 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you, including Dustin Campbell, Tim Deputy, and Brandon Brooks. Coming up on DTNS clothing rentals go peer to peer. Apple lets Netflix link to its own website from the app, and an online delivery service works best in French Polynesia. DTNS, start now! This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, April 1st, 2022 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. From Columbus, Ohio, I'm Rob Dunwood. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Sarah Lane is off today for April Fools, I imagine. She's just, no, I don't think that's why. But it is April Fools' Day. All of our stories are real. For those of you who have lived through those years of the internet when no actual information came out on April 1st, we seem to have moved past that, and we have actual news to talk about. In fact, let's start with a few tech things you should know. The Entertainment Software Association confirmed that it has canceled all plans for E3 in 2022. The ESA had canceled plans for the in-person show in Los Angeles, but still had planned to host digital showcases. However, that's not going to happen now. The ESA said E3 will return, though, in summer 2023. After launching back in November in beta, Apple made its Apple Business Essentials subscription service available to all customers. It includes tools for configuring, developing, and managing Apple products for your employees, and can be bundled with Apple Care Plus subscriptions. The service now includes a single device subscription with the 50 gigabytes of iCloud storage, and it costs $2.99 per month. I'm bad if you're running a small business. Two teenagers arrested by London Police last week have been charged with multiple cyber offenses as part of the group that breached companies like NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Okta. The two were scheduled to appear at the Highbury Corner Magistrates Court now, April 1st. Meta confirmed that Facebook engineers detected inconsistencies and downracking starting in October of last year. This caused posts flagged by fact-checkers to get regular distribution in the newsfeed, increasing views on them by up to 30%. The issue also fell to demote probable nudity, violence, and Russian state media. Internal documents said the technical issue with the newsfeed was introduced in 2019, but did not have a noticeable impact until October of last year, before initially being identified and resolved in March of 2022. And Google began rolling out quote, stylistic and writing suggestions for Google Docs. So this will flag if you're using repetitive words accidentally, opportunities for you to change the active voice from passive voice, inappropriate words. Those will all get a jagged purple line. You can decide to accept the suggestions or not. Google enables the feature by default though. So if you want to turn it off, you have to go into settings. All right, let's talk about your right to repair. And when I say your, I mean you, Rob, Samsung device owner, what do we got? Yeah, this one definitely applies to me. So Samsung announced a program Thursday to help Samsung Galaxy phone and tablet users repair their own devices. Samsung will offer access to authorized parts and is partnering with iFixit to offer repair tools and guides. Starting this summer, it will be available for the Galaxy S20 and S21 family of products and the Galaxy Tab S7 Plus. You'll be able to use it to replace display assemblies, back glass and charging ports. You'll also be able to send old parts back to Samsung for recycling. More devices and more types of repair will be added in the future. Apple announced a similar program in November that has yet to be launched. Microsoft has also partnered with iFixit on the system for their service devices and Motorola has been offering self repair programs since 2018. Yeah, I feel like this is now a thing. This has become the standard. Let's get it out of the way. It's not perfect. People are going to complain about the price of the parts, maybe complain about the fact that if you use alternative parts sources, you might still violate your warranty. But man, this is well, well better than what we had before, which was any attempt to repair your own device on your own was going to void your warranty. Rob, is this something you think you might take advantage of? It is. Unfortunately for me, I no longer have an S21 or S20 because I've now got the S22. But if I did have one, if I were to keep that device around as a secondary device or something like that, I had a little crack on the screen. I don't know that I would want to send it in and pay the price in case you're going to have to pay to get that thing fixed from Samsung or from your carrier. So the fact that you can now do this and keep your warranty is a big deal. Is it going to be for everyone? Absolutely not. But there are some folks who just like to tank and it's like if I can save 100 bucks by fixing it myself and actually get the play and get my hands dirty a little bit, why not? So I am all for this. Man, and how validating is it for I fix it too to have been fighting this alone without cooperation? In fact, with active opposition sometimes from the companies it was trying to help you repair devices from to be partnered up with Microsoft and Samsung on these. I guess really the only real objection is I'm like, why don't you have the S22 in here? Like, is it a parts supply issue or is it kind of both that and we really want to get the repair stuff done right? I don't know what it is, but I wish it applied to everything all at once. Yeah, I imagine they say it will eventually come out for other devices and I think that it will. So I'm guessing they launched with where they know they have parts in supply that they can actually get the I fix it or get to customers that actually might want to take advantage of this. That makes sense. We got another related Samsung announcement, right? Yeah, so also an unrelated announcement about NFTs. You may recall the Samsung's announcement from CES