 Coming up on DTNS, I think we know what Elon Musk is up to with Twitter plus North Dallas drone bluebell delivery And why we don't think we'll clone our pets This is the Daily Tech news for Monday April 4th, 2022 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio Redwood I'm Sarah Lane And I'm Roger Chang the show's producer Let's start the show as we always do with a few tech things you should know Roku's deal to distribute Amazon Prime Video and IMDb TV apps expired recently, but guess what? This is not a story about public Recreation and apps no longer working the Verge noticed that Roku announced an agreement without any public campaigns or cuts in service So well done Roku and Amazon I guess in our time The US State Department announced the cyberspace and digital policy bureau Which will address the national security challenges economic opportunities and implications for us values associated with cyberspace digital technologies and digital policy the bureau will be headed by a Senate confirmed ambassador and include three units the International cyberspace security unit the international information and communications policy unit and the digital freedom unit The car rental company Hertz announced it will buy 65,000 Polestar EVs over the next five years to be used in Europe North America and also Australia Europe will receive the cars first this next spring with North America and Australia getting them for rental as early as fall of 2022 so you know a few months away, but still some months away in October Hertz announced last October rather Hertz announced It would order 100,000 Tesla vehicles as part of its plans to electrify over 20% of its US rental fleet Google set a deadline of April 1st for apps in the Google Play Store to come into compliance with a long-standing But unenforced rule that Google Play's payment system needs to be used for in-app payments that passed on April 1st and now the implications and The results are happening the verge notes that Barnes & Noble and audible have both removed the ability to buy digital books in Their Google Play apps audible will let you use credits as it does with the iOS app But not a credit or debit card and new audible memberships can be purchased and billed through Google Play You'll also be able to buy more credits in the app So audible just taking away the ability to pay with a debit or credit card Google and Spotify announced they will try out an alternative billing program later this year But that according to Barnes & Noble was not offered to it. At least that's what it told the Verge Microsoft Chief Product Officer Apennos Panay announced the Android at Microsoft platform and Experiences unit the company moved its teams behind its surface duo OS swift key phone link Microsoft Launcher and other Android initiatives under this new dedicated unit Windows central sources say that Microsoft wants to position Android smartphones as extensions of Windows PCs and Create interoperable experiences between the two All right, let's talk about Elon Musk Let's do it So according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission the SEC Elon Musk Bought a 9.2 percent passive stake in Twitter on March 14th worth about $2.9 billion this makes Musk one of Twitter's largest shareholders and four times What founder Jack Dorsey's 2.25 percent stake includes so Musk is now a very very large stakeholder if you're a passive stakeholder. It means you're not on the board You're not necessarily going to be making decisions that affect the company But a lot of that is a little bit up in the air depending on the company passive stake That's that's what is sort of interesting here on March 24th So if you're looking at a calendar after Musk bought his stake in Twitter because this is all public record He posted a poll on Twitter asking whether the Twitter algorithm should be open source that was retweeted by Jack Dorsey The following day that was March 25th Musk asked the platform Rigors if the platform rigorously adheres to free speech But on March 26th asked if a new platform was needed now at the time Because he obviously has a lot of followers people care about what Elon Musk says a lot of people were saying well Is he going to start his new social network? What would that look like blah blah blah? Turns out no It is truly Twitter that now he owns a extremely large stake in and You know the chatter today is is this strategic is the supposed to you know sell more Tesla cars is this is You know is this ethical, you know where we landed on this Tom? Yeah I mean the obvious analysis you're going to hear everywhere is Elon Musk never does anything passively so even though this investment is classified as passive Which means he doesn't get voting rights and and things like that. Don't expect it to stay there I've seen like a half dozen analysts including Dan Ives of Wedbush telling a CNBC this purchase could be the first step towards a buyout and I think that's certainly possible It doesn't guarantee that that would happen, but it certainly would be the first step if that's what he wanted to do I think if when you look at these tweets, I've noticed that everybody talks about the March 25th one And the March 26th one talking about whether Twitter is free enough and whether there needs to be a new platform That would seem to contradict buying a stake in Twitter Does this mean Elon one, you know just wants to steal Twitter secrets and start his own I think you have to look at that March 24th post to make these make sense And you should have the context that Jack Dorsey has been pushing for a decentralized social networking platform led by Twitter Of course, he's no longer at Twitter, but he pushed for that for a long time It's it's part of the project that wants to figure out how to create a decentralized way of doing Twitter my guess is given these three tweets Elon Musk is investigating