 This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners. That's you. Thanks to all of you, including Carmine Daily, Vince Power, Rodrigo Smith-Sabata, and new patrons, William and Victor. Welcome, William and Victor. On this episode of DTNS, Apple and Epic still going at it. Raspberry Pi 5 is here, and Dr. Nikki is going to explain how lab embryos are more evolved than ever. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, September 28th, 2023. From Studio Cinnamon, I'm Sarah Lane. From Columbus, Ohio, I'm Rob Dunwoody. And from all the way down in South Alabama, I'm Dr. Nikki Ackermanns. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Before the show, we got word that CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment Jim Ryan announced he's retiring in March of next year. After almost 30 years with the company, Hiroki Tatoki, who is president and chief financial officer of parent Sony Group Corp, will become interim CEO of the game's business once Ryan departs while they find a new CEO. All right, let's start with the quick hits. Yesterday we passed a long report from the information that open AI CEO Sam Altman was working with former Apple designer Johnny Ive to build a hardware device. Today the financial time sources say open AI is in advanced talks with Ive and SoftBank's Masayoshi Son to launch a consumer device described by some as the iPhone of artificial intelligence. The hope, reportedly, is to create a more natural and intuitive user experience for interacting with AI. After nearly two years in beta, Photoshop, the web service, a simplified online version of the company's desktop photo editing app is now available to all. Photoshop on the web offers commonly used tools like generative fill and generative expand powered by Adobe's Firefly Generative AI model, but with a redesigned layout designed to give new users a more streamlined experience. Apple launched a new iPhone Wallet beta feature for UK users, which lets them see their current account balance, recent deposits and payments and balances after using Apple Pay. The new features use the UK's Open Banking API and follow Apple's acquisition of a company called Credit Kudos that uses Open Banking to give users a snapshot of their financial health and credit score. Banks including Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, RBS, Monzo and Starline are all on board and this integration is rolling out first as part of the upcoming iOS 17.1 developer beta. Open AI said in a post on X that it has expanded the data chat GPT can access beyond its September 2021 cutoff and can now serve the web. In Open AI's own words, browsing is available to plus and enterprise users today and will expand it to all users soon to enable choose browse with being in the selector under GPT for this latest web browsing feature will let websites control how chat GPT can interact with them. Disney Plus is now alerting Canadian subscribers that beginning November first it's going to start restricting password sharing in Canada. The announcement came in an email sent to Canadian subscribers, but the company didn't elaborate how in fact plans to enforce the policy. A new account sharing section in the Canadian subscriber agreement also notes that Disney may analyze the use of your account and that failing to comply with that agreement could lead to account restriction or termination. No other quick hits. All right, so Apple and Epic, they've been squabbling for several years now and they just can't seem to get along. So here's the latest. Apple has asked the Supreme Court, US Supreme Court to review a judge's ruling from two years ago that deemed developers should be able to direct users to alternative payment methods other than Apple's own app store. That's where Apple takes a 30% cut of all sales of digital goods and services. Now, Epic, maker of Fortnite, among other games, doesn't think it should pay that fee was very vocal about that. That's what it is fighting with Apple over. This follows Wednesday's news of Epic initially also asking the same Supreme Court to weigh in on the ongoing dispute. Epic Games sued Apple back in 2020 after Apple kicked Epic out of the app store for violating Apple's rules. Initial rulings and appeals on the suit have mostly favored Apple. But a federal judge did rule that Apple violated California's unfair competition law by restricting developers from telling consumers about alternative payment options. We're probably not going to know if the SCOTUS will select the case for a few months based on the SCOTUS's schedule. Yeah, yeah, SCOTUS has a schedule. Congress has a schedule, lots of companies have schedules. I don't know, Rob, Nikki, you know, this whole thing I thought was more or less put to rest. Obviously, Apple and Epic, neither company feel that they fairly, you know, won the argument or this wouldn't be ongoing. You know, I've always sided with Epic and any other company that says 30 percent is just too much. And, you know, we should not be forced to go through the Apple app store for something that could, you know, savings could be passed on to the consumer in another way. But Apple has its reasons for doing it as well. So, yeah, what do we think? You know, I think that Epic, you know, I personally agree with why Epic is doing this. But, you know, as we said in the read, they basically have failed most often when they go up against Apple and it gets to court. So I'm just kind of wondering at this point, what is Epic's play? Are they hoping that public opinion ultimately is going to maybe sway what the court would say? I don't know if that is a great strategy. It's a strategy. And we'll just have to see if the