 This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you, including Reed Fishler, Larry Bailey, and Michelle Serju. Coming up on DTNS, Netflix is ready for a big year of gaming. We tackle the issue book publishers are having with the Internet Archive, and is this the one high temp grill to rule them all? This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, March 20th, 2023. From Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. From Lovely Cleveland, Ohio, I'm Rich Trafalino. Keeping the heart of Texas, I'm Justin Robert Young. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chen. We are excited to talk about libraries, grills, and all the things. But first, let's start with some quick heads. Over the weekend, Indian authorities cut mobile internet access and text messaging across the state of Punjab, which has around 27 million people. The Punjab government, led by the opposition on Aadmi Party, announced a 24-hour ban on Saturday amidst an operation to arrest the fugitive Amrit Paul Singh. Then they extended the ban Sunday for another 24 hours. Singh is associated with a separatist movement, which wants to create a sovereign state in Punjab, but that movement is outlawed in India and considered a national security threat by the government. Three Punjab residents told the Washington Post that only essential text messages, for example confirmation codes for bank transfers, were being sent successfully. It was pretty much a full lockdown. New York-based advocacy group Access Now reports that over the past five years, Indian officials have ordered internet shutdowns more frequently than any other governments. Phil Spencer, the chief executive of Microsoft Gaming, Phil to his friends, says the company is preparing to launch an app store for games on iOS and Android as early as next year if it's $75 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard is cleared by regulators. Spencer says the deal could boost competition on smartphones where Apple and Google currently dominate the distribution of games and other apps. Apple and Google will need to open up their mobile platforms to app stores owned and operated by other companies starting March 2024 under the EU's Digital Markets Act, making this whole thing possible. Both Android and iOS offer similar markup utilities, letting you crop and annotate images often used with screenshots. Developer Simon Arons reported a vulnerability of the markup tool used by Google Pixel devices back in January, which could allow for potentially uncropping these images. You might say, well, if I've cropped it, how could you reverse that? This is because markup doesn't erase the original file before saving the new one. If the new file is smaller, the trailing portion of the original file is left behind, which means it might still be able to be accessible. The bug report notes that Twitter and other social media platforms reprocess uploading images. That takes off the trailing data of the original. Google fixed this issue in its March security patch. Bleeping Computer reports that Microsoft is working on a built-in Ethereum crypto wallet for Microsoft Edge so users can send and receive cryptocurrency and NFTs. Remember those? A Twitter user named albacore tweeted screenshots of the new Edge crypto wallet apparently in a limited test phase and not rolling out to insiders yet. So even fewer testers than the insider program. Microsoft says, during setup, this is a non-custodial wallet, meaning you are in complete control of your funds. We will not have access to your password and recovery key. It is embedded in Edge, making it easy to use without installing an extension. As a tester, you will use your own funds in the event of loss of funds. Microsoft will not reimburse any loss. This is a confidential project and no details should be shared externally. Drop the ball there, Albacore. Except we did. Sorry, Microsoft. Although this is kind of exciting. I don't know. I'm an Edge user these days. So, you know, bring it on. Let's get some options. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote in a memo to staff Monday that Amazon will lay off 9,000 employees in the coming weeks. This is following previous rounds of layoffs from November through January, affecting more than 18,000 jobs already. The latest cuts are expected to hit Amazon's cloud computing, advertising, human resources, and Twitch units. Jassy says Amazon took into account the economy and the, quote, uncertainty that exists in the near future. In an effort to avoid broader layoffs, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports in his Power on Newsletter that Apple is trying to allocate its research and development spending on more pressing projects and deprioritizing other projects. As a result, the rumored home pod with a 7-inch video screen is now reportedly pushed back until next year at the earliest. Just one example of a project being shelved, at least for now. The company is also delaying some employee bonuses, tightening travel expenses, and looking to streamline remote work policies. Apple, they're