 Daily Tech News Show is made possible by you. Thank you so much, Carmine Bailey, Vince Power, Rodrigo Smith, Zapata, or maybe you're one of our brand new patrons. So many Anthony, Alvin, Robert and Mike G. Welcome into the Patriot. On this episode of DTNS, Netflix is done wrestling with its live sports strategy. See what I did there. And I think HP sunk to a new low for inkjet printer makers. Well, we'll see. Pretty sure they did. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, January 23rd, 2024 in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Animal House, I'm Sarah Lane. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Hey, Roger, I know you don't use an iPhone. Is anybody in your family like using iPhone? Does your wife use an iPhone or anything? Oh, my wife used an iPhone until it broke. And then I said, get an Android phone. So she does not use one. So the answer is no. OK, previously, yes. Currently, no. Well, for those who do have an iPhone, if you're worried about theft, upgrade to the new version of iOS and turn on stolen device protection or be like Sarah and just have it magically turned on for you, apparently. It's a good idea. OK, let's start with the quick hits. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says his sources tell him that Apple has moved away from developing a fully autonomous car, a.k.a. a level four car to something closer to a level two plus car, similar to Tesla's full self-drive mode. Level two means the car can assist with steering and braking and acceleration. But the driver must remain aware and in control at all times. Gurman also says that Apple is targeting 2028 for release at the earliest and may consider the project altogether. Boy, have we been talking about that for a while. I'm going with they reconsider the project altogether. That's what I'm putting in. Yeah, yeah. Samsung expanded itself repair program and now includes more than 50 items. They just added a bunch of home entertainment devices. So the program will give you step by step repair guides, access to genuine replacement parts and the tools you need to do it. Although they say in a lot of cases, all you need to screwdriver. The expansion will add 2023 Samsung TVs and their remotes. Monitors released in the past year, the second gen freestyle projectors and selected soundbars in other Samsung news. Samsung's Han Pak told Bloomberg that the company is pursuing non-invasive blood glucose monitoring. So basically a way for you to monitor glucose without breaking the skin. That would be a boon for people with diabetes and other conditions. It's not clear when or if Samsung will have it ready for a device like the Galaxy Ring, for example. So get excited, but not too excited. Remember during CES, just not even a month ago, when the SEC's X account briefly posted that it had approved Bitcoin ETFs. Then the SEC quickly said, no, no, no, this account has been compromised. And the next day it actually did approve ETFs. It was quite a whirlwind of two days. Well, if you were wondering how somebody got into the SEC's account in the first place, the commission said on Monday it was a sum swap. That was something that many people had had assumed had happened. But this is the commission officially saying yes, we did not have multi-factor authentication on. Meaning once the attacker got control of the phone number, it was able to reset the password by text message. And boy, if that isn't just a little PSA to turn on two factor off, I don't know what it is. Yeah, especially if you have it turned off temporarily by calling customer support, which is apparently what happened with the SEC. Remember to turn it back on later, because it will come back to bite you in the Sims wall. Sierra Space's inflatable space habitat burst during a test of its inflation exactly as intended. That's what they were trying to do. The large integrated flexible environment, aka life module, handled seventy seven pounds per square inch before it burst. Far exceeding NASA's recommended level of sixty point eight PSI for spaceworthiness. Life is a 20 foot tall module. It's around a third of the volume of the International Space Station. It might normally take a dozen or so launches to get something like that into space, as it did with the ISS. But the inflatable module packs into a five meter payload fairing. The module uses a polymer composite called Vectran V E C T R A N and Blue Origin's orbital reef space station plans to be one of the first to use life modules. Google is bringing three new features powered by its large language models to the Chrome browser. A writing assistant lets you right click on any text box or any page and choose help me write to get suggestions. That's coming next month. Tab organizer will also suggest groups of tabs based on the content of the sites and also suggest names for the tab groups. If you're a tab hoarder like I am, kind of excited about that. And you can also use a text to image generator to create a custom theme for your browser itself. The last two features will arrive in the next few days. Good stuff. Actually, do what that composes system. It's not bad. All right. So let's let's go through what's happening in China with video games previously on Sarah. I know you've been following this along with me, but let's let's catch people up. China's been cracking down on the video game industry for a couple of years. Back in twenty twenty one, you may recall, we talked about them putting a rule in that children could only play games between eight and nine p.m. on most days. So just an hour a day on most days. Also, there was a long period where it was not approving licenses for new games. If you're