 Coming up on DTNS, all hail the Pixel 6. Does Dark Mode really help your battery life? And the latest to combat collisions? Daily Tech News for Monday, August 2nd, 2021 from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane. In Cinematic Cleveland, Ohio, I'm Richard Raffalino. And I'm Roger Chang, the show's producer. For the show, we were talking about movies that were based in either San Francisco or Cleveland, for no reason, you know, just chose those two cities amongst ourselves. If you want to get the wider conversation in our expanded show, or if you have ideas of what movies we might want to watch there based on the cities that we know and love, good day internet would be the great way to do it. Become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Intel's general manager of its client computing group, Gregory Bryant, posted a photo, now deleted, with some specifications for Thunderbolt 5. The photo claims this will offer up to 80 gigabits per second connections over USB-C using a novel 3-bit data signal that boosts bits per signal from previous Thunderbolt implementations by 50%. Square intends to acquire the Australian buy now pay later finance company after pay in a $29 billion deal. This would be Square's largest acquisition. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission still needs to review and approve the deal. The Indian government launched E-Rupi, a new person and purpose specific digital payment solution. The name is a portmanteau of Rupi in the country's popular unified payments interface or UPI. This is a limited launch currently only available at select hospitals in the country. India eventually plans to use E-Rupi to entirely replace cash for medical or educational aid. E-Rupi essentially provides beneficiaries with a prepaid voucher for a specific purpose. It's sent through SMS or QR code and doesn't require a digital payment app or bank account to access the voucher. It also uses two-step verification for security. Personal details aren't shared when redeeming the voucher, although the insurer of the voucher can track when it is redeemed. The State Bank of India, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Cotech Bank have all gone live with E-Rupi. Windows 365 is now available for business customers. Pricing starts at $20 per user per month for those with an existing Windows 10 Pro license, providing one virtual CPU, two gigs of RAM and 64 gigs of storage. The top tier eight virtual CPUs, 32 gigabytes of RAM and 512 gigabytes of storage cloud PC starts at $162 per month. Those without a Windows 10 Pro license pay $4 more per month per user. French intelligence investigators say Pegasus spyware has been found on the phones of three journalists, including a senior staff member at the country's international television station France 24. This is significant because it's the first time an independent authority has corroborated the findings of Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based non-profit media organization and Amnesty International, both of who initially had access to a leaked list of 50,000 numbers that are believed to belong to people of interest by clients of the Israeli firm NSO Group since 2016, and they shared that access with their media partners. Alright, let's get out to sea, shall we? Automatic Identification System, or AIS, is a wireless radio technology designed to prevent collisions at sea. Using GPS data, AIS broadcasts a ship's identity, position, course, and also speed to other ships in the area every few seconds. Everybody knows where everybody is, as long as it works well. The signals are limited, but a global network of private and public shore-based AIS receivers and satellite receptions pick up these signals, which are then aggregated across the web. According to an analysis by the non-profit SkyTruth and Global Fishing Watch, since August of 2020, over 100 warships from at least 14 European countries, as well as Russia, and also the US, have had locations faked using AIS. These faked locations were often disputed or in territorial waters of another country, lasting up to days at a time. These were initially discovered by SkyTruth researcher Bjorn Bergman after hearing about the Swedish Navy having had locations faked. After looking at various data fields embedded in AIS signals, Bergman was able to tease out the fakes. Researchers weren't able to tie the fake signals to any country, organization, or even an individual, but shared common characteristics indicated that they came from the same actor. Part of the problem is that AIS is an unencrypted system, with some in the security community calling for adding digital signatures to each AIS transmission going forward. Yeah, there's a couple interesting threads kind of coming together here. I mean, one is kind of that ever-present what happens when we add scale to something that works well fairly locally. AIS being unencrypted may be not an issue when it's not easy to aggregate every single AIS signal together or something like that, all of a sudden bringing together. But also, we've been kind of covering a lot of more high-level security concerns as of late, kind of just cropping up. And we've heard rumblings of when cyber attacks can become national security threats or lead to even combat or escalation and stuff like that. And this is literally like a bond plot. If you watch the movie, Tomorrow Never Dies, this is like the reverse of that in a weird way, which would kind of surprise me seeing that in real life. So, kind of yet another surface area that we need to be aware of. Luckily, I mean, I don't know what it would take to implement something like adding digital signatures to these kinds of things, what kind of expense that would add to fleets and how easy that would be to implement. Saying that sounds very easy to fix, I wonder in practice, given that this is a global system and kind of everybody, not opting in, but kind of running on an honor