 Coming up on DTNS why 5G phones will get cheaper next year the triumphant return of Microsoft power tools and how long does it take to charge a darn electric car? This is the Daily Tech news for Friday, August 6, 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from Studio Feline. I'm Sarah Lane. And I'm now insured into the bucket empire. From the shores of Lake area. I'm Len Peralta and I'm today's producer, Anthony Lemos. Yes, Roger Chang having a power outage today. So he may be joining us midway or not. We wish him speedy return of his power. We were just talking about podcasting and levelating and all kinds of good technology stuff on good day internet. You can join that wider conversation by becoming a patron at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. LG announced the G8X ThinkQ that comes with a case containing a secondary display similar to the V50. However, the G8X display case connects by USB-C, not wirelessly. That's the distinction. Both displays are 6.4 inch OLED FHD plus with an aspect ratio of 19.5 by 9. The case also has a 2.1 inch monochrome OLED display for time and notifications, although no price or release date as of yet. Your audio crept out again, Allison. I'm sorry. That was a sad robot. It was a melting witch. We will check back with you in a minute. TF Security's analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says his sources indicate Apple will indeed release small circular tags that can be attached to bags, electronics, keys, etc. Similar to how tile tags work, if you know those, the tags are expected to use Ultra Wideband, which Kuo believes will be supported by all three new iPhones this year. Ultra Wideband is considered more accurate than Bluetooth LE, which is what tile uses, though the tags might also support Bluetooth LE since the previous iPhones don't support Ultra Wideband. And if you pre-ordered the Samsung Galaxy Fold through Samsung last spring, Samsung's cancelling that pre-order while it rethinks the entire customer experience for the Galaxy Fold, probably not for its entire business. To be clear, these were people who had expressed the wish to buy a Fold, asked Samsung not to cancel their pre-order, but they weren't charged. Still, Samsung's granting them a $250 credit for anything in the Samsung online store. Pre-orders are not currently open for the Galaxy Fold, but pre-registration is. That allows you to get notified when pre-orders become available. They do need to rethink that entire customer experience. They're right. It's the promise ring of pre-ordering. Yes. We'll get there. We're about to get engaged. The Wall Street Journal reports that in the first half of 2019, US music sales rose 18% to $5.4 billion with streaming, now accounting for 80% of all revenue, which is up 26% on the year. Paid streaming service revenue grew 31% to $3.3 billion. According to the RIAA, in that period, streaming services added more than 1 million subscribers per month with a total of 61.1 million US subscribers at the end of June. But that's not all that was up. CED sale revenue grew 5% in the first half to $485 million, and vinyl sales continuing to grow 13% this time to $224 million. Last week's Google Project Zero Detailed Vulnerability had found an iOS that had been fixed by Apple in February, but that's the one that would allow an attacker to infect a phone simply by having it visit a website. Now, it turned out Monday we found out that some of those websites were probably targeted at the Uighur community, an Islamic community in China. Friday, Apple announced that the attack was narrowly focused on fewer than a dozen websites that focus on content related to the Uighur community. Apple also said the attacks appeared to have been in operation for two months. If you remember, Project Zero had suggested that the attacks could have been underway for two years. Possibly it means the vulnerability was there for two years, but Apple is claiming that the attacks only showed up in the past or in the two months leading up to the fixing of the bug. I thought there was a pretty good answer back from Apple because they didn't say the vulnerabilities weren't there, they didn't say the attacks didn't happen, but they gave a lot more context to it than the way Google said it's everybody you're in danger. They also added a little finger wagging at Google, but the context was good, you're absolutely right. In fact, they were the first company to confirm what the websites were that were targeted and to say that it was not that many in case you were worried like, did I visit one of these? It becomes much more narrow in that case. Yeah, they left that question open. Well, Apple published a beta version of a web interface for Apple Music at beta.music.apple.com. The beta is available to all Apple Music subscribers, and according to Apple, should work with all modern browsers, including those on Windows 10, Chrome OS, and Android. The interface is similar to the standalone music app coming in Mac OS Catalina. While it can access all music, playlists, and most radio stations, it doesn't include Beats One, some video content, and smart playlists. You also can't