just like us. All right, Rich, let's talk more about what's going on with Apple and some competitors, potentially. Yeah, so we're speaking about Apple R&D and doing cutbacks. One of the major projects that's reportedly been in development for years with Apple is old project Titan, a.k.a. the Apple Car. It's been about a feels like a decade or more here. Apple software and design chops at that time made it seem ahead of maybe of competitors as a platform or if they want to develop an actual car lot. People are intrigued by that possibility. What Wired's Alster Carlton wrote up how Qualcomm is now well poised to dominate the upcoming ways of electric vehicle platforms rather than a company like Apple. See, here's the thing. EV makers have two conflicting problems with EVs offering a lot of similar technical underpinnings. It's imperative that they differentiate with customer experience in the cabin, whether infotainment or driver assistance systems. But this requires an entire software stack, a bevy of sensors and deep technical integration. To answer this, Qualcomm announced its Snapdragon digital chassis system at CES. This combines safety and connectivity systems, entertainment, customization and upgradeability all in one ready to use product. Yeah, and if you're saying, well, who would use it? It's saying some adoption in the industry already. Sony Honda Mobility's Afila brand, sort of a dual brand between Sony and Honda. Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, Cadillac and Stellantis are all digital chassis customers. With Qualcomm saying it received support from BMW, Hyundai, the Chinese brand NIO and Volvo as well. So Qualcomm is, you know, probably feeling pretty good out of the gate. I don't know about y'all, but when I read this story I read it as, what does Apple care what everyone else is doing? Unless, unless Apple really isn't going to work on any hardware for its own car rather than an infotainment system. You know, a system in general, you know, that powers the car when you're inside it and now has run out of partners. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, right, is all of the, like, because the reality is that a lot of these EVs, when you're, when you're eliminating a gearbox, when you're eliminating the differentiation between a V6, a V8, a V12, you know, an inline four or something like that. Like the driving experience on those are these super torque heavy gearless experiences and it gets hard to differentiate in that particular regard. And I don't think any automakers are lining up necessarily for an Apple specific platform. And I don't want to say Qualcomm is playing its own game here, right? LG is working with Magna on kind of their own competing platform for this. But if I'm an automaker, it's a lot more tempting to say, you know, Qualcomm knows how to make some pretty good systems. They power like half the smartphones or a significant portion of the smartphone market, right? They figured out how to do that and allow OEMs to differentiate. Why do I want to be locked necessarily into all of Apple stuff if other car makers are going to be doing that as well? I could see if it's an exclusive partnership with a high-end luxury maker of Mercedes-Benz or something like that. But if it's going to be out there, that to me feels like a much harder sell when I can't control the experience in the way that Qualcomm or any of these others competitors would let you. Well, let's go ahead and take this SEO soup that we have had of a story so far of all these different big bold-faced names and add one more. Tesla, the point that Project Titan was at its highest, Tesla had really gone from zero to one with a Roadster and had a hit product on their hands and had moved EV forward into not only a more commercial place, but also a luxury place. And that's something where I can imagine in Cupertino, they look down and say, well, wait a minute. If they were able to go from zero to one, imagine how much people would pay for the experience that they have with their laptops and their computers and their phones. Now you get to spend all the money, but also all the time in an Apple experience. And I think that was the idea. Where they are now, who knows? There has been nothing but leaks about where Project Titan has gone from the moment that it was first rumored to have begun. But if you look at the commoditization of EVs since the time that those rumors first began, we're in a totally different market. And one that I think Apple would really have to feel that they had a gigantic differentiator on their hands to get into the extraordinarily pricey market of auto manufacture. You know, not only that, but who would be their manufacturing partner? You know, if Apple doesn't make its own car, which seems unlikely, although, you know, we'll see. Maybe it's one of those projects that's been shelved for a while. That would be one thing. That's sort of like, you know, I liken it to sort of like iPhone versus everybody else. If you want an iPhone, that's the one that you get because it's Apple. Not everybody