 This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners. Thanks to all of you, including Kirk Stephenson, this music teacher, James C. Smith, and Dave Packard. On this episode of DTNS, foldable PCs are trying to become a thing. The FCC wants to swing back to that neutrality. And do we want podcasts in our music apps? Well, too bad. That's what we're doing. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, September 26, 2023 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Secret Punker, I'm Sarah Lane. And on the show's producer, Roger Chain. Now, I know some of you may have heard us say at the end of yesterday's show that John C. DeVorek was going to be with us. And he was until his internet decided to leave. And so we will we will try to get John back. Sorry for that, John. We'll reschedule. In the meantime, though, you know what did show up, Sarah? What's that, Tom? The quick hits. See what you did there. After a ban on iPhone 12s in France due to radiation concerns, Apple has offered regulators in the country an update to mitigate what was considered an excessive specific absorption rate. Earlier this month, Apple pledged to accommodate the testing methods used in France. And the French digital ministry told Reuters that it is reviewing the update. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and 17 states' attorneys general have filed a joint lawsuit against Amazon via say alleging they violated antitrust laws, which reduced competition and raised prices. On the seller side, Amazon is accused of punishing sellers who offered lower prices elsewhere than Amazon and pushing sellers to Amazon's fulfillment service and to pay fees for things like advertising on the platform. On the consumer side, the FTC accuses Amazon of replacing search results with paid ads and biasing search results to Amazon's own products. We have heard this refrain before. In other Amazon news product had David Limp, who just announced he was leaving Amazon, has been named CEO of Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin rocket company. To the moon. The Verges, Sean Hollister reports that Valve announced its shipping steam at VR 2.0 in beta. In its words, quote, we see this as the first major step towards our goal of bringing all of what's new on the steam platform into VR. Valve has supposedly been working on a VR headset codenamed Deckard. It's OS update day. Microsoft began rolling out the fall update for the Windows 11 system. That's the one that brings you co-pilot, the AI powered assistant for Windows. Among other features, Microsoft paints getting some photoshop like features with support for transparency and layers. File Explorer gets its modern makeover and Windows 11 now supports pass keys. Apple also released its operating system a little earlier than usual. Mac OS Sonoma, just a week after iOS 17. Among the new features there, the Mac lock screen looks like an iPhone's with a password field instead of a number pad. You can put iPhone widgets on a Mac without having to install the corresponding app and a new game mode prioritizes CPU and GPU resources to optimize gaming and make wireless accessories more responsive. Spotify launched a new feature called Jam, which lets up to 32 users create a combined playlist. Jam has technology that you may have seen another other multi person playlist like Blend and Duo Mix, but is designed for real time collabs, as the kids say, like at a birthday party. Instead of only one person being that DJ, having access to control the music at that social gathering, everyone says, actually, they have pretty bad taste in music. Everybody or at least 32 people who are part of Jam can multi DJ that event. I could get messy. I've been there. Well, all right. Yes, all the screens. Tell me. Yes, yes, yes, yes. All right, let's let's switch gears, talk about foldable screens. And we're not talking about mobile devices, although this will play into the conversation we're about to have. The LG gram fold is a 17 inch foldable OLED laptop that can be used like a tablet, not the first to the party. Of course, there's the Lenovo X one fold, which just launched its second version, 16 inch, 16 inch version and two other 17 inch foldables, the ASUS ZenBook 17 fold OLED and HP's 17 inch Spectre fold. Now, as with foldable phones, the form factor will hurt your wallet. It's expensive. Think pad X one fold is 2,499. Zenbook fold is 3,499. The Spectre fold is five thousand dollars. LG's entry is right in there. Now, it's only going to be available in South Korea. So we have the price in one four point nine nine million won, but that puts it just below four thousand dollars US. LG is using its own LG display foldable screen. If you are keeping track of displays out there, and I know one of you is Samsung and BOE also make foldable laptop and tablet displays that are used in some of these. So, yeah, that's where we are with the foldable displays. And all of these that Tom mentioned offer the ability to dock a Bluetooth keyboard to use like a 12 to 13 inch laptop. Using the keyboard separately, but the full side screen is also an option or using a virtual keyboard when bent into the laptop shape. And you can hold it like a book. So you might say, all right, are we out of gimmick land? Obviously, these are expensive, Tom, but are there situations throughout your regular day where you say, gosh, I wish I had one. Just like foldable phones, I want to set aside the expense for the sake of being able to have a discussion. Because otherwise, I think we just end up with too pricey for most people. Is there a reason if let's say the cost of these comes down as they become more popular, which often happens. Would I want a foldable