sign up for Apple Music through the web interface just yet. Yeah, but it sounds like they're going to add those things. So it is a beta, after all, I think that that's fair. And I don't know, kind of a smart move by Apple if they want more people to buy their services to make it available cross-platform through the web. Yeah, we're not loading that bloatware of iTunes anymore. Yeah, no kidding. Yeah, I use my iTunes app on Mac OS, it's fine. I primarily just all I do is access the radio version of Apple Music. So the web interface is not something that I need. I'm also looking forward to the Apple Music upcoming app in Mac OS. But yeah, for everybody else, another option. You're going to get more Apple Music subscribers this way. Well, especially when you start letting them sign up, but yeah, certainly more opportunities you have to use it than the more people might be deciding to use it. Spotify is cracking down harder on their family sharing plan these days, which I know caused some people to say, well, maybe I will switch after all because Apple has slightly different terms with the family sharing. So you will see Spotify has always required you to be in the same household. They just didn't enforce it as much as they seem to be doing it. State Attorney General Leticia James announced her office is launching a multi-state investigation into Facebook for potential antitrust violations, along with attorneys general from Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee and the District of Columbia. The investigational focus on whether quote Facebook's actions may have endangered consumer data reduce the quality of consumer choices or increased the price of advertising. Facebook revealed in July that it's also facing an antitrust investigation from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, so shouldn't be a shock when the New York State joins in as they often do in these cases. And dangerous consumer data seems like, yep, that's a thing that you can you can put on Facebook, certainly increasing the price of advertising. That's a little bit murkier for me. Reducing quality of consumer choices. Well, there isn't really a choice that's comparable to Facebook. So yeah, I mean, it's it's that's one of those arguments that you can say, okay, well, Facebook doesn't really have a competitor in that realm, but has it kept somebody from becoming the competitor in that Well, they've bought some competitors right with with WhatsApp and what's the other one Instagram. I mean, you can't not be on a Facebook platform anymore it seems. Yeah, I mean your your your competitors are tick tock Snapchat Twitter. You know arguably that you start drifting off into the LinkedIn's of the world that are a little more specialized right so I think what they'll go after here is, I don't know if they can show that that Facebook has increased the price of advertising there actually is pretty. Well, there is competition with advertising it's called Google but also Amazon. So, I don't know that they'll determine that one consumer choice would have to do with. Yes, you you buy your competitors and keep choices from from becoming highly competitive. But in daydream consumer data seems to be their best bet if they were going to make some charges stick. Do you think you think that there's some meat on those bones Tom. Well, there's certainly a lot of people look at those bones and see meat. Yeah, yeah. Okay, Facebook has competitors sure but every but all the competitors that were just listed are competitors of one part of Facebook because Facebook is so many things now which is I think that that's where the argument is is there still is not one single umbrella company that is functioning the way Facebook is now and and and can it exist and could Instagram or WhatsApp have grown into that by diversifying and adding things if you hadn't bought them. I think that's how that argument will go. Absolutely. Qualcomm has some announcements of its own it's bringing 5G to its series six and seven chip sets which are used in mid range phones. The chips will support key regions and frequency bands including MM wave and sub six gigahertz spectrum. That means that 5G phones coming next year at more affordable price points. Qualcomm says that 12 manufacturers have signed on to use the Snapdragon 7 series 5G mobile platform and sampling of the chips has begun with availability in phones after Q for 2019 the series 6 5G mobile platform for lower cost phones should start showing up a little later in the second half of next year. And obviously 5G is not going to be penetrating even even the second half of next year it's not going to be available in a lot of places so you'll want the cheaper options to be available once 5G comes to you this seems like it's going to happen. Millimeter wave means you get those really really fast speed potentials if your service supports it so you know this is this is all good stuff. It's got to make things cheaper. Yeah and people there's a lot of price pressure on phones right now so if you want to sell 5G phones are you're going to have to have those mid range $300 $400 phones have in 5G built in this is this is