 Coming up on DTNS, Roku has some big hardware and OS updates. Amazon may be launching new Kindle paper whites. And are you ready to talk iPhone 4 yet? Too bad, DTNS starts now. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, September 20th, 2021. From Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. From Lovely Cleveland, Ohio, I'm Rich Drafalino. And from Columbus, Ohio, I'm Rob Dunwood. And I'm Roger Chang, the show's producer. We were just talking about fruit that is ugly before the show, on good day internet, if you want to know more about the fruit that we think is ugly. And why all fruit is pretty in its own way. Become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. That is where you can join our top patrons such as Matthew Stevens, John and Becky Johnston, and Chris Benito. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. GM CEO, Mary Barra, said the automaker plans to build direct relationships with chip manufacturers to address the continuing semiconductor shortage. Previously, GM relied on suppliers to buy chips rather than doing so directly. This comes as GM and many other global automakers have had to cut or halt production of vehicles due to lack of chips. Amazon will announce news about our latest Amazon devices, features and services. That's in Amazon's words. On September 28th at 12 p.m. Eastern Time and an invite-only event, but no live stream. Previous Amazon fall hardware events have featured Echoes, Ero Routers and Ring cameras, as well as more experimental offerings like the Echo Loop Ring and Ring In-Home Drone. The messaging app Telegram suspended all chatbots using the Russian elections campaign. According to founder Pavel Durov, this would abide by Russia's election silence law that prohibits campaigning during the elections. This comes after Google and Apple removed a smart voting app from Russian app stores. We talked about it on the show. ByteDance's China-focused short-form video app Douyin will now limit users for those under 14 years old to 40 minutes a day between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. This new limit will apply to real-name authenticated users, and ByteDance is encouraging parents to complete this authentication process for their kids. And Zenimax Creative Director Rich Lambert confirmed the next patch for Elder Scrolls Online MMO will make it the first title to feature NVIDIA's Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing or DLAA. Unlike NVIDIA's Deep Learning Super Sampling or DLSS, easy to remember, which runs a game at a lower resolution with AI upscaling for better performance, DLAA won't provide a performance boost. Rather, it will use AI to provide extra edge smoothing at native resolution, saving the GPU from the typically resource-intensive task. DLAA requires an RTX 2000 or 3000 series card. NVIDIA also released a new display driver that's certified for Windows 10 and 11, as well as adding DLSS support for 28 more games. Titles that now support it include Alan Wake Remastered, Deathloop, Diablo 2, Resurrected, and Far Cry 6. Alright, let's talk a little more about Roku's announcements. We'll start with the hardware. Roku announced the $49.99 Streaming Stick 4K and the $69.99 Streaming Stick 4K Plus, with a 30% faster processor than the Streaming Stick Plus. Dolby Vision is included as well and HDR10 support, faster Wi-Fi. All good things, right? If you're a Roku user anyway. The 4K Plus model gets a version of the Roku Voice Remote Pro that's rechargeable. It can make a little noise if you lose it. Both streaming sticks will be available this October. Roku also announced and updated the Walmart exclusive Roku Ultra LT, with a faster processor, also with more storage, Dolby Vision, and an Ethernet port. In the software side of things, the company also announced a number of changes coming to Roku OS 10.5. Users can now pin live TV stations from the Roku channel to their home screen for easier access. It's kind of good for Roku live stations as well. The OS also features expanded voice control, so you can now use voice to perform a general content search, enter email and passwords, and set up screens. Roku says voice data is sent off device to its speech-to-text partner, and the audio is anonymized for anybody who says, I don't like the sound of that. Roku says it never stores the odd login audio and the text goes to the channel partner only. Yeah, some interesting stuff from Roku here. The hardware definitely seems like they are checking all the boxes that the recent kind of fire TV sticks that Amazon announced put out there. They've really doubled down on voice remote, so you're saving $10 from buying the remote separately with the Roku Stick 4K Plus. I guess we're just adding plus to everything. We can't avoid that. That's our future. Yeah, it's the only thing we can think of. At least we have parity there. The software stuff, though, is super interesting to me. From an accessibility standpoint, just as an everyday user having to enter your email and password, especially if you're using a password manager, you've got a long convoluted password, kind of a nightmare to have to go through with a little remote and stuff like that, I don't know if I am ever trusting that. They can give me all the warnings they want. They can tell me it's all done locally, and I still just don't like saying my password out loud. It seems just to violate every kind of security protocol we've come to know, right? Honestly, though, go ahead, Rob. I was just going to say I'm right there with you, Rich. I can't see myself speaking into a microphone where my voice is going to be sent to someone else where I've just spoken my password and username. I know what they're saying. I just can't