 The best way to support the Daily Tech News show is on Patreon. Did somebody cough? What do you mean? Oh, sorry, that was me. Sounded like a little dog. All right, starting over in three, two. The best way to support the Daily Tech News show is on Patreon. Anna Belash has supported us that way for five years. Join Anna and get more at patreon.com. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, July 15, 2019. I'm Tom Merritt. And back at Studio Feline, I'm Sarah Lane. And I'm Roger Chang, the sweating producer. We're actually all in Los Angeles and therefore all sweaty. You don't need to know that. We're going to keep you cool with the important tech news of the day. This is one of those days where we are going to give you the things you need to know to sound smarter in the room. They may not be the craziest, weirdest, click-baity headlines out there, but you're going to be better informed because of them. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. After more than a year, the Republic of Chad has restored internet access to social networks, including Facebook and Twitter. More than a year. The blocks were put into place in March of 2018 following political protests. The Economic Times reports Apple has stopped selling the iPhone SE 6, 6 Plus and 6S Plus in India. That means the entry-level price of an iPhone in India is now about 8,000 rupees higher because you can't get those entry-level phones anymore. Apple raised revenue in India in 2018 and 2019 despite lower volume, leading to an apparent focus on value over a number of units. They're just going to lean into being a premium supplier in India. Consum Mac reports that the newest MacBook Air, which was announced last week, has a slower SSD than the 2018 model with write speeds slightly faster but read speeds about 35% slower, which likely relates to that MacBook Air also getting a $100 price discount. Consum Mac used Blackmagic speed disk speed test on the new Air, hit speeds of 1.3 gigabits per second read and 1 gigabit per second write. The 2018 MacBook Air achieved 2 gigabits per second read and 0.9 gigabits per second write. All right, let's talk a little bit about the new Qualcomm SoC system on a chip, not the thing you put on your foot. Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 855 Plus SoC, which features higher clock speeds than the existing Snapdragon 855 that isn't called Plus. The Snapdragon 855 Plus is targeted at gaming and VR. It includes the 8-core Cryo 485 CPU with the main core clocked up to 2.96 gigahertz paired with an Adreno 640 graphics card that Qualcomm claims will be 15% faster than the standard 855's graphic card. The SoC will only have 4G on board, so 5G will need a separate modem if you're going to get this in a 5G phone. The Snapdragon 855 Plus will be available soon, with Asus confirming it will be in the upcoming ROG Phone 2, the Republic of Gaming Phone 2 that's coming July 23rd, and the Galaxy Note 10 coming August 7th is likely to use this system on a chip as well. This is not a huge update, but it's kind of big news right now because it's going to show up in phones soon, and it's going to provide a little more power for gaming. I think a lot of people are surprised that it won't have 5G built-in, but it doesn't mean it can't be in a 5G phone. It just means that phone's going to have to have a separate modem part for that. I would assume Qualcomm eventually to have this kind of power upgrade with a 5G modem built-in, but for now, not that many people need the 5G phone anyway. And your Note 10 I think could take good advantage of this little power boost. Absolutely. Well, I don't know Tom, Roger, or anybody out there if you use Twitter for the desktop. I do not, but a lot of people do. And Twitter has decided to roll out a new desktop version to the public that uses it, that includes a new left-hand sidebar that points to things like notifications, direct messages, explore, bookmarks, lists, and the like. Direct messages in particular feels a little bit more like an inbox at least in, you know, compared to what it was before, where you can view and respond to conversations all in one place. Profile switching, support for more themes, and advanced search all got updates as well. And it's rolling out now. Tom, I don't know if you're seeing it yet, but I am not. I have not seen it yet. I'm going to reload right now. Yeah, I'm kind of reloaded right before. No, it has not changed. It's not for me, but I have to say, the first thing that struck me about this was it reminded me of how Netflix added a left-side bar to its Apple TV app, and a bunch of its apps. And I think for a long time, designers of UX were trying to avoid the sidebar, the left-side bar, and it just seems to be coming back into vogue now. Like, you know what? We give up. I guess the left-side nav is not going away. And what was that really in favor of? Just drop down so that you could increase your real estate on the left side and put something else there? Right, this is a cluttered feel. This new look, when you look at the screenshots of it, I'm like, ooh, yeah, there's not a lot of room for the tweets in the middle. But navigationally, it is a lot easier to see the things that you need to choose versus when you just had like two or three options across the top in the older version, then, you know, like with tabs. Sometimes when you wanted to find something, you had to guess which one of those tabs or which actual nav option it was hidden in. So they've pulled some stuff out of the more section and put it in the left-side nav, which is good, like, for finding direct messages now. And I think the, you know, the fact that direct messages is beefed up is great, but it's funny. Both the direct message screen and the Twitter home screen are more cluttered. The direct message screen being more cluttered is a good thing to me because it's like, oh, now it feels more like a