 This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you, including Michelle Surju, Miss Music Teacher, and James C. Smith. Coming up today on DTNS, the satellite wars continue, the Apple headset rumors continue, and Nika Monford is here to tell us about a mathematician you should know about. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, February 24th, 2023. From Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. From the Atlanta area, I'm Nika Monford. And from under soggy and snowlit skies, I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Sounds like Roger has some snow on the horizon. We heard before the show that Nintendo is confirming reports, it's not going to take part in this year's upcoming Electronics Entertainment Expo, also known as E3, saying that the show just didn't fit into its event plans. We'll talk a little bit more about that in GDI after the show, but first, let's start with some quick hits. Google announced its Magic Eraser image editing tool will start rolling out to Google Photos for iOS and Android as a Google One subscription feature. The feature previously was exclusive to Google Pixel 6 and 7 devices, so some people are going to be happy about this rollout. The company will also bring it to older Pixel devices as a free feature. Bloomberg sources say the US Justice Department began preparing an antitrust lawsuit to block Adobe's proposed $20 billion with a B acquisition of the collaboration software maker Figma. The case could be filed as early as next month. Both the European Commission and the UK's Competition and Markets Authority launched investigations into the deal as well. In some YouTube news today, YouTube's head of podcasting, Kai Chook, announced plans to add podcasts to YouTube music. The integration would support free ad-supported background listening with badges to signify audio first shows. Although the company says it's not planning to add exclusives or licensed content. In other YouTube news, a Reddit user passed along an option that they spotted for a 1080p premium quality playback on YouTube, described as an enhanced bit rate. Now, YouTube has not acknowledged any test of the feature or said that it exists at all, and it's not clear if the option would be limited to YouTube premium subscribers or a wider rollout. A little bit of meta news. Meta announced it's releasing a new large language model for the research community called LAMA, which means large language model metal AI. That's a mouthful. With four foundation models ranging from 7 billion to 65 billion parameters, Meta says it outperforms GPT-3 and Google Palm by training on a high volume of high quality text. A Meta spokesperson tells Bloomberg that LAMA is not in use by Meta's products, including Facebook and Instagram. Interesting stuff. All right. Satellite news now. Satellite connectivity for phones is quickly spreading. We talked about Apple integrating it on the latest iPhones and Samsung's next modem supporting it. But for older devices, Motorola released the defy satellite link. It's a small device connecting over Bluetooth and can connect to satellites with a clear view of the sky. Users can send messages using Motorola's bullet app and connect to emergency response centers with SOS Assist. It's a 600 mAh battery is rated for days of use. I don't know how many days, but certainly more than one. It will be available in Q2 for $99 with service costing $5 per month. Or if you want to bundle in a year of service, it'll be $150. But that is not all when it comes to satellite news. We have some more satellite news. This one coming from the South China Morning Post that reported researchers at China's Space Engineering University that's operating under the People's Liberation Army in the country recommended in a new published paper that the country should launch its own satellite constellation as a countermeasure to SpaceX's Starlink system. Nika, tell us more about it. China has been concerned that Starlink, which is currently made up of around 3,700 satellites, could be used to conduct worldwide surveillance. In the paper, the Chinese researchers argue that if China can seize low Earth orbital territory from Starlink, they can gain a head start and advantage in other orbital heights and even suppress the Starlink constellations. That's kind of interesting. China's rival satellite constellation could also be equipped to monitor Starlink satellites and even, quote unquote, soft damage or disable them. Yeah, I mean, if you're wondering, what does that mean? Are they just going to be shooting down satellites? Supposedly not disabling the Starlink satellites. And this could be any kind of satellite constellation that's hovering above China, but it happened to be Starlink in this case could involve using lasers or high powered microwaves to disrupt the equipment on board, basically saying, we see your satellites and we don't want them and we've got our own. Roger, China's not the only country that's concerned about this though, right? I mean, so there's two facets to this. There's a commercial application, which is what Starlink was originally launched for. Let's give people internet access to where they don't have high speed broadband because they live out in the world or some remote location. The other one is military. And both of these obviously would concern China because as we've seen in Ukraine, the use of Starlink has enabled a lot of the your Ukraine forces to organize in a manner that they would not have been able to, you know, after attacks on traditional infrastructure like cell phone towers, electrical lines, landline communication. And so there's a concern that if we don't control it, that means someone else does. So A, it could give an advantage to our enemies because they could allow people that we don't control or have control over to access it and then coordinate amongst themselves