 Coming up on DTNS, first impressions of the Microsoft Duo dual screen phone. Is it a phone? Amazon makes printing by voice command actually work and the TikTok deal looks harder and harder all the time. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, September 10th, 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane from the orange skies of Oakland. I'm Justin Robert Young and the shows producer Roger Chang. We were just talking about how your skies are no longer orange. Thank goodness. Congratulations on that. All of our, all of ours are yellow now. And we were also talking about strange, mysterious Uber charges as as well as the Microsoft Duo. We might do a we're taking it out of the box live tomorrow on the show. It's a good day internet. That's where you get it. Patreon dot com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Bose announced the noise canceling quite comfort earbuds for two hundred seventy nine dollars. Also the one hundred seventy nine dollar sports earbuds, successors to the noise canceling headphones, seven hundred and five hundred. Both will be available on September 20, September 29th with pre-orders now open. Bose also introduced three new pairs of its frame line of sunglasses with integrated speakers that the company says has improved audio over its predecessors, tenor, soprano and tempo are all of the lines all for two hundred forty nine dollars available now and prescription ready. Microsoft announced the PC version of its Game Pass service will double in price from four dollars and ninety nine cents to nine dollars and ninety nine cents a month starting September 17th. The service had been in beta under the cheaper price. Game Pass on the Xbox already cost nine ninety nine a month or fourteen ninety nine for Game Pass Ultimate, which also includes console and PC AMD announced an event for October 8th to announce new CPUs using its Zen three architecture, a second event on October 28th will give details on the Radeon RX 6000 series. That's the one that uses its RDNA to architecture. That same architecture is used in the GPUs for all look that Xbox series and PS five consoles. The CTA announced that CES twenty twenty one will be rescheduled from January 6th through the ninth to January 11th through the fourteenth Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg will deliver the kickoff keynote for the online only CES Apple's new reported custom face mask for employees have a three layer design to filter particles are washable and can be reused up to five times between washes back in April. Apple sent out millions of face shields to essential workers and hospitals. They snap back wash after wash. Huawei announced at its annual developer conference in Donghwan that it plans to launch its proprietary Harmony OS on its smartphones in twenty twenty one Huawei said HMS core as it's being called, which is designed to replace Google Play services now includes ninety six thousand apps up from eighty one thousand in July and sixty thousand in March, but still short of the millions in the Google Play store. Tider US restrictions against Huawei go into effect on September 15th. As a result, Samsung, LG and SK high necks will reportedly stop selling chips to Huawei. That means that Huawei will have to source its NAND flash, its RAM and its OLED displays elsewhere. Didn't stop Huawei, though, from announcing updates to its Matebook Matebook X and Matebook 15 laptops for sale in October and updated Watch GT2 Pro and free buds with improved noise cancellation. Facebook formally submitted a complaint about Apple to the EU after the EU asked for consultation on its Digital Services Act. Facebook complained about, quote, the application of Apple's policies and technical controls around inapp payments, gaming, apps, login tools and online advertising, adding that Apple's privileges privileges its own services and revenue stream to the detriment of others. Well, Facebook joined in the party. Great Motorola announced the second generation of its razor foldable phone similar to the original phone. It offers a six point two inch twenty one point nine to nine aspect ratio foldable display inside the phone as a two point seven inch OLED on the outside when it's folded up. It also adds sub six gigahertz 5G thanks to the Snapdragon 765G chip inside and will be available unlocked on AT&T and T-Mobile for $1,400 later this fall. The Portland, Oregon City Council unanimously voted to approve two bans on facial recognition. The first immediately bans the acquisition and use facial recognition used by city bureaus, including the police. The second ban applies to private use of facial recognition in places of public accommodation, starting January 1st, twenty twenty one. Portland says it's taking precautionary actions against these technologies are certified until these technologies are certified rather and safe to use and civil liberties issues are resolved. All right, let's talk a little more about something I assume. Justin, we'll have a great impact on society. Ah, yes. The ground trembled when Twitter announced expanded efforts to fight election misinformation