 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you, including Johnny Hernandez, Hi-Tech Oki, and Martin James. Coming up on DTNS, where will the metaverse thrive? And where I'd get some big accessibility updates, and how do we collectively save our power grids? This is Daily Tech News for Thursday, September 8th, 2022, from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. From Austin, Texas, I'm Justin Robert Young. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chen. We've got a lot of stuff to talk about today, and some of it is on the, you know, the heels of Apple's big announcements yesterday, but we've got a lot of other stuff to talk about. So, let's start with a few tech things you should know. Samsung announced that the new One UI and Watch 4.5 updates for older devices, software updates will start with the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and the Galaxy Z Flip 3, starting September 5th, rolling out gradually worldwide. Later, the One UI 4.1.1 update will roll out to much older foldables, including the original Z Flip and Fold devices. When the screen is unfolded, the One UI 4.1.1 includes a taskbar allowing shifting between apps easily and dragging and dropping apps onto the home screen. Verizon announced a unified subscription plan for iPhone users. This was interesting to me because I am a Verizon user and I'm on a limited plan. The new One Unlimited for iPhone includes subscriptions to Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, iCloud+, and Verizon's Unlimited Calling Plan. One Unlimited for iPhone costs $90 for one line and between $75 and $45 per line for multiple lines and will include Unlimited 5G Ultra Wideband, 5G Nationwide, and 4G LTE data. The One Unlimited for iPhone plan is available now to all new and existing Verizon wireless subscribers. Verizon and Apple are also holding a stream on Friday, September 9th to reveal first look releases coming to Apple TV+, among other joint announcements. Speaking of announcements, Nvidia will stream an event on September 20th at 11am eastern time called GeForce Beyond, a special broadcast. It's expected to announce its 40 series GPUs built on the Lovelace architecture. That's the successor to Ampere. You can watch the event on Twitch and YouTube. The Financial Times reports PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan says that Microsoft's offer to keep the Call of Duty franchise on PlayStation for three years after the current agreement was inadequate on many levels and failed to take account of the impact on our gamers. Sony has concerns about the impact if the proposed $67.68, rather a $.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft is indeed approved as the proposed three years extension of the existing agreement could only continue Call of Duty's annual PlayStation releases through to 2027. As part of the Chips and Science Act passed into U.S. law in early August, the Biden administration has released more strategy details. Secretary of Commerce Gina Riamondo said companies who receive chips funds can't build leading-edged or advanced technology facilities in China for a period of 10 years. And companies who receive the money can only expand their mature node factories in China to serve the Chinese market exclusively. Alright Justin, let's talk a little bit more about the metaverse and who the heck it's for. It feels like a song that would have a call and response. KPMG said approximately 78% of U.S. adults do see value in the metaverse with 76% supporting on the job training in the metaverse, 59% expecting the metaverse to have a quote-unquote significant impact on their lives in the next 12 months and 40 and 8% seeing significant impacts in the next five years. U.S. leaders of enterprise innovation at KPMG Cliff Justice said, quote, with each interaction, people are becoming more accustomed to engaging in everyday activities in the metaverse. KPMG surveyed 1,000 Americans between the ages of 18 and 65. So it's not a huge sample size, but at least giving you some idea that some folks say, yeah, this is probably the way that it's going. Speaking of the metaverse and other options than being in person, for many people, everyday activities as KPMG calls it kind of means working. If you're keeping normal hours, you're probably working 9 to 5-ish Monday through Friday during the week. In contrast to recent moves to bring employees back into offices from companies like Twitter and Google and Apple who have had remote workers for some time but are at least trying to get everybody back in the same place. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said on stage at the Code 2022 conference in Los Angeles yesterday that Amazon has no plan to push workers back into the office. Now, of course, some of the workers are workers in warehouses and so it doesn't totally apply to them. This is more of like a corporate working thing, but that is what Jassy said. Also, when asked about unionization efforts within Amazon, Jassy noted that the company's objections to the process are ongoing through the legal process and said, I think that's going to take a long time to play out. So let's start there. There's limited amounts to what Andy Jassy can say. I can understand from their perspective, they, like many large companies, find unionization efforts to oftentimes be predatory. So they're entitled to their opinion. There's only so much that they can say legally without falling under the category of being union busters, which is illegal. So let's get to the metaverse stuff, Sarah, because I've got some questions about that survey and I would like to point that KPMG, which is a company that can stand on its own record when it comes to the accounting services that they provide, are actively benefited by continued expansion by businesses into new areas for which might require specific accounting processes. Yeah, a lot of consulting going on. Exactly. The metaverse. I would wonder exactly how they worded what the metaverse is because those numbers seem very high for what my expectation is from a personal bubble that is very tech literate. I 100% agree with you and I know that I try not to be too much of a naysayer on something that I haven't really seen in practice working yet. The metaverse as a concept is a very large concept, you know, the metaverse as it would apply to, let's say you and me and Roger and Joe and Amos and Tom doing something collaboratively before each show, which we already do. Yes. Yeah, I know that remotely, but let's say that that somehow helped us kind of feel more connected or read the room a little bit better. I'm all for it. I'm all for it. I just don't know how many opportunities a lot of these companies have. And I wonder how much, you know, I know Andy Jassy saying, ah, we won't make people come back to the office just yet. You know, if they work for Amazon, that that may stay the same. Who knows, Amazon might just be lagging behind certain other companies who are like, hey, we have these headquarters, let's get people back. You know, because nobody's even wearing masks anymore kind of thing. I just, I would love to see in practice how this is going to work super well. And the idea of a digital representation of yourself, you know, I know the metaverse is more than just like, oh, Sarah made an avatar that kind of looks like Sarah type thing. How this can free us up to be better workers. I mean, look, I buy these numbers if by metaverse, you mean internet. I would see that 78% of adults see value in the internet or support on the job, on the job training and the internet and expecting that it'll have a significant impact in their lives. But if we're looking at the metaverse the way we understand it, which is a virtual reality based world for which you can interact with fellow people, then the best case scenario, if I'm going to steal man, this argument is boy, did we take to zoom really fast during the lockdown. Yeah, sure. Zoom has become an indelible part of the business community. And if you are going to look at zoom as a rotary telephone, then the future version of it the iPhone version of that could look something like the metaverse. But boy, do I not think that I don't buy that a representative sample of American workers believe that that is in their future within the next 12 months. I think that's a really good point. I think they're probably a few people who go metaverse. Yeah, it's, you know, Facebook, right? Sure, I'm on Facebook metaverse that, you know, that's definitely in my future type thing. Not everybody has the same idea of what that is. If I if I really and again, I hate to boo boo something that could work for me in the future. But I think, okay, what if I were an executive and on some level, I had to present something to a team and that gave me a lot of anxiety and somehow the metaverse could help me in that way to kind of give give myself like a tiny bit of, you know, the man behind the curtain type thing. Okay, I can see there being specific examples where this would help certain folks. I just don't know when we're all jumping into this. I agree. I also think this iOS who Android is in. Yeah, huh? Android is introducing a host of new features to improve accessibility personalization and productivity across various devices, one of which nearby share Google's version of Apple's AirDrop is getting an update that lets users easily send files between their own devices, as long as both devices are on Android. If you opt into the new feature on your Android phone or tablet, it transfers between the two devices, and they will be automatically accepted, even if your display is switched off. Google says the feature is coming quote in the next few weeks. Few other updates, which will be I think welcome to a lot of Android fans Google Drive and Google keep are also getting newly designed widgets for larger screen devices with easier access to things like docs and slides and sheets files within the Google Drive widgets. The keep widget helps note taking for people with reduced vision with increases in overall size and font size. Android sound notifications are getting an upgrade to once activated and Android device will