 Coming up on DTNS, Amazon wants you to become a live streaming DJ. GM wants you to use your electric vehicle during power outages. And Apple wants you to buy the iMac in pieces. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, March 8th, 2022 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. I'm Roger Chang, the show's producer. And joining us from Snobbo, S-Cast, Nika Monford. Hello, hello, ready for Apple. Hello, hello, hello, and Terence Gaines. Hey, how's it going, everybody? Happy Apple Day to both of you. Absolutely. For sure. There is a longer version of this show. If you want to hear us chatting about all kinds of things like what is and is not Atlanta, it's called Good Day Internet, which you can get a patreon.com slash DTNS. We like to extend a big thanks to our top patrons today. They include Scott Hepburn, Bjorn Andre, and Jeff Wilkes. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Mandien announced it has a definitive agreement to be acquired by Google and will join Google Cloud. The U.S. cybersecurity company was formed in 2004 and was under the FireEye umbrella when FireEye helped Microsoft discover the SolarWinds attack. Mandien expects the deal to close later this year. Patches are out for a local privilege escalation flaw in the Linux kernel called Dirty Pipe. Security researcher Max Kellerman found and reported the flaw in February. It first showed up in kernel version 5.8. So if you have an older kernel version, you're not vulnerable to this and it's fixed as of versions 5.16.11, 15.25, and 10.102. Most distributions of Linux have now patched it. So go find your patch. One notable exception is Android. Many Android phones are still running an old enough kernel that they're not vulnerable, so your phone might be okay. However, the Pixel 6 and the Galaxy S22 are currently at risk. Now the vulnerability can be exploited through a malicious app or any other vulnerability that allows limited code execution. So be careful as you always should be what you install and what you click on until this gets patched. Cloudflare, CrowdStrike, and Ping Identity have joined together to form the Critical Infrastructure Defense Project to offer free security service to vulnerable industries. Hospitals and power utilities are encouraged to apply. Eligible organizations will get the full suite of Cloudflare, Zero Trust Security Solutions, CrowdStrike's Endpoint Protection and Intelligent Services, and Ping Identity's Zero Trust Identity Product. The new group will offer roadmaps to businesses in any industry to improve security and defend against attacks. The United States has granted an exemption to South Korea to the export restrictions of technology to Russia. Now, similar exemptions have already been granted to the EU, Japan, Canada, Australia, and the UK along with New Zealand. The exemption does not mean the countries will suddenly just start exporting all their chips to Russia, but instead they are free to tailor their own sanctions. Korea's SK Hynix, for example, had applied for a license to export some semiconductors to Russia. Now they can handle that within Korea. Sidewalk delivery robots are becoming more and more common. In fact, DTNS viewers and listeners send us videos and photos of them more often than not. Riding that trend, NVIDIA has invested $10 million in serve robotics, a company that spun out of Uber, operating in Los Angeles and also San Francisco in California. Serves robots use NVIDIA's Jetson Edge AI platform and can operate in geofenced areas without a remote operator. All right, we've got Apple stuff to get to you, but let's talk about this Amazon Clubhouse competitor first called AMP. It's out in beta and it lets streamers play music from a list of tens of millions of licensed songs. There's some indie stuff, major labels, all kinds of stuff, basically stuff that Amazon Music has a license for. So you get to play it in the AMP app. You can also chat with the audience, take call-in guests, and it's available to anyone with an Amazon account to listen to or to stream. If you're a host, you can pre-plan and schedule your show. So listeners get an alert when it's ready to start. There are lots of hosts that just happened to have signed up. Amazon has included Nicki Minaj, Pusha T, Lindsay Sterling, Travis Barker, Lil Yachty, and Big Boy among their celebrity hosts, if you get in and can start listening. Now, right now, there's no monetization strategy. At least they haven't admitted they're paying Pusha T or anybody else for the moment. I'm guessing they are, but there's no monetization strategy for the average user. Amazon does say it hopes to add such features in the future. And Amazon wanted to point out it has a 24-7 moderation team in place from the jump. So there will always be somebody to help you out if you're having problems with people in chat and such. You can get Amazon's AMP on iOS right now, though you'll need an access code. So you have to get in line. You can sign up in the app for the waitlist. Anyway, here comes AMP. Move over spaces, live audio rooms, green room, fireside, call-in, clubhouse. Do we think music is going to help AMP be the one to break out? Oh, man. Terence or Nika, do you have strong thoughts on this? I feel like clubhouse is not something I've even heard uttered