 Coming up on DTNS the walls fall on music services and smart speakers why China is pushing an official digital currency and Transparent OLED sliding doors that can say hi to you This is the Daily Tech news for Monday December 7th, 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio Redwood I'm Sarah Lane And I'm the shows producer Roger Chang. We were just talking about phones both big old cell phones and our first cell phone numbers And all kinds of reminiscing get that wider conversation on our expanded show. Good day internet become a member at patreon.com DTNS let's start with a few tech things you should know The latest pixel feature drop adds adaptive sound to the pixel 3 and newer devices Which improves speaker quality based on overall ambient sound pixels will also receive adaptive charging to better preserve your battery life 5g capable pixels will get adaptive connectivity which defaults to 4g for low band with tests also save some of your battery life The update also adds a number of features from the pixel 5 to the older pixel models Including extreme battery saver mode hold for me Which uses Google assistant to wait on a phone line until a human picks up Airbnb which is about to go public launched Airbnb.org a non-profit that lets hosts offer free or discounted stays to refugees People affected by natural disasters and frontline workers. This builds off Airbnb's previous home open homes and frontline which started back in 2012 to let host offer spaces for those impacted by Hurricane Sandy at the time host offering free stays will get a badge displayed on their Airbnb profile and Airbnb.org will partner with relief organizations like the Red Cross and Red Crescent societies and community organized relief efforts The Wall Street Journal sources also say that Airbnb boosted its IPO price range to between 56 and 60 dollars from 44 to 50 dollars which values the company up to 42 billion dollars For those of you who are still out there going wait, wasn't the US gonna ban TikTok or something? Well, bite dance did have most recently until December 4th to reach a deal to spin off its us operations No deal has been finalized. However, Bloomberg sources say the US Treasury Department told bite dance It would not face a fine or any other penalty Since negotiations are still ongoing a treasury spokesperson said the committee on foreign investment in the US and bite dance are working to Finalize a divestment that would satisfy us security concerns and no new deadline has been announced A new patent shows that oppo is working on a detachable camera module for smart phones The patent shows the camera module was an included battery as well as USB see NFC Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capability The camera also includes a USB see connection which could be mounted to the phone as well the patent shows two camera lenses in the module and opens up the possibility to potentially upgrade the camera separately From the overall device the long-standing dream of essential phones and Motorola phones and even going back to that Palm trio I think had tried this kind of thing. We'll see if it works The UK's first electric vehicle service station opened near Braintree Essex The electric four-court from grid serve offers 36 rapid chargers with electricity coming from solar power Canopies above the chargers as well as grid serves network of hybrid solar farms The station also includes other service station staples like a coffee shop newsstand a post office as well as a meeting room pods And a fitness area with bikes that generate electricity for your car All right, let's talk a little bit more about peace in our time Music services. We're getting closer to it Anyway, Google announced that Apple music is now available on Google assisted enabled smart speakers and displays in the US the UK France Germany and Japan So you can set Apple music as the default music service and then control the app by voice just like with YouTube music Spotify and Pandora, which were all previously On Google assisted smart speakers as well You can also play Apple music on multiple speakers if you want whole home audio if you've got a few speakers Title and Amazon music though are the only major music services that Google assistant has yet to support Two more to go That would be big. I it was pretty big when Apple showed up on Amazon echoes 2018 and that kind of signaled that that we were headed this way It took Google a couple years to to reach an agreement But it seems like they have and and I like this idea that I Eventually someday can just pick my music service and my smart speaker and not worry about whether the two play along nicely with each other You know Google assistant is one of my favorites on mobile. I just feel like it works better than Siri At least for the queries that I'm asking for them. There are a lot of things about Google assistant that I like a lot I do not have any physical Google speakers or other smart devices. I do have echoes They're there's so no speakers, but they work with Amazon's assistant And I am an Apple music user and so when that all came into play together It was like ah chefs kiss. So yeah I think that if Google or any other company is Having some traction with hardware wants to sell more units It just behooves all companies to offer as many services as possible It'd be kind of like Google saying well, you can't access Apple music in Chrome I mean the company just wouldn't do that. So this is just an extension of that. Yeah, for the longest time I was Google play music Since oh going back to Ardeo when Ardeo went away Ardeo I know I love that service So so Google play music and Google home Google assistant worked great for me. I was I was very happy with that integration But when Apple music came to the Amazon Echo, I went ahead and added my Subscription to my wife's because she had Apple music and that way we had a family plan And that let me play music on the echo because there was no integration with YouTube music and there still is not And that kind of started to nudge me into using Apple music more Then they switched Google play music to YouTube music and that kind of pushed me all the way back into Apple music So it's ironic that now I'm like, oh I could go back to using Google assistant for music stuff more often because I actually Am able to use Apple music on the Google speakers, but that's the way it should work. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean I Know a few title users, and I'm not trying to make a joke about it I know the title has a certain kind of audio quality that some people are willing to pay for Terrence Gaines and and I think Nika too, but I know for sure Terrence from snobo s uses it Yeah, yeah, I mean audio files swear by title because again quality So, yeah, it'll be interesting to see the Amazon Google thing makes sense to me You know, they're gonna duke it out for a little while But but yeah, how long until both companies say let's just work together. We're all gonna benefit Yeah Well LG announced a reorganization of its mobile phone business to outsource more phones this time mid-end smartphones To ODMs original design manufacturers. It'll still carry the LG branding. It's just Won't be made by LG This is similar to what Nokia and Blackberry do where another company that doesn't just build them I mean Foxconn builds Apple phones, right? But Apple designs them LG won't even design these another company will design That's why it's ODM original design manufacture and then sell the phones under the licensed brand name So all Nokia and Blackberry's are made by other companies and sold under their names The lower and LG phones were already being made by other companies now the mid-range Ones will also be made by other companies as well still sold under the LG name LG will reduce its research and production positions and focus its R&D on premium smartphones cutting costs on the production of these mid-range phones so Really trying to shave off their losses because LG has had 22 consecutive quarters of losses in its mobile communications business I don't know that the LG high-end phones are going to last much longer Honestly, given that they're they're now down to like number seven in market share And I think 2013 was the last time they were in the top five Yeah, the idea of cutting costs and letting other companies essentially make your your mid-range and lower-end phones Slap the LG name on it at the end That that makes perfect sense. So LG saying, okay. Well our flagship phones We're still gonna handle that ourselves Best of luck. Maybe maybe they will have some luck with us But with that many consecutive quarters of losses almost to gosh, I mean Math is hard, but 22 consecutive quarters of losses is many years of losses It Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if LG just gets out of the design manufacturing business Totally at some point and and keep in mind. There's there's a couple of different LG's. There's LG display and LG electronics They they have some Some connection at the very very top end of the corporate structure, but there are essentially two different business LG electronics is the one that does TVs Home appliances kitchen, you know the refrigerators laundry, etc They're doing great with their white goods like like wash it and dryers and refrigerators. They're doing great with TVs They are obviously not doing so well with phones, but phones used to be the bedrock of LG electronics. So I do feel like They this is this is a big deal and and yeah, they're gonna make more money Licensing out the name than making these low-end phones, but not as much money as if they had successful phones Yeah Well speaking of successes the M1 isn't the last chip designed from Apple It has been available on certain computers to do quite a bit of fanfare And it seems obvious But some folks seemed also skeptical of how well that M1 chip would be at powering bigger max So sure macbook air mac mini great. What about the others? The answer is there are other chips for that Bloomberg's mark German and Ian king's sources say that apple plans to release the new apple silicon chip also known as Whatever version of the M1 they call it as early as the spring for larger macbook pros and also the iMac Reportedly featuring up to 16 high performance cores and for efficiency cores Although high performance cores could be limited to 8 or 12 depending on production apple's also testing 16 and 24 core GPUs For these same chips another chip with as many as 32 high performance cores and up to 128 graphics cores Is reportedly planned to arrive in late 2021 To eventually show up and a half-sized mac pro reportedly scheduled for release in 2022 Yeah, so I mean they might be called the m2 and the m3. They might not we don't know But we're we're definitely getting a couple more chips and that shouldn't be a shock But when everyone was looking at like yeah, but you can only get 16 gig of ram Part of the answer was these chips are so efficient. You probably don't need a lot more ram Uh, especially because it's all integrated on the die But the other answer was these are the lower power chips