 Coming up on DTNs, sports is back from real sports people. Thanks to Video Games, the latest tech that's tracking people to stop the virus spreading and tips to keep your home network running smoothly from Patrick Norton. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, March 20, 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. Drawing the top tech stories from Cleveland, Ohio, I'm Len Peralta. Where are you, Patrick Norton? I'm west of Kansas City and east of St. Louis. And that's about as exact as I can get. Somewhere in the hills of Missouri. Somewhere in the hills. We were just talking about how GameSpot calling themselves an essential service might not be as laughable as you thought. We were also just talking about the situation we're all in and what our thoughts are about it. If you want to get that, get Good Day Internet. Become a member at patreon.com slash DTNs. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Google has canceled Google I.O entirely. It had previously canceled the in-person event, but planned on doing a digital event on May 12th to 14th. Not the case anymore. In other Google news, Google has discounted its Stadia Premier edition, featuring a controller, Chromecast Ultra, and three months of Stadia Pro from $129 down to $99 just in the U.S. for a one-day sale until 11, 59 p.m. Pacific Time, Friday, March 20, if you're watching the show live. That's tonight. If you're not, you may have already missed it. This coincides with the Friday launch of Doom Eternal, which is $59.99 for the standard edition and $89.99 for the Deluxe Edition. Stadia will also plan to launch a free tier of Stadia in the coming months. Former Google engineer Anthony Lewandowski has pleaded guilty to one count of stealing trade secrets. Under a plea agreement, Lewandowski admits to downloading thousands of files related to Google's self-driving project that later became Waymo. Then Lewandowski launched Auto, a self-driving truck company that was bought by Uber, and Waymo later sued Uber over the trade secret theft. Lewandowski now faces a prison sentence of between 24 and 30 months. Waymo has suspended all of its self-driving services in Arizona until at least April 7. Only its fully autonomous cars had been left in operation, but even those will now be shut down. Matt, we went from Google I.O. to Google Stadia to a former Google engineer with self-driving cars to Waymo to Tesla. Tesla's Shanghai factory is back to work, and its production rate has now passed pre-virus levels. Tesla also announced Thursday it will transition to minimum basic operations at its plant in Fremont, California, starting March 24. That's the one it'd been resisting cutting back on. Tesla CEO Elon Musk had said his factory could produce ventilators if needed. UK-based Formula One teams, their engine manufacturers and technology arms are all working with the United Kingdom to help manufacture ventilators there. And from a Tesla story, we go to a Microsoft story. So I guess it broke the chain. Well, we broke the chain. Microsoft announced a new version of its graphics API, DirectX 12 Ultimate, which unifies a number of hardware features to make optimizing games for the Xbox Series X and modern GPUs from Nvidia and AMD easier. DirectX 12 Ultimate includes support for ray tracing 1.1, as well as variable-rate shading, mesh shaders, and sample feedback. AMD will support DirectX 12 on cards based on its RDNA2 GPU architecture with Nvidia supporting it on GeForce RTX cards and newer cards. DirectX 12 Ultimate will be released later this year. From games to games, though, the Game Developers Conference has been rescheduled for August 4th through the 6th at Moscone Center in San Francisco. GDC Summer will feature technical content, new series of microtox and fireside chats, as well as career development sessions. And you may have a new phone by then. HMD Global announced the Nokia 8.35G. Its first 5G-enabled device and the first of any 5G device to support all 5G bands in all countries worldwide. The Nokia 8.35G goes on sale this summer for 599 euros for the 6G model and $649 for the 8G model. All right, let's talk a little bit about listening to music. You'd think maybe with a lot of more people staying home, more people would be listening to music and you'd be wrong. Quartz notes that Italy's Spotify users averaged 18.3 million total streams of the top 200 songs per day in February 2019. But since a national quarantine was announced March 9th, total streams of the top 200 songs have not topped 14.4 million. That's just under 4 million less. There was a 23% drop between March 3rd and March 17th. In the United States, total Spotify streams of the top 200s fell to 77 million on March 17th. The lowest total so far this year, UK, France and Spain have also seen drops. Now maybe that when you're shut inside, you just go for less popular songs, flattening the curve, if you will. But it does seem like maybe people just don't listen to as much music right now because they're not in those situations. Yeah, it's the commuting has dropped. People are maybe