 This 10th year of Daily Tech News Show is made possible by its listeners. Thanks to all of you, including Dr. X-17, Adam Green, Dustin Campbell, and new patrons, Patrick and Carver. Give him a big, oh, welcome. Welcome, Patrick and Carver. Now, on Tuesday, we briefly mentioned the attacks in Israel and the Gaza Strip, and Guy wrote in to let us know he was disappointed that I didn't take a moment to acknowledge the human suffering happening there during our conversation, and he's right. Since we brought it up, I should have taken a moment to do what I'm going to do now. Stay safe, and I hope for swift resolution and peace for you and everyone there. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, October 12, 2023 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. From Columbus, Ohio, I'm Rob Dunwood. From deep in the heart of Texas, I'm Justin Robert Young. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Cheng. Oh, my friends, welcome. We are gathered around the tech hearth once again to discuss the tech news of the day. Did you know Threads got an edit button? No, but I'm sure all 14 regular posters are thrilled. I'm sort of ambivalent on edit buttons. I need one. Don't get me wrong. But, you know, I don't get like as excited as some people do. I'll use it if it's there. Yeah, I'll use it. All right, let's see what else is in the quick hits. As part of an ongoing audit, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service sent a notice of proposed adjustment, not to me, thank you, but to Microsoft requesting a back payment of $28.9 billion in taxes. The notice is based on a readjustment of how Microsoft allocated profits between countries and jurisdictions between the years 2004 and 2013. In particular, Microsoft moved at least $39 billion in profits to Puerto Rico by transferring intellectual property to a small factory it owned there. Not illegal. You just need to pay taxes on the way you did it. Microsoft, however, says the notices don't reflect $10 billion in taxes already paid and that it plans to contest the notice through an administrative appeal and is willing to take it to court if they need to. The ActivityPub plugin for WordPress now works on WordPress.com sites, too. Earlier this year, automatic makers of publishing platform WordPress acquired a plugin that let blogs publish their posts to and receive replies from users of decentralized social networks like Mastodon, Pluroma, Frendica and others, but it did not come to WordPress's own hosted blogs at WordPress.com until now. The ActivityPub plugin is now available to all WordPress.com plans. Yeah, and I implemented it on the DTNS website, so Daily Tech News Show at dailytechnewshow.com wherever friendaverses are happening. Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine told TechCrunch that the publishing platform expects to be profitable. Medium is going to be profitable in the first half of 2024, and he says they're getting pretty close to one million subscribers. Medium makes its money from a subscription tier that it implemented starting in 2017. Comcast implementation of DOCSIS 4.0 can deliver two gigabits per second service, symmetrical meaning download and upload over existing coaxial cable. Some neighborhoods in Colorado Springs will start getting it next week with parts of Atlanta and Philadelphia next in line. DOCSIS 4.0 can go even faster with an upper limit for downloads of 10 gigabits per second and 6 gigabits per second for uploads. I need to move to Colorado Springs, I guess. That's pretty quick. Yeah, right. Following an announcement two weeks ago, Microsoft has shut down the authorization it was giving for free upgrades to Windows 11 from Windows 7 and 8. There probably are many of you using that, but there were some, and it's now over. Windows 10 users can still upgrade to Windows 11 for free though, so don't worry about that. It's only affecting 7 and 8, and you can still do the upgrade without paying. You just get reduced features. Shutting off the Windows 7 upgrade was my idea. All right, let's talk a little more about threads. Yeah, so the EU continues to get stern with social media platforms. Ex-CEO Linda Jacarino sent a response to EU commissioner for the internal market theory Brayton's letter defending the platform's removal of Hamas-affiliated accounts and removal or labeling of content related to the war in Israel. In response, the EU sent a formal request for more information, a prelude to an investigation. Brayton also has sent a letter similar to Metta giving that platform 24 hours to respond as well. And as we mentioned Tuesday, a lot of this has caused people to wonder if threads might be a good place to encourage news content, especially from reporters, observers, affected people on the ground. Threads says though, it's not anti-news, but it does not welcome that role. It believes amplifying news is dangerous. And Threads headman Adam Maseri wrote on threads, to do so would be too risky given the maturity of the platform, the downsides of over promising and the stakes. He's happy to let news flourish on threads. He's just not going to help it. Zuckerberg even told the Verge that news can lead to negativity and he thinks you could create a discussion experience that wasn't quite so negative or toxic. Which I guess means not promoting news. They're not blocking news. They're just not going to, you know, raise it up the way Twitter used to. Also, Metta itself has a lot of fights going on with news publishers. And so I'm not necessarily saying this is about, oh, we're going to get