 Coming up on DTNS, Apple sort of lets game streaming services into the app store. China's export controls could drive Microsoft, Zoom and others out of China. And the next big trends to make you feel good about tech again. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, September 11th, 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. And from Columbus, Ohio, I'm Rob Dunwood. Drawing the top tech stories from Cleveland, Ohio, I'm Len Peralta. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. On Good Day Internet, I unboxed the Surface Duo and it got to the point of setup. We installed the update. So after DTNS on Good Day Internet, we'll go through that a little more. If you want the details of our experience with the Surface Duo, you got to get that wider show. Patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. iOS 14. Now let's third party web browsers and email clients be default apps. But the apps need to update themselves to be available as a default. Chrome for iOS just updated itself. So if you're running the iOS 14 beta, download the latest version of Chrome, open the settings app, tap default browser app, tap Chrome. And that triggers the standard open URL activity, which will now direct the system to open Google Chrome rather than Safari. Nice. I know. Earlier this week, Epic Games warned users that accessing Epic accounts using sign in with Apple might stop being available after September 11. In a statement to The Verge, Apple said it was not doing anything to prevent sign in with Apple from working with Epic Games. Epic later stated that Apple granted it an indefinite extension to use Apple sign in but recommends that users prepare for the features removal. There's some fear and certainty in doubt being so in there. Microsoft issued a report that in a two week period last month, groups of attackers that Microsoft calls strontium attempted to gain access to more than 6,900 accounts at 28 organizations involved in elections in the United States in the UK. Another group called Zirconium by Microsoft has been targeting people involved in US elections, Vice President Biden's campaign and the international affairs community. And a third group they're calling Phosphorus has targeted people associated with President Trump's campaign. According to the RIAA, vinyl LPs sold outsold CDs for the first time since 1990. Vinyl album revenues of $232 million were 62% of total physical revenues. Of course, digital media now accounts for about 93% of music revenue. So it is what it is. But hey, look at LPs. Heads up folks. Zoom rolled out two factor authentication for all users. Once activated, users can receive one time codes by SMS, phone call or any authenticator app supporting the one time, excuse me, the time based one password protocol. So get in there and set up your two factor authentication apps being that they are the most secure option. Yeah, I mean, if you have to go SMS, I guess, but you don't have to get one of those authenticator apps. Dolby announced that Xbox Series S and Series X will be the first consoles with Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision HDR gaming support. Dolby Atmos 3D surround sound will be available at launch and Dolby Vision HDR gaming support will arrive sometime in 2021. Acer bought the Gateway PC brand in 2007 for $710 million. Now Acer is bringing back the brand as a line of exclusive PCs for Walmart. The line launches with 11 new devices and all of these devices will of course come in a cow print box. 9 to 5 Google found references in the code for the Apple Music app for Android to an Apple One subscription bundle. There was also a message that read your Apple Music subscription will be included in Apple. You will not be charged for both subscriptions. Apple has an announcement scheduled for September 15. Looks like we're going to get the bundle. Alright, let's talk a little more about Apple updating its App Store rules to explicitly allow game streaming services. You know, things like Google Stadia or Microsoft's Project X Cloud. Each game offered on the service just needs to be downloadable separately from the App Store. And every game update must be submitted to Apple before it can stream to users. In other words, there can't be one app that just streams the collection of games. There has to be a collection of apps for streaming each game. And then they can have a catalog app that can link out to each game app. So let's say Google Stadia has 100 games, they would need to have 100 apps, one for each game, and then a Stadia catalog app that would link out to those other apps. And don't forget services must also offer the option to pay for subscriptions with Apple's in-app purchases, which of course gives 30% to Apple. The game services also must offer Apple sign-in, which is Derigure now on the App Store. Apple also updated rules so that one-to-one fitness or tutoring classes do not have to be billed through the App Store. One-to-many fitness classes do. That addresses a Facebook events