Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 09/03 – Will Only One iPhone (The Expensive One) Get The Fastest 5G?

Starting point is 00:00:00 On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the TechMeme right home for Thursday, September 3rd, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, will only one iPhone get the fastest version of 5G?

Starting point is 00:00:43 Facebook moves into an election posture? Do geo-fencing warrants violate the Fourth Amendment? New Intel chips, new Snapdragon chips. Have you noticed we've been talking a lot about the chip industry lately? Today, I'll explain why. Also, a fully functional Game Boy without a battery, powered only by the sun and the energy of your button presses. Here's what you miss today in the world. world of tech. So this might not make your day. What if I told you only one of the many versions of

Starting point is 00:01:13 the forthcoming 5G iPhone will have the truly fastest version of 5G? And what if I told you that that will likely be the most expensive version naturally? That's what sources are telling fast company, quote, all the phones in the new iPhone 12 lineup will support the slower but more common sub-6 type of 5G service. But only the largest, highest end phone in the lineup, a 6.7-inch screen device likely called the iPhone Pro Max, will also support millimeter wave 5G. The source says only the largest phone in the line has room inside for the special antenna design required for millimeter wave and larger battery needed to accommodate millimeter wave's significant power draw. Also, only the U.S., Korea, and Japanese versions of the Pro Max will support millimeter wave 5G.

Starting point is 00:02:05 If sub 5G is a Camry, millimeter wave 5G is a Mercedes S-Class, it travels over a high-frequency radio spectrum between 24 gigahertz and 39 gigahertz, and delivers download speeds of up to one gigabit per second, and sometimes beyond. On the other hand, the signal has trouble penetrating objects such as buildings and is more expensive for carriers to deploy than a lower frequency service. Sub-6 service, which uses lower frequency spectrum below 6 gigahertz, produces speeds that are much more like a good 4G connection, end quote. So if you like me, we're expecting all this time that this year would be the year you would do your big iPhone upgrade cycle. Maybe not. Maybe it's going to be next year all over again. At least if your aim is to fully

Starting point is 00:02:52 jump on the 5G bandwagon in its maximal glory. Facebook says it's gearing up for the U.S. election. The company announced it would stop accepting new political ads across its properties a week before the U.S. presidential election as part of its steps to stop election interference, quoting Casey Newton in The Verge. Candidates and political action committees will continue to be able to buy ads that have already received at least one impression by October 27th, the company said. They can also choose to target those existing ads at different groups or adjust their level of spending. But they won't be able to launch new creative campaigns, a hedge against

Starting point is 00:03:31 candidates spreading misinformation during a particularly fraught moment in the company's history. The move represents a compromise between critics who demanded that the company stopped selling advertising altogether and political campaigns who argued that ads benefit lesser-known candidates and can be essential for get-out-the-vote efforts. Other steps announced by Facebook today include putting the company's voter information center at the top of the Facebook and Instagram feeds. The widget contains accurate, verified information and videos about how to vote and will remain at the top of the feed until Election Day. It will begin appearing this week for all U.S. users, Facebook said. Also, using the voter information center to educate Americans about the fact that the

Starting point is 00:04:10 winner of the presidential election might not be declared the night of the election as mail and ballots could take days or weeks to be counted. Also, providing live official election results as they become available through a partnership with Reuters. The information will appear in the voter information center, and Facebook will also deliver updates via push notifications, and removing posts that contain, quote, clear misinformation about COVID-19 and voting, end quote. So good, ads that say you'll catch COVID-19 by voting will be removed. And yet, given COVID-19 and the current situation, it's expected that 80 million people will vote before election day. So all of the potential harm that Facebook wants to prevent happening the week before the election, that harm can still be done for all of those 80 million voters voting all the weeks up until that final week. Also, candidates will still be allowed to claim victims. or cast doubts on election results, that's still allowed. And heck, the exception that Facebook carved out that straight up allows candidates to lie in ads, it still remains as well. So, you know,

