 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners thanks to all of you including Reed Fishler, Larry Bailey, and Michelle Serju. Coming up on DTNS, the quest to make brain implants longer-lived, Netflix's real strategy with gaming we've cracked at this time, and why is TikTok taking over the world? This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, August 17th, 2022 in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. In Salt Lake City, I'm Scott Johnson. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. My friends, it's so good to be back. Thank you for letting us do Experiment Week, but we're very pleased to be back with Scott Johnson, even though I did get to see Otis, the dog, in person. It's true. No fair. It was kind of worth it. Yeah. Yeah. And he minded his manners. He looks good. He's a good boy. All right. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. And yet another signal that we may be headed for a chip glut rather than a shortage, Reuters notes that tech companies have reported slower annual cloud revenue growth this past quarter. Google Cloud slowed by 8%, Microsoft Azure by 6%, and AWS more than 3%. Slower cloud growth could mean slower buildouts of data centers and data center buildouts are one of the biggest drivers of chip sales. In addition to that possibility, all three companies indicated they plan to hold on to equipment longer, sometimes up to six years in order to save some money. One countertrend is the rise in autonomous cars and hopes for a booming metaverse sector. Speaking of the syllables, meh and ta, meta will disable new political, electoral and social issue ads during the week prior to the November 8th US elections. Ads running prior to that week will continue to run, but meta will disable most edits during that window and will continue its policy of not allowing poster ads that misrepresent details of the voting process or spread misinformation on the quote outcome of an election. Speaking of elections, TikTok went live with its midterms election center in the US. This provides state by state voter registration information, vote by mail instructions, polling place locations, all taking information from the National Association of Secretaries of State. TikTok partnered with Ballotpedia to display candidates on local ballots, and election results will be displayed thanks to the Associated Press. Nikkei Asia's sources say that Luxure, Precision and Foxconn have started test production of Apple Watch production in Northern Vietnam. Apple has reportedly also asked for test production lines of MacBooks to be set up as well. Apple has been moving some production out of China and the company moved some iPhone 13 manufacturing to India earlier this year and plans to assemble iPads there as well. The Verge and Windows Central sources say Microsoft is going to release the next major update for Windows 11 called Sun Valley 2 on September 20th. That's my wedding anniversary. The update will add tabs in File Explorer, a new task manager, app folders in the start menu, new live caption and voice access accessibility features, and new gestures for touch screens. Windows Central also reports Microsoft plans to release its first moment update. That's an update that adds features but off the two big yearly cycle before the end of 2022. Logitech announced headphones designed to slide onto a MetaQuest 2 headset called Chorus. These connect to the VR headset's USB-C port for power and are designed to be kept on the device between sessions. Shipping in September for $100. That's a classic find and need and fill it situation. Well done, Logitech. I mean, I gotta tell you, it's, you know, the MetaQuest 2, this is actually something I would buy. You are welcoming this idea. I am. Yes. All right. Let's get into some TikTok news. Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon is letting its employees test TikTok-like features in its app. Yeah, that's right. Amazon is testing TikTok-like features in its app. So they're going to show you a photo or maybe a video of products that you can share with other users. If you are like, wait a minute, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, they all copy TikTok. Yes, Amazon's doing it now. In Amazon's case, the test is called Inspire. That's the name of the plan. It appears as a diamond widget on the homepage of Amazon's app. That's according to Israeli-based artificial intelligence firm Watchful Technologies. If you tap on that widget, it'll show you a feed with a stream of mostly images, although there are some videos in there, which shoppers can then like, share, but most importantly, buy. For now, this is separate from Amazon's Influencer program. That's the one that lets creators have their own personalized pages and create videos promoting items for sale. I expect that if they stick with Inspire and it works, they might merge those programs together in the future. Yeah, it could be. According to an annual report from the UK's Office of Communications, a.k.a. Ofcom, or Ofcom, I don't know which way you said, young adults in Britain now spend more time watching TikTok than broadcast television. That's a lot. This is based on two separate surveys. One from IPSOS estimated those 15 to 24 ages, 15 to 24, spent 15 minutes per day on TikTok. A separate survey by broadcasters, audience