WeChat is Everything

WeChat is Everything
Number	2721
Broadcast Date	MARCH 27, 2016
Episode Length	1:00:14
Hosts	Peter Wells
Guests	Krishan Sharma

A very long show from two chatty Australians, talking news, rumours, and a recent trip to China.

Guest

• Krishan Sharma
  • ksallthingstech

Headlines

• Apple pausing iOS 9.3 updates for older devices, working on activation fix

Rene Ritchie of iMore is reporting an issue affecting some users of iPhone 5s' and earlier who are being asked to enter the Apple ID password following the update to 9.3, and if they don't know their password, they cannot access their phone. Apple has already pulled the update in question to older handsets. News organisations around the world ran with the headline Apple bricking old iPhones, but seriously people, you should know your Apple ID password, or at least have a way of recovering it, if you use an iPhone. You should probably know your Gmail password if you use an Android phone too. And in my day, a phone was bricked if you messed with it so much, it was gone for good. A phone isn't bricked if you just need to reset your password if you've forgotten it. Get off my lawn!

• Mossberg: the iPhone 7 had better be spectacular

Sticking with Apple, and the reviews of the new iPhone SE and iPad Pro are starting to trickle out this weekend. Overall, reviewers were suprised by how much they liked the devices- but that hasn't stopped the Apple is Doomed think pieces from the tech pundits. The article shared and quoted the most this week was from Walt Mossberg over at the Verge. Uncle Walt says the iPhone 7 had better be spectacular, following last weeks lackluster event, and the quote "derivative products" that were announced.

• New iPhone model with curved glass case, 5.8" AMOLED display due in 2017, insider says

Walt Mossberg would no doubt be pleased to read the rumour on Apple Insider today, that suggests the new iPhone will feature a curved glass display, a gigantic 5.8 inch screen, and for the first time, the display will use AMOLED technology. So basically, Apple are releasing the Galaxy S7 Edge. Just to prove how quiet this weekend has been after Microsoft's Tay fizzled out, this is currently the number one story on Techmeme.

• Angola’s Wikipedia Pirates Are Exposing the Problems With Digital Colonialism

Motherboard shares a story that over in Angola, users are finding new an interesting ways to use the Facebook Free Basics and Wikipedia Zero services. Seems users are taking advantage of the Zero Data rated services to upload movies, tv shows, and other copyrighted material, as a kind of Zero rated file sharing network. The content is hidden on Wikipedia as jpg or png files, or shared freely in Facebook Groups.

• Big 'Leak' Claims Nintendo NX Is More Powerful Than PS4, But Be Careful

Forbes is reporting you're using an ad blocker to view their website. Once you disable your ad blocker, you can read all about the latest Nintendo NX rumours posted to reddit, that Forbes is writing up as fact. A developer took to Reddit with an Ask Me Anything, to say he was a triple a game dev, he has seen the Nintendo NX and that last week's rumours and leaks posted to reddit were in fact fake. The real story, according to User stimpak_vendor, is the Nintendo NX is a machine with full screen controllers, that kind of look like the old Game and Watch Nintendo hardware, that you can use as independent portable consoles. More interesting is the Nintendo NX hardware is said to be more powerful than the PS4. It's been a long time since Nintendo were able to claim better specs in a console war - I guess the Nintendo 64 was the last time? So this would be massive news. Only it's not news, its a rumour. But it's the long weekend and we're scraping the bottom of the barrel here.

• Google Transit directions in Melbourne are now live for everyone

Closer to home, our friends at Ausdroid are reporting that the good folk in Melbourne Australia finally have transit information in Google Maps. I'm very proud of you Melbourne, and the rest of Victoria. Wait til you guys experience smartphones, it'll blow your freaking mind.

• Government documents reveal Dyson is making an electric car

Engadget reports that Dyson, the company behind the very expensive vacuum cleaner my wife recently bought, is developing an Electric Car. The Guardian has spotted a section in the National Infrastructure Delivery Plan published on gov.uk that talks about the project and the government's "£174 million ($245 million) investment" into the project.

Submitted by habichuelacondulce

• This Is uFlix!
• Full Steam Ahead!

And is it the Death of geo-dodging for Australians? With popular geo-blocking circumvention tools UnoTelly and Unblock-Us in addition to a number of commercial VPN services falling under Netflix’s block list, customers outside of the US looking to get access to a wider content library are fast running out of options. But Melbourne based UFlix remains firm.

• The Epic Story of Dropbox’s Exodus From the Amazon Cloud Empire

And if you're looking for a weekend read, pop on the kettle, and settle in to read the Wired article in our show notes on the epic work that went in to moving Dropbox off of Amazon Web Services, and into their own data centre. Infrastructure nerds will be disappointed in the lack of technical detail in the article, but it's an interesting read none the less.

Discussion

• So Krishan and i have just travelled to China - disclosure, smartphone manufacturer Oppo paid for the trip - and we thought it would be fun to discuss some of the observations we made visiting there. Now this is not going to be a "You can buy a Glass of beer in McDonalds" segment, we're hoping for a little more tech for this audience.
• Thoughts on Shenzen, and the factory tour at Guanddong
• As consumers we are captivated by flashy launches, high spec products and slick ad campaigns but this is how phones are made, and almost all of them are made in China.
• The top 12 smartphone manufacturers, nine are based in China and together account for more than a third of the world’s total smartphone market. Chinese players like Xiaomi and Oppo have caught up when it comes to hardware but can they crack the west?
• US listeners probably have never heard of Oppo, but they may know the offshoot, OnePlus. Although even that was a little odd. Oppo are now trying to distance themselves from their very popular western brand
• Barcelona FC and America's Next Top Model
• So I was fascinated by the use of WeChat by our host. I knew WeChat was insanely popular, and I knew it was used for transactions, but i didn't realise it was used for IRL transactions. Our guide was using WeChat to as a debit card to pay for cabs and restaurant bills, and when i chatted to him, he said in Sydney, he uses WeChat to order food from Chinese restaurants in his area. I loved thinking theres this clandestine WeChat network of Chinese expats, in Sydney, but it makes total sense, if everyone in that community is already using the app
• Beyond that, WeChat is not just WhatsApp for China. It's Twitter for China, it's Instagram for China, it's Facebook for China. It's Apple Pay for China.
• And, of course, we need to discuss the great firewall of China. I wasn't really affected by it because I was mainly roaming, so most sites - Twitter, Google Maps, the rest of Google - seemed to work. For me, it was more a hassle than anything. It was fascinating discussing with locals what VPN they used, everyone we spoke to used a VPN.
• But as easy as it was as a visitor to, it was a little creepy to think my non-vpn traffic was always being watched - on hotel WiFi I used the free Tunnelbear service to get around the firewall.

Pick of the Day

• Infuse - The Beautiful Way to Watch Videos

Infuse is like a local, offline Plex, or if like me you use and love Plex, then this is Plex Sync for a one off purchase for $9. What Infuse does is suck down all the metadata for your movies and TV and presents the files in a beautiful Plex like interface. It supports binging of course, so if you kick off one episode of a season it's smart enough to play through that season. Purchasing it once will give you access to the Apple TV app if you have one of those too. It's my pick because I've just switched back to an iPad after using a Samsung Galaxy Tab as my tablet, and by gosh it's beautiful.

Links

• This episode on dailytechnewsshow.com
• Support DTNS on Patreon
• DTNS subreddit

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WeChat is Everything

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