Starting point is 00:05:15 meanwhile, more consequentially, perhaps, Facebook also said it will limit message forwarding on Messenger to five people or five groups at a time to tackle the spread of misinformation. This is down from the previous 150-person forwarding limit. It mirrors what Facebook did recently with WhatsApp and what it's done in other countries where its platform was accused of aiding actual genocides. It also mirrors the increasing calls by critics, which run basically like this. Okay, maybe there's no way to stop harmful content at scale on social platforms, but we could put guardrails in place that would structurally, essentially put speed bumps in the way of the spread of harmful content. Back to the political stuff, though, quoting the New York Times. Thursday's changes, which are a

Starting point is 00:05:58 tacit acknowledgement by Facebook of how powerful its effect on public discourse can be. are unlikely to satisfy its critics. Some of its measures such as the blocking of new political ads a week before election day are temporary. Yet they demonstrate that Facebook has sweeping abilities to shut down untruthful ads should it choose to do so. Some said blocking the ads would do little to reduce misinformation and that the social network should go further. Tara McGowan, the chief executive of the liberal nonprofit group acronym, said in a statement that right-wing publishers on Facebook such as Breitbart would fill the vacuum, quote, By banning new political ads in the final critical days of the 2020 election, Facebook has decided to tip the scales of the election to those with the greatest followings on Facebook, and that includes President Trump and the right-wing media that serves him, she said.

Starting point is 00:06:42 The Trump campaign was equally critical of Facebook's moves, quote, when millions of voters will be making their decisions, the president will be silenced by the Silicon Valley Mafia, who will at the same time allow corporate media to run their biased ads to swing voters in key states, said Samantha Zager, a campaign spokeswoman, end quote. Look, on stories like this, I always find it useful to see what Zenepp Tufekchi thinks, and Zennep tweeted this, quote, There are the details, and there is this. Mark Zuckerberg, alone, gets to set key rules with significant consequences for one of the most important elections in recent history. That should not be lost in the dust of who these changes will hurt or benefit. There is no alternative platform to Facebook that would counterbalance being banned or limited from it for electoral politics, an even stronger effect in some other countries. This fact stands even if Facebook, for now, bans limits or hinders one's own side, end quote.

Starting point is 00:07:42 In other words, timely reminder that, completely unelected, completely unaccountable to literally any other person or government in the world, Mark Zuckerberg alone remains the most politically powerful person in modern history. And there is nothing that you or I, or anyone else can do about that. Since we're covering politics, let's just jump slightly adjacent to address two stories from the legal tip. First, a unanimous three-judge federal appeals court

Starting point is 00:08:15 has ruled that the NSA's mass surveillance program was possibly unconstitutional and that the program's bulk collection of metadata was straight up illegal. So sort of a no-dun ruling, I guess, maybe seven years too late. And also, what does it matter? because Congress can just pass a law tomorrow, making anything like that legal.

Starting point is 00:08:35 Still, quoting Politico, Judge Marcia Berzon's opinion, which contains a half dozen references to the role of former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden in disclosing the NSA metadata program concludes that the bulk collection of such data violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The appeals court stopped just short of saying that the snooping was definitely unconstitutional, but rejected the Justice Department's arguments that collecting the metadata did not amount to a search under a 40-year-old legal precedent because customers voluntarily share such info with telephone providers, end quote. And on the front of the law evolving with the times, also related to searches, I guess, a federal judge in Chicago rejected three government geofence warrants, concluding that the requests

Starting point is 00:09:20 violated the Fourth Amendment's probable cause requirements. I find this even more interesting, quoting Ars Technica. Federal courts in the Chicago area have three times rejected government applications for warrants to force Google to produce a list of smartphones near two particular commercial establishments during one of three 45-minute intervals. The most recent ruling was handed down last week and was recently made public. The decisions are significant because Google has reported massive growth in law enforcement use of such geofence searches. Google says there was a 1,500 percent increase between 2017 and 2018 and a further 600 percent jump from 2018 to 2019. That's a hundredfold increase in two years. Google received a hundred and

