 Coming up on DTNS, new Roku's are here. A way you can get Google Stadia in the iOS app store today. And goodbye, Farmville. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, September 28th, 2020. In Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chase. We were just reminiscing about old workplaces and old dress codes on Good Day Internet. If you want to get that conversation and more, become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. FedEx CEO Fred Smith announced that the company is working with reliable robotics on a pilot to use unmanned single-engine aircraft for cargo delivery. The pilot will use a modified single-engine Cessna 208 with a goal of providing service for extremely remote or uninhabited areas of FedEx's delivery network. Smith said that the company is not looking to replace its current aircraft fleet with autonomous alternatives being still decades off. Back in August, we talked about 3D-printed homes from a startup called Mighty Buildings. They have begun selling prefab ADUs and homes in California. They use a synthetic stone that cures instantly using two UV lights attached to the printhead and print your house in roughly 24 hours at the company's factory. Because it cures so fast, buildings can be printed without the need for a support structure opening the door to more complex structures being printed. Pricing ranges from $115,000 to print out a one-bed, one-bath ADU up to $285,000 for a three-bed, two-bath house kit with the company also offering turnkey solutions to deliver, assemble, and connect the home to utilities. Very cool. Westminster magistrates judge, court judge, Ton Ekrem, granted Uber an 18-month license to operate in London. Transport for London had previously declined to renew Uber's license to operate in the city, citing flaws in Uber's systems that could allow for unauthorized and misidentified drivers to pick up passengers in at least 14,000 rides. In the decision, Judge Ekrem stated he had sufficient confidence that Uber no longer poses a risk to public safety. My gosh, I remember going to London doing DTNS from there. That's how long this was ago. And having to reassure everyone that we could still use Uber because that's back when this started. That's been going on for a while. The U.S. Department of Commerce reported sending letters to customers of China's biggest chipmaker, SMIC, warning that that company, SMIC, will need to apply for an export license from the U.S. Department of Commerce. The Commerce Department claims this is required because there is an unacceptable risk that equipment sold to SMIC may be diverted to military end use. SMIC says it has no relationship to the Chinese military, but they're not going to be able to buy stuff from U.S. companies or U.S. companies using U.S. technology because of this letter. As part of its first major redesign in four years, LinkedIn is rolling out its version of ephemeral stories in the U.S. and Canada, letting users post a series of photos, videos, and text that can be viewed for 24 hours. LinkedIn will now also integrate with video call providers within its messenger with support for Zoom, BlueJeans, Microsoft Teams. The site is also adding the ability to recall, delete, and edit messages, react to messages with emojis, and a tool to flag inappropriate messages. LinkedIn also overhauled its search, which will now surface jobs, courses, events, and other content in addition to people and companies. Yeah, so everybody needs Snapchat apparently now. Google's doing this in search too, it's weird. Dell announced updates to the XPS 13, the XPS 13 developer edition now available with Ubuntu, and XPS 13 2-in-1 laptops, adding Intel's 11th generation Tiger Lake processors and the first laptops to carry Intel's Evo certification. That's the certification that requires a laptop to support fast charging, get at least nine hours of battery life on a charge, and wake from sleep in less than a second. Laptops go on sale in the U.S. and Canada September 30th. The XPS 13 starts at $999 and the 2-in-1 at $1,249. We didn't get a price for the developer edition. Epic and Apple had their first hearing in Epic's antitrust lawsuit against Apple. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Roger said it's likely the trial will be heard in July and recommended a trial by a jury. Either Epic or Apple must request for that to happen, but the judge felt a jury decision would be more likely to hold up on appeal. Judge Gonzalez-Roger's also suggested that Apple could allow Fortnite back into the app store if money collected by Epic was held in escrow for the duration of the trial. Epic declined that offer. Yeah, Judge Gonzalez-Roger's didn't seem to favor Epic's approach here. She had some harsh words. All right, let's talk a little bit about what Google's doing to change its app store. Remember, there's also an Epic Google lawsuit going on, and we mentioned Friday that Bloomberg was reporting Google might make some changes. Today they confirmed some of those changes and more. Google announced that it will make it easier to install and use third-party app stores on Android 12. Now, the company didn't give you any details about how this would work, but it did say it was being developed, quote, being careful not to compromise the safety measures Android has in place. So they're saying we want to make it easier for folks to get independent app stores like Amazon. Amazon has an independent app store you can get for Android, but they want to keep it secure. This comes as Google has re-emphasized that apps hosted on the Google Play Store must use Google Play's billing for in-app transactions. That's the Bloomberg story we talked about Friday, which gives Google a 30% cut on transactions. Google now says developers must integrate Play billing to apps by