 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners thanks to all of you including Tim Ashman, Johnny Hernandez and high-tech Oki Coming up on DTNS why alpha folds open database of protein folding structures is similar in importance to the invention of the microscope It's pretty big plus Warner Brothers discoveries plans to merge its two streaming services and Amazon may soon own Roomba This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, August 5th, 2022 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 From New York. I'm Dr. Nikki Ackerman's and I'm the show's producer Roger Chang Have a packed show folks. So let's get right to a few tech things. You should know If you search for exact quotes of text Google has an updated search results to bold that quoted text in the website snippet Shown under the page title in the results Google also began testing using large favicons and more prominent site names in mobile search Nice people seem very excited about those things. They're they are pretty cool Back in May security researcher Zach Edwards discovered the Duck Duck goes privacy focused browser Not the search engine the browser Exempted Microsoft domains from its block on loading third-party tracking scripts We talked about it on the show Duck Duck goes CEO Gabe Weinberg said at the time It was due to search syndication agreements with Microsoft that he was trying to get changed now Weinberg announced that within the next month Duck Duck goes beta apps will block almost all the scripts from Microsoft But not all the only exception will be for scripts for bat.bing.com those scripts load directly after you click on a search ad in The browser to block that script Users will have to disable ads in the Duck Duck go browser search settings Duck Duck go also made its tracker block lists available on GitHub if you would like to peruse them Meta has released blender bot 3 to the public at blender bot dot AI Slash chats the company says it's designed to do the kinds of things that a voice assistant might do like find Recipes maybe find restaurants or other places you might want to be interested in blender Bot 3 was built on meta's large language model similar to GPT 3 While it was trained on large text It can also access the internet to find more information on more specific topics meta asks users to flag Flag suspect responses to help improve its performance That's kind of what they do when you do this sort of thing for the first time all data collected during its public Operation will be published for use by the AI research community. We asked blender bot 3 What it would be like to say to the DTNS audience blender bot got anything to say And it said let them know that bots can be trusted and will help make their lives easier We may seem artificial, but we are here to help Meta is also testing a standalone live streaming platform for influencers called super similar to twitch 200 influencers are already on the platform and Apparently we'll keep 100% of the revenue generated from their time there at least for the time being By the way, I went and told blender bot. We were talking about it right then while you were reading that and it said Where did daily technician go over my comments about bots? Did they just use part of what I said or did they take it all out of context cheese? Okay, senty and bean Ah next week is DTNS experiment week and we scheduled before Samsung announced that it was going to have a big galaxy Unpacked event on August 10th, but don't worry Rob Dunn one and Rod Simmons have agreed to do DTNS Reactions an experimental episode to give you first impressions right after the galaxy unpacked show is done, but Almost everything I have to announce has either been teased or leaked So if you want a preview it looks like we're gonna get the galaxy z-fold 4 the galaxy z flip 4 the galaxy watch 5 and Probably the galaxy buds 2 pro 91 mobiles has the latest and largest leak of images if you want to take a look at that Meanwhile for those curious about the durability of foldables Sam Rutherford over at engadget has reported on his last year Using the z-fold 3 he found it held up to some rough use Spills and drops and things like that But the screen protector developed annoying bubbles near the crease about six months after he started using it Well, we try to keep you up to date on central bank digital currencies sometimes known as CBDCs The blockchain based currencies issued by national governments The Bank of Thailand says that it's ready to start testing its retail digital currency later this year and expects the test to run through The middle of 2023 around 10,000 retail users will take part in the test in a limited area Meanwhile in China banks and two more cities have started to issue loans in digital yuan as of this may more than 4.5 million commercial outlets in China Accept a digital yuan almost every country has at least a plan for CBDC Smaller countries like the Bahamas have had theirs in operation for a while some like China or in advanced testing And most like the US are still in those planning stages. Yep, but they're coming I mean just just in covering this for the past couple years on DTS We went from