 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners thanks to all of you including Carmine Bailey Vince power and John and Becky Johnston Coming up on DTNS movie passes back, but will customers return podcasting platforms take the next step forward and this is what it looks like when dogs cry Not actually like this, but we'll explain This is the Daily Tech News for Monday August 22nd 2022 in Los Angeles on Tom Merritt and from studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane from New York City I'm Ayaz Akhtar another shows producer Roger Chang. I Had a dock and a USB C port die on me right before the show, so if I seem a little flustered I don't know what you're talking about. Let's start with a few tech things you should know Elon Musk's legal team has subpoenaed evidence from former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey It includes documents related to the impact or effect of false or spam accounts on Twitter's business and operations Twitter's use of MDAO as a key metric and any process or workflow Other than the MDAO audit and the suspension workflow that Twitter used has used or has discussed or considered Using to detect and label accounts as spam or false. I love legally is to you Musk's team has also subpoenaed evidence from former Twitter head of product cave-on big poor app researcher Jane Manchin Wong reports the Twitter began testing Displaying if accounts have a verified phone number the answer would appear on profile pages But is not the same as the little blue check mark that means a verified account company also began testing view counts for tweets available To some users under an analytics label The UK's conservative party will offer internet voting for the first time as part of its leadership election about 160,000 qualifying party members will receive a ballot pack in the mail that will include a paper mail and ballot as well Of security codes to vote online the party used guidance from the UK's national Cybersecurity Center to build its online voting system the winner of this election will be the UK's next prime minister So pretty high stakes here Britain's Labour Party also allowed online voting in its latest leadership elections But that was to choose an opposition leader I would just like to have a lot more details about what's the tech behind this We didn't get much the game awards will take place on December 8th Both as an in-person event and a live IMAX experience at select theaters Because what you want to see in IMAX is a bunch of people accepting awards this year The show will feature a new best adaptation category for projects that translate games to popular media And I know you want to see the game trailers in IMAX and that's kind of cool Apple added M1 based Mac books to itself service repair program This includes logic boards for the machines Although Apple will only offer trade and discounts on replacement parts with the same skew Meaning that it would be pretty expensive to use a logic board replacement part to upgrade your RAM or your storage Consumers will be charged the same for parts as Apple authorized service providers. Hey, I might need that. All right Let's talk about a new company trying to make plants like Nespresso Yeah, so if you have ever heard the term think globally act locally that sentiment often applies to food a lot of times This means heading down to a local farmers market to pick up produce or maybe signing up for a community-supported Agriculture like a CSA box, but a company called click and grow wants to bring fruits and veggies a lot closer to home specifically inside of your home now of course growing produce inside your house is not a New concept almost anyone can set up a few fresh herbs on a windowsill and hydroponic garden setups are readily available But click and grow wants to take a lot of the maintenance out of the equation offering a hydroponics as a service model and Simple operation almost like a curing coffee maker for a while The company has offered the smart garden 3 which can grow herbs and some small tomatoes and peppers Offered by the company as plant pods It's a hundred dollars and designed to maintain the levels of moisture nutrients oxygen and pH without any User monitoring a subscription of three plant pods every two months costs eight dollars and ninety eight cents a month Their latest product takes this whole idea up a notch though the click and grow 25 model offers the same automatic watering the same LED lighting But it can grow bigger plants like variety of lettuces the units are also stackable So you could build up kind of a home vertical garden over time if you've got the space or make sense to you plant pods available range from tomatoes and peppers to various leafy greens herbs even flowers Now the economics of this might be more complex than actually growing the plants a tech crunch notes that a hydroponic garden setup on Amazon with seeds and nutrients costs a hundred and ten dollars and 4,000 seeds cost $25 if you throw in nutrients you could be spending a bit under ten dollars per crop That being said there's more work in the setup and a lot more work per week in maintenance And you have to check pH values and nutrient levels yourself the click and grow 25 Starts at seven hundred and thirty dollars with a subscription of thirty nine ninety five a month for 90 plant pods Every four months. Yeah, so this is not for I want cheap Produce right because your your your salad bags at the grocery store are pretty competitive per price If you just want to get easy greens, this is about I want the experience of immediate fresh vegetables Not something that's been in a packaged bag not something that's been on a truck But I don't have the time to do all of the measuring I don't have the time to develop the skills I'll be it small if you already know them of like making sure that the pH and the watering and everything is balanced Some people like to learn that stuff, but