a way to make that happen. In a related known Huawei announced its own chipset with an integrated 5G modem they use seven nanometer Kirin 990 5G, though it's integrated modem does not support millimeter wave so that makes it quite a bit less competitive with the Qualcomm one. That means that its maximum potential speed is slower yeah. Okay. The chip itself has eight cores with two cores capable of clock speeds of 2.86 gigahertz also has a 16 core Mali G76 graphics processor and a three core neural processing unit, along with Huawei's fifth generation image signal processor for DSLR DSLR level noise reduction. Huawei also announced a new phone I'm using quotes because it can come with Android 10 pre installed something it's unable to do with most of its new phones right now because of US trade restrictions. However this new phone is really the existing P 30 pro but available in two tone matte and glossy finish and either blue or lavender, meaning it can take advantage of the easement that allows Google to provide updates to existing models. The Huawei made 30 a holy new phone will launch September 19 and so far is not allowed to have Google services on it so that September 19 is when we'll really see what wallways plan to deal with a post Google operation is going to be for the rest of the world outside of China anyway. They're staying relevant on that that's an interesting strategy to make it new but it's really this old one over here. I mean I think they wanted to announce something at IFA and that was the best they could come up with. There's somebody out there who's like I like this new finish great. I was going to get the phone maybe anyway, but for the most part I don't know how many people are going to be like wow they figured out a way to get around the restrictions against the company. It buys them lavender. Yeah. It's the lavender revolution. Well, Microsoft released two new utilities that I'm totally jealous of under the revived power toys name. The first is a windows key shortcut guide. You hold down the windows key and it puts up a full screen overlay with a list of dynamic keyboard shortcuts, based on what windows and apps you have open. I've seen this done on other apps and I really like that that it's system wide here. Another utility is a windows manager called fancy zones, and you just got to love that name. You set up custom zones on screen hold the shift key down and drag an app onto the zone and it automatically resize resizes to fit. And both utilities are available on GitHub. I called these power tools at the beginning of the show but they are powerful tools. But they're fun and fancy power toys power toys for windows 98 windows XP. I mean, I miss them and it's nice to see them bring that brand back. The like you say the windows key shortcut guide is useful. That's pretty cool but fancy zones is is is good that's that's what I expect from a power toy right up that power and it's not just a toy it's it's a power. Both of my kids use windows at work and they're Mac users at home and they complain to me they say they always talk about how the windowing is better on windows and I mean I guess they named it windows so it should be better but the fact that like you can snap to the screen to the left and the right things like that. They're going to be all over these power toys I'm totally jealous. Yeah, power toys was windows 95. Thank you Captain Jack for that so power tools for windows XP, not true power toys for windows 95. True. Yeah, I'm excited about the fancy zones thing because it may be hard for you to imagine if you don't go look at the video of it in action but it basically says, you know when I when I use the shift key and drag over here it'll just automatically make it a block that that is that corner over there so it's, it's a powerful the snap to the side that that gives you a little more customization pretty cool. 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.com. A lot of folks like the idea of electric charging for their car, but worry about the charging part of it because hey, I know where the gas stations are I can carry a can of gas in spare can in my car but I can't really carry a spare can of electricity. I got to plug this thing in Allison. You've got an electric car how long does it take to charge these things up. Well, after about my test of Model three, you can't not count the number of people say how long does it take to charge. I wrote a blog post on this because it's a question. My father, this kind of question how big is a lump of coal. Well, I know it depends on a whole lot of things. The first thing to think about of course is it has to do with how much charge you start with and how much you want to have when you're done if you need to go 10 miles it doesn't take very long at all. And the other thing is it depends on where you are in the charge curve. So batteries are linear up to about 65% lithium ion batteries charge about linear. So it'll be a constant rate but after about 65% they start rolling off. And so they don't charge as quickly in that last two or less third of the charge. So that matters to you're going to get fast at the beginning slower