research board, found at 16 to 24, watched 53 minutes of broadcast TV per day. In that group, less than half watched more than 15 minutes a week on public service channels like BBC or ITV. So I'm not sure I heard you right. It's how much for TikTok and how much for broadcast TV? For TikTok, it's, uh, oh, oh, 57 to 20. I'm sorry, I messed that up. 57 minutes. Yeah, 57 minutes on TikTok versus 53 minutes on broadcast television. Yeah, big, big difference. We got four minutes. Yeah. Yeah. So why is this happening? Why? I mean, I'm not surprised. Well, this turns into like, we are the olds. We don't get it. But breaking that down a little bit, I'm sorry to cut you off, Tom. But going back to the Amazon TikTok type thing, it's like, I think some people would be shaking their heads like, why, though, Amazon? But if it's all about chilling off stuff that then you can buy because you're already at Amazon, that makes more sense to me than doing it on TikTok. No, I actually get why the platforms are imitating TikTok. Uh, some of it isn't going to work. Some of it is, you know, you imitating the successful thing isn't always the best idea. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn't. Maybe it'll be good for Amazon. We'll see. I'm going to guess it's not going to work, but why not try it? My theory on why TikTok has become the predominant thing is not based on it being younger. Younger folks always enjoy the new good thing in greater numbers than older people because as you get older, you get more stuck in your habits. So it doesn't surprise me that the new big thing would be most popular with the younger users. I think what's nice about it is that you don't have to work at it. With TikTok, you don't have to choose. With Twitter, with Facebook, you have to manage your feed. You have to unfollow people and follow people and decide, oh, what's the balance of people I should have here? I've always argued that my Twitter feed works great for me because I put a lot of work into it to, you know, prune out the voices that I didn't enjoy hearing but without creating an echo chamber. But that's work. TikTok isn't work. TikTok still gives you control. If you're not liking something, you easily swipe away from it, but you don't have to choose. You don't have to work to maintain that feed. You still follow people and all that, but that's not how most people consume it. Well, and at the same time, oh, go ahead, Scott. No, I was just going to say, I think you and I are in the same boat, Sarah. We're both, you know, Gen Xers, but we both enjoy TikTok. We both like to sit there and kind of get lost in it. And part of the reason is exactly what Tom says. They do all the work for you, the algorithm adheres to what you like, and you just sort of get what you get, which is why I always, I don't know, my ears go up a little bit when I hear stories like more people are getting their news from TikTok or more people are getting their this or that from TikTok. And I think, well, okay, maybe that's true, but it's such a non-traditional way of getting it because it's such a random way of getting it. There's no sort of, let me go in there and follow a chronological list of today's news items or a chronological list of whatever from anybody unless you're going to individual accounts. Otherwise it just feeds it to you, even on your follow list that just feed you the latest and the things they think you're going to want to see the most. And so But it's also so easy to be like, eh, I don't like this one. Let's, let's bounce out. Right. If you're watching some sort of, I don't know, the BBC was one of the examples in the story. It's like, well, there might be a story or two that you're not really all that into or isn't relevant to you. And you just sort of deal with it because it's linear television. Yeah. And this is totally different than that. It actually reminds me, I've probably told the story before, but back in 2006, I was in China for the first time in Beijing and staying, staying with a local there. And at the time YouTube was not a band in any way in mainland China. And it was still relatively new. And he was like, oh, yeah, I don't watch TV. I just watch YouTube. And I was like, what do you mean? What do you mean you just watch YouTube? And he's like, everything's on YouTube. You just have to know where to look. And at the time I was like, that seems so chaotic. But this is, I feel like it's the next generation of exactly the same thing. Well, and that's the funny part of this, this nine to five Mac story on the TikTok numbers also notes a Pew Research Center poll that found 95% of US teens watch YouTube. And it's kind of become TV for them as well. In fact, I think it was Rob Dunwood on SMR podcast a couple of weeks ago was saying his daughter was like, hey, are you on TV? Because because they were putting clips of the tech John up there. And he's like, no, I'm not on TV. It's just YouTube. She's like, that's TV, you know. All right, right. And a lot of them are literally watching it on the television, which makes it as much TV as it's ever been. So yeah, yeah. Well, Netflix launched gaming back in November, wasn't that long ago, but you know, we're going on a year, let's you play mobile games for no additional charge. If you're already a Netflix subscriber, of course, there are around two