issue. And another formal exception has been made for free apps acting as stand-alone companions to a web-based tool. This addresses the problem that, hey, email service had. If this had been the rule then, hey, wouldn't have had any problems. So that's a good one. The one-to-one fitness will help those people on making use of the Facebook events billing. But I don't know, Rob, that allowing streaming services doesn't seem like it's going to allow a lot of streaming services. It says, though, they don't want streaming services on all these devices because the companies that have dozens, if not hundreds of apps, are not going to go through all that. It's just, you know, there's, you know, what is the reward for doing that amount of work for giving up 30% of your take? So I just don't see that happening. I mean, I guess you could, just to play devil's advocate, you can automate that. Every app would be essentially the same app providing access to the streaming service limited to one game. Once you get the first one up, it's not that hard to do, but you're right. It's extra work that you don't need to do. It's more things that can go wrong. And it's really not what the service is supposed to be. The service is supposed to be, I access the service through my browser or an app. Not, there's a bunch of apps that access a streaming game service. It feels like a very Apple compromise with itself, not an Apple compromise for the services. Absolutely. Well, TikTok. Oh boy. I know, I know. I'm just going to go ahead and set it up that way. A U.S. Executive Order declaring TikTok a threat to national security under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act originally set a deadline of September 20th for TikTok to be sold or shut down in the U.S. The subsequent Executive Order reversed that decision that allowed ByteDance to acquire musically, which became TikTok requiring ByteDance to divest those assets by November 12th, which made folks believe that the deadline was now November 12th. So is it September 20th or is it November 12th? It's neither. Thursday, the president told reporters, quote, I'm not extending deadlines. No, it's September 15th. There will be no extension of the TikTok deadline. End quote. Although ByteDance has filed suit claiming that the secretive orders are illegal, which may delay their implementation. Going forward, Reuters now cites three people with direct knowledge of the matter who say that China opposes a for sale of TikTok and would prefer it see it shut down in the U.S. entirely instead. ByteDance told Reuters that China's government has never suggested it should shut down TikTok anywhere, including within the U.S. Meanwhile, Reuters sources say that ByteDance is moving its Southeast Asia regional headquarters to Singapore, including purchasing servers, hiring employees, and moving engineers there from China. That's the most interesting thing. Whether TikTok shuts down September 15th, I doubt it. I honestly doubt it. I think this is going to drag on because of the court cases. China very obviously was objecting to this and was making it complicated. So getting a few more sources saying that doesn't surprise me. But ByteDance trying to move regional headquarters into Singapore. I'm not sure that it changes things, but it's an interesting move because it does seem like ByteDance feels like getting out of China will help somehow, whether they're selling part of their operation or not. Don't forget that U.S. data is held in U.S. servers, but backed up in Singapore. So it's significant that they're moving a lot of engineers out of China into Singapore to be. This is going to be a big game of chicken. China definitely does not want companies moving out of their territory so that they can operate pretty much here. So this is going to be interesting to see who blinks first because this is a huge application. You're going to upset teenagers everywhere if this thing goes down. The question is, is it Sheshwan Chicken or Kentucky Fried? We will see. Tell us about the CNN story about Amazon. CNN found that several products reviewed by purchasers as fire hazards are still on sale on Amazon. Another example of how Amazon is unable to completely police sales on its own platform, something it has had trouble with in other areas like counterfeiting and price gouging. However, in these cases, some of the hazards as items were Amazon's own Amazon basics brand. It's important to note that the review on Amazon is not the same as a report to the Consumer Product Safety Commission and could be used to undermine Amazon sales. The CPSC has received at least 10 reports over eight years that mention Amazon basics products. CNN reports Amazon has issued two recalls for its own basics products and has also removed 11 products for sale after CNN contacted them. Yeah, I don't know about you, but to me this just feels like Amazon's third party marketplace is just too big for them to keep track of. I don't think Amazon maliciously is trying to sell stuff that explodes. They