 Coming up on DTNS, who uses a Xiaomi Android tablet? Dan does, and he's here to explain himself. Plus, Twitter decides to be open again and is a universal app store, even possible? This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, November 16th. My mom's birthday, that's her birthday, mom. 2021 in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. And joining us, the host and producer of Noticius Day Techno, Hea Express. Dan Campos, welcome back. Hi there, it's a real pleasure to be with you all in here in this glorious show. We just blew the lid off of a piece of culinary information that you need to know about ordering a quesadilla in Mexico. You could go, Mexico City, particularly, you could go far wrong if you don't listen to Good Day Internet available at patreon.com slash DTNS. Also big thanks to our top patrons, such as Brad, Kevin and Paul Thiessen. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. The United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority, or CMA, announced a full investigation into Nvidia's $40 billion takeover of chip designer ARM, citing antitrust and national security issues. The investigation will take place over the next 24 weeks. The EU is also conducting its own investigation of the acquisition. Qualcomm announced it will release ARM-based PC processors in 2023. Qualcomm acquired a company called Nuvia earlier this year, N-U-V-I-A. It was founded by former Apple chip designers who helped make the A-series processors for the iPhone. Qualcomm hopes that its new processors will set the performance benchmark for Windows PCs, and most outlets are drawing comparisons between Qualcomm's ARM-based processor for PCs designed by former Apple engineers and Apple's ARM-based M1 processors for PCs designed by current Apple engineers. According to Bloomberg Law, Peloton filed lawsuits against Echelon and iFit, claiming that both companies violated patents related to Peloton's on-demand classes. Court documents state that Peloton's leaderboards and the ability to participate in live classes with other users is a violation. The documents also state how iFit only offered subscribers pre-recorded classes with no community engagement until Peloton came along. Peloton is asked for a court order preventing Echelon and iFit from infringing on its patents as well as compensation. And they told the judge, good job showing up today, you've got this. Grant our request, push on through. Good luck Peloton. Adaptive headlights can automatically shut off certain clusters of LEDs so you don't blind oncoming traffic with your brights, but keep the road in front of you well-lighted. They can also project patterns to highlight lanes and road edges better. They're available in places like Japan and Europe, but were not approved for use in the United States until now. Approval for adaptive headlights in the US was signed into law on Monday. Microsoft announced it will increase the pace of Windows 11 updates, so any compatible computer can upgrade it to it directly now. If you choose to or have to stick with Windows 10, the November 2021 update for that is rolling out now as well and Microsoft intends to move Windows 10 to a yearly cadence of feature updates, which is what it plans to do for Windows 11 as well. Microsoft also made 64-bit app emulation for ARM-based computers, generally available for Windows 11, but it did announce it will not bring that emulation to Windows 10. Boo. All right, let's talk about Twitter because Twitter is gonna stop auto-updating your web version of the feed. That annoying thing that sometimes makes a tweet disappear in the middle of reading it. Instead, you'll get a counter bar at the top of your timeline that you can click to refresh the feed yourself. This works a little more the way it works on the app. Now, why did that take so long? I don't know, but Twitter has a plan to help it innovate faster. Twitter's new API for developers is coming out of Early Access and will replace the old API as the default for developers. They're switching the old one into maintenance mode, so all the eggs are in the new API version two basket. Now, that may seem like news that only devs are really gonna care about. We know we have a lot of devs out there, but it may change how all of you use Twitter. For those not in the know, API stands for Application Programming Interface. It's the thing that lets third-party software interact with Twitter. If you use Tweetbot or Phoenix or something, they use an API to get your tweets. This new API is a return to the early days of Twitter when third-party clients had freedom and a considered move towards the idea of eventually decentralizing Twitter as a platform. The new API removes restrictions on including core features in 30-party apps, so features that were not allowed in third-party apps now can make their way over. It no longer limits how many users an app can support. Twitter wants third-party clients to compete with it. It's changed its mind about that. In fact, Tweetbot already has started using the new API, which