dozen games available on both Android and iOS. But not many folks seem to be playing them. Aptopia recently estimated that fewer than 1% of Netflix's subscribers are playing its games on any given day. Downloads declined from December until May. You know, so there's probably a little uptick of curiosity. Hasn't really seen much surge since season four of stranger things reversed the trend as people played the two stranger things games. You may consider Netflix gaming strategy. Sounds like a flop, right? Well, you also might be a person who considered Netflix's streaming strategy a flop shortly after it was launched back in 2007. Protocols. Janko Redkers has a deep dive up on Netflix's gaming strategy. So Scott, tell us more about that. All right, so Redkers points out the small number should not be a surprise to people. Netflix hasn't launched any new titles, although they've got some in the wings. They're old games, some not as old, some older, that were launched somewhere else first, like Steam, other consoles, and Netflix doesn't advertise it. And the gaming service at all, really, they just have like a banner ad on the app while you're using it almost looks like an ad inside the app, which turns people off. This is not the final form of Netflix gaming. It's basically in learning mode. But there are some hints as to what Netflix might be up to to doing right now. So here's some of those ideas. Netflix wants to make sure or makes wants to make and launch their own titles. Netflix has acquired three game studios, including next games. And Netflix has multiple job postings around games that describe building a game studio tech lab with people who quote, learn fast, iterate quickly, unquote. Netflix also seems to want to build a cloud gaming service, which has been rumored for a bit. How do they know that? Well, according to this, one job posting says, quote, we are looking for a rendering engineer to support our cloud gaming service. It's pretty obvious. Yeah, seems like we got our answer. The job description talks about rendering games on cloud appliances and developing SDKs for game developers. Yeah, this is how Netflix does things. In 2007, when commenting on the new Watch Now feature that came at no additional cost with your Netflix DVD by mail subscription, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said, mainstream consumer adoption of online movie watching will take a number of years due to content and technology hurdles. The time is right for Netflix to take the first step. Over the coming years, we'll expand our selection of films and we'll work to get to every internet connected screen from cell phones to PCs to plasma screens. Now compare that prescient 2007 statement to last June, when Netflix's director of game acquisition, Leanne Loom, said, we're still learning and experimenting and trying to figure out what things are going to actually resonate with our members. And cloud streaming, I would argue, is in about the same place that video streaming was in 2007. You can do it, there's services, but they're not widespread. They don't have widespread adoption and nobody knows which one is actually going to catch on yet. Netflix has said publicly that it plans to build franchises that span across movies, TV shows, and games. And that's what it's doing. It's building the platform for that. So I would argue, Scott, that the fact that they've got all these titles that are not original doesn't matter. In fact, the fact that these are mobile games doesn't matter. This is them just floating some bread on the water to see what the current is like. You are not wrong, I think, in that entire summation. And funny enough, in the last week or so, actually almost exactly to the week, I set out to play every single Netflix game currently available. So I can talk about it more on my show core tomorrow. And I have happy surprise, everybody. We're talking about it today on DTNX. So this is a perfect place for it. I played everything that they have thus far. And people are going to be a little shocked by my takeaway, which is, and this isn't a tease that I won't tell you until later, I'll tell you now, I think they have a better shot at this than maybe even Apple Arcade has. And hear me out for this real quick. The games I played, some of them, as a few in particular, are better than anything on offer on Apple Arcade. They may not be as new. They might be also retreads that have existed on other platforms, but they're excellent games and they're huge gets to have on this service. The ones I would point out would be Into the Breach, Point P, which you do not sleep on Point P. It's an amazing game. Moonlighters, Incredible, and Arcanum Rise of a Khan. All four of those games are top shelf amazing games. In particular, Into the Breach is an incredible game. And anybody who got to have that on their service as an available title is winning in my book. Now they got a huge stuff on the way. Spirit Fair, Reigns of the Three Kingdoms, Taranil, which is a game that's not even out anywhere yet. So it's going to be a simultaneous release. Plus some other own stuff. They've got a, you know, a chess game based on the on their popular chess show they had. I forgot the name of it. All sorts of stuff like that on the on the way. And I'm not saying that this is going to solve it for them or be