system almost, I wonder how feasible that is to roll out in the near term. Yeah, well, honor system. That is a term that I feel like, I don't know, I have friends who have a sailboat and every once in a while I'm out there with them and it does feel very honor system-esque, right? Like no one wants to hurt each other, let's all just make sure we're, you know where I am, see me, okay, we're going this way, you're going that way, all good. And that does work fine most of the time, but when you think about espionage and the idea that ships are going to be a big part of that, depending on who you are and what country you represent, the idea that this would be so easily hackable is something probably to investigate. The other thing to note though is that I believe military vessels are not required to use AIS. So like the, I guess maybe the worst case scenario is that just militaries turn these off in general, so if you see a signal from them, you know it's fake. I don't think that's in anyone's best interest, these are massive ships, obviously we don't let them getting into trouble and hitting into each other, but that is something to note as well. All right, well YouTube confirmed it's testing a premium light subscription offering ad-free viewing for six euros and 99 cents a month without other YouTube premium features like offline downloads or background playback. The feature is currently testing in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. YouTube said this is an experiment and could roll out more plans based on feedback. Sarah, not available to us now, but are you going to crack open some YouTube premium light? You know, I'm really used to ads on YouTube. I know many of us sort of we either look the other way or suffer through them kind of thing. I don't. I pay for YouTube TV, which is sort of the cable alternative, which is a service I think is worth my money, but YouTube itself, no, I just kind of deal with an ad experience. But I was, you know, looking at this story earlier, I was thinking, well, what would I pay though? I mean, the ads are annoying. I wish they weren't there. Yeah, I don't really want to see them. What would I pay? And it sounds like what YouTube is trying out is, well, okay, there was a package that was a little bit more expensive that also offered things like offline downloads. That would be that would be advantageous to me when I was traveling, for example, background playback, you know, another thing we we're multitasking. That is also stuff I wouldn't really pay for. But would I just pay for one of those things? And you know, if I was the person who wasn't going to pay for any of that stuff, then YouTube isn't getting any of my money. But if I say, if you lower the price a little bit, and then I don't have ads anymore, then maybe that's a little bit more attractive to me, especially if, you know, it's it's in my price range. Yeah, I wonder, you know, if this is a signal of how much or the lack of traction that maybe the standard YouTube premium has been getting overall in terms of, you know, the money that YouTube makes, it's a money making machine for for Google, obviously, you know, if that's kind of not moving where they need to move to, and there and maybe there, I'm wondering if this will kind of be the be the spur for, okay, maybe we're not going to experiment with more features, we're going to experiment with that price point, right, is six years seven euros or $7 or whatever it ends up being if it ever comes to the US, is that the price point that gets you to go ad free? And does that make sense versus what they can make, you know, serving ads up? I think it is interesting. And just a note here, I want to make sure we clarify that YouTube music, or I'm sorry, YouTube premium does include YouTube music. That's one of the things that you do not get with the premium light subscription. So it is a very, I mean, I really wish it's really a stripping out. Yeah, I really don't understand. Just call it YouTube ad free. I feel like why are we, why are you burying the lead with a clunky premium light? Premium light. What does it get me? Well, no ads. And for many folks that might be like, that's the price is right. We're, I'm finally ready to throw some money at you. YouTube is also very, very aggressive about reminding me every single time I watch any video. Do we want to upgrade to YouTube premium? No. Okay. But do you want to maybe upgrade to YouTube premium? It's like, I mean, no, you're not going to get me, but I, I know that there are people who use YouTube in other ways than I do. I will say I watched a YouTube video in prep for today's show for one of the stories. And it was the first time in a while that it was kind of struck by like every three minutes there was some sort of ad break. And I think it was because it was, you know, a timely just breaking video or something like that. But it got me like having the two stories kind of back to back in my mind. I was like, you know what's seven, seven euros doesn't sound too crazy. I mean, I prefer dollars just for the exchange rate, but you know, Well, conventional wisdom says that since OLED screens don't use a backlight for black pixels, the screen just isn't really on. So using a phone's dark mode on an OLED screen is going to save you battery life. Yes. Well, a new study from Purdue University looked at if using dark mode actually does in fact save battery life. The researchers found that if a display is at 30 to 50% brightness, switching to dark mode uses three to 9% less power. At 100% brightness, dark mode used 39 to 40% less power. So obviously the brighter it is, the more you save. The researchers looked at calculator, Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google News, Google phone, and YouTube apps in the study across several OLED phones, including the Pixel two, Pixel four, Pixel five, and Moto Z three. The researchers also found that the built in Android battery consumption