 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you, including Bjorn Andre, Jeff Wilkes, and Paley Glendale. Coming up on DTNS, who wants to be CEO of Twitter? You? I don't know. Plus our thoughts on an Apple Silicon Mac Pro and why Apple backed out of its NFL deal and whether the NFL is going to miss some of that extra cash. This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, December 19th, 2022 in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redbud, I'm Sarah Lane. From New York City, I'm Ayaz Akhtar and I'm the show's producer, Roger Jain. I was going to make beep, beep sounds when I talked about the NFL and Apple backing out of the deal, but I didn't. Because when... You know, like a reverse truck, yeah, right, yeah, I think it was a good call. Let's start with the quick hits instead. At Google's annual India conference, YouTube unveiled a program called Courses to bring more structured learning experiences to the platform. In addition to videos, teachers can publish reading materials and also questions on YouTube that may charge a fee if they wish. The features are in beta and will roll out to users in India soon. Also at the conference, Google showed off development of a new AI model designed to decipher difficult to read handwriting with a focus on doctor's notes and also prescriptions. They are notoriously bad at being able to read. It's working with pharmacists to develop the tool in Google Lens, training to detect medicines and other medical information. No word on the launch date, as of now, with Google saying much work still remains to be done before the system is ready for the real world. Epic Games has agreed to pay an epic amount of money to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to resolve allegations that it violated online privacy protections in Fortnite. We're talking a total of $520 million. The FTC has filed two civil suits, one that Epic had collected personal information of players younger than 13 without notifying parents and also enabling voice and text chat for those users by default. Epic's going to pay $275 million in a civil penalty for those alleged violations of the Child Online Protection Act. A further $245 million in consumer refunds are also going to be paid to resolve the second suit that said Epic used banned methods called dark patterns when they try to trick you into doing stuff to get customers to pay for in-game items and create obstacles to canceling payments. Epic also has agreed to make some other changes to Fortnite to further protect users as part of the whole settlement. Google plans to roll out client-side encryption to Gmail as it has done for Drive and other products. Google Calendar is testing it in beta as well. The end-to-end encryption will prevent Google from seeing what is in user emails but will also require users to manage their own encryption keys. The program is only available for Google Workspace Enterprise Plus, an education standard or PLUS accounts at first. The U.S. Supreme Court has scheduled arguments for two internet moderation cases on our producer Rich Trafalino's birthday. Aww, that was so nice of them. It'll hear Gonzales vs. Google on February 21st which deals with if Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act should apply to a platform's content recommendations. Reminder we have a safe harbor episode of Know a Little More that explains what all that means. On the next day, the court will hear Twitter vs. Tomna which covers whether online service provides unlawful material support if it fails to kick terrorists off of its platform. Meta CEO Andrew Bosworth projected that Meta will devote about 20% of overall cost to reality labs in 2023 with the bulk of spending going towards its family of apps. That's Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and also Messenger. For comparison, it's been 18% on reality labs in Q3, so ramping up. In related CTO news, insider sources say that reality labs consulting CTO John Carmack is leaving the company. Carmack joined Meta when it acquired Oculus. In a note posted to Workplace, he said he would focus on his startup Keen Technologies, expressing frustration in efficiency within Meta. He also said, quote, VR can bring value to most of the people in the world and no one is better positioned to do it than Meta. Oh, so John Carmack's looking for a job. Love y'all, but I'm out. Yeah, Carmack's available. I don't think that relates in any way to this next story, to be honest. But if you see someone who covers technology suffering from neck pain today, they may have a slight case of whiplash from following Twitter news this weekend. On Saturday, Elon Musk, CEO of Twitter and a majority owner, also posted a poll asking if suspended journalists, remember we mentioned Friday that several mainstream journalists got suspended, whether those suspended journalists should be reinstated. 