 Coming up on DTNS, how mad are we at Sonos for bricking speakers? YouTube may not be as radicalizing as you've heard, and the pre-CES announcements are here, including new smart fridges and things you'll actually care about, too. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, January 2nd, 2020, in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. I'm Oakland, California. I'm Justin Robert Young. And I'm Roger Chang, the show's producer. Well, first of all, we're a little sad that Sarah Lane, throughout her back, and she will not be with us for the first show back 2020. She was with us for prep. Her mark is all over this rundown. She will hopefully be back with us tomorrow, but we wanted to get in shape, so she'll be ready for CES coverage starting on Monday. But we are very happy that this show right here, Justin, it's DTNS's birthday, January 2nd. Yes, yes, indeed. And we are thrilled for it to be. How old is DTNS turning? DTNS is now six years old, so entering into its seventh year as a show, making it the longest-running tech show I've ever been on. That is amazing. How do you feel? Because this is obviously the one that you control the most. Yeah, stunning, stunning for something that, as someone pointed out to me the other day on Twitter, is still temporarily named. I mean, I named it Daily Tech News Show as a placeholder for whatever I would eventually call it. And that name has stuck around. So anyway. It does bring me back very quickly to over six years ago when I was talking to you and you were in transition, and I asked you, what are you going to do? He's like, I don't really know. And I kind of giggled because I knew that there is, Tom Merritt is a Daily Tech News robot, and this is the purpose for which we're put on Earth. Absolutely. And I couldn't be happier that folks have supported the show well enough to keep us going into our seventh year. So thank you very much. Also, we enjoyed doing Good Day Internet. That's the wraparound show that you get on Patreon. And today I told the story of my pursuit of wrestling merchandise for Justin Robert Young. And after DTNS, he will be unboxing that merchandise that I acquired for him there. If you want that, you got to become a member, patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. TikTok released its first transparency report on which countries submit requests for user data or to have content removed. Report shows that India and the United States had the most takedown requests from TikTok, 11 for India, 6 for the United States. China not listed in this, but that's because TikTok doesn't operate in China. Duyen is Bite Dance's TikTok-like app in China and therefore not part of the TikTok transparency report. Hmm, how interesting. Swiss president and finance minister Yuli Maurer told broadcaster SRF that Libra has failed. He believes that central banks will not accept the basket of currencies underpinning it. And quote. I mean, when Switzerland's coming out on top, I was saying that. This does not look good for Libra this year. Researchers from the University of Rochester, New York published a paper in the journal Small demonstrating a biocomputer made from 32 strands of DNA. This is going to be a trend to watch. Designed to calculate square roots, the researchers developed a 10-bit logic circuit using chains of DNA linked together in double strands with input signals colored using fluorescence. Every square root from 1 to 900 was assigned a color value, allowing the researchers to analyze values after passing through the logic gate. Tier 1 auto parts maker Bosch announced that it has developed production-ready LiDAR sensors for use in vehicles. The company is producing the sensors at scale to help keep costs down and spur widespread adoption and says the sensors are suitable for all autonomous driving use cases. Yeah, Tier 1 auto parts maker, that means you're going to see this shown up on more cars less expensively. California's Consumer Privacy Act, the CCPA, took effect Wednesday, January 1st, requiring companies in California to notify users of intent to monetize data and offer a way to opt out of that monetization. Users can also request copies of any data that's stored on them, as well as request their data be deleted. Businesses must disclose what info they collect, for what purpose and with whom they share it. California will start finding companies for violations after a six-month grace period ends, June 30th. A volunteer directory of pages that give you information about where you can opt out of data collection is being compiled at caprivacy.me. Tesla will begin delivering its first Chinese-made Tesla Model 3s to customers in the Shanghai Tesla factory starting January 7th. Tesla says its Shanghai produced Model 3s will be 50% cheaper per unit of capacity than the ones made in its Fremont, California Sparks, and Nevada factories. All right, let's talk a little bit more about big Apple news, actually big news for a different company that used to do business with Apple. Indeed. Imagination Technologies announced a new multi-year license agreement with Apple providing the company with, quote, access to a wider range of imagination's intellectual property, and quote, imagination previously designed the GPUs based in Apple's iPhones and iPads, but Apple cut ties with the company in 2017 when it moved its designs in-house. The move was largely responsible for imagination being bought by Canyon Bridge Capital that same year and subsequently going private. It is unclear what intellectual property will use from the licensing agreement. Yeah, so this is just good news for Imagination Technologies. It looked dire for them when Apple removed the business, but it sounds like behind the scenes they were able to persuade Apple to pay for some intellectual property to make Apple's