VR so good, it's Supernatural - DTNS 4009 By Daily Tech News Show

Coming up on DNS solar charged headphones could mean endless battery life. The numbers show that ticktock is the Facebook threat. You've been waiting for and VR gets productive and good for your health. Sarah lane's fitness VR regiment is vindicated. This is the daily tech news for wednesday, April 14th 2021, in Los Angeles, I'm john Merritt, and from studio redwood, I'm Sarah lane from Salt Lake City, I'm Scott Johnson, and I'm the show's producer roger Jane uh. We were just talking about baseball stadiums, uh, among other things, get that wider conversation.

You never know what we're gonna talk about on good day internet become a member at patreon. com DNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Samsung announced its next galaxy unpacked event for April 28th at 10 a. m.

Eastern time the event announcement promises, the most powerful galaxy is coming so conventional wisdom is that it's not a phone announcement and the image looks slightly like a laptop new galaxy books, perhaps maybe uh. Back in March, we talked about Microsoft. Releasing patches for four newly discovered Microsoft exchange vulnerabilities that were being actively exploited by an advanced persistent threat group believed to be hafnium. The attackers were exploiting the vulnerabilities to install web shells. Uh web shells give them access to targeted networks, the patches close the vulnerability, but, of course, wouldn't remove the web shell once it was installed so Tuesday.

The US department of justice announced it received approval from a court in Houston to copy and remove web shells from hundreds of Microsoft exchange, email servers. Now they didn't get all of them out there, but they got a bunch of them. The FBI conducted the removal by accessing the web shell and issuing a command to the servers to remove it. The method only removed web shells. It did not remove any other malware that might have been installed through the use of the shell, but its something Amazon announced second generation echo buds which are 20 smaller than the originals ipx4 rated, and offered twice as much noise cancellation as the originals.

Although they no longer use Bose's active noise, canceling technology, the new wireless headset ships May 13th for 119.99 with an USB charging case or 139.99. With a wireless charging case, TCL announced the 6.67 inch 20 pro 5g android phone, which features its in-display fingerprint reader is coming to Italy, Portugal and the UK for 549 euros and eventually to the United States, though they didn't give pricing in a date for that yet budget versions, the 20, l and 20 l plus also coming to those countries without 5g or wireless charging. That's why their budget and TCL announced its combined foldable and rollable phone tablet concept that CNET talked about back in March is called the fold and roll like with a little n with an apostrophe mark. The fold and roll still no plans for a release on that. Yet it's just concepted you may have heard Coinbase issued a direct listing on the NASDAQ Wednesday with a reference price of 250.

Instead, it opened at 381 dollars instantly up 52 the cryptocurrency exchange's stock continued to rise through the day, making it one of the most successful recent tech IPOs, partly because it was already profitable. It closed its first day at 328 dollars, so it settled down a bit, but still a pretty good, showing for the first day. Coinbase's future rests on the future of cryptocurrency in general. All right. Let's talk about the next big threat to Facebook.

What is it? Scott Johnson? It's the thing I look at when I'm in the tub all right as part of a leaked pitch deck to advertisers tick-tock claims to have more than 100 million, with an m U. S. monthly, active users, that's just in the U. S. , with 732 million on a global scale, with 59 of users under the age of 24 and 17 percent ages, 13 to 17, so the youngers, the company claims, 47 percent of users, have bought items seen in TikTok, I'm one of them.

I did it once with its U. S. ad business growing over 500 percent in the last year. By comparison and quarter, four of 2020, former king of young people, apps was Snapchat. You may remember them uh.

They had an estimated and now sounding paltry 46 million monthly actor user users in the United States. According to market data from Statista that uh, that's less than half of tick, took tick, took's numbers, if you uh, do the math. If the tick-tock pitches uh numbers are accurate. In an online survey, statistics to perform last fall.34 of us teenagers said Snapchat was their most important social network with tick-tock in second place, with 29 yeah, so uh this really uh struck me. I mean uh the article uh on business insider talking about this leaked pitch deck was mostly about plans for e-commerce and that's all very important, because uh e-commerce is definitely how bite dance is making money off Du yen in China and will probably be able to make a lot of money off tick-tock with as well, but these numbers are.

