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Tom dives into the history of DisplayPort and explains why DisplayPort isn’t just HDMI with a new-fangled connector.

Featuring Tom Merritt.

Episodes mentioned:

About USB 4

About Variable Refresh Rate

About HDMI 2.1

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Episode transcript:

A buddy of mine gave me a monitor and it uses DisplayPort? What the heck is that?

I looked it up and the connector looks like Thunderbolt AND USB-C. What the heck is up with that?

And what is it good for anyway? Why isn’t it just HDMI?

Confused? Don’t be. Let’s help you Know a Little More about DisplayPort.

DisplayPort is one of many different interfaces that turn bits of data into pictures on a monitor for you. It’s the one that has that rectangular connector with a funny angle on one corner.
DisplayPort is developed by the Video Electronics Standards Association or VESA. VESA is a standards incorporation created by NEC Home Electronics in July 1989 as a successor to the VGA standards. The organization now made up of about 300 companies and is based in San Jose, California.
OK back to DisplayPort.
DisplayPort is a high-quality display tech. It has something called Dual mode that can output either DisplayPort, Single-link DVI or HDMI from the same port. I know. That’s more than two. But it’s still called dual mode. Deal with it.
Because of dual mode, DisplayPort is compatible with HDMI and single-link DVI with passive adapters. Just dongles. If you want more, like dual-link DVI, you’ll need a powered active adapter. But I know you only care about HDMI. You can use a passive adapter to use a DisplayPort jack with an HDMI display. But you can’t connect DisplayPort to an HDMI source. Well, technically, it can be done but it’s not practical. So if your laptop has a DisplayPort jack and your monitor is HDMI you can get a dongle. If your laptop has an HDMI port and your monitor only has DisplayPort, that’s probably not going to work.
Now I know that most of you identify a display connection by the connector. The shape of the plug.
DisplayPort supports two types of connectors. A full-size connector, the previously mentioned one with the angled corner. That one is called Standard DisplayPort. It sometimes comes with a latching mechanism.
The second type is a mini display port connector, which was developed by Apple and logically called Mini DisplayPort. Thunderbolt 1 and 2 used the Mini DisplayPort connector shape before Thunderbolt switched to USB-C’s shape for Thunderbolt 3.
There are a few other types of DisplayPort connections you may encounter.
An embedded DisplayPort connection or eDP is used in some laptops to connect the motherboard to the screen. That all happens inside your laptop so you’ll probably only run into it during repairs. And inside TVs there is a version called Internal Display Port or IDP. Again. All on the inside.
One you’re much more likely to come across is DisplayPort’s Alt Mode on USB-4. This lets DisplayPort signals come out of a USB-C port. You can do this because some of the pins on the USB-C connector are reserved for other protocols. Like DisplayPort. DisplayPort is part of the USB4 standard. (See our episode on USB4!) So you can connect a laptop with a USB-C port to a DisplayPort monitor! Yay!
So what does the DisplayPort protocol itself do?
DisplayPort has 4 lanes of data and can transmit video and audio either simultaneously or one without the other. It can also carry USB 2.0 data. It supports up to 32 channels of 16 or 24-bit audio. Because it has independent data streams it can support multiple monitors– if it has enough bandwidth for the resolution.
A note about bandwidth numbers. You’re going to hear two kinds of bandwidth specs in this episode. The DisplayPort spec notes both. Maximum bandwidth is how much the standard is capable of. Effective bandwidth is how much you get after accounting for the overhead of encoding.
VESA approved DisplayPort version 1.0 on May 3 2006. It allowed a maximum bandwidth of up to 10.8 gigabits per second. Version 1.1 added support for HDCP and fiber optics, meaning cables could be longer.