back at them so much as not wanting to get into more fights with news publishers. Or is it about getting back at them? I don't know. Justin, what do you think? It's also about their history with news, Tom. The fact that Metta is blamed by a lot of organizations is effectively killing a lot of the blog revolution because they paid money to have people quote unquote, pivot to video. That not only happened with blogs. It happened with major newspapers and Metta is looked at as an untrustworthy partner. So when you look at growing the idea of news content on threads, what you're actually, at least what Metta would think of with that is who do we pay to post? They want to bring people over. They want to incentivize them to populate their platform with that kind of news. Not only is it problematic, but it's also something that I don't think a lot of news organizations would, except for the right price, take seriously because it was a siren song last time. And I think that the scars that it left are still there with that industry. I agree with Justin on this. Metta doesn't want any of that smoke, so to speak, when it comes to news. However, if they can continually pull users from X over to their platform specifically for news, they're not going to promote it. They're not going to help news do better there, but they're more than happy to have those users come over and at least use their platform. I think that that is, you know, they're not, they're basically keeping the loud part quiet when it comes to that. We're not going to promote it, but we're happy that you are trying to use it on this platform. I think that's really what Metta says. If you were to ask him in an honest moment, I agree. Twitter became valuable for news without paying people, though. It just, it just promoted. It just amplified. Threads doesn't have to pay anybody. They could be like boosting certain voices in any kind of news event, you know, but what they're saying is we don't want to do that. We don't want to become the place people look to find out, oh, the earthquake happened. Who's on the ground talking about it? They don't want to do that. Metta can do that. But when Metta has in the past said we want blank, it means let's pay people to do blank. That's what it meant on Facebook. That's what it meant on Instagram. So I think that's what they mean, at least if we are looking at their history. You're saying Metta can't help itself. Metta, that's just that's their theory. I mean, and also that's not just meta. That's any kind of challenger to a dominant brand. What you do is you pay people to come over and do it. And then you hope that the kindling that that starts creates a community on that site. You're right. Twitter became a some would say sickness for which journalists I believe to this day still can't shake. I mean, for, for whatever you can say about X and I can say a lot about X up to an including the fact that a bug in their two factor authentication has not allowed me to download and log into my account on my new iPhone. But they are the place where breaking news happens. They were the place where breaking news happened with the speaker fight this week. They were the place where breaking news happened when it came to the war in Israel. That is their lot in life. And maybe that is happening on blue sky. Maybe that is also happening on threads. But I'll just put it this way. I have not seen a lot of screen grabs from those apps going viral on Twitter because that's where people share news. Yeah. Although I do find less of it on X than I did in the past. Not this week. I mean, at least for those two news stories, when it came to international reporting and DC reporting, maybe for other stuff, maybe for tech stuff, there is less of it. But for those two things, people are as addicted as ever. There was as much up to the second updating as there has been on any other major news story, at least with those two issues. Did you see maybe I just missed it, but I didn't see that on the ground like I'm here here. I didn't see that on X the way that I had in the past. I wish I wish at times considering what I saw that there was less of that, at least when it came to international. Well, I wasn't looking as closely. Yeah, I got you. Yeah, I think two things are true. X is still the place for this kind of thing. But if it were a year ago, it would have been so much more than I think what it is now. I think the X has done things to itself to make it not be that town square that it used to be. I think it's kind of losing that feel. And this is one of the reasons that folks are looking for other places while they're looking at threads. And as I said, I just don't think that meta is interested in this and all. They said, we see what Twitter did with this for decade and a half. And they really never made any money. And we are all about making as much money and selling as many ads as humanly possible. And news doesn't necessarily bolster those goals. Brand safe content brand safe content is the name of the game. And at the end of the day, meta sells ads, Google sells ads. That's their actual business. And there's a lot of news that happened this week. That is not brand safe. That is at best divisive and at the worst in terms of looking at the content, extraordinarily graphic. That is a sign of an ugly world. It's a sign of bad things that happen that news often covers. But it also is not a great place for a brawny ad. Yeah, that's a good reset on the perspective from our earlier conversation this week. Thank you both for that. And also makes