supports cards and polls, has already added new features like superfollowers and limiting who can reply to your tweet. Twitter wants to see developers drive future innovation for the platform and help improve the community. Twitter's developer platform leader, Mir Shavat told The Verge that Twitter's goal is to become a platform more like an operating system than an app. CEO Jack Dorsey has said in the past, he wants Twitter to become a standard for the public conversation layer of the internet. You may have heard this referred to as Twitter's Project Blue Sky, which is an entirely different take than what we see Meta doing. Meta is saying, we're not even gonna name our company after Facebook anymore. Facebook's gonna maybe try to orient itself more towards the youths, but honestly our future is the Metaverse and VR. And so I don't know, Facebook might die over the next two decades, but we'll milk it for it's worth as long as it's still around. Whereas Twitter seems to be taking the approach of let's become a platform, let's become the way people talk to each other on the internet, let's not limit ourselves, let's not silo ourselves. I think it's an interesting approach. Dan, interested to hear how you use Twitter, because I'm a Tweetbot user, and as a third-party user, Tweetbot is fairly popular, and I pay for it annually whenever the new versions roll out. And there are certain things on Twitter that I'm just blissfully unaware of, especially things that people complain about of the web experience. Yeah, and for example, I have always used something besides the official page for Twitter or besides the official app. On the internet I use Flamingo and I more used to use Tweetdeck because you have more functionality in there. And I have even tried the new version, well, a version that you can, let's say unlock for the Tweetdeck and it's closer to the way that the general app or the general page of Twitter works and it is still like a work in progress. So I'm very interested about how they are going to develop this. I am not sure what will be the reach if this becomes more like a platform. Well, like something more with a wider applications. But so far until now I find more useful using Twitter and not in the official app or not in the official page. Yeah, I feel like one of the examples that Shavak gave to The Verge was if you're a vegetarian, somebody could make a vegetarian oriented Twitter that might like demote meat oriented posts and promote vegetarian oriented posts. Which is kind of a weird example, but it worked for me, I got it. I was like, oh yeah, I have lots of little niche windows. Customize your experience. Yeah, and everybody, it's a little bit of the idea behind Mastodon and other decentralized approaches, which is there isn't just one client and there isn't just one network. You can find your own window, you know, a more free speech oriented window could also be a more like safe space window. There could be a window into this for everybody. You mentioned sort of the earlier days of Twitter, Tom and I remember Tweetbot has hung on, but it's one of just few companies that were able to be third party developers that stayed in business. And partly, it's not free, pay for it. There were a lot of Twitter companies back in the day where it was like, oh no, there's restrictions on how many times the API can ping Twitter to get the right information. And a lot of companies died because of that. Yeah, in fact, Tweetbot, I'm surprised made it through, but they hung on there. It's part of the reason I stick with it. I'm like, I just believe in you little fighters. Yeah. Well, let's move on to shopping. Everybody likes shop, cash share list free technology is coming to the biggest non-Amazon location yet. The UK's Sainsbury supermarkets will implement Just Walk Out at a location in London set to open on November 29th. Sainsbury hasn't named the supplier of its cash or free technology, but Bloomberg sources say that it's Amazon. Testing is underway at a store near Sainsbury's London headquarters on High Holborn. Customers can scan a QR code from the Sainsbury app to enter the store and also to exit. Anything they leave with is charged to their account. That's the whole Just Walk Out concept. The system doesn't use facial recognition, doesn't share customer data with the platform supplier like Amazon, and images collected by the store system are usually deleted within 30 days. Some people are gonna have issues with this, but if you like the Just Walk Out concept, that's what you're going with. Amazon has more than 20 of its own locations in the US using this technology, and about six in the UK that also use the technology. US retailers Hudson Markets, OTG Cebo Express, and Delaware North are also buying the system. And there are other cashier free tech platforms as well. It's not just Amazon. According to the Verge, a Tesco location that's also in London's High Holborn, it's a very popular area for Just Walk Out technology, is testing cashier free tech from an Israeli startup called Trigo, although that