58.7% said yes to that poll and most of those journalists were then reinstated. Now you may have heard that Washington Post Taylor Lorenz was suspended. That happened after the poll. So yeah, so the story is, there are some layers to it. Also on Saturday, if you were keeping track, Twitter prevented some users from linking to selected social networks, including Facebook accounts, Instagram accounts, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribal, Noster and Post, before then reversing that policy and then announcing it would make major policy decisions by poll and then posted a poll that read, quote, Did we have a policy preventing the creation of or use of existing accounts for the main purpose of advertising other social media platforms, end quote. That poll had not concluded by the time that we recorded this, but more than 80% of respondents had voted against that policy being reinstated. Earlier on Sunday, Musk posted a poll asking, should I step down as head of Twitter? And 57.5% of the respondents said yes. Now Musk did not immediately confirm VoxPopuli, VoxDI, as he has with other polls. However, he has said before that he wouldn't stay CEO of Twitter forever. In testimony during a trial over his compensation at Tesla, he said, quote, I expect to reduce my time at Twitter and find somebody else to run Twitter over time. Axios' sources say that several of the investors who contributed money to the purchase of Twitter were told that a leadership transition would happen within three to six months after Musk took over. After the poll completed, Musk did say no one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor. So any guesses on who would even take over as CEO if Elon Musk decides to relinquish the position? Axios, you want to take this one? Sure. I mean, the first thing that I always think of, the first person I think of is Marissa Meyer. She was from Google. She ran Yahoo for a little bit. She took on that challenge, left Yahoo. But I think whoever it's going to be needs to be somebody that Elon Musk actually respects their decision, somebody who's tough enough to talk them off the ledge when he's got his issues. I mean, there was that meeting apparently that Tim Cook and he had recently where Tim's like, hey, chill out, we're not going to throw out Twitter, stop being a jerk about it. And he was fine with it. So whoever this person is going to be has to be very, very strong and capable of handling Musk's whims because this person's got to fight back constantly. That's going to be very difficult. Well, or be a yes person, which would be a different situation entirely. And I've seen, I've seen some names floated around like, well, this person would be the best, you know, the successor to Musk as CEO. I think. I haven't even seen any of that. I was going to say, like, I haven't seen any names floated around that, which I found unusual that I haven't seen that. Well, I guess I don't want to say them because I don't think they would be the right CEO of Twitter, but, but, but I mean, you know, this is, this is, you know, a lot of this is theater. And, you know, I will say that the whole idea of like, hey, should I step down, yay or nay? That doesn't like that didn't matter. Like sure, a lot of people participated in the yes or no poll and that's fine. And it probably is good Intel, you know, for people behind the scenes at Twitter on some level, but this is not what is actually driving the company. And if you think it is, you, I don't know, you know, wake up sheeple. The Elon Musk probably is like, I don't really want to do this anymore. It's actually pretty hard. So let's get somebody else to do the day to day operations. And maybe I could just like, you know, be, you know, chairman of the board type thing. That's how I see this. I don't think he's thinking it's hard, I think, but I do think you're right that, you know, one of the many things that Elon Musk is very good at is promotion. And he always has meant to switch CEOs. And what a good showman does is convince you that two plus two is five and then reveal that it's four. So he knew that a lot of people have assumed that, well, he's so self-centered, he'll stay in this role forever until he runs it in the ground. And so he took that poll knowing like, well, if I win, and I think he thought he would win, then that'll give me some momentum to point to. But if I lose, I'm going to change CEO anyway. So I'll just start the hunt and talk about how hard it is to find somebody. But then I'll eventually replace myself and point to this poll as me following the will of the populace. It was a can't lose proposition. I'm just most fascinated that we haven't seen BuzzFeed and Business Insider and everyone putting out there, you know, top 10 people who could take over as Twitter CEO, because I don't think anybody really has a consensus pick. Marissa Mayer may be the best one I've heard so far, I guess. If that's not doing anything right here. So does he want to do something after Disney, hang out with Musk? I don't know. Bob Chapeck to run Twitter. Yeah, that's never going to happen. But that's funny, at least he's available. He's out there. Well, back in June of 2020, Apple said it expected to transition from Intel to its own M series chips to take about two years. It has been about two