in some sort of position that's disadvantaged, that disadvantages us. The other one is like, you know, we would lose out any kind of commercial opportunity as people jump onto this instead of our network. And we see this already happen with GPS. So when GPS rolled out initially it was a military service. It was part of a system to navigate aircraft and ships more accurately before they used a stellar navigation system that relied on star constellations and computers roughly estimating where the ship or the vessel was. But over time the EU produced Galileo, Russia produced GLONASS and China produced BEDO, which are equivalent systems. And then you also have regional systems produced by India, Japan and parts of Latin America that allow a similar kind of satellite navigation system but just limited to a specific area because everyone felt, you know, if we all rely on the American GPS, maybe one day they might not be so kind and they turn everything off and we're just, you know, out in the boonies without any way to get home. Yeah. And, you know, for anybody who's keeping score in December, just a couple months ago, December 2022, SpaceX did announce expansion to military and government applications with something called Star Shield. So Starlink for governments basically, including special end-to-end encrypted communications for government clients, launching satellites that had sensing payloads capable of Earth observations, again, surveillance and customized payloads for government customers. So, you know, China saying we're a little concerned about this is, well, you know, it can be China versus the US in some sense, but there's certainly reasons for any country to take a pause when it comes to this. I mean, it's, oh, go ahead, Nika. No, I was just going to say it's really unfortunate how, you know, something that started out as, you know, something so good to bring, you know, access to people who wouldn't ordinarily have it for it to kind of devolve into this type of thing is really unfortunate. I mean, in many ways, this is just kind of the whole debate around infrastructure sovereignty, right? We need to be able to control not just our utility lines, our access to fuel, whether it's natural gas or petroleum, but we also need access to seaways that bring goods to our shores, and we also need to have control over our telecommunications and internet infrastructure, because we don't want someone else doing it, because if they do, that means we don't know if what they're putting out is truthful or harmful. I mean, there's a number of reasons, and unfortunately, as you said, Nika, it's unfortunate that this had didn't foster more cooperation, but rather more kind of rivalry around it. Well, I mean, you bring up a good point, Roger. It's like, I mean, if the US were to say, you know, hey, just so you know, everybody in China, we're going to go ahead and run a pipeline, you know, through the ground, you know, it's like that's not possible. It would never fly. But when you're talking about low earth orbit, you know, in the sky, this is new territory, you know, and that territory, if you, you know, look at the globe and you look at what's above the globe in a certain area of space. Well, now we're going to start getting into some space wars. Yeah, broader implications for sure. Indeed. Well, Nika, when you're on the show, you often tell us all about illustrious people that deserve our recognition in the tech space. So with that in mind, it's time for another edition of Teching While Black, where Nika Monford shines the light on a technology leader. You might have heard of, but you possibly might not have heard of yet, but you're going to be glad she told you all about. So Nika, who are we highlighting today? So many of us know from the movie Hidden Figures, we became aware of the ground-baking scientists, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Dorothy Vaughn, who were instrumental in calculating the equations that sent men like Neil Armstrong to space. But there is another Hidden Figure that has come to light, and her name is Melba Roy Muton. She is another prominent mathematician whose work was crucial at NASA. She served as one of NASA's human computers, beginning her career as a mathematician and working her way to becoming the head computer programmer and thusly up to become the program production section chief at Goddard Space Flight Center. So her computations helped produce the orbital element timetables, which allowed millions of us to see the satellite from Earth as it passed overhead. She received BS and MS in mathematics from Howard University in DC. Additionally, while she worked at NASA, her work led her to receive both the Apollo Achievement Award and an exceptional performance award. Now, just recently, as of February 13, 2023, a lunar mountain named Mons Muton was named in her honor. And after a little research, I found out that anything that's named on the moon, it starts with Mons, so it's Mons Muton for her last name. And we highlight Melba Muton, a hidden figure no more, who can now be seen on the moon. That's amazing. Also amazing is the idea that back in the day when NASA was trying to get people on the moon, men particularly, that there would be someone considered a human computer, someone smart enough to be able to say, okay, we can do this and this person will be able to get there and get back to us safely with information that we have provided. Can you imagine doing those calculations by hand on paper? Just how massive this has to be. And if you remember in the movie, they had like these huge white boards that had like ladders that went all the way at the top because these calculations were just so large and complex. And when we think about, you know, we have all these algorithms. We have these, you know, high computing machines that can spit out these calculations in seconds. You know, just