going on fewer outdoor exercise, long form stuff where you listen to music. Definitely the case with me. I don't, not for any good reason, but I don't listen to a lot of streaming music at home, but I do when I'm out and about. So my own use has gone down quite a bit. I'm just waiting for the surge on Leonard Cohen playlists or semi-depressed folksy songwriters. You forgot how much you liked until you were really depressed about not being able to leave your house. Like there's going to be these surge and playlists nobody's ever heard of. We have seen an extreme spike in Everybody Knows. Yeah, I do think this is an interesting thing because you would think like, oh, more people with more time maybe means more music, but they're doing other things. They're watching video, playing video games. And the music is like you say, Sarah, for going outside and hanging out, which fewer people are doing, or in your car when you're driving to work, which fewer people are doing. So yeah. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman and Debbie Wu's sources say that Apple's 5G iPhone models are still on schedule to ship this fall. Mass production is reportedly not set to begin until May. Assembly factories run by Foxconn in China hope to be fully operating by the end of March, but sources say not all operations may get up to normal speed for another month as the flow of components to assemble is still slow. The iPhone release timeline could also slip if Apple isn't able to send full teams of engineers to Chinese factories to finalize designs and resolve issues. China Xiaomi resumed operations for more than 80% of its supply chain as of Thursday. Xiaomi had also reopened more than 1,000 stores in China, and it plans to launch the red K90 Pro on March 24th. Well, this is good news overall that these factories are coming back online. It's interesting news that Gurman and Wu have sources saying, yeah, we think the iPhone will ship. We think we'll be out of this by then. And if all factors are as we expect, it shouldn't be a problem. But I want to know when those engineers can get to China the latest for them to sign off on things, because there is no chance that engineers from California are going to fly to China anytime soon. Yeah. And if for some reason they can't get there, do things slip through the cracks, or do we just get dates pushed out? I would hope the letter. If I can jump in for a second. A company that's got $100 billion or $150 billion squirreled away can probably figure out a way to get engineers to China if they need to. Is it about money, or is it about just China saying, no, we're not letting you in? Well, I mean, I feel like with the kind of money we're talking about here, because Foxconn was saying like, okay, there's been like one group is basically tracking wait times on phones. Like, okay, and their judge was that Foxconn appeared to be completely back online, given that the reduction in the time it was taking to deliver phones, right? That the parts availability was back up again and phone availability was back up again. But I think there's so much money at stake here, and Apple has such a relationship with so many heavy players in China. I feel like if they needed to get a half dozen engineers over there, they'd figure out a way to get a half dozen engineers over there. That also may be my utter belief that capitalism may be able to pay for what it wants. Unless China wants Apple to not be as popular for some other reason. Well, that's tinfoil headsets. Also really quick, I called it the red K90, K30. Oh, K30 Pro. Yeah, no problem. We're not ready for 90 yet. Hold your horses. Previously on DTNS, we've talked about efforts in South Korea and Israel to track people to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Here are the latest efforts from around the world. Singapore launched a voluntary contact tracing app that identifies people who've been exposed to those with COVID-19 called Trace Together. And if you're using it, it will exchange Bluetooth signals to detect other users within two meters and let you know, like, hey, there's somebody near you that has been near someone who's been infected. Users voluntarily send their logs when requested by the health ministry. The data's all kept on the device, so you have to avowedly send it. But apparently people are willing to do that in large numbers. Taiwan has added an electronic fence mobile app to make sure quarantined people stay home. Police and local officials are alerted if the phone leaves the area or is turned off. And even if it's still in the area, officials call the phone twice a day to make sure people didn't just walk out without the phone. And if nobody answers, then they send somebody along to check. People returning to Hong Kong are being given an electronic wristband that links to a phone to ensure they are following quarantine requirements. Although they're having some problems with activations, only a third were activated as of Friday. China's sense time can detect people in a crowd with an elevated temperature, but not if they're wearing