 This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by you listening right now. Thanks to all of you, whether you're Mark Gibson, or Reed Fishler, or Larry Bailey, or our brand spanking newest patron, Abraham. Thank you for being here. On this episode of DTNS Trisha Hershberger tells us about the hottest new games announced this summer, weighs in on Valve's policy against letting game developers use AI for art, and I spent the weekend with the Pixel Fold, and I'll update my relationship status with it shortly. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, July 3rd, 2023 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. From lovely Cleveland, Ohio, I'm Rich Strafilino. I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. And joining us, TV host and streamer, Trisha Hershberger. Welcome! Thank you guys so much for having me. It's so delightful to be here, as always, chat and tech with everyone. Indeed. It's always good to have you, Trish. Let's get right into things with the quick hits. Over the weekend, Twitter chairman Elon Musk announced temporary daily usage quotas for Twitter. The numbers changed over the weekend a few times, but the last word was that verified accounts could read 6,000 posts per day before you got rate-limited unverified accounts, 600 posts a day, and new unverified accounts if you created one right away, 300 per day. Musk said the measure was meant to address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation, hence the lower amount for the new accounts. Some users report these changes caused issues with TweetDeck. I have not been seeing that, but your mileage may vary. In seemingly related news, the decentralized social network Blue Sky temporarily paused its signups over the weekend, saying it needed to address existing performance issues after seeing record high traffic. They have resumed their signups now. The network is still invite-only, though, so you can't just sign up. You either got to get on the wait list or have someone give you an invite. Well, app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi is always looking for the scoops, and over the last day or so, spotted that Meta's Twitter competitor, called Threads, was temporarily available for download from the Google Play Store. The listing was subsequently taken down, and users who downloaded the app could not sign up. They just got an error warning that they weren't allowed to sign up. Through Paluzzi's screenshots, it showed signs that you can sign up with an Instagram handle when it actually starts working. China's Ministry of Commerce announced that as of August 1st, the metals gallium and germanium, along with derived chemical compounds from them, will be subject to export controls to protect Chinese national security. Now, both these metals are part of a supply chain for semiconductors and electric vehicle components, among other things. They are small, but very valuable. Exporters will be required to obtain a license if you want to ship them overseas. China accounts for about 94% of global gallium production. Analysts speaking to Bloomberg say this could result in price increases across the tech and EV industries once companies run through their existing stockpiles, unless you can find other sources. The Indian Telco Geo Platforms announced the Geo Bharat, a 4G handset that offers access to mobile payments with UPI, and access to the company's on-demand video and music services. Now, Geo Platforms has put out cost-effective phones before, but this phone costs $999 Indian rupees. That's about $12.20 US. It will be available as a beta trial as of July 7th. The company also announced a new monthly service plan that offers 14 gigabytes of data per month and unlimited voice calls for 123 rupees a month, so equally cost-effective. 12 bucks. Well, the deadline passed. Reddit Pocalypse has occurred. Reddit's new API pricing rules came into effect on July 1st, and as expected, third-party apps for the service shut down. Bacon Reader, Apollo, not all of them, but a lot of them. Also on July 1st, the moderators for Ask Me Anything or IMA subreddit announced they would no longer organize posts with celebrities and other high-profile individuals. The mods will also no longer run an external site for scheduling AMAs, maintain an AMA calendar on the subreddit, or confidentially verify users. The mods are not abandoning the subreddit, but they're limiting their efforts to removing rule-breaking content. These were all things they were doing above and beyond. They said they're not going to do them anymore. The mods informed Reddit on June 1st that this was a likely outcome of the new API pricing. All right, you may or may not have heard that Valve has banned games that use AI-generated art from being on Steam. That's not exactly what's happening. Valve explained to IGN some of its reasoning behind not allowing machine-generated content in many games, but it's not a blanket ban. Valve says it's worried about copyrights. Here's what it told IGN. The introduction of AI can sometimes make it harder to show a developer has sufficient rights in using AI to create