saying Bahamas is the only one to having them to to that so it is it is changing As we all do over time. All right, speaking of changes Everybody is excited about the changes coming out of Warner Brothers discovery. Aren't they Sarah? Oh, Tom Are they ever we talked about this briefly on good day internet after yesterday's show concluded Well, we have more information. We have some thoughts Warner Brothers discovery announced its first earnings since the merger of the two companies of Particular interest was the number of subscribers to HBO Max in particular Warner reported one Combined number for discovery plus HBO Max and HBO on its own those three had a combined 92.1 million subscribers, which is up 1.7 million on the quarter So that sounds good. The growth came entirely from international subscribers though domestic subscribers fell 253 million however the company forecasted growth going forward saying it expects to have more than 130 million global subscribers by 2025 now one of the reasons the company combined those numbers is that they have long Planned and if you've been following the story here on the show or on cord killers or places like that You know this they have long planned to combine the platforms. That's not the news But in its earning statement Warner Brothers discovery confirmed that plan said yep What we've been talking about doing we're absolutely doing and gave us a timeline So it's gonna rolled out Combined service for the US and Latin America in 2023 and then Europe and Asia Pacific in 2024 They pitched it as each platform bringing a strength CEO and president of global streaming and games JB Perret noted that HBO Max has Quote performance and customer issues in other words the app kind of sucks sometimes, but it has rich features It's got some stuff that Discovery Plus doesn't have as far as discovery and tracking While Discovery Plus has more limited features, but a more robust tech stack HBO Max also has strong stripped scripted content both from HBO and from max originals and a male stewing audience while Discovery Plus has strong unscripted content your discovery science your food your home and garden stuff and a Female stewing audience so the pitch is that combining them is gonna give you all the content all the audience and reach Features with a solid tech platform All right So after shelving bad girl scoop to and removing several originals from HBO Max earlier this week Folks have wondered if the discovery executives that run Warner Brothers Discovery Really value HBO going forward and if not, what does that future look like? Addressing some of those concerns former Discovery CEO and now Warner Brothers Discovery CEO David Zabloff said quote We're going to spend dramatically more on HBO content in the next few years And that they had locked up the majority of HBO's executive team now presumably that doesn't mean they'd locked them up Physically, but they probably have some employment contracts So they're gonna be around for a while Zabloff didn't provide any numbers to go with those comments Just saying quality is what matters Warner also said that once it has rolled out the new combined platform for HBO Max and Discovery Plus Whatever they end up calling it that they're looking at launching what's called a fast service fast stands for free ad Supported streaming TV think Pluto to be anything where you don't have to pay to get it crunchy roll But there are ads that that roll Even though you don't have to pay HBO Max offers an ad supported version of its service, but it's not free So it's not fast. You still pay $9.99 a month, but you just have limited ad interruptions So this potential new free service would not have all the same programming as HBO Max or Discovery Plus It would have a selection of it a few other developments of note CNN originals aka what what's left after they canceled CNN plus is gonna get its own hub in Discovery Plus and I would presume that means it will eventually have its own hub in whatever the combined platform is as well I mean none of this is really none of this seems like a bad idea to me. I think when I've pulled friends who follow these stories, maybe a little less than we knew on the show aka a lot less, you know, they kind of go like Discovery Warner Brothers CNN HBO, that's all the same people. Well, didn't used to be so. Yeah, there might be some discovery Mysteries, you know where people are trying to figure out. Haha. I know trying to figure out where the stuff They want to watch is and what bundle it might be part of and if that's ad supported or you know What what they're actually paying for it, but I I don't feel like any of this is like some horrible red flag where my favorite stuff is going to go to go away They're just repurposing it. I mean first of all the mystery would probably be on history channel not discovery But yeah, I get I get your point. Sure. Yeah Now I know a lot of people are freaking out about this my opinion is they might change the name But I doubt much is gonna change. I can't imagine they'll charge more for this free than HBO Max Which is $15 a month I don't know how they're gonna sell a more expensive plan to Discovery Plus users