 Coming up on DTNS, it's our 2023 listener episode. We have a current attack events quiz, a geeky debate, and we'll decide what gadgets should go onto the Mount Rushmore of tech. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, December 26th, 2023 in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Mary. And from studio, I don't even know where I am. I'm Sarah Lane. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. That's right, folks. Everybody on this show should realize it's December 26th, the day after Christmas 2023. That's the day it is when you say anything on this show. Welcome to our end of the year listener show. This is the annual episode where we invite several of our supporters to appear alongside us right here on the show. And there was a listener suggested, why don't you do some of those Friday quizzes, the GDI fun stuff in the show. So we decided to take a cue from our Friday GDI. And we've made this episode, the Quiz and Debate Show, to play along with us. Thank you to everybody who submitted your name. There were obviously way more people than we could have on the show. But Roger used a very sincere and complex method to narrow it down to these three people. Welcome to the show, Seng. George Seng from London. It's good to have you on the show, man. Indeed. And thank you for the support, which I will be saying to everybody, including Tom D, aka Captain Jack913. Welcome, Tom. It's good to have you. All right, good to be here. Thank you for having me. Thank you for your support. And longtime supporter of not only this show, but lots of other shows that we've done. Gary Fisher, welcome back. Thanks for having me, Tom. I think I told you about seven or eight years ago. I was gonna figure out a way to get on your show and I finally did it. And you did it. That's fantastic. Gary, thank you for your support over all these years. As well, Sarah, we have our contestants. We do. All right, for this challenge, we have 10 tech questions that are based on actual tech stories that we have covered on DTNS over the past year. Now, all of you may remember these stories, but maybe not all the details associated with these stories. So the way it's gonna work is, if you think you know the answer, raise your hand, we call on you, you give us an answer. If you're right, yay, get a point. If you're wrong, somebody else gets to try. Are we ready? I'm ready. That's all right. All right, Tom D, George and Gary playing some fun trivia. Question number one. How much did Twitter sell for? Gary. Is it 40 billion? You're close, but not quite. 44? That's correct. Don't know that you're supposed to get two tries in a row, but nobody else volunteered. So we're just gonna make this up as we go along. All right, Gary gets a point. Woo! Is anybody keeping score? If not, I'll do it right here. All right. And question number two. Which of Google's large language models was barred originally based on? Tom. It wasn't Gemini, was it? It was not originally Gemini. No, Gary or George. No idea. All right, the correct answer is Lambda family of large language models, were later upgraded to Palm and then Gemini. All right, so we got Gary for question one, question two, nobody got, but hey, you can all come back for question three. What is the process size in nanometers of Huawei's Kirin chip found inside the Mate 60 smartphone that supposedly worked around U.S. technology export controls to China? Gary. Four microns? No, it's a process, one might say. Yeah, this is the, what is the process size in nanometers? So microns would not be the correct answer. Four nanometers. It's not four, Gary. Okay. George or Tom D. Either of you want to take a, let's go Tom. I said guess 25. I know three nanometers. Well, you're both wrong, unfortunately, but Tom gets to do the wrong button, but I might not have remembered this either to be honest. All right, everybody had a guess and the answer is seven nanometers. Lucky number seven. All right, moving on to question four. What is the name of Jeff Keeley's summer event which now has de facto replaced E3 in 2023? Anybody watch the show today? You would have heard it. Oh, I mean, the show. You mean the show last week? On December 12th. On just the way back. Two weeks ago. Two weeks ago. I don't remember that far back, no. When I used to do a show from a garage. Yeah. Yeah. Why'd you go back to that look? Just classic end of the year. Thought it would be kind of fun and retro for just the show today. Let's see a creative background. All right, Jeff Keeley's summer event. No more E3, but we still have Gary. E2? I like that. I like it. I like where you're going with that, but unfortunately not called