 Coming up on DTS G4 is apparently back India is making more iPhones and Patrick Norton. Let's us know how bad the Intel news is This is the Daily Tech news for Friday July 24th, 2020 in Los Angeles on Tom Merritt and from studio Redwood I'm Sarah Lane draw on the top tech stories from Cleveland, Ohio. I'm Lynn Peralta and the shows producer Roger Chang and Joining us as I mentioned host of AVXL Patrick Norton. How's it going Patrick? Patrick Patrick you're you've muted yourself on Skype. That's a first Or maybe Skype didn't want you they didn't want the truth to come out. How's it going, man? You know outside of this whole blue jays buffalo bison half thing. I'm golden excellent excellent well, if we were just talking about a Show called alone on the history channel and you need to get the dramatic retelling from Len Peralta by becoming a member at Patreon.com slash DTNS and getting good day internet. Let's start here with a few tech things you should know To former Twitter employees tell Reuters that more than a thousand employees of Twitter and contractors had access to internal tools as of early 2020 and could change use your account as settings and hand control to others Including contractors like cognizant that work with Twitter Twitter says it's seeking a new head of security Working to better secure its systems and train employees on resisting tricks from outsiders in the future the verges sources say the Monday hearing of the US House Judiciary Committee the Assembling of the Avengers Mark Zuckerberg Sundar Pichai Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook will be postponed It's like it's a Hollywood movie a private memorial and public viewing of US representative and civil rights leader John Lewis is scheduled for Monday and that would start just after this hearing was originally scheduled so people are like You're probably not gonna want to go straight from one end of the other This hearing whatever it happens is supposed to mark the end of an investigation by the US Congress into allegations of anti competitive behavior by these companies and Update to the Samsung Galaxy Buds companion app points to an official Galaxy Buds Live name and support for active noise Cancellation as well as a how to wear the earbuds with apparent touch controls when future reports that the price will be $169 with 4.5 hours of estimated battery life three mics and 12 nanometer drivers The National Basketball Association The NBA is using Microsoft teams new together mode to create a virtual experience for fans during live games Using AI to segment your face and your shoulder and recreate the appearance of being in the venue Fans will be able to watch a live feed of the game within teams select fans anyway And see other fans at the same time and the players will hear them cheer and it sounds kind of fun actually An outage that began Thursday affected Garmin's website We talked about it the little bit on the show yesterday call centers were affected as well data syncing services aviation databases and production lines in Asia Kate Linux simp on you at ZDNed reports that it may have been caused by the Wasted Locker ransomware while services are still out users can't sync their fitness data from devices pilots also notably unable to do FAA required updates to flight databases on their navigation devices and As I've been doing some vaccine updates as news becomes available two of the SARS-CoV-2 Vaccines that are in phase three trials member phase three is the last step before you can actually use it on the public in general Have received updates Sinovax vaccine which uses an inactivated virus has received approval to conduct part of its phase three trial With 9,000 people in Brazil so expanding that phase three trial and a vaccine from China National Biotech and Sinofram Have started phase three trials in Saudi Arabia All right, let's talk a little more about that weird G4 news. Oh that's And it was weird on Friday the Twitter accounts of G4 TV attack of the show and also x-play All posted the same video of what looks like an a pan and studio The camera kind of zooms among wooden crates lands on a screen playing pong then the screen is taken over by the words incoming transmission and is blurred and then lands on a G4 logo and then Fade to the number 2021 and the words the words rather we never stopped playing which is Supposed to indicate that G4 is coming back the G4 TV calm website shows a playable pong game Which is had harkens back to it, you know, it's sort of like a ha ha thing from the past G4 shut down on November of 2014 Adam Sessler Morgan Webb and Olivia Munn all responded to the tweet with a parent surprise The apparent surprise I think I think is It it depends on who's being surprised. I truly was surprised. I don't know anything about this You know anybody who's who's been you know calling me at 6 30 in the morning trying to ask me about this kind of thing I don't know anything about this. I truly don't but it but it but it does Indicate that some people do yeah, and if people don't know Sarah used to co-host attack of the show back in the day And also used to work on attack of the show before it was changed to attack of the show When it was the