in the US set to go into effect September 17th. Twitter will remove or attach a warning label to claims of victory prior to election results being official. It specifically mentions, quote, inciting unlawful conduct to prevent a peaceful transfer of power or orderly succession, end quote. Twitter will also will also move or add labels to post with false or misleading information about the civic process, like who can vote or what documents are needed to vote. Twitter will also act on, quote, unverified information about election rigging, ballot tampering, vote tallying or certification of election results, end quote. Also, Google updated its autocomplete policy to say it will, quote, remove predictions that could be interpreted as a claim about participation in the election, end quote, as well as, quote, predictions that could be interpreted as claims for or against any candidate or political party, end quote. So, Justin, how much will these actions save democracy? Absolutely nothing. Say it again, y'all. Yeah, I mean, they're not bad. Don't get us wrong. We're not saying that, you know, they shouldn't do these things. No, they're not bad. They're feckless. And the fact that they're doing them is because people on their on their platform are yelling about it. They're yelling for them to do something, do something at Jack. Do something, Google. You are are causing this problem. And I understand that internally there is probably a lot of pressure, even with those who work there, that believe that they have a control on how society thinks. However, from the perspective of somebody that watches the news come in and come out and Twitter's roll in it, the idea Twitter makes more news than they do suppress news. They believe that they are a dumb pipe, but they are not. If they were to remove somebody saying it looks very clear that Donald Trump or Joe Biden have won the election and they deem that to be something that is on beyond the bounds of declaring what is appropriate to declare victory that would become such a bigger story than somebody who just said it and somebody saying it might be the biggest story of the year. I mean, yeah, if someone writes, someone associated with the campaign writes, it's all but over, folks. X is your next president. That violates this, right? Even though the spirit of what I just said is is more of like cheerleading. Yes, you know, because people get introduced at their campaign rallies as the next president of the United States, right? Like that's just the thing you do. So I don't know. It's a weird it's a weird line to draw. And I'm not against them doing it. I guess I just don't know how much of an effect it really has. The Google autocomplete might actually have a little more effect because it might stop people from landing on fake pages that tell them fake information. Maybe I don't know that that that brings us into a whole another thing about Google hand picking and choosing where the autocompletes go, which is its own little controversy politically that they believe that there are and they've had, you know, Project Veritas, for example, has had like Google engineers showing how things will be removed, even though they are easily far higher organically in terms of autocompletes. So that's that's up to them. That's their own product that they are going to further make sure they prune so they don't feel that irresponsible information is getting out there. But in terms of the Twitter stuff, I get it. They have to do it. I'm sure they're getting internal pressure. I'm sure that they are getting pressure from there. I know they're getting pressure from their user base to quote unquote do something. Do I think that this actually does anything? No, no, I don't. I'm going to make one of those peanut gallery quotes, but. Don't don't they always claim victory before the official results are out anyway? Like, isn't that a thing? Like the the polls, the projections are so clear, I'm going to concede like somebody usually concedes and then somebody claims victory. Like it usually isn't an official election. Yeah, well, it's going to be a little different. No, no, no. I mean, we are effectively ceding power to decision desks. All the networks have decision or independent decision desks. Those are the people that effectively we are. We call the election on and at a certain point on election night, both Joe Biden and Donald Trump will have an agreement with their staff that at one when one decision desk calls it, then they will, you know, congratulate the other. Right. What if somebody concedes before the official results? Well, this is that we're getting into some we're getting into sticky political conversation. Well, this might, I don't know, make some of you happy if you have Amazon devices because the company announced a voice controlled printing feature that lets Amazon echo owners print items like to-do lists or recipes from all recipes, weekly calendars, educational content for kids, even games like crossword puzzles, Sudoku from the LA Times. The feature works with second get or near echoes and IPP enabled printers from HP, Brother, Canon, Epson, kind