 Daily Tech News show is made possible by you, our boss, thanks to all of you, including Irwin Sturr, Ken Hayes, Phillip Shane, and brand new patrons, Jeff and Ben. Welcome, Kevin. Yay, Jeff and Ben. On this episode of DTNS, is TikTok really worth all this security work? The first reviews are in for the Apple Vision Pro, and is Netflix now just television? Like, it's just TV, middle, mainstream, turn on the Netflix. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, January 30th, 2024 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Animal House, I'm Sarah Lane. I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. And joining us from the edition newsletter, Charlotte Henry. Hello, hello. Welcome to London, I guess. It's London Calling. London Calling, exactly. Thank you. What do you think of Sarah's new studio name, Animal House? I basically only come on the show to hear what Sarah's going to name her studio on any given day. We've done Animal House for a couple of weeks now. Yeah, we've been trialing. I feel like we're settling in. You know, you don't see a lot of the animals, but I guarantee you it is an Animal House, so. Are you going to have to dress them in togas? Like in the movie, Animal House? I mean, I will. And I'll take photos. Please do. And put it, and Otis can put it on his Instagram. There you go. I mean, I won't do it. Why would I do that? He'll do that on his own account. I like how you said it like Sarah needed any kind of encouragement to dress the animals in togas. That was good. Look for it soon, ladies and gentlemen. Everybody likes a toga party, okay? Otis Reading Lane on Instagram. All right, let's start with the quick hits. After a recent Windows update, some users found that Microsoft Edge had automatically taken over their formerly open Chrome tabs, even if data importing from Chrome to Edge was never explicitly chosen. The Verges Tom Warren notes, it seems related to an import feature in Microsoft Edge itself, though it was disabled on his systems. Privacy and data data supply chain researcher Zach Edwards also shared that after a fresh install, he found a new prompt during setup that reads, with your confirmation, Microsoft Edge will regularly bring in data from other browsers available on your Windows device. This data includes your favorites, browsing history, cookies, autofill data, extensions, settings, and other browsing data. All things you might do if you wanted a browser to do that. So Microsoft doesn't deny that it is doing this and says data import is completed locally and stored locally, but that it will be sent to Microsoft if you sign in and sync your browsing data. That's a great feature if you want it on. It seems like there was a little glitch in the Windows update that caused it to turn on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, scared a few folks. Elon Musk posted that his Neuralink company has implanted it's, this is an important word that I don't see in the headlines, it's first wireless chip into a human, and that human is recovering well from the surgery. Musk says the product is going to be called telepathy and will let patients control computer interfaces by thinking it's a brain computer interface. Neuralink is the latest in many efforts to perfect a brain computer interface. If you're unaware, here's a couple. BlackRock Neurotech implanted its first chip in a human in 2004. Synchron's brain computer interface was used to post from a Twitter account by a patient in 2021. The Swiss school EPF's chip has helped a paralyzed man walk by thinking. Precision neuroscience is developing a simpler procedure for the implant called cranial micro slit so that it can be carried out in an easier and less risky manner and carried out its first clinical study last year. Paradromix is on schedule to launch its first full trial in human patients, not just one, but a clinical trial for multiple patients in the second half of this year. Neuralink has the benefit of receiving more attention than a lot of other efforts because of the prominence of its founder, but I thought you might be interested to know what else is going on out there. The Skylight calendar is a single purpose device, a screen that essentially shows just your family calendar so you can put it where everyone can see it. That would be like a whiteboard or something that was on a fridge or maybe even an Echo show. This would be something that would be another option. The Verge notes that Skylight has launched a new version of its wall-mounted family smart calendar called the Skylight Cal Max. 27 inches touchscreen, almost double the previous 15 inch version, and also has a higher resolution at 2560 by 1440. You can also get an anti-glare screen and buy interchangeable frames to help it match your decor if you care about stuff like that. If you do, Skylight Cal Max is available to order for $599 shipping this