 This 10th year of Daily Tech News Show is made possible by its listeners thanks to all of you including Dale Mulcahy, Matt Zaglin, and Scott Hepburn. Coming up on DTNS, Netflix has a new CEO, but it was planned for a long time. And Google plans to counter ChatGPT, those plans have leaked out, and Twitter, I mean... This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, January 20th, 2023 in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. And I am Chris Ashley. Drawing the top tech stories from Cleveland, I'm Len Peralta. And I'm the show's producer, Roger. You didn't want to give a geolocation. You're in Cognito. I am Chris. I am omnipresent. Chris Ashley is the location. Alright man, let's start with the quick hits. T-Mobile disclosed in a regulatory filing that a malicious actor accessed data on 37 million customer accounts, including names, birth dates, and phone numbers starting on November 25th. T-Mobile deleted the activity, detected rather the activity on January 5th, and then fixed an exploited API flaw within 24 hours. This is T-Mobile's second major breach in a year with a threat group stealing source code back in April. Amazon announced it will increase the price of Amazon Music Unlimited in the US and UK as of February 21st. Prices will increase by either a dollar or a pound per month, depending on where. That includes student plans. They're all going up. Standard U.S. individual subscriptions, for example, will cost $10.99 a month. Apple Music and Deezer made identical price increases last year, and Spotify has indicated it's probably going to raise its price pretty soon as well. The Verge has more details on Samsung's new prototype 360-degree foldable display. Samsung Display, that's the subsidiary that makes Samsung screens, showed off the flex in-and-out display at CES earlier this month. It does rotate 360 degrees, basically folds both inward and outward, with a new water drop hinge design that is supposedly going to create significantly less visible crease by forming a looser shape. Although Samsung's fold line is still using displays that only fold flat in one direction, the new flex in-and-out design could show up in an upcoming device, perhaps the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5, which we don't know when is going to be released. Yeah, or they might change the name to the Galaxy Z 360 Fold. The flex in and out. The Galaxy Z Flex. Kind of like that, actually. To mark the 40th birthday of the Apple Lisa desktop, the Computer History Museum, with the approval and cooperation of Apple, released the source code for the Apple Lisa Office System 3.1 that was originally released on January 19, 1983. The operating system comes in at 26 megabytes, so clear that off if you want to download it, and it's licensed under Apple's academic license agreement, which allows for non-commercial open source use of the code. A new report from Canalist found that Xiaomi smartphone shipments in India fell 40% on the year in Q4 to 5.5 million units. As a result, for the first time in 20 quarters, Xiaomi did not ship the most phones in that country, falling to third. Samsung retook the top spot for first time since 2017, and Vivo shipments rose 13% to take the number two spot. Overall smartphone shipments in India dropped 27% on the year to 32.4 million units. Alright, that's a big change in a big market. Let's talk a little bit about that Netflix news. Yeah, so in yesterday's show, right in the middle of the show, we got news that Reed Hastings was stepping down. But let's talk a little bit more about that and Netflix's latest earnings report. The company announced earnings Thursday, but started with that bombshell that Reed Hastings stepping down as co-CEO with COO Greg Peters, now co-CEO alongside Ted Serendos. Hastings will remain as executive chairman of the board. Now in a blog post about the move and the shakeup, Hastings said that Serendos was promoted to co-CEO back in July of 2020. Peter's to COO partly because of long term succession planning. So probably this was not a big surprise to anybody that Hastings says he will now want to spend more time on philanthropy. It was a good quarter to go out on. Analyst had expected a rise of 4.57 million subscribers and Netflix almost doubled that, adding 7.66 million subscribers in Q4 to reach 230.75 million total subscribers worldwide. Also, every market grew. The U.S. and Canada grew at least 910,000 subscribers. Europe and the Middle East grew the most with 3.2 million new subscribers. The company met analyst revenue estimates with 7.85 billion dollars in Q4, missed on earnings though. A lot of that had to do with some currency stuff in Europe. Netflix also thinks its ad supported tier is off to a solid start and expects that it will bring in about 3 billion dollars in annual revenue. New co-CEO Greg Peters said engagement is quote comparable to similar users on non-advertising plans. Yeah, as far as revenue, the company also followed up on plans to add a path to paid sharing of accounts saying that those methods will roll out more broadly later in Q1 of 2023. The terms of service for the company have always prohibited sharing the account outside of your own household, but Netflix has been increasing its methods of detection while also testing