 This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you, including Pilly Glendale, Dr. X17, Adam Green, and our new patron, Adrian. Thanks, Adrian, and welcome. On this episode of DTNS, Apple says, try our product, you know, the existing product that we have already that you should buy. EVs are also having a marketing or pricing or maybe both issue, and we break down what OpenAI announced at its very first Dev Day. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, November 6th, 2023. From Studio Secret Bunker, I'm Sarah Lane. From Columbus, Ohio, I'm Rob Dunwood. And from close to your nation's capital, your boy, big Chris Ashley. And the show's producer, Roger Chang. Chris, Ashley, so good to have you on the show again. And I seem to recall having a pretty fun show the last time you, Rob and I were on the show together. Definitely had a great time. Yeah. Yeah. So let's do it again. Shall we? Starting with the Quickets. Meta announced it has one million paid subscriptions to creators on Instagram, which is a relatively small portion of Instagram's two billion monthly users. Meta will also start adding subscribe buttons at the top of applicable posts, and creators will be able to offer 30 day free trials. And Instagram is adding a tool to let creators DM new subscribers in bulk to chat with them. Elon Musk announced Sunday that his artificial intelligence startup XAI will be integrated into a social media platform X and also be available as a standalone app. Musk also said XAI released its first AI model about called GROC, which was released to X premium plus subscribers on Friday. XAI is working on AI tools that assist humanity in its quest for understanding and knowledge. And GROC has been designed to answer questions with a bit of wit. Epic Games was in court again on Monday in San Francisco. This is the latest in the case of Epic School to do away with Apple and Google taking a cut of sales through their mobile app marketplaces. In Epic's case, specifically Epic's sales. Previously the company was unsuccessful in most of its claims in a similar but different case against Apple in 2021 and also failed that appeal earlier this year at which point it petitioned the Supreme Court. Discord tells bleeping computer that will start marking links to hosted files and they're going to refresh every 24 hours. So and that's going to happen by the end of this year. Discord says this will fight the spread of malware on the platform since that gives it more ability to restrict access to flagged content. Media Tech announced its latest mobile processor, the Dimensity 9300 with flagship performance AI power and multimedia capabilities. High end Android smartphones and tablets are the target market for the 9300, which includes a new all big core CPU design for faster speeds, a reengineer GPU for on-device AI and boosted media engine for cinematic video capture. Media Tech says the chip will show up in smartphones before the end of the year, which is notable because it's around the same time for Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 to also show up in devices. All right, y'all. It's not a big secret that electric vehicles aren't selling as well as the automotive industry thought that they would. So manufacturers like GM, Ford, Honda, and others have lowered some estimates on the number of EVs that they expect to produce in 2024 and the amount of money that they will invest in EV research and development going forward. One of the main reasons for slower than expected EV adoption is prices because EV prices are typically higher than what some consumers are willing to pay. But Tesla, according to Reuters, is addressing this with plans for a 25,000 euro or 27,000 US dollars Model 2. Right, Rob? Absolutely. So in a visit to Tesla's Berlin Gigafactory Friday, where the Model 2 would be initially produced, Elon Musk reportedly told staff about the plans. He did not say when production would begin, but Tesla has briefly hinted at production coming potentially in the next year, as early as 2024. Currently, the cheapest EV Tesla sales is $39,000, and that's on the Model 3. So, Chris, you purchased a Ford F-150 Lightning last year, and I'm betting it costs significantly more than $27,000. So my question to you is, do you think that an EV this inexpensive would get any traction more than they're getting right now? Well, to find significantly more. Twice as much? Let's start there. Three times as much? That's a little closer. But as a person that definitely has his eye open for a second EV vehicle for the house, my daughter's turning 16 in the next couple of years. So definitely, I'd like to get her a vehicle. I would love not to buy a gas vehicle for her. I think this is a great move by them. They've been talking about it for a while to get these prices under control and get something out there for mass adoption. And it's kind of shocking to me, actually, that they would be the first ones to do this, because you would think the other manufacturers have the capacity to create a loss leader, even if they wanted to. But yeah, I would definitely look at anything they created in that price range for sure. Yeah, I wonder how much Tesla being the company that let's just say this comes to fruition. I can buy a $27,000 Model 2 sooner than later. Does Elon Musk have anything to do with this? Probably not. I don't know. I mean, I think if you like a vehicle, you trust the company behind it, and