one hasn't opened yet. So it's, you know, let's follow that. Amazon's big hurdle for this technology was to get other companies to try it. Seems like they're at least rolling that out on some level. And the next question is whether those companies are gonna find out that the cost of implementing it is worth it and continue it. Yeah, this is where the rubber meets the road. Sainsbury is doing it in a test location near its headquarters. If that works, and they find that the cost of implementation maybe comes down if they do more markets, and wow, it increased the ability to bring food in and we improved the store because we were able to have the workers do other things instead of just standing there checking people out, then they'll do it, but they may not. They may look at it and go, yeah, that's nifty, but way too expensive. And they may decide not to do it. So that's why I'm watching Sainsbury. Sainsbury is huge. I mean, they're a big company. Hudson markets isn't small, but I feel like Sainsbury to me is kind of the canary in the coal mine. Do you, Dan, have any of this going on in Mexico City? There are different like markets like part of Walmart, part of Soriana, and Chedra, with that they have starting implementing the self-checkout. We still don't have this kind of technology implemented. I'm really interested how it can works because you have the cultural differences. And you can say that in certain countries the people won't get used to these kinds of situations or you have to pay more attention because they could tend to forget that they are carrying with something that they didn't want to pay. But I don't know, I am really interested into looking at this being implemented in, I don't know, in a Best Buy during Black Friday, used to see how well it can work. Yeah, a lot of elbows get thrown, but as long as you have it on you when you get out of there, it's yours. Okay, that could be the case. All right, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney is in Seoul, South Korea for an app conference and has a lot to say. If you've browsed around the headlines, you might have noticed some headlines about what Tim Sweeney's saying. Lots of it has to do with Apple and Google's app store policies, which of course, Epic is fighting in the courts in Australia and the United States. You'll definitely see Sweeney quoted saying, Apple must be stopped. He said that. He also called Google's policy of charging fees on payments if it doesn't process them as crazy. So I've seen several headlines that say, Tim Sweeney says, Apple must be stopped and Google is crazy, which he literally did say. What might be an attempt to evoke JFK saying, Iqben, I'm Berlin or Sweeney also said, I'm proud to stand with you and say I'm a Korean. Probably he's saying that because Korea passed that law that requires Google and Apple both to let third-party payment platforms be used in their app stores. I would assume Sweeney has not emigrated to either North or South Korea. So I'm guessing it's a spiritual I am a Korean in this case. Now, those are all fun headlines for all of us to make memes and quips about. But there's another quote from Sweeney coming out of Seoul that I think is more interesting. He says, what the world really needs now is a single store that works with all platforms. Right now, software ownership is fragmented between the iOS app store, the Android Google Play Marketplace, different stores on Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch and then Microsoft Store and Mac App Store. So, okay, if we had one store to replace all those and we could just buy software once and it would appear on all the platforms we're logged into, that would be great. Who would make such a store, Tim Sweeney? Well, Epic, of course, it's PC, Game Store and other efforts are meant to become a single place you can, in Tim Sweeney's words, buy software in one place knowing that they'd have it on all devices and all platforms. I'm personally not so certain Epic will be the place but the idea is intriguing. Should there and could there be one platform for software? I buy it on the Mac App Store and I get it on Windows. That's a pipe dream, right, Sarah? Could that even ever happen? I sure would like it to. It's like who watches the watchers, right? Like, okay, we've got a universal store, awesome. As a consumer, I'm like, that sounds great but how do I make sure that the companies who stand to profit from me buying their apps are all playing nicely in this universal store? I know it can be done. It's just not the way that we've built a pretty complex system up until this point and yes, there's lots of lawsuits and wouldn't it be nice if those lawsuits just sort of went away and you just buy what you want and you use on whatever device you have? I just don't know how that happens and I'm with you that I don't know that Epic is the company to do that, not saying they can't. It is an interesting concept though. Dan, what do you think? What is need for a company to actually offer this and that it works seamlessly across