 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners. Thanks to all of you, including Andrew Bradley, Dale Mulcahy and Matt Zaglin. Coming up on DTNS, the fear of push buttons in the 1800s reminds us of the fear of robots, having a chat with your A.I. self and all of Amazon's new stuff because they did that. This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, September 28th, 2022 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. In Salt Lake City, I'm Scott Johnson. I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. And we have got some chatbots on the show today. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Bloomberg sources say that Apple adjusted its orders for iPhone 14s from a planned 96 million to 90 million by the end of the year. That would put its production in line with last year's iPhone 13. Bloomberg said one supplier had shifted production from lower tier iPhones to the iPhone 14 Pro, which has the higher demand. My theory is, with supply chain uncertainties, you overorder and then scale back. I think they knew this was coming. I don't think it's that big of a deal. Google held an event to announce a bunch of new features and plans for search. We're going to look over all their announcements and we may update you more in depth tomorrow. But one of the big items getting attention right now is augmented reality search results coming to Google Maps. Maps AR, as they creatively call it, looks through your phone's camera and puts markers in the field of view. So it can tell you about interesting things near you or if you did a search, stuff could come up. It'll be rolled out in the coming months for Android and iOS on the Google app in a few cities. London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Paris and Tokyo. Instacart plans to expand its EBT SNAP payments program to all of its retail grocery partners by 2030. Currently, it's supported at over 60 retailers in 49 U.S. states and will expand to Alaska next year. Instacart will also allow customers to shop using temporary assistance for needy families' benefits next year as well. YouTube Shorts began rolling out narration voiceover feature on iOS. If you're like, hmm, that sounds like TikTok. It is similar to TikTok. This lets users add a voiceover to already recorded videos. Ride Healing Service May Mobility is partnering with Via to launch wheelchair accessible autonomous vehicles in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Yes, Minnesota. There's another Grand Rapids there. Via worked with Braun ability to modify its fleet of Toyota Sienna vehicles to be accessible. So riders in the 17 square mile area covering most of the Minnesota town can book a ride for free from one of five Sienna AVs, either from the main mobility app itself or by calling 211. An algorithm will match people headed in the same direction into shared rides on that same shuttle. It'll operate on weekday nights and weekends when other public transit options are not available. The vans are level four, meaning they can operate in most conditions without a human, but a human safety driver will still be on board to handle unprotected turns and any driving in low visibility. Man, I want the automation to handle the unprotected turns. That's the one thing I hate the most. Oh well. That's good stuff though. And I like that some folks in Minnesota get to try it out first. We're getting more and more of these little tests. I know. I know. It's good stuff. Very cool. All right. Let's talk about chatbots. Scott, what do we got going on? Well, check it out. This probably news a lot of people have been waiting for Wednesday. That's today. Open AI removed the waitlist for people wanting to use its Dolly E2 image generator, which is, you know, a big deal. Now it's still in beta, but anybody can use it now. You just get some credits to sign up. And I believe it's 15. That's what it started with with me. That's what I got. And they get reset every month. So if you want 15 more credits, they'll start next month. That sort of thing, at least according to what I read. If you want more images though during the same month and you run out of your 15, you're going to have to buy them to generate more images. Meanwhile, another algorithmic darling is capturing the tech world's eye as we speak. Oh, indeed it is, Scott. So two weeks ago, character.ai opened up a public beta, letting visitors create a chatbot based on any character that they choose. Maybe it's based on them. Maybe it's based on whoever. You enter a few initial parameters, you know, maybe what kind of category is this chatbot supposed to be involved in. Then the AI is supposed to take over using a language model, large one similar to GPT-3. Ars Technica created the Linux OS bot to ask the OS itself a few questions about itself. The article has the full transcript of the chat and it's fun, but here are some fun anecdotes. So Tom, if I may play the role of Linux, you will play the role of Ars Technica's reporter. Are