by anybody in some time, but there are quite a few competitors, although Amazon makes us a little bit more interesting in saying, think about all the times you wanted to, I don't know, play music, but you can't. You know, you're going to have a takedown notice or it's going to be an issue. This could make this a lot more lucrative to people besides just celebrity musicians already. Well, so this sounds like something that me and Nika cover all the time on the Snobo-S show, a little plug there. We talk about verses and verses is a thing that's spawned out of the pandemic when a lot of DJs could not go to events, could not DJ parties. What they would do is they would go on Instagram and DJ parties. The problem was they would get takedown notices because the music that they were playing were copyrighted. I have actually, I have a friend who I talked to just over the weekend. He's a DJ and he's had that same problem to where he'll go on Instagram, try to do the DJ thing, try to answer comments and then he would get taken down. But what something beautiful that came out of the pandemic was the verses to where a couple different people will come on and they would play their own songs. I guess that's how they got around copyrighted because it was their own music or the labels. Yeah, so, but I guess what Amazon has taken from that is they actually did pretty well. So much so that what's the popular app that actually bought the right to verses? Triller. Triller, Triller. Yes, they actually bought the rights paid the people who created that type of platform paid them. I mean, I'm assuming a lot of money and that became a popular thing. So I think Amazon is not necessarily a this this amp is not necessarily a clubhouse competitor. It may be a verses or that type of competitor to where DJs that are going on Twitch, they're going on Instagram and they're having issues with copyright. And they may also be having looking for other ways to monetize which I thought was interesting as the Amazon is thinking ahead and saying, OK, we may build in some monetization to this because right now you can't monetize via Instagram, which is most popular place can monetize via Twitch. But Twitch may be a little bit difficult or complicated, especially like when you're trying to moderate, you know, and that's why I think Amazon also throws in these things where they'll have a 24 seven moderation team because if you're trying to DJ and you're trying to play music, you know, I'm not a DJ, but you know, you're trying to mix and do all these things. Last thing you're trying to do is all that. And if somebody's, you know, being potty mouth in the comments, you're then also trying to monetize that as well. So I think this is actually a competitor to like an Amazon. I'm sorry to an Instagram to like a Twitch to where DJs are really trying to figure out, OK, I can make money without necessarily have to play physical gigs. Yeah. And I think it's easier for them to say they're a clubhouse competitor, even though they're not is it's an easy kind of comparison to get people talking. You can't necessarily compare this to anything. I mean, I'm sorry, Amazon, they're not going to be able to compete or compare with Instagram or Twitch in this space. So it's kind of, you know, low hanging fruit to say they're a clubhouse competitor. Even though clubhouse and amp are. I don't see any type of to be like outright correlation between the two. And again, I just think it's just going to be another app in the mix. I don't think it's going to really liberate or or cause any type of, you know, revolution in this space. So I think it's just another thing that's that's in the mix. And to be clear, it's the journalists comparing it to clubhouse. If you look at Amazon has written Amazon doesn't say anything about clubhouse. They're just talking about amp. So it's journalists going like, I don't know. This sounds like clubhouse to me because it's a popular audio thing. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the audio was the only thing because other than that, I mean, dude, I mean, yeah. Yeah. No, I think it's way versus. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's talk electric vehicles. Shall we General Motors is partnering with Northern California's Pacific Gas and Electric on a pilot program to support the use of electric vehicles as backup power supplies during power outages. This is something that you can rig up yourself. Some people already have, but having the power company on board will make this easier. If you haven't already, if you're looking for it in the future and integrated into the power grid as well, the hope is to make it work automatically if and when this is needed. Home power is alternating current, which is transformed into direct current to charge EV batteries. This summer PG&E, that's Pacific Gas and Electric shortened, will test vehicle to home TVs and also chargers included the including the bi-directional hardware and software to manage the flow of electricity between the EV and the home and the grids. The test will start at PG&E's applied technology services facility and then expand to a small subset of homes with GM EVs. So if you have an EV, you're not going to be able to use this at least right away, but larger trials are planned for the end of