 This tenth year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners Thanks to all of you including Bjorn Andre, Jeff Wilkes and Paley Glendale coming up on DTNS How augmented reality makes super Nintendo world come alive clearing up some misconceptions around Microsoft and open AI and our podcast dead again This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, January 23rd 2023 in Los Angeles on Tom Merritt and from studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane also from Los Angeles. I'm Lamar Wilson and I'm technical producer Anthony Lemos Oh, my friends, did you hear you can't buy Windows 10 after January 31st? Hurry. Get out there stock up But here all your Windows 10 Don't worry, it'll still be supported until 2025. Let's get to the quick hits Back in October the Competition Commission of India find Google 161.9 million dollars for anti-competitive practices on Android. It also mandated changes to the Google Play Store Now Google attempted to challenge these in court However, the Supreme Court of India declined Google's request to block these changes as a result India will require the Google Play Store to host third-party app stores as of January 26th The ruling also prevents Google from requiring manufacturers to pre-install games on Android devices to receive Play Store access And also requires Google to play to allow Play Store access on forked Android versions Also out of India today the country's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting ordered Twitter YouTube and other social platforms to block multiple videos showing the first episode of the 2002 BBC documentary India the Modi question which covered religious riots in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state of Gujarat Ministry advisor Kaunshan Gupta said that YouTube and Twitter complied with the takedown order Bloomberg's Mark Gurman sources told him some more info about what to expect from Apple's mixed reality headset He has a good track record on this stuff. So it's kind of worth paying attention to It would be a standalone device have an interface similar to an iPhone or an iPad As well as being able to be used as an external display for a Mac You'd also be able to use Mac iPhone or iPad device keyboards to enter text kind of like you do with an Apple TV Supposedly Apple has talked to Disney as well as Dolby and some other unnamed partners about bringing some VR content to the platform It would have iron hand tracking and support gestures So you could like squeeze a thumb and forefinger to interact a watch like crown Apparently will let you switch between augmented reality and virtual reality so you can see the world around you or have it blocked out It also may render realistic Advertisers if both FaceTime callers are wearing the reality headset and the battery pack will be an external piece meant to be put in a pocket And connect to the headset by wire That's the only part of this that I'm like that does not sound like Apple to do something like that All right The device may yet according to Gurman be revealed this spring and then go on sale in the autumn Alphabet announced plans to cut 12,000 jobs and it looks like those will largely put Google's area One 120 incubator on the chopping block at least part of it Google plans to graduate three area 120 projects into Google businesses this year with Bloomberg sources saying that virtually all of their jobs in the unit would be cut as Part of its job cuts Microsoft eliminated the entire team for its mixed reality toolkit and its VR workspace project alt space VR as a result alt space VR will shutter on March 10th and another tech layoff news because we have a lot of it Lately Spotify said it will cut 6% of its workforce impacting about 600 jobs CEO Daniel X said that the cuts were needed to In part being too ambitious and investing ahead of our revenue growth Meta expanded its partnership with the NBA and WNBA to offer 52 live games on its quest headsets as well as a selection of WNBA NBA G-League and NBA 2k league games five games will be broadcast in immersive 180 degree Monoscopic VR through the stadium platform. It's stadium because you spell it with an axe All games can also be viewed at the dedicated NBA arena if you're in Meta's horizon worlds Part of the expansion will also bring NBA licensed apparel to the avatar store That's virtual apparel for your avatar. That's coming in the next few weeks and other meta news CEO Mark Zuckerberg said messenger users will start being notified the conversations can be upgraded to end to end Encryption over the next few months encrypted chats will include link previews custom emoji and themes The Wall Street Journal reports that Wells Fargo Bank of America JP Morgan Chase and four other banks began working on a new digital wallet that will let shoppers pay at online Checkouts with linked credit and debit cards the wallet would be managed by Zell operator early warning services and operate separately from Zell Sources say the banks see this as a PayPal and Apple wallet competitor letting them keep control of customer relationships Details are still being ironed out But it seems likely it will involve consumers typing in an email at a checkout page Expected to roll out in the second half of this year with banks hoping to enable 150 million debit and credit cards for use when it launches Wow pay with an email how very PayPal circa 2002 Yeah All right, let's talk a little bit about Microsoft and open AI a lot of news today about Microsoft investing yet again in open AI and a Lot of it slightly off the mark Repeating some misunderstood nuances