These are Facebook. In its younger days, numbers these these these are when Facebook was for young people. You know for college age, people back in the day numbers I mean you've passed twitter, you're well ahead of Snapchat uh you're on the way to being a billion user, worldwide phenomenon uh and that's launching you into Facebook territory and, as we've talked about before in the show Facebook kind of for the olds. You know the young people show on Facebook to talk to their parents and their grandparents yeah. I mean it wasn't that long ago that Snapchat uh burst on the scene, and you know all the headlines were like Snapchat is for sexting.

Oh my gosh, the youth. You know this is scary, scary, app, but it's all secret and ephemeral, right and then icon. I was like Snapchat's pretty fun and then I sort of fell off and because I didn't have enough friends on Snapchat, but I realized a long time ago. Snapchat is not for me, but young people. You look at the numbers, it's still very, very popular.

However, when you compare 46 million monthly active users in the US, that's Snapchat's numbers to more than double that for tick. Took again I mean this is a leaked detect. So just assuming that the leaked deck numbers are accurate, I mean tick. Took is blowing Snapchat away and the fact that more U. S.

teenagers who were polled- and it was under 10 ? 000 teenagers. It was on online polls, so I mean it's a small subset of what would be uh. You know the entire U. S. teenage population, but for more teenagers to say that Snapchat was their most important social network.

That was last fall. I wonder if the poll was done today, how many things have changed in half a year yeah. I would think so too, but I would also argue I mean again. This date is really hard to gather and get, but I know so many people who are not in that age, demographic who loves tick-tock. I know a guy who's 56 years old and his favorite thing to do right now at the end of the day, is sit on the couch with his wife and compare their public feeds.

There's something about that algorithm. That hits everybody if they give it a chance, and I'm not. You know this, isn't me saying yay rah-rah ticktock. I just think they found this magic sauce in the algorithm in how it works and a know: critical mass of people they've built something that's very quickly becoming more important than some of these other services and doing it in record time, and that's just crazy to think about those numbers. Yeah, I mean obviously there 's's you know it's its a huge swath of ticktock numbers is people younger than us.

However, I was at a barbecue over the weekend, and you know we're all talking about ticktock and oh, you know we're sharing animal videos and there was someone who's just like I just haven't gotten on there yet and we all kind of looked at her, like you're, really missing out, it's really fun, and I'm not that's always the story right. Yeah, I can remember that conversation about twitter Facebook, about Snapchat. Now it's about ticktock, but ticktock seems like it's got the momentum. It has gone from me thinking like oh musically, that's the thing for kids to lip-sync, oh ticktock, a little uncomfortable for me to watch, because it's mostly young people dancing to be like. Oh no, I think I could learn Korean by.

You know watching a certain section of tick, took, yeah, exactly uh. This is a cool one urbanist. If you haven't heard of the company or urban needs to announce something very cool. Its latest wireless noise-canceling headphones, the urbanist Los Angeles, that's the name of the headphones. It doesn't really have to do with geographically Los Angeles.

They can charge the battery inside with any kind of light promising in the company's words virtually infinite play time. The headphones have power, foil, solar cells, which promise to add three hours of listening time when in bright, sunlight for just an hour two hours of listening time on a cloudy day and the headphones will also charge from ambient light indoors but charge fastest in sunlight. So you might want to leave them near a window if you're trying to charge them up without being outside. They can also charge over USB. So it's solar, but also power.

If you, if you got to go that route and gadget points out, that JBL tried to crowdfund power, foil solar, headphones back in 2019, but had to cancel the project partly due to covert related travel restrictions, just bad timing. All around power foil was developed by Swedish company eager. Its screen printed on flexible plastic and uses principles similar to photosynthesis, to generate electricity from any source of light. Partly this is because there are no conductive layers blocking photons urban east Los Angeles. Headphones can be used in other cities, besides Los Angeles on Windows, android and iOS, and work with Siri and Google Assistant.