earlier this year about NFTs and they were going to be bringing it to their TV somehow. Well, this week Samsung announced that it will partner with Nifty Gateway to let you browse, display and interact with NFTs on 2022 premium TV product lines such as the QLED and the Neo QLED TV. There will also be an app for the frame and Samsung's micro LED TVs. The integrations will optimize display settings. Nifty Gateway vets its sellers requiring them to submit personal info or have an active bank account verified through Stripe. This helps combat fraud and bots. You may be able to buy and sell through Samsung integrations once they launch. So I'm reading through this story and it's like every time I think I know what an NFT is, it's just like there's something else that comes out and makes me make you say, do I really know? Because my understanding is that what they're saying is that you can basically click a link on your TV and now buy art. But they throw the NFT word in there to make it. I guess technically these are NFTs, but it's just like NFT just another thing you can do with your TV. I don't see a use case for this, but that's just me. Yes, perhaps most of our audience won't see it as being for them. But I bet there's some folks who love the idea, especially if you have the frame which is meant to display art to say not only am I buying art from my TV, but I'm buying art that only I have access to, which is why it's important that they partnered with Nifty Gateway, which makes sure. Their article should lay out with the frame because the fact that you said it that way, that actually makes it make more sense because it's like I'd like to have this on my frame. Let me click a button and let that happen. So I guess I can understand it. But like I said, NFTs, they just more things are NFTs now. They are still more potential than they are yet reality. Fashion rental platforms had some challenges during the pandemic. A lot of stuff benefited from from work at home, but fewer office workers need an address up for work. Fewer people going out in general. Folks didn't necessarily need the nicer fashionable clothes. Rent the runway probably the front runner in this space, but there are others. UK fashion rental startup by rotation has one of the more interesting models because unlike pretty much everybody else, it doesn't hold any of the clothing inventory itself. It's a fully peer to peer model like like Airbnb, but for fashionable clothing. There's even a social aspect you can follow. You can become a repeat renter. You can rent from the same person repeatedly or maybe you're a fan. They've got mood boards in the UK by rotation competes with companies like my wardrobe HQ her collective. That's HURR. But if you're wondering how they stand out founder Ashita Cabra told TechCrunch, it's very interesting that the shortcuts always end up going back to managing or buying and filling rental orders. Talking about their competitors. Whereas for us, we really spent time, I would say it's been a very painstaking journey, building out the community grassroots in the beginning and also obviously investing most of our resources into the tech, which is to build the social network type platform. So that that seems to be the differentiator here is they were able to not have to centralize the inventory by turning it into sort of a Pinterest meets TikTok kind of a situation. And they think that they're going to do better because of that. In fact, they go go in depth with TechCrunch to say that they are they consider themselves supplementary to places that buy and sell places that buy and sell. Are selling usually what they call fast fashion, you know, some of those things like Zara, H&M that that sort of thing. Whereas this kind of stuff is either current or at least the past couple of years, high fashion, not main street fashion, not or as they call it in Europe high street fashion. This is like, you know, your your your runway type stuff, like rent the runway, but you're running it directly from someone and and that's where that social aspect comes in. They don't have to centralize the inventory because they have built up the ability for someone to become a fan of someone's closet and say like, yeah, I want to keep renting from you. You have the best stuff. Yeah, I see this potentially absolutely taken off because this is a big deal. People are realizing that I'm not going to go buy this dress that I can only be seen wearing it once. Let me go get it from this person who I can pay, you know, nice, you know, rental rate for it and actually get it. And it seems like they're kind of they're being the middleman, but they're allowing you to still deal directly with the actual person who has to close. So I see this as, you know, it's a fashion company, but this is a big tech play. They basically are going to be playing matchmaker on the internet for people who have really nice clothes and want to share them around. And I think that this could, you know, ultimately be, you know, a pretty nice business venture for them. Yeah, I like one of the stories they told in here about a woman like restored a vintage dress. This wasn't even like a recent fashion thing for her wedding posted about it. Had a lot of followers like praising like, oh, what a beautiful dress. And then people started renting it for their own wedding because they were like, I love that. And I want to have that when I get married. There's so many interesting little sub sub things here. And, you know, there's there's also stuff about there's an argument in here about whether this actually is environmentally friendly or not. You're certainly saving on the generation of clothing by by resharing them with people. But at the same time, you're spending carbon and money to having to have them delivered around. I like the business model. You know, it is prom season right now. I know that there are a lot of high school students who are going through and they're trying to buy the nicest looking dress they can wear one time. And this type of service may you could get it maybe even a