do it. It reminds me of, I don't know if anyone has been in a hotel lately, but one of the things you can do in a hotel now is you can actually, on many TVs, you can enter in your own Netflix account or your own YouTube account so you can watch streaming stuff that's your preferences. It always says when you check out, it's going to delete your stuff, but you have my stuff before you delete it. I just don't feel comfortable with that. Out of all of the story that I'm listening to, that is the one that gets me the most. I don't want to speak my password to you and someone third party hears it. When the Apple TV, I believe it was the HD model. This is from a few years back, and Siri was added to the remote. It was like a godsend because anytime I had to log in, and this is sort of the early days before, now I just use the same few apps all the time and I'm logged into everything, but at the time it was like new apps and entering usernames and passwords, and it was a nightmare to do that on the screen with a little remote. I was very pro voice. I wasn't too worried about it. Probably should have been a little bit more worried about it, but the convenience won me over for sure. And not to be overlooked here, adding the live stations, being able to pin those to your home screen. Roku is increasingly an ad-tech company that happens to sell hardware as a profitable, semi-profitable side business for them. Being able to pin those and specifically just Roku channels. You're not able to pin a YouTube TV or anything like that station or anything like that. Having that and having easier access to smoother integrated access to that as a Roku user myself and someone who will occasionally turn on the MSD3K channel or something like that, that's a little bit of a convoluted process. It's not that hard. I'd be using it a lot more if it was front and center with all of my other kind of app entertainment choices. And again, Roku has a vested interest in making that as seamless as possible for sure. All right. Next up here, Ikea announced and apologies to anyone from Sweden. The Swomark, a $40 wireless Qi charging pad designed to be installed underneath nearly any desk or table. It provides five watts of charging and can be installed under a wood or plastic surface between 8mm and 22.2mm thick. Those are the recommendations from Ikea. It seems like there might be a little play in there. It can be screwed or taped to the bottom of the surface and includes a temperature and power monitoring so you don't set your wood table on fire. It ships in October and for that $40 price being able to turn basically any piece of furniture into some sort of wireless charging situation. I know had a lot of appeal for me, Rob. I mean, is this something that you could see integrating into your setup? I absolutely could because I have, you know, Qi chargers everywhere. And it's just, I mean, on one table, I think I have three. And it's just all kind of cables and stuff, you know, cable management for your living room furniture is where I'm getting to. I love this and I am so surprised that I've not heard of anyone who has done this before. You know, this is like, oh, it just makes sense that you could just slap it under the table and charge through it. I'm all for this. And fortunately for me, there's an Ikea literally two miles away from the house. I will be checking these out when they get in store. And the thing that this also kind of plays into Ikea's drive to be a lot more sustainability focused, right? So the idea being, hey, instead of buying the table with the integrated Qi charger that, oh, I might want to put it in a different corner. So then I'm going to buy a different charger because that's not a convenient charging location anymore. Being able to configure as you move furniture, as furniture moves room or just your placement in the room, giving you one less excuse to not throw out something, giving you more use out of that. I think plays into that overall kind of sustainability mission, which they seem pretty serious about. So I just measured my desk. That's pretty, pretty hefty desk that I'm sitting at. Just haven't had a ruler right here. And my desk is more like 40 millimeters thick. So I think it's important to remember that there are a lot of pieces of furniture where you go, ah, yeah, the nightstand would be perfect. But it has to be a little thin, at least on that top level where you're going to put something underneath it. Yeah, impossible. Like for context, eight millimeters is about as thick as like a phone, like your typical like 2021 phone or something like that. So that is pretty thin. And then so that's like what three stacked on top of each other for some context. Yeah, so that's a really good point, Sarah, too. But that said, I can think of so many places that I would want to, because it's like you're not losing the wire, right? The wireless charger that's mounted under wherever, you know, even if it's the right plastic or wood that that it could fit under. It's like still needs to be plugged in somewhere. But just having that off of the surface where I, you know, I commonly have lots of cables that just gather around because it's like, it's my little corner where I charge. I don't know my Fitbit and my iPhone and my Jabra earbuds. And it just, it just be not that these are all able to be charged wirelessly. But as more and more devices are compatible with that, it just cleans things up. Yeah, that's that's the big thing, as I said for me, just getting the wires off of the top of the desk. I can cable manage under the desk just fine. But if I can get them off the top of the desk, I'm going to spill less beverages because I can tell you I don't want to say it's a regular