 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you, including Daniel Dorado, Howard Yermish, and John Atwood. Coming up on DTNS, Elon faces a bitter pill. Google wants to whisper sweet notifications at your plants, and don't hate locate with what three words? Daily Tech News for Friday, April 15, 2022. From Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. From lovely Cleveland, Ohio, I'm Rich Trafalino. From Somewhere in St. Louis, I'm Patrick Norton. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chen. Got a good show ahead for y'all. We will be talking about Twitter, but we've got a new spin on it. There's a lot of information that happened since yesterday, but let's start with a few tech things you should know. A joint advisory from CISA, the FBI, NSA, and Department of Energy warns that threat actors have developed custom toolkits that allow them to scan for and compromise vulnerable industrial control systems, specifically ones using logic controllers from Schneider Electric and Omron, which means a lot of them. While no specifics on the tools were given, the advisory warned that this approach could disrupt critical devices or functions. Peloton increased its subscription fees in the US and Canada for the first time. So as of June 1, all access plans increased $5 per month to $44 in the US. However, Peloton cut the prices on its hardware. With its bike cut 18% to $1,445, bike plus down 20% to $1,995, and tread down 7% to $2,695. Opera released its crypto browser for iOS and iPad OS. Of course, opera launched this browser back in beta in January for Windows, Mac, and Android, and it offers things like a built-in crypto wallet and access to Web3-based apps. Asus launched the ZenBook 14x OLED space edition, which includes a 3.5-inch OLED display on the lid. And it also comes with a 12th Gen Intel i9 12900G, 32 gigs of RAM, and a 90 Hertz OLED main display. It's available now for $2,000. And Bloomberg's Mark Gurman sourced to say Apple began testing third-party apps with at least nine new Mac models running an M2 chip. According to app logs, it includes a MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini with a standard M2, new MacBook Pros with M2 Pro and Mac chips, and a Mac Pro with a successor to the M1 Ultra chip. The logs also show tests with a Mac Mini running an M1 Pro as well. Alright, let's talk a little bit more about notifications and how we might get them delivered to us more efficiently. Yeah, you know, with smartphones, you know, you got IoT, now wearables increasingly, just other gadgets, you know, increasingly, we're just beset with notifications, whether it's, you know, banners popping up at the top of screams, we've got ringing chimes at inopportune times, wrist vibrating all the time, it can be distracting at best, anxiety inducing at worst, Q, there there's got to be a better way moment. Well, Google designers at Seed Studio worked with the London based map project office on some different ideas for notifications with a set of projects called little signals. The idea is to create more relaxed ways to send notifications. And there are some interesting concepts in this set. The one that's getting a lot of press is an air device that basically pulses air to move a nearby object or thing, thinking like a plant to get your attention in a very subtle way. There's a button concept that raises a button as one might expect from the name to alert you before playing a tone to ultimately get your attention to kind of depress the button to let it know, Hey, I need to check this notification. There's also a movement object that has seven pegs in a little row. It's almost like, I don't know, like a little pencil holder. And that breaks out to that to kind of peek out each of these little pegs peeks out to get convey motion and get your attention in a variety of I'm assuming whimsical ways. There's also a rhythm device that plays ambient noises with varying levels of intensity, and that can be sounds, but the wave of your hand. So think wind chimes, that kind of stuff. And then there's a tap device that has a little propeller that can tap a surface with varying intensity levels. And last, a shadow device that casts a shadow that can pulse and grow over time. Again, all of these are trying to get away from, Hey, something's buzzing in my pocket. You know, the ring on my Alexa lit up or something like that. And what's interesting, perhaps the most is that these aren't just kind of one off concepts or something like that. Seed Studio has put up the design files and the code to get these to work. So you can actually create these and kind of iterate these and try out these concepts on your own. You know, this isn't just an interesting tech demo, which it also is. Yeah. I love the idea that we're trying to think outside the box as far as notifications go. I have, I mean, when it comes to email notifications for absolutely everything, they're a hundred percent turned off. You know, anytime I get one, I'm like, unsubscribe, hate you, even if I like your service otherwise. But I also, you know, I'm rocking the Apple watch as a, you know, pretty recently, and I'm trying to