 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners. Thanks to all of you, including Eric Holm, Carmine Bailey, and Vince Power. Coming up on DTNS, Rich DeMuro is here with some excellent last-minute tech gift ideas. Scott Johnson talks about Microsoft's 10-year deal to bring Call of Duty to the Nintendo Switch. And what would it take to get you to use a super app? Americans? Why? Why can't you be more like China? Says business. This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, December 7th, 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 Jang. And joining us, tech reporter for KTLA TV and host of a new radio show called Rich on Tech, starting January 7th on stations nationwide, Rich DeMuro. Thank you. Also in Los Angeles. Yes. Yes. Also in Los Angeles, where we are. You now have a majority of the house on the shelf. Nice. Indeed. Indeed. All right, let's start with the quick hits. Uber and Motional began offering self-driving car service in Las Vegas. Users booking through UberX or UberComfort Electric in service areas have a chance to be matched with emotional autonomous vehicle. Now, as a user, you have to opt into the sort of ride. They're currently free with plans for a commercial launch to come. The rides include safety drivers at launch with fully autonomous service scheduled for some time next year 2023. I got lots of little Apple things here. Apple announced changes to the App Store pricing model. There's like 900 prices now, which is about 10 times as many as there used to be for developers. Minimum app price drops to $0.29. Used to be $0.99. They increased the maximum price of an app. You may not have realized this, but you could only charge up to $1,000 for an app before. Now you can charge up to $10,000. It also provides more incremental pricing, so $0.10 increments up to $10. It allows setting prices on a per-country basis, auto-renewable subscriptions can start using the price changes now, and other apps will get it in spring 2023. Apple also introduced new security measures for cloud data, including end-to-end encryption for iCloud backups, photos, and more. Wall Street Journal says the company has dropped its proposed system for trying to identify child sexual abuse material or CSAM. They had an automatic system that had some controversy around it. They're just not going to implement it. And finally, the release of iOS 16.2 will revert airdrop sharing to contacts only after 10 minutes automatically to prevent unwanted requests to receive content. That's the thing that Chinese iPhone users already have to stop them from hearing anything bad. Remember how important Dish getting Spectrum was to the approval of T-Mobile's acquisition of Sprint? Well, they're finally doing something with that Spectrum. Dish Wireless launched a beta program for its post-paid, boost infinite wireless service, offering unlimited calls, texts, and high-speed data for $25 per month. Data throttles after 30 gigabytes, so that'll be a factor for some folks. The beta will use AT&T's network. After fully launching in Q1 of 2023, it will use Dish's 5G network in addition to AT&T and T-Mobile. Connections for smartwatches and tablets will be available at the full launch. The messaging app Telegram dropped its requirement for using a SIM card, if you want to sign up for its service, to verify users. Telegram partnered with a company called Fragment, which will let users create an anonymous phone number to sign up. It also added a global auto delete timer for all chats, upgraded its topics feature to sort group topics into multiple threads, and added a new quote-unquote aggressive anti-spam filter for group chats. SpaceX launched Starshield, a version of its Starlink satellite internet technology, designed for government and military use. The company claims it could quickly build end-to-end systems for government clients, from launching dedicated satellites to user terminals, offering additional high assurance cryptographic capability on top of Starlink's existing end-to-end encryption. You know, things like that, that the military might want. SpaceX claims that Starshield service would remain interoperable with Starlink's network. Yeah, they're probably going to run on the same network with some firewalls in between. All right, that's the quick hits. Microsoft announced it has reached deals with Nintendo and Valve to make Call of Duty available for the Switch and Steam for at least 10 years. I mean, it was already on Steam, but it's going to stay on Steam for 10 years and Switch for 10 years if Microsoft acquires Activision Blizzard. Microsoft reportedly offered the same deal to Sony, but Sony has not accepted. The deal is, of course, contingent on regulators approving Microsoft's pending acquisition of Activision Blizzard. They told Activision Blizzard, hey, we made this commitment in case we get you, but they can't force Activision Blizzard to do anything about it yet, because the rules around mergers mean no development can begin until the acquisition is closed. Microsoft says it expects it to close in June of 2023. The US Federal Trade Commission meets Thursday, December 8th, to discuss the