utility doesn't accurately measure power savings when in dark mode. So they created the Android battery plus app to do so. Yeah, it's so it's interesting to see the scale that this is able to, you know, to hit obviously like that 30 to 50% brightness. I think they said was representative of having your phone kind of an auto brightness. And that's usually kind of where it averaged out to. And so, you know, you're seeing, you know, that's some power savings, maybe it gets you an extra hour or something if you're on that 9% line. Obviously 100% brightness, you know, kind of kind of scales directly to there. It is interesting though that there's a lot of these we've seen this around kind of digital well being stuff where there's a lot of things that sound like they make a lot of sense. And then when they do the science, you know, it's a little bit more of a of a mixed bag when it comes to, you know, just what what's going to be more restful for your eye and what's going to save you power and stuff like that, particularly with OLEDs. I you know, it's important to point out this isn't like three to 9% of your total battery. This is just the power that the screen is using. So it's not like it's because it's pushing less pixels because they doesn't have to render them because it's like not turning on the black pixels like it saves processing power or anything like that. It's just the screen it seems like from this study. I've had my doubts about this for some time now. And I think part of the reason is, and yes, the idea of saving battery life and, you know, saving your eyesight, two different conversations, I understand that. But we have been in this whole sort of like blue light is bad. That's where it's all coming from. Try to try to avoid that as much as you can, you know, later in the day. And especially if you're on a mobile device. Well, I mean, any device really, but a lot of people are on mobile devices a little bit later at night, switch to dark mode wherever possible. And I actually have done that with a variety of apps. I feel like I strain more to the point where I'm actually upping my brightness half the time because I'm like, I just can't see the words. And, you know, I'm sure it's different for everybody, but I just don't know that this is the right, the right solution for us with our, you know, our tired eyes having been on the internet all day already. Yeah, well, it's certainly things like screen sharpness, you know, where we're, you know, you know, depending on the resolution of your screen and stuff like that, I can see, you know, having white text on a dark screen that just kind of bleeds into gray a little bit easier for some reason. And I feel like for a lot of these wellness or whatever these kind of conventional wisdom kind of things, a lot of it does come down to it. Well, if it, you know, if it's causing ice cream for you, it doesn't matter scientifically, I guess, if a study showed that your eye vibrates 6% less, if you switched to dark mode, if it's an unpleasant experience for you, it's still an unpleasant experience to you, no matter if, you know, what that paper says. So I think there is a little bit of a, not even psychosomatic, but there is a, you know, it matters what your perception of the effect is as well in this instance at least. However, when it does come to battery life, several percentage points do matter depending on where you are and what you're doing. So I totally get that. It does not seem like, yeah, unless you're cranked up to full brightness, it's going to make that much of a difference to you. If you're on team full brightness all the time, this is going to be a game changer. There you go. If you love this show, and we certainly hope that you do, but sometimes you just need the headlines, or you'd like a headline version of the show while still listening to DTNS, which we also love, check out our related tech show, Daily Tech Headlines, all the essential technology news in about five minutes at DailyTechHeadlines.com. Well, the future of Google's Pixel phone lineup has kind of been an open question. With the line sometimes going for more cutting edge tech, when you think about something like the 2019 Pixel 4, it had that project solely radar for motion tracking, kind of on that bid for a higher end or at least cutting edge, and then was followed by maybe a little bit more mid-range Pixel 5 and then pretty much an all-out budget offering with the Pixel 4a. But Google has now given a preview of the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro, and it definitely marks a return to flagship ambitions for the line. The main thing Google preview meant wasn't the phone. This wasn't the actual phone announcement technically. They admitted that the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro were coming out, but the big thing is a new system on a chip inside that they call Tensor, and it's named after the Tensor Processing Unit they use in their data centers for AI processing. On the Tensor SoC is that same Google made TPU for AI operations and a new Titan M2 chip. Otherwise, though, we don't know things like CPU, GPU, other components. We've not even been knowing really who's making them at this point. There's been some hints out there, and you can kind of dig into the rumor sites if you can't wait until the fall when they're going to release the full Pixel 6 release details coming out. Google is keen to frame the TPU inside the Tensor SoC, not just as another co-processor, which we've kind of seen. They had something for the camera pipeline as a pro-co-processor along that. Made a lot of waves when it first came out, but they're pitching this as more of an essential part of the computing pipeline that will touch a lot of user-facing interactions, and that's really kind of on par with the CPU in terms of the primacy of operations. Demos using Tensor include a camera instantly merging a blurry shot of a moving child. The child's face is