 Coming up on DTNS, good news on the vaccine front. It's not too early to start talking about 6G and why Sony and Facebook are bullish on selling games later this year. This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, July 15th, 2020 in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. From Salt Lake City, I'm Scott Johnson. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Changs. I would like to correct my tease. It's gaming gear this year. Facebook and Sony are not bullish on selling games, although Sony is probably bullish also on selling games. We were just talking about the fact that there's a Kim Kardashian channel on Peacock and also about TikTok. Get that wider conversation on our expanded show, a good day internet. Become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things we should know. Reddit has added support for native image galleries. Long time coming. It's up to 20 photos and gifts at one time and also the option to add captions and URLs to each image. Previously Reddit users who wanted to share multiple images in a single post needed to use a third party service like Imager, which limited functions like captions and other contexts to those posts. The new galleries can support spoiler and not say for work tags as well. And subreddit monitors will need to enable the new feature. To get more visual over there, Microsoft patched a wormable Windows domain name server vulnerability. And this is a good thing. If unpatched, it could let attackers execute arbitrary code, intercept network traffic and more. Checkpoint discovered the vulnerability, which it calls SIG Red. It affects all Windows server versions. Microsoft rated it at a 10, its highest severity level, but it has not seen evidence of it being exploited yet. AMD announced its first set of Ryzen Threadripper Pro workstation products. Threadripper Pro differs from EPYC and core account frequency and TDP configurations with a top count of 64 cores. Threadripper Pro is only a single socket DRAM supporting up to two terabytes. The workstation Threadripper Pros will only be available to OEMs. Lenovo will offer it as part of its ThinkStation P620 family. Meanwhile, over at Mozilla, they have launched an VPN service out of beta in Canada, the US, the UK, Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand to be specific. When planned, with plans to add other markets later this year, Mozilla VPN will cost $4.99 a month and it is available for Windows 10 and Android. An iOS client is still in beta and versions for Mac and Linux are also in development. Graphcore announced its new AI chip, the GC200, available in a Graphcore machine called the M2000. Graphcore claims it's the first AI computer to achieve petaflop processing power in a machine the size of a pizza box. No pizza included. The M2000 is shipping to early access customers right now and will be more widely available later this year. iOS 13.6, which was previously the iOS 13.5.5 beta is now available to all users, which includes things like improved support for downloading and installing system updates, Apple news plus audio content and car key for the precious few people who could use car key at this point. It's just really one model of BMW. A new automatic updates option also lets users toggle automatic updates to happen immediately or overnight. Developer Tahir Rahman undercovered some Google slides from a company's upcoming Cloud Next event that showed the Gmail app and a website integrating with meat chat docs and rooms built into a single service. Screenshots also showed the ability to collaborate on documents from within Gmail with access to chat rather, video conferencing and Google docs all in the same app. Let's talk a little more about taxation. It's for those of you who enjoyed episode one, Phantom Menace. The general court of the European court of justice annulled a European commission decision that Ireland had failed to collect 13 billion euros in taxes from Apple. The case involved the practice, the legal practice of attributing profit to Apple's Irish head office in order to take advantage of lower taxes in Ireland. Now that's not illegal, but what the European commission said is Ireland should have taxed the moving of that money as state aid. They're like giving you that lower tax rate qualifies as state aid, state aid gets taxed. You should have taxed them 13 billion euros for that. Well, the European court of justice ruled that there was not a legal basis to declare that practice equivalent to receiving state aid and therefore no, Apple doesn't. Oh, the 13 billion euros. The European commission may still appeal this decision. They haven't said for sure. So this may or may not be the end of it and Apple's got 13 billion euros in escrow still sitting there just in case. So do they, I feel like I'm reading, I feel like I'm being read the first Apple story that deals with lawsuits where they actually won or didn't get danged as hard. Yeah, right. I mean, technically Ireland I guess won the lawsuit but it benefits Apple. It was a big lawsuit in Europe that went Apple's way. Yeah, it feels like those are usually the other direction or sometimes it's Google, sometimes it's somebody else but anytime you bring up European commission you bring up the EU, you bring up these court cases about technology companies, I always feel like they're on the losing end. So for now, unless they appeal it, I guess good job, Apple. Well, and yeah, if there's an appeal in the works the story may go on and on for some time. You hear a lot of stories about companies that are Apple-sized, right? Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon. There are lawsuits that happen in variety of countries that either the companies need to eventually pay up or they win. $13 billion though is a pretty significant win for Apple in this case. Euros. Euros, Euros. Yeah, still big. Still big, yeah, still. Also speaking of big, Google is buying a 7.73% stake in reliance industry's Geo platform which makes Google the second largest minority investor in Geo after Facebook. Geo operates India's largest telecom business with 400 million subscribers. And Google will develop an entry-level 5G smartphone with Geo as a result of the partnership. Now, Google obviously operating all kinds of things in India especially with Android and marketplaces like the Play Store. Facebook has tried to make advances in India sometimes like with their open system where they were trying to do some zero rating got in trouble with the Indian government. So for both companies it's smart to partner up with a successful local company that knows the market really well. And arguably nobody knows the tech market in India better than reliance industries. I mean they basically stormed out of nowhere to make Geo the top platform and it is 400 million and growing fast. So if you wanna take advantage of that growing market, one of the fastest growing technology markets in the world, I think it's smart for Google to say all right, we'll sink a little money into your platform and we'll probably get benefit out of that because we'll get a return on that investment but also in return we'll develop some partnerships and take advantage of some of that expertise. I think that's really smart. Yeah, even at 400 million subscribers now that's a significant chunk of potential business for a co-developed just looking at the smartphone angle and as that grows that opportunity grows. So makes perfect sense for Google to be involved in that regard and you're right like 400 million is a lot that's a lot. Like that's more than there are Americans total. So that's a lot of people and that's not even scratch on the surface of what's potential in that market. So yeah, like that is. There's a 1.35 billion or so people in India. So there's even room to grow. Well, on Google and Facebook have both historically tried to make competing products based on what trends were with folks in social networks and just online in general with sometimes pretty disastrous results. So buying a minority stake and you go like, okay, it's under 10%, right? But because of how big Geo's platform is as you mentioned, Tom growing at a pretty steady clip that makes more sense for the company than it does to say, oh, interesting. There's a large network of folks that maybe we could also offer a competing product to. Yeah. Well, Samsung would like you to know that you should now be hyped about the next thing. And then it turns out it's 6G. Samsung says it expects CG service to launch by 2028. That's two years earlier than most other predictions. Most people thought it would be later. Samsung believes 6G service could deliver terabit per second speeds with user experience data rates of one gigabit per second. That is pretty fast. 6G could support 10 times as many connected devices as 5G. Latency would improve from less than a millisecond in 5G to less than 100 microseconds. 6G rather would have a nice or would have twice the energy efficiency. That's a big deal for your batteries. Samsung said use cases would include industrial purposes, extended reality or XR devices and volumetric hologram standardization of 6G is expected to begin as early as next year. Yeah, I could already hear the eyes rolling out there. Like, oh, we haven't even got 5G, which is overhyped. And you're already hyping 6G. Don't listen to the hype. 6G is a real advance. Like we don't have to overhype it to be like, hey, this will improve things. And yeah, we don't really have the ability to take advantage of 5G quite yet. It's still in the early stage of rolling out. But also it's good to see like, okay, let's keep an eye on what's gonna happen with 5G. I mean, 5G standards started rolling out shortly after 4G started rolling out. So this is the beginning of the next thing. If you're one of the people that wants to see what's coming down the road, this is the thing to pay attention to. What is interesting here are two things. One is the 6G advantages defined by Samsung in this press release are generally the same advantages 5G has, lower latency, better battery life, higher capacity, with higher speed, which 5G can also deliver, but that's actually not its main advantage. So we don't really see something sticking out of 6G that's like, oh, it'll have that which 5G doesn't. It's just more of the same, but better in 6G. And that leads to, well, what do we need it for? And nobody really has an answer. Samsung's very futuristic sounding answer is, well, we could stream full resolution, like better resolution than your I can detect volumetric holograms so that you could have actual streaming video of a virtual world that is indistinguishable from the real world, which I mean, that sounds crazy cool. And I would like to see that product be developed so that it could take advantage of 6G, which of course we have till 2028 or later to do that. Yeah, I mean, that's the whole thing. It's like, okay, it's 2020. 