if you're like I want the fresh vegetables. I don't want to learn it That's what this is going for now to that end I look at Keurig and I look at Nespresso and I think yeah There's a lot of people who want really good coffee But don't want to go to the trouble to make it themselves even if arguably they could make it better if they make it Themselves Nespresso ends up being pretty good I feel like that's what this is about is if you're willing to pay the price You you've probably come out of about even but you will get fresh vegetables easily my question is Are there enough people who want to do that to make a business out of this? especially because you know I Mean I'll say a fresh tomato grown in a well I was gonna say a yard, but it could be hydroponic situation in your kitchen or wherever is always gonna be the best tomato you have I mean a good fresh tomato just it will make store about tomatoes to see him like death But you know a one tomato plant on its own takes up a fair amount of space I think there are certainly a market for this I don't have room in my house to do this even though I really like the concept even taking the price out of consideration because I think the price is really high You know I at first I was kind of like well This is sort of like you know the difference between me baking my own brownies or buying a pan of brownies That's somehow store-bought right, but it isn't really because it there is no sort of like Oh the love of cultivating the plants is part of the reason that you pay for this The whole point is that it's happening on site, but you're not really having to do anything So I think that for you know for certain folks This is very attractive because you are gonna get nice fresh produce, but I just don't know how many people are gonna pay for this Yeah, I think I'm gonna echo what you said Sarah six conceptually sounds like a great idea I'll just grow it myself But like one of the things about k-cups and in general these single service Devices that you get your stuff right away So sure you will be able to know when your tomato came in and but you can't just be like okay I'm gonna put my pod in and there's a tomato. That's what we got the supermarket for so you might lose that time convenience I love the idea. I think this is for somebody who wants to be like a better person like I'm gonna wake up at five in the morning I'm gonna check my plants and make sure my pods are fine, and then I'm gonna meditate and then I'm gonna harvest I Think this is aspirational. I don't know who this is for It's not me because I mean I don't think tomatoes taste good no matter what they are Okay, but there's lettuce there's peppers there's there's other vegetables There's a variety of things I would also disagree that this is for the person who wants to be a feeling good that that's the person Who's gonna do hydroponics where they have to put in a little effort and feel good about the effort? This is I don't want to put in the effort. I just want the LED lights and the water and everything to be automatic I don't want to have to think about it I don't want to spend more than a couple minutes a week, but I will have lettuce available when I want To your point I as it isn't as easy as you put the plant pod in and the lettuce springs out They do try to say well what you can do is you can time the growth with multiple trays So that when the lettuce is ready to eat you can pull that tray out and the lettuce will stay growing even outside of the tray outside of the LEDs and stuff for a while and then you you have the next one growing so that it you know You can get into a rhythm But getting into a rhythm is not the same as as like the Keurig where it's like I don't have to get into a rhythm I put the thing in I press the button and I have coffee and That price point is going to be a huge barrier That's one like if you better feel something 730 bucks just to start and then you're paying $40 a month for these pods And if you're not here's the other thing if you're not even eating it That's a whole other problem. You got a whole other behavioral subscription service to deal with yeah It is like those those what did you call them Sarah earlier the CSA boxes? Those are those can be around $40 a month and a lot of people end up throwing stuff away from those too I think there's less waste in this because it's growing right you aren't going to take it until you use it and that'll keep it Fresh because it's and there's a little bit more psychologically of you saying but it's here I watched it grow. I should eat it All right, let's talk about something that is very similar to growing lettuce podcast production Zencaster announced some significant new features to bring it closer to an end-to-end podcasting solution so users will now be able to record up to 4k Video and edit that video and audio with some new features right inside of the Zencaster website They can also distribute to various platforms. They can monetize with ads all from within the service Monetization and 4k recording are available on a new $59 a month plan Some of the other things are available on other plans the growth tier as that one is called The free steer tier is still there and we'll do the distribution and stuff But it's only 1080p recording and you only get an hour of the post-production stuff the editing But this is very much like Spotify's anchor except without being tied to Spotify Now not every podcaster cares about video But for those that do and you know who you are podcasters may have even more reason to focus on video 9 to 5 Google notes that back in July YouTube began publishing a new explore page for podcasts at YouTube comm slash podcast and Slowly been making available the company's been making it available to more people Including carousels for popular episodes popular playlist Recommended shows groupings by category like comedy true crime sports music TV and film There's a podcast for everybody