Supreme Court even picks this case up. You know, in perhaps related Epic news CEO, Tim Sweeney, who has been very vocal about the Apple case, but also is representing Epic in general. Also confirming reports that the company is laying off 830 employees, which is about 16 percent of its workforce. So not, you know, 50 percent, but still it's, you know, you're nearing a thousand employees. It's a lot of layoffs. Sweeney said Epic will divest from indie music storefront band cap, which band camp rather, which Epic acquired last year. So, yeah, that was a pretty recent acquisition. It also plans to spin off super awesome. Super awesome makes safe online experiences for kids. Perhaps pretty candidly, Sweeney said, Epic is spending way more money than we earn. And I wonder, I don't think this is posturing. I think that Epic needs to cut some costs. Many companies do and layoffs are a part of this. But I wonder how much of this will be used as leverage in this ongoing Apple case, you know, by Epic saying, hey, you know, look at all these people that are out of work now. Apple forced our hand here. You know, I think Apple, or I should say Epic, they, they may try that. I really think what is happening here is that Epic, like a lot of companies, they overdid stuff during the pandemic when people had enormous amounts of free time and were paying, playing ridiculous amounts of Fortnite and other Epic games. Now that we're kind of back to normal, you know, people's time is shifted elsewhere. Therefore, Epic's revenues are going down. So I think that it's probably as much about that as if, you know, if anything. But if they think it'll work, hey, we have to lay these folks off because that 30 percent that, you know, we have to give to Apple every time somebody buys one of our apps or upgrades or does whatever. If they can use it, they think it's going to help their case. I wouldn't put it past them trying it. Friend of mine who works in. Oh, go ahead, Nicky. Sorry, I was just going to say this is probably just going to keep dragging on forever. And the fact that there probably is going to be a government shutdown soon is going to make the, you know, the SCOTUS selection last even longer. So I don't think we'll be doing this or any time soon. Yeah, I know. I think I think I agree with you there, Nicky. A friend of mine who works not for Epic or Apple, but works in the mobile gaming industry. I asked her, what do you think about all this? And she said, you know, everyone keeps talking about Fortnite and how Fortnite is, you know, this is such a big part of the whole thing because Fortnite is so big. She said, you know, Fortnite's kind of long in the tooth at this point. Epic had, you know, tried out another game that did OK, but isn't isn't the kind of hit that Fortnite was. And I've really heard anyone else talk about that. I'm not a Fortnite player. So I, you know, I don't totally know how much that can be used as, you know, collateral in the situation. But it definitely seems to be brought up quite a bit. So let's talk about tiny little computers that don't cost a whole lot that are actually amazingly powerful for what you get. It's been about four long years since the release of the Raspberry Pi 4. And though there was some speculation that its successor wouldn't be available until later this year, if not next. The Raspberry Pi 5, along with its $60 starting price tag, is available for pre-order today and will be available for purchase by the end of next month. A lot of noticeable improvements made on this Raspberry Pi 5. I will talk specs now. It includes a 64 bit quad core arm cortex, a 76 processor that runs at 2.4 gigahertz, allowing for a two to three times performance boost when compared to the Raspberry Pi 4. The device also comes with an 800 megahertz video core V2 graphics chip to four lane 1.5 gigabit per second. It's a MEPI, MIPI transceivers that let you connect up to two cameras or displays and a single lane PCI Express 2.0 interface offering support for high bandwidth peripherals. But you'll still need a separate adapter such as an M.2 hat. Hat stands for hardware attached to top for you to take advantage of that. The Raspberry Pi 5 also boasts dual 4K 60 HDMI outputs with support for HDR, a micro SD slot, two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, gigabit Ethernet, a five volt DC power connection via USB C and Bluetooth 5.0 with Bluetooth low energy. All right, Rob, I just just the other day, my Mac mini that I use right now when I'm streaming for a variety of things has started to wheeze a bit. It's been wheezing at me, you know, restart has not helped. And I'm thinking, all right, what's the next step? Could something like the Raspberry Pi 5 be my streaming machine for $60? It it it absolutely could be that that is a thing that a lot of people set them up to set them up as media players. And the fact that this thing is now supporting is it's got HDR, you know, HDR support at 4K. Yeah, it could do it. So I'd like to see it. I like to see that actually running or, you know, powering someone's giant television or a monitor. But it could actually do that. One of the things I did own a Raspberry Pi. I believe it was like the second edition, probably, I don't know, seven, eight years ago. And I just got it to tinker around with it and play with it. But a really cool thing that actually someone I know does is they build actual arcade games. They build the full cabinet, you know, they do work working. They've turned the garage into a wood shop and they actually build the cabinets to hold, you know, a Raspberry Pi, a, you know, a monitor and then the keyboard control or should say that, you know, the