screensavers, which Patrick Norton you also used to go host So, you know, this is some history in the room I used to run the website over there at tech TV comm before it became G4 So we all have like a passing interest in this, but yeah I don't I don't know anything in particular about this either although I am very close to a source at NBC Universal when I mentioned that she's like Oh, yeah, I heard about that last week. So, you know, I actually and you know I won't call up anybody by name, but I Ping some people this morning. I was like, what is this? Why are all these people like paying me on Twitter about this and they were like, yeah, I know about it But I'm under NDA. So yeah, I was like, all right. Cool. Thanks. I mean Way to leave me out of everything as usual. The best part is when we told Patrick this and he and Patrick What was your reaction? Who close a long time ago? Yeah. No, I Yeah, the whole This makes no sense to me, but they own the brand and the URL, I guess Makes perfect sense to me like video gaming is hot right now. Yeah I'm sure somebody independent of this at NBC could have been thinking like, you know We should probably start a channel around video games that that would be really hot And somebody said, you know, we used to have one and they're like, let's just revive the brand We already got all the IP. So I totally get it G4.TV still redirects to Esquire Wait G4.TV does because G4TV has the Pong thing on it now You're right G4.TV goes to Esquire.com because if people don't know G4 TV was originally going to become the Esquire channel And then they ditched that plan at one point. Yeah, well, it was for some time, but yeah Hmm Tech crunches sources say Foxconn has begun building the iPhone 11 at its Chennai, India plant though production yields are limited India's Minister of Commerce and Industry also tweeted that Apple had begun assembling the iPhone 11 in India So it seems like it's the case economic times reports that Wistron also may begin making the new iPhone SE at its plant near Bengaluru as well They used to make the old iPhone SE and so it would make sense for them to make the new one Wistron began producing older models of iPhones back in 2017 It currently makes the iPhone 10 are there in both cases though What's significant is this would be the first time that current iPhone models would be made in India Indian factories have been putting out the less expensive older models up until now The first big advantage in doing this is Apple could then sell its flagship phones without having to charge a 22% import duty Which India puts on anything that isn't manufactured in the country Xiaomi does this saying nearly every phone it sells in India is assembled inside the country So that alone would be enough for Apple to want this to happen Also developing India as a manufacturing option Hedges against the uncertainty caused by the trade and political conflicts between China and the United States So I don't find this news surprising But it's notable that Apple's manufacturing base as we have suspected is beginning to wipe Well, I mean this started a long time ago in Foxconn You know as soon as the the the trade embargo started getting serious Foxconn started making noises about expanding into India So, you know, this isn't real surprising. I think part of me is real curious what Limited production yields actually means once it's translated out of PR speak What what it means right now is they're not making a lot of them yet But it doesn't mean they won't tool up and start making a lot of them eventually. Yeah Yeah, I guess what I mean is like are they saying that because I always say her production yields And of course I have intel on the brain right now because of something later But you know when yields are low, it means things are broken Right, right or as you pointed out, maybe they're just slowly ramping things up I that's how I took it But you're right usually yield means like we just aren't able to get enough of them To to work. I doubt that's what's going on here. It's probably just like man, we don't have because it's more expensive We don't have as much demand inside India for the iPhone 11. So we don't have to make as many of them right away According to internal documents seen by android police as of august 4th T-mobile will require new devices activated on its network to support voice over lte Existing 3g voice devices will now continue to work until January of 2021 And T-mobile will confirm that new devices on its network will require voice over lte support But didn't offer the timeline T-mobile told the birds that has not offered non voice over ltv devices for years And the overwhelming majority of devices on its network support voice over lte Atnt will shut down its 3g calling service in 2023 And verizon is shutting down 3g service at the end of this year Yeah, everybody's making a bigger deal about this than I think they would have because of that atnt email that we talked about Previously this week where they kind of tried to scare people into upgrading their phone two years before they're ending The 3g calling service what t-mobile is trying to say is look We barely have anybody on the network who uses a v voice over lte phone or