of the big guys, as far as printer goes, with more printers to be added over time. You can check by telling your echo to discover my printer. And once it's set up, you can say print a crossword puzzle or print graph paper or print a chicken recipe. Also, the echo will remind you if you're running low on ink or toner, which is the worst, but it will remind you anyway. And you can even order replacements for you. Well, and that's why Amazon's doing this. They want to sell you the toner and the ink, right? Like, I guess- Which is very expensive. I just bought some. And it would be nice to be able to say, like, hey, you're running low on toner. Do you want me to order new and have me not have to worry about looking up, like, is this the right model? Because it knows because of the connection. I get that. That's all great. I was super skeptical about printer networking because in my life, printer networking has never gone right. It's always a pain. Getting stuff to print over Wi-Fi always goes wrong. And so I thought, huh, well, I'm going to try this out. Well, let's just see. And I said, discover my printer 15 seconds later. It said, I have discovered your brother printer. I'm like, okay, but did it really? And I said, print a crossword puzzle. And it said, I'm adding the LA time skill to print a crossword puzzle. Is that all right? And I said, yes. Would you like me to print a crossword puzzle? I said, yes. And like a minute later, I had a crossword puzzle printed out. That's pretty amazing. It actually worked with like no intervention. I didn't have to go into settings. I just talked to the thing. I have to say, I was kind of impressed by that. Yeah, pretty cool. I, you know, I, I'm not a printer fan. I, I, I wish us all to have a paper-free life one day. But we're not there yet. And I do have a printer of my own that I have to use occasionally. And this is really cool. It, you know, the, the idea of like, I don't know, telling, you know, yelling into the wind to, you know, turn my lights on and that works. You know, that was very fascinating to me at one point. Now it's just part of life. Being able to tell my printer to do various things based on skills is, is, is the same kind of cool. Yeah. Uh, I don't know about chicken recipes. I feel like that one's a little more of a shot in the dark, but yeah, you know, I'm like, aren't I supposed to look at that on the echo rather than print it out? And also which chicken recipe are you printing? I don't know. Great. Uh, Wall Street Journal sources say bite dances discussing arrangements with the US government that would let it avoid a full sale of its US operations. One option, uh, being discussed would be taking on a technology partner to secure the data. So I think the idea there would be, let's say Microsoft says we'll handle the data. We'll keep it secure in the US and it'll be under our control and then we'll provide you access with it, but you still run TikTok and the algorithm. Representatives from US investors and bite dance reportedly met with the CIA last week to discuss data security on TikTok. An executive order banning TikTok originally did set a deadline of September 20th, but don't forget there was a subsequent executive order that made the deadline for a transaction November 12th. So they still got a little time and don't forget last week, China put technology like TikTok's recommendation algorithm on a list of tech that would require government approval to be exported, essentially scuttling the deal. Cause if you can't get China to sign off on selling that algorithm, what good is buying TikTok? We also have some other TikTok stuff going on. TikTok gave reporters a virtual tour of its transparency center in LA to show how its recommendation algorithm works. There's also a report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute accusing TikTok of limiting discovery of videos with LGBTQ hashtags in the countries of Bosnia, Jordan and Russia. TikTok first said those terms are restricted to comply with local laws. They also added sometimes they were restricted because they were only used to get to porn and it was a way to crack down on porn. But then it also admitted that some phrases were moderated by mistake and it's fixed the error and it regrets it. That part is more like, you know, TikTok moderation has never been terribly clean and right as they're launching their transparency center, they had a bad example of it. But I think that first story is the bigger one of these, which is it doesn't sound like a deal can be reached. And TikTok is scrambling around to try to get the US government to come to a compromise and say, what if we don't sell all of it? Because it doesn't look like we can. We'd rather not be shut down all together. What do you got? Well, we do not know what is going on here. I do believe this is probably the most fascinating transaction story that has happened in tech over the last 25 years. The fact that we do have a product that is as explosive as TikTok is that it is for sale. That's very dog bites man that it's being forced to sell and it might sell at less than what market value would be