thinking back to kind of where it started to where we are and just the amount of growth and innovation in a relatively small amount of time. Yeah, no kidding. The fact that we have so many tools in order to, I don't know, I guess make us smarter or make us faster at least at this computational technology. The fact that, you know, there were pioneers, Melba among them, who were doing it the long hand way. Yeah, and, you know, it has made space exploration what it is today. Yeah, for sure. Well, if you have a thought on anybody that we might want to highlight in a future Teching Well Black segment on the show or anything we might talk about on a future show, you can email us. You got a lot of options, but email is one of the best ways to get our attention. Feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com is where to send that email. All right, Nika, couldn't help myself because as host of the Snobo Us podcast, we know that you keep pretty close tabs on everything Apple as we do here on DTNS as well. So let's talk about Apple's ever-evolving reported roadmap. What is new? In a new posted on Medium, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reports Apple will likely launch two follow-up mixed reality headsets in 2025. This would come in high-end and low-end versions with Kuo comparing the strategy to Apple's pro-branded and standard iPhone models. As a reminder, Apple hasn't officially yet said anything about the first generation of this expected headset. It's all rumors at this point with the latest reports indicating an announcement in June at its worldwide developer conference. Yeah, I mean, we are talking about rumors previously. It was rumored that we might be hearing about the mixed reality headset in some form as early as April. The rumors have now pushed that out to WWDC, which happens in June every year. But as for who is making these reported headset rumor announcements, Ming-Chi Kuo has a good track record. Ming-Chi Kuo also claims that Pegatron could be gradually withdrawing from Apple's headset business with expected transfer of its AR and MR development team and production resources to Lux-Casect, which is a joint venture between Lux Share ICT and Pegatron in the first half of 2023. So he's still, you know, he has yet to be seen exactly what these headsets are and who's making them. But if the scenario is true, Lux Share ICT would take over the subsequent design and production of the high-end version of the second generation headset. Again, we're looking a couple years out at this point, which Kuo says would lead to the subsequent acceleration of reducing the cost of the headset, which is what Apple expects. Now, Nika, we, like you said, Apple has not made any official announcement about this yet. So we could be surprised and delighted by some low cost, but it is rumored to be pretty high cost, especially in the market that is saturated with headsets that are kind of in the $300 to $600 range. So what do you expect in reality? No pun intended. So for me, on our show, we do predictions every year. And I've had these AR VR headsets on my list for the last couple of years, maybe if I just keep adding it, it'll eventually come true. But this latest rumor with the high and low end is relatively new because we've only heard about the OS, reality OS or one headset. And I guess it does kind of make sense to have a high end and a low end. And maybe that's why it keeps getting pushed out because they may want to release them at the same time. Again, you know, when it comes to Apple rumors are always a buzz. But typically with certain analysts where there is a little bit of smoke, there's usually some fire behind that. Yeah, we've been talking earlier this week about the idea that iPhones are particularly popular with the GenC crowd. So people that were born in 1996 or later. And we've kind of been kicking around, well, is it because you kind of have whatever your friends have? And that just happens to be something that younger people have. Is it because so many kids were given iPod touches or maybe iPads when they were younger and they're just used to the ecosystem? You know, the idea of iPhones having this higher end and lower end version going forward, you know, further, I guess. I mean, I was about to say sort of fragmenting the iPhone line. I mean, that's what it sounds like to me. And again, I'm just talking about iPhones here and that's another rumor. But, you know, Apple, I think Apple understands, OK, we've got a lot of fans and their variety of price plans and things that people just care about versus don't care about. And you know, if you want the highest end of the high end, then we'll make that for you. That's what Apple does really well. The lower end stuff Apple has been kind of hit and miss with. So I'm wondering if they're hedging their bets a little bit on what people want out of a mixed reality, you know, AR VR headset. And, you know, if you're not the kind of person who's going to be, you know, plunking down a couple grand for something like this, who is the market going to be in a couple of years when we're all a little bit more used to it? Right. And I think Apple is really reading their customer base. Because if you remember when Apple really first became prominent, it was kind of like a status thing. If you had an Apple product, if you had an iPhone, if you had a Mac, if you had anything related to Apple, that kind of put you in the upper echelon of the tech community. But as we've seen, you know, through recessions, downturns, people kind of, you know, saving their money, spending it a little bit more conservatively. I think it's one of those things where they do realize they do have a pocket of people who are Apple snobs, Apple heads that whatever Apple releases, they're going to get it. They're going to get the most expensive version, but also realize that they have to