thing. But I definitely have had the times when I have bumped the cord and knocked a drink over because the court was just wrapped around the bottom of a, you know, of a bottle or something like that. And I think the appeal of this is that this feels actually wireless as opposed to like placing on a charging thing. Like this is, this is like, I'm not putting it directly on the charging, but yes, you need to properly align this. And I'm sure, you know, people are going to complain, you know, it's going to be very easy to be not on the charging area or something like that. But like, this feels closer to that than just your typical G charging mat. So the iPhone 13 lineup was just announced. So that means it's time to ramp up speculation on the next gen iPhone. Apple analysts mean she quote is usually good for reliable rumors. And in his most recent analysts and nobody points to the Apple delaying two long rumor technologies advertising that Apple will delay. Let's see where they're going to delay touch ID. And that is actually in the screen and a foldable iPhone. Both of those are going to be delayed and I think it's respective to 2023 and 2024. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported last month that Apple worked on an under display version of touch ID for the iPhone 13, but it didn't make the cut for the product's release. Cool believes that a foldable iPhone will feature displays between 7.5 and 8 inches, presumably folding in half like the Galaxy Fold and turn into an iPad mini size tablet. In terms of more immediate rumors, cool expects the iPhone 14 Pro to offer a hole punch style front camera rather than a notch with a 48 megapixel standard camera. Cool also expects a 5G iPhone SE in the first half of 2022. And I read all this and you know the story in between the lines is what's popping out to me. It sounds like that the iPhone like Samsung devices that happened a little earlier are becoming very utilitarian. I don't think you're going to see any big major shifts in what the iPhone is or what it does other than a little bit faster, a little bit better battery, maybe a little bit better camera. But these are basically square pieces of glass that do really, really cool things that just don't get updated significantly so from year to year. And I think that that's what we're saying that they're pushing out things that we thought were going to be here this year out until the year after next, if not the year after that. Well, and a lot of folks have already said this about the iPhone 13. It's cameras very impressive. You got a terabyte of storage if you can afford that or want it, you know, on the on the pro, but it's somewhat incremental. The phone doesn't really do much that the iPhone 12 did, you know, both very high end phones. Now, you, you might be like me, I'm still rocking a 10 X max. So I really am. I haven't bit the bullet yet, but really considering the iPhone 13 because to me that's a nice big step up. I don't really see 2022. Besides, if the 5G iPhone SE rumor comes to pass in the first half of 2022, it's like, if there's a foldable phone to get excited about and an under display version of touch ID isn't happening. You know, anytime relatively soon, what, you know, what do you, what do you get more, more megapixels? Okay. But I think Apple has been kind of planning for this as we've seen life cycles of these, you know, people kind of going from that two year cell contract model of I got to upgrade every two years to, hey, I'm getting three, four or five years out of, you know, a device and it's, you know, it's not like a hellscape to use that thing for the last year or something like that. And because we're moving into this more commodified market with this, you know, it kind of the traditionally it's like, okay, Apple sales ramp up, you know, the quarter after the release in Q4, like right now they trail off, you know, the quarter before. I think Apple would be fine is if they could flatten that out and basically be like, yeah, the iPhone 14 is coming out, but I need a phone now and, you know, okay, so the camera will have a few less megapixels and stuff like that. My big thing with, I was thinking about this reading the story is 2024 is Apple then significantly late to the foldable game and I was thinking about this in terms of like it feels like this generation, the Z fold three and the fold whatever. Those are, this is the first time it feels like a product as opposed to a tech demo, at least in my eyes. And I was reminded I was at a party the other day and someone had an original galaxy fold and you know it can pull out his pocket and unfolded it and like several people there like free like they had never seen or heard of a foldable before and it was like literally watching someone experience a new product category made me realize, oh no, we're still so early with this that I feel like 2024 yeah that's a long way way I mean three years of is an eternity in technology. I feel like if they can deliver something and say hey it's it meets all of our IPX ratings it's not going to break I mean you know who knows but well and I don't necessarily think that feels late even by this standard. Apple will create the world's best foldable phone says just give them until 2024. And it's not too late because it's not like Apple users are going to switch and I want to switch from Apple to go get that Samsung device that that's not really happening right now. Well, folks, sometimes you just don't have time to listen to DTNS and although we love to have you we understand if you want just the headlines. Good news you can check out our related show Daily Tech headlines, all the essential tech news in about five minutes. Check it out at DailyTechHeadlines.com. All