 Coming up on DTNS, Google is ditching deserts, Bose is taking on Sonos, and does the future of aggregate news look any different than the present? This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, August 22nd at 2019. From Studio Feline, I'm Sarah Lane. From Oakland, California, I'm Justin Robert Young. And I'm Roger Chang, the show's producer. Before the show, Roger and Justin and Amos and I were all talking about fast food and what we like best and why people are waiting in line for a very, very special kind of chicken sandwich. If you want to know more about these and other fascinating topics, you should listen to Good Day Internet. It's our sister's show. In fact, it's kind of the sandwich of the show that happens before and after DTNS, and you can become a member by signing up at patreon.com slash DTNS. All right, let's start the show with a few tech things you should know. Source is still 95 Google, rather, that Google is preparing to launch the Nest Mini, which is a successor to the Google Home Mini. The Nest Mini will reportedly feature improved sound output with a higher maximum volume and better bass, offer a wall mounting option, has a 3.5 millimeter stereo jack and proximity awareness to display the current volume as you approach the device. The form factor will reportedly stay roughly the same. The Linux Foundation announced the confidential computing consortium to create encryption standards frameworks and tools on devices, apps and services. Current standards focus on data at rest or in transit. The consortium will focus on data in use. Contributors include Microsoft and its open enclave SDK Intel and its software guard extensions SDK and Red Hat with its NARX project. A framework is now running serverless apps in trusted executive environments. Other launch members are Alibaba Cloud, ARM, Baidu, Google Cloud, IBM, Swisscom and Tencent. Quite a consortium. Machine data software provider Splunk announced plans to acquire cloud monitoring company Signal FX for $1.05 billion, which is Splunk's largest acquisition to date. CEO Doug Merritt said that the purchase will let Splunk offer customers a single data platform that can monitor cloud native infrastructure and enterprise applications in real time. In its latest quarterly earnings report, Splunk's earnings came in at $0.30 per share on revenue of $570, $17 million, which is up 33% from the same time last year. Apple is warning new physical Apple Card customers that quote, some fabrics like leather and denim might cause permanent discoloration that will not wash off and place your card in a slot in your wallet or billfold without touching another credit card. If two credit cards are placed in the same slot, your card could become scratched end quote. The company recommends wiping down the card with a damp microfiber cloth that to keep it clean and quote, don't use window or household cleaners compressed air aerosol sprays solvents ammonia or abrasive to clean your titanium apple card. Wow. This is a precious cargo, man. I mean, anything physical where a company like Apple is like, and definitely don't put it next to another credit card. I'm like, nope, do not want that physical card. Yeah. Do you want to know why? Cool. I'll just leave it at home. In other Apple news, let's talk a little bit more about some rumors that are starting to inch closer to reality sources tell Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, their Apple pretty good Apple source, that Apple will launch pro phones as previously rumored and updated iPads as well at an event next month. The pro phones are said to feature OLED screens, lose 3D touch for a haptic touch long press, use a new 813 processor with dedicated AMX co-processor for computer vision and AR feature improved water resistance and wire wirelessly charge other devices. The two high end models may offer three rear camera sensors with the addition of a wide angle lens. That would be nice. Also let users retouch, apply effects after all alter colors, reframe and even crop video while still recording the video. The 11 and 12.9 inch iPad pros will reportedly have new processors as well. And similarly improved cameras and Apple may also introduce a new 10.2 inch iPad and discontinue the current 9.7 inch model. Watch OS six is said to get updates as well as new case finishes for the Apple watch. And we're still here in hearing rumors about that 16 inch MacBook Pro as well. Justin, I don't know. We're talking like I don't know. We're moving 10ths of inches around at this point. A lot of different form factors. Remember, remember when these were like so exciting and we would like get into fights and everybody'd be like, oh, Android did this a while ago and this isn't new and never it would just be, it would dominate the news cycle for like a week and a half, just a whiff of what's going to be on these new iPhones. But look, now you just read the stuff and you're