stay competitive in the market space because we do have some AR VR headsets that are in the two to 300 range. So it's kind of like almost hedging their bets that say, hey, everybody wants an Apple product, everybody wants an Apple headset. So let's kind of cater to a broader mass rather than being super niche and going towards, you know, the hardcore Apple fans. Yeah, I mean, and you couldn't, I don't know, I guess you could look into Apple's foray into, you know, smart speakers. And, you know, having the most expensive smart speaker that is not the first to market, you know, sometimes Apple wins with these sorts of products, but not always. You know, it can be a really hard sell for people sort of going, well, I already have one or I wasn't interested anyway. And, you know, the specs that you have sound really great for an audiophile, let's say, but is that really me? And I think, you know, especially because I talk VR to anybody who will listen, you know, I'm a Quest user myself. And, you know, I like it a lot, but there's there's a lot of room to grow. I can't wait for the market to be saturated with options so that everybody gets better. And so many more people, you know, who I know are going to love this, they just don't know it yet. You know, the Apple is just just just one company who can do that. But again, it's Apple, you know, when Apple announces something, they are really great at saying, yeah, maybe we didn't really invent this idea, but we've made it better than the rest. We perfected it. Yeah, exactly. We did it. And that's why we weren't first. Yeah. And and competition is good for the consumer. So I too have a I am a Quest user as well. I'm just looking forward to Apple's innovation and spin on it and the and the possible use cases for this because right now with the Quest you have, you know, very limited types of things you can do. And I'm just, you know, really excited with the amount of money that Apple has what they're throwing at it and in the different use cases will be able to get out of it. So that's going to be cool. Indeed. Well, hopefully we will learn something at WWDC. We'll get an announcement of some kind. I'm crossing my fingers here because I don't even know if that's true. But you know, that is the going rumor at this point. But if you happen to be thinking about traveling, you might pack your VR headset with you. But even if you don't, if you travel with your own internet service, you might be constantly afraid of going over that bandwidth cap. If so, Chris Christensen has a handy Mac app for you. This is Chris Christensen from amateur traveler with another tech in travel minute. I was exchanging email recently with Allison Sheridan who was talking about some of her recent travels and what she was doing for connectivity and how to manage data caps in that process. And that reminded me of a tool that I use Mac only tool I'm afraid. And that tool is trip mode and trip mode sits on your computer and when I'm at home it doesn't turn out at all. And when I'm on the road, it starts blocking different services so that I don't go over my data cap which is useful on a cruise ship or when I've got a roaming card or something like that a data plan. And you can block service by service. It turns off by default and then you just turn them on for the services that you want to use your data for. That's trip mode.ch and I'd be interested if anyone knows of an equivalent service for the PC. This is Chris Christensen from amateur traveler. Good stuff. I may have to check this out because I was mentioning before we came on air that I am going on a trip for my birthday. I'm leave on Sunday. I might get some nifty tips before I go. So I'm definitely going to check this out. Yeah. I mean, hey, any birthday trip has to have internet connectivity. Yes. Even if you go in somewhere a little off the grid. Well, this is this is on the grid. It's kind of coming in before our show started today. The Lego company, you've probably heard of it, has taken some issue. In fact, issued some takedown notices about videos that have been circling around addressing a leaked Lego set for the Great Deku Tree, which comes from the Zelda universe. So a lot of people are very excited about this. Now, Lego is the copyright holder. So the fact that the company is issuing takedown notices on YouTube videos that are more or less saying, hey, this is coming seems to indicate there may be a forthcoming Zelda based the Great Deku Tree set or else why would they really care? Right. As first spotted by Nintendo Life, the YouTube channel Nintendo Prime received a copyright takedown notice from Lego after Nintendo Life passed along a rumor of that Zelda theme set featuring the Great Deku Tree in a video on their channel. Now you might say, well, okay, is this copyright infringement? Legos seem to asserting that it is. Many of us who work in news know that there's fair use and certainly the First Amendment that could apply here doesn't totally seem like rumors are takedown notice worthy. Unless Lego was like, man, you're really cramping our style. We wanted to, we wanted to announce this in a better way. I don't know, Nika, are you, are you a Zelda franchise fan? Are these rumors interesting to you? I'm not huge. I bought like, you know, during the pandemic, I got like a switch and of course I mentioned earlier I got the quest. So I'm not really into it. I was like, maybe I'll get into it and I haven't really been able to deep dive into it. So that's all kind of, you know, over my head. You know, I know a lot of people love Zelda. I remember it from, you know, back in the day, the world of Zelda. So it's interesting to see how this kind of goes from generation to generation. So yeah, I mean, as you mentioned, something else early in the show, whether smoke, there's fire. Sounds like there might be some fire here. Yeah. Like I was saying, yeah, we