of the story So we thought we'd take a step back and put this all in context for everybody Microsoft first invested in open AI in July 2019 at that time Microsoft became open AI's Exclusive cloud provider through Microsoft Azure It has been the exclusive cloud provider to open AI ever since this is one half of a misunderstanding over Exclusivity it gets thrown around half of the exclusivity refers to this Microsoft invested again a second time in open AI in 2021 and on Monday open AI announced a third multi-year multi-billion dollar investment from Microsoft with this new deal Azure will power all open AI workloads across API's researcher and products And now we will turn Sarah to the issue of open AI being a profit or nonprofit company if I've heard both Yeah, so open AI incorporated is a nonprofit company, but it owns open AI LP Which is a capped profit company that means in each round of investment Investors are limited on how much they can recoup on their investment So for instance open AI says its first round of funders were limited to getting no more than 100 times their investment in returns Okay, open AI says on its website quote We expect this multiple to be lower for future rounds and quote There's no official announcement about the latest round But one proposal detailed by semaphore had Microsoft getting 49 of the company other investments Other investors coastal ventures and fosys for example 49% collectively and then open AI retaining just 2% But it's unclear if that's what ended up happening or not because nobody has said so Given that Microsoft is a public company will probably better understand their investment By their next earnings report because they have to talk about this stuff Okay, so we said that azure was the exclusive cloud provider and that's Part of the exclusivity confusion. So let's talk about the other half. Yes, so they are an exclusive cloud provider Uh open AI co-founder and CEO sam altman told tech crunch last month that the deal with Microsoft is not Exclusive he wasn't talking about the cloud part. He's talking about people being able to make products using open AI technology Here's where I think it gets confusing Microsoft licenses some of open ai's intellectual property, which Microsoft can then sell to partners That includes a license to gpt 3's underlying code Other companies can use gpt 3 Microsoft doesn't have an exclusive on that Microsoft has a license to the underlying code So open ai can sell access to its own api of gpt 3 and other products What Microsoft got it seems is the right to modify the code for gpt 3 and then put it in its own products Basically do whatever it wants with it. It can use the code from gpt 3 to build Microsoft models that open ai doesn't have for example in 2021 Microsoft launched azure open ai service An enterprise level offering that includes gpt 3 and then enterprise stuff like security compliance governance other enterprise features Open ai can go build its own software products It also has a license to the thing it made I guess by default And it can make its own services license its technology to other companies For instance mid january it started a waitlist for chat gpt professional The verge reporting on monday that some users have got their access and reporting that it cost them around $42 a month So Microsoft Can build their own things in a way that nobody else can But other companies including open ai itself can use gpt 3 and and other products like chat gpt and dolly in other ways I think you did a great both of you did a great job explaining this because prior to this I had No idea what's going on. I I I still Just based on my limited knowledge don't really understand what open ai is obviously the open must mean open source I'm guessing it's just open open source technology And I think in the beginning Myself and maybe some others thought that well if it's open it has to be free So why is Microsoft putting money in this? Why are they benefiting from this? Why are they selling products based on this? Why are they exclusive at all? Uh, but the reality is more nuanced It's you know, it like they are allowed to make money on it, but How much because they're a nonprofit. Yeah. Yeah, but part of it is they can make a profit to a point So it it's it's still confusing to me, but I think you did a way better job of Breaking this down than I then when we started. I think what's interesting to me is Microsoft saying, okay Well, we you know, we we have bought the license to do this underlying code. So open ai Can still be used by all sorts of companies But we might be able to modify the code based on what we think is the best path forward Which would then change our version of this product And you know based on how well we do that we can charge people what we think is fair Yeah, I think a lot of people thought that open ai would go the open source route and it did not And I think a lot of people are confused by the weird corporate structure Which I think mozilla also uses of a non-profit company owning a for-profit company. Yeah, uh, and then it gets extra confusing It's like, okay. There's two open ai's. There's the non-profit open ai that that one just owns the for-profit open ai And and it owns 2% after this if you believe semaphore But then there's also the fact that it's capped profit. No cap. It's capped You can only make so much money as an investor, which is a way. I think for them to try to Stay true to the original idea which was not so much open source as it was Making ai in a way that is beneficial for society And so it's about the reason they didn't go open source in