel beyond things like heart rate or whether or not you're, you know, climbing a mountain or whatever. Not having a screen is this is limits this, you know, for for somebody like me who wears a smartwatch, that would, you know, it'd be activity alone. So I don't know, a hundred bucks for something that isn't going to, it feels a little high. Think of this not like a replacement for a smartwatch. Think of it as a replacement for a scale and all of your metrics being processed on a level that you have not yet done. What I've always said is in our rush to find the quantifiable self, we have had now for nearly a decade ways that we can track things that give us numbers that we ultimately have very little concept of unless you get really into fitness and you are starting to do the computations yourself and even then you are running up against looking at databases online to see what is healthy, what is good, what is bad. What Amazon's trying to do is sell you all of that in a very, very prepackaged way. What I suspect, however, is that some of these things like tone and energy and stuff like that, we're they're throwing a lot of spaghetti at the wall and we're going to find out exactly what sticks and also who wants to eat this spaghetti that was just thrown at the wall. Yeah, especially because your body image now changed because you ate all that spaghetti. Yeah. Yeah, now you can look at that's strange. Also, like what if you're just a very passive aggressive person and you're dying on the inside, but this will tell you that will know the halo was like you seemed very positive just now. Well, I know the point. The idea is that with the machine learning, it'll know like that tone of voice with that heart rate and that temperature means you're being passive aggressive. You're doing that thing again. I don't know. Listen, I love data like this. Some of it is not that helpful to me day to day, but I like to have it. I love just body stats. Yeah. And if you I think that this is this is a great service, especially for people who you know, like I'm in the Fitbit universe. So there's a lot of back and forth like I wouldn't do both. I just you know, I you'd pick one of the other. But someone was like, you know, I buy a lot of things on Amazon and they probably know what they're doing. Maybe I'll get into this. Or if you have a smart speaker that utilizes Amazon's assistant and you feel, you know, somewhat, if not totally comfortable with your data being used by the company and and and spit back to you. So you know, there's a lot of that too. But no, no, no, I think the opposite. I think this is for the people who aren't comfortable with with Amazon day because they're going bending over backwards to say this doesn't have our voice assisted on it. We don't keep any of our stuff. No one will ever see your photos. We're deleting it like they're making sure to steer into like if you're uncomfortable with the echo, no problem, you can use Halo. And and I also think just that they would say that you well, of course, yeah, whether that will work or not, I don't know. But Justin, you pointed out something I think is important here. When I looked at this as a device, I was like, Amazon's coming out with kind of a crappy fitness tracker. When you look at it as a service, yes, that says, look, we have a health service, and you're going to use your phone. And we're going to give you a Bluetooth tracker. But it's you know, it's not a replacement for your watch. It's not meant to be. That's why it doesn't have a screen. It's just tracking the essential things you need to know to track your health. I think that is an interesting gamble. I don't know if it's going to work or not. But that is a different way to approach this, especially for people who are like, I'm not into wearables, but I am into health. And so they're approaching it from the other way. The hook in is important. Yeah. Well, you might like this one. Oh, no. What, Justin? What are you knowing? Well, anyway, I'm going to keep going. Norway's Remarkable has put out a new version of its e-ink tablet, the Remarkable 2. It has a 10.3 inch e-ink display with two 26 dpi resolution and a stylus with 21 millisecond latency and a feature to erase if you use the opposite end. It's 0.19 inches thick, making it the thinnest tablet on the market. E-ink tablet, but still that's that's something at 0.89 pounds. It weighs as much about as much as a legal pad. And the software supports drawing, note-taking and reading and annotating PDFs and e-pubs. Everything can be synced through a companion app for desktop or mobile and drawings can be exported as PDF, PNG or SVG for you vector folks. It can also recognize handwriting and convert it to text. You can pre-order Remarkable 2 now for $399 with a marker and case included. Extra markers cost $49 and the fully okay sells separately for $69 shipping expected in November. Yeah. All the people who reviewed this very obviously also reviewed the first Remarkable because they all compared it to the first Remarkable. But you don't have to know anything about the first one to appreciate this one. If you need something for, you know, writing, drawing, doing like it's a it's