ways to pay extra to add an out-of-household account. The company also plans to offer a way to keep your profile data if you decide to start a new account of your own, making it easier if you were already on a shared account to begin with. So, Chris, of all this news, what part of the Netflix news surprises you the most? You know, while much of this is very interesting, the user addition is kind of super surprising because Netflix has been around for a while, so to see them breaking records, even though I think there was a point where they lost some subscribers, but to see them adding so many, it makes you wonder who just recently raised their prices, Disney just announced that they're raising their prices, so I wonder if they're peeling off folks that are like, I've had it with some of these other services, I'll just go back to Netflix. I was surprised by the numbers too, Chris, because for many quarters it's sort of like, oh, Netflix, you know, growth is slowing, the people who want Netflix already have it. Certainly the U.S. and Canada was a market that had slowed quite a bit, and even lost subscribers at times. I don't totally know if it just means that the competition has gotten more expensive and people are whittling down what they decide to pay for, but you would assume that you would probably already be a Netflix subscriber and drop something rather than become a Netflix subscriber out of nowhere, given all the choices that you have. I agree. I wonder how many of these are returning subscribers. I wish they would give us that report. I imagine it's not the majority, but I wonder how much of this chunk is a subscriber who said, I'm tired of the price increase, done, I'm out, I'm mad, I'm not coming back, and then realized they missed things on Netflix, because some of the analysis had been like, well, Netflix is having subscriber growth problems, because it's making too many massively appealing shows, and I'm like, well, you may not like those massively appealing shows. You may consider them lowest carbon denominator, but the reason they make them is because they appeal to people, and if that's the case, if they really do appeal to people, then people will probably pay to watch them, and this seems to bear that out, which is, yeah, Netflix has got a lot of popular stuff on there, and over the holidays, they had big hits like Wednesday, they've had all kinds of other stuff, movies and things, glass onion. So I feel like this kind of indicates that Netflix is making programming that people want, even if it's not what you or I particularly might want at the time. Yeah, adding content should never be seen as a detriment. You can never speak for what everybody likes, right? So the more content you have, the more people you have an opportunity to attract, but certainly there should be something said as well about the ad-supported version of Netflix too. It allows them to come in at a cheaper price, and so certainly that'll attract more people as well. And finally, I love the fact that they're embracing the sharing of accounts, because we saw through Napster and all those things, when you just go hardcore after the people that are sharing these type of things, it never ends well, right? And it wasn't until they started embracing it where they're like, we'll stop coming after you and we'll create a methodology for you to buy these things one-off like you want. People embraced it and they rolled with it. So I think Netflix is definitely doing the right thing when it comes to that as well. I think Netflix is smart too, because they said in the earnings call that as they roll this out more widely, they expect some backlash. They expect people to cancel accounts because they see that message and get upset. They're prepared for that, and they know that will have an effect on its numbers, but the tone that I got was that a lot of those people will come back same way they did this last quarter. I wonder if the weather had anything to do with it too, at least in the United States and Canada. I think that's a factor for sure. Alphabet announced it will cut 12,000 jobs, roughly 6% of its global workforce. CEO Sundar Pichai said job cuts are going to fall across the entire company in all regions, though the Wall Street Journal said recruiting and projects outside of the company's core businesses would be more heavily affected, at least according to Wall Street Journal sources. Google makes up about 75% of Alphabet's employees, so you can imagine that even if it's evenly added, Google is going to have the most losses here. Alphabet is one of those companies like all the other tech companies we've been talking about who had overhired. Sundar Pichai made the usual thing that tech CEOs make now and said it's my responsibility. Alphabet had added 37,000 employees last year, so still a net gain on the year, I guess. Yeah, but the New York Times source say that Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have called in to give advice in response to the rise of chat GPT, which is interesting. I didn't even hear about this until two weeks ago. However, Larry and Sergey have been largely hands off for the past decade or so, but apparently pitched ideas and approved plans on how to get more AI into Google products. Yeah, and something