 This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners. Thanks to all of you, including High Tech Oki, Jim Hart, Logan Larson, and Andrew Pearl. On this episode of DTNS, what epics win against Google means. Timu is the most popular Apple app of the year. And Dr. Nicky tells us how chickens were modified not to get the flu. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, December 12th, 2023 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Secret Bunker, I'm Sarah Lane. From Tuscaloosa, I'm Dr. Nicky Ackermans and I'm the show's producer, Roger. Dr. Nicky, it's always good to have you on the show. Welcome. Happy to be here. Thank you for bringing chickens. Always. Let's start. However, before we get to the chickens with a quick aperitif of quick hits. Well, E3 has been declared dead quite a few times now. But this time I think it's for real, y'all. The Entertainment Software Association made it official in a statement that said after more than two decades of E3, each one bigger than the last, the time has come to say goodbye. Show promoter Reed Pop said the event did not garner the sustained interest necessary, although it is survived by Summer Game Fest. Memorials could be made to the Los Angeles Convention Center. Customers in Kansas City, North Carolina's Triangle Region, parts of Arizona and Iowa can now sign up for 20 gigabit per second. Internet service from Google Fiber for installation sometime after the first of the year service does come with Wi-Fi seven hardware, which you're going to need if you want to take any advantage of that 20 gig. Wi-Fi seven has a potential maximum of 5.8 gigabits per second. So you'll need to be wired if you want to get the full 20 service will cost two hundred fifty dollars a month. Ain't cheap. Google Fiber does offer slower service elsewhere. Five gigabit per second service in parts of Kansas City, West Des Moines, Iowa and Salt Lake City in Huntsville, Alabama and eight gigabit per second service in a few other limited locations. Couple Apple tidbits today, according to Reuters, the company is offered to let rival mobile payment operators access tap and go NFC technology in the iPhone and iPad to settle EU antitrust charges that were levied against the company last year. And as part of the TV OS 17.2 update, Apple made changes to the interface of its Apple TV app. A new sidebar in the Apple TV app now makes it easier, at least easier to find non-Apple services like Max, Disney Plus, stuff like that. Also, the iTunes apps on iPad and iPhone as well as the TV shows or Movies app on Apple TV will now redirect you to the Apple TV app. The store tabs on the Apple TV app also now let you sign up for streaming services and rent and buy TV shows and movies. Well, good. That's a lot of consolidation, but I think it'll be simpler in the end. Google is saying goodbye to Google Play Movies and TV. Kind of a similar situation here. It moved Android and iOS users to the Google TV app earlier this year and removed the Google Play Movies and TV app from every Roku, most smart TVs and pulled the app from Android TV in October. Although Google Play Movies and TVs is gone for good in January, you'll still be able to access and watch all the shows and movies you've already purchased elsewhere, like on YouTube, for goodness sake. If you're logged in with your same Google ID, you can see them there. Updates to Google Maps now let you save your timeline. That's the encrypted record of where you've been to your device instead of in the cloud. Location history will now automatically delete your data after three months instead of 18 months. You can also now tap the blue dot on the map to bring up your location history options. And you can delete specific things from your location history like the research that you did for my surprise party because you would not want me to know about that, right? But you definitely want to throw me a party, right? These new features are coming to Android and iOS over the coming weeks. I say no because I know you don't like surprise parties. I would just throw you a regular party. I've had one surprise party in my life never again. Yeah, no, learn from that. Actually, actually, too. And the second one, I was really mad about. They were mad about it both. All right, let's get to the big news. A jury in the U.S. District Court in Northern California found that Epic proved by the preponderance of the evidence that an antitrust market existed for Android app distribution and in app building billing worldwide, excluding China, and that Google engaged in anti-competitive conduct. So they had to define the market. They had to find antitrust in the market and they had to find Google engaged in anti-competitive conduct in that antitrust market. And they found all three. They also found that Epic was harmed by this conduct because, you know, if Epic hadn't been harmed, it wouldn't matter that Epic had proven that. Jerry also found that Google engaged in restraint of trade with its developer agreements, revenue sharing programs like Project Hug and Games Velocity Program, as well as some of those OEM sales agreements where they say, hey, you got to carry the Google Play Store and don't mention any others. And then then we'll make sure that you get the Google version of Android. Also found that Google unlawfully tied the use of the Google Play Store to the use of Google Play Billing. So that's that's the one where Google says, you can only use our system to charge people in your apps if you want to be in the Google Play Store. So this is a big win for Epic. It's not the end of the road. Google has already said they're going to appeal this. We also haven't got the remediation part. Remember, this is not this is not a criminal trial, so there's no sentencing. Nobody's