and a half years and the Mac Pro and high end Mac Mini are still running on Intel. Well, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that the Mac Pro was originally supposed to get the M1 Ultra, which is the chip in the Mac studio. And another configuration with four M1 Mac chips. Apple then decided to push the Mac Pro back until the M2 generation with plans to offer M2 Ultra and a doubled M2 Ultra, which Gurman calls the M2 Extreme, the M2 Ultra will supposedly have up to 24 cores, 76 graphics cores and 192 gigs of memory. The so-called extreme would have double the course. That's 48 CPU and 152 graphics cores. Though Gurman hears they've scrapped that design. I mean, I know that design sounds great to a lot of folks, but that's down to saving chip production resources at TSMC for higher volume machines and also a desire to keep the price of a Mac Pro lower than $10,000. Because, hey, some people can afford that. Many people cannot, but a lot of people that cannot could really use those Mac Pros. So according to Gurman, Apple now plans to make an M2 Ultra Mac Pro with expandable memory and storage and other components. The current Mac Pro is manufactured in China, then assembled in Austin, Texas in the U.S. The new Mac Pro may be produced in Vietnam. That's interesting. You might be thinking, what is this going to ship? Well, even Gurman doesn't have an estimate right now. Apple has let the Mac Pro line language before going six years between refreshing the trash can Mac Pro, I mean, the cylindrical Mac Pro with the more modular offering in 2019. The Apple Silicon transition has largely been well received because it offered either clear efficiency or performance gains within a product category, often both. It's not offering a clear, if it's not offering a clear performance delta, how much does an Apple Silicon Pro Mac Pro matter to the professional market? What do you think, Tom? Yeah, I think it's going to offer a performance delta, even with this lower chip. It is a little surprising to see Apple delay rollouts this way, but given supply chain issues and inflation and disruptions to the economic and then supply chain market, even Apple can't overcome all of that. So that makes sense to me. I think the fact that they are also trying to move out of China while trying to keep costs down makes Vietnam a very, very reasonable place that Apple might end up. Maybe some Indian, maybe some Brazilian factories. But that also is going to delay things and add to the complexity of all this. So so the delay doesn't surprise me. There is a lot of price resistance. And it's it's not just you and I that want to Mac Pro. If it's more often a business, sometimes they're small businesses, but the creative professional businesses and those businesses used to be able to throw more money around than they can now. A lot of businesses are more cost conscious, even big businesses. So Apple does have some price pressure on there. It makes sense that they would strike a balance of, all right, we'll we'll do an M2 Ultra, not an M2 Extreme, but we'll we'll allow you to add things to improve the performance. I guess that's my big question is the Apple Silicon promise has been we've got a unified architecture so you don't need as much RAM. And that's why we're not giving you expandable RAM. That's why it's just 192 gigs of memory in this in this rumored chip. So does how much does the expandable RAM help you? I mean, obviously, being able to expand storage and everything is is always a good thing. Yeah, but but I don't know how much of a SAV that is. However, the Apple Silicon has been so good. I have a feeling that even just the just the M2 Ultra is going to make a splash. Yeah, that's the performance, the insane performance of the of the Apple Silicon line so far almost makes a Mac Pro kind of ridiculous to think about because there is the Mac Studio out there. The I was thinking back when I first got my Mac Pro in 2008. OK, so 2008, this is a long time ago. This machine was like the only one capable from Apple machines that could do what I needed to do, which was a lot of heavy video editing. At this point, you can do super video editing on an iPad, an iPhone and an M one based like a clearance item, M one Mac mini. So now he's talking about like, let's use 8K. We're going to have 16 streams of this. We're going to have an orchestra. It's like the use cases for what the Mac Pro used to do for like small creative professionals. That's completely affordable at this point for the Mac Pro. It has to either be like something so insane. It's so specialized that very few normal creators are going to use this thing because unless you need specialized hardware that needs to be internal, why wouldn't you go all external at this point? So it's kind of it's almost like if they had that Apple Silicon in the trash can Mac Pro, it would make a lot more sense. Yeah, this is a business product. The Mac Pro, given how good the M one and the M two are on laptops, like this this is for like I'm doing heavy duty editing stations. I'm doing heavy duty development. I really have a