right, let's get into these Amazon rumors. Well, maybe more than rumors kind of more like leaks. Amazon appears to have leaked new versions of its Kindle Paperwhite eReader, a comparison chart published to Amazon's Canadian and Mexican sites shows a 150 Canadian dollar Kindle Paperwhite and a 210 Canadian dollar Paperwhite signature edition with 6.8 inch 300 PPI 17 LED displays and an adjustable warm light, much like the Kindle Oasis current Paperwhite models have six inch displays with four LEDs so it would be a significant bump to make it all brighter. The signature edition appears to add wireless charging and also auto adjusting light sensors. This has not been officially announced by Amazon so features and pricing are obviously not final. Still, while it is larger, a brighter display, also not a bad thing. Matt Wiley over at Input argues that kind of points to a continual lack of innovation by the eReader market leader. Kindle's hold about 80% of the eReader market share, least in the US, but he argues the devices have kind of remained fundamentally the same since they launched back in 2011. First Gen Keyword don't have that anymore, otherwise not a lot of huge design differences or really much under the hood either. The Kindle took years to add new simple features like display cover. Smaller competitors such as Kobo and Remarkable are pushing the envelope with screen sizes and stylus support and functionality that goes beyond just being an eReader. It kind of asks that question of is this a utility object that the only point of this of an eReader in Amazon's mind is to connect you to their marketplace to buy a book, provide a nice fine reading experience. They have made innovations. I would say the Paperwhite was kind of the last big one where people are like, oh that fundamentally improves my ability to read this in a more book like fashion, stuff like that. But in Amazon's mind, this is a utility device like we know what an eReader should be, whereas Kobo and Remarkable are saying, hey, eInk has very unique properties that can replicate, not just a look, but even the feel of the paper in some instances where you're talking about adding stylus support, taking notes and that kind of stuff. And I think those are two competing visions that there clearly is a lot of frustration out there. Obviously the eReader market is enough that Amazon's continuing to invest some form of, I mean, you know, these are fundamentally new products. After all, even if the functionality behind them isn't the same, but I definitely, you know, I'm an eReader stan. I love me some eInk. I want to see eInk on all the things. I can definitely understand the frustration of being, you know, what the Kindle could be versus the updates we've kind of received. I think Amazon kind of nailed it with the Kindle white. I mean, the device, it is very good at what it does. And from an Amazon standpoint, this supports their business of selling you eBooks. They're not trying to, we need to corner the market on selling these devices. We need to corner the market on where you buy your books from. So because of that, there's not really been a reason for them to iterate and upgrade because it's not like, you know, folks are saying, oh, I'm going to leave Kindle, you know, eBooks if I go to some other reader. You're just going to get another device that they really haven't updated in some time. So it's probably going to take other companies to really innovate and come up with these, you know, these, you know, paperweight or these eInk type, you know, stylized, driven devices that you can use to take notes and all those kind of things. That's not really Amazon's wheelhouse. So I don't want to say that they don't care, but it's just not a market that they're really targeting, at least not right now. Having the Remarkable 2 eTablet, I don't think they actually called it eReader. I don't have it next to me right now, which is going to be my next Live With It segment, by the way. I know it's a little delayed. Once I get my life together, I promise. I have lots of thoughts on the Remarkable 2. I think it's an amazing productivity tool. It is an eReader second or third. It can be. You have to know a little bit. There's some fancy footwork that gets something that would be in, you know, a Kindle store, for example. You know, you get it from your local library and there's some ePub and you've got to convert some formats and everything. It can be done. The ETS audience can certainly handle that, but it's it's it's much more of a productivity tool and a way to not really be online. I mean, you can sync it to to get documents off of whatever computer you sync it to. But otherwise, you don't have apps. You don't have a browser. You're supposed to be kind of focused and doing your thing. It's awesome, though. And the the stylist that it comes with is Remarkable. Sorry, pardon the pun. But yeah, it's there's just so much more to it. And I think that once something becomes that and also an eReader, then you get into you get into much more of a well now it's a tablet competitor. Following up on a successful Kickstarter campaign, Incubate Games confirmed it's bringing its unreleased Game Boy Color Tactical RPG Infinity to the Game Boy Advance Steam and the Nintendo Switch. The GBA title will be a direct port of the game while the Steam Switch version will receive an enhanced version. Work on the game in 1999 by Affinix Software, but it was canceled in 2002, kind of building on a really interesting trend. I mean, the fact this is a Game Boy Color game and it's still going to be coming out for what could be considered a vastly legacy console in the advance. Yeah, they're going to be making some advancements to here. Generally