 Coming up on DTNS, hints on how attackers got into solar winds. Sony wants to help folks shoot TV like the Mandalorian and is strum the future of streaming TV. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, January 7th, 2021 in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. Quarantining in Oakland, California, I'm Justin Robert Young. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. If you want to know why Justin is quarantining, either listen to his podcast or get good day internet. We talk a little bit about that. We talk a little bit about college football conferences and we talk a little bit about deplatforming. Get that wider conversation. Become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation is, quote, accepting tips and digital media depicting rioting or violence in and around the US Capitol on January 6th. Submissions can be made at fbi.gov slash US Capitol. That's capital spelled with an O. CNN sources say the US State Department told US diplomats to pause posting on social media, a measure normally taken after a terrorist attack or major natural disaster. And Facebook will block the president's use of Facebook and Instagram for a minimum of two weeks. Twitter suspended the president's personal account for 12 hours and warned further violations would bring a permanent suspension. Twitch disabled the president's account. Snapchat locked the president's account indefinitely and Shopify took stores run by the Trump Organization and Trump campaign offline for violating their policy on supporting organizations that promote violence. Japan's NEC says it has developed facial recognition that works for people wearing facial coverings. The system uses the visible parts of the face like the eyes and claims an accuracy rate of 99.9 percent with verification less than one second. NEC is testing the new system at a shop in its Tokyo headquarters. NEC's new face live facial recognition is used by the London Metro Police Lutonza, the airline and Swiss international airlines as well. The Wi-Fi Alliance launched the Wi-Fi 6 E certification program that opens the door for devices to use six gigahertz band. Wi-Fi 6 E is fully compatible with Wi-Fi 6 and can support up to seven hundred sixty megahertz channels at once, only using the latest WPA three security protocol on the band. IDC estimates three hundred thirty eight million Wi-Fi 6 E devices will enter the market this year with 20 percent of all Wi-Fi 6 devices supporting 6 E by twenty twenty two. If you want a little more on Wi-Fi 6 and 6 E, check out know a little more.com. ASUS announced it will raise the suggested retail price for its components like motherboards and graphics cards in the US. The increased cost comes as waivers on US tariffs against Chinese made goods of seven point five to twenty five percent expired on December thirty first. An example is the ROG Strix or S.T.R.I.X LC Radeon RX 6,800 XT, which launched at eight hundred ninety nine dollars ninety nine cents now listed at one thousand seventy nine. Ah, so price is going up, folks. Keep that in mind. TicToc has a new augmented reality filter that uses the iPhone 12 Pro's LiDAR sensor gives you a confetti effect that looks like real confetti in your room. Seems a little one note, but TicToc promises to develop more innovative effects in twenty twenty one. So look out for more than just confetti. Snapchat added support for Apple's LiDAR sensor back in October that lets creators build their own enhanced AR filters for Snapchat. Well, y'all, CES does not actually begin until Monday, but that is not going to stop lots of companies from making their announcements. This happens every year and this year is no different. So we'll start with Samsung. The company announced this Galaxy Chromebook to a thirteen point three inch two and one Chrome OS device support sporting a Q led display that starts at five hundred forty nine dollars. That's way down from nine hundred ninety nine dollars. The first gen device started at the base model offers a tenth gen Intel Celeron processor, four gigs of RAM and 64 gigs of storage. An I three equipped version with eight gigs of RAM and one hundred twenty eight gigs of storage starts at six hundred ninety nine. LG introduced five new models in their thin and light LG gram laptop line up ranging from 14 inch to 17 inch all of thinner bezels around their sixteen ten ratio screens as well as 11th gen Intel processors. Z graphics and up to 16 gigabytes of LPDDR for X memory. LG claims the gram 17 gram 16 and gram 16 two and one all offer nineteen and a half hours of battery life. The gram 17 weighs in at one point three kilograms while the lightest gram fourteen comes in at nine hundred ninety nine grams. No word on price or availability. Well, my new car set in stone, everybody. I'm only partially. Bends up to 56 inch hyperscreen display set to display in the EQS electric sedan, which is set for production for Mercedes in late twenty twenty one. So later this year, let me know if you've got one ordered already. The hyperscreen