messaging handling system. Yeah, exactly. Well, it sort of reminds me, and I know Twitter has its own agenda here, but it reminds me of Facebook's recent messaging about Messenger and the fact that they understand, the company understands that not everything needs to be public and there's, you know, private group chats going on. And Twitter's direct messages has supported group chatting as well for some time. And if Twitter knows, and they do, whether or not we're all using DMs, I don't use them very often, but I think if it was a better experience overall, I might use it the way that I use Instagram direct messaging for whatever reason. That's something that, you know, is pretty prolific in my friend group. So, yeah, I mean, it makes sense that Twitter's like, hey, we got all these features, right? We might as well throw them at everybody, make it more prominent, at least for the people who are using desktop. Yeah, I have a lot of people, especially people outside the United States who use direct message to communicate. And so having that work better on the desktop is great. I think the other interesting thing is they have hidden moments. Moments has now moved into the more menu. So I would expect moments to eventually go away, but they prioritize explore, which is trying to show you more things they think you will be interested in, which, you know, the curse of the algorithm, right? That's always a little dicey if it's putting you in a bubble or something. But I've never used moments or explore. So I don't think it's going to change my own personal use, but it might change the experience for a lot of people. I'd also like to know just out of curiosity if anybody wants to write in. If you preferred desktop Twitter, why? Because I specifically just use Mac apps whenever I can. I've been using Tweetbot forever. So there are so many Twitter features that I know about because we talk about it on the show, but I don't actually have because I'm using a third party app. But yeah, I'd love to know if, you know, what about the desktop experience is advantageous? Yeah, and I'll add to that. Tweetdeck users like myself chime in as well. Yeah. Facebook's David Marcus posted his prepared testimony in advance of his appearance before the U.S. Senate on Tuesday and the U.S. House on Wednesday. Marcus says the Libra Association has no intention of competing with sovereign currencies, no intention of entering into monetary policy. The Libra Association plans to register as a money services business with the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and will comply with anti-money laundering laws and the Bank Secrecy Act rules. So they're saying all the right things. We want to be a, you know, chuck cashing place, essentially. We don't want to be a bank. Marcus also said that Libra will not hold personal data beyond transaction info and personal info provided to Facebook's Calibra wallet, which remembers a separate thing from the Libra Association, will not be shared with the social network or used for ad targeting. We have talked about the fact that you could opt to change that, we think, but we'll see how Calibra rolls out right now. He's emphasizing that by default, Calibra won't share information with Facebook. The Libra Association is headquartered in Geneva and will therefore follow Swiss Federal Data Protection Regulations for its privacy policies. So, you know what, I have a feeling all of this is going to be lost on the people asking the questions over the next two days because already ahead of the testimony, U.S. House Democrats are considering a bill called the Keep Big Tech Out of Finance Act. The wording is highly targeted to make Libra illegal or at least to make Facebook's participation in it illegal. It's still being finalized. It has not been introduced, but the current wording would ban platforms with global revenue of more than $25 billion or more from becoming or being affiliated with a financial institution. So, 25 billion or more, well, there's a handful of companies that meet that. And among those, the ones trying to be affiliated with a financial institution in the form of being a member of the 27 or 28 people running the Libra Association, there is one, Facebook. A bill would target Facebook the way it is currently worded. A platform is defined as offering to the public an online marketplace and exchange or a platform for connecting third parties. TechCrunch speculated that might apply to PayPal at some point, but it doesn't make $25 billion or more. So, at this point, it doesn't. It really does seem like all the House and Senate want to do is make Libra Association not happen. Yeah, I think it's a combination of what I can see, a combination of people saying I don't understand this or I am frightened by it. And then you've got the other camp of, you know, keep big tech out of finance. You know, those little finance guys, they, you know, don't run over the financial institutions. It's, it's, it, there are, there's a lot of incentive from people who work in finance to say, everything's fine. Why would you want to recreate this? Nothing is wrong with the way that currency works now. There is, there is no reason that you have to be involved. And, you know, that, that is super short-sighted. I think my best guess is we're going to hear a lot of very uninformed questions over the next two days that don't get to the heart of the matter, that don't get to the actual issues of how will this be used? Will it in fact help the unbanked if you don't have enough money to have a bank account now? How are you going to buy your Libra? I would like to hear a lot more. But that's what I'd like to hear him talk about. I don't think that's what we're going to hear. We're going to hear a lot of grandstanding that allows an elected representative to campaign on the people who leaked your information and swung the election against whoever you wanted to win. I want to get into money and we're going to stop them. That's really the message that the elected representatives want to get out there. And it's in contradiction to what I think the Libra Association is actually trying to do. To be honest, I don't really know how Libra will or will not affect my life because I don't have the opportunity to use it yet in any capacity. There's a lot that Facebook kind of isn't saying yet and I think that that's by design. I understand the confusion on a certain level. But to say, well, this is just going to be a whole thing for criminals is that's not true. So today for protests everybody see what we did there. 