E2. Tom D. Nintendo Direct. No, no. Not Nintendo Direct either. We're getting farther away, I think. George, wanna guess? Yep. Game fest. Now that sounds similar. Are you infestable? Sounds similar, but unfortunately no one got this right. It is the summer game fest. I think we give him points for getting two thirds. All right, all right. You get two thirds. Two thirds of a point. Yeah. Gary is in the lead with one, with George in a close second place with two thirds. Tom D. Still at zero. Tom D, you can take it back now. In question five. What date did Netflix's DVD service officially send out its last discs? This is pretty specific. All right, Gary, I think you wanted my hair there. I'm gonna guess October 1st. Now you are close. You are very close, but not quite right. Tom, your hand was up as well. September 30th? Even closer, my gosh. Even closer, George. September the 31st? Oh wow, unfortunately you went the wrong way. Also, September only has 30 days. September 29th. That's the one, that's the one. All right, now Gary, we let you guess twice, but hey, this is a fun game. Hey, I had my hand up, I had my hand up. We're all having fun. Yeah, no, you're right, you're right. Okay, so that's question five. Gary gets the point. Question six. Attackers exploited a vulnerability in what application to install malicious key logging software on a last pass employee's computer that would lead to a massive data breach at last pass? What is the app that had a vulnerability exploited within? George almost has it. I can see it. I can see it in his brain. People who like media are addicted to this company. Myself included. Weird flex, Sarah. Weird flex, but it's okay. Tom D beat me. All right, Tom D. First I was Winamp, but probably not. Not Winamp, Gary. YouTube. Not YouTube. It more acts as a storage. Application for media, beloved by many. Gary. Dropbox? Not Dropbox, although that's a good guess. George, you didn't even raise your hand. Just take a crack, George, you can do it. You got this. Take a swing. No, nothing. Google Drive. Ah, Google Drive. How dare you tease them like that, Tom? I hit the wrong button. That really wasn't meant to be as mocking as it came off. Okay, the correct answer is the Plex Media Server, Plex. Wow. I know, I know. I might not have gotten that either and then I would have kicked myself because I love Plex. Watch out what apps you use, folks. Even your Plex Media Server. It's true. Oh, kidokey. This one, she's been in the news a lot lately. What was current CEO of X Linda Yaccarino's previous job? Where did she work? Like, not McDonald's in high school, but like right before X. Yeah, like where was she poached from this year? I don't know if she worked at McDonald's. She worked in, I'm trying to... I would have thought she was proud of that job, but... Oh, that's not a helpful hint, Tom. I know what you're doing. Apparently not. How about this, how about this? We know that she was hired by X to help boost advertising revenue because she's got a lot of history with that. What company did her history with advertising give her good reputation? Tom D. Google? Not Google. Gary. Not Alphabet either. What if one would say Legacy Company? These are advertising companies, you're right, but not the kind of advertising company that Linda was in. All right, George. Yahoo. Not Yahoo, not Yahoo. Anybody else wanna take a crack? All right, three cracks and you're out. It was NBC University, it was NBC Universal. She was head of advertising at NBC Universal. Oh, the proud bird, okay. Yeah, see, yeah, that's, I mean, it's a great hint, but just, you know, who's gonna get that? All right, question number eight. What is self-driving taxi service Cruze's parent company? Who owns Cruze, the autonomous vehicle operation? Tom D. Waymo? It's not Waymo. Waymo's a competitor to Cruze, not the owner. Gary. Sorry, Alphabet. Not Alphabet either. Alphabet owns Waymo though. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. People get Waymo and Cruze, those are often, they get them mixed up. George. Uber? Not Uber, not Uber, although Uber has its own autonomous operation as well. Gary. Meta? Not Meta. Think of this as more of an old school-type auto company for a minute or two. Generally speaking. Gary. General Motors. Okay, Gary gets it. That's what I was gonna say before you said that, Tom. There you go, there you go. I mean, Tom, he didn't even really give you a hint. All right, question number nine. OpenAI has chat GPT, Google has Gemini, but what is Meta's family of LLMs called? Gary. Bard? Not Bard. That's Google. Bard is Google's, yeah. Google's, yeah, okay. But so you're, you know, you're going down