going to jail, but there is the judge will now take that jury decision and determine fair remediation. That will happen after a couple of meetings in January. Second week of January is going to sit down with representatives from Google and Epic. And here there are arguments about what the remediation should be. But Google is going to appeal that, nonetheless, given that it's still a big win for Epic because, you know, you have a better chance of winning on appeal if you win the first case. I mean, I guess what Google will hope for the most even during the appeals process when sitting down with the judge and figuring things out is that it can convince how this case goes forward to to consider Apple in all of this. So it doesn't seem like Google is shedding developers out of its own ecosystem, because when you add Apple into it, it's like, yeah, there's all sorts of competition here. It's not just. Yeah. I if I'm reading this right, it seems like Android being open source worked against it in this particular case. So so stay with me. In Apple's case, Apple was able to say, we are the makers of the device and the operating system is on the device. There's nobody else. We get to determine what happens on our device and our device exists in a marketplace of other devices out there, right? And the judge, remember, it was not a jury. It was a judge. The judge said that makes sense. But I don't think it makes sense that you can stop your app makers from talking about where else they can be charged. And so that is the point that Apple is appealing to the Supreme Court in the US to see if they can get that part overturned. But Apple won on everything else. In this case, the reason Apple was not found to be antitrust, but Google was was because it was a different argument. The argument was in the world of Android, Google has taken what is an open ecosystem and dominated it. So they have a monopoly position in the Android marketplace. Apple is not part of the Android marketplace, so that the Apple part of it doesn't matter. As long as you define Android as the market we're talking about, then you can show pretty easily that Google dominated it and then abused that domination by saying, and you can't have any other app stores or you have to make it really hard for people to to install them if they're there, you can't mention any other things. You have to use our payment system, although the rest of that follows. So it's not just as simple as like, oh, the courts like Apple and they don't like Google. We've we've got different legal arguments going on here. I'm going to guess this is not going to be. We're not going to have closure on this until, I don't know, a year from now for Lucky. Yeah, because it'll be until January that they get the remediation figured out and then there'll be an appeal and it'll take a while for that appeal to get assigned and heard and then that's probably going to get appealed because whoever loses is going to want to go to the Supreme Court. And then we have to wait for the Supreme Court to decide if it's a kind of legal issue that they want to weigh in on or not. So yeah, I would guess 2025 before we get this whole thing sorted at the earliest. You know, for anybody who's less familiar with the court system than Utah Mayor, for example, I mean, is there ever a situation where a company is so they know that there's going to be appeals and a lot of back and forth and they can just force a case to go straight to the Supreme Court because that's where it's going to end up anyway. Yeah, you can. It's a harder argument to make, though, because the Supreme Court isn't. I think the perception is the Supreme Court is going to disagree with the lower courts. The Supreme Court doesn't work that way. The Supreme Court is looking like, oh, is there a precedent setting issue that you need us to weigh in on? Is that lower court decision such that we need to we need to bring the full force and authority of the of the Supreme Court to bear and settle the issue? Because if it's not, then they'll just let the lower court decision stand. And so you'd have to be really compelling to leapfrog all of that. Usually they want you to work your way through all the arguments. At least that's how I understand it. I ain't a lawyer. Well, what you are is someone who is getting used to it being that retrospective time of the year. Yes, we got lots of best ofs and and Spotify wrapped. And today we're talking about most downloaded iOS apps of 2023. Now, this is just in the US, but drum roll, please. Apple announced today that Chinese e-commerce company Timu was the platform's most downloaded free app in the US in 2023. That's measured by app installs. So had the most momentum. You can think of it that way. Chinese based companies CapCut and TikTok both made by ByteDance came in at number three and number five, respectively. So you might say, well, what about the incumbents, you know, the Metas and the Googles last year's Metas WhatsApp came in at number three. This year it slipped at number nine. Instagram was number four last year. This year it's number six. And Facebook didn't even make the top 10 this year, although Instagram threads made it to the number three spots. Yeah, Google also did its usual showing up on this list, but a little lower than usual. Two in the three in the top 10, somewhat disappointing for YouTube, which fell from number two to number eight. Google search, Boyd by Bard was in front of YouTube at number seven. And then Gmail came in 10th. But data from Apptopia shows that Timu ruled the roost because it got people to want to use it a lot. It was an average of 18 minutes a day on average for US users. Compared to 10 minutes a day for Amazon, so it's almost twice. Timu has a few tricks to keep people