screen? And I was very fascinated with foldable phones. And once I got one, I got the Pixel Fold, I started to realize like, OK, this is what it's good for. It's really nice to be able to open it up to that bigger screen sometime, but not have to have it that way. I don't know that I've ever felt the same way about a laptop, though. I'm not sure that I and my Chromebook, I have a Chromebook that I can fold over into a tablet. I used to have the surface where you could detach the screen and use it as a tablet, never do either of those things. So I'm not sure I need a laptop that unfolds into a tablet, at which point it seems inconvenient, don't you think, to just have to like, oh, I have to snap a Bluetooth keyboard on or or pair it up or use it separately? Yeah, I mean, you know, again, the price is a factor here. But putting that aside, yeah, is this a form factor that I say, ah, this would this would help me in, you know, A, B and C scenarios. And I can't really come up with any scenario. Now, I'm also not a multi monitor person right now. I'm sitting, you know, I've got my big desktop monitor. It's I don't even think it's that at 28 inches, I think plenty big. You know, I got windows. I can see all sorts of, you know, things at once. But it kind of just makes sense to me to have it all in one place. Now, that's a desktop situation. I'm not traveling with this rig at all. But if I were to have a laptop, the, you know, even when I used an iPad quite often, which is the only tablet that I've ever used with any consistency and I haven't used an iPad regularly for four years now. I was always sort of like, yeah, you can add a keyboard to it. But then like, what's the point of it being a lap or a tablet rather? And I I get that there are a lot of people who go, it's great. It's great for that reason. You know, if you have space issues, if you're doing a lot of travel, you know, if you like the touchscreen capability, all of that makes a lot of sense to me, but the foldable laptop. I guess I have to go back to price at this point. No, I it just isn't something that I it's not something I would say no to. Right. If someone said, hey, try this out. But no, it's not a form factor that I need. It's cool. That's about how I feel. Maybe, maybe on the go, and I'm not on the go very often. So that's probably why I'm not thinking about it. But what what about? So let's pretend we're not ourselves for a second. Where we never leave our house or garage. And if you're on the go, having the flexibility to make make that screen bigger or smaller, like I could see on an airplane that's usually my go to for for travel is like, oh, could I watch a movie on this? Well, a nice 17 inch screen. Yeah, that's that's not bad. I thought I would like watching movies on a on a pixel fold, but I don't really watch them more on the unfolded version of the pixel fold, which is seven inches than I would on a like 6.9 inch iPhone. So this this could actually change that. I don't know if that justifies the price, but that's the best I got. Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, when you when you when, you know, we're asking ourselves, like, is this just a gimmick because it's possible to make this form factor? No, I think there's a lot more to it. And somebody out there is going, this is a great use case that you're not thinking of. And please do email us feedback at daily tech news show dot com with your thoughts. But yeah, I think if you are on route regularly and, you know, we were talking about that we were having this conversation about foldable phones not that long ago of just being able to pack it in when you're not using it in its full capacity into a, you know, a smaller pocket or, you know, duffel bag or whatever that sometimes is enough to say, yes, this now I can do a variety of things with one product that can mimic three. OK, I'm going to I'm going to wrap up this this conversation with a plea for feedback. I'm going to give you two folders. There's the folder that I will not respond to, which is the people going, don't laptop's already fold and the people going, I hate the foldable idea. I will read them or appreciate them, but I won't respond to them. If you send us the, hey, I want the foldable screen in my laptop. And here's why. Definitely going to respond to that and might read those on the show. So send those to us feedback at daily tech news show dot com. I mean, I'll laugh at the ones that say our laptop's already foldable every time you send. He asked. I just won't respond to it. Yeah. U.S. Federal Communications Commission chair Jessica Rosenwurzel is announcing plans Tuesday to propose reclassifying broadband internet providers as telecommunication providers, a.k.a. Title Two. Oh, Sarah, it's like greatest hits. Remember this old tune from the 20 tones? In fact, yes, a news item we covered extensively back in the day. And apparently we are swinging right back. Well, you know, all the old fashions come back around net neutrality, apparently one of them. If you're having a hard time keeping track, well, let me bring you back up to speed. FCC chairman Tom Wheeler under President Obama classified internet providers as telecoms, placing them under open internet guidelines, commonly called net neutrality. It's called Title Two. It says you're a common carrier. You can't prejudice certain traffic. You're just delivering the service. A version of that was created. FCC chair Ajit Pai, who came in under President Trump, rescinded that classification and said, no, no, no. Internet providers are under communications rules. Title One, like cable TV, meaning that open internet guidelines don't apply. They can manage their network however they want in order