 Coming up on DTNs, rugged gear is in. Amazon wants you to come to its outlet store and why nobody trusts big tech anymore. This is the Daily Tech News for April 1st, 2021 in Los Angeles, I'm Todd Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. And this is Allison Sheridan from the Podfeat Podcast. Roger, sharing the show's producer. We were just talking about why I don't care that this is episode 4,000 of DTNs, as well as hot dog shaped hamburgers and Sarah's new contacts. That was all packed in on good day internet. Get that wider show to become a member at patreon.com slash DTNs. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Microsoft ended support for the Cortana app for iOS and Android globally on March 31st. Lists, reminders and other content created in the apps is still accessible on Cortana for Windows with list and reminders also automatically synced to the Microsoft to-do app. Google's AI powered reservation service, Duplex, is now available in 49 US states. Why not 50? Apparently local laws in Louisiana are an issue. Google tells the Verge that Duplex has taken a while to roll out across the US because it had to add certain features to the service or wait for legislation to change to make it legal in some states, such as offering a callback number for businesses contacted by Duplex. Google also confirmed it will not exhibit at this year's Mobile World Congress, citing its COVID-19 travel restrictions and protocols. It joined similar announcements from Nokia, Ericsson, Sony and Oracle. Following lines completed merger with Yahoo Japan, Yahoo Japan owner Z Holdings last month, Z Holdings announced Thursday that its subsidiary, YJ Capital, has merged with Line Ventures to form Z Venture Capital. So Line, Yahoo Japan, all part of Z Venture Capital. New firm will launch a 30 billion Japanese yen fund, that's about $271 million US, which will focus on global markets like South Korea, the United States, China and Southeast Asia for investment opportunities, as well as Japan itself of course. Well, everybody Twitter has laid live video streaming service Periscope to eternal rest for real. The app is no longer even available in Apple's App Store. Twitter bought Periscope back in 2015. It was a different world back then. Periscope's website though, is still live. And if you're a user, you can download archived versions of your videos there. It is of course, survived by streaming video on Twitter. And I feel a little bad because I brought up Meerkat on yesterday's show and then today Periscope finally died. Aw, you killed it. I mean, the features didn't die. They just were bundled into larger platforms. The real Periscope is the feature that was added to Twitter along the way. And it's the one in your heart. And in your heart. All right, let's talk a little more about rugged gear, Allison. All right, rugged gear is in. Caterpillar has brought its rugged CATS-S62 pro phone to the United States for $699. It's got mid-range phone specs, but includes a flip thermal. I'm sorry, that's not supposed to be flipped. That's supposed to be a FLIR thermal imaging camera. A temperature alarm can stand up to 1.5 meters of water for 30 minutes and high pressure spray, also known as IP68 and IP69. It meets the Mil-Standard 810 military standard for vibrations and thermal shock, concluding six-foot drops onto a steel surface. And Casio unveiled its first G-Shock rugged Wear OS smartwatch. What's new is the dual-layer display with an always-on LCD to display the time, and then they combine that with a regular full-color LCD for maps, sensor data, and more. It has a titanium back, shock and water resistant to 200 meters, GPS compass, altitude, barometric pressure, heart rate, and more. And it claimed 1.5-day battery life using the Color LCD or up to a month on the time display. The Casio G-Squad Pro, GSW H1000, and the $700 GSW H1000 are arriving in mid-May. So when I saw the Casio getting all this attention today, I thought, oh, it must be that dual display, because that is kind of cool. You've got the lower-power display just to see the time, and then it can give you some color and stuff for the maps. But y'all were telling me it's really just the return of G-Shock, I guess. I mean, G-Shock was a bit like, there was a time where, well, not everybody, but it was a very popular watch. I remember when my kids, it was like that's what they had to have. Yeah. My kids would just like, I gotta have a G-Shock. They all got G-Shocks. Yeah, so the idea that the G-Shock could come back, but also be a smartwatch is pretty cool. And I don't know, I mean, seems like it does all the things. I did have to laugh a tiny bit at the Caterpillar rugged phone, which can withstand things like high pressure spray, which is, I just don't know how often that's gonna be a thing that you have to deal with when you're like, well, thank gosh I have the rugged phone. Water skiing. That's it, water skiing. Once I was being sprayed with high pressure just now, for up to 30 minutes. But yeah, I think in Casio's case, this is a nostalgia play, but it does sound like a pretty cool watch and does all the stuff. And that was the whole thing with G-Shock in