 This 10th year of Daily Tech News show would not happen if it weren't for you. Thanks to every single one of you who supports the show, like Miranda Janell, Justin Zellers, Pepper Geesey and Bill Baggins. On this episode of DTNS, Meta connects us with a new VR headset, upgraded smart glasses and lots of AI plus what the FTC is up to with Microsoft. Yeah, still. And Hollywood writers get AI guidelines. This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, September 27th, 2023 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Prune, I'm Sarah Lane. From Salt Lake City, I'm Scott Johnson. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chay. Studio Prune, did you like take a bath? Are you drinking juice? But I like prunes. And you just like prunes. Prunes get a bad rep. Yeah, yummy. I mean, don't don't eat 20 of them. You know what I'm saying? But otherwise, I'll have a prune. Stereotypes and they've been maligned over the years. They're fine. There's nothing. They are delicious. Prune positive. Yeah, indeed. Peepies. All right, let's start with the quick hits. Apple's eddy queue testified as part of the US versus Google antitrust case. Q was asked about Apple's Information Services Agreement or ISA, which makes Google the default search engine on Apple software like the Safari browser, Q negotiated the latest renewal of the deal back in 2016 and says there's not a valid alternative to Google. Apple chose Google because it was the best product. Anchors, smart home cameras, the ones they sell under their Ufi brand, the EUFY now offer cross camera tracking and video splicing, you know, like in the movies. So if you have multiple cameras, you can follow motion from one camera's view to the next and see it as one continuous video all spliced together. Feature works with Ufi's home base three hub. So you have to have that piece of equipment, the home base three hub. And it uses an on device algorithm to identify people and stitch those videos together. It's part of a free beta that you can use right now. And then they'll release it as part of their paid subscription in Q4. The Ufi home base three is available for $150. And they introduced a new line of cameras and spotlights as well, but the cross camera tracking will also work with older Ufi cameras. Well, as expected, Amazon has named former Microsoft executive Panas Panay as the new lead of Amazon's Devices and Services Division. Panay spent 19 years at Microsoft, most recently leading the Windows and Devices Division. He'll officially start at Amazon at the end of October. And the folks who work on the Echo devices said, Panos, yay. My gosh. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo circulates that reports of iPhone 15 models overheating. Probably have to do with the new titanium frame, not the chip. A lot of people are like, the chip's overheating. Kuo says, chips probably fine. It's probably just not dissipating the heat fast enough. Kuo says titanium negatively impacts thermal efficiency and notes. There's also a reduced heat dissipation area in the iPhone 15. He does expect that Apple will address the issue with a software update. Well, one would hope. Multiple news outlets reported on their experiences with Mercedes-Benz's new drive pilot system coming to the 2024 S-Class and EQS sedans. It'll be the first level three autonomated driving system approved for use by the public in the US. Level three means that the driver doesn't have to pay attention at all times, but has to be ready to take over when needed. You can take your hands off the wheel, but you can't go to sleep. In essence, the systems will not will be will only be available and active in California and Nevada to start. In addition, they'll only be active at speeds less than 40 miles per hour while following a vehicle on dry, clear, well marked and pre-mapped roads. And LA freeway traffic at rush hour would be a great example of this. You might say, when would my area be a great example of this? Well, this is sort of phase one. Las Vegas traffic since it's also in the back. Awesome. Yeah. So you could watch YouTube with level three, but don't watch the chill beats YouTube or you'll fall asleep. That's good advice. Well, at its connect conference on Wednesday, Meta unveiled the Quest three headset offering improved performance for a higher price over the Quest two. The Quest three will go for five hundred dollars for the 128 gigabyte model and pivots from just VR to mixed reality. At least that's what the company is is doing this marketing wise. This is commonly known as XR. So when you see XR mixed reality is what they're talking about. Meta now refers to its headsets as gaming and productivity tools rather than just sort of for fun. The Quest three has 30 percent higher resolution, new lenses, faster Qualcomm chip, dual color pass through cameras. So that's the mixed reality stuff. A souped up version for six hundred fifty dollars has five twelve gigabytes of space. Preovers are opening now shipping on October 10th. I mean, these are pricier than the old Quest three. They're kind of evolutionary, not revolutionary. But I have to say that there's a lot of the hands on reviews came out like right along with the announcement. Everybody's fairly positive about these. Yeah, they seem they seem excited. I can't tell from some of the video. It's hard for me to tell what the difference is with VR. A lot of the times the whole history of VR, as we know, it is usually a technology. If you really want to appreciate what you're looking at, you kind of have to have it on your head. Videos