is at the heart of the company's second gen MBUX infotainment system, which doesn't have any buttons and is completely digital and voice controlled. It's one of the signs that CES has started as you get huge screens in cars the last few years. JBL announced the bar five point oh multi beam sound bar, which gives virtual Dolby at most using multi beam technology going for four hundred bucks or three hundred fifty pounds starting this spring. Less than half the price of JBL's previous bar nine point one. Bar five point oh uses five drivers, three forward facing to side facing and four passive radiators to create its sound. Bluetooth, Amazon Assistant Bluetooth, Amazon Assistant, including multi room, audio, Apple Airplay to and Chromecast support all built in. The JBL SA 750 is a new stereo amplifier, also supporting airplay to and Chromecast with a retro wood veneer design that goes for three thousand bucks starting in May. And JBL is also introducing a big new headphone line, the live pro plus earbuds, fitness oriented live free and C plus, both supporting charging and lasting up to seven hours for continuous listening. The over ear, live six, sixty and C and on ear live for sixty and C need wired charging, but they can last up to fifty hours. So there's a trade off there. All have active noise canceling with smart ambient mode that lets you hold conversations without having to remove a bud or an ear cup. Oh, I love that receiver. It's a beauty. Acer's first commercial official and commercial Chromebook is the Spin 514, which either uses an AMD Ryzen 7, 3,700 C or Ryzen 5, 3,500 C processor and built in Radeon Vega graphics. It has a 14 inch full HD touch ISP six display using Corning Gorilla Glass three, 10 hours of battery life, MIL STD 810 H compliant durability and weighs in at 3.42 pounds. It can have up to 16 gigs of DDR4 DRAM and 456 gigs of storage. Getting north to 256, 456 would be great. Oh, yeah. Can I say 456? I'm sorry. Yes. 256, you know, let's let's let's get back to earth here. It hit North America in February, starting at $400 and Europe in March. The enterprise versions of the Spin 514 coming in March, starting at $750 or 799 euros. Acer also announced its 18 inch nitro gaming monitor with HDMI 2.1 for $900. There's also a new 31.5 inch Predator 4K monitor with a 144 Hertz refresh rate and G-Sync for $1,200. Also a 27 inch Predator with 2560 by 1440 resolution and 275 Hertz refresh for $1,100. The three monitors are all coming to the US this May. Man, so many product announcements and specs. I can almost smell the quiz nose that's usually down below us as we cover CES central hall. Let's talk about what Lenovo announced. This one's getting a lot of attention. Lenovo's new Yoga I.O.7. It's A.I.O. for all in one. It's an all in one desktop that has a rotating 27 inch landscape screen. Although it becomes a portrait screen when you rotate it. A future software update even promises to let it double as a 4K smart TV. And of course, you can cast a mobile device to it so that you can watch your TikToks on a 27 inch screen. Also, let you plug in your laptop by USBC. This feature is the one that caught my eye. So you plug your laptop in with a USBC cord. That's it. It now can use the A.I.O.7 as the display speakers, mouse, keyboard and power supply and hard drive for the laptop. It's available right now in China coming to other select markets in February, starting at $1,599. Got a few other Lenovo things to talk about. What do you guys think of this one? I love it. I have I have yet to need the rotating landscape screen, you know, going to portrait as much as I like TikTok videos. Quite quite quite a bit, in fact. And I actually do often like to watch my TikTok for you stuff on my laptop rather than my phone, just because I'm like, it's bigger. So sure, that's fine. But the idea of being able to plug in a secondary computer at your laptop, you know, the thing that you're carting around to be able to be in more of a desktop experience is very attractive. And the price is also pretty attractive. Yeah, I think that the price is there. There's a lot of throwing things up against the wall here, right? Because I while right now, the thing that we can think the most of is TikTok videos, there's no doubt that in the evolving media landscape that there might be things that are developed more and more as things are mobile centric for a desktop situation. And the blending of laptops and phones and tablets are something that continues to kind of happen. So while this may or may not be something that flies off the shelves, although it is an attractive price point, I think that the idea of all these things sort of morphing will become more and more the the rule and not the exception over the next day. Yeah, I mean, there's lots of rotating screens out there. But I think this is probably the first or certainly one of the first in an all in one. And I think that's what even though people are like, oh, you could show your TikToks on it. I don't really think that's the attractive part. But