non v o lte phone And and the only ones that do are people who bring their own phone So we're we're just letting them know like hey if you bring your own phone You better bring a newer phone because if you're bringing a three-year-old phone It's not going to activate and anybody who's still on the network in january whose phone is several years old Probably ought to upgrade too, but they're not sending out a scary email about it at least not yet Hmm Two security firms synactive and grim have found that the android version of the dji go for app That's the app you use with the quadcopters from dji has some suspicious behaviors or at least these two researchers think so The researchers say the app can download code outside of the google play store So not an up app update through the google play store, but it can secretly download its own code and install Theoretically anything at once any application at once In fact, it uses the weibo Framework to do this and weibo allows for you to download and install apps within weibo because it's a super app It's a platform The researchers also found a function that they say could restart the app when the user closes it So that you wouldn't notice that it didn't stay closed and then it would run in the background making network requests All right, so those aren't great things DJI says Yes, we have an app update function like that We have to have that to guard against users hacking geofencing restrictions The faa in the united states requires restrictions on the app to say you can't fly into these particular areas You can't go above this altitude and if people try to hack the app to get around that this function would automatically Replace any code that a hacker would put in to put the geofencing back. That's what DJI is saying. It's there for DJI also says it can't replicate the restart function that the researchers are talking about They're like we don't we don't see that happening DJI also says its functions were never exploited for malicious reasons There's no evidence of that the researchers say. Yeah, no, we didn't see evidence of malicious use We're just saying it could happen DJI go for for android does however require access to your contacts your microphone your camera your location your storage And the ability to change your network connectivity So if it were to do is up the malicious it would also have access to all that information too, which is unsettling Google said it's going to look into all this. It's going to investigate these claims and get back to everybody Patrick are you a drone user and do these uh findings surprise or scare you um No, uh, you know, we use smaller drones like the you know, we have a we have literally a couple of boxes of Uh, little simple drones. We've got one DJI um I think this is that thin line between I think this is malicious We think this is you know safety. I it's you know, I'm not uh I I'm torn between my usual level of paranoia involving anything and sometimes You know an unexploited mistake is not something to freak out about I'm kind of curious to see uh, you know now that it's talked about What people will be looking forward in the future. Um You know I I think one thing that made me feel a little better about this is uh, the researchers also found that the previous version of DJI go for Uh, was sending telemetry data to a web advertiser And that before this research was published DJI went in and and got rid of that Which is that that's a typical app move these days is an app company thought it was okay to be sending all this data To an ad company and that's not popular anymore. So the company goes in and rips it out DJI did that all on its own I think that shows that they're not, you know, the the the princes and saints of the of the universe here But they're they're at least operating an industry norm, which is like, oh, that's not cool anymore. Okay, we'll we'll stop doing that It's not oh, you notice that we're so sorry. Yeah, we'll clear that out It doesn't necessarily mean that they were like had an evil plan But you know deep chinese company right now is going to get extra scrutiny. That's that's understandable Well speaking of collecting information The information sources say that google has an internal program called android lock box that collects data On how non google apps are used on android the sources also say that google uses this information to improve google's own apps So when people agree to share information while setting up android The program collects how often apps are opened and how long they're in use So google said in a statement that it uses the android app data a api Usage data api to access quote basic data about app usage such as how often apps are opened to analyze and improve services and quotes google also cited the adaptive battery feature and play store app discovery feature as ways it has used the data I I think the idea here is to to have a gotcha on google similar to what people have accused amazon of Which the accusation with amazon is that they look at what's selling with all the third party Marketers on the amazon platform then create a product based on that that drives those creators out of business, right? So a cool Cool pattern on a shirt