don't really do it justice. But from what I can tell, this is definitely a bump from last time. The big question for consumers is, is it a, you know, double the price bump for the lowest entry model or not? And that's yet to be seen. But I think it looks great. Well, I think I think at this point, at least as far as, you know, key one of next year, we'll all be talking about the Quest three versus the Apple's Vision Pro. Very different price points. Vision Pro, by all accounts, is based on development. Let's figure out how to make this cool. You know, developer community. This is not for just the average consumer unless they have thirty five hundred dollars to spare. The Quest three is the Quest three is exactly for that. I am I am I am a Quest apologist for better or for worse. I love the Quest. I have been really interested in how the the the technology has sort of slowly but surely evolved. And and yeah, I think you're going to have to pay for something that is better than the Quest two, which was, by all accounts, a lost leader. Johandar in the chat wonders how XR is different from AR. It's basically just means you can do VR and augmented reality. And I think that's probably the differentiator with the Quest three, is that the Quest two could do the augmented reality pass through. But it was pretty grainy and it was it was it was not exactly black and white, but it wasn't color, right? The Quest three has a higher resolution pass through. It's not nearly as grainy and it can do full color. So I think you might see a differentiation there in what kind of augmented reality stuff the Quest three can do. Hence them emphasizing the XR nature. And the X really just means cross, right? Just crossover. Extended. Yeah, there's also just so many reasons why, you know, this idea of crossing over, you know, people go, well, you know, how many times a day would I wear this? And this would be necessary for me for a lot of people never. You know, I use VR for exercise primarily and the crossover stuff is mostly so that I make sure I don't trip over my dog. But this is technology that I understand is going to make a lot of sense for people doing things besides, you know, putting on a headset and then going dark for an hour. That's, I think, what my big takeaway from Meta's announcement is like, we can still provide that for you on. But for anybody who just didn't really like the idea of full VR, now it's more of a lifestyle. Yeah, we're going to expand what we can do with that. And that's where they're going to try to compete with the Vision Pro. A few more notes coming out of the Connect keynote. Xbox cloud gaming coming to the quest in December. That's not XR. That's just a big virtual screen hanging in space in front of you playing a 2D game, but they're also getting Roblox, a Stranger Things game. Lego Brick Tales is interesting because it is a PC game, but they are making it tabletop. So they are taking advantage of the augmented reality for that. Also, a MetaQuest business platform launching in October. That's designed to offer Enterprise augmented reality apps that will be compatible with a lot of different business platforms, including Microsoft 365 that's coming to the quest later this year. And Meta talked a lot of connect about AI that chat bots are coming. We mentioned this on Monday to WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger. They use something called the Expressive Media Universe to offer Dolly like capabilities so you can do a prompt to get an image. It's Meta's own custom made large language model. They said it's based on the core principles of Lama2, but it appears to be much more limited and it includes those 28 personas based around people like Mr. Beast and Snoop Dogg and Paris Hilton, etc. They also announced Meta's AI Studio. Let's make your own AI companions. So that's pitched at brands, not individuals. You know, if I'm craft cheese, I can make a chat bot that reflects my brand value as craft cheese and customer expectations that I'll know a lot about cheese. Alpha of that is available now and it'll start expanding next year. And you'll be able to edit images and create stickers in Instagram with text prompts. So restyle adds a filter based on a text prompt backdrop. Let's you change the background based on a text prompt real quickly before we get to the last part of the announcement, which is the sunglasses. What do you think of the AI stuff? I mean, personally, I think that it's surprising. We haven't already seen it integrated in. So it makes sense to me. We're going to hear this from everybody from here until the end of time. Our new thing also includes these AI things, whatever they end up calling it. The Instagram filter feels real, though. Like it feels like these are useful cases, by the way. And I don't actually decry these. I think these are a great idea. I think that the more the more intelligent interactions I can have with both my hardware and my software and my life, I'm happier to do that. So everyone wants to freak out and act like they're going to become sentient and all that, forgetting all of that. This is a good move for this device. Qualcomm also announced two new Snapdragon chips along with the hardware. So one of them is going into the Quest 3, the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2. We mentioned that already. The other one is going into the Rayban Meta smart glasses. They're not Rayban stories anymore. They're Rayban Meta smart glasses. They're getting the Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1. This set of glasses has