lot nicer looking dress and you're just renting it because, you know, you're only going to wear one time to prom. You rent it, you get it, and then you send it back and then somebody else on the other side of the country rents it and they they wear for their prom. I like this business model. Yeah. Oh, that's a great that's a great situation to be in where somebody could be like, oh yeah, you know that thing you saw so and so where on the red carpet for such and such a place. That's my prom dress. I'm renting that I could totally say that. Anyway, this is up and up and running. It's called by rotation.com. It's in the UK right now and they'll be launching in the US they say later this year. So Apple now allows developers of so called reader apps like Netflix and Spotify, for example, to link to a website for account creation and management. Apple defines reader apps as applications that provide access to previously purchased content or content subscriptions for digital magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music and video. This is an extension of the settlement with the Japanese Fair Trade Commission, but will apply worldwide. Developers must request access to the external link account entitlement program. They must not list prices and the suggested text for the link is go to example.com to create and manage your account. I for one love this. I've been waiting for this for so long, even though I'm not a, you know, generally an iOS user. Just the ability to not, you know, to, you know, not have to go through the store if you are a developer. Or if I am someone who I like this app, you know, I subscribe to this app, but I would rather go to the website just the ability to click a link right there from where I'm out to go do that as compared to having to remember. Okay, what was the link that I need to go to hope I have that bookmarked. This is this is a big deal. And I'm all for this that Apple, you know, is finally coming around to this. Even if they were forced to, but it was fair trade commission. I to this has been my biggest complaint with Apple. There's lots of arguments and very nuanced arguments to be had about whether Apple should allow third party app stores or not, whether it's reasonable, whether building the business model on taking a cut of in app payments is a fair way to fund the other aspects of the app store like security and delivery and and discoverability. But I have always been of the contention that I'm fine with Apple saying hey, it's our platform. These are our rules, but you shouldn't stop people from saying you can go elsewhere. You should not be stopping companies from saying here's a link out to our site. And that's the biggest problem with the app store for me that this will fix, at least for reader apps. It doesn't fix it for everything. There's still going to be exceptions. As we know, there was that mail app that didn't count as a reader app that went round and round and round with Apple. But this fixes it for a lot of the biggest issues like not being able to create an account from the Netflix app. That's just not customer friendly. And I don't think it undermines Apple's ability to fund its app store as much as they have argued. And so I think this is a fair way to do it to say hey, you want to manage your account? You want to create an account? Go over there. Once you're over there, Netflix can tell you whatever they want. And I think that's the way it should work. Yeah, I look at the companies like Netflix. They weren't going to ever play with Apple. This is how you have to get your account. So the user has to jump through hoops. And it's just not a great user experience when all you had to do was apply a link. If you did that, it just made it easier on the user. So I look at this from an end user usability standpoint. It just makes you doing the things that you were already going to do a lot easier. I know that there are some game developers out there. If you play the game, you've got to come to us to get it. This just makes doing those kind of things. If this actually will fall under that, because I don't know that a game developer is going to fall under this reader app. I'm not sure how that works. But if they ever do get to that, it just it just makes it easier. It's just like, you know, I understand that if you do buy something through the app store, Apple should absolutely, you know, that's their IP. They should absolutely get something back for that. But you don't really need to force companies to only go through you or you make it so hard for them to do something else that, you know, it just makes it more difficult for end users. And that's why I said I am all about this because I think it improves the end users experience when they are going through your app store and ultimately trying to get an app that doesn't necessarily sell itself through your app store. I've like I said, I've always been sympathetic to Apple setting the rules for its app store, but there was something in me that I think believes that the web works because you are allowed to link to anything you want. A link is never a wrong thing. And you should be careful what links you clicked on because of that. But there was there was just something about Apple saying, No, you can't even link. We're like, I don't know, that kind of breaks the spirit of the web. And I know we're talking about apps, but it just ran counter to how this is all support supposed to work. So just didn't feel right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So whether they did it willingly or not, I'm glad it's happening. Hey, folks, what do you like to hear us talk about on the show? If you're wondering where we get these ideas, well, we search all over the place. We look at our own feeds. We look at news aggregation sites. One way to get a story in front of our eyes is on our subreddit. You can submit stories and vote on them right over there, dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. Bloomberg has a story about food delivery startups getting pummeled by investors. Last quarter shares in