those early days Is they said well, we wanted to be better stewards of this We only want to release things when we think that there are good guidelines on how to use it properly Uh, and that's that's why they had that's why they're they're dragging their heels on things like gpt4 They're like we could release gpt4 right now, but we don't think it's ready We don't think we have the proper guidelines in place Real quick. I'm guessing this is super similar to android and google like in a sense of of control And and enhancing it uh enhancing it to make it better No No, it's not a great analogy Just because android the open source project is independent Of google in a way that open ai the for-profit company is not independent of open ai the non-profit company You you corrected me so eloquently, thank you No, not really lamar, but yeah That's why we're here. We're talking it through Uh speaking of talking through things the rise the professionalization the death the comeback And the possible or relevance of podcasts have been greatly exaggerated over the years as we do this podcast right now We understand the irony here But one thing we know for sure is that being locked at home during a pandemic Was great motivation for a lot of people to say, you know, what I should start that podcast I've been thinking about for a while according to data from listen notes 2020 saw over a 200 increase in new shows Compared to 2019, but now that we have data for 2022. We're seeing an interesting trend Oh boy, do I have some data for you So data for last year shows that new pot podcast creation has fallen off a cliff The number of new podcasts Launch dropped 70 percent in 2022 compared to the year before and down 800,000 shows Compared to the high at 2020 now first this might appear to just be a return to slower growth that we saw in a podcast pre-pandemic, but 2022 saw 219,178 new podcasts down 35 percent sent from 2019, but it's not all gloom-a-doom 2022 saw 26.1 million new podcast episodes published Up 44 percent from 2019. So our podcast dying tom or did a lot of people just realize There could be a lot of work. Yeah Not as easy as it looks people Yeah, I I think I think Podcasts are always dying. That's the joke, right? Any of us who've been doing this as long as as we have Because to Sarah and I have both been doing it for more than 10 years Going back to like 2004 2005 Knows that podcasts have been declared dead many many times and then ever dead and I don't think they're dead this time I think what might be different about this time around is that You did finally maybe reach the saturation point Where new shows could no longer find an audience where it was just really hard to to Make a new audience happen and You had a larger percentage of shows being started by businesses versus Someone who's doing it personally So a lot of shows like my longest running show east meets west that I do with roger Is just something we enjoy doing But most shows started during the pandemic were probably from spotify or Some other company wanting to make money and they realized oh, it's it's hard to get discovered because there's so many out there So I think we hit that limit What is interesting to me is that the number of episodes seems to have outperformed the number of shows If you compare it to pre-pandemic Which says to me that it's the the shows that are lasting have found an audience and that audience is sticking around And we're not seeing pod fading from those shows, which I think is really interesting I mean so much of this just reminds me of okay, you know open up hbo max You know, you've got some hit shows and you got some shows that I don't know aren't landing as well as the the network would like that is very much like podcast Even though we're not all necessarily part of one single network I mean first of all making a podcast is hard And many people who say you know, I have a lot of things to say end up going Huh, there's a lot of background stuff that I did not realize you know was was was part of the deal You know, if you can't hire somebody to be your engineer, you got to do it yourself And that's just not for everybody It's kind of like when we're talking about the things that people were doing during the pandemic because they had time on their hands It's like, I don't know. I made a lot of banana bread. Am I going to open up a bakery? No But I mean, why not try? I think there are probably a lot of people who said, you know, let's give this a try We can't all open bakeries and that's sort of, you know, it's the same thing with podcast stuff is you you can have a great idea You can have um, you know a heart in the right place. Um, but but yeah, you there are so many podcasts out there I mean, I love podcasts, but I only listen to I don't know five on a very very regular basis because You know, my attention is finite Yeah, listen, I'm I am so I'm first. I'm glad you said that sir. I'm like, I'm so glad people Were able to find their creativity and have a voice I think a lot of people marginalized just did not have a voice podcast have been great for that Uh, however, more people are discovering that there are other places to have your voice Uh, such as, you know, the the rise of the vertical video where there's unreal's facebook, uh, instagram, excuse me Facebook, tiktok Or youtube shorts, they're just other avenues to have your voice and the barrier of entry sarah is a lot Easier on tiktok than it is On making a podcast. Yeah for sure Well folks, uh, we thought you'd be interested to this because you're listening to a podcast We of course have more thoughts on this because