later. The other thing that that matters a lot is what kind of charger you plugged into. If you just plugged into your 110 volt at your house, it's at three miles per hour. And it's kind of a funny way to think about charging but it is. I think I get it. So if I've added three miles of range to the car is right. Okay, right. Yeah, it sounds it sounds funny at first. But if you if you go up to 240 if the 240 outlet with say at 40 amps, it's going to do it at 35 miles per hour. So overnight you're fine. You know, you could go you can go full range of the car model three, the higher range ones go to 310 miles. So I can I can fill the car up overnight. There's other company chargers too. So you can take a Tesla over to a dealer or to BMW dealer and that but the one year my house 101 150 miles per hour. But the one is 20 miles per hour. So how long does it take to your car depends on that. So to test the supercharger, I collected at 500 miles per hour at the beginning. It's a little bit after that when 340 miles per hour. So now the tech faster. We're losing you again. Are you going to talk about temperature? Yeah, I was the charger. Sharing a supercharger cuts the speed in half. So so what you're saying is if I go up to a supercharger and somebody's already plugged into it. And I plug into it. And one side. Yeah, then their speed goes down and I won't get the full speed out of it. And, and, and apparently it matters which Tesla you use to because there's different amps, depending on whether you have a model three and model s and a model X. Right. It definitely there's a curve you can see from Tesla that tells you that's go depending on which. This is the connect your connection is dropping out on us. It unfortunately right in the middle of this, which is, which is a really good explanation and thankfully Alison is smart enough to put her explanations up at pod feet.com so you can you can just go that we'll have a link in the show notes at daily tech news showed. Well, my back. Yeah, you're back now go ahead. All right, good. It turns out if I hang up and you know turn off and on again it works. The other interesting thing that you bring up temperature is, if it's zero degrees Fahrenheit batteries don't charge at all. It's zero or it's an infinite the length of time that would take. So you kind of have to actually know what the temperature outside is. And if it gets up to 113 Fahrenheit, which is 45 C, the batteries also get unhappy. But one of the cool things in the Tesla is if you navigate using the navigate feature to say I want to go to a supercharger, the car will actually heat condition the battery as you get closer to it. So it'll make sure that you're at the optimal temperature of your battery in order to receive as much charge as possible. So that's pretty cool. So the upshot here is depends on what amp you're plugged into, especially at home 110 volt it's going to charge real slow but but 240 it'll get you fine overnight depends on the charger you're plugged into depends on the car that you have and what model you have. And it depends on the temperature. So a lot of it depends. But in practice, Allison, have you have you run into a situation where you needed to charge up you were almost empty. And and you needed to charge up and you had to wait to charge because I think that's that's what goes through people's mind usually they're thinking of a road trip. But let's say they just haven't been paying attention to like almost I'm almost out of charge with a gas station you know how long it's going to take for you to pull up, pay at the pump fill your gas and get on your way. Yeah. So it's kind of a differing trade off what I what I've noticed is that I look at my car and I go Oh, I'm going to need some charge. I don't need to go anywhere right now I'm going to tell it to charge right now or I'll tell it to charge at midnight when it's cheaper which is kind of nice. And I haven't gotten in my car and driven over to gas station and set their weighted and turn around and driven back. So you know that's say a half an hour to go do something like that if it's done on my way home. So I'm not spending that time, but I can't in an emergency say I need gas right this minute for and I need this much. I mean I could get you know in in 10 or 15 minutes I could get enough to go a little ways depending on how far I have to go. So it's, I haven't really run into problems with that. When we were up in Fresno visiting Steve's family. I love family, as we all do. But I had this really good excuse to go away to a Tesla supercharger for an hour and go relax and I read a book. I didn't have to talk to anybody so for the nerd. That sounds like making lemons out of lemonade a little bit a little bit a little bit it was. So, you know for longer trips I mean you are going to sit there for a while but they there's a ton of really good tools that you can put in. There's a tool that allows you to say okay I want to get to this destination with this much charge. So the one big thing I didn't want to have happen is show up with my brand new cargo. Oh I gotta go charge. I said I want half full when I get to Fresno so we stopped