 This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners. That's you. Thanks to all of you, including Tim Ashman, Johnny Hernandez, and Hi-Tag Oki. Coming up on DTNS, tips to help you not get fooled by misinformation, plus how Apple's move into sports will affect how you watch in bars, and Nest's co-founder would like your food scraps, please. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, February 17th, 2023 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. Drawing the top tech stories from Cleveland, I'm Len Peralta. And on the show's producer, Roger Chan. Folks, if you're new to the show, I know we have some new folks in the audience. Welcome to independent tech news that is really seriously only supported by you. We have some advertising on the main feed, but we don't even know who they are. So if you really like supporting the independence and the little guy and all those kinds of phrases, you are in the right place. Thank you for being here. Let's start with the quick hits. Several tech news sites are reporting about the release of the latest iOS 16.4 developer beta. Here's what it brings. Support for the new emojis in Unicode 15.0, updates for international keyboards, notifications for web apps that you've pinned to your home screen, tilt and orientation support for the Apple Pencils Hover feature, and manual and automatic software update support for matter accessories. Another Apple-related software news parallels from Mac, now supports Windows 11 Pro on Apple Silicon. Since Microsoft now lets it use Windows 4 ARM. Yeah, that web notification stuff. That is pretty cool. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced it is opening a technology office. It will be headed by the U.S. Chief Technology Officer Stephanie T. Nguyen. The FTC says the office will support investigations and actions. Advise on policy and research initiatives and, quote, highlight market trends and emerging technologies that impact the FTC's work. Samsung introduced Message Guard, a feature for Galaxy smartphones and tablets to protect users from zero-click attacks. Those are attacks that use things like attachments, usually an image, to exploit a vulnerability that requires no interaction from the user. Pegasus software, for example, took advantage of this. Message Guard isolates image attachments sent to Samsung Messages or Messages by Google, then scans them before processing to help prevent device infection. It's available on the Galaxy S23 now and will roll out to Galaxy phones running one UI 5.1 or later. Writer sources say the Tencent has made significant cuts to its extended reality or XR unit and it no longer plans to make VR hardware. The company reportedly forecast it would not achieve profitability with its XR unit until at least 2027, with the unit showing a lack of promising games for the hardware. Yeah, if that's how I felt, I'd probably shut it down too. Tencent spokesperson said it has not, however, disbanded the XR unit. So they're still there. You're saying there's a chance. The Entertainment Software Association plans to hold its E3 gaming show in June, its first live event since 2019. Now, if you're wondering why we're telling you that in February, it's because Ubisoft CEO, Yves Guillemot, caused some confusion on this front, saying in an earnings call, if E3 happens, we will be there, leading some to question if the event was still up in the air. ReadPop organizes the show and its president, Lance Fensterman, reiterated that the event is full speed ahead. At some point, I'm still confused. Yeah, it's like, no, E3 is really happening. Why are you saying that? Was it not happening? Yeah. All right, let's talk about Major League Soccer. Next Saturday, February 25th, the 2023 US Major League Soccer season starts. Yes, European soccer fans, we know our league is not nearly as important as any of yours. It's true. But this is significant for tech because it's Apple's biggest sports venture yet. If Apple wants to pivot to services, it needs TV to be successful. And for TV to be successful, it needs sports. Let's catch you up on what Apple is actually doing different with these MLS broadcasts. Yeah, so first, you get everything. You say, what does that mean everything? No blackouts. Subscribers get to watch every regular season game, also the All-Star game, also the MLS club playoffs, as well as League's Cup and development teams. Second, game times don't jump around because of TV deals, which is something that you may have experienced in the past. So almost all games start at 7.30 p.m. local time on either Wednesday or Saturday. There are a handful of afternoon and Sunday games as well though. Now, Apple's MLS season pass costs $15 per month, $99 for the whole season, if you want to do that, or $13 per month and $79 for the season, if you are an Apple TV plus subscriber. One question some fans have had and this is a good one is, what about bars or pubs or restaurants or, you know, that place I want to go and hang out with my friends and watch the game there? If you want to go to one of those to watch a game, will the bar need to get an Apple TV or a Roku to participate? Yeah, I