like, cool, it'll probably cost a lot of money. Well, and it was, there was a time where when there was a new, let's just stick with iPhone, right? If you're an Apple fan and you wanted it, there was just one, right? The storage, they'd give you a couple storage options, but it's like, you have this thing and now you're part of some elite crew, maybe in your own mind, but that's what it was. And now, even though having more options is arguably better for almost every consumer, it does bring down the spectacle enough so that it's just like, all right, you know, what's what was it? Okay, fine. What's the new one? Someone tell me what to get it. Attack of the skews. Google's abandoning dessert, Sarah. What, Justin? How could they? Well, well, we're going to find out. The company's next Android release, previously known as Android Q will become Android 10. Google VP of product management for Android, Samir Samat said that the sugary nomenclature tended to confuse new users and aren't applicable to Android's global audience. Google also announced a redesign of its Play Store to incorporate material design. Mobile devices will now have a navigation bar at the bottom of the Play Store. Games and apps will now have distinct destinations. Rounded square app icons are now standard for all apps and app pages feature more information about the ads, in-app purchases, downloads, and a bigger install button. The design rolls out to Android users this week. Sarah, I always thought that the dessert thing was a way for Google to show a little bit more humanity like Google as a company tends to be maybe a little cold and so this was a way. Yeah, heavy on the engineering. Yeah, you could make things a little bit more fun. You know, that's why you have a funny little Android man. He's the ticker sawer. Everyone's got a good time. What dessert is he going to have next? I know. Yeah, although I've never had an Android device, weirdly enough. Actually, that's not true. I do have a tablet somewhere, but I always sort of enjoyed the speculation of what the next dessert would be based on how going through the alphabet. That was kind of fun. It doesn't mean much. I understand that the company's like, you know, the whole dessert thing, we have such a global consumer base and this doesn't necessarily translate to everybody in the same way and it's starting to feel maybe a little long in the tooth. I get that. I also get that if you're going to go ahead with Android 10, this is a good time to do it. You know, it's kind of, you know, it's almost like you're starting fresh. It's a good number to say like, all right, Android 10. That's what we're doing from here. At the same time, it kind of, it sort of takes a little fun out of it. I think this has been there done that thing for them in terms of the branding. Like, it wasn't like you were going to, you know, surprise anybody of like, oh, like, now it's a macaroon. Hooray. Like I'm really excited for Android macaroon. It was like 15 minutes of like, oh, what could it be that also starts with the letter M? Yeah. Roger, before the show was looking through the play store and in and on a little bit about the design looking a little bit nicer. So yeah, I for me personally, it does make navigating the store a little bit snappier, just faster because you can jump directly to games instead of going through one, one additional menu. You know, overall, the looks nice. I mean, I wish some of the apps were better written, but I mean, that's neither here nor there with the play store. But you know, it's always nice to get a refresh. So you feel at least the company's keeping its eye on it, you know, that there's something that's still happening and it isn't just kind of set on cruise control. Well, if you've got strong feelings about Android or Google rather ditching desserts, let us know. Feedbackadillitechnoshow.com. But enough about candy and chocolate. Let's talk about Eminem. Not every day I can say that on this show. Eminem's publisher, Eight Mile Style, has filed a lawsuit against Spotify claiming that the service has infringed hundreds of song copyrights of Eminem's. In a Nashville federal court, Eight Mile accused Spotify of reproducing the song, Lose Yourself, and about 250 of the rapper's other songs on its service and claims that Spotify also isn't living up to its obligations under the Music Monitor's Modernization Act. I knew I was going to do that. A federal law that wasn't acted last October that was widely praised by streaming services and publishers aiming to streamline processes both for tech companies and payments for artists. The suit adds that Spotify put Lose Yourself, that song again, into a category under the new act called copyright control, which is reserved for songs that have no known owner. Because, of course, Eight Mile Style is like, we very clearly are the owner of the song that is completely ridiculous. You're just trying to skirt around