 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners. Thanks to all of you, including Jeff Wilkes, Paley Glendale, and Dr. X17. Coming up on DTNS, Elon Musk is buying Twitter, but I don't think it's for the reasons you do. Plus, Bob Chapec really wants you to care about sharing theme park experiences with Disney Plus. Why won't you care more? Care. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, October 27, 2022 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. Deep in the heart of Texas, I'm Justin Robert Young. And I'm on the periphery and I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. But the eyes of Texas are still upon you, Roger. Deep in the eyes of the Ranger. Perhaps, perhaps a little too much. The autumn wind is a Ranger. All right, Astros fan, calm down. Astros in three. That's still my prediction. All right. Let's start with the quick hits. A few tech things you should know. A bunch of Apple news to note, starting with Apple telling Mac rumors that it paused ads related to gambling and a few other categories preventing them from appearing on app pages. Scott Johnson and I had talked about this ad nauseam yesterday saying, we think this will probably be rectified in 24 hours, which it was. Apple added more locations for ads to show up in its app store, causing some developers to complain about their listings appearing next to gambling ads. In other news though, the information says that Apple is working on a 16 inch iPad for release in Q4 of next year. Apple's also reportedly previewing a new design for iCloud, a Cloud's website that you can see at beta.icloud.com. And Spotify has changed how it handles audiobooks in its iOS app. You might recall that Spotify took some issue with how Apple handled it beforehand. Previously, when you found a book you might want to buy, you could tap on a button to email you a link to buy the book. Apple objected to that, but has now agreed to let Spotify show the words, you can't buy audiobooks in the app. We know it's not ideal. Just goes to show that the app reviewers have no sense of humor that they allowed that through. Good news and bad news for the Chinese tech scene. Huawei reported revenue rose from about 6.5% from a year ago to $19.9 billion. Infrastructure sales are offsetting the smartphone sales declines that are being caused by US sanctions. Huawei has also increased development of network tech for hospitals, automobiles, mines and manufacturing seem to be selling a lot of those, at least domestically. That's the good news. However, rare earth processors are in for some competition. The China Global South Project reports that Singapore's Trafigura announced it will partner with Battery Metals Processor EVOLUTION to build a cobalt sulfate processing plant in Arizona. The facility could produce about 40% of demand for cobalt by 2027. The U.S. Department of Energy is spending $2.8 billion to help domestic companies reduce or eliminate their reliance on Chinese battery-material supply chains, and this is just the first of what may be many products. Well, as far as U.S. companies go, we've got some negative news out there. We know it. Meta reported its second straight quarterly decline in revenue, and yes, the company projects another decline next quarter. Not great. Not great. Yes, it lost more than $9 billion on the reality lab's metaverse division over the first three quarters of this year, but it meant to lose the money, okay? Yeah, the company says, we're doing us our best. Where's the good news here? Meta is still making a pretty astounding $9.41 per user, and Instagram now has 2 billion monthly active users. So that's, as the math goes, just less than a billion shy of Facebook itself. Don't forget, there's a consumer level Quest 3 coming next year. Tom did unpacking of that. No, no, I didn't unpacking of the Quest Pro. Quest 3 is coming next year. That's the one you can afford to get. Yes, Quest 3. Well, Zuckerbeck won't let us forget either of them. He mentioned the whole VR thing again on its latest earning call, and I don't know how people feel about this. We were trying to cheer you up, Meta. That's all we're trying to do here. Government of India is considering legislation that would require all messaging apps to redirect messages to state officers in case of an emergency, national security. India has also implied that apps like Signal are already not in compliance with current rules on the ability to see messages. So the Verge asked Signal CEO, Meredith Whitaker, if the new law is passed, or if Signal is deemed not to be in compliance, what would happen? Whitaker at first avoided the question, pointing out that such choices are rarely so simple, which is fair, implying that maybe Signal could find a workaround, work with the Indian government somehow. However, the Verge's Nilai Patel followed up because Nilai is good at his job and said, all right, let's put it this way. If a government in the world says, in order to operate in our country, we want the keys to your encryption, would you just walk? And so Whitaker said, yes, we would walk. We will not hand over the keys to our encryption. We will