delivery hero experience the second worst performance of any stock on Europe's stock 600 index. JustyTakeaway.com and Deliveroo also dropped more than 35%. Regulation is affecting the sector. China's National Development and Reform Commission led a coalition of government agencies that pressured food delivery platform operators there to lower restaurant fees. That caused May-Tuan stock to fall 15%. There's the situation in cities, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, both banned the creation of dark stores, the warehouses that can deliver food fast. At the end of February, following noise complaints, similar situations have occurred in Paris and New York and other cities. Some of this is just the economic climate, which is harsher on businesses that prioritize growth over profit. That was once a standard path. Google did it. Facebook did it. Uber's doing it. It's harder to do that. Those companies back then didn't have to deal with the rising cost of capital that now faces startups. With food delivery, that means the already razor thin profit margins, if they exist at all, are even thinner. And that means market share is your only way to win. And that means you're going to have to cut your profits even more to gain that market share, which means higher debt, which means your investors get nervous. Inflation is also hitting the demand side as consumers are getting more selective about what they spend their money on. That's going to push the market to consolidation. Deliveroo left Spain. Delivery heroes is pulling out of Germany. Expect to see a lot more of the same. Some adapt their execution to survive to avoid regulatory pressure on the city level. Fast grocery delivery company, Getter G E T I has differentiated itself by working with local businesses. So the businesses don't oppose them like bakeries and stuff and emphasizing silent operations. They use electric vehicles and all kinds of other stuff. All of this is to say food delivery seems to be facing the same resistance as ride hailing along with the added complication of inflation. So it's probably only going to work in the densest cities, right? Hold that thought because I'm going to tell you about French Polynesia. Rest of World has an article about how citizens of the French Polynesian atoll, which makes up 118 islands and must rely on shipping for many of its items, has created its own online shopping service. In fact, several of them, Amazon and Alibaba, don't offer the same delivery service to the islands if they offer it at all. Manihi, for example, is one of the islands in French Polynesia. 27 kilometers long, eight kilometers wide, three shops, no restaurants, no hardware store, no clothing shop. Local couriers have started to close the last nautical mile gap that stopped e-commerce from taking off in islands like Manihi. One of the longest running is called HM Coursier Express, has a Facebook page with a list of services and prices. 74% of French Polynesia is on Facebook, so that makes sense. Customers can request things through Facebook Messenger and then HM couriers find the products. Usually it shops right there in the capital, package them up. So they're not ordering them from overseas, they're just finding them on the one location that has stuff. They package them up and then either put them on an airplane or a cargo ship to the other islands. Light items like clothing, fresh fruit, they've even done McDonald's meals, can be sent by air. And HM has a freight discount from air to heating because of the volume that they say makes it about 30% cheaper than individual purchases would be if folks were trying to have it flown themselves. Heavier goods include canned foods, building materials, they've even delivered cars, those are put on a boat. With COVID, people started taking good advantage of these services because folks didn't want to leave their house. The business of HM doubled, especially in the outer islands where it went up by like nine times. And customers end up paying a flat rate of about 1,500 francs per order, 14 bucks US. There are now close to 40 other couriers competing. A lot of them get up and running and then close right away. But it's a hot business to get into in French Polynesia. And French Polynesia isn't the only place doing this. Fiji has 300 islands and a company called Freight Logistics offers online door-to-door delivery there. In Alaska, Eagle Raven Global is delivering to communities in the southeast of the state that big companies like Amazon won't even ship to. So I find it fascinating, Rob, that in the dense cities, there's problems of scale and problems of profitability. But out in the islands, some innovative folks figured out how to make delivery work. Yeah, I would I would have bet you money that it would not have worked here just because of how hard that last mile delivery is. But it seems to be that that is exactly why this is working so well in these types of, you know, places because they are relatively remote in the sense that you can't just, you know, call it, you know, call a door dash and your food just shows up. You know, you've got you may have to get on a boat, you may have to get on a plane. You may have to get someone who's literally going to walk or trek across, you know, you know, relatively small island to get to your residence. So there are a lot of logistical issues that say that this shouldn't work. But maybe because of those logistical issues is allowing these small businesses to pop up and say, well, we're going to do something that the Amazons of the world, you know, can't do or won't do. And it seems to be working swimmingly like said this is like I would have I would have never thought that this would have worked in, you know, in remote places like this, but it seems like it's absolutely booming. Yeah, I feel like there's a principle to be drawn from both what getters done, where in multiple cities it goes in and makes friends with the local baker makes friends with the local butcher and says we want to help you let's talk to the city and say we don't want to