 Coming up on DTNS the robots are taking over the warehouses turns out 5g is fast Just like they said it would be and why Netflix wants to cancel your Netflix account for you This is the Daily Tech news for Thursday May 21st 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio Redwood I'm Sarah Lane from Oakland, California. I'm Justin Robert Young I'm the shows producer Roger Chang. We were just talking about squad cast and Me causing trouble on Twitter on good day internet. You want to get that wider show become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS let's start with a few tech things you should know Earlier this week AT&T said it would comply with the National Advertising Review Board recommendation that it stopped using 5g evolution in marketing in It as for its advanced LTE service However an AT&T spokesperson speaking to the Wall Street Journal says that the decision only applied to ads Indicating that the 5g logo will still be used on 4g devices reserve the right to confuse people. Good job AT&T The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon is considering delaying its prime day promotional event until September Will any tradition remain untouched? According to internal meeting notes seen by Reuters Amazon expects to lose a hundred Million dollars from excess inventory from the delay held last year in July the two-day promotion brought in an estimated $7 billion The Guardian sources say the UK's National Health Service contact tracing app for COVID-19 Currently in trial on the Isle of Wight will not be deployed until sometime in June It was supposed to be like the first one out of the gate UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock previously said last week it would roll out in mid-bay Right games is tactical shooter Valorant is set for release on June 2nd The game is rights first major release since League of Legends and has been enclosed beta since April Which will end on May 28th Valorant will be a free PC title available across the majority of regions worldwide So says the company drops enabled on this next quick hit a few Supply chain nuggets Samsung began work on a sixth Korean production line to make five nanometer logic chips in direct competition With TSMC Samsung operates five foundry lines in Korea and one in the US Digitime sources in Taiwan say Apple has engaged LG to make a camera module for a forthcoming 6.1 inch and 6.7 inch OLED iPhone while sharp and O film will make camera modules for a low-end 5.5 and 6.1 inch iPhone Samsung announced the terrace for your house potentially. It's a 4k TV designed for outdoor viewing The terrace is IP 55 water and dust resistance has 2000 It's a brightness so you can see it when you're outside in the sun also includes an HD base T receiver That lets you run power 4k video and audio through a single cable. That's nice when you're running cables through the backyard 55 inch model is three thousand four hundred fifty five dollars 65 inch five thousand dollars 75 inch sixty five hundred available today in the US and Canada Do you think that's why they call it terrace? No, I'd be no the korea. No, I don't know Whatever popular show google maps now features an accessible places option an icon will show wheelchair Accessible entrances to locations and additional accessible seating restrooms or parking google also updated live transcribe on android to vibrate When somebody says a user's name sound amplifier for hearing impaired users now supports bluetooth headphones And google launched action blocks in the play store to create one-press home screen buttons for multi-step tasks And finally ea will open source the code for its real-time strategy game command and conquer tiberian dawn and command and conquer red alert Under the gnu gpl version 3 license The code will be released to coincide with the release of command and conquer remastered collection on june 9th The code can be used to create mods and can be used in conjunction with a new map editor included with the collection All right, let's talk about intel For for years now intel has been trying to figure out How to come up with that next thing that helps it evade relying only on x86 processors Well, here's the latest attempt intel announced the acquisition of rivet networks You may not know rivet by name, but you might know the killer brand of ethernet controllers wireless chips and management software Killer nicks are in your laptops from del alienware hp and others They're great for reducing latency and prioritizing traffic So they're really popular in gaming laptops intel actually already manufactured the killer wireless ac 1550 nick a few years back So these companies have worked together before and now they will be the same company The company will be rolled into intel's wireless solutions group and intel will continue to sell killer branded products And continue to license killer software to customers However, when asked by pc world of killer technology will be sold alongside amd processors and laptops Intel's eric mcloughlin said It's probably too early to comment on that That sounds like a long way of saying no pc world also reports intel wants to bring the killer intelligence engine Uh, that's the one which identifies the best wi-fi