Daily Tech News Show (Tom Merritt)

Google will expand the Sleep Sensing features on the second-gen Nest Hub that uses a motions Ensor to monitor your sleep patterns. We cover the latest events in the Epic vs Apple lawsuit. Google loses its appeal against a 2.42 billion Euro fine leveled by the EC in 2017 for abusing its monopoly on search.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Scott Johnson, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

A cord-cutting study indicates Netflix maybe losing $192 million due to people sharing accounts. Is this a legal and what do the streaming services think?

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang, Len Peralta, and Shannon Morse

G-Suite predicts spelling errors as you type, YouTube might start behaving better for your kids, and LinkedIn culls spam accounts.

Starring Sarah Lane, Scott Johnson, and Roger Chang.

As enormity of COVID-19 begins to affect various parts of society how has big tech responding to the challenges of the outbreak.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang, Robb Dunewood, Len Peralta

HBO Max will launch in May for $14.99 a month, the same price as HBO Now. Customers who pay HBO for an HBO Now subscription or who get HBO from an AT&T service will be able to log into HBO Max. What will this mean for current HBO subscribers and the streaming landscape?

Starring Tom Merritt, Patrick Beja, Roger Chang

Start-ups position robots as bee replacements in the all-important crop pollination role, Thirty-seven US state and district attorneys general have sued Google in California federal court, alleging it unlawfully maintains a monopoly with the Google Play Store and Steve Wozniak argues for the right to repair.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Justin Robert Young, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

In a letter to US Senator Chris Coons Amazon’s VP of public policy Brian Huseman told the Senator that they keep transcripts and voice recordings indefinitely, and only remove them if they’re manually deleted by users.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Scott Johnson and Roger Chang.

Blizzard CEO and co-founder Mike Morhaime left the company in 2018. He has now unveiled his new company DreamHaven, a game developer and publisher. What is he up to and what can we expect from his new company?

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Scott Johnson, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

Twitter was the subject of a major hack compromising the accounts of high profile accounts including Bill Gates, President Obama, and Elon Musk. What was behind the activity and what are the ramifications.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Justin Robert Young, Roger Chang and Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

Robb Dunewood has put a lot of work into his home video studio and is ready to share all tricks he's learned and a few of the products he thinks are worth knowing about.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Robb Dunewood, Len Peralta, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

The Verge's Tom Warren notes that despite the Xbox Series X having more powerful hardware, the PS5 has been outperforming it, particularly in frame rate, according to benchmarks from Digital Foundry. What's going on and is there deeper going on?

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Scott Johnson, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

On Wednesday, the US Federal Trade Commission voted to increase its enforcement of laws against repair restrictions that prevent small businesses, workers, consumers, and even government entities from fixing their own products. We discuss where the current state of right to repair is at and what we can expect in the near future.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Patrick Norton, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

DTNS ends the year with this special Best of 2019 GDI reel put together by Theatremonkey.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang, Scott Johnson, Justin Robert Young, Patrick Beja, Allison Sheridan, Shannon Morse. 

Dr. Kirsten Sanford from This Week In Science is here to answer your technology related questions about COVID-19

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang, Kiki Sanford, Patrick Beja, Joe.

Link to Show Notes

LinkedIn is adding features that cater to video creators, Arm announced its first major new chip architecture in ten years, called Armv9, and PayPal will let US users use cryptocurrency holdings to pay online merchants in the coming months with a feature it calls Checkout with Crypto.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Lamarr Wilson, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

China is deploying surveillance software that recognizes people by the way they walk and their body shape. How will this shape security and privacy of the masses in years to come? 

Longtime YouTube creator Jason Inman talks about YouTube's latest plea for creator trust.

Jason Inman host of Geek History Lesson, show runner's assistant on The Code CBS, and author of Super Soldiers: A salute to the comic book heroes and villains who fought for their country

As health authorities race to contact trace infected patients with people in the public many are turning to smartphones as way to speed-up the process. But are there privacy issues related to this method and how can they be mitigated?

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Molly Wood, Roger Chang

Disney+ has launched but not without some hiccups. We examine how well the new streaming service has fared on its first day and our impressions of it.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang, Theatremonkey

Author and Podcaster Shelly Brisbin joins us with an update on state of assistive technology.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang, Len Peralta and Shelly Brisbin.