attempt to be a replacement for paper. This is a very interesting device, a little expensive for something that limited. It's more than a base level iPad at $399 and it doesn't do as much. But it sounds like a really interesting, I'm tempted to try it because it sounds like a really interesting evolution of e-ink and it looks like this works pretty well. I mean, size of a legal pad is just like writing on a legal pad, right? Yeah, totally. Man, the e-ink tablet stuff, besides the, you know, the folks who are, you know, Kindle faithful, Kindle strong. I haven't heard much about, I don't know, new entries into this particular category. And, you know, it's again, with all of the compatibility that obviously Remarkable has thought about what people want to take in and take out of something like this. It's pretty cool. Yeah, except for the intercapping the M. You can just stop. All right. LG announced the Pura care, also intercapped, the Pura care wearable air purifier, a portable air purifier you wear as a face mask. The mask uses a pair of replaceable HEPA filters and battery powered fans, which will adjust their speed as you inhale and exhale so that your breathing feels normal. The filters can remove 99.97% of particulates down to 0.3 microns because they're HEPA filters. The Pura care will last eight hours in low power mode or two hours in high power mode. An included case will charge the mask and disinfect it with UV light price and availability not announced. Also pointed questions of will this help with COVID-19 definitely deferred to say like, we're still testing things. This, by the way, is the first of our parade of products in advance of EFO, which is happening next weekend. Look, there is going to be a world in which masks are now more normal. There is also specifically up here in the California, specifically the Northern California area, where we have a lot of forest fires that happen now regularly, where I mean, this household was already lousy with N95 masks long before COVID became a thing because my wife's an asthmatic and needs them for when the world lights on fire now yearly. So the idea that these kinds of devices are here, I think is smart. Whether or not the idea, oh, does it stop COVID now? I don't think that's going to be as much of a concern in our now newly mask compliant world. And I think the price is going to matter a lot. I mean, I've got, I don't know, I have five masks streaming around my house, you know, where I'm like, where the heck, I got to do some, where's that mask, you know, if I've got something that would cost me 200 bucks. So I, you know, it's really important that I make sure that I know where that one is. Maybe my behavior would change, but it would have to change quite a bit from what I'm dealing with these days, going out to the, to the convenience store here and there. So I don't know, it's, if it isn't too insane on your face, because there's clearly a lot going on here, it sounds great. Yeah, I mean, I'm in, you know, forest fire territory right now. I mean, it smells horrible outside. Can't be good to breathe. Probably she should be wearing something like this. So if it, yeah, if it can be something that you can do groceries, do grocery runs while wearing and feel better, and it isn't too expensive, it might be onto something. Yeah, I mean, LG wants us all to think about this in terms of the current mask wearing. But I'll be interested to see if they can claim it does anything for COVID because filtering for smoke different than filtering for virus. Those are definitely two different things. So masks can do both, but not all of them. Tom and Sarah rapper and broadcaster Joe Budden says his podcast, the Joe Budden podcast will no longer be exclusive to Spotify after September 23. Yeah. In his latest episode, Budden said, I cannot tell you where the podcast will be. But as it stands, I can tell you where it will not be. And that is Spotify. But in complain that his audience has exceeded expectations by 900%, Spotify would not pay his team a bonus and wouldn't let them skip episodes for Christmas and New Year's Eve. He also said that he they offered to buy them watches and they submitted two expensive watches to buy. Budden says Spotify is pillaging his audience only interested in finding popular new shows rather than feeding the podcasting ecosystem. Spotify, meanwhile, says it made Budden a considerable offer of respects his wishes to find a new home for his show. I mean, I sorry, Sarah, I, I, I have to laugh. Like, I don't know where this podcast will be. Just not Spotify. So everywhere else. He might, he might be doing another exclusive deal and he can't say it, but it's like, but it sort of gives it away, right? That he might, he's considering an exclusive deal. Yeah. Or, or, you know, do it the way lots of other people do it. And so it's not that hard for an audience member to continue to love the show that they loved before and they love it. Solidarity. Daily Tech News show is also no longer, well, it never was exclusive. Never mind. But also, if this is the first time you have heard the name Joe Budden, then understand that he got this deal with Spotify because he chronicles