you maybe look the other way when it comes to the person who's at the helm. And by the way, not everybody hates Elon Musk, so I'm not speaking for anybody except myself. I might have some pause. I also know that there have been other companies, in fact, we talked about a couple of them last week, who say, we just can't figure out how to make an EV that is in this price range work for us on our assembly line. So we're going to go back to the drawing board and try again, but no soup for you. So there's a couple of things, and one of the points I always make when talking about why don't people buy EVs? They're readily available is because they cost more. And there are a lot of people who buy automobiles because they need an automobile. But no one, at least in North America, has ever bought an electric vehicle because they needed one. They bought it because they wanted it. And the reason I say that is because the electric vehicles are there is substantially more expensive in most cases. I mean, we've been getting better, but they still cost significantly more. So that's a big deal when you're talking about cars are already expensive and it's like, OK, well, this one's going to cost nine grand more, 13 grand more just to have batteries in it. And I don't know that I'm going to be able to potentially resell it for the same amount that if I were to buy an automobile with a fuel combustion engine in it, those are a lot of factors for people who need cars are going to look at. So I'm thinking that the $27,000, they're probably going to move a bunch of these because, you know, as you said, Sarah, there's a lot of folks who if Elon Musk wasn't at the top of Tesla, they wouldn't even be considering them, you know, that whatever company he was running, that's what they would look at because there's just as many folks who like them as dislike them. So I don't know that that's going to affect a lot of people on the low end one way or the other. But I do think that you will see more people start to look because now this $27,000 cars to say $27,000 or $25,000 Euro car doesn't cost significantly more than something in the same frame. And just one last point on the Chris's point. Cars, we've been making cars on assembly lines for over 100 years. The margins are really, really tight. So I can see Tesla doing this because they just don't have all of that baggage that a lot of the, you know, the traditional GMs and Ford's, they have that, you know, they are making these cars on such tight margins that they just can't make any money. Tesla can still do that. Yeah, you know, the I walk, like I said, I welcome this big time because I really want to see people get into these cars because I can't tell you, I still get stopped. I still get asked tons of questions about my truck all the time. But quite a few times and obviously this is anecdotal, but quite a few times people are like, yeah, I'd love to switch. They're just too expensive for me. So, you know, it's definitely a thing that that is a barrier for many, many people that want to switch because oftentimes we think that people are just in one camper, the other right there, combustion or electric and that's it. But there are certain people that are stuck in one because, you know, it's just not in their budget to go the other direction. What about the second market? I mean, I know it's not totally what our conversation is about. But Chris, if you were to sell your F 150 Lightning, I know you're not going to, but have you have you kind of dipped your toe into what sort of resale market is out there? I have not because it is absolutely unequivocally never crossed my mind. But I will say this, when I bought my truck and I was about to leave, the general manager of the store came out and said, if you don't want it after a week, bring it back, I'll give you 10,000 more than you paid for it. Whoa. And I don't know if that's still the case today, but, you know, I imagine that there's probably still a good markup availability there and a resale because the F 150 Lightning, even though I'm seeing more and more, they're still not as prevalent as I'm sure Ford would like them to be. Well, moving on to Apple, another company that likes people to buy their products, Apple PR Rep. This is kind of unusual story. Told the Verge over the weekend that the company will not be making an Apple Silicon version of the 27 inch iMac that would replace the Intel chip model that it discontinued in 2022. You might say, but don't iMacs already have the, you know, M3 chip? Apple says it's focusing the iMac line on the 24 inch model. It released early 2021 initially, updated with the new M3 processor this fall. The rep who spoke to the Verge, Starling Mesa, says buyers who really want a 27 inch model should consider buying the studio display and Mac Studio or Mac Mini. Though, obviously, if you do the numbers, that option is a lot more expensive than the all in one design of the iMac and also just, you know, has more components overall. Now, Apple doesn't normally respond to rumors. This is unusual. Has a lot of folks wondering, making some bets on whether this means Apple's working on some other size of iMac with Apple Silicon that it hasn't announced yet. I think that's a pie in the sky or just wants to move some merchandise after a bit of a lack. What do you all say? So here's the thing. I paid attention to Apple's quarterly earnings call last week and the quarter before that