because of pressures that are far beyond what normally goes on for something like this is indeed very, very, very unique. But what I see here is the fact that bite dance and, you know, the whatever interests are here that are US based, that probably do want to just move on with whatever version of their future is, they are trying to buy either time or leverage to just either re underline from their perspective to the government. Hey, this isn't easy. You can look, you can smash the hammer on us. And yes, we might shatter into a bunch of pieces, but you're going to ruin something that a lot of people like. That's not what you want. What you do want is this being on more US soil control by US forces. What we can offer you is that ultimately, though, and this is more from a political perspective, there's not a lot of give on China right now and either Trump or Biden, I don't believe would want to be the guys that said, well, maybe China's OK here, even if it's just for the TikTok tweens. I think that this is something that is more of a death rattle before we get a deal. Now what that deal looks like and exactly what role the Chinese government plays in it. That remains to be seen. Yeah, this this this tells me that they can't get a deal where they sell their operations in Australia, the or Canada, New Zealand and the US because they can't get the algorithm. They know that China will not approve the algorithm. China made a death move there. So now they're looking like, well, what other kinds of deals could we have where we hold on to the algorithm because China won't let it out, but we do something that is acceptable to you. And the only thing that would work. In theory would be saying, let's let Oracle or Microsoft or somebody control the data because that's what you're concerned about is the data. Can we meet with the CIA and get reassurance from them like, here's what we'd have to do for you to feel comfortable with that data for you to claim victory of like essentially the majority of the operation that was a concern is now under US control. Can we do that? That's a big question like that all makes sense to me. And I think it sounds reasonable given the conditions that have been set, but whether the US government says, no, we really don't care if you go away. We really don't care if you go under. That's a harder one. I think there's there's a reason why these sources are bite dance sources because I don't think that this is the US government that this is something that they want to go for at all. Yeah, but you don't think the US government wants to go for this. Nope. Yeah, I think that this is bite dance talking. And the only way is for those Sequoia and Atlantic investors to convince like there's going to be some damage caused by this that that you're not taking into account. That sounds like a hard sell for me. Facebook launched a new way for college students to connect. Hey, that sounds familiar. The section is called campus and like the Facebook bold, it only lets you interact with people at your school and includes a campus only newsfeed groups, events and campus chats. A campus directory lets you find and friend other students. You'll need a dot edu address and your graduation year to join. And then you'll create a campus specific profile with options for things like majors, classes, dorms and et cetera. Campus campus is being tested with 30 universities in the United States. And no, Harvard, the original home of the Facebook is not one of them. You know, I don't know. There were a lot of like ha ha ha. Look at Facebook, getting back to its roots stories about this when when the company first launched this initiative. And that's not really what this is. I mean, Facebook isn't changing at all. This becomes something that's like if you want to access one of the somewhat buried, you know, options that Facebook gives people and this being one of them, you can. I suppose if you were I don't know, you know, having an edu address, it's like if you really wanted to be, I don't know, like talk about your teacher or is it, you know, like there are certain things that I guess this would be a good use for. But it you could already just be friends with people that you want to be friends with on Facebook. I just don't quite know what the company is going for here. As as somebody who logged on to Facebook, initially under the J.R. Yown zero two at s y r dot edu email. Did you really indeed? Indeed. One of the first schools that non Ivy's to get it when it was first rolling out. This is dumb. And yet another way that Facebook can over complicate their interface that makes it less usable. Oh, so there you have it. From Hacker News, we found a posting from September 7th by Neil from the appmaker Solitaird about why the company dropped email registration for its apps. The short version is that email reminders didn't appreciably improve retention. But then Neil noticed that his sister didn't want to register an account because she didn't want to give her email. So since email registration was an additional cost, the company experimented with dropping email registration and then only asking a user