 Coming up on DTNS, do you trust a digital driver's license? Amazon wants to hire even more people, and Patrick Norton is here to tell us how the chip shortage might affect your holiday shop. This is the Daily Tech News for the first of September, the first day ever in September 2021. Anyway, in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. Dogtown, St. Louis, not San Francisco. I'm Patrick Norton. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. You've just missed why Sarah Lane once hated lasagna and her freestyle rapping, if you weren't listening to Good Day Internet. So get that wider show, become a member, Patreon.com slash DTNS. That is where you can join our top patrons like Philip Shane, Paul Boyer, and Brad. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Nikkei Asia's sources say that Google began development of its own arm-based CPUs for use in Chromebooks with plans to roll them out in 2023. The company also reportedly ramped up plans to produce CPUs for its Pixel smartphone line. The latest update to the messaging app Telegram supports an unlimited number of viewers for live stream content. Previously, it was limited to a thousand. So if you've ever hit that thousand in one person, now you don't have a limit. The app also lets users remove captions and sender names when forwarding a message. Earlier this week, the analysts at Sensor Tower reported that Telegram passed one billion global downloads. Microsoft will announce new products at its surface hardware line on about its surface hardware line on September 22. The online event will discuss devices, also Windows 11. Images of a surface duo, the hinged Android device, had leaked earlier this year. So an official announcement is expected along with new laptops. Wall Street Journal sources say the Apple Watch will get new health features as early as 2022. So what are we thinking they're going to have? Looks like maybe a thermometer to help with fertility tracking and a tool to tell when your blood pressure is increasing. Probably when you look at how much you paid. Apple's also reportedly seeking FDA approval on a feature to track atrial fibrillation as well as alerts about drops in blood oxygen levels. Bloomberg sources say Intuit is in talks to acquire MailChimp in a deal worth over $10 billion. The deal isn't finalized and sources say that other companies are still interested in MailChimp, so remains to be seen. But if it goes through, this would be Intuit's largest acquisition to date. All right, let's talk about SmartBulbs. Let's do it. I love SmartBulbs. I've got one behind me right now. Philips announced new updated Hue SmartBulbs, that's its SmartBulb line, including brighter 75-watt and 100-watt equivalent standard Hue bulbs, new filament bulbs that can change color temperature, and a new candle-shaped filament bulb, also updated light strips and light tubes that sink its colors with TV content. New Cigna, that's its parent company, Philips parent company, floor and table lamps that can display multiple colors at once, also coming out, and a new ceiling light called Infuse that can change colors and send light up onto the ceiling above it as an accent. The brighter bulbs are available now. The lights drip and lamps are coming in October, and the light tube and ceiling light coming in January. An update to the Hue app also adds support for dynamic scenes that continually shift color and light coming later this year, also a natural light scene that adjusts color temperature throughout the day to mimic the light of the sun. Maybe you have a murky apartment? Could be good. And if you're intrigued by syncing lights to your TV, the Hue Play HDMI sync box that enables that is getting an update later this year to support 120 Hertz gaming up to 1440p resolution, with 4K support still limited to 60 Hertz. The company also announced a new partnership with Spotify to sync lights based on music played. This is great. This is so fun. So let me preface this. I don't actually sync anything to music with my Hue lights or media, you know, if I'm watching a movie. But I have, gosh, I don't know, maybe 12 Hue lights in my apartment. Yeah, plus a couple down here in my studio. And I'm all very much into the scenes throughout the day. I do actually take advantage of light color. But something, something, the thing that stuck out to me the most is the temperature stuff based on, you know, morning versus night, which is something that we all are have gotten very used to when it comes to our screens. Like, you know, you know, if it's too late, you don't want too much blue light, won't be able to sleep well kind of thing. I actually find that much more helpful when it comes to the ambiance of the room that I'm in. I was thinking like it's nice to be able to switch between, you know, the daylight Kelvin because it makes it so much easier to work on projects versus, you