 Coming up on DTNS, the truth about China's latest move against cryptocurrency, how a New Zealand district council can help you look like you're working, and what device makers do to keep from raising prices. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, September 24th, 2021 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. Draw on the top tech stories from Cleveland, I'm Len Peralta. I'm Roger Chang, the show's producer. And joining us, Senior Producer at CNET, Ashley Esqueda is back on the show. Welcome back, Ashley. Hi, friends. Happy Friday. Happy iPhone Day. Also to you. Did you get your iPhone? No, of course not. The curse continues. I'm sorry to hear that. We were just talking about Ashley's escaping child and the new Ray-Ban stories that I'm wearing on my face. If you'd like to get our opinions on all of those things, get Good Day Internet. Become a member at Patreon.com. That is where you can join top patrons like Erwinster, Ken Hayes, and Philip Shane. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. The Wall Street Journal sources say that U.S. Justice Department and Huawei's CTO, Meng Wanzhou, have reached an agreement to let her return to her home in China after almost three years after being detained in Canada on behalf of the U.S. She was entered into court this afternoon and will reportedly require Meng to admit some wrongdoing. Prosecutors will defer and then later drop wire and bank fraud charges in exchange for her admissions. As well as being the financial chief, Meng is the daughter of Reng Zhengfei, Huawei's founder. Apple just pushed a software update to fix the bug that prevented access to Apple Music for users of iPhone 13, 9th Gen iPad, and 6th Gen iPad Minis if they restored from backup, which is a lot of things that people do when they set up a new device. Epic Games announced that its easy anti-cheat system now runs on Linux and Mac OS. The company said this is specifically set up to work with Proton and Wine compatibility laders used by Valve's upcoming Steam Deck to run Windows games. Anti-cheat software maker Battoli confirms its software will soon be compatible with the Steam Deck as well. According to a stock exchange filing on Friday, Alibaba plans to sell its minority stake in state-owned broadcaster Mango Excellent Media. The government asked Alibaba in March to defest itself of media assets to reduce its sway over public opinion. Meanwhile, Tencent has completed its merger with China's second most popular search engine, SoGoo. SoGoo has 14.3% of the search market in China behind Baidu, which has 76.7%. Paltry, so. Two stories of note out of India. Amazon launched Prime Video Channels in India, allowing customers of Prime Video to add on eight streaming channels including Discovery Plus, Mubi, Hoi Choy, Daki Bay, Aerosnow, Lionsgate Play, Manorama Max, and Shorts TV. Meanwhile, the state of Karnataka has proposed a ban on online games that involve betting and wagering such as Fantasy Crickets. Three other states already have banned this practice. One of them has been the wickets and mallets game, not Fantasy Jiminy Crickets. Just in case anybody asks. Yeah, just a really popular game. All right, let's talk about the People's Bank of China issuing a joint statement with nine other government agencies reminding all Chinese nationals, even those working overseas, that quote, there are legal risks for individuals and organizations participating in virtual currency and trading activities. And significantly wrote that quote, overseas virtual currency exchanges that use the internet to offer services to domestic residents is also considered illegal financial activity, adding that workers at foreign crypto exchanges will be investigated. This has been oversimplified in a lot of headlines you'll see as China banning cryptocurrencies, which doesn't give you the whole picture. It's not exactly wrong, but China banned trading cryptocurrencies in 2019. That part's not new. Chinese nationals have been getting around the law by using foreign exchanges. In May, state institutions warn citizens that they would have no legal protection if they continued to trade cryptocurrencies. In June, China ordered banks to stop facilitating transactions that might be used to trade on foreign exchanges and banned mining of cryptocurrencies. That's when you suddenly saw the price of a graphics card plummet for a brief period and as everybody tried to figure out how to build mining operations somewhere else. And Friday, they issued this new statement, basically tells people if you're still trading cryptocurrencies, you're committing a crime and the prosecutions are about to start. We've been warning you for years. Now we're going to come after you. Unless of course you're using the virtual currency issued by the People's Bank of China, then you're totally fine. Totally good there. No problems. I wonder how much I know, you know, the DMCA coming after people who are illegally downloading music is slightly different than China going after people who are trading cryptocurrency on foreign exchanges. But I wonder how truly enforceable this is. I know this is meant as a scare