signal and may even recommend router upgrades to bluetooth The hope is that the same thing it can do for wi-fi where where you can only Connect a one thing at a time But it could tell you what the best ones are could be used on bluetooth where you can connect to multiple bluetooth connections and All of them could then work on your pc seamlessly with this software Possibly finally bringing that vision of a wireless dock To your laptop and maybe even complete wireless setups no wires at all That's that's a big promise. We've got a long way to go to get there But what do you all think of intel? Sort of diversifying itself by looking at at the connectivity and saying we can come up with a really cool package of things for you With the network interface card I I think I think it goes to what you're saying that they're trying to look for something that they can they can expand on wireless wireless technology is something that intel has experience in and uh, they're they're They're pushed into doing gpus in the same way that amd when they acquired ati Managed to do with their uh with their portfolio Hasn't worked out for intel. I mean a good chunk of the staff that was working on their next gp Discrete gpu up and kind of left So now they're just kind of feeling around for things that they think there's something in their wheelhouse that they could really expand out on Yeah, and I you know, uh, no nobody likes lag killer very good at killing lag So uh lag and latency that could be a differentiator for intel Hard to say Intel has tried a million of these approaches. We're we're going to be the ones who lead in this We're going to acquire this technology. We're going to develop this technology But killer highly respected and if they're not Cousing that brand if they're not syncing that brand Even if they make it difficult for a vendor to include it with an amd processor I wouldn't love that But I don't think that gets rid of the value of the killer parts, especially if you can buy them on your own Uh for certain uses. So yeah, I think this is a smart acquisition for intel. We'll see what they do with it Facebook announced the rollout of new alert tools in messenger that will display warnings for messages that appear to come from financial scammers or potential Child abusers as well as provide tips and encourage blocking that sender the machine learning system looks at message metadata Not message content to determine if a message is suspect Meaning it will work with end-to-end encrypted secret conversations in messenger That is interesting. The system will look at things like adults users Adult users sending messages to large groups of minors or sending messages between users without connecting social graph Or if that user has been blocked by a lot of other users as potential signals The feature has been rolling out to android since march and is now starting to roll out on ios This is a fascinating evolution for these kinds of end-to-end encryption And I do applaud facebook for sticking up for and making and sticking with the idea That they are going to hold to end-to-end encryption on messenger But for me, it is a step forward in what end-to-end encryption users if we're going to understand that end-to-end encryption Is the standard that you want in any kind of secure messaging app What is the role of your moderator of the platform itself? And that will be different between let's say a platform like signal that is there for you know secure privacy that might you know frown upon metadata Stuff of any sort right because you might be afraid that the platform will misuse it versus facebook, which There's a lot of parents talking to their kids on facebook on messenger and They would applaud the platform stepping in and maybe being a little proactive with this kind of metadata. Well, yes and no Parents don't want them reading the messages their kids send them They want facebook reading the messages Delicious people send their kids and there's no way to determine that Except this way have an ai determine like you know what this might Be somebody you don't want to talk to in which case this is the result of that to say, you know what? If we can read somebody's message that we can read all messages. So let's not get into that Don't forget messenger's already encrypted. It's just not encrypted end-to-end So it's not quite as solid as a signal, but it's already encrypted facebook's like We don't want to get into the business of reading people's messages ever So let's build a system that still helps keep In this case minors. We're not talking about messenger for kids. We're not talking about kids younger than 13 That's a whole different system with a whole different set of protections. We're talking 13 to 18 Particularly they want to say we can tell when someone who's above 18 is messaging someone who says they're below 18 And we can also look for other kinds of patterns And I think people are trying to make more as usual with facebook trying to make more out of this than there is When this is really just a way to kind of suggest to people Hey, be careful about this the same way when you click on a link on the on a search engine It might say hey this one feels kind of wonky you can go there if you want But we