5G, we're coming to terms with how this rollout is going. In eight years from now, I mean, eight years to me is like a lifetime away, in tech terms, because things change so much. I mean, five years makes a big difference. So I kind of go like, all right, fine. But think of all the companies who are like, okay, we've got some time to develop some stuff that 6G could take advantage of that we really don't have the capability to do. Samsung saying there could be resolution that the eye can't even detect. How exciting is that for holographic images? And it's like, I don't know. Yeah, it sounds exciting, I guess, but if we can't detect it anyway, I mean, what does it really matter? But that's kind of how this all works is there are projects in place that need time in order to be able to have the kinds of service that this would deliver on. And it just doesn't happen overnight. You want it to be more than you can detect so that you don't see the grid, right? Like, it's not because you can't detect it. It's that it's so good it'll be indistinguishable from reality. Yeah, which is the, I mean, the gamer's making this mistake all the time. I just got my PlayStation 3 and they are already working on a PlayStation 5 they were saying this six years ago because Sony was already working on it. They say it every time. We're always working on something new. This is what's great about tech and iteration. Everybody calmed down, it's great. I mean, I'm making a straw man about who thinks what here. But still, if this frustrates you, just think of anything where it's advancement. There's somebody working on something better all the time and we're all gonna get to it, take advantage of it. It was about seven years ago that Samsung said they had developed a 5G system. So this is actually even a little... That's true, that's true. We have been talking about 5G, you know, in concept for quite some time as well. All right, I will zoom announced a 27 inch touch screen smart display called Zoom for Home DTENME made by Videoconferencing Hardware Company, DTN or D10. It has three cameras. It also has eight noise reducing microphones and it also comes with a Zoom software and calendar syncing built in. You can share a screen from the phone or laptop to the display and Zoom says it plans to partner on more Zoom for home hardware in the future with Neat Bar and Poly Studio X, among others, the DTENME costs $599 shipping in August. So this is pretty much your all in one if you're gonna have to work from home for a while system, if for whatever reason, your existing system isn't cutting it. I mean, I'll go ahead, Tom. I was having a hard time figuring out who in their right mind would pay $599 for a machine that only does Zoom. But I figured it out when we were talking in our pre-show meeting, which is this is for that person on your Zoom meeting that can't get their camera in place, that can't, I can't figure out the settings. Wait, why isn't this working? Why isn't my mic on? You, $599 is worth every penny to just send this person this, say plug it in, and it just works. If it works, then I can totally see that. Yeah, I agree. It's a little, it's still, I'm gonna just say it's still too expensive for what it is. I think you could accomplish what this needs to accomplish for people that you're describing at a lower price point than $599. However, I do think that that's true. If Janice from accounting cannot get her crap straight on this Zoom meeting, no offense to anyone named Janice or accountants named Janice, but whoever you are, yeah, like get it, a little petty cash, spend it on this thing, get it out to Janice's place, and boom, she's part of the meeting and we can move on and actually be productive. So I agree with you. I think $599 still feels a little on the high end. Well, it's sort of like, okay, if you were to, if you were to set up a three-camera rig and have multiple microphones that somehow we're all feeding into a central mixer of some kind in an effort to make that all seem even better. And we're not even talking about lighting because lighting doesn't come with this rig. You would get up to something like $600 pretty easily. So if it's an all-in-one system that delivers in that sense, I'd get it for certainly for like enterprise companies, maybe not a ton of us are gonna be like, yeah, $600, that makes a lot of sense for me. But if a company's like, just send them out to everybody, plug it in, and let's just keep the ball rolling as far as company stuff goes, then it makes more sense. Yeah, in a big company's budget, this isn't going to appear as expensive, at