 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you, including Jeffrey Zilx, Tony Glass, and Phillip Less. Coming up on DTNS, digital twins are coming to a metaverse near you. Elon makes an offer Twitter might actually refuse and Niantic bets on virtual pets. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, April 14th, 2022 from lovely Cleveland, Ohio. I'm Rich Strafileno. From Austin, Texas, I'm Justin Robert. Yeah, I'm drawing the top tech stories from Cleveland. I'm Len Peralta. And on the show is producer Roger Chang. You can, of course, join us for a good day internet. If you are a patron, we were discussing all about delicious drinks that are enjoyed at cons and non-delicious ones and their effects on the human anatomy. But let's get started with a few tech things you should know. TikTok began testing a private dislike button for users to identify comments that are irrelevant or inappropriate in select regions, although it's not available in the US right now. Video creators and commenters will not receive dislike notifications and the system is not meant to replace reporting comments for things like harassment or hate speech. Reddit updated its search feature to index comments on the platform. Users will now be able to filter search results by comments in addition to existing posts, communities, and people filters. Reddit search will also now take into account post interactions on the site, rather than just relevancy based on exact wording. As of April 28th, Amazon will add a fuel and inflation surcharge of roughly 5% to the existing fees for third party sellers using its fulfillment services in the US. The company said the surcharge will apply to all product types and subject to change based on changes to in inflationary costs. Flag that when we get into more regulation stuff with Amazon. Asbro, owner of Dungeons and Dragons Developer Wizards of the Coast announced that it will acquire the D&D Beyond online platform for $146.3 million. D&D Beyond launched in 2017 and is an officially licensed online storefront and digital tool set to play D&D, offering web and mobile apps to run campaigns. And Bloomberg's Mark Gurman sources say Apple faces production delays with its MacBook Pro models due to COVID-19 related factory shutdowns across dozens of companies in China. The 16-inch MacBook Pro shows delivery estimates as far back as June 16th, while the 14-inch models expect deliveries by the end of May. Right now, MacBook, other MacBook models and iPhones don't show significant delays, yet seems these are mostly focused on laptop production, at least these shutdowns. All right, let's get into the main topic of the show. This is a little story I thought we would highlight it. I don't know if you guys have heard about this. Turns out Elon Musk is doing more stuff with Twitter. So let's dig into it. Securities and Exchange Commission filing reveals that Elon Musk sent a letter to Twitter chairman Brett Taylor, offering to take the company private by buying 100% of Twitter for $54.20, a share in cash worth roughly $43 billion. Musk called this his best and final offer, saying he would reconsider his existing stake if it was rejected. Twitter said his board will carefully review the proposal to determine the course of action it believes is in the best interest of the company and all Twitter shareholders and stock quote. There's more to the story though, while speaking at TED 2022 in Vancouver, Musk emphasized that he was motivated by the public interest value of the platform, saying Twitter has become kind of a de facto town square. So it's just really important that people have both the reality and the perception that they're able to speak freely within the bounds of the law. So Musk also went on to say he believes Twitter should open source the algorithm in order to build trust and ensure availability and specifically said the code should be on GitHub so people can look through it. This kind of echoes earlier things he's tweeted out specifically evolving open source kind of aspects of Twitter. The information reported this morning that Twitter's board will reject Musk's offer and there was reportedly an all hands meeting except for 5 p.m. Eastern. So right at the end of a DTNS showtime at Twitter to address the matter. So Justin, the story that just keeps on getting a little weirder every time we revisit it. I mean, obviously you've been following this. I mean, what did we make of this latest move? Well, this was kind of telegraphed. When you saw the CEO's comment earlier in the week on Monday about Musk not joining the board as we had initially heard, he made mention about the fact that there was going to be a lot of drama in the coming days and everybody should keep their eyes forward. This is obviously what he was talking about because now we have the information of that as he rejected his board seat he made the offer to buy Twitter by taking it public. I am not a financial analyst. So take all of this with a grain of salt. It is a synthesis of what I have gathered over the last few hours when this story broke. But it seems like Elon Musk's game here is to say here is a above