wanted to let you know you might want to take a second look at it Yeah, I mean there's going to be some false positive issues going on here But it does seem like in general Yeah, when you're talking about the age group that you're talking about and the kinds of messages That might be sent to that particular age group This this isn't hey, it's like kind of a good middle ground right? It's like okay. Listen encryption is really important What what if the ai just tries to you know flag messages that we think might be an issue For you, you know or your loved one and then we'll go from there It's like it's the first step towards you know what this is going to look like right now machine learning is good at suggesting things It's not good at making decisions No, although it might have a material effect on the patterns of some of these bad actors that if if they are Yeah, you know force them to jump well We're just talking talk differently, which is the whole other thing Well, no, but this is about who they're what their accounts are and and the burden approved that their account would have The standing their account would have to be in or how many messages they're sending at the same time stuff like that Amazon launched a food delivery service in Bangalore, India creatively named amazon food The service has been testing With select restaurant partners in Bangalore to amazon employees since late last year Ordering through amazon food is available through the main amazon app with local restaurants and cloud kitchens required to pass a Quote high hygiene certification bar and quote the launch comes as two of the biggest food delivery companies in india Swiggy and zamato continue to reportedly lose up to 15 million dollars a month Subsidizing orders and acquiring customers and I've seen orders since COVID-19 Fall from about three million a day to under a million I will not make the obvious joke about how amazon food is not amazon fresh But I will point out that amazon tried a restaurant delivery System here in the united states and it tanked they ended up pulling it And this is not the time to launch a restaurant delivery service or maybe it is right Up until now has not been the time because what we found is people are far more interested in getting groceries delivered to them Then have prepared meals out of an overabundance of caution But maybe those barriers are finally starting to break down Maybe amazon takes what they learned from their failure in the united states It's like ah, we know how to avoid those mistakes now and maybe this is the perfect time for amazon food to launch in india Yeah, I do think that there are differences in in all You know cultures and how they're going to interact with these things just as there are in any kind of Even regionally here in the united states some areas are going to be more into this than others But if we're going to look at it from a meta level Delivery is something that has become more a part of people's lives Over the last three months since all this COVID stuff hit If you are amazon and you are saying well, look the world is about the world has changed Everyone else was playing by the old rules in the new way We can have power position if we just have money and patience. Well, amazon has both of those And they like to they they they like to spend that money They they don't like to have those profit margins if they don't need them Uh, so yeah, uh, you may be right. This may be the time to say like look We're seeing the inflection point people are finally starting to order prepared food delivered It's too late for swiggy and zamato But we can we can sweep in and and ride that crest as people return To ordering delivery when they won't want to go to a restaurant I mean, I think that's what you're saying justin is that before There was a certain amount of delivery and that was it now We're coming off a period where delivery tanked because of of worries But now the question is well a restaurant reopens Do I want to go there or do I just want it delivered? Maybe that becomes the safer choice to be restaurants are doing delivery now that Otherwise do it now have to do it and for Amazon they could be looking at those competitors and saying you're over leverage You guys got into a bidding war for exclusives. Uh, you are overstretched We can start from scratch and have a better go of it And that's a really good point because all of these companies lose money on each order right now They have to subsidize the orders and that that's where that cash that amazon has comes into play Mobile analytics company opens signal examined 5g experiences in australia south korea the united states in the uk across 10 carriers To find out finally now that we've had 5g for six months How good is it? Is it any good? Is it as bad as people predicted? Is it as great as people predicted? Well, here's what they found all 10 operators had faster speeds on 5g than on 4g Ranging from 1.7 to 18.4 times this fast There were some folks questioning whether lte would be indistinguishable from 5g But it turns out right now from these 10 carriers. It's faster. It's demonstrably faster an open signal If you don't know, uh, runs apps on people's phones. They're independent They're not related to