to make sure that the packets flow freely. We don't want to restrict them from managing. Now, everybody said when Wheeler did it and when Pai did it, that it would ruin the internet and in neither case did it ruin the internet. But I'll tell you what isn't good is constantly switching what the telecoms and everybody else have to deal with. And now Rosen Morsel would like to go back to reclassify them again. This follows the appointment of Anna Gomez to the FCC commission that makes the commission a full five member body for the first time in years, meaning you can actually have a three to vote instead of always having a two to tie and the initial vote on this proposal is now going to be scheduled for October 19th. Sarah, do you enjoy the ping pong of reclassification of the internet every five to 10 years? Not at all. I mean, besides it being a news item that then I talk about. No, I don't think this is good for anybody. I know that there are a lot of net neutrality advocates. Certainly a lot of folks in our audience feel pretty strongly about that. So I feel like this is a win or at least a step in the right direction of a win. But not if it's just going to go back to something else, you know, in it depending on the administration in charge going forward. I think what we need to do at this point is say, all right, let's let's all just let's classify and end it. Yeah, we need a new title. That that's my position. And I know that making a new law is almost impossible in this day and age, unless it has to do with very limited categories that everybody agrees on. And this is such a political football, you're not going to get people to agree. But the problem is that, first of all, the internet is neither of these things. That's why we actually don't see much real big effect when they reclassify is that the internet just kind of is like, well, we're we're not communications or telecommunications either one where the internet and so maybe you get a little attitude to push a little one way or another. But to properly manage the internet, you just keep managing it as the internet. If you want to properly regulate it, I think you have to create internet regulation. The telecommunications regulation was created in the 30s when telephony was new and the communications regulation was created in the 70s when cable television was new. And I think the 90s is when it really got solidified. So you could think about it that way too. But we're now in the age of the internet. There needs to be a classification that says the internet works like this. Here are the rules to say, like, hey, you can't do this, you can't do that. Net neutrality for whatever it means could be part of that. But I think it really does need to just say, here's here's the guidelines in which you operate an internet service provider. And they're essentially the way the ISPs have been operating and just saying, here are the boundaries. It shouldn't even be that controversial in my opinion, anyway. I know that telcos have their own thoughts about this because it can benefit companies. But putting all of this aside because I know you've thought about this a lot, Tom, who what is the argument for a non net neutrality future for broadband internet that makes sense? Yeah, so usually the argument you get from from the ISPs is that if if net neutrality rules go in place, they won't be able to properly manage their networks because there are times when you need to shape traffic in order to keep the internet flowing. Turns out when Wheeler's rules were in place, nobody got sued for proper management of traffic. And the argument for net neutrality is if you don't have rules in place for net neutrality, the ISPs will block traffic in order to prioritize paid traffic. And that means that certain voices will be disadvantaged. Turns out we haven't seen that either because it really doesn't make as much business sense as people fear. So when I talk to network people, people who work on actual networks at ISPs and I know several of them, they all say, look, we do need some rules of the road to make sure that everybody's cooperating with each other. Maybe some rules to make peering clear and easy. And so we don't have to fight each other of it. Maybe some pull access rules so everybody can can run networks easier. But we really don't fit in either of these categories. When you talk to the lobbyists, when you talk to the business people at networks, that's when they start saying, well, we need these easier rules in order to do traffic shaping and stuff like that. The folks who operate the networks don't say that as much in my experience. All right, folks, I know a lot of you are Android users and we have a show for you. Ron Richards and Quentin Dahl bring you Android Faithful, a podcast devoted exclusively to Android news and information. You can catch it Tuesdays at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific, live right there on the internet. Net neutrality or not, the packets fly to you. Go to www.androidfaithful.com. Google has a reputation for killing its own products. It's kind of a meme at this point. Today certainly does not provide evidence against that. So let's run down what has happened. YouTube Premium Lite will go away as of October 25th. This was the less expensive version of YouTube Premium that just removed ads. A longer lived offering, basic HTML Gmail will go away in January. So they're giving us a heads up on this. This version has been around for more than 10 years, even though Gmail back in the day was always like, well, you can use it, but don't you want the nicer, newer one? I don't know. Some of you might have said, no, I like basic. So you got till Jan and Google Podcasts