the big success. Everybody is waiting for or worth the millions they're pumping into it. We don't really know, but they are making quality games or they're putting quality games out there. The long term of it is of course unknown to everybody, but I could not agree more with with your point about their strategy. This is how they did it with streaming movies. This is how they'll do it with these games as available through app stores. And it's how they'll do it when they start doing cloud based gaming. And they've got the money in the pockets to sort of throw money at it and experiment. This isn't a do or die situation for them. So everybody wants to look at it and call it a flop already. I think are cutting them short. I mean, yes, is it perfect? No, they've got lots of issues right now. If I want to get a game on the service, I have to know what I'm looking for and find it in the app store or find the weird little banner that's squished between all the categories in Netflix and click it. It's a pain to do. That's on the iOS side, on the Android side. As far as I know, it's the same. You got to jump through similar hoops. It's not easy. It's not intuitive. It's not as simple to say something like Apple Arcade. But I will say so far, the stable of games, it's been quality over quantity, number one. And if they can maintain that and continue to put out quality products, both already known products and some of their own, I think they have a real shot at this, at least in the mobile space. And nobody else is really making a try at it the way, say, Apple and Google are with their various initiatives. So I don't know. I'm not ready to count them out yet. I had a really good time this week playing like half a dozen games. So there's that. Take it for what you will, everybody. Yeah. I think it's really interesting that they're doing cloud streaming. I think that is a perfect play. Learn as much about gameplay from mobile. Maybe continue to do some mobile Apple Arcade like stuff because, like you say, it does seem to be working. And then take these first party titles of the studios that you have bought and the developers that you have hired and put them on a streaming service. You're good at streaming. And at first it's going to look like Netflix watch now did in 2007. We're going to be like, well, there's some good things on here, but it's not a lot. And before you know it, it's the streaming service that everybody wants. And they spin it out and start charging you separately for it. But for years, it's going to be part of your Netflix. Yeah. And the only other thing I would say to put a pin on this would be if you have a Netflix subscription and you have a cell phone, there is zero reason for you not to be playing into the breach. It is one of the best games of the last few years. So don't sleep on that game either. Go play into the breach. Trust me, you'll love that game. You're not getting any sleep because you're listening to this guy. Well, folks, are you feeling social? Let us know what you think of these or any of the other thoughts on our social networks, DTNs show on Twitter and DTNs pics, PIX, DTNs pics on Instagram. You may recall when Nika Monford was on the show a couple weeks ago, August 1st, indeed, we talked about the first US brain computer interface or BCI from Synchron, one of two BCIs approved for implantation in the United States. The other type we mentioned at the time is the tried and true Utah Array made by BlackRock Neurotech, Utah connection. The Utah Array was developed by Richard Norman in the 1980s at the University of Utah. It's a square electrode grid of around 100 tiny filaments, each one's about a millimeter long. These are very small. The electrode is installed in the motor cortex and connects to a small coin sized pedestal on your head that is then wired to a device. They are trying to figure out how to make it wireless, but right now it's wired to a device that amplifies and decodes the signals. It reads neural activity and send those signals to control devices like a computer. The way they did this was a person controlling a computer cursor with their mind. You can play video games. You can control a robotic arm, prostheses, things like that. About 30 people worldwide have Utah arrays, and the good thing about having tech that's been around that long is it lasts. That's important when it takes brain surgery to replace your device. Not something you want to be doing a lot of if you can help it. Wired's Emily Mullen highlights some of the challenges to extending that durability in an article called, This Man Set the Record for Wearing a Brain Computer Interface. Indeed. So 36 year old Nathan Copeland has been paralyzed from the chest down since a car accident that happened in 2004. He has four total Utah arrays in his brain. The first one has been there for seven years and three months, the longest continuous run ever in tests like this. Ian Burkhardt, leader of the BCI Pioneers Coalition held the previous long run, but his was swapped out in 2021 last year. Longevity is important if we want to make BCIs available to more people because you get something, it's a big deal. You don't want to have to swap it out all the time. Jane Huggins, director of the University of Michigan Direct Brain Interface Laboratory, told Wired, quote, it feels like it's on the