engaged in the app. There's in-app games. You can win rewards and coupons with those games. Bargain prices for items that seem unbelievable. And sometimes maybe they are and some time-based deals. So the Timu app is not specific to the United States. It's available in more than 40 countries. It's technically headquartered in Ireland, but there's a Chinese company involved and there's a lot of corporate maneuvers to separate Timu from that Chinese company. Kind of the way ByteDance tries to separate TicTac, but a little more successful than that. But yeah, it's been it's been pretty huge in the US this year. So I have to just be super honest and say when I when I read these stats, I mean, some of it was a little surprising like Facebook, not even in the top 10. But you have to assume we're talking US users. I mean, if you already have the Facebook app, it doesn't mean you're not using it. Just means you weren't installing it for the first time. So definitely a momentum shift. However, I was not familiar with Timu until today, years old. Wow. I know. And I mentioned it to Tom. And Tom was like, you're kidding. And I said, no, I asked a few other friends, you know, just kind of people who know these things. And two of them said, oh, yeah, but I only really know it because people sometimes hawk Timu items within their TikToks. So there's a lot of cross promo that's going on. TikTok is the number two app, by the way. So it, you know, had the number one spot in 2022 and didn't fall much in 2023. People were still installing this year. TikTok was number five. TikTok was number five. Yes, sorry. And but number one last year. And yeah, so I spent some time on Timu. Boy, is it chaotic? If you want to compare it to something like Amazon, I'm also really used to the way Amazon is laid out. And people might think that's chaotic when they first use it as well. But you can get a lot of stuff on Timu. And the prices, and I think, Tom, you've been burned by this once or twice. The prices seem like ludicrously low. You know, it's like a kitchen item that would be, I don't know, 30, 40 dollars at William Sonoma. And it's like 250. Yeah. All right. Well, there's some shipping costs, I suppose. But geez, you know, these prices are, I can see what people are saying. You've got to tell them this is the cheapest you're ever going to find anything. I know people who have bought successfully on Timu. Eileen and I are not one of those people yet. We bought some of it is probably our own inattention. We bought some molds to make triangle gimbab. So to make a little rice ball things. And they were like half the size of what you normally need for that. So we got they were like, oh, my gosh, we can make very tiny triangles. We bought one of those those bags that you're supposed to be able to put like your winter coats in and then you suck at all the air and they take up less space and allows you to maximize your storage. Those things leaps like crazy. They just did not work at all. I feel like there's one other thing that I'm not remembering right now. But yeah, we have not had a lot of Timu luck. Seems like he would have bought you or are you a team user on TikTok? And I've very staunchly kind of held myself back from installing it just in terms of ethics. Like there's no way that any of that stuff is produced ethically at that price. I already have like unsubscribed from Amazon Prime. So I don't think I'll be taking the step towards Timu. But I'm not surprised that it's that it's up there because things are getting really expensive and people can't afford Amazon. So that's what they're heading towards that makes sense. And I'm not surprised about Facebook being down at the bottom. When's the last time you open Facebook? Like, yeah, it's really running out of favor. So it all kind of tracks. It's the changing of the guard here. You know, Timu and Sheehan or Shine, depending on how you pronounce it. Those those are the big shopping apps in a very clearly, at least on iOS. Timu wins. But then CapCut, like Sarah said, owned by ByteDance, like ties in with TikTok, TikTok on the rise. Threads is brand new. That one on the rise. Max forced everybody to read their app. So that's how it gets up there. And then, yeah, the older those older apps, YouTube, Facebook, Google, even WhatsApp, just kind of drifting down down the charts there. It's it's it's a sea change. Yeah. Yeah. And if you're you're sort of like, well, what about, you know, the popular games that everybody's on? Those are in their own category. Top free game was Monopoly Go. Top paid game in the US was Minecraft. These are all US. Apple arcade games don't feature top charts. So if it's a subscription game, it's kind of in its own category and just wasn't part of what was counted here. But not not a ton of surprises, except for Timu. And that's just because I'm a little late to the game. If you don't know it, then, hey, I was I was you this morning. Now I know that there are 18 whisks left in that beautiful pink color. And I better get on it. And each one is ninety seven cents. This deal won't last. Yeah, I was a little surprised that Roblox didn't win free iPhone game, but it did win free iPad game. So that makes sense. And I know so many people use Procreate, which is number one iPad paid app and also in the top of the iPhone paid as well, I think. Yeah, it's number three Procreate pocket. So that that one made sense to me, too. But you know what? Can't wait to see the Android one. We'll keep an eye out for that. Meanwhile, if you want to get some Android news in your life, you're going to want to listen to Android faithful, Ron Richards, when to a doubt, bring the latest Android news and information every week. And this week, you cannot miss it. Jason Howell will be joining them to talk