In January 2010, Version 1.2 doubled the maximum bandwidth to 21.6 Gbps. It added Multi-stream Transport, or MST so you can daisy-chain multiple monitors on one port. It officially included Apple’s Mini Display Port as well. That’s the one that shared a connector shape with Thunderbolt before Thunderbolt changed its connector shape to be the same as USB-C. Sigh.
In January 2013, version 1.3 added optional support for adaptive sync like AMD’s FreeSync. We covered that a little in the episode on Variable Refresh Rate.
On September 15 2014 brought out DisplayPort 1.3 with a maximum bandwidth of 32.4 gigabits per second with HBR3 mode that featured 8.1 Gb/s per lane. The effective bandwidth was 25.92 Gb/s. That gave enough overhead to support 4K at 120 Hertz, two 4K monitors at 60 Hertz, or even 8K at 30 Hertz. It also added support for HDMI 2.0 (see our episode on that as well) and HDCP 2.2 copy protection.
In March 2016, Version 1.4 didn’t increase bandwidth, but it did add support for HDR10 metadata, Forward Error Correction and a big one, Display Stream Compression aka DSC. DSC helps squeeze more bandwidth out of video signals. It really accounts for a lot of what DisplayPort can do now. But it does modify the signal a bit. They call it a “light compression.” In practice it affects video quality more than latency since it encodes and decodes in real time, but it doesn’t affect either very much. Version 1.4 also increased the maximum in-line audio channels to 32.
Finally, DisplayPort 2.0 came along June 26 2019. It has a maximum bandwidth of 80 Gbps. and supports 8K at 60 Hertz without compression. With DSC it can go all the way up to 16K at 60Hertz or two 8K displays at 120 Hertz and even three 10K displays at 60 Hertz. Oh, I know. None of you have 8K monitors. Fine. For someone who would like a more practical example, try two 4K monitors at 144 Hertz with no compression or three 4K at 90 Hertz.
If you’re using USB-C to connect to a display-port monitor, Display Port Alt Mode 2.0 can support one 8K monitor at 30 Hertz with no compression or 2 4K monitors at 120 Hertz and 3 4K monitors at 144 Hertz with compression.
Another thing it can do with all that adaptability is support VR and AR headsets at high resolution since headsets have one screen for each eye.
OK. Now you know what the DisplayPort can do, let’s talk cables!
There are three certifications for DisplayPort cables and 5 names for the speed of the cable. The speeds I’ll give here are the effective speeds, aka the speeds you get after accounting for overhead. When shopping you may see either the speed name or the certification type, so I’ll give you both.
RBR (both the name for the certifications and the speed) supports version 1.0 up to 6.48 Gb/s. You probably won’t see this one anymore.
Standard certification supports version 1.2. That covers the HBR and HBR 2 speeds of 10.8 Gbps and 17.28 Gbps.
And DP8K certification supports versions 1.3, 1.4 and 2 and the HBR3 and UHBR speeds of 25.92 Gbps and 77.36 Gbps.
Cables can run from from 2 meters to 15 meters long. Though if you’re daisy-chaining that will reduce the maximum length it works at.
If you don’t know what version your device supports… good luck? One annoying thing about DisplayPort is you usually have to look at spec sheets to tell the version. There’s no standard way of identifying it on ports or cables.
And another annoying thing is Deep Sleep. This is an energy-saving mode on some DisplayPort monitors that doesn’t cut power entirely when they go to sleep in order to wake faster. Great when it works. If you’re having trouble getting your DisplayPort monitor to wake from sleep, disabling deep sleep may help.
So who is DisplayPort for? If you’re not trying to get the cheapest option and you don’t need the widespread compatibility of an HDMI, DisplayPort will give you higher refresh rates and more options to configure adaptive refresh rates.
In other words, I hope you know a little more about DisplayPort.