September 30th, 2021. So we heard they might do a grace period. This is it. You've got until September 30th, 2021 to make sure that your app in the Play Store uses Google Play Store billing. If you don't do it by next year, they're going to toss you out. I feel like, Sarah, this is some maneuvering certainly in anticipation of the Epic Google lawsuit, similar to the Epic Apple lawsuit. Sure, yeah. I'm wondering if it also isn't negotiation to avoid that lawsuit possibly. I mean, the third-party app store bit makes me think that. Yeah, I mean, that was my first thought as well. It's like, Google being like, we're fine with third-party app stores. We're good, but we want to take that 30% cut. And we haven't been enforcing that as well as we should have over the last however many years of the Google Play Store. So we're going to do that now. But you've got a certain amount of autonomous freedom developers. I don't know what this really means besides kind of lip service, again, in the wake of a lawsuit. But I'd be curious to know if the developer feels that Google's doing something really great here. Yeah. I mean, Epic has a third-party app store that they can run an Android, as I mentioned. Amazon does, Samsung does. There are third-party app stores. My guess is Epic complained that every time you install a third-party app, even from a third-party app store, Google gives you all these security warnings. So maybe Google's coming up with a way that developers can be vetted not to trip all those security warnings. Maybe we can say, like, all right, the Epic store won't trip the security warnings. That would be one way to make it easier to install apps from third-party stores. Maybe Google would have a vetted list of, like, these are stores that we think are pretty safe. But I do like that idea. This seems to be the rational response to Epic's complaints. To be like, all right, let's just make it easier for third-party app stores to get up to. Yeah. Yeah, we're playing ball. You know, we're friends. Well, playing ball, I don't know what it means when it comes to the TikTok story. But on Sunday, Judge Carl Nichols granted a preliminary injunction blocking the executive order that would prevent U.S. app stores from distributing TikTok. Judge Nichols said that TikTok is likely to prevail in its case to overturn the order as the judge believes that the president is likely to exceed the lawful bounds of the law. Filings in the case showed that TikTok data in Singapore was contracted to Chinese company Alibaba's cloud service. That is important to some people. Also, the Justice Department argued, there is no requirement that the executive must wait for specific harm to occur before responding. The executive is free to act prospectively based on a risk of harm. The order was issued under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which Judge Nichols cited, doesn't grant the president the authority to regulate or prohibit directly or indirectly, either the exchange of information or informational materials or personal communications. Judge Nichols said that the threat from China presented by the government was substantial, but not convinced that the prohibitions were the only effective way to address the threats. Judge Nichols didn't rule on a separate executive order against providing internet services to TikTok, which goes into effect on November 12th because the threat from that order is not imminent. Yeah, he basically said like, all right, when we get closer to November 12th, I'll hear any requests for a preliminary injunction then if they're still necessary. Maybe you guys are going to figure this out with that whole Oracle Walmart deal. So we're not talking about that. That's the order that says, internet companies can't provide transit services. They can't host data, et cetera. That one, we've got a lot of time, November 12th. This one that he said isn't going to stand means that TikTok can stay in the Google Play and the Apple App Stores. And his reasoning was you say there's a threat from China. I believe you, there's redacted evidence in here that I'm like, yeah, credible threat, but your justification for banning the app doesn't meet the criteria for addressing the threat. The judge is saying banning the app exceeds the lawful bounds of your response. You could respond in other ways to that threat. Now the government's saying like, listen, we can take perspective action. We can decide to ban the app before we have to. That's what they're trying to argue, but the judge didn't buy that argument. He said, no, no, no, you're way far away from that. I believe China is a threat here, but banning the app from the Google Play Store and the Apple Play Store, first of all, doesn't stop people from using it. So it doesn't address the threat in that way. And it does harm TikTok's business. So he granted the stay, the preliminary injunction, that says no, until your lawsuit is done, we're going to leave TikTok in the app stores. Now, if TikTok and the United States come to an agreement about the Oracle Walmart acquisition, all of this becomes moot, right? This is only because that deal isn't done yet and everyone thought it would be done last week. And it's not. We're just sitting here in a staring contest between China and the US government over this right now. At least that's what it appears. If somebody finally blinks and that gets done, all of this goes away. If it doesn't, we're going to have a trial and the judge will then decide whether TikTok should be banned or not. But the preliminary injunction says, well, TikTok's likely to win the case. So we're not going to make them leave the app store yet. We're going to make you prove that they should leave it in court. Here's another one. Man, it's all about app stores today. Apple, of course, does