the idea of creating a Free like absolutist free platform that would integrate with Twitter And he took a stake in Twitter to sort of get closer to making that happen to say like I want to encourage Twitter To continue to make that open-source version of itself and then I would like to launch My own version that would in interoperate with Twitter because that was Dorsey's idea was you could you could have lots of different Experiences of Twitter if it was open source based on what your preferences are Yeah And I think that that's all true what I what I think you know as as a Just general citizen who uses Twitter quite frequently a daily basis and Elon Musk It's a lot of you know a lot of attention, you know everything that he tweets is Not only retweeted extensively and quote tweeted and spread far and wide But also sort of picked apart like what does it all mean and there's a lot of yeah There's a lot of trolling stuff that goes on from that. This is my opinion but from his side just to kind of see what gets traction it is Concerning to me that somebody who has certainly Extremely obvious venture benefits from having a platform like this to have so much control over a platform like this but Twitter has been in flux for long enough, especially under Dorsey to kind you know kind of have people be like, okay What's what's what's going on here? What's what's next here? I I don't I don't want to panic yet But but yeah, this is big news today. I don't think he's going to buy Twitter. I really don't I don't think it's impossible Yeah, I think he absolutely could I think he absolutely considers that to be an option You know if I had to put a number I'd say there's like a 19% chance that he buys Twitter I'm not ruling out entirely but I don't think it's really where he wants to go with this or where he'll end up My guess is like a lot of these things people sometimes approach them as like Oh, so he has a plan and he's executing it sometimes. No, sometimes it's let me take step one and see what I learn now that I'm a shareholder and then I'll decide step two like he may not have a fully formed plan But probably has a set of options one of which might be like trying to contract to do a controlling stake But I think it is more likely that what we talked about is where he goes where we we see him Push for some sort of open-source alternative to Twitter that interoperates with it as as again Dorsey has has lined out as well. I don't think that's really a bad idea I think there are a lot of people who know pretty you know Pretty down with that whole option How it is executed if it comes to fruition is another story, but but yeah, I I think that That That could have a lot of traction on its own, but you know, he also Elon Musk is who I'm talking about. He says a lot of things that he's just trying to get a rise out of people. So, you know You know little salt let us know where you think it's gonna go feedback at daily tech news show dot-com Alphabet's wing unit Or business I guess depending on how you look at announced it will launch its first on-demand drone delivery service in the US In the Dallas-Fort Worth area starting with Frisco and Little Elm those are both north Dallas suburbs April 7th April 7th is when you'll start to be able to get delivery from wing in north Dallas Now they've done cities before they they've done and still do Canberra, Australia But the company claims this will be the largest metropolitan area to be served by drone delivery Walgreens pharmacy will be a primary launch customer. So, you know all the health and wellness stuff They do the drones will be staged to launch from store parking lots and Walgreens employees will load and launch the drones While the delivery will be supervised remotely by wing employees. So wing won't be out there loading them up They'll train everybody to do these little those little hangers Go in and load up the drones and send them on their way In addition to Walgreens wing is also going to deliver products from bluebell creameries easy vet pet medications and first-aid kits from Texas health Cargo is limited to 3.3 pounds and the round trip range is just about six miles Christopher Mims of Wall Street Journal put together a piece looking at all the different drone delivery efforts going on in the US Wing is not the only one Walmart and zipline launch their first delivery service in P. Ridge, Arkansas back in November They also deliver health and wellness products by parachute to a roughly 50 mile radius the Israeli firm fly treks Is already operating in Dallas. So they beat wing to the punch there Expanding its drone based food delivery service from North Carolina last week And they're promising five-minute food delivery time in their delivery area Both these firms have completed commercial deliveries in other countries for years zipline completed more than 275,000 commercial deliveries in Irwanda and Ghana We've talked about them for years on the show fly treks completed its first drone deliveries in Reykjavik in Iceland back in 2017 In China mate one operates a pilot program in seven neighborhoods in Shenzhen Saying they deliver about 19,000 meals to 8,000 customers at Streetside kiosks They've been doing that since 2019. So lots of lots of drone delivery out there Yeah, there really is the fact that I've I've never once been able to Figure out how to get something that I actually want to my particular house Probably has a lot to do with the fact that I live in a rural area. It's not serviced yet This is all rolling out slowly and yes We talk about the the promise of drone delivery and not only the promise but the the actual fact that drone delivery Is possible and happens in various markets if it's not in your market I think it's easy to kind of go like yeah, I mean is that really happening? It is at a hundred percent is I would I Would I would welcome this with open arms? I've got a