 Coming up on DTNS uber and walmart may join forces for grocery delivery should car mirrors be replaced by video cameras Don't answer so quickly and earbud wars This is the Daily Tech news for Friday, October 11th 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio feline I'm Sarah Lane drawing the top tech stories from Cleveland, Ohio I'm Lynn Peralta and I'm Roger Chang the show's producer. It has been too long Since we've had Annie Gauss on the show technology reporter at the street Annie welcome back It's good to have you any just wrote up a story about all the various people getting into earbuds and putting voice Assistance in them and we're gonna talk about that in a little bit. We were just now Talking about well, we were just now talking about wings But before that we were talking about television shows Which ones we like which ones we don't and that is on good day internet If you want to get that wider conversation become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Alright, let's talk about a few tech things You should know a report from IT research firm at Gartner shows that worldwide PC sales rose by 1.1% and the third quarter of 2019 with 68 million units shipped this quarter compared to 67 million units in the third quarter of 2018 Lenovo shipped the most units with about quarter of the market share followed by HB and Dell Other brands under the 10% market share include Apple, Acer and Esus Microsoft announced new ergonomic and slim Bluetooth keyboards that feature dedicated office and emoji keys The office key replaces the right-hand Windows key It can be used as part of a shortcut to launch office apps So you can probably guess office W launches word for example the emoji key launches the emoji picker in Windows 10 But it cannot be used to trigger a specific emoji or for emoji shortcuts So I'm not quite sure why they went to so much trouble But the Microsoft ergonomic keyboards cost 60 bucks the slim Bluetooth keyboard cost 50 bucks and they're both available starting October 15th mixer co-founder mad Salas Mendee announced on Twitter that he was leaving the game streaming platform The news comes a week after Mixer's other co-founder James Bohm announced his departure The platform was originally founded as beam and acquired by Microsoft in 2016 All right, let's talk a little more about catalyst catalyst is a new framework from Apple that makes it easier for developers to port iPad apps To Mac OS Catalina now it doesn't automatically do it There's still a little developer work, but the idea that they gave it WWDC is this would smooth the route There's been some debate over whether it smooths it enough or not And who might embrace this framework and whom won't Netflix being the most famous example of a company that won't Today however Twitter released its new app in the Mac App Store and since it's based on catalyst Only users running Mac OS Catalina can run it Catalyst doesn't work with the earlier versions of Mac OS Twitter seems to have done more work than just use catalyst It's not exactly the iPad app the UI is a little bit different and the iPad app you have some buttons down on the bottom It's all on the left in the catalyst version of the app But otherwise the layout is mostly the same and it works just fine. I was using it earlier today There there does seem to be a little nervousness about whether catalyst was worth all the effort or not I guess yeah, I know on the developer side There was some lamenting of like well do people have to like Downloads again for Mac OS like as a developer, of course, you never want anyone to do that But at the same time if you have to do twice the work or close to it as a developer You kind of should be paid for your work So it it sounded like it was a little bit of a mess at least a week ago Annie have you been following this at all? I mean a little bit. I mean I was Remember when they announced this capability. I guess it was last last year It sounded like the big pitch was that this is gonna cut The work of developers in half but it by this point it seems like, you know, at least in the The case of Netflix, it's not necessarily working out for folks So I'm curious to see kind of how this develops and what kind of the takeaways are on the benefits and the disadvantages Of this approach Yeah, especially if you can only use it in Catalina It's it's it's going to have a more limited appeal. Although the people do tend to update Mac OS fairly Regularly there are also very good reasons, especially after a new release of any operating system to not Update right away. So not as many people are going to be jumping on board this As they would if if if Catalyst worked on previous versions So I think that's going to limit things as well There seems to have been a great appetite for a Twitter app though I never quite understood that because I use tweet deck and maybe that's why But a lot of people were just as excited that there's a Twitter app now as they were that it was done in Catalyst Yeah, I mean tweet deck has had a chair of update problems as well over the years Um, you know, I'm I'm a tweet bot user. So, you know, I always sort of like a third party Whatever, I actually don't really know what the Twitter experiences that everyone else is having But I do think that