June. ICANN has proposed a new top-level domain that would never be used on the open internet, would not be recorded in the DNS tables. Dot internal would be used like you use 192.168 IP addresses, if you know what those are, but without needing to assign it to a subdomain because subdomains often have to be recorded in the public DNS root table. Subdomains aren't always in the DNS, but if they are similar to actual public domains, that can cause other issues. Dot internal would attempt to give a clean and private label to use for a company intranet. Next step is having ICANN's board sign off on the creation of the unusual domain. Hackaday reports on a video from Dr. Volt where he modified a mouse's simple camera sensor to act as a webcam. So if your mouse doesn't have a ball, it probably works by using an LED light and camera sensor. Dr. Volt figured out how to query the sensor information from a Logitech mouse's SPI, and an M at 12 lens was added, and now you can see low res monochrome images. Oh, hacking a mouse to be a camera. I mean, not particularly useful, but fun. I like it. Also fun is Project Texas. If you haven't followed our explanations of this before on the show, it is TikTok's effort to separate US TikTok user data from the rest of the world, specifically China, by putting it and a US version of TikTok's algorithm in an Oracle run data center, and then creating a separate company which has members of the US Committee on Foreign Investment on its board called USDS to manage the data and the algorithm for TikTok. And that has been going on since early 2023. Wall Street Journal has documents today showing that 2000 employees of USDS cannot keep up with the huge amount of code used to update the TikTok algorithm. Same problem exists for using user data to keep the moderation tools up to date. There's just too much for them to be able to handle, and there's all kinds of restrictions about how they can handle it that makes it even more difficult. So unsurprisingly, there's evidence of managers letting workers take some shortcuts which might have exposed some US data to members of TikTok outside of the US specifically in China. There are also memos chastising workers and managers for doing that. They December memo promised to roll out tools to make workarounds unnecessary and warned against circumventing the rules saying protected data should never be shared with global TikTok or ByteDance colleagues. I don't know, Charlotte, this just feels like it's one of those corporate situations that we've all been in if we've ever worked in a corporation where they're like, yeah, that's a great idea policy on paper, but you can't make it work in practice. I, for one, am shocked that this didn't work perfectly right off the bat, whoever could have foreseen that this would be complicated. If only, if only someone could have, could have foreseen that. I mean, Joe, to your side, I think I'm pleased to see the debate has moved on from should we ban TikTok, because that was kind of a bit petulant and a bit annoying and was not going to work. I mean, I heard, what, forgive me, I heard on another podcast, I do listen to other ones apart from DTNS. Of course. You're late to give me. It's okay. You can listen to someone made a point about the politics around the banning that Joe Biden, who is frequently criticized for his age, banning a young person's app, quote, wouldn't look very good. But whatever the reasons, I'm pleased that we've moved on from this, but on the technical side, this was always going to be complicated. However, you asked me before the show, Tom, we were chatting about, is this worth the effort? And yeah, yeah, is this is a lot of complex effort, right? Whether we should have been seen ahead of time or not. Is this the priority? Should we be spending all of these people's time on this? Or is there something more important to our security? I have come to the view over recent months, actually, we underestimate the sort of cultural political power of TikTok and the kind of cachet that gives China at our peril. Now, I'm very much not in the TikTok. He's going to bring down the world. We should ban TikTok camp. I'm very far from that. But I do think we should be aware of where it comes, the links the parent company has to the Chinese state. And Western nations should take some steps accordingly. However, as you've perfectly laid out in that, you know, details in that story, it's really very, very complicated and messy. But yeah, I do think some efforts are worth it. Whether they're going to be entirely possible is a whole different question. Yeah, Sarah, what about you? Where do you land on this? Well, I mean, I think this is whether you are cool with TikTok or think that it's a really bad situation, you know, for the young, the youngins. This does detail how many people actually are required to run an algorithm. I think a