 Coming up on DT and S people are very excited about the Nvidia RTX 30 80, but cannot get one. We chat users get a partial reprieve and tiktok's international nightmare inches near an end. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, September 17th, 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane from Oakland, California. I'm Justin Robert Young and I'm the show's producer, Roger. Folks, we were just talking about activity clicks on our Apple Watch, as well as the breaking tiktok news on Good Day Internet. If you want to get that conversation, become a member at patreon.com slash DT and S. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Yesterday, Wednesday, Sony announced that the PlayStation five would go on sale in North America, Japan, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand on November 12th, and elsewhere November 19th for $500 or the digital edition for $400. That matches the Xbox series at the top end, but it's $100 more for the non disk edition. Many PS five games will sell for $70 instead of $60 pre orders for the PS five are open now pre orders for the Xbox series consoles start September 22. Bloomberg sources say India is planning a new law ban and cryptocurrency trading with the federal cabinet discussing the bill before it's being sent to Parliament. Back in 2018, the central bank of India banned crypto transactions after some fraudulent cases showed up following Prime Minister near Dromodi banning 80% of the country's currency. The Supreme Court lifted that ban in March after cryptocurrency exchanges filed a lawsuit in one, the new ban could affect 1.7 million crypto traders in the country, plus companies looking to set up their own trading platforms. Facebook began rolling out Facebook Business Suite, an app that gives your business one place to manage pages and profiles to cross Facebook, Instagram and Messenger with plans to eventually add WhatsApp. The business suite is available on the web at business.facebook.com and on mobile through the existing Pages Manager app with standalone app coming soon. Business Suite lets you save customized stock responses, view your reach and engagement and performance across Instagram and Facebook as a few other things. Windows Central reports that Microsoft's Surface Pro X will be updated to include Microsoft's XQ2 processor, likely based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8CX Gen2 5G. It's not clear if the Surface Pro X will include 5G support, however. Also rumored, Microsoft may be working on a new platinum color for the Surface Pro X. Twitter will select accounts related to the US election with security reminders and turn on password reset protections for them. Government officials, campaign staff and journalists will be required to use strong passwords and prompted with in-app notifications to turn on to factor authentication. Twitter will also implement new safeguards against suspicious activity and expedited account recovery for those accounts. Can we just have that for all of us? Thanks. No, no, you can't. I'm Twitter. Just asking nice. iRobot released two mid-range vacuums, the i3 and i3 Plus. Both offer a cleaning system similar to the existing i7 vacuums with the i3 Plus including iRobot's automatic bin emptying station. The vacuums lack smart mapping features that were found in the rest of iRobot's vacuums, but do include the iRobot Genius Home Intelligence feature suite, including the ability to integrate with smart home devices to schedule a vacuuming when it attacks that you've left the house. The i3 costs $399. The i3 Plus goes for $599 and are now available in the US and Canada. And Mozilla announced it will shut down Firefox and that was its encrypted file transfer service that it put on hiatus in July. Mozilla says the service was being used to send malware as part of phishing attacks and it made the decision just not to relaunch it. Mozilla also announced it's shutting down Firefox notes as well. This could be related to the fact that Mozilla has been cutting costs lately, laying off 25% of its staff earlier this year. All right, let's talk a little more about Mozilla. Oh, yeah, Tom. Mozilla has launched a browser extension called Regrets Reporter to report regrettable recommendations made by the YouTube algorithm. An example would be a search for a funny fail video that eventually starts recommending videos of fatal car crashes. The browser will automatically collect how often you use YouTube. If you come across a recommendation you wish to report with your permission, it will send to Mozilla's information about the video you're reporting and how you got to it. The hope is to identify patterns and show that YouTube's algorithm works. Mozilla says it will collect information over six months and present their findings to YouTube. Regrets Reporter is available for Firefox and Chrome. I got to say, I mean, the whole idea of Mozilla collecting this and presenting to YouTube in the future, you know, assuming that people use the feature and maybe get an algorithm switch or, you know, a little uptick. That's great because YouTube does do that sometimes. You get a video after whatever video that you thought you were watching or wanted to watch and it doesn't always work and sometimes in a horrifying way. So this is, I mean, this is good data. I would assume that Mozilla and YouTube are talking to each other about this. Yes, they are. YouTube is a little standoffish saying we don't mind seeing the data. Sure, that's great. We're not a partner in creating this, though. We're doing all kinds of