the first place, was that it was meant to be, you wear it every day, you wear it outdoors. It's got it all. It's kind of big, kind of bulky, but has it all. And it looks very G-Shocky. You know, it is a G-Shock, it's very memorable of that. One of the things with the high pressure spray is because the Caterpillar is marketed towards construction site workers, right? Where you would more likely be using a high pressure spray. But it is still kind of like, and I know every construction worker out there listening is like, oh no, I got a story about this. But like, how many situations did you hit your phone with the high pressure spray in? Well, now you don't have to worry about it again. As long as you don't hit your hands. Yeah, as long as you don't hit your hand too, you ever hit yourself with your power washer. The phone would, if the phone's in your hand, you got other problems. So it must have been sitting somewhere that you forgot about. Right, yeah. I also, before we move on, that Cascio is saying 1.5 day battery life. Sure, if you have some sort of a schedule where you charge it at night or whatever, not the end of the world. I will, I mean, I just, I know I sing my praises of the Fitbit all the time, but I mean, that guy is like, once every five days, I have to charge it. 1.5 would be like, ugh, I have to think about this a lot more often. I have less than a day battery life in my Apple Watch, but I actually don't mind that. But you don't wear it at night. I don't want to wear it at night. Yeah. And so I would think that the Fitbit with the five day, I'd forget when to charge it. I'd be like, oh, crap. Well, that's happened too. Yeah. Definitely happened too. Yeah, I have all sorts of notifications. I'm much better at dating. My phone will remind me to charge my watch that's talking to my phone. It's a whole thing. All right, outlet stores. Do you like them? Do you hate them? I mean, if you're like me, they're great because you can get that thing that you wanted and maybe there's a little rip in the back, but it's half off. It's the place where high-end brands can get rid of excess inventories. And the new as a consumer can get some stuff with a higher end label or cheaper. Then there's Ross, Home Goods, TJ Maxx chains that all take unsold goods from other chains and then sell those goods at a discount. Bloomberg sources say before the pandemic hit, so pre-pandemic, more than a year ago, Amazon was exploring the idea of opening its own physical locations to sell off unsold inventory of home goods, electronics, toys, baby products, and kitchen items all at a discount, Amazon stuff. Amazon considered pop-up stores as well as permanent locations according to the report. The company already has Amazon Outlet and Amazon Warehouse for selling unsold inventory or also returned items. So this would be the next physical location that Amazon would open. The company also has 96 total physical locations, Amazon Bookstores, Amazon Go convenience stores, Amazon Fresh grocery stores, and Amazon Four Star for electronics, home goods, and toys. Seems like they kind of have this all covered, but it doesn't count for the more than 500 whole foods locations that Amazon now owns as well. So what do we think is there room for another Amazon store for this runoff inventory that it obviously wants to get out of its warehouses? I can picture this being really popular and my first thought is it'll be like when you go to Costco and you know, you see something you think you want but you're like, ah, I'm not really sure I'll come back later, but then you know it won't be there if you don't buy it now. It's gonna be like that times 1,000 and you're gonna think, oh, I don't know if it's a good deal. Do I have time to check? No, I just gotta get it now. I think it'll sell, I think it'll do really well. Yeah, I'm sure Amazon will make it clear that everything must go. It may not be here tomorrow, so if you see it, grab it now. Yeah, it's a constant clearance sale, right? Exactly, and I think the idea of this being a physical store, people may say, well, Amazon's already doing this. Why do they need a physical store is it's a way to gather some shoppers that they might not get. You know, somebody may be a little weirded out about like, I don't know if I wanna buy bargain stuff over there, I wanna see it. Or I wanna shop around, I just wanna see what's there and it's a little harder to just see everything when you're on a webpage. So I think they get some sales they wouldn't otherwise. It also clears out the warehouse. They don't have to have it sitting in the warehouse waiting to sell on the outlet page. They can send it to this physical location and that becomes a warehouse for that stuff that constantly is moving things out. I went to an Amazon pop-up store in a mall back when malls were a thing and it was very interesting because I wanted a new Kindle and they had just come out with the latest one that's a little bit more squarish and kind of thick on one side and I wanted to see what it felt like and it felt horrible to me. So I was really glad I had a chance to go into a real store. I'd certainly give it a try. I'd definitely go wander