just can't do quality control of it and that even includes their own basics where they have so many Amazon basics products they probably aren't keeping track of the quality control of the suppliers of those either. Yeah, this is the thing that it happens with companies and Amazon being one of the biggest on the planet that literally sells everything. It's the biggest store. They're going to run into this as almost all other companies do and then they address it and they move on from there. But it was interesting that these are users that are reporting this. This is not the CPSC that's reporting this. So I don't think you're just going to somebody says my phone got hot or my battery got hot. They're going to start yanking stuff off immediately. They're going to do a little bit more due diligence than that. Yeah, I mean, they don't want people out there saying their stuff catches fire. But at the same point, folks who are mad about Amazon competing with them on their own platform might be motivated to put some reviews out there. I mean, a lot of this feels like somebody saying this social network is toxic. Look at all these terrible things that people are saying on the social network. And then you have the other side of people being like, but no, it's just a platform. The social network didn't do anything wrong. They're just providing the platform for these people to say these terrible things. So it does seem like, yeah, I mean, Amazon is too big to possibly be able to say like, for sure, nothing on our third party, none of our third party sellers will give you things that will explode. We all know that there's a lot of stuff going on Amazon. But again, when you get too big, what are you going to do? Yeah, they should have more control over their own products. I would say that China added technologies to its export control list on August 28th. That list requires approval from China's Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Science and Technology. If you want to export any of the technologies on the list. At the time, we and others focused on the fact that recommendation algorithms like the one used by TikTok was included on that list, making selling TikTok to a nine Chinese company difficult, as we talked about earlier. However, Reuters is reporting that the consequences go beyond that because recommendation algorithms was not the only thing added. The list also includes drone and cybersecurity technology, voice recognition software, handwriting scanning software. Companies that have research and development centers in China now face the question of whether any discoveries they make would fall under this law and therefore not be allowed to be transferred even within the company. That makes them question whether to keep the tech they develop there only in China or move their research and development centers elsewhere. Microsoft, DJI, Zoom and Tencent are all affected in different ways. Microsoft and Zoom have research centers in China even though they're not Chinese companies. DJI of course has drones and licensing out its drones. Technology is probably a revenue generator for them. Tencent exports games to people all over the planet. They don't necessarily sell the games themselves everywhere. They are also an investor in other companies that they might want to transfer technology to as part of their investment partnership. This would make that difficult. So yeah, this is a move that is more than just TikTok and I thought it was worth pointing that out based on this Reuters story. This is really interesting because although China is a big country, the biggest and a lot of people live there. Most people don't and most people who use stuff are there. So these companies know that my market is not just China, it is Earth. Is it beneficial to us to not necessarily be headquartered here or to have our research and development inside of their borders? Yeah, and well, to me, to my way of thinking, all of these disputes end up hurting consumers because it's putting up walls. And the debate is more about which consumers is it going to hurt, the ones inside China, the ones inside the US, the ones elsewhere. This one definitely feels like it might end up hurting Chinese companies or Chinese economy more than it will outside. Because if I'm Microsoft, I just moved my R&D that I want to use elsewhere outside. We've already seen manufacturing start to try to diversify outside of China. Arguably that was happening anyway without trade disputes. But DJI already facing enough problems with the US saying, we don't want the military to buy your quadcopters. Now they have to worry about whether they can actually transfer any of their technology out to other manufacturing. I mean, it's a hard ball move by China, no matter how you look at it. Scientists at MIT developed a sensor called Body Compass that monitors your sleep position by analyzing how radio waves bounce off objects in a room, including you, the object. It can tell what's you based on how signals bounce differently