least in some companies anyway. And like you said, it's got smart cameras on it so it can do some adjustments and things that people might not be able to do. Middle managers like Gerald need it too, not just Janice. All right, I got some good news. A SARS-CoV-2 messenger RNA vaccine under development by Moderna in conjunction with the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases provoked an immune response and appeared safe to use in 45 people it was tested on. The finding was published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. Moderna announced that it will now begin phase three testing of that vaccine on 30,000 people in July, July 27th, to be exact. That study will be conducted in a hotspot and hopes to show that those with a vaccine were significantly less likely to contract COVID-19. It'll be a placebo-controlled group. Like half the group will not get the actual vaccine, half-willed, they will not be asked to engage in risky behavior, they'll just be in an area where people are getting infected and they'll see if there are fewer infections cropping up in the vaccine group versus the placebo group. That's how you test these. Phase three is a good thing. A vaccine candidate from Oxford University in AstraZeneca, one from CineVac Biotech in China and one from China National Biotech and the Beijing Institute of Biological Products are also in phase three. So we've got four vaccines right now in phase three. Phase three trials are usually the last stage before you can authorize it for use. Now phase three usually takes years, they're speeding this up, but this doesn't mean we're gonna get the vaccine at the right, within a month of the beginning of these trials, but it does mean we've got four possible vaccines in widespread testing, which makes it possible that we will actually have a vaccine sooner and then you have to scale it up. Then you have to pay to manufacture it and distribute it and all of that. So you're probably still not looking to be getting a vaccine until next year, but I just thought it was important for us to continue to follow this. We don't usually do biotech on the show, but this is good news and it's news that's going to hopefully continue to get better as these phase three trials proceed. By every account, I've read it's record speed as well. Phase three doesn't come in the scene for almost anything else. So as much as everybody did talk about how a lot of this is being fast tracked and all expenses paid, let's get there, let's get there as quick as we can. Really great to see it happen this quickly. So yeah, great news. Even though we don't usually do a lot of biotech on the show, I'm going to keep an eye on this and when there is significant news to report on these vaccines, I think we need to hear that and we need to hear it more often. So we'll be adding this, probably do the quick hits at the top of the show as those developments happen. If you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to DailyTechHeadlines.com. Sources tell Bloomberg and Nikkei that Sony will build nine to 10 million PlayStation 5s in 2020. That's twice as many as it originally planned. The PlayStation 5 is the first completely new generation of the console and it's scheduled to go on sale in the holidays. It's the first in seven years after the Japanese company launched the PlayStation 4 in 2013 and an upgrade in 2016. Nikkei sources also say that Sony isn't the only one bullish on selling a bunch of gaming devices. Facebook has increased its estimate of Oculus VR shipments by 50% to 2 million by the end of the year. Oculus has about 35% market share. It's first all in one VR gaming system. The Oculus Quest became a hit after it launched in May 2019. Actually, the Oculus Go is technically the first but no one remembers that. Oculus Quest has been very, very, very successful and probably the bulk of this increase of millions. So Scott, in a world where people are worried about, well, will folks want to spend money on stuff like this? It sounds like Sony and Facebook are saying, yes, we need to gear up because we think more people are gonna spend money on this than we expected. I think they're probably right. I think what's happening is, there's a few things happening at once, like all things, it's kind of nuanced, but Sony's got a lot of momentum right now in terms of the actual console wars that are coming up and that they're happening at this particular time and our economy is gonna make things interesting. And I don't think they're no stardomist by any stretch, but I think they feel like they've got a pretty good lead over Microsoft leading into this launch, not just at the tail end of PS4, Xbox One competition. And so I think they're feeling confident in general that more and more people's choice of what console they're gonna grab that even know about this happening this year are gonna swing Sony's way. And there are a lot of factors in that we don't have to get into, but we'll see Microsoft still has a chance. But I think also they're planning and to some degree Facebook and Oculus are planning on this idea that a lot of people spend money in the summer on vacations, trips, sports