Like most wireless headphones. These days they pause playback when you remove them from your head, and they look pretty nice they're over the ear headphones. You can get them for 169 British pounds when pre-orders begin yeah so uh. This is a big advance and power foil is fascinating to watch, because if this takes off with urbanist uh, it might prove the technology for other platforms to pick up and the big advantage of power foil is that it can work in situations that other solar panels don't uh. It can work at angles better than other solar panels.

It's a single cell, so you don't have a lot of the seams and stuff and that's what makes it work in a headphone situation where you can just flexibly put it over. You know the top and get enough charge out of ambient light to make it worth implementing uh but charge really. Well, I mean three hours in one hour, uh in bright light outdoors, even two hours uh with a cloud cover like you were saying, that's impressive, and we've talked a lot about the idea of wireless power. This could be a type of wireless power if the only time it doesn't charge is when the lights are off yeah. These are massively cool, also 200 bucks.

If you translate the doll to dollars, it's not bad, like you're going to pay that for competing products anyway, yeah right around the price for those and if they sound great, that's a big kicker. Obviously we have to see how they sound uh. I just want to mention one other thing. I think I noticed a new naming trend on the internet. You guys we just talked about Statista.

Now we're talking about urbanist. What's with the east statistic has been around for a while, though I don't know how long urbanist has been around, but you may be on to something. Oh, it's, the new flicker they're putting they are at the end, everyone's going to put ISA on everything I want to address. Uh JSC 315 says you really shouldn't be moving solar panels, so I don't know if it's something that will last more than a few years, these solar panels, because of the way they're constructed, handle moving very well to the point that the solar panels generally outlast the device they are on parts of the actual headphone wear out before the solar panel. So again, that's one of the one of the advantages of power.

Foil is very durable. Yeah, all right Facebook announced several updates coming to the Oculus Quest in version 28 v28 of the headsets' OS wireless connections to PCs and 120 hertz coming to the Oculus Quest too, the 120 hertz refresh rate will only work on supported games and will not be brought to the home screen. So it looks like it's there, mostly for streaming VR from the PC which you can do with oculus link, but you can also now do it from your PC wirelessly over your local Wi-Fi network. A wireless version of oculus link called airline, will be built into v28 of the OS requiring v28 of the PC software to work as well, but once you got both those going you can use it. Airline is in the experimental stage so for it to work.

You'll need an Oculus Quest to a secure and uncontested local, five gigahertz ac or ax non-mesh, Wi-Fi network. So it's not gonna work for me and ideally, you need to be within 20 feet of your Wi-Fi router when you're using it. So a lot of it's very early days for this, but it does work. Facebook also recommends connecting your PC by Ethernet to the router so that your PC isn't using up uh Wi-Fi, that's less congestion, there's also a list of hardware recommendations. Facebook also announced an update to infinite office.

That's its collection of productivity features coming to VR. This update lets you connect compatible Bluetooth keyboard, starting with the Logitech k830 to the headset, and then a 3d model of the keyboard can show up in the virtual world, you're in, and you'll be able to see your hands typing on the virtual keyboard, but actually be typing on the real keyboard. The idea for now is to put a virtual desk on your real desk and then let you interact with all the Oculus Quest productivity apps like the browser, I guess, but more to come. I'm sure this new feature will work on the original Oculus Quest, as well as the Oculus Quest 2, and all of this of course requires you to turn on beta features and get v28 of the OS, which is on the way soon generally uh excited about this. Like we're both Sarah and I are both uh quest users.

I've got a one. You've got a two uh. No, I have a one. Oh, that's right. We both have one tom has the two, although he never talks about using it, are you do you feel Sarah? Sarah? You tempted at all, to go? Oh well, now that we're at 120 hertz and all this extra stuff and virtual keepers is it time very, very much, so I mean I, and we'll continue to talk about it on the show I mean 72 hertz is as good as my original oculus is getting, and I still think it looks like magic, so the better it gets, the better it is, and the oculus 2 is just sort of smaller and has you know, a couple more bells and whistles? I don't play PC games.