the right path. Gary. Is it not just cool? Oh, George. Go ahead, George. No, it's Meta GPT. It's not Meta GPT. It, the name almost makes you feel like you're at the zoo, Gary. Oh, at the zoo. A Petty in Zoo. Tom mentioned WinApp earlier today just made me. Oh, nostalgic. I'm talking about Llama, right? Yep, that's it. I was trying to make it Lambda. No, Llama. I actually read it as Lambda quite often, even though it's, yes, it's big L, big two L's, little A, big M, big A. That is. It's the large language model Meta AI. So Meta's in the name, just not the acronym. Exactly. All right, final question in our lightning round. What did Meta do in response to the passing of Canada's Bill C18, aka the Online News Act? What did Meta do in response? Tom D. Did they withdraw from the market? They did, they did. Well, they didn't withdraw the entire service. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's not going to be much more specific. Yeah, they still offer Facebook in Canada. So what did they withdraw from the market? C18 is also known as the Online News Act. Gary. They withdrew their news coverage. That's correct. That's correct. I'll give it to you. Yeah, they blocked news. So Facebook actually doesn't have news coverage, but they blocked news for Instagram and Facebook users to comply. All right, so looks like, what do we got here? What's the total here? We got Gary, one, two, three, four. How do we go three with five? We got George with two, and we've got Tom with one. So I think we've got a clear winner, and that is you, Gary. Congratulations. I hope you feel as good as we felt trying to stump y'all on these questions, which were really quite hard, Roger. Thank you, Roger. Maybe some softballs next holiday season. All right, for our second challenge, there's no wrong answers, unless you're on the other side of the debate from another person. It's the great debate. We've done this on GDI a bunch, it's taco sandwich kind of stuff, and our debate question is simply this, and then we'll just open it up to people arguing one way or another, but we wanna find out what side you're on first. Is Star Wars American or British? That is the debate question that Roger has put forth in front of us today. Let's start with you, George. Where do you fall on the great debate? Is Star Wars American or British? Good question, good question. Which side will you argue? You're gonna have to argue a side. Ultimately, ultimately it's American. Ultimately it's American. That's the wrong side. Yeah. Tom, is Star Wars American or British? What side of this debate will you like to start on? They agree with George that it is ultimately American. Ultimately American. All right, Gary, will you make it unanimous amongst the listeners? Is Star Wars American or British? It's as American as you can get. American is apple pie. Yeah, I mean, the bad guys have British accents, so... All right, before we get to Sarah's side of this argument, we did have these sorts of points that Roger would like to put in front of you. The original and the sequels were shot in Britain with mostly British cast and British extras. British accents, as Gary just pointed out, pervade the empire, not always evil. Sometimes, you know, Mon Mothma. Prop designers who came up with the designs for aliens, droids, weapons, et cetera, were all British. Sarah, where do you fall on a Star Wars American or British? I mean, I've never considered it to be British. Definitely the accents, but you've got your... Well, I'm also thinking old school Star Wars. Maybe I should... If we're thinking of just the entire galaxy, the whole galaxy of programming, maybe there's a little bit more British in there, but ultimately, you know, it's Luke, Leia, and Han. They're American. They're not. They're from Tatooine, Alderaan, and Keralia. Yeah, yeah. But they're the actors that I loved very much as a child. Are American, so I can't decouple that from my answer. Star Wars is American. All right, I don't know how you all can say that Star Wars is American when it was entirely shot in Britain with British people in the cast. Yeah, you named the Americans on here, but they're not from America. But they're the best ones. Yeah, George Lucas was American, right? It was ultimately his idea. Beatles recorded songs written by Americans almost exclusively in the earlier days. So that makes the Beatles American then. Oh, Tom. It's the Great Debate! What do you mean, oh, Tom? Yes, as... I am gonna jump in here as the producer is allowed, producer's privilege here. I will actually argue that Star Wars is very much British because you would not have the Star Wars that you know, the look, the feel without