that might offer a little bit of a slice into what that might be is a slide presentation indicating that Google has plans to show off a search engine with chatbot features sometime this year. Also planning to introduce more than 20 projects somehow related to AI at Google I.O., which happens in May. The slides say Google thinks that copyright, privacy, and of course antitrust are the primary risks to rolling out new tools. Yeah, that's why Google's slow. If everybody's like, why are they so slow on this? That's why, because they know copyright, people are going to come at them. Privacy, the public's going to come at them. Antitrust, any product they put out, if it's anything similar to anybody else, the government's going to come at them. Yeah, let's go through some of these projects that the New York Times said were mentioned in the slide. An image generation studio, that seems like a no brainer with Dolly out there, right? Yeah, and the fact that you see a lot more folks starting to take advantage of these fake images that are being created and just being able to use them in general marketing and stuff like that. Definitely. That's almost table stakes at this point. I mean, if you're Google and you know that people are making these images, you want them to make them using Google tools. A tool that would summarize videos by generating a new one. Now, that one is a little bit of a head scratcher. Is it like editing? Yeah, I'm curious. I mean, let's say a tool is going to take a look at what we're doing right now. You have a video version of the show. What does that tool give? Does it summarize what our show was? Does it try to say what we did or is it just edit down like here are the important parts? Is it one of those like here's the Apple keynote in 10 minutes kind of things? Yeah, so I could see potential problems with that because I think one of the episodes I was with you a long time ago where they started talking about how the news aggregation was being removed and I think it was Australia. And so because you're taking our content and now you're attracting people to your site and you know, we're not getting the money for our content. I see definitely something along the same path. That hits that copyright risk right there. A product prototype tester. Okay, fair enough. More testing, more always good. Yeah, no brainer. Something called Maker Suite, which lets companies create algorithm powered product prototypes in a browser window. So you just go in a browser window and be like, oh, I want to do a customer service chat bot or something like that. I guess, you know, some somewhere along the lines, they must have threw it against the wall and it's stuck. So I'm not sure who's clamoring for algorithm powered product prototypes, but okay. Palm Coder 2. This is a code generator like GitHub's co-pilot. So bringing them up to Microsoft Snuff there. Yeah. And you know, things like that, I see more play in because definitely creating a shortening the gap for folks to get into coding and creating applications. I always like, so anybody that does anything around that, I'm always for that. And it's only old people like us who will think it means coding for a Palm pilot. I mean, I would be like, excuse you, Tom, who is only an old, but that's exactly what I thought at first. I was like, Palm? Collab plus C or co-lab, I guess, not collab, C-O-L-A-B plus Android Studio. Collab plus Android Studio for building smartphone apps. I like the idea of this one, the ability to be like, I just needed to do this and it's like here, here's your Android app. Yeah, for sure. And much like the previous one, you know, making app generation and coding a lot easier for folks. Definitely because I can't code, but I always have like, man, I'd love to get an app that does this. That's the idea. Yeah. It's a, yeah, talk about no code. It's like negative code. And the last one I'll pull out of the New York Times article shopping try on a YouTube green screen feature to create backgrounds. So call me nuts, but I understand the whole shopping try on. People are trying to make this technology work in a way that we all use it. What would a green screen do to help me try on something? I think, I don't know if this is like, if I cut and paste it badly from New York Times or it's just badly written. But I think what they're saying is like a green screen, they can put you in something on the shopping situation. Put on that new pair of jammies and we'll give you a like a cool background. Well, if you want to see what your new dress looks like when you're walking out of the Emmys. Oh, of course, Chris. Of course. I expect to be there next year. You're trying on an outfit. It's like, well, how's this going to look at the rest of the year? That's how I see it. When I get out of this horrible dressing room with fluorescent lighting. This is sort of thing. There'll be some YouTube folks who are like, this is awesome. Why not give people features like that? Now, me personally, I have never ever used the feature in any application or buying store where it's like, oh, let's see what this looks like on you. I find it to be stupid, especially with shoes because I got to walk in them. I don't care what they look like on my feet. I threw one in here, too. I didn't put