 This 10th year of Daily Tech news show is made possible by you the listener Thanks to all of you including Kevin Paul Teeson Ally Sanjabi and our brand-new patron today Sarah Not Sarah Lane on this episode of Daily Tech news show We discuss why foldables may be the best form factor of all Sarah Lane's reaction to her domain name getting shuttled from Google to Squarespace and red it's not gonna budge on API fees But will they take to actually kicking out? protesting mods This is the Daily Tech news for Friday June 16th 2023 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio zipline. I'm Sarah Lane From Columbus, Ohio. I'm Rob Denwood drawn the top tech stories from Cleveland. I'm Len Peralta And I'm the show's producer Roger Chang if you liked the Bay Area references on a Thursday show Just wait to get a load of the think you shouldn't leave references coming in this one. Let's start with the quick hits The Verge confirmed with meta spokesperson Joe Osborne that the company plans to lower the minimum age to use the quest VR Headsets from 13 to 10 parents will have to approve accounts for younger children and meta will only recommend age-appropriate apps No ads will be shown to them Profiles for 10 to 12 year olds will also be set to private by default Baby of the year We'll probably use it Intel announced its tunnel falls quantum processor meant for research labs investigating quantum computing tunnel falls has 12 cubits That's a unit of processing used in quantum computing and it's not a lot of them For example, IBM has a commercial version of 127 cubits But Intel chips are smaller and the company hopes its reputation as a chip maker will help a game business from financial service companies Big R&D outfits the University of Maryland for example is one of its first customers Quantum computing is still very much in the research stage But has promise to dramatically speed up certain kinds of computing especially in areas involving math Mercedes-Benz is testing using chat GPT to power a voice assistant in its cars More than 900,000 vehicles in the US will be able to beta test the feature by saying hey Mercedes I want to join the beta program Mercedes says it can be used to handle questions from anything like a Driver's destination to ideas for recipes. There was a lot of the grocery store Yeah, they were they kept mentioning recipes thought that was an interesting thing to do in your car But yeah, sure you go to the grocery store. That's a good point US's cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency a.k.a. CISA Confirmed that multiple federal agencies have been affected by attacks exploiting a security vulnerability in Move it transfer and an enterprise file transfer tool developed by progress software CISA also said the attacks were linked to the Russia-based clop ransomware gang that spelled CLOP But did not elaborate on how many US agencies might have been affected The Department of Energy confirmed to TechCrunch that two of its entities are among those that were breached Intel and micron both detailed plans to diversify their chip production outside the US and China Intel CEO Pat Gelser out announced a 4.6 billion chip facility in Poland Micron is close to a 1 billion commitment to build a packaging factory in India and Despite China restricting its companies from buying micron products Micron also announced it will spend at 600 million dollars to acquire a packaging facility owned by a third party Inside of one of Micron's campuses in Gion All right Let's talk a little bit about this domain name shuffle. You're gonna have to do yeah, let's do it So Google announced it shutting down its domain name registrar called Google Domains I am one of the people who uses Google Domains for a variety of domains So here's the deal Squarespace will take over the business and all of its assets in a deal Expected to close in Q3 of this year. So not far off. So customers of Google Domains will have their registrations Transitioned over to Squarespace over the coming months You might say that might not go well, but hey hasn't happened yet Hopefully if it does Squarespace says it will honor all existing renewal prices for at least a year Just that year Squarespace also will provide domains for Google workspace customers And in fact the terms of the deal also makes Squarespace the exclusive domains provider for any customer purchasing to domain Along with their workspace subscription from Google directly for a minimum of three years Now Rob, I am a Google Domains user. I am slightly concerned about this. I know you are as well. So Who are you feeling about that? So I have a couple of domains that are right now registered with Google And it was one of those things to where I was setting up Google workspaces and it just made it easy to do it I'm not terribly concerned With them being moved over to Squarespace I have moved many domain between registrars before and haven't really had any issues with it So I would imagine that Google and Squarespace are going to figure out a way to do it effectively But for me since I don't use Squarespace for anything. I probably will opt to have mine moved over to You know namecheap, which I've you know, I've been using them for years as well Just so I can have all my domains in one place So it's it's an issue, but it's just it's not a big issue And you know, I kind of understand why Google is doing it. I know there's a lot of people who are upset about it But this is just not a core part of their business Google is about we do