things on our own to stop this sort of thing from happening. They cite a bunch of statistics at how much they've improved. And they say we're not sure how useful this will be. And that's where it becomes a problem for me. I understand that Mozilla is saying, look, this is something that needs to happen in YouTube. If you don't want to cooperate with us, we'll just do it on our own. But I'm not sure it's useful if you're not doing it into a scientifically valid way that YouTube can use, unless you're just doing it for the press of like, look, we're putting pressure on YouTube to improve its algorithm, in which case maybe it works a little bit. So let me slide in halfway between those two situations, Tom. Yes, they're doing it for the press because obviously there is a tremendous thirst for us understanding how these algorithms affect, if not shape, our behaviors online. There's a new Netflix documentary, I'm pretty sure, that just goes into all about, you know, the way that these social ills are caused by our social networks. At the same time, I do think that the closer we get to this, as more people that aren't technologically savvy and don't understand even the concept of what an algorithm is, to have more of a consumer advocate that's saying, hey, look, this is the data we're gathering on it, we'll present it to YouTube, but somewhere between Ralph Nader and a bug bounty, I kind of feel like there is a space for this. I agree there is a space for it. I'm not convinced that Mozilla is doing it the way consumer reports would do it. If they were partnering with some academics on this, and maybe they are, and I just didn't see that, who are like, yeah, we know how to collect this data really well and make it useful and provide it to other people to analyze. I think there could be a lot more done with this than just the press hit. I think that's where I'm at. Well, pour out a little liquor, everybody. Nintendo posted a notice on its website, manufacturing of the Nintendo 3DS family of systems has ended. 3DS sales declined 73% year over year to 690,000 units in fiscal 2019. And Nintendo also announced it would not provide future sales forecast for the system or its software titles. The console was launched in 2011. Gosh, it's been a while now and sold at 75.87 million units as of June of this year. Are as Technica notes that it's the first time since 2004 that Nintendo isn't producing a dual screen portable system. While the Nintendo Switch Lite is technically a dedicated mobile platform, mobile gaming has essentially been overtaken by phones and tablets. Nintendo 3DS, we hardly knew you. Well, actually, no, we knew you really. We knew you for nine years. Well, we'll miss you. Yeah, no, I think this is is inevitable, right? What what Nintendo was able to do with the 3DS was prolong a mobile gaming device long beyond the point at which smartphones had stolen all of the air out of the room for everything else like the PS Vita. And now what little air was left for the 3DS has been stolen by the switch. Because if you want something you can hold in one hand, people are going to use their phone. Otherwise, they're using a tablet or a switch or something like that. I mean, what's interesting is Nintendo has been the only company that's managed to keep a portable gaming line parallel to its broader offering for what three decades, 30 years, starting with the Game Boy, then Game Boy Advance with the 3DS and the rest. And everyone else who's done it has been semi successful, but never past one generation PSP and then the PS Vita that kind of fell off the rails. Sega had the had the game gear. And then they went they tried it for a second time with the Genesis Nomad, which was the Genesis in a portable form, really big and bulky didn't last. Turbo Graph Fix 16 had the Turbo Express, which is a handheld version of the unit. What's interesting is that we've basically come to an inflection point where Nintendo says, you know what, we can offer the same experience and relatively mobile or or at the home experience. And it's the same game, which is something that has been technically infeasible up until like five, six years ago. So this is a big plus on that. Well said. Yeah, this is I don't know. I want to give props to a device that made 3D work, though. I think that's the other thing to note here in its passing. 3D failed everywhere but on the 3DS. I want to know what I haven't even connected those dots that indeed this was part of the 3D television. This was the new thing that would make everybody rebuy all the old gadgets because now we could see in three dimensions. Alright, it doesn't do full on 3D, but it's pretty good. The Nvidia RTX 3080 went on sale Thursday and then went almost instantly out of stock. If if you're one of those people who misses the days of seeing people line up to buy new tech things will look online. There's a bunch of throwback pictures that look like the old days of Apple phone releases, but with people wearing masks and waiting for a video card at Micro Center. Yes, even you smart people checking know now in stock.net are out of luck. It's not in stock.net for you today. Nvidia apologized for the shortage and said it is doing quote everything humanly possible quote to stop bots and scalpers. Nvidia told the verge that the cards are in mass production with great yields. So there's hope for the future. But people are angry at Nvidia. Like it's not a shocker that people are selling these things on eBay, but people are angry at Nvidia for not having a better way to allow them to spend their money on the 