borderline of being practical. So what do we need to make these things more practical and to last longer so you don't need multiple brain surgeries to swap out these devices? Yeah, I would like to. Yeah, it seems like an honest question. As few brain surgeries as possible. Utah arrays have lasted up to 10 years in monkeys, but over time, the periline, it's the material they coat the filaments with, starts to degrade, as well as the fact that your brain just gets irritated by having those filaments in there over time. Inflammation happens, scarring happens, all of that impedes signal detection and they just don't work as well as they did when they were fresh, just like your phone. It slows down over time, so does your brain implant. That's why they get swapped out. To increase longevity, BlackRock Neurotech is testing adding silicon carbide to the periline filament material that would extend how long the material lasts before it degrades. A group at MIT is looking at hydrogels to be a coating material that has similar elasticity to the brain. A company called Paradromix is developing arrays with thinner filaments. Those might be less disruptive to the tissue, cause less of that inflammation and scarring. And scientists at the University of Pennsylvania are even developing filaments grown from stem cells. So they would be the material of the brain working with the brain. Another possibility is something called neurogreens. They are like nano technology, small enough to just be sprinkled onto your cortex. But that one right now is only being tested in rats with their skulls removed, so that one's a bit ways away from being used in people. It does look like we have a little bit of work to do before BCIs become commonplace, right? I mean, yeah, like if I was thinking the other day, what if we were at some reason in the dinner situation that came up, something came up about implants, and why don't we have them yet? And what would they give us? Well, we want our HUDs and we want all our fancy abilities and everything. And we forget that on the side of, hey, people with severe disabilities or injuries are experiencing some of this technology now, it automatically makes your brain go, oh, well, one day, maybe these would be optional. Maybe I can just get one. I don't need to be hurt in a horrible accident or have multiple brain surgeries. It's just a thing they can do. And while that may be true, the obvious immediate focus of this is and should be people who need it the most. So it's that weird thing of I hope less people need it. But since some do, I hope they keep making the tech cool. If it makes sense. It's like a weird twisted thing in my head about not wanting people to get hurt so that we can so that we can perfect this technology. But at the same time, these are huge jumps. It's really cool. The whole the whole scar tissue part of this, I mean, somebody who I had surgery last year, not in my brain, but I did. And scar tissue in the body is very real. It's a normal thing. It can get a little bit out of control at which point. Maybe it's cosmetic, maybe it's something else to deal with. But that's pretty standard. That's what the body does with foreign objects. One, it's your brain. You have to be really careful about that stuff because you introduce a host of other problems. And I just I love the idea of where this is going. And at the same time, I hate the idea that somebody would have to go through multiple brain surgeries in order to keep everything in check. Yeah, it does make me wonder if the winning application of this, the thing that makes it widespread, figures out how to not need surgery or minimally invasive surgery. Maybe it just goes into the skull and works wirelessly somehow to detect signals rather than needing to be implanted into the cortex. If somebody figures that out, then you avoid all of this. Not that this isn't important research because it absolutely is, but a lot of times that's how innovation works is you do this and you see the problems and then you figure out from this, oh, well, what those electrodes are doing is this. And I can read that from outside. Maybe I'd figure out this cap that can do the same thing. I'm not saying that's what's going to happen, but it feels like that's what has to happen for this to become. Well, it's interesting because you're not necessarily saying we need full absolute mobility out of this eventually. That'd be nice too if somebody could be walking again and moving normally. But there are applications potentially down the road where I just put a patch on the side of my head and I can do, I don't know, a remote computer function while I do something else with my hands. There's ways to think about this that go far beyond the furries. If you need the mobility, then you get the brain surgery, right? That's why you need to keep researching these. But for less critical uses, yeah, maybe there's something else we can do. Sure. Well, keeping on the scientific train here on the show, Texas biotech company Colossal Biosciences is teaming up with scientists at the University of Melbourne to bring back the extinct thylacine. You might say, what's that? It's the Tasmanian Tiger. The thylacine was hunted to extinction back in 1930. Thanks, poachers, because of a government program that paid for kills. Colossal believes it can use the