giving us the money that we feel that we are owed. For anybody who's like, I haven't been following the story. Before this new Music Modernization Act, the issue was that under copyright law, Spotify or another similar service could obtain a license, a compulsory license for mechanical reproduction of a song. However, it needed to send out a notice of intention and then make required payments. It had to get in touch with the owner of the song. Now, that's not always possible. Sometimes these owners can't be tracked down. You can't get confirmation. There's a communication issue. The whole idea with the new act was that matching songs would be run through a database by a mechanical licensing collective, and then that, then someone like Spotify or similar service would be granted a blanket license that's beginning in 2021. This is still getting put together. Like I said, lauded by people across the industry as this is a better way to go about doing this. M&M's folks say, well, but this act is actually, we have beef from what you've been doing for the last several years and we're owed a lot of money. I don't know, Justin, what do you make of this? I have one more question for you. So can you say a mechanical reproduction? Is that them doing a cover? Is that them just having another file of what is clearly M&M singing? Lose yourself. That is on the service. Like what is a mechanical reproduction? It means it's a mechanical reproduction is a way to serve you, Justin, that song through the platform. Gotcha. Okay. So that's so, so this is literally, when I turn it on, it's not somebody else singing lose yourself. This is M&M singing lose yourself. Right. Gotcha. Or it could be another, you know, that's that would also fall under the argument here because he's the songwriter. So theoretically at some point, somebody would do something. All right. So this is part of a rash of a lot of music lawsuits that are going around right now. The lawyer on this particular lawsuit was also the lawyer that represented the Marvin Gaye estate against the blurred lines lawsuit. There's been a lot of these like, all right, did you take the feel or the mood or the tempo of a certain song and should a hit song have to pay out to somebody else? This I think has a lot more merit because you are dealing with the gigantic behemoth. This is the future of all music and M&M should be getting paid for, for what he has done. If Spotify did put him in a category that would not have paid him out as much, then that is something that he should address. There's another sort of interesting twist to this is that the new Music Modernization Act apparently gave copyright holders, owners of music, until New Year's Eve of 2018 to file any lawsuits and grievances that they might. Tom Petty's camp did that exactly on New Year's Eve in fact. M&M's folks didn't and said, well, that's not fair. Now that we've kind of surveyed the landscape here, we do feel that you owe us quite a bit of money. And just because we didn't meet some deadline for this new act, we do not agree with it. And we're looking at millions, two billions of dollars that we feel we are owed in back pay. Yeah. So there we go. Soon to be co-owner of Spotify M&M. Uh, Bose announced that the portable home speaker with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth that supports Google Assistant, Amazon's A-Word, AirPlay 2 and Spotify Connect. It weighs 2.3 pounds and has a conical design for a 360 degree sound output and a carrying handle. The aluminum enclosure is rated IPX4 water resistance. It charges over USBC or you can buy a charging cradle for $29. It's available September 19th for $349 in black or silver. Sonos is rumored to be announcing its own Bluetooth speaker. The Sonos move at an event on August 26th. Oh, look at Bose getting in a week early before Sonos is biggest big announcement of something that sounds like pretty much the exact same Bluetooth speaker. Isn't it kind of weird that both of these brands which were known initially for like audio quality, unsurpassed audio file of consumer brand stuff now are like in what had traditionally been the like cheapo speaker game of like Bluetooth portable. Like that that was it would have seemed almost a totally brand opposite for Bose and Sonos a few years ago to be in this game. And yet that's just the place where the market is right now. Well, yeah, you're right. In fact, even though there've been pretty good Bluetooth speakers for some time it was, you know, and I've got a couple Sonos ones, they do have great audio quality and people rave about their competitor good speakers as well. Never actually been around a home pod in anyone's home only in an Apple store. But again, you know, good quality for the most part. But now we're getting to the point where the companies are like, all right, now what's an extra thing I could do? Aha, let's add some water resistance, a handle, and then throw