3080 today. I mean, come on. Like when's the last time we saw a wild out of control demand for for a card like this? Well, I mean, it's wild and out of demand because apparently there just aren't very many at stores. I mean, you've got a guy tweeting last night at 10 30pm that there are 15 cards available in the store and I'm 14th in line. I will let you know how it goes. I mean, is this like a you know, a fun just kind of like, you know, get people psyched type thing? I think it's I think it's a confluence of two things. One people just been cooped up for for an extended period of time. And this is something that they can seriously rally behind. To I think this really is a hardware innovation where people can say, Hey, you know what, I already have this in my system, play the games just fine. But this adds the extra benefit of active full time ray tracing. So the games I already have something that the previous series purported to do but the performance benefits were sort of, you know, negligible at best if you didn't have a maxed out system. So this might be, you know, a combination of two things. And people are like, you know what, I got money to spend because I haven't been spending it on movies or going to, you know, rock shows or anything else. So I mean, it's cool. I think this is just a weird blip of history, though. Yeah, there's a lot of things to consider here. First of all, it's day one and video says there are no shortage of these things, right? We just we didn't expect everyone to try to buy them on day one micro center ordered 15 of them because they're like, Yeah, what's the most people want the first day? What 15? Yeah, like this isn't everybody gets into their conspiratorial positions when it's like, well, it's just like to drive up interest. Is this some kind of ploy? It's no, there are partnerships between manufacturer and retailer. The retailer said 15 guess what? They'll be ordering more than 15 tomorrow. Yeah, I do. I do think that, you know, it's a surprise amount of demand, even though they knew there would be a lot of it. And I do think that yeah, Apple and Samsung have made a science out of not having this sort of thing happen on their launch days. Nvidia just I don't think they face this kind of demand before so it's it's sort of new for them. How nice. Google announced that Google Drive will start automatically deleting users trash files after 30 days starting on October 13. Any user with items currently in their trash folder now has 30 days after the new policy starts to move those items or ignore them when they will be incinerated forever. This is already a Gmail and other G suites services policy. When I read this, I was like, they don't already do this. I'm I am used to if I trash an item, I'm lucky, you know, if for some, you know, horrible reason, I'm like, Oh, my God, I didn't mean to trash that I need to get it back to get to be able to have 30 days to do so. Knowing that stuff was kind of sitting in Google Drive for longer than that was news to me. And I've been a Google Drive user for years. Yeah, I don't think I even knew there was a trash file in Google Drive. Or if I did, I didn't think about it a lot. Like, it's if I delete a Google Drive file, I guess it depends on how you use Google Drive. Some people may use it as their drive. But if I have a Google Drive file, it's either there for collaboration, which means if I delete it, I'd probably not deleting it for everybody. Yeah, or it's something that I just put up temporarily and I don't really care if it's if it's gone or not. So yeah, I'm glad to find out that they have a trash file and that it automatically empties every 30 days now. Good for Google. Yeah, I guess the idea of Google's cloud services to me is that everything stays forever. I don't know if I've ever intentionally, I think in Gmail, in like the spam folder, they don't have archive, you have delete. And so I'm just like, Okay, sure, delete the spam, everything else gets archived. The whole reason why the relationship I have built with Google is that I never delete anything ever again. They trade you that way by not putting a delete button in Gmail. Yeah. Why do you think I've plugged myself into your machine to the harvest all of my data? That's the bargain. Well, and it's it saved me countless times where I'm like, okay, this file is somewhere. Okay, let's let's try some keywords. We'll figure it out. We'll find it. Yeah, we'll find there. Yeah. Yeah. So well, Google Drive users, just know that if you delete something, it will be deleted for sure after 30 days going forward. And executive order prohibiting transactions with WeChat in the US is set to go into effect on Sunday. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross was given until Sunday to determine how many transactions are defined. Here's what it doesn't mean. An accord filing secretary Ross said that the US quote, does not intend to take actions that would target persons or groups whose only connection with WeChat is their use or downloading of the app, or convey personal or business information between users, or otherwise define the relevant transactions in such a way that would impose criminal or civil liability on such users end quote. However, users may find the app is directly or indirectly impaired because of other actions. Yes, this tells us almost nothing. Because it's not the official list of we're defining prohibited transactions as this, I guess that'll come Sunday. Also saying like, Oh, we're gonna block WeChat. But I guess if you can get around it on your VPN, then that