Catalyst sounds great in theory. I know that Smaller developers have come out and said, you know what this isn't as plug-and-play as we thought it was And and you know that that's not necessarily You know the end of the road You can you can make an app that works the way that Catalyst is supposed to work But as a developer, do you want a customer to be, you know, overcharged? Of course not Do you want to work for free? No So I think that that that, you know, that that's something that it's it's a Uh It developers are kind of trying to walk that line. Well, yeah I mean developers that the idea was a developer for an iPad app Would easily be able to make a macOS app And so why wouldn't they and it'll help bridge that gap? Well, it doesn't look to me like it's going to bridge that gap Uber announced plans to acquire a majority stake in the grocery delivery startup corner shop Corner shop currently operates in Chile, Mexico, Peru and launched in toronto most recently Uber plans to help it expand service to other markets including in the u.s Now walmart tried to acquire corner shop in 2018 for $225 million But the deal was blocked by mexican antitrust regulators in june walmart works with corner shop on grocery deliver Delivery service in toronto currently and uber has experimented with its own grocery delivery service before Including working with walmart Well, it seems like that makes sense. So uh walmart couldn't buy corner shop uber said, you know, we need we want to do grocery delivery This seems like a great way to do it. And then the two of us can keep working together. Uh, So, yeah, I kind of expect. Yeah, does the antitrust situation go away when it's uber rather than walmart? I don't know in mexico anyway because uber doesn't run a grocery store, right? I think the mexican Objection was that this is walmart trying to Own the supply chain, right? You can't be the grocery store and the delivery agency That's too much and and maybe mexico's concerns go away if it's uber That's like no, we're a transportation company and we'll have clients that will deliver lots of things including groceries Mm-hmm. Yeah Oh, what I'm not I don't necessarily see how this is a positive for uber's business though I I I guess that's a part i'm still trying to figure out is it's you know, the There's a lot of players in grocery delivery. They have competitors including like amazon and many markets I don't know too much about the competitive landscape and chili mexico and peru, but um The margins aren't that great in this business and so I'm Kind of struggling to figure out kind of what the what the play is for uber here. Um other than just trying to You know spread horizontally into other things that involve delivery and in cars and and uh, you know related Although, you know later markets uber just you know recently Decided to relaunch its app. Um not available to everybody But you know in in due time as sort of like ride delivery But also food so the fact that they want their pool of where you can get your food to be bigger than ever Does make sense to me also if you can get walmart as a client to pay you a lot That that could be enough that could be enough for it to make sense if you've got a big client lined up Uh, so I if this passes regulatory scrutiny and they do acquire corner shop I wouldn't be too shocked a few months down the road to hear that uber and walmart have agreed to a great Big partnership in the us to do delivery Leveraging both the uber platform and the corner shop technology Um non-profit social science one Is an organization founded in 2018 to establish partnerships between academics and data companies The idea was to have a kind of an ombudsman to say, okay academics We'll hook you up with the data companies data companies We'll assuage your concerns and we'll we'll broker these deals So social science one has brokered an agreement for facebook to share 32 million links to use for research The data set includes the number of times the url was shared publicly The date it was first shared the date it was fact checked if it was The country in which it was shared most often and a summary of the content that the link leads to It also includes the number of times a link was flagged as false if it was and the number of times it was shared without being clicked on Researchers can look at this data set to study patterns of information and misinformation. This is an important data set It's huge and it allows studies to be done to say not just well We know that there must be misinformation spreading, but how does it spread? What are the effects of it spreading something that I have been hoping people would do more work on this makes more of that Work possible differential privacy was used in the data set To make it more difficult to identify individuals from the data and any scientist that wants to access it has to Have a proposal for study They have to submit it to social science one and have it accepted to receive access to the data Once they are approved though, they can publish their paper with no restrictions. No Facebook can't come in and you know say No, you don't get to do that So there's there's freedom of publishing But there is there is some vetting of who gets access to this data in the first place This is such a great example of