we're creators So patron stick around after the show, uh, if you if you want to hear more on good day internet And if you have a thought about why you think this is happening with podcasting or questions about microsoft open ai or anything else Email us feedback at daily tech news show dot com Super nintendo world opened at universal studios hollywood, uh, or it will open, uh at universal studios hollywood friday february 17th This is a smaller version of the one already open at universal studios japan It only has one main attraction really one one big ride Mario kart bowser's challenge future versions of super nintendo world are coming to universal's epic universe park in orlando florida And universal studios singapore both expected in 2025 But lemar and i both were able to attend a technical rehearsal Because my wife works for a company owned by mbc and and mbc being part of the same company as universal Uh, it was given the employees a chance to go try it out There were a few rough edges because you know, they're they're still rehearsing, but lemar I thought it would be interesting to folks on this show to hear about the augmented reality that is in the mario kart ride itself Because i'll be honest I was a little skeptical of how well it worked would work the the idea is you you put on a headset when you're on the ride And you're going to see things through that that you would not see if you didn't have that headset on while you're on a Kart that's on a track How did you how did you find that? so You saw it's a week and later i found out you knew walking and this was going to be ar I did not i thought we were going to get an actual kart And drive around like a go kart and it wasn't till we got up to the to the door And they did a presentation the pre presentation. I'm like ar Oh, that just sounds awful And I gotta say tom honestly it was anything, but it it was uh, we later I found a nintendo made their own ar But once you put that that over your you know, like you know, you're in on a the uh on a theme park ride but I really felt like I was hitting people's carts with my shells I really felt like I was earning those coins that I was I was seeing pop pop up on the screen and It it looked and felt really good like it felt solid Uh, I don't really have any complaints on on it to be honest. I I think they they nailed the experience The best I feel like I don't know what better you can do with a theme park ride Uh, what do you what do you think? Because maybe vr Yeah, no, I I thought this was really interesting. Uh chief creative officer for universal creative terry coop Told theme park insider a while back that that they invented this ar because I was nosing around trying to be like Wow, did they use hollow lens? Did they get something from somebody else? Was it right? You know, was it quest? Was it, uh, I don't know Magically, what what was it? Uh, they said they created their own I still bet they sourced some parts and technology from somewhere else But they built it on a game engine and I would assume that's going to be a nintendo game engine Uh, and what I found in reality is that you put this thing on you start rolling forward You feel like you're on a theme park ride and the idea is that you have a controller That is your steering wheel when the arrow comes up in front of you to turn right or left You have to turn right or left if everybody in the car and there's four people in the car Turn right at the same time you turn better and it's going to score you more points in the game You also can press some buttons to shoot turtles and there are things you can look at and as you look at them You see a little dot that's targeting and that the the turtle shells will You know fly out and hit things and I saw turtle shells hitting things But it wasn't until halfway through the ride where I realized Hey, this is actually working like when we all turn I feel us turn more, you know It's still on a track, but we are having effect and I would sometimes stop my turtle shells and realize like Oh, that stream of turtle shells right there. Stop. That was me And I and so I actually was seeing myself hit things And all of that It if it was a real game it felt like a real game that I was moving through Yeah, it absolutely did It also felt like 90 minutes of standing to get there For two minutes of games For two minutes. Yeah. Yeah, but no I was impressed. I definitely want to do it again. Uh as as I lean So being a text single single rider Next time yeah, the single rider line was like 10 minutes We we we were all in a group together, uh, and it took an hour and a half But you know your mileage may vary obviously this coming to Orlando at some point in 2025 They're going to get the Yoshi ride as well too. Uh, but I think what's interesting is if if I do go back and try this again Uh, they're gonna have new content because it's got on a game engine So they can push updates the way they would to a normal video game They can also swap out the hardware. So they made the hardware modular I probably wouldn't notice anything about that anytime soon But they said as a r and vr technology gets better They will be able to go in and take out pieces of the ride and put in new technology To keep pace so that you're not saying like hey my quest too is better than this Yeah, another cool piece of technology that's optional for use in a park is a $40 wristband They use this nfc technology uh, similar to the amiibo than to no make uh, the little little characters that you can Put on the game pad uh to get new coins or extra Things in the game. So what you would do is you you'll wear