 This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by you the listener Thanks to every single one of you including Andrew Bradley, Dale Mulcahy, Matt Zaglin, and new patrons helping us to get Molly Wood on more regularly Curtis, Andrew, Steve, Jeff, Barry, Dude, Frank S, John, Mandeep, and Vanura! On this episode of DTNS high-end headphone makers are doing hearing aids and medical device companies doing high-end headphones Patrick Norton explains this convergence plus a little nimbyism breaks out in the Fediverse This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, June 20th, 2023 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio somewhere in the solar system I'm Sarah Lane At the edge of the 314 I'm Patrick Norton, and I'm the show's producer Roger Chang. And indeed you are That is not anything I have ever disputed in my life All right, let's start with the quick hits Announced a new feature in WhatsApp that will light users automatically silence calls from unknown numbers The feature is particularly relevant in WhatsApp's largest market That would be India which has seen a deluge of spam calls in recent months The app also added a new privacy checkup feature to review your privacy controls Announced plans to split its company into six different business units with the name of pursuing independent IPOs Now we're seeing a further leadership shake-up with the company current CEO and group chairman Daniel Zhang will step down from those roles He'll remain CEO and chairman of Alibaba cloud intelligence group, which is a position he took it back in December Taobao and T-Mall chairman Eddie Yongming Wu will be Alibaba's new CEO as of September 10th Apple expanded itself service repair program to cover the iPhone 14 series and M2 based laptops The company also announced users can complete a post-repair systems configuration process Which verifies the device is working properly Before this you needed to contact support for that additional step The reviews are out for the new 10.95 inch Google pixel tablet Digital Trends Joe Merring was not impressed by the battery life and software calling it a rough entry for the pixel family But everybody else seemed to have medium to high praise Tech crunch and gadget and pocket lint all had nice things to say about the accessories, especially the dock The dock lets the pixel tablet be used as a home hub If you remember from the announcement at Google I.O. you can just stick it in there and suddenly you got kind of a smart display sort of thing In fact, Gizmodo said it was better at being a smart home hub than it wasn't being a tablet The Google pixel tablet starts at $499 and is available right now Vili announced a new open AI powered tool coming to subscribers on July 17th This includes a script generator based on a brief video subscription including tone and length It also adds a teleprompter feature and a text-based video editor to automatically remove filler words and or long That's a long That wasn't a pause though That was long It was more of just a yeah Yeah It gave you the idea Alright Bloomberg sources say Spotify finally plans to launch a new more expensive subscription tier which the company has internally been calling Supremium Now the idea of this tier isn't just to charge you more It would reportedly give you high fidelity audio Finally this this is the tier they announced as a high-fi audio tier back in 2021 So if it does launch it might launch in non-US markets first Title Apple and Amazon among others have high quality tiers right now So let's start there Patrick. Why do you think Spotify has been dragging its heels on this? Well first of all we should point out this is a big deal for them because they're talking about finally bringing in lossless streaming We could argue what high fidelity is until the cows come home But this is really about their announcement They were gonna you know step up and deliver lossless streaming like title and Apple and Amazon music I feel I feel we're in a safe space I feel that you know they were waiting for the the numbers to line up So it would look like they would make money by offering this tier. It looks like if the rumors are correct It's gonna be way more expensive than any of their existing tiers including premium And they may try to bundle other things with it because I think one of the challenges Especially for Spotify is that the premium version sounds really good It's not technically lossless because it's not lossless But I think in a blind test It would be very hard for most people to hear the difference between premium and lossless or supreme Which sounds like a gasoline You know in in recent weeks Spotify and others have been in the news for you know winding down some you know podcast initiatives Podcasts are one of the things where you know people say Sarah you know what are the best headphones I go well I mean are you listening to music like are you doing like a Led Zeppelin type thing because if you're not and you're listening to podcasts I don't know how much it really matters So does it seem like Spotify may be doubling down more on that sort of premium music thing and less on the podcast thing Oh man right when you look at the human voice just you know we're all old enough to remember landlines wired phones and I think of the wired phone bandwidth was like 300 hertz to 3400 hertz But somehow despite the fact that I have high resolution audio off of my cell phone that beat up old landline always sounded much crisper and clearer I mentioned that because it's a great point I think it was mostly about Spotify was like we're going