So the idea of being untethered to you know to free myself to be fully. Wireless is a little lost on me personally, but I understand how important it is to a lot of folks. It's been you know. The oculus link is is having been something that people like this is awesome. In fact, you Scott were telling me how, by using that I could get like more beat saber uh songs back in the day.

You know when I was first getting used to this, but you were like it's a little complicated. You need a PC, and I was like ah screw it. I don't even want to do that. So this is you know it's just one step uh closer to what people are going for and be able to play the sort of stuff that they've been playing on a PC infinite office. I've played around with a little.

I look forward to this. Furthermore, I'm not not totally sure how much this would be of productive use to me day to day. But again I also didn't think I would like VR. So there you go yeah, it's an it's a fascinating thing and the concept of you being able to say access the PC version of that game with 120 hertz support, which it has on PC, or at least it does on some headsets. I think the five, and maybe the um I forgot, the one that valve makes anyway um those that experience in theory could be yours and wirelessly or at the very least through that link, cable again, which will probably ensure that you get the 120 hertz uh, uh refresh rate.

So it's a little weird though right. It's kludge, it's like well on the one, and I have this game I own it. I bought it, and now I've bought it twice, and I'm kind of playing it over here, because the fresh, the refresh rate's better and I have more access to songs. But I kind of want to go on the road with it, and I need to take that version of the game with me, and I mean that starts to get weird just a little weird. But I really like that.

They're branching this out and making more stuff possible. I'm I'm all yeah, it's all. It's all stepping stones right, uh! Eventually you want everything to be on the device, but until then being able to get some from your PC, you know expands the capability. Eventually, you want to use your VR headset as a monitor, but until then you know being able to use the browser with the Logitech keyboard. That's that's kind of cool! Eventually.

I just want my oculus headset to be solar-powered like that, like those headphones, so I never have to charge it, but you know we're not there yet yeah, we'll just all be walking around in the sun, yeah yeah more battery uh folks, we got some more VR news to come, but first we love to hear from our supporters. It really helps us improve the show. The show is as good as it is now, because you keep telling us what you want. So if you have some time, please fill out our latest survey. Let us know what about DNS is working for you and what is not just visit dailytechnewsshow.

com. Well, I'm always talking about how I love VR, because it's the best way to work out, not everybody exercises and uses VR exercising apps, but for those of us who do itare very fun, and today I feel vindicated uh. Yesterday the verges belie Patel interviewed the co-founder and CEO of within, which is the company that makes the VR fitness app supernatural is far and away my favorite app. I love it so much I'm going to play it after the show. Today, Chris milk on the decoder podcast last week, talked to inlay about how supernatural came to be, and it's kind of an interesting path, because milk made a name for himself directing music videos.

He was working with Kanye West, and you know all sorts of really, really big names in that entertainment industry. He was also creating digital experiences and museums and was kind of interested in immersive entertainment and that's exactly what he and his co-founder Aaron Colin, who was formerly of Google's creative lab, started doing when they found it within back in 2014. They wanted to kind of figure out. How does entertainment like music or film turn into something that is a VR experience? They said milk says that they pivoted to exercises entertainment back in 2018 from what they were kind of doing the first time, because they both hated working out, and they wanted a solution, and they were like wait a second. Why don't we just make that the company, so there's that what's interesting about supernatural specifically, and I've always wondered, so that's why this interview was very interesting to me: is music licensing because the music is it's very good? You know it's very top 40 to the point that it blows other apps away completely.

I mean unless you're talking about like Spotify or Apple Music. You just don't get this kind of library in other apps, even something like beat saber, which uh supernatural is very often compared to because it's kind of a rhythm game in February supernatural signed a deal with Universal Music after signing deals with Sony, ATV Warner, Chappelle, cobalt and BMG, as well as label deals with BMG and Warner. Milk, wouldn't really go into specifics in the interview of how that all happened, but he said it was incredibly and continues to be incredibly complex and that he definitely used his contacts back in the entertainment industry to broker some deals. My first reaction to that last bit is this. Is the problem with trying to protect old business models? Is it makes you inflexible in adapting to new ones, think how much money these companies could be making if it was easier for all of these VR exercise apps to license their music, uh and music companies are doing better now, because Spotify finally was allowed to lead the charge, and now you've got title and Apple Music and all the others bringing in streaming music.