the aisles. In fact, I'm really looking forward to just wandering aisles someday. Yeah, tell me about it. I think the idea of this is if I liken it to like a TJ Maxx for example, sure for the most part it's clothing but TJ Maxx also has bedding and plates and food sometimes by the cash registers and it's a little bit of like a everything store. And if Amazon's got the bookstores, the Amazon Go convenience stores, the fresh grocery stores, that's all fine. I mean, as long as they're selling merchandise out of there but they're specialty stores. Something that's a little bit more of a, hey, you're gonna get something for cheap here and there's a lot of stuff in here and it's a big super store. That's what people liked about outlet stores in the first place. Yeah, and Amazon four star is their non-outlet version of that. So my guess is that must be doing well enough that they're like, well, if that works, a nice bargain area would be. I think it's interesting. I remember five, six years ago, people talking about whether Amazon should have physical presence and we all sort of imagined it as the Amazon store but what has happened is we have gotten specialty stores rather than the Amazon store. Even Amazon four star is electronics, home goods and toys. It's not, I mean, there's so many different kinds of things you can get on Amazon. It would be almost impossible to properly stock an Amazon store. So you would truly need a mall, an entire mall to be like, this is Amazon but real life. Don't give me the idea, Sarah. Amazon mall coming next. Third party sellers in real, yeah, there you go. Good stuff. You know, in looking at the, talking about the Amazon bookstores, I realized what I want them to make. I want them to make a bookstore where there's one copy of all of the books. So I can judge a book, buy its cover and then buy it for my Kindle. Cause that's what I miss. I don't know. We just scan a QR code, boom, done. They all look the same to me when they're on the Kindle but when I'm in a store, I can tell, ooh, this one's by Penguin. So the, it's real flexible. Okay, I'll buy that one. I'll buy it at my Kindle. Wow, yeah. All right, the chip supply shortage continues to affect multiple manufacturers. For instance, company called Analog announced that its pocket mobile game console, it's one of those retro game consoles, is delayed until October now because of quote, sudden and severe electrical component shortages as well as logistical issues leading to a domino effect of challenges for nearly everyone in the industry. They're like, this isn't just us. The biggest effects of course are still being felt in the auto industry. Ford just expanded downtime at more of its factories, including a truck plant in Dearborn, Michigan and an assembly plant in Kansas City, Missouri. Stellantis, which makes Ram Jeep and Chrysler vehicles is halting production at five North American plants through mid-April. Honda, Toyota and GM of all previously announced stoppages as well. GM and Ford have not been taking this lying down neither of Toyota or Honda or Stellantis but GM and Ford have been taking chips meant for other less profitable cars and putting them in the pickup trucks because they know they can sell those and make more money off them but they've now had to start building trucks without chips. They don't have enough chips even for the trucks anymore so they're building trucks without the chips and then just parking them until they get the chips and they can finish the truck and ship it. Companies are also starting to move away from just-in-time inventory to stockpiling. That's something every company did before the 80s but Toyota pioneered the just-in-time system in the 1980s bringing costs down. Toyota itself announced in February that it built up a four-month chip stockpile. Toyota from the 80s called and said that's heresy but that's the world we live in. Companies are talking about supply chain resiliency now. They wanna keep some of the cost savings of just-in-time but with flexibility like dual sourcing of parts, closer production to your factory, not orderings from so far away in case a boat gets caught in a Suez, standardization of parts so that you can use things in multiple places. Auto parts maker Dana is actually building a data sharing platform with suppliers so that they can see possible issues before they arrive. If you know a parts maker, three steps removed from the part you need is having an issue. You could start to plan better than finding out the day that the end part doesn't arrive because it's delayed. Electric batteries and motors are possible crisis spots that companies are looking to try to avoid problems with and of course getting more chips into the system would help too. TSMC just announced it plans to invest a further $100 billion over the next three years to expand its chip for application capacity. That's on top of 20 billion it had already announced and follows announcements of expansions and investments from Intel, Samsung, Global Foundries and more. But this, we keep saying we just need to push through the supply chain weirdness that was caused by all kinds of things in the pandemic but we're