about what's next for him. Post twit, you might say that this show will be all about Android. So check it out. Android faithful Tuesdays at 8 p.m. Eastern 5 p.m. Pacific YouTube dot com slash Daily Tech News show and subscribe to the feed at Android faithful dot com. So Dr. Nicky came today to talk about GMO chickens. Why we're going to find out. But let's start with GMO, because a lot of people may not know that that is not a way to finance your new car. What is GMO, Nicky? Yeah, this actually came up on on a Good Day Internet segment. Roger, I think, asked about that. And I said, you know what, I'll cover that next month. So here we are. GMO is a genetically modified organism. I think most people know that far. So it can be a plant, a microbe or an animal where a change has been made to its genome. Usually when people say this, they mean that the change has been made by genetic engineering, where genes are either introduced, enhanced or deleted within a species. But technically, selective breeding is also a form of genetic modification. So instead of adding or removing genetic material, it relies on the conscious selection and breeding for desired traits. So technically, your cats and dogs are GMOs. Right. And peas, all those peas in the Punnett Square. Yeah. Yes. Mendel's peas are also GMOs. How long have GMOs been in use? So actually the first kind of use, not commercially, but just general use, maybe in research of GMOs is since the 70s, when they genetically engineered E. Coli, but from at least the sort of research part, not the selective breeding, that's since we domesticated plants. But, you know, it's been used in all kinds of places. A lot of people, of course, think about it in food, but it's been used from agriculture to pest eradication to research. You know, obviously, transgenic mice genetically modified. And some of the really important projects, just I wanted to cover the swath of like what's out there would include bringing the American chestnut tree back from the brink of extinction, super important ecologically, creating nutrient enriched golden rice to combat malnutrition, as well as malaria resistant mosquitoes and now potentially flu resistant chickens. Now, that would be mosquitoes who just are incapable of carrying malaria, keeping the rest of us safer. Love that idea. All right, so I know that in order to understand this fully, we have to first explain CRISPR, right? Yes, CRISPR is not the order for how to cook your chicken. It's also a genetic technique. It stands for clustered regularly interspace short palindromic repeats. And I feel like I don't need to explain further than that. No, just kidding. The name is not super helpful, but it's a technique that's basically used to selectively modified DNA strands. Basically, it's genetic scissors. So it was actually adapted for use in the laboratory from a naturally occurring genome editing system that bacteria can do on their own. And they cut out virus, virus segments in their own DNA. And so scientists actually won the 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry for figuring out how to bring this into the lab. Very, very basically, the CRISPR DNA is a repetitive strand of DNA that gets transcribed into RNA, so basically a carbon copy of it. And this RNA message then guides a specific protein to cut a targeted region where you would either then remove or insert a new sequence in its stead. And that's very basically CRISPR. Yeah, so it makes it easier to go in and modify the DNA. And then from there, the RNA makes the new whatever it is that you're trying to make. It makes it possible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what did we do to the chickens with it? Yes, so now we got to the chickens. And this project, the scientists who are working on this project from the University of Edinburgh have been working on it for 30 years. So, you know, if you haven't gotten your thing to work yet, just keep trying is what they said. They were successful in using CRISPR to create chickens that are resistant to the real life dose of the avian flu virus. In order to do this, they found the key gene that was for growing avian influenza in birds, but not in human cells. And they use CRISPR specifically to introduce mutations into this gene. And that way, they're able to breed chicks that didn't have the capacity of producing a certain protein, which would then be co-opted by the avian flu. So when they inoculated these baby chicks with the bird food, they didn't become infected. And it's only after they reached a dose about 1000 times higher than normal that they did get infected. But even then the infection progressed at a slower rate than it usually would. And the gene-edited birds still were a little bit less likely to spread the virus. But as you know, viruses are really tricky. They mutate. Obviously, this is not a one end solution because they can mutate so well. Viruses could very well change around this gene edit. And that would include potentially getting pushed towards developing a stronger variant of the bird flu or maybe becoming better adapted to transmit to mammals, which we really don't want. Some scientists are saying that multiple gene edits instead of just one could restrict this risk, though. Yes, so I hanging out in the organic section at a supermarket. Anyone will see lots of non-GMO stickers and labeling. And I think a lot of people go, oh, GMO, that's not bad. Is it dangerous to eat? I mean, it can be right. But what about what about these chickens? Are we going to have to, I don't know, change the other nutritional structure that we as humans need to stay healthy? So, of course, these chickens, they just came out with this a month or two ago. So there's going to be a whole entire slew of regulatory