Amazon Prime price hikes are coming to Europe this September, Alibaba plans to list as a duel-primary in Hong Kong and New York stock exchanges, and Russia opts-out of the International Space Station in 2024.

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Show Notes
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Tom breaks down Central Bank Digital Currencies and why they are not the same as cryptocurrency.

Featuring Tom Merritt.

MP3

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A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.

Thanks to Kevin MacLeod of Incompetech.com for the theme music.

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Episode Transcript:

I’ve barely wrapped my head around Bitcoin and now you tell me the government is getting into it?
There’s something called Seabee Geebies or CBDCs??
Is cash going away?
Are you confused?
Don’t be.
Let’s help you Know a Little more about Central Bank Digital Currencies or CBDCs

Central Bank Digital Currencies or CBDCs are digital currencies issued by a government institution– usually a central bank– an alternative to– not a replacement for– an alternative to coins or printed money. They’re sometimes called digital base money or digital fiat currency. Fiat currency is the name for the money most governments issue. Side note, fiat means issued by order or decree. The term fiat money arose to distinguish it from money backed by something like gold or silver.
CBDCs are often compared to cryptocurrencies because they’re digital, but that’s a confusing comparison because they have different aims. Cryptocurrencies are generally meant to be independent, and often are decentralized, where no one entity controls the servers the system runs on. Even when a cryptocurrency is centralized it’s generally meant to be independent of governmental institutions. And cryptocurrencies are often seen as an investment. CBDCs are no more or less of an investment than the country’s fiat currency.
CBDCs are also different from a particular kind of cryptocurrency called a stable coin. Stable coins are usually linked to a stable fiat currency so the value doesn’t fluctuate any more than the currency it’s based on. One stable coin linked to the Euro would always be worth one Euro. These are closer to a CBDC but they’re not issued by the central bank.
So I think about government digital currency less as a government form of cryptocurrency and more like a digital driver’s license or a virtual transit pass. It’s something the government creates in a digital form instead of physical form.
And most of the CBDCs in development don’t use a blockchain or any kind of distributed ledger. In many ways they’re more like the money in your bank account than they are like bitcoin. Except even though you only see your bank account money as a number on your bank’s website or app, somewhere– allegedly– there’s a stack of paper money representing the balances in that bank. With CBDCs there would not be.The digital currency would be the same as the paper currency not just a digital record that it exists.
So if they aren’t cryptocurrencies exactly and they aren’t necessarily using a blockchain and aren’t even backed by paper money what are they and how do you get off calling them money?
Let’s figure out how this works.
Whatever system a central bank uses, a CBDC will rely on the consumer having a digital wallet. This will most often be done in software on a mobile device, but could also be done in hardware like a smart card or some other kind of smart dongle.
The wallet would authenticate the user some robust way. This could be by PIN, password, or biometrics. Most CBDCs contemplate using the FIDO alliance password-less strong authentication. See our episode on FIDO for more on that.
Wallets would also need to authenticate parties in a transaction, whether sending or receiving currency. This can be done with public and private key exchanges (we have an episode on that too) between two wallets or with a central database.
A few central banks are considering using a distributed ledger like a blockchain. It would still be centrally controlled but would include the security of the blockchain and be an easy way to get a system running. But it also introduces some complexity that’s not necessary for this system. You don’t need to avoid centralized control, which is one of the main aims of a blockchain.
So most Central Bank Digital Currencies being developed use a token-based system. Tokens are protected with strong encryption from being duplicated– kind of like Bitcoin– and then recorded in a database under the control of the government, usually the central bank. The bank itself may run the database or it may contract a private entity to do it for them, but the government is in charge, not the private entity.
The database keeps a record of any entity, people, companies, government organizations etc, that hold the digital currency. So you could have an account which tracks the balance in your CBDC wallet from which you could pay others or accept payments or deposits.
There isn’t one settled way to run a CBDC yet. One thing they all have in common though, is the need for strong cryptography to keep each unit of the currency from being copyable. And as far as payments and transactions, there’s a lot of security already built into the current system– like in point of sale units– that can be adapted for CBDCs.
That sounds like a lot of work. Why do that? Why not just keep the system we have now? It works, right?
Well CBDCs, like blockchain-based cryptocurrencies that inspired them, would be way more efficient. Right now when you pay someone using a bank or a credit card there are dozens of entities involved in the transaction. The point of sale system talks to a credit authorization system which communicates with a payment processor which talks to a clearing house which talks to a bank. And that’s a major oversimplification. That’s why money transfers can take up to three days.
With a CBDC there’s one entity, the central bank, that does the transfer, in real time from you to the person you’re paying. This reduces risk because you know immediately if the payment was successful. It makes accounting easier because you don’t have a lot of stuff you’re waiting to clear through the banking system. And it eliminates fees since there are no organizations in the middle taking a cut.
