 Coming up on DTNS breaking news about breaking galaxy fold Z's how to get a ride into space in the next couple of years even if you aren't an astronaut and Should we raise cows on the water? This is the Daily Tech news for Tuesday, February 18th, 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio Redwood I'm Sarah Lane and I'm Roger Chang the shows producer. We were discussing a little text message etiquette Is it okay to just say hey and text message if you want that and Discussions of ice cream and more go get good day internet the wider show at patreon.com slash DTNS Let's start with a few tech things you should know Bloomberg reports that launch of a new low-cost iPhone SE is still on track to happen in March an updated iPad Pro with a New camera module could still be delayed or constrained Outside possibilities also include an updated 13-inch MacBook Pro a new MacBook Air air tags trackers for your items that work on Ultra-wide band and a wireless charging mat TfSecurities analyst Ming-Chi Quo sources say that Apple will ramp up production of air tags in Q2 or Q3 of this year Yeah, we figured out why Nvidia and Activision Blizzard were fighting and it wasn't because what's gotten I thought last week verge reports that it was a Misunderstanding between Activision and Blizzard over the GeForce now service and video thought it had permission to keep Battle.net games going during the free trial But it was mistaken Bloomberg sources say Activision Blizzard wants a commercial agreement Which would mean maybe having to pay twice and Nvidia doesn't want any commercial agreements Regarding our speculation that this had to do with stadia it appears not an Activision Blizzard spokesperson told the verge that the company is focusing quote specifically on YouTube and Google Cloud Microsoft release it's all-in-one office app for Android to everyone the app combines Android versions of word Excel and PowerPoint it lets you browse files in one drive It also syncs with Windows 10 notes and includes office lens scanners and a QR code reader The app is locked in portrait mode and has no UI for tablets or Chromebooks And a report in nature describes a device called Air Gen Created by electrical engineer junior and microbiologist Derek lovely at UMass Amherst that generated electricity from the moisture in the air This could be big electrically conductive nanowire produced by the microbe geobacter Interacts with naturally present water vapor to create current They say it works even in low humidity conditions like those found in the Sahara Desert You don't need it to be in a particularly humid place The Air Gen can power small electronics right now like your wearables and should reach commercial scale in productivity fairly soon So keep an eye out for that. That's amazing Dell announced its selling RSA security to a private equity consortium for 2.0 75 billion dollars The transaction includes RSA Archer RSA net witness platform RSA secure ID RSA fraud and risk intelligence and RSA conference the sales expected to close in the next six to nine months And Kickstarter employees voted 46 to 37 to form a union with the office and professional employees International Kickstarter workers are the first white collar workers at a major tech company to successfully unionize in the United States There's been like Food workers at Google and other tech companies that have had unions But this is the first in the in the white collar tier Kickstarter CEO Aziz Hassan said in a statement We support and respect this decision and we are proud of the fair and democratic process that got us here Doesn't say whether he had his teeth clenched or not. All right. Let's talk a little bit more about a new Qualcomm modem Oh, let's Qualcomm unveiled its 5 nanometer snapdragon x60 5g modem Which he says which it says is the first to offer carrier aggregation for signal sent over sub 6 gigahertz and millimeter wave variants of 5g networks This would let a carrier send data over multiple bands at once leading to faster speeds overall samples of the x65 5g modem will go out in q1 and are expected to show up in phones in early 2021 Yeah, this confused me at first when I saw the headline come across the feeds Because there is a Qualcomm modem out right now that supports millimeter wave and sub 6g sub 6 gigahertz But the phone can only use one at a time It can switch back and forth even on the same carrier, but it can only connect to one at a time this new x65 g modem Can bond to the connection so essentially it can send the data through both the millimeter wave and The sub 6 gigahertz and whenever you bond a connection like that you you effectively raise the potential Capacity and the potential speed so that's a pretty significant thing. It's it's interesting that we're gonna take a year to get this into phones But it's not gonna be something it's gonna be hard to market this It's you're just gonna say like with a faster modem connection and carriers are gonna have to write Exploit it. It's hard to make this like a one-liner marketing thing. Yeah, we're like, I don't know or my speed's faster Qualcomm's like yes, but there's more to it Yeah, so yeah, how is this gonna work Qualcomm is gonna sample these out Manufacturers are gonna work with the carriers who can do this some carriers will want to do carrier aggregation some won't You know something like Google Fi Might be able to to use this then they're gonna say, okay, these devices these manufacturers will make them partnered with these carriers And then it's gonna have to come from the carriers I think I'm sure some announcements from from device makers might mention that they have the ability to do carrier aggregation with the x65 g modem inside But you're gonna have to get a carrier that takes advantage of it for it to be worth bothering with Yeah, I mean the fact that Qualcomm is the first is significant But really this just means that Eventually, this is something that that carriers can take advantage of and consumers will benefit from I'm hoping more carriers do this They don't always because carrier aggregation