in Bluetooth so they could take it to the beach. That's what this is, right? Yeah, right. And it'll be better quality than the Bluetooth speakers of yesteryear. I love this. I mean, the fact that all of the assistants for the most part are represented. And it's if you're a Bose person, I used to have noise canceling headphones from Bose, they were very nice, they were kind of pricey. And so is the speaker. Why wouldn't you go with a third party smart speaker at this point rather than, you know, a home pod, which is much less open? Well, I mean, I think the home pod is probably much much like the Apple credit card, something that people have kind of just ignored. Wash it gently and put it next to anything that might scratch it. Look directly at the home pod. Only the finest silk when you take your home pod to the beach. The Washington Post reports that 12 of the US's largest telcos, 12 of them, wow, didn't even know we had 12 have signed a pledge to implement technology to spot and block robo calls. Gosh, these stories make me so happy, making anti-bubble called tools available for free to consumers and deploy a system that will label calls as real or spam to fight a practice known as spoofing. The pledge is part of an agreement between 51 attorneys general and the industry to fight robo calling, which is on the rise or has been for some time anyway. The carriers include AT&T, Comcast, Spring, T-Mobile, Verizon, Windstream, and US Cellular. Now, the fact that I get, and I'm not even kidding, about 10 robo calls a day on average. I just want to, I miswrote that it's not spring, it's sprint. Sprint. I was like, springs. One of those 12, one of those 12 I've never heard of. Yeah, that makes a lot more sense. Thanks, Raj. But the fact that robo calls, I've gotten good at ignoring them, but it's, I want them to not happen at all, right? And I still, there's a tiny part of me inside every time I deny a call from Montana, because I don't know anybody who lives there currently. What if somebody was trying to get a hold of me, and I hope they leave a voicemail? They never do. And I don't know how well this technology is going to work, and it's going to vary between telcos, but moving in the right direction gives me hope. Phones are corrupted tech, in my opinion, and largely because of this. I would not be shocked if people just leave their phone on silent, right? There are so many different ways that people can get in touch with you. There are so many ways in our modern world that you can stay, that you can do the things that you would have otherwise done with voice, even other voice assistants like Skype and FaceTime and stuff like that, that the idea of just always having your phone ring with all these robo calls, because I'm with you, I'm not a 10, but I'm certainly at five or six a day. Also, you said you wouldn't be shocked if someone left their phone on silent. My phone has been on silent for like five years. Yeah. And I don't blame anybody for it. I still have the twitchy old reporters instinct that I want to leave it on just in case subsource that I called nine years ago and I still work to the field is calling me back for something. But other than that, I totally understand people just leaving their phone, not only on silent, but just don't ring, write to voicemail for everything. Yeah. Every once in a while, I'll make, oh, I think my phone's vibrating. Where is it? Yeah. I don't know. I'll just like get it later. They'll text me. Everybody to get the tech headlines each day and about five minutes. It's a great companion show to this here show. Subscribe to dailytechheadlines.com. Justin, you mentioned news, news gathering. We're all avid news readers, in fact. And now News Corp wants to compete with Google News with an aggregation service. It's calling news and that spelled K-N-E-W-Z. Get it? It was the sound of my soul escaping through my spine and rattling out my nose and mouth. I was so hurt by just reading that. I think the Postal Service had a song about that actually. The Wall Street Journal, which is notably owned by News Corp, is reporting the story. Here's the situation. Official launch on the web and a mobile app might come later this year assuming that News Corp is proceeding with the project. Sources say that the idea is to draw from hundreds of new sources and present an alternative to Google News and the news that you get on platforms like Facebook. Both, among others, have been criticized over giving proper reward and attribution to publishers. And they introduced potential bias depending on who you talk to. Articles from canoes.com. We'll just call it canoes for our purposes today. We'll link directly to publisher sites. News Corp just says it's not planning to take a cut of advertising revenue and it wants to share valuable data with the publishers. While it will incorporate national outlets, including the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times