assets, including images, text, and music. In particular, there's some legal uncertainty relating to data used to train AI models. It is the developer's responsibility to make sure they have the appropriate rights to ship their game. But Valve says it doesn't want to discourage using AI tools. It just needs to follow existing copyright laws, and those laws have not been formalized around machine-generated art, so they're moving very carefully. As you know, a large language model or mid-journey making art does not check with copyright first before it outputs something. It just outputs it. Trish, where do you fall on this? I mean, it's hard because we already have AI existing in video games and have for a while when you talk about enemy AI, how enemies or NPCs in game react to you as a player. Like, that's AI. We've had that in games for a while, but now that AI is becoming so much more robust and able to do so much more, I think a lot of industries, in addition to video games, are trying to figure out how to navigate this. I think a lot of the conversation in the gaming community has been around, like, yeah, Valve's taking a stand, but it could certainly be that. I don't know that it's so much that as it is just taking it at face value. Valve's not out here trying to get sued for copyright infringement. You know what I mean? Like, they're looking at it from a purely business perspective and saying, like, I'm trying not to get in trouble. So it's going to be hard to see where things land. I know we've talked on this podcast before a bit about, you know, where AI kind of falls into video games and the benefits that stand to come out for players versus the downsides that it may cost developers, etc. So I'm curious, Tom and Rich, where you fall on this as well. I think that this is just like the first shoe, because it feels like the logical second thing for Valve to do is to say, we have vetted these AI creation tools, and they meet a certain legal criteria that we are comfortable with, where they can be published. Or you are a giant publisher, you can either put money in an escrow account or like we you are agreeing to take on liability for this. And we know that you have the capability to hash out something. So we will take your word that, you know, if you have the capability to actually vet this kind of thing. But I definitely see them kind of coming out within a allow list of tools, at least in the short term. And we've seen like tools like Adobe Firefly, I know for example, all of their tooling, they're very forward in saying like, we are actually going to take on liability if there's any copyright infringing stuff. So those kind of tools and like that kind of approach, I feel like is going to be the other step in this, probably not too far down the road. Yeah, you're going to need something like Adobe's chain of custody to make Valve feel good about this. Because remember, as I've been reading about this, I have to stop myself from thinking, well, shouldn't they just screen it? Shouldn't they just say like, if there's copyrighted material shows up, you can't use it. And the answer is, we don't know what what what violates copyright when it comes to these tools, where it's not as simple as I made it. And a court can determine whether it's fair use or not. Otherwise, it's copyright violation. The machine made it. And whether the machine can be considered a fair use or not has yet to be determined. So I think what Valve's doing is not saying, we need to decide which of these tools follow the law. They're saying, we need to wait for the law. Like, we don't know what could be in violation and what's not yet. Yeah, that just again shows you how early days we are in all of this. Like, I know there is this rush like on a consumer level, there's this rush to new toy to play with. I want to do all the GPT three things. I want to go to mid journey and create like all this work out there. But like, even as we are seeing already industries either racing to develop these tools or racing to, you know, try and develop workflows and stuff like that, like it reminds me of the early days of kind of music sharing online. And like, you know, at then a certain point we hit the, you know, digital millennium copyright act or something like that. I'm not saying that's the outcome I want necessarily like a DMCA outcome. But like that took a number of years to kind of flesh out and kind of still dealing with the implications. And we knew what copyright law was here. We don't even know. We're like, I don't know. Is that violated copyright? It came out of the machine. Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe the data set makes it fair use. Maybe it doesn't. Like we have a lot of questions to answer. Yeah, most certainly. Yeah. All right. Well, the Pixel Fold officially came out on June 27th, but seems like Google might have underestimated demand. Order one today. You just go on to Google Store and it's not going to arrive until late August. August 31st was the latest date I saw in their estimate. Digital Trends Christine Romero Chan has gotten new iPhone every single year since the first one, but argued in a column on Monday that the Pixel Fold might be enough, have enough appeal to make her think about switching. She says the phone has an exciting foldable form factor, but it's not so new. You know, it's matured to give it, you know, a more usable front cover display, multitasking is well implemented and generally useful, and has a better camera system with overall solid hardware. Now, we're not taking these Pixel Fold opinions in a vacuum. Tom, you've used iOS and now you are using the Fold. Is it enough to get people to switch? Yeah, and to be clear, I'm still using iOS. I'm using two of these, but yeah, I've got the Pixel Fold. I used it all weekend. I went to my cousin's birthday party, took some pictures with it and showed it off to people. I've been carrying it around. The reception, the internet part of it has been great. My problem is it feels a little fragile, and I don't know if that's just psychological because I have been reading all the articles about the ones that have broken, but every time I open it, I'm worried I'm going to break it. There's no exposed hinge, and because of that, I always worry that the material that covers the hinge might break if I open it. I also really worry about putting it in my pocket because I'm worried about scratches. That's what got the ARS Technical One broken is a little bit got right on the edge between the protector and the thing. So I'm always worried about, like, what is it going to be rubbing up against in my pocket or in my bag? Also, like a lot of phones, it's slippery without a case. So I'm desperately afraid I'm going to drop it, but a Pixel Fold case is $60. Even an Otterbox case, like a third-party case, is like $50. There are cheaper ones from makers I don't know, but then I don't know if those are actually going to protect it, and it's kind of a weird case because it has to be able to unfold. It never opens fully flat. There's always a little bit of a bump. That doesn't bother me too much, but it's worth noting. And not everything works in continuity on the bigger internal screen. So you can open stuff up, and it'll just jump to whatever you were looking at. But most of the time, it does work. And when it does, it's pretty magical. Video looks great. The crease just kind of disappears when you're playing video on the thing. So if I pull up some kind of YouTube video and play it, it'll just play really smoothly. And I don't even know that that crease is there. I've made good use of having a small tablet at my command. So far, I feel like it's just too expensive. This is not quite 100% what a foldable is going to be. And it's $1,600, right? So $1,700. You probably should wait until it becomes the thing where everybody goes, yes, this works. This is the perfect version. Yeah. So Tricia, you're an Android user, right? I am. I'm a Pixel user, Team Pixel. So right now, we're seeing like 100% price premium to kind of get to this foldable phone factor. Now, the Flip versions, ones that are like a Flip phone, those have definitely come down at price parity. But from what you've seen from the Fold is that form factor, just from an Android perspective, you're already in the ecosystem. You're already on Team Pixel. You're already kind of like that whole package. Is that form factor appealing to you? Yeah. I think if you're someone who's already bought into foldable phones, if you've been into the Samsung Galaxy Fold over its couple generations, what the Pixel Fold offers is a lot of the same benefits you get with the Galaxy Fold, but with a way better camera. To me, I do get my hands on these devices to review from time to time. And the biggest comparison to me is honestly that you're getting that Pixel camera and the Pixel camera software and some of the other Pixel exclusive software like call screening, et cetera, but in a foldable phone. Now that being said, you have to already, in my opinion, be a foldable fold phone fan. Not everyone is going to be. Not everyone needs that amount of multitasking. Not everyone's going to use. I'm Tom, I'm curious to see if you've messed it all with like the table form factor where you can kind of put it at a 90 degree angle, rest it on the table to take selfies or videos or watch a YouTube video on top and have all the comments on the bottom. Like there's a lot of extra functionality that a foldable phone gives you. And I think if you're looking at the foldables on the market right now, Pixel fold came out the gate swinging strong. But yeah, Tom, have you messed around with the table mode at all? Yeah, I was doing this at lunch today. I had YouTube going and I just had it sitting there on the table playing video on the top while it just sat there. I've taken some photos with it, but surprisingly, the photo part of it didn't feel as necessary. I haven't been in a situation where somebody had a candy bar style phone and couldn't make it work. And I'm like, here, let me let me do this. But it is nice to be able to just sit it down and be like, all right, let's do the timer 10 seconds. Here we go. The other thing that I will I will note about it is at the birthday party that I