this type of uh, Uh wristband and they have little stations around there where you can You scan it get some good coins and then you get to take those coins back to your nintendo device and and and upload them using you know the amiibo technology to to use in game Not that that was pretty you know fascinating I would have loved that they gave these out complimentary But they're 40 bucks and I I got I got You you got all of them is what yeah, yeah, yeah, they have they have one of each one of one of each guy Yeah, no that it is the hollywood version of this is smaller than the one in japan and and really there's the mario cart ride There's one other ride that you walk through and you collect coins That's ar as well and then the rest of it is outside collecting coins hitting the loot boxes and and the the pow boxes and And there's a there's a game where you can go around and you can you can actually uh, you you can actually Collect you can level up You can play a little game outside Uh, it it is very immersive and it's very pretty and it does make you feel like you're you're inside of a nintendo Yeah, I yeah, I thought the like said the park was a little smaller than I expected But I had no time that I feel like oh man, I waited all this time Now it there's so many details. We can't even go to in a show. Maybe we'll talk about afterwards There's just so many little details that made just just an immersive experience and uh Um, and then again just the technology that was involved just made it made it a excellent experience for for everybody And you know who goes to check it out. So we'll check it out Well lamar speaking of experiences you are a chess player, correct I Half play chess. Yes. No, I'm I I also used to coach. I used to coach kids playing chess too. So oh, yeah Well, you might already be familiar with the story, but if anybody isn't it's a good one on january 1st The site chess.com introduced a new chess plane bot called mittens. You might say who's mittens? Well mittens has an avatar of kind of a cute little kitten Uh, you know looks like mittens. However, mittens is ruthless mittens was designed to not just be world class opponents But also use grueling tax tactics to do so Utilizing painstaking positional battles mittens is ruthless. It also makes kind of Weird things by referencing all men's quotes from the likes of robert oppenheimer and fridrich nichie Playing against mittens has become a phenomenon for the site though because mittens is so hard to beat On track to serve more than 850 million games in january alone That's 40 more than any month in chess.com's history So listen They uh, they have other cats with different uh, chest ratings have anger cats scared of cats They have a grumpy cat so they all have different personalities in it. They have lower lower ratings They get you in get you in the door. Oh, I'm beating all these cats. No problem That's my I usually do this to warm up on chess.com and then I saw mittens with the one rating Like one that that has to be an error So I'm like, well, I beat all these other cats. I'll you know, no no Can't beat mittens Mittens not only beat me but trash talked me like just talked mess The whole time and I'm just like what's going on? Well, what happened? We were just having a good time on chest. I mean to be fair that is very catlike of mittens It's very catlike. Yeah, just devious, but I love cats So uh, I will be I still will be going back But mittens mesmerizes you see because you you're like, no, no, no I need you got to go back and try again try again, but it's it's been beating like world You know phenomena chess uh phenomenal chess players and they're just stumped at this engine So I've had fun with it and I hope I'll just try it out too. I I know that the the uh, the model The the learning model behind this is really good But also that gambit luring you in with a cute cat picture to distract you. Oh, yeah Genius Well, thanks to you lemar wilson not only for playing chess, but also for being with us here today Let folks know where they can keep up with your latest Yeah, if you I just put a video today on uh, I'll run it in there But specifically on youtube if you want to watch it there that uh documents in about 50 seconds Our our trip yesterday at the nintendo world. So Uh, and and tom is then in the video very very quickly, but but uh, I'm again, so I'm very grateful to you And uh, I'll leave for let me go there and be able to document that experience to put on my channel So if you'd like to see my videos on any kind of lifestyle technology Uh pop culture stuff. Uh, check me out. Uh, I'm lemar wilson dot com Uh, you can check me out anywhere. Uh that you feel comfortable. So thank you We also have some brand new bosses. We got over the weekend. We've got stanford We've got tina. We've got james and we've got quade. They all just started backing us on patreon So a big thank you to you stanford tina james and quade good to have you with us Indeed good good crew. Ah, welcome and uh, come on in I know this is very hard Let's play chess Speaking of patrons do stick around for our extended show a good day internet We have a lot of fun on that. We will talk about all the things you can also Check out dtns. We are live Monday through friday at 4 p.m. Eastern 2100 utc if you want to join us live, we'd love to have you find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live We are back tomorrow talking chat gpt in resumes and cover letters with megan maroni joining us talk to you then This show is part of the frog pants network Get more at frogpants.com Bob hopes you have enjoyed this program