isn't new you could do it on 4g you can do it on on 3g and even 2g And in fact the x65 g as you mentioned on daily tech headlines today can handle all the way back to 2g So you could aggregate all over the place. Yeah, the carriers don't always want to do the work for that One of the elements of Samsung's foldable galaxy z flip was that it uses glass instead of plastic in the screen Which implied that maybe it would be more durable However, it does not appear that it is Extremely durable. Well, let's review YouTube reviewer Zach Nelson Does a regular screen test where he takes progressively more destructive things, you know Like a pen and then you know up to a Cardboard cutter to the screen to see if it can scratch it He has levels that that he has calibrated Most smartphones don't show scratches till he gets to level six or seven He's reusing some really sharp stuff the galaxy z flip started showing scratches at level two now Samsung told the Verge that the ultra thin glass Used in the galaxy z flip has a protective layer on top Implying that the scratches seen at level two are similar to scratches seen on plastic screens because it's that plastic layer on top That's getting scratched Samsung said it will offer one-time free application of a screen protector on the z flip And has a screen replacement program where you pay 119 bucks to replace your screen if it breaks speaking of breaking there's some reports of Cracking of the screen nothing with the hinge in this one, but a twitter User cracked a z flip right out of the box thinking it might have been because of the cold weather And senets three-foot drop test shattered the glass as well again The hinge seems to be fine in this thing and it's not like these things are breaking all over the place Right and left, but they aren't holding up to the same level of durability tests that a normal smartphone would hold up to Yeah, before the show I was you know My takeaway was sort of just like are we just trying to make this new form factor happen? And it's not going to happen not making flip happen But at the same time you bring up a good point tom and roger had said the same thing too that If if there's if there's a certain form factor under so much scrutiny That there are all these tests being done to be like and look there are scratches on it It's like I mean my phone is scratched in lots of places because I just dropped it out of my pocket I mean it's not as if the you know the flat form factor has been You know great to me I like the idea of something being able to fold shut I think in general that actually is the safer way to go about things, but again These are early days and companies are trying to figure out what the what the sweet spots are Yeah, this is a great example of headline creep of outrage creep Where originally the problem with the galaxy fold was the hinge was breaking and there was a problem with the plastic screen This is a different problem. It's a problem with the screen being scratched or the glass breaking and People are sort of seem to be equating it to the galaxy like oh, it's just as bad as the galaxy fold and it's not It doesn't doesn't mean it's good. We could we have to have you know more than two approaches to to understand this properly It's not good. In other words, it's not going to be as durable as your current phone But your current phone isn't perfectly durable And yet it's also not as bad as this thing breaks all the time It means if you buy a galaxy z flip you need to be gentle with it And if you're the kind of person who's hard on phone screens, maybe it's not the phone for you Yeah, I mean that's a really good point, uh the especially when you get into these premium prices It's like you know someone be like oh what do you expect? What do you want to throw it around and it's just not going to break it's like this is this is a A precious delicate item does a lot of stuff. I make your life better got to treat it with care it's like someone who would Take a phone from say like the old the old the old flip phone and then compare it to a smartphone where You're just doing a drop test with that. It's like oh, I've dropped my flip phone I've dropped my flip phone out of a first story or second story window And it broke the the battery came out, but I could put it back together and it ran just fine I couldn't do that with my smartphone and I'm not going to say oh my smartphone my actually my pixel 3a is Defective because it's not survived a two-story fall Right, exactly. It's just a different kind of phone. You just have to keep that in mind All right guys, would you like to go to space? Is that a threat? Well depends depends. I'll read you the rest of the story. SpaceX plans to send four private citizens Could be you into orbit at the top of 2021 or early at the end of 2021 rather or early 2022 Space adventures, which has helped seven private citizens visit space will help with this project The tourists will fly in a dragon capsule at around the same height as the international space station Orbit two to three times and then return back to earth The first crude dragon flight is supposed to take place with nasa astronauts on board later this year Now SpaceX also has a contract with Japanese billionaire yuzaku Misawa to fly around the moon on the future big falcon rocket In fact, that's been in place for some time, but hasn't happened yet Both both blue origin and virgin galactic are planning suborbital flights to let paying customers Experience weightlessness, but this is a little bit beyond that Yeah, they're going higher than blue origin or virgin galactic virgin galactic still says they're going to do theirs by the end of the year The the the flight around the moon was supposed to happen in 2018 It didn't there's no date on that yet But because they're actually testing the dragon capsule with astronauts Seems possible that you could have private citizens going up in this thing at least in 2022 and if virgin galactic is Starting to do its tourist flights into sub orbit for weightlessness if blue origin starts doing their flights next