and, and fans the flames on drama. He is the bird, him and, and the, uh, the breakfast club are the clearing houses of hip hop drama, uh, the premier places where people go to air their dirty laundry. He is very pro wrestling in terms of, uh, building up the heroes and villains of the pop culture world. And now he is making himself the hero and Spotify the villain. So this is not that odd for Joe Budden. What he does say for our rapidly evolving podcasting ecosystem, where a little bit more money is getting splashed around Spotify being somebody that is, uh, very much spilling some cash over the bar that some people are not necessarily pleased. The fact that Joe Budden is not pleased should not shock anybody who is aware of Joe Budden and what he does. I'm guessing Spotify is not surprised either when they didn't reach a deal. They knew they must have known this was going. Yeah. Uh, the idea that Joe Budden is somebody that is like, well, they didn't give me enough. I mean, here's the other reality that was not. This is like the dog that doesn't bark in this controversy. How much did his audience fall off and how much does he blame Spotify for not either pushing it more for advertising more, because that is the thing. You're going to take that money. Joe Rogan is going to take that money. Last podcast on the left is going to take that money. The new ringer shows are going to take that money and they're not going to get the same kind of listenership as they would otherwise. Oh, yeah. That means. Two years ago, Joe Budden was the most important podcaster at Spotify. Yes. Today, I think it's fair to say no disrespect that in Spotify's eyes, he is not the most important. Still a jam. Well, this week, John Henshaw at digital marketing firm Koi Wolf noted some behavior from Apple that he thought might indicate that Apple's creating a search engine of their own. Several folks have noticed that the Apple bot crawling websites more frequently. If they've noticed some activity, the Apple bot, like most web crawlers, collects information to determine how websites hold to be ranked. Apple users in Siri and spotlight results, for example, Henshaw also noticed Apple updated support in support document back in July with more information on Apple bot, including factors that affect its rankings and more rumors of Apple launching a search engine have been around since 2015. You might be like, haven't we already talked about this before? You're not wrong. They've been floating around since then, even earlier, perhaps. Joe Rossignol at Mac rumors also notes it's most likely this is just improving Siri and spotlight results, not necessarily a search engine, you know, in its in its full sense. Apple uses Bing for image results and Google for other results, but then customizes those itself. Yeah, people remember that Apple used to have Google as the default Safari search engine, but Bing, powering Siri and spotlight. And it was back 2017 that they switched to using Google for Siri and spotlight for everything except images and images are still supplied by Bing. And if that confuses you, that may be why you would think Apple is doing all these things to create a search engine, because what they're getting from Apple and Bing is what Yahoo used to get from from Google and Bing is what Yahoo used to get and still does, which is a feed of search results that you can then manipulate and customize in your own presentation. And so that's what Apple has been doing with Applebot, is going out and saying we want to collect some of our own data to layer on top of this, to customize it so that when it shows up in spotlight, it works good for spotlight because these search results, it might be great if you're in Google, but we have a different presentation. We have a different audience. And so you want to, you want to modify those a little bit. And that seems to me what's going on here is Apple is doing more of that. Just they've hired search engine engineers before because of that. The fact that they're hiring some more of them doesn't surprise me. The fact that they've cranked up the Applebot may just mean that they've come up with some new ways to prevent, present search results and they need more data for that. Could be for an entirely different reason like augmented reality or machine learning or something like that. So I don't think this means that Apple is going to launch a search engine to replace Google and Bing. Because it doesn't mean they're not. They probably are always about might my guess is they're always evaluating. Should we take this project and expand it into a full on search engine? But that would be something when they get to a point and they're like, yeah, this is good enough to do that, not because they you know, are all out, you know, racing to replace Google. Yeah, Apple has a Jillian, a billion dollars. And at any moment, they should be trying to make a search engine for their internal white label products that they now no longer have to pay Google and Bing to provide those. Yeah. Hey, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to Daily Tech headlines dot com. Tick Tock CEO and also COO of Bite Dance, Kevin Mayer is neither anymore. He