I think we've all gotten very trained to be like well, you know data collection is very bad You know our privacy is at risk This is you know, no no big companies should do this This is actually, you know anthropological studies, you know are based on this sort of thing This is the modern world that we live in and it's it's kind of nice to hear of Okay, here's data collection that comes from a huge company like Facebook and others Where it actually will help people who care learn more about the human condition Mm-hmm. Yeah, it would have been nice if they came out a little sooner But You know the um, you know the uh, 2020 election being in full swing and all um, but This is this is a bit of a better Yeah, exactly took the words right out of my mouth. Uh, there were delays in getting this out of Facebook And at one point, uh, Facebook missed a deadline that social science one had set to say well If you don't get us this data, then you then we're just going to abandon the project But Facebook convinced them that the technical issues were real because they were trying to protect privacy So, uh, in some sense, I'd rather have them do it right, which it does sound like they've done Then rush it and do it wrong, which they have also done in their past But I'm with you Annie. It would have been nice to have this earlier for sure In a notice on Wednesday, the US national highway traffic safety administration said it is seeking input On whether or not to allow camera monitoring systems to replace rear and side view mirrors Tesla believes that this could improve the fuel efficiency of its cars by reducing drag caused by side view mirrors The alliance of Automobile manufacturers said that it can improve visibility as well a five-year study by the n h t s a also found safety risks Some screens were bright enough to make it harder to see objects on the road ahead at night Also raindrops could interfere with camera views So, yeah, I mean the the study also found that it did improve some things some visibility over over mirrors, but Uh, I there is a part of me that knee jerk just says like oh, but I don't know a mirror Definitely shows me what a mirror shows me right and a camera can be disrupted It can you know the the wire could fray and then it doesn't work anymore But you know what I also drove a car that didn't have a left side mirror for a while Because it got knocked off by somebody and I couldn't afford to replace it So I guess the same thing can happen to a mirror too. I also feel like listen I don't really know all that much about drag I believe that having a rear view mirror on either side of the car Will contribute to that but like I mean are we drag racing here like is that really like Bringing down like the speed or your gas mileage that much Yeah, I mean to me the the obvious drawback is like what like how well well does this work in weather? Or okay, you know, I know that's been one of the biggest challenges in like developing autonomous vehicles Is that you know in a lot of lighter systems? They just don't work if it's snowing or raining, you know Or at least I know that's been an ongoing challenge with Um those types of systems. So it would kind of seem like That would be a factor here too. And that's something that you you know, no one none of us can really control so I I mean, I think I think the the the raindrops on the lens is the one that really does cause me the most concern because Yes, you can have raindrops on your side mirror too, but we've we figured out surfaces that still work even when it's rainy Uh, you figured out how to shield them and make the surface cause the rain to run off faster and all of that I assume that there there could be a way to do that with the cameras too But that that is definitely something I would want addressed before this becomes a standard And that that's why they're doing five-year studies and asking for for comments from from people in industry before they implement these standards This also, I mean, I don't know personal, uh, you know, uh experience here But my my car before the car that I have now was the first car where I had a rear view You know put it in reverse and you can see what's behind you and for a good six months I was like, this is not helpful. I can't look at that. Like I have to do like, you know Like I have to do what I learned at the dmv when I was 16 years old, you know, like look behind you you know look both ways kind of thing and Gradually over time I have gotten used to it and I think that you know As more and more people are just used to that from the beginning Because they know no other kind of car and that's not everybody but it we gradually will be I think that that that that's sort of an important distinction too. Like how How does this actually replace something that is has Historically for, you know, the rest of us been like the only way that you can see what's around you Apple has ordered a nine episode follow-up to HBO's band of brothers called masters of the air Tom Hanks Gary Getzman and Steven Spielberg still executive producing even though Apple's going to do it now instead of HBO The show will be the first Apple TV show to be produced in-house by Apple's own television studio Other Apple TV plus shows are produced by external production companies and