year by The you know two years from now It might be a luxury item, but the idea of being able to pay to go into space as a Joyride might be normal It might be a thing that is you know accepted rather than a weird thing That's only happened a few times because of that company space adventures. Yeah, and so the the next Obvious question and I have I've been on the show in the past and I know people Go ahead and flame me if you like I have no desire to go to space I am never going to do this the the idea Fills me with anxiety. I just want to stay on earth where I belong But for people who do want to go how much is it going to cost? And how long are you up there? And those are questions that we don't know the answers to yet. Well two to three times orbit You're not up there for very long. Uh virgin galactic blue origin They're just going sub orbital to get you a little wee I'm weightless and then back down. So none of these are very long, but how much Yeah, uh, if you have to ask you probably can't afford it Exactly Yeah, no, and it's I will add this uh in some ways is the next step from the current level of Exotic ride for a lot of money where you can fly into so uh an ex russian air force fighter And they take you to the edge of space and a pressure suit and stuff and it lasts maybe an hour But I mean you pay a big stack of cash, but you get to brag I went to the edge of space in a in a in a russian That's what virgin galactic is doing same same type of thing. Yeah, so it'll be interesting to see all the humble brags when this comes around Yeah, I I am skeptical that all of these plans will happen on time. That's why I say How about cows on a boat? How about it? It's actually not a boat though. Wired's laura maloney has an article about a floating cow farm From a property development company called belladon in roderdam harbor in the netherlands The aim is to demonstrate a possible sustainable food source The idea came to the owner of belladon peter van windgarden when he saw the disruption to the food supply In new york during hurricane sandy and he's like maybe for food security. We should develop floating farms So he did a 4943 square foot stable floating on concrete pun tunes anchored into the seabed Cows eat potato peels and grass clippings waste is turned into fertilizer for park grass Like soccer fields or just you know meadows That then provides the clippings for the food and milk from the cows is bottled or made into yogurt The farm appears to be too expensive to replicate and widely or to replicate widely anyway And relies on too many resources outside of the cows. So there's a lot of maintenance when you're out on the seawater Power it doesn't make its own power. I know, you know, you're thinking cows Obviously, there's a power source there in methane, but they haven't figured that out yet So to maintain sustainability is a challenge But belladon founder peter van windgarden hopes the experiment will spark more creative thinking about food sustainability Yeah, and for anybody who's like well, you're putting a bunch of cows on a pontoon That's mean the cows can come and go This is a almost 5,000 square foot area for the cows to eat and it's the state do their do their business But they they can they can go uh to to and from land. Um, if they have a ticket If they're rich enough, but uh, but and also who's interesting I guess in the early stages of testing this out the a large question was Do the cows want to do this because if they're gonna get seasick like let's not do this to the cows Cow seem okay. Cows are like, all right. We we got it. You know, they're they're pretty resilient creatures, but uh, it it's interesting to me that This would be so Expensive to replicate. I understand that if you don't I mean the Netherlands is, you know below sea level majority wise and you know covered in water So this is a perfect place to try something like this out There are lots of other places in the world where this would work and and places that it wouldn't So you can't just say, yeah, we're just gonna, you know, build all the stuff, you know Every little lake around here. Of course that wouldn't work But uh, I I wonder what is so cost prohibitive at this point It's it probably has a lot to do with power But but as I mentioned the maintenance, you know, uh seawater Corrodes things you have to do a lot of maintenance to keep just a regular old boat in shape Or you know an oil derrick And and so you don't have any sustainability in that stuff Uh, there's not sustainable power There's not, you know, the cows don't provide any maintenance. So you have to pay other people They're not earning their keep. I mean it could go it doesn't necessarily have to be cows either It could be like a hydroponics Set up your growing crops But it would be the same maintenance and power Issues probably maybe less power. I don't know less power I mean if you can get some uh, if you can get some solar cells on top You can actually do kind of some sort of preventive galvanic corrosion on the vice by running a current through Uh through the superstructure see That's what peter van windgarden is hoping people will do by doing this this way He's like maybe maybe i'll inspire roger chang to improve on my design I I think if this might be a better fit for aquaculture, whether it's something like Raising oysters, you know a mobile floating oyster bed that you're not tied up next door But you let float and then let the waves carry in whatever Or there's already stuff like that with oyster beds, but yeah, there's those oyster beds Are are currently fixed like they're fixed from offshore. So you walk down and but if you could have it floating you could Well, these are fixed too. They're fixed to the well, I mean, that's that's my thing It's like if they could get it so you could have it float you could lessen the impact of things like fish farms and stuff to have currently and uh in shore areas Well starting this week ring will require all users humans or cows to use second factor Authentication when logging in users will be offered text message or email to