at a supercharger that we didn't need to stop at to get there. But we made sure that when we arrived we could drive everybody around and have them all go wow and then later go on and go charge the car. I think that's what hangs people up is they're like that sounds like a lot of planning, especially East Coast drivers where they're like there's always a gas station around. I'm not going to run into a situation where I needed to think it through. Maybe if you're driving out in Arizona, New Mexico, West Texas, where there you know there can be long stretches between gas stations you're a little more used to thinking that way. But, but people want this to be as easy as as lacking of planning and I think that's what hangs people up, which is why it's interesting that there are these these hybrid the what is it the Prius premium. Prius Prime is that one's a real interesting car it's it's got two, two separate things going on it's it's a gas electric hybrid not plug in for that side. So, when you're when you're driving you're using gas when it's more efficient electric when it's more efficient you got regenerative into the into the battery, but it's also got a separate battery so it can run completely on battery. So for 30 miles, you can you can plug it in and you can charge. So for all those stupid little trips around town. You never use the gas electric side, but then when you want to go long range you actually have a gas tank you can put gas into and be efficient you know be the kind of 100 miles to the gallon kind of numbers or whatever it is that you get out of a Prius. So that one's kind of that's kind of a sweet spot for this interim period before we've got the infrastructure completely there, but but I would look at the total area under the curve how much time do you spend putting gas in your car versus how much time would I spend putting electricity in my car. I spend any time because I mostly drive within five miles and 10 miles of my house. I'm not spending any time I walk out to the garage I shove in the the charger and I go back into my house. I'm spending two minutes versus 20 minutes 30 minutes going to a gas station. In fact, I think that's a really good way to think about it because it's the use case that makes the difference right. Yeah, how many of you, and I know there are some of you drive around near E and think, gosh, you know what I need. I need to pull over the gas station. I'm late for work I'll do it after work and then after work you're like oh crap I still need to fill up. If you have that situation and you can charge at home. You're basically as if you have a 240 volt charger in your home. You're basically set up to never be empty. Right. Yep, never have to go fill up so to speak. Yeah. Oh, that's the life. Our priest is really getting 100 miles to the gallon on a good day because that's that's a good number. I know they didn't use to be good. What is it Tom. Oh well mine's 17 years old so it gets like 35 miles to the gallon at this point but even at its top I think it got around 50. I don't know what the modern the modern I know I know it's crept up but I know it's more but it's nice. Yes, I have I have 58 miles to the gallon is what they have. Okay. Yeah, narrowly. Yeah, the number 60 popped into my head after I said 100. They claim 60 and then they had to back off of that so I because of EPA stuff but I wasn't sure if they've gotten back to that sounds like they've gotten close anyway. In my defense if you if you walk the line of E, you know how much you really have left once your car says you need gas. You're also maximum efficiency you have spent the least amount of time going to the gas station right because if you did it a half full, you'd be doing twice as often. For the most amount of time. I haven't run out of gas on the freeway in a few years now. I fill up at half the tank, no matter what because I don't want to get caught in an emergency without your smarter than I am. I don't know if it's smarter, more paranoid. Very good reason. Hey, thanks everybody who participates in our subreddit you can be paranoid or not we want you all to submit stories and vote on them at daily tech news show dot reddit.com. If you like Facebook groups well we've got a good one lots of good folks in there having all sorts of conversations facebook.com slash groups slash daily tech news show. Let's check out the mail bag. Let's do it Brian H rodin and he's got an interesting solution for Robo calls, which by the way I got two of them during this very show. Brian says I have a solution that's worked on cutting down the number of calls that I'm receiving I'm on Verizon, which does identify potential spam and gives it a rating. But for the calls that aren't marked by Verizon the ones with the same area code and even the same prefix that I do those sneaky ones I do the following the phony the rings and I answer softly. Hello, and then wait. If it's a computer voice I just hang up. But if it's a person who starts going off of their script I then say Sheriff's Department fraud division how may I help you. I was getting three to four calls a day and maybe I get three or four per week now, or even