listen out for sounds like a fire alarm or somebody knocking on your front door stuff that you, you know, maybe need to address, maybe don't hear on your own. You'll get a notification when it hears them. And users can now create customer alerts. This one's pretty cool by recording specific noises. For example, if your washing machine is one of those that plays a little sound when it's done, then you can get a notification that your load of laundry is ready for the dryer. Google Meet users will also have access to multi pinning during calls and meet also introduce live shared experiences like games and co-watching on Android mobile and tablet devices with YouTube content available for up to 100 people at a time. And if you have a smartwatch running where OS a new keep tile can now be added to your watch for note taking and your Bitmoji can be added to your watch face. Oh, Bitmojis. You know, I'd make fun of them metaverse and all, but I've got one. She actually kind of looks like me. But all these new Android features aside, while speaking at the code 2022 conference, a lot of executives were there. It was pretty star studded in the tech world. Apple CEO Tim Cook dismissed that idea of adopting RCS messaging, something that many Android and iOS users alike have wanted for some time. Tim Cook says he'd like to put to rest the idea of the green bubble issue being a problem when an iPhone user messages an Android user or vice versa. He said, quote, I don't hear our users asking that we put a lot of energy on this at this point. I would love to convert you to an iPhone. Oh, he surely would because an iPhone sells for more money than most androids do and he happens to be the guy who runs the iPhone company. Oh, a lot of folks were a little salty about this whole thing. First of all, I think, especially since we went through not just iOS stuff, but a lot of hardware stuff on our show yesterday with the Snobo S folks, Terence Keynes and Nika Montford. But the updates to Android sound pretty great. Roger, I know you're an Android user. I am not. So I look at the stuff and I go, sounds pretty great if I used Android in any capacity, which I don't. I think that the CEO of Apple saying, yeah, green bubble isn't really that big a deal. Because if it is, you could just get two iPhones and then we don't have that. One thing on this, Roger, and I'll let you go. iPhone this week surpassed Android for the market share of all smartphones. It went over 50%. So there is not even a mandate for them to fit into the larger smartphone community. Roger, go ahead. Well, I was going to say that there's no reason for him to say we'll be working on. I mean, like, Apple is fine where it is with what Justin just touched on. There's such a huge market share of iPhone users that it really is more of a burden for Google to get something like this done than it is for Apple to kind of help facilitate that. Because, I mean, how is Apple losing by not fixing the issue, right? I mean, it's like saying like... If Apple sales fell dramatically, then they would probably... Well, yeah. I mean, here's the market pain on that. When you're in a group chat with somebody, everybody else has an iPhone and one person has an Android, and then all of a sudden you don't get the tap backs. It's somebody laughed at a message, blah, blah, blah, blah. And ultimately, people will work around it this way. They'll use a third-party app. They'll use WhatsApp. They'll use Signal or anything else. That's how they get around it. It's not by, you know, brow-beating Tim Cook. Like, why does it work with Android? So it's like seamless. It's like one ecosystem. It's like, no, I make a lot of money on my device. People like it the way it is. And I haven't seen any market repercussions from not changing the way things are right now. So, no. Yeah. I don't know. I have plenty of friends who are on Android devices, and the green bubble does not bother me. It's not the end of the world. It's not a broken product without any kind of update. Yeah. I don't know. I think at one point it maybe meant something, and now it's like... It is purely the domain of OCD completionists. Well, if you would like to complete some of the thoughts that we've talked about on the show thus far, you can do so by submitting stories into our subreddit. It's a great way for us to know what you care about and what's on your mind. Submit stories and vote on others at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. Well, I am pretty warm in Studio Redwood today because a California heatwave has been dragging on for over a week now. Cell phones have helped keep the power on, you might say, in what way could they have done that? Well, temperatures in large parts of the state have been above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. That's 37 Celsius if you're a Celsius person. For eight straight days, it's been hot. And on Tuesday, at September 6th, the majority of the state, and it's a big state, one above 100, and a large part above 110 Fahrenheit, which is 43 Celsius, also very hot. As air conditioners strained to