navigate, okay, what notifications are important to get on the watch? If I would also get them on my phone and where do I get them in both places? Just in case my phone isn't near me. But those notifications are all kind of the same thing, right? You're getting a buzz, you're getting some sort of a chime and it would be kind of cool. It's somewhat weird. I don't exactly know how it would be in practice, but it'd be kind of cool if one of my plants could like wave at me. And I would know, yeah, there's something that I need to address at some point. Patrick, are you going to have plants waving at you anytime soon? No, I'm envisioning a dancing Groot as my personal notifications totem. I'm also feeling this, I, you know, recently upgraded iOS on my phone. And one of the features is that it'll turn calendar information into a notification for things I already have set into my alarm systems. Now, I'm getting alarm and notification for Google Calendar notification from the calendar built into iOS. And I'm feeling, and I'm kind of annoyed by notifications begin with I shut them off for the vast majority of apps I have. So it's part of me think this is really exciting and part of me is already open in seed studios looking for files to implement them. And part of me is wondering like, okay, and then there's a service like a gig economy and someone will come to your house and bang on your door with a hammer so you don't ignore that alone. It seems like, you know, we've gone from like, okay, your phone is completely worn out of your worn out your ability to actually care about it, right? And your, your watch, if you have a smart watch is probably also something you work hard to ignore. So it's interesting, I think that they're going to more subtle or more relaxed things. And I'm also wondering how many heart attacks are going to be when somebody walks by one of the more subtle notifications, you know, I'm envisioning Sarah like, how long has my plant been waving for? Well, yeah. Or like, is it just that my windows open and there's a slight breeze? I mean, there are obviously a lot of questions here. I think, for me, it's like, if it's a notification that's important to have something that's a little bit more zen of a notification, isn't really going to help me. It's more of, how do you know that you need to deal with something? Whether or not you take action on that notification right then and there or you, you know, wait till later is that that's different. But it all seems invasive to me. I mean, it just is by nature. It's, it's you're being interrupted with, with somebody knocking on the door saying, there's a thing and we want to share it with you. Yeah, it's all about, it's all about triaging with these kind of things. And then like, like you're right, the vast majority of these probably need to be turned off. They need to be curate these. These don't solve the curation problem. The, the where I see possible like kind of issues with these is a couple of these are pretty ambiguous. Like the air one, like you mentioned, did I leave a window open? Is there a stiff breeze or did I get a notification? So if there's, when there's ambiguity, that, that is going to increase your anxiety because then you're just going to check the thing that that's going to notify you about anyway. You're going to bring out the phone anyway. Just looking at your plan all day. But I do think a couple of them, like the button concept, the video they posted for that, like I could definitely see that being like, at least like sending an acknowledgement like, I know there's a notification. I'm on the way to check that. I think the movement one definitely has some potential. And we've seen devices like this. I remember what was it? Think Geek had like a little like Bluetooth penguin that would like raise its arm when you got an email. You could like program it to do that and that kind of stuff. So we've, we've, we've know that notifications are, can be horrible. And we know that there are more organic ways or at least less intrusive ways to do that. I, I, I like these ideas though. I like that they're trying out design solutions to this problem. Well, there's a company called Navistog for years. And unfortunately, I got rid of my old Navistog rabbits before I moved. But what they were doing is experimenting years and years ago with the idea of using the cloud and to do things like this little mechanical rabbit with ears. You get the ears to move. It could read messages to you. You could program all sorts of stuff. And they recently actually did a whole kickstarter to replace the technology inside of them, the boards inside of them with more current hardware. But I feel like this is something that goes all the way back to the, remember the first time you could do custom ringtones. And, you know, you would hear like, you know, if people would sometimes work very hard to make sure you never heard their ringtone for you, or you worked really hard to make sure like your boss didn't hear your ringtone for them. You know, the whole, the whole Darth Vader march for your boss, that tells a lot about what you think about that person that's