feels that way. And to have so many options with other vehicles, I don't know. I mean, I'm still, I'm still fine with CarPlay myself. I assume Android Play is pretty similar. Well, that's the thing that's interesting about EVs, too, is that in some ways, having more set platforms simplifies the process of getting a car to market. It's an extraordinarily complicated process. Please don't mistake me. But Apple could work with. Magno will work with anybody. You have Geely that's out there. You also have Foxconn, in fact, is getting into a lot of supply, like part supply and stuff like that. We know Apple has had extensive and healthy relationships with them when it comes for any number of products that they have there. So there are people out there and there are Chinese companies. I'm thinking of Neo. I'm thinking there's another company that's slipping my mind right now that have within the last, I don't know, 15 years or so gone from zero to we're selling giant numbers of EVs maybe in China specifically. But you can ramp that up, right? It feels like what Qualcomm is doing here of having this very unified platform and having huge names here. I mean, like when you're talking GM, Stellantis, you know, Mercedes-Benz on here, I mean, these are giant volume car manufacturers. These are, you know, this is going to power their next source of revenue. It is a very small portion of revenue. I don't want to oversell like where Qualcomm's business is right now. It's only about 4% of their Q4 revenue from their automotive division. It's up like 58% so it's growing very quickly. But when you're talking about, you know, a company that's doing $9 to $11 billion in revenue in a quarter, this is still, you know, a relatively small business for them, admittedly with a lot of headroom. Well, who wants to talk about books? Me, I do. I'm so glad you're both here then. Right now, just to throw you a curveball, there are eBooks that we're about to talk about. Right now, let's say you belong to a library. You can check out an eBook from that library and there are two basic ways that that works, depending on the library that you're associated with. If your library uses something like Overdrive or you're using Amazon's Kindle library program, pretty simple. Ebooks are officially licensed out by publishers, giving those publishers and Overdrive control over how libraries can both acquire and then offer eBooks, including price setting. Because these are licenses, the library never owns the books. They can't be used as archives. Publishers can retroactively change content if they want to. But because these eBooks come from publishers, they tend to have consistent quality. This contrasts with a concept called Control Digital Lending, or CDL for short. This is where a library digitizes copies of its own books in their collection and offers them on a one-to-one basis. So if your library owns a copy of Gravity's Rainbow, it can lend out one digital version at a time while keeping the physical copy in storage, saving the knowledge that nobody will actually read either. Shots fired. Gravity's Rainbow. Apologies to Gravity's Rainbow. Yeah. The system isn't used as widely as Overdrive, but is used by some large institutions like the Boston Public Library and the Internet Archives Open Library program. Since these are scanned from physical copies, quality can be a little hit or miss. Another potential downside is the interpretation of U.S. copyright that supports this system. Well, it's about to get tested in court. Yeah. Earlier today, a New York federal court heard oral arguments in Hatchet vs. Internet Archive. This, of course, stems from a 2020 suit where Hatchet, Harper Collins, John Wiley and Sons in Penguin Random House, some pretty ginormous names in publishing, sued the Internet Archive after it launched its National Emergency Lending Library. This came in the face of COVID-19 lockdowns at the time and let unlimited people access scanned e-books for two-week lending period. So it wasn't tied to if they had a physical book in their collection, anybody could take these books out for a two-week lending period. While the removal of lending limits certainly spurred the legal action that isn't just the only thing that the lawsuit is calling out. We call CDL in general an invented paradigm that is well outside copyright law based on the false premise that a print book and a digital book share the same qualities. Because of a lot of the particulars in this case, the judgment will likely be fairly specific to Internet Archive. But do we think this could set the tone for broader principles around digitized books, Sarah? Well, I think it is a false premise that a print book and a digital book share the same qualities because they very much don't. I belong to my local library in Sonoma County. I have never actually, well, since I was a child, it's been sometimes since I went to a physical library branch. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I have some other options. You know, I've got a Kindle, I've also got the Remarkable 2. Remarkable 2 is kind of a funny test case in a conversation about this sort of stuff because it gets weird getting library books onto the Remarkable. It just sort of isn't meant to be an e-reader in that sense. It is possible and you can strip DRM if you want to. But what the publishers are saying is, I mean, I understand that the Internet Archive did the emergency lending library. That made a lot of sense to me. Understandably, publishers were like, oh, you can't do that. And they were like, these are crazy times. Got it. We are now in different times. So yeah, how do libraries proceed? Do they figure out a shared publishing model that does happen sometimes? Do we have to, you know, it's just sort of like, haha, nod, nod, wink, wink and say, one physical copy equals one digital copy, which makes no sense. But okay, at least they can keep track of who's got what. Or is there some other solution? Well, I think part of the thing that's frustrating for a lot of libraries is there is really no way for libraries to permanently purchase digital books, right? You're always just buying the license to that. So if you are serving an archival mission, like the Internet Archive does, that can be, I mean, just extraordinarily limiting and frustrating that you're paying for something that's kind of transient. And Sarah, to your point about, you know, physical book and a digital book not being the same. I mean, American Fair Use Law depends on a couple of factors, one of which is if a new work is transformative. So I would think that that might play into supporting that ruling. And it also needs to look at how it affects the work's value and whether or not the new work is a commercial product. It's not either or. These are all swirling mix of these. This is all about licensing. The Hachette and all the other publishers just want to protect the fact that they have the right to license as many times as they want. If they had their way, they would have one license for every single day of the week and they would charge individually for it. And that's what this is really all about. Well, you may have a thought about this or anything we talk about on the show. And we want to know what your thoughts are because you make us smarter every day. Email us at feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com and share your thoughts. Thank you in advance. One of the games coming to Netflix as is Ubisoft's mighty quest, Rogue Palace, which launches April 18th. Netflix has a three exclusive game partnership with Ubisoft, the first of which was Valiant Hearts coming home that launched in January. Yeah, Netflix really going in on games, which it said it would. So good on you, I guess, Netflix. But some other Netflix news, Bloomberg sources say that Netflix's ad supported service tier reached about one million monthly active users in the U.S. After its second month, so quite a bit of growth in two months. Netflix already has 74 million customers in the U.S. But as the company tries to curb password sharing, which it has clamped down on as of late, it will likely see that $7 ad supported version gain more attraction among users who are maybe siphoning off their friends and don't currently pay anything at all. So after some not so Sony aureans, maybe we think Netflix is turning its entertainment battleship around. Justin, what say you? They would certainly love to. Right now, Netflix is in a position like every other streaming company or really entertainment company. And that is we are past the world where the crystal cracked in terms of streaming. Netflix hit the ceiling of how high their subscribers were going to be. This isn't the land of infinite optimism anymore. And now we have to have the commoditization conversation. Exactly how much are we going to do for customer retention? How much are we going to just mitigate whatever the rise in people that are getting or becoming a customer age for the first time crackdown on password sharing and gaming. Gaming has been something that's not a stranger to Netflix's strategy. But it's also a nascent market unlike ad supported of cheaper ad supported tier, which we've seen from Hulu and stuff like that. And we kind of have it as a known quantity. The idea of a subscription that you use to play games is still something that is kind of fraught. We've seen it not succeed with like Google on the high end. And this is more on the low end, a little bit more Apple Arcade than it is the offerings of AAA games. But at the same time, are you going to not cancel your Netflix subscription because you want to play Monument Valley? Well, yeah, and that's where I'm wondering is Netflix just recreating like exactly what happened in the streaming. But like, you know, the quote unquote golden age of streaming where they're like, let's assume that this isn't just going to be for customer attention. At some point, the game catalog gets good enough that this is drawing people to it. I don't know if we'll ever get there. But like, let's make that argument. Don't they reach that exact same point that they do where at some point growth will stall and then