things that makes us money in a domain register It's not one of those things Yeah, so Google domains. I was not I don't know for whatever reason I have a variety of domains that I you know have to pay annually for and I was using a Registrar called Dottster for years. I mean, you know from like the early 2000s It was just what I used. That's what I paid for and over time There were strange fees that kept getting added to my annual fee to the point where I was like Well, this is cost-prohibitive Google domains was not free, but it was very much cheaper So I was like, oh, well, I'm over on Google. Anyway, let's just like move the you know The stuff I have off of Dottster onto Google domains, which was not It totally painless process, but it was easy enough So for you know for this to now go to Squarespace, which I'm also a member of I have a couple of domains that you know I'm familiar with Squarespace. I'm familiar with you know, you know what I have to pay for I wonder what what this is going to look like in a year when Squarespace says, okay Well, we gave you a year and now here's where you have to pay in order to be part of the Squarespace domain community Yeah, I wonder, you know having it be Squarespace I think is going to give people a lot of Impressions of how this is going to work Just because you think of Squarespace as the web host, but Squarespace being a domain name Registrar Really doesn't mean anything different than when you sign up for Google Workspace and they offer you a domain Squarespace will handle the back-end transaction. I doubt you ever even leave a Google page when you do it It's just Squarespace going to operate it there. They're basically outsourcing it here So I wonder how much the price is going to change simply because Google will not want it to be too much too expensive either I'm trying to take a quick look at what Squarespace charges now It says that you can get it between 20 and 70 dollars a year so If it's somewhere around there with that would that set you off if it's closer to 20 than no 20 than yes, yeah, you know, that was that was sort of why I left my My former place that I you know had had parked a few things But but yeah, I mean, I'm actually a fan of Squarespace I I've been using it for a long time, you know, my my personal website is on Squarespace but that's hosting and you know and and a variety of design It's it's not exactly the same as what this is. So yes, I I guess I'm optimistically but But also a little suspicious about I think that a lot of folks a lot of folks just Yeah, it's not a big deal. I don't care. I'm one of those folks I've got dozens of domains. I mean, you know, I have well over 50 domains So for me an additional three or four dollars a month and you multiply that times that many that you know That adds up really quickly. So Since I am going to move I only had two there. It wasn't a big deal for me But now that I have the opportunity to do something different. I'll just ship them over to a place It is a domain register first. They tend to keep their prices lower Then companies that do other stuff and offer domain hosting services Yeah, a technical mentions asking the kind of question I imagine a lot of folks have is Squarespace gonna ask if you have an account with them If your Google domain is under a different email again I don't expect that this will route you through Squarespace comm and the web hosting part My guess is that this will just be embedded in workspace And when you you know when you sign up you sign up through Google and Squarespace is managing it If you already have a Squarespace account for web hosting, maybe you'll be able to manage it over there, too But I don't know that they'll make you do that. That would be an interesting thing to see There's no reason it should make you do that. I Don't know. I've had domain names going back to the network solutions days when you didn't even have a choice So sometimes I think it's you know, we're kind of spoiled for choice these days and the costs You you should shop around like Sarah's saying like if the price goes up just take it somewhere else It's not that hard to transfer domain I keep most of mine on hover these days and I'm pretty happy with them because they take good care of me and their prices May not be the ultimately cheapest every time that there's a renewal But they're never high enough that it's worth my time to change it. They're always within a couple dollars. So Yeah, my language may vary though and this I think Rob I think what you're doing makes sense Which is this is an opportunity to reevaluate and go like oh well since it's moving anyway Let me see if I should move it somewhere else We've been talking a lot about foldables lately What with the galaxy Z fold success in the upcoming July announcement that sam song is gonna do We talked to I as actor on Monday and had had some praise for the razor plus We've got the Google pixel fold coming out in what like 12 days something like that and gadgets Sam Rutherford Talked to two Google pixel product managers about how the pixel fold plans to distinguish itself They mentioned that it is shaped more like a passport than a typical phone They think that makes it easier to use when it's closed They worked a lot on continuity of apps so that apps will work seamlessly between the two screens something razor plus also did They moved the hinges to the edge of the device to decrease the thickness It's 12.1 millimeters when closed But the big one that caught my attention is that like