to make all the money off of podcasts by spending a lot of money off podcasts because podcasts are really hot at generating money And now they've looked around and go like well maybe people actually prefer music on Spotify Well the interesting thing about that is in March the Verge says Spotify's co-president Gustav Soderstrom told them that Hi-Fi was still on the way but the industry changed for a bunch of reasons And it does seem like money is also to do with the delay I don't know if it's they didn't have the proper contracts to license the higher fidelity maybe they had weird contracts or something like that But it does look like this thing's going to be pricey like you said right now it's $9.99 a month for Spotify's premium tier which is not the lossless one Hence the supreme name Apple and Amazon for their high fidelity audio charge $10.99 but a survey Spotify put out asked if people would pay $19.99 That doesn't necessarily mean that's the price it's going to be but that indicates that's what they're thinking around that range Yeah it's tough right because when you look at Spotify, Tidal and Kobos those are kind of the three music centric streaming platforms Nobody wants to compete you know Apple, Amazon the music is a side sell for them you know what I mean it's the it's the it's the mince right before you check out you know what I mean it's not their primary source of revenue So I think one of the challenges is you know they're looking at hi-fi plus from Tidal which gets like $20 a month and they're doing high resolution audio on that Kobos you know their streaming plans start at $10.83 a month and then gets and that's for all of their like flak 24-bit high resolution audio so I think Spotify's in a place where they need to make a lot of money if they're going to do this And I think it's going to be really challenging I think mostly they just didn't want to spend the money on it and I think they've been waiting out to see whether or not it would take off for Tidal or Kobos or Amazon music or Apple And I think they're just at this point where they have to do something to kind of keep par with almost every other music streaming service on the interwebs Now last week we talked a lot about the controversies percolating through Reddit Sarah we have controversies beginning to percolate in a different area of the internet Indeed Tom and that area is called the Fediverse which you could argue is every area of the internet okay so a lot of consternation percolating through that good old Fediverse As a reminder if you're like what is the Fediverse exactly the term is a combo of federated and universe and it's meant to mean a collection of protocols and servers and users the whole idea is that the Fediverse isn't governed by is not governed by an entity So you know you don't have Mark Zuckerberg at the helm for example by design means that if I were to post something anywhere and I'm using a Fediverse protocol Tom Patrick Roger everybody can see that post anywhere that they like It's kind of like email that's a popular comparison that you see around these days it's a protocol used by many you get the same result and no one really talks all that much about what email client you're using because it all works in conjunction Okay, so back to the consternation there have been allegations that some from inside meta have been meeting with mastodon instance administrators and asking them to sign an NBA the purported topic of these clandestine discussions is a standalone app coming from Instagram notably built on activity pub activity pub is notable because it also powers mastodon this has led to some people calling for an anti meta pact that agrees to block any instances owned by Meta John Gruber you may know him from writing during fireball for many years posted about this on his blog writing quote if Facebook were on the cusp of launching a Gmail like email service would you preemptively declare that your email server would block them to me. That's what this anti meta FETI packed is arguing for. All right Patrick. What say you. Um, yeah, everyone is equal as long as they're not a Zuckerberg project. Um, I think this is kind of, I don't know if I want to say short sided I understand the motivation because people hate Meta so much people hate Facebook so much. People are so frustrated especially you know it being as I said to someone a while back you know when when I'm agreeing with the Kardashians about bad policy, even on Instagram. That's a weird moment right. Right. But I think, you know, Tom was talking about it in pre show, where it's like hey, they haven't done anything awful yet. And I think the entire internet's assumption is it's meta, they're going to do something awful. It doesn't matter if it's Facebook, Instagram meta or anything else. At some point they're going to do something awful and ruin this place for everyone. Yeah, the flip side is, is the whole federated environment kind of reminds me of Twitter in the early days where Twitter never really made sense to me until there was an app in a system, and that made it easier to digest all the randomness that was coming out of Twitter so I feel like there's a lot that's going to go on there. Yeah, well, yeah, you're not wrong there. Part of part of this that and I agree with John Gruber here is, well hold on a second, you know, if we are using activity pub to, you know, you know, in Meta's case, supposedly to build a Twitter like a comparison called threads, that is just, you know, that that is the the going term at this point. Okay, well, there are a lot of people that I care about very much