Starting point is 00:10:00 180 Geoffense search requests a week during 2019, according to CNET. Google is a popular target for this kind of request because almost everyone uses Google products in one way or another. Google's Android controls a majority of the smartphone market, and even most users who run iPhones use apps like Google Maps and Gmail. Moreover, Google frequently has GPS data that places a user's phone within a few meters, much more accurate than the tower location data law enforcement can get from wireless providers. And these dragnet searches can capture a lot of data. In one case last year, Google was required to hand over information about almost 1,500 users to federal investigators working on a Wisconsin arson case.

Starting point is 00:10:38 If the Chicago ruling is upheld on appeal, it could place new limits on broad government data requests. That would force governments to be more discriminating when they ask Google or other technology and wireless companies for data about their customers' locations, end quote. Intel has announced its 11th generation Tiger Lake CPUs for laptops, with integrated Z-Graphics, Thunderbolt 4 support, Wi-Fi 6, and more all coming this fall. These are the chips that Intel intends for use in thin and light laptops, according the Verge. Intel is launching nine new 11th-gen designs for both its U-Series, which Intel is now referring to as UP3, and Y-Series class chips, aka UP4, led by the Core I7 1185 G7, which offers base speeds of 3.0

Starting point is 00:11:31 gigahertz, a maximum single core turbo boost of up to 4.8 gigahertz, and a maximum all-core boost of up to 4.3 gigahertz. It also features the most powerful version of Intel's Iris G integrated graphics with 96 CUs and a maximum graphic speed of 1.35 gigahertz. The company had already previewed the new chips at its Architecture Day 2020 event earlier this year. The new 11th-gen lineup is still built on the 10-nanometer node, similar to the current 10th-gen Ice Lake models, but it upgrades to the Willow core architecture with the new 10-nanometer superfin design that Intel says will offer better speeds at lower power consumption. Intel isn't being too specific on what those increases will be, but it promises that the new

Starting point is 00:12:11 chips will offer a 20% faster speed for day-to-day office productivity tasks, along with a similar 20% increase in system level power, which it says results in more than an extra hour of battery life for things like video streaming, end quote. And Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2, 5G for Windows arm-based laptops. Notice I said arm-based laptops running Windows. Do you see why I'm telling you this story right after that last one? Qualcomm says the new chips will have better AI performance and support for Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1. quitting and gadget. Here's a sign that the troubled windows on Snapdragon platform isn't going away

Starting point is 00:12:57 anytime soon. Qualcomm is announcing today its new made-for-PC processor based on arms design. The Snapdragon 8cx-gen-2 follows up, 2018 Snapdragon 8cx, and back then the company said the X in the name stood for extreme power. This year's model offers better AI performance and support for newer standards of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, but doesn't appear to run any faster than before. Acer and HP both also announced today that they'll be offering laptops with the new chip set, with Acer's Spin 7 being the first to use it. HP's product will be a business-centric notebook, and the company said more information will be shared later this year, end quote.

Starting point is 00:13:39 Have you noticed we've been talking an awful lot about chips lately? Like, I can't remember doing so many chip stories all at once ever before in the three years of this podcast. I feel like there are times when we can go six months without even mentioning Slippes, silicon and the semiconductor industries even once. Part of this is probably just cyclical, but part of it is that I also can't remember the last time the chip industry was so in flux. You've got Intel falling behind, back on 10 nanometer processes when others are racing towards three nanometers.