a mask. So if they're wearing one of those coverings of their face, it doesn't really work. But if they can see the whole face, they can make a guess of whether somebody has a fever. And Thailand and Vietnam are also using mobile apps to track location history and enforce quarantines. And if you missed our discussion of this previously, combining comprehensive testing with tracking has been, at least in Korea, shown to be fairly successful at limiting the spread. Yeah, I don't know, Patrick. Some of this, you go, jeez. I mean, it's like being on house arrest, really. Like, honestly, in a much more dramatic way than just let shelter in place everybody. At the same time, as we've talked about earlier this week, drastic times call for drastic measures. Does any of this not sit well with you? You know, at this point, I think my biggest concern has been, A, watching what people buy when they're ripping through the store shelves, trying to stock up for being locked in their houses, and, B, I was in a big sporting goods store picking up something for my son's birthday because we wanted to pick it up before maybe all the stores were locked down for the duration. And, you know, it was like Christmas at the toy store over at the gun counter. And, you know, as someone who owns firearms and who has firearms training and who knows a little bit about firearms, some of the questions we're hearing, we're just, I was just thinking, like, I do not want you heavily armed as panicked as you sound in my neighborhood. Like, and stuff like that. People being freaked out or panicked bothers me. And yeah, it's, you know, do I want to be traced and to tell everybody, everybody I've talked to, for an indefinite period of time? Not at all. You know, would I do that to help curb an infection? Probably. You know, I'm just, I'm still kind of blown away that the fact that you guys are basically all in shelter in place and they were ordering businesses to be shut down in California if they needed on-site employees. I mean, that's, that's intense. That's hardcore. Yeah. And it's not as many businesses as some people are thinking from the headlines. There's a lot of exceptions, including podcasting. Podcasting is considered an essential service. So that's, that's good to know. But yeah, we had the long gun lines here. To grease Gavin's palms. Store over in Culver City that no, I don't have any grease for Gavin. That's still a hell of a way. Yeah. But yeah. But yeah, you were telling me the big lines outside of the gun show. And part of me is like, I get that people are afraid that people are going to rush their house and steal their toilet paper. But the flip side is, you know, this is not the time to decide you're going to defend the man's with a high caliber rifle, especially if you live in incredibly densely populated areas. It just doesn't work out well in those cases. Yeah. It's, it's such a line to walk between carrying enough and heating mornings and taking everything seriously and not panicking. And a lot of people are doing one or the other. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that Instagram is testing an ephemeral text messaging feature that clears a thread whenever you leave it after code for it was discovered by app researcher Jane Manchin-Wong. The testing implementation allows users to swipe up from a DM conversation to launch a dark, dark mode messaging window with messages disappearing once closed. Currently, the function is an internal testing only and no word on when or even if it will launch. Yeah. And is it end to end encrypted? Does it take any measures to mitigate against screenshots, et cetera, et cetera? Those are questions I would have, but interesting to see them doing that. Yeah. Really, the whole ephemeral thing on Instagram, which is very popular, it's all image-based, and it's for everybody who follows you, right? Unless you're, unless you specifically add only certain people or if you have a private account. So that's ephemeral, but it sounds like it's a very different idea than what Instagram is going with this if this becomes something that the public could use. It's sort of like, okay, we're already having a private DM conversation, but this is like really private. Like I want this erased, as soon as I tell you, Tom, my deeper secret. I want no record. Yeah. The screenshot should definitely be something I know about, as Snapchat does already. So the functionality is certainly there if Instagram wants to give you that. Last weekend, La Liga Clubs, Raelle Bettis and Sevilla played their canceled derby on FIFA 20. That's a video game case you don't know. With a first team player representing each side. So starting lineup player on each side. Britain's late in orient started a tournament that grew to 128 teams, all playing as themselves, or somebody from the team playing. NASCAR will have its top racers take part in the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series starting March 22nd on Fox Sports. And also on Sunday, Formula One's top racers will take part in the eSports Virtual Grand Prix starting