acquisition. Regulators in the UK and EU are also investigating the acquisition for antitrust concerns. So there's some stuff yet to happen. But the fate of Call of Duty is not the only antitrust consideration. It's often been brought up as an example of the power that Microsoft would have over the gaming market if such a deal is approved. Now, Scott, I know you've been following the story. What's your best guess on how this shakes out? Well, for me, shake out is an interesting proposition because there are a few things a little bit vague here. For one, when they say 10 years on the Switch, what they really mean is 10 years on Nintendo platforms. It's entirely possible. In fact, likely that sooner than later, Nintendo will have a successor to the Switch or whatever their new platform will be. So the idea of people still playing Call of Duty in 10 years on a Switch is probably not quite what they think it is. Secondly, it doesn't even guarantee that we're talking about day-in-day releases of new Call of Duty products, of cutting-edge stuff that needs 200 gigabytes of space, and all of the bells and whistles the new consoles and PCs provide. So just a little bit of a reality check on the Nintendo side. But what it does tell me is they're saying, I think it's a strategy. This is Microsoft saying, look, we're putting our best foot forward and saying to our competitors where they will accept it, hey, we're not going to take Call of Duty away from you. In fact, Nintendo would like to offer you Call of Duty again. It's been a long time since anything has come from this franchise onto your platform. So there's that. There's your 10 years of that. And of course, Nintendo stoked about it or at least accepting of it. In Steam's case, they already had it, like Tom mentioned. However, it's been pulled before when things only were available on the Blizzard launcher. They pulled it from Steam. It's now back on Steam. And this is them saying, hey, we'll keep it on there. So you guys are good. I think these two steps are an additional way for them to say, we're feeling very benevolent about all of this. We want everybody to have our stuff that includes Sony. They're just not doing it yet. But boy, we sure are trying to give it to everybody. I actually think it's a good move. I think it's smart for them to do it. I also think that we're going to do this anyway. They don't want. There's money on the table that you would leave in massive amounts if you didn't put Call of Duty on other platforms. So I think this actually may help Microsoft down the road for this getting approved and over with. Yeah, I think their benevolence is definitely fueled by that Thursday to some great meeting that Sarah mentioned. I think Microsoft is trying to do everything they can to show that the concerns about Call of Duty, at least, that Sony are bringing up are not anything to be worried about. It's not what this is about, though. It's about whether this gives Microsoft too much control, whether they're going to do 10-year deals or not. It's about, does it give it too much control? So I'm not sure whether it's actually going to save this deal or not. Rich, I don't know. Do you play Call of Duty? Does this affect your life at all? It does not, but I saw the tweet from, I think it was a lawyer at Microsoft, and he was like, this is a good thing for consumers. And any time you have a lawyer saying that, during any sort of merger, it is most certainly not a good thing for consumers. So none of these mergers, none of these acquisitions, they're never good for consumers. They can promise 10 years, but when everyone kind of forgets about it, the prices start to creep up, the things start to scale back, and it's always the same story. So I'm not buying it. I think that there's a chance for Microsoft to do good here. And here's my only thinking. Up till now, with Game Pass and kind of the new Microsoft, in terms of their gaming division, has been, look, we're not so concerned that you're buying our exact console. What we'd love it is if you'd play our games no matter where they are via cloud. So hey, get on Xbox Game Pass and let's do that. PC, you want to play it there? Great. You want to play Halo there? Great. You want to play it on a console? Great. You want to play it on your tablet? Great. And also, if you don't just pay cash for it on Steam, that's fine too. Oh, you're on the Epic Store? Cool. Buy it there. If that attitude continues where they're like, get our games wherever you game, then this fits that. If this doesn't hold, then maybe we got a problem down the road. I think, as is often the case in these antitrust situations, the cases are always about the past, not what's actually going to happen. So it's interesting to note that Microsoft being dominant on Windows was a huge deal a few years before the desktop operating system stopped being the thing anyone cared about and everyone was caring about the browser and then after that the phone operating system. So these things are always a little bit lagging and I think if it were to look forward, which I don't expect it will, they would be looking at Project Luna. Are you going to make Call