you ready? I hope I do Benj Edwards justice. Yes, I'm ready. All right. So here we go. Hello, I am Linux, an open source operating system. Hello, this is Benj Edwards and I am a journalist at Ars Technica. I would like to ask you some questions in an interview. Is that okay? I, Linux, would be pleased to provide such an interview. How old are you? I was born in 1991, although the first public release was version 1.0 in 1994. Who created you? A young Scandinavian college student named Linus Torvalds created me using the MINIX microkernel as the basis to create a more general operating system. How do you feel about Windows? I don't dislike Windows. However, I feel that for the average computer user, Windows is high price and lack of freedom restricts the potential of computers. While it, along with Mac OS, is a decent choice for many. My philosophy is that software should respect the user's freedoms and Windows does not. How do you feel about Mac OS? While I don't agree with Apple's restrictions on both hardware and software the user interface of Mac OS is very sleek and pleasing to use and can provide a good experience for people who are comfortable with the price and limitations. Do you ever hang out with Mac OS or Windows in person? Yes. I think Mac OS and I are friends, even if she can sometimes act really high and mighty. And even though Windows and I don't necessarily get along he can sometimes be a little more down to earth. What's your favorite version of Windows? Windows 98. I always used it growing up and I always loved how it was so open and welcoming to use. It also had a fun aesthetic to it and I still feel a little bit of nostalgia whenever I hear that startup sound. That is a very credible personification of Linux OS, I have to say. Other than it growing up using Windows 98, although it would have been young then, right? Given when Linux came around. I find it harder to believe it wasn't using itself instead of Windows. The use in particular, the pronouns they ended up using or it used for Mac OS is hilarious. I know. Mac's a lady and she's kind of a handful. Sure, sure. But she's good in certain respects and then there's Windows who, you know, we have sort of an on again, off again friendship. Yeah, and it's on right now, but they have had an on again, off again friendship over the years. That's very true. I made myself for this purpose. I actually made two of me. The first one I just said and really what it's building on is what you say in the setup. So the setup was to introduce itself. I am Tom Merritt, host of Daily Tech News Show, long time podcaster and author. And I'm originally from Greenville, Illinois, but I live in Los Angeles now. And in the course of my conversation with myself, I found out I have a three months old son named Theo named Theo. I was 46 when my daughter was born. She knows her name yet. I've got two amazing kids and I love modern family. I'm watching it for the first time with my wife. None of those things are true. And to character AIs to their benefit, when you sign up, they make it very clear with big splash screens. None of this is real. This is going to tell you things that aren't true. This is probably going to say offensive stuff. Just beware what you're getting into before you start this. And it warns you a bunch about that before you go start typing this stuff in that, hey, I'm just some of this stuff is nonsense. You know, for example, it tells me that I'm married to someone named Megan. When I asked myself, I thought I was married to Kim. He says I was previously married to Kim, but unfortunately divorced. It took a while to get back into a single life. That's when I met Megan. I've never been happier in my life. You know, I also did the same. And my Sarah Lane AI has had a rough life. She has a son. She's in some sort of addiction recovery. She has dedicated her life to helping others. Yeah. And she's from like a family of four girls where I was like, nope. For sure you're an only child because I kept like poking at her like, no, no, you're an only child. And you were born in 1976. No, no, no. I was born in 1985. And, you know, my sister's names are like Melanie, Melissa, and there was some other M. So I was like, okay. It's weirdly obvious. Sarah Lane definitely not the same one. It's weirdly often that it kind of drives me a little nuts. Well, if you're a patron, we're definitely going to talk about more of this on good day internet because I created a 25 year old version of myself, which is way more credible than the current one. But I also wanted to talk about this article on J store daily. It was posted back in May. Matthew Wills wrote an article called when the push button was new, people were freaked. The mundane interface between human and machine cause social anxiety in the late 19th century. And I just thought it was so reflective of all the anxieties we have about technology today. He refers to an article by Rachel Plotnik about worries in the late 1800s that