Is going crazy and then amazon makes their own pattern and puts that up in the search results and that's anti competitive behavior That's the allegation I think they're trying to say the same thing here is that google looks at what app behavior is on the android platform And then would use that to make apps that Drive the other apps out. I feel like that's That's a less compelling thing on google where yeah, they do bundle their apps in but you also do not have to use them Unlike ios you can you can basically change to almost any other app on android So without you know without requiring me to to use your app It feels I mean I guess you could still say oh, we'll make our apps better than the other ones in the app store But also it feels legitimate that you would just use the data in the api To improve your operating system But this is the problem when you run apps on your operating system and the operating system Is it cast doubt and people go well wait a minute? Are you doing this just for the operating system? Are you doing this to to You know be better at competing with the other apps on your own platform I almost feel like this would also be a security issue where you know, uh, you could just observe You know, is there a large group of behavior is something odd going on? Did all of a sudden a whole bunch of people in a region download an application that nobody had ever heard of before is a legitimate application? I mean There's there's it doesn't sound particularly nefarious to me, but i'm also not Competing against you know google in the app space. So if I was an app I would not like the idea of this if I was making an app if I was an app I wouldn't be a human so I probably wouldn't have any feelings If you want to get all the tech headlines each date about five minutes be sure to subscribe to daily tech headlines dot com Tell you who's got some feelings right now people at intel. Let's be clear. Intel's earnings were good Its processor arms saw revenue rise seven percent because laptops work from home people were buying a lot of those Data center and memory solutions help drive an overall 20 percent year over year increase in revenue for intel Also, good news on the horizon the 11th gen tiger lake and z graphics cards are coming to laptops later this year They're highly anticipated the company's first 10 nanometer desktop cpus 12th gen alder lake also coming by the end of this year That's the good news However, during the earnings report intel announced it is delaying Its seven nanometer cpus for personal computers six months Which would see the chips arrive sometime in 2022 Intel CEO bob swan said the company had identified what he called a defect mode in the seven nanometer process Meanwhile, keep in mind amd has had its seven nanometer rise in 4 000 chips on sale for a few months now aws makes its own seven nanometer gravitan chip the iphone 11 uses a seven nanometer process made cpu made by tsmc In fact, tsmc is readying its five nanometer process So intel is definitely behind and announcing a delay Doesn't make people happy also the announcement was reminiscent of Then intel CEO brian kurzanich saying in 2015 that that 10 nanometer process was running behind schedule and would be delayed six to nine months That's six month figure again. And as you heard some of those 10 nanometer products are just now coming out Current CEO bob swan also made a remark that if 10 nanometer delays Continue intel might outsource Manufacturing here's this quote We're going to be pretty pragmatic about if and when we should be making stuff inside or making outside and making sure That we have optionality to build internally mix and match inside and outside or go outside in its entirety If we need to that'd be a big deal for intel. They don't do that Intel seven nanometer ponte vechio graphics chip which is meant for data centers and meant To bring intel into competition with nvidia in data centers Was identified as a chip that they might decide to be have made by outside chip factories so The big thing here patrick that it has people concerned is the delay, right? Right Um, the let's sort of break this down. You mentioned the the 10 nanometer announcement from several years ago the uh The desktop cpus the first 10 nanometer desktop cpus Although they're actually not going to come to the second half of 2021 not this year To put that into perspective. They were talking about 10 nanometers several years ago and it's gotten delayed and delayed and delayed and delayed all the intel desktop processors Are still sitting at 14 nanometer. Did he say six months? He meant six years Six decades um, but like yeah, it's When you when you look at processors, um You know you you come up with a design and The process usually goes through a dye shrink You know when they change to a more efficient process They shrink the size of everything that reduces the voltage consumed It gives you kind of a de facto reduction in the power consumed and a performance boost and there's cooling And that's what intel sort of tick-tock thing was like for years Or they you know the new processor design a dye shrink a new processor design a dye shrink They would kind of get two layers of fun out of every design