Starting point is 00:14:11 You've got what looks like the final inevitable rise of arm. You've got GPU suddenly the bigger force in the industry, thanks to everything from AI to self-driving cars to crypto. And let's not forget, you've got the whole China-U.S. Tech Cold War thing, and Silicon has a big role to play there as well. For instance, Bloomberg is reporting that China is full throttle enacting new policies to develop a third-generation homegrown semiconductor industry by 2025. This would include R&D efforts, education, and financing for the chip industry. Beijing has apparently budgeted $1.4 trillion for this effort, quote,

Starting point is 00:14:49 China is planning a sweeping set of new government policies to develop its domestic semiconductor industry and counter-Trump administration restrictions, conferring the same level of priority on the effort it accorded to building its atomic capability, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Semiconductors are fundamental to virtually every component of China's technology ambitions, and an increasingly aggressive Trump administration threatens to cut off their supply from abroad. Quote, the Chinese leadership realizes that semiconductors underpin all advanced technologies and that it can no longer depend reliably on American supplies, said Dan Wang. technology analysts at research firm Gevacol Dragonomics.

Starting point is 00:15:25 In the face of stricter U.S. restrictions on ship access, China's response can only be to keep pushing its own industry to develop, end quote. China imports more than $300 billion worth of integrated circuits each year, and its semiconductor developers rely on U.S.-made chip design, tools, and patents, as well as critical manufacturing technologies from U.S. allies. But deteriorating ties between Beijing and Washington have made it increasingly difficult for Chinese companies to source components and shipmaking technologies from overseas. Third-generation semiconductors are mainly chipsets made of materials such as silicon carbide and

Starting point is 00:15:58 gallium nitride. They can operate at high frequency and in higher power and temperature environments and are widely used in fifth-generation radio frequency chips, military-grade radars, and electric vehicles. Since no single country now dominates the fledgling third-generation technology, China's gamble is its corporations can compete if they accelerate research in the field now. quote, this is a sector about to see explosive growth, Alan Zhu, managing partner at Fujian-based chip investment fund, and Jin Capital told an industry forum last week, because of China's increasing demand and investment, this is an area that could create, quote, a world-class Chinese chip giant, end quote.

Starting point is 00:16:40 And finally, just something fun that I can't resist mentioning. Researchers have unveiled Engage, a proof-of-concept battery-free handheld gaming device that couples Game Boy emulation with intermittent computing technologies. What's this now? Well, what if one day we could have completely battery-free mobile gaming? Let me quote C-Net and then click through to the linked piece for more details on this. Quote, the battery-free Game Boy, a video game console powered by a combination of energy from the sun and button-mashing during gameplay. It's an orange brick about the size of a paperback novel, but it weighs only half as much as the original Nintendo Gameboy released in 1989. DeWinkle, a computer scientist at Delft University of

Starting point is 00:17:26 Technology, has been working on building the device for about a year. He calls it his baby. Officially, it's dubbed the Engage, no relation to Nokia's failed console, I'm told, but the inspiration is obvious. Besides the absence of a battery slot on the back, the device looks exactly like Nintendo's revolutionary handheld. It was critical from the start of the project that we maintain the feel of a Game Boy, DeWinkle says. The handheld device is a proof of demonstration that battery-free mobile gaming is possible. It's not a Nintendo product, but it's also not just a simple novelty for researchers either. Like the original Gameboy, it's designed to spark a revolution.

Starting point is 00:18:00 The researchers leading the project have been studying energy harvesting and intermittent computing devices for years. The Engage is the result of researching and defining this work, and the system is a state-of-the-art technical marvel. Intermitt computing, an emerging field of computer science and engineering, drives the design principles behind the engage. Unlike batteries which draw energy until they need to be replaced, intermittent computing devices use novel energy harvesting techniques that provide small amounts of power, resulting in devices that only remain on for seconds rather than hours.

Starting point is 00:18:33 Quoting the researchers, the whole idea of intermittent computing stems from the fact that we should ditch batteries completely, end quote. Super, super cool idea. Check out the piece, lengthen the show notes for more details. That's all for today. Long, long, long show today. I just kept looking up and finding something else that I had to tell you about. So in the interest of trying to bring this in as close to a 20-minute runtime as I can, that's it. I'll talk to you tomorrow.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 09/03 – Will Only One iPhone (The Expensive One) Get The Fastest 5G?

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