job easier and that will keep this company from going under. Usually, you see the story of Apple turned away and that's it, and they're never giving you another dime, so it's interesting to see the other shoe drop here. I think it does make sense that this was a bit of a quieter situation. This was not Imagination Technologies immediately launching into a big public lawsuit. They were bought by another company who felt that there was something ideal to be made with Apple and now they are going to make that deal, and while that does not bring back the job-creating prowess of Imagination Technologies, it certainly does bring in somebody to their new owners. Certainly, certainly. A study from data scientist Mark Ledwitsch and UC Berkeley researcher Anna Zeitsev examined the role YouTube plays in suggesting radicalized content. Now, we should be clear. This isn't a comprehensive study. It's not the last study that needs to happen, it's a specific way of recommending, but here's what they found. The study classified 760 politics-oriented channels by left, right, center, radical, et cetera, and looked at public channel data to determine the most likely recommended channels that the algorithm would suggest. So, basically, when you look at a channel, it'll say, hey, if you like this channel, you might like these other channels, and that's the data they were drawing from. The study found that YouTube's recommendation algorithm and I'm quoting from the study now, actively discourages viewers from visiting radicalizing or extremist content. Instead, the algorithm is shown to favor mainstream media and cable news content over independent YouTube channels, even things like Young Turks get called out in the study. Quoting from the study still, the algorithm tended to recommend center or left-of-center channels more often than conservative ones. Recommendations in general seem to promote filter bubbles. So, far from if you were, you know, watching how to change a light bulb, the next video would tell you how to blow up an embassy. It seems like you just get shunted on to mainstream stuff more often than not. You know, this has always been an interesting story for me being at the center of both a tech news gathering enterprise, which has talked a lot about YouTube and YouTube algorithms and their decisions to create and promote more mainstream, often television or mainstream media repurpose content because that tends to be advertiser friendly, while also being in the political sphere where, as you mentioned, there seems to be this direct slip and slide from literally any video on YouTube to hear some people tell it that goes right into hearing about how the Rothschild family owns all of the world. Well, I tend to always side more with where this study came down on, which is interesting, that YouTube absolutely does not want you to be looking at anything they can't sell an ad on. So, I don't think that it's necessarily even that there is a political bias per se. I think that CNN, MSNBC, and mainstream news outlets, which, you know, tend to, specifically in the MSNBC case, Tilt Left of Center are just the things that YouTube understands that they're going to be able to sell an ad on top of where they don't know, even with the young Turks, something that makes its living on YouTube. Not everything they do is going to be advertiser appropriate. And like I said, this is one study and the authors of the study don't consider it the definitive final study. They point out that there haven't been a lot of studies like this, and so this contributes to the literature. So if you want to investigate more, find out, yeah, is that Left of Center thing? Is there anything to that? Is there a anti-conservative bias to the algorithm? Or is that just the way the study was constructed? Those are the kinds of things that need to be investigated. But I like that we are getting more of these kinds of studies, because if we think the solution to the actual problem of people who are radicalized is shutting down YouTube videos and we spend all our energy doing that, and then we find out, oh, that's not what was radicalizing them. That's the kind of energy that should have been spent on doing something that actually could combat the problem. Sure, and then, I mean, there's much, much, much, much, much, much more conversation on exactly what radicalizing is. Well, yeah, exactly. You fall into a whole slippery slope and we haven't gone into how they decided to categorize things, how they determined what the 760 channels fell into which buckets. That is all in the study, though. That is a peer-reviewed study that you can go look at. If you're interested in that, go to the article at Engadget and get the link to the original article as well. You should read it, even if you think that the study is trash. Speaking of trash, Sonos is offering a feature called Recycle Mode as part of a trade-up program that lets you trade in older Sonos speakers for a discount on a newer one. If your old Sonos is eligible for a trade-up, you can confirm you want to trade it in the Sonos app. It will give you a 30% discount on the new speaker and begins a 21-day countdown for your old speaker to go into Recycle Mode. At the end of the 21 days, the old speaker has its data erased and is permanently deactivated. That leaves you with no other option than to taking it to an e-waste facility or shipping it back to Sonos for recycling. The products in the trade-up program are sold. Sonos says it would be irresponsible to reintroduce them to new customers that may not have the context that they are indeed 10-year-old products that may not be able to deliver the Sonos experience they expected. A lot of people got extra outraged at this. I don't think you need to get extra outraged. This is really a more flexible way of doing it than