the year. Yeah, and I thought this was just an interesting step along the way to making wider uses as EVs become wider and wider adopted to make better use of them to help, especially PG&E, which is famous for its power outages right now. And other things as a person who lives in an area where power outages are fairly common. We have a generator on site. When it works, works well, but it's loud. It's a huge power hog itself. And if it's broken, you are SOL. So to have an EV and to be able to say like, sure, I mean, if the power is going to be out for a week, you have bigger fish to fry. But for something that just kind of keeps everybody up and running for short periods of time, which is what most power outages are. I love this more, more please. Now, I was going to say two things. Number one, I'm not on the West Coast, of course, but I have been paying attention to where PG&E has been in the news in the past five years as as a result of the wildfires and who started those wildfires. So I would say my thing was, okay, let's do something to get on the good side of people, you know, to get this it off of us. And then two is this power company is trying to get back into the middle. I guess when what I mean by that is I think of, you know, me being able to use my car to me being able to put a battery in my house and maybe run off of solar. It powers the battery or I use my car as the battery and then that kind of takes the middleman out a little bit. But maybe this is PG&E's way of saying, okay, well, let's try to get back in the mix. And I don't know if they're going to charge a fee for this is going to be free based on the power you generate, you know, I don't know those answers, but it seems like, okay, well, we want to make sure we stay in the mix. So let's create this thing that kind of helps you use your battery, your car, your car battery. The way the way LADWP does it, which is what I'm on, if you have solar, that solar feeds into the grid and then you get a credit for it. You don't actually take the solar right into your battery. So my guess is having the battery integrated into the grid helps for power management. It makes possible some things that PG&E couldn't do otherwise, because they know they're like, okay, we have this much capacity to store power in. So I'm not saying you're wrong about putting themselves in for billing purposes, but there's some other legitimate reasons why it might work to. Okay. Hey, folks, if you're feeling social, get in touch with the DTNS audience on our social networks at DTNS show on Twitter and DTNSPIX, DTNSPIX on Instagram. All right, we had an Apple announcement today. Maybe you had heard of it. We have a lot of stuff to talk about. So let's talk about some of the big news. Apple announcing the new desktop chip called the M1 Ultra turned a lot of heads, which is basically two M1 max chips with a fast multi dye architecture linking them called ultra fusion. The M1 Ultra offers a 20 core CPU and 64 core GPU and we'll show up first in the new Mac Studio. The Mac Studio is physically, I guess, across between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro looks more like a Mac Mini, but you know, a little thicker, but power wise, much more akin to a Mac Pro. The Mac Studio has ports galore, two USB ports, USB-C ports rather, and an SD card slot on the front. A lot of people are excited about the SD card slot. And on the back, four Thunderbolt, four ports, a 10 gig, a gigabit ethernet port, HDMI, mini jack, and two USB-A ports. So if you have old USB stuff, you're going to get some use out of that. The system is a lot faster than anything that Apple compared it to, which makes sense cause you know, that's what Apple does. We're the best. You can get the Mac Studio with either the M1 Macs or the M1 Ultra chip. So that means up to 64 gigs unified memory for the Macs and 128 for the ultra version. The M1 Macs version starts at $1,999. The Ultra jumps up to $3,999. Orders are open now, available March 18th. And to go with the Mac Studio is the Apple Studio Display. It's a 27 inch 5K retina display with 600 nits of brightness, P3 wide color, three USB-C ports, one of Thunderbolt port in addition to those three, which can carry 96 watt power and a six speaker spatial audio system. Plus, it's also kind of a big iPhone. It has its own A13 Bionic chip, a 12 megapixel ultrawide camera and supports center stage because it has a three mic array. So it can track you around. The basic stand offers 30 degree tilt or you can add one that does tilt and height adjustment or you can opt for the Visa mount. There's a matte anti-reflective version. They said nano anti-reflective for an extra 300 bucks. Studio Display starts at $1,599 available for order now shipping March 18th. The combination of the Mac Studio and the Studio Display also appears to have replaced the 27 inch iMac as that model no longer appears in the Apple Store. Only the 24 inch iMac is available in the Apple Store right now. But Nika, let's start with you. What do you think of the studio line from Apple? I mean, it's really nice, but I think the name says it all Studio Mac Studio. I think it's not for the average user. It's going to be for your audio visual type people. Now, if you have that kind of money to drop on it for personal use, I mean, you