not break the encryption. In fact, with the way we're built, we don't have access to those keys. So your move, India. Google Cloud announced the launch of Blockchain Node Engine, which it calls a fully managed node hosting for Web 3 development. Google Cloud is offering a managed service for node creation in a secure development environment in a fully managed product aiming to improve Web 3 development. This tool comes from the team assigned earlier this year dedicated to digital assets. Oh, that is an intriguing little development getting into the host of Blockchain stuff. All right, let's talk a little more about Disney. Let's do it. So Disney CEO Bob Chapak told the Wall Street Journal that Disney is working on a way to tailor your experiences based on how you use its other products. Chapak said, quote, if you're on Disney Plus, we should be aware of what happened, what you've experienced, what you liked the last time you visited a park, and vice versa. When you're in a park, we should know what your viewing habits are on Disney Plus. Yeah, so he gave an example. If you ride Pirates of the Caribbean at the park, you might get special Pirates of the Caribbean programs that show up on your Disney Plus. Chapak wouldn't say when this might happen cryptically, just saying that the company is, quote, putting the arms and legs on it right now. I don't know, maybe it's going to be animatronic. This isn't about expanding data collection. Okay, don't get too freaked out. Disney already knows this stuff. They know if you go to the park, they know if you use Disney Plus, they're not sharing it with other people. They're just saying, we're going to use what we know about you to improve your experience. The question is, Justin Robert Young of Florida, home to Disney World, going to Disney World soon. Are you okay with Disney Park? My goodness. Are you okay with Disney using what it knows about you to make your experience better sometime in the future? The answer with all of this kind of data collection stuff is yes, if it makes things better and doesn't and almost, you know, we remember the misses more than we do the hits. A lot of times with this kind of data collection, if it is giving you recommendations that you enjoy, then we feel that it's kind of magic, right? That's what TikTok's algorithm is. It's very good at understanding the kind of stuff you want. So you trust it, your relationship with that app, is it feeding you things that you now wind up liking that you might not have asked for? If it is bad, then we think of it as spam or even worse kind of surveillance. So when it comes to Disney, I think that they have made a lot of decisions lately that have degraded the park experience. I think that they have become an entertainment company that also operates theme parks as opposed to one that for a very long time put a church and state line between this is our movie company. This is the theme park experience. A lot of the stuff that they've done, I think has been very user unfriendly. And if this kind of stuff is what it is, I mean, look, I think the best ride in Walt Disney World is at Animal Kingdom, the Avatar ride. Does that mean that I'm the biggest fan of Avatar the movie? No, but it's a great ride. And I like to ride it every single time. If they made the mistake of thinking that I was a gigantic Avatar fan or I wanted to skip that ride because I don't like Avatar and Disney Plus and I've never watched it, then I think that would be a mistake. Yeah. I think the other thing that came across to me when we were talking about this before the show in our production meeting was this is not the first time Jay Peck has said this. Every time he says it, it makes a headline, but the headlines kind of lower down. And I always expect people to, you know, start freaking out about it. Oh, Disney's going to share data. When really, I don't know, Sarah, it feels like the general reaction is like, okay. Like he really wants people to care about this and nobody does. Well, I think, listen, if you care about Disney to the point that you're like, listen, I like Disney properties, whether they be, you know, something that I'm, you know, hanging out with, you know, in the comfort of my living room and, you know, watching on Disney Plus or actually going to a theme park. I don't know that the Disney people care that much about the fact that, you know, someone's like, well, hold on a second, there's some data collection going in here. I think that if you're kind of that Disney person, you know that and you're okay with that. And you probably can go and make sure that things are fine based on what you already know of what you have bought into. Yeah, you're going to be like Justin, like, oh, as long as it makes things better, great. I'll get annoyed if it doesn't. But otherwise, okay, show it. Tell me when you've launched it. I can't wait to see. Yeah. Yeah. One quick example of where I think it would be good. And specifically with Disney Plus, if they see that you have multiple accounts and you have a kid account, and you are watching a lot of kids programming, and they are able to market or tailor a day