what Apple or Microsoft or any of these trade-in programs do where they make you send the device to them. You don't get to resell that either, right? You send the device in and then they give you a discount on a new device or they give you a credit towards a new device. What Sonos is saying is look, we're going to give you the 30% discount then we're going to shut down your old speaker because we don't think it's a good idea for other people to get this speaker that's 10 years old and rather than making you ship it to us, you have the option to ship it to us so we'll recycle it or you can just go recycle it yourself but we want to keep it out of the ecosystem. It's that last part we want to keep it out of the ecosystem that I do have a problem with Sonos. It's like, look if you're not going to take it back I don't think having these out there is really going to cause confusion. It's certainly not going to undermine the market for your new stuff. I find it ridiculous that you have to brick a speaker because someone wanted a 30% discount because I can go sell my old Sonos speaker right now without getting the 30% discount and cause just the same amount of so-called confusion. No, you just hit it. This is a non-story. This is Sonos saying we would like to buy the ability to keep this ecosystem as up to date as possible. We would like to buy that ability from you. You do not have to sell it. You are not compelled to sell it. Your old speakers do not automatically click into obsolescence. Only if you get the discount. You are choosing for Sonos to buy the right to turn off your speaker permanently and then be sold for part somewhere else. This is not a forced thing. The way that this is being covered and reacted to makes it sound like at year 12 your Sonos speaker starts ticking because they want to make sure that everybody has new speakers. That is not the case. If you do not want to do it, do not take their money. That is a fair point. You are starting to persuade me a little there because if you look at it as and it is optional, that is the key here is you do not have to apply for the 30% discount and if you do not ask for the discount, your speaker does not get turned off. It continues to work and Sonos has been very good about supporting products 10 plus years which most electronics companies do not do. I want to give them lots of credit for that. I just don't see why they can't just give you the 30% discount. I don't know why give you the 30% discount if you are not giving them anything. 30% deep discount. That is a good chunk of change off a new speaker that they are doing to make sure that nobody buys a speaker. How about this, they are abdicating their responsibility when they don't make you send the speaker to them because you might just throw it in the trash before you were saying that is a good thing for them and they don't make you do it. Yeah, it is. Actually, it is good for them. And to be honest, this is such a small problem. How many people really buy you speakers? I know you exist and there are three of you writing me an email right now saying I do but most people don't. It is not a huge market. I don't know. I guess it is your right. It is a 30% discount for taking old speakers out of circulation and hopefully getting them properly recycled and offering you the ability to properly recycle it. This is a non store. Hey, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each state about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to DailyTechHeadlines.com It is time for the CES product parade. Hey Hey, I know I'm stealing your parade music. I'm sorry. Dell's new XPS 13 is leading the parade today. 13.4 inch display 1610 aspect ratio claimed size of an 11 inch device. So they're saying we got a 13.4 inch screen in the same size as our 11 inch used to be. It's got a 91.5% screen to body ratio. That's the key. This is a lot of screen optional 4K Ultra HD plus 9% larger keycaps 17% larger touchpad though it is still the scissor switch keyboard. So it's not the same as the XPS 2 in one, which has a very shallower keyboard. So you get that nice feel. 10th Gen Intel i3 to i7 max up to 32 gigs of RAM to tell you about the storage. They're claiming up to 19 hours of battery life. It has Wi-Fi 6 in it and available January 7th in the UK, France, Germany, US and Switzerland and in February in other regions starting at $999 and a developer edition that comes with Ubuntu coming February 4th to Canada, Europe and the US for $1,200. Don't ask me why it's more expensive to get it. That's an interesting situation. But yeah, people are going gaga over this new XPS, Justin. Yeah, you know, it seems like obviously that is an insane screen to body ratio. And I kind of wonder where the future of these kinds of products are going to go. Whether or not for laptops that's just where it is. We also got the latitude 95, 10, 2 in 1 in March 26, no price on that, but it uses AI to improve system responsiveness. It says the battery is going to last up to 30 hours on that latitude. 