bringing in a game with any foreign components, which is pretty much all the games, you could you have to get a license for it. And they were not giving licenses from August twenty twenty one until December twenty twenty two. That hurt the bottom line when you can't put out new games and new updates. The license approvals began again after December twenty twenty two. And then this past December, right before we went on the break, we talked about the fact that China's National Press and Publication Administration published proposed guidelines that would severely restrict in-app payments, the guidelines proposed warnings that would tell you you're spending a period irrational. They would ban incentives to log in daily limit large tips for game streamers. And the announcement of the guidelines in December caused 80 billion dollars of market cap to disappear for the two biggest game makers in China, Tencent and NetEase. Tencent's the second biggest game maker in all the world behind Sony. So so, Sarah, as you can imagine, Tencent was was probably fairly unhappy with those guidelines being proposed, right? I would assume so. At the same time, you know, all of this and this has been interesting to me as a really somebody who doesn't involve herself with a lot of gaming. You know, I like some games. I like some gamification of things. I like rewards. I get it. At the same time, I think that, you know, what China was saying is way too many kids are gambling right now. And we have to figure out how to, you know, rein that back if not put a stop to it all together. If you're a huge company that's making a lot of money off of kids being extremely, extremely engaged in these games and potentially giving money to these games. I mean, this is not. I know this is a China problem because we're talking about China right now, but this is not a China problem. This is this is a this is a kid problem. OK, OK, well, let me let me put a little pause on that, though. Right. Because there's another element. You're not wrong. China is saying this is bad for our kids. But as with many things with the Chinese government, they can say things and mean two different things at the same time. So publicly, they're saying that and I and I'm not disputing that they mean it. But they also want to encourage tech companies to sink their money into hardware making. They want them to build up the nation's chip industry. They want to make sure that they can be self-sufficient in making chips that the United States specifically is putting restrictions on, etc. So that's been part of this, too, the not licensing of games is a big part of that. What's interesting. And when we're getting to the news, because all of this has just been previously on until now on Monday, the comment period on those restrictions on children's gaming expired of not even just children's gaming, but all all gaming and Tuesday, the guidelines disappeared without comment. Also, the person in charge of the rollout of the guidelines was removed from their post. Now, most people are saying in the articles I've been reading that if the revised guidelines come back, that they're probably going to be innocuous. The big effect of these restrictions has been for companies like Tencent to move a lot of their gaming overseas because you can make money overseas. But today, Tencent announced it's laying off 11% of its staff at Riot Games. They own Riot Legal Edgings Maker. That's because of slowing game sales worldwide. So it does appear to me as if Tencent was like, fine, I guess if you're going to crack down domestically, we'll just make our money overseas. And now that the games are slowing down overseas, they went back and said, these restrictions are too much. If you make it impossible for us to make money off these games, then Tencent's not going to be around. And I don't think you want that either. I mean, I think Tencent is going to be around. But the fact that Tencent owns a pretty large chunk, not a majority, but a large chunk of Epic. I wonder how much, you know, all that lawsuit stuff plays into this as well. I don't think the lawsuit stuff plays it at all. They're a minority owner in Epic. That's just a revenue stream for them. Yeah. I think mostly this is Tencent saying we were we were dealing with the domestic pressure fine by making the money overseas, mostly off Riot and League of Legends, which is huge internationally. But that's that's not going to be good enough anymore. So so we we we really need you not to hamstring our ability to make money off of our games domestically, especially if you want Tencent to remain domestically, to remain a strong example of Chinese industry. Shall we shift to a tale of woe, Sarah? Well, Tom, I think we're going to. So let's hear it. HP, you know, they make printers. Yes, yes, I have one in my closet that I don't use. But yes, go on. You're smart to have it there and not use it. HP has a system called Dynamic Security that will brick your printer if you use a third party ink cartridge to protect you from that third party ink cartridge damaging your printer. So right there and how pretel would the third party cartridge do something like that? Yeah. The I'll get to that. I'll get to that in a second. Very difficult. That's how the dynamic security was introduced in 2016. The only known possible threat was a potential way to modify a third party cartridge to cause a buffer overflow. So they found that by funding a bug hunter in 2022. So they introduced the security measure in 2016 and then went looking for a problem to justify it. No evidence had ever happened in the wild. It would be much more complex and costly to execute this attack than to