will shut down later in 2024. We don't know exactly when, but sometime next year, the company is once again moving podcast listeners along to a new platform. And this time it's YouTube Music. Yeah, Google had a podcast support to YouTube Music app in the U.S. Anyway, back in April, they say a migration tool is in the works so that you'll be able to bring all your Google Podcast shows over to YouTube Music. That a migration tool for Google Music to bring it over to YouTube Music. That worked fairly well. So hopefully this one will, too. And it will include RSS feeds for shows not currently in the YouTube Music catalog. So it'll be open for you to add RSS feeds. It won't have to be indexed in YouTube for it to work. You'll also be able to export an OPML of your podcast feeds from Google Podcasts. If you don't want to go to YouTube Music and you can take that OPML into any other podcast app that allows you to import. TechCrunch points out this leaves Apple as the only major platform that has not merged music and podcasts into one app. Though Apple did announce Tuesday that Apple Music Radio shows are now going to be available in the Apple Podcasts app. That is different than music and podcasts all together. Those are essentially shows. They could be considered podcasts. Sarah, are these platforms worth the effort for for podcasters or listeners, either one? I mean, listen, so every time I start a new podcast and daily tech news show aside, this is something that I do here and there in various projects, you know, capacities. And I just kind of say to everybody, OK, here are, you know, the kind of obvious stuff where the feeds should go. Here's where you're probably going to get your most, you know, the majority of your audience. But here are some other places that people enjoy podcasts. You know, let's try to service as many people as possible. Google Podcasts has consistently, because I get reports, monthly reports from Google, consistently just the lowest numbers. You know, so I kind of go, OK, well, I don't think it's a service that doesn't work well, but I I've never thought that. In fact, I think it makes a lot of sense. But for whatever reason, people just don't think about that as, you know, a place to get podcasts. Maybe some of you say that's the only way that I get podcasts. And, you know, that's great. There just clearly aren't enough of you to the point that the company says, let's roll it into music, which brings me to my gripe. Podcasts and music, two different things. If you want to reinvent an app, call it audio, then let's talk. But podcasts and music are two different things. Yes, you can have a podcast about music. So we're getting into a little Venn diagram thing here. But they're two different things. It's like, I mean, I've always thought that about iTunes. iTunes being about anything besides music has never, you know, never sat well with me. So I sound a little bit more fired up about this that I really am. I mean, do what you want to do, universe. But it bothers me. It does. I don't think that they're the same. And so I agree with Apple in that sense. You know, every so, so often I'll, I don't know, like accidentally hit the music icon rather than the podcast icon. And I immediately I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm in the wrong place. Yeah. Yeah. I meant to do something different. I don't know. They're just different things to me. Yeah, GPAC84 points out Apple used to have podcasts in iTunes, to your point about iTunes being blown. Oh, it was it means crazy stuff in it. But even Apple, when they changed away from iTunes, decided to keep podcasts separated from from music. Maybe they'll eventually start doing it the same way as everybody else. But I find it it's fine. I don't I don't have a problem with it, but I find it confusing. I find it harder to keep track of things when the podcast and the music have one more app combined together. I get that in theory, you're wanting to listen to something and you listen to podcasts and music in similar situations while you're jogging, while you're in the car, while you're doing yardwork, you know, you got headphones in, you're listening to one or the other. And that's why you see Amazon even putting audio books in there along in the same line, because that also is something that you you listen to in the same kinds of situations. I just wish that whatever they do on the platform side, we would just all have one place to submit RSS feeds. And it would just be it's it's RSS. It's meant for that. It's meant to be universal, right? Why do we have to submit to every OK? Now I got to submit to YouTube music. Got to make sure that YouTube music has mine when the show is already on YouTube and was already on Google Podcasts and is in Spotify and is an iHeart radio. I just I just think it's annoying that every platform wants to reinvent the wheel or gatekeep what's in their system when there is a perfectly reasonable and systematic way. And in fact, it's too bad that John had technical problems today because I know he and Adam are big supporters of an open project to index podcasts that is right there for everybody to use. Yeah, I think this largely, you know, Google has a marketing problem. Google also sunsets a variety of properties with some regularity that people really like. So so, you know, you that's a twofer here. But just in the greater sense of if let's say Spotify, I'm not a Spotify user, I use Apple music, but let's, you know, call them for the most part, pretty similar products, putting podcasts and music together under Spotify, not the end of the world, just Spotify want to break out into two different platforms? No, of course not. But I think you can you