cool buildings, so did the state's power grid. To combat this, the state has issued flex alerts every day from October 31st to September 8th. A flex alert sends messages, including by email and SMS, asking customers to reduce power usage between 4 and 9 p.m. such as avoiding running dishwashers and laundry machines and to raise their thermostat above 78 degrees or higher. Some smart thermostats are registered in a voluntary system, automatically adjusting to save power. For example, Nes rush hour protocol pre-cools buildings for a certain time before the flex alert, and then raises the thermostat's temperature to conserve energy in the afternoon. Alright, so on Tuesday, September 6th, demand for energy reached 52,061 megawatts. That's an all-time high. So the California Independent System Operator, which oversees the different power companies like Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, PG&E, ConEd, all companies that have taken my money over the years, issued a level three energy emergency alert warning of possible rotating power outages in order to ease pressure on the grid and keep power flowing everywhere else. Now that alert was issued at 2.17 p.m. Pacific time. Less than a half hour later, at 2.45 Pacific, California's Office of Emergency Services pushed a cell phone alert statewide in both English and Espanol that read, conserve energy now to protect public health and safety. Extreme heat is straining the state energy grid. Power interruptions may occur unless you take action. Turn off or reduce non-essential power if health allows now until 9 p.m. This was not a text message, but an emergency alert similar to an amber alert for missing children. It's one that just pops up on your phone with the yellow triangle and an exclamation point in it. In this case, it was part of the U.S. system of wireless emergency alerts used to warn emergencies for natural disasters and amber alerts. So you might say, alright, well, who paid attention? It worked. Demand fell by 1200 megawatts between 2.50 and 2.55 p.m. So basically, that means people saw the alert, people took it seriously and people turned stuff off that were, you know, putting strain on the power grid. By 5 p.m., the level three emergency was called off and rolling power outages were not needed after all. Now you might say, hmm, hasn't this happened before? Indeed it has. New York City experienced a similar thing back in June of last year when a cell phone alert was pushed during a heat wave that the city was having and power demand dropped in response to that as well. So it just goes to show you whether or not you're thinking of your fellow neighbors or not if you're like, rolling power outage, don't want that, which would be certainly the case for me right now. I'll turn off whatever I can. I will say the fact that it came in as an emergency alert. Now if you've never had one before, it's not just the fact that you can message. It's disconcerting. It also sends out a very unique audible bleep on your phone, like a very shrill tone to get your attention. And so there is a level of seriousness to it that you feel rather than just getting a normal text. For example, my local utility texts me on the odd occasion when they have to shut down power, but it's done over normal SMS. So it's all right, I got this from the power company. I'll look at it and think about it. But this really had like, you know, you don't do something. You know, the power may go out, so you save a little now. You'll save a lot later. I think also, and Justin, I don't know how things are happening in your neck of the woods obviously, Texas has its share of heat waves as well. But, you know, there are certain things that I wouldn't do. It's going to be a high of what? 104 here today, probably is outside at this point. I'm not going to water my rose bushes in this heat. That's crazy. It's a waste of water. But I might not really think about certain other things that I'm doing chore-wise. Like, oh yeah, I shouldn't run the laundry machine. I could do that later. There's certain, I think it's, there's a certain aspect of just reminding folks like, hey, could you shift it a little bit and people don't want to be jerks about it unless they really have to be. All right, not to be a critic here on this particular issue, but I do think that the powers that be that issue these kinds of warnings do need to be judicious about it as noble of an effort as amber alerts are or silver alerts are, which is being on the lookout for a lost senior citizen. How many of those details do you remember seconds after you get those alerts? Because I know for me it is in one ear and out the other because they happen too often. Yeah, but those are a little different, right? It's like, when I get an amber alert and it's like child missing, last seen here, here's the license plate or, you know, the description of the car that might have this kid. If I'm at home and I haven't been out in a while, I can't help. My point isn't that it is any less noble, although I do take your point that this is something that you would have a less immediate