like the rotating is great as a this is your desktop. And if you don't have a laptop with you, you can use it as a desktop. You can put that screen in whatever position you want. If you do have your laptop, you can plug it in and now access your laptop without having to open it up. I mean, it seems silly, but not having to also plug in the laptop because it can power itself off of this. It's like a really fancy dock when you think about it. Yes. Yeah. And that's and that is that's huge. Also, a few other Lenovo things here. IdeaPad 5 Pro has that 1610 ratio display. There's your first CES trend, but just 1610 ratio displays 90 percent screen to body ratio and H series AMD Ryzen mobile processor, at least up to that. So Ryzen processors in an IdeaPad. The 16 inches come in May 2021, starting at 11 49 99 14 inch coming to Europe, Middle East and and Europe, Middle East and Africa in March. Intel versions and a 5G version will also come to select markets. The Tab P 11 is a more family oriented version of the Tab P 11 Pro that came out last year. It's got an IPS LCD, for instance, instead of an OLED screen, six gigs of RAM, LTE, and it's $230, not $499 and available this month. They also announced a couple of other interesting things. Alexa show mode for Lenovo PCs coming in Q2 that lets you use your Lenovo device like an Echo show, just tell it to go into that mode and it becomes like an Echo show. And the NEC LaVie Mini, a concept net book, a net book, net books are back that can turn into a game console. It has an eight inch 1920 by 1200 touchscreen and the keyboard can be folded back and two wireless controllers attached to its side or the device can be docked and works like a switch. Yeah, that's that's very, very interesting. Can I just go back to the show mode thing on the Lenovo PCs? We had said from from the very, very beginning that it was a fascinating decision for Amazon to just be platform agnostic and try to spread that voice assistant as far and wide as they can. And the idea that now they've already put it everywhere they could into microwaves, not a joke, bow ties, a joke, but don't say it too loud because they'll do it. And now it's like, well, why don't you come up with places to put it here? Let's let's just the Avalonobo turn it into a turn into a show. I mean, listen, I tried out the Echo show for three months for my want to buy more recent live with it segments. It has turned into an indispensable item for me. There are others. I understand that. But the idea, and of course, it depends on where your office is and where your monitor might be. And, you know, it does it, you know, are you going to see what the Echo would be putting up on the display all that often? Your mileage may vary. But that is a great idea for a monitor that might otherwise just kind of be sitting dormant to be able to to give you a bunch of other information is pretty cool. You know, another thing that makes CES are huge television displays that you can't buy. My goodness. I mean, you got to love CES for that. In fact, I'm most disappointed that we're not, you know, traipsing over to Vegas next week, because I love looking at the stuff. But Sony did announce it will start selling modular micro LED displays as part of its crystal LED line that can be used as digital movie sets. The newly announced B series panels offer anti-reflective coating and 1800 nits of brightness with support for high frame rates and 3D. I know. Sony plans to release the panels in the summer. No pricing announced just yet. Probably not going to be all that cheap, but still pretty cool. Displays like this have been used for series like the Mandalorian, for example. They offer an advantage over green screens because they provide their own lights and their own shading. So if you don't get a green reflection on an actor's helmet, then you don't have to digitally wipe it out later. You just get a reflection on whatever is in the digital screen itself. Yeah, so these these are four companies that want to shoot video. This is not going to be sold to the general public. They're probably going to be pretty pricey too. But everybody who's, you know, raved over watching the behind the scenes of the Mandalorian at that display has been we had a visual effects artist on in our art week last year, who was saying like, Yeah, everybody asked me if they can do that. Well, she's going to get more requests now because they can actually have another place to go by the hardware. It's going to be a pretty penny. But there's obviously a lot of pretty pennies in the world, then specifically people that want to not only recreate that as a movie set, but also as an experience. Part of what has made the Mandalorian special is because the actors say and there's great dialogue looking up a noted eccentric and season one cast member Werner Herzog, just going on and on about how amazing it was to shoot in a set that looked like this fantasy world, like it allowed all the actors to get into their roles more so than just acting on a blue or green screen. And