Facebook announced Wednesday that it will de-rank the accounts of and limit the spread of posts from users who repeatedly share content that has been debunked by fact checkers. Bloomberg’s sources say Nintendo will begin assembly of a new updated Switch console as early as July, with a release scheduled for September or October. Mozilla runs targeted ads on Facebook and Comcast issues a DMCA warning to a user who downloaded…. Linux.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Justin Robert Young, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

Moving can be a challenge but moving your tech along with you adds an extra layer of hassle. Find out how Patrick Norton moves his considerable amount of gear to a new place.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Patrick Norton, Len Peralta, Roger Chang and Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

Are frequent OS updates the right way to go or should they be rolled out annually for bug checks and compatibility issues?

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Allison Sheridan, Roger Chang

The consumer digital camera market declined about 80% to 19 million unit sales in 2018, versus more than 400 million smartphones sold globally the same year. What can camera companies do to cope with a shrinking market and what will it mean for consumers?

Starring Sarah Lane, Ant Pruitt, Roger Chang and Len Peralta

Amazon has revealed a raft of product announcements at its 2019 hardware event we dig and see what's what. Plus Mark Zuckerberg announced a software update to the Oculus Quest and unveiled Facebook's new VR environment.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Scott Johnson, Roger Chang

Rich Stroffolino talks with tech skeptic Ben Weinberg about the latest tech news. In this pilot episode, they look into the luddite perspective on Apple's recently announced on-device scanning for CSAM, Facebook's metaverse take on VR meetings, and why AI-generated websites are like Final Cut X.

Featuring Rich Stroffolino, Ben Weinberg

A New York Times piece by Taylor Lorenz examines the phenomenon of the TikTok cult. Rabid followers of seemingly innocuous TikTok creators. What can influencers expect from these fan bases are how are they different from ones that rise-up from Instagram and YouTube?

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Lamarr Wilson, Len Peralta, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

Despite the predicted doom and gloom over Airbnb's future due to COVID-19 the latest numbers from the company suggest a resurgent interest in the company's services.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane and Roger Chang, Joe

Link to the Show Notes.

Tipping users on Twitter, Amazon announces Project Zero to fight counterfeits, and YouTube will disable comments on all videos featuring minors.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang and Justin Robert Young.

Are expectations for what consumers are willing to pay for new streaming services too high?

Starring Tom Merritt, Patrick Norton, Roger Chang. 

Research shows that placing googly eyes on robots makes them less threatening and Ford is rolling out an autonomous package-delivery robot called "Digit".

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Scott Johnson, Roger Chang. 

Three DTNS supporters join our show as our co-hosts!

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang, Justin Kauflin, Michael Parker and Liam Hughes

Blizzard released its earnings results for the recent quarter, is a Sleep Pod the best way to get a good nights rest and what is Apple's news subscription service all about?

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang and Scott Johnson.

We explore what might happen to big tech after the Congressional hearings. Will it be good for them, consumers or anyone?

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Justin Robert Young, Roger Chang and Joe. 

Link to the Show Notes.

The US Justice Department has charged two former Twitter employees with spying for Saudi Arabia. AMD announced the Ryzen Threadripper 3970X and 3960X processors and T-Mobile will activate its 5G network int eh US on December 6. 

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang, Justin Robert Young. 

Google is pondering changes to Chrome to make it more effective against malicious extensions but at the expense of breaking 3rd party ad-blockers. Who and whom would this affect the most and will this mean Chrome users will see more ads if the changes are implemented?

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang and Patrick Beja.

The Tech Jawn is a second look at the week's tech news headlines delivered from a different perspective. African Americans, demographically, are the biggest users of consumer technology in the country and The Tech Jawn aims to showcase how technology affects them as well as how they affect technology.

Hosted by Robb Dunewood (@robbdunewood), Stephanie Humphrey (@techlifesteph), and Terrance Gaines (@brothatech), the first episode tackles bias in algorithms like Facial Recognition and Artificial Intellegence.

What is upcycling and why should you be part of the movement? Plus Samsung Galaxy Fold delayed, Sony launches ride-hailing service in Tokyo, SiriusXM reaches for streaming-only audiences.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, and Roger Chang.

Microsoft has launched a three-part plan to fight deep fakes. The first is a tool meant for political campaigns and journalists called the Video Authenticator and it's also working on a system to let content producers add digital hashes and certificates to media so users can verify authenticity.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Scott Johnson, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

The US justice department filed an antitrust lawsuit in Washington DC federal court Tuesday, alleging Alphabet's Google engaged in anticompetitive conduct to preserve monopolies in search and search advertising using exclusionary and interlocking business agreements to keep out competitors.