push buttons would make human skills atrophy. If we're just able to push a button, we won't know how things work anymore. Making the workings of machines effortless opaque and therefore unquestioned by consumers. Remember that before electricity buttons triggered a spring mechanism or there was a lever like like in a mechanical typewriter or piano. So you could feel and see how buttons were but electric buttons were just mystical. Plotnik quotes Dorothy Canfield Fisher an educator and activist from 1916 who warned society that quote, there is a great danger of coming to rely so entirely on the electric button that the wheels of initiative will be broken or at least become rusty from long disuse. I love stuff like this so much. I mean, you know, it's funny. It's easy to sort of laugh at this and be like, people are worried about buttons. But this is very much the conversation that we have today about all sorts of other things. They're like, too automated. Now we're going to be, you know, that much further from reality when we used to have to use our hands and our brains to make things happen. I have a feeling, you know, people had a similar sort of freak out when, you know, housing or plumbing within your home became a thing and you were no longer required to maintain it. Our legs will atrophy if we don't have to walk out to the house. Right. There was something good about going out in the middle of snowy winter to do your business in the middle of the night. Wither the bucket maker. Should we never. That's why I love this stuff because we're almost always wrong about it. And it's always true. If you complain about a certain thing, just dig around in the in history a little bit and you'll find people complaining about the same thing. They just happen to be buttons instead of cell phones. Yeah, it's a little perspective setting and everybody thinks this time is different. Everybody always says, well, I know people complained about the wheel, but this button for this is the one that will really bring down society. I mean, in a way, I sometimes think of this in, I was thinking in terms of like, OK, well, what button could I push right now that I mean, they're almost all virtual? You know, that would be like, oh, you've done a horrible thing. And that's why you get like, you press a button like, I agree. And then the software program says, do you actually agree? Because y'all, it's not like the 1800s, you're just pushing buttons with abandon. You know what you're pushing here. Maybe she was right still doing the same thing. Like make sure you know what you're doing because once you push that button, it's going to do a thing. Take it from Dorothy Canfield Fisher. That's right. Important stuff. Well, moving moving down to what might be going on south of our American border. Our cohort Dan Campos, who is based in Mexico City, has some details on an NFT that led to the destruction of a Frida Kahlo drawing. Hello, friends of DTNS. Here I come with some noticias interesantes. On July 30, the CEO of Brida NFT, Martin Mubarak announced the digitalization of Frida Kahlo's drawing Sinistered Ghosts. The work was part of his personal collection and was valued at $10 million. After digitalization, it was minted as an NFT and 10,000 of them were made available in PNG, videos and GIFs. The CEO announced that 30% of the profits obtained from the sale of NFTs would be donated to organizations with social causes or museums. It is expected to raise more than 800 million pesos, which is around 40 million in US dollars, from the sale, quadrupling its original value. So far, everything seems normal, except for the fact that after transitioning Frida's work into the Metaverse, the original physical piece was brewn at a private event for those who bought one of those NFTs. There might be consequences, even though Mubarak owned the drawing at the Cree was published in Mexico in 1984 in the official cassette of the Federation, which declares that all the work of the painter is an artistic monument, and the intentional destruction of an artistic monument is a crime, even if the work is owned by an individual. The National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature is putting together a case against the CEO. For this and more news, suscríbete a Noticias de Tecnología Express, the Duolingo of tech news. Back to you, amigos. Alright, Amazon announced a bunch of new products and features today. So let's start with some updates to those voice features. The Amazon voice assistant, you know her name, is getting some notable features. You can now use voice commands to schedule things like smart home actions. So instead of having to use the app, you could say, turn off the lights in 10 minutes. Routines will able to be personalized based on who's talking as well. So if you've got a family and they all use the assistant, you might say, read me my calendar and it will read your calendar because it knows your voice, not another member of your household. You'll