really blurry, but they had simultaneously taken another picture with an ultrawide at a faster shutter speed, and were able to merge those basically by the time you would go to view the photo into a sharp image, as well as using HDR net processing on every single frame of a 4K video to make more realistic HDR. The hope is that the TPU can take enough of the workload off of the CPU and GPU to make the whole package feel faster, even though, you know, whatever it's using is going to be a commodity CPU. It seems like it would be a differentiator because it's able to take off that workload. In terms of the difference between the Pro and the regular Pixel 6, the Pro has a 120Hz QHD screen and a 4x periscope telephoto camera. The regular Pixel 6 makes do with a mere 90Hz screen and an ultrawide and a standard camera as well. Design-wise, it's interesting the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro both use glass on both sides with a black horizontal bar for the rear cameras, kind of a pretty bold piece of styling. Pricing is unknown, but Google hardware head Rick Osterloh says it will certainly be a premium price product, so there's speculation that this is going to be hitting around $1,000 plus. I mean, with all of that, imagine Google being like, and it's $750. This is the Google's new chip, the Tensor chip. It seems like a really big deal here, and the Google Pixel phones in the past, as you mentioned, Rich, they kind of run the gamut. They're sort of more kind of feature phones and more high-end phones. The Pixel 6 seems like Google is going for Apple. It's Samsung or any company that's like, this is a premium product that they best of the best, but also it's a Google chip. I wonder how that changes Google's relationship with OEMs going forward. Yeah, and it kind of goes along with an existing trend that we've seen, certainly Apple on this bandwagon, NVIDIA to some extent, Qualcomm getting in on this now, and even Intel on their FAB business, is that this whole semi-custom silicon thing, as opposed to we're just going to throw in a stock X86 or a stock ARM processor, call it a day, have a set platform to differentiate just with software, feels like we're at the tail end of that. And to your point about this being a big deal, I mean, certainly for Google, again, you don't have a pre-announcement feature, like spotlight on a feature like this unless you feel like it's a really big deal. And there's been some hay made that Rick Osterlow is kind of calling this the Google phone. People have wanted to put that tag on the Nexus phones way back in the day and now going into the Pixels, and they've kind of shied away from that, obviously to make OEM partners happy, I imagine. And Google kind of really leaning into that. We've seen them try and do like ultra high-end premium Chromebooks before, trying to own that in terms of that high, high end market. The phone space is weird. There's a lot of different economics besides just, hey, this phone looks cool, and it has this top end feature when you're not named Apple. So I don't think we can say for sure, like, oh, this is going to be the surefire hit. This is going to be the thing that makes the Pixel phone the number one selling phone, or number one selling end for it. Make Sam's on Spotify. I mean, the specs are pretty good, though. The specs are pretty good. And yeah, I mean, the Pixel market share is so low at this point, not because Google hasn't done a nice job, but I think Google has sort of been walking a line of sorts of what is it? Is it a maker of things or does it partner with makers of things? And I think that this is Google saying, we're making this. This is all us, and it's really good, and you're going to like this phone. Last month, TikTok launched a pilot of a video resume feature. Yep, you heard that sentence right. Letting users post videos to get jobs at partner companies such as Chipotle, Target, and Shopify. The pilot only went through July, so it was limited. But this seems to be a growing trend. Industry analysts saying that LinkedIn may soon add a similar feature, and companies like the WWE using TikTok to try and find its next ring announcer. So, you know, it's this whole kind of social aspect of getting people on board. Everybody seemingly hates the cover letter and resume routine. We've been doing it for years. Always sucks, right? But does a video resume seem like something we might all be making down the line? Yeah, I mean, certainly the WWE thing, certainly a fun thing they can do for their fans, but kind of a stunt. But I do think that there is a legit reason why you would want a video resume other than writing a cover letter is perhaps the most soul-sucking experience you could possibly imagine. I feel like part of the quiet point of the resume or the CV and the cover letter is not just to demonstrate that you have qualifications that will qualify you for a particular position. It's not like, oh, I spent so many years at company X, so many years at company Y. Here's my list of all your skills in Adobe Cloud or whatever. Part of it is also, hey, I can create a document that looks nice. I know how to competently use a word processor. I have a certain level of quality of writing that I can employ to be effective and to communicate really well. I know a lot of that gets quantified down and these are all scanned by bots that kind of pull out the key details that they're all looking for. But I feel like a video resume to me, depending on the company, can serve that exact same need, right? Kind of prove that you have these same skills, whether it's something you're in a customer service job and you want someone that can really turn it on like you would for a TikTok video or something like that. They can think creatively. They have video editing skills. I think that has a lot of potential for job seekers in the future. I will say this. I said this during the pre-show, like I've talked to HR people about how they go