just get into someone's network. Like if you want to get into someone's network with a buffer overflow, there are many easier ways to do it than modifying a printer cartridge and tricking them into putting it in their printer. Anyway, HP issued this bug and then patched it. So that it wasn't even a problem anymore, but still said like, I don't know, we patched that one, but how many more are there? Probably not that many more. It didn't remove the code that affects the third party ink just in case another bug comes along, because HP also says the measure helps protect its intellectual property. OK, now we're getting to the real reason. Third party ink quality might not be appropriate for the HP printers and cause damage. I'll actually allow that one. I'll buy that one. Like, OK, yeah, third party ink cartridges might not be made. Got it. Right. HP doesn't have quality control. I still don't think they should brick your printer if you try to use the one, because again, you're definitely damaging the printer if you brick it. You're not defending me. And in the end, HP wants to sell you an ink subscription. I don't think that's any secret. They want to sell you ink and they've got plans to create a subscription model that'll keep you giving them the money. HP CEO Enrique Loris told CNBC every time a customer buys a printer, it's an investment for us when you when you buy a printer. He says it's an investment for us. We're investing in that customer. And if this customer doesn't print enough or doesn't use our supplies, it's a bad investment. And you know, Loris has a point. I mean, he's just being real transparent about the fact that, you know, we we we sell you this printer lost leader. We're making back that money on ink. And if you don't go through us, we're not there. It's I mean, it's it's it's it's a it's a it's a very poorly kept secret for the past 20 years that they used the disposable razor model of sell you the printer cheat. I don't think it's even a secret. But I think they they're up front about it. They're like, yeah, this is this is a lost leader for us, the printer. That's what he's saying. So so two things irked me about this. The the whole security security flaw of the cartridge is there because they developed a system to stop you from using third party in cartridges in the first place. So they introduced this chip design into the cartridge one. Two, they have refillable tank ink that just that goes away that does away with the cartridge entirely and you buy little bottles of ink and you fill up the tank as it comes down. Yeah, yeah. Reloaded. So they obviously have something on the market already that does this. So why not just go in on that instead of fighting this really weird, like, you know, 2000, you know, like, you know, issue that was a thing maybe 20 years ago since they have Epson as well. And HP, you know, figured out people are tired of buying cartridges. If they're going to go to third party ink cartridge manufacturers or recyclers, as some of them call themselves, why don't we just sell you the ink and we'll design the printer to use the ink straight up and then we avoid paying the cost developing special cartridges. But they still want to sell you the ink. They don't want you to use third party ink. I, you know, at some point really solve the problem. Like if you're not going to buy the ink altogether, that's one thing. But if you are used, having used third party ink, your luck with them is anywhere from OK to why is it that's why I think this is overdoing it, like this is squeezing blood from a stone. Leave it up to the customer to decide if they want to take the risk to use a third party ink or raise the price of your printers. Keep in mind not every HP printer has dynamic security. So you can buy one that will work with third party ink cartridges, but HP can update the firmware at any time. So then your choice becomes, oh, they updated the firmware. I want to keep using third party ink. So I won't update the firmware, which makes your printer even less secure because you're not updating the firmware and patching other bugs. I have a solution to all of this. OK. Buy a laser jet printer. I mean, that's what I did. I bought a brother laser jet printer and I've never regretted it. And you've talked about how much you like this printer. I mean, listen, you know, for anybody who's like, well, wait a second. If you want to print, you know, high res photos, you know, and their color inkjet is the only way to go, like totally get that. And I've always been in that camp as well to the point where I'm like, I just spent two hundred dollars on ink, you know, for my printer. Like more than the printer was just buy like a color laser printer would do you better or I just think, you know, if if anyone wants to say like, hey, you want the best quality and maybe HP would be the one in this case to say that, well, tell me why this all makes sense instead of like fabricating like weird scary scenarios that don't affect any of us. It's not a security issue. You're not fooling anybody. So right once now, if there's third party toner issues with laser printers, I don't know. I've replaced the toner once in like the six years I have used third party toners and it's roughly the same issue you get with your party, but but the laser printers aren't making their money off selling you toner because it goes out so rarely, so it's not really even a problem. But I mean, it's it's it's a hit and miss. That's that's that's really the caveat there is sometimes they work all right. Sometimes you get very smudgy prints and sometimes you have to use, in the case of ink, it's more ink than you normally would. And, you