it in our notes, but yeah. And it was like, okay, yeah, I know what the shoes are probably going to look like on my feet, but that's not my major concern. My major concern is, oh, my bunion's going to hurt every time I take a step. That's what I need to know. That's GPT five. I don't know. These all seem fine. None of them struck me as ridiculous or anything. I think the bigger deal is that Google is big and slow now. And the fact that this slide said copyright privacy and antitrust are our primary risks. Open AI has to deal with copyright privacy and antitrust, but they're not like Google where they're going to know immediately as soon as they put anything out, one or more of these are going to be a problem for everything they do. And that's what takes them longer. Well, those are their primary risks. I would say any fool that takes on any of these things is your primary risk is that it won't be around long enough for you to enjoy it. Yeah. The one they put in search, the one they put in Google search, that one I feel confident will stick. Any of the rest of them, I don't know if I'd build your entire business. Good luck with that. Folks, if you disagree, if you're like, no, no, you can trust him. Here's why. Email us or email us about whatever is on your mind. Feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com. Andy Beyo was the first to discover, or at least the first that we saw tweeted about it, that Twitter added language to its API rules on January 19th that prohibits the use or access the licensed materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter applications. In other words, we don't want to work with third parties anymore. This comes two days, just two days after Twitter had posted that Twitter is enforcing its longstanding API rules that may result in some apps not working. Now, we don't know why some third parties were found in violation before the rule changed, but it does mean that going forward, essentially any app mimicking the Twitter app would be in violation of this new rule. The Verge recently noted that an entire API team responsible for working with third-party apps was laid off in November. Yeah, so many third-party apps have been pulling their apps from stores, suspending service. Twitterrific, for example, has been discontinued. The team made it official just a few hours before this show. TweetbotmakerTapots announced that Tweetbot was shutting down. They're working on a mastodon client, but Tweetbot just can't exist anymore. Phoenix, that's an app that continues to work on iOS, also continues to have API access. But the developer, Mateo Villa, told Engadget, he pulled the Android version and was left with an app working fine on iOS that people are still buying, but Villa said, I'm wondering if I should pull it too. A lot of people wondering a lot of things at this point. So, I don't know, Tom, what do you think is going on here? Yeah, look, to me, the biggest problem with this is how it was done. It's fine if a developer or a company says, you know what, we're changing the API, we've changed our business model. We don't even know you an explanation, but it's just, I don't know, good relations to say, we will be cutting off your access at this point. When you understand you built a business on this platform, so we're giving you a grace period. Rather than just one day say, oh, you're in violation and we're not going to tell you why. In fact, we're not even going to talk to you. We're going to cut off your access and then a few days later tweet about it, essentially sub-tweeting you. And then two days after that, we're going to change the terms so that you can't even do what you're doing. Just the way this was handled is what bothers me, not the fact that they did it so much. Yeah, and especially if you take into account that they have said that they want to create better relationships with developers. This ain't how you do it. No, I screwed up the actual opposite. Yeah, so when you listen, folks, I love the opportunity to jump all over somebody that I don't really find. I'm not really a fan of, but let's, we should be honest, as much fun as we're having watching, you know, all of this stuff go down. The dude did overpay for a company. He owns it. He does have the right and the responsibility to make it profitable, right? So is he can do these things as he sees fit if that, you know, if you're looking at the business model that previously existed and it's not making any money, you got to, you got to kind of change it, right? And you got to do some of these things. But I think it's also fair and then saying, you don't have to do it like this. You know, just be open, honest, be cool. Like, listen, we're making this change. Here's a warning 10 days, this thing's going out. You know, because now you're going to have people who recently purchased, you know, one of these applications and it's going to be broken within, you know, a couple of days or so, or it's already broken. And then what do you do to them that now you're forcing these guys to either, you know, look like the bad guys. And it's like, it's not their fault that the app's not working. As a Tweetbot user for many years, there are many, many new Twitter features or even just, I don't know, just experiments that the