they have to like, like, the best case scenario is they're in the same spot that they are. I mean, I guess that means customers are growing. No, they want they want to keep people. It's customer attention. The way that Netflix that the way that Netflix measures their success is how often you log in because they know they have it down to a mathematical formula that each time that you log into your account, you're probably somewhere between at most three months away from canceling. It usually takes about three billing cycles once you access their product to say, yeah, I think I'll definitely leave. If they can in between stranger things seasons, have you get obsessed with Monument Valley, then you are going to be further away than you would if you just like the three months starts over again. Yep. Every single time you play and games are addictive like that, which is I think why they're attracted to this idea. But whether or not it will work to me, it just seems like something and I'm not a gamer. So I will defer to everybody else. And I know that we will, you know, that this show gets emails whenever you just out now dismiss subscription gaming as there are some people who really love the defendant. Although if you were customers of more of these services, maybe they'd actually be in business still. I just I wonder for that entire shot. That's all I'll say. Yeah, streaming gaming services are alive and well. But Justin, I get your point. I guess, I guess for me, it seems like Netflix saying, all right, we got 74 million customers in the US. We have lost some people, at least in North America, you know, gaining ground and other markets. But okay, let's just say some of these people think that the service is too expensive or they were never paying at all. So let's give them another option, you know, throwing gaming. Maybe some these people are gamers and can now equate Netflix with like a fun gaming experience where just a few short years ago, not the case. And, you know, and these, you know, folks who and maybe I'm maybe maybe maybe this is something that I have a little bit of experience with using someone else's Netflix account to watch a movie that, you know, I just I don't know where else to get it. You know, that sort of thing. Now, it's like, well, Sarah, do you want to pay $20 a month? Well, no, I'm not, you know, I'm not ready for that kind of commitment Netflix. But seven bucks a month with ads, you know, it ad supported. Sure, I mean, I don't love ads, but I'm used to that model. And I think a lot of other people are too and Netflix saying, if we're just going to lose you all together or get you back or get somebody to convert and make a little bit more money. Why not? Why not try it? I will say as the as the parent on the panel, my kids are getting close to the age where I'm going to be there. At some point they're going to be playing a game on a phone and whether it's Apple Arcade or Netflix or another subscription game service. The idea of having a set of games, one that I know is limited, which is a plus for me as a parent, but two, that there's going to be no DLC involved. There's going to be no ads involved. Like I know I'm just entrusting them to a core game platform is extremely tempting to me. And then down the line when they move off and, you know, this is more long term, but when they move on and go to college, oh, well, then they get their $7 ad supported here. And that's how like I can see that as part of a long term kind of thing of being like a value add to families who are then going to splinter off into new users. Like I can see that as a convincing argument down the road. Well, it's no news that ceramic, commota style grills or the new hot, hotness and grilling gear. And I really wish somebody from barbecue and tech was on the show to tell me if it's cool or not because this does seem cool. They offer great heat retention, the ability to range from 200 to 700 degrees Fahrenheit to cook kind of anything. That high point smoke point is is is a big deal. But if you're lighting it and you're keeping your higher temps consistent, it requires a little practice, a little know how, if you will, enter the commado Joe connected Joe grill, which offers an automatic fire starter to ignite charcoal and then a control system. They use case for all the unfortunately do. Well, yeah, it's whatever. I mean, Kardashians as well, where you can set your temperatures, they're automatically controlled with various fans and vents at that point. And it's all controllable with an app. You might say, where do I sign up? Well, the connected Joe is $1,700 shipping in June. However, I sent this to a friend of mine earlier who is an enthusiastic griller and he was like, thank you, Sarah, for sending me a product that is sold out. Just in time for summer, though. Yeah. I mean, it's sold out now, but maybe you can buy it on a little second market. Yeah, really in action. And the good news is maybe you sweeten the deal by throwing in your Netflix password. Yeah. And the good news is there is a full manual mode. So if you want to