market if not knock your socks off offer to for Twitter. The reason why that matters is because the list of people that can buy Twitter is not as long as you think they are valuable enough and they have enough possible profitability that you are knocking out a lot of other retail sort of larger companies, a lot of media companies and the ones that would be most likely to do it in four seconds like Google and Facebook and Amazon can't do it because of regulatory pressure. Look, I wasn't joking before when I was saying that a 5% surcharge for third party sellers will trigger regulatory pressure for Amazon and that's within their own sphere. If you are selling ads, you cannot if you're selling ads online, you cannot buy Twitter at all. So what Musk is hoping is that as news gets around that they're gonna reject this offer the stock price begins to tank and now the financial tide starts to move against the board. But Rich, I'm curious beyond all of the real financial issues around it, the kind of spiritual question because Elon is approaching from his perspective on a white horse to save Twitter for free speech. Yeah, I mean, there are two separate issues here. One, again, this all kind of echoes your point about Parag Agrawal's statement kind of being the credo that we all had to read the tea leaves on. All of this has been kind of said before by Elon, right? After he had purchased the stake but before it had become public, he was making all these statements about the importance of Twitter free speech putting out perhaps puckish polls about the value of certain features or the value of certain accounts and stuff like that on Twitter. So again, none of this is any new information. I have to imagine Twitter's algorithm like any of these algorithms that they're putting out there are trade secrets. And so I imagine a lot of investors are not like super keen about being like, hey, let's take our secret sauce and throw it up on GitHub. As interesting, like personally, like as interesting as that would be, I'd be fascinated to see what that looks like, what analysts find out when they actually, what devs look like when they actually get into that code. I could see why there is a financial interest and not to do so. In terms of the going private, I can't think of another instance of someone being like for the, for the public interest, I want to spend for even, even if this is just someone saying this and there's obviously financial motivation behind it, but I'm going to spend $43 billion for something that I believe is in the public interest. Usually going private is we have to make a bunch of hard financial decisions. I have a vision for this company. And so we're going to take a loss for a long time. I'm thinking of like Dell, when Dell went private, stuff like that. Like they had some structural issues that they had to figure out. Here's the big thing that you have to remember in terms of the way that Twitter works is that it's unlike Facebook and Google and a lot of these other tech companies wherein the founders, and the reason my jack got beat around so much is that he does not have the kind of control over these companies in the same way that other founders do. So the board is able to sort of push around whatever the CEO wants. If Elon is saying we need to take this private, essentially what he's saying is there are unilateral decisions that need to be made about Twitter that cannot be made by committee and cannot be made when everybody is thinking about how it's going to affect the share price. That's his point. Now I also think that if you look at other online companies that sell display advertising, Twitter has not done what they should be doing. I think that they have whiffed on other situations where they are trying to capture different market value. This is a company that is underperformed. Would it do better under Elon Musk's leadership as a private company? Maybe, but you cannot argue that they have lived up to their full potential now. I don't disagree with you, Justin. In non-Twitter and Elon news, in April of 2012 at the Coachella Festival in California, Tupac Shakur was on stage with Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. I'm sure you would think now what we thought then, wait, what hasn't Tupac been dead for 16 years at this point? And the answer of course was yes, but the Tupac hologram was indeed alive and well. The music group ABBA had a hologram of their own. And there are other instances where digital twinning has been identified as a money making play. So creating 3D avatars has become a way for an artist to create virtual brands across several digital platforms. They can connect virtually with fans and increase loyalty and engagement while fans interact, express themselves and experience new things. AI software can create holograms as researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or MIT as it's known for people who like using less letters. Demonstrated in an experiment that created holograms fairly instantaneously. Xeva Dynamics, which makes simulations in real-time character creations employ synthetic AI-powered avatars to create autonomous and