know, the softer light that makes me look less like I need to be put into a box and buried to take a dirt nap as we were discussing earlier. I learned what a dirt nap was today. But no, I love and and Hugh Phillips is not the obviously Hue lights are not the only smart lights that you can buy. There are others on the market. I have a couple life axes as well. And using Amazon's assistant, you can make different smart lights talk to each other fairly well. And I think that's all going to get easier with the release of what are they calling it now, where all the companies are getting on board with smart matter. Yes, exactly. But but I'm a Hugh fan. I really am. There are so many fun, fun routines that I've even put into place. And then later been like, Yeah, that's not really a great routine, but it's still kind of fun to try out. Yeah, I actually like the ceiling lamp that points up at the ceiling. That's a cool effect. It doesn't feel like it's a big deal until you see it in action. You're like, Oh, yeah, that does look really cool. And I I wouldn't mind trying either the light tube or the other one that that that kind of keeps the color on the wall behind the TV synced with the color temperature of what you're watching. I think that can be fun. Yeah. Apple announced Arizona and Georgia will support digital drivers licenses and state IDs in Apple Wallet, a feature launching in iOS 15. Connecticut, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma and Utah are also expected to follow Arizona and Georgia in this, although we didn't get a timeline for those states. US Transportation and Safety Authority or TSA, the folks who handle security screening at US airports will accept the digital IDs for domestic air travel. So they're not just being issued by these states. You'll be able to use them to get through security. Just tap your phone on a reader to present the ID. You don't need to unlock it. That was one of the big worries about this is like unlocking a phone, handing it over to somebody. A lot of people weren't comfortable with that. You won't have to do any of that stuff. It'll be like showing a card. You'll you'll just tap it. The info on the license will be stored locally, but it does need to be verified by the state before it shows up as valid. So there is a little information exchange between you and the state. Apple isn't the only one doing this either. Oklahoma, Delaware and Arizona have worked with a company called Idemia to develop an app for digital drivers licenses. Colorado and Louisiana have had digital IDs for more than two years. And yes, other countries have digital IDs. Estonia is laughing at all of us, but we don't have time to go into all of that right now. This system could be secure and protect your privacy. It's not impossible. It's perfectly conceivable that the system could work that way. And in fact, it was very nice to find out that you will not have to unlock this, but Apple isn't giving out all the details about how this works or what information is shared with the state to validate it, which if it's limited information, it's perfectly fine. We just don't know. There's an ISO standard out there for digital IDs. If Apple's following that, I think everybody feel more comfortable because that's been well vetted and reviewed by security professionals. But Apple hasn't said if they're following it or not. So where I stand on this, I don't know about you all, but I just think I would like Apple to let security professionals vet this, be more on Apple and open about this particular thing. And I think you would rest a lot of concerns. Patrick, I know you're skeptical. You know, it's less of a skeptic than not wanting to have a single point of failure for not just my communications, my email, my navigation, my airplane tickets, my credit cards, and now my driver's license. All it takes is one terrible moment or dropping your phone or something or someone accidentally picking up your phone. For me, I prefer to have things separate so that I can't lose everything all at once. So you don't put everything in one wallet, you kind of move it around so you're safe? Well, I mean, there's some stuff I keep on my phone. I don't actually have a wallet oddly enough. Everything gets deposited in a roll in my front pocket. Whereas my dad used to say, if they steal it from there, they probably earned it. But also, my dad was like, his cash was in one pocket, his credit card was in another pocket, his checkbook was in another pocket. You know what I mean? Because he grew up in some shifty cities when being pickpocketed was actually a thing. So for me, though, having lost an ID and then had to deal with getting onto a plane without an ID or having, I just, I get the convenience, I get the convenience of having all of that information or all those credit cards on your phone. But I also run into so many places like