actually don't know licensing-wise how that works, but no, they don't have to do that. Some games are going to air on Fox and FS1. So if they have a business cable package that carries those, they'll be able to show those. And a lot of bars use Direct TV for business. Apple is letting Direct TV handle the commercial rights for all the MLS games. This is something that Amazon also did with Thursday Night Football. So if you are a business that subscribes to Direct TV for business, you won't need to do anything extra, you just need to make sure you're paying for the plan that carries Thursday Night Football and Apple MLS games. This sounds to me, I know it's a template that Apple would like to show works and then maybe convince other sports. Obviously they couldn't convince the NFL, but maybe they can convince Major League Baseball. Who knows, maybe even the NBA or maybe they can get the NHL away from Disney. But it sounds like streaming fixing things and making things easier rather than just disrupting them. So one of my questions when we were discussing this before the show started was, okay, so Direct TV for business, could I get Direct TV for business if I wanted to operate like a bar that gets all the games? And I think the answer is yes, it's just going to cost me more. But on the flip side, if I was, I don't know, my local pub down the street, why wouldn't I just buy an Apple TV and then pay less? So these are both very good questions. I have a spectrum business account. With that account, I could get the TV service that you use in restaurants. They didn't make me show a business license. When you look at the Direct TV for business terms, it says new approved commercial customers only. But I don't know how rigorous they are about that. If you say like, oh yeah, I just, I run a business out of my own home and we need a commercial license because we have clients or something. That would be pretty easy to say. Yeah, businesses are. They'll probably take your money. The flip question that gets way more interesting. Like if I run a bar and I don't have any of these, can I just set up a Roku with my personal account? And the answer to that is 98% sure no. That if you're a bar and you're showing TV, you have to have some kind of licensing for a public performance. And that's what these business versions of Direct TV and Cable TV provide for those places is, oh, if you're getting it from us, it's licensed for public performance. You don't have to worry about that part. Yeah, I guess the question there would be how well is it enforced? You know, if you have a liquor license, well, you're probably not Sarah's living room. You know, that sort of thing. But again, you have more options than ever at least, you know, as we're talking about MLAs. So moving in the right direction for some of us who have been very frustrated with blackout times and, you know, where do I see a game and when type type conversations for sports in general? I don't know because Apple TV is available on like Roku, PlayStation, Xbox, Chromecast, Android. I mean, you can get the Apple TV app everywhere. I don't know when it would be beneficial for someone to try to pretend to be a commercial business, except maybe rural. If you're in a rural area where your TV streaming is just your bandwidth just isn't good. That then, yeah, then maybe maybe that's that's worth it to try to get these if you're a really big Major League Soccer fan. The bigger wider point, though, here is that this is a template that Apple is using to say, look, we can give our customers the perfect experience, no blackouts, all the games they want at a reasonable price, and it'll be profitable. That's the key. They need to show by the end of this first season to the other leagues like, hey, look how much Major League Soccer is making off of this. And it needs to make money for Apple too, right? It needs to contribute to that services bottom line. Indeed. Yeah, I asked a very big soccer fan of mine, a Premier League fan. I said, yeah, what do you think about this deal? And he said, haven't heard about it. Tell me more. And I thought, well, Apple's not marketing in the right audience here because here we are talking about it. I'm not sure how many soccer games I'm going to be watching as far as US leagues. Maybe I will. Who knows? But yeah, if this could be something that I could do for Major League Baseball, for example, that would change my life and my mother's life as well. Absolutely. The no blackouts thing would be huge for baseball. It's because it's not that I have a service that gives me the local games, but I had to work really hard to find one that had Dodger games because the Dodgers channel is not on anything else. And it's not so much that I need to watch the Dodgers, but when the Cardinals play the Dodgers at LA, that's my only way to watch it is on that. So, yeah, there's all that stuff. Also, before we move off of this, anybody who works in a bar or any retail establishment that has TVs, if you know, like, how often did the inspectors come around and check your license? How often are people caught? Be curious to hear those