complex movement simulations based on real muscle fat soft tissue and skin contact. Meanwhile Epic Games predicts that digital twins will combine with the metaverse as emerging network of fully immersive digital worlds. Rich, where do you add on these digital twins? In some ways, obviously this is all within like this whole realm of a growing idea of like virtual concerts, not just being like a one-off novelty where it's like, oh, this artist did this crazy thing. Everybody check it out as opposed to being like just a regular thing that musical artists do. I'm thinking of like, you know, like Roblox has been kind of getting into this very seriously to start back in 2020 with Lil Nas X and kind of been doing that pretty progressively for a while now. In terms of the digital avatar thing, I actually, I'm like kind of an indie rock snob. Like I like going to like a concert where there's like 20 people were all unhappy and drinking overpriced beer. And like, so like that's the concert experience I prefer. However, if you prefer to go to an arena and see like a laser light show with a bunch of other, you know, with 20,000 other people and it's a whole audio visual experience, I have no problem with this kind of idea where it gets weird is like ABBA, for example, their digital avatars were significantly de-aged to make them look like they did in the 70s. You know, we talked to anyone that's seen Fleetwood Mac. Like it's like, okay, you get, you're glad you're a little further away sometimes seeing them in modern times. So like that gets into the weird thing of, okay, once ABBA is no longer here but we can definitely synthesize all of their, we can synthesize all their music. We have photorealistic ways to replicate their movements. Heck, we can use AI to make new ABBA songs if we really want to. In terms of a brand living on after like the actual artists have gone, that to me is where that feels kind of weird, maybe. Okay, well, I mean, for your indie rock snobness, you're telling me that you wouldn't pay a premium to go into a immersive theater that is totally dressed up to have to particularly look like a dive bar in Seattle in the 90s and hear a pixie set the way that it was. Justin, if it was a neutral milk hotel set. Okay, we're talking, yeah, 2001. I'm there, I'll pay for that. Put the headset on me. I was in Las Vegas and I came in a few weeks ago and it was a stunning moment. I'm walking through the baggage claim area and I hear Whitney Houston playing and I'm like, and it's on the big boards that they have all the different shows that are playing. And I'm like, Whitney Houston, like that seems a bit, is it a revival show? Is it a sound alike show? Nope, actual Whitney Houston with a hologram that is now open in Las Vegas. This is hit, the big time. The question is, is it a stunt or will audiences really respond? This is the thing, I'm interjecting myself into this because I'm very opinionated. But this has been kind of a thing. Virtual idols are sort of a big, not underground thing, but a subset of the live music scene in Japan where the singer is a fully synthesized, not based on any real person, but an anime character. And the music has totally been synthesized from a group of people that make a style of music. And what's interesting is it sounds like you're just franchising yourself in a way that you couldn't before. And the same with the blue man group is a franchise. There are different groups that do the blue makeup, do the learn how to play the instruments. It is a very fascinating way to kind of make yourself a brand. But the great thing about it is what you were saying about Abba Rich is that you can de-age yourself. You can make yourself that grunge band from the 90s in that period, in that experience all the time. It doesn't matter if you have an off night or whatever, it is the same experience. And we've seen with theme parks, people will pay money for the experience, whether or not it is synthesized or a 60-year-old guy who's playing the music that they did 30 years previously. And I gotta give credit to the conversation which put together a lot of these different sources and kind of set up this conversation. But one of the things they pointed out is technology, it doesn't just have an impact on how we consume music. Like it's literally shaping it, like every generation, like as we got recorded music, that changed what we expected. As we went from music being something you could only experience live to sheet music going out to recordings, changing how we perceive like the difference between the author of a song, the person that performs the song, like that whole relationship. So I can see this as just another evolution of that, of yes, this is music brand that I like, the same way I like going to see a movie or something like that. I know I'm not seeing a live performance, I'll still clap at the end of it like a weirdo, I guess. So I could still get enjoyment out of that. Yes, I don't think this was like, I think the concern that a lot of people have is like, I still wanna go see a live band. There's still gonna be that, it's not going away. But I do think this is like, I could