of Disney toward you having kids versus mine, which is largely just Andor and Marvel properties, then they will, they will send me the email that lets me know that Food and Wine Festival happens at Epcot from this day to this day, and they will send somebody else early magic hours and on property residency so they can get in and have a character brunch for the kiddos. And that could be good. Alright, let's move from the world of fantasy to the world of fantasy become reality. For more than a decade now, we've had drone delivery. It's it's out there in lots of places. Now, it's not in most places. So you may not have it. But more than a dozen companies are delivering things by drone. We've covered zipline a lot on this show. They've been doing it the longest. There's also Matternet, Wing, UPS, Flytrap, Zing, Wingcopter, Elroy Air, Volkswagen, Wisc Arrow, and gosh darn it, even Amazon finally started actually testing drones instead of just doing segments on broadcast television. New test areas keep popping up to on Tuesday, Wing added residents of the Gold Coast in Australia to their tests of using drones to deliver supermarket items, small supermarket items from coals in this particular case. If you're Australian in that area, you might know coals. The conversation decided to look at these expanding tests and then try to estimate if and when drone delivery might finally become mainstream. Well, first it needs to be safe. And so far, the exceptions have proved to be the rule that drone delivery is generally safely achieved. Regulation is strong in this sector right from the start. Aviation authorities must sign off before tests can even begin. In Australia, it's the Civil Aviation Safety Authority and companies have taken a conservative approach, beginning testing rural areas and newer suburbs where flight paths happen over largely unpopulated areas. Well, and you might say, okay, well, how can we scale? To scale up, companies will have to face the challenges of dense urban areas. That's the big one. What happens when you have to fly over a lot of people? What about apartment buildings? What about office buildings? Where do you land? These are answerable questions, but how they're answered does make a lot of difference. Safe flight paths can be created, but have they been created yet? Drop off systems for multi-person buildings can be created and normalized, but that is where we're at now. Yeah, even if you nail those, if you get a practical way to scale up that's safe, you need people on your side. Professor Jonathan Roberts in the conversation calls it a social license, not an actual license, settle down, Heaton, just a term for people supporting an endeavor. In other words, public support, getting the public on your side. If drone delivery is seen as noisy, ugly, cluttering up the view, invading my privacy, it will not get social license and no amount of safety or practicality is going to let it take off. How do we think it could get that kind of social acceptance? How do you get it? That's exactly what you should be asking. Letter you as in utility. If it does something for you, then you will like it. Nobody likes how gigantic or expensive or smelly or noisy cars are. And yet we use cars all the time to them. Yeah, because they get us from A to B, because they deliver our food, because they do so many things for which we find not only good or pleasing but now necessary. They've become woven into the fabric of our society. And so we'll be the same with drones if you can find something for them to do beyond rudimentary delivery and taking footage that you post on your Instagram. I think it has to be free. Like start it free. It has to be a massive retailer. Maybe Kohl's is big enough. I don't know. Maybe Woolworth's. We're talking Australia there, but in the United States it'd be a Walmart. Something where it's going to cover a massive number of people and to start anyway. It's like, hey, if you get this drone delivery, it doesn't cost you anything and you get it faster. Go ahead and try it out. It's going to be convenient. Maybe you do it with essential stuff like prescription items. That's how ZipLine has made its name is doing health deliveries. Prescriptions are one of the common use cases here. Maybe you started with that. You can get your prescriptions delivered right to your door. You don't have to get out on the roads and it's perfectly safe. Again, I see a lot of people in our chat room like, yeah, but how do you make it safe? How do you make it practical? There are ways. We can talk about that, but I think they'll figure that out. I think the social acceptance is the bigger part. Yeah, go ahead, sir. The companies, I mean, that's all they're thinking about is how to make this safe and effective for the consumer. The consumer's like, but do I want it? Yeah. This really makes sense for me. We're really at some sort of a precipice, I think, of companies being like, we can do this. People being like, it's scary though. It's scary and new. I don't know. If I want it. Yeah. Just put my, either go to the pharmacy or I'll get it in my mailbox. This is going to help everybody in