I would imagine that if you want to impress people that you are going to have a similar experience or at least the desire to have a similar experience, even if you're not shooting on it, or maybe if you're, you're just taking pictures and videos for a more casual experience. I think this is going to sell as far as the crazy screens that we see at CES, which is normally just, you know, huge monitors, you're going to see at stadiums or something like that. This seems like a more practical version and I'm putting that in there. It's actually a really smart and very, very useful development in cinematography and shooting just productions because it allows very quick turnaround times. There's stuff you don't have to post, like there's no post effects you need to do. Like the brushing out of the green screen, like Sarah was saying, there's a ton of other examples like that. And you make amazing use of space. I mean, the Mandalorian shoots on three sets and they have these walls and it allows them to get so much more. No, they don't. It's real, Roger. They shoot on location, right? I mean, sure, the baby Yoda or I can never. Grogu, Grogu, it sounds like a putty product. It's it's that that is real. That is real. All right. That that may sound like CES has started. It hasn't. CES starts next Monday. But we do have some non CES stuff going on, right, just need Reuters sources report that the US FBI is investigating whether attackers who compromise SolarWinds Orion platform may well have also compromised project management software called Team City from check based jet brains. SolarWinds is a customer of jet brains and malicious code was inserted in the SolarWinds Orion software by someone with access to the development system. Jet brain CEO Maxim Sharyov, whose office is in St. Petersburg, Russia said that he had been in contact with SolarWinds, but had not been contacted by any agency and was not aware of any investigation. Wednesday, a spokesperson for the US Department of Justice said intruders had used the SolarWinds vulnerability to access about 3% of the Justice Department's email accounts, none of which were classified. Tuesday, multiple US intelligence agencies said the attackers on SolarWinds were most likely from Russia. So we don't have confirmation of anything here. Even the actual intelligence agencies saying it's most likely are saying most likely, but the narrative that you could pull out of this is that it could be that Russian attackers used the used jet brains of vulnerability in Team City, and there are some known vulnerabilities like there are with any software in Team City to get into SolarWinds, to put the back doors into the updates that then went out to the SolarWinds clients that allowed them to get into whatever government agencies and corporations that they got into, like the 3% of the Justice Department email accounts. We're not saying that is what happened, but you could sketch that out based on like, okay, apparently somebody thinks that jet brains might be how they got into SolarWinds. Yeah, you know, this is one of those, I mean, obviously whenever you're dealing with leaks from the intelligence department, from the intelligence communities, there's a lot of mosaic that you want to build. I would encourage everybody to just keep tabs on this, keep tabs on the narratives that are arising, and then as we get further away, compile them all up and figure out what seems to make the most sense. That being said, that caveat inserted, this seems plausible. It seems like a way that you get from here to there, it looks like a credible roadmap. And this is a sophisticated attack. So, you know, it's probably not going to affect your daily life unless you're an assistant, and deal with this in which case, you know, my thoughts go with you. But this is definitely something to keep an eye on because it's significant in its effects, even if it doesn't directly affect you. We like to talk about all kinds of stories like that. If you have an idea of what you would like to hear us talk about, go submit it on our subreddit. You can submit stories and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. Former executives from Discovery and Disney are launching a streaming service called Strum. That's Strum with two U's, S-T-R-U-U-M. But Strum isn't going to have its own content. Instead, it's going to partner with smaller streaming content providers to offer you, the user, the ability to sample content from multiple places for a single monthly fee. Strum subscribers could get credits that they can use to then watch content from any provider in the system. If Strum notices that you're choosing content a lot from a particular provider, it will offer to let you subscribe to the whole service from within the Strum app itself. Strum has not named its 12 partners. Obviously, that's very important going forward, but says it will have more than 20,000 TV series, movies, and also shorts. Strum will launch in the spring in the U.S. with international launches planned later. Yeah, so this is