And because your account/wallet holds your actual digital currency a run on the bank would not cause your money to be unavailable because the cash isn’t in the vault.
Another benefit is that CBDCs are often promoted as a solution for the unbanked. Banks need to develop and maintain infrastructure to provide access to its financial system. This involves verifying identities, creating credit cards and debit cards, offering ATMs etc. CBDCs could just be run on a phone with a connection to the CBDC database. So instead of having to apply for a bank account, every citizen could get a wallet or account from the central bank through a phone. This could be done with an app but as has been shown by systems like M-Pesa in Kenya could also operate over text messaging. 89.9% of people own at least one mobile phone, that’s 7.1 billion people. And even for those who don’t have or don’t want to use a phone for CBDCs, cards similar to transit cards can be created to act as digital wallets for the digital currency.
And then there’s a benefit that’s also a downside. Tracking. Every transaction is recorded which helps governments collect taxes and combat crimes like money laundering. But also means the government knows every transaction making people uneasy, especially if they don’t trust their government.
Another downside with an upside, is that CBDCs could take away a kind of revenue from banks, causing them to have to shift their business models. A downside for the banking industry but possibly an upside for consumers who might benefit from increased banking competition to get you to use them for deposits and loans. They’d have to offer you new features to convince you, versus now where you feel like you have to use them because your alternative is sticking your money in a mattress or burying it in a jar out back.
And of course the one main downside to CBDCs, centralized control. Bad actors within a government might be tempted to abuse their control to punish political opponents or activists by removing money or access. More often and more likely are the privacy and security issues faced by ISPs and current banks. The central bank would become a prime target for attackers looking to crack into the database and steal money or information.
Up until now I’ve been describing what are called Retail CBDCs. The money us regular folks use in day to day life. There’s also something called a Wholesale CBDC. These would be used for payments between central banks or between any banks. You think the system is complicated for you buying that Violet Crumble at the Aldi? It’s way more complicated for banks to exchange money across borders. CBDCs could be used to make it easier for banks to do cross-border transfers.
In September, central banks in Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and South Africa started testing a system to use CBDCs to make cross-border transactions cheaper and easier between those countries.
And the Bank for International Settlements which handles this issue for fiat currencies is also exploring using CBDCs for cross-border payments with the central banks of China, Hong Kong, Thailand and the UAE.
So we know how they kind of work. And we know some big fancy international banking is testing them. When can I get a wallet?
I mean seriously. Is any country actually doing this for its citizens?
Yes. And it’s not El Salvador. You may have heard that El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as an official currency. That is not a Central Bank Digital Currency because it’s not issued by a central bank. It’s no different than El Salvador saying Canadian Tire Bucks are now they’re official currency. It’s the government giving a currency they are not in control of the official blessing to pay for things with it.
But it’s not a Central Bank Digital Currency.
The Bahamas get the credit for the first Central Bank Digital Currency. The Sand Dollar is the official digital version of the Bahamian dollar, issued by the Central Bank of the Bahamas in collaboration with MasterCard and Island Pay. It was officially deployed in October 2020.
With 700 islands, moving actual cash around the Bahamas is costly and time-consuming. You have to put it on boats and stuff. The hope is that disbursements using the sand dollar will reduce the need to move actual paper notes by boat or otherwise.
5 other Caribbean islands have followed suit, including St. Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Lucia, and Grenada.
China is also fairly well along in a central bank Digital currency
China is the biggest country that has an active test of a working CBDC, the digital RMB for domestic use and digital Yuan for international use. It launched its test programs in 2020.
China’s CBDC exists on a phone or digital card and does not need an active internet connection to make transactions, though it does need internet to access accounts. Some of China’s tests of its digital currency set expiration dates to encourage spending. But they don’t usually do that. And China replaces one unit of physical currency for every digital unit it releases, keeping the money supply the same. China’s CBDCs are issued by the People’s Bank of China to a few private banks for disbursement, keeping banks in the loop.
China has conducted multiple tests of CBDCs in many cities like Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing, giving citizens free grants of small amounts to spend in a few participating test locations including Mcdonald’s, Subway, and Starbucks. The big test is expected to happen at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing which will feature a pilot program with a wide national and international footprint for the first time.
And that’s about it. While around 90% of government central banks are investigating or developing digital currencies, there aren’t many who have launched them.
For instance MIT and the Boston Fed are undertaking Project Hamilton to research and test a FedCoin for the US. The Bank of England has created a CBDC task force and the EU launched a two-year investigation into a digital Euro project in July 2021. But none of them are coming anytime soon.
So there you have it. Central Bank Digital Currencies are something central banks around the world would someday like to issue as an alternative to paper notes and coins, that you could hold and spend in digital cards or phone apps for easy efficient spending and saving.
In other words I hope now you know a little more about CBDCs.