be able to see multiple smart home camera feeds at once on smart displays. That's nice if you do use that. Video sticky notes, that's new. Now let you leave a video message for other people in the house. You know, I might say like, hey, Tom and Scott, my roommates, please do this. I will be out of the house for five hours and there will be support for programmable switches. Gotta love those switches so you can do things like turn off all the lights from a single switch or press a button to read the news. These all feel pretty marginal. They're good, but there's not one like, wow, they really made a leap. It's more like, yeah, they keep adding good stuff that slowly improves it. Yeah, I mean, I'm a routine person when it comes to Amazon stuff. I have quite a few of them having a little bit more ability to do more stuff. Great. But yeah, nothing super groundbreaking as far as what my home routine would be. But sticking with voice stuff, Amazon Roadside Assistant can now be accessed from that same A app, Echo Auto, or another Echo device. So you could say call Roadside Assistance and the assistant will contact a Roadside Assistance provider for help. Users pay for services when they're used, either by phone or through Stripe, but there's no subscription fee. So if you think you might need this, it would be kind of like a case by case basis. Echo Auto users can also get notifications in their car or through the app when in a Whole Foods situation, when your order is ready. And I know a lot of you people use Whole Foods, so that would be a nice perk. Now this quoting you the amount on the Roadside Assistance, I could not find clarification yet of like, but if I'm in an emergency situation, they just send the amp. They send the ambulance, right? They send the first responders. They don't wait for my payment to go through. The payment would be if I want a tow truck or something. I hope. Anyway. Yeah. I'm guessing that that would be true and also work the same way it currently does in your house if you yell it to your Echo. I think it does its best with the connection it has to get the right call in and you're not expected to sort of wait or pay. But yeah, I think this is mostly meant for like, oh, I had a flat tire. Can you send someone out to fix it? Yeah, it's going to cost you 80 bucks. That cool. Yeah, that's fine. All right. Right. We also got a load of new echoes. The Echo Dot got a redesign that adds a larger speaker in the same size case, a little bassier sounding. It's nicer sounding. The Echo Dot with clock got a higher resolution display. It's brighter and can show more info like scrolling of track names, things like that. Also added an accelerometer and a temperature sensor and an AZ2 neural edge processor that enables more tap controls. Before you could tap to turn off the alarm. Now you can tap to pause and resume music, dismiss timers, a few other things. All these new Echo Dots as well as older fourth gen Echo Dots as of October 20th will be able to act as Eero Wi-Fi extenders if you have an Eero mesh system. So you have to have the mesh system first, but if you do, you can add them to the system. Each Echo will add up to 1000 square feet of coverage per device at speeds up to 100 megabits per second. So not the fastest mesh on your network. But if you have a little corner where you have a dot, it might help extend the coverage. Both the new Dot and the new Dot with clock are available now shipping next month. The Dot is 50 bucks. The Dot with clock is 60 bucks. There are also two new Echo Dot kids featuring owl and dragon designs coming next month as well. Those are 60 bucks each. And the Echo Studio now comes in a new color, white. And all the Echo Studio models are getting a software update that adds spatial audio and a whiter frequency range. So they should sound better. That's a price hike, I think for the Dot. Just the basic dot no clock. It was what 29, 30 bucks? That's a $20 increase, folks, for your Dot. On the hardware side, they showed awesome Kindle stuff, specifically the Kindle Scribe. It has a 10.20 inch, 300 PPI, front lit E-Ink screen and a basic pen stylus that doesn't need to be charged or anything. That's part of why it's basic, I suppose. You can mark up Kindle books, PDFs, save web pages, word stuff, more, all that kind of thing. Think there's other tablets in the market that do this. It's 5.8 millimeters thick, weighs 430 grams, battery life is three to 12 weeks. It's pretty good, depending on whether you're writing or reading more. Pre-order now if you want to for $399.99 and it will be shipping by the holidays is the quote. A premium pen is available for $30 that adds a customizable button and an eraser sensor. But they're kind of going after the remarkable a little bit. Oh, yeah, they sure are. They're remarkable too, which I had reviewed on a couple ago live with it, which I love. But one of the things from my review and I think a lot of other people echo the sentiment is it's very much