know, go for it is probably going to be super, super quick in and the display itself. It looks stunning. So it looks great. I'm interested to see down the line. How useful it's going to be for so-called, you know, everyday users to be able to get access to this M1 Ultra, but on the surface, it looks like it's light and fast. No, so I guess my question is, is this the answer that people were looking for that love their Mac minis and either did buy the M1 or did not? And this is the response that they were looking for. Is this a good replacement? Is this what people will buy instead of the Mac Pro? Because if I remember correctly, the person that was doing the presentation, he mentioned the Mac Pro and he says something along the lines of that being a totally different or a product in and of itself. I can't remember the actual phrase, but it sounds like the Mac Pro is still a thing and they're still going to make those. I guess my question about that too, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm it sounds like this is not supposed to take the place of the Mac Pro if that phrase in and of itself is true. And if that is the case, what are people? I guess people who need this studio device, are they going to jump on this? Are they going to still kind of wait and see what Apple has in store for the new Mac Pro? To me, this sounds like what they're looking for, but I guess there is another either either even higher subset of people who need something even more powerful in this. And if there is, what on earth are we doing? Right? Yeah, I know a couple of people hit me up. They were looking for it to today's announcement to be an upgrade of the Mac mini and technically it wasn't upgrade of the Mac mini, but I don't think this is what they were expecting. So it'll be interesting to see who I guess the audience this is really for. I like I said, I don't think this is possibly for the for the everyday user, not for the price point at least. This is for the creative pro. This is the creative professional. Maybe developers if they're if they're doing some more intense work than the Mac mini can handle, but Scott Johnson, you know, he does artwork, he does podcasts. He's like, oh my gosh, they heard me and made a new Mac for me specifically. Scott also has the M one Mac mini and he it's quite new raves about it, but he's very excited because he's like the pro was too damned expensive for me. I needed something more powerful, but it was too expensive. This is exactly the sweet spot for him. It's got the power he wants, but it's not ridiculously expensive. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. It says it all studio. It's I think it's for those creative. Yeah, and it was it was very much presented that way, you know, for my my Twitter timeline is full of creative professionals who also like Mac products. So, you know, it was like an explosion of people losing their minds. But yes, I'm with you, Nika, for most folks, I mean, unless you're already in the market for something you, you know, you you do a lot of creative stuff from a system that this would be part of or your main one. Sure, but it's not cheap. And my gosh, the ultra price is like, okay, come on, four thousand dollars. I it's yeah, it is filling a gap, right? The Mac mini is for the people who think this is too expensive. The the Mac book air is for people who want a laptop who think the Mac book pro is expensive. So this is they're basically adding a new tier in between entry level and pro, which the desktop really didn't have before. I mean, I would argue, though, I mean, I've got a Mac book air that the M one that was the yeah, that that was, you know, that was one of the newest models that you get the M one chip in. And I mean, I've never missed the pro once and I do a lot of fairly intensive, you know, audio visual stuff on that. But that's a story for another time. We do have other announcements that Apple gave us this morning. The company announced a iPad air with M one chip, also 5G capability pretty much the iPad pro and there were a lot of comparisons made of people saying. So why is the iPad pro still cool? But the iPad air has less display resolution doesn't have face ID. It starts at five hundred ninety nine dollars. So a little bit more affordable there. There's also the iPhone SE with the A 15 Bionic chip starting at four hundred twenty nine dollars. Apple made a pretty big deal about how this was the best SE ever. And it certainly seems like a pretty pretty good option for anybody who's a little bit more budget conscious and also really likes the the not face ID touch ID button. Both of those go up for pre-order Friday starting shipping on March 18th and there's a new green color for the iPhone 13 and a light green for iPhone 13 pro available now shipping one day after seeing Patrick's Day which is March 18th. Blue it Apple Blue it your new green phone should ship on March 17th. What are you doing? Missed opportunity. I don't know. Opportunity people were all excited about the green. There's something about green things where I'm like I love green greens great looks a little moldy to me. But you know what I'll probably see that like at a cafe soon and be like oh, I like it. Any other quick thoughts on those? Those were all pretty much evolutionary