who use Facebook a lot more than I do. And wouldn't that be nice if we could all sort of talk in a different capacity. So the whole idea of like, Meta's going to screw this up. It's like, well, if the Fediverse works as advertised Meta can't screw it. Right. Yeah, there's a confusion going on between principles and protocols here. Right. And your point is exactly the one I also would make to Sarah which is, if your protocol is truly open. And if the Fediverse, in this case, mastered on an activity pub works well, then everyone is allowed to federate or not federate based on the behavior of the other party. Now, on the one hand, that should not stop people from pledging to say, you know what, I'll never federate with Meta. They have the right to do that. That's the way an open federated Federated Universe works don't like you. But I would prefer to be a member of an instance that judged other instances based on their actions, rather than Oh, no, we just don't like this company. And we think they're so bad they're guilty until proven innocent in this case. I, I understand that there might be situations where you're like, yeah, I know that this is a malicious organization, and I'm not going to federate with them. That is a real thing that could happen. You might know that this is, you know, a bunch of malicious hackers or something. I don't consider Meta that I would. I personally, maybe I'm milk toast, would like to give Meta and threads or whatever they're doing a chance to prove themselves first. But I, I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that it's going to be bad. I mean, it's funny, like generally speaking, I don't believe in Napoleonic law, the idea that you were guilty until proven innocent. And it's funny, right? But nobody's nobody's talking about, you know, flip board or medium or tumbler or Mozilla, or the WordPress plugin that's that that are all kind of working or being developed for activity pub. And I also, but I understand it seems like everything, I am sympathetic, but you can't be open if you're not open. Yeah, maybe that may be milk toast too. I'm with you. And, and, and you if the Federer versus working properly, what you'll be able to keep threads from being bad, but by having the threat of cutting them off, right? We wait. Yeah. With baited breath. All right, folks, in our surveys of which guest you'd like to hear from more, you've probably heard me sing this on a DTS 100 times, one or two times before. Molly Wood is the single most frequently mentioned person. She is beloved in our community. So we did a deal. Molly's willing to come on at least one Friday a month. She'll commit to at least one Friday a month. If you express your support for that, which you as patrons have already done that that's in the bag, we just need a few more patrons to make all the math work out. So we set a pretty ambitious goal, 4000 patrons by June 29. That's now nine days away. We've got just a few more than 400 to go. So thank you to everybody who has signed up. Thank you to everybody who stayed a patron. And if you haven't become a patron and you'd like to hear a little more Molly on the show, sign up now and make Molly Fridays happen at patreon.com slash D T and S. There's an interesting convergence happening in audio that we want to talk to Patrick about. There were a couple of stories today that illustrated it well. Sennheiser, renowned maker of high end headphones. I still remember those beautiful foam yellow headphones that I first experienced them with. Announced its first over the counter hearing aids, the all day clear starting at $1400. I got two different models of them. A medical device company, Massimo, in a separate story, released the Denon Pearl and Pearl Pro earbuds for $199 and $349 respectively. So if you didn't catch that, we had a high end audio brand making an assistive device and a medical company putting out high end audio. What's going on here, Patrick? So many things are going on here. I mean, it's probably time to have a conversation about the strange and wondrous world of medical device manufacturers moving into retail because of the ongoing success Apple has had with the Apple Watch features, getting FDA approval, recent changes in over the counter hearing aids, and my favorite dead horse to beat industry consolidation. Okay, so, you know, for anybody who's like, well, I mean, it sounds cool, you know, to have assistive devices that are made by companies who understand audio, but what is going on here, Patrick? Okay, May 2021, Swiss company called Sinova acquired Sennheiser's consumer audio business. Not a huge surprise, right, because of the over the counter hearing aid act of 2017 was finally becoming the law of the land here in the United States. I want to say October 17, 2022, give or take. And then there's this other company we mentioned, Massimo. They're the home of a broad portfolio of hospital and home medical technology solutions, primarily known for oxygen sensor technology, sensing for tonic signal processing. They bought a company called Sound United. You might not know Sound United, but you probably know brands like Denon Bowers and Wilkins, Polk Audio, Morance, definitive technology, very, very, very high end audio rounds. Some of them are high end, some of them are more common, Polk's not super high end, they make beautiful stuff for not much money, but this company Sound United owns all these brands. Well, you know, I get it, BMW definitely one of the highest end class A audio, you can spend a lot of money there. But this medical technology company bought all of this, this holding