and the quarter before that and probably the six before that. And if it's not called an iPhone, they're not selling a lot. You know, the numbers have just been going down and down and down. So a problem the Apple is having right now is excess inventory. They don't want to put out new hardware that is going to cannibalize existing hardware that they have. And they also don't want people who are looking to buy something today to have that, oh, maybe I should just wait until the M3 version comes out. They want you to go ahead and buy what they have on their shelf right now. So they're letting you know, we're not going to have anything new on the shelf in a few months. This is what you have if you want a 27 inch. And if you really want to have an iMac with an M3, you're going to get the 24 that we have in the M2 and the M3 variant that they just announced a week or so ago. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. You'd love to beat companies up on stuff like this, but the reality is why make something or even have the hint of something coming out that's going to stifle the sales of what you already have, especially if you truly don't have any plans of developing that size. So as much as people may want to that in between size, if Apple's not feeling it, it's just not going to happen. So it makes perfect sense to me to just nip that in the bud. I mean, I've got an ASIS monitor I'm looking at right now that is 28 inches. I don't think it's 27, it's 28. I would not be able to go smaller for this particular setup that we're doing right now. What what does everybody else have? I'm using a 32 inch monitor here and a 15 inch monitor there and a 29 inch monitor turned vertical right here. I've got all kind of radio activity coming into my eyeballs. But what Apple doesn't want to do, they're not really moving those big displays, they're not really moving the minis right now, they're not really moving the studios. They want to move the hardware that they have. So they know if they come out with that 28 inch device, the one that people are really into, they know that's going to sell, but it's just going to catalyze what they already have on the shelf. Yeah, I'm staring at the Samsung Odyssey G9 and this thing is absolutely disgustingly awesome. And what is the size of it? Oh, it's a 49 inch. It's the curved monitor. All right, y'all. I mean, I didn't even like, I feel like I just like punted this to everybody like, hey, I have a pretty big monitor. What about everyone else? And they're like, Rob's like, I have four. Chris is like, I have the largest monitor you've ever heard of. Yeah, I want to get that Johnny Minam to display it. Or I just have a wall of TVs and monitors, you know, pumping radiation into me. Oh, totally. Totally. I was like, oh, that's cute. Those monitors are cute. This thing is awesome. Oh, boy. Yeah. Well, all right. So, you know, Apple's, yeah, Apple is entering, we'll see what happens in its next earnings. And Rob, I know you will be following that as well as will we all. But yeah, it seems like a bit of a, you know, it's a it's a trough quarter. And yeah, the company says, hey, yeah, if you want to buy more of our stuff, buy the expensive stuff on the shelves. And we'll talk later. So what do you want to hear us talk about on the show? One way to let us know is on our subreddit. So submit your stories and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. Well, news moves fast on a Monday today on Daily Tech headlines. I passed a long news that OpenAI was readying a new chat GPT update. This was according to some leaks and some rumors. According to screenshots and videos seen by the decoder, OpenAI would have a new marketplace where users can share their chat bot or browse those made by others. SEO tools developer, Tibor Blajo shared a video of the UI for the feature demonstrating a GPT builder option, letting users enter a prompt. An example, red, make a creative who helps generate visuals for new products to create a chat bot. And it sounds like Rob, this is this is a real thing. It is because now we know more as OpenAI officially announced viable GPTs as its first ever Dev Day conference in San Francisco accessible through the GPT store. The company says eventually it plans to pay creators an unspecified amount based on how much their GPTs are used. They'll be available to paying chat GPT plus subscribers and OpenAI enterprise customers who can make internal only GPTs for their employees. OpenAI has also announced a faster, cheaper GPT for lower prices for developers using its models in their apps and shared that GPT has reached 100 million weekly users. Chris, where do you stand on all this buy someone else's GPT spectrum? I actually love the idea of that and I think it makes perfect sense both from a customer standpoint as well as a just a product management standpoint. Oftentimes when you've got a group of people that are kind of deep deep inside technologies that they're developing, you start to develop this group thinking you start to develop this tunnel vision and it's natural but it prevents you from seeing some of the fringe cases that could you know that or issues that people don't know exist but everybody has and so those are like the gem scenarios that you try to come across where it's like oh there's a problem that's out there. People didn't even realize they had it but now that it's been exposed and we can solve it with this chat GPT