not revolutionary upgrades. I you know if you're if you're into the SE and you need a bargain phone it did go up 30 bucks over the previous one but but it looks nice. The other announcement we got is that if baseball ever comes back which if you don't know there's a lockout going on the season is displayed is delayed. It was sort of undermined this following Apple announced but but if baseball ever does come back you'll be able to get a lot of it on Apple TV Plus. Apple is launching a 24 7 stream in Canada and the United States including highlights and replays along with a live Monday through Friday show called MLB Big Inning that will do things like live look ins to games in progress stuff that ESPN does on Sports Center stuff that MLB Network does on on its evening show and every Friday night Apple TV Plus will have two exclusive MLB games available without blackouts. Those will be available not just in the US and Canada but also Australia Brazil Japan Mexico Puerto Rico South Korea and the UK. You may not care about baseball but the big deal here is Apple TV getting a major sport and when you combine this with the fact that everybody says Apple's trying to get NFL Sunday ticket Apple really making a play to launch themselves into the minds of a lot more people than just the folks who like their Oscar award nominated shows. And that's my thing. One I think maybe they know something about the MLB that we don't know for them to go ahead and announce this today which was kind of shocking and to I think they're coming for like your ESPNs or your major networks that carry these sporting events. I think this may be their little toe dip to see you know how well it works the type of engagement that they get see if people come and watch it and that may kind of lead them to go after more more major sports. Yeah because Amazon I think is streaming NFL games. Right exactly. So it the president has already been said that streaming services can carry live games since people are flocking to streaming services which are almost as equally if not as more expensive than regular cable but that's where people are you know. So it makes sense for Apple to say OK we got we got to get something as well and MLB is that like Nika said they're toe dip into it again. I thought the same thing. I was like oh that's such a bad timing because I actually thought of Tom you know because you do tweet a lot about baseball and I was like this sucks sucks to be you right. You know I was like maybe Tim Cook can mediate and get an agreement done. I don't know. They've got an interest in doing that now and they can bring it to the table but yeah. It's also I love the idea of like two games Friday night. It's like baseball games are really long. Two of them like which two. You know there's a lot to be worked out here. It's a fun idea and concept. I still subscribe to I don't have cable service but I pay for YouTube TV which is cable alternative but very similar mostly for sports. A few other live things here and there but mostly for sports because I just can't get certain things that I really enjoy as a live experience and even yeah like you mentioned Sports Center Tom like just just kind of sports content that I don't feel like I really can replicate you know just using various channels of the Internet. So this it feels like the first in road to a much larger one. That two game thing is exactly what MLB Network does and I think ESPN does it on one of their nights where they have an East Coast start and West Coast start. So they're they're basically mimicking MLB Network right they're doing an MLB Network show they're doing a 24 7 live stream. I think that that part is really intriguing almost more than just getting the live games. You've got ESPN plus that has all the NHL stuff in the United States ESPN plus I don't know if people realize has a lot of original sports sports that aren't available on ESPN on cable. I was watching Princeton play Fairfield or maybe maybe it's Fairmont the other day just ESPN plus and now you couldn't get it anywhere else. There's a ton of that kind of stuff. So sports is going to be a differentiator in the streaming thing Peacock's got a lot of exclusive sports including English Premier League soccer and so Apple getting even just this amount of baseball huge deal and if they can get football to even bigger deal. Yep. Well Nika since you are here we would like to have another installment of taking while black for this month. So who are we highlighting today. So in honor of International Women's Day which happens to be today we are going to highlight Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson and she has a ton of firsts in her resume. She is she's a physicist and currently the president of Renslar Polytechnic Institute. So she is the first black woman to earn a doctorate at MIT. She's the second black woman in the United States to earn a doctorate in physics. She's also the first woman and first black American to hold the position as president at Rensler Polytechnic Institute. So right off the bat she's already kind of you know breaking down quite a few barriers and in her time as a physicist she worked at AT&T Bell Labs in their theoretical physics research department. So a lot of the research that she did it was you know groundbreaking