definitely see this being something that becomes in the commonplace way to consume music brand entertainment. I am bearish. All right, moving on here. Speaking of, I was trying to make an earth sign pun, I got nothing here. Waze launched a retro mode as a limited time feature letting users change the app's UI to the 70s, 80s and 90s inspired to 10th themes. Turn by turn navigation voices, the user's displayed vehicle and map UI are all changed while in retro mode and users can mix and match these three for extra funds. You can get your 70s turn by turn with your Apple iMac looking car if you want to. Waze said the feature will be available through mid-May, so it's available for a limited amount of time. If you wanna enjoy some novelty in your turn by turn, Justin, you turn it on. No, but that's not anything against me. Like I just don't really use Waze. And also this is a great example of a company that has a very utilitarian product that is done very well by other competitors. Obviously Google Maps is kind of the industry standard, but Apple Maps has gotten really good as well and has integrated into the iPhone hardware in a way that the other two aren't. So the fact that they do these things and they've long done them, right? They've had the celebrity guest voices and stuff like that is really just another reason for you to take a look at Waze and try their product out and inject a little bit of fun and humor into what is otherwise a soulless drudgery of the commuting people are entering back into the world with. In fact, I wonder how long this has been sitting on the shelf for them because I doubt that they would have tried to launch it during the pandemic when so many people were not commuting back and forth to Waze. I also feel like, you know, they're giving this what? Like basically a month rollout here. I feel like that is like the amount of time on a daily commute. I wanna hear like 70s DJ giving me, you know, my turn by turn. I do wonder if like the step beyond these cause I do think there is like a value in like, oh, maybe I'll like pay attention to this more because it just sounds different. If there's some way to just inject like a little like human variance in like the turn by turn cadence just to make it a little less predictable, just make it sound slightly more awkward, I feel like would get the same effect without the pastiche of the 70s or 80s. Well, I mean, like they're there for you. I feel like I think it says that more skins on this product than anybody else. That's true. They are whimsical if nothing else. All right, remember you can join our conversation in Discord, which you can join by linking to your Patreon account at patreon.com slash DTNS. You can get in on the chat and get in early with while we're prepping the show. It's a fun time. So check it out for sure. The game developer Niantic announced Periodot, a new AR game that focuses on raising digital pets. Each pet will be 100% unique based on appearance, personalities, likes and dislikes, like visiting certain points of interest, foraging for specific foods or going on walks. The app will soft launch and select markets on the App Store and Google Play later in April. Now Niantic has had quite a bit of success with Pokemon Go with Periodot. Players will raise magical beasts called Periodots that quote unquote, feel real. So says the game's senior producer. Each Periodot has 100% unique and 100% yours, differing in visual appearance, personality, their likes, dislikes and abilities. Players are supposed to raise Periodots from birth into adulthood, breed them with other Periodots at NES and create multiple generations of their virtual pets. Rich, do you have the need for a AR Tamagotchi in your life? I don't personally. I did the Pokemon Go for like a week and I was like, I get it. I can totally see why people like this. I'm good. I just like going for a walk regular style. I'm old school like that. I am fascinated by this though because Niantic has done a really good job with other people's IP and kind of integrating that with their really interesting AR tech. Their own IP, they have more of a mixed bag in terms of doing that. So this feels like a big swing for them. And I gotta say, if you're going to do that, like pets is a good way to do it. I mean, one, like you said, it taps into Tamagotchi millennial nostalgia for that kind of experience. Also like Nintendo is what, this is what reminded me more of that because that was, you could have multiple dogs and stuff like that. And it really was like your dog would run away and there was more of a interaction with it than I mean Tamagotchi was like a eight pixel screen or something like that. So it just, it felt more, I guess, personal to you and stuff like that. But in terms of like getting you to go back daily and like press the data delivery food pellet and get you to buy extra stuff and do microtransactions and stuff like that, like pets is a really great way to do it. The one thing that kind of stood out to me is like the whole breeding thing. Like I know they're not going to make it weird, but it still seems like, I want to hear the peria.factory farms