calling you. Well, in the ongoing Twitter rollercoaster saga that is Elon Musk, here's what we know. And gosh, darn it. A lot of things have happened since yesterday's show. So on Thursday, Twitter CEO Prague Agrawal told employees that the company's board was still evaluating Musk's $43 billion offer to take the company private. In related news, an SEC filing showed that Vanguard Group increased its stake in Twitter to 10.4% over the course of Q1, meaning that it is now the single largest shareholder, Musk remaining the largest individual shareholder. Speaking at a TED at 22 conference, Musk said he had a plan B if his bid was rejected. Well, fast forward a few short hours while some of us slept. Now we have what's known as a poison pill. That's a strategy meant to slow or block Musk's $43 billion bid to buy Twitter is something that Twitter is doing. Now Friday, Twitter's board enacted this defensive measure, which gives Twitter's existing shareholders time to purchase additional shares at a discount. It importantly also dilutes Musk's ownership stake. Bloomberg notes that poison pills are common among companies that are under fire from activist investors or in hostile takeover situations. The poison pill strategy, if you're not familiar and some of you are, I did a little research on it last night. Yes, it was started by law firms in the 1980s to protect companies from corporate takeovers, essentially letting a takeover target flood the market with new shares or allow existing shareholders other than the bidder to then buy those shares at a discount. That means anybody trying to acquire the company has to negotiate directly with the board, which Musk wasn't really doing anymore. Now Twitter said that this effort will be in place until April 14th, 2023. So it's like almost buying the company a year of time, but it won't keep the company from holding talks about a sale with any other potential buyer. So this poison pill gives it more time to negotiate a different deal. Speaking of other deals, the New York Post and Bloomberg are both reporting that private equity firm Tom Abravo is working on a possible bid for Twitter as well. This roller coaster, I want off, but I can't get off yet because it's a really long ride in a very short week. Poison pills. Who's more familiar with them than me? Who can tell me more about this? Short answer is, it's funny, right? Because the other thing that came out was Vanguard dumped some more money into Twitter stocks so that they're now the single largest shareholder in Twitter. They already had several hundred million dollars, I guess, tied up in Twitter. So I can imagine you're an executive, you're a whatever you are inside of Vanguard. You've got billions under management or trillions, I guess, under management at Vanguard. And some yuts starts messing around in a way that could a screw up your long term hopes for the stock or screw up your short term hopes for the stock or just mess up the company you have millions of hundreds of millions of dollars tied into. And they're probably like, you know what? We're not getting any coverage. Nobody's offering us a seat in the board. Nobody writes about our holdings. People are writing about how, okay, Elon's backing away and the stock's going to crash. There's going to be other possible takeover bids. And all of a sudden, like, I feel like Vanguard came up and said, it's not just the kid with the weed thing, it's us. And I don't want to, I'm not trying to be rude to Elon Musk because we're talking about a rocket land itself. I'm delighted. But he does a lot of stuff that probably irritates a lot of investors. It certainly irritated the SEC, his relationship or what he does on Twitter. So I feel like, you know, there's some great big companies stepping up, in this case, Vanguard being like, okay, before just remember, you know, he may have attention span issues, but we do not. And we own a big chunk of this company. So back off, people. At least that's what it smells like. The whole thing has just been so bizarre. And I cannot imagine having to cover it every day this week. So you have my sympathies, Sarah, just like, this is good because it gets weirder and weirder. These sorts of things sometimes drag out, but this has been, I don't know, full force since Monday. It is no Friday. And so much has happened. The other thing this makes me think is the more this dragged out is, you know, by Twitter choosing, I guess to do this stock quantitative easing for, you know, for lack of a, you know, poison pill, whatever you want to call it, the idea that, you know, they're putting more shares out there for existing shareholds by this, this raises the amount of overall stock dilutes any existing, you know, share that Elon or like the total percentage of Twitter that Elon owns. I do wonder, Elon is a very online person. I think that is not an uncontroversial statement to say. And it, I do wonder if there's going to be a weird element where we start to see like the stonks and Wall Street bets, like trying to, trying to like be silly and do something along these lines, because you're basically saying like, Hey, anyone that's not