the British influence. The director for Empire Strikes Back, British, the directors for the Circles, British. A lot of the way the worlds feel, the way the costumes and all that, all British, a very British sensibility into the construction of R2D2 in C3PO in Chewbacca. If you actually saw what the original drawings were like, that Lucas had for Star Wars, they're very much different and I don't think you, I don't think I could bridge that gap. There's a really good series from the BBC on Star Wars made in Britain that it goes through point by point on why Star Wars, in many cases, is more British than it is American. Has Roger swayed any of you? No. Not fair. George, national pride! National pride! George, Tom, Sarah, as Roger swayed you. I have to say. He's pretty convincing to be honest. Some good points. Go ahead, George. I will say this, watch and if you have Disney streaming, if you watch Andor, there's a feel to it that is very Star Wars and very familiar and it's because it was done all in Britain with British extras, British writers, British director, British everything. It is as British as Jaguar or Jaguar or the big band. All the things you could say. Jaguar, what's the other Britain thing that Britons like to point out? Land Rover. Land Rover, that's it. I had a Cortino once, English Ford. Yeah, it's a Ford, but in Britain. Well, I don't know. I don't know, you're pretty passionate about this, Roger. Okay, Star Wars is British. I see why Roger picked this because he wanted to make this argument. You're right, that's fine. Doctor Who is British. Yes. Black Mirror is British, even though some of it's set in America, but not Star Wars. Star Wars, that belongs to us. Sorry, George. Not even like a compromise, not like a War of 1812, a Gents Treaty of Gents, nothing. We get to split things 50-50, no? I'll give you 10%. 10%? Wow, you're a hard bargainer. George, you have found your inner Britain. Embrace it, it may the force be with you. Tom, Sarah, we have Roger and George on the, yes it is British, Gary on the no it's American side. Where do you end up at the end of our debate? Tom, what do you think? Have you been swayed? No, because of all the times I've seen Star Wars, I've never thought of it as British. It's always been American. Yes, there are British actors. Yes, Obi-Wan, both versions is British, but that's incidental. It was made by George Lucas, it was all his idea. I'm guessing they just did it in the UK just because of budget. It was probably cheaper over there at the time. I have no idea. Yes, that is true, but imagine Tom Selleck as Obi-Wan, and that's not Obi-Wan, that's just Tom Selleck without a mustache. Sarah, I imagine Tom Selleck as Obi-Wan. Yeah, I just, I gotta stick with it. I think probably there's just too much of being a kid in the good old US of A when Star Wars came onto the scene. Well, actually I wasn't alive yet, but you get my point. And yeah, I always did wonder, like why are there so many accents in a galaxy? And it's a long time ago, like wasn't there like not even in America? But we don't know, we weren't there. So yeah, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna stick with my original gut and say it's American. As Gary said, as much as Apple Pie is. And Tom, you're sticking with it. Star Wars is America then. Yeah, I'm sticking with that. All right, it's three to two. Star Wars is American. That is the end of the great debate. Folks, if you have feedback about this, if you're on a different side than these folks, or you wanna mention anything that gets brought up on the show, get in touch with the DTNS audience at DTNSShow on X, at DTNSShow.mstdn.social on Mastodon, at Daily Tech News Show on TikTok, and DTNSPIX with it X, DTNSPIX on Instagram and Thrivez. All right, final challenge to you all. This is a fun one. We just get to use our imaginations here. Okay, so here goes. The goal of this challenge, which is called Mount Rushmore, a real place in America. Goal of the Mount Rushmore game is simple. If you could create your own version of Mount Rushmore based on tech hardware, gadgets, which four things would you choose to be in your Mount Rushmore of tech hardware? No, Gary, we've got some notes from you. This is inspired by Marshall McLuhan variety hour podcast. They do this all the time, and I like this idea, so we wanna acknowledge that. Yeah, so we've got some notes from you in here, Gary. You've obviously put some thought into it. Would you like to go first? Sure, go for all four here? Well, yeah, you're four gadgets. All right, well, I started off with the PDP-11. I'm approaching the middle of late youth in my life here, and so I've been around