controls before these things even get anywhere close to market. But these small gene edits that they made with CRISPR mimic mutants that actually already exist in nature since we talked about those bacteria. And so because of that, the regulatory barriers are slightly lower. But, you know, GMOs, unless they're edited to create something toxic, like a pesticide, if they're just edited to make your food more nutritious or maybe just stronger roots or whatever they edit for, we've been eating GMOs, you know, since we invented plant domestication, if you want to think about it that way. Or since the 90s, where there's been GMO tomatoes on the shelves forever. I would eat GMOs for breakfast, lunch and dinner, honestly. And we can definitely chat about this. But honestly, the main hurdle after regulation to this is whether consumers understand what it is and whether they actually want to purchase the project. A lot of GMO products that are very good for us are still facing this problem in stores today. Yeah, I think GMO has become slightly less useful as a label because it can be used to mean all kinds of things on the one end of the scale, something entirely uncontroversial like the slow genetic modification of corn from being a very tiny and possible to eat thing to the delicious sweet corn we have today. And then on the other hand, and there are uses of genetic modification that should not be allowed, right? And there are regulations against those. So it's kind of a catch all sometimes for people who just don't like a thing. I think something like golden rice is essential to the welfare of humanity. If you didn't have those micronutrients bred into rice, a lot of people would be sicker and live less long. So so, yeah, I think this is this is something that is interesting. And I think this is a very responsible story, the way you're passing it along, which is they were able to keep the chickens from getting the flu. But they're not saying, so let's use this. They're saying, but we need to make sure this doesn't create an even worse version of the flu before we start putting this in a bunch of chickens. Right. Yeah. And I think GMO is kind of a marketing problem, like you said, the golden rice. It's golden rice is made like at least a decade ago. And it it's not selling because people don't want to eat GMO. And it's literally just nutrient dense rice. Like it's not there's you're not going to get transmitted a mutant and become a dinosaur because you ate rice. Like I know that's what people want to hear. But the only bad GMOs that I know of right now are the fact that places like Monsanto have patented their seeds and that makes it harder for farmers to buy them. Like usually you just grow your own seeds. But so it kind of creates this monopoly on agriculture. That's not great. Actually, it's terrible. But in terms of things that we can eat, there's they wouldn't sell something that's bad for you or else it wouldn't sell good, so it doesn't make sense. And also I saw a GMO sticker on a salt packet the other day. And salt doesn't have any Gs to M because it's not an O. Right. So they must have been adding something to the salt. No, it's just not a GMO, which is true. But like they weren't. Oh, it was a way to say, don't worry, this is very safe salt. Oh, they were saying it's GMO free because it is because it could. It's a rock. All right, no, I got you. Yeah, right. I would like to note that this pen is also GMO free. This DTS mug available online is also in fact. Every email that we've gotten today is GMO free. Let's check out. Cameron sent us a good one with lots of interesting thoughts about large language models, including his preferred metaphor for choosing a chat bot. Cameron says it's closer to how word processing works or filters in that the future, each in the future, each big product will have it and will have advantages and disadvantages. But it'll be more about being an important feature to keep people on the product. Google Drive could do word processing. Microsoft Word Online or locally installed can do word processing. But we expect them all to be about the same until somebody asks for something special. I like this. This is a good analogy. I welcome more analogies to this because, yeah, it chat bots, LLMs could be like spell check, right? And in fact, in a lot of ways, they kind of are where it's just a feature that's built in and your word processor can have varying levels of, you know, kinds of features. And some word processors have better versions of those features than others based on what LLM they're using. Thank you, Cameron. That's a good one. Also, thanks to you, Dr. Nicky Ackermans for bringing the GMO knowledge and the crispy chicken to the show today. Let folks know where they can keep up with your work. Absolutely. I'm always findable on my website, nicoleackermans.com, still on X as Ackermans, Nicole and on Blue Sky as Nicole Ackermans. Blue Sky, not Blue Ski, Blue Sky. Blue Ski, you can have a Blue Ski while you drink. Although I haven't checked that in ages, but I'm there. Patrons, stick around for the extended show, Good Day Internet. Netflix just released its first engagement report. This is not about marriage. It's about hours viewed. It details the hours viewed of 18,000 Netflix titles from the first half of this year. Can you guess the most watched Netflix show? Stick around and we'll tell you. Reminder, you can catch our show live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern. That's 2100 UTC. You can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We're back tomorrow talking about the end of E3, the end of an era with Scott Johnson. Talk to you then. E zero. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Simon Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.