lot of people kind of go like, oh, algorithm, you just press and play. And, you know, now, you know, nobody has a job anymore. If you're a human, very much not the case. TikTok is also, you know, an outlier in the sense that there are a lot of things that go on on TikTok that I think many other companies are very interested in when it comes to the algorithm. But again, behind that algorithm is a lot of people, you know, if 2000 people in the US, you know, trying to run TikTok, isn't enough. Well, you know, what's the conversation that we're all having now about everybody being laid off? Maybe more people have to, you know, help the robot. I don't think this is specific to TikTok either. I think that's the other thing is there's just as much of a problem on other platforms that aren't run by a company who has a headquarters in Beijing, and we're not doing anything near this level of complication to try to solve that. And this is apparently not even changing anything, as far as anybody could tell. There's not much evidence that there was abuse. There's not much evidence that anything has changed. And yet we have 2000 people, you know, racking their brains and trying hard to figure out how to duplicate an effort. It just seems like a waste of effort to me. But that's just that's just my sense. I think there's something else that comes up from the great point Sarah made, which is we talk about it happens with TikTok in particular, but I think it happens in tech in general, the quote unquote algorithm, as if it's this non human, totally self sufficient thing that we, we, you know, can't influence anymore. Algorithms are made by humans, they are run by humans, and they require in lots and lots of cases, human input, that is particularly the case in of TikTok where people are curating content and monitoring content and so on. And so I can understand why it's taken the efforts of thousands of people to try and tackle this. It's so popular. And I can see why it's taken that that level of effort, and it hasn't even got anyone very far yet. Yeah, because algorithms are made by humans, but they're also entirely unpredictable, right? They don't respond to your designs very easily. And that's why you need the humans, you know? Exactly. Like a human being like, well, that didn't work as intended. Well, this looks a bit weird. Maybe I need to press this button. So how's TikTok doing otherwise though? Well, Tom, I'm glad you asked. Actually, this is this is interesting. The Verge reports that some creators say that TikTok is encouraging them to make 30 minute long videos in horizontal format. Ooh, sounds positively, you know. I've had this one before. Yeah. Kind of sounds like YouTube, right? Okay, that's what I was going for. So as YouTube shorts seem to be taking off to make YouTube more like TikTok, TikTok is getting more into the landscape mode of YouTube. The two are becoming more direct competitors, even if neither company wants to explicitly mention the other when they talk about new things. That's what they're doing. Okay. To get the upper hand, you need to lure creators in offer them more ways to make money. That's why you retain creators. This is not rocket science. A new TikTok feature currently being tested, automatically identifies products in a video and then links over to a TikTok shop to find them or products like them. So that is, that's kind of where we are here. TikTok still being very short, you know, snackable content, but also long form. Yeah. And TikTok and YouTube becoming more alike, therefore becoming more direct competitors, meaning that you actually have a choice in a space. There has been no choice other than YouTube for the longest time. So that, that, that is an interesting development that I don't necessarily agree with you on that, actually, Tom. So first of all, there are other places you can get longer form video, should you want Vimeo daily motion, whatever, you know, it's not impossible to get longer than one minute videos elsewhere on the internet. And the other thing is, I can't, when I totally get your point about competition and being direct competitors, I do get what you're saying. I kind of also think, what's the point? I like TikTok because it was distinctive. And then Instagram has done reels and tried to compete with it that way. Obviously, we've seen YouTube shorts. And now TikTok is trying to go in the complete opposite direction of the thing that made it great and likeable and hugely, hugely, hugely popular. And I don't quite get it. But Instagram was, you know, aping Snapchat back in the day, and then TikTok was pulling, you know, pulling things from Instagram. It's like, all these companies are, you know, they're trying to figure out what works best. Yeah. But then how is it of any benefit to the consumer if everything's the same? But it's not the same. You have different, different content on