story that we're going to be seeing out. Yeah, I'm sure it'll be very optimistic. Look, Niantic began with a game called Ingress which had a very hacker take over the block sort of a vibe to it. Obviously not particularly kid friendly. They were the biggest thing on the planet with Pokemon Go. And I did play that for a while and really only dropped off when I found out that they weren't able, they weren't allowing you to do turn by turn fighting with these Pokemon that I had purchased in bread and everything. And it had a very dumb UI for their fighting. So I dropped off there, but they've had a lot of other swings at this that have had varying levels of success, including a Harry Potter version and a few others. The idea that they are going back to the well with their own IP for which they're going to be able to profit from exclusively is not surprising. What is interesting is the fact that they are steering so far into the kid area. That this is about, you know, this is about children and their parents playing the game and people that also want a fully safe game that isn't about fighting, that isn't about territory, that isn't about these kind of more aggressive ideas. This is soft and nurturing and adorable. When you watch the preview video that encourages you to go register before it soft launches, it doesn't even have language on it. It doesn't have any voiceover to it. It is just calming, soothing music and children and adorable teens having these adorable little dogs run around them. So I think that is the vibe they're going for. Ultimately, the thing with all these AR games that really leave me cold is just the UI. I don't really enjoy the gameplay to it. The thing that really interests me about this though is it kind of solves a little bit of the Pokemon Go situation where because each of these pets is unique, you know, as you kind of grow with them and either, I guess, get more or, you know, that's what you... Unique, quote-unquote. It's like, yes, it'll be unique in that it has a slightly redder skin tone than the other dog that also looks exactly the same way and has a red skin tub. But like, at least like the way they were setting it, I was like, hey, it likes to go to this one specific spot or maybe it likes to go for Walksmore. Dude, like, I could see if there was enough creativity in like, hey, we can switch up like kind of the game mechanic and how you keep your pet happy. Like that to me makes it a little more interesting to check out as opposed to, okay, I got to go and check. Like you're like, Tom, I got you. It's like, okay, I got to just like check all the boxes, make sure it doesn't die of feed it, make sure it's happy, rub its belly. Okay, now I'm done. I can like leave this thing. That to me, it feels like a little bit of a deeper gameplay that would keep me coming back to it. But also look, this isn't for us. It would be for your kids, right? Well, listen, if you want your virtual pet and you don't have kids, you go and get your periodot, buy your customizable periodot shirt that they'll sell you and get your customizable periodot plush that you can upload and buy your periodot NFT and you'll be fine. By the way, they're definitely selling periodot NFTs. I was not doubting. Speaking of NFTs, the NFT of Jack Dorsey's first tweet sold in March in 2021 for $2.9 million, the heady days of early NFTs. The NFT owner, Asina Astavi, listed the NFT for sale for $48 million, pledging to donate 50% of the proceeds to charity. The current top bid sits at 3.3 ether, about $10,000. Astavi has seven days to accept or reject the bid. A lot of talk online about whether or not NFTs are doomed and those that think or want that to be the case are kind of just like eaten into the story. It almost, Justin, is this too good, like too juicy if you're an NFT hater to kind of sink your teeth into? I have, this is a personal tale of in various situations where I've been either a journalist or a producer for TV stuff, where I was trying to find news stories. The times that I was burnt the most was when the story was just kind of too perfect. This feels a little too perfect. Now, what I will say is likely in play here is that the world of these eye-popping NFT sales, I've always gotten the sense and I've heard third hand that a lot of this is basically on one group chat where people with a lot of Ethereum are literally just trading back and forth so they can generate headlines to continue to prop up and make interesting the NFT market. So it doesn't shock me that this sold for less than what it was initially bought for if nobody in the group chat likes this particular seller. For example, let's say, you know, possibly. The idea that it initially was selling and a lot of the headlines was that it was, the current bid was like $200. Now it's at $10,000. This is something that I found a little bit that we're missing some context here. I still think that we're missing a little context here but you're right. It is just too juicy for folks who look at all of cryptocurrency as a gigantic shell game to not find this as evidence, pointed it and say, absolutely, look, we told you that you are always seeing