stories. Feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com. Indeed. Tony Fidel, somewhat famous in the tech world. I'm saying that ironically because he brought the idea for an MP3 player to Apple and then oversaw the development of the iPad. Then in 2010, he went on to found Nest, eventually acquired by Google. He's now an investor and also a startup coach. But for every Steve Jobs, there is a was. For every Bill Gates, there is a Paul Allen. And at least at Nest, for any Tony Fidel, there's a Matt Rogers. Now, if you haven't heard of Matt Rogers, understandable. Rogers doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. You can look him up, but, you know, he's not really front and center, but he has worked as an engineer at Apple for five years, spent eight years at Nest, and now invests in and guides startups trying to solve environmental problems. And in May of 2020, Matt Rogers started something called Mill. Tom, tell the good people out there why Mill is trash. Okay, well Mill isn't trash, but how is Mill dealing with trash? Yes, Mill is making a trash can specifically for your food waste, for your organic waste. The problem Mill is trying to solve is that the USDA estimates about a third of the food supply in the U.S. goes uneaten. And rotting food generates methane. So if you just throw it in the landfill, it's going to release methane into the atmosphere. In fact, uneaten food is estimated to make up 8% of global carbon emissions. So what Mill is doing is trying to make it really easy for you to get rid of your food waste and make it usable for something other than landfill. The way it works is you scrape food waste into the bin and then you schedule it, you can do it manually, but you schedule it to process it. Usually you're going to schedule it overnight when you're not around, you're asleep. Mill will, when scheduled, dehydrate the food and then grind it into an easy to process powder. When the bin fills up, you empty that powder into a shoebox size box and mail it to Mill. Mill gives it to facilities that then filter out inorganic matter and turn it into chicken feed. That turns it into chickens that lay eggs that you use to make an omelette and then you throw the eggs into the Mill and then it becomes more chicken feed and the circle of life is complete. This is a service, not a thing you buy. So you get the trash can and you pay $33 a month to have the trash can but also to be able to mail the powder to them. You can reserve it right now with a $33 deposit. They're going to start shipping them this spring and they're in talks to integrate it into municipal waste collection so they're hoping to get some city or another to implement this as an option for residents that they could just use as part of their waste collection. But it would be a premium on top of that. We don't know, right? They don't have any agreements with municipalities so whether it would be included in your continuing food processing, if you're in a city that a lot of cities do composting, they have composting bins, maybe it could just be covered by that as a replacement. But there's none of those deals yet. So right now you got to pay the $33 a month if you want it and that's where I stopped. I love this idea. I love the idea of like, oh a food waste bin that easily keeps it from smelling, that's nice, makes it easy to process for chicken feed. I like that, keeps it from emitting methane. But $33 is a lot for me to do that just out of the goodness of my own heart. Yeah, it's a full stop for a lot of people and it's not because people don't want to make the most of what this sounds to me like essentially smart composting. Right now, where I live, I've got a little compost countertop bin, plastic bin that I was given, I didn't have to pay for it, that I'm supposed to put stuff in and then send that stuff to the larger compost bin that's the size of a recycling or garbage bin. So we have three, one, two, three, they're all different. And I use that. And the garbage picks it up and we're on a weekly schedule and that's all good. The idea that the mill would do more with my composted food, which is, I always think of it as just like, it's just like rotting garbage, right? It's not like plastics or metals or cardboard, it's food, but it's still garbage. If that can be used more smartly to go back into the ecosystem for everybody, great. But I mean, how many people out there go, I would also like to pay $33 a month for this and have to take it out once it's a powder into something and mail it back to the company. Listen, if you want to do that, I salute you. And I don't want to say that it's not a good idea, but I think it's just going to have hard adoption because it gets people out of a routine that's already easier. I will add that it seems kind of odd that you need to grind it. If you wanted to ensure that non-organic materials were making it out like you're filtering out, would you want to avoid grinding that little plastic spoon into it and it seemed like it would make it more complicated? No, but that makes it a non-starter for use in the facility. You want that stuff ground up so that it is in its easiest to process state. That