don't want you to talk about this stuff. Even though we want to talk about it. Yeah, we're copyright holders. So you're in the wrong here. Even though we don't have anything to announce yet. Dot, dot, dot. I think they're probably going to have something to announce. All right. In the mail bag, Michael wanted to chime in about our discussion in yesterday's episode regarding copyrights and prompts when you prompt AI to generate a work such as artwork. Michael writes, I have a couple questions floating in my head about this prompt angle. The first, if I hire a graphic designer, I provide input. I approve the final image. Who owns that copyright? The second is in regards to issuing a prompt. If I were to give a writer a prompt and then they went ahead and turned that into a novel. Does the fact that I gave them the prompt mean I'm eligible to copyright that novel? I do think the ability to prompt and improve AI art as a skill says Michael and will become an important skill. I just don't know where it tips over into copyright territory. We were kicking this around yesterday with Justin Marbury Young and Tom and myself, Nika. We didn't totally land on what is the cut and dried solution here because it's in such early days. But I think the idea that let's say you were going to write a novel on your upcoming vacation. And I said, you know, why don't you frame it as, you know, here's some bullet points to get you started. I mean, that's a prompt of sorts. You're not AI, you're a human. But if we're starting to consider what an AI spits out as starting with a human, which right now does, where does that line get drawn? It's a very fine line. And I think at this point we're creating these lines. So it could be very, the biggest task at the word that I'm looking for. It's, I don't know, it could, it could really cause some issues. It's going to be very messy because the thing I thought of from yesterday's discussion was like, you know how you go down to like any kind of tourist area and there's always an artist there that will do kind of a cartoony figure of you or the person you're with. Right. So when that, so you pay the person's like, Hey, do a caricature of me. Does that mean when you receive it and you paid for it? Does that mean you now own the copyright to that caricature of you? Or was it the artist that you asked to make a caricature of you have, has ultimately the copyright or because you've said to that person caricature me and I want to be in a car or in a plane and I'm the pilot or I'm the race car driver. You're giving them prompts about what you want, but they're the ones that actually draw it for you. So at the end of the day, you know, the argument was like, well, if you don't ask him, there's no art. Well, that's true. But when you go, that the same can apply to that caricature artist. If you don't, if you're not there and you never say make a caricature of me or my wife or my kids in front of the Empire State Building or from the Golden Gate Bridge, never gets made. So, I mean, I don't know. I think it'll be a lot messier than think people will imagine. And I think there's going to be levels. It's not going to be this automatically binary choice. It's going to be, OK, if you ask this or you go up here and so you'll have levels of user input into it. That will determine it. Right, right. It's like, you know, like levels of prompts. This was a simple prompt. Anybody could have made this prompt versus yeah. This is a highly specialized prompt that only you, Nika, could have ever given, you know, another entity. Well, something tells me we will be talking about this story in many forms for some time to come. For sure. But for now, Nika Monford, so nice to have you on the show. As always, we could not do it without you. Particularly today, I needed you. But let folks know where else they can keep up with your work. You can find me on social media at TechSavvyDiva everywhere. You can also check out at Snobo Westcast. That is a tech podcast that I co-host with Terence Gain, who's also contributed to the show, where we talk about all things Apple and some other tech stuff too. Excellent. Well, good to have you with us. Also good to have a brand new boss. I think we're, well, it was a four day week today in the U.S. But four for four today with new bosses. And today's boss is Zach. Zach, thank you for backing us on Patreon. Welcome. Speaking of patrons, do stick around for our extended show, Good Day Internet. We talk about a lot of stuff that, you know, it kind of spills over from DTNS and much, much more. In fact, we're going to talk a little bit more about Nintendo officially not showing up at E3. We might even play some games. But just a reminder, DTNS is live. You can catch the show live. You can also catch it on demand. If you want to join us live, we are live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern 2100 UTC. You can find out more at DailyTechNewShow.com slash live. We hope you have a wonderful weekend. We'll be back on Monday with Aya Zaktar joining us. Talk to you then. This week's episodes of Daily Tech New 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 Drafilino, 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 Ackermans, social media producer and moderator Zoe Dutterden. Our mods, Beatmaster, W. Scottus1, BioCow, Captain Kipper, Steve Guadirama, Paul Rees, Matthew J. Stevens, aka Heap Gadget Virtuoso, and J. D. Galloway. A mod and video hosting by Dan Christensen. Music and Art provided by Martin Bell, Dan Looters, Mustafa A., A-Cast and Len Peralta. A-Cast ad support from Tatiana Matias. Patreon support from Dylan Harari. Contributors for this week's shows include Tim Stevens, Scott Johnson, Justin Robert Young, Nika Montford and Chris Christensen. And thanks to all our patrons who make the show possible. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at FrogPants.com.