I'm sure they'll have support for more usbc thunderbolt ports for more amounts of ram Integrated still probably integrated but but more ram in higher power chips And that's what this points to is you're going to have beefy chips. I mean 32 high performance cores in a uh intriguingly referenced as half-sized mac pro I know. Yeah. Yeah, I can't wait to see that I can't wait to see what the prices will be as well because boy, does it look good on paper But uh, these would you know if uh Well, I don't know. I mean, maybe the m1 chip uh versions of Of some of the machines that we're getting right now And I've got a macbook air one of the new ones that that is is powered by an m1 chip I mean They're Priced competitively for apple products. Yeah necessarily competitive for you know the entire market depends on what you want But there's not a change right there. Yeah, there wasn't some astronomical Yeah, like if you want better performance, then you know, you're gonna have to pay double mac pros totally priced out of most people's wheelhouse, but who knows Yeah, they're meant they're meant for the professional market I would have I would guess based on what we saw this with the introduction of the m1 that They'll the prices will stay around the same Uh, that the what put it this way the price change won't be dependent on these chips If they change the prices it'll be for some other reason And I think that's part of the reason that so many folks myself included because I've been I've been using my new macbook air I'm not using it right now because I have a mac mini for the my show setup But it's been my kind of just puttering around computer for all lots of other things You know for for a couple weeks now And I think that one of the things is wow this thing is fast, but also And it's also priced in the same vein as what you would expect to Pay for an apple product and so that's like, you know if it was twice as much people would say That's pretty fast But like prices got to come down or no one's gonna buy these and I think that's that's where a lot of enthusiasm comes from Yes, it's performance, but it's also the fact that the price isn't astronomical Yeah, and there have been some questions about whether the m1 performance seems so good because it was on these smaller machines But it sounds like they're gonna have beefier apple silicon for the bigger machines You you have you have been trying out that macbook air. I mean all we have to go on at this point is the m1 It sounds sounds like you're pretty pleased with it very pleased There were a couple things that I did when I got the machine I you know I brought over just the sort of bare minimum of stuff that I was gonna Dump onto the hard drive itself even though there's two terabytes and I've never had a machine with that much storage before But you know I I'm using chrome and and safari as My second and third browsers because you always have to I don't know we need multiple browsers to like test stuff But I'm using firefox as my as my kind of number one, which I haven't done in years So there's a few things I'm doing to sort of be like, okay Let's pip this up a tiny bit But the the air is also unique in that there's no fan So there's no fan noise and when I have done a lot of sort of complicated Labor intensive rendering of video or that sort of thing, you know, you hear it kind of start up and you go okay, now we're now we're cooking with gas and This little thing just sits there silently and sometimes I'm like, are you alive? You're working so well. Are you okay? You need food like in and battery life is really good again new machine I will say I mean tiny gripe But I had four thunderbolt ports on my macbook pro, which still exists. It's fine. It's just, you know I it's sort of over to the side right now I've just got the two on the new air and they're on the both on the left side and just where I plug It in I wish they were on the right hand side and I can see where you know If I was plugging in a bunch of you know peripherals or whatever that's going to be slightly a little bit of an issue but I'll say overall the speediness the zippiness And just mac Mac apps themselves clearly But just in general is remarkably faster. Just remarkably faster. I I I can't say it any other way. It's uh, I've been pleasant universal sentiment, right? Yeah, just yeah, it's crazy Well, folks, if you got some thoughts on apple silicon or anything else join in the conversation in our discord You can do that by linking to a patreon account at patreon.com slash dtms Saturday, uh, china's big shopping giant jd.com became the first virtual platform to accept digital yuan The government's official Digital currency the people's bank of china will issue about 20 million yuan in digital red envelopes To a hundred thousand residents of the city of suzhou, uh, which is near beijing Who are near shanghai actually who can use it on jd digits to pay for some products at jd's online mall So they're giving grants of this to people so they'll try it out and they can use it online now The bank previously issued 10 million digital yawn to 50 000 residents of shenzhen for use at physical retail locations So it's not the launch of the digital currency But it is the launch of the first place to be able to use it online As of early november digital yawn had been used in more than four million transactions worth about the equivalent of 306 million dollars us Okay, so I had a lot of questions about this story because I I know it's a big story and I think A lot of folks out there if you're anything like me are like, okay