high overhead to my computing in the staff that I employ. And so I need to, you know, splash down nine thousand five hundred dollars on something that's going to improve their productivity because I'll make that back. This is this is not meant for the the prosumer anymore. I think you've convinced me I is. But when I need a model with wheels, OK, I don't care what it is. I need to have attachable wheels that cost six hundred dollars. Oh, no, it's going to be. Yeah, it's going to be an accessory that you buy, right? This is also, you know, call me crazy. But where it's 48 CPU, one or 52 graphics cards. That's crazy. It's like there will be a time five years from now when we're like, remember when we didn't think we needed that? Oh, yeah, the M three will like have 136 CPU cores or something. You're exactly. And it'll just be like, oh, we just like dealt with slow things. Yeah, no, yeah, that's how evolution works all. Well, if you have figured out either of these things, perhaps you are the new Twitter CEO, please send us an email and let us know feedback at Daily Tech News Show dot com. NFL Sunday ticket, we've talked about it before. If you're a little fuzzy on what it is, maybe you're not a big football fan or or you're a you're a big American football fan. It's the package that lets you watch all the games you can't get otherwise. So the games that aren't on in your market, you can watch all of them on a Sunday. Direct TV has had it forever. But there are negotiations for next year to sell it to someone new. It has been around for almost three decades. The rights to Sunday ticket have been tied to the US to direct TV in the US since launch. That expires at the end of this season. And back in July, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell told CNBC it would select a streaming service partner with Sunday ticket by autumn. Clock's ticking. We got two days left in autumn. Apple, Amazon, ESPN's owner, Disney and YouTube's owner, Google, were all reported to be among the bidders with all the previous reporting saying that Apple was pretty much the front runner. They just had to dot the I's and cross the T's. So now, pop.news and the athletic sources say Apple has abandoned talks on a deal to get NFL Sunday ticket. The athletic says Apple wanted international rights and in market game streams, Sportico previously reported that the NFL opposed Apple's idea of including Sunday ticket with Apple TV plus at no additional cost. Reports say the NFL asked for three point five billion dollars for the Sunday ticket deal. Apple clearly has the money, but reportedly did not see the logic with the NFL's terms. Wow. This is like the immovable force meets the irresistible object or vice versa. The puck reports don't mention Disney. So no ESPN in the running for this bid. Whatever the reason, the word on the street is that Amazon and Google, therefore YouTube are the top contenders to get the NFL package next year. Apple's been making a big push into sports. So it's not like they're backing off. Major League Baseball has a deal. They recently announced a 10 year deal with Major League Soccer to get everything on Apple. Is it surprising I as to see them walk away from the golden goose that is the NFL? I mean, Apple doing whatever it wants is not really that surprising, especially since they can do pretty much whatever they want. I mean, if Apple wanted to create their own football league, they might just do that because they have the cash to burn. But I think that what Apple was looking for was like an all inclusive thing. It's not like if you want to an Apple TV product or Apple TV plus and you wanted to watch Sunday ticket to explain to people that certain games are blacked out because that's on Fox or on CBS or it's on whatever a local RS center, something that's annoying to explain to a consumer. So I think Apple walking away from it until they can get the terms of the deals they want. It's like them, but it's the NFL. They're not going to bend very easily when you got people like or you got companies like Google out there and Amazon, they're probably willing to go, yeah, sure, whatever you want. This is this is fine. This is fine. Yeah, I get the sense that Apple NFL would say like how we can't get rid of the blackout restrictions. We've got deals with CBS and and and and with ABC and and and with Fox and Apple just pointed at a pile of cash. And either the pile of cash wasn't big enough or the NFL was like, no, but the relationships, it's not about the money. It sort of surprises me that Disney would not have just been the company that scoops this up. ESPN done deal makes sense. I think there are many folks who were like, wait, so Apple or Amazon would be interested in, you know, NFL stuff. The answer is yes. But yeah, for the right price. And yeah, you know, Apple has more money than God. So there are obviously other things going on here besides just the price. It is not surprising to me simply because it's the money. Disney Disney just doesn't have the deep pockets that Amazon, Google and Apple have. And so which is wild to say, what it's