different platforms. That's my point anyway. And you have a choice. You have places you can go that are different. Maybe you'll even watch them in an Apple Vision Pro, Charlotte. Oh, maybe you will. I can't. Maybe you will. Well, if you buy one, and come over to my house on Friday, because I will with my co-host on Apple Vision Show, Eileen Rivera, will be hanging out with one of those, but wanted to talk a little bit about basically the embargo has lifted for a lot of people who have been playing around with the Apple Vision Pro. So we have, we have some thoughts from folks who have, you know, taken the whole thing for a test drive. First of all, Mac remersources say that Apple has sold approximately 200,000 Vision Pro headsets. That's up from, I think it was 160 to 180, the Mengxi quo had quoted, right around this time last week, after the initial push of the first weekend. Apple started accepting pre-orders for the Vision Pro on January 19th. So, all right, 10 days in. Here we are. 200,000 Vision Pros. Now you might say, well, that isn't a lot. And it kind of isn't. I mean, if you're comparing that to something like iPhone sales, but again, different product. All right. So we have some, we have some choice words from some of the folks who have done the due diligence of figuring out who this is for and why it is great. The Verge called it the best pass-through headset ever made. Neelay Patel said in his review, which is very good by the way, that the whole seeing someone's eyes behind their headset, not quite there yet. Still weird. Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern said it's the best mixed reality headset she's ever tried compared that to the far cheaper MetaQuest Pro and Quest 3 saying they're all working toward building virtual experiences into something that looks more like a pair of regular eyeglasses. Until then, they're just messing with our heads. Going over to Tom's Guide. Tom's Guide said in its review, focusing on battery life, over two hours, the Vision Pro was down to about 60% and then down to 40% after another couple of hours. That will make a huge difference, especially if you're using this for in a work scenario. CNET though said, I thought this was kind of the most interesting. Not only is it good enough for movies, something Apple is touting constantly, but it's better than any TV in my house. Okay, so Charlotte, of all these reviews, what is informing your decision making the most, if any? Well, the key thing that's informing my decision is that you can't buy an Apple Vision Pro in the UK. They're only selling them in the US. But okay, let's just say that if I had three and a half thousand dollars, would I be spending it to spend on tech? Will I be choosing to spend it on an Apple Vision Pro? The answer is no. I am not surprised that the likes of Joanna Stern, Nilai Patel, people whose work I really, really love, are finding it's a really good experience compared to what they've tested. I'm not surprised that Apple has come up with a really good product. I'm just not. I mean, I will say though that all of these reviews, although obviously the reviewers, as you mentioned, they're good at this. They know what people are interested in and so those are the notes that they're taking. No one is saying, this is the best thing I've ever seen. This is the best thing I've ever used. This is interesting and we're not quite sure why they made these decisions. Yeah, the vibe seems to be, it's the best headset we've ever tried, but we still don't know why someone would need it and it still doesn't feel like a final product. Exactly. No one is saying, take out that overdraft. You've got to have one of these. That's just not what's happening. And the thing that is informing my decision, despite the excellent reviews from excellent reviewers, is that I cannot think of many use cases where it would exponentially improve what I need to do. So yes, it might be cool to take a meeting and using an Apple Vision Pro, but I'm kind of okay with my Logitech camera, right? It's fine. My life is good. It's fine. I don't need that. The idea of sitting and watching a two-hour movie with a headset on frankly horrifies me. Well, okay. So Charlotte, I wasn't getting into it with somebody all that much, but on X this morning, somebody had said, oh, this is sort of like, I'm paraphrasing, but it's sort of like people taking photos with their iPad like, so lame. Can you imagine people being on planes wearing their Vision Pro? And I'm like, that is the exact use case where this is awesome. Why would you be mad at somebody for work? They're basically going to sleep. Who cares if they're watching a movie at the same time? It's so funny that you mentioned that example because I did a preview of the Apple Vision Pro and discussing it in the kind of media context on the edition podcast with my friend, Jeff Gammett. And I was