was at, it was the women who were like, Hey, you've got the foldable. Let me take a look at that. None of the guys were that interested in taking a look at it. I think I have seen that overall, Samsung has really done a good job with their folds and their flips marketing to women specifically. And maybe that's why. And so I think it's kind of on people's radar. Yeah, but I mean, like I said, the the pixel, the foldable pixel is definitely coming out the gate swinging and trying to be competitive in that foldable market. Now, I will say as another iOS current iOS user, my last Android phone was a droid turbo. So that just tells you it's been a hot minute since I have used the OS, but I've used it frequently in the past. Like the whole point of Christine's post on digital trends was that the iPhone is not an exciting platform. It's not an exciting form factor, not exciting. And like that's the appeal of it for me. Like this is my Toyota Camry of tech. Like I don't want excitement. I want like this is a daily thing that I need to take pictures of my kids and you take video. I need to use it, you know, for web browsing stuff like that. I don't need the hard top convertible excitement of a foldable. If I'm going to torture this car analogy anymore, like I the only thing like it's not the cheapest. No, but like it works. It holds its resale value. I know where I can go get and go get it fixed anywhere I want. And like, like there's like that to me is like the boringness. I'm like, yes, I don't have smartphones at the stage. I don't want excitement. I want reliability. So wait, you're saying the iPhones, the Corolla and what the pixels, the El Camino? Something like that. It is. I don't know my cars enough to be able to tell you. Please send us your best analogy for what the Pixel Fold is as a car to feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. One of the big hurdles with electric vehicle adoption is charging infrastructure. Where are you going to charge that thing? Some of the challenge is making sure there are enough chargers out there. But charging speed is also a hang up. NTX's Dan Campos highlights a new charging facility that offers charging speed almost as fast as filling up a gas car at the pump. Are you looking for a fast charge? Then come to Puebla, where Qayon and Exipowers have installed the worst fastest charging station for electric and hybrid cars with a capacity of one megawatt. Depending on the battery model of your vehicle, you will be able to charge it from 0 to 100 in about 7 minutes. The station is located within the Finza Industrial Park in San Lorenzo Almecatla, in Puebla, and it has chargers from different types of cars, from American to European to Asian models. The cost per charge will depend on the battery going from 15 to 60 US dollars for a full charge. If you want to get more news and practice your Spanish, listen to Noticias de Tecnología Express. Back to you, amigos. it today, go check out Tom's Top 5 at DailyTechNewsShow.com. Despite the demise of E3 this summer, it has still had a lot of game announcements and updates. E3 not being there didn't stop that. Feels like every major publisher and developer has a title releasing this year. Tricia, with so many titles announced the last couple of months, what are you most looking out for this fall? Oh my goodness, so the announcements did not stop this summer, whether it's because you tuned in a summer game fest or IGN summer of gaming or direct conferences like say Ubisoft Connect, or Ubisoft Forward, excuse me, there were so many games announced that the rest of 2023 is going to be full on wallet breaking at this point. So in case you have missed some of the announcements just to kind of run them down for you, on this 31st we're going to see the full release of Baldur's Gate 3, which if you are a Larian Studios or Dungeons and Dragons fan, listen up, it's a good time. It's been in Early Access for a while. I played it early on in its Early Access and then kind of tapped out because every 10 days or there were a couple times they'd release a patch. You'd have to create a whole new character and I'm not about that. This is a huge game. I want to dive in with my character and go for it. So if you have been looking forward to that Baldur's Gate 3 is coming out August 31st. And then September 6th, I know probably one of the biggest video game announcements around is Starfield. September 6th is when we will see Starfield. If that's not in your radar, it's the first new universe in over 25 years from Bethesda Game Studios. And a lot of people have been watching Bethesda since the Microsoft acquisition is kind of see what's going to happen there. But really, if you're someone who hears the Elder Scrolls in space and thinks that sounds awesome, then you're definitely going to want to pay attention to Starfield. I want to ask both Tom and Rich, is Starfield on either of your radar at this point? Well, yeah, because I've been following the AMD exclusivity thing, which we're going to talk about on GDI. But yeah, it's just kind of background radiation of excitement, isn't it? Yeah. Oh, like, yeah, I'm not