cause noise. You go into the community and you learn what the community cares about, and then you work with that. That's happening in French Polynesia, where it's the local people who are like, yeah, I know how the system works. I know that air Tahiti charges me this much if I live on one of the outlying islands to get something shipped. But I know they'll give me a discount. And now I can start to take advantage of that because I know what those people want is having knowledge of the market you're serving that the Amazons and Alibaba's of the world in these cases definitely don't have. Yeah, it's like this is almost like big data didn't win. This is, I know Joe and I know what Joe needs. So let me, hey Joe, I'm thinking about doing this. Would you be interested that that very personal connection that you have with someone because in these places everyone knows everyone. So you kind of know what people do what they need, what they want because you've had those conversations and, you know, I think I can start a business around this they've done it and it's working for me. And even if you don't know everyone, you know, somebody like someone, you know, like, oh my grandma's got the same thing. Can you do that for her? Yeah, sure. And there you go. You got yourself a business school. All right. Tell us about a new mod. This I love this. So yeah, I was reading through this one and it like it is really interesting to me. So last year, an engineer named Kim Polano created the world's first known iPhone with the working USB C port. Now Polano's latest project is the first Android phone with the working lightning connector. In a video explaining the project, Polano says the device mod was a fun project created to balance the chaos that he said was created by his previous device. Now this is April Fool's Day, but this is not an April Fool's joke. The Samsung Galaxy A51's lightning port is able to both charge and transfer data. No small feat since Polano had to trick the cable into thinking it was plugged into an Apple device and make sure the hardware could actually fit inside the phone. I don't expect anyone in the right mind wanting to do this to their device. He said it was a fun project. I just wanted to see if I could do it. And I'm all for this that, you know, the tinker people out there that just like, you know, I wonder if I could make this work. Let me go play with the device and see if I can get it to work. This is just a cool story. Yeah, no one should ever want an Android device that has a lightning board. But the fact that one exists is kind of cool. Yeah, exactly. This is not a like practical like, ah, we're bringing we're going to bring lightning. Everybody go mod your Android. No, it's not that this is this is along the lines of fascinating projects that do things you didn't think could or maybe she could be done. One time back in the day, I modded a floppy disk to be a USB drive. There was nothing practical about that. I just wanted the visual of a floppy disk hanging off my USB port. And this is along those lines, you know, just do it to see if you can do it. And he did a good job of it. It looks good. Absolutely. And this is the guy that knows, you know, if we ever get to that post apocalyptic state to where you just have to walk into a, hey, you know, here's my electronic stuff and you give it to somebody. Can you make this work? Can you charge this up? Can you Jimmy rig this for me? This guy might be your guy. Definitely. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Christopher wrote in we had been talking on the extended show about having a DTNS flag. And Christopher said, bit of a good advice for flags from Roman Mars. Draw your design on a postage stamp sized piece of paper. Flags are often over designed too complicated for flags. People think of them as a mural or a seal. But you have to remember visibility at a distance. So simplicity is good. And he gave us a link to Roman Mars, Ted talk about horrible flags and designs. It's usually not the national flags, although sometimes it is that have this problem. A lot of times it states and cities and regions that have the flags where they put a seal and like a lot of small drawings. And then when you see it up in the flagpole, you're like, it just looks like a blob. I don't know what that is. Yeah, you can notice Ohio's flag because it's a pennant. But, you know, when you have all that really intricate stuff on them, it's almost impossible to see when they're up in the sky, waving and all that kind of good stuff. So this is a good point. Make sure you can see it from a distance. Make sure it looks good if it's small. And granted, the story that sparked all of this was that they're not going to admit new flag emojis unless a new country is created and acknowledged by the United Nations. So, but designing your flag so that it looks good as an emoji is just just it's a good rule of thumb. Thank you, Christopher. And thank you, Rob. Appreciate you hanging out talking tech today. If you have stuff going on, why don't you tell some folks about it. Well, it's always a pleasure being on Daily Tech News Show. And folks, if you want to hear more from me, I am at Rob Dunwood on all the things. And you can also check me out at my other shows, the SMR podcast, and the Tech John. That is the Tech J-A-W-N, where we talk about tech from a bit of a different perspective. And I have to say the Tech John has very nice t-shirts. I'm wearing one right now. That is a lovely, lovely t-shirt that you have. I'm really impressed by that, you know, by that guy there in the middle. It's a good looking guy. Oh, I thought you were in my parents. Yeah, but yours is good too. Yeah. Yeah. Stephanie looks great. No, you got to go. Go check it out, folks. The Tech John. Great show. TheTechJohn.com. T-E-C-H-J-A-W-N. Thanks to our brand new boss. We got a new boss and we appreciate it. Could be lost. I would say you're not because you're right where you belong on our Patreon. Thanks. Could be lost for backing us on Patreon. 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