company has tried or people lamenting, you know, there's too many ads and they're not relevant to me. I never saw any of that because they use Tweetbot. The whole time I thought at any moment this is going to go away because why would Twitter want me to not enjoy all of its new features, whether or not I like the features the company wants users to try them, you know, to understand what people want and don't want. And so, yes, I figured this day would come at some point. The complete lack of communication is appalling. That said, so much has happened within Twitter that I don't really know who would have communicated this effectively because as I understand it, a lot of the comms team is no longer there. You know, the teams that were working with third-party apps, it sounds like in large part are no longer there. And, you know, the folks who are running the business and trying to make a quick buck, you know, I don't know that they really care about the developer community. The developer community is a big one and I wouldn't consider myself part of that community. I'm certainly part of the community that enjoys the developer community because I like to have options. So, you know, you ticked off a lot of folks. I just don't know how you bungle it worse. And in the end, I don't think this is going to reduce Twitter usage. It will probably, as Chris pointed out, increase revenue because more people will have to use the first-party content, which has the ads. And I don't know that there's any short-term consequences at all to doing it this way. And I'm not even convinced that there'll be a ton of long-term consequences, but there will be developers who won't do something that Twitter opens up to do in the future because they've been burned by this, or even if they haven't been burned, they've seen others get burned and it won't even necessarily be an emotional thing. It'll be like, well, but do I want to do it on that platform? Because it might not stick around. It's like the Google stuff we were talking about earlier. Man, it sounds like a good idea, but I don't know. I get a queasy feeling. And that's not something you're going to be able to measure. And you can't prove a negative. So I'm not saying that this is going to blow up in anybody's face, but that's the only consequence I can think of. Well, we should be clear, though, on one aspect. I think you're right on that. But in the end, there's no way any company, any software company, can scale to every scenario, every issue, every idea that comes up that makes your product better. You can only do what you can. And that's why I have a solid API where outside forces and outside developers can then take your platform and bring it to the next level. It's very important, even in the game that I play Destiny, their API is regularly managed. It makes playing the game better because these outside users or developers make apps that work better than what the company has time to put forth effort into. And same thing with Twitter. There's no doubt that a lot of the Twitter third-party Twitter applications were way better than what Twitter was delivering themselves. And it'll be easy to show they're gone, but it will be hard to show what could have arisen later. And a lot of people have been pointing out Tweety was the app that became the Twitter app when they acquired it. A lot of the features of Twitter started on third-party clients and then were adopted into the main Twitter universe. And you won't be able to tell that's not happening anymore. Moving train media said a short-term consequence will be ill will from users. The reason I didn't mention that is I'm not sure that ill will could get any bigger. So, you know, at this point there's so much ill will from users because of other things that I'm not sure this is really going to move the needle much. That train has left the station. Well, developers will continue developing. And this is a fun one, all right? We're going to end on a high note here, everybody. Developer Mate Markle Shore posted a video on Reddit showing off a GPT-3 plus Apple Siri voice assistant combined demo supporting more conversational voice commands and understanding more vague prompts when controlling various home kits, smart home devices. For example, Marshall Core's voice prompt, just noticed that I'm recording this video in the dark in the office. Can you do something about that? Gets the lights turned on. Marshall Core also asked for a temperature that would help me sleep better but didn't say specifically what temperature to leave it at. So, instead of choosing a specific number, the AI responded by setting his bedroom thermostat to 19 degrees Celsius. Now, you might say, what, how, how, how do you do it? In a blog post, Marshall explains that he's using Apple's Shortcuts app to interface between Siri GPT-3 and then HomeKit-enabled devices that he has in his house. So, a voice command goes to Siri. That causes Shortcuts to send a prompt to GPT-3, requesting a machine-readable response. Then Shortcuts gets that back, parses it to control smart home devices, and then if you need a response using Siri, then you get one. Marshall Core says that each command costs about $0.014 per API request sent to GPT-3. So, occasional use, not going to break the bank. But, if