can, you know, it's it's largely optics here of you want to listen to something. Well, we've got everything you might need. You want people talking, you want, you know, spoken word poetry, you want music, Taylor Swift, we've got it all. That would be fine. That wouldn't upset me. I just don't like when things are put into a music category when they're not music. I just thought of something. YouTube has done something I think is pretty smart with YouTube TV and YouTube music, which is they're both available in YouTube. There's three different apps, right? There's YouTube music for music. There's YouTube TV for live TV. And then there's YouTube for traditional YouTube stuff. But you can watch YouTube TV stuff in YouTube. You can get YouTube music in YouTube. In fact, when you watch music videos in YouTube, the stats are merged with your YouTube music stuff. Why not do that with podcasts? Have YouTube podcasts an app for people like us who just want to have podcasts, but if you want it, you could still add your podcast in YouTube music. You know, like why squish it over there? Why not do what you've already done and and and make it make it easy so that you can do whatever you want. I mean, I'm a YouTube TV user. I'm well, price hikes aside over the years. I'm very, very happy with the service. I have never once used it inside of YouTube, right? And you don't need and YouTube is fine with that. They're like, that's only for somebody who really wants. Well, yeah, because they're like, you know, we'll give you a choice. Do what you want exactly as long as you stay with us somewhere. All right, we need to we need to chase. Chase this heavy topic with some fun. What do we got? Yeah, I'd say top of to you. But if nobody has any hot sauce around, let's go with Mattel. Mattel had quite a year at the box office at least so far. Now, yeah. Now, Mattel is on board. It's it's board game rather. And it is on board to change the game called Pictionary. Pictionary is a new version called Pictionary versus A.I. So A.I. Enhanced Refresh. If you haven't played Pictionary, you know, I, you know, Tom and I are playing. I'm trying to draw something. Tom's trying to guess what I'm drawing type thing. That's that's the the basis of the game. That's a lot of fun. The new. Yeah, the new spin is that humans are trying to now see if the A.I. is smart enough instead of other humans to understand what the humans are drawing and the other humans who might be playing the game are also trying to predict if that A.I. will indeed understand the drawing. So a little bit of a departure from from regular old Pictionary. The drawing by each participant sent to a smartphone analyzed by Mattel's proprietary A.I., which then tries to guess what you drew. Whoever else is playing along, tries to guess whether or not the A.I. can, in fact, guess what you drew. Maybe you're really good at drawing. Maybe you're not. But hey, we're talking about A.I. Right. So the the the stakes are a little different. Pictionary versus A.I. releases on October 2nd for $25. And I am in line. That sounds fun to me. Yeah, I I actually really like this idea. First of all, it took me a minute to be like, well, why wouldn't you just draw really bad so the A.I. can't recognize? And then I realized the rule was no, you want the A.I. to guess your drawing. It's other people are trying to figure out whether it will or not. Where it's quality gets in. And for those I know who have questions, this is a model created for Mattel. So it is proprietary to Mattel, like Sarah said. But it's using Google's technology. It was trained on actual drawings. And when you scan your drawing, it is not stored at Mattel. So you're you're not you're not training it any further. You're just playing the game using something specifically created to recognize dictionary drawings. And and it doesn't have to be the best because that's kind of the fun of like, what is it good at? And what is it? Oh, totally. I was trying to think of what it what is this remind me of before the show started. I was trying to think of what's that game where you you say something that isn't true. And then everyone tries to guess of like, oh, is it really not true? Baldur Dash, also a fun game, a good party game. This is not that, but there is a little of the person drawing wants the A.I. to get it or intentionally doesn't, you know, for whatever reason and hilarity ensues, hopefully. Yeah. In the video, there is one of broccoli that really looks like a tree and the A.I. I guess tree. And I was like, you know what? I probably would have to if I was the. You know, sometimes the robots are, you know, it looked like a tree. I think like them. What are you going to do? Yeah. Well, folks, you may recall from yesterday's show that I mentioned it's free preview week. If you're not a patron, we're letting you get all the fun stuff that the patrons get in your regular feed. So you are getting the full extended show just so you can see what it's like. Stick around for good day. Internet, we're going to discuss how long should we expect companies to support software updates on phones? We always want it to be longer, but is it forever? Stick around and find out. Maybe it is. I mean, my answer is forever, but reality. Yeah, we'll talk about it in a minute. Just a reminder, though, you can catch our show. We do the show live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern 20 hundred UTC. You can find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live. And we'll be back doing it again tomorrow with Scott Johnson joining us. Talk to you then. This show is part of the frog pants network. Get more at frog pants dot com. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.