better on-device augmented reality processing. No heads up screen. So when we're talking about augmented reality, it means it can recognize something and then talk to you about it. The glasses have upgraded from a five megapixel to a 12 megapixel camera. Can live stream to Instagram and Facebook with that higher video quality. Software update next year will add things like landmark identification or sign translation so that you can look at something and say, what does that say? And it'll translate it into your language. They're available in really good styles, Wayfarer and headliner styles. They really do look like sunglasses pre-order now ship in October 17th, starting at two hundred ninety nine dollars for standard lenses. If you want polarized, that's three hundred twenty nine. If you want transition, it's three seventy nine. And then your prescription is a sliding scale on top of all of that. I continue to wonder how much AR glasses will sell. And the reason for that is, you know, here I am, you know, wearing an Apple watch, love it, gives me all sorts of value throughout the day. Glasses would give different value, but there's a lot of this is your personal style thing that you have to buy into in order for this to work. Wayfarer's cool personal style, but not for everybody. And I just don't know how you have somebody wear something on their face that doesn't have that many options that you're going to get a lot of people to buy. Yeah, it is kind of a hoping that one or a few sizes fit all. My my my thinking is there's there's a future where I'm adding something to a pair of glasses, a pair of prescription glasses, and I'm clicking it into them and they're modular and now those become smart glasses. And that stuff is small enough that it's not really sticking out. Like there's a lot of ways this technology could head. This is a decent step into that world. And I'm it's exciting to watch this particular aspect of of AR evolve. Yeah, yeah, I wanted to get there too. I just I'm like, you know, it's a tough sell for a lot of people. I think it's I think it's smart not to put the on-screen for these because they keeps the price down, keeps the expectations down. But I'm with you, Sarah. It also keeps the intended market down, right? How many people are really going to want that? Like, I might say this is my exact style. Sorry, I think you should leave reference there. But for a lot of other people like, yeah, I don't know. Yeah. Well, real quickly, in other hardware related to AI news, the information sources say that Sam Altman at Open AI has been working with Apple former designer Johnny Ive on hardware. We don't really know anything else about it. That's all we know. The Verge notes that Altman worked with Thomas Meyerhofer in the past on the orb for Worldcoin Meyerhofer, also a former Apple designer. And Altman invests in Humane, which is run by former Apple employees developing a wearable AI device. So something something coming out of there. You know, the the movie her starring Joaquin Phoenix and with the voice of Scarlett Johansson is often brought up in situations like this, like, oh, remember, you know, and like the guy fell in love with the AI type thing. But I feel like this idea, at least, you know, you know, just not knowing a whole lot of what's going on. If there if there was a sort of place that you could go and talk to AI and get information and get smarter and have them help. And then you sort of, you know, take off the headset and again, I'm using a headset just because I don't exactly know what else we would do. That is interesting and not really anything that anyone else is doing right now. I mean, Amazon would beg to differ. They basically say we're putting a large language model into Echo. You can sit there and talk to it all day long. You don't even have to put it on your head. 100%. But I think, you know, Amazon could also be accused of being a little behind the game. As far as AI stuff is concerned. And that's why they're using Anthropics AI and not developing their own, which is probably a smart move. The USFTC has not given up on evaluating the Microsoft Activision Blizzard merger. They have a dream and they're not letting go of it. It's a bit thorny. Here's what's happening. The UK is still in the final stages of approving the deal that's expected to happen. October 18th is still the new extended deadline for the deal to get done. And to catch you up on the FTC, yes, it tried and failed in July to get the courts to prevent the deal from closing and it lost. So it withdrew its administrative challenge. That's its internal investigation. And its appeal of that preliminary injunction isn't going to be heard until December 6th. So everybody thought, well, that's that. Well, that's not that. The news today is the FTC has refiled for its administrative procedure, which will take place 20 days after the appeals court rules. So sometime in either December or January, this is an internal procedure for the FTC. So if they were to win that case with their own internal administrative judge, they can issue a cease and desist to unwind the merger, which will be closed by that time. And Microsoft can appeal that cease and desist. And then the FTC would have to go back to federal court to enforce its decision where it has already lost. It's a long shot. FTC just just doesn't want to give this up. Yeah, they seem like they're almost enjoying it. They want to keep toying with it or something. I don't know what's going on with that. But it feels like, I don't know, people I talk to on the ground over