2,000 workers are on strike at seven Amazon stores in Germany with the slogan no more discount on our incomes. And a six-hour stoppage is being conducted in an Amazon site in Minnesota as well. We talked about that on Friday. Leafletting and protest organized but the GMB Union at the GMB Union are happening at several Amazon sites in the UK as well. Amazon says it's pay and working conditions compare favorably to similar businesses and doesn't expect the protest to impact deliveries. And Gadget's Nicole Lee has her story on the Minnesota Amazon strike up as she mentioned. She talked about it a little bit but she was our guest on Friday and we spoke with her a little bit more about it at the time. So, you know, the fact that it's Prime Day is just one of many stories about this. Yeah, seven Amazon, I don't know if they're all warehouses or storage locations but there are certainly locations with warehouse type workers unionized workers on strike in Germany is a smaller percentage of the number of people employed by Amazon in Germany. So, it's more sending a message as Amazon says they don't expect this to impact deliveries. This is about optics just as much as the House and Senate interviewing David Marcus is. They're trying to say we don't think Amazon is treating us well. Amazon says no, we treat you great. What are you talking about? I don't expect this to really have any impact on Amazon's big sale that they're operating right now but it is an indication that the workers are unhappy and there's enough of them unhappy to cause some protests around the world in various locations so it's a problem that's not just going to go away, right? Well, this is also protest work this way right now. Yeah, I actually ordered something same day on Amazon that I needed because I had been traveling and I needed a certain cable that I left up in Sonoma and, you know, came within a couple hours, great. So there are many reasons that Amazon works wonderfully for me, especially in a pinch, but if enough workers struck then it would be a problem on Prime Day because this is something that gets a lot of hype and the company, you know, tries to kind of turn into a holiday of sorts and it gets a lot of attention and if you don't have your workforce you can't execute it. Yeah, and by the way if you're wondering like why aren't we talking about the sale cause we don't want to do a commercial for Amazon, it kind of disheartens me every year at this time when everybody does stories about the deals there are certain outlets that that's their thing, right? Like CNET had a columnist who talked about deals and of course that columnist is going to talk about any deals that are happening any given day including today but it just it does feel like there's a lot more light than heat around this sale and because of that I think that's why you're seeing the worker protests focused on this day because there's all this hype around it and of course like you said it may not be big now but this is how it starts some US TV stations have started broadcasting and what's called ATSC 3.0 which among other things supports 4K broadcasts with HDR at up to 120 frames per second over the air put up an antenna plug it into your TV get some 4K broadcast over the air right here in the good old US of A it also collects information on viewing habits from your net connected TV and can remotely turn on your TV for emergency broadcasts both of those have received some controversy it's easy to get away from the tracking because you have to have some kind of internet connected device to send the tracking back to the broadcaster so if you just don't have a net connected TV you're fine or if your new tuner doesn't have a net connection on then you would be fine I guess they could play some bad ball and make you have an internet connection for the tuner to work but it doesn't seem like that's going to be the case they're remotely turning on the TV creeps some people out but as long as it really is only used for emergency broadcasts I'm fine with that antennas will be able to receive it right now if you've got an HD antenna you'll be able to get the 4K broadcast too however it's not backwards compatible with ATSC 1.0 tuners which is what everybody has had since the digital TV transition a decade ago so you'll have to get a new TV or a new tuner if you want to take advantage of these new broadcasts and there aren't any available yet the new ATSC 3.0 tuners aren't expected until next year meantime stations that are broadcasting in ATSC 3.0 have to continue to also broadcast in ATSC 1.0 for at least five years the expectation is most of them will broadcast for longer than that because they know a big partition of their audience are going to continue to just use the older tuners and this isn't like the digital TV transition where the government is going to step in and subsidize tuners and all of that so I would imagine we'll get 1.0 broadcast for a lot longer than five years but if you want the 4K HDR broadcast starting next year you'll be able to get a tuner and they're already starting to test these broadcasts so that they'll be there for you when you do. I so I've got an OTA antenna I watch a fair amount of network TV that way and they are HD broadcasts and I don't know