for their name and their password to register. Registration rose at 36% after the change and retention improved 4.5%. So more users are trying other games from the company as well. Yeah, just a username. That's all they like. We don't need your email address. Just a username and suddenly a bunch more people registered. A 36% more people registered. I think this is a great example of a company noticing that, man, there's a lot of people who do the don't like the thing that we want them to do because it's beneficial to us. I wonder if we stopped annoying them what unexpected benefits we might get and they got unexpected benefits. They got not only increased engagement with registration because people are like, oh, I don't even have to give an email address. No problem. Love to have have an account. Great. Yeah. But it kept people and they started trying other games from the company. So this might not work for every company out there. But I think it's a great lesson that sometimes even though you want behavior like, I don't know, getting a bunch of students to sign up for a special new service because students don't use your service anymore. It doesn't mean that the users want that behavior. And so you have to give this the users what they want and they will engage with your platform more. Yeah. And this is trial and error. I don't think that there's one one way to eat a Reese's and certainly Facebook is a very complicated service that I think has kind of gained in esteem as we have realized the problems with some of our walled gardens that we created to replace the clutter of it. But the idea that I could actually do a thing online and not immediately get spammed with text and emails. Oh boy, would that be thrilling? Yeah, I think this does bring up the idea of I'm sure somebody out there is saying, but what about newsletters? Newsletters are hot. You got to have a newsletter and that's email. That's that's content people want. Yeah. Newsletters are people sign up for newsletters because they want you to email them that and they unsubscribe. Trust me, as people who run newsletters just as I know they unsubscribe as soon as you mildly annoy them or they don't find it useful anymore. Yep. Hey, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to DailyTechHeadlines.com. The reviews are out for the Microsoft Duo Android dual screen phone. Don't call it a phone, but it's also not a tablet. I don't know. It's a thing. Here's what we're seeing in aggregate. I think the top line is best put by Adam Ismail over at Tom's Guide. The Microsoft Duo, he says, is exciting and maddening all at once. That seems to summarize what reviewers are saying. On the pro side, all of them like that it can do two apps at once in a way no other device can. Side by side on two different screens. It's like having multiple monitors, but in a smaller device. They like that you can use Android phone apps. This is not a tablet. So you're not dealing with a lack of tablet optimized apps because it's a phone size screen. It's got great battery life. Everyone raves how pretty this thing is. It's a beautiful design, well manufactured, thin and light. Opinions vary on how much productivity benefit it has, but pretty much everybody seems to think it made them at least feel more productive if not actually be more productive. It does have a learning curve to get there, though. The software that was designed for it, mostly for Microsoft, does seem to work well. The hinge got praise from multiple reviewers for being sturdy and allowing for those good orientations like tent view for for watching video or holding in your hands like a book supports Microsoft pen and lots of people praise the screen. Nice sharp screens dual 5.6 inch OLED. But here are the cons. Everybody agrees too expensive for what you get. One thousand three hundred ninety nine dollars for a phone that doesn't have NFC Wi-Fi six wireless charging expandable storage 5G or stereo speakers is too much. Everybody pan the camera. Actually, there were one or two people didn't think the camera was that bad. But most people pan the camera. It's 11 megapixel webcam, not a smartphone camera. In fact, I think it was the Verge who said you just call it a webcam and it would have been fine. Buggy laggy software was a complaint, not enough apps that support the dual screens was a complaint. You can't use it with one hand because it's so wide even when it's folded up. And that learning curve, man, it involves Microsoft gestures on top of Android gestures, none of which seemed intuitive to the reviewers. Mary Jo Foley said it could definitely replace an e-reader in her opinion. It was great for that, but it was mixed on other things. And Brad Sam's at Petrie said, quote, for those who have been waiting for years for a surface PDA, your day has finally arrived. But for those looking for a general purpose smartphone, this likely isn't your hardware. Yeah, man. I mean, going through the pros, as you were going through them, Tom, it's like, this sounds pretty great. Sounds pretty great, right? But it's very expensive. So what's wrong with it? Well, you have the same, you