me wonder, and I'm not predicting this, but should X at some point in the future close off or become something different or go out of business? I wouldn't put it past the New York Times to start their own. But that's yeah, if X goes away, let's say X goes away tomorrow. Yeah. And I doubt it will. But Elon, Elon, Elon decides as quick as he bought it. He's like, by the way, party's over. I don't want to play with you anymore. It's over, right? Shots down the servers. That's that we will lament a time where everybody gathered and did that. I don't think that we are going to easily replicate the idea that journalists are addicted to one message board and all share their stuff on one message board. That is rare. But somebody's going to try. It's not going to work. Yeah, of course, or they would. All right, let's talk about the pixel eight because that is less controversial and divisive, right? Well, maybe not. The NDAs for pixel eight reviews ended Thursday. We got an overview of what tech reviewers think. And and Rob, it's kind of all over the place. So, yeah, seeing as Andrew Langston wrote, there are big concerns with the Google pixel eight pro with disappointing camera performance, missing features and frustrating quirks. Google's new flagship feels half baked. And at best, it's certainly not ready to hit shells on October 12th. That's today. Now, on the other hand, Ron Amadeo at ours, Technica. And by the way, I've been following both of these. I know Andrew Langston well, so I trust both these voices. Ron Amadeo does a great job. Ron Amadeo at ours, Technica said, compared to where the pixel line was just a few years ago, Google hardware is turning in phones that are polished, practiced and full of great decisions. He also wrote, for the first time ever, you can hold a pixel phone up against an iPhone and not feel like you're getting a worse deal. So, yeah, so let's let's split the difference in striking a balance between them is the verges Allison Johnson who wrote, these might just be the pixel phones we've been waiting for, but it all depends on how much you trust or how much trust you're willing, I should say, to put into Google. And that's kind of the rub. Do you trust this company that only sale has only sold 30 million of these? Not even yet. Do you trust them to just be around? Are they going to do this like they do other Google products that are not their primary core functions? But there is some consensus amongst all these different reviewers. Seven years of OS updates is excellent. Granted, if you don't trust Google to keep their promises, it wouldn't be as good. But if they do, seven years of OS updates is an excellent promise. Face unlock works now. That was universal across these as people going, oh, wow, the face unlock, they made it reliable. And the temperature sensor is a gimmick. Nobody liked the temperature sensor. Nobody found a good use for it. The value of the camera is agreed to be reliant on the software implementation, though the opinions do vary as to how useful that software is and whether it's worrying. Best take is that feature that lets you combine photos so you can take like the best parts of each photo to make a good final version. People worry about, you know, yes, that's great if you're just picking all the smiling people to make a better group photo. But what about using it to do more nefarious things? And then magic editor, which lets you move objects and people around in photos. Overall, Justin, how's it sound to you? I am not a pixel user, so take my opinion with a gigantic pixel of salt. But I wonder where we are in this diminishing age of phone hardware, where more and more of the advancements are through software. You know, even the advertising for this product has AI as the number one thing that it's leading with. I think we've kind of reached the end of the yellow brick road when it comes to a new camera that will make things really, really exciting, because it doesn't seem like that moves the needle in the way that it did even five years ago. And that was looked at as a world of diminishing returns. Yeah, the thing with with Google, if it is not Gmail, if it is not Google Docs or Google, you know, Google workspace, if it's not Chrome, if it's not search, definitely search, they just they'll kill this stuff with the in the drop of a hat. And like I said earlier, since 2016, when the pixel came out, they've only sold about 30 million of them. In contrast, Samsung sells about a quarter billion devices a year. They've sold 30 million total. So I just, you know, I don't know that apples and oranges though, like like Samsung sells phones consistently. Pixel is supposed to be a prestige line. I wouldn't be shocked if they sold less. But but the thing that worries me about these reviews is that the pixel is always marketed itself as the best Android phone bar none. This is finally doing what Apple has done. One person controls the hardware and the software and you get the most out of it. The fact that we're seeing these kinds of maybe reviews that you could even compare it to a Samsung that is Google seeding what should be their natural advantage. I'm more on the line that these are actually really good phones. I think they do compare with iPhones. Google just doesn't sell many of them. And that ultimately is what is problematic. You know, when you think about, you know, to clearly the Samsung, but even to the iPhone, what they sell in comparison is a rounding air to their competition. And that just smells like a product that Google could get. I'm not calling for