Starring Tom Merritt, Alison Sheridan, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

DTNS from the past as the gang revisits Friday Dec 18th, 2009 to share and discuss that day's most important tech news.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang

Bezos steps back into the captain's seat at Amazon as the company faces renewed scrutiny from government regulators.

Starring Sarah Lane, Rich Stroffolino, Roger Chang, Justin Robert Young and Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

We examine all the announcements from this year's Samsung Unpacked event.

Starring Tom Merritt,Sarah Lane, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

As the EU inches closer to a vote on the Copyright Directive European Wikipedia sites have gone dark in protest, Facebook confirmed it kept logins and passwords for hundreds of millions users in plain text in some cases for almost seven years, and the NYT reports Apple has made a deal with the WSJ for its news and services.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Justin Robert Young and Roger Chang.

Amazon buys MGM. Is Amazon becoming a 21st century conglomerate and what is the company’s end game? Plus the US District of Columbia sued Amazon Tuesday for violating antitrust laws.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Scott Johnson, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

Patrick Norton is back with his picks of top affordable headphones plus a review of the Qobuz music streaming service.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang, Len Peralta and Patrick Norton.

Benchmarks for Intel’s Alder Lake processors are in and boy do they look good! Meta is looking for alternative ways to generate profits outside of ad revenue and Qualcomm thinks supply-chain issues for its chips will abate by this Christmas and Danish shipping firm wants to compete against Amazon’s shipping services.

Starring Tom Merritt, Justin Robert Young, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

Amazon plans to bring its “Just Walk Out” cashierless technology to two Whole Foods stores, Twitter launched a few feature tests. One changes the way photos are displayed on mobile and the second lets users remove followers without blocking them, and we look at the state of long range wireless charging.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Scott Johnson, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

The Wall Street Journal has a story on how brands on Amazon go to extreme lengths to stop bad reviews of their products, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman argues that, in the current streaming landscape, that the Apple TV is a pointless products, and Facebook unveils its “Transfer Your Information” tool that allows users to export selected data for use by other services.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Chris Mancini, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

We explore the coming conflict of quantum computing and blockchain cryptocurrencies, plus we find out what happened to Movie Pass and learn about Patreon’s plan to host and deliver video.

Starring Tom Merritt, Shannon Morse, Len Peralta, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

Patrick Norton is back with some choice picks for your holiday gift buying list.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Patrick Norton, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

Intel unveils new mobile CPU parts in response to AMD's Ryzen 9 4000 enthusiast mobile processor announcement last month.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang and Justin Robert Young.

In a weird juxtaposition tech companies like Airbnb, Uber and Netflix are starting up their own print magazines. Why are they investing in an old media platform and what do they hope to gain by doing so?

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang, and Nicole Lee.

We take a look at the state of harmful speech regulation online as the European Parliament formally adopting a law requiring internet companies to “remove or disable access to flagged terrorist content”. Plus a recent article in Wired by Gilad Edelman says Social Media platforms speech policies aren’t actually inspired by the First Amendment and says that’s a good thing.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Justin Robert Young, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

Samsung announced new intel-Evo certified laptops at its Unpacked 2021 event Wednesday, Sony has sold more PS5s in the first quarter of 2021 than PS4s sold in its first fiscal year, and updates on the Epic vs Apple case.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Scott Johnson, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

David Ginsberg - Host and Producer of "In Touch With iOS" podcast explains how he manages to use a tablet as his main everyday computing device.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang, David Ginsburg, Len Peralta

We examine the phenomenon that prevents people from picking up new habits and ways of doing things preferring established methods instead even if new behavior would simplify tasks.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Blair Bazdarich, Len Peralta, Roger Chang. 

What can your operation do to keep its data secure? We examine the key elements of infosec every business needs to know.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Justin Robert Young, Allan Alford, Mike Johnson, Roger Chang and Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

Microsoft has formally entered the wireless earbud market with Surface Buds. What do they hope to achieve and will it be a hit among consumers?

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang and Chris Ashley.

Tesla, Tesla, Tesla. We discuss the reviews of Tesla's Model 3, what's going on in Elon's brain case and why Tesla is under investigation by the US Justice Department.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang, Len Peralta and Shannon Morse.