like, if someone sat down next to me on a plane with one of those headsets on, I would really freak out. Like, what are they watching? What are they doing? People used to be like that with the iPhone. If you pulled the iPhone out on a train, everyone stared at you like, oh, whatever, you're first showing off your wealth sort of thing. If the Vision Pro takes off, that stuff goes away. The question is, will it take off? One way to follow this is our brand new Apple show, Apple Vision Show, applevisionshow.com, Sarah Lane and Eileen Rivera are kicking that off next Monday when Sarah gets the actual Apple Vision Pro and Eileen and her are going to both try it out. We're so pumped. Yeah. I know. And before we get off this topic real quickly, we had a couple of great emails and non-Junior said, I'm with Chris Ashley. I just don't see it helping with the Executive Oversight Committee. But he did see that it might benefit from a 3D model. And he even followed that up. He's like, now that I'm more I'm thinking about it, there might be a little 3D help here for what he does. He's a luthier, somebody who repairs stringed instruments. And then Andrew wrote, I was wondering what a luthier was. Andrew wrote in and said, with the Apple Vision Pro, the promise of a massive screen that you can throw in your backpack is really enticing for me as a software developer. Now, a couple of the reviews I saw, I talked about how big this thing is when it's in the case. So it may or may not be as convenient as you think, Andrew. But thank you both for giving us your opinions. Now, Apple Vision Show, if you want the Apple side of things and Android faithful, if you want the Android side of things every week, Ron Richards, Gwen Tweedow, Michelle Ramon and Jason Howell bring you the latest Android news and information. Watch it live Tuesdays at 8pm Eastern at youtube.com slash Daily Tech News Show or get it whenever you want at androidfaithful.com. Last week, Netflix announced a 10-year deal with TKO Holdings to bring WWE's Monday Night Raw and other WWE content to the streaming service in 2025. Coincidentally, Netflix also announced the departure of film chief Scott Stuber, who will be with the company until March, but then he's out of there. In a recent Bloomberg opinion piece, Paul Hardart from NYC Stern School of Business thought, you know, this is a sign that the company isn't just cutting back on costs. We already knew that, but maybe pivoting away from high cost original films towards traditional TV content, the kinds of things you see on broadcast TV, dramas, sitcoms, reality TV, and he added the ability for Netflix to compete with network TV seems to be at a tipping point, not just for Netflix, but for streaming services in general. Charlotte, is this a major threat to so-called linear TV? Well, I think we were at the major threat stage many, many years ago. I think that major threat has passed and had its effect. What I find interesting is this idea that Netflix is not going to make the big hit movies anymore. And while I understand the argument, I find it hard to imagine that. Now, I can see maybe they'll make fewer and make sure that what they have is the hits, but the idea that the main thing it's going to focus on is kind of competing with the 30-minute network comedy and stuff. I find that unlikely. But saying that, you know, when we all looked at that data, you know, that spreadsheet that Netflix put out towards the end of the year showing the most-watched shows, loads of us were like, well, I've never seen that. I've never heard of that. And that's because it's not always the flashy stuff that gets the hours of viewing, right? Yeah. I think that's a really important thing to bear in mind talking about Netflix now. Did you see the Nielsen report? This was just for the U.S., but it found that the top 10 most streamed TV shows of 2023 were all library shows, no originals. Ted Lasso was the top stream original, but it didn't crack the top 10 overall. Right. And, I mean, Apple, we're very pleased with that given it's very limited catalog, but that's a slightly different discussion. I think we have underestimated, I've written about this before, actually, the importance of the library. So think about, say, Paramount Plus. I mean, the originals are okay. People kind of got into the curse, didn't they? But you don't take out a Paramount Plus subscription because you want to watch the curse. You take out Paramount Plus subscription because you want to watch all of Star Trek, right? Exactly. Yeah. And maybe the new ones too, but yeah, the entire library is there all together. Yeah, it's not for, I mean, the HBO sort of model of like, I want to watch that one series. That is a tough sell these days because you have so many other options. I think Netflix getting WWE makes it take a step towards being a replacement for linear TV. And I know streaming