Elon Musk, please buy this stock at a discount. You know, Patrick, have some fun. For Sarah's emotional wellbeing. Yeah. If you're not watching the video, you can't see me holding my hand up for Sarah's emotional wellbeing. Just, just hope that the whole stonks crew states out of this. I don't think she can take another week and Twitter moved 73% last night. I mean, I think really what this all comes down to is on a, on a totally personal level, it's like, okay, what's the worst that's going to happen here as just a person who uses Twitter, which is me. I don't know. It gets burned to the ground. My life won't be over. You know, we'll, we'll all figure out something else. You know, there'll be another social network. There are plenty of others already, but this is something that has been part of my life for really long time. And you know, I know everybody on the panel feels the same way and you can use I think we might have lost Sarah, but to, to kind of reiterate what she was saying, you know, as Justin was kind of talking about yesterday, it's, it's increasingly vital for a lot of media organizations as well. So, you know, there is a lot, there's obviously there's a lot of interest and then a lot invested in Twitter going forward. And one note, you know, I know this, this Tom Abravo private equity rumors out there and we usually don't get into a lot of like private equity talk around here. But one interesting thing I think is that they recently spun off Barracuda networks and sold it to another private equity firm for like $4 billion. Now they, they're, they're private equity firm. They have piles and piles of cash everywhere, but I'm just saying they just freed up a bunch of cash. Theoretically, they wanted to get into some Twitter, some Twitter stock might be good timing. Well, if you have a thought about this particular story or anything that we talk about on the show, we have an email address and we'd love for you to use it. Here it is. Email us at feedback at daily tech news show.com. This week, the mapping company, what three words announced a partnership with Subaru, adding to a list of automaker partnerships that include Mercedes Benz, Jaguar Land Rover, Ford, Lamborghini, Lotus and Mitsubishi. Subaru says what three words will be integrated into its new outback going forward? What three words was founded in 2013 and divides the plan into three meter squares with each square getting an identifier of three random words. So like something like your home has, you know, a couple, maybe a dozen squares or something like that, depending how big it is. So Patrick seems like all of our phones, cars, we already got GPS, right? I mean, my smartwatch probably has it, right? So why do we need what three words? What is this offering? Oh my goodness. Okay. So short answer, right, is because saying prepare.clear.tilt is a lot easier than saying 125 South, 600 West Price Street, Utah, 8451 and gives you a much more precise location. And if you're wondering why I pulled out a really random address in Utah, that's the location of the Cleveland Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry, which is one of my favorite places in Utah. If you've seen an allosaurus, it probably came out of the rock there. And let me back up for a second, right? Like what three words sounds familiar? Last year, right, actually about a year ago, exactly, give or take a couple weeks, DTNS talked about what three words dropping a cease and desist on the folks behind what free FRE words, an open source tool for security researchers that wanted to kind of dig into the whole what three words concept. So what three words insisted that, you know, what three words was, you know, basically, including some of their copyrighted code, it never really basically, they ceased, they desisted case never went anywhere. We don't really know where the code came or did not come from. But so, you know, when you when you look at what three words, those there's three by three meter squares, that's 10 foot squares, like you're measuring your roof for new shingles in American. But it's there's 57 trillion of those. And they take about 25,000 words to create a dictionary and then they randomly apply those words to the locations on the surface of the planet. It's fascinating math. So as somebody has had to navigate using latitude and longitude, for example, the Cleveland Lloyd dinosaur quarry would be 39.3232 by negative 110.6877. And that's within the lack and accuracy of 11 meters, or about 33 feet. Siding those numbers, especially an emergency can be a huge challenge and addresses are really problematic. If you're in a big state park, if you're in a big, if you're in a big park in a city, if you're in a big national park, you probably don't have the ability to pull out latitude and longitude and saying, Well, I was three miles north or I, I just walked pay, it's giving directions is vague. And one of the places that what three words is showing up a lot is in emergency services, you know, because like, the other funny thing is like, you've got Google Maps on your phone, you know, Uber has mapping, everybody has mapping. And for the most