company owns all these audio companies. They were also involved in this big major lawsuit with Apple. It ended in a mistrial last month. It was like a 6-1 hung jury, six jurists decided that Apple hadn't stolen Massimo's trade secrets. Quote on the use of light to measure biomarkers like heart rate and blood oxygen levels for use in Apple watches. Hint, Massimo has its own lineup of smartwatches with a medical angle. You can dig into those court cases and the reporting on that if you care to. You know, and it's interesting, right? Because the Apple Watch has FDA clearance or approvals. There's a difference, don't ask me, for detection of irregular heart rhythms in 2018. Their ECG app, I think, was approved in 2020, atrial fibrillation, history and data gathering for Rune Labs. There's Strive PD Park disease software that got either approval or clearance in June 2022. So there's a lot going on in this area and a lot of companies are like, wait a minute, there's money here. It's interesting that they announced the Pearl and the Pearl Plo earbuds. Those are essentially, there's a company called NERA, they're an Australian audio company. And they did this wild thing where they bounce sound in your ears and they measured autoacoustic responses. Essentially, some sounds that your ear gives back in response to these particular pulses that are sent into it. This is legit. It sounds really audiophile hinky, but it's actual legit science. I've experienced them. They do a fantastic job tuning their headphones for your ears. I've used the over-ear ones. So the Pearl and Pearl Pro, they're essentially the NERA True and True Pro, but they have Denon branding instead of NERA branding because Denon brought NERA and brought them into the fold. I want to say about a year ago, like I said, they're over the ear tech, the headphones sound fantastic. And instead of like NERA's adaptive sound technology is now going to be the Massimo adaptive acoustic technology. I suspect that's a step towards Massimo doing their own over-the-counter hearing aid system. That's complete speculation on my part. Please don't sue me. Okay, so if I'm hearing you right, Massimo is getting into this because they just want to widen the portfolio. They want to have, they're sticking their fingers into more consumer-friendly markets like, hey, we're selling oxygen sensors, we're selling hearing aids, maybe we sell some headphones. Maybe we can cross-pollinate some of this technology. Is that right? Yeah, last month they introduced STORC, which is a baby monitoring system that came out at the beginning of May that was announced. And we expect more products to be coming out from the crew at Massimo. I also expect more of their medical technology to start moving into their watches. It's kind of interesting to see how this is going to work and where it's going to go. Then on the other end, Sennheiser, you mentioned real quickly at the beginning there, is just taking advantage of the fact that there's new rules, and we could do a whole show on this, but new rules over being able to sell hearing aids, right? Yeah, so over-the-counter hearing aids, essentially as of October 22, right? There's this whole category of over-the-counter hearing aids for people who self-identify as having hearing issues. It's not like I can't hear the chainsaw running next to my head. It's like I'm in a room full of people, and I can't quite hear Sarah's voice over the noise of the room. Or I'm on a phone call with Tom, but I can't get the phone loud enough to hear Tom. So there's a whole bunch of Sony's doing these, the Sennheiser's doing these, several other companies are doing these that you will be familiar with. And then there's a whole bunch of companies that are maybe traditional hearing aid manufacturers that are moving into this space where you can buy it and configure it or buy it and click the sound boosting settings that you like for these over-the-counter hearing aids. I mean, some of the stuff, you know, I have to say, it's like, I think companies go, oh, you know, accessibility, sure, we can do that. Let's just market that to you. It doesn't mean that the product isn't good, but it is something that more and more, especially, very much especially with people, you know, who are wearing smart watches. You know, have come to expect, right? And the more that you can do that, particularly with audio stuff, the more a company looks to be a company that you can trust, right? I think also for a big thing for Massimo was, you know, they had this big old medical technology company and they didn't have a lot of experience dealing with consumer electronics channels. So a big part of the reason for buying this massive audio company was because they knew all of the consumer audio or the consumer electronics channel. That's a really good reason. It's a very peculiar environment. I've talked to people and it's like what it takes to get onto the shelves at Best Buy versus what's the best way to deal with Amazon versus what about these other sources? So to buy that, I think a large part of it was buying that expertise. Well, as soon as I'm done with this show, I'm going to go pull a nice, delicious Fuji Apple out of the fridge and take a big old bite of it. But Sarah, will I be risking trademark violation if I do that? Oh, Tom. Well, you know, normally I would say what a silly question. However, let's get through the next story first. Apple, the maker of Apple products, Apple Computer, wants rights to images of apples, the fruit. And the fruit Union Suisse, that is a farmers organization that's been around for 111 years in