keeps it from stinking too. That helps reduce it. There's a lot of reasons I could see if you want to grind it up. What I don't know is how then they filter out the inorganic matter. Because they're going to have to filter out inorganic whether you grind it or not. Yeah, it's like if it's already a powder. Hey, if you can do it, you can do it. Maybe that makes it easier. In fact, if anybody in agriculture knows how you filter inorganic matter out of a powder like that, I can imagine it's done because there's all kinds of ways it would have to be done. But I don't know how they do it. This feels like step one of something that eventually we're all going to do. Maybe, yeah. It's kind of like EV cars. Right. If it gets included in municipalities, that seems like the best bet than getting people to do this on their own. Because this is easier than dealing with a compost bin. I did dealt with those little compost things anymore before. They're dirty and they stink. They have to remember to open them up. This thing is going to just sit there. You press the pedal. You scrape the food in it. You're done. I do get that part of it. It's just too costly for me. If that cost was also you got discounted eggs from the chicken farmer. Yeah, right? Give me something. That would be great. Yeah. All right. Well, folks, again, if you have a thought about this or anything else on the show, be sure to send us an email. Our email address is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. On the latest episode of another show that I do, I called a word with Tom Merritt. I got to sit down and talk to former BBC News correspondent and host of the podcast Under Currents, Tech Tyrants and Us, Natalia Antelava about the word manipulation. And I specifically asked her about manipulation on social media and what we can do about it. Based on your experience and what you think, for a user of social media, what are signs that people can look for and maybe they're being manipulated? And what should they do about it? Do you just abandon platforms? Do you curate who you follow? Do you have any good advice for folks? I think my advice is to be a bit of a journalist about it and look at everything with a little healthy dose of skepticism and figure out where it comes from. I mean, very basic social media, hygiene, actually, information hygiene, right? Check the sources. See if they're more than two sources or something. Don't repeat it. Don't retweet it. Don't share it unless you're sure that it's true and figure out what's the agenda of whoever it is that's spreading a piece of information that you might be interested in. Not really, you know, not rocket science. It's basic stuff, but it's stuff that requires a little bit of work. You know, it's a lot easier to scroll mindlessly through your timeline. Guilty is charged. I do that too. But when it comes to information, you know, all we like, you know, it's funny sometimes, my advice to a lot of people, sometimes all we need to do is to think, you know, to use the weapon that we have in our brain. It sounds like work. It does. It is work. It is work. If you're not willing to do it, then you should be ready to be manipulated. Sad but true. Sarah, what do you think about what Natalia said there? Yeah, you know, I've talked about this certainly amongst ourselves, but certainly on an episode of GDI or 7, that I have a variety of extremely smart, well-read, educated friends who will, you know, every once in a while, you know, maybe it's a group text or something, they'll float around something, you know, a piece of news, and I'll go, well, what's the source? And it's a tweet, you know, from an account that, I mean, I don't know the account. You know, the bio of the account doesn't really point to anything. And it's like, well, what's the source? And they say, well, the source is the tweet. And I say, no, no, no, that's not how it works. I mean, I could tweet anything. I mean, what's my source? You know, you either have to be the source of the news or you have to say, here's where I got it from and here's why I trust this source. And one of the things I think is probably, you know, you see it, I see it the most where I just go, oh, you know, it makes me cringe. You don't have to be like a journalism graduate, you know, to understand this stuff is when people say, well, you know, 64% of all Americans don't even compost. And I go, really? Oh, that's a lot. What's the source of that? And, you know, often they go, well, I mean, it's just everybody knows that. It's like, no, no, no. You can't, you know, this is exactly, this is where, you know, this all breaks down. And this doesn't mean that I'm challenging you because you're wrong. It means I'm challenging you to say, let's all find out where this comes from. Maybe that source is wrong because that happens too. In fact, that happens more than it should. And we should all, you know, get used to just checking and double-checking all of our sources. Yeah. In that way, I really like Natalia's response, which is think. If you want a simple response, it's like, just think about stuff. Because, yeah, I've had the same experience where you tell