tactic because obviously it hasn't stopped entirely. But yeah, how many folks will say, I don't really think you're going to find me? Yeah, the idea that China seems to be pushing is this is for your own good. You're going to get ripped off if you use this. And then this Friday it became and we're not kidding anymore. So I think it probably achieves China's goal, which is they want to reduce the amount of cryptocurrency trading to something close to negligible domestically. And they don't want people getting around with foreign exchanges. They want to close as many loopholes. They know that they won't eliminate it entirely, but they can make it a criminal enterprise versus something akin to speeding, which it was for a while. Like, well, I know it's against the rules, but now it's like, oh yeah, you're going to be in trouble if you get caught. Ashley, do you have any thoughts on that? I feel like that's exactly right, which is to say they're trying to get all of the casual cryptocurrency users to just say, well, this is just now one step, not worth it. Finally, it's at a point where it feels like it's not worth it. I'm just going to stop. I don't want to get in trouble. I'll try to sweep up that round of people, which is like, you know, whenever things like this happen, it's always like you get the first round of people who will stop doing it just because they said to stop doing it. Then you get another, like, you know, like you were talking about all the developments over time. It's like, then there's a new development and then there's another group of people who stopped. Then there's another group of people. So now it feels like this is sort of like you said, it's an effort to get it down to a negligible amount. And, you know, I don't live in China. I don't have experience with it. So I can't say if it will be really effective or not. I think that we've kind of seen some interesting developments down in Central America with cryptocurrency there and the roll out of that as sort of national currency accepted. But yeah, I'm really curious to see how this rolls out and if it's effective. Very curious. My guess is it'll be very effective. In fact, maybe too effective. If anything, what's going to happen is China is going to miss out on some innovation around cryptocurrency because they have now pushed it into the fringes. And the respectable companies that are under constant crackdown right now are not going to touch it. And the development of cryptocurrency and blockchain forward stuff that is legitimate and does happen is not going to happen in China right now. And they may live to regret that. That said, they do have their official central bank digital currency that they're pushing from the People's Bank of China. A lot of development that can happen on there. So they're not going to be devoid of all cryptocurrency related developments, but it's certainly not going to be a boom area for development in that particular discipline. That's a great point. Well, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman and Priya Anand sources say that Amazon is planning a 15 inch wall mountable echo display code named Hoya designed to be a smart home control panel of sorts. The company is also reportedly working on echo soundbars with integrated cameras for video calls as well as a second gen echo auto product that would offer wireless charging and access to Amazon's voice assistant. Sources also say Amazon has a team working on custom chips to power future echo devices as well as improving syncing across its device categories. Now, obviously these are just rumors, but we'll probably find out sooner or later because Amazon has a product announcement scheduled for September 28. Yeah, so we'll find out for sure next week. No robot. No, no voice activated robot. Where's the tiny Jeff Bezos that walks around your house? Where's that? Yeah, it makes you money. Yeah. Yeah. And just prints money. Like just prints. Or at least my crypto or something. You haven't ordered sardines in four weeks. Would you like me to add it to your cart? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Literally what all my echo does to me. My echo show I love, you know, it sits on one of my dressers and when I first was like wall mounted echo, who would want that where you could just put it anywhere instead? But that's like saying who would want a wall mounted TV when you could put a TV on lots of different surfaces? I mean, I think this actually makes a lot of sense. Love a good soundbar. I don't need one. I already have one from Sonos. But yeah, I like the idea of the echo product line expanding. I could see if they announced next week that they pitch it as a smart home panel instead of a thermostat. That's what I imagine. You put that up right by your front door. That's the thing that, you know, you talk to it as you're walking in or as you're leaving and it sets up all your home stuff. Like that's the use case that I imagine when I think of a device like this. Yeah, I kind of expect it to be something like that. And if they do that, that'll make sense to me. Everybody seems to want to do video calls these days. So, you