and The Washington Post and NBC News, it also says it will include publishers with conservative audiences, Daily Wire, Daily Caller, Washington Free Beacon, and also liberal audiences, Daily Cost, Think Progress, et cetera. News aggregators are not perfect. That's why I use a few regularly. I think that we also probably crunch a lot more news than the average person, although lots of people who are DTNS listeners share our love for news and information. Do we think canoes.com is going to do something that Google News is not already doing pretty well? Tipper canoes, can you? Well, it'll certainly put it is an attempt by a major media company that owns a few of these news properties to take some of the power out of Google's hands or at least introduce a player into the marketplace that could further strengthen the position of the people that actually produce the news versus the platforms that surface it for so many users. Yes, this is about bias on some level, I guess, but in reality, this is about advertising. The fact of the matter is that Google and Facebook have totally sapped the advertising market. They are the players in something that used to be dominated by gigantic free to the user of services like newspapers, or even though newspapers cost a little bit, they were nominal or television stations, stuff like that radio stations. Now that has all gone online and the people that are writing these stories that now surface online have to kind of count out to the Facebooks and the Googles of the world, because that's where people get the content. So I can understand News Corp saying, look, we're going to make our own aggregator. We're going to name it something horrifying. But at the very least, we are going to be coming to this situation from a news creators perspective, as opposed to Facebook and Google, which at this point are like, whatever, either list it with us or don't, we don't care, we'll find something else to surface to everybody based on their tastes. If you want gatekeep, then that's fine. I guess enjoy a lot less people understanding and reading your product. Yeah. It's an interesting world where more and more I'm hitting, I either have to avoid certain news outlets that have paywalls, or I'm hitting my monthly limit real soon into the month. And so I've got to go to another source that has basically regurgitated what the first source is that isn't behind a paywall to sometimes get my news. And so as a consumer and a reader of a lot of news, and I wish I could pay for all the quality content that I am absorbing all the time, I don't. I don't because there are easy ways around it and there have been for a long time. So that's a little bit of a conundrum that I personally have. So aggregators in general that give me a lot of what I need to know in one place is just convenience more than anything. News Corp, whether or not you're taking how you feel about what the company might be to you out of the equation, just the fact that it's an owner of one of the largest publications that will get top billion because the Wall Street Journal breaks a lot of stories, certainly in the tech sector of course. That's already like a bias thing that's going to not sit well with folks. I mean, in another era, that would have been the big story, but we're not in that era anymore because it's the devil you know versus the devil that you don't. At the end of the day, there's a lot of people that know reporters and media executives that know the news court people. Right. They're in New York. They're not in Silicon Valley. They're not in these other places that don't care about media. They care about the clicks. They care about keeping people coming back to their platform. So yes, there might be some bias. There might be some insider baseball there where a Wall Street Journal version of the story gets a higher placement than a New York Times version. Right. But right now, I think anybody in that predominantly New York based media would prefer that to the whims of what's happening at Palo Alto and Mountain View. Right. Yeah. I mean, there was a time not that long ago where I was a Verizon employee. I worked for TechCrunch, which was owned by AOL, which was owned by Verizon. And we were so far removed from whatever was happening there that we read stories about ourselves just like everybody else did. And that's actually true. I mean, maybe somebody at my company knew more than they were letting on. But for the most part, people working in news organizations have, there isn't a lot of, okay, we're going to go ahead and give you the better slot, wink, wink, because you're part of the family type thing. But at the same time, it's harder to, people are taking all of that with a grain of salt anyway. And it's harder to know for sure. But you're right. We're in an era where somebody owns that trusted site that you love so much. And you either have to accept it or you have to constantly