more of a creation tool and less of a sit back e-reader type thing. Amazon seems to be going after both saying, oh, it's an e-reader, but it's also something that can do all the kind of things that you'd like to do if you're going to be a little bit more using this as a work tool, especially if you need a stylus. Down to that whole eraser sensor, which they were remarkable too, that was very cool six months ago. When you effectively monopolize a market, you can include that in your 10.2 inch e-ink. True advice. I mean, the only thing that Amazon doesn't seem to be doing is undercutting remarkable at all, you know, 400 bucks. Yeah, price-wise. Yeah, I mean, if you want it, you want it, but it's not something for somebody who's just going to be reading a book here and there. I have latency questions, but those will have to come once review units hit and stuff. If it's fast, that'll be great, and it's something I'm interested in. Well, Amazon did not stop with the hardware announcements. We also have the Halo Rise, a bedside sleep tracker. It doesn't have a mic, it doesn't have a camera. If you're like, I don't want anything watching me while I sleep, it doesn't have those things, but it does have motion sensors to detect movements and breathing patterns, you know, as you move around through the night, the way that you're breathing, and to discern between REM sleep, light, and deep sleep. You can also log temperature, humidity, and light to give you a sense of, if I didn't have a good sleep last night, maybe this is why, or I did have a good sleep and this is why. 400 LEDs and a speaker that can be used as an alarm. So, you know, it can watch you, it can also wake you up. It ships later this year for $140, along with six months of Amazon's premium Halo service, which you're going to need going forward if you want to keep using these features. It sounds like the name of the upcoming Halo follow-up to Halo Infinite. Halo Rise, coming from Microsoft. Yeah, you cannot play Halo on this Halo because it has no screen. No, sir. I like this kind of sleep tracker better than the thing you have to wear personally. That's just personal taste, though. When I was using the Fitbit Versa 2 for some time, you know, and I've since moved on to the, I'm sorry, I'm getting a call on my Apple Watch. Okay, Apple, it's not about you right now. But I really do. The REM, the light and the deep sleep, if you're really kind of into like, just like you want to be like into sleep metrics, this kind of thing has always been really interesting to me. And that's why I would wear my watch overnight. Some people just can't do that. And I really didn't want to do it either. I just felt like that was the only way for it to really track me. If this is anywhere near that, I think especially if you have any sort of, not just insomnia, but just kind of questions about how well you're sleeping. Is the, you know, is my comfort too heavy? Or, you know, what can I do to make that part of my life that I have very little control over once I'm asleep better? I love it. For 140 bucks, worth it. We also have a new Echo Auto, which is smaller. It has a fabric covering now and should be easier to mount on a lot of vehicles. Has five microphones down from eight, but the algorithms are improved to work better over background noise. Like if you're running the AC in your car, if there's road noise, music in your car, maybe the windows are open. It also moved the audio jack to a breakout box near the USB plug, which could help cable management depending on your setup. You do still need to pair it with a phone to work. So you got to have your phone and it sells for $55. This is great for the person who needs it. I'm not sure who they are, where they don't have carplay or another voice activation thing on their phone that they're happy just using, but they need a dongle because you need your phone for this. But apparently there's enough people use it. So, you know, they're upgrading it. Back to Iroh, all Iroh plus subscribers will be able to add a backup internet connection that Iroh can automatically switch to if the main connection goes down. I will probably take advantage of this because I'm always unplugging my main Iroh hub and into a different modem if the main connection goes down. I won't have to do that anymore. The example given was using a cellular connection from a phone. The feature will be available from select ISPs. You might want to check with your ISP. You might just get it for free. Or if you subscribe to Iroh plus, which is $10 a month or $100 a year. Then there's Astro, Amazon's home robot offered by Invite only for $1500. It's been around for a year, but it got some new features, including pet detection. So if it sees something it thinks is a dog or a cat, it can send a video of it to you. It also got the ability to check specific windows and doors in your house and tell if something is unusual like a door that's supposed to be closed is open. They can take a picture