Apple CEO Tim Cook sent out an email to employees asking them to partially return to the office starting in September. WhatsApp confirmed that it will support multiple devices allowing users to access their accounts from up to four linked devices. The US Supreme Court has slashed the scope of the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in a 6-3 decision handed down Thursday.

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

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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.

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Tom shares the history of the USB standard and the real benefits and limitations of USB4.

Featuring Tom Merritt.

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Thanks to Kevin MacLeod of Incompetech.com for the theme music.

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Episode Script
I hear I can now get stuff with USB4. What the heck does that get me?
USB has been a mess and confusing and I don’t know if I want another number?
Also it relates to Thunderbolt 4 somehow?
Are you confused?
Don’t be.
Let’s help you Know a Little more about USB4
USB stands for the Universal Serial Bus, a standard released first in 1996 to provide an industry standard for connecting peripherals and computers.
It is maintained by the USB Implementers Forum or USB-IF, a non-profit group founded in 1995 by Compaq, Digital, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NEC and Nortel – it’s expanded its membership since of course.
Friends, before USB, each peripheral had its own connector and you couldn’t use the same wire or port for the other. Well there were a few exceptions but for the most part, a monitor had a VGA connector, a printer used a serial Port, a mouse used a PS/2 port and examples like that were many.
People at the founding companies of the USB-IF got together in 1994 to fix that mess and make it easier to plug things into computers and make it cheaper to make the computers because you didn’t need a separate port for every single peripheral someone might want to connect.
A team at Intel led by Ajay Bhatt produced the first integrated circuits to support USB in 1995. And Joseph C Decuir credited his work on the Atari SIO 8-bit communication implementation as the basis of the standard.
The USB 1.0 specification was officially released in 1996 and supported 1.5 megabit/second low speed and 12 megabit per second full speed data transfers. The high speeds were meant for printers and floppy drives, the lower speeds for cheaper peripherals with unshielded cables like joysticks and your mouse.
Microsoft began supporting USB in Windows 95 OSR 2.1 in August 1997. Apple’s iMac was the first mainstream product to support it and popularize it starting in August 1998.
It took off from there.
USB 2.0 arrived in April 2000 adding a higher signaling rate of 480 megabits per second and adding the Mini and Micro connectors.
USB 3 came along in November 2008 bringing superspeed capability at 5 gigabits per second and the blue ports to designate them. USB 3.1 followed in December 2014 doubling the speed to 10 gigabits per second called SuperSpeed Plus. And USB 3.2 arrived in September 2017 allowing for multi-lane operation to get data rates of 20 gigabits per second.
That brings us to the present. USB4 was released as a spec on August 29, 2019. And when you’re searching for info remember that unlike previous specs the USB-IF spells USB4 without a space between the B and the 4. All one term USB4.
While USB 3.2 was designed for use over USB-C cables – you know the small reversible ones–, USB4 is the first spec to require it. USB4 does not run over previous USB ports or connector types without an adapter.
ALSO USB 4 incorporates Intel’s Thunderbolt 3 spec. A USB4 host or peripheral device does not have to support Thunderbolt 3 but it can. The spec does require USB4 docks to support Thunderbolt 3 and hubs to support Thunderbolt 3 on the downward-facing ports – aka the one that peripherals plug into.
USB4 is mostly an attempt to simplify USB. The spec itself can be said to just tunnel other specs, like Thunderbolt, DisplayPort, USB 3.2, USB 2.0 and PCIe. It is therefore backwards compatible with all of those.
Also a USB4 connection requires USB Power delivery of at least 7.5 Watts per port up to 100 watts. So no more trying to guess if a USB port provides power or not by looking for the little lightning logo. It does. And it will make sure it only sends as much power as your device can handle.