is leaving the company. A tick tock statement said, quote, the political dynamics of the last few months have significantly changed what the scope of Kevin's role would be going forward. They respect his choice and they'll miss him and they thank him and all of that stuff. In an internal email from mayor to employees obtained by the Financial Times, mayor wrote, quote, in recent weeks, as the political environment has sharply changed, I have done significant reflection on what the corporate structural changes will require and what it means for the global role I signed up for against this backdrop. And as we expect to reach a resolution very soon, which is really what the news is about here, it is with a heavy heart that I wanted to let you all know that I've decided to leave the company. So in the meantime, Tick Tock General Manager Vanessa Poppus here in the US will take over as interim CEO of Tick Tock. If you recall, Mayor was head of direct to consumer at Disney. That's the folks who brought you Disney Plus. He was also instrumental in buying Marvel and stuff like that. And everybody thought he was going to take over as CEO when Bob Eiger left. But instead, Bob Schapeck took over as Disney CEO. And in May, Mayor said, well, if you're not going to make me CEO of Disney, I'm going to be CEO of Tick Tock, which I assume he thought as many of us did was going to be the next Facebook. So, you know, if you can't be CEO of Disney, be CEO of the next hugest thing. So he took that role June 1st. This departure signals that bite dance may be about to wrap up whatever it's going to do with Tick Tock. Supposedly, Mayor wasn't going to announce his resignation until the sale was official. That would, of course, assume that Mayor is naive enough to assume that an internal email would never get leaked to the Financial Times, which seems unlikely. So I'm not sure what to make of that. But this definitely feels like we're about to get the resolution. And CMBC sources say a deal could be announced as soon as next week to see the New Zealand, Canadian, Australian and U.S. Tick Tock operations sell for twenty to thirty billion dollars. And the sources tell CMBC that Tick Tock is also not determined who they're going to sell it to that they're still negotiating with both Oracle and Microsoft. Also, Walmart has jumped in on Microsoft's bid. They are interested in partnering with Microsoft. So Microsoft would buy it. But Walmart would invest because Walmart is interested in the e-commerce and advertising potential in Tick Tock. And that is something ByteDance has done very well in China with Du Yan, the Chinese version of Tick Tock, is integrating e-commerce so that creators can sell stuff. Walmart has a burgeoning third party seller marketplace that they would like to plug into that Tick Tock magic. Now, it's unknown whether Walmart's Chinese operations would be a stumbling block in getting approval. Walmart doesn't think so, of course. Meanwhile, the RAP sources say Oracle is still offering 10 billion in cash, 10 billion in stock. And their deal, according to the RAP, would give ByteDance 50% of the profits from Tick Tock going forward. I imagine there's a great scene at the end of the Guy Ritchie film Snatch in which Dennis Farina's character goes back to New York. And when he is in the Customs Declaration line, when asked to be as anything to declare, he says, don't go to England. I would imagine that this is Kevin Mayer as he is now leaving this. Do you have anything to declare? Don't go to China. This is just what a crazy year for somebody who was really at the top of his game in terms of riding high on being the guy who microwaved a Netflix to now have this crazy situation where he's got to. He straps himself to the top of a rocket ship and then it gets shot out of the sky by rising international tensions, just nuts. The only thing I would say about the sale here is I think this is going to Microsoft because if Microsoft was not the likely seller here, number one, we wouldn't be hearing Oracle's price, specifically if they are currently negotiating it. And we would have heard what the Microsoft thing is. I think that this is that they are moving to a deal with Microsoft, but they can't say considering how closely Microsoft has been linked to this, that they are moving close to a deal without saying that. So that's why we're getting this weird dance here. Yeah, that does make sense. We were talking last week recently, somebody had written in and said, I mean, why does Microsoft want to pay so much for something that's, you know, just, you know, it's kind of it's cool now and won't be cool tomorrow type thing. And we all kick that around and we're like, you know, TikTok is a social network and that's different than, say, a, you know, draw something or, you know, these, you know, a various mobile focused like game type stuff that are very hot and then go away quickly. But the more I read about this, the more I'm like, what is TikTok really going to look like in a few months? Very hard to say right now, you know, there are companies clamoring to figure out what to do with with the rabid user base that it has. But it also is a, you know, it's a