gas stations without chip readers or gas stations without card readers or tap readers. We should be clear that this system isn't replacing your physical driver's license. It's just in addition to. That's why I like this. I haven't been on a plane in some time, but it's always the same thing. It's like, okay, well, I've got my boarding pass on my phone. That's something that I've gotten used to over the last few years, which is extremely convenient. But then I always have to fumble for my ID. And if I could just have both of those things on my phone, I'm still going to have my ID with me as like a failsafe. You know, you really need to see it. I've got it. It's kind of like how I use, because I have an iPhone, I use Apple Pay all the time, but I don't leave my credit cards at home because what if I need them? You know, and I know that the idea is to replace these physical things, replace the wallet. No wallets ever needed. I don't think we're anywhere close to that yet, but convenience factor wise, I love this idea. I'm also laughing because I was, you know, I had to fly recently and it was one of those moments where there was like, you know, your people are queuing up and there's this person that's like with their phone on the reader and, you know, and then the gate attendant is like, you know, pulling the, you know, stretching the queue, you know, I mean, it was just, it was like literally three or four people that couldn't get their phones to scan at least. I don't know. It's, when it works, it's amazing. And when it doesn't work, it's another layer of computerized frustration. I don't know. It's kind of fascinating to watch the idea that maybe someone will actually accept your ID on your phone. Like I just feel like there's going to be so many, you know, underage college kids trying to sneak into bars doing this and, you know, what app is going to slide through? What does the fake idea on your Apple wallet look like? I had to put my car in the shop last week and they needed to see proof of insurance. And I was like, gosh, I don't know. For some reason, I don't have my insurance card. And she's like, just pull it up on your phone. And I was like, Oh yeah, great. That's easy enough because I have insurance. But I also thought this is, you know, again, another layer of complexity. Well, Amazon employs almost one million people in the U.S. It's a lot of people. But Amazon's new CEO, Andy Jassy, announced that Amazon wants to get even bigger. The new CEO announced the company's plans to hire 55,000 people for corporate and technology roles in the coming months. And Reuters also notes that that figure alone, that 55,000 additional people is equal to a third of Google's headcount and almost all of Facebook's headcount. 40,000 of the new jobs will be in the U.S. with the rest in India, Germany, Japan, and a couple other countries. Some of that will be for existing retail and cloud and advertising businesses, while some is for new efforts like Project Kuiper, which aims to launch satellites to provide broadband access, which we've talked about on the show in the past. And most of the positions are in new roles. They're not vacant roles left open after people quit. They are new hires. Amazon's annual job fair takes place September 15th, and we'll probably know a little bit more about who gets hired after that. Man, I was reading this story and had not kept track of just how many people Amazon employs. The fact that a small percentage increase for them is equal to all of Facebook kind of blew me away. And Patrick, you found out that they're getting close to Walmart as far as the size of the employment. Yeah, so NBC News wrote this up, and they're reporting 1.3 million globally, 950,000 U.S. employees, not including all of the contractors like drivers that work for Amazon. This is just full-time employees. And then Walmart currently employs, quote, 1.6 million people in the U.S. So one in every 169 people in the U.S. workforce works for Amazon. About one out of every 100 people in the U.S. workforce, NBC News says, is employed by Walmart, which is a lot of people. Yeah, it's kind of mind-boggling, really. So, you know, Andy Jassy wants to look good. He wants to, you know, get ahead of some of the, he already got a controversy on his tail, and, you know, he needs to make his name now that he's taken over for Bezos. So promising some new jobs, not a bad way to do that. 55,000 sounds like a lot until you see the percentage. And, you know, like, honestly for Amazon, that's not even that many, right? Like, it's less than 1% of just their domestic workforce. Speaking of Amazon, we go ahead, Patrick. Is it less than 1%? Like, now I'm doing math. Be careful, everyone, I'm doing math. Math is hard. Well, while you're doing that, just a reminder, we briefly covered this yesterday that Axios' sources said that Amazon is investing in live audio