there at Activision Blizzard are both at the same time hopeful that this goes through without naming any names. And also some of them are certain that it's going through. And I don't know how it doesn't at this point. This just feels like another weird delay that will be kind of fruitless. It's not even a delay, though. That's the thing, right? Microsoft's going to close. It's not going to do anything unless 15 unlikely things happen. Yeah. And that's just it just seems like a waste of whatever resource is being spent doing it. It seems like a waste of that. And I think that's probably just money. So so I don't know. I wish they would knock it off, but also at the same time, I understand that, you know, you have to you go through all the venues you have to go through. If you're serious about a thing, it's like copyright law, except this, you know, this is the government speaking. But but if you're going to try to make your point, you got to make it all the way till all your stuff's exhausted. So I guess exhaust yourselves, but it sounds to me like this thing's going through one way or the other. Speaking of going through Chris Metzen, Scott, friend of yours, one time lore master of World of Warcraft is returning to Activision Blizzard. Come heller high water to create the next generation of adventures in World of Warcraft. He retired from Blizzard back in 2016. Folks might remember returned as an advisor in 2022. Now coming back full time. So, Scott, you and Chris, your your buds, you have a good relationship. Are you are you excited about this? I am. It's actually nice that it finally came out officially because I've known about this for a really long time and I didn't want to blow it and drop the bomb on the show sometime when I wasn't supposed to. So I've been kind of walking on eggshells, not to accidentally reveal it. But it isn't exactly a secret that he'd been back there for a while. But what his actual role would be, ultimately, how much front facing public stuff we get out of Chris, that was all a little bit unknown. It's important to note here that he's going to be specifically focused 100 percent on the Warcraft team. That means World of Warcraft and anything connected to Warcraft. And that means other games that are either unannounced or some of the stuff that already exists like their new mobile game coming out and, you know, Hearthstone may fall under this under this. But really, that's the focus where it used to be. He was in charge of all franchise development over at Blizzard. That meant every game they had under the roof. So this is a very laser focused thing. I can tell you, it sounds like they have some really cool stuff going on. I think Warcraft Warcraft fans have every right to be excited about this. And we'll learn more at BlizzCon where there's a very good chance you'll see him on stage again first time since 2016, I want to say, 17, maybe. And he'll probably have a lot to say about what they've been working on. So it's very exciting stuff for Blizzard right now. Another photo of confidence that everything's going to be fine at Activision BlizzCon to see Metson. He wouldn't go back there if he didn't think this was all going to work out. I can tell you that that is 100 percent true. Chris, Chris was retired for a reason. It wasn't, you know, I'm not going to get the details here, but for him to go back and to take the reins of something like this meant that it had to be right. And I'm I'm sure that that's the case. So it's it's people should be excited. I'm genuinely excited and I haven't subbed the game in eight, nine months. This means I will probably get back in when when we start to hear what's going on. Well, folks, real quickly, if you liked that Experiment Week episode of A.I. Named This Show, good news, it's a full on show. Lots of episodes out already each week. Tristan Jutra and Teja Kastodi wade through the hype and the doomsaing and keep you informed about what's real regarding the world of artificial intelligence. Go look for A.I. Named This Show in a podcatcher near you or at A.I. NamedThisShow.com. The Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have reached an agreement. You probably heard about this among the agreed two terms are rules governing the use of A.I. tools. Here's the gist. If A.I. tools are used to create material within a script, a WGA writer, maybe somebody who prompted the material gets the credit. You can't give the credit to an A.I. That's that's that's the agreement. A.I. cannot be credited as a source. A studio also can't tell a writer to use A.I. tools or even what A.I. tools to use. Yeah, and companies that writers are working for have to disclose if any materials that were given to a writer were generated by A.I. Companies may use writer materials to train their own models, but the WGA reserves the right to step in if it determines training violates the agreement or law. In other words, the WGA can put a stop to the training if it feels off. Aside from A.I. guidelines is the fact that streamers must now share streaming data with writers. This would apply to many people in this audience, probably, so that they know just how well the projects that the writers have worked on have done designed to offer increased royalty payments. Yeah, I think the A.I. part of this got more attention than it deserved. This is just my opinion. But I always felt like it was a pretty easy thing to come up with some rules around. Don't give a credit to A.I. Let the writers have control over the tools. Let the writers use the tools. Don't ban. There was talking