fickle community that we're talking about right now. You have Instagrams trying to, you know, hurry up and figure out how to give folks who are a little bit nervous about TikTok a better place to hang out and, you know, a better community with all that stuff that's already been figured out by Facebook. You know, it's certainly as far as ads go. So yeah, it's it's it is a story that is rapidly unfolding much more than I thought it would. Both of these companies, by the way, because I see people in the chat room like, why would Oracle want this? Oracle wants it for the same reason Microsoft wants it to show off what their platform can do to get a bunch of data to feed their machine learning and data science. And the rest of it can go to waste. It doesn't even matter if it fails. Now, in Microsoft's case, they've got an advertising business so they do want it to succeed to feed that and Walmart jumping in on that helps them with the advertising revenue. Both of these make perfect sense to me. And both want to be cool. There is a cash aid. This this business does not come up every that doesn't come up every day. You don't get a sale price on a company that is growing this fast. And there is an argument to say this is a sale price. Like this is something where all of a sudden Microsoft cannot be the thing that your dad has on his work laptop. Microsoft can be the thing that gave you TikTok and save TikTok and made and made sure that it didn't change, which I think, Sarah, to your point, there is nothing different about TikTok in a year. They are going to make sure that that ship continues to sale exactly as straight as it is right now. Well, if you have thoughts on this or anything that we talk about on the show or stuff that you'd like us to talk about on the show, you can submit those stories to our subreddit. Submit stories, vote on other stories at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. Imagine a bag filled with mail. What would you find in it? Well, I'm I'm trying to Oh, I see it. I see it. In fact, bizarrely, it's from Mike and Svultrin, Dubai. Hello, Mike. Mike actually did read it for reals and said I have seriously been considering the pros and cons of getting an iPad Pro with the Magic Keyboard. I've watched a ton of reviews of the keyboard and whether iPadOS can really work as a laptop. But hearing Scott's live with it, which we recorded yesterday, helped me realize that in my use case, I'm better off without it. Thanks for saving me from a potentially costly mistake. If I may make a recommendation, I would strongly encourage Scott to test out the new Surface Pen. I mean, using a Surface 7 and using it for note taking in Microsoft finally made a stylus in my humble opinion. How does the Apple Pencil least first gen on a three year old iPad? The tip is slightly rubberized, feels much closer to a pen on paper feel versus the Apple Pencil where I feel like I'm dragging metal on very slippery glass. You know, funnily enough, Mike, that that's what everybody says about the remarkable, too, is that it feels very close to pen on paper. It even has like a scratchy sound when you use it. So I don't know, maybe you should check out the remarkable, too. Maybe that would work for you. But yes, thank you, Mike. And if you want to get Scott's live with it on the Magic Keyboard, on the Apple Magic Keyboard for iPad, go become a patron, patreon.com. All of you existing patrons, you have that episode already. It was excellent. Scott did a lot of good work. So yeah, and and thank you also to to Mike and hope you are not spultering forever. Shout out to patrons that are mastering Grandmaster Levels, including Dustin Campbell and do Bradley and Brad, just Brad, you know, like Madonna. Also, thanks to Justin Robert Young for being with us today. Justin, we got politics all up in the ying. What have you been up to? And some would say the yank, too, Sarah. It is indeed convention season. We're going to bring that one to a close tonight when the president ends the Republican version. But then we are leading right into debates and then right into election night. We are as of yesterday, 69 days away from Election Day. And it is as nice as you might expect at politics, politics, politics, wherever your podcasts are found, including Spotify, but we're not exposed. But I'll take that button, but if you want. Yeah, they got a little extra kicking around. Why don't I? Hey, folks, don't forget, live with it. All kinds of other things are available when you're a patron. Check out all those those perks. And if you support the show because you get value out of it and get value back, then that's the biggest reason to support right now. Go check it out, patreon.com slash DTNS. If you sit here and listen to the show, maybe watch it and think, I wish I could tell them something or maybe ask a question. Guess what? You can. Our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. We love to hear your feedback, so keep it coming. We're also live Monday through Friday for 30 p.m. Eastern 20 30 UTC and find out more dailytechnewshow.com slash live back tomorrow with Shannon Morris and Len Peralta. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com.