actionable position with. That being said, the more that this happens, the less people will pay attention to it. That's just the law of how people deal with things. And so while this is a good story, this is a tech done good story, regardless of what you think about the power grids and how they're maintained and the companies that run them for which I will say full disclosure, I have very negative feelings to PG and he specifically, that is good. It is good that they were able to reduce consumption at a time when the load was really, really high. I would also say they should not take this as a sign that this is a button that can hit at the same frequency with the same result forever because I don't think that's the case. I totally agree. I mean, there is very much a boy that cried wolf analogy to this. I think what it does, because it was the initial, at least the first time they've rolled it out, is that there's an urgency to it and if they're very, very judicious and use it incredibly sparingly, people will treat it as such in the same way that I used to treat, you know, sirens, like emergency sirens either from a fire truck or EMT, although now I live in an area where that is literally a daily occurrence instead of before where it was maybe once a week or once a two or three times a month. So what you were saying, I kind of filtered that out of my mental processing. But I think there is definitely ways I think technology can help, especially with power usage, directly by providing consumers with technology like LED light bulbs, smart thermostats, smart technologies to allow only power to be used when it's actually needed instead of just, you know, sometimes I leave a fan on or ceiling fan or light on absentmindedly and as I do something else and I totally space on it for it to turn it off and I've wasted, you know, an hour and a half worth of electricity turning a fan in a room that no one's sitting in. But I think moving forward with this, I think it's part of a spectrum of things that people can do. I think if all you had was this and that's all you did, this would be a terrible way to use it. But if it is one, I would, I would, I would push back on that a little bit, Roger, in that I think that right now, aside from curmudgeons like me who have very, very specific access to grind about companies like PG&E, in general, citizens and customers of these services that are protected by the state have fairly good feelings about them. Yes, heat waves come and go. Yes, brownouts have happened throughout California, not only in the recent history, but also even back through the 90s and early 2000s. That being said, the power shows up. Everybody is able to depend on it. It is odd when it is gone. And so if you move into the realm of things like smart thermostats, look, if it is something that you opt into and maybe with you opting into it, you get some kind of rebate on your bill, then at least you are making that deal with your customer. The more that you look at technology as a necessary lever or a everyday lever to reduce load, the more I think you're going to erode your relationship with your customers. I mean, I'll disagree with you on this point. Before technology, we had another lever and that was pricing, right? You use electricity during peak demand hours. They used to jack the rates at least double or if not three times more. That was to penalize people who use too much during a peak hour. And so if you can shift away from purely an economic stick to a technology that allows people to still experience... Nobody wants to have a warm house when they want a cold house. They might be upset that they have a higher bill. But the way that you feel if you cannot change your thermostat, not to say that that is happening now, it is not happening now. I'm just saying that this is a realm in which these companies should tread lightly. Because if you do it sparingly, I do think it is effective. The more you believe that you can do it more often, for which I do not put it past any of these companies, the worse they're going to sound. And the thing with smart thermostats where the power utility can't control, and they have both here and in your state of Texas back in 2021 in September, that was all voluntary. People signed up for it when they signed the agreement. And if that's the case, then that's a different story. I'm more warning on a slippery slope argument. I see that there's an edge to it and you don't want to go off of it. But at the same time, you don't want to necessarily just kind of push it off as saying, well, that's too much of a leap. You're getting too close to the edge. You're going to fall over and saying like, hey, why don't we just have this and maybe put up a guardrail that allows us to manage people's power usage without adversely affecting them as long as they agree to it. And I think that that kind of delicate nature is something that public utilities have always been known for. Listen, things will change hopefully or not. We'll see. I mean, well, it's time will tell. Indeed. Well, we talked a lot about new Apple