part, it does fine, right. But if you're a package delivery company, or Uber, or somebody that lives in an apartment building with three entrances or an office park with eight buildings and where they have one big master address, getting, you know, saying like weasel cope candle is probably a lot easier than explaining that well, you drive around blowhard Avenue, you take the second right and drive around the back turtle left with the dumpsters. And then you'll see a white building but not white like the other buildings because it's got a red stripe. And the second entrance on the right is the one you want to, to, you know, drop your stuff off, you know, or as you know, to call out Subaru's announcement this week, finding your spot in a campground if having been to campgrounds where they were very, very large and very, very sprawly, you know, what three words address would have been a lot easier than literally, okay, go to the second oak, make a left and then at the second bathroom operation, take a left and you're the fifth slot on the right. Notice that I'm pointing in the wrong direction as I say that because I'm recalling an experience I had in Southern California. So what three words says at least one delivery service reduce their delivery times by something like 28% after implementing what three words. Yeah, that's a big number. As of June last year, the Los Angeles fire departments implemented what three words and do its emergency app, I believe 2020, the Australian emergency services, 000 emergency plus apps started using it. It's kind of crazy. It's available in something like 4800 emergency call centers in the US, built into Rapid SOS and other software systems for call centers. It's a really fascinating concept. I don't know if it's perfect, but one as a nerd or a geek or whatever you want to call me, lovingly or not so lovingly, it's a fascinating piece of math to me, like the idea of actually divvying up the surface of the planet like that. There are claims that I've read about that similar sounding words or plurals are used in locations that are just miles apart. I think it's the Mountain Rescue England in Wales. The story about that was in June 2021. They're saying like, look, there were cases, I think they cited like 45 incorrect locations in the previous 12 months. They didn't say what the total number was. Was it 45 out of 100? What is it 45 out of 45,000? We don't know, but they said that where the wrong addresses were given. The quote from that is, quote, we are finding there are a lot of spelling issues which might be from when locations are given to the emergency services. Local accents have also been a problem. If you've ever traveled in Wales and you're not Welsh, you know that English is a complicated language. If you've ever traveled to parts of the United States, you can kind of stare blankly while you're trying to figure out what somebody said, but it's an interesting concept. Part of the reason the what free words operation came out is because they were trying to figure out if there were cases where plurals or similar sounding words were relatively close to each other and you might be like, ah, they're off by a mile. Well, if you're sending a helicopter for an emergency rescue or you're starting some type of rescue operation or if you're the Los Angeles fire department being sent to the exact location the first time rather than a few miles away is the difference between life and death or a house burning down or not burning down. You know, if you have an active imagination, you're probably leaping ahead on this. The first thing that springs to mind also beyond emergency services is, you know, we've been covering a lot about the increasing prevalence of drone delivery. And I'm just thinking a 10 meter square or a 10 foot square is like the perfect landing area to designate for a drone. Also, so it's like, I want it in a specific spot in my backyard, send it to, you know, dog, fox, frightening or something like that. Like, boom, it's right there, you know, so I have to look that up. Patrick is, is, is there a perpetuity to this? I guess like that would be my only other question is like, if I can memorize like a spot, is that locked in? Like, is that, is like, how do, I guess, how do they kind of keep that locked in, you know, in a way, since like launch due and latitude is numerically based, like, right? It is ancient science that has been set down. No, I don't think they are. It's numbers, so it must be perpetual. Well, you hope, right? You know, I'm sure somebody's, I'm sure there's going to be some great follow up emails on this. You know, one of the challenges of any technology that comes out of a privately held company, whether it's an operating system that's driving you insane, or for example, how many times if we wish there was an open source alternative to streaming programs didn't cause us to spend 20 minutes a week dealing with stuff that we thought we saw last week. Although, you know what I mean? Like, it's, it would, you know, I'm going to brazenly assume that they did their math properly. And if they, you know, that's a question, right? Because they, I