now everybody wants to use it. So when you start expanding the capabilities for folks to develop on the platform and then you'll give them the incentive of making money from whatever is to develop now you have opportunities for all type of scenarios to come out and you know some of them will be trash but other them will actually be pretty exciting. So I find that aspect of it to be pretty cool. The other thing is the more adoption you drive you know the better uptake you'll get because I was actually in the story the other day and I was just talking to somebody about you know automated sales and using these cash registers and they brought up AI and clearly they were novice to the scenario but they were actually kind of more scared about the what you know what they think AI is going to do for the world going forward. So when you have other folks that give them some cool reasons to use it and leverage it you probably dissipate some of that some of that apprehension that some people may have embracing tech this type of technology. So I think from both of those angles this is actually a pretty smart move. Yeah I mean looking forward and I know we're in early days here I mean this was all just announced but the idea that there would be a store for an AI bot to help me live my life better but I don't know I mean maybe would be free maybe would be you know for pay much like any app stores right now. You know what do app stores do for us right now. Well apps games you know photo stuff I mean there are a variety of things that you do end up paying some money for maybe some in-game purchases type thing. The idea of having a GPT bot that is in the marketplace that's let's just say because I'm kind of in the market for a new apartment right now let's say there is a way you know for me to just apply for that apartment just better than I would otherwise like this is the way to do it you know it just hits all the marks. Again I'm going forward a few steps but I can see where in many aspects of life this is something that we're all going to be used to and you know sooner than later. Yeah definitely. Yeah I think back to just like digital assistance we don't really think about saying hey keyword and then getting an answer. It's going to be like that with you know these you know these large language models you know eventually we're going to just get used to asking them questions and expecting that the questions that we ask are answered accurately and correctly and the more people that are using them the more data is going there's going to be the more data there's going to be the better the outcomes are going to be based off of that data. So I think that you know there are reasons that people should be concerned and they need to think about how am I going to use these things in the future how could it potentially affect my service related job in the future what skill sets should I maybe you know look into but ultimately I think you know for the most part this is probably going to be good for you know for humanity as a whole. Yeah you know just the complicated scenarios that could probably be I use Siri all the time when I'm cooking and I'm doing barbecue you know especially when I have you know three or four things on the smoker and I got two things in the oven and I need to keep track of times and I you know I'm scatterbrained sometimes I'm just hopping all over the place and so I will definitely have Siri set reminders for me so when I know when to go check something I want to go salsa you know the chicken or the ribs that are in there so being able to but I usually have to do that individually so you know somebody comes up with a chat GPT that allows me to set these more complex alarms and reminders as those are type of things that come off the top of my head that I would definitely love to leverage. Well at Open AI's again inaugural Dev Day conference in San Francisco the company also launched a Dolly API Dolly 3 API rather with moderation designed to help protect against misuse also a text to speech API that offers six preset voices and two model variants Open AI also announced something called a copyright shield meant to defend chat GPT enterprise users and Open AI devs if they end up facing copyright infringement claims related to Open AI apps that get built in the future. So yeah you know a lot of stuff a lot of stuff today and you know we'll be we'll be delving through a lot of it and if there's anything that we haven't talked about today we will certainly talk about on the show tomorrow but I want to ask you Chris what you think about Toyota's new steer by wire system it's calling the one motion grip because there's no mechanical link between the steering wheel and the wheels also has a 200 deg ratio instead of a 150 deg ratio that I had in the past these are car terms so of course I don't know anything about it designed to give the steering a smoother and more natural feel steer by wire will be offered on Toyota electric cars just a couple of them to start Toyota BZ4X and the Lexus RZ which is more of the luxury model. Yeah so I actually always find things like this super interesting I don't know if anybody needs that tighter that greater turn radius that could potentially be developed by this but in the end I don't know if I know anybody that's ever had an issue with the with the steering word that you know the I guess the steering column just stops working but clearly this probably