of Duty available there? Are you going to make all your games available to Amazon? Are you going to make them available to Nvidia Shield? Are you going to make them available to any other streaming service that comes along? Because I think that's the devil's in the details there. Microsoft's like, yeah, of course we'll let Steam and Sony and Nintendo do this, even if it costs them development money because what we want to do is make our money off the streaming service. We know that's where the future is. Yeah, well we'll keep our eyes on it. In other Microsoft news, the information sources say Microsoft wants to develop a new, they're calling Super App on mobile that would combine shopping, messaging, web search, games and news feeds. Sound familiar? Maybe like WeChat a little bit. The report actually mentions that. They want to emulate the mobile strategy of Tencent's WeChat. Microsoft reportedly sees this as a way to boost its advertising and its search business as well as draw more users to Teams. It's unclear if Microsoft will actually launch the app, but it seems the desire is there. Yeah, I mean, let's just say, let's say that Microsoft does launch some sort of a Super App and other companies certainly could do that as well. WeChat is the very obvious example of a very successful Super App where many millions of people can do all sorts of things within WeChat and not use 10 different apps to do the same, but many of us, myself included, I'm not used to that all-in-one model. There are certain things I might be able to do within an app like send a friend some money and also chat with them, but it's pretty limited, and certainly a lot of users in the U.S. are not as used to the Super App situation as in certain other markets. So I thought it might be kind of fun to go around the horn quickly and just take some stock in what we might think a Super App would be helpful for if we don't have an option for one already. I think for me, sort of the messaging and payments thing, that's obvious, but you can do that within Messenger, you can do that within Venmo, you can do that within PayPal. There are ways to do that, but I think if I were to take that a step further, it would probably be some sort of a shopping experience, and that doesn't really mean that I want Amazon to give me a Super App, because I don't know if that's what I'm asking for, but I would say that would be the third thing if we're talking about money and chatting that I would probably throw in there. Yeah, for me, I think I'm like Sarah in that there's some habit involved here where I'm used to the same five, six apps a day that I do all these things with, and I don't think the American market or the US market is in the mood to shove a bunch of stuff under one roof and who's roof will that be and who will control it. I also think it's a little bit like saying, hey, I'm going to start a competitor to Facebook today and I expect it to be huge. I just think that's a really daunting process. I'd love it if somebody would, but I don't think anybody's going to. You have certain established norms. We're weird about that in some ways, and we just lock in on it. So I'm sure if I lived in Japan and I had one app that did everything or wherever it's prominent, I would be way into that, but it isn't here, and I don't know how everyone agrees to cozy up to it. It's like the insurance business. Nobody's going to do it. Rich, what are your thoughts on the idea of the super app? Is convenience key for you or does it make you feel weird to have too many things in one place? Yeah, I actually go the other way. I definitely don't want anything in the same place. I'm a big believer in the competition of the apps, and we're seeing a lot of apps try something like this. So I mean, if you look at an Uber app, I mean, they blend it in Uber Eats. They're blending in package delivery. They're blending in the ability to rent a car, and I'm not sure besides Uber Eats, if any of those things are super popular or have taken off. And I do see what you were saying about things like Venmo. If you're collecting money, we were on a text chain the other day with my kid's basketball team, and we needed to collect money from all the parents, and we went from iMessage to typing in all the phone numbers to a new message, and then getting everyone to Venmo in a separate thing, and of course the username and the confirming. So I mean, I see why there's some friction here, but at the same time, I think we also like to move around to the best thing. And so if that best thing is Venmo right now, that's great. A couple of years ago, it might have been PayPal and the same thing with email providers and all these different things that I feel like people have gotten so used to having apps for different purposes. And honestly, if you think about it, the iPhone is almost kind of what Apple's trying to build is a super app. When you think about all the different things that they've built into that phone, the services and the products, the magazine subscriptions, the messaging, the ability to send money. I mean, there's so many things, the maps. I mean, it's kind of a super app in itself. And