know, it's it's a gamble. That's why the marketing should be trust our ink because it works every time. Well, folks, if you have feedback about anything that gets brought up on the show, get in touch with the DTNS audience on the socials, what not the audience with us. DTNS show on X and Mastodon, where DTNS show at MSTDN dot social. Daily tech news show on Tiktok and DTNS pics. DTNSP I X on Instagram and on Fred. See you there. Monday Night Raw is coming to Netflix, y'all. Well, next year anyway, the streaming service. Netflix being the streaming service and TKO Holdings, which is the parent company of worldwide wrestling entertainment, formerly WWF, but WWE in this context. Announced a 10 year deal to broadcast its headline show, Monday Night Raw, starting in 2025. Now, there are some terms to the deal. Netflix can exit that deal after five years or that's going well. Extended for another 10 after the initial 10. Netflix can also stream raw globally, starting with exclusive rights to it in the US, Canada, the UK and Latin America. Outside of the US, Netflix will also stream SmackDown, NXT, WrestleMania, SummerSlam and Royal Rumble. Raw is currently the number one rated show on NBC Universal's USA Network. They produce three hours of live programming every week, claiming 17.5 million unique viewers per year. This is a big get for Netflix. Tom, I don't know how much you watch wrestling. I watch very little of it, but over the years, I have understood more and more how much this is part of a sports lexicon and a very, very big get. Yeah, it's it's huge entertainment. You know, whether you whether you even need to think of it as sports or not. I'm not saying it's not sports, but it is it is a get for Netflix. Look at how much Peacock, how many people complained about Peacock streaming the NFL game exclusively on Peacock? And then look at the numbers and watched it. They just figured it out. Look at the fact that WWE ran their own streaming service for a long time and then decided to give it to Peacock to run domestically in the US. That went well. Netflix outbid them. Netflix wasn't even in the rumors about this. Amazon was in the rumors about this, but Netflix came in and made him a deal. They can't refuse. So next year is when this starts and you are going to see a lot of wrestling fans stick with Netflix. I'm going to imagine most wrestling fans probably already have Netflix, but they're going to stick with Netflix now. They're definitely not going to leave and they're probably going to attract a few more that don't have Netflix. It's it's going to get a lot of people around the world, I think, more so than the United States. I think in the United States, you've got a lot of domestic fans already with Netflix, but it's going to help them around the world because WWE is popular worldwide. Sure. And there's a few parts of this that I think are particularly interesting when you consider that, like, Sarah, you were telling me earlier, Netflix has been not wanting to get into live sports. They're like, nah, it seems like a bad bet for us. Yeah, I mean, just over a year ago, co-CEO Ted Serrondo said at a conference, we just don't see a profit path to renting big sports, which was at the time. And again, not that long ago, a time where, you know, people were sort of like, well, what is Netflix doing? You know, they're kind of an outlier. Like, why aren't they like buying like a big sports IP? Well, the the the it's changed. It's changed quite a bit in a short year. And listen, obviously, Netflix and and and TKO Holdings owns WWE and the rights to that. They've been talking for a while. Like, this is not something that just, you know, got, you know, inked two days ago. However, we've had a couple of really, really positive situations. You mentioned Peacock, you know, that football game, NFL game. A lot of people watched. Amazon has had really success with Thursday night football. And I think I mean, myself included, there was not that long ago where I was sort of like, I don't know, people aren't going to like search for sports that much. They're just not going to watch it. And, you know, it's all getting too fragmented and weird. I don't think so. I think it's actually the exact opposite at this point. And now, you know, we're we're in a situation where it's like, what do you want to watch? Here here's the service that you need to be a part of in order to watch it. Yeah. And the reason I brought up the the fact that Netflix had resisted sports is that explains this deal to me. They said they didn't want to rent sports. That's what you do with the NFL. That's that's also what you do with the NBA, the NHL. You are renting sports. They get so much more from WWE. They, according to the reports, are going to be able to work with WWE's approval to make other intellectual property based on the characters story like original content or story type stuff. So Netflix now, this is like acquiring Miller World, in some extent. They get to make movies and TV shows starring WWE talent, using WWE story lines. Not to mention they can make documentaries and things like that. Not to mention they can do what they did with the golf. Remember, they had the the Formula One racers and the golfers do a golf tournament. They can do more stunts like that with the WWE people combined with other sports as well. It just opens up a whole lot more possibilities for Netflix than just an NBA deal. Probably would, you know, what I also thought was interesting. And this is, you know, for anybody who works in TV or, you know, is familiar with it, not going to be a huge surprise, but matches, wrestling matches will reportedly, this is according to CNBC, be