features to expand the content that it can offer through Echo Devices and also its voice assistants. The effort is being led by Amazon's Music Division with a focus on live music, but also looking at talk radio programs and podcasts as an extension of the feature. Sources kind of framed this as a digital radio-like tool for live streaming performances rather than what some other people have compared it to would be a clubhouse knockoff. Amazon also plans to integrate this live audio into Twitch. Interesting stuff there going on with Amazon. Hey, before we move on, do you want to expand your Spanish tech skills? Well, NTX's Dan Campos is here to help. Hello, friends of DTNS. It is time for the word of the day, brought to you by Noticias de Tecnología Express. I bet you have heard the term machine learning when talking about the branch of computer sciences that develops techniques for machines to learn by themselves. Originally, it was translated as Aprendizaje de máquinas, but that expression could be unclear since it could mean that a machine was learning something or a human was learning something about a machine. That is why we use Aprendizaje automático as a proper expression when referring to machine learning. You can learn this and more words by listening to Noticias de Tecnología Express available every Friday. The demand bounced back fast starting in June, and car makers scrambled to get their orders back up. However, by the time they did, the high demand for consumer devices in part caused by work from home meant the factories were now working at or past capacity, and they had not planned for the bounce back and chip demand from the car companies. Other complicating factors contributed as well. Lockdowns at ports reduced working hours and caused backups and containers getting turned around. Sanctions on Huawei by the United States caused a lot of Chinese companies to just start stockpiling chips for fear of being next. A little bit of a toilet paper effect there. Factory fires in Japan, cold weather shutdowns of NXP and Samsung factories in Texas, and a few other weather-related events complicated things as well. Fast forward to now. When everybody needs chips and there's not enough capacity, it will take a year or two to bring new fabs online to increase the capacity, and even when you can get chips, logistics is still a mess. So you're caught up. Where are we today? Tuesday, Vauxhall Motors said it didn't think the shortage would improve for the auto industry this year. No surprise there, they're not the first to say so. Chevy has stopped making its Bolt EVs already because of the chip shortage, but now has delayed resumption of that production because of a defective battery recall. GM had already paused three plants that make pickup trucks. Last week, Toyota announced a 40% reduction in its automotive production, and also last week, TSMC announced it's going to raise its chip prices. It just has to. 10% for the advanced chips used in consumer electronics, and 20% for less advanced chips used in cars because there's more demand for those. TSMC usually sets prices with its clients in August and September, so that's normal for them to do it now. The effect on what you pay won't show up until sometime early next year. Oh, and some typhoons off the southern coast of China in July and the rise in Delta variant infections of COVID-19 have also been slowing the turnaround of containers. Reuters reported that August 5th container rates reached fresh highs, and shipping companies are now charging four to 10 times the normal price to move cargos. The rates are expected to remain high until February 2022. So that's where we are with the current chip shortage and logistics nightmare. Patrick, tell us about our holiday gadget shopping. I'm just a little ray of sunshine. I'm just DTNS' little ray of sunshine, Tom. So it's funny he's not the right word, but when you look at TSMC raising their prices, in addition to that, they're going to stop basically. They traditionally have been bulk discounts. I think Apple consumes roughly 20% of their production. There's some other major clients there. You may think of places like Qualcomm, AMD, NVIDIA, and a whole bunch of other people. So it's going to be kind of crazy because they, and it's not just car companies. I'm dealing with somebody who makes, a friend of mine, somebody who makes audio equipment, has been buying USB controllers, gray market, because they literally cannot source one of the simplest parts in the devices he builds through normal channels. And they're already currently paying like 200% on the cost of those parts. So it's one, it's not just cars. It's not just GPUs. It is consumer electronics everywhere. Oh, we also have coppers up 200%. Steel is up the better part of 200%. And the shipping rates, you mentioned the increases. I mean, you've literally gone from a 40-foot