receive a six digit code Ring also introduced new options for controlling when data is shared with third parties You can turn off sharing data with companies that create personalized ads as well And data sharing with analytic services is paused while ring works on an opt-out system That's going to work best for everybody last month ring added a privacy dashboard and options to control whether or not police can request footage This is all damage control for ring Ring is being pushed into doing these kinds of things because people are very upset at ring for Sharing third party data without making it absolutely clear not letting you control or opt-out So they're doing the right thing. They're saying, okay, we're not going to share analytic stuff till you can opt out We're going to let you turn off data sharing for ads If you want and we're just going to force you all to use second factor When when the verge talked to the ceo of ring about this it's ces He was implying it would be something that you could opt out of but it's not There's just from the sound of it going to make everyone get a second factor either by text message or email And use that every time they want to log into ring which Okay, that is going to force security on people so There are problems when you force security on people where people try to get around it or just stop using a product but That is going to force security. It's not as good as allowing actual ube keys or code generators But it is better than not having any security on your ring account And of course if your email is not Also protected by 2fa Then you really are just pushing, you know kicking the can down the road with the security vulnerability being on your email at that point They could still get into your ring account theoretically But you know These are all small steps in the right direction. Yeah, I agree. I I We've talked quite a bit at length of of rings Missteps, you know, it's it's not even I think a lot of folks are quick to say Oh, and I'll look at they're doing with the government and that that may be true Maybe not be true, but all of these steps are in an effort to gain back Trust from their user base. So yeah, it's it's all it's pretty pretty cut and dry I think there's some misunderstanding that police could go in and get footage out of your ring without your permission They couldn't uh, what was happening is They were allowing police to request footage in a way that a lot of people felt they had to agree to or they would Be suspicious, right? Uh, so is that power imbalance and saying look, I just don't want to be asked I don't I don't want to participate Is is an improvement For ring where they're saying look, we just won't let the police we won't let the police know your ring doorbell is even there Uh, and that way you won't feel pressured if they come along a lot of people very happily Want to cooperate because they have good relations with the police in their neighborhood and they're not suspicious of it Depends on who you are in one neighborhood you're in though Well, when it comes to ads kind of same story, right? Some people are like well, if i'm gonna see ads anyway They might as well be personalized If you you know if you if you know what I might like that would be helpful rather than not helpful at all other people Are like nope don't want to that should just always be an option for the user All right, uh these days it's hard to go through tech news without touching at least on the coronavirus in some way Uh, and we've got a few different points to get to here supply chain analytics provider trend force Has revised a report on smartphone production Uh, which is now projected decline 12 percent year on year in q1 Due to issues with the coronavirus making it the lowest quarter in five years It had been expected that smartphone production would bounce back in q1 after sort of going flat So this is unfortunate for the smartphone industry Uh, apple warned monday that it might not reach its previous q2 revenue guidance of 63 to 67 billion dollars Due to the effects of the coronavirus on its supply chains Manufacturing is resuming in china more slowly than expected according to apple So apple said the worldwide iphone supply would be temporarily constrained and that directly affects you If you're looking for a new iphone there might not be one on the shelf It might be harder to get one And of course it affects apple sales because in china itself apple stores remain closed or at reduced hours So they they just aren't as many opportunities for people to go buy an iphone People aren't leaving the house as much anyway because of the scare apple did not offer any new quarterly guidance numbers Other than to say that they would be affected Xiaomi also announced an expected impact to its sales Interestingly samsung is expected to feel less impact as half its smartphones are made in vietnam And it already had poor sales in china So people shopping less in china doesn't affect samsung as much because they just weren't selling it as much to begin with Uh, and their supply chain should be less impacted because the factories where they have their their stuff made Uh, aren't in the region directly impacted There's been a little the impact on cross border sales a lot of the components That go into the assembly in vietnam come from china and that's been impacted But overall vietnamese factories for samsung have been churning out Units, you know close to what they expected Yeah, as this story has unfolded and it's been it's been a weird one I you know, I have friends who are going to south by southwest in austin texas in march And you know, they're sort of like is it going to get cancelled too? And I was like, I don't know why it would Yeah, the you know the Mobile world congress would make a lot more sense But but okay this kind of like lasting effect of this and how much it actually does damage More than the next quarter ish especially for a company like apple I mean it was big news this morning apple saying hey, we're not going to meet our guidance We're not going to tell you what we