the razor plus which has a 3.6 inch front screen They focused on that outer screen pixel fold has a nice big one. It's 5.8 inches It's normal phone size and using it without Unfolding it is something they paid a lot of attention to we just got some leaks today that the galaxy Z flip 5 Seems to have a large cover screen as well Now considering that emphasis considering that the new thing is to have a usable screen on the outside when it's folded and Then roll in the this article by the diverges David Pierce that he wrote on Tuesday Extolling among other things the virtue of being able to use a phone while folded when you want as one of the reasons that he Thinks foldables are the future in fact the article is called every smart phone should be a flip phone Starting right now Rob, do you agree? I'm not necessarily willing to go that far. I Am willing to say however that I think foldables are here to stay so much so that a company named Apple is probably going to start looking at these things pretty quick and in a hurry and here's my reasons why With that new razor is the razor plus the one that has that nice, you know Screen on the front. Yep. I my daughter who was all in on iPhone her first question was deck Can I run an iMessage on that? Uh-huh And I was like, no, it's not an iPhone. She's like, oh, that's really cute So the fact that there is nothing that was going to get her off of an iPhone except for cuteness and Apple's gonna have to they're gonna have to deal with that these foldable phones are really cute and The fact that they're making the screens more usable on the outside where you can use it like a regular phone when you Don't have it unfolded and then you get the added benefit of having a small tablet in your pocket I think a lot of people are going to start looking at that Not enough that's gonna, you know make Apple make drastic changes But I do think that you're going to probably before too long start hearing rumors coming out of Apple that they're working on a foldable It's really interesting Rob that your daughter was like that's cute Now, you know, we don't all you know buy phones based on how cute they are or you know devices in general But if you if you say, you know, I like this form factor But can I do the things that I used to do on the other phone on this? Because if so then I've got more real estate. That's where you that's where it gets interesting And I have been shuttling back and forth when I go from one phone to another between large and small I This one I have is a large screen that the iPhone that I have now is a large screen Because I wanted the large screen but then once I got it I was like, oh, but this thing is so bulky in a pocket and carrying it around, you know And then the last time I did that I went to the smaller screen because of that then I missed the larger screen My Android phone is a foldable. It's a Microsoft duo because then I can just open it up But I can't use it when it's folded up So I'm looking forward to trying out the pixel fold because I think there is something compelling if they can get the price down I'm assuming they can eventually get the price down And if they can get that hinge nice and flat, which it looks like, you know Pixel and Samsung both and even Motorola are making progress towards if you can just have something in your pocket that feels small Like an old like a five inch phone where it's like barely barely even notice it at all slips in a handbag really easily But when you want it to be a seven inch when you want it to be a gigantic screen It's even bigger than the six point eight inch screens that you get in the large phones That that to me feels right that feels like the kind of form factor we want and These are have gone from like how you're gonna make that work is the hinge gonna break to Can you make it thin enough? And I think they're this this form factor is definitely maturing And Sarah to your point about people looking at phones because they're cute well back in the day We're all old enough to remember that before smartphones as we know them now How your phone looked was a big reason why you got a particular phone or another phone It was just I like how this one looks. This is really cute Oh, yeah So like I said, I'm giving you firsthand knowledge my daughter the reason the only thing that made her look at something That was not an iPhone was because it was cute. That's what drew her to it now stealth Dave says farewell battery life Which is a good question, but one of the things that they mentioned in this and gadget Interview was that they felt like the battery life would improve because you could do so many things on that small screen with it folded up So you don't have to be using the full screen all the time, which means you're drawing on the power less Yeah, just saying All right, folks, we are 413 people away from our goal of 4,000 patrons It's a tall order for us to get this done by June 29th But we know we can make it happen because y'all are amazing So thank you to everybody who has joined us on patreon Thank you to everyone who is about to join us on patreon because if we get to that goal We can make sure that mollywood is on the show at least once a month On Fridays to have fun with us. She'd be here right now Talking with with me and Robin and Sarah So if you if you like mollywood if you'd like to see her hang out with us more often Please go to patreon.com Dtns Previously on reddit reddit announced new fees to its apis several third-party app makers most prominently