it. I don't know that they will do this. But I would not bet that they would never do it on a platform like this. It just doesn't sell that many. And nobody should, Rob. And that's the that's the problem that Google has made for themselves is that they are the killer of products. Yeah. And they're not to Rob's point, they're not selling so many that it would be dumb to kill it. Right. So until that point, it's it's anybody's ballgame. Well, folks, the world of artificial intelligence is a fast moving world. There's a there's always something new, always a new controversy, always a new feature. AI named this show focuses on that part of the conversation. This launch just part of our experiment week in August. And you can get it every week right now. Tristan Jutra and Teja Kastodi wade through the hype and the doom saying to keep you informed about the latest news in AI. Catch it. AI named this show dot com. What teens do often sets the template for what they will prefer as adults. So a lot of companies look at what teens are doing to prepare for the long term market. Witness the Eagles still touring, for example, once a favorite of teens in the early 70s. You can check out any time you like, but you never leave. Listen, I'm going to take this metaphor to the limit. In the long run, it's worth paying attention to what the kids are into. And Piper Sandler has been doing just that since 2001. They do regular surveys of teens in the US to find out, okay, what are you into? What's your favorite thing? How much time do you spend doing it? What's your fashion habits? What do you pay with, et cetera, et cetera. In its latest survey, it found that YouTube has for the first time in its survey passed Netflix for time spent watching. Now it's self reported, right? Teens are estimating how much time they spend on these things. But for the first time, teens said they spent 29.1% of their daily video time on YouTube versus 28.7% on Netflix. Hulu was in a distant third at 7%. Disney Plus and Prime Video gained percentage points while Hulu was losing. Max, and as you might have guessed, cable TV also declined. Now we're going to take a look at some of the other tech trends the survey found as well. But what do we think is significant here, Rob? The fact that YouTube is overtaken Netflix is really interesting to me because it signifies two things. One, Netflix is struggling against something that it normally hasn't struggled against. And two, when you think about YouTube, the way that teens are viewing enormous amounts of content is different. When you go to Netflix, you're there to watch a half hour, an hour, or a 90-plus minute movie. When you go to YouTube, it literally could be for a 60-second short, it could be for a seven-minute vlog. The way you're consuming that in between doing this, while you're on the bus, while you're walking down the street literally looking at your phone, the way people consume or teens consume content is really telling to me as to how things are going to be in the future. I'm going to go the other way on that. I think Netflix, the fact that Netflix is competing with YouTube and was beating YouTube, is a sign that Netflix is in an extraordinarily strong position when it comes to the youth market. YouTube's free. Netflix isn't. So it is even close that Netflix is doing a very good job because you can have a much lower percentage if people are paying and make a lot more money. Now, obviously, YouTube is tied to Google, Google sells ads. There is a reason why they want to create as much surface area as possible. But it's hard to know exactly what this means in the long term, except to say that if all these, we see YouTube as big as it is, but also there are a lot of pay streaming services that are a part of daily life for teens. That is good for Hollywood going forward to say that, all right, as children, people are understanding that you need to pay for these services. And yes, the parents are paying for them now. Eventually, I think we're going to see a tightening of sharing things, but they know that they want this content. And that's good for those platforms. As I am inclined to do, I'm going to say this is a win for everybody. Because to your point, Justin, Netflix is competing in a way that it hasn't had to compete before with Disney Plus and Prime Video and Hulu and Max getting better. Max declined in this one, but I wonder if that's going to flatten out or even turn around with sort of the rejuvenation of that brand adding sports, et cetera. If it's going to sell to somebody. So if you look at, yeah, absolutely, you look at what Netflix is doing in a crowded marketplace of competitors versus YouTube, which has the space pretty much entirely to itself. I mean, yeah, there's a fairly motion and a couple others out there. But frankly, there's no one competing with YouTube. So this is good for YouTube in that it's like, oh, it's got the market to itself. It's continuing to grow. It's the future of a certain kind of video. It has captured a certain kind of vlogger reality history, do-it-yourself section. And Netflix is, like you said, still holding on and the others are growing in the pre-produced Hollywood style of it. It's free desktop and lean back. YouTube owns it, right? They don't have a lot of competitors. And they are a fighter in mobile, which is largely, you know, they're battling with TikTok and Instagram. Now, there were a lot of other findings besides the Netflix YouTube one and this Piper Sandler. Rob, was there any one of them that stuck out to you as particularly interesting? So