you were to scale something like this, could be a little challenging. So, 1.4 cents, basically. It's not nothing, but yeah, in a regular household, that's not bad. I don't know, I love this. This is what open platforms allow to happen, that you wouldn't have known were going to happen before, right? I think this is a great example of this. I love anything home automation. I have pretty much every switch in my house has something on it, lights, I love talking to Siri when I come home, doorbell, alarm, everything. Even the fact that just starting my truck from my phone and never picking up my key. All these things are awesome. So, when I see something like this that's next level, it gets me re-excited about what you can do around home automation. So, really, really cool stuff here. I just don't want somebody to walk in and see me having a conversation with Siri around my lights and my house temperature. I don't know, I think it's going to happen soon enough. For anybody who's like, is this really all that different than just the prompts that I'm used to using? It is. And we'll have the video, a link to the video in our show notes. It's really worth watching. There's not a ton to see, but it is a video of how conversational this actually is. It really is just chatting with the robot. If you've gone through with Echo or Home or Siri or anybody that having to ask something four times because you're like, I know you can do it. I just need to phrase it right. This feels like Nirvana. Watch this video where he's saying stuff. It's amazing. Just yesterday, I was trying to get Siri to play a song for me. My daughter was laughing at me because I had to figure out how to word it so she could pick up what I was saying. So yeah, something like this would be really dope. All right. Let's check in with Len Peralta, who has been illustrating today's show. Len, did you resist the siren call of drawing Twitter again or not? Oh, it just pulled me in. Sorry. What are you going to do? Yeah, you know, I try not to be too editorial. I mean, I kind of jump into that editorial vein every once in a while. I think this for 2023 is probably going to be my most editorial version. This is called the Big Blue Crackdown, which is. Oh, wow. You just have to see it. I don't want to say too much. Just like Prince Harry at Halloween. Exactly. You got to check it out. It's basically the Twitter birds sitting on top of three three Twitter apps, third party apps that have even been old around longer. That's the crazy thing. They've some been long around longer than the actual Twitter app itself. So if you want to see the Big Blue Crackdown and Twitter cracking down on third party apps, you can go to my Patreon, patreon.com forward slash Len. That is you get it free if you just back me at the Patreon level or at the DTS level, or you can just go the old fashioned route and go to my online store, which is Len Peralta store.com. It's right there in the front page. And I'm also taking commissions too. So think about that as you as we go into the Valentine area. They're amazing. Valentine commission, not a bad idea. Brilliant one. Brilliant. Thank you, Len. As always, brilliant work. Chris Ashley also brilliant work from you. Let folks know what else you're up to. You can always check out me and the homies on SMR podcast. Check us out on smrpodcast.com. And of course, the next season of barbecue and tech is on the way folks. We're about to do it up again, wrapping up our Christmas smoking and then getting into some Super Bowl stuff and planning for our Super Bowl feast. So yeah, right around the corner. So coming soon, folks, coming soon. Well, glad to have you both on the show today. Also glad to thank a brand new boss. In fact, it's a family trust. The Bain family trust just started back in us on Patreon. Thank you, Bain family. We trust you're happy. Yes, we're glad you put your trust in us. Literally. Quite literally. Speaking of patrons, do stick around for our extended show, Good Day Internet. We'll talk about all the things. You can also check out the show Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern 2100 UTC. We do it live. Did you know? Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com. Back on Monday with Lamar Wilson joining us. Have a great weekend, everyone. 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 Strafolino. Video producer and Twitch producer Joe Koontz. Technical producer Anthony Lemos. Spanish language host, writer and producer Dan Campos. News host, writer and producer Jen Cutter. Science correspondent Dr. Nicky Ackermanns. Social media producer and moderator Zoe Deterding. Our Mods. Beatmaster, W.S. Goddus 1. BioCow, Captain Kipper, Steve Guadarama, Paul Reese. Matthew J. Stevens, a.k.a. Gadget Virtuoso. And J.D. Galloway. Modern video hosting by Dan Christensen. Music and art provided by Martin Bell. Dan Looters, Mustafa A. A-Cast and Len Peralta. Live art performed by Len Peralta. A-Cast ad support from Tatiana Matias. Patreon support from Dylan Harari. Contributors for this week's show included Nika Monford, Scott Johnson, Justin Robert Young and Chris Astley. And thanks to all the patrons who make the show possible. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. I hope you have enjoyed this program.