through resumes before and one of the things they do is basically run a keyword search to make sure that, one, you hit all the points that the job description requires and that's something you really can't do with video. But another interesting thing is the whole video aspect isn't new. I mean, Sarah and I both come from a broadcasting career where having a real, having a compilation of your work that's two to three minutes long that you submit on VHS or later on on DVD, or in the past 10 years you send a link to a YouTube with your reel and I still have mine that explains all the stuff you did. And I think in some ways this might be kind of a cut-down version of that. I will say there is a particular heinous and somewhat dark aspect to this in that employers might, and unfortunately I've seen this happen, where they base a lot of their hiring decisions based on the appearance of the person. Oh, you don't look like you fit the culture of our company based on the appearance of the person. Perhaps they're not old enough or they're too old or they don't have the stylish clothes or they don't have the right There are so many things I think that could go wrong with this that could definitely steer the whole aspect of it. Although I do think it's a valuable tool, I expect to see some negative opinions on this in a short order. Roger, you mentioned HR departments. I have never worked them on. I certainly know people who have worked in HR departments. I have certainly submitted many resumes to HR departments, sometimes with great results, sometimes not. This seems to me like the next gen of the resume that has a scent or has sparkles, or you have your head shot in a resume, even though people say it's corny. It's like, well, but it still gets you noticed and people remember your face. There are all these certain ways that if you really want a job, why not? I mean, as long as you are staying true to yourself. This is kind of a fun way to do that. I mean, I know we're only talking about a few different companies, but it might be the way that resumes are in the future. It's like, what are you going to list all your qualifications on a piece of paper? No, we're not going to accept that. Where's your TikTok? You're going to link lip sync it to whatever the hot hit is, but I do have a feeling like I have definitely applied for jobs like knowing like, okay, my resume is not going to be the strongest or something like that. But if I can get in that interview and I can show them some of the rich magic, that'll push me over the top or something like that. I know that's not for everybody and it's almost certainly hubris on my part, but I feel like one is not just as soul-sucking as like putting dear who may concern, please. I have always dreamed of working for Chipotle and would love to wrap burritos. That's the worst. If you can make it fun and at least you have something out of it that you can say other than a resume, I think it definitely has a lot of potential and signals that the things you need in a job, the skills that you need, perhaps are changing for a lot of employers. Indeed. Well, some of us are traveling in the summer and if you are one of those people, if you need a fun free place to visit, if you're spending time in my sort of neck of the woods, San Francisco, Chris Christensen has you covered. This is Chris Christensen from Amateur Traveler with another Tech in Travel Minute. Going to do something a little different this week and that is where to go if you like tech. You've seen the San Francisco cable cars, but I don't know how many of you know that they have no engine. They basically operate with a large pair of pliers that grabs onto a moving cable underneath the ground. If you want to see how that works, you can go to the free cable car barn and museum. Only take you about an hour or so to learn how cable cars work and you're going to enjoy your cable car ride much better after you do that if you're a nerd who likes to know how things work. And there you can see the very large diesel engines that drive the cable in the street that move the cable cars. I'm Chris Christensen from Amateur Traveler. Well, I got to say as a Bay Area person, the cable car is a beloved thing and it's true. The cable car museum is really cool. I agree with you, Chris. I encourage anyone who comes out this way to give it a shot. All right. Let's check out the mailbag, Rich. Oh, we got a good one from Monty. He sent an email in response to the DTNS special, Chip Shortage, The Logistics Issues, which you should check out if you haven't already. He wrote in and said, I live in Anaheim Hills. I can see the shipping container ships lined up in the bay. As a design engineer and VP of software for our company, I've been hit with the shortage issue. Unlike an end of life issue, the shortage issue is a sudden attack on the production of existing products and causes an absence of stuff we can ship. We have 11 products that are currently suffering the shortage going from a couple of weeks to 52 and 100 plus weeks lead time. We don't ship tens of thousands of products, but only thousands per year, which we rely on folks like Aero, DigiKey, and Mouser for parts. We are redesigning two of our higher quality or quantity products to meet demand. This has changed the way that we design for we are now looking at the immediate quantity of existing or extant MPU parts that fit the design qualifications and purchasing them in quantity now. That is, we are redesigning products based on what we can actually or we get now. And I think that's one of the things like long term effects that we are definitely seeing. We've seen a couple of things with counterfeit chips and people kind of repurposing chips because there are such shortage and not surprising to hear redesigning stuff, but good to hear on the ground stuff. Monty, thanks for sending that in. Absolutely, Monty. Thank you so much. 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