with the Virtual Bahrain Grand Prix on YouTube, Twitch and Facebook. So I would like to see more of this. I want to see top players from Major League Baseball, the NBA, the NHL, all playing video game versions of their sports live on the Internet, television, whatever. I think this is fantastic. They have to live stream themselves though and make sure it's not just that someone from his camp is pretending to be so-and-so. Absolutely, yeah. This is cool though. I mean, it's not cool in the sense that it's like watching the sport that you wanted them to play in the first place, but there is some sort of like, hey, let's try to make the best of a situation that we don't have any control over right now. And there is a fun community aspect to this. I don't know. I'm trying to be... You know, you're trying to be sports ball positive. You're looking at the bright things and it's filling time. I'm just laughing because I'm thinking about some of the people I know that play video games who are like super... Tom, they're gracious. They're well-spoken. They make puns. And they start playing a video game and it's like listening to drunken sailors trying to figure out who can curse worse than the other. That's only when I play Animal Crossing though. I remember that day with the Bejeweled tournament, man. Yeah, before we get off this topic we do have to acknowledge that these are professional sports players, organizers, broadcasters, treating esports as sports. That has been a controversy. That has been a point of contention with some people there. Not all of them. A lot of professional sports people involved in professional sports have been very respectful of esports. But there's a little Sheldon Freud out there right now that the pro sports people have to live in the esports world right now, especially after some of the things that have been said about esports over the years. So we had to acknowledge that. Acknowledge. Hey, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to DailyTechHeadlines.com. Networks, man. As we said, thank you, Sis Edmund. Thank you, Network Professionals. It is not easy to keep these things running right now. A lot of efforts going into this. Following discussions with the EU Commissioner Terry Bretton, Amazon and YouTube have now joined Netflix's commitment to reduce Internet bandwidth usage in Europe. Amazon will reduce its prime video streaming bit rates. YouTube says it will switch all traffic in the EU to standard definition by default. Meanwhile, here in the United States, Dish Networks is letting Verizon ATT and T-Mobile use some of its spectrum to increase their LTE capacity. T-Mobile also got permission to use spectrum from Comcast, New Level, and a few other companies for 60 days. Verizon got permission from the FCC to borrow spectrum from North Star and SNR. The FCC granted U.S. cellular additional spectrum. AT&T has suspended stock buybacks in part to invest in its network infrastructure. And that's just the network providers. Once that Internet gets into your house, you may have your own networking problems, your own problems with people using it because you got more people in your house than usual. You're doing higher bandwidth activities like streaming in Netflix. So Patrick, what do we do if all the folks staying home are killing your ability to stream the Witcher? It's all about the Witcher. Well, part of this is one of the things to think about is, right, we already know, as you mentioned, Europe's been hit, Netflix has, you know, basically the EU was like Netflix, only, you know, streaming SD, which is such a horrifying thought as a video geek. But they, you know, squeezed the knobs and got their bandwidth down 25%. I think a lot of people don't realize just exactly how much video is consumed on a normal day. What a huge percentage of overall network traffic that is. And then a situation like this, you know, the Netflix viewings over the top, you know, things like video, like people have been tracking some of the stuff like in Italy, for example, and like certain activities are up like 70%, 200% over normal. And so one of the things you want to realize is that, yes, the internet is as more people shelter in place as more people, you know, kind of, you know, go in and hide for the duration, the networks are going to get stressed and we're going to learn a lot about that, right? I also just want to give a shout out. I've been fascinated that a lot of the carriers are like, you know, we're not going to kill anybody's account because they can't pay if it's COVID related to a bunch of other stuff. They've been raising caps or eliminating caps. And like as somebody who seems like, I feel like I've spent most of my adult life saying, you know, rude, angry, but incredibly accurate things about, you know, carriers and ISPs. It's like, oh, wow, you know, isn't that nice of them? So isn't that nice of them? But one of the things, you know, you want to do, right, is if you can't, one, if you can't stream, right? Let's say, you know, you're in a neighborhood in California and everybody's home and all