not allow streaming game services in its app store because of rules meant to stop malware and store rules from being circumvented. An app where all the features are accessed remotely could be easily manipulated to do something unallowed. So you say it does one thing. You put it in the app store. And because it's remote, you can change everything without having to put it through the app store. So goes the argument. Now, Apple makes lots of exceptions to that for things like corporate VPN, for instance. So they're like, OK, you're doing it just for that. Anything on your local network, you can connect to your own stuff even when you're out of the house. That's fine, too. And Apple even lined out new exceptions for game streaming services, albeit ones that require each game in the service to be submitted as its own app, which doesn't seem likely to be taken up by Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, or anybody else. In fact, Amazon last week got around this by making its new game streaming service, Luna, a progressive web app. So it doesn't exist inside the app store at all. And Apple's like, fine with that. We actually helped them figure out how to do that. But a user on Reddit called ZM Knox, apparently Zachary Knox, describes how they got a Google Stadia app approved in the Apple app store itself. So there's an app you can get in the iOS app store right now that lets you play Stadia. The app is called Stadium Fullscreen Browser. And here's the key. It's built just as a browser, which it is, a browser using Apple's web kit that is tweaked so that it plays Stadia games well. Now, one feature of the Stadia browser, not mentioned in the app description, is that if you authenticate with your Google account, it will bring up the Stadia landing page whenever you open it. But that's how they got it through the app store is they didn't claim any of that stuff in the app description. They didn't suggest it in the setup page. When you open this thing up, it just says, what primary URL do you want it to open at? And what user agent would you like this browser to tell services it is? If you set that primary URL to Stadia.google.com slash home and you set that user agent to a specific version of Chrome, it works with Stadia. Yeah, you can do that on the main screen, but you have to know what to enter. It doesn't give you the hint. That's how they got it approved. It doesn't guide you at all. Another Reddit user called Grey Bay Play got an external controller to work with a full screen iOS browser app. So that's implemented in there, meaning you can use your iPhone and Stadium to play Stadia with an Xbox One or Sony DualShock 4 controller. So, Sarah, this is good for somebody who wants to do this, but it's certainly not a way to market it. Yeah, I mean, listen, like you mentioned, you got to know what you're doing. This is not going to guide you through this. I wonder though, and we're talking about it right now, so clearly the word is out, is this something that Apple will crack down on? Or does Apple just simply not care? Because again, this is a little bit of a homegrown solution to play Stadia games. I don't know how they could crack down on it rationally because all this thing does is say, hey, we're a browser that lets you set a user agent. I mean, literally, they played it by the rules. They did not say anything else. They give no hint that they're meant for anything else. They didn't try to ride the line, and that's legal. Like that's a legitimate app, right? Yeah, at this point, if Apple were to yank it, it would be a whole thing. Yeah, so I think it's probably going to stay, and it's a nice little workaround if you know about it. Well, there you go. Well, if you're using it, let us know how it's working for you. A new study from Pew Research, looking at news consumption on YouTube, found that 26% of US adults say that they get news from YouTube. Of that, 72% said YouTube was at least an important way that they received their news. Most said they didn't see any big issues with getting news from YouTube. 73% said that they believe that videos to be largely accurate. 66% said that watching YouTube news videos helped them to better understand the current events of the 100 most viewed YouTube news channels. Pew found that 7% mentioned some kind of conspiracy theory. 4% primarily about conspiracy theories. Only 2% of the channels from news organizations mentioned them. Well, 21% of independent channels did. 14% of independent channels were primarily about conspiracy theories versus less than 1% for news organizations. 22% of videos from top news channels were negative. Negative videos were the most popular. News video viewers on YouTube were more likely to be young, male, and non-white compared to US adults overall. Yeah, there's lots of interesting stuff. There's also some other stuff about the breakdown of independent sources versus sources from news organizations, which they're predominantly news organizations, but there's a lot of independent sources and they're personality based in a lot of cases. But what I found most interesting here was, first of all, that YouTube news users were more likely to be non-white males. Young, I expected. Male, I expected. Non-white, interesting. Still 50% white, but it's more... There are fewer white people in this cohort than in the general population. You know, when I first read the story this morning, I was like, who is going to YouTube to get their news? But then I think, well, a lot of people watch DTNS using YouTube to watch our video feed. And we certainly consider ourselves news and we hope to always get things right. So that's actually a great example of like, okay, that actually makes a lot of sense, especially if you're doing that habitually on a somewhat daily basis. Yeah, there were some