manually do all your commado style grilling, you are good to go. And if you have any questions about these grills, just shout the word big green egg. Just around any crowd of people and someone will enthusiastic. Someone will be like, this is a different company. This is a different company. Different company. Okay. Yes. But a similar idea. It's a similar idea. And this, this, I don't know. I mean, it's a, I don't know if you put it on your kitchen island, but it's a little bit more of a table. These are multi hundred pound gigantic grill. You could put 24 burgers or four whole chickens on this. That's in their copy. Well, you know, I guess Rich, you don't know a lot of people with big enough kitchen islands. I have no use for this. This is my kitchen. I mean, trust me, my entire apartment could not fit this grill. However, I'm into it. It's not, it's not, this is not cheap. This is a fun splurge for the grill enthusiasts. I will say this is in line with pricing for these grills. I would say this is exceptionally expensive. Dang. This is in line. See, I'm like, give me a cast iron and we're going to go. All right. Let's check out the mail back. Anthony wrote in about our discussion with, with Justin and Rich and I last week on GPT for safety report. Anthony says, when the crew assessed that safety check report and episode 44 78 on encountering concepts, concepts like X risk and AI alignment, as opposed to other immediate and concrete concerns. I discerned the opinion that their emphasis and coverage of the report aroused mostly from sensationalist journalism. That would be an understandable first reaction. Justin is correct that columnist not are. Well, okay. Columnist can be dumb. That's what Anthony said. But although informed opinion is in flux and consensus is fuzzy. Many AI domain experts have substantial concerns that I hope the show won't risk listeners dismissing. Quantitatively, the average answer from 161 responses in a 2022 survey of published AI researchers put the chance of human inability to control future advanced AI systems causing human extinction or similarly permanent or severe disempowerment of the human species at one in 10. Do we feel like those odds are good or bad without without getting into thank you to the email or I greatly appreciate your perspective on this and my larger point was more to slap down. I think a popular sentiments with journalists who should have better known better in my opinion. Indeed, AI is a tool in a technology like any other tool or technology, much like the computer itself. It is capable of tremendous good as we have seen as well as tremendous ill. We should never dismiss that something as powerful theoretically as AI can be. But at the same time, I do believe that on a base level when we have seen its true first breakout product in chat GPT and all the ancillary ways that this API is going to get used that we should it is it is a an imperative thing for retail program like this to to talk about what it is and what it isn't right now down the road. Absolutely. We can talk theoretical applications of this forever. And I think this is an audience that very much can handle it. But that was my intention last week. Well, thank you Anthony for writing in and thank you to everybody who writes in and gives us thoughts, questions, comments, all the things feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com is where to continue sending that email. Please do so. Thanks to you, Justin Robert Young for being with us today. Let folks know what you've been up to since we saw you last. Well, I don't know if you've paid attention to the news, but this is a very hectic week in the world of politics so much so that I put out an extra episode on the politics, politics, politics feed. Normally my Sunday show is for patrons only that that goes out first thing in the in the morning on Monday. But because there's so much news about the former president and a possible indictment by the New York district attorney, I put out my segment on that so go ahead and listen to my thoughts there and follow along in what will be assuredly a very spicy week in the world of politics. Well, thank you Justin for keeping on top of it for the rest of us. Also, thanks to a few new brand new bosses that we have, we'd like to thank you Debbie and you Bob and you Jordan. It's like rumper room. Who just started backing us on Patreon. Thank you Debbie. Thank you Bob. Thank you Jordan. We really appreciate it. Yeah, and Debbie, Bob and Jordan as well as all of our other patrons remember to stick around for our extended show, Good Day Internet. We'll be talking about runway. They're an AI startup and they're opening up limited access to a text to video generative AI model. What could go wrong? But just a reminder, you can catch our show live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern 20 hundred UTC. Find out more at DailyTechNewShow.com slash live. We'll be back doing it all again tomorrow with Terrence Keynes joining us. Talk to you then. This show is part of the frog pants network. Get more at frogpants.com.