less. They seem to take your number out of the system when you answer this way. Now this is obviously the definition of coincidental evidence. This is this is not proof that if you answer the phone shares department fraud division, you will be removed from lists. But it's really satisfying to do that. Yeah, if it's fun do it. Yeah. I mean, I don't know, could it be considered fraud to say that with is that impersonating a police officer. Oh, let's ask Facebook, they seem to know a lot about this. I like a robot. So, hello, this has been answered by a robot. Oh, that's a good one. I stopped getting calls. Oh, I seem to be having trouble with my mic. We have affordable health care for you. You know that one. Oh, I get her every few days or so. I never answer. I just don't answer and then I don't have to think about. I've missed out on several million dollar winnings and, you know, great warranty extensions, but overseas Prince, he was going to give you all the money. Liz was voting or was commenting on our voting for the next live with it that live with it is the series that Sarah does where she spends at least three months with a device to really live with it and find out what it's like to use it. And the voting right now is going on around four wearables. Liz said those mentioning a Fitbit compatibility with iOS don't mention that the health data does not sync to the health kit platform viewable in the health app on iOS, which is where the real magic with other health info happens privately and I think she's right. That health app this is what Apple does really is designed to work with the Apple watch. Yeah, absolutely. The versatile is the Fitbit watch that is in the running and a lot of people have weighed in saying yeah this seems like the best option because maybe they aren't on iOS, I am, but it seems to be one of one of the options that is most cross compatible so very good point from Liz that the Apple watch, not surprisingly is something that works with iOS, more than any other of its competitors. Let's check in with Len Peralta who has been illustrating during the show. Len, what do you got for us. You know, I think before we started the show, I said, you know, I had this idea for Teslas and charging and I hope it wasn't super simple. This is a pretty simple idea overall it's the Tesla logo that's plugged in and it looks like it's charging, but I think what really makes this image really fun and and great is that I added Alex and Sheridan's dog Tesla, and he says are you I love it I love it. How do I buy this, Len. Well, if you're a guy I'm glad you asked if you go to my patreon, which is patreon.com forward slash Len you become a patron and you get every single one of these drawings I do every week. In your mailbox or just, you know, you can download it right there or if you'd like to go the old fashioned route, you go to Len Peralta store.com and it's right there on the front page just click it and buy. You also really nailed the asymmetrical dog ear look. One ear is kind of cocked up a little bit higher professional. That's why we have you as our illustrator. You got the Tesla logo that's on her chest. That's right. That's right. That's why it's everything works out. It's a beautiful day. Thank you. Thanks Len and also thanks to Allison Sheridan for being with us today. Allison, you work hard in the podcasting world where can folks keep up with the rest of your work. Well, you can head on over to pod feet.com and you can hear all about how to diagnose a dying 2016 MacBook Pro. Yeah. In fact, if you've been wondering about underlying causes of certain things during the show, that would be one of them and where are you, because I've heard you talk about this on no silicast I've heard you talk about it on the SMR podcast. Are you any closer to have solving this this weird conundrum. I have not figured out everything that's wrong with it. We think it's it might all be based on the battery that the battery is actually affecting the CPU speed, which is really weird. But if you could see my video, you would see my jauntily placed box to mail my MacBook Pro back to Apple, because when I went to go make an appointment at my local Apple store, it came up and said, you can get an appointment. Never. There are no appointments. Wow. It's that book. Yeah. So anyway, so I'll be getting a new battery and, you know, while with them, they might as well replace the broken keys because that's what happens on these models. Oh yeah. Might as well while I got it. Well, good luck. I hope you get it fixed soon. Folks, we're changing our patron rewards. So we came up with a proposal and we'd like you to look it over. Let us know if there's anything in there you can't live with. Patreon reward changes at daily tech news show dot com slash Patreon. We also love your feedback and our email address is feedback at daily tech news show dot com join us live Monday through Friday for 30pm Eastern. That's 2030 UTC and you can find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live. See y'all Monday. This show is part of the frog pants network. Get more at frog pants dot com. Time in the club helps you have enjoyed this bro.