five of their kids are home and their kids are home for college and Grammys there and everybody else's stuff into a building and they're all trying to stream whatever they want to want. You know, there's only so much you can do if the Internet's, you know, choked. And one of the things you can do is take advantage of Android and iOS applications from Netflix and Disney Plus and other things. Hey, you have the ability to download a lot of stuff to your phone locally, which can be really frustrating because you can't maybe watch it immediately, but if you let it sit in the background and let it download, you can watch it later, right? You of course can still purchase things from, you know, the iTunes store, the Play Store, the Amazon store. You can purchase videos and again have those download in drips and draps and have those available. There are also still things like Blu-rays and DVDs and if you're willing to venture out of your house to one of the rare places that still has a stock of them, you know, picking up three or four seasons of your favorite show may get you through a few days without going completely insane if you can't stream. Inside your house, the big thing I would do is if you have like four children and four rooms and like four computers or four televisions going on, I would basically immediately either go to my router and start throttling the amount of bandwidth that you get because most applications are smart enough to readjust the streaming resolution based on the available bandwidth or two, just go in and slam everybody's down to go into the Netflix setting on the app for their device and turn the settings or the Disney Plus or whatever that is because all of these applications afford a fair amount of control over the quality of the video stream or conversely, if you throttle down the bandwidth available to each individual in the house, the application will basically do the best with what it has. Can you notice a difference? Absolutely, especially if you're on a massive 4K television and you're enjoying your HDR experience, not that there's that much HDR streaming. Will you notice if it gets throttled back to 720 or goodness help you 540? Yes, you will. Is it going to ruin things? Probably not. Is it better than sitting around and talking to your family and playing games and interacting socially and trying to build a closer community? Absolutely. That's a joke, by the way. Thank you for smiling. Well, you're doing that while you're waiting for it to load because it was too high of a resolution and it got far, right? Yeah. We got an email from Chip in rainy Boston. It was saying a lot of the things we were talking about, Hulu, Disney Plus, Netflix, they all have download options. He was comparing it to charging your car during off-peak hours. He's like, download this stuff at night when no one else is using it or early in the morning and then you can watch it later and don't forget, folks, you can cast downloaded movies in most situations from your mobile device to your television if you've got a Roku or if you've got a television with the right setup or an Apple TV or something like that so or Chromecast, etc. So that's a great idea and he also picked up a Blu-ray player so he's following your advice already. Also, if your router allows it, Patrick mentioned going in and squashing down bandwidth, you can also set time of access in some routers for devices. So if you have a device it doesn't need to be on most of the time and you want it to get its firmware updates while everybody's asleep, you can set those kinds of settings. I'd like to add also as this drags on and people spend more and more time reading news reports or on Facebook, if you find one of your kids like up at two in the morning freaking out because they've been reading reports and they think everything's going to end, feel free to turn off their internet access overnight because nothing really puts a Facebook addict to sleep like not being able to get to Facebook in the wee small hours of the morning or that maybe that's a theory. It almost feels like you're speaking from experience, are you? I'm thinking of an individual who I do not live with but who lives with a friend of mine and they found out that when the internet broke the person next to got a full night of sleep. So yeah, you could target individual devices in that way as well. Yeah. Just a thought. Just a thought. Well, you've been working on this for AVXL, right? So should folks be looking for something there? Yeah, actually, we just Robert Herron and I just started re-recording new episodes of AVXL and this Sunday we should have new episode out where we're just going to be talking about some of your streaming options and why this is why Robert and I own hundreds of Blu-rays and some of the other options and some of our favorite series to watch when you suddenly find yourself with a lot more time than you're used to having. Yeah. So if you want more details on managing your network and more options for lots of that kind of thing, check that out. Join the conversation as well in our