won't break the law is what he's saying like saying in this filing. Of course, the people in the that are filing the lawsuit that this was filed as a part of are saying this doesn't tell us anything. It's not good enough because they're in the lawsuit and that's the way that goes. But I am very curious, Justin, if anything and if so what will happen with WeChat on Sunday? I bet not a whole hell of a lot. I think that they are going to find some way to kick this can down the road. We chat, you know, again, we're going to get into this a lot with some of the TikTok story. But as as a primer, when China became very unpopular on a bipartisan level post coronavirus, then a lot of just wishlist items for China Hawks now become more in play. And one of these things are ban Chinese owned companies up to an including WeChat. And so after that, you start to see the rubber hit the road as we're going to talk with TikTok, where WeChat is plugged in a lot more with a lot more US companies. It's got roots down in in many, many, many more places. And so now I think they're realizing exactly how difficult this is. I do not suspect that there is going to be any kind of hard and fast action if we have not seen it telegraphed by now. I do think Secretary Ross has to come out with his list of transactions by the date of the executive order on Sunday. And I think he'll dot those eyes and cross those teas. I imagine that transaction list will be vague enough to allow a lot of wiggle room, but probably pretty limited. It probably it probably won't. It probably won't be widespread. But like a short list of vague items is what the reporting on this one was everybody who was screaming and yelling about how restricted WeChat was going to be got a phone call saying, Don't worry. Don't worry. So I'm not worried. Yeah. Alright, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to daily tech headlines.com. Here's your TikTok update for the day. Don't worry, folks. This is all going to be over soon. CMBC says major revisions to security issues in the term sheet. The term sheet is the agreement on the deal saying these are the terms of the deal. Major revisions in that term sheet were sent Wednesday night. Bloomsburg sources say Oracle will now for sure get the ability to review TikTok code. So if you remember me talking about this earlier, there are three things that people are worried about with TikTok. One was that the data would be available outside the US. And that was taken care of by saying Oracle is the trusted tech partner. Two was the source code that they could put malware in the app and push it forward. And originally this deal didn't address that. But here we go. Oracle is going to get a code review. That doesn't mean they get the code. That means they get to go into an office, probably, and look at the code for backdoors and go, Yep, nope, don't see any backdoors. Great. So that addresses point number two. The other point was moderation. Would there be like propaganda pushes or trying to influence people? And that is not directly yet identified here, but we'll see. Because Reuters sources say ByteDance is planning a US IPO of a company to be called TikTok Global on a US stock exchange trying to make this sound as US as possible. The new company would have a majority board of American directors. So the board of directors would be majority US people. It would have a US chief executive and a security expert on the board. CNBC sources say Oracle would own about 20% of this. Don't forget US investors already own 40% of ByteDance, so they can go right up to 49% ownership on TikTok Global. Pretty easy. Walmart CEO Doug McMillan would have one of those US board seats. A Bloomberg source says Attorney General William Barr and other members of the administration have been talking directly with the Oracle executive, Larry Ellison, about this. ByteDance says, yeah, China is going to have to approve the deal. But Bloomberg sources are saying since a US company doesn't get the algorithm, remember it's just a code review, they're not getting the code. Since they won't get the algorithm, China is less likely to oppose that deal. Okay, so far so good. Oh, wait a minute, six Republican lawmakers have urged the president to reject the deal. The president says he will be briefed Thursday about the fact that they've got this deal. And regarding ByteDance retaining control, President Trump said, just conceptually, I can tell you, I don't like that. CNB sources say a decision will probably come by the end of day Friday. And in order to stop TikTok operating in the US could come as early as Sunday based on the previous executive orders if they decided to go that way. And if you're wondering about that bit about, and they're going to pay us for it, no money will go to the US Treasury, because White House lawyers determined there was no legal path to do so. So that's not going to happen. But it does look like the idea is, let's set up a company that looks as American as possible. We got Americans dominating the board, we've got a US CEO, we've got a US headquarters, we're listed on a US stock exchange. The only thing that won't be fully US is that 51% of it maybe will be still owned by ByteDance over in China. Wow, Tom, you said this story would be over soon, but it sure doesn't sound like that. I mean, so many twists and turns. Also, shortly before the show started, the New York Times sent out a report that Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom has had preliminary talks to become TikTok's new CEO, at least the US version. Why would he want