all platforms because, for example, Adobe has this, when you buy a license subscription for that and you can install it into computers, it doesn't matter if it's a PC or if it is on Mac OS. So it's something similar to this but that's their own platform and they pretty much arrange that you can use it whatever you want as long as you have the, within the limits that they comply. To implement this kind of thing with a lot of software, with a lot of stores, it's really complicated. So what would be needed for this to work seamlessly? If I had to guess what Tim Sweeney's angling out here is he's got lawsuits to try to force Google and Apple particularly to let him have his own third party app store, let Epic have a store of its own on iOS and Android. Android will already let him do that. So really his lawsuit there is to kind of give him some more wiggle room, give him some more flexibility over there. I think what he wants to do is say, if we could force Xbox to do that, if we could force everyone, if we could make it illegal not to let third party app stores on a platform then Epic could start a platform and everywhere you go, you could get your software. We'd have our software everywhere. And I would imagine that it wouldn't be just Epic, it would be other stores. And yeah, there's also the cloud services like Microsoft 365 and Adobe Creative Cloud that sort of already do this, but this would open it up for everybody. But then again, the software developer may not wanna make a version of its software for Xbox, if it's just a to-do list, like making an Android and an iOS version of some software is already complicated enough, right? So I'm not sure that everybody would take advantage of it even if it was there. But I don't know, maybe that's what Tim Sweeney is trying to fight for, is like let's open this up so that your software could work everywhere. Maybe everything will be running on ARM processors in the future and it's compiled for one ARM processor or it'll run everywhere, who knows? What do you want us to hear talk about on the show? One way to let us know is our subreddits, submit stories and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. All right, Dan recently acquired a Xiaomi MiPad 5 Android tablet. You may know about Xiaomi, but you may not be real familiar with their tablets. Their tablets are not as well-known in a lot of parts of the world. Certainly Apple and Samsung are more well-known for tablets, even Lenovo and LG may be a little more well-known than Xiaomi. So I thought it'd be interesting to hear how it compares. Dan, explain yourself, why did you get a Xiaomi tablet? Well, the first thing is that I used to use Google tablets. I love my Nexus 7 and Nexus 9. Nexus 9 actually got all really fast so that was one of my main complains with that particular part of Google's development. And I have been fishing for a different kind of tablet. The usual suspects, as you mentioned, Tom, are well, you can get an iPad or you can get a Samsung tablet. But for me, they weren't as useful and they were a little bit more expensive that Google tablets at the beginning. And after that, I was looking for something that was actually more powerful for me. And when Xiaomi released MiPad 5, I was looking at the specs and it's really interesting because for the Chinese products, particularly from Xiaomi, they are really popular in Spain, they are really popular in Europe and in America, not so much, perhaps because we are closer to the United States. So that's the kind of products that we are looking for because of all the marketing and they are closer. But when you start comparing the prices, when you start comparing the cost, in this particular case, the MiPad 5, it's about half of the cost here in Mexico from the equivalent that would be in Apple, the iPad Air, which is around 20,000 pesos right now in here in Mexico. And the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7, it's around 18,000 pesos in here. So the MiPad 5 is half that cost and pretty much has the same hardware. And as I mentioned before, and I'm going to be showing in here, part of our review that will be coming and then you can check, they actually got some of the cost when you get the package because you don't include the charger. So if you were of the first people who got it in China, you got a free charger, which I got lucky because you get that 33 watts charger, which is actually really, really fast for this. But if not, well, don't worry for the following models, it doesn't include a charger in there. And for me, it's really important, the experience for consuming media, but the most important thing for me was, I wanted as a productivity item. And in this case, I am using a very rudimentary keyboard that I used to have. And I'm pretty much doing everything that I was doing with the office, with my office tools in there. But also something that I wanted to do is create podcasts. So that was one of the main tests. And one really important thing that I was trying to do is with the exact same microphone that I am talking