know, it's the same people saying, well, I can't use it in one hand. I mean, it's a dual screen device. I mean, that that's kind of silly, but it's it's like we we continue to be searching for the next gen of smart devices. And we don't really know what that's going to be yet. And we're getting all these like, is it foldable? Is it dual screen? Is it this or that? But this with like a horrible camera, I'm sorry, like I would never buy something like this for that price with with a camera that is so lackluster. I don't understand what this is and to be like, oh, it's like a next gen e-reader is like somewhat laughable. It if you can't interact with it, it doesn't matter. And and whatever all these pros are, if if the if the software is buggy or laggy, if the gestures are something that that prevent you from wanting to interact with it with with all these things that are really positive, the idea that it does look pretty, the idea that it does have greater surface area and you can run multiple things. None of that matters if it's buried under the ice of software that frustrates you and gestures that you can't that you can't use. And on top of that, if it's expensive and now you're going to have a higher barrier to entry. And I think we have we have we have an even higher threshold for it to pass that it doesn't sound like it did. I mean, I will say that that Mary Jo Foley quote is withering like it could replace an e-reader is is among the most epic of backhanded compliments in the history of tech reviews. She's not a review. She makes that clear just just her opinions on it. But yeah, I you know, this may be an answer in search of a question, which case it's doomed. But a lot of these reviewers felt like there was something to it. They're like, there's something here. We don't know quite what it is, but we liked it. And all of the cons, if you look at them, are fixable in a second gen. You can bring down the price. You can add hardware features. You can improve the software like none of these things are killers out of the gate. Not saying they will fix them, but they could. So I don't know. There is it's something to keep an eye on. Well, thanks, everybody, who participates in our sub reddit sometimes you talk about Microsoft stories. Sometimes you don't, but you can submit the ones that you care about and vote on others at DailyTechNewShow.Reddit.com. What pretel is in the mailbag? Oh, Tom, I'm glad you asked. Brian wrote in and said on our discussion yesterday with Scott Johnson about Xbox and with Lamar Wilson and Shannon Morse earlier in the week with both the Xbox Series consoles and PS5 featuring dedicated compression hardware and SSDs, the installation size for next generation games should be smaller than on current consoles. Being able to compress and decompress assets on the fly obviously allows for a more smaller footprint. But the lack of seat times on an SSD means that there's no need for redundant assess assets. As it stands now, game developers will offer store assets in multiple places on a magnetic disk. So they're quickly accessible. In theory, the series should also be able to benefit from smart delivery delivery and 1440p assets for installation instead of 4K, although it would require developers to create those assets to begin with. Long story short, you should be able to install more games on less space in the common console generation. Yeah, it's still 512 still seems kind of tight, but that definitely helps. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Brian. And also thanks to our patrons at our master and grand master levels, including Paul Thieson, Allyson Jobby and Scott Hepburn. Also, thanks to Justin Robert Young for being with us today, Justin. I know your life is really quiet and nothing's going on, but perhaps you could let us know where they could find your work. We are within 55 days of election day, and that means we are deep into bad country, friends, and we will only get crazier as we get closer. So you want a voice you can trust. The politics, politics, politics, podcast. It's here for you, friends. Go pick it up wherever you find podcasts. Before we want to cross the four letter word for Senate staffer in my aid, aid with an E. Yeah. Hey, folks, the best way to support Daily Tech News show is to give us two bucks a month. That's all it takes. And then you get an ad for your SS feed. You get my editor's desk. You get a column from Roger Chang. You get live with it from Sarah Lane. And you are directly paying us. There's a little bit that goes to Patreon, but honestly, it's worth every cent for them to create that platform for us to manage all of this on. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you to our patrons. And if you're not one yet, now's the time. Go do it right now. Patreon.com slash D T N S. And our email addresses feedback, dailytechnewshow.com. We are also live Monday through Friday for 30 p.m. Eastern 20 30 UTC. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live back tomorrow with Rob Dunwood and Lynn Peralta will be here drawing the tech news of the day. 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.