still pushing through. We haven't gotten through yet. And not just the pandemic, there were the fires in a factory and things like that. Everything could have gone wrong or was it floods or lost water? There certainly were things like that. Yeah. The kinds of things that may not have been as disastrous to the supply chain had it not been for the pandemic but it certainly didn't help. Yeah. So it seems to me this is gonna definitely increase the cost of cars over time. If these car companies are gonna hold inventory, that's a, you know, you don't wanna hold on to capital investments. You don't wanna hold inventory. That costs you money. Every dollar that you're held into an inventory is something that you're not making money on. So this is gonna cost more money over time. Well, or it pressures your profit margin even more. This is already a low profit margin business and it's gonna squeeze that because it's, we always forget as consumers that the cost of the good doesn't determine the price. The demand determines the price in combination with the cost of the good. So yeah, the cost of the good provides a floor which you can't charge any less unless you're selling it a loss for a reason but you can sell what the market will bear and there's only a certain point that you can raise the price of a truck right now because the demand is not what it was. But it's probably as we come out of this that demand is probably gonna go up so they could probably, you know, increase the cost and have people take it. Like I am just expecting spitball in here but I'm thinking flights are gonna get expensive, right? As soon as everybody, because everybody's gonna wanna fly at once. Everybody's gonna wanna buy a car at once. It's hard to guess. Actually the demand hasn't been as low as people thought for cars. I'm already seeing the airlines start to offer frequent flyer perks if you buy. Really? If you get back on a plane now, Delta just sent out a thing like, oh, we'll do extra perks, extra flights or any flights this year. So yeah, again, if nobody's flying, they'll need to keep those fares low. If everybody suddenly has to fly and there's more people flying than they have planes, then yeah, price goes up. What do you wanna hear us talk about on the show, folks? One way to let us know is in our subreddit, you can submit stories and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. Edelman surveyed more than 33,000 people in 28 countries to gauge consumer trust. They've been doing this for 21 years in institutions like media, government, business and the tech sector. Trust in the tech sector fell by 7% worldwide, a third straight year of decline. Trust in tech was going up and up and up until three years ago, worldwide, and then started to fall. Trust in tech hit a 21 year low in 17 countries, including China, the US and Australia, and the biggest decline happened in the United States. Tech was the most trusted sector studied in the US last year. Even with declines, it was still up at top. And it fell between last year and this year to ninth. Tech was still the most trusted sector despite the declines in seven countries. It declined, but it stayed on top. That's down from being the most trusted sector in 20 countries back in 2016. Only Saudi Arabia showed an increase in trust in the tech industry this year. Trust in tech is the lowest in Russia, the UK, Japan, the US and France, and it's the highest in Indonesia, far and away above in Indonesia, pretty good in India, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kenya, Mexico and Thailand. But the fact of the matter is, tech blew it for one reason or another. They had everybody's trust, everybody's like, oh, tech, tech's great, love the apps and the phones. And then three years ago or so, everybody's like, don't like tech, too much power, too much stuff. How trustworthy do you guys feel tech is? Well, okay, so it depends on what's tech, right? Take the US specifically, went through an election year. A lot of issues with how Facebook and Twitter and pretty much Facebook and Twitter were handling that sort of thing and people's real trust issues with those platforms. Yeah, it's more social network than technology, but then you've got a company like Amazon going through a variety of warehouse issues and scaling issues and you have the occasional story coming out of one of those warehouses saying that things aren't going very well here. I can see where in the US, the trust going down makes a lot of sense and it doesn't even necessarily mean that the companies are failing in any sort of way, but that's just the vibe and some of the other countries, I find it really interesting that, yeah, like Saudi Arabia, increase in trust in tech over the last year. Is there something going on there that I don't know about? Is there perhaps a company that's, I don't know, working in the oil industry in a way that has made a lot of people happy? It's kind of fascinating. I want to build on what you were saying, Sarah. I hate this because it does put tech together. I mean, did people lose trust in Microsoft in the last couple of years? No, everything I hear is people love Microsoft right now. I haven't heard about people distrusting Huawei or there's a lot of companies. Well, yes. You have heard a lot of people distrusting Huawei. Okay. I don't think you meant Huawei. Did you mean Xiaomi? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Huawei's the one that the United States doesn't trust because they think it's owned by the Communist Party. Okay, but that doesn't necessarily mean the people in China don't trust it. In China, they don't. That's good. Right, in China, it was the lowest. Tech had gone to its lowest, right, is what you said. So I always put on my Chinese hat there. So, and you know, Apple, I don't think it's that probably doesn't hit the low trust thing. They get kind of swept up in some of the other stuff, but I feel like this has maybe all been swept by the Twitter and Facebook problems and Google and I trust and that's where I think that it's sort of like the way the NASDAQ gets swayed, right? I fully expect to get some emails saying, I don't trust Microsoft because, you know, everybody's their own data point. But the fact of the matter is, I think everybody would say what you said, Allison, with different names. Like, well, I know people say they don't trust Google, but I love them and I think they're fine. And they do a lot for security. It's not actually what they do. I'm the one who's made the point that I think Facebook, while they do a lot of things that I disagree with and don't like and I don't use Facebook because of it, I don't think that you can actually say what effect they had on the 2016 election, but that is what they get accused of being bad about. That's what it feels like. Where there was a psychology professor took some properly acquired data and without Facebook's knowledge gave it to somebody else and suddenly Facebook was, you know, the company that swayed the election. I don't personally believe that happened. So to me, it's really not about what happened because you can make all kinds of arguments about all of that. It's about the fact that they're big. And once something gets big enough, people stop trusting it because they don't trust the power it has and they don't know or understand everything that it can do. And I think that was true of railroads. It was true of oil companies. And now it's true of Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and to a certain extent Microsoft, Netflix, et cetera. I can see what you're talking about. I know that there is a tendency whenever a company's on top that you've got to bring them down. Maybe all of that still happens with an aggregate, like you're saying. Yeah, because people, you know, when it's a small company it's easier to wrap your head about who's doing what. When it's massive, like these companies, you start to not really know who's in charge. Who are the real people behind what's going on besides the CEO? Yep. Well, it is April 1st in most of the world, anyway. But what is apparently not an April Fool's joke, the toy maker Funko acquired a majority stake in the NFT startup Tokenwave with plans to combine Funko Pop vinyl figures with digital tokens using the Wax platform. Yes, not a April Fool's joke, we don't think. The first NFTs will arrive in June with Funko offering new ones each week, starting at $10 with rare tokens tied to exclusive Funko Pop figures. Yeah, I got a message from Rich Straffolito who puts together Daily Tech headlines this morning saying, I'm pretty sure this is not a April Fool's joke, but I just need a gut check on this. I was like, I don't know, man, maybe I'd stay away. He's like, it's in there SEC filing. So if it is a joke, then they're going to be very elaborate fraud maybe. So I think it's real. But even then, even with all of that, we were both like, I think so. I guess it's OK. And we decided it would just be sure. I mean, April Fool's jokes are some are great. Some are not. They're mostly not great anymore, but it would be a really weird April Fool's joke if it were to be a joke, which it isn't. That's not why we're talking about this. I think there have been some really weird April Fool's jokes over the years. But yeah, you're right. But it was just like, hey, look what we're planning to do. And people would be like, that's exciting. I'm into it. And then be like, ha ha, gotcha, April Fool's. Because I think this is actually something that, yeah, these are fungible things in history. And the idea of it becoming an NFT thing is like, if people are like, oh, but if I'm collecting it, then what do I get out of something like this? I'm not exactly sure. But I think it's cool, even though I'm not really into this world myself, that there are companies that understand that they have IP that people want to be a part of. And people might have other options this way. This is the numbering. This is digital numbering, if you're collectible. You have the FunkoPop number one NFT that goes with your FunkoPop. There's a whole list of issues about if you sell the NFT, do you have to send them the actual physical FunkoPop? And people have to navigate that. But it is an interesting use of that aspect of NFTs, for sure. You couldn't just print a one on the FunkoPop? You can. But then