then Apple licenses them and then doesn't get to keep that license Has to keep renewing it if they want to keep that that content So this will be a big deal for Apple to say no, we own this from the ground up Yes, we hired these executive producers to come in and produce it But it's our studio that we run in-house Apple's worldwide video had Zach van amberk and Jamie Ehrlich will oversee the studio and Hollywood reporter says the reason HBO turned down the series was because it was going to cost $250 million to make and in a world where you can't recoup a lot of dvd sales like you could with band of brothers was new They didn't feel like it would generate enough revenue to do it And even though band of brothers and the pacific which was the second in that series Both did well. So apple with their big piles of cash. I guess it's like, yeah, 250 million dollars We we lose that stopping to pick up our wallet. No big deal Yeah, I mean, I didn't see that show. Did you guys watch watch that original show band of brothers? Uh, I I did not I I heard that it was really good Okay, no, but no, I did not Yeah, nor did I but they won a lot of m's though. That's right. That's right. Yes It was it was it was largely deemed to be a very good show. Yes apple has like, I mean It seems like apple is like Really gunning for the awards too Like it's really important to them that they win some awards once this thing launches Because that helps lure more hollywood people in and brings Credibility to what they're doing and and so on and so forth. So maybe that's what their their game is here They don't seem to have a problem getting big names to work for them But yeah, uh, that does seem to be what they're after is we we need to win some awards to show that We are hboer than hbo. All right, this you know that hbo's whole Thing has always been we're the highest quality television. It's not television It's hbo was their slogan for instance And bryan brushwood on court killers has been railing about the fact that hbo max is going to water that down And I assume that's why apple is like, well, there's a niche for us to move in and take over that slot Yeah And if they're going I don't know how they expect their television Efforts to pay off if they're moving to services and they're only charging five dollars a month for the service But they certainly are in Customer acquisition mode by saying we're just going to have the biggest names in television making like really attractive looking stuff Well, 99 cents per per music Song at at one point, you know what had eyes rolling as well. So sure sure I mean if you get enough people in the tent But do they have enough people in the tent? I guess they did for music. You're right Yeah, I think this is interesting just in the sense of like, oh, you know Yeah, we know apple's doing original shows But like apple having an original production studio does that mean a lot for the you know and consumer? No, not really But but it is a different it's a difference It will be something down the road when apple can keep this show and not have to worry about licensing This the first time apple loses one of their own shows, you know down down the road that Yeah, that's an important. Yeah, that's an important point Well, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes Be sure to subscribe to daily tech headlines dot com So for the street annie gauss wrote an article called the earbud wars are on can microsoft and amazon challenge apple's air pods Annie tell us about what's going on in the earbud space Yes, um Well, uh, you may have noticed over the past few weeks. There have been a couple of new Wireless earbuds announced. Um, the first was from amazon. Um, they're coming out with echo buds These are to be released on october 30th I think they cost 130 dollars and they put alexa in your ear And then shortly after that microsoft announced a new earbud product called surface earbuds. I think they're coming out Um, I don't know if they announced a launch date, but sometime this year. These are 250 dollars They have a different set of features and the third one is that quite the size of dinner plates, but they are very large Yeah, they're Yeah, they're they're they're they're chargers Yeah, yeah, they're they're they're half dear than you know some of the others but um, you know to each their own And then on october 15th google is also having a hardware hardware event And the rumor is that they are going to be putting out their second iteration of pixel buds And so there's some rumors flying around about that. So we're in this interesting moment where You know the back the backdrop is that um apple has a full 50 percent of the so-called hearables market With their air pods. Um, they control, you know, half of the half of the market and the others players I think samsung has 10 percent Bose has a little bit of market share and then some other um chinese Exactly. Um, and then uh, yeah So it looks like there's kind of a big challenge coming to to apple potentially with some of these new earbuds And all of these companies are trying to get on this new wave of putting digital assistance in your your ear lobes And I think when the air pods first came out, uh, people were were impressed at how well they worked But a lot of people were