that gave them some breathing room and intel was for approximately forever The most advanced in terms of shrinking the process or shrink You know go through dye shrinks and updating the process and the wheels have just kind of completely fallen off that In the last three or four years and that has allowed, uh, you know companies that that are kind of dedicated to manufacturing other people's designs uh to Move to a lower process now you could argue that I want to say like tsmc seven nanometers kind of like intel's 10 nanometer but the truth is intel's you know still struggling with 10 nanometer and The end result is you know things like when amd was launching a processor last year And they decided to see how many times they could say seven or put seven in the artwork and in uh, you know The the the presentation and the speeches and the marketing because they were just driving a fork into intel's rib cage Because intel wasn't even on 10 nanometer and they're at seven and we're at seven and we're at seven We mentioned seven seven we're gonna launch this on seven set. You know, I mean and it just went on and on brutal Um, so a lot of things going on at the high end depending on who you ask in terms of market share sort of the high end desktop There's been huge gains by amd amd has had I think 10 consecutive quarters of gains against intel in the overall pc market They've just released a huge round of processors that are going to be just for oems. So they're losing market share um You know, it's it's a lot of money You know and and they've gone from being You know for years and years and years. Well, yeah, if you bought an amd It's because you were an amd loyalist or because you were looking for a particular rock bottom processor But in the last couple years Amd, you know, they've done phenomenal work the performance is way up We could argue about individual, you know single core performance But the reality is is amd is doing some incredible stuff with their architectures And they are really in a position Especially with mobile to start digging away at intel's uh core business because client computing is like, you know I still want to say at least still 30 percent of their or almost 30 40 50 percent of their business. It's a lot of money um, you know, they they have a huge amount in the data center group and other stuff, but um Intel's got a real problem and for You know intel's leadership to come out and say it might be time for us to work with someone else That's either some kind of a really vicious Um challenge to the engineers of intel to fix this problem. Uh, or it's just them You know acknowledging that they after, you know, all of the time they were leading on this They have sort of lost their way and they are going to move to other options moving forward, which you know Is interesting. It's a big change for intel. Uh in terms of intel's culture. It's an incredible change well, if you look at the The history of intel, uh, it's it's lately been a history of missing opportunities and relying on its x86 instruction set chips to carry the weight and that's the bad news here is AMD and others are coming for that in various ways And if that's all you've got that's not enough to carry you forward The fact of the matter is it's not all they've got they've got data center And in fact, that's where most of their growth came from And they could retreat into that but that's again like giving up one more market I think it would make sense for them to say well, look desktop cpus Not a growth market We could abandon that and and go into other designs And maybe that's what's leading bob swan to say maybe it's a little both Maybe it's both a challenge to the engineers, but also a way forward to say look engineers If you can make seven nanometer work and get us back on track great We'll stay there, but if you can't It's time for an IBM like pivot where we stop making typewriters and start making mainframes We stop building chips and we go to designing them and designing controllers for thunderbolton And data center stuff and become more of an enterprise level company and less of a supplier for for personal computers Right, um, you know, and there's no doubt that that intel is still making huge amounts of money period Oh, yeah You know, I you know, I think it's been kind of crazy. I mean one. There's this huge reaction from wall street Who punished In no no uncertain terms wall street just punished intel stock price AMD is now worth more per share, but the market value is so much huge here by intel But the other thing is you touch on it before is is they missed some opportunities And you know arm processors and cell phones have become the primary Community it's the primary It's the it's the primary computer for the vast majority of people on the planet You know, they're never going to have a laptop never going to have a desktop or or it will be a long time before they have a A laptop or a desktop so the computer is where they interact with the internet and each other in the web and games and um, you know, that was a huge opportunity that just kind of slid right by intel and by the time intel realized that the you know AMD powered devices primarily uh coming from Or primarily running