for a while, and the first computer I ever wrote an application for was in Fortran 4 in 1974 on a PDP-11-based mainframe called a DEC-10, and it was like the first really popular what they called mini-computer at the time. It wasn't that mini compared to what we have now, but it was, and I also, I ran a microcircuit test machine that was powered by a PDP-11. Now, I even thought about it the other day, I was watching Three Days of the Condor, and from 1975, and one of the first scenes, there's a PDP-11 right front and center, so it's the first mini-computer that had wide use preceded the VAX, and so yeah, I put that up there as my first thing. The next one's also a DEC product. It's the VT-100 Dumb Terminal. When I started programming, I sat down in front of a key punch machine, and I'd punch these cards out, and I'd put them in a DEC, I'd put them on a shelf, and an operator would come out, run them through the computer, and then I would get a printout, or maybe another DEC of cards, and one day, one of the operators came out and sort of grabbed me by the shoulders and took me into a dimly lit room where they had a little TV set with a typewriter keyboard in front of it, and that was a VT-100 terminal, which saved a lot of paper, also saved a lot of frustration, because if you made a mistake, you could just backspace over it. So, and then the third thing would be the Apple Macintosh, the first one. It brought a, what's the word I'm looking for here? Well, yeah, graphical user interface, an intuitive graphical user interface to the masses, and in my case, at that time, by that time I was working, I was still working at a user aircraft company, and I was working as a test engineer, writing test instructions for the techs, and up until then, we had had to write them out in pencil on a piece of paper, and then if we had any circuit diagrams or anything like that, we had to actually draw them, and then we'd send the text out to a typing pool to get it typed up, and if we get many a graphed, and then we would interleave any graphics we had with them, and with the Mac, I put a lot of typing pools out of business. We just did the whole thing by ourselves, and it took a lot less time. So I would definitely put the Macintosh up there, and my last product, I kind of went back and forth on this one, but it's another Apple product, the iPod, and that allowed you, the first one, if you only had a thousand songs in your library, you could take your whole music library with you, and it eventually evolved into what we now carry around in our pockets, iPhones, and it started up something, I don't know, they're getting really, really popular, they're called podcasts. Never catch on. No, no, never catch on. And so I think, yeah, those are my four things, for Mount Rushmore, the tech Mount Rushmore. I love it, I like your Mount Rushmore, Gary. Well, George and Tom, you've had a little time to think, as Gary was explaining his Mount Rushmore. George, why don't you go second? Okay, sure. So, when I was thinking about Mount Rushmore, obviously you want four iconic items upon the Mount Rushmore, right? So I was just thinking about the most iconic looking sort of items. I've got the iPhone, obviously made famous by Jobs' announcement, combining all elements, you've got the iPod, you've got the phone, you've got the internet. So when obviously an iPod itself as an icon, I'm pretty sure everyone recognized it. Secondly, I've got a computer console, I've picked the NES, which is the, yeah, it's called the NES, isn't it? Yeah. And I've put that because for me, I felt that was when I recognized gaming and actually my whole family recognized gaming was becoming popular. And obviously Mario, the Mario games, everybody knew what Mario was. And yeah, so that puts gaming on the map, let's say. The other icon I was thinking about was the Sony Walkman. You can't not recognize the blue one, made famous, most recently with the Guardians of the Galaxy, but also you've got the iconic yellow sports one, I think Ciri said you've still got yours. I'll never give it up. Still works, fine. Why would I? Yeah, so just the word Walkman is iconic in itself. And then lastly, I was debating about whether to put a Prius or a Tesla. Even though it's sort of signaling the end of the combustion engine as we know it. I like your Mount Rushmore, George. Good stuff. All right, Tom D. You've got four iconic Mount Rushmore things to chip away into stone and what will you be revealing? Well, iPhone was mentioned specifically, but I wrote specifically down smartphones. So that would include androids as well as iPhones and it's got my iPhone here. Cause, you know, this