This is the next wave and instead of keeping copyright licensing so complex uh that it's hard to make a deal and and and that supernatural is the exception- not the rule, they could be raking in money, but I digress. I love this idea that VR you know another use for VR beyond gaming is. Is fitness is exercise? I think it absolutely is. It absolutely is. If you don't want to wear a headset, you know on your face, while you're exercising okay, that you know, maybe it's not for you, but I cannot tell you how much- and I know I'm not alone, because I, like I'm part of their Facebook group and stuff now I mean I play supernatural.

I when I say play it's. I don't really have a better word for it. Furthermore, I use the app at least five times a week. Furthermore, I would not go to the gym five times a week and listen. This is not a full gym, it's mostly cardio and Scott.

You got me hooked on beat saber back in the early days when I first got the quest, which was not even a year ago- and I was like this- is pretty fun- yeah rhythm game- I like it, but then when supernatural came along, I was like. Oh, this is like an actual workout you're, not lifting weights. I mean, I suppose you could like weight down your arms, or you know, put weights around your waist or something to make it a lot harder uh. So you know it's: it's not going to bulk you up necessarily, but it is quite the workout, and it's focused on exercise. You know you got a fitness trainer in front of you, virtual of course, and this whole thing- and there are lots of other exercise apps, I haven't tried all of them, but that is, I think I mean it's, it's the killer app for VR.

It really is, and I think anyone listening to this being like what are you even talking about? That's how I felt until I tried it for the first time- and I was like oh, this actually makes me like want to exercise rather than have to exercise. Well, you need to be wireless for that time. Right and the music. The music is inexorably connected to fitness. That's just that's the way it is.

We work out to music, and you know if you go to a spin class. Music is blaring for the whole class to hear as they are ripping through that thing and even if they bring their own headphones, they've got their own music. So you can't take music out of the equation. Not only that headsets are only going to get smaller, smaller, more compact, more light, more conducive to them being workout ready and not big and bulky. So they got to get on board now, or they'd, like tom said, are going to miss the boat because they keep fighting it.

Well, you may have heard there was a record broken recently, and the record was broken by the twitch streamer Ludwig Afghan again. Rather, who ended his non-stop stream after 31 consecutive days, breaking the record for most paying subscribers with over 282 thousand Ludwig started the stream planning to add 10 seconds to the live stream for every new subscriber, and he said he would donate five dollars for every new subscriber added on the last day to charity. We don't exactly know what the final tally was, but you know it was uh. It was an interesting 31 days indeed after wrapping up his record Aaron tweeted. Since I started streaming prince Philip died, the Suez Canal got blocked and unblocked David debris made two apology: videos and Jesus of Nazareth died and then rose from the dead.

Yeah, easter happened right, wow yeah. That's that's really impressive canal. One is the one that that turned my head, the most like that felt like that lasted forever and that that all happened during the time of 31 consecutive days of streaming so yeah sure yeah. You know at first I was like what I mean. Was he like insane at the end of it I mean he was sleeping uh and then he kind of had like a small team of folks hold on sleeping in a race car bed in a race car bed, a red one in the shot yeah I mean he was uh? You know.

Sometimes you have to, you know, go to the potty or something so there. There were things that they were doing to allow him to be a human, but the stream went on 31 days yeah. It's impressive um I've heard of these sorts of things before, and they don't always go so well. Some people have crazy exhaustion problems, and you know it kind of messes with their head. I think he had a good plan, and he pulled it off.

I say well done to this guy. Do we know what charity he was donating? The proceeds to um, let's see twitch addiction anonymous just kidding, that's not true um, I don't know. Actually it doesn't say it is not yet known how much he raised and the BBC article doesn't say uh which charity so uh, though, though I'm always you know, I'm not I'm not accusing Ludwig of anything, but I'm always more supportive when we know exactly where the money is going, where the money's going by the way. If you're wondering uh, who held the previous record, it was Tyler, Blevins, otherwise known as ninja, who had 269 154 subscribers still a lot but uh, but we have. We knew we have a new champ everyone so which nascent uh Microsoft streaming service will Ludwig, be uh, enticed away and then come back after a while.