off of your chest and belly as you breathe. A neural network was trained on 200 hours of sleep data from 26 subjects. It was able to accurately identify body posture, 94% of the time. And team member Sinchao Yue will introduce this system at UB Comp 2020 conference, which takes place on September 15th. If this sounds familiar to you, well, back on August 25th, we talked about a different MIT team using radio waves to monitor people's movements in a room. This is a very popular thing now. Using radio waves to detect motion is the similarity here. If you remember that other story, you had to set it up with the person, and it had to be in that room, and then you had to identify the objects. And it was about monitoring seniors and stuff like that. You just put it in the room with you, and it'll tell you how you're sleeping. And man, I prefer that. The idea of not having to wear something while I sleep, like I can just sleep the way I normally sleep, and it'll be able to tell me some stuff. I think that's great. This is all really interesting stuff, but I have to ask the question, are we just creating ways for Skynet to be more effective than what they will hopefully do to us? Yeah, yeah. Now we know they're all asleep. Rob Dunwood sleeps this way. We know when he's down. Well, I mean, you know, you're only partly joking, right? Because Skynet or not, you know, this is the kind of, the question always is who gets this data, right? Right. And I would like to jump to the conclusion that we have fixed data sharing, and this data stays under my control, which is a big jump, trust me. But if we were able to do that, I would like to have this. I would like to have this sort of stuff to share with my doctor if I want, and to maybe even share with a service I trust to make recommendations to help me sleep better. I just love the idea that it's not invasive, right? You don't have to have lights on. You don't have to have LEDs on. You don't have to be wearing a device, nothing. This thing just monitors the radio waves that are already, anybody with Wi-Fi already has radio waves bouncing around, so you're not even adding anything there. Yeah, that part of it is actually really cool. It is as not invasive as possible. It's just radio waves that are going to be moving through the room as they already are. So that's pretty cool. Sarah, are you ready for when this finally becomes a shipping product? I am. And I know that you and I have talked about this in the past where I wear my Fitbit Versatube at night. I'm just used to it. And you're like, I don't want to wear mine at night. That's kind of weird. And I was like, I really want my sleep data. So that's the only option that I have. So I've just gotten used to it. I would prefer not to. I would prefer to have a better option such as this to give me a little bit and perhaps just better data in general about what's going on based on how I'm breathing and what is coming out of my human body. Yeah. I mean, I love this. I mean, sleep data is my jam. And this is just sleep posture, right? Telling like, did you turn it, toss and turn a lot? How are you laying? You know, probably can tell your breathing rate since it's using that to be able to detect what's you. I would assume that you could develop this technology to also do other stuff and maybe even detect heart rate. Yeah. Yeah, like, you know, are you sleeping? Are you in a coma? If you had sleep apnea or something, it helps you determine that says, hey, you might want to go check with your doctor or something like that. So from that aspect of it, it's pretty cool tech. Well, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to DailyTechHeadlines.com. The Wall Street Journal has an article by Matthew Krongsberg called 10 Biggest Tech Trends to Come from Talking Bikes to Tile TVs. And it's a nice summary of things that we have all covered on this show for the most part, but just giving us a little hopeful look at trends in technology that aren't necessarily frightening. These are positive things, things we'd like to see, and not the same old, same old. If you're like, why isn't anybody coming out with any new products? Well, here's some ideas for some new products you might see in the next, you know, maybe up to five years, maybe a little longer, but certainly not too far away. So we looked through the 10 that they have in this Wall Street Journal article, and we each picked one that we liked the most. And then we'll go through some of the others as well. Rob, which is the one that popped out to you? So I liked the vision, basically AR glasses or optical implants that may give you X-ray vision. They may give you enhanced augmented reality, but I am a huge, huge fan of this. I wear glasses all the time, unless I'm doing some type of sporting event. And I can see this one coming. We already have the technology. I mean, Google Glass came out years ago. You know, these are the kind of things that we're going to be saying. And this reminds me of, there's a show, I think it started Sean Penn. I