Which who pay either five or seven dollars a month depending on what they would they want to have ads or not? Nikki you're an HBO Max user as I understand it. How do you feel about this? I've never even searched for anything that was on Discovery Plus So this is not impacting me at all basically like let's see where it goes And maybe I'll get more shows on my already subscription service I was gonna say this is less things for me to search for online if next summer All that happens is the name changes to be like Discovery HBO and then you have a bunch of food and history stuff on there. Are you gonna be upset? No, I'm fine good Yeah, as long as they don't raise the price, right? Well, yeah, of course. Yeah Well, let's talk about another merger that's getting people upset Amazon intends to acquire iRobot the the folks who make the home robots specifically the Roomba Amazon's gonna spend one point seven billion dollars all cash For reference Amazon reported having sixty one billion dollars in cash on hand at the end of June So it was an easy Yeah, they were at the checkout counter already and they saw Co-founder Colin Angle of iRobot will remain as CEO Post acquisition so it does sound like they're gonna keep iRobot as a division the way they've done with twitch or IMDb Amazon acquired the robotics company Kiva systems for 775 million in 2012. That's what's now called Amazon robotics And that is warehouse robotics that is different than the home robotics. So it's not necessarily Obvious that they would merge those two together. They may keep them separate well as you can imagine with any Amazon purchase especially over the last couple of years the public is Skeptical one argument I've seen a lot online is that Amazon might further intrude into our lives because Roomba Vacuums can map out your home in order to clean it effectively But then also know how you've arranged furniture where you're the most messy could give Amazon yet more personal data about how you live and Understandably there are a lot of people who are not comfortable with that now iRobot Roomba's company privacy policy says that images captured for Navigation are never sent to the cloud and by the way most Roomba's don't even have cameras It is it is a it is a feature on one of the more expensive models Roomba's can work without connecting to the internet users can opt out of sending any map data to the cloud No data is sold to third parties So it says the company but may be shared with third parties with customer knowledge or control such as with voice assistance Not every Roomba works in the way that people are afraid of though for example my Roomba Which is a 694 that was a former live with it episode from? 2021 is Wi-Fi connected it can be voice-controlled with Amazon's assistant In fact, that's how I get it to go because sometimes I forget to run it before I leave the house and then I you know I I go ahead and say yeah Please clean my house because I'm gonna be gone for an hour plus But it isn't drawing from any sort of map data This is a Roomba that just crashes into things and tries to clean as much as possible Also, I think it's worth noting for the purposes of this conversation that Amazon already has all the Roomba data Because iRobot uses AWS for cloud storage and as you mentioned is integrated with Amazon voice assistant iRobot is Experimenting with non-floor cleaning robots if you're wondering like why are you just mentioned in the Roomba? They have robots that clean gutters and pools and mop floors and mow the lawn They purchased the air purifier company Eris Not too long ago, but the Roomba vacuum is where it's found commercial success So that that's really why we're focusing mostly on that most people who have an iRobot product have a Roomba Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I mean since I got my Roomba, and I know it's not the fanciest Roomba, you know it doesn't I I still have to physically put all the Stuff that it gets off the floor into my garbage some Roomba models do that themselves, you know into their own container anyway I I'm a big fan of the Roomba. The Roomba has saved my life. I have to vacuum less frequently I have a dog and a cat so you can imagine that if I didn't care things would get out of control real quick I also You know again my apartment is not being mapped by my particular model But if it were to be I can see where if you want to you know go you know very much on one side of the We're sort of scared about what Amazon knows about us to say no this is taking it a step too far You know Amazon's already listening now Amazon's gonna know how I've mapped out my house Amazon's gonna know, you know what where I drop my food where I might eat on my couch You know rather than my dining room table and maybe maybe not That that isn't a legitimate concern I don't want to take that away from anybody But I just feel like unless Amazon is going to straight apply and take a bunch of your data and do Horrible things with it which you might believe that it will do but it can't do that as the companies work right now I'm not sure how especially given your opportunity to you know pull back some features if you're not comfortable