just it's been true for years now, right? But it is weird if you don't realize that. Yeah, absolutely. And so they're being smart with their with their money because they know there's there's a rough transition ahead. They will make that transition, but the transition is coming where they lose a lot of that money that's been coming in from cable carriers and they're going to have to make it up with direct subscriptions and they have some experience of what that means with Disney Plus. So Bob Iger stepping in, even though these these were already underway under Bob Chapec, I think Bob Iger stepping in makes it even less likely that ESPN pays NFL money. They're going to use that money to buy up other things that these these other bidders won't have the money for after they splash out too much money on the NFL. Apple is willing to pay too much money to the NFL. I can't be masters saying relationships. It's always about the money. I can't imagine that Apple saw a dollar amount that they wouldn't take if they got their deal. It was about the blackouts. It was about like I can't imagine Apple wouldn't have been able to pay enough money to get rid of the blackouts. The NFL just either didn't feel like it could legally get rid of the blackouts or was worried that it would lose money down the road somehow. But it wasn't immediately about the money. It was about the relationships. And you're right, be master of the relationships are about money. But a lot of times there's there's personal personal feelings start to get involved more than you might expect. Also, you've got the thing if Apple got away with this, if this happens, the NFL has got to kind of offer this to the next party that's going to buy this. Whereas they were getting pieces of the pie from international distribution. This part, that part, this part. So now if other companies go in the future, hey, wait, you did that for Apple, you got to do that from now on. That could be a tough pill for the NFL to swallow. I'm thinking if it's Google or Amazon, and these are the last two big guys left in tech, it should be Google who should get this because they have YouTube TV. So if you have a blackout, you go, oh, go to Channel 2. You can go and watch this very easily. Amazon's, unless something's changed and I haven't really checked recently, Amazon doesn't have a really easy way for you to go to a live streaming version of a of a network television show. YouTube TV is there. So you just put that together with the NFL Sunday ticket and you've got a traditional standard cable like experience that people understand. Yeah, I think that would make the best consumer and consumer, although they probably add it to YouTube without YouTube TV as well. Amazon really wants the NFL, though. They've got Thursday night football. They would love to have Sunday ticket as an add on to Amazon Prime Video. So the NFL is not going to hurt even though they turn down Apple money. They're going to get stacks of money. I'm not I'm not worried. Don't worry about Roger Goodell. He's going to be fine. You know what, Tom? Thank you. I was worried I wouldn't sleep well tonight. You don't need to send him any any loans or anything. He's good. They're going to be OK. OK, cool. That is that is nice to know. Well, switching gears to, you know, some music and some social networks. Let me put on my callad voice. Another one. Instagram is letting users select up to 14 of their favorite photos, which will be automatically stitched together into a reel with narration templates from stars like DJ Khaled, but also Bad Bunny and Priya Ferguson. Bit of an evolution from last year. Instagram's recap feature at the time was called Playback, selected up to 10 of a user's stories from the past year. And that, at the time, was sort of a way for IG to keep people in network instead of using a third party service like top nine. Many of us had been doing that for some time, and it was kind of fun. And they're like, why would we not just make this tool inclusive? Parent company Metta now says that across Instagram and Facebook reels are played more than one hundred forty billion times every day. So if you like it, have at it Instagram peeps. They said we couldn't see 14 of our favorite photos. So we did it together. Yeah, actually, I haven't done it because it hasn't showed up for me because I never use reals. So I don't think I'm going to get one of these. I don't either. I ask you, I really am not one to be nostalgic in general. So if this shows up, I'll hit the button and take a look. But I'm really not going to be like, oh, no, I missed out on looking back at the light this year. I don't need to look back this year. Well, Touche, me either. I actually I actually really do like looking back. I really liked top nine. I wished Instagram would give me an automatic top nine of my photos instead of reals. But I know that I'm an unusual person. Most people are using stories that are real. You're not that unusual, Tom. I think I honestly, when I see reals, I'm like, don't click. No, we are both unusual, statistically speaking. I know personally, we don't