think it's going to be But it was already kind of a wide range and we're just not going to make it We know we won't that that's a big deal because it's apple But how much does this really become a ripple effect? More than the next three months. Yeah the the the general consensus You know, I read the economist listen to the economist bbc at such is that you know outside of technology This is outside of my expertise, but the general consensus seems to be Usually when this sort of thing happens Yes, there's a downturn because of lack of consumption and production But then there's an upturn afterwards because people were just deferring Until after and so you get a spike But the spike is never enough to fully make up the difference Yeah, and so the question is the longer it goes how much of a difference are you going to have between what was lost And the bounce back effect What what ends up with people just pushing off and saying look i'm just you know I'm not going to buy that phone or more relevant like you were saying with mobile world congress You don't go back and do mobile world congress everything that was going to be spent on lunches and and you know ancillary stuff In barcelona isn't going to be spent no one's going to go back and do mobile world congress lately later So that's just lost Uh and and it's it's going to have a big effect on technology the technology industry in general for sure Hey, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes Be sure to subscribe to daily tech headlines.com and thanks to everyone who participates in our subreddit You can submit stories you can vote on other of your peers stories as well a daily tech news show dot reddit.com You can also join in the conversation in our discord going on right now Which you can join by linking to a patreon account at patreon.com Slash dtns. Let's check out the mailbag. Let's do that An anonymous federal drone that that was there there person or quadcopter. Yeah, hard to say They can talk That says I work at a federal agency and I just introduced teams. We were talking about microsoft teams in slack with rob dumbwood on friday's show Drone says i've been trying to get my colleagues to bring teams into their workflow Unfortunately, the key hurdle to this is my workplace's policy that we can't create our own teams And need to submit an it ticket in order to do so the integration into office 365 leads me to believe It would be great for managing vip travel keeping team members in the loop in general Right now this is being done poorly via email and whatsapp the rationale for the it ticket is that if individuals create teams willy nilly It'll burden record retention requirements However, a lot of that gets lost when we rely on whatsapp as well as the shared document viewing and editing capability I'm going to keep up my campaign and hope that when I get into a management position I'll be a little more technologically nimble than my current bosses It does sound like a little cya is going on which is look if we don't know you're arranging travel in whatsapp Then there's no requirement that we we we preserve that But if you open a teams channel, then we know it's there and we have to preserve that Um, I'd be curious if there's some sys admins out there who think like, you know, that's a reasonable concern Or if they're like what you just you just archive it, you know, yeah You have to pay a little more for your storage space, but it's not that much One way or another Also, we got a lot of reactions to the tesla story that we followed up on that tesla had done the right thing and restored The automatic driving so autopilot functions to the buyer of a used tesla Who was surprised to find that those functions had disappeared even though they're on the invoice james from ervine Points out that tens of thousands of used teslas have been sold over the past 10 years And all indications are that 99.9 of the time software purchases transferred to the new owner without issue I know it would have been nice if tesla had issued a statement about this But I think for them this was a non story one mistake was made and fixed and there is nothing worth talking about Obviously, many other people didn't see it that way Uh, remember this wasn't that transfer didn't happen It was that tesla went in with an audit and removed it because the names didn't match And james is saying yeah, but usually doesn't go wrong. Why are we focusing on the one time it did? Uh, and then tom mckague said in reference to the story on a car losing auto drive features If tesla really wanted to connect features to a car they could use the vin Not the purchaser name the vin never changes. That's the vehicle identification number But the owner might I feel that using the original owner's name instead of the vin shows how immature tesla is as a car Manufacturer it's either that or tesla intended to rip off the second owner by making them purchase the option again They just got caught when jelopnik ran the story tom. I would point you to james who's saying no, it's probably not that But I do like the suggestion that the vin is a more reliable way to track this stuff that there I wonder if there's you know Things that we're not seeing that would be a pitfall to that but it feels like oh when someone has bought it And it's attached to the vin If you then then your audit would always be like, oh that vin did pay for it. Okay, great, you know That's a good good insight tom. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, it makes perfect sense Hey, shout out to patrons at our master and grand master levels including dr. Carmine m bailey mike mclaughlin and philipp lass And we have new patreon reward merchandise to celebrate six years of dts six years six Almost six and a third by the end of march. Anyway, uh, if you want to celebrate with us you can get a poster a sticker a mug or a t-shirt with the special dts six year logo on it Just become a patron or if you're already a patron just stay a patron Starting january 1st the clock started ticking. 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