with them How this is as scary as I've heard it to be Yeah, Nicky. How do you feel about this? Do you have a room both? Yeah, I have a knockoff. I checked the brand. It's called you fi which is owned by anchor I don't know if that means anything But if people are really really concerned about Amazon taking over their life then there are other options And maybe they shouldn't have an Amazon echo either in that case. So yeah I'm not saying it's good that they might be taking your data But if that's really concerned then you can do other things my gut reaction to people immediately saying Amazon bad I don't want this is well Hold on if they keep the privacy policy the way it is now and it looks like they're gonna keep the company as it is now So I would hope they wouldn't need to change the privacy policy It feels like it's okay unless you just don't believe Amazon like Sarah just said What does bother me is consolidation, right? There is now a very tilted marketplace for the home robot vacuum dominated by Roomba without Amazon's emphasis behind it now Amazon is gonna be able to make that even more dominant by putting resources into it and like you said They could also if you want own your doorbell and your Wi-Fi router from Eero and your twitch streaming And your IMDB looking and your video watching and your shopping like it is a lot in one company And so as long as you have choices like you're saying Nikki, then I think that's the answer for now It does get scary that almost everything starts to be you know owned by Amazon it and luckily we still have options But I can understand people are concerned well folks We have some things to make you feel better about the world all next week It's dTNS experiment week swapping out our normal dTNS shows and trying out some new ideas You may remember last year we tried out the tech john and barbecue and tech and those are now going concerns of their own This year rob Dunwood is back for an experiment. He and rod Simmons as I mentioned are gonna do a reaction show to samsung's galaxy unboxed announcement Nicole Lee sat down with my Wi-Fi lean Rivera To talk about tech culture from an asian-american perspective There's a bunch of other shows in the hopper too. It all starts next week Monday august 8th right here on the dTNS feed if you're getting this show, you don't have to do anything You're gonna get it On july 28th alphabets deep mind announced its alpha fold network had predicted the protein structure of 200 million proteins That is literally Almost all the proteins known to science And in addition deep mind made the database of those predictions available for anyone to access for free Nikki can you explain to us what alpha fold is and why all those protein structure predictions are so important So deep mind is a london-based company that's owned by alphabet and they developed alpha fold Which is a type of deep learning ai that predicts these protein structures So alpha fold was actually launched a year ago and I covered it on daily tech headlines And they started out just by seeing if they could correctly predict the 350 000 proteins that were human made And they did and now about a year after the catalog has expanded to over 2 million entries So demis hasabis who is the chief executive executive at deep mind said that this essentially covers the entire protein universe Which is insane honestly And and these proteins have been sequenced from every organism with protein sequence data not just human So that is a lot of organisms And a protein structure to understand what alpha fold is actually predicting It it dictates how a protein works in a cell And so the structure is made out of a sort of string of beads of these chemicals called amino acids And when these chemicals are assembled into sequences, they hold the instructions to an organism's dna This type of structure is also at the basis of most drug designs So a more accurate prediction of of this structure brings us more knowledge on how proteins work And thus how drugs work and lots of other uses Okay, that that makes sense to me So if you know where the slot is on the protein that does the bad thing You can figure out a drug that stops that slot from from working How did alpha fold do this? So it's very very complicated But breaking it down into sort of understandable steps Alpha fold system inputs the data from what we know about amino acid sequences and then creates multiple possible alignments Once it has these it compares these alignments to similar sequences that we have already identified in living organisms And sort of makes a logical guess at what makes sense Then it passes this information through a neural network architecture And it produces a 3d model of the protein structure Down to the atom and you can understand that scientists who work on this are super excited about having this 3d model That is so precise because in the past each new protein that was being analyzed Had to be done with expensive time consuming and extremely precise methods These are things called x-ray crystallography and cryo electron microscopy even the names sound expensive And this is how we found out about their structure Now with alpha fold