the carriers and they just want to find out what people's actual experiences are And I pay close attention to what they say because they have very good testing methodology Verizon was rated the fastest in the world of the you know in the world of australia south korea u.s And uk but out of all of these Verizon was rated fastest with an average download at 506.1 megabits per second T-mobile usa was rated the worst the slowest at 47 megabits per second still fast But slowest of the the 10 5g providers however T-mobile 5g users spent the most time with 5g available to them 19.8 of the time T-mobile users had a 5g signal they could use while Verizon had the worst availability It was super fast when they got it, but it was only available 0.5 of the time Verizon uses millimeter wave Exclusively that's part of the problem millimeter wave has a harder time penetrating and T-mobile uses the 600 megahertz spectrum That's a spectrum that can carry lte too Carriers in the mid-range of the spectrum like sprint which will soon be combined with team mobile Along with telstra and all three of the korean operators saw a range of speeds depending on the amount of spectrum available They were in the mid-range on speed In a mid-range on spectrum, but if they had more spectrum They had better speeds because they could provide it. So I don't know it seems like 5g not widely available. That's not a huge shock, but definitely faster Yeah, my my first reaction was like yay. I'm a Verizon user. We win and I was like, I don't know We win very very seldom T-mobile user were like, ah crap. We lost wait. We won We get a more but yeah, I mean it's it's you know the the whole kind of how is this going to get delivered to people going forward even though we're in the very beginning stages of this is pretty fascinating because The this whole, you know, who is the best conversation is only going to continue You know as it always does even with you know with lte and with 3g And you know if you if you if you run a an area that doesn't get a lot of service in general, it's it's It's all very fascinating, but I guess the good takeaway from this is 5g indeed faster Yeah, I think all the rest of the stuff in terms of availability and A connection is very early days like that is judging a toddler by how they burp Uh, that necessarily say where this is going to go as it matures and becomes bigger and better, but This puts a bad the idea that 5g isn't going to be as fast because that ultimately is the proof That we need to see to see whether or not 5g is going to be a transformative technology In terms of how much you're going to be able to use it and how much you're going to be able to get out of it There are other benefits to 5g arguably better benefits than speed But speed is the one people understand So that's going to help take up and coverage is only going to get better. It's not gonna get worse. Yeah In order to limit human contact in its warehouses gap department store chain Gap also includes old navy and banana republics a pretty big one speeding up the roll out of their own warehouse robots Gap had originally hoped to triple its warehouse robots by 106 by this autumn with stores closed though and online orders rising Gap needed more warehouse workers couldn't figure out though how to add them safely So kindred ai was asked if they could speed up delivery of the robots That's who's providing the robots 10 of them have been deployed in nashville and 20 in columbus, ohio with roll out to four of Gap's five us facilities to be finished ahead of schedule by july Meanwhile geek plus which specializes in unmanned robots for logistics automation at factories and warehouses has struck a deal with Conveco which makes systems for order fulfillment and distribution centers across north america So they're going to be putting more robots in more places in more warehouses for more companies as well This looks to be the beginning of a trend where companies look at social distancing measures and realize We can't get the same production out of People because we can't have as many people working safely in the warehouse So let's take what we were doing with automation and speed it up because that will help make up the gap Okay, can I put on my cynical hat? I have a very cynical. How are you taking it off? Yes, of course Put on my cynical hat. No, I have a more cynical hat This is the way they can cut drops Uh, and now they can do it without getting criticized. Yeah, I had to say it. Yeah, absolutely Yeah, and and uh, they can eliminate headcount Uh In a way that everybody will clap and say hooray. You care about people while you are paying less people Yeah, I mean they won't if they eliminate jobs people will stop clapping immediately And I always feel the knee-jerk reaction of automation means they'll fire everybody Is too simple companies don't work on on, you know, evil timey to the railroad tracks things in most cases However, we're in a different situation where companies are also feeling the pinch Yeah, they've got online orders that are up But those stores being closed means those sales are down and they may be looking at laying people off Uh, I'd be curious if anybody thinks that adding warehouse robots might save any jobs because there