metrics here that were a little bit surprising to me. I wonder how much beyond, let's say, I don't know, let's say I watched last week tonight with John Oliver, right? HBO show. And they do some YouTube stuff that they, kind of like, that's like, special content type thing. And I might watch some of that stuff. I might not, but that is not where I go to in the beginning to figure out like, what's going on in the world? However, clearly a lot of people do. And that's really interesting. And that is something that YouTube is going to have to walk a line, obviously going forward between, are we helping you find your news? Are we helping you find bad news? Yeah, it's worth, if you're interested in this topic, go to that Pew story and dig into it. Because some of this is perfectly reasonable behavior. Like, I don't have time to watch the CBS or ABC Evening News. So I watched their clips on the ABC News channel on YouTube, right? I don't think anybody, unless you particularly hate ABC News, I guess, but nobody would look at that and say, that's irresponsible. Where it gets worrisome is 21% of independent channels mentioning conspiracy theories. And that combined with when I watch YouTube news, I feel better informed, right? Video news in general has this halo around it. But video news generally informs you less than written news, but makes you feel more informed than written news. And personalities can cause you to feel like something is obviously true when it's just playing on your emotions. And it doesn't sound like that's the overwhelming news that people are getting from YouTube, but it exists more here than it would in other arenas for sure. Yeah, and I think, and this is, you know, I think it's overall a very good thing that people can put together something that looks very professional with the right equipment for way less money and not having to be at a production studio or working for a TV network than they did in the past. Largely, I think that's a good thing. However, I think that then you get into a gray area where people are like, well, this, like they seem really pro and they're telling me this thing. And whatever they're telling me is, you know, maybe you agree with it, maybe you don't. But that's where you, you know, it used to be like, well, you have four channels and those are the people that tell you the news and now it's different. Listen, if you had good lighting in a camera, you obviously had to be a large news organization. And we have learned as a cultured that that is authenticity. But as you know, as you and I know very well, you can put up some lights and have video. There's no one looking over your shoulder to make sure you're doing a good job, but you may still have that gene of authenticity. Do you remember June 19th, 2009? Oh, Tom, I like it was yesterday. The world was eight days into the first pandemic of the 21st century from the swine flu back then. Oh, the swine flu. The number one song was Boom Boom Pow by the Black Eyed Peas. A Roe Banger. Which I had blissfully forgotten until I started researching the story. CNET's Buzz Out Loud had just celebrated its thousandth episode on June 18th. Current TV had just received approval to launch a Canadian version. And Zynga launched Farmville on Facebook. Ah, Farmville. I mean, what a delight. Well, that delight is ending, Sarah. Zynga confirmed it will shut down Farmville. Facebook previously announced in June it would end support for flash games on December 31st. And Farmville's a flash game. In-app purchases for the game will shut down November 17th. And at one time, Facebook's Farmville had the most daily active users on Facebook. That was in the blissful days of 2010. No longer, Farmville is over December 31st. It is survived by its cousins Candy Crush and Words With Friends. Not neither of those are flash games. Well, but they're available as apps. I guess they never really, you know. Yes, right. Not integrated. There's Farmville 2 and stuff that aren't flash games either. But Farmville on Facebook, like that's where it really made its. You know, I remember, gosh, I mean, back in the twit days, Leo Laporte was a big Farmville player. He was very enthusiastic about it. I never played Farmville. I, it always kind of came across to me as one of the things where I'm like, time suck, who's got it? But I do know a lot of people who still play Words With Friends. And there were some shaking in boots earlier today when I said, you know, Farmville's gonna win Facebook. And they were like, what about Words With Friends? And I was like, well, no, that's Words With Friends is still fine as far as I know for for some time. But hey, man, I mean, that's the thing about mobile games. And I know that Farmville integrated with Facebook is a little bit different, but it's a, it's a fickle group. And Farmville had its day in the sun. Yeah. And that sun is finally senting. Senting, setting, setting is what I meant to say. Sent, it's sentient. Yeah, the scent of the farm. Off into the distance. Hey, folks, to get all the tech headlines each day in five minutes, be sure to subscribe to dailytechheadlines.com. Roku announced a bunch of new hardware and even a new app. The Roku Streambar is the latest in Roku's line of audio products. These are products that, you know, take your dumb television with its simple speaker and give you a little better audio. The Streambar is kind of a mid-range one. This is meant, this is kind of the entry level versus the Smartbar, which is a little more capable. The Streambar is a 14-inch soundbar running Roku OS capable of streaming 4K and HDR content. The Streambar can be paired with Roku's wireless speakers and a subwoofer from Roku, if you want to add surround sound. But it's got four channels, two for voice, front-facing, and then two side channels to