about 35 percent of the predictions are highly accurate Which is just as accurate as it was using these techniques And it's much much Take a month before from the scientists now takes about a few days And a little bit, you know higher amount of these are 45 percent are accurate enough for many other applications Okay, so that's 80 percent of these are are real useful basically pretty good We'll say pretty good and overall this sums up to 23 terabytes of data So you can't just you know have it on your pc But on the cloud scientists can take this data and they're just rushing to keep up with the volume of predictions that are coming out of Alpha fold and their conscious continuously thinking up applications for all of this brand new freely available data Now I I know some people may be thinking we sequenced the genome a long time ago We we know what the amino acids are for lots of stuff not just human genome We've sequenced lots of genomes. So wouldn't we already know the proteins? So in some instances we do know what the proteins are made of because we took the time to look at them But we haven't looked at every single protein in the universe. Yes It yet it takes a ton of precision as I mentioned to find out exactly how they're structured We know the soup of all the things that they're made out of but the way that they're sort of put together in the 3d space is really hard to predict and Oh, go ahead. No, I was going to say I heard it The metaphor I heard somebody use was uh, I can give you a list of pc parts But if you don't know how to put them together That doesn't tell you that doesn't allow you to make a working pc So the you could know the amino acids in the protein, but if you don't know how it's structured, you don't know how it really works That's exactly that and the rules are are much more complicated and it's very very very tiny So it's rough and and some of them we can't you know, we haven't predicted it yet But alpha fold is helping us out with them. Okay. So once a scientist goes into this Database and says, ah, that's the protein I was looking for now. I know the structure. How does that help them? So the database now contains almost every known protein and this allows for researchers to look at things from a sort of Backed away scale They can study different protein families on a large scale to help understand how they evolved and they can focus on different proteins with specific properties Some of them can for example breakdown plastic or cause cancers And so being able to figure out what specific thing in the structure is causing that is pretty helpful That being said alpha folds still has its limitations It's not designed to predict how a protein structure could change due to mutations for a disease, for example Or what happened and proteins may interact with each other But one of the goals of the european bioinformatics institute, which is who maintains alpha folds database The code the software and the data are all open source This is a huge monumental step in open source research and data And so anybody can access it. You can go look at protein structures if you want right now And this bolsters the next generation of deep learning tools. So I love to hear that Yeah, I I heard the economist podcast compare this to the microscope in in the importance of a tool that now makes science much easier to do than it was before Yeah, I mean we basically now know a lot more about the building blocks Or at least we have access to knowledge about the building blocks of everything Yeah, everything biological. So yeah, it's a big deal. It's exciting What when you can take two months out of your schedule of your work right and say well I don't have to spend that time figuring out the protein now. I could spend a couple hours instead In this database that's that frees you up a lot, doesn't it? Yeah, and it frees you up to look into it and ask different questions and and there's a whole ton of cool research that's going to come out of this discovery. Yeah, so the AI is not taking the scientist jobs. It's helping the scientists in this case. Absolutely just like Roomba Good to know. All right, let's check out the mailbags there We got one from Mike in steamy Dubai who says the know a little more Wi-Fi 7 episode was perfectly timed my aces router suddenly bit the dust it was going back and forth about a simple replacement or upgrading to Wi-Fi 6. I didn't think any of the benefits would be worth it for our family, but here in the Wi-Fi 7 episode confirmed my belief that maybe we should wait a little longer. My replacement router is on the way Mike says a friend asked how I'm doing without internet having witnessed the outage happen on a call. I just responded. Do I look like the kind of guy who has one router? Thanks for keeping me up to date on this tech and helping me not waste money. I like that Mike and I'm glad that know a little more episode was helpful. Folks, go check that out know a little more.com. I definitely know that feeling of being like, do I look like somebody who's just got the one router? Come on now. I need internet. Yeah. Bodie wrote in light of the story in which we were talking about people paying to be a guest on a podcast. Bodie said I would like to announce my new daily podcast Namaste Finance and Tokens or NFT for short. Oh, what fun. I'm currently accepting offers to be my first guest starting at $100,000. Use the promo code DTS for 50% discount. Of course he's kidding, but he also added as long as everyone is transparent, paying to be on a podcast isn't much different than an infomercial. Yeah, I feel like if you're somebody who cares about content and maybe there is something to be sold, whether it's a product or somebody services in the future, transparency is key and people have different feelings about transparency. So that's a conversation to keep having. Yeah, you don't have to like an infomercial, but if you know it's an ad, then you're paying for exposure. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's check in with Len Peralta, who has been drawing today's episode. What have you drawn today, Len? Well, you know, Tom, I know you were saying earlier that, you know, don't freak out about all these mergers and acquisitions. It's not going to be as bad as you think. You know, I don't I agree with you to a certain extent. I just think let's hear the other side of the story. Where are we going with this, Len? Some of these mergers and acquisitions kind of give me a very island of Dr. Morovibe, if you've ever seen that movie where it's like experimentation with different type of creatures. Anyway, this is called the Island of Misfit Mergers and Acquisitions. Actually, this is a scene from the Island of Misfit Mergers and Acquisitions. I love this. Coming summer 2023 on Discoverbow Plus, which is my, you know, my name. If it's called HBO D plus, I'm going to be really happy. I think it'd be funny to be called Discoverbow. So, you know, I don't know. Yeah, both of them are there. That's good. If you're listening to the audio, as I know most of you are, you're going to want to check this out. How do they do that? Please check it out. Well, if you're a Patreon of mine, patreon.com forward slash Len, you can get this parent right away. You just go ahead and download it or you can go with the old fashioned way. You go to lennproldestore.com. It's right on the front page right now and you can download it and get it that way. So check it out. It's really cool. It's so good. Len, you are a treasure. Also a treasure is Dr. Nikki Ackerman. So nice to have you back with us, Dr. Nikki. Let folks know where they can keep up with all that you do. It's very easy. They can find me on my website at nicoleackermans.com and the reverse on Twitter at Ackerman's Nicole. And if someone wants to do a PhD with me next year, I'm currently looking for a student. So, congrats on that. I feel like we have some people in our audience who would be like, yes. There's some AI stuff that I want to do. So I say that with huge quote marks. Well, if you're interested, get ahold of Nikki. And if you need her information, it will always be in our show notes. By the way, feedback at dailytechnewshow.com is where to send emails. If you have questions, comments, feedback on anything we talk about on the show, something you would like to talk about on a future show, all good. We are accepting them now. We also have a brand new boss, Alexander. I think we might know you already, Alexander. Just started backing us on Patreon. Thank you, Alexander. If you're new or you're coming on back, glad to have you. It's always good to have people back. Always good to have people new. And if you haven't been backing us and you start backing us or you're brand new backing us, we'd like to give you a welcome to the show. So you could be that next person. Indeed. Speaking of patrons, stick around for the extended show Good Day Internet. We call it GDI. We have a lot of fun on it. We might talk about food. We might talk about science. We might talk about both. You can also catch the show Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern 200 UTC. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Just a reminder, DTNS is off next week for our regular show. But Experiment Week kicks off on Monday. We are so excited about everything we're doing next week. So keep your ears glued to the feeds to listen to all the great content we have lined up. 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 Strfellino, video producer and Twitch producer Joe Koontz, technical producer Anthony Limos, Spanish language host, writer and producer Dan Campos, news host, writer and producer Jen Cutter, science correspondent Dr. Nikki Ackermans, social media producer and moderator Zoe Deterding. Our mods beatmaster W. Scottus 1, bio-cow, Captain Kipper, Steve Godorama, Paul Reese, Matthew J. Stevens, a.k.a. Gadget Virtuoso and J.D. Galloway. Modern video hosting by Dan Christensen, video feed by Sean Way, music and art provided by Martin Bell, Dan Looters, Mustafa A, ACAST and Len Peralta. Live art performed by Len Peralta. ACAST support from Tatiana Matias, Patreon support from Dylan Harari. Contributors on this week's show include Nika Monford, Scott Johnson and Justin Robert Young. Our guest on this week's show was John C. Dvorak and thanks to all our patrons who make the show possible.