the long run, 100%. Myself included. You might get it before me because you're in an area that's less populated, which seems to be where they're able to roll these out. Indeed. Indeed. I mean, I am bullish. At the same time, I realize why people are like, eh, but is it so hard to do things the way that I've already been doing them this whole time? And that is the rub. Why do we need these big smelly cars when I can just ride my horse to the general store? Yeah. The day of horseless carriage can outdo my horse is the day, oh, it's 1920. That's what it is. All right. If you've got a thought about this, if you're like, I think I cracked it, I know how the drones can win. Don't tell the drones. Tell us. Feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com. The Wall Street Journal sources say Elon Musk sent an official borrowing notice to banks on Tuesday and the banks have started transferring the money needed to back Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter. The New York Stock Exchange posted a notice that Twitter shares will be suspended from trading on Friday. That is a normal procedure during an acquisition. So folks, if you had doubts, have them no more. It's happening. By the time many of you hear this, Elon Musk will probably officially own Twitter just in time to avoid the court resuming the trial over whether he should be forced to buy Twitter or not. And Musk is embracing his role. He changed his Twitter bio to read Chief Twit and his location to Twitter headquarters. He's also posted a picture of himself walking into Twitter's offices carrying a sink with the text entering Twitter HQ. Let that sink in exclamation point. Wow. Gosh. Puns. Yeah. Some suspected it was a reference to kitchen sinking. That is a business term when a company throws out everything and starts from scratch. Others noted that it appeared to be more of a bathroom sink. There's a lot of discussion of that. Yeah. Clearly a bathroom sink, so he's not going to rip up the company. So jokes aside, I mean, gosh, and you never know with Musk, what happens next, you might ask. Well, forget everything that Musk has said over the past six months. He has. He's kind of doing his own thing now. What matters is what he says now and he does now that he's actually in charge. Advertising provided 89% of Twitter's 5.08 billion revenue in 2021. So unsurprisingly, that's where he started. Yeah. Musk posted a letter to Twitter advertisers, an open letter on Thursday, repeating that he sees Twitter as a digital town square where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner. And he added the following. And I think this is the crux if you want to try to understand where his head's at for the future of Twitter. He said, that said, Twitter obviously cannot become a free for all hellscape where anything can be said with no consequences. In addition to adhering to the laws of the land, our platform must be warm and welcoming to all where you can choose your desired experience according to your preferences, just as you can choose, for example, to see movies to play video games ranging from all ages to mature. So you could start to criticize him of like, oh, he's just saying what they want to hear. Don't worry, we're going to stay warm and welcoming. But then he put in that bit about according to your preferences. And he has said that before. Jack Dorsey has said that sort of thing before. Project Blue Sky is essentially a spin off out of Twitter to make a platform to enable just that sort of thing where you as the user decide what level of rhetoric you want to see. Do you want to be family friendly? Do you want it to be mainstream like Twitter is right now? Do you want to be able to be on the risque side? All legal speech, of course. But where do you want this desire? Could you block certain people? Could you be in a tier, et cetera, et cetera? It feels like that's where he's going with this, Justin. Well, he is. And before we get into the future of Twitter, I would just like for everybody who mythologize their own fan fiction about the fact that he was not going to buy Twitter to please hold this L. I need you all to acknowledge that that was a very stupid take because from the very beginning, he said, I think I'm going to buy Twitter. Then it was I'm going to buy Twitter. Then it was I'd like a discount. And he wound up going to court for it. Very normal things that happen in business acquisitions all the time. And now he purchased Twitter. So all of the he's trolling. He wants to do this. I feel like that was a dumb take to begin with. And please acknowledge that now. Can we get quorum on that? What strikes me the most about all of this is Musk saying, Hey, okay, so I'm going to buy this platform. You know, not perfect, but here's what we can't do. Become a free for all hellscape already is Elon Musk. I disagree. Where anything can be said with no consequences already. No, people get de-platformed all the time for things they say on Twitter. I disagree with you on that. Not well enough. No, that's a that's a difference than anybody can say anything. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of Twitter accounts with a lot of numbers on the back end of it. And it's not because that's their first account. It's because they have made multiple accounts because they've done a lot of things that have the only the only reason we're talking about problematic accounts is because of Twitter's very unfortunate way of being able to say, like, okay, Tom Merritt said something that I think is not cool. I'm going to go ahead and report him. You can do that all day. It doesn't it doesn't change anything on Twitter. Twitter is a cesspool. Let's be honest. I disagree. I really do. I can argue with you there. But that is, I mean, hell is what you make it. And oftentimes it said hell is other people for which a lot of people gather on Twitter. I do think that the point of what he is saying is that right now Twitter is over moderated, and that permanent suspensions are moderated. Yes. Permabands is something that he has said that are overused on Twitter. When he says free for all hellscape, he means 4chan. He means 8chan. He means places like that that bad actors essentially rule the roost. What he wants, the only reason that Twitter isn't that is because of the way that the platform is set up doesn't mean people aren't saying the same stuff. They are. There is a cultural difference. I don't know when the last time you were on 4chan or 8chan, Sarah, but there is a cultural difference. Not that I want to go, to be honest. And then I would personally disagree with you. I do think that Twitter has its own vibe in a way that these other sites, Kiwi Farms is fundamentally different than Twitter. Now, whether or not the building blocks that got them there had is a different story. Where I think Elon is going, if you want to understand the Elon Musk Twitter regime, you have to understand what X is. X is the app that he wants Twitter plus messaging plus everything. He wants that to be the future of it, which might mean that Twitter becomes more of a protocol than it is a advertising company, which is what it is now. Yeah, no, I mean, you're not wrong. I feel like maybe my experience on Twitter as of late has been pretty laden with barf. I don't disagree with you. And that's why I'm like hellscape, kind of. Yeah, kind of is. Oh, I mean, look, Twitter is outsized in its cultural cache. It certainly is not the same kind of company revenue-wise that Facebook is or that Snapchat is or other companies that I think have been better run in terms of maximizing what they really are, which is creating surface area for people to serve dynamically generated ads that are targeted to certain demographics. That being said, I do think that it matters. I don't think everybody's going to leave because it's a heroin. Just because you don't like your dealer doesn't mean you're going to stop using it. All I will say is I will ask you just Yeah, exactly. Let's go out on this. Sarah, a year from today, do you believe that Twitter.com or whatever it is called at that point will have more or less active users? Oh, fewer. 100%. 100% fewer. Tom, 12% increase. Which would be pretty much what? No, I'm not. I'm not. I'm actually glad you're accusing me of that because I think a lot of people think like, oh, Tom, he can take both sides of an argument. He's just doing that. And I do do that. So it's not unreasonable to think I would. But no, I think people have decided something about a lot of things, including Twitter, that aren't true because they're so frustrated with it. There are things that are certainly frustrating about it. And I'm not going to try to say that it doesn't need more moderation and it doesn't need a lot of things fixed. But we tend to go binary and say, and therefore, everything's bad. And therefore, it's a cesspool. And therefore, there is no hope for it. And the fact of the matter is, I don't think it's that broken. And I think that while Elon Musk wouldn't be my choice for the person to fix it, I don't think he's going to be incompetent. And I think he will do something with it like he has done with Tesla and SpaceX and other companies to make it successful. I don't think he's as good at this as he is at those things. So I don't think it will be wildly successful, which is why I pick a very moderate growth. And I would only best Tom by 1%. I'll say 13%. The kind of pedantic idiot that dominates Twitter. Yeah, if I were a betting man, I'd probably bet with both of you. But what I do know is that when you travel, Justin, you've been doing a lot of travel recently. If you have missing or worse, lost luggage, it can really suck. Well, that's the price of travel, because you never really know. But Chris Christensen has a handy tip that could help mitigate that risk. This is Chris, the podcaster with another tech in travel minute. I've got a new gizmo, which I carry in my bag. And not only do I think it's a good idea, but when recently interviewed a number of presidents of airlines thought it was a good idea to put in your checked luggage and that's an air tag, an air tag or some other related device. It allows you to track that bag should it not show up at the baggage carousel when it's supposed to. And