thylacine's closest living relative, the noombette, and CRISPR, which is clustered regularly, interspaced, short, palindromic repeats, to make resurrection of the species possible. Scientists are divided on whether projects like this could help increase diversity by reversing extinction or where the money is better spent on preventing existing species from going extinct. Colossal is the same company working on splicing woolly mammoth genes into elephants to bring back the woolly mammoth. The scientists at University of Melbourne have formed the Tiger Lab, which stands for Thylacine Integrated Genetic Restoration Research. Because there's two R's, I prefer to pronounce it Tiger. Yeah, Tiger Lab. This is very controversial. But the Conversations article did a great job of finding five scientists who had very nuanced but different views. Some of please don't do this. Some of the people on the don't do this were like, maybe. But I don't know if we're there yet. I think we need to do more to preserve existing species first. There was one guy who's like, no, we need to put all of our energy into preserving existing species before we start bringing them back because we can bring them back any time. And the longer we wait to bring them back, the better the technology to bring them back is going to be. It actually kind of was persuaded a little bit by that one. How many times do you think Jeff Goldblum was quoted in the comments about you didn't you thought you bothered to think you could but didn't think about whether you should. With the woolly mammoth for sure, like the woolly mammoth's been gone for a long time. So bringing the woolly mammoth back brings its own risks of like, yeah, but this isn't part of the recent biodiversity. Whereas the Tasmanian Tiger was within the last 100 years part of the ecosystem. So, you know, arguably you're bringing the ecosystem back into balance at that point. Yeah. Plus our dream of having a woolly mammoth in the house. It's finally there's a chance you're saying there's also that I would like a mammoth and Tasmanian Tiger. I've got a backyard. You are all welcome here. All right, let's check out the mailbag. This one comes from Alan. This was due to our conversation with Shannon Morse yesterday about TikTok. I'm sorry, Spotify audio reactions. And we were kind of going, Okay, what's this good for Alan says, as you were describing the new Spotify feature with audio reactions, it struck me it was kind of like an audio version of TikTok, especially if they allow eventually reactions to excerpts and reactions to other reactions. Anybody who's familiar with TikTok knows that reaction videos are very popular. Yeah. No, that seems right. That seems to be what they're pointing towards there is the audio of TikTok. Man, if Spotify could really crack becoming the audio of TikTok, and while all these other platforms are just trying to straight imitate it, that might be the move, right? I mean, it's, I don't know, when it's when it's straight audio, I mean, and listen, many people are listening to the show and say, we don't even watch the video version of the show. Like I get it. But when you're talking about audio reactions to other audio stuff, it just it seems messy to me. But maybe I just haven't seen it implemented well enough. They also don't talk about whether there's a limit or not. If that's like a 20, if I don't want to listen to some guy ramble on for 20 minutes about the Beatles. That was the key of TikTok originally is that it was short. Yeah, give me a shorter, a shorter thing. At least on TikTok, I can tell kind of generally how long the reaction video is going to go. In this case, you know, make it, if you tell me it's 10 seconds or less, you might have something. Well, this show is not 10 seconds or less, but it is over. It's almost over, Tom. We have people to thank though. First up, TikTok fan himself, Scott Johnson. Scott, we missed you last week. What has been new? Well, I did my own experiment and played all the Netflix games. Didn't really make a show about it though, but I will this Thursday because I do a show with a couple of friends called core. It's a gaming show all about video games, the industry, what's happening in it. And of course, games we're playing, but it's a bigger, wider picture. In fact, I'd say it's a lot like DTNS, but for video games. So check it out. If you have never heard of it before, go find it wherever you get your podcasts. Again, it's called core and you can find all the details if you need them at frogfans.com slash core. Excellent. We also have a brand new boss to thank that boss. His name is Tyler. Tyler just started backing us on Patreon. Thank you, Tyler. Yeah, welcome. And because Tyler decided to back us on Patreon, I will add to the show that Mark Gurman says the Apple announcement is going to happen September 7th. See, if you become a patron, good things happen. Speaking of patrons, stick around for the extended show Good Day Internet. We talk about all the things tech and otherwise. But if you'd like to catch the show live, we'd love to have you. We are live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern 20 100 UTC. Find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live back doing it all again tomorrow with Justin Robert Young. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.