someone like, well, where did you hear that? And they start to get upset. Like, I don't know, but it's true. And it's like, well, you just want to, you want it to be true, but that doesn't make it true. Well, and you also feel attacked as, as if I'm saying you're wrong. Right. And I'm not saying you're wrong. Let's just make sure we're all right. Well, I've got five tips if you want a little more than just think. I think that's good advice, but if you want a little more, five tips to stop yourself from falling for misinformation. I gathered these from a lot of different sources that were saying these are things that you can do. And I feel like these are five that jive with my own experience and what I think works. One is be aware of your own blind spots, emotions and biases. When you're, when you're reading or passing along anything important, think of that all the time. You know, what a, what do I tend to believe that maybe I shouldn't? What do I get emotional about? If I'm getting emotional, maybe it, maybe it's not true. Then question the source. Everything that Sarah was just saying, who's saying it? What's their motivation? Does it just look valid or is it valid? Just because it's written on Twitter, it doesn't make it an actual source. Be curious. Read beyond the headline. Consider the opposite. Is the, does the opposite sound true? Well, then maybe the thing you're reading is also not true. And look outside your bubble. Use a variety of sources. Number four, stop and think before believing and sharing exactly what Natalia was talking about. And then number five, actively counter misinformation, but without getting drawn into an argument or a debate. You don't have to convince anyone. It is very powerful, even though it may not look powerful to just say this isn't true and walk away. It can do a lot. Here, here, Tom. Would you like to talk about making the air cleaner in your home? Yeah. All right. We figured out food. Let's figure out air. Ikea would also like to talk about it. The company introduced a new indoor air quality sensor. And my Swedish is going to get bungled here. So apologies in advance to anybody who can do this better than me, but it's called Vinsteerka. This translates to wind force in English. It's arriving in April and it's a tabletop device, something you put on a counter or something has a large display. So you as an owner can measure in real time things like particulate matter levels or PM2.5, humidity, temperature, total volatile organic compounds, also known as VOC, of your home's air using Ikea's new home app. That's also new. Now we don't have pricing on the Vinsteerka yet, but it is touted to work as a standalone air quality monitor. Or if you're connected to Ikea's $69 Dira Gara hub, which is already available. It can also control Ikea's air purifier line, which is called Starkvind, to help improve air quality overall. So if you care about this stuff, Ikea says, we've got some stuff for you. The Dira Gara hub is interesting. It's a matter ready device. And Ikea has already said we'll update the hub to work with matter in the future. I like this. Not everybody needs this. If you live in an area where there are fires, like Sarah and I do, it might be useful there. If you live in an area with pollution, it might be useful there. Yeah, if you're near a chemical plant, or some other urban reason where you're like, this actually really matters. You have somebody in your household who is sensitive and needs to have pure air. You want to make sure your HVAC system is working. I'm curious what the price is going to be, but if the hub is $69, I'm hoping that the Vinsturga itself is not too much more, I might end up going for something like this. Especially to know like, yeah, they're saying it's bad outside. Is it bad inside too? Or it's not bad outside, but do I want to open those windows and invent stuff? It could be useful. I mean, you mentioned living in a fire prone area, California as a whole, as well as other areas in the world. I can't tell you how many friends like me were just sort of like, well, what are we going to do about it as we move? And then they had a child. And then this all became a lot more important. And I can imagine that Ikea will sell this to a lot of families with young kids. Yeah, good point. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Got a good one from Steven. Steven said, I was just listening to Thursday's episode of GDI. If you didn't listen to GDI yesterday, we kind of took the conversation right out of DTNS talking about VR and, you know, what companies are doing, particularly Sony and what advantage Sony might have over Microsoft. Steven says, in my wild and fanciful imagination, Apple may have delayed the announcement of their headset till June because they're going to announce a partnership with Microsoft and Game Pass. Steven says, Apple may be ultimately hoping this would encourage developers to develop for macOS, take advantage of the new chips, allowing them to outsource gaming, take advantage of some additional revenue in the ecosystem, ultimately not having to worry, as their focus, of course, is on the potential revenue