container costing like $4,000 to something like $11,000, $12,000, $13,000, $15,000, cue the warning from the audience, Tom, where I'll be correct and double-check us there. We're good. Feel free to tell us. And it's literally just doubled between July and August because of some of the COVID problems in the typhoons, but it was already up like three, three and a half times in August. It's going to be a crazy year. Some people commented when I was talking about TSMC on Twitter, they're like, this is a monopoly. And it's like, no, not for the commodity level chips, like the 40 nanometers stuff. There are at least 10 major fabs that are capable of producing the relatively simple chips, not the super high-end ones. And that's a good point because that's where the shortage is. The shortage is not with the seven nanometer chips. The shortage is with the commodity stuff, with the stuff that's easier to make and made in abundance, but it's needed by more people. Yeah. And it's so much of the, there have been capacitor shortages. I've been told there have been substrate shortages. Like one of the things I've told us is at least one GPU manufacturer is like, we could put out more cards or more chips if we could just mount the chips on something, but we can't. So there's been supply line issues all the way down. On the upside, memory prices are falling after they hit a high earlier this year, GPU availability. We were, I think laughing is the right word, but GPU sales are actually up over last year significantly. You just haven't been able to buy them because they're still not enough to satisfy everybody's demand at this point. And that's been, I don't expect that to change much before. It'll be interesting. Using feeling words in the group, I feel that when Intel launches their GPUs next year, and they've bought a significant amount of memory to build into GPUs, we might see some easing in that. Also, very, very curious to see what those GPUs perform like when they ship. And that's a question for another day. Bottom line, chopperly for Xmas, don't order Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or anything else you want to celebrate or birthdays. I wouldn't expect your next GPU until 2022. Don't expect car flashes to fall anytime soon. And good luck. Yeah. So in other words, holiday prices might not be that bad because of the delayed effect. But after the first of the year, you might see some spikes. Yeah. And speaking of computer hardware, we were always like, don't buy your PC parts piecemeal. Save your money when you have your money. Buy it later because over time, you're always either going to pay less for today's chips or boards or motherboards, or you're going to pay the same amount and get more performance. At this point, I feel like if you're looking to buy something, keep an eye on the availability. We've seen things that never run out of supply. Subwoofers, like SVS has done a really good job of managing Subwoofer availability, but Shoe, Monoprice, RSL Labs, it's been really strange. I've never seen AVR's sell out, but like Denin sold out of all their AVRs for a while last year. So if you're thinking about shopping, keep an eye on availability and shop early because it may not be available later. And I'm going to hate to tell people to go buy stuff. But it's a temporary exception to the general rule, right? I'm going to call my shot right now. Everybody's buying stuff. At first, it was because of work from home. Now it's because of spending more time at home, or because the availability isn't there. And if you see a thing and you're thinking about getting it, you're going to jump on it rather than put it off because it may not be there next time you want to want to find it. I think that is going to lead mid-2022 at the earliest, maybe later, to a glut. I think down the road, because people are like, yeah, I have this laptop. It's good for three or four years. Yeah, I bought that speaker. I don't need another one for a while. We're going to see a glut of consumer electronics. Hopefully that helps to ease the shortage. And you may be able to get some bargains at that point. That would be nice. Yeah. That's not for a while though. That's just me saying that on the other side of this, look for that to happen. Maybe the way I should say it is, when you see that start to happen, that's when you know it's over. That's when you know what kind of got through the situation. It'll be interesting to see the iPhone prices and, oh yeah, I wouldn't expect a lot of big, deep Black Friday deals this year. Yeah, they'll be shallower. It'll be more of a gray Friday this year. Apollo Global Management has completed its acquisition of Verizon's media group. That's the one that includes Yahoo, AOL, a bunch of ad tech media properties like Tech Crunch and Engadget. Verizon Media, now not part of Verizon, will be called Yahoo. They're just