right now clicking through a video opens it as a standard YouTube video without podcast or audio specific Optimization so this seems to be a first step into better podcast discovery on YouTube It's not clear what this would mean for Google's other podcast products How this is going to roll in specifically in YouTube music or the Google podcast app Which I think a lot of people assume its days are numbered now that podcasts are showing up in YouTube But that's not necessarily true. You just never know with not with Google sometimes they live with 17 different versions of the same service for a while so I think it's interesting that they are Partnering up and trying to gap gather a little of that podcast magic in this way because it means that YouTube sees dollar signs there It means that they see enough of a business in podcasting that it it's worth trying to take up some of that homepage real estate with Yeah, looking at this like what we can discuss the whole Google's gonna kill it and what whether or not they'll have a Parallel product or they'll roll that the fact they're keeping it quiet right now is the smartest thing I've heard Google do It's like dad. We have something it's not rolled out everywhere Be quiet about podcasts, but then again with talking to Zencaster story Like if you have more and more tools then make it easier and easier to set up a podcast So there's a lot more solutions out there now You're like, okay, which show am I gonna watch and if YouTube is actually going ahead and they're christening This is our page and you got podcasts here. You got the ability to find stuff I think that'll be great for people who are looking for something to watch Also great for people who want to actually create podcasts because they have a real home Because the thing would be where's your podcast like oh, it's on itune. They go wherever it's available. It's on Spotify It's on anchor. It's on this it's on that and the other thing Maybe being able to say it's on my YouTube podcast page a little bit easier Yeah, I use a cast for I mean we use a cast on the show as well But um for for one of my shows have such a good day Which I I co-host with my friend Heather Frank We send the podcast to YouTube It's just one of those things that's in the a cast system of like want to just send something and it's just our album art And you know a video and I always thought I mean why not doesn't hurt us I don't know who's Consuming the show that way because there isn't any video to see besides the album art, but people do You know, we get our we get stats from that all the time So anything that makes you to more of a player in Podcasts production as far as I'm concerned makes a lot of sense. It's where a lot of people are already But I do feel like yeah Google has a long way to go before the Okay, you make a podcast on Google podcast But then there's YouTube podcast and is that the same thing and if it isn't the same thing How do they differ and this is very classic Google? Yeah, this youtube.com slash podcast looks to me more like Folks like us who do a video version of their podcast that they put on YouTube We have a video version of the podcast at youtube.com slash DTNs, right? You can go watch the show there But it's not an RSS feed that is a YouTube channel and we can monetize that separately Then we do other things because it's not part of the RSS feed However, it does sound like maybe Google wants to move podcasts into YouTube that would threaten the Google podcast app And maybe provide audio only stuff that we do also publish our audio only from a cast straight to YouTube Like it's a podcast platform But again, that's a separate channel from the RSS feed. It gets messy when you start to think well What is YouTube really up to are they gonna are they gonna take RSS feeds and pump them straight into YouTube? Am I are we gonna have a situation where there's a Daily Tech News show podcast on YouTube? But also the Daily Tech News show YouTube channel. How do we reconcile that? I could get very confusing. In fact, it already is kind of confusing for consumers Yeah, I'm also thinking if Google is gonna have a YouTube specific thing They better have a really good way of searching within that audio because with all their machine learning advances and things thinking about how great They've got a YouTube We've gotten all these chapters and you got markers and things audio podcasts Even if they don't have any video component They're just the album art even if their algorithms are smart enough to actually pick out points of the show Which actually would be better for ad insertion as well like hey not gonna trouble me in the middle of my point to go here This is brought to you by whatever that's not a great thing So maybe that'll be the way that Google figures out how to get to customers Hey guys go to our podcast solution because the ads will make sense You'll be able to find what you want and it's available on Google So you know, it's gonna be at least running theoretically on the uptime. Yeah I think clearly everybody would like a slice of the ad money that's available for podcasting YouTube spotify Acast all of them they They would all like to get a little section of that. So there's a bit of a land rush to that right now Hey folks, what do you want to hear us talk about on the show? We love to hear from you one way to let us know is in our subreddit You can submit stories and vote on them at daily tech news show dot reddit dot com movie pass Does it make you shudder? Does it make you wistful? Does it make you confused? I don't know But it often carries a lot of baggage the service dated back to 2011 Sarah and I as an I covered the launch of movie pass on tech news today way back in 2011 It has offered theatrical movies as a subscription service At at its launch. It was a certain amount of movies per month for a for a fee Not just similar to the fee that they're charging you for plant pods I think