neighbor Who lives just up the street from me who's disabled? and she occasionally Leans on me to go get her stuff at the pharmacy and I'm happy to do so and if I'm around I would never say no, but if I'm not I think this is such a great option for you know Not just people who who who can't get out of their house But just there's so many instances where once you kind of get into certain markets of like, okay It's not just about getting you know a sandwich it's about getting something that you actually need and and you don't have to go out and get it and as the As the drones are able to operate for longer and longer distances, which I assume will happen going forward Then then this gets really exciting and we're we're we're getting there I mean zipline goes over mountains in Irwanda. So yeah areas can certainly be served I feel like they're trying to solve the metropolitan area first because it's more difficult With the with the crowd and it's more lucrative because you got more people but hopefully You know once that gets solved then they'll start being able to do economies of scale and deliver out to you As well, sir, and I think that will be a huge benefit for sure Well, if you've ever been watching a show on let's say cable TV and you thought you know I like the show I'd like to binge more episodes. You know, where are they? Maybe I hit the streaming service where I could binge them all at once But you didn't know which app to use on your TV and then you said I'm frustrated and you said it there's got to be a better way and maybe You're you're on the trim and show and there's some sort of a social experiment going on and yes We've all been there. Okay, Visio sure hopes That's the case because they have a solution late last week the TV maker announced a beta for a new feature called Jump ads now This is not something as a consumer that you would need to know about but it's something that as a business owner You would you would be very very interested in these will appear while watching linear TV For most people that means cable television, you know, you're watching a show. That's when it's on it's live When it's not live, you can't watch it anymore Participating network can push a jump ad overlay that can link out to something like its own app Showing a watch now button in hopes of offering a more seamless experience for example Many of us are familiar with the fact that a lot of cable networks now have their own streaming services And would very much like people to subscribe to those streaming services or at least know about them Fox is the first to test this particular one at the end of the premiere episode of its new comedy Welcome to flash an overlay comes up that says you can watch the first seven episodes of the season on the Fox now app Exactly what I was talking about. This looks like a standard network banner But you can select it with the Visio remote and launch the app. So it's not just a banner It's something clickable because he also began working with other content providers and brands on a variety of integrations So one would think Fox would only be one of the networks that Visio is working with Visio also uses software called to escape ACR, which recognizes when a program is on air I can then serve the particular banner in real time that is relevant to your interests. So it hopes So everybody's reaction and including Callum booth at the next web And and love Callum booth bio cow even in our chat room has this kind of reaction is I don't want ads to be served by my TV over the television. I'm already viewing there already enough ads This is horrible that I'm paraphrasing These are not the exact words of bio cow or Callum booth, but but that seems to be the reaction I look at this and I think you know, they already put up banners at the end of a show saying Get more of these episodes streaming in our TV everywhere app Fox now Why not make them clickable? What what is the problem with that? I? Don't know. I actually I don't watch a lot of live television. I Don't have a cable subscription. I use YouTube TV, which is very cable like But if I were to I know exactly What the scenario is here where I I kind of go like maybe I'll watch the show I don't maybe I don't know who's in it or oh, I like it. Oh, okay Me you know is there an option for me to you know just kind of binge the rest of it Not necessarily right that second, but we're all getting used to the idea of binging something that we like a lot I like the idea of that. I don't I don't really have a huge issue with us But I also don't watch a lot of tech TV because I don't like to be targeted I don't like commercials. I don't like any of that stuff So, you know, I kind of figure out other solutions that I that I pay for But this would also be something that you would pay for like the Fox integration is not just like Ah, it's free because busy when Fox made this deal. It's like no I mean you're still this is something the Fox now app just to be clear The Fox now app works with your cable subscription So if you're in our scenario watching cable you already have access to it So this is just making it easy to get over there exactly exactly but you know Okay, that's one example of something that that that wouldn't hit your pocketbook But a lot of other streaming services are not the same way it just depends on where the show lives I don't know I this does not bother me that much and all the networks have their own TV everywhere apps That you don't have to pay any extra for if you're a cable subscriber I think people are most upset it about like this is an ad And and upset about it being abused in the future not not necessarily even this implementation But now they're just going to be start putting banner ads that are unrelated to what I'm watching and Maybe Vizio does that and if they do that then I'll be upset with them too But I kind of prefer to wait until they