be questioning what anybody is doing. Now, here's one thing. And as we get out of here, I will never give my money to something that is named so profanely as canoes is. However, there might be a rebranded version of this or something else along these lines where I think the end goal of an aggregator like this is to be the place where you can manage your paywalls, where you can say, all right, look, sure, let me make, make it easy for me to sign into the New York Times, make it easy for me to manage my paywall with the Washington Post, possibly give me some other package deal where, where I pay for both of them in one flat thing. And then just surface the things that when I click, I read and I don't have to hit that super annoying half fade. You have zero articles remaining despite the fact that it's the second day into the month. I have found if you're really quick, sometimes you can command a and then copy paste into a nice blank text edit doc, and you can feel really severe. Doesn't always work, but I can do it when I'm Sarah's dirtbag tip of the day. I love it. I'll keep them coming. That'll be my Thursday ongoing segment. Yeah. To our page on dot com plus GTNs. Thanks everybody who also participates in our sub Reddit. You can submit stories and vote on them at daily tech news show dot Reddit.com. We're also on Facebook. Join our group Facebook.com slash groups slash daily tech news show in the mailbag today. Dominic weighed in in our discussion in Tuesday's show about subscription fatigue. We're with Patrick Beja. Patrick and I were talking about all of our subscriptions, whether it be gaming and media and boy does it add up and how do you deal with it and and what's the best way for it? Dom says, can I call you Dom? Your conversation was primarily around gaming and video, but for me, I've been feeling the subscription anger rising because it's not just entertainment. It's my to do list. It's my cloud storage. It's my newsreader, podcast player, notes app, and more. They all want a monthly subscription. When coupled with entertainment subscriptions, it's easy to look at a credit card statement and throw your hands up in frustration. Dom says, I understand companies need money to stay in business. I'm happy to support them, but since everything is asking for money monthly, some stuff just has to go for what it's worth. I'd prefer to buy an app or software service annually over that monthly subscription. And a lot of services do offer an annual subscription, usually with a little bit of a discount because you're you're you're saying you're you're committing to a 12 month thing. But I hear you, man. I mean, with my creative cloud subscriptions and I got a meditation app I'm paying for this, you know, it's my monthly app bills are like, oh, it's kind of looking like a cable bill at this point. Yeah, yeah, that is a real hard one to juggle. And one of these days, I'll look at my credit card statement and figure something out. Well, that's the nice thing is that if you don't look at it, it isn't real. So yeah, it's like calories on vacation. Right. Yeah, you just don't pay attention and it goes right away. Thank you to everybody who writes into our mailbag every day. Keep those emails coming. And also thanks to Justin Robert Young. Justin, what's going on in your world? You got some stuff coming up. Yeah, leaving out for Austin, Texas tomorrow because on Tuesday, August 27th, we will be at OOB Fest. That is the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival in Austin, Texas. That is Tuesday night at 8.30. Night Attack is doing a live show. All right. It's also got two comics that are opening up, Clara Blackstone and Kai Krebs. And they're going to be fantastic. But guess what? For DTNS listeners, the headliner is this. Tom Merritt is flying out from Los Angeles to be on this night attack show live at the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival. Get out of town. Yeah. Hide out here. Out there. But you want to know what the best part is, Sarah? What? The price. $10. We haven't, we haven't done a $10 show when it's just our podcast. But because the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival is awesome, get all that for 10 bucks. So come on out on a Tuesday night, 8.30. It's going to be a really, really fun time. Night Attack Live. You can get your tickets at oobfest.com. And again, we are on Tuesday, August 27th. Get your Taco Tuesday. Then you get some comedy. What could be better? Great. That is, that will be a night to remember. Hey, also thanks to our patrons. You make our show what it is. You keep our show afloat and we thank you all for it. If you're not a patron, get a lot of cool stuff. You get an ad for your RSS feed. You get lots of behind the scenes information, newsletters, updates from the, from I was going to say the cast and crew. Who am I? I'm a Hollywood producer. 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