also, people are like, yeah, but I want the record of it. I want people to know on the ledger. Right. Hope there's no disappearing FunkoPods. Well, yeah, I hope so, too. Also, Kevin Schaefer on Twitter thought that maybe I gave people a misimpression when I was talking about what fungible meant yesterday. Fungible means interchangeable. So I apologize if I misled anyone yesterday. Let's check out the mailbag. Yeah, we, I forgive you, Tom. In the mailbag, Andy, who says he's in warming up, but quickly becoming mud-seasoned in New Hampshire, says I just had to write in about your discussion on gender selection for voice assistants. This was in our show yesterday. And we were talking about the fact that Siri is now not going to default to a female assistant. It will let a user, well, will require a user to choose their own voice. Andy says, I don't use Google Assistant much, but I do work in an emergency department where we wear a voice assistant that helps schedule reminders, call colleagues, announce emergencies, et cetera, named Vocera. From what I've seen in Wisconsin and New Hampshire, these are fairly common in hospitals. Vocera is not incredibly accurate, though. And especially with all the PPE we're wearing, you frequently get a response of, I think you said, or I didn't get that, let's try again. After the umpteen time yelling angrily at Vocera, I chose to change it to a male voice, as I felt slightly less guilty yelling at a male voice than a female voice. Even though I know this is the virtual assistant and any genders we're assigning are purely in our imagination. I love the idea of being able to change your virtual assistants to fit your personal needs right away in the setup like you were discussing. I love that. That is fabulous. Because how many, there's a whole thing about that with kids trying to teach them to be nice to the virtual assistants, because people are worried their kids are gonna learn bad behaviors because they yell at the A lady or the S lady. Yeah, I mean, I do this often. I mean, my assistants, it's mostly Amazon's assistant, at least in my house, where I'm, you know, talking out loud to it. But there are many times where, you know, sometimes bark something and then I get my answer and I go, thank you. Sorry, sorry if I felt short just then. I know they were, I think it was, Tim Cook was talking about what they can do or somebody was talking about what they can do to improve Siri. And my suggestion was you should be allowed to listen for obscenities and yelling right after whatever you say. So for that split second after it says something and you say, no, that's not what I said, they should be able to hear that because that's where they should go back and analyze the voice recognition. Yeah, and listen, it's a digital assistant, as Andy has pointed out, it's not a person. You know, there's only so much guilt you should take. You know, if you lose your mind trying to talk to your personal assistant, but it does kind of matter psychologically. If you're like, I don't feel right, you know, getting the information that I do need from this with this particular voice, having options is good. If you have feedback for anything that we talk about on the show, anything that we might talk about on the show, questions, comments and the like feedback at dailytechnewshow.com is where to send those ideas. We also like to shout out patrons at our master and grandmaster levels. Today they include Scott Hepburn, Dale McKayhee and Ellie Sanjabi. And thank you to our brand new bosses. Got a few of them today. Rob Watts, Jimmy Smith and Celtic Wolf all just started backing us on Patreon. Thank you to our new bosses, y'all the best. Also thanks to Alison Sheridan, also the best. Alison, what's been going on since we saw you last? Well, I am very excited that I got a DTNS7, Len Peralta sticker in the mail for being a patron for how long? Three months? Yeah, every three months that you stay a patron, you'll get a new sticker now. Get a new sticker, so I have that one. But I'm afraid as excited as I was about that, I'm more excited about my new one. I have a sticker that says I got my COVID-19 vaccine today. Yay! That's my big excitement. I didn't get a sticker with mine. I did not either. Yeah, that's cool. And you can find my fine work on this subject and others at podfeat.com. Hey, folks, another thing patrons get is a column from Roger Chang every week. Good stuff, good tech perspectives. If you're a patron and you haven't been checking it out, go to patreon.com.dtns. This week, Roger shares his thoughts on watching first-run movies from the comfort of his couch. Even if he doesn't always like the movie, he does like watching it from his couch. So go check that out, patreon.com.dtns. You know, we are on demand, but we're also live. If you can tune in and join us live, we'd love to have you. We're live Monday through Friday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern. That's 2030 UTC. And you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. And we're going to be back here tomorrow with Chris Ashley. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. I hope you have enjoyed this program.