putting all the Yahoo properties alongside Tech Crunch and Engadget and AOL under the Yahoo umbrella. It will operate as a standalone company under the Apollo group and Verizon Media CEO Guru Gal Rappan will stay on and he will now be CEO of Yahoo. I thought it would be interesting to touch on this real quickly because we've all been through this before. There was the 99 through 2003 sell-off of tech magazines and publications and Patrick, you worked for Zip Davis when they were managed by an equity group and we're sort of seeing that happen to websites now. We saw CNET sold to Red Ventures and then Red Ventures went off and sold Tech Republic to a holding company. So it's kind of a trend again and I was curious if you had any advice for the people going through that now. Buckle up, kids. I don't know. It's it was really odd to watch a lot of the purchases that were made, especially at Verizon. And it's been hard. I'd like to say something intelligent and soothing, but I feel like private equity tends to come in and tighten up belt buckles that have already been tightened beyond belief and just hang on, folks. And the good news is PC Mag's still around. A lot of those properties that equity companies took over are still around and generally what happens is stuff survives. You're not going to see TechCrunch go away, but it will be a while before that content gets hot again. And as long as they can make it through, then hopefully, things get brighter towards the other end of it. Yeah, I mean, somebody who worked at TechCrunch a few years ago, when Verizon bought AOL's properties, but bought AOL, it was kind of like, we're all like, oh, we're such an autonomous group. What will happen? Nothing. Nothing happened. And that doesn't mean that properties within these kinds of companies that gobble each other up or swap them back and forth don't have issues later on. That does happen. This feels like moving around of management that was never really available to us to start with. Yeah. All right, folks, let's check out the mailbag. All right, let's do it. This one comes from Alan, and this is in response to our conversation about floating pizza yesterday. We were talking about astronauts at the ISS eating floating pizza, and why the pizza was floating, but the toppings weren't floating off of the pizza. And Alan says, remember seeing an interview a while back? By the way, he does link us to a couple of links that describe this, so check it out in our show notes. A while back that talked about how liquids act like glue, indeed, in zero gravity because of the surface tension. And you need to have liquids in everything since anything loose could otherwise float away. Alan says, I tried to find a succinct description of this, the closest I could find is an explainer. He points us to a NASA link. But he says, if you have a few minutes, and this is also a YouTube link that he links us to, here's an interesting and entertaining video that a former astronaut made a couple of years ago about eating food in space. He mentions the thing about liquids and surface tension. He even talks about pizza, although he said he had heard about it, but he was skeptical. Well, we got video evidence now. So thank you, Alan, though. This is great. So it's the surface tension. It's nice to have a little backup for what we seem to be seeing there and get a little more on the science about it. Appreciate that. Yeah, we really do. And if you ever have feedback and anything to add or a question or comment about anything we talk about feedback at dailytechnewshow.com is where to send that email. We also have six brand new bosses, everybody. Yesterday we asked pretty nicely. We said, if you can, you know, be a new boss, please do. Now's the time. And boy, did you deliver. So thank you to our new bosses, Logan, Richard Alvarez, Brad Cash, Craig Godspeed, Chuck Esplaneta, and Lisa Bourbon, all who just started backing us on Patreon. So thank you, Logan. Thank you, Richard. Thank you, Brad. Thank you, Craig. Thank you, Chuck. And thank you, Lisa. Yeah. No, I was blown away when I saw the little list in there today. So thank you. Maybe we could get another list tomorrow. If you're on the fence, if you've been out there, like, oh, I would like my name to have been there. It's not too late. Join us tomorrow. You certainly can. Thank you also to Patrick Norton, who joins us regularly. Patrick, always a pleasure. Let folks know where they can keep up with the rest of your work. AVXL.com. Research for AVXL on your favorite podcatcher. And I'm generally always at Patrick Norton on the Twitters. Excellent. Well, folks, we are live Monday through Friday on this show 4.30 p.m. Eastern 2030 UTC. Put it on your calendar and find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We will be back tomorrow with Justin Robert Young. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com.