I don't know all right. Let's check out the mailbag. This one comes from Matthew who says good morning. I mean good morning Matthew to you most wonderful people and happy spring greetings from the UK good to hear that matthew says just got a quick question. Tom mentioned in the Monday conversation that he has a harmony hub, but he hasn't touched the remote for a long while Matthew says my question is: how does he start stop and skip and fast-forward and all that stuff yeah? So I I I wrote directly to Matthew, uh and longtime listeners of the show know that I suffer from a melody known as liking, the Apple TV, remote ITIS.

There is no cure, I just like the remote and so for stopping and starting and uh actually for stopping and starting. I can use voice and I sometimes do uh, but mostly I use the Apple TV remote or the Roku remote uh, the Roku remote's sitting out there as well. We do tend to use the Apple TV a little more than the Roku um and certainly for fast forwarding and stuff um, so, so yeah uh, I do use fewer devices right because I don't need to use the remote for the TV. I tell the echo to turn it on and off or with the Apple TV and the Roku, both now they use Keck. So I can just press a button, and they will turn the TV on to the right input.

The speakers automatically pick up where the input is coming. Occasionally those JBL speakers don't catch up, and I may have to pull out the JBL remote uh. So I know you're mentioning a lot of remotes, and it may sound like why are you just using your universal remote and the fact is, I use them so infrequently that keeping the remote settings up to date with the latest devices uh became more trouble than just having that remote sitting out yeah. That makes sense whenever I use that remote, and I love that you back that remote so much because I don't think anyone else will so you're fighting a good fight, and it's important, oh yeah. No, I'm wrong.

I just want to say it before you email me. I am absolutely wrong to like that remote. But I do I's a matter. I really I'd love the Apple TV as an overall device and experience, but that remote I feel like I'm. I feel like I'm disarming a bomb every time I pick it up and use it, and then I'm very careful putting it down very gingerly on the table.

Nobody bumps it or else we're changing channels, and you don't want that, and you know it kind of annoys me, but every time you back its cause, I don't know I feel like an angel gets its wings, so I am physically incapable of picking it up right side up physically incapable it's almost like the universe. Has it outed. For me, I mean I'm not going to talk about it. Slipping between my couch cushions because that's a whole other ball game, but there's something it's its as if it's secretly weighted in a way where I always pick it up upside down, yeah, it's just madness. I don't know it's just one of those things.

Oh, yeah. It needs to be like triangular shaped or something like hell. I think you're going to get a new Apple TV remote this year. That's that's all signs point to that. I'm not the only one who complains about it.

So, let's here's hoping yeah I'd be shocked if they didn't do that this year, it'll be a big deal well, they've shocked us before that's true, true, thank you for the email Matthew and, if you have any feedback of anything, we've talked about on a past. Show question about a future show or anything in between feedback at dailytechnewsshow. com is where to send your correspondence shout out to patrons at our master and our grand master levels, including carol Dustin, Campbell and Andrew Bradley, by the way, very special thanks to Andrew Bradley, who is in the top lifetime supporter list for DNS. Thank you, Andrew for all the years of support. We love you also thank to Scott Johnson, who we also love Scott, what's been going on, since we saw you later, oh well, thank you for saying so.

Uh, uh we're second week into this um Kickstarter for my card game. If you want to see progress on that, I just put up a video today, or it will be going up today, uh, where I go through a couple of cards and how they work and how it affects the card game. So uh lots of good new information happening as we get ready for our next set of stretch goals. It's going great, so go check it out it's over at frogpants. com rock runners, or you can just search rock runners on Kickstarter and for everything else.

You can find me on Twitter at Scott Johnson, excellent folks. We are live Monday through Friday at 4, 30 pm eastern, that's 20, 30 UTC find out more at dailytechnewsshow. com, live we'll be back tomorrow, doing it all again with Justin Robert young talk to you, then this show is part of the frog pants network get more at frogpants. com.

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