interesting or millennial nostalgia, I guess at this point, Rob. So there's probably a certain type. You and I probably fit the mold for this. I love this because, you know, one thing I can say, I have been a good steward for pretty much most of my tech. I have going back to the 80s, like my second or third computer, I have most of my Game Boys, you know, I've literally had all of them. I still have like my original Atari, not my original, I have a Atari 5600 that still is in working condition. If somebody was to make a cartridge for that joint, I'd pop it in there tomorrow. So, yeah, I have the tech to be able to, you know, to use these games. So if somebody's going to actually give me a new cartridge to throw into my Game Boy, that's great. If somebody's going to give me a new game that was, you know, that was to emulate a Game Boy, I probably would try it out because those old games, in my estimation, some of them are some of the best games that were ever created. So, you know, I'm all for it. I was going to add, like, this is not something entirely new. This is something that is, this is something that's been in kind of what they call the retro gaming scene for a while. It started out with orphan consoles like the Atari Jaguar, remember that? Where a lot of dedicated users have gotten around and decided that making their own games for these kind of, well, most people consider obsolete consoles would be a nice way to kind of keep that system going, keep that kind of video gaming experience alive. And it's really cool to see him do it with the Game Boy because it is a system that a lot of people have fond memories about and a nice way to kind of keep it going. Yeah, like I said, I'm just sitting here thinking of games. I would definitely go back and play Game Boy Advance or Game Boy Color games. So, you know, to me, these are kind of awesome. And it plays really into that whole, what is the company analog that's making FPGA compatible consoles and stuff like that, that, you know, there's clearly an interest to play both the legacy games. And, you know, if we can, even though some of these are, you know, maybe proprietary or tough to like physically make the cartridges for, definitely an interest to keep like not just ROMs and emulators alive, but like the physical experience of like cartridge console gaming alive. And so, hey, we'll be getting a chance for that with Infinity. And I do love me a tactical RPG, so. Let's do a quick jump over to Nika Monford, who has this month's Teching While Black segment and let me just play this up right. Hi, this is Nika Monford of the Snobble West show with another episode of Teching While Black. In this segment, I bring awareness to an innovative black leader in technology. This week's spotlight is a Yende Alacoy. He is the founder and CEO of Needle as an haystack, which is a social audio platform. Needle, according to his website is quote, the first social audio platform in the world to provide live transcripts that make audio accessible for everyone in quote. Additionally, the social audio platform provides a unique URL equipped with SMS alerts, the ability to take callers and more. Needle is one of 12 startups in Google's inaugural voice AI accelerator and it's raised $1.6 million thus far. Now, this isn't a Yende's first foray into app development. He is the creator of the original iHeartRadio mobile app. Also, he serves as an executive board member of the Applications Development Alliance. In addition to his contributions to the tech space, he is a renowned radio and television speaker, as well as a panel and keynote speaker. He has appeared at CBS TV and Radio, CNBC and the National Association of Broadcasters. So his extensive speaking abilities are kind of understandable as he served as a speechwriter, staffer and message advisor for former President Barack Obama. Let me just say this. I think we should all keep an eye out on Needle as it appears to be a true force in the making. To find out more about a Yende Alocoye and his work, you can follow him on Twitter at thatayende and at needle.com. Join me next time as I highlight another Black tech innovator. When we are aware of all innovative voices, especially those in underrepresented groups, the tech community thrives. Thank you, Nika. Very well said. A reminder to everybody, if you've got ideas for topics we should talk about, questions about anything we did talk about or anything in between, do send us those emails. We want more feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. We also want to thank just a few brand new bosses. In fact, all six of you. John Spencer, Alan Gallang, Robert Wolfington, Jochen Sievert, Samuel Jackson Royal, and Brian Holtz, all who just started backing us on Patreon. So a big thanks to John, Alan, Robert, Jochen, Samuel and Brian. It's good stuff. Good stuff. That's it. That's a solid weekend over on Patreon. Thank you so much. Let's keep this treat going, shall we? Also, thanks to you, Rob Dunwood, for being with us this fine Monday. You are a busy podcaster these days. Let folks know where they can keep up. So I am at all things Rob Dunwood. And you can find me at the SMR podcast, actually smrpodcast.com. And my brand new show that I host with Brother Tech and Tech Life Steph called The Tech John at thetechjohn.com. So check us out. Very cool. We are live on this show Monday through Friday, 4.30 p.m. Eastern. That's 2030 UTC. If you want to know more, check out dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Join us live if you can. We'd love to have you. Tom will be back tomorrow and we'll be joined by Lamar Wilson. See you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Bob, I hope you have enjoyed this program.