been a regular gamer. But the last game I really got into was Oblivion. So Starfield is definitely like, it could pull me back in. It could get you. To me, it looks a little overwhelming for my taste. I like a game I can complete in a reasonable amount of time. But as far as getting bang for your buck, Starfield's going to be where it's at, because you will hopefully be able to spend hundreds or potentially thousands of hours in this game. You're responsible for them to release that at the beginning of a school year. Come on. Right, exactly. September 6th. September 8th, they're announcing Faye Farm, which if you like cozy games, think like a Stardew Valley, but a little cuter art style, and you're able to do more. You're able to go monster hunting. And it's just a very magical, sweet, lovely, cozy world. Faye Farm is releasing September 8th. Also September 19th, Mortal Kombat one for the fighting game fans out there. This was showcased at Summer Game Fest play days this year. I did not personally get a chance to see it, but everyone I know who saw the behind closed door demos was thrilled with what they saw and very, very excited. September 19th, Lies of Pee is coming out, which there is a demo available now if you want to try to play it. But it's a dark twisted take on the Pinocchio story and with souls like gameplay. Yes, I hear you laughing and that's exactly what it is. I'm guessing neither of you have played the demo yet for Lies of Pee. No, I haven't. Now I'm sad that I have not done that. Wait, I have played it. Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, that's the thing that happens. Your sidekick, like the name is written down Gemini, but it's pronounced Jiminy. There's a lot, there's a lot of stuff in there, but it's very a dark take on it. So be prepared for that. Not for kids, despite Lies of Pee being a Pinocchio story. September 21st, Payday 3 for the Payday fans that are out there. Baby, Payday 3 I know has some mad hype to it. And for the Cyberpunk fans that might be listening, Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty is coming out September 26th. Now I know I did get a chance to play a bit of Phantom Liberty at Play Days this year and it sucked me right back into the Cyberpunk 2077 world. But this is almost, it almost feels like a redesign to how the game works and how the game plays. I will say it was a lot more high action than the way I played through Cyberpunk 2077. I went a little more stealthy hacky. And at least in the demo I got to play at Play Days, it was very heavy action. But it was cool. It looked great. It was that same aesthetic that you love. And there's a lot going on that people are hyped for in a new way for Cyberpunk. Are there any Cyberpunk fans? I played two hours of it and then I haven't played it. Is Phantom Liberty going to be available on the PS4? Because that's all I got. I'm not sure to be perfectly honest. I don't know. Because it looks kind of more up my alley. Yeah, Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty, I guess that if you're like high action, high action, get in there. You're going to be really happy with it, I think. And for me, driving was one of my less favorite parts of Cyberpunk 2077. At least in the demo I played of Phantom Liberty, I didn't really have to drive. And that was exciting for me. On a completely separate note, September 28th, Disney Speed Storm is coming out, which to me, I'm oversimplifying here, but Mario Kart with Disney characters. That's what it looks like. Yeah, that makes sense. Yep. So we're going to be jamming together lots of Disney IP in a fun racing game. So that's Disney Speed Storm. If you don't want the kitty aspect to your racing games, Forza Motorsport comes out October 10th kicking us off there. I only ever play Forza games for the tech demo of it all. I think they look fantastic. I love to push hardware to the limits and I feel like those games do that really well. But for people that want all of that, not only visual accuracy, but all the physics accuracy of a racing game then Forza Motorsport is going to be it for you. Yes. When I retire, I will only play Forza Motorsport. Really? Live your best life, Tom. Live your best life. I'm here for it. October 12th, Assassin's Creed Mirage is coming out. So for all of our Assassin's Creed folks, I think that could really be it for you. I haven't had a chance to test out anything from Assassin's Creed Mirage, but I know a lot of people are hyped for it. October 13th, Lords of the Fallen is coming out. Lords of the Fallen looks so good. I love a good dark fantasy. And so for me, just purely on aesthetic, I'm drawn into Lords of the Fallen. It's an action RPG and I just think it looks incredible. Now, October 17th is the day I most hyped for in our fall releases that have been announced. October 17th. I hear you laughing. Alan Wake, too. Why are we giggling at Alan Wake, too? I just enjoy your excitement is bubbling up joy in me. So that makes me happy. I'm a huge Remedy Games dork. I love Remedy Games properties. I love that they're all interconnected. I like to find Easter eggs in each one. And the