skeptical that you would lose them What would you do? And people wouldn't want them because of that or they they want wired because it's more reliable than bluetooth But it turns out that this market is just exploding Yeah, and and you know, it's it just kind of goes to show that this this category Of device is evolving into so much more than just like the thing that you use to listen to music when you're walking around or to podcasts And so, you know, it kind of with um, you know Surface for example, they have the surface earbuds will have cortana. They're doing something a little bit different They're kind of gearing it more towards enterprise use cases, you know, it's connected to your Microsoft 365, you know suite so you can use it to check your calendar or whatever you do And also has um translation capabilities, for example, so that's like kind of a little bit different piece of the market, but um Overall, you know, all of these companies are It's becoming a two-way channel where it's not just for listening to your music It's for interacting with that digital assistant as well. So Um, so it'll be really interesting to watch like how you know, how all of these devices do whether any of them can really challenge air pods and kind of complement their own ecosystems with this new, you know, type of device and ultimately like How how does how does this category of device like affect how people if Will it affect and and how um, how will it affect how people interact with their digital assistants? Well, somebody who started using the Jabra, um 65 t elites, um, which was something that we did on a A former live with it segment on DTNS I I had never had wireless headphones before So, I mean that alone was like wow, this is great. I mean, you know, just not having the wires was, you know But there was so much about the sound quality that I was like I have actually been really missing out on this um with like, you know, just kind of like the like I don't know headphones that apple gave me. Sorry apple, but you know, they kind of sucked compared to this And because of that I have, you know, I I've been really enjoying something that I you know I think is like It's pretty good audio on the go And what's funny is that um, I just started listening to a podcast. It's music oriented So it's very much, you know about music and you know listening to you know beats and the whole thing And they say at the beginning try to listen to this podcast with your best headphones Now my best headphones are my sony headphones that I'm wearing right now But my second best are my bluetooth headphones because they are pretty good And I don't remember that ever being, you know, the case before it was always sort of like Yeah, the you know mobile headphones on the go are like never going to be as good Yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's the a lot, you know, I think, you know, I don't have the details right in front of me But like, you know, they all kind of have premium Um, you know purportedly have premium audio quality and then also the the digital assistant built in I I wonder about the digital assistant thing that seems to be the gamble that they're all making that that seems to be the way they want to differentiate Which again silos off products if you're on this ecosystem, you're going to want the amazon earbuds if you're on this one You're going to want the pixel earbuds, uh, but I don't use The assistant in fact, I turn it off because I just want to tap to pause and unpause or pull out the The the earbud to talk to somebody because it automatically pauses when I I pull it out That's the part that's magical for me the automatic connection and and the ability not to have to think about it I don't go around talking to my earbuds. Do people am I just weird and old or or or You know, do people do that? Yeah, I mean, I I'm I'm not totally sure with the ideal use cases for that. I mean, is it like kind of like call Hey call tom or You know Yeah, yeah Because I when I'm like out jogging I don't want to have to tap and talk and tell it like pause hold on And then the person's like you talking to me and yeah, that's it Yeah Well, I mean what what's really interesting to me about this is like You know will some new new use cases kind of emerge with people and you know digital assistants in their ear And even beyond that like will the differences between all these assistants between google assistant and siri and and so on Like and alexa and so on like will they become even more pronounced like will those were the will the distinctions between those assistants even matter, you know given the way that people wind up using these um Within in the earbud context or if they none or if you know tom you're kind of like the They you know the average user and you're like why would I you know Talk to siri when I'm out walking around She comes in she comes in handy every once in a while Who he he my siri's or he I know my mom has the same thing. She's like siri's not a girl Yeah, siri is a british gentleman. That's right. Yes hers as well. Thanks everybody who participates in our subreddit No matter who your digital assistant is Gender-wise we will accept you. Please submit your stories and vote on them at daily tech news show dot reddit.com We're also on