VR declined down to, it's down to 10% from 14%. But the number of devices that teens own went up, that one is really telling. So, you know, teens are using VR less, but more of them have the capability to use it. That does not sound good for, you know, for the market. I think maybe when Apple stuff actually is affordable for people, whether it be late next year or the year after that, you can actually get one that doesn't cost a couple of car payments. Maybe that will change. But just looking at this for where we are right now, this is not a good sign for VR. Well, I also would say that VR is in a weird world where you also have the the normal life cycle of like a desk or a console. Like there are ups and downs. And right now, we're in a valley because we are just coming out with the new Quest 3s. Obviously, everybody's holding their breath for Apple. But speaking of Apple, the Cupertino dynasty shows no signs of weakening 87% of teens owning an iPhone, 88 expecting that the iPhone would be their next phone 34% owning an Apple watch. The kids are into iOS and it has become a luxury symbol for them. It did not age out. That is something that is a long term win for our shiny overlords of Cupertino. I'll throw in real quickly. TikTok improved as the favorite social platform. It was already number one. It's now got a 38% share. And Snap still hanging in there at number two, 28% share, followed by Instagram. That's amazing to me. Snap is amazing because I think that once you turn 21, you just no longer understand it and you get off. But if you're 21, that is your platform. Both Snap and TikTok are not just lean back content viewing platforms. They're messaging platforms. And that's a huge element of this is that it subsections out elements of people that you talk to exclusively on that platform. Yeah, yeah, for sure. All right, one last thing to get to, Rob, an OS that has caught our eye and it's not Windows or Apple's. No, so German startup data and that's the ETA has unveiled a new operating system for web. It's a personal cloud computer called Space OS and its interface keeps your data secure, encrypted, and contained while allowing you to incorporate personal apps from data discovery to create lightweight apps called cards within the interface. You can think of space OS as an alternative to services like Zapier and make which port your data between disparate web services like Google Docs, AirTable, Notion, ClickUp and instead keeps your data inside your PCC allowing you to apply apps to it within the OS. It's an interesting idea and data has raised $3.6 million in a seed round led by trained venture partners, among others to flesh it out. A lot of cool things to mention with this. It's an operating system built to run on virtual machines in the cloud. While it is in the cloud and so your data isn't technically under your control, you do have to trust data with your data. It is heavily encrypted and they say we can't read your data and your data when you're running it on this virtual machine is yours. It's in the cloud, but it's under your control. So you can do things like connect a Slack to a Google Docs without having to share data with Salesforce or Google, except of course the downside is those apps have to be written to run on Space OS and you need a developer community for that. So as I said in my newsletter today, I assume there will be an enthusiastic following for this because it's a really cool idea, but it's going to have a hard time getting mass adoption, right? Yeah, I think the mass adoption is going to be a tough one here and here's the reason why. The whole gist of this is to keep your data inside of this operating system, but if you're a business, as soon as you want your data to connect to something that is not part of this OS, you're going to make your data, you know, you're going to export your data into whatever you need to do for your business critical issues. And I just don't see how they're going to be able to keep all the developers developing just in this platform and not just, you know, on their own outside of this so that you can get access to any cloud data versus just what's inside of data, per se. Yeah, there's a little bit of a chicken in an egg game going on there. Well, neither chicken nor egg is Justin Robert Young, my friend. Thank you so much for being with us again. What do you got going on? Well, friends, you can go ahead and listen to know a little more our unfolding season with Tom Merritt explaining to you not only everything involved with the mother of all demos technology that pre-saged so much of what we use today, but also some other ancillary topics that we're working on risk five is the one out today. It's it's the open source chip competitor to arm. I don't know. It's good stuff. Interesting. Yeah. Know a little more, friends. Check it out at patreon.com slash know a little more. Speaking of patrons, Rob. So yes, patrons, stick around for the extended show Good Day Internet Netflix is opening restaurants not pop ups either permanent locations. And we're going to discuss why this may be their smartest move yet. You can catch the show live Monday through Friday, 4 p.m. Eastern 200 UTC. Find out more about that at daily tech news show dot com slash live. We're coming back tomorrow talking how security can help companies experiment with generative AI with LinkedIn's CISO Jeff Belknap. Len Peralta will be here too. Talk to you then. This show is part of the frog pants network. Get more at frogpants.com. Prime and club hopes you have enjoyed this program.