what 4K content would even be in that package eventually I wouldn't even want it I wouldn't care well over the air broadcast right so if you wanted to watch the Mass Singer in 8 4K you'll be able to. Okay yeah I guess there's certain Wimbledon right I mean maybe you just want to see that crisper than ever broadcast would have been in 4K yeah they're okay so there are some exceptions but it also sounds like I don't have to panic for at least five years. Yeah I'm probably longer but yeah I say this is for the person who wants to early adopt it'll be out there next year and it's good to know that the TV stations are starting to broadcast I think 40 major market stations have committed to starting their 3.0 broadcasts by the end of this year so you should have lots of broadcasts once you do by a tuner if you choose to buy a tuner. Cool. To get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes be sure to subscribe to dailytechheadlines.com A lot of Huawei news happened over the weekend and today so I'm going to try to combine all of that for you into a digestible form so you can be up to date the most recent a senior US official telling Reuters that the US may approve licenses for companies to sell to Huawei in as soon as two weeks we had the president saying they would start approving it and then last week US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the licenses would be issued if there is no threat to national security so providing parts for phones that kind of thing would be allowed one would expect now we know within two weeks they're going to start approving these these licenses Reuters sources indicated the two chip companies a customer response management company and a firm that simulates cross-sectional radar for Huawei are among the companies filing applications you can expect more to file as this becomes apparent meanwhile sources tell Wall Street Journal that Huawei is preparing to lay off hundreds of workers from its US subsidiary Futureway Futureway is in the Silicon Valley it's a research and development subsidiary and Chinese employees of Futureway are apparently going to be offered a chance to transfer back home to China but it looks like Futureway is going to be shut down and there will be no Huawei R&D happening in Silicon Valley Huawei has previously said it increased revenue in the first half of this year it'll be interesting to see how that plays out when they announce their first half numbers on July 30th and then 5G, whoa lots to say about 5G last week Monaco launched its 5G network using Huawei equipment remember there's been a lot of pressure from the US to get especially European nations not to use Huawei equipment Huawei announced it will invest 3.1 billion dollars in Italy over the next three years as long as Italy ensures that it's new rules on state intervention of 5G networks and they just passed a decree saying the state can step in and prevent some equipment if it's a security problem from being used in building 5G networks in Italy Huawei said will invest 3.1 billion dollars in Italy as long as you apply that decree to everybody they want it to be transparent efficient and fair they want all vendors to be a subject to this decree they don't want it to be just targeted at them and of course telecom at Italia and Vodafone Italia are expected jointly roll out 5G infrastructure in Italy so the pressure will be on them as to what they buy and whether they're going to try to invoke this decree or whether they would tempt invoking the decree I guess in a letter from the chair of the UK Science and Technology Committee to the UK's digital minister Jeremy Wright the committee says we have found no evidence from our work to suggest that the complete exclusion of Huawei from the UK's telecommunications networks would from a technical point of view constitute a proportionate response to the potential security threat proposed by foreign suppliers in other words you can use Huawei equipment we don't think it would be proportional to ban it it's not that much of a threat however it does recommend the exclusion of Huawei equipment from the core of 5G networks and recommends that Huawei equipment be restricted if Huawei does not address security competence remember we talked about on DTNS the Huawei oversight board report said Huawei isn't an intentional security problem however they aren't very good at cyber security and they don't seem to be making progress on patching their pretty mundane vulnerabilities and so this letter says you're fine to use Huawei equipment don't use it in the core and if they don't improve on patching their vulnerabilities then we might change our minds I gotta say I love Monaco being like launched 5G here we are we're Monaco you know how many people live in Monaco not very many it's a very small region it's hard to compare it to a lot of other countries but yeah lots to unpack here 28,695 people lived in Monaco in 2017 how many? 38,000 well I don't know if you've ever been there but it's a really small little independent nation but next to Italy so yeah I don't know the layoffs from Huawei's R&D subsidiary that is interesting to me kind of came out of nowhere maybe not for some of you but I had not heard of it before I wasn't familiar with what was going on there and it kind of makes sense that there are there just gonna have to be some changes particularly in the Silicon Valley area and that might even be a trend that we see more of from companies that aren't based in the US you may not remember it as Futureway but we did talk about on the show before the fact that the US employees of Huawei were ordered not to talk to the rest of their employees in other words Futureway employees don't talk to anyone in China that's them so this is kind of just throwing the baby and the bathwater out saying you know what instead of trying to wall off our R&D you're just gonna get rid of it even if the