know, a soundbar with a camera on it probably be useful. Some people will find out next week. There are many updates in iOS 15, including support for bidirectional hearing aids, recognizing audiograms used in hearing tests and some increased detail about images and voiceover. But one interesting addition is an accessibility feature to help neurodivergent people retain focus and maintain calm. In the accessibility settings under hearing, you can find a section called audio visual with an option for background sounds. The sounds will continuously play in the background to mask unwanted environmental or external noise and the sounds mix into or duck under other audio and system sounds. You can choose to have them not play when you're listening to music or even like stay playing if you're listening to music or podcasts. Options include balanced noise, rain, bright noise, dark noise, ocean and stream. I love this. I didn't realize that was one of the features in iOS 15. This is great. I mean, there are a lot of people who need things like this. I mean, I put on white noise when I sleep at night. It's very helpful for me as creating a calming atmosphere. So, this is a really awesome accessibility feature. I hope a lot of people use it. Even people who maybe are not neurodivergent. I mean, this is a really great feature. It's a great feature. I think this is amazing. And I would like to see more things like this included in software updates going forward. Between this and also the surface accessibility, the adaptive kit for surface this week. That was really great. And I think that it's important to keep your products, keep people in mind who are not quote unquote normal. Or who are disabled or who have challenges that they face. They need those accessibility options. And I think this is great. More. Give me more. More, more, more, more, more. Let's just be as inclusive as possible. This is great. Yeah, I think for so long, well, there was a time where folks with various disabilities just either were left out entirely or needed sometimes complicated work arounds in order to be on a level playing field and kind of be able to do what everybody else was doing. And more and more as we see more accessibility settings added into various products by various companies, I feel like we're getting to a point and there's still a long way to go, but getting to a point where that's the base product. The base product is an accessible device. If you don't need that certain accessibility feature, but you can find a way to use it for your own, for, for your own stuff. Awesome. You know, like white noise, great example. I use that too sometimes where I like really need to concentrate and just any noise in the world will bother me like a crowded office or something. Not that I've been in one for a while, but that sort of thing. But if you actually needed it to really kind of maintain peace in your life, that is, that is something that, you know, having that built in the, you know, as the base, those folks are being considered at the very beginning of new hardware and software products. That's a cool thing. Yeah. One of the reasons I thought it was cool. Yeah. Yeah. I thought it was cool to talk about this today in part because we do hear more these days about accessibility for hearing and vision. You don't hear about a lot of the other accessibility options. When we did Accessibility Week earlier this year, we had a guest in with dwarfism and talking about the accessibility challenges of that. So I thought, you know, the fact that there is an accessibility feature for neurodivergent individuals of which there are many, I think it's important to call that out too is like their accessibility doesn't just mean I can't see or I can't hear. It can mean that. It can mean that in combination. It can mean a lot of things. And I thought this was an interesting feature that is included here. All right, folks, if you like tech news, check out the Tech John podcast featuring Rob Dunwood, Terence Gaines and Stephanie Humphrey. The Tech John takes a second look at the week's topics, but delivered from an African American perspective. You can follow it over at thetechjohn, J-A-W-N, thetechjohn.com. That's T-E-C-H, J-A-W-N, dot com. Protocol has an excellent article explaining how a pretty mundane economic topic is being put to use frequently by tech companies to avoid having to raise prices. With the supply chain a mess and chip manufacturing past capacity, the cost of making some devices has gone up. But despite what many people on Twitter and elsewhere seem to think, price is not just unilaterally set by the manufacturer and everybody pays it no matter what. What people are willing to pay does push down on what a company can charge. And a price increase will almost always cause an outcry amongst customers. An outcry that these days is heard around the world because we have all these platforms where people can complain about it. So protocol points out that companies are using what's called a good, better, best pricing strategy to maintain their profits in the face of increasing costs. They use Roku as an example, and I think