your money. Yeah, but also a lot of the headlines made it seem like he had to then sell it for whatever the ludicrously low amount based on money. But it's like, he doesn't. He just doesn't have to accept it. And yeah, he's got a little egg on his face. But, you know, to your point, he can try and tap into some more NFT networks, get on that WhatsApp chat. And hopefully try and sell it again. Like, again, people want to just, I think the instinct to dunk on this is almost irresistible. So, everybody, just calm down. Still, I mean, it might be exactly what it is. It might be a very dunkable situation. What are those things where it's like, I don't know, I just kind of feel like so much of that NFT marketplace right now is just so, so, so top heavy where you got a lot of guys that are sitting on a lot of crypto and they might as well just throw it back and forth between each other like a medicine ball because then it seems like there's this gigantic bustling market when in reality, there are NFTs that do sell. I do think that it is a market for which people want to be involved on some level. But whether or not it is the, everything needs to sell for $50 billion is probably also kind of too good to be true. All right, let's move on and let's check out what's in the mail bag. We got an email from our new patron Buffalo Muffins and they wrote in and said, I enjoyed listening to you guys trying to figure out the reason behind my name. We did that kind of earlier this week. Buffalo Muffins says it actually started back when I was in high school and my friend group wanted to figure out steam names for each other that kind of matched. We decided to choose a one bovine and a pastry and that was your name. I chose a Buffalo and a muffin. So my steam name became Muffin Buffalo. We also had Bagel Bison, Waffle Goat and many others. Although over the years it's transformed from different variations of that name and is finally landed currently on the Buffalo of Muttons. Even my profile pic is a Buffalo eating a muffin. Kindly, the Buffalo of Muffins, that just sounds, that's like the most adorable story. I love it. It also is not what I thought. I would have thought that the Buffalo muffin was something that also originated at the anchor bar in Western New York. But this makes a lot more sense and to be honest is less gross than it is in Buffalo of Muttons. Thank you to Buffalo of Muttons for making it not gross at all. In fact, heartwarming. Oh, yeah. All right, before we get out here, let's check in with Len. He's been cooking up some art. Len, what do you got for us? You know, this is such a moving target. The story about Elon Musk and Twitter. So it's kind of hard. I wanted to do something very evergreen. So the image is called by the bird. And you know, this is Elon with his 4.3 skillion dollars thing. By the bird, a skillion dollars, not a penny less. Of course, after Mr. Moneybags, this is a Mr. Money Musk here. So yeah, I mean, this could all be different by the time that a half an hour rolls around. We may not, this may be a different world in just about 45 minutes. We don't even know. So that's sort of my evergreen moment for one of the biggest stories of the week, Elon trying to buy Twitter and seeing what happens there. So this image, by the way, is available if you're one of my Patreons, patreon.com forward slash Len. You get it right now. You just download it or you can go to my online store, which is lennprobsstore.com. I'm currently taking commissions. So if you're open to me drawing you, Mr. Money Musk, reach out and I can do that for you. That'd be great. What even cost you skillions and skillions? It won't. Len Art as a housewarming gift about a year ago and it is prominently sitting in our living room, I would highly encourage everybody to do the same. Awesome. Thanks so much. Artists to the stars, Len Peralta. And of course, we want to thank Justin, Robert Young, being on the show, fantastic job. Justin, as always, we expect no less. Where can we find more of your great stuff if we are so inclined, Justin? Tomorrow, we are doing our tax day episode of Politics Politics Politics and we welcome our friend Andrew Heaton on to talk about tax anxiety, whether or not he's actually done his taxes, spoiler alert, he hasn't, and whether there is other ways to do it, including a system that we go over where it is Marxist from the ground down and from the ground up. We'll find out exactly what that is on Politics Politics Politics tomorrow, Friday. I'm just gonna go ahead and give that a chef's kiss. Sounds amazing. Of course, we wanna give a special thanks to Bill Rudder. He's one of our top lifetime supporters of DTNS. Thank you, Bill, for all your years of support. And of course, you can get a longer version of the show called Good Day Internet. That's available at patreon.com slash DTNS. We are live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern, 20 hundred UTC. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live and we'll be back tomorrow with Patrick Norton. See you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. I'm in the club. I hope you have enjoyed this program.