In this episode, we discuss:

Our takeaways from E3

Sony's cross play PR issues

Battle passes are the new standard

Steam sales recommendations (Scott: Celeste, Endless Space 2 / Patrick: Opus Magnum, Dead Cells)

With Patrick Beja and Scott Johnson.

On this special episode of DTNS we host the final "Live With It" for 2019. Sarah shares her experience with FitBit's Versa 2 fitness tracker. This show is audio only. There is no video version.

Starring Sarah Lane, Scott Johnson and Roger Chang

Allison Sheridan is back with her take on the rest of CES 2021, plus we talk about the future of Podcast Media LLC as it goes up for potential sale.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Allison Sheridan, Len Peralta, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

The CEA has greenlit CES for 2021 in Las Vegas. Is this a wise move in light of continuing COVID-19 infections and will anyone show up?

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Scott Johnson, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

John Hancock is offering its Life Insurance customers an Apple Watch Series 6 for $25. Then you have a choice: pay the remaining cost of the watch monthly for two years or exercise more and share that data with John Hancock to reduce or eliminate your monthly payment. We discuss the implications of the policy and what it might mean for data privacy.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Robb Dunewood, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

Facebook's attempt at fact-checking political posts runs into a problem as various fact-checking partners contradict each other a recent POTUS comment.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang, Justin Robert Young 

Wired spoke with Kayvon Beykpour former founder of Periscope and head of product at Twitter regarding steps the platform is taking to minimize bad behavior. 

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang.

The RIAA has found the piracy, Waymo simulates collisions, and your cough might know if you have COVID-19 before your body shows symptoms.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Amos, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

We examine three cryptocurrency news items including the US Office of the Comptroller of Currency Interpretive Letter 1174, that says banks may use stablecoins and the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is proposing requiring financial institutions to collect personal information like name and address, for anyone involved in large cryptocurrency transactions.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Robb Dunewood, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

Nintendo confirms a sub-$200 portable version of the Switch game console called the “Switch-Lite”. What do you give up in this smaller cheaper form factor and is it designed to appeal to existing owners or new ones as well?

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang, Scott Johnson.

Microsoft Ignite starts up this week and we go over all the updates and service announcements from the Redmond based company. VP of Alex explains why he wants you to talk to your Echo smart speaker less. And is there really something to Facebook’s Metaverse concept?

Starring Tom Merritt, Nate Lanxon, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

More than 5.3 million accounts belonging to cardholders from 35 U.S. states are posted online, DoorDash unveiled its updated tipping policy, with all drivers now receiving 100% of tips placed through its app, and Denmark will review 10,700 court cases dating back to 2012, to see if flawed cellphone evidence was used for convictions.

Starring Sarah Lane, Shannon Morse, Roger Chang, and Anthony Lemos.

With no deal in sight between Google and Roku to renew YouTube TV’s presence on Roku’s platform the search giant has come up with a workaround. It will let people access YouTube TV directly from the main YouTube app. Will Roku allow it and what does this mean for Google’s attempts to strongarm platforms to accept its terms?

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Lamarr Wilson, Len Peralta, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

Streaming services are the new hotness. AT&T CEO John Stankey announced at a conference that HBO Max subscriptions rose from 8.6 million at the end of Q3 to 12.6 million as of early December while NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell said Peacock passed 26 million signups as of Monday up 4 million since October.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Patrick Norton, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

Justin Robert Young shares his political insights on recent initiatives by social media giants to ready themselves for the upcoming US 2020 Election.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Justin Robert Young, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

We interview Eric Olander from the 'China in Africa' podcast to discuss the state of tech in China and examine where the largest non-American tech companies are choosing to do business. 

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang and Len Peralta.

Scientists in South Korea have published an article in the journal Nature Communications about a robot they created that can change its skin color like a chameleon. Would you eat cheese made from the byproducts of fungi? And Intel announced an upcoming high-performance discrete GPU line called Arc.

Starring Tom Merritt, Rich Stroffolino, Blair Bazdarich, Roger Chang, Joe.

Link to the Show Notes.

Sony reveals key specs for their upcoming PlayStation 5 game console including 8K resolution, faster CPU, and SSD storage. What does this reveal say about where Sony wants to be in gaming and more importantly where it might be weakest. 

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang and Patrick Beja.