this is an approach to the fatigue, subscription fatigue, to say like, all right, we know you're going to subscribe to Netflix and Disney Plus and maybe Hulu and HBO Max and Peacock, et cetera. But what about Shutter? What about Tubi? Are you going to use that for free? What, you know, what about Crunchyroll? These guys, we don't know who they're partnering with, but they're targeting those smaller ones to say, let's bring those in and say, you can watch whatever you want. Now, we're going to have this credit system working to put a max on what you can watch, but you can watch whatever you want. You don't have to think about where it came from. And if we notice like you're always watching horror stuff from Shutter, we'll suggest to you like, hey, would you like to access the full library all the time without a limit? Subscribe within our Strum app and you can do that. Well, then the Shutter folks get a strike, the subscription fee, I suppose, because they're driving subscriptions to back to Shutter. Yeah, I mean, it makes a lot of sense. I think, I don't know, I talked to people all the time who are saying, what is the best thing to subscribe to? And I'm like, well, what do you want to watch? That's always the answer. It's like, well, what do you want to watch? You have a lot of options and that's great. But yes, if you're not, you don't want to geek out on this whole like cutting the chord thing, a service like this might actually be your ticket. Well, but does it make a lot of sense? Because the problem is people don't know what to watch. And so they are hesitant to subscribe to something that they are going to forget if even if they watch the one thing they want to see, and then they're going to stay subscribed and it's going to it causes anxiety so they don't do it. And the answer to that is to subscribe to a service where you don't know exactly what you're going to watch. Like that's that's what this is. Now, yes, they want you to find things are going to make it easy. They're going to give you discovery. They're going to guide you through this process. In their mind, it's a concierge. But let's understand that what we are what we are asking is for people to jump into this. All I'll say is that the content is king as it is always, we're going to have to see what these partners are. But if the partners are not leading with things that have happened to fall through the cracks and are very, very attractive that also give people a cheaper way to access it. This seems like a noble pursuit that might fall in the mushiest of mushy metals. I think strum is the right idea. But it's a chicken and egg problem, right? Strum is perfect. You're never going to get Netflix in anything like this. Probably not going to get Disney Plus. But let's say you get showtime and epics and stars and shutter and you know, list goes on of the next tier down, right? And you have you have hundreds of them. Strum is what I get. Like, oh, I don't want to have to think like, wait, is that on stars? Is that on epics? Or, oh, wait a minute, is that on shutter? Crunchy roll? Like, I just get strum and I don't have to think about it anymore. And I have access to all this stuff. And if I get really into anime, then I can buy crunchy roll through strum and I'm still just going to strum to watch stuff, right? But it has to get to scale for that to actually work. I mean, I think we are we are writing ourselves out a fan fiction version of this idea that, yes, it could work. It could work. But again, it depends on if it can get to the level. But the question is going to get to the level, right? Even then, like let's say I really there's a bunch of showtime shows that I had never seen that I really, really want to go say, why am I going to strum first? You go to strum because it's like, oh, I have access to everything. Yeah, it's not about a particular service. It's I got strum so I don't have to think about it anymore. That's where it starts to work. Kind of a window shopping thing. And then you decide what you like. Yeah, I just don't know if that I want strum to be the one to lead me through the window shopping when I can just search the internet. Yeah, but then you got to manage all those different subscriptions yourself and you got to figure out where everything is. And the solution is another subscription. One subscription for all of it. Another subscription, but just one for all of it. Rabbit season. Feedback at Daily Tech News. Microsoft Senior Program Manager Brandon Leblanc announced a potential new feature called News and Interest that would add an ad free news feed to the Windows 10 task bar. This will include a news content from 4,500 global brand that will open into a streamlined reading view as well as local weather. Users will be able to personalize their feeds for relevant interest or turn it off altogether. News and interest is available now on Windows Insider builds in the dev channel for users in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia and India. Yes. So this is almost a similar conversation