Well, we know that china is a digital currency friendly country already, you know, just think we chat or digital payment friendly Digital payment friendly. Yeah, right, but it's not as if you know, everyone's, you know, uh, you know Got a bunch of cash in their pockets. So you go, okay Digital currency is still based on the yawn So How does this actually change life for folks inside of china unless it's folks who say I don't know. I just don't trust banks and I want another option Yeah, if if there's anybody out there in china where we're banned So probably not listening in china But if there's anybody that knows email us feedback at daily tech news show dot com. I do think the idea is It's so easy to pay with we chat pay or alipay and you scan your qr code And that's how people send money to each other that What the government wants to do is encourage usage of the digital yawn To make the back end easier. So for the consumer. Yeah, I mean this isn't From what I can see any easier than paying with alipay at the counter or online But they're giving these grants to kind of get people to use it to get people in the habit of knowing about it And to try out the system. They're going to try out the system on jd.com So that you can show the Businesses and the banks How much if more efficient it is on the back end because remember with alipay and we chat pay It still has to be turned into hard currency at some point, right? There's there's these online accounts But some banks somewhere has to has to reconcile all of that with actual paper money Or coins or whatever probably mostly paper money With digital yawn, you don't have to do that So it cuts out a whole lot of the infrastructure of settling payments and having to do transactions and it speeds them up on the back end So I don't know that it really has a whole lot of advantages for the customer Other than oh, I'm using the official currency I'm not I'm not maybe I have to pay fewer fees because it's cheaper to run on the back end And of course it also has the big advantage of the government knowing exactly what's going on with it because they control the system That the digital yawn runs on So that was going to be my next question. Okay, let's say here. I am in the us and I want to participate And now the chinese government maybe has a little bit more information about the transactions that I'm making And it's not tied to the us dollar and all sorts of things that It's not meant for you. Yeah. Yeah It's only meant for well, okay So maybe that was a bad example, but you know someone in a Variety of other countries that you know are on friendly terms with the chinese government. No, I just mean it's meant for domestic use They really don't mean this at this point to be used for overseas I guess if you're traveling there, you could pick up some digital yawn, but it seems like it might be early days for that Well speaking of early days if you didn't find the launch and roll out of hbo max confusing Well, warner media might give you another chance to be confused The information sources say that the company is considering launching at two news streaming services One could be a paid cnn service that would offer more deep dive originals and international content The other being a free ad supported channel with content from tnt and tbs Sources say that neither service is greenlit yet. They're just on the table But the cnn service could potentially launch in 2021 with the other not launching until 2022 at the earliest So, okay The cnn one makes sense. That is a niche market That is something that somebody who they might get through hbo max They might get to pay a few extra dollars for a specialty documentary services Essentially what this sounds like to me right cnn does those, you know, living in the 80s or specials about africa You know, they they have these kind of evergreen programs that aren't tied to the daily headlines And I could see that being something that somebody would be like, oh, I really love those shows You know, I'll pay a few extra dollars to add that to my subscription service The tnt tbs one It's free ad supported So I guess that sort of makes sense But they've said they want to do a free ad supported hbo max as well So i'm not sure why you would do Something that would have some of the tnt and tbs stuff is showing up on hbo max as well Unless they're changing their strategy or I guess, you know what? I'm just thinking this as I'm saying it out loud. This could be their pluto or their zoom-o or even To be your fubo. I know the names if you're not familiar them sound ridiculous But there are free ad supported streaming services out there that are getting a lot of take-up And maybe this is their attempt to do that right because pluto is owned by Viacom cbs zoom-o is owned by Comcast I think to be is owned by fox. So they all have these free Versions of services out there and maybe that's what hbo max is thinking is we'll take some of our comedy entertainment stuff from tnt tbs etc And put it on a free streaming service because they all the companies do seem to be creating the these tiers of We have our Our free service We have our mainstream service like a peacock or a cbs all access and then we have a premium service like a showtime Yeah, I think what tripped me up at first is looking at the paid cnn service rumored service I was like paid cnn, you know, I'm already paying atnt watch now. Gosh. Is that even what it's called? ATT TV now? Yeah, TV now. Yeah, I mean Forgive me. There are many options, but I was like paid. That's already part of my bundle. Like