that? Okay, good for him. Well, he would want that because he wants to, you know, kill Zuckerberg in any way that he can. There you go, you're right. That's all the motivation he needs. Yeah, I get the sense that their relationship did not end on a super great note. And of course, Instagram has Reels, which is this TikTok competitor. So that would be a wild card. We'll see. One point of order, Steve Mnuchin, who is the church secretary and will be part of the CIFIS review board that will brief the president has said that it's the 25th and not the 20th. That is the drop dead date on TikTok, that it was 20th in the executive order, but it was since amended to the 25th. So take him at his word. So it won't be over soon. I retract my earlier statement. It will depends on, you know, when will Tom soon? Okay. Here's what you need to look for. Right now, ByteDance is accelerating this as fast as it possibly can because they want to make it very painful if it all comes crashing. If Donald Trump, the president of the United States says that TikTok is banned, that this is just not happening. No, I said sell the company or we'll shut it down. You're not selling the company. You are bringing on a trusted tech partner. Then this is going to be a big loud mess. And ByteDance wants to ensure that. I think the CCP wants to ensure that it would be a big loud mess. On the other hand, if in defiance of some of the China hawks that have stood up and said, no, no, no, this was sell the company or nothing. If Donald Trump, if art of the deal, Donald Trump, the one who wants to to to understand no, nobody can make these deals. But me, anybody else would have just rolled along with this. I'm the one who got the data to stay stateside. I'm the one who made sure that the person who did is Larry Ellison, who is a Trump supporter and therefore wears a MAGA hat, which makes me more comfortable. I'm the one who made sure that this thing went public and therefore benefited American investors and put Americans to work. Steve Mnuchin also said that TikTok global would employ 20,000 people in America with their global headquarters being put here in the on US soil. So does he want to take the win? Or does he want to approve? That's how much no CCP, both of which seem very plausible in our modern political mindset. We're going to have to wait and see which way he goes. And for those of you who may not catch all the acronym CCP, meaning the Chinese Communist Party and Syphus, not the Jedi master Syphadeus, but rather the committee on foreign investment of the United States. Yes, we're really cool. Shout out to all of us. Hey, thanks, everybody who participates in our sub reddit. If you haven't been there in a while, go submit stories that you care about, vote on others that you see daily tech news show dot reddit.com. Let's check out the mailbag. Got a good one from Jeremy who says, talked about sleep tracking and wearing a device to do it. Most recently, we were talking about the new Apple Watch series six. Jeremy says, have you tried one of the devices that goes between your mattress and either a box spring or the platform? Personally, I use sleep from why things after comparing it to their watches, Apple Watch with the Puylo app, a Garmin watch, multiple Fitbits. Jeremy says, I won't support Fitbit again under their current ownership. It's good enough data for me to no longer worry about getting, wearing something to bed. Because we talk about, you know, some Tom doesn't like it. I'm fine with it. But you know, people have their own opinions about this. Jeremy says, I also know that Apple sells the beddits, which I believe they purchased, haven't tried it. I'm not too into the Apple ecosystem anymore, but maybe for those of you that are. Yeah, though, I have not tried any of these either. And I'd forgotten all about them. So thank you for reminding me, Jeremy. And Fitbit hasn't been acquired by Google yet. That acquisition isn't closed. So if you want to buy Google now, Jeremy, or Fitbit now, you still got time. Conscious claim. True story. Yeah, you know, the only thing that I've tried that wasn't actually a watch that I wear at night, which it doesn't bother me, but I realized it bothers other people, was like a Sonar iPhone app that you kind of like, you know, you kind of set it on the nightstand or wherever by you. But it never really seemed too accurate to me. This is also a few years ago. Also, Jeremy, thank you so much for that photo of a centipede that you also send us. That's GDI fodder. Please never do it again. Yes, no more centipede pics. No, can't can't have those, but especially because Gmail really like blows it up really big. Yeah, but I anyway, you know, if you love your centipede, that's great. Best of luck to you both. Shout out to patrons at our master and grandmaster levels, including Paul Boyer, Ken Hayes and Tony Glass. Also, thanks to Justin Robert Young. Justin Robert Young, what's been going on in your world? We are under 50 days to the United States presidential election, and things are accelerating. If you would like to be a part of, I think there's six weeks left. That means that for for you, you would only really have to shell out $18 to be at the $3 level on our Patreon and get four episodes of politics, politics, politics, be on top of it when it matters the most. Head on over to take politics seriously.com. And folks, before we go, I want to remind you, we want your feedback. Every year we do a DTS survey to ask you about how we can make the show even better. 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