do something wrong to punish them for it And so far this this test doesn't seem bad. In fact, even having a clickable area in an ad I don't think would be horrible if it's in fact motivated part of the ad and useful There's a good way to do it in a bad way to do it and so far I don't see any evidence that they're doing it the bad way I just don't really think of this as an ad if it's an ad for the show that you're watching and you've watched it for long enough, you know that that the you know algorithm understands like Probably like this and you might want to see more It doesn't feel as invasive to me as it would for you know, like a toothpaste ad or something that you know Was some overlay over a show that I had recently discovered and I would like I think that's what everybody's imagining is I'm gonna be watching Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon and they're gonna throw a toothpaste banner over it And it's gonna take away part of the scene. That's not what they're doing I'm not saying they couldn't do that with this but so far It's not what they're doing and what they're doing seems no different than what you already have Which is a little banner that says like hey watch the Grammys on Sunday And now you could make that click here to set your DVR like I don't know doesn't seem bad yet I'm not saying it will never go bad, but doesn't seem bad yet Folks if you want to tell me why I'm wrong and it is horrible and bad or preferably that I'm right and Everyone else is overreacting either one of those conversations can happen in our discord Which you can join by linking to a patreon account at patreon.com slash DTMS Cloning member Dolly the sheep back in 1997 South Korea produced the first cloned dog in 2005 and the BBC has a story about how cloning of pets cats dogs horses and otherwise is Becoming more common They give us an example in this BBC story New York police officer John Mendoza using a Texas company called Viagin Took a tissue sample before his dog princess passed away from cancer and then two clones were born to a surrogate mother Mendoza named them Princess Ariel and Princess Jasmine, which I find adorable Viagin opened in 1998 It's been around for a while But it originally focused on high-value livestock cloning before opening cloning of pets in 2015 It charges $85,000 to clone a horse $50,000 to clone a dog and $30,000 for a cat Barbara Streisand has taken advantage of Viagin services to clone her dog Samantha and Viagin says 90% of its clients opt to have their pet cells preserved for $1,600 to possibly clone at a later date So they're making a lot of money just on people reserving the option not necessarily doing it cloning process is the same as it has Been since Dolly the sheep was first cloned Genetic material is removed from a donor egg The cell nucleus of the animal you want to clone is then injected in that egg and the egg is grown into an embryo in The lab then implanted in a surrogate mother the tissue from the animal You want cloned can be frozen and stored almost indefinitely So that's why so many people are willing to put the $1,600 down on the off chance that they have the tens of thousands later Viagin claims the animals are identical twins. Some studies, however, indicate the cloned animals Might have more health issues. The most significant of these being premature aging adult cells have these shorter tips called Telomeres they get shorter every time your cell divides and clones starting from adult cells may have shorter telomeres and therefore age faster Cloned animals have been observed to have shorter life spans than expected another criticism is that not most cloned embryos Don't come to term which is stressful on surrogate mothers So for every two princesses you get you you might have had to have 20 surrogate mothers Get pregnant and a bunch of them not actually bring the baby or the pet baby to term Then there's the more general concern that so many pets already go unwanted in shelters And that's the same objection to breeding in that case Which is why create new animals when there's so many waiting for a home as it is Obviously Sarah and I big pet owners. We both have dogs and Sarah has cats What do you think of this Sarah? Well, I've got some problems with it The idea of cloning a pet that you love very much And you've got the money because this is cost prohibitive to almost everybody But if you've got the money I can see why You would go this route and you know, I don't want to bag on this because I know You know how loving your pet is and you know if I could clone Otis I would But I feel like in order to do that if we got to that point Not only do I have to come up with $50,000 for a dog Quite a bit more if it was a horse a little bit less if it was a cat, but that's a lot of money I mean who who's got that kind of money and also it's not Necessarily guaranteed that the lifespan is going to be the same. It's also, you know a genetic replica Does not mean that it's going to be the same Animal that you loved and you miss And this could also happen before the animal died, but that's you know, that's a whole you know talk to any twin It's like it means not the same price not a carbon copy It can be look like a carbon copy, but it's not a carbon copy and I'm not even talking about like science fiction movies here It's just that's just the reality but what I'm what upsets me most about this is when humans because of our scientific advancements have been able to have more options as far as procreating, you know, you know the IVF and Surrogates and there's a whole, you know the industry involved in that and I Don't pretend to know firsthand how that all works, but I have a pretty loose understanding because I know a lot of humans who have been through this Everybody is kind of you know, you know, there's money being transferred people are on board It's not the same with surrogate