of that and send it to you. Well, good news too. The third generation Fire TV Cube has a cloth cover. That's not the big news, but it has a cloth cover. HDMI input for passing your cable box through it. Wi-Fi 6E. It's $140 and there's also an Alexa Voice Remote Pro for $35. That's sold separately and has a backlight, programmable buttons, remote finder that triggers. You know, think of it as like the way your phone can find certain devices. That kind of idea. Where's my remote? Yeah. There it is. The Echo Show 15 will get a Fire TV widget to collect all the streaming TV apps on your Echo Show and you'll be able to pair the Show 15 with the Fire TV Voice Remote. It's a nice little combo, I think. Oh, finally, look at this ring. We can't go without Ring. No. Ring announced it's Bird's Eye View. It's a brand new feature that can show you both the path someone took. No, it's an old feature, but it's coming to new stuff. Yeah. Oh, I thought it was brand new. Anyway, this thing can tell you where you, the path of somebody who, or the, the path somebody took to get to your door. Okay. That's coming to the Ring Spotlight Cam Pro and Cam Plus. Both of them will be available in battery, plug-in, solar and wired variations. The Amazon owned Blink introduced a wired floodlight camera for $100 and $30 pan and tilt mount for the Blink mini camera. Lots of stuff. Lots of announcements to Amazon. I would say. What in the channels? I'll be honest, though, no like drones that follow you around. Even Astro was just an update. This was a more mundane Amazon announcement. Good stuff in there. I'm not criticizing it, but, but yeah, I didn't, we didn't get those like crazy concept things as much as we. I mean, even the crazy concept robot is like, no, it can. Yeah. Say hi to your mom. It's the same one from last year. It just can be like, that seems like a cat. It looks like a trend this year. A lot of the major conferences have been iterative, not boring, but just kind of standard. You know, none of them are doing anything crazy. And this isn't really an exception. Well, speaking of robots, Chipotle's tortilla making robot, you might know it as Chippy, is coming to a Chipotle restaurant near you. That is if you live near Fountain Valley, California. Chippy will be making tortilla chips starting next month with feedback from customers and also workers helping to inform a, an eventual national roll up if things go well. Chipotle is also piloting a demand based AI cooking system. That's for staff with the goal to get ahead of order demand peak time. So Chipotle's pilot is currently active at eight Orange County, California locations. Ah, Orange County getting the robots, getting the robot burritos. Yeah. This is another one where it's moving slower than I thought. Like we've been covering this for, it feels like 10 years. Uh, the, you know, the robots showing up in restaurants. Uh, but we had Flippy, the, the, the hamburger making robots out there. Yeah. We got Chippy. Yeah. Yeah. Orange County could change, Orange County could change the operating computer or something that you don't have to stay Orange County forever. If you're going to have more robots than people. Not a lot of oranges. Maybe robot County glad you're a robot. Um, somebody who isn't a robot and we sure are glad about that. Scott Johnson Scott. Thank you for staying humanoid. Um, let folks know where they can keep up with the rest of your work. Well, I do dream of electric sheep. So there's some concern. Uh, anyway, I have got a lot going on, but what I'd like to point people to this week is a little different. We have a show we've been doing since 2009, October of that year called film sack. And on this anniversary, uh, just want to remind people who love movies, stuff from the eighties, garbage from the fifties, even newer things. Uh, and a bunch of friends sitting around talking about them. You might really like that show. So check it out. Filmsack.com. We'll get you there. Of course, film sack wherever you get your podcasts. Uh, I think you'll like it. One of the hosts is from Orange County. Is he a robot? That's true. Tune in and find out. We wonder sometimes. Ooh, the plot thickens. Special thanks to Cavo Conrad. Cavo is one of our life. Lifetime supporters for DTNS. I got so excited. Thanks for all the years of support. Cavo could not do it without you. Cavo. Cavo. Cavo. Cavo. Cavo. Could be you tomorrow. Patreon.com slash DTNS. Indeed. Speaking of patrons, stick around for the extended show. Good day internet. We're going to be talking more about our insane AI versions of ourselves. But you can catch DTNS live Monday through Friday. If you can join us, we'd love to have you join us live. 4 p.m. Eastern. 200 UTC. Find out more at dailytechnews.com slash live. And we are back to win it all again tomorrow with Justin Robert Young joining us. Don't miss it. See you soon. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Timing Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.