it's a good one. It didn't raise prices recently on any of its Rokus. However, it did introduce a new streaming stick, the streaming stick 4K+, at $70. That's $20 more than the streaming stick plus, which was replaced by the streaming stick 4K at $50. Now, before this lineup change, they had a $30 or $40 and a $50 option. And most people go for a mid-priced tier in a lineup like that. So in this case, they would have gone for $40. But now with a $70 option at the top, more people are going to go for the $50 option instead of the $40 option. And it ends up having the effect of a price raise for Roku without customers seeing it as a price raise. This works for Roku in part because older models have gotten cheaper to make since their first release and Roku is willing to sell some devices at a loss in order to get customers that can make money off of through advertising and service revenue. It doesn't always work and it isn't always used. Protocol points out that Sonos just raised prices across its lineup. But in that case, CFO Brittany Bagley made it clear they were going to do that in their last earnings call and said the price of components is going up, so the price of the products has to go up too. And that's the other way to do it is just be transparent and get ahead of it to tell your customers, hey, we're really sorry, but this is why. But I thought it was fascinating because I think a lot of people just jump to the conclusion. Well, when the component price goes up, they're going to raise the price on me. And the fact is, it's not that easy. They can't just do that. But if they're paying more for components, they do have to figure out a way to make that money back somehow. It seems like Roku, I don't know if I would say Roku got lucky, but Roku was able to say, well, here's our product roadmap. This is the stuff we're already working on anyway. Here's how we don't just jack up a bunch of prices and freak out customers and therefore sell fewer units. We have, you know, this new top of the line stick, you know, 4k plus, and it's going to be a little bit more. And customers go, well, yeah, it's a little bit more because it's the coolest one. But I think that that median $50 price feels fair, even though the median price used to be more like $40. I think it's, you know, some of this is clever marketing, but not every company such as Sonos has the luxury of saying, well, we have this product already. So let's just do some fancy footwork so that nobody really feels like we're gouging them. Yeah, yeah. Another example that Janko Wreckers used in that protocol article is the iPhone. iPhone prices did not go up. The iPhone 13s all cost the same as the iPhone 12s, except they added the terabyte iPhone 13 Pro Max, which is the most expensive iPhone ever at $1,599. So the headline was that Apple announces most expensive iPhone ever. The headline was iPhone prices stay the same and yet they're able to bring in more money at the top end because they have that new option. Indeed. Well, people pretending to be working in order not to be bothered is a practice as old as the job itself. I may have done this once or twice in my youth. In recent decades, we've had things like the boss screen, which the flick of a keystroke pulls up a spreadsheet on your screen when the boss gets close. You're busy working. Do it all sorts of spreadsheet stuff. There's even a version that lets you play the game 2048 inside a spreadsheet, but you're working because it's spreadsheet when the boss is coming. New Zealand's WIPA District Council has somehow become this sort of modern equivalent of this. The Council's Finance and Corporate Committee held a Zoom conference on April 20, 2020. This was during lockdown and being a public governmental council posted it online for citizens to view all the proceedings. Now, all part of good transparency, democracy at work, right? Citizens, everybody knows what's going on. Well, it has 57, 800 people in it. So a typical meeting video gets dreamed a few hundred times. The April 20, 2020 Finance and Corporate Committee Zoom meeting has now been viewed more than 300,000 times. Kind of a lot. Wow. It must have been a really interesting meeting. Comments on the video include anyone else using this just so they can sound like they're in a meeting so the other family members don't disturb them while they're working from home. Another comment says, literally, put this Zoom call in at work so it looked like I was busy and was avoiding having to deal with a stressful individual and it worked. Thank you. Yet another comment said, ended up learning more about their council than my own company. The Wait District Council noted Friday that this video is now charting above meeting by Gucci Mane, which is, I guess, another way to distract yourself from others. So thank you, internet. That is incredible. Yeah, right. Like, have you taken a look at this? I haven't heard this. I haven't. I have not heard of this. So a year ago, we did a video called, I pre-recorded myself in Zoom meetings for a week and nobody knew. You may have seen it. It has like, I think it has over 13 million views now. It's like doing, did