would allow for some more space inside of the engine compartment where they can probably do some other things because you usually have this long rail that goes from you know from the inside of the car down to the axle so I don't know I find it kind of interesting Roger brought up a great point when we were talking earlier about this where you know it would be interesting to see if you lose the feel that you and the feedback you get from the road by not having that direct connection to the wheel so that's interesting wouldn't people say that about power steering is it different than that you know if you don't have power steering then you know how to crank a wheel but when once you get power steering you're like is this real gosh I'm not even trying anymore I will I'll jump in real quick and say sorry didn't mean to cut you off Rob that even though you have power steering you still get the feeling of the tires from the front so whether it's the left or the right through through whether it's a solid axle it's four by four or if it's like independent it still transmits into the steering column so even if you have like a land yacht and you can drive with just a single finger on the steering because the power power steering is like over boosted you can still feel the road you will not have a physical connection it's like if you were driving a car with just push buttons on the dash right you wouldn't feel other than like you know the suspension under your touch so they're gonna they're probably most likely adding artificial feel into it I would suspect that as well because it's really dangerous not to be able to know where your tires are pointed yeah because you would have to or you just develop the muscle where you just kind of more pay attention to you know how the how the car is moving verse where the wheel is oriented what do you think Rob I think I agree with the you know that people can feel it even if you lose your power steering but I think that the angst is probably overstated Roger I fully agree with you I think that they're going to probably add some feedback to this just so that you at least feel like you feel it but these are issues that they need to fix we've been flying planes you know fly by wire for the better part of the last 40 45 years I think they can figure this out in cars as well and yeah I will add real quick this technology has been has been in development since the 80s like the early 80s since they developed fly by wire for cars or planes it's like be great if we could develop it for cars as well and the original control was a joystick like on a plane and so people all that there was a there was a show called beyond 2000 it's an Australian show and the the news of the the correspondent they had that drove the car was like really interesting because you don't get the feel of the road through a through a stick it's literally just like a giant joystick and she was felt very unsettled by the entire experience because normally when you drive at least when we drive as humans currently when you drive you feel everything you feel it through the steering wheel and you feel it in your body but if that becomes disconnected then you might that's that's when you have problems yeah I'm just just getting used to driving without the use using my brake took me a probably a good two months to finally develop a the muscle in my leg for it and be just to kind of feel for it and the ability to kind of feather your stops and all those things so I gotta imagine something a bit more drastic like that would you know would take a bit of time so yeah feedback makes sense and hopefully you something like that well Rob you and I we yeah jinks you and me but I'm gonna go ahead and thank Chris Ashley because I know you're not going to Chris Ashley thank you so much for being on the show and I'm just joking because you and Rob do a show together but you do a lot of stuff so let folks know what then keep up with your work yeah definitely check out this episode of barbecue and tech that just went live yesterday because man if you like a good comeback story you can hear how I came back from absolutely almost destroying two briskets at the same time oh you you came back with meat yes I came back with meat going to break a destruction and came all the way back so it's a pretty pretty fun story but yeah come check us out on barbecue and tech also I really enjoy reading big cashly when I read your mastodon dot social account big cashly yeah appreciate Ashley just with cash you know yeah good stuff all right patrons stick around for the extended show because we have more of it good day internet we're going to be kicking around the idea of trust and safety protect companies as a service rather than as an internal team pros and cons there are many but just a reminder you can catch this show live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m eastern 2100 UTC because we are now in standard time in the U.S. for most states and you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live we're back again tomorrow talking about shore sensors with Dr. Nikki Ackerman's and by the way if you have a biology or science question you would like Dr. Nikki to answer send them to us feedback at dailytechnewshow.com and we'll see how many Nikki can answer on tomorrow's GDI good times talk to you then this show is part of the frog pants network get more at frogpants.com Bob hopes you have enjoyed this program