about banning A.I. from these are all reasonable things. I think I think it's clear from this agreement that the fight, the real fight was over the royalties for streaming and the sharing of data and how many writers can be in a room and they they solved all those too. Yeah, I think it's Tom said it really well on a brief segment this morning on TMS and we're reiterating it here, but just made a great point about how a lot of these hot button issues like A.I. being used in the writing process just became kind of a propaganda point. And not just for the writers. I mean, it just seemed like it was this hot moment of like, well, A.I. changes the whole thing. We need these strikes more than ever because of A.I. A.I. seem to be at the pinnacle of all of it. And at the end of it, it's pretty reasonable what they want to do. Like it's pretty straightforward. I don't think anyone had to make major crazy concessions on the A.I. front. And if they did, you know, we're probably never going to hear about it. But this just seems like a good reasonable thing. It gets revenue back where it should be. They have three more years to work under a new contract that I'll agreed on. None of this has any impact on well, maybe it has some impact, but no impact immediately anyway on the actor strike that's still going on. And you have the potential of the video game performers and actor strike looming, they've all they voted overwhelmingly to strike. So they have to come up with either an agreement there really quick or strikes will happen. So still a lot of this going on. But at least the writers can get back to the table and we can get our talk shows back and, you know, some of the stuff that was maybe. Oh, Scott, I know you're such a morning talk show guy. I mean, you do your own. But yeah, I don't I don't really see it. You know, what struck me as I think all of these new terms make sense. Nothing about this seems crazy out of whack, anything. I just wonder how many and maybe it's because of, you know, my own inability to use chat GPT to help my job day to day. I mean, trust me, if I could, I would. I just don't think that it actually helps my day to day job. It might help your day to day job totally depends on what you're doing. In fact, just the other day, somebody, you know, I was talking about writing up a contract and they said, why don't you just use chat be GPT? And then, and then, you know, and then and then go from there. I was like, oh, wow. I've never even thought about that. I think that there are a lot of writers where this is not even going to be an issue at all, never has never will. But it's good to have these these these these laws as it were in place. Yeah, I think I think the bigger the bigger role for AI is helping the writers when they're like, you know, I just need some ideas. I need I need to lay out a scenario. I've got like the tedious part of script writing, like maybe some formatting or something that I want the tools to use. And I'm glad that this agreement contemplates that and says, yes, they are allowed to use those. You can't tell them they have to use them, but they get to use them. And no, the studio execs can't tell chat GPT come up with scripts and replace the writers, which I don't think was ever going to happen anyway. But now it's on paper that it can't. So there you go. And did. Well, should we thank Scott or I don't know, Sarah, do you think you did a good good enough job? Oh, you know, Scott, yeah, week after week, you do a really good job. You know, I'm always trying to talk you for something and I just can't find anything you're like an AI yourself. Thank you for being on the show. Let folks know where they can keep up with the rest of your work. Well, there is good news, everyone. I have a show called Core on Thursdays. It's actually Friday this week. But it's a weekly show about video games and it's not just, hey, what do we play in? It's like the big issues. So we are going to tear apart this medicine news in a way that we don't have time for here today. We're going to really go deep in what it might mean to have, you know, one of the one of the creators of the Warcraft franchise coming back to the roost and doing something. If you want to hear that big blown out discussion, we'll be doing that. And we'll be talking about Starfield or this crazy idea that cyberpunk after three years of release is actually in 10 out of 10 shape now somehow three years later. We'll talk about that all kinds of stuff in that zone. So if that interests you at all, come check us out. Core wherever you get your podcast or you can find it all directly at frogpants.com slash core. Now, it's free preview week. Everybody's getting the full show. So I would normally say patrons stick around, but everybody stick around for the extended show, Good Day Internet, CNN Max is live. The last of the US streamers to put live news in its app. It's launched in beta. It's a second pass at premium news, although unlike CNN Plus, it's not a separate thing you have to pay extra for. It's just right in there in your max subscription. And we'll talk about it. Stick around. Just a reminder, we do the show live. Did you know you can catch this show live money through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern twenty hundred UTC. Find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live. We're back tomorrow talking about lab grown embryo models with Dr. Nicky Ackerman joining us. Don't miss it. This show is part of the frog pants network. Get more at frogpants.com. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.