facebook join our group if you haven't already facebook.com slash group slash daily tech news show Looks like we have a cool tip in the mail bag today We do this one comes from professor metcalf. Um who said i wanted to chime in on the d-link Unpatched router issue. We were talking about this the other day and tom was fired up um professor Kevin says over the last several years. I've gone through half a dozen routers by several manufacturers for exactly this issue There are a number of bot nuts on the internet that leverage vulnerabilities like end of life devices Which are ostensibly the first line of defense in your home network I finally decided to take an old pc I had laying around and put pf sense on it so I could be sure to get updates for years to come It's not the easiest thing to set up, but there are plenty of how-tos out there It might be an option for scott because scott was talking about you know, if he has an issue If he rage quits d-link eventually Yeah, this is this is a great tip for for people who like to to do a little diy or make good use of old equipment Thank you professor metcalf for that And in fact roger your column that came out yesterday on patreon.com slash dtns dealt with this as well, didn't it? Yeah, so real quick is essentially there are a subset of routers that have been designed to be accessible by the open source community And even though the company no longer Produces or supports that particular hardware the open source community still releases If not regular pretty regular updates to things like ddr dd wrt or open work that allow you to still maintain and use that hardware You just don't get all the new You know g whiz features from all the new hardware that you're missing out of but you know what? I have a eight-year-old router that still works and my dad has no problems with it Yeah, and if you're not a tinkerer or if you're dealing with somebody who doesn't want to do those those kind of options Uh, the the newer routers the the mesh routers Out there do a good job of updating firmware Regularly, uh, we'll see how far they go But my eros are a few years old now and they they continually are updated and and patched for security and everything So that that's another element of the the market that I think is better about this sort of thing than than say the old d links were Shout out to our patrons at our master and grand master levels We like to thank everybody who supports us. We have new patreon levels And so a big thanks to everybody who is jumping in at those new levels Including I think I've got some names here. Uh, jeffrey zilx dr. Carmine m bailey and bjorn ender Who thank you for that and thank you any gals for joining us today. Thanks for having me Uh, if you are uh, if people want to find out what you've got going on, where should they go? um best to go to twitter my twitter handle is annie gauss a n n i e g a us Excellent and look for her work off the street dot com. Also. Thanks to len parolta for drawing with us today len We're waiting with bated breath. What do you know? I there's there's something wrong with my screen sharing options. I don't know if you're seeing right now the background Yeah, we're seeing the lovely katalina background We'll have to figure this out so I'll have to figure this out off but new bug report for katalina break screen sharing for len I will stop sharing But what you want to do is you want to go to twitter right now visit len parolta dot com It's uh, it's an answer to a a war I had no idea was coming It's the battle of the buds And uh, you can see uh four little buds fighting one another There's uh echo air pixel boy and of course surface and You know, I it's unfortunately able to see it right now. We'll have to figure that out. That's a technical thing But uh, you can actually look on patreon patreon.com for slash len Or go to my online store len parolta store dot com and check it out right on the front page right there It's called battle of the buds. Yeah, so if you go to len parolta store dot com You you can all look at it right now no matter how or where you're looking at it and uh, I have to say as always It looks great. I love it. It's pretty cool. It's fun Uh, it's good stuff, man. Thank you so much len parolta store dot com. Don't miss it Maybe this is the better way to get people to look Yeah I think that's right But surface pixel boy echo air the battle of the buds is off Folks, uh, we have a new patreon reward system If you become a member of dts you could get a peek at our show round down as we develop it Behind the scenes chats where we just pop into discord and when we're going to be scheduling more of those And if you back the show before october 31st at the two dollar level or more You'll get a pdf copy of the official dts cookbook with recipes from us Some listeners and more sign up right now at patreon.com slash dtns We love your feedback. Keep it coming feedback at daily tech news show dot com is where to send it We're also live join us if you can monday through friday 4 30 p.m. Eastern. That's 20 30 utc And you can find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live holiday on monday in the us We'll be back on tuesday with patrick bezia talk to you then This show is part of the frog pants network get more at frog pants dot com