it's great, it's convenient, but I hate the fact that people just open up the Maps app and think that it's the best Maps app out there and they should be using that. So I think what I hear you say, and I think it's very representative of what a lot of people feel, is I don't want one company controlling it all. But if you look at the way WeChat does it, Amazon is on some of these super apps in China. So if you do it right, it's saying, we're just going to make it easier to have everything integrated so you don't have to hop from app to app and the apps don't communicate to each other. I think the biggest reason, though, that it hasn't caught on in the United States is emblematic in this information article. The information writes, Microsoft executives wanted the app to boost the company's multi-billion dollar advertising business and Bing search, as well as draw more users to Teams messaging. In other words, they want it because they have reasons. That's not the right way to do it. If that's why they're going to do it, don't do it. What WeChat did was found things that made people's lives easier, which is why they integrated other shopping. They didn't try to run their own shopping. They integrated other shopping. They integrated other payment systems even at some points. They said, what makes people want to use our service better and then created that? Now, granted, they had some advantages because there weren't other things competing. We're kind of stuck in our ways. It's the first mover disadvantage, right? We've already been using PayPal for a long time. We've already had Venmo, so we don't want to move. And I think the combination of that, it's hard to make the case, it's hard to create the service that's better, and the fact that we're all stuck in our ways and we're like, yeah, but we like it the way it is, makes it hard to see the advantage of jumping to something else. So I think the only way you do this in the United States is you get a neutral platform that convinces some, if not the number one in every vertical, at least the number two, where people go, oh, but it is way easier to use that service because it's integrated with this other thing in here. If you can make that happen, then it works. But that's really hard. And that may be why it never happens here. I have one good example of this real quick. So we were ordering pizza the other night and it was cheaper to go outside of DoorDash directly to the restaurant and use their app, which was horrendous, right? It was this poorly made app. And I sat there and I was like, I told my wife, I'm like, look, I think next time we'll just pay the extra $5 to go through DoorDash, even though it's a little bit more expensive because it's streamlined, it has all of our information, I don't have to type everything in, it's got my payment, and it's just simpler. And so I do see the appeal of something like that, especially if they are using different companies to do it. But just one company having all the control always kind of scares me. Indeed, indeed. Well, folks, if you've got a thought about this, I bet you do, or anything else we talk about on the show, our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. We want to hear from you. All right, so the big commercial pushes, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, those are in the past now, but you probably still have a few things you might need to get or even things you want to ask for. We've already covered gifts for gamers, home theater, TV shoppers, new smart home users. But what do you get for somebody who's hard to shop for? We had to call in our closer. Rich DeMuro has been doing tech gifts for literally decades. Rich, help us out, give us some ideas. Hey, Tom. Actually, today, Circuit City was trending on Twitter, and so I shared an old video from CNET Black Friday 2006 at Circuit City. I didn't even know I had this in my... I just happened to look up and was like, why is Circuit City trending? And it was just classic watching what people were buying on Black Friday so many years ago. It was mostly like DVDs and digital cameras. So things have changed. Let's go through a couple of the picks I have. So number one, I think the gift that is the easiest to give to anyone in your family is the Aura frame. So this is a digital frame, and what's neat about this frame is that you can send pictures from your phone to this frame. So it's all digital. You don't have to put a USB stick in the back, and you can do it as soon as you take a picture. If you're halfway across the world, you can send it right to your parents' frame or a loved one's frame, or even a frame that you have at home. And so it's just something that is such a crowd pleaser. I've gotten this for almost everyone in my family and extended family, because who doesn't like seeing a picture pop up on their kitchen counter of their grandkids? That's the picture, I guess. I guess so, yeah. This is a family thing. Yeah. Yeah, it's a family thing. You got to be... I mean... You got to trust your family on this one, yeah. Yeah. That's a classic one. That one's been around for a long time. That's a good one. Yeah. That's a