are situations where automation does relieve the cost pressure in a way that can let you keep some folks around Or whether in the short time we are going to see the worst of both possible worlds where they'll be laying people off and Automating the warehouses, but it looks like automating the warehouses is definitely going to happen What what I would say is that automating the warehouses doesn't mean that the jobs are lost It means that the jobs might not come back come back. Yeah, no exactly and that I I am a believer that when you've got people working and you bring in the robots It's actually harder to get rid of them. You come up with things for them to do like Oh, but you know, we still have these people. We've always wanted this. Let's put them doing that That's that's what happened when mainframe computers came in they didn't fire all the computers They turned them into other jobs. I mean the computers mean to the people who are doing the computing But if you've already got rid of them That's a whole different situation. Well you 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 Netflix will start asking subscribers who don't watch anything if they want to keep their subscription Customers who haven't watched anything for 12 months since they subscribed In other words, you signed up. Maybe you watch something on day one and you never watched it again or If you haven't streamed anything in a two-year period you used to watch something But it's been two years since you watched anything on on Netflix You will get a message from Netflix asking you if you won't confirm that you want to stay subscribed It's like the are you still watching for your subscription? Now if you do not confirm No, no, no, I know I'm not watching it But I want to keep paying you then Netflix will automatically cancel your subscription on the next billing cycle Netflix says these kinds of accounts are less than 0.5 percent of all members. That's a few hundred thousand all told Counseled accounts will maintain favorites profiles and preferences for 10 months So if you do come back if you do notice it got canceled and re-subscribe If you come back within 10 months all your stuff will still be there Netflix director of product innovation eddie woo says they're doing this because It saves people some hard-earned cash. That's all that's just so nice of them. Yeah Yeah, you know, I I don't know we we're kicking around like what does it all mean this morning? And you know when the story came out on variety and it's like Okay, is this an opportunity for Netflix to take a small amount of users as far as its total user base goes This is not like a majority of people that would matter to the company and market to them Again, so maybe they like boost their original programming numbers In what what is the reason that the company is doing this because it's not to save a few people some hard-earned cash I'm sorry Yeah, I'm gonna remove my cynical cap and say I mean, but it can be that too, Sarah Like yeah, and I just don't think it is. I think there's more to it and I want to know what that is It can be many things I would suspect that the vast majority of people who don't watch netflix and have a subscription That then laps lapses because their credit card lapses and they just never get around to resubscribing on another credit card What I think this is Is a bit of a pr move? Look, they are saying that there are hundreds of thousands of accounts or yeah a few hundred thousand accounts that They will cut off, right? So that is them giving up Some amount of money the question is what they are buying with that money for me They are buying the idea that they are no longer the monarchy in terms of streaming We now have legitimate competition that is moving this into more of an oligarchy For your streaming dollar and if you are netflix, then I do think that we are Looking to to get into the a power position of all right. Look what look what we do Does hbl max do that does disney plus do that? We can demonstrate to our shareholders that the active users we have are indeed active. These are not Dead accounts. These are people that are watching all of our programming That matters to us good guy netflix And every revenue per user for netflix is around ten dollars. You're talking about a few hundred thousand accounts We don't have hard numbers, but it's easy to guess. This is going to cost them a few million dollars So per month They make 15 billion dollars per quarter. They'll be fine, right? But is it worth a couple million dollars in public goodwill? I mean, will people pay enough will people even know this story exists? Will people pay attention and go, you know that netflix I feel more positively about them because They canceled the accounts of people that weren't watching them. I I just don't know that I buy that I feel like there's more to it than that that to make this worth it netflix Is either saving a cost of maintaining like even if these profiles go away in 10 months that that That reduces the database load enough that that it helps something make something more efficient or It netflix loves to think long term like this If you they may have some numbers that say when we remind people that they haven't been watching netflix