is good. We all knew it was replacing cable and broadcast. That's not the news here. The news is that Netflix isn't prestige. Netflix isn't becoming HBO before HBO becomes it, like they said back in the days. Netflix is becoming ABC, CBS, NBC, or BBC ITV Channel 4. It's mainstream stuff. Whereas Apple is trying to do the HBO game. Fewer shows, fewer films, but they want them to all be high-end. It wants you to think of it as the high-end streamer. Netflix just wants you to watch for hours and hours and hours and hours. And it's working. Everyone's like, oh, no one watches Netflix Originals anymore. Turns out it doesn't matter. They all watch suits. Even though suits was available on Peacock in the U.S., they still watch suits on Netflix. Yeah. I mean, I've gone through all sorts of, I think I did the whole of how I met your mother on there at one point. Like, we've all done it. But just if we have a moment to talk about the WWE thing and the live sports thing. Because, you know, you and I have talked about this, Tom, on both of our shows. Like, is Netflix going to do live sport? It's been sniffy about it for years. I think in that newsletter I wrote today, there was a quote from Ender's Analysis, who's an analysis firm in the UK, who was slightly telling us to calm down about this. So basically saying, look, the WWE deal doesn't mean Netflix is now definitely going to go and buy NBA rights, which are definitely agree. And I think that's right. And we have to remember that Netflix's record with live stuff is kind of mixed at best. And I think we're taking a big risk here with WWE, people who like WWE really like WWE. And you cannot screw that up live. People want to watch that live, you've got to get it right. And so it's a really big pressure moment for them. And I can understand why they're like taking the sort of baby steps they are to get into the space, and to see if they really want to get involved and splash that cash around to compete with Amazon for the NFL or Premier League, whatever you want to pick out. But it isn't really, I mean, it's not a competition. If you want WWE, you will go to where you can find that. And that's where that seems like such a clinch for Netflix because get it, wrestling term. I didn't even do that on purpose. I'm a poet. I don't know. My question to you then is how many people who care about WWE, and I accept there are a lot of people that care about WWE. How many millions? How many of them don't have Netflix already? I don't think Netflix cares because retention is important as acquisition. And so if they can keep a bunch of people that might have canceled otherwise, that works. I would look at Netflix's live strategy as being entertainment oriented because you can have this argument as WWE sports or entertainment. It's both. It is one of the most unique boths that exist. I think Netflix, first of all, I think they screw up one of the lives and everybody gets mad, but then everybody gets over it and they get good at it and it's going to be fine. I'm going to call that right now. But I also think we're going to see them do more awards shows. Remember, they're doing SAG after awards. I wouldn't be shocked if Netflix angles to get the Oscars at some points angles to get the Grammys. That seems consistent with what and that kind of works as a brand, right? We are the home of entertainment. You love movies and TV. So do we come and watch the Emmys and the Oscars on our streaming service? It works. And frankly, I suspect some of the next networks from what I see of the viewership numbers will be very pleased to not have to pay for put on that show anymore. Yeah, maybe. Well, Charlotte Henry, thank you so much for bringing the knowledge to our show here. Let folks know where they can keep up with the rest of your work. Head over to theaddition.net. I'm bringing blogging back and we're going to put loads of updates there. And as you can see, there is also a newsletter link. So if you want to head straight over to newsletter.theaddition.net, you can get that stuff straight to your inbox. Fantastic. Thank you, Charlotte. Patrons, stick around. We're going to keep this conversation going beyond just what's Netflix doing to what do we want TV to look like? Yeah, we kind of talked about the fact that like, all right, broadcast is on its way out. Cable is on its way out. Streaming is on its way in, but it's way too complicated. So what do we want it to do? Stick around for that conversation. Just a reminder, you can catch our show live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern 2100 UTC. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Join us live if you can. We'd love to have you. We'll be back tomorrow talking about Blizzard's new president with Scott Johnson because he has thoughts. Back to you then. The DTNS family of podcasts. Helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.