Discord. You can share good tips there. It's a great place to do it. You can join by linking to our Patreon account at patreon.com slash dtns. Yeah, man, Discord's been hopping this week. I got to say there's lots of good stuff going on in there. Let's check out the mail bag. Let's. Dan had a couple of recommendations based on your Tom's most recent editor's desk. Dan says, I subscribe to the flip side. I've been very happy with it. It covers big headlines and then sites a summary as well as snippets from reputable news sources from both the left and the right side of the political spectrum. In doing so, I'm able to parse through the partisan language, see what the real story is. Additionally, check out the new paper which aggregates news articles not just political ones and presents them in an easy to read format without clickbait headlines. I like being able to read through the big issues each day without hearing chicken little screaming that the sky is falling simply because a president's needs. Dan goes on to say, love your work. As a result, count me in to help out the other listeners. I bumped up my pledge to the GDI master tier for at least the next few months to help mitigate those who might be struggling these days. Thanks, Dan. Yeah, thank you, Dan. Appreciate that. Super cool. I'm not familiar with either of these links. So, you know, this is Dan's recommendation, but it sounds like really interesting stuff and like Sarah said, if you are curious about that editor's desk, it's a feature that goes out to the patrons at the associate producer level, but I made this last one available to anybody. Just go to patreon.com slash DTNS and anybody can get it. And it's just me going through five ways to help yourself from getting freaked out over the news. Like how to not only use reliable sources, but taking breaks from the news and how to just make sure you're getting, you're staying well informed without, you know, just making yourself lose it over everything that's happening out there. So again, you can find that at our Patreon. Shout out to patrons at our master and grandmaster levels, including Mark Gibson, Dr. Carmine M. Bailey, and Mike McLaughlin. Let's check in with Lamperalta, who has been art, artisting in place in Cleveland. That's right. You know, next week, my bandwidth is going to be really tested as I will have five students here, five kids in varying ages from age, from grade two all the way up to junior in college doing remote learning. I'm also going to be teaching two classes next week and also just working from home and not to mention people who are just going to be streaming stuff. So it's going to be interesting to see how my bandwidth is affected. And this is, this is sort of maybe my response to that. You know, it's like, I don't know if I can handle the strain of streaming help. What can we do? So, you know, yeah, it'll be a big test. We'll see. We'll get through it. And I'm very, very glad that I updated, updated my internet to 400 down, which just a couple months ago. So we're in good shape. We haven't had any big issues, but I guess we'll see once we really kick in. The drawing folks is a pipe of bandwidth spilling water all over lens children. Soaking them in bandwidth. It's almost like dream fulfillment there. Exactly. And this is available at my online store at lundproldestore.com. And hey, you know, if you, I know that things are tough, things are crazy. If you want to throw me a couple bucks over at Patreon, patreon.com forward slash Len, if you download this immediately, if you do that. So thank you so much for your support. Oh, hello. Oh, no, we're good. Let's say thanks to Patrick Norton for being with us and given all those tips. Patrick, anything else to tell people about? Oh, my goodness. Chill out. Deep cleansing breaths. Wash your hands. This too shall pass. All that kind of stuff. It's all good people. abxl.com. And, you know, if you, I'll actually, it occurs to me that I have been on Twitter and approximately forever. So I'll bounce back on Twitter and I would love to hear if you want to tweet at Patrick Norton what your favorite, like basically, you know, series with lots of episodes. That I can catch up on. Folks, we know it's hard times out there. And so there's lots of ways to support the show. If you can't afford to keep the Patreon going, just tell people about the show. Go leave us a review on iTunes. Tweet about it. Get people in the tent. As you heard, we have other people who are luckily able to cover you at this time. And if you are a patron, you can read up on resources you can use if your local school has closed because of COVID-19 in Roger's latest weekly column. Go check that out. Patreon.com slash DTNS. Our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com and we are live Monday through Friday for 30 p.m. Eastern 2030 UTC. Join us if you can and find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. I'm off on Monday. No big deal, but Rich Strafilino will be here alongside Sarah. They will see you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com.