restrictions are easing because don't forget these licenses are being issued or going to be issued within the next couple weeks but they're not issued forever so it's sort of a temporary easing to see how things go and the licenses could be revoked again we could go through this whole dance again in a few months Thanks everybody who participates in our subreddit Huawei stories show up there regularly as well as others you can submit your own stories that you think might be good for the show and good for the community and vote on others at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com we're also on facebook join our group if you haven't already facebook.com slash groups we're also on facebook.com slash dailytechnewshow all right let's check in with Chris Christensen the amateur traveler who's sharing a bit on airport navigation for the blind Chris Christensen from amateur traveler with another tech in travel minute great story out of travel Paul so professor out of Carnegie Mellon who's been blind since 14 has launched a navigation app for his local airport for the Pittsburgh airport that lets blind people navigate the airport how do you feedback it works like an indoor GPS allows you to do everything from finding the gate to find a gift shop or a cafe or just wandering around for a bit it's not the only app out there like that apparently Louisville International in Kentucky has a similar app but a great use of technology I'm Chris Christensen from amateur traveler Thank you Chris that's good accessibility stuff to know and if anybody's using this let us know feedback at dailytechnewshow.com how well it works for you let's check out the mail bag speaking of let's do it Michael who writes in from what he says is overcast and unseasonally cool Yokohama Michael says you talked about Amazon recently offering retraining for staff and programming and other fields having worked in a Japanese software firm for 15 years it came as a shock to me how few people we hired for software development had studied programming at the university level or anywhere for that matter before joining us and we had some really good programmers everyone who's hired is trained to do the thing that they're hired to do one advantage to this method is that we had around half male half female programming staff when it doesn't matter when you studied before anyone can do any task male or female so numbers don't get skewed by what's so popular to study the guy who graduated in marketing is trained alongside the gal who studied education for example the purpose of education is to learn how to learn the company is going to train you in the task you need to do for them and they'll continue with the training up to the ranks of management my first two supervisors leading the development teams were the female seniors of the department this was how everything worked back in the 1990s in the early 2000s LinkedIn and other Western influence may have changed that dynamic over the past decade but if the factory worker wants to train to become a software developer and has the work ethic and ability to learn I don't see why training in a different field won't work most of our best programmers and later managers haven't even used a computer before joining our company now I already know somebody's going to write in and say you know my experience in Japan is not that much gender equality and while Michael I think is trying to make a point about one of the benefits of this way of doing things I don't think his point was that Japan has perfect gender equality I think his point was it was an interesting way for him to experience the idea of you don't have to have gone to school in engineering or programming to get a job as a programmer and maybe what Amazon's doing even though it's different Amazon saying we'll pay to retrain you you pick what you want go train it and if you want a job back at Amazon great but you don't have to that's a little different than what Michael's talking about but there is the point of saying hey anybody could potentially do anything if they're interested and show enough talent to be able to learn it and so I'm curious if there are other people who worked in Japan in that same era 90s through the early 2000s who had similar experiences and I know we have several listeners in Japan let us know if you think that it's no longer like that or never was like that if you if you think that feedbackanddailytechnewshow.com but I love this insight from Michael thank you Michael for sending it to us because the idea of saying we just want smart people and then we'll train them to do the job we want could be a way to help overcome the challenges of automation and displacement of workers hmm what industry uses that hmm could it be media anybody in media will tell you we'll hire anybody who's smart and wants to do the job we don't care what kind of degree you have I have a broadcast degree but I mean does that matter that's funny because three of us working on this independent show all of us have journalism degrees right right I know but it is increasingly uncommon there you go that's what happens if you have a journalism degree you just end up going off on your own because you learned how to you learn the principles of it and you're like yeah I just do this myself shaking your fist oxford comma that's just me thanks to all of our patrons you make the show you help those of us with journalism degrees do every day yeah well we're doing a survey right now if you go to dailytechnooshow.com slash survey you can find it and click through to the Google form and let us know what you think it helps us improve the show and one of the things we're asking people is like what is compelling about Patreon so far a lot of the answers are just being able to support the show and when we love that because really if you do become a member we try to give 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