from hardware sales. A new high-spec MacBook Pro could be like the new BMW M5 for the person who needs a machine for work, but also likes to do some gaming. Steven says, just some wild, wild thoughts and why you should all live in my metaverse, as it will never happen in reality, of course. I love the way Steven couched this. It was like, look, I'm not trying to say this is true, but wouldn't it be cool if it was true? And, yeah, I get you. But on both points, like, yeah, I don't think Apple would partner with Microsoft just for their VR headset. Never say never. Nothing's impossible. Doesn't seem likely. But how cool would it be if Game Pass came, like, not to the iPhone? We won't let you in the App Store, but we'll let you on the VR headset in order to drive sales. That would be really interesting. And it does have a sort of appeal because Sony has the PSVR too, and Microsoft is, as you guys talked about yesterday, is reducing its development of HoloLens. It's becoming more of an enterprise device. So there's an opening there for somebody to provide VR for Xbox. I love it, Steven. You know, and when this eventually happens, and who knows? It may. We're going to look back to this day. February, what is it? 17th. Right. When Steven told us the future. Steven himself didn't even know how right he was, perhaps we might say, someday. Who knows? Indeed. Well, let's talk to Len Peralta who has been illustrating today's show. Len, what have you drawn for us today? You know, this is the way my mind works. This week, of course, we celebrated Valentine's Day. We did. And also, today's show, you talked about two products that are, I think, are, you know, for home to help out. You got the mill, and of course, Vinsterka. So this was my weird thought if these two got together and introduced themselves to one another and said, hi, I, you know, I'm mill, I just, I turned discarded food into a powder used as animal feed. And Vinsterka's like, I measure pollutants in the home. So they're like, well, let's go to dinner. I can turn our doggy bags into something useful. And she's like, I sense something wonderful. So adorable. It's, you know, it's strange, right? Like these two, I don't know if they'd ever talked to one another, but they'd be in the home. And so there's my little take on Valentine's Day for the mill and the Vinsterka. If you'd like to see this, you can go to my Patreon, patreon.com forward slash Len, where you can get it immediately if you back me at the DTNS Lover level, or you can just get it the old fashioned way at my store, Len for all the store.com, where of course I am taking commissions throughout, you know, just on top of everything else. So think about it. Just consider it. Yeah. No, I love that. It's an unlikely pairing that actually makes a lot of sense. It is unlikely. We could have a whole rom-com built around that. I'm there for it. I'm there. Well, we also want to thank our brand new boss, Luke. Luke just started backing us on Patreon. Thank you, Luke. And welcome. Glad to have you. Luke, we are your tech news show. Luke. Yeah. I'm also your father. Also, Sarah's your father. I don't know if you knew that. Thank you, Luke. This is Luke's show. Luke did it. Luke heard us say that like, hey, tomorrow could be my show and then backed us on Patreon. And now the show is Luke's. Luke. In fact, patrons, you get lots of cool stuff. Stick around for the extended show, Good Day Internet. We're going to talk about one more story for y'all, why Meta is hiring a smart glasses product manager. But just a reminder, you can catch our show live Monday through Friday, 4 p.m. Eastern, 2100 UTC. And you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Or let a friend know that they might like the show as well. We are off for the U.S. President's Day Holiday Monday, but back on Tuesday with Tim Stevens, talking about a new EV supercar from Croatia. Have a great weekend. This week's episodes of Daily Tech News Show were created by the following people, host producer and writer Tom Merritt, host producer and writer Sarah Lane, executive producer and Booker Roger Chang, producer, writer and host Rich Strafilino, video producer and Twitch producer Joe Koontz, technical producer Anthony Lemos, Spanish language host, writer and producer Dan Campos, news host, writer and producer Jen Cutter, science correspondent Dr. Nicky Ackermanns, social media producer and moderator Zoe Deterding. Our mods, Beatmaster, W. Scott S1, BioCow, Captain Gipper, Steve Garterama, Paul Reese, Matthew J. Stevens, a.k.a. Gadget Virtuoso and J. D. Galloway. Mod and video hosting by Dan Christensen, music and art provided by Martin Bell, Dan Looters, Mustafa A, A-Cast and Len Peralta. Live art performed by Len Peralta. A-Cast adds support from Tatiana Matias, Patreon support from Dylan Harari. Contributors for this week's shows include Brian Brushwood, Justin Robert Young and Scott Johnson. Our guests this week were Andrew Heaton, Sean Hollister and Natalia Antelava. And thanks to all our patrons who make the show possible. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Ironman Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.