think it was called First. It was about the first manned mission to Mars. And one of the coolest things, you know, in this show that was very believable tech were the glasses that everybody wore in the show. So if you want to talk to someone, you know, video conferences, you just threw your glasses on. If you wanted to look up some information, you literally just threw your glasses on and it's right there in your eye. And then also there was an augmented reality aspect to it. You could look at a barcode, you could look at something and automatically pull up information for whatever that thing was that you were interested in. The technology is here for, you know, for those type of things. So I could absolutely see this decade that, you know, people are wearing glasses to help them navigate, you know, through the world. You know, I think to another movie, you know, reference, you know, the one with Tom Hanks where he had to remove his eyes so that, you know, he couldn't be tracked. It was a minority report. I don't want everything to be a billboard out in the actual world. But if I can put a pair of glasses on and then it becomes one because I choose to make it such. That's kind of cool. And I see that, you know, with, you know, AR glasses or even contacts, which I don't think those are going to be here in, you know, in this decade. But I could definitely see some type of augmented reality glasses that are just, you know, just things that people wear all the time. Yeah, I don't know. I might have to draw the line of optical implants. Like you say, that one's not coming anytime soon, but I'm not. It depends. It depends. Yeah. I just don't, I don't like the idea of surgery putting stuff in my eyes. Although I will say minority report is a great example of a movie that when we all saw it back in the day. Gosh, I don't know what year that was even, but it was a while ago. It was like, that would be crazy. We're not far away from that now. No. We are, we are very close to that sort of reality. And not necessarily in a nefarious way, but in a way where we're all just used to that, that, you know, AR life being part of our lives. Sarah, what is the one that stuck out to you in this list? Oh, it was Evans, Tom. So, so the idea of smart ovens that have things like super forced air convection, steam injection, accurate temperate temperature control beyond what regular conventional ovens can do smart microprocessors. I already have one of those. In fact, if you listen to live with it from a couple live with that to go, it was the June oven that is a smart oven that I use still to this day pretty much every day. And it's funny because I was just talking about this with my mother who just replaced her conventional oven. You know, she just had like an old stove and she kind of wanted a new one, you know, something that looked a little cooler or whatever, you know, worked a little better. And she got it. And she was like, well, you know, it does this and that and, and, you know, it's not a confection oven because I never cared about all that. And I'm like, this is a really big item to not do it all. Right. Your June oven is probably half the size of the one she got. Oh, I mean, it's a fourth of the size. Yeah. You know, but we're all just used to this is what you do in your kitchen. This is what you put there. And this is how you cook things. And in many ways, that's great. But especially, you know, it depends on, you know, how big your family is, right? For me, my mother, we both live alone. It's like, I mean, how often do you really need to like run the five burners at one time? Like never. Like, you know, so a lot of this stuff, I think is reimagining what we find to be a necessity and a kitchen is for sure. But does it have to be a certain size? Does it have to be in a certain place? Maybe not so much. I think we're, I think we're getting kind of creative here. Yeah. And just the idea, I have a tovala and just the idea of being able to stick an aluminum tray full of mushroom, no key in there and scan a QR code and it cooks it perfectly. Love that. Like if that is even smarter, I'm all for that. I'm also for another one on this list with the plates with sensors that detect any bacteria or viruses, food, freshness, allergens, give you an estimate of the calories. Love that too. That's actually kind of cool to where you could just put your food on the plate and it tells you the nutritional value and whether or not it's contaminated or not. That's a food safe to eat and it's 630 calories. Done. Yeah, you're going to feel kind of bloated a mile, but you're good. My favorite though was the brain computer interface through earbuds or other compact wearables, partly because it was noninvasive, right? I already wear air pods all the time. So smaller versions of those that just go in my ears. And then what they would do is we've talked about this ability to sense your brain waves and have it transmitted to a device so that you can control it, right? And people are able to control cursors with