it was around $40 a month It peaked in subscribers with more than 3 million in 2018 when they were selling the subscription as an unlimited Subscription for like 10 bucks a month between that aggressive pricing model and fraught relations with major theater chains The service eventually Just ran out of money and shut down in September 2019 But wait, there's more in November 2021 one of the original founders Stacy spikes who movie pass fired in 2018 Well, he bought the assets in February 2022 He announced he would relaunch the service on more reasonable grounds with a cryptocurrency flavor Now we know a few more specifics movie pass will launch in beta on September 5th If you want to be a part of it You'll need to sign up for the waitlist starting Thursday August 25th at 9 a.m. Through August 29th If you're selected to become a member you'll get 10 invites You can send friends if you were a member of the old movie pass You'll get some unknown number of bonus credits now We don't know if any of that web 3 stuff that he talked about in February is coming in fact There's a lot we don't know like where it will be available movie pass says it will launch initially in markets Based on where they get the most interest during the sign-up phase as well as where they have partner theaters right now They say they're partnered with 25 percent of us theaters So insider says prices will vary by zip code just like prices at theaters Tears will be around $10 $20 or $30 a month You'll get a number of credits per month to use on tickets We don't know how many per tier or how many per how many credits per movie that is We also don't know if it excludes any movies or which theaters it'll work with it'll also have a black card Not a red card You can use it to pick up tickets at the box office though You can also book them through the app and no details about anything crypto related have been announced yet movie pass says it'll have more details Soon. Yeah, this comes as theaters themselves are struggling to stay afloat Cineworld which owns regal theaters here in the US Said it is in fact considering filing chapter 11 bankruptcy chapter 11 is the one that lets you continue to do business While you reorganize your finances, so it doesn't look like they're going out of business But there's certainly not booming. So the question is is this a good time? For movie pass to get into this business when there aren't quite as many people going to the theaters Or is it the good time to get into this because the theaters need the help in generating interest? I feel like it's the latter. I feel like, you know theaters are struggling and sure Pandemic stuff kept a lot of people out of movie theaters But I haven't really been going to movie theaters regularly for some years now It's not because I don't enjoy the experience I just think it's easier to watch movies and and you know content in general from the safety and security of my own couch, but if you get, you know, a bunch of people going back to the theater and Movie pass can make money while while um, you know In the theaters which make the majority of their money on concessions anyway, if everybody's happy about that great crypto part of it doesn't make any sense to me and They're pretty thin on details there I would love to know where the web three aspect of me going to the movie theater is but maybe I'm just not thinking hard enough Well, what they were talking about back in February was this idea of like your credits could be transferable You could send them to others on the network. So so they would be on a blockchain They were talking about, you know, your monthly fee would accrue ownership in the company somehow as an NFT You know that that gave you a small stake in the company perhaps But these were all just examples of the kinds of things they could do and that's why people were curious what they were going to do And they didn't announce any of those things You know look at the chat and they said there aren't that many hits out right now And you know the fact that people aren't going to movies so much, you know Maybe this is a great time for movie pass to restart like okay They can start off with a really low user base. They can find out any any weird Wrinkles in this new plan see what incentives will keep people coming back So that way they can actually succeed for real this time because the thing is a competition is pretty fierce You got all kinds of things streaming you've got AMC's got their own pass almost got their own pass So not necessarily we don't know if movie pass will even work with those theaters So if movie pass is gonna start off if they're gonna get a what a number shot is the third fourth fifth They're gonna try it again Maybe try it while the demand is low work out those kinks and actually learn from all of the years experience of You know what movie pass was was kind of a mess at times I'm also curious if people have the long enough memory to remember Hey movie pass was a mess by the end there was these blackout dates or blackout times You might have to take photos of tickets just to be able to watch the movie thereby making everything way less Convenient pushing you towards other ways to watch content So maybe a bet the best time for movie pass is now But they better get rid of some of that really junkie bad consumer experience that they had at the very end of their last run I'll be honest. I feel like most people you know who aren't us and talking about movie pass on Twitter Probably don't remember. They probably just recognize. Oh movie pass. That was that subscription service. It's back Huh, how does it work? Is it a deal? the problem is Movie pass blew up because it was easy to understand But that was not a sustainable business model which was ten dollars a month see any movie you want And then there of course there were problems with theaters not wanting to take it and all of that this which is like a quarter of the movie theaters