3.2 pounds Wi-Fi 6 5G LTE E-SIM support. They announced some new monitors, 42, 27 and 25 inch USB-C monitors. The 42 inch one is 4K and comes January 30th for $1,050. It's a few days before CES, which means we get an announcement from LG Display about rollable televisions. LG Display is the third year in a row, but unlike prototypes from the past two years, this one rolls down from the ceiling instead of up from a base. Last year, LG Display, which is the division of LG that sells displays to everybody, they sell them to themselves, their own television department, but they're a separate division from the television division. So LG Displays may show up in competing television manufacturers. Last year, LG said it's foldable would show up in 2019. It did not. This year, they're not making any promises about coming down from the ceiling. They also announced a 40 and 8 inch OLED display before the smallest one they had was 55 and some transparent displays meant for partitions and airline seats so they could show your seat name with a transparent display and plastic OLED design for cars. But that ceiling rolling down like a projector, right? Oh, what a feeling when you're rolling from the ceiling. This is a very, very interesting idea specifically to not do it from the ground where obviously people are going to walk and maybe trip and stuff like that. This is a lot more hideable and interesting. Clipsch is going to show off their smart soundbars. They've got a Bar 44 3.1 channel with Bluetooth streaming for $499 coming in the summer. Bar 48 now has Wi-Fi. That's an update to the old Bar 48 and a more compact design. That one's coming in the autumn for $699 but the PSD resistance from Clipsch is Bar 54 with Amazon and Google voice assistant support. No mic just to be able to tell your Echo or your Google Home send some audio to that speaker. Also has AirPlay 2 if you're an Apple user Wi-Fi 5.1.4 surround 12 inch wireless subwoofer and Dolby Atmos. That one's $1,500 shipping in the autumn. There are three of these compare with a surround 3 unit to add two extra channels of surround. So the 5 point channel Bar 54 would become 7. The other two would become 5. That is a beast and a half. Oh my lord. It's curious that they don't have a mic on it. Would you assume that they would have had a mic? I mean obviously this is a high end kind of stuff so you're probably networking it with other things but I think it's a smart choice because they're saying we're not trying to make this a smart speaker. We're trying to make this an accessory to your smart speaker. And so we keep the cost down by not having to put that far field microwave in there. GE announced new additions to its connected home line. It's called C for GE which is a horrible name but it's actually a pretty good line. There's a hubless now three wire smart switch and hubless dimmers. So in other words you can get their smart switches and their dimmers without having to buy a hub. Both devices can integrate with Amazon voice services and Google Home over Wi-Fi. So same thing they don't have mics in them but they can integrate. Bluetooth mesh for connecting to other C devices so they're really trying to say you don't need a hub for our stuff anymore. Neither of these require a neutral wire for installation. So that's useful in older homes where you only have three wires to hook up. Now you can do a dimmer on three wires and it includes an adapter for your bulb to prevent the ghosting and flashing that that fourth wire, that neutral wire is meant for. They're available in button paddle or toggle so whatever you have in your house you can keep it the same. And the dimmers can come with or without motion sensors if you want. GE also announced a wire free switch and dimmer set. Those just attach to the wall with adhesive and operate on a coin battery that gives you a two-year battery life. That way you don't have to wire it into anything. Connects to Google home devices over Bluetooth and GE says wire free motion sensor and wire free remote controls will be coming along with a wire free dimmer at the same time. All these devices start at $22.99 coming around the same time as the three wire switches which arrive Q1. The three wire switches start at $40 and the dimmers doing Q2 start at $50. You know what this made me think of is 2020 the year where a lot of these smart home devices start getting like $7.11 cheap. Yes. A lot of tees to the point where it is just end cap at any random convenience store. $19.99. You don't need a hub. You just buy this thing. You know the ones with the batteries you don't even need to wire it. Just pop it on the wall. Yeah. Yeah. Because that I think is something that especially with more compatibility is more of a game changer to more people. Samsung announced an actual product. The Galaxy Book Flex Alpha ahead of CES. This is really just a cheaper version of the Galaxy Book Ion on the Galaxy Book Flex. 13.3 inch 1080PQ LED display, 10th generation Intel processor, 8 or 12 gigabytes of RAM 256 or 512 storage 17 and a half battery life and USBC fast charging. It does not. The Alpha does not have the Qi wireless charging pad or the S Pen that the Galaxy Book Flex not has. Pricing for the Alpha starts at $830 available first half of 2020. Samsung has also been teasing something called Neon at Neon.Life. It's an artificial human project to be unveiled at CES. I'm sure we'll find out about it in the Samsung keynote. Let's go digital found info in a trademark application describing Neon as computer generated imagery and virtual characters for TV, movies, augmented reality, video games and more. Applications of Neon.Life and core are three trademarks described tools for creating and editing virtual characters. It sounds like some kind of AR VR thing. And then finally German website 4K film published renders of what it says is Samsung's bezel less 8K TV. Sam mobile says its sources say this will only be available as a 65 inch model. Apparently Samsung can weld the display panel to the TV body in such a way that there is zero bezel, not just a thin bezel at all. Just a smooth product that you could skip like a huge stone in a massive level. No bezel getting in the way. I'm very interested to find out what this Neon thing is. My gut tells me it's going to be disappointing. Well, it's going to be some kind of Samsung thing that you can only run on Samsung products like milk their music thing. I don't doubt far be it for me to be somebody that will explain why this Samsung announcement is not going to be a disappointment. But I am curious to see where we're going to go with