scripted around commercial breaks for, you know, those on a Netflix ad tier versus those who have paid to not get ads so that if there is some sort of a, I don't know, you know, everybody's trashing or maybe there's a, you know, like a headlock that doesn't really lend itself to how the match will actually end. You get two different versions based on whether your ad supported or not. And speaking of ad supported, they just released their earnings while we were doing the show. Wall Street predicted the company would add eight to nine million subscribers. They added 13 million subscribers last quarter. So all of these complaints and worries like, oh, Netflix is going to, you know, drive their numbers down by asking people to pay for subscriptions, have not borne out. And according to the company, they increased the ad supported tier, 15 million to 23 million. You know, there's a lot of stuff about Netflix that, you know, over the years I've been like, huh, curious trace or well, we'll see how this plays out. And some of this, you know, again, some of it's still up in the air. But some of this stuff seems like there were people who thought very carefully about this behind the scenes. And this is one of the one of the, you know, most obvious solutions for a huge revenue stream. Yeah, I think this is this is good for WWE. It's good for Netflix. I wouldn't be shocked and I'm not calling it and saying it's going to happen, but I wouldn't be shocked if there may be even in this licensing deal with some talk, but definitely talk down the road that Netflix would buy TKO holdings. I could see them, especially when the deal runs out. I think Roger told me 2026 is when the deal runs out between NBC for the the the part that they don't have WrestleMania, Smackdown, etc. Domestically, Netflix might not only snap up the rest of that when it goes away from Peacock, but I could see Netflix just buying TKO and saying, you know what? This has worked out so well. Let's just let's just own the whole situation. Wayne Johnson just joined the board of TKO. So yeah, he's worked with Netflix on a bunch of movies. They could, you know, that that could be somebody they know and working. I don't know. What do you think? You think Netflix buys WWE at some point down the road? If this works out well, I think maybe, maybe so. Yeah, I. I don't know. I mean, this whole thing said we want to control the sport. We don't want to rent the sport. And that would give them full control over the whole thing. And it would be really like buying Miller World in that they would own the IP. Yeah. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Oh, we got a nice one from Comey who asked for anybody listening to the audio version. This is an incentive for you to watch the video version. I love the look of Sarah's new studio. Comey asks, where did you get the cube shelf behind you that seems to cover most of your wall? As you can guess, I have many gadgets and they're lying around randomly on my desk and table and chairs. The size of the cube and your shelf would be perfect for my quest, etc. And would make my room look much more organized. Comey, first of all, thank you for noticing. Second of all, I didn't do this. These are built-ins that they came with the apartment that I rent. I do not own this place. So, you know, none of this is technically mine, but they are so great. I I love them. I, you know, I totally agree with you that and not everybody has a dedicated room that's an office, you know, to like put things on on display. But my theory is that and I don't know because this is a very old apartment. So who knows who's lived here, you know, over the years. But my theory is that somebody had a shoe collection, like a fancy shoe collection. That could be a shoe display wall for sure. Yeah, yeah, because there are certain you don't really see them underneath, but there are certain little cubbies that are a little bit longer where I'm like boots, boots, go, you know. And you got little slides up top. I don't know. I have no idea. I don't know my landlord well enough to ask him, but I'll get back to you. Someday you will, and then we'll find out. But I'll tell you all, I mean, this is, you know, whether it's a built-in or just like a bookshelf or whatever. And Tom has something very, very similar behind him. I really agree with you, Komei. It's so nice to just sort of like have a little cubby for things. Something has a place to go. And it fits our book. I just have Billy bookshelves from Ikea behind me, but it fits the bookshelf theme. Yeah, exactly. That's nice. We always thank WRRW Nash for his fun comments on Patreon. So here's today's example. Feeling very positive about independent podcast in 2024, especially now with your new Apple podcast. Oh, yay. Plus GDI always cheers me up. And Dr. Nikki is excellent greetings from Storm Jocelyn land. Yes, I hope all of you in in Britain and the surrounding environs are weathering the storm well and stay safe and dry. Patrons, stick around for the extended show, Good Day Internet. Do you want to GRWM? Get ready with me. Well, we're going to tell you whether you should or not. Sarah Lane has been going down that rabbit hole and will also report on progress with the Apple vision show that R W Nash just mentioned. So stick around, won't you? You can also catch our show. DTNS is live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern at that is 2100 UTC. You can find out more at Daily Tech News Show dot com slash live. We're back tomorrow talking about the game controversy surrounding Pell World. Oh, and it's weird. Scott Johnson joining us. Don't mess it. The DTNS family of podcasts helping each other understand.