their minds and stuff like that. I love the idea of that just becoming commonplace. And you just stick something either behind your ear or on your ear. It's able to measure the brain waves and then it would transmit just like your air pods, transmit music to and from your phone. It would transmit to whatever to be able to control it so that you could pay by brain at the grocery store. Yeah, I'd like to see a mashup of that in the augmented reality glasses to where you're controlling what you see and what you see. Just have it in there. And you're just wearing the glasses and you're doing your browsing. That's pretty cool. There are a bunch of others here. It's definitely worth taking a look at. Pills that you swallow that analyze your health while they're going through your system. LED tiles. So you just cover any space and they seem, they're seamless, right? They don't have space between them. So any space can be a TV and then that can be wallpaper when it's off because they're super thin. Light from lasers, bikes with AR, et cetera. So yeah, good stuff. Made me feel just maybe just a tiny bit better about the future. Well, that's good on a Friday. Also good on a Friday is to join the conversation in our Discord which you can join by looking to a Patreon account at patreon.com slash DTNS. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. Mike in Dusty Dubai wrote it and said, I would love a duo. By the way, Tom did a little unboxing of his duo before the show on GDI. So check that out if you haven't already. Mike says a lot of caveats though that probably wouldn't work. Pre COVID, my workflow was very similar to a reporter. I would love the duo to hand write notes on the duo, type up a report in the car on the way back to the office or in between meetings. I used to lug my surfaced and do just this, but a duo would be much better substitute. It would be 100% work device that I would leave at home when going out and on weekends and vacations. But I know my employer will never pay for this and I wouldn't pay for a $1400 device that my work is too cheap to pay for either. I hope that employers take a bet on innovation and buy some of these. Yeah, there was a person in our Discord earlier today, the white griffin in our Discord making a case that what the duo is for is business. It's for business and productivity. So and I do feel that already that if there is a use case for it, that's it. So maybe some employers will pay $1400 for you to have this. I don't know. Thank you, Mike, though. Appreciate the email. Good insights, man. Also shout out to patrons at our master and grandmaster levels, including Bjorn Andre, Jeff Wilkes and Ragnald Vermidal. Let's check in with Len Peralta, who has been drawing during the show. What have you drawn for us today, Len? I know you had mentioned that you feel good about the future and hopefully this will be something that makes you feel good about the future. This is something that I drew, took a little bit of a different take on this tech trends monthly, which if you look here, it's a DTNS publication. So like you think by September 2031, you have an entire empire ready to go. Right. So the headline here is coming for you. Health feels X ray vision brain interfaces. You'll feel nearly human again. So has it shown up yet? We don't know. But but I actually am really interested in reading this little article about Robo Sarah who shares her favorite tech appease. Wow. For the holidays. I was like, that is me. But that's definitely me. Yeah. So yeah. So Tech Trends Monthly, a DTNS publication coming in September 2031. If you want to take a look at this cover, it's over at my Patreon, patreon.com. Or if you just want to buy this and put it up on the wall and frame it, you can do so at LenPeraltaStore.com. And that's definitely what I'll look like in 2031. Yes, that's the thing that's blue and weird. Thank you for making me look so nice in 2031. I really appreciate that. Also, thanks to Rob Dunwood for being with us today, Rob. What's been going on in your world and how can people keep up with your work? Well, everybody can find me over on the SMR podcast and we've got a show we've been doing for a little over 10 years over there. So come check me out there. And I am at Rob Dunwood on all the things. Go check it out SMR podcast. Always a good time hanging out and talking tech with those guys. Sometimes woodworking as well. You can also support this show at any level. Get good day internet so you can hear my thoughts on the duo. Get Sarah's Live With It so you can hear that June of and live with it breakdown. That's all at DailyTechNewsShow.com slash Patreon. And if you have feedback for us, we would love to hear it. Our email address is feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com. We're live Monday through Friday, 4.30 p.m. Eastern, 2030 UTC. And you can find out more at DailyTechNewsShow.com slash live. See you all Monday. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. The club hopes you have enjoyed this program.