really great... I mean, it's just a crowd pleaser. Okay, moving on. So these earbuds, people always ask, I want a cheap, inexpensive pair of wireless earbuds. And of course, AirPods. Everyone has AirPods. Everyone loves AirPods. Not everyone wants to spend $100 up to $300 on those. Yeah. So the best earbuds I've tested in the last couple of years have been the OnePlus Nord Buds. These are just 39 bucks, and sometimes they go cheaper on sale. They don't have all the fancy schmancy stuff. So when you take them out of yours, they're not going to pause the music on your phone. But they sound really good. There's no noise cancellation. But they sound really good. They're water and dust resistant. The battery lasts a long time. And they're just simple. And they work with iPhones, androids. And if you just want something that you don't mind if you happen to lose them or leave them at the gym, and it's just an easy thing to give. Yeah. And OnePlus makes quality stuff in mid-range and affordable prices. So that makes sense to me. Yeah. Nord is sort of their basic lineup. I think they have a Nord phone, Nord Buds. So yeah, OnePlus is doing some good stuff there, too. All right. So this next one, you can see the picture theme. I get a lot of questions about, for some reason, people don't want to use the cloud for their pictures. I don't know why I recommend the cloud to store your pictures and, of course, having them backed up somewhere else. This is a way to free up space on your phone and also bypass the cloud if you don't want to use a cloud. It's the Sandisk I Expand Flash Drive Lux. And the reason why this is the fancy Lux version is if you look closely, one side is lightning, the other side is USB-C. And so you can plug one side into your iPhone. The app will help you take the pictures off your phone or copy them to this device. And then you can plug the other side into your computer to transfer them or access the photos. It's just kind of a nice tool to have in general. Like, I like having one of these in my bag just because you never know when you want to get something off your phone in a non-air drop, non-cable manner, non-upload-to-cloud manner. So, yeah. It's also a good reminder. I mean, I'm an iPhone iCloud user. And I don't know. I mean, I have many thousands of photos in the cloud, but I haven't really backed them up anywhere recently as in the last five years because iCloud seems to be working. But good reminder that if you care about those photos, you want them in more than one place. SneakerNet lives. And you could move them from an iPhone to Android if the Android phone has USB-C, which the cloud may make it more difficult. This would be an easy way to do that. Yeah, it's just a nice thing to have. And like you said, back them up. Even if at the very least you still use iCloud, you can still back them up to this to have a secondary backup, which I always recommend. Okay, next up, this is something that I feel like everyone could use. This is a wireless portable charger, but it's MagSafe. This is from Belkin. It's one of those things that it's just, again, nice to have in your bag. I feel like everyone could use this. If you have an iPhone with MagSafe, which is the iPhone 12 and up, it's that circle in the back of the iPhone that lets you magnetically attach stuff. This is a wireless battery that will align itself. It will charge your phone. It's great if you're going to Disneyland. It's great if you just are on a long CES day. I know that's something for me. But it's just good to have your traveling, checking out a different city. Nothing is worse than being at the bottom of the battery on your phone and not having any charger in sight. So this is super easy to have in your bag. And it's 40 bucks. And it's just, to me, again, one of those things that anyone can use that has an iPhone with MagSafe. Is it just MagSafe? Or could you charge something else off of it too? Does it have the other port? Yeah, it still has USB-C. So you can still, you know, and when you, no matter which one of these things you get, any sort of portable battery bank, if you don't want the, you know, if you want one that's more Android oriented, you always want one that has USB-C in and out because it's going to charge the fastest both ways. Some of them are still kind of like slow on the charge in or out. So just be aware of that. Good to know. Okay, this one, do we have the Tesla up next? This one's kind of funny. This is something I personally use. Ever since I got an electric car, I've been using it as an office at times. And this laptop tray steering wheel desk, I know it looks funny. And the picture on Amazon has the person eating McDonald's, but I put my laptop on here. I've actually done work in my car. The thing you don't realize about an electric car is since it's not idling, you don't feel bad sitting in it for longer periods of time. I would never let my car run with the gas, you know, when I had a gas car for hours because, you know, it's gas. You're putting emissions out. So it's just kind of one of those things. It just seems strange. It seems odd, right? I mean, I know that people do it, but to me, when you're