breakthrough technology and her research enabled other people at Bell Labs to invent fax machine, touch tone telephone, fiber optic cells, solar cells and the technology behind caller ID and call waiting. So fundamental research that yes ground based level that's basically that you know what we have now was stacked on top of that to get you know some of the basic things that we probably take for granted now but is really fundamental in what we do. And that's just on her you know you know scientific type education side but she also is huge in public policy. She was the co-chair of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board in the Obama Administration. She also served as the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in the Obama Administration and even going back to the Clinton Administration. She was a chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and that she was the first woman and first black American to hold that spot as well. So she has in addition to all those things that I just said she's gotten honors and accolades including being inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. She got the National Medal of Science Honor from President Obama as well. And she is also a fellow in the Royal Academy of Engineering over there with the Brits. So yeah so that's just really some you know some of the things that really stuck out but when I was looking into her it's so much the stuff that she's done is it's pretty insane and for her to still be you know in the president of this university and still you know out there creating and still manifesting things it's pretty extraordinary what she's she's been able to accomplish thus far so that's pretty cool. Doing a bunch of fundamental research like that that we build our lives on and president of the university on top of it. That's impressive. I mean all waiting. It's been a while. That's what I was going to say. All this stuff she's been busy Dr. Jackson. Yeah all this other stuff. Yeah that's cool. Yeah you got a theoretics and physics. Cool cool cool. Call our dean. Call our waiting though. Right. Every single day. Oh man. I mean truly I mean especially for young people that's life changing stuff. Yeah you have no idea you can now have quite a few conversations and also know who just you know dialed and dashed and then call their mom back and be like I know it was them. Call our idea. All right. Well thank you Dr. Jackson. Thank you Nika and let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. This one comes from a Joop or you from the Netherlands. So hopefully one of those is correct who says the streaming market is getting competitive here in the Netherlands tomorrow on March 8th. HBO Max is offering a lifetime 50% off of subscriptions for two 99 euros per month. Do you have definitely going to give it a try tomorrow. Wow. So you lock in the rate which is just about three dollars like three dollars and 25 cents roughly lock in that rate as long as you keep it. That's that's like that's a deal. It is. I mean you have to say on this whole you know Netherlands thing I was just on vacation last weekend. I was in a Dutch territory and my HBO Max did not work. So I was like I was flipping. I was trying to get on the VPN. I was trying to trick it maybe to make it think I was in the state still and I was like no not today. So it's good for them that they get that. I'd be interested to see if you could trick it using a VPN here and get this subscription service. I'm pretty sure they would you need a Netherlands address Netherlands credit card that kind of stuff or the VPN enough. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Well, let us know how it goes for anybody in the Netherlands who also wants to take advantage of this. If you pay for a really long time you're still paying regularly. But yeah, sounds like a pretty good deal. Also special thanks to Kelly Cook. Kelly is one of our top lifetime supporters for DTNS. Thank you Kelly for all the years of support. Thanks for sticking with us Kelly. You rock. Indeed. Thanks also to Nika Monford and Terence games. Our Apple can let folks know where they can keep up with your podcasts and everything that you both do. You can definitely head on over to snoboscast.com and find out all the details on our show become a Patreon supporter as well. You can find me over on Twitter at techsabidiva. And you can find myself in addition to the snoboscast. You can find me on all things social media at brother tech and some of my cohost Rob Dunwood who is a friend of the show Stephanie Humphrey who's also been on the show. We three host a tech show from a different lens i.e. black lens via the tech John. So you can find us at t-h-e-t-e-c-h-j-a-w-n.com. Well, we're so glad to have you on the show. Good stuff everybody and you know let's do this again at the next double announcement if you're not on sooner. We're live on this show Monday through Friday. The news never stops everybody for 30 p.m. Eastern at 21 30 UTC is where you can join us live. You can find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live and we are back torn it all again tomorrow with Scott Johnson talk to that. This show is part of the frog pants network. Get more at frog pants dot com. I'm in the club hopes you have enjoyed this program.