And we're going to cancel their account They start watching again and when they start watching again They start telling their friends about shows and when they start telling their friends about shows Suddenly that person is causing more subscriptions to happen when before they weren't because they weren't watching any of our shows Or maybe even they just start watching shows closer to the time that their credit cards about to expire So they are more likely to add a new credit card or add their new credit card number These are not people whose credit card is expensive. No, I know I know I know But let's say let's assume that to me the vast majority Is the people whose credit cards lapse, right? So if these are people who have that has not happened and now you remind them because you do have this That's I think it's all of these honestly I think it's it's a bunch of these factors together because if it's suddenly like Hey, if people don't know they're subscribed and their credit card lapses They don't keep subscribing But if we remind them they're subscribed and they stay They will refresh their credit card information. I don't know maybe whether or not you think that this story gets around And that gives netflix a good reputation If a subscription came to you and said you haven't used us in a while Do you just want to stop giving us money? Would you feel better or worse about that subscription? You feel better Thank you very much. Yeah. Thank you for not, you know, in fact, maybe I'd like to re-subscribe Pretty cool company pretty good reach to 100 to 100,000 a month. Yeah Uh, well, all right, um, I'm gonna stop watching netflix for two years and experiment See what happens when they market their new, uh, lineup of 2022 to you Uh, thanks everybody who participates in our sub reddit netflix stories end up there all the time But so do many others because they're the ones that you care about you can submit stories and vote on them at daily tech newshow dot reddit dot com Let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. We were talking recently about what's going to be the new form factor for mobile devices You know, we they all look the same now. So what do we got? We got foldables Maybe we talked about swivel a bowls. In fact, we tried to coin the term Anonymous says you mentioned swivel screens and I had to take a picture of one of my two Sony clays A landscape design that had a keyboard might be cool But what I really want is a keyboard replacement that actually works that gives me a graffiti and I I gotta say oh those clays I had forgotten about you clay. Um, but uh Yeah, you were ahead of your time. Yeah Uh pour a little out for the sony clay. Yeah, I was a handspring visor person, but uh, you know also jot not graffiti for me just But I but still respect for for the clear I mean when you look at the form factor, you're like that it really was very cool But so much unused space, you know now we're like that bezels too big Oh, look at the bezels you can tell it's so outdated Oh, yeah Hey shout out to patrons that are master and grand master levels include in Paul Boyer, Dustin Campbell and Andrew Bradley Also, thanks to Justin Robert young the politics king Justin what's been going on with you? Uh, you know, we had a great episode of politics politics politics yesterday an interview with A language professor talking about the metaphors we use about illness and specifically leadership in times of crisis throughout history Learn why there's a difference when your leader goes from calling an illness an unseen monster to just a massive Conflagration, uh, there is a meaningful linguistic difference to how those metaphors Operate as well as a great story, uh specifically the world of new media Where for the first time in my opinion A mistress to a sitting congressman Revealed all about their affair In her own narrative podcast not an interview with somebody else's podcast Spun up her own you can hear all about it on politics politics politics Uh, folks, we've been getting great reviews from you on the apple podcast app We definitely appreciate it. It makes our day to see these pop up They they we have a we pay for a subscription that automatically pops up any reviews we get in our slack So thank you to everybody who's been creating those reviews that helps other people Discover the show even if you don't use apple podcast going into leaving a few stars We'll help us get in front of more eyeballs out there. So so thank you so much for doing that. And of course, thank you for your support We've had excellent support from a few people who've gotten jobs Of all things and and decided to like share the wealth With us. So thank you for that Anybody who can support us is welcome to you get a few perks at daily tech news show dot com slash patreon If you've got feedback for us our email address is feedback at daily tech news show dot com and we're also live In fact, we do it in monday through friday 4 30 p.m. Eastern 2030 utc If you can join us, please do and find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live Back tomorrow with shannon morse and len peralta. Talk to you then This show is part of the frog pants network get more at frog pants dot com I hope you have enjoyed this brover