controllers, you know, for that, you know, for for the games. And they load up literally hundreds, if not thousands of games to that Raspberry Pi and play it. And when you're you're down in the basement playing on these games, it really feels like you're playing on an actual full arcade style game. And like this person, I know that they've done this. They've turned this into a little bit of a side business, you know, during the summer months, you know, he's a school teacher, teaches wood shop at school. But, you know, during the summer months when he is off, he builds probably 10 or 15 of these things and they sell anywhere from like 1500 to three grand, depending on how good they look and all the stuff that they put in them. So that's one area where I know Raspberry Pi's, you know, you know, swim, you know, swimmingly well, I should say, they they are really good for emulating arcade games. Yeah, overall have you have you played around with a Raspberry Pi? You know, I've had my eye on one for a little bit just to try out one of those, like, I don't know what they call them, they like electronics maker sets to kind of learn how to do electronics and 60 bucks is not a lot. So this might be going on my Christmas list. And I'm sure the uptick in specs is more a little bit more on the nerd side. But I mean, it looks like you can do a lot with this. So I might I might get one. We'll see. Yeah. I mean, a fun tinkering project, we could all have like a pie off and like these things are ridiculously inexpensive for what you get now. Like this this is not, you know, you're not going to say I have a Mac, you know, book air, can I replace my back book air with a Raspberry Pi? Probably not, but for you're not going to be able to do that. But for just the power that you're getting in this device for 60 bucks or for 80 bucks, if you were to go with the eight gigabyte version of it, it's it's pretty amazing for for tinkers, for folks who are just you know, trying to learn more about computing, play around. Maybe you want to learn, you know, some alternate, you know, programming languages or just just really play around with something and tinker around and not worry about destroying your $2,000 laptop. This is really cool to play on. Well, if you have a thought of what we should all do with our upcoming Raspberry Pi fives or anything that we talk about on the show or something that we might talk about on a future show, we would like you to tell us about that. And one way to do it is to email us feedback at daily technewshow.com. So earlier this month, scientists at the Wiseman Institute in Israel published research in the journal Nature reporting the creation of an early human embryo using only stem cells and without the aid of sperm, eggs or a womb. The team took adult human stem cells collected from skin cells and cultured them in their lab. The model resembles an embryo at day 14. The team's next goal, because I know that's your question, is to achieve a model at 21 days of development with a 50 percent success rate and obviously go from there. OK, so, Nikki, let's break this down. What is an embryo model? How do they make it? And how long has this been going on? Yeah, we're going to go all over all of this. So exciting find and I'm excited to tell you guys about it. So usually before these models, how embryology research would be done is that you would use donated embryos. But in this case, this embryo is created in the lab from scratch from the stem cells that you mentioned. And so the end goal for this is to kind of eliminate that sample scarcity that comes with using donor tissue. And it also maybe will help reduce some ethical limitations in the future. So when stem cells are retrieved from skin cells, what does that process look like? Well, they basically you can culture these. You take these cells that are kind of like the origin cells of the skin cells, they're not completely skin cells yet. And then you can culture them and inject certain factors in them so that they turn into different cell types. And actually, this is not the first time that this type of embryo has been made. So to give you guys a short timeline, the first model embryo was developed from stem cells only in 2012. And this was in mice stem cells. So that obviously we always try everything first in mice. And then the first human oocyte, which is the egg cell, which was made from stem cells was in 2018. So they made the human egg cell and then the next logical step was to do this sort of embryo model. Now, you talked about ethical implications. Obviously, there's much more research to be done here, but it's a pretty important step. Why is this such a big deal going forward? That's a very good question. So the fact, the big deal is how this actually happens. So if you think about this starts out as a handful of pluripotent stem cells, meaning that these are stem cells that have the possibility to become any other kind of cell. They have that possibility within their genes, let's say. And these specific cells, what happens is they self-assemble into an embryo model. And this happens for multiple days. In this case, the oldest they got to was 14 days. And at that point in time, four different cell types had differentiated from these stem cells and they separated into different cellular layers and started to form the embryo, which obviously eventually becomes a human. And for me, a pretty cool part about this is that this developed in the lab in vitro exactly the same way that it would've normally developed in a human. And that's pretty incredible, all that in a petri dish or the equivalent. I mean, yeah, knowing quite a few friends at this point in my life who have