leagues for their kids, things that they would normally do that would cost way more than this console is gonna cost. And they're thinking, all right, well Christmas is coming up, we did save money by not flying to the keys this year or whatever. Why don't we shuffle some of that this direction? And game is- Yeah, it's cheaper than buying a Zoom for home, why not? Exactly, you were exactly right or probably right on par actually, we actually don't know the- Yeah, well, you know, buy a few Oculus Quest games and then let's go. Back to me, but VR is the same thing, right? Like, I think in the Sony case, that all makes a lot of sense. But in VR, the Quest has turned out to be a bona fide hit in the space and nothing else really has come close to it in terms of volume, including their own Rift. So why wouldn't they also feel that kind of confidence leading into this holiday season where people have got a little extra to spend that they may not have, not that people shouldn't save that or hang on to it. I mean, I totally get that desire. I feel it myself. But I also feel very strongly that Sony and then this case, Oculus, are feeling really confident this fall. And I think they should. I think they're actually gonna do well and Sony is making a big bet. Double their shipments is a big deal. And they must think they've got the right kick this year. I think you're right that there are a lot of things in play. Families have been stuck at home. Families might be stuck at home, depending on where you live. It's the next couple of quarters, as far as companies, think about selling stuff are pretty up in the air, but it looks like people are gonna be home more than possibly even anybody thought just a couple of short months ago. So there's that. And there's, yeah, the whole sort of, well, maybe we had to cancel family plans. I've heard lots of stories of that sort of stuff. Very, very true. And there might be a little flesh and come to be able to upgrade our console or get into the VR space. And then there's kind of like the, there's the people like me who, I got an Oculus Quest for Live With It, my latest segment just a few months ago. And I was just sort of like, this'll be interesting. And then I mean, I'd sung its praises to anybody who would listen because it's so much more fun than I thought it would be. And so then you get a lot of people who are like, oh, really? Should I maybe look into this? Oh, it's not that expensive. I mean, yeah, it's 400 bucks for the 64 gig model. But there's that kind of word of mouth thing that I think took a little while, at least in the VR world, to get out because people are like, oh, you need this very complicated gaming PC and there's wires, it's weird, stuff. It's like, well, it's still kind of weird. We have a ways to go. But it's a lot cooler than you think. And it just takes that one person and then all of a sudden, the momentum begins. I also wonder if some of this isn't, everybody has now gotten more used to their lives being more digital. So how you're meeting with your extended family is more digital than it used to be. How you're consuming your entertainment is way more digital than it used to be. And these consoles, in particular, the PlayStation 5's digital edition, which a lot of people are gonna buy over the one with the disc in it, is all about getting that content over the internet, over a utility you're already paying for and that you gain all this maximum value out of during a time like this. And so maybe there's some of that where people are like, well, this is another thing that we can spend money on, can be a family device, can fill our home with whatever, and we can do it remotely. I don't have to go to Walmart and wait for that disc. That's all gone now with this. I think there's some of that too, the quest is similar. You're not loading a disc into that device, you're installing it via Wi-Fi anytime you put any kind of product on there. So I don't know, that shift, I think, has something to do with this, or at least has something to do with their numbers. We'll have to see, I guess. Yeah, I mean, Facebook shipped 1.5 million units in 2019 for all of its VR. So that's an incredible increase for that. And I think, I don't remember the exact number, but the PS4, when it launched towards the end of its launch year, sold like four or some million. So granted, I don't think Sony expects to sell all nine to 10 million in December, but they certainly expect to sell the bulk of them, or they wouldn't be ramping that up right now, right? Yeah, and they also see things like, what has Nintendo been doing for the last four months? Constantly selling out of switches. Right, yes. Constantly. So you can, and for that matter, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One's got a little bit of a surge as well. So they see these numbers and go, well, this is, if this continues, we're gonna never be, we're not gonna be able to keep these on the shelf. Double up the orders, we'll sell through 10 million. Certainly in life, by the time this thing hits lifetime, we'll be way, way over at 10 million. So there's really not a big reason not to do this as long as they can get the logistics working and the supply chain working, why not? I expect Microsoft to do the same, to ramp up Xbox sales. Maybe not as much, we'll see, but yeah, I wouldn't leave them out of that. Well, if you have thoughts about any of these companies and what they're doing or doing wrong, you can join the conversation in our Discord, which you can join by linking to a Patreon account at patreon.com slash dtns. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. That Charlie Dude wrote in about our Monday discussion about the Arrivo. Remember, it was that 3D printed electric bicycle that runs between $2,804,000. Charlie says, those prices are very good. A name brand e-bike will run anywhere from $3,000 to $10,000. Trying to find an e-bike for less than $1,000 is very difficult. Most of the ones available are poorly made or made with poor quality components. A traditional name brand bike could easily cost more than the Super Strata. If I didn't already own four bikes, two of them e-bikes, so, you know, little flex there, Charlie, love that. I would pluck my money down for one. As Sarah said, we live in exciting times for e-bike riders. That's cool. Thank you, Charlie, for the perspective setting. From someone who apparently knows with your four bikes, half of the e-bikes. That's cool. Yeah, no kidding. And then Andrew in Montreal wrote in and said, six years ago, I stayed with my cousin in London. He took me shopping to his local Waitrose supermarket. On Arrivo, we were greeted by a wall of charging handheld scanners. So you take one and go shopping. Select a product, scan it, put it in your basket. Also, you can use the scanner to price check. If I remember correctly, only specials had posted prices. On the way out, you plug the scanner into the pay station, tap and pay, and then put the scanner back on the charging wall. Don't know if that was just a test store, but yeah, Andrew, that sounds very similar again to what Amazon is doing with the smart cart we talked about yesterday. Just, it's built into the cart instead of having to grab the scanner and carry it around with you and then put it back. It's all, you know, built into the cart. So another example of it just kind of being an evolution of something that's already out there. The only worry is there's a lot of people mistreat those carts at stores. So I hope they're rugged. I was reading about that yesterday and I just thought, oh man, I hope these were made to handle the jackass rate that happens in some parking lots with some teenagers at night around a store. So I guess we'll see how those work. Well, there's cameras on them so you can tell who was doing it. That's true. Yeah, or you know, or they have that age old technology where the wheels just don't work after a certain point. So it's like, sorry, gotta keep them there. No, it's nice to know, Andrew, that I agree that carts sound easier than scanners, but six years ago, obviously we're experiencing something that a lot of people didn't even know existed. Yeah, very cool. Hey, shout out to patrons at our master and grandmaster levels, including Reginald Bermudal, Reed Fischler and Paul Reese. Also thanks to the one, the only, Scott Johnson. Scott, what's been going on with you? Well, we're at the halfway point roughly, a little bit before, but almost halfway through our month long Kickstarter campaign for Tom and I's new project, which is a relaunch of sorts of current geek called Current Geek Chronicles. And man, do we want you guys on board for what is going to be a very cool, special thing. Tom says a lot, I'll say it too. It's one of the best things I've ever done. Really proud of this work and of the work that we have a team doing, which is why we had to do the Kickstarter. We had to be able to pay for what this costs to make. So you're hearing all this going, well, what's it about? It's easy to go find out for yourselves, check out the video, check out the pitch, look at our rewards. That's over at support.currentgeek.com. We really, really can't wait to get this thing out into people's ear holes and quicker we hit our levels, the quicker we can do it and get the rest of the season done. So go check it out. That's support.currentgeek.com. Yes, we just need one of you to support us for $4,300. Yeah, no problem, just one guy. Yeah, or 4,300 of you at a dollar, whatever works either one or somewhere in between. Hey, we've got masks and they're selling, they're flying like hotcakes. So you might wanna get one before they're all gone and folks have been tweeting them, put them on Instagram, join the parade of people with the DTS logo on their face for some reason. I'm glad you guys like them. Go check them out, dailytechnewshow.com slash store. Hey, our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. If you got something on your mind, we would love to hear it. Also, we're live. Did you know Monday through Friday, 4 30 p.m. Eastern, 2030 UTC. If you can join us, we'd love to have you live and you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Back tomorrow with Justin Robert Young on the show. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. 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