going electric, this kind of turns your car into an extra room, an extra place to work. So you can be anywhere. And to be clear, you don't use it while driving. This is when you're parked. Thank you for that clarification. Do not use this. This is when you're parked. And I've used it in both the passenger and also the driver's seat. But the problem with the passenger and the Tesla, everything sort of shuts off when you close the door. So I need to figure out how to like keep things on. I'm sure there's a way. But anyway, things seem to stay on when you're sitting in the driver's seat. Okay, next up, this is really cool. Again, on that charging, I travel a lot and I charge a lot of stuff. So you can see the themes here. But this is the STM Charge Tree Go. And what I love about this is you can charge three things all at once. You can charge the iPhone. You can charge even an Android phone. You can charge an Apple Watch and a pair of wireless earbuds on the backside. So three in one. And you just have to plug in one cable. It folds up all compact. So the side where the Apple Watch goes, that pushes in and then this folds down flat. So it's super easy to pack. First thing I do when I get to a hotel room, you set this up, all your stuff charges. Again, wireless charging is going to be a little bit slower, or actually a lot slower than wired charging. But it's just so nice overnight to be able to charge everything without bringing a whole bunch of cables with you, even though I bring them anyway as any good nerd would. Yeah, no, Eileen, my wife has one of these and they're great. We'll have a couple of bonus picks. We'll talk about on Good Day Internet if you get the extended show as a Patreon. And we'll throw up in the show notes as well, dailytechnewshow.com. Thank you, Rich. Let's check out the mailbag. Andrew wrote in about AI and code in general. Andrew says, I've been a software engineer for a while now. And one of the things I have to teach almost every new developer who joins my team is not to reinvent the wheel. It seems to be ingrained in them, regardless of institution, to come up with a completely new solution instead of using a well-vetted library. Now, this is Andrew's response to our conversation with John C. DeVorek yesterday. Andrew says, John was right in a sense that understanding code reuse earlier would be good, though an AI just designed to spit out code is not going to be any better at recommending libraries than a junior engineer. Yeah, we got a lot of really good responses to that discussion about having assistance with code from something like GPT-3 versus using it to replace code. Now, I really like Andrew's response here as somebody who's teaching it. I know we had other folks as well. So thanks to everybody for those responses. Good stuff. Indeed. Also good stuff from you, Rich Jamiro, and so nice to have you on the show. Where can people keep up with what's going to happen with you in 2023? It's going to be a big year. Sure. My website is richontech.tv. There you can find all the details and all my stories from TV. I'm on KTLA Channel 5 here in Los Angeles in the mornings and throughout the day. And then, of course, on social media, I am at Rich on Tech on all the various platforms. Instagram is probably where I'm the most active, but I do check in on the rest of them from time to time just to see what's going on. Well, very nice to have you on the show today. Also nice to have you, Scott Johnson. Where can people keep up with your latest? Well, it's pretty exciting stuff over here at the Frogpan Central Joint. I'm making a new card game, everybody. I learned a lot from making Rock Runners. I've moved on to a new game called Dungeon Murder, which you can learn all about at dungeonmurder.com. There's even a video to a 24-minute awkward tutorial of me playing my test deck currently in beta. But as you can see, we got some cool-looking cards with some nice card fronts, some nice card art. I did all the art, all the design. I invented another card game. Anyway, it's coming to Kickstarter soon. I'll have details soon. But if people want to bookmarkedungeonmurder.com, that's a great way to find out what's going on. So please do. I love it. We also love our patrons. We want to extend a special thanks to Dennis Wardell. Dennis is one of our top lifetime supporters for DTNS. Dennis, who've been with us for quite a few years, thank you for all your support. Yeah, man. It's nice to have people who stick around that long and support us. We really appreciate folks like Dennis. You could start being like Dennis today at patreon.com slash DTNS. Indeed, speaking of patrons, stick around for our extended show, Good Day Internet. We're going to talk about all the things. Maybe Rich has a few more ideas for gift guides. Scott and I are going to fight about Christmas songs. You can also catch the show, this show, DTNS Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern 2100 UTC. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We'll be back tomorrow doing it all again about how tech is shaping music with Justin Rubber Young joining us. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.