to strum. In theory, you know, the idea of like, oh, high quality news customized to my interests right there in the task bar. So it's easy to get to when I want it sounds great, right? I don't know. I mean, maybe it could be great. I have not seen this in action yet. What it sounds like is a lot of I don't know. My browser looking more convoluted than it did yesterday. I don't know. It's it could it could work fine. Sure. But you could also just have like a little app that you go to when you're ready for that rather than a bunch of words. Yeah, but let's brush aside Microsoft's insistence on stapling yet something else to the operating system when we really don't need it because we just wanted to be an operating system. General question, has anybody got curated news, right? Google News felt like it was like a good first step in that direction that they kind of settled the territory. And I don't know if anyone's really gotten it better since then. And so if they could do that, if all of a sudden it was great and every itch was scratched, sure. But that's seems to be a hard hill to climb. I mean, Apple News works pretty well for me, but I also don't want it like constantly scrolling somewhere where I'm doing another thing. I don't think this is like an eyesore necessarily. It's not like a ticker at the bottom of the sea. Can you imagine? Yeah. But it's it's easy to access. And I think you're right. It's it's all about whether the it has the content or not. Well, this is a pretty good story. I feel a good story of the highest magnitude in North Queensland, Australia, a group of four adults and also a baby were stranded on a dirt road between two rising creeks. There was heavy rain. It was a storm. They got stuck. They didn't have mobile phone reception and they couldn't get out. So they attached a mobile phone of one of the adults to a drone to send an emergency SOS text message. And it worked state emergency service area controller James Gag said it was, quote, clever enough to think if he typed the message on his phone and pressed send, it would keep trying to send until it got reception and emergency services reached the group the following day. Man, this is a great story. First of all, because the individual in question knew the number to send the text to knew how to tell them where they were or give them enough information that they could find them and knew, oh, man, it's so annoying when you send a text and it just keeps trying to send it. You're like, oh, and having to have a drone also like, hey, well, and the head of UAV, right? Yeah, absolutely. All of that together. But where I was going is I always complain when it keeps trying to send the text. I'm like, just give up. I don't even care anymore. And this guy was like, hey, that's that's useful in the situations. Really clever. I have an idea free, free idea for all the screenwriters listening. Super wholesome, lassie-esque show where the dog is replaced by a sentient drone. And this is your pilot. And it saves the day. And it saves the day. It saves the day by bringing the cell phone up. And this is only the first. This is when it learns that can save the day in the pilot. Exactly. This is when, yeah, I don't know, however you want to dial in the magic here, the lightning strike or an old charmed pendant, whatever you want to do to get it sentience. But this is your pilot. Go ahead. It's going to get an eight episode order that you can access on strung. Excellent. Excellent. Love it. Love stories like this. And yeah, when I first heard it, I was like, oh, they flew the drone with the phone somewhere until someone was like, oh, there's a phone on the drone. No, actually more genius than that. Shout out to patrons at our master and grandmaster levels, including David Mosher, Reed Fischler and Mark Gibson. Also, thanks to Justin Robert Young for being with us today, quarantining in a unmarked hotel room somewhere, you know, somewhere in the world. What's been going on with you? Kind of a slow week, huh? Oh, boy. Obviously a lot going on in politics, not only in Georgia, where I was live covering those Senate runoff races that ultimately flipped control of the Senate itself, but also I did a bonus episode that is free for everybody with Andrew Heaton and Jen Briney discussing the events in the U.S. Capitol yesterday. So if you would like to get all of that, you just have to head on over to politics, politics, politics.com. Sign up on the podcast platform of your choice. And it is all there for you. We had our annual tradition of RSS feed for our video podcast going down at the beginning of the year. But now it's fixed. So if you want to get DTNS as a video podcast, get the RSS feed for the video at dailytechnewshow.com slash subscribe. We're also live Monday through Friday for 30 p.m. Eastern. That's 21 30 UTC. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We'll be back tomorrow with Shannon Morse and Len Peralta. See you hear that. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. I hope you have enjoyed this program.