and see Some of the movies you want some will cost different amounts of credits than others is my guess It's harder to explain and when you've got AMC out there going like hey If you go to AMC theaters all the time just buy our thing you can see all the movies You want at the AMC theaters for this price a month and get you know a special line for the popcorn? That feels like a more compelling Argument my guess is the move for movie passes to provide this for theaters like landmarks that don't have it and Then make a play to manage the partner you manage the plans for the AMC's of the world as a sort of like an enterprise service provider Well, it's not every day that we go straight science Maybe not even all that much check but today is one of those days because we just couldn't help it a study in the journal Current biology finds that dogs produce more tears when reunited with their owners than with other humans Meaning that Otis loves me the most now if that's true It would be the first evidence that emotions cause tears not just in dogs But in other non-human animals But scientists who weren't part of the study Totally sure that this conclusion is justified canine behavior specialist at Arizona State University Clive when it says if we accept the evidence of this paper This is one of the most stunning discoveries in animal expression emotions of all time But it would take a lot to convince me now when dogs exhibit watery shiny eyes It's shown to facilitate human caregiving says Takafumi Kikusui and animal behavior and veterinary medicine specialist at Abizu University in Japan who's one of the study's authors so kind of kind of goes to show you when it comes to certain studies a Little bit of grand assault depending on who you are as a scientist and what you believe Well, this is this is this is not about whether scientists as belief or truth This is this is about what it's one study and this is science at work Which is a bunch of scientists poking holes in it. That's that's that's science at work is like sure, okay They show this but I'm gonna you know, I want to see another study You want to see more than one study that this is the thing the press does to us all the time is Pretends like one study is the definitive end of all study on the stuff This this could be a lot of other reasons for this. It might be that Whenever a dog is around someone they're familiar with The why their eyes just water more not because of emotions, but because they you know get more caregiving because of that And it's an evolutionary thing that's built in and they don't even realize it's going on I'm not saying that is the case, but you know, you got to rule out all those those other situations I haven't read the paper. Maybe they address that in the paper, but But Sarah this is not a tech story. There's no technology in here no, I mean it and Unless we can figure out how you know Machine learning can make dogs cry on command or something and I don't I don't exactly. I don't know It's not that the story is about technology It's about we need you the folks who are into technology to solve the problem of dog tears. That's right. I Mean Otis cries all the time. Sorry, buddy Yeah, whimpering is a whole different thing than the tears. Yeah. Yeah, all right Let's check out the bell bag. All right So Dan wrote in responding to our story on Friday of Janet Jackson's rhythm nation perhaps crashing 2005 era computers Dan says this story reminds me that impossible is a variable function Dan says some years ago I installed and managed the sound system at the Key West International Airport one day I got a call that an airlines departure gate microphone would crash their computers whenever they used it. It's impossible I said so I went out to investigate sure enough an agent held up the mic and with a Stony look hit the PTT button There was no sound but the local computer screen went blank turns out It was a bad ground on the microphone The system would go into ultrasonic Oscillation which was then broadcast throughout the terminal at hundreds of watts It was that specific frequency that crashed their computer, but nobody else's since then my that's impossible threshold has increased Significantly, I love this story so much. It's a great story on its own But it also I love Dan's like I used to think things were impossible and then the impossible And now I know better now I know not to judge so quickly anymore. Yeah, it was a great story. Thank you, man Yeah, thank you Dan and thanks to everybody who writes in please keep those emails coming If you have a fun anecdote you have ideas for a future show feedback at daily tech news show comm is where to send That email also. Thanks to you. I as act are for being with us today Let folks know where they can keep up with what you're up to. Yeah, go to Twitter I'm at I as over there. I'll be announcing stuff about this old nerd That's a show I do where I fix my household tech problems and there's a ton of them because there's a new house So I got to take care of a whole bunch of stuff Dan from the mail bag I want to know when you start your podcast about impossible being a variable function sounds really awesome Here, there's a lot of cool tools out there for you. So check out Dan's podcast when that starts We also want to extend a very special. Thanks to Russ Clark. Russ is one of our top lifetime supporters for DTNs Thank you Russ for all the years of support. You are the best Thanks for us. Yeah Patrons stick around for the extended show good day internet affectionately known as GDI You can also catch the show this show DTNs live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern 2100 UTC find out more at daily tech news show comm slash live We're back doing it all again tomorrow. We're talking EV charger installation with Chris Ashley. Don't miss it This show is part of the frog pants network Get more at frog pants.com Time and club hopes you have enjoyed this program