gone through IVF in vitro fertilization or gone surrogate route for their own ethical reasons or perhaps medical reasons or both, I know that it is extremely expensive and for someone's body extremely taxing. Does this, is the hope here that we're gonna bypass some of the current solutions that we have to everything that goes beyond just how people make babies normally? Yeah, and like we mentioned in the beginning, this right now has a very low success rate. I think the success for this one is about 1% based on how these cells work. It's a really complicated recipe and their goal is to learn more about things like IVF and also things just about how embryos develop because one of the reasons we need IVF is because we have sometimes faulty embryos but we don't really know why because they're hard to study. And obviously this is an incredibly complicated process. I did break it down into like some, a small recipe if you want to hear about what's the recipe to make. Absolutely, yeah. So, okay. Let's do it. Apparently you start with 120 pluripotent stem cells from a human cell line, not a mouse cell line and you let them grow for three days. This is like put them in a pot and stir them for three days. And you continue this culture in something that's called an orbital shaker. Literally he's just shaking it around so that it doesn't get stuck to the bottom of the petri dish. And you use a cell culture media. This is just a liquid that has all the things that you need for cells to grow. I'm gonna call this the secret sauce for the embryo. At about day eight, you will get a spherical structure. So that's already getting kind of interesting. And it starts to have different tissue compartments that have self-organization. So this means the cells are differentiating into different tissue types. And by days 11 and 12, you will get these fully differentiated cells that form these different structures. And they express growth factors that make the cells move and change shape into something called gastrulation. The easiest way that I have to explain this is like, if you think about a human as like a giant straw, the empty part, the inside part of the straw, like your guts and all that, that's gastrulation is like when a sphere becomes kind of like a straw. That's how I explained that to my class at least. And along this entire process, the researchers inspected all of these embryos microscopically and noted that all the molecular properties and the structural properties of these embryos match the human ones at these same stages. So this is a model for human embryo. They're not technically human embryos, but they look almost exactly the same. Is this a way, I mean, I know it's obviously a way to better understand how embryos grow and this is one step closer to that. Because as you said, sometimes it's not super clear why embryos fail. Is that the end goal? I mean, are we, you know, is the goal to, I mean, I'm talking super science fiction way down the road to not have people carrying children anymore, you know, or some combination of the two? I think it's a tricky one. I think specifically the scientists in question don't mention this too much because that's a slippery slope to go down. Obviously everyone's first thought is like clones and, you know, gattaca style genetic manipulation of embryos. The main idea right now is to make it easier to study early stage embryogenesis and not having to use donor cells from people to do that. I think that's a really big goal already. And then I think for them is to make it past, you know, 21 days, like you said, and then longer than that. And then ethics also become complicated, especially in places like the U.S. So I think it's gonna be a lot more incremental steps. I think the end goal will be helping people who would need help creating embryos. Maybe that's a good way to put that. And you had mentioned before the show today, because I had said something about, oh, you know, IVF so expensive, you know, so I hear, and you said, well, this is gonna be expensive too. Is the idea that eventually, and obviously there's still a lot of work to be done, eventually this would be much more cost effective than some of the alternative routes that science provides. I would hope so, but the way it is now with a 1% success rate, it involves a lot of work in the lab. So obviously right now, I doubt it's very cost effective. Maybe they could streamline it in the future, but we definitely have to wait and see whether that is more efficient. I would assume it's at least easier to create something than to get donor tissue to a certain extent. Whether this remains stable after 14 days is another thing that they still need to investigate. Well, Dr. Nikki, thanks so much for bringing this to our attention. I know a lot of people are probably hearing about this for the first time, myself included. Really cool, thank you. Yeah. On a very different note, if you feel like traveling, which Dr. Nikki also did, made a bit of travel, and you're tired of those junk fees that get tacked on to your plane ticket or various other things that you have to buy when traveling, Chris Christensen has some tips for you. This is Chris Christensen from Amateur Traveler with another Tech in Travel Minute. This is not just a tech minute, but also a little bit of a legal one. There's been talk about junk fees in travel. President Biden has talked about that. There's things going through the US Congress in terms of changing the rules, but California is likely to actually pass two laws before then, SB 478 and AB 537, that will do things like changing it so that sites like Airbnb would have to give you all of the fees except the taxes. So the