changed everything the way we do everything. Like the way I communicate now is not how I did 20 years ago. No, I mean. Yeah, no, everyone has a smartphone in a way that people didn't have computers. So that's a great one. Yeah. So going off of smartphones, got the e-readers, the e-ink e-readers, which, you know, you sell a giant pile of books. Now that's your giant pile of books. Yeah. Much more accessible and affordable. So much easier to carry that around. And people, that's one of those single use devices that has survived in a way that a lot of others either have it or become nostalgia items, like iPods. So my third item, fiber optic cables. These connect the globe. We don't have these. We don't have the super fast, super reliable air net that we have now. Yeah, I think undersea cables, right? Not just the ones that come to your home. You may be like, well, I don't have fiber in my home, but all of the backbones of the internet are fiber. But it's still basically this. This is basically the same thing. It's just a fiber optic cable. And then finally, well, don't have a visually for this, but GPS got changed how we got around. Instead of piles of paper apps, now we've got our phones telling us where to go and how to get to places. Let's pick up your phone again. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. There you go. Kind of book ends, you know, nice symmetry for your Mount Rushmore. Yep, that's my four. All right, these are good. These are good. Everybody's, everybody had something a little unique, something a little different. Thanks for using your imagination. And we'll all, I don't know, be building our Mount Rushmore's, I don't know, maybe in our own backyards or something. It'll be a fun holiday event. So yeah, get to whittling stone. Is that what? Yeah, it's harder, but that's the right way. Yeah. She whittled it. It's gonna take a while, guys, so we can get started today. Chisel and a hammer, yeah. Chisel. I'll pick a more explosive. Yeah, there we go. Yeah, there you go. I like the way you think. Good stuff. All right, well, thanks to all three of you for being here. It's always really fun to be able to not just, you know, see you, talk to the folks that see and listen to us day after day. So thanks to you, George, sang so much for being with us and hope the weather is good in your part of the world. Unfortunately not, not at the moment. It's just raining, so British weather for you. But yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, if you want to hit me up, I'm on the, all the socials at Geo Yakult. Yakult, like the yogurt drinks. That's how it's spelled, right? Yeah, just so people know how to spell it. In fact, many of you have seen George around, even though you might have only known him by his handle. Now, Tom, I'm gonna do my best here because you didn't help me beforehand. And I really should have asked. Tom Di Gian Vittorio Jr., how did I do? That's pretty close. I always say Di Gian Vittorio. Okay, that's a pretty cool last name, gotta say. And Tom, it's been super fun. I know you're a football fan because I'm able to take a little peek into your office. But let folks know where they can find you when you're not with us. I would just go with my Twitter handle, CaptainJack913. You know how they are posting anything on there. But really, if you want to find me every week, Twitch.tv slash WSKIS1 is Friday night at Jackbox Game Nights. That's, they're super fun. Love it. And finally, Gary Fisher. Thanks so much for being with us today. Let folks know how they can find you and what you're up to. Well, what I'm up to mostly these days is I have a sub-stack newsletter called Diary of a Senior Geek, which is a continuation of an old podcast that I had called Diary of a Senior Geek. And I'm actually republishing some of the episodes of my old podcast, remastering them, just the ones that are on evergreen subjects. So you might want to check that out. Just go to sub-stack and search for Diary of a Senior Geek. Excellent. Excellent. Well, thanks to all three of you. And thanks to everyone out there who supports the show. We could not have done it without you. You can always support our show at any level at dailytechnewshow.com slash Patreon. Speaking of patrons, we don't have live shows this holiday week, but we're normally live Monday through Friday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern. That's 2100 UTC. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live, but we will see you tomorrow with our best of good day internet 2023. Should be fun. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Fireman Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.