Switzerland. It's kind of worried. It's historical symbol is a red apple with a white cross across it, which is depicting the swish national flag. Now, if Apple gets its way, the organization, the organization being the fruit Union Suisse, might not have the right to use an Apple in its logo anymore. Here's a little background. So in 2017, Apple, the company submitted an application to the Swiss Institute of Intellectual Property or IPI, requesting the IP rights for black and white depiction of a generic Apple. In 2022, the IPI partially granted Apple's request late last year, agreeing that Apple, the company could have rights relating to only some of the goods that it wanted, citing a legal principle that considers generic images of common goods, like apples, the fruit to be in the public domain. Earlier this year, Apple peeled, I mean, appealed. We don't know which categories they got in which they didn't. We just know that they appealed. That's all hidden while the case is proceeding. But the worry now is that if Apple gets protection for a generic black and white Apple, picture of an Apple in a broad number of categories, it could claim brand confusion with almost all Apple depictions. This is not just Switzerland, by the way. The World Intellectual Property Organization's records show that Apple, the company has made similar requests to dozens of IP authorities in Japan and Turkey in Israel and Armenia, just to name a few. Now, whenever I see these kinds of stories, my knee-jerk reaction is to pull out my old episode and know a little more and go like, hey, when BlackBerry trademarks BlackBerry doesn't stop you from calling the fruit BlackBerry, it's limited to the categories BlackBerry works in, security software, handsets, whatever. But this story, as you proceeded through it, Sarah, seems to indicate that Apple is like, give us as broad a protection as possible. If this means you can't put an Apple on the bag that you buy your apples in, fine. We want that. I don't think they'll get that, but that's a little broad, don't you think? Oh, that's very broad. I was like, we may have to keep Apple out of the Fediverse, because this is just, I mean, I'm going to say this is ridiculous. This screams of overreach. I mean, if you think about Apple's relationship to trademark, Apple, the record company went after Apple, the electronics manufacturer, and that relationship has been going on for decades. They finally settled that, what, 2007 after like 20 or 30 years of fighting? Gosh, did they? Half our lives that fight went on. This is just bizarre. Like why do they, are those stupid little stickers on the back of people's, the back windows of people's cars that important, are people really going like, that white Apple could be for the Eckers file? Well, if it's on the back of your car, you would say yes. I don't think anybody who has an Apple sticker on the back of their car wants to go after a farmer's organization and splits it away. I don't even think Apple Incorporated wants to stop the farmer's organization, but their lawyers are pushing this so far that it might have the unintended consequence of doing so. Is this like the thing when Disney ruined copyright for everyone? Yeah, that too. And then once they did that, another lawyer, you know, you could have just trademarked the characters, and everybody at Disney went, oh, I'm really sorry about ruining public domain. Right, no, they were like, yeah, but this is stronger. That's what the lawyer said. That's what they, yeah. All right, let's check out the mailbag. With Google domain shutting down, Martin, or sorry, Martin, your name isn't Martin, your name is Alan, and you're from Montreal. Alan says, Alan wanted to shine a light on another registrar, not often brought up, Cloudflare. Now, many of you who were listening are like, we know Cloudflare, but many of you may not. Alan says, they sell domains at cost, so it's pretty much as low as it can get. They don't care to make a profit as they make good money with their other CDN and DDOS protection services. If you'd never heard of their registrar, it's because they don't waste money advertising on it either. Oh, I mean, we all probably, I'd say the majority of people listening probably know Cloudflare, but I had forgotten they registered domain names myself, so that's a good reminder. So did I, especially, you know, now that I'm like, Google domain's going to Squarespace, do I want other options? That is a good one. Thank you, Alan. Merci beaucoup. Merci beaucoup to you too, Patrick Norton. Let folks know where they can keep up with your work when you are not with us. I'm starting to pick up again on Twitter, that's at Patrick Norton. Of course, Robert Herron and I host podcast, AVXL. I apologize, has been very active this month, but we will be picking up speed again at the end of this month and into July. And that's AVXL on your favorite podcast. Excellent. Patrons, stick around. We've got another story for you. Patrons, get one more story. Roblox is creating a separate category for adult content. And there are limits. Don't let your gasp get too gaspy. Creators will, however, get some freedom to show a little blood, maybe put a beer in somebody's hand, stuff like that. We're going to talk about it on Good Day Internet. So stick around. Just a reminder, you can catch our show live because we do it live. Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern, 20 hundred UTC. You can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We're back doing it all again tomorrow with Scott Johnson 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.