taxes could be separately, but all of the cleaning fees that would apply, all of the other fees, so that when you look at the price, it's actually the price plus the taxes, which seems like they could have included that, but they did not. But it looks like some help may be coming for those of us who are tired of junk fees. This is Chris Christensen from Amateur Traveler. All right, let's check out the mail bag. So on Tuesday's show, we asked folks what they felt about the idea of foldable laptops now that we're starting to see more and more options. Got a ton of feedback. So we'll go through a couple. Josh Lauma from Sydney, Australia wrote, I can see some positives in having a foldable laptop for the use of web development, IT administrative jobs where a vertical screen on the go might be preferred over a horizontal one. Making the keyboard mouse external could give a lot of flexibility, but then you're carrying around extra peripherals. The closest contender to a foldable laptop on the market today, says Josh Lauma, would be the attempts to sell that mobile OS can do everything that a desktop OS can do, like the Samsung DX, which turns your phone into a Chromebook-esque virtual machine with a dock or iPadOS in split view. But at this time, we haven't seen widespread attempts of that working. Developers have experimented to make the iPad Pro their main workstation, but they've run into issues with multitasking and working within that form factor. DX hasn't gotten a whole heap of attention since its launch back in 2017. There's just something about the laptop form factor that makes it work. That being said, I cannot justify the $4,000 asking price. Andrew from Melbourne, also in Australia, thanks to the Aussies today, says, working in tech, I like using machines with large screen real estate while also being portable. If they have a high viewing position, that's even better. I currently use a GPT WinMax 2 with a portable 16-inch external monitor when I'm on the go. But having a foldable portable external monitor that could be powered and receive signal using USB-C, displaying up to 30 inches, would be ideal. It could fit in the backpack while folded. I'd have a beast that could be taken out when I need to do some real work or play a few games away from home. And Benjamin from Boone, Iowa wrote, I am a mechanical keyboard enthusiast. I would love a foldable laptop that I could use without a built-in keyboard and plug my mechanical keyboard in. Instead, provided there is more than one USB port, it would be a useful item. The price is way out of my price range right now, but it is a promising technology and I may buy one when the price has come down in future years. Rob, I know you weren't with us on the show, but I am going to guess that you have thoughts on the idea of a foldable laptop. We're obviously getting used to foldable phones. So I am a user of Samsung DeX. I use it fairly regularly from my phone. So not at four grand, but if there was a nice portable folding device a foldable laptop that I could use with DeX, I'd do it. I would try, I try to use it now with portable monitors and stuff like that. But it is something that I would at least give a shot to. I also, I've got a mechanical keyboard here as well. I am a huge fan of them. I like building them. And I have a laptop that basically is a desktop, but if there was one that came that was just a giant monitor without the keyboard, I know I would have my mechanical keyboard plugged into it because I got my mechanical keyboard plugged into the one that has a perfectly fine keyboard on it as we speak. There you have it. Nicky, what are your thoughts? Foldable laptop? Yeah, Renee. I'm unsure because right now I'm talking from one of those laptops that has the touch screen and the screen folds all the way around to the back. And I thought that was really cool when I bought it and I literally never, ever used that feature. If anything, I accidentally touched my screen and screwed something up. So maybe it could be a little bit of a fancy feature, but it seems like some people have specific use cases for it. I kind of see what Rob's saying is a modular piece that is kind of cool. Yeah, I don't know if it'll be enough to be marketable to everyone. So it might just stay expensive. Well, when you're not using your laptop that does cool things like turn itself on its head, let folks know, Nicky, where they can keep up with all that you do. Yeah, of course. So it's easy. It's my name everywhere. It's nicoleacrimans.com on my website, nicoleacrimans.com at BlueSky and Acrimans.com. I always want to call it BlueSky, but it's BlueSky. That's where the scientists are having their exodus right now from Twitter slash. Really, BlueSky is kind of the scientist that's the social network that the scientists have chosen. Some of you anyway, your friends. Well, we're so glad to have you on the show today. Nicky was traveling recently, so we hope to see you early and often after today. I hope so too. So, folks, it's free preview week. All this week, we're giving everyone access to good day internet extended show. Stick around for GDI as we discuss what your Zoom background or any video chat background, for that matter, says about you. Oh, gosh. I don't want to know, but I do want all of you to know that you can catch the show live because we record it live. Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern, 200 UTC, we're always on demand, but we'd love to have you join us live if you can. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We're back tomorrow with Tristan Jutra joining us. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Bob hopes you have enjoyed this program.