really well. And one of our co-workers, we like schemed with him to basically pre-record all of his responses, like generic vague responses to meetings and then he ended up playing them like during meetings and it was very funny. This is amazing. I would like to, I may actually take advantage of this. Just play it whenever my kid comes to the door and he's like, Mommy, come out and, you know, watch Cookie Monster. I'm in a meeting. I'm sorry. Although, how many times can you get away with it before someone's like, wait a second. I know this meeting. Something's off. The second time, my son will be like, you've, I've heard this before. You've been in this meeting before. And I thought that was one of the more fascinating things about this is it wasn't just people in an office trying to look busy while the boss was looking over their shoulder. It was also people at home. Like you're saying, Ashley, who are like, I need my family. I need my space. I'm sorry. I'm so busy. Oh, gotta learn about this meeting. It's very important strategy. Don't perceive me. I'm so, I'm just so many meetings all day. I feel like there's a startup here. Where's the Apple feature for this? Where's put in the white noise? Just put a meeting in there. Throw the extra droney sort of Charlie Brown adult wah wah noises as meetings. That was actually one of the, one of the things the Wipo City, our district council people were saying is like, I guess our accent is sounds very businessy. You know, so, so it works across the world somehow. Less than New Zealanders. We just, I never, it's pretty good. Never took advantage of the boss screen, but I did start to, and this is just, it just depends on where you work, start to notice the kinds of things on your screen that the boss would be suspicious of, even if you were working. For example, a slack window, because it might be the work slack, but it might be all sorts of other slacks you could be in that sort of thing. So, yeah, gotta, you know, stay on your toes everybody. I'm fortunate enough to say I've never had to use the boss key, the boss screen. But, but yeah, I know of people who used it pretty prolifically before we all went home. Well, thank you New Zealand for Taika Waititi, Flight of the Concords, what we do in the shadows, and now the Wipa District Council Zoom call. Yeah. Yeah. Now I gotta watch the thing. I'm curious. Well, if you, if you're curious about traveling, and some of you are getting back out there, and if you're the kind of traveler that also likes to indulge in a pint or two on your vacation, perhaps in a new place, new pints, Chris Christensen has just the app for you. This is Chris Christensen from Amateur Traveler with another tech in travel minute. Whether you're traveling to Belgium or Germany or whether you're just traveling down the street to your local bar, one popular app for beer lovers is Untapped. Untapped lets you keep track of what beers you've tried and did you like them. So you can remember what that beer was that Fred told you that you'd like, or you can remember to avoid that other one that was really, really bad. You can find the app in the App Store or at Untapped without the E, U-N-T-A-P-P-D dot com. Check out Untapped dot com if you like beer. And this is Chris Christensen from Amateur Traveler. I've been using Untapped for years, and I'm glad it's stuck around. I always, when I have used it, it has been a minute since I've used it. But when I have used it, you know, when traveling and trying new beers, it's always nice to get cheered by somebody in the locale and get some insight into that kind of beer and where it came from and others like it. So it's good stuff. All right, let's check out the mail bag. Let's do it. Russell wrote in and said, a few shows back, you were talking about e-ink and some of the uses. Russell says, I was in a Best Buy in New York City yesterday, and I noticed that all of their product tags next to the products were using an e-ink display instead of the usual cardboard signs. Thought this was kind of interesting. Ah, yeah. I have seen those kinds of things being used for like sales and stuff, but not in the case like he's showing where you've got like the product, not only the price, but the specs and everything. I'll print it out like Best Buy usually has. That's probably not cheaper than doing paper at first, but it's certainly going to save you time when you need to update it because you can update it remotely and keep it up to date faster than having to print something out and send somebody out to swap it out. Yeah, exactly. And I wonder how many times if something is, I don't know, mismarked, right, that they have to honor the price and it has to do with not updating quickly enough. So this might just end up saving Best Buy a lot in the long run. Sure. That's interesting. Yeah, that's actually, I think that you're, I think you're probably onto something there, right, where it's like, one, it doesn't, it's not as wasteful. You're not using as much paper for printing out everything, but then also like, you know, in the morning, you just roll out the price updates or it does Best Buy corporate roll out those prices, right? It's like doesn't even come from the store itself. There's like no pricing specifically done there anymore. Is it now just sort of a wider corporate thing where they just push the prices in the morning? It's just like, hey, there's prices of this thing now. It'll be like stocks, right? Like fluctuating all day. It does pay the price. It's a Bitcoin. It'll be just you hope that you get into a crash and get great prices on stuff. If you're a Best Buy rewards member, it knows who you are and how much you usually spend. It just changes. Yeah, based on your walking by, it uses a BLE. Hey, you, you like cameras. Oh, you spend a lot. Five dollars off. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. Well, thanks, Russell. I'm always good to have firsthand stuff. And if anybody else notices anything out in the wild that you think would be great for the show, questions, comments, all that good stuff. Maybe you're going to be out and about over the weekend and you see something you think would interest us. Please do send us an email feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com. We also want to thank our brand new boss and that boss's name is Terry Laird. Terry just started backing us on Patreon. So thank you, Terry. You are our Friday standout superstar. You truly are our Laird, Terry. Yes, yes, indeed. Smart, smart. See, yesterday I was like, look, if you want to be named on the show and get it all to yourself, become a patron. And Terry's like, I'm going to do just that. And he did. Look at that. Well done. Also, thanks to Len Peralta, who has been busy drawing illustration for today's show. What have you drawn for us this week, Len? You know, after hearing that New Zealand Zoom call story, I wish I would have drawn that, but I decided to go with the spot the difference. Remember those from the old days and like highlights magazine or whatever. And what I did is I used the better, good, better, best pricing strategy for the Bloku. Bloku has nothing to do with Roku, come on. Bloku's Streambox, the Streambox 4K and of course the Streambox 4K Plus. Can you spot the difference between these three? I don't know, really. Ten dollars, apparently. There's something, yeah. Couple dollars between each one of them, but you know, maybe, I don't know. I guess you're going to have to just buy it and find out for yourself and see what you get. This image, of course, is available on my online store at LenPeraltaStore.com. Also, my Patreon, if you're a Patreon backer at patreon.com forward slash Len, you can get this right now and download it. It's all yours. So go and check that out, please. You should have an e-ing version that could be dynamically updated. That would be, oh, yeah. Good idea, good idea. Also want to thank Ashley Esqueda for being with us this fine Friday. Ashley, let folks know where they can keep up with all that you do. Oh, you know, I'm on, I'm a woman about the internet. I'm on CNET. I'm on our YouTube channel, so youtube.com slash CNET. And then if you want to just come hang out with me on Twitter where I yell about things, but in a nice enthusiastic way, probably because I'm excited more so, more so as opposed to angry. You can hit me up over on Twitter at Ashley Esqueda. I'm literally never disconnected from Twitter. It's a disease. But please, if you're diseased too and you love Twitter, come hang out. Yeah, you're a good follow. I will double down. Thank you. I like to think that I have a very broad, I talk about a little bit of everything. So if you want to come hang out, it's always, it's like hanging out with a friend and a pup. We talk about a little bit of everything. Excellent. Well, we're live on this show Monday through Friday for 30 p.m. Eastern 2030 UTC. Find out more at DailyTechNewShow.com slash live. But I'll be here and Rich Strafilino will be here too. Have a great weekend, everyone. This week's episodes of Daily Tech News Show were created by the following people, host producer and writer Tom Merritt, host producer and writer Sarah Lane, executive producer and Booker Roger Chan, producer, writer and host Rich Strafilino, video producer and Twitch producer Joe Kuntz, associate producer Anthony Lemos, Spanish language host writer and producer Dan Campos, news host writer and producer Jen Cutter, science correspondent Dr. Nikki Ackermans, social media producer and moderator Zoe Detterding, our mods Beatmaster, W. Scottus 1, BioCow, Captain Kipper, Jack Shid, Steve Guadarrama, Paul Rees, Matthew J. Stevens and J.D. Galloway, mod and video hosting by Dan Christensen, video feed by Sean Wei, music and art provided by Martin Bell, Dan Looters, Mustapha A, ACAST, Creative Arts and Len Peralta, live art performed by Len Peralta, ACAST ad support from Trace Gaynor, Patreon support from Stefan Brown, contributors for this week's show included Rob Dunwood, Lamar Wilson, Scott Johnson and Justin Robert Young and guests on this week's show included Steven Schleicher and Ashley Esqueda and thanks to all our patrons who make the show possible. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. The club hopes you have enjoyed this brover.