animals and I don't like the sound of that at all When you say it's not the same you're saying the animals may not be being treated as well as the humans Well, and they also can't get you know, it's not like the surrogate dog is getting, you know A fat wad of cash for like being part of this process It's like no, that's something that's being controlled by humans somewhere I don't I don't even know really where where that is But yeah, that's that that is very stressful physically on any mother So, you know, you know that alone is like, yeah, I don't know guys I you know sure proved me wrong, but it doesn't seem ethical to me Yeah, let's pretend just just for the sake of argument that that all the shelters emptied all the dogs got adopted Let's pretend that they they came up with a surrogate program where where there was a better Efficacy rate and the surrogate mothers only had to give birth though. It's a one Puppy and then they moved on and they were well taken care of There were no downside Would I like if we got rid of all the ethical problems with it Would I still do it and the fact of the matter is man as much as I'd love to have Django the dog back It wouldn't be Django the dog. It would look a lot like her, right? Yeah, and and it would probably have some of the same mannerisms But it depends on who you asked the they estimate like 25% of the personality of a pet comes from whatever they experience growing up and Certainly they'll experience some of the same things being around you, but you aren't the same person you were 10 years ago So you're not gonna do all the same things. It's going to be a different dog Now, I think there's still an argument for like, yeah But even if I could get Django the dog's sister, that'd be kind of cool And that's where it goes back to like, okay But we need to figure out a lot of the other ethical sides of this and bring the cost way down Like you were saying before I'd want to consider it But but to me that's that's the first blocker is like I don't know that I want this and when there's a perfectly great dog Waiting in a shelter for me. I think I'd rather go that way to start with. Yeah I'm I'm with you a hundred percent on that one and I really don't I I do not want to bag on the idea of like if I could clone my You know my lovable most wonderful pop-up, you know for for all eternity I I would but I don't feel like our options right now Are are sufficient enough for for me to make it happen even if I had the money, which I do not but even if I did I don't I don't I don't I don't think we're there yet Agreed well the UK's Chancellor of the ex-checker Ritchie Sunak announced that the Royal Mint will issue an official NFT sometime this summer You might say what what what would that be? Economic Secretary John Glenn said that the token would be a symbol of a forward-looking approach That supports crypto technology and as planning legislation that would introduce stable coins into the UK's payment infrastructure Would also consider legal statuses for decentralized autonomous Organizations also known as DAOs and also hopes to remove Disincentives to investment funds that also include crypto the financial conduct Authority is planning the first in a series of policy Crypto sprints this May just kind of trying it out and the government is forming a crypto asset engagement group that includes Representatives from the FCA Bank of England and also a variety of businesses Yeah roll your eyes all you want you may be justified in that But this is how you learn and so if you want the government to learn how this stuff works You might want them to try one right and I didn't say anything about central bank digital currencies in here But my guess is this is preparing the groundwork and and doing some learning for that I think that's not necessarily as bad as you might think yeah when I am when I Read the story initially from in gadget this morning. It was sort of like hold on your butts everybody here we go and I think that Folks who are not involved with cryptocurrency and specifically NFTs Have gotten very used to saying oh, you know what what who's this good for well It's good for a lot of people it depends on what you want to transfer and you know Your your value on ownership and and how you see that going in the future and I actually think this is pretty forward-facing Yeah, and it's it's not like a big money generating plan it if you read read it closely it's a test and Before before you criticize a government for testing something that way Consider whether you also criticize them for not knowing things for being dumb for for not understanding technology I feel like there's probably a lot of problems with this because I haven't looked at it that closely to be honest But I'm not going to condemning condemn them just for the idea of trying sure Well, we will also not condemn at new bosses In fact, we will celebrate them with great fanfare. We got new brand new bosses over the weekend Nathaniel Nigel Tim Min and Chandra all just started backing us on patreon. This really made our Monday. Thanks everybody. Thanks Nathaniel Thanks, Nigel Nigel rather. Thanks Tim and thanks Nim and Chandra. Yeah, keep keep us going into April Keep us going strong. We're up one patron over last month. We want to keep that going We are yeah, March was kind of you know, it's a little bit of a down month So we're on the up and up and we'd love to keep that trajectory going Reminder folks There's a longer version of the show called good day internet available at patreon.com slash DTNS We roll right into that after this show But just a reminder that DTNS is live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern 200 UTC find out more at daily tech news show comm slash live and we are back doing it all again tomorrow With Lamar Wilson back to then This show is part of the frog pants network get more at frog pants calm