apparently, according to the airline presidents, it also helps the airline track it. Because if you can tell them, no, my bag is in Miami, they know where to look. And so if you are going to check a bag or even think you might have to get checked that bag, even though you're planning on doing carry on, it's a great idea to take one of those and throw it in your luggage. I'm Chris Christensen from amateur traveler. I actually have one on my keys and the battery finally went out. I guess it's four years for batteries. There you go. A real quick story on this. So one time I left my iPad on a flight and I had to come back the next day to find it. They had no idea where the plane that I had left it on was, but it was still functioning. I could find it via GPS. Did you put it in the little cubby in front of you? It was before Hearthstone went to mobile and so that's why I was using it. It was a dumb maker. But I was able to tell them via GPS exactly where it was in what hangar and they were able to find it. Amazing. Airlines are all operating on the computer from the bunker and lost. So if you have any kind of GPS data, you will know so much more than them. Indeed. All right, let's check out the mail bag. This one comes from Tim. We had the conversation a few days ago about YouTube frontman Bono saying, all right, you can blame me for that whole putting the album in your Apple music debacle. Tim says, as what sometimes feels like the only YouTube fan in the entire tech industry, my problem with the YouTube songs of innocence that was the album in question debacle was the exact opposite of most people's experiences. I desperately wanted the album, but because you two and Apple decided to stuff it into your phone rather than just make it free, it also meant that you couldn't just go get it if you wanted it. You had to wait for it to come to you with their stage rollout. So while I listened to people complain all day long when it was pushed to them and they didn't want it, one of my favorite bands had a new album that I couldn't listen to until full day later when it finally hit my phone. Talk about a bad rollout can't get much worse than when the enthusiasts have no option for early access and have to wait in line behind those who don't even want your product in the first place. Well, I imagine there were some people who got it who wanted it that you just didn't hear. Yeah. I mean, Tim is not alone here. Also, Tim had to wait a day. I mean, in the grand scheme of things. It's not the end. Oh, when you're a super fan, come on. All right. All right. Fair enough. I mean, have you ever met anybody who follows Taylor Swift, Tom? One day matters a lot. Don't get the Swifties on, you married. Listen, when Jin's astronaut drops tonight at 9 p.m., if it's not there, I will be tweeting angrily about it. You know how it goes. I do. It's a fair point. Thank you. I retract my objection. Well, thank you for letting us know, Tim. And if you ever have any thoughts on anything that we talk about on the show or we might talk about on a future episode, do let us know. Feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com. Josh from Marbury Young, thank you for being with us today. You are a busy man. You are all over the place. So let folks know, then keep up with the rest of your work. Friends, we are inching into single-digit days until the midterms here in the United States of America. And if you've kind of understood some of the names and the races that are happening, some of the consequences that might happen after the midterms, at least in terms of who's going to be in power and who won't. But you don't really know. Then this Friday's edition of the Politics, Politics, Politics program is for you. I do a big breakdown of all the things that could happen on Tuesday, my spectrum of possibilities. And then our friend Andrew Heaton joins us. He's also a political pundit, but he doesn't really focus on the election stuff. So I coach him up. I tell him everything he needs to know so he can do various different podcast guest host positions and not look like an idiot during cocktail parties. You can do the same if you listen to PX3, that is Politics, Politics, Politics in your podcatcher this Friday. Excellent podcast. If you're not already in it, now you know. A special thanks to Jim Kalanen. Jim is one of our top live Tom supporters for DTNS. We like to shout out people who have been with us for a while. And you know what, Jim? You're one of those people and we'd like to shout you out today. Jim, join Jim. You could get your name on. You don't have to be a lifetime supporter like Jim. A little secret, a little hack of the system. Just become a patron right now. And you're in. Patreon.com slash DTNS. Speaking of patrons, stick around for our extended show, Good Day Internet. We affectionately call it GDI. But just a reminder, you can catch DTNS Live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern. That's 2,100 UTC. And you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We are back doing it all again tomorrow. Who will we have with us? Nate Langson and Lent Peralta. It's going to be fun. See you then.