what what is this about? I think that that They're gonna have to rename that whole thing because people go like that's what what would I pay more for that? It could be yeah that longer form docu series stuff which cnn and other networks do quite well And that is something that might be premium enough that you might fill in a couple bucks a month that Um when it comes to yeah tnt and tbs and this free ad supported channel Even if there's some overlap with hbo max now What do they have to lose? It's free ads if it's free and they get like see what sticks and experimental Could be a gateway to get people into hbo max, I suppose that too Although if they do a free ad supported version of hbo max, which they've said they wanted to I don't know why you would also need this so maybe but maybe they're changing their mind on that I don't know What I would I already see the people in the chat room like ah why too many streaming services I can't subscribe to them all we just have to get used to the idea that this isn't cable television anymore You don't have to subscribe to them all This is an open marketplace Just like you wouldn't have you don't have to buy every book that comes out in the bookstore You don't have to buy every streaming service That comes out you pick the ones that you want to watch that that have stuff that you want to watch and and you will end up If you only pick the stuff you actually have time to watch you probably end up spending less than you would have to cable I know it's it's funny sort of unraveling this idea of like wait a second A hundred bucks a month used to get me everything, but I only liked one third of those things Well, now you can pay for one third of those things and probably save a few bucks a month Exactly Okay, speaking of the future lg partnered with the swedish company ossa abloy entrance systems to develop automatic sliding doors Using its transparent OLED displays LG says that the displays can be used by businesses to greet customers communicate with employees and Show ads no word on whether this when this tech will be available to businesses Just an idea for now, but they're obviously working on it LG transparent OLEDs are already used in windows on some chinese subway cars. So it is already technology in use Yeah, this is uh, this is a really interesting story. Uh, I should disclose up top I own nine shares in ossa abloy that I never expected to be a conflict on the show because they're like, uh They're they make doors For like retail establishments, but here we are. This is the world we live in I have to disclose that now because LG wants to send sell some OLED screens to them And this is this is cool sounding technology Where I think what we're going to experience is you'll look at a door. You'll think it's a decal We're all used to seeing see through decals on a store and then it'll change and you'll realize. Oh, that's not a decal That's a live display and uh, even more creepy would be if it actually senses you And it's like hi sarah 20 off today. Just oh, yeah No, I think that's definitely the idea in a retail setting imagine, you know, you're in a store You're kind of like I'm done. I didn't feel like buying anything And you know much as you get the emails from companies being like, hey, there's still something in your cart You know the store is like we noticed that you touched those socks over in that bin. Yeah Would you like percent off? Yeah before you leave, you know, maybe, you know, we can You know do us a solid uh that kind of thing. I also think and I know this is you know, there's a lot of retail Reasons that this would come in handy certainly ads or you know incentives or or that sort of thing but imagine you've got a sliding glass door In your house and you look out onto a parking lot depending on where you live, right? And to be able to have something that in the future looks like The beach or palm trees or the mountains or a stream or whatever you want This actually has some like pretty cool implications just in general as far as Where you are what kind of light you want shining into your house And and and then you know the retail stuff as well Yeah, and apparently they're already using these OLED displays on subway cars in china So that you're looking out at the landscape as you you tool around in the subway car You know because sometimes they're not sub sometimes they go above ground and then suddenly you see you see an ad The mountain was like delicious coconut wine. Yeah Yeah Well, if you have thoughts on anything we talked about in this show or past shows or future shows feedback at daily tech news show Dot com is where to send those emails We want to shout out patrons at our master and grand master levels today. They include david mosher read fishler and margibson Oh folks the holidays are coming. We got all kinds of specials in the offing Is our seventh year anniversary of daily tech news show and we have new Merch offerings for folks that continue all year long the old merch offerings on patreon Ended every three months, but the new ones continue all year long more to come on that But in the meantime, we want to send you a holiday card if you're a patron and you have given us your address by december 10th We will send you a Hippopotamus themed holiday card with art from lend peralta You can check if we've got your address by going to patreon.com slash pledges find dts Look in the right hand column And if it's there make sure it's correct. If it's not you can add it if you don't want to add it That's fine. 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