android we're going to kind of kind of take over the universe You know, they they were like, okay We're going to do mobile and they did this huge thing to try to do mobile and it didn't really work and then this huge thing to try to do internet of things and it didn't really work so They're frustrated because in terms of of volume AMD's kind of taken over computing and they're you know, AMD's also made huge inroads in um the data centers So they have to be a little uptight about looking at that especially with I think you guys talked about yesterday You know with nvidia thinking about buying AMD from softbank that would be buying arm from sorry arm Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I've made that mistake We all have AMD on the brain But you know if nvidia buys arm from softbank that that's that becomes that I think at that point it becomes a real vicious nvidia versus intel battle for data centers and and uh And ai and all sorts of stuff moving forward. Um, so so what you're saying is uh, it's you know, indicating that either you get back on track or becoming A designer rather than a maker of chips is in a sense intel swan song Yes question mark. Um No because bob swan is saying it so definition It really is it's just slid right by me. Um I apologize. It's uh It's uh, no, it's it's but it's it's a challenge and it's a huge, uh It's just a huge cultural shift at intel the idea that intel would be managing the processors. Uh, that's Yeah, and just just throwing that out is that's that's meaningful even if they never do it just saying that on an earnings call That's that's serious stuff. You don't you don't just say that by accident. That's not a throwaway I mean the other thing it struck me is because I had cut and pasted this and sent it to a friend of mine is um You know the quote from from bob swan, you know, we've root caused the issue. We believe there are no fundamental roadblocks Okay, that's that's okay. Yeah, and then the next sentence. I think was quote But we've also invested in contingency plans to hedge against further schedule uncertainty We've mitigated the impact of the process to land our products scheduled by leveraging improvements and design methodologies such as diet disaggregation and advanced packaging and it's like that's a lot of You know jargon And that's a lot of non financial jargon in an earnings, you know report like that's You know contingency plans. That's that's a huge statement And I think honestly what you're telling you if he's talking about moving over to another manufacturer That's a huge contingency fan. They also have a contingency plan. They also have enough money where they could flat out pay any of a number of manufacturers Staggering amount of money to kind of set up manufacturing for their use And I wouldn't you know, that may be a much smarter utilization of resources for intel. That's a good point. Yeah Well, if you have thoughts on this, you can always join the conversation in our discord Which you can join by linking to a patreon account at patreon.com slash Dtns We also want to take a moment to shout out our patrons at our master and grand master levels including Scott Hepburn Dan Colbeck and Irwin stir Len Peralta has been busy drawing today. What have you drawn from today's show, Len? Well, you know, I know intel's problems aren't necessarily pandemic focused But I you know for this I sort of did that This is called chip insecurity this piece. Um, and it's uh, you know, as you've heard of food insecurity It's the same sort of thing. Uh, but you know when it deals with tech stuff, it's a little bit different You have a gentleman saying it's intel's chips are delayed till at least 2022 and the dudes who's eating this thing called chip-o's It's saying 2022. How will they get any work done without these sweet delicious chips? So yeah chip chipos exactly If you're interested in taking a look at this This is at my patreon right now patreon.com forward slash lenn or you want to purchase it you can go to lennperalta store.com Excellent also thanks to patrick norton for being with us today patrick. I know you're on the move You're doing lots of stuff. Let folks know where they can keep up with your work You know, uh, just recorded another episode avi excel with robert herron. Uh, yesterday and uh, hopefully There will be a our first episode of this week in computer hardware He and I are recording one on monday That'll be back online next week Very awesome Thank you everybody Thank you everybody who supports our show patreon.com slash dtns. It's the best way to support dtns Also, uh another way is uh to buy some stuff in our store. We got hoodies. We got coffee mugs We got stickers We have masks if you need any of that stuff with dts logo on it Go check it out support the show at daily tech news show dot com slash store And if you have feedback our email address is feedback at daily tech news show dot com We're live monday through friday. If you haven't joined us live, please do for 30 p.m. Eastern 2030 utc and you can find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live Uh this week at computer hardware is back and on monday andia notco is here. 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