typed in, this is a fun one. So I typed in dog fox frightening. And there's dogs foxy frightening near Mendee, Oro Maya. There's doggedly foxy frightening near Gebre Gracha, Oro Maya. And there's dogs, frox foxy frightens near Irode Tamil Nadu. Now, two of those things, you know, I feel like I'm going to, you know, I'm going to have to have three maps open simultaneously. So I'm like, I think that's a place I've never heard of. Mendee, Oro Maya. And where is that? If I put my keys on the right part of the keyboard. That's actually just kind of a fun game. Be like, let's just find something in the world. Yeah. Like, well, in, it's, it's almost the reverse of like that XKCD password generator, right? So like think of three random words. Yeah, definitely a fascinating concept. Then I could see that like, if your Apple watch pops that up in a case of an emergency to give that information out, again, a lot easier to transmit than despite dialectical differences than longitude latitude in a lot of cases. It's, you know, in a lot of cases, I think it's going to be, I, I think it's an interesting idea. It's certainly, I mean, you know, if you've ever dealt with latitude and longitude, you know, one part of you is like, I'm a hoopy prude. I can make this work. And another part of you is like, was that 3232 or 2323? And is that going to put them three yards off or 300 miles off if you, if you mess a digit up? So yeah, it's, it'll be interesting to watch how it develops over time. And just so everybody knows, is radio silence is always awesome. Those two locations are 758 kilometers apart in Ethiopia. So well, if y'all can hear me, I would like to tell you about a tip that Chris Christensen, the amateur traveler has for you. If you find yourself vacationing in Southern California, maybe you're going to a theme park, maybe you're going to Disney World in Florida, and you unfortunately end up needing some medical help. This is Chris Christensen from amateur traveler with another tech in travel minute. A couple of years ago when we went on vacation, I think most of us didn't think about the possibility of needing a doctor, but that may have changed in the last two years. And so I thought it was an interesting announcement that if you're in a hotel near Disneyland, Disney World, Universal Studios, Hollywood or Knott's Berry Farm, you can go to drtumy.com and book a hotel house call. And so this is a house call system that you can use at home, but it's now going to be available in these vacation areas so that if you do run into a problem, you can set up a house call with anything from a podiatrist because you walk too much to an OBGYN to somebody who can do that COVID test for you. Hopefully you won't need it, but if you do, drtumy.com. This is Chris Christensen from amateur traveler. Always good advice from Chris. Thank you for the tip. We also got an email. This one comes from Sheila. Last week in episode 4250, we told you that scientists at Washington State University had developed a memrister for neuromorphic computing using honey. And Sheila would have said, all I can think of is how much Terry Pratchett would love this. He used honeycomb and bees for rom and hex. And this is just chef's kiss. That is, that is a fantastic pull. Well played, Sheila. Well played. Well played. Also well played, Patrick Norton. Always nice to have you on the show. Thanks for being with us today and what's been going on in your world otherwise. I'm working on a studio rebuild and as always doing AVXL with Robert Herron. We talk about home theater and audio and headphones and all that good stuff and possibly going to Axpona next week, which is a big old trade show. And that would be at Patrick Norton on the Twitter's if you want to blast something in my direction. Excellent. I want to give a special thanks to Scott Napier, who is one of our top lifetime supporters for DTNS. Thanks for all the years of support, Scott. And of course, there's a longer version of this show called Good Day Internet. It's available at patreon.com slash DTNS. Here on DTNS, we are live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern at 20 hundred UTC and you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. And you know what? We're going to be back Monday doing it all again. If you celebrate Easter, have a great Easter weekend, everybody. 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 Strfellino, video producer and Twitch producer Joe Coons, technical producer Anthony Lemos, Spanish language host, writer and producer Dan Campos, news host, writer and producer Jen Cutter, science correspondent Dr. Nikki Ackermanns, social media producer and moderator Zooey Detterty, our mods, Beatmaster, W. Scottus 1, BioCow, Captain Kipper, Gadget vs. Grosso, Steve Guadirama, Paul Reese, Matthew J. Stevens, J.D. Galloway, mod and video hosting by Dan Christensen, video feed by Sean Wei, 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 Trace Gaynor, Patreon support from Dylan Harari and contributors for this week's show include Chris Ashley, Scott Johnson, Justin Rubber Young and Patrick Morton, thanks to all our patrons who make the show possible.