a lot of these AR and VR kind of character creations. Yeah, and I could be wrong. Maybe it'll be something that works on everything and it's super revolutionary. Well, we'll find out. And of course, it's not a CES or least it hasn't been for about 20 years without a smart fridge or two. And we've got one from Samsung and one from LG. If you're looking for a buzzword to attach to a buzzy product like a smart fridge, why it would have to be artificial intelligence and by gosh both of them use the word AI. The idea as ever is the fridge has a camera that scans your food and because it's got AI lets you know when you're running out of stuff and can even suggest recipes or meals you can make from the food that you have. The Samsung Family Hub uses the AI so that you don't have to identify the items. It's an AI that's got AI recognition automatically supposedly meal planning comes from whisk which Samsung recently acquired and the touch screen supports video clips now and can mirror Samsung phones and TV so you can send things from your television to the fridge screen. The LG Instaview think you of course also has some AI. It's a 22 inch display that's almost the length of the right side so it can show you what's inside the fridge. You can also open the door. It sort of becomes a fake transparent by showing you a video stream of what's inside your fridge and it's a French door thing. It's freezer on the left fridge on the right so you're seeing pretty much everything in the fridge. It also has a craft ice feature which has been around on LG fridges for a while that makes spherical ice balls so that your whiskey doesn't melt into the fridge. So you can see a few connoisseurs. The early adopters for fridges will be very excited by these new. I have never been even in an Airbnb that had a smart fridge in it. I don't I mean like I talk about something that is yet to hit that saturation price point right smart. Just just not there. Thanks to everybody who participates in our subreddit. You can submit to us. We'll be popping in there even over the holidays people are getting in there wishing each other Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and sharing links you can join that by linking to your Patreon account at patreon.com . Check out the mail bag Matt wrote in and said dear Tom Sarah and Roger I hope you are having a nice holiday break and Happy New Year. Thank you Matt. If it's easy to gather the data from your friends, product services and trends in 2015 you had predicted to come true in the next five years almost like a meta prediction result show. I love this idea Matt. So our bonus show is usually looking back at the rundown from five years ago for that month and we just picked stories that kind of catch our eye. But we should do a little find for 2020 or five years when we're going through that rundown each month what stuff did they say we would be getting this month in 2020 and did we get it I think that'd be great. Oh yeah yeah because you know those five year predictions especially in the last you know the sense you've been doing it to Daily Tech news show and the various different incarnations you can have a pretty good accuracy rate with those like things have moved fast enough that even crazy predictions are more realistic. Well and everybody always says are these Gartner projections right well we could look back and take a look. Hey shout out to patrons at our master and grand master levels including Chris Allen to Gracia A. Daniels and Ken Hayes and of course thank you Justin Robert Young for being with us how are things going in 2020 so far. You know living the dream 48 hours in it couldn't have gone better. I am very very proud to be on the final episode of I raise the dead. I can't believe you're already on the final one that's amazing. We are on the final one and who's going to win the election I can't wait to find out. Well tell you what our last our last episode chronicles the election itself it is probably the most dense information wise that we have and man am I proud of it I really really would encourage I know that obviously this is a linear story you should start from the very beginning and you should listen to all of it but if you just want that shot of adrenaline that might interest you in the entire series I would encourage you to listen to episode 5 campaigns aren't one is the name of it you can get it on raise the dead podcast or any of the podcast platforms it brings you through the actual election itself including the debates I make the case that everything you know about the debates is probably wrong the things that the Kennedy campaign really did do some the complicated history that the Kennedy campaign had on race specifically and this is probably the most controversial the moment that Richard Nixon found out that personal medical information had been stolen from a doctor information that could end his career should it get out so go ahead and check that out raisethedeadpodcast.com we have new patreon reward merchandise to celebrate our six years of DTNS Len Peralta created a six year anniversary DTNS logo and if you back certain levels of patreon.com slash DTNS for three months so if you stayed in December and you're doing January that's two out of the three you can get either a sticker a poster a mug or a t-shirt get the details at patreon.com slash DTNS slash merch our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com we're live Monday through Friday 4 30 p.m. eastern 21 30 UTC at dailytechnewshow.com slash live back tomorrow with our very first guest ever coming back on the show Tim Stevens from CNET and of course Len Peralta will be here as well have a great day we'll talk to you then this show is part of the frog pants network get more at frogpants.com I hope you have enjoyed this program have a great day