The first products supporting USB4 arrived near the end of 2020 and the connector became common in new products released in 2021.
So what do you get if you get USB4?
USB 4 can share a single link with multiple end device types. So you can daisy chain. AND you get speed. USB4 devices must support 20 Gigabit per second data and can support up to 40 gbps data. And with video you can get an even faster effective rate. We’ll talk about that in a minute.
So while USB4 does simplify things quite a bit over previous USB versions you still have to check a device to know whether you’ll get 20 or 40 gbps. To help with that, packaging will carry a USB20 or USB40 logo to help you tell the difference. Ports and cables get a more stylized logo that just says 20 or 40 with the little USB trident symbol.
Oh and none of the logos say USB4, just the bandwidth amount. So if you see USB40 you’re getting USB4 with 40 gbps capability.
But that’s it. Even USB 3.2 had lower-speed variants. USB4 has just the two. 20 and 40.
The other thing that you’ll need to check for is that previously-mentioned Thunderbolt compatibility.
Intel is no longer charging for implementation of Thunderbolt 3. And Thunderbolt 3 uses the USB-C connector just like USB4. That means a new computer with a USB4 port could offer compatibility with your existing Thunderbolt 3 devices. Could but not must. The spec makes it optional. Most devices seem to be implementing it because why not, but you will want to make sure it’s there if it’s important to you.
So how does Thunderbolt 4 fit in? Well some are looking at it is that Thunderbolt 4 gives you USB4 at its highest capacity with all its options. We have a whole separate episode on Thunderbolt 4 if you want all those details.
As I mentioned a minute ago, there’s also a situation where USB4 can handle more than 40gbps. That’s because it can also support DisplayPort Alt Mode 2.0 for high resolution displays. If that DisplayPort spec is implemented in a USB4 device it can transmit video data– just video data– at 80gbps meaning you can power multiple DisplayPort 2.0 displays at 8K and 60Hz refresh rate or one 16K monitor at 60 Hertz. And yes, a bunch of 4K monitors if you have that many. It achieves this by using all the lanes to send video data and leaving none to receive. So to get that speed you won’t share the connection with anything else but monitors.
Also if you’re not using every lane for display purposes, USB4 is smarter than USB 3.2 in how it allocates bandwidth. You could do that on previous USB versions but the lane would be split 50-50.
USB4 can divide up its capability dynamically. If you have a USB4 device that can support 40gbps, Your 4K monitor could be given 12 Gbps and your external hard drive would use the remaining 28 Mbps all on the same connection.
Oh and what about cables. Well good news your old cables will work. And other news they won’t work faster than they used to. If you have a 5gbps cable that’s all you’ll get out of it.
Finally this is it for USB4. No 4.1 etc. The next version of USB is intended to be called USB5. Simple.
Right?
I hope this helps you cut through the confusion. Thankfully the USB-IF has helped us do that. Thanks USB-IF!
In other words I hope now you know a little more about USB4.

India introduces regulations on ride-hailing services that limit fees and set maximum hours for drivers, the UK mandates that Huawei 5G equipment can’t be installed after September 2021, and Airbnb and DoorDash seek higher valuations in their IPOs.
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German police have begun a muder investigation into the death of a female patient in Düsseldorf who was about to undergo critical care when the hospital’s systems were disabled by a ransomware attack September 9.

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

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Raspberry Pi Foundation announces the Raspberry Pi 4, Google is expanding its Child Safety program to include media literacy, Apple is rumored to be launching a 16-inch MacBook Pro in September and Amazon unveils a online beauty supply store.

Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang.

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Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!

Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!

Thanks to Anthony Lemos of Ritual Misery for the expanded show notes!

Thanks to our mods, Kylde, Jack_Shid, KAPT_Kipper, and scottierowland on the subreddit

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Show Notes
To read the show notes in a separate page click here!