to you at this very moment and the same equipment that I pretty much use for recording podcasts, I could connect and use it with my tablet. And the quality obviously depends on the software. In this case, I was using a specialized software and pretty much the experience was the same. The screen is big. The screen helped me a lot. It has a six gigabytes in RAM. The processor is really fast. And it helped me to pretty much start working with one project in one place and then move along. And perhaps if I was working with DoFis, which is really easy, or with Google Docs, it's really easy to start working in the computer and then you open the app in a tablet or in your phone. But one thing that I found that struck me the most is that I started only installing the regular apps in the tablet. So for example, when I have to work in the show notes for a show, I had the Google Drive app and I started working in there. And then I just decided to use Chrome as a regular computer and I got a lot of more functionality that way. So for me, it's the first tablet that because of the size of the screen and the processor, it's a Snapdragon 860. And the RAM, I pretty much could do a lot of the work that I would regularly do with the tablet. It's not ready for video editing. I use KineMaster for that, but well, that's like heavy duty stuff. But for podcasting, it was wonderful. I have been using for that the last three weeks, actually the last three episodes of NTX have been done that way. And also one month ago, I was covering a film festival and all the content that I was creating for that film festival video, making some designs with the Spark, Adobe Spark. I could pretty much use it with the tablet. If it wasn't using a regular app in there, it was using the web versions in the case of Spark, for example. So it was really convenient for me because it was cheaper. It's around 10,000 pesos. If you got it at the beginning, you could get a promotion if you ordered it from China for $299. So it's really, really cheap for what you are getting. And the regular cost is 369 to $399 or the same in euros if you are in Spain. So for me, that was really, really helpful because it's cheap and it's actually really useful. So that's USB-C on there. So you can just plug in anything that works with USB-C to it? Yes and no. It's one of the problems that it has. The port is USB-C. And for example, when you are transferring data, it works as USB-2. If you connect it to charge, it's USB-3. If you connect an HDMI adapter, it doesn't send signal. So it's like a hit and miss. It's one of the problems that it has. Another of the problems that is important to think is that the different streaming companies like Netflix or Prime Video, they tend to release certifications for different streaming apparatus, in this case, tablets or cell phones to see if you can actually stream it in HD. So at the beginning, when I got it two months ago, I had to pretty much side load all the software so it could work properly. And Prime Video is the only app that so far hasn't released an update so that you can watch in full HD, the quality. But pretty much with HBO, with Netflix, with the video that I have been working in there, I use it as a secondary monitor. And for example, for that, it works really, really well. At this very moment, it's where I have my video chat. And when I'm working on video, sometimes because it's HDR and it's 2.5K resolution, I rather use a tablet for monitoring the video that I am processing because it's actually better screen that the one that I have for my regular work. Well, that's great, man. If you want to get more of Dan's thoughts on this, you're going to have not only a video out, but also an episode of NTX where you dive into this, right? Yeah, with the full details, it will be available later today. Excellent. So keep an eye out, folks, at the Noticias de Tecnología Express, which is also at DailyTechNewsShow.com. Well, if you're in the market for a new gadget, what would you say to a 4.9-inch 1080p Android 11 phone with sloping edges and a curved back has a 48-megapixel camera on the top in one corner, fingerprint sensor in the other corner, Qualcomm Snapdragon 765 and 2,2500mAh battery. Okay. Okay, maybe. Okay, key though is the design. One of those phones that just feels good in the hand. You know those phones. Everybody has a different idea, but that's what this company thinks. So you're saying, okay, sounds good. How much? In Japan, it'll sell for 104,800 yen unlocked. That's about 920 US dollars. Wow. And then you might say, why would anybody pay so much for these specs? The answer is, it's from a company called Balmuda that also makes a $329 toaster. If you're familiar with Balmuda, it's known by its fans for excellent design. This is a premier design company. The company even has some tweaks in Android to make it easy to use. So, you know, there's a little bit of skinning going on. So now that you've heard that, how much would you pay? Would you pay 920 US? No. Okay, maybe not. But Balmuda fans are gonna love it. I