want to feel that way. But because, you know, it's that personal bias. But if you look at the numbers, like most people are doing enough stories and reels that that they can qualify for this. So I'm willing to admit it. All right. Fine. It's his this season. But I I would like to I would I like these end of the year things. I actually do, too. Yeah, I'm a little more nostalgic than I is. Yes, that's true. That's really hard to argue with. Yeah. All right. Let's check out the mailbag. We can't argue with this either. All right. So Marty Rodin said, wanted to offer a perspective as a side as side loading, which is something we talked about on the show last week. Side loading is incredibly popular in the Pokemon Go world, says Marty. When a new APK or update starts to roll out, it can sometimes take days or week to reach everybody to have all the people side load the app from APK mirror to get the latest features without having to wait for their staged rollouts to reach them on the flip side and tying back to Apple. There are many times where a new update breaks something in the game, but the rollout is finished. So most people auto updated on Android. People are easily able to go back to a version of a stable version until the bugs are worked out, but that's not really possible on iOS today. You're stuck on the buggy version if you've upgraded, Marty says. So if Apple allows side loading and depending on the specifics, of course, it would hopefully make upgrading and downgrading a more controllable experience, even with apps that are just offered in the app store. I love this. I mean, it's kind of like reels. Like it still doesn't mean most people side load, but what a great example of a community making really good use of side loading. I love this story. Thank you, Marty. Yeah, indeed. We also got a nice note from Comey, who said it has been a while, but I wanted to thank you for your review, Sarah, of Remarkable 2, because my wife just bought one and she loves it. My wife is an interpreter. She constantly takes notes when she interprets between English and Japanese throughout the business meetings. She used to take a lot of steno pads to her business trip. Then she discovered Rocketbook, a notepad with special paper that lets you use erasable ink with wet cloth, lets you let you erase ink with wet cloth. It was good at first, but it became too much work to wipe and erase hundreds of pages after each business trip. On Remarkable 2, she can take notes as quickly as on paper and she doesn't have to carry five steno pads on her trips anymore. Now she's recommending that product to all her interpreter friends. Oh, that's so great. Oh, that is such a great use case. Comey, thank you for writing in and letting us know that that that that seems like a perfect reason that they're Remarkable 2, which is a great product for many reasons, is great for your wife. Very cool. Thank you, Comey. Indeed. Also, thanks to you, Aya's actor for being with us. It's like no time has passed. Let folks know how they can keep up with your work. I've got this on Nerd.com. That's a show I do. It's about having the most tech forward life and home as possible. And the thing is, since life is short, you don't have a lot of time. So our projects are about about 15 minutes long, if it takes you that long to do, at least to watch the show. This week's episode was about the future of the Harmony Remote, which is dead already. So I'm already looking into HDMI, CEC and how that actually works. Not a big fan of CEC. I'll explain why in that video. Check that out. You've got ideas of what the future of home theaters is. Let me know. Yeah, I need this information, so I'm so glad you're doing this. Yeah, same. Same here. Well, thanks for being with us, as always, Ayaz. And also, thank you to our brand new boss, Earl. Earl just started backing us on Patreon. Thank you, Earl. Thank you, Earl. Now, Earl is locked in on the Patreon merch train. If you are not a patron already, there are lots of perks you get, including bonus episodes, extra content, longer versions of the show. But also, every three months you remain a patron will send you a little something. Could be a sticker, postcard, mug, t-shirt, hoodie. All depends on what level you're at. Go check it out, patreon.com. Slash D T N S also this Friday. Real quickly, I almost I forgot to put this in the rundown. We are going to do a Q&A episode. So if you have questions for Daily Tech News Show, patron or otherwise, send them to us. Feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com. Speaking of patrons, stick around for the extended show today. Good Day Internet starts right after we wrap up DTNS. But just a reminder, our show is live. Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern 2100 UTC. We're always on demand as well. But if you can catch us live, so much more fun. DailyTechNewsShow.com slash live is where you can find out more. We are back tomorrow doing it all again. But Terence Keynes joining us. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. And Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.