narrative of the first Alan Wake is one of the best video game narratives of all time. I'll go out there and say it. So super hyped for Alan Wake, too. Really happy it's releasing right before Halloween because I think it's going to make some great Halloween streams. And all I did get to see a behind closed door demo at Summer Game Fest this year. And I was happy to recognize right away a control Easter egg just in the short demo I saw. I'm a huge control fan. Yeah. So that was nice. October 20th is also a bang in day. October 20th releases both Spider-Man 2. Oh my goodness. I believe people have been hyped for that for so long. The first Insomniac Spider-Man was so good. So this will be Spider-Man 2. And Super Mario Brothers wonder the first new Super Mario Brothers game. And I don't even know how long from Nintendo. So October 20th, I don't even, I mean, it's going to be a half PlayStation, half Nintendo day for me. If you had to choose between Spider-Man 2 and Super Mario Brothers, which would you choose, Tom? I will choose Super Mario Brothers because my brother was the one who had the Nintendo when we were growing up. And October 20th, this is birthday. So it's perfect. I would also choose Super Mario because that's my wedding anniversary. And I feel like if I was going to force my wife to watch me play a video game, it would be Super Mario Brothers would be much more entertaining. It's a tough choice, though. Yeah. Oh yeah. It was the Spider-Man door. I mean, come on. But I'm not going to put my wife through that in our anniversary. Come on. I'm like, what about you, Trish? I'm going to do half the half and half. Yeah, half the day one and half the day. That is also the weekend of my wedding anniversary, Rich. And it's also TwitchCon weekend. So I don't know how I'm going to make it happen, but October 20th is a day full of love in all different directions. My wedding anniversary is the day after Lies of P. I'm not sure what that says. Nope. At least it's not on that day. Oh, Trisha, thank you so much. That was amazing. That's only two months worth of games. That's like a whole year worth of games. That's crazy. That's crazy. That's it. 2023 is wild. Yeah. Well, another thing that was wild is a piece published by the BBC. They were talking about tech being used to better understand waste management. One effort is from a UK startup called Gray Parrot. The company places cameras above conveyor belts at waste facilities using machine vision models to analyze what actually passes through in real time. Its system so far has tracked 32 billion waste objects a year. This data can then be used to do things like make waste centers more efficient, but also shared around to give regulators a better understanding of what's actually in the waste and how to make policy around that, as well as used to better design packaging. Seeing what packaging that could be recyclable but is just being put entirely into waste is one example of how that would be used. Another company called Polytag uses invisible ultraviolet tags to track plastic bottles and it does this by brand. This can let customers see how many of their bottles actually end up in recycling center. The company can say, hey, our bottles are 100% recyclable, but they can actually know what percentage is actually getting through to recycling. I think that's super cool. That is a big issue. They mentioned that in here is that you don't have 100% recycling. You have a lot of things that get kicked out or just never make it into recycling in the first place. Being able to track that and use a little computer vision to tell what's actually going into the conveyor belts, I think that's fantastic. We will have a link to that in the show notes as well. That does it for today. Thank you so much, Trisha Hershberger. If people want to find more of what you do and how could they not want to, where should they go? Thank you guys so much for having me as always. You can find me on all the social networks at that girl Trish with no I in the girls. It's just that GRL Trish or on Twitter, YouTube slash Trisha Hershberger. I stream about four to five days a week on most weeks. Anytime you won't find me on set hosting in the worlds of tech or video games or fandom entertainment, you'll probably find me on Twitch. If you watch us on Good Day Internet on Twitch, a lot of times we raid Trish and you are so nice. You always take time to welcome people and say hi. It's so cool. It's really fun. Go check that out, folks. Patrons, stick around for the extended show Good Day Internet where we'll talk about why a lot of people are angry about AMD's exclusivity with that GameStar field that we were just talking about. Even though we really don't know what they mean by exclusive. It's it's fun. You can also catch the show live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern, 200 UTC. And if you want to find out more, there is a URL available daily technewshow.com slash live will be off tomorrow for US Independence Day, but we'll be back Wednesday with Scott Johnson. See you then. This show is part of the frog pants network. Get more at frogpants.com.