kind of give you a little bit of a room-filling sound. The Streambar will cost $130 shipping mid-October. Also, a brand new top-level Roku streaming box, the Ultra. Just like the old Ultra, but this one's got new features. For instance, Dolby Vision HDR for the first time. It already had Dolby Atmos now, it has Dolby Vision HDR, Bluetooth support, so you can send audio to it from your phone or hook up Bluetooth headphones. First time a Roku is at Bluetooth, price staying in the box, first time in the box. Price stays at $99.99, same as the old Ultra. And both these devices, the Soundbar and the new Ultra, support AirPlay 2. So if you want to watch HBO Max on a Roku, you'll be able to cast it from your iOS device as one option. Roku also announced plans to bring its free ad-supported on-demand streaming Roku channel to iOS and Android. You can get it as part of the Roku general app, but there's going to be a standalone Roku channel app now, where you can just watch all 100-some streaming channels. I think they've got 115 or so channels on there. Those are ad-supported free streaming channels. So another one of those Pluto TV-like offerings. Roku channel will also launch live linear TV offerings in a separate app on the Roku, September 29th. Channels include things like Ven, The Craftistry from Studio71, HappyKids.tv, iFood.tv, a Lego channel, Maverick Black Cinema, Moviesphere, that kind of stuff. So Roku branching out on the services side, which is where they make the most of their money these days, is on ads. Ads they sell on the Roku OS platform and on their own devices, but also ads that they're selling in the streaming version. But also trying to say, like even if you don't have a Roku, here's some free TV for you to watch. Yeah, I read the story. I was like, Roku has wireless speakers. And I'm sure lots of people out there are like, yeah, they do. And I love them. I love the idea of, I've got a Sonos beam. I'm a Sonos person, for better or for worse. But that is, it's a speaker, but it's not a smart anything otherwise. It is Amazon Assistant enabled. But it isn't that the content part of it is a different device that's behind my television. So it's really just audio. To be able to have all of this in one place, in one device that works well, very cool. One last thing for me to have to mount on my wall. It seems to be the new trend to say like, ah, the old convenience was having all of your sound in a sound bar. If you didn't care about having the perfect audio, you could get better audio. Now it's have that and the operating system for your television in there. If you don't like WebOS on your LG TV or Samsung with its Tizen OS or something like that, you can use this instead. Exactly. Yeah. And AirPlay 2, that's cool. I have a Roku. I don't use it because I'm kind of an Apple TV user, but they work the same way for the most. I'm going to watch certain things on a Roku or an Apple TV. A lot of it goes through a Plex Media Server, which, you know, that's me. But yeah, I think the whole kind of like, we're going to give you this thing. It's pretty affordable, $130 for a sound bar that also is a Roku device and works with whatever existing Roku equipment you already have in your house. That's pretty attractive. Yeah. And available soon, coming in October. Well, you can join in the conversation in our Discord. Maybe it's about Roku. Maybe it's about something else. You can join by linking to a Patreon account at patreon.com slash dtns. And thank you in advance. What's in the mailbag after all? Oh, Tom, I'm glad you asked. Adam, who says he's in Fall Colors Wisconsin, said, yeah, I know, it's fall. How about that? As a recurrent receiving associate and former electronics area associate at Walmart, I can confirm this. He's talking about the Chromecast that we talked about that was available at Walmart before it was actually announced. Has it been announced yet? Yeah. Adam says I can confirm this as the individual store level, at the individual store level. All items with release dates have those dates prominently displayed on the shipping boxes. Many people don't pay attention to these markings as they stock product. Hope this helps keep up the good work. And so the Walmart folks out there don't feel too bad. The Verge was able to buy one off the shelf at Home Depot this weekend. So it's not just Walmart. For some reason, people really want to put these things on the shelf before they were announced. Yeah. I mean, as somebody who used to stock a lot of product at a grocery store, I feel their pain where I'm like, there are boxes. Let's put them out. Let's get, you know, let's move some merch. Hey, shout out to patrons at our master and grand master levels, including Irwinster, Philip Shane and Kevin. Oh, and don't forget, you get lots of extra content. If you're the co-executive producer level of our Patreon, we did a whole bonus show last week, looking at our lineups from five years ago and going through the stories from then and looking at them through the eyes of 2020. It's always a good time and you get that right there in your Patreon feed. If you don't want ads in your feed anymore, becoming a patron means you get an ad-free Patreon RSS feed. Sign up right now at dailytechnewshow.com slash Patreon. And don't forget, starting next Monday, it's Creator's Theme Week, talking about all the ways people use technology to create from game design to costume and props to more. Our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. You got something on your mind? Email us. We'd love to hear it. We're also live Monday through Friday, 4.30 p.m. Eastern, 20.30 UTC. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Patrick Bezos with us tomorrow. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Time in the club hopes you have enjoyed this brover.