announcements on the show yesterday. One of them being the new Apple Watch Ultra. Justin, I don't know how excited you are about it, but Justin wrote in, because we had asked the folks out there, okay, well, this seems to be designed for, you know, serious athletes and folks doing scuba diving and, you know, a lot of kind of, you know, pretty intense outdoorsy stuff. Dustin wrote in and said, iron man triathlete and ultra runner here, which is nice, Justin, because it's not a bus arm. He says, it was nice to see Apple try and tackle the crowd that I frequent. And while it is a step forward, it still falls flat on many levels. Take the Garmin Enduro, for example. This device has an over 100 hours of GPS time without GPS lasts over 30 days. Comes in handy for those extreme ultra races, much like the Tahoe 200 mile run I participated in a few years back. When it comes to triathlons, it also falls flat. No accessory integration, which so many of us use, you know, out of the pros. Power meters, one example, which are calculating your power production through pedals or cranks. Apple made a statement that the battery would last the average person a full distance triathlon. But what about the back of the pack folks who need all 16 hours? Sounds like this may not last that long. I did love the alarm mode. It's nice to see crash detection, which appears to be a little over the Garmin devices have offered for a while. But all in all, a great start to fill this community need. As let's be honest, Apple does run past Garmin in smartphone specific features, but it still feels years away from many of these niche communities. And it will feel years away probably forever because Garmin is a brand that has very much locked in on these niche communities. And I don't think that Apple is ever going to go as far as Garmin will unless things become so commoditized that it is easy for them to expand into it. So yeah, I will. I will say that I've always had a feeling, at least with Apple's branding and advertising, a lot of it's inspirational, right? It's like you could if you have one of these, you could scuba dive. It could be an ultra, but it's not. I mean, again, we're talking about merely marathon runners, not Iron Man triathlete ultra marathon runners running 200 miles, right? And God bless Dustin and anybody else who does that. That is a tremendous commitment in mind, body and spirit. But like that is that is an edge case of an edge case of an edge case that if Apple moves more toward that, then good for them because their bread and butter is what Dustin murdered at the very end, smart watch features. Yeah, and I mean, it's like hiking boots, right? Before hiking boots were a thing just in casual, where they were meant for a very specific group of people. All you need to do is grab enough of the market share of the people who want to look like they do it, not necessarily actually do it. And I think at least your financials will look good, right? Because the whole point about a lot of these products is again, inspirational. I'm not going to just because I buy Nike. I don't even necessarily think it's inspirational. The key that Apple wants to do is make sure that in the moments that you have your watch on your wrist, it is doing things that you like. That's it, right? That's what makes it a successful product. And if you're into fitness, does it calculate your fitness stuff while you are doing it? And I've used it for that a lot. I have a much older I watch or an Apple watch. And it does fine with this new version. Sounds like it does better. So that'll be good. Well, Justin, Robert Young, we love your thoughts, as always, whether they're political or they're about smart watches. Let folks know where you've been the last week or so. You know, when I'm not delving into the real minefield of Android versus Apple or Garmin versus Apple Watch, I like to relax in a calming field of political discussion. And that's what I do on politics, politics. Oh, super chill. Go ahead and check out the shows from Wednesday and the episode that will come out tomorrow for looks into the Pennsylvania and Nevada Senate races, Nevada Senate race. I'm sorry to everybody in Las Vegas. We take a look into those and it's a fun time. Politics, politics, politics, wherever you find your podcast. Well, we always love to have you on the show here. We also love brand new bosses. And guess what? We got one today. Brandon is a brand new boss. Just started backing us on Patreon. Thank you, Brandon. You're the best. Speaking of patrons, stick around for our extended show, Good Day Internet. What will we talk about? I don't know. Possibilities are endless. Smart watches, maybe food or even the U.S. Open. You can catch the show live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern, 200 UTC. Find out more at DailyTechNewShow.com. Join us live if you can. We'd love to have you. We'll be back doing it all again tomorrow with Rob Dunn with Joynes and Len Peralta as well. Talk to you soon. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at FrogPants.com. I hope you have enjoyed this program.