guarantee it. Yeah, this is a subculture from what I could tell. Like there are Balmuda people. I bet there's at least one if not more in the audience who are like, oh yeah, but that's a nice looking phone and it goes with my toaster and my kettle and all my other Balmuda products. So it's... Well, and you can equate this to a piece of furniture or a fridge or a car. There's nothing really different here. It's the specs that I think a lot of us will get hung up on. Like why would you pay $920 and you're only getting a 4.9 inch screen? You're only getting 1080p? You're only getting a Snapdragon 765? But that would be like, Sarah, why are you buying those Yeezy Boosts? They're not even that great for running. Yeah, they're gonna wear out in a year. What do you want? Yeah, you could get better running shoes. It's not, you know, it's different strokes. All right, let's check out the mailbag. All right, Marty Rodin had some thoughts on Microsoft redirecting Windows taskbar searches to its own browser results over a default browser. We talked about it on the show yesterday. Marty says, I'm one of those people that actively uses the taskbar for web search because I'm always just a single key press away. I use this multiple times a day. When I upgraded to the insider preview build that has this fix, it was extremely aggravating. Marty says, my workflow since the first version of Windows 10 was to use Edge Deflector to send the search to Chrome than a Chrome extension to redirect Bing to Google. It was the perfect workflow for me and it mimicked the Chrome OS workflow. What's especially annoying about this is this workaround or a flavor of it has been around for more than five years and Microsoft did nothing about it until now and appears to be leaving the exploit still unpatched on Windows 10 as far as I know. Marty says, come on, EU, do your best. Get Microsoft. Yeah, it's not a feature in Windows 10 which is why they haven't worried about it in Windows 10. This is a feature of Windows 11, apparently. I still don't get this either. And Marty, I'm very glad you wrote in to represent those who were like, yeah, I used this functionality and I do not like that they are taking it away. Regarding digital driver's licenses, we had several people write in about how their states have their own driver's license platform that's cross-platform. Key thing to remember when we were talking about the driver's license thing with Stephanie Humphrey, some of you thought maybe it was an Apple exclusive, it's not. This is just, you have to agree to do this to offer the idea in Apple Wallet. Apple is not doing anything to stop you from also offering an Android version but Peter in Colorado says he has them on iPhone via the state's My Colorado app which also can store automobile registration and insurance cards as well as park permits, COVID vaccination info which they get from Walgreens. The digital license is only required to be accepted in Colorado but the convenience to Peter outweighs the possible risks. And then Todd in Oklahoma pointed out that they have a cross-platform called OK Mobile ID in Oklahoma for access to digital driver's license that works on iOS and Android. So yeah, states don't have to deal with the Apple thing. They only have to deal with the Apple thing if they want it to show up in Apple Wallet. And to me, Apple making it so restrictive is probably gonna keep some states from adopting it. Well, thanks to everybody who wrote in about that. It's always good to get info on the ground if you have your own from another state and you haven't told us yet, please do. And if you had feedback, questions, comments, anything you wanna talk about with us or that we might talk about on our future show, do email us feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. Also thanks to a couple of brand new bosses that we got today. We are on a roll and Drew S and Kevin Zeeland are our two new patrons. Thank you, Drew. Thank you, Kevin. Yeah, keeping the streak alive and helping us prop up that mid-month slump that we're always fighting against. So thank you guys. We really appreciate that. Thank you very much. Also thanks so much to Dan Campos for being with us today. Dan, we're all familiar with you here on the team, but let folks know where they can keep up with the rest of your work. Well, you can find me probably outside Mexico City looking for a quesadilla with queso, but you can find that information in the internet. And also in Noticias de Tecnología Express. It comes every Friday and sometimes we'll have a special episode like the one that we're going to release later today. Yeah, dailytechnewshow.com.ntx, folks, go get it. We're live on this show Monday through Friday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern. That is 2130 UTC. You can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com.slash.live. We'll be back tomorrow. Tom is out, but Rich is joining us and Sue has got Johnson. See you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Well, I hope you have enjoyed this brover. Ha, ha, ha, ha.