Apollo said it's too Expensive and they would shut down on June 30th before the api fees kicked in more 8,000 subreddits went dark on Monday for at least 48 hours to protest and around 4,000 are still dark now on to the latest news Okay, so on Thursday reddit CEO Steve Huffman told the verge He doesn't plan to change the api pricing Huffman said quote That's our business decision and we're not undoing that business decision end quote He told the verge and NBC news He doesn't believe most users support the moderators who have closed off the subreddits at least not anymore We've got a little bit of a waiting game going on, but reddit said in fact a fact sheet that was published Published on Thursday said it's not shutting down discussions or unilaterally reopening communities But Tom there is more yes Unilaterally doesn't mean if we got somebody else on board. They might not shut it down NBC news NBC news said Huffman was pursuing a plan to quote allow ordinary users to vote Moderators out more easily if their decisions aren't popular That's not unilateral right? He did say he had no timeline for such a change and expects the protests might just end voluntarily first and he'd prefer that Reddit also sent messages to mods at some of the dark subreddits Offering to help remove or reorder the moderator teams if some of the mods favored Reopening finishing that memo with if you are not able or willing to reopen and maintain the community Please let us know Now that's notable because reddit also told the verge that inactive subreddits may be in violation of rule 4 of Reddit's code of conduct that one requires moderators to be active and Engaged and it's one thing to keep it dark for 48 hours But if you start keeping it dark for a week the argument could be made well If you're not being that you're not you're not being a good mod Yeah, you're not making it over worse. Yeah Yeah, so I I read Selig's interview with the verge earlier this week and if you heard don't heard me on GDI I went in at length about how he just sounded reasonable. He didn't sound like he was mad sounded like somebody was like I really wanted to make this work. They're not talking me the dev who runs Apollo. Exactly. That's the guy who runs Apollo and He he struck me as someone who wishes it was different, but he's in a pickle I read last night the interview with CEO Steve Hoffman from Reddit and He struck me at first in that article as somebody reasonable But as the the conversation went on he started to throw shade on people He started to be a little more emotional His PR people had to step in a couple times and try to disrupt the interview and say oh you're asking the same question over and over again And it struck me as somebody who doesn't have a solid ground to stand on so I don't know Rob Sarah if you can make any heads or tails out of this But it really it seems odd for somebody who wants to resolve something to start threatening moderators It's just this strikes me as the odd Rob, I'll just I'll say this and I'll I'll hand it over to you my You know having followed the story over the last week. I find it Baffling mind boggling that somebody who's running reddit has Is so out of touch with the way that reddit and subreddits specifically and moderators Work and have built communities and are upset about this now I'm not saying that reddit really you know if reddit says this is this is our only recourse We have to you know, we we have to make the API fees You know, you know, we have to raise them. This is what we were going to do. Anyway, we're trying to IPO later this year We have no choice that would be one thing But that's not what the company is saying at least not you know outwardly So I you know, I I would be I would be I would be pretty mad If you know if I was one of the communities who was like, hey, we want an answer and the company is like We never really thought that you know API stuff was you know our bread and butter and yeah, we don't care about you anymore Well, even worse, I think their answer is talk to your moderators. It's their fault not ours Yes, so right but like what are the moderators gonna do, you know, like the moderators What are they gonna pony up like many millions of dollars per year moderate the moderators should unblock their their subreddits and stop protesting That's reddit's position Yeah reddit Reddit as this story progresses it seems like they're moving into Prickish moves Just just to call a spade a spade. So I will talk out of both sides of my mouth I understand reddit is a business and you know when I think about Apollo I feel bad for the developer of Apollo and the users of Apollo because They actually have a application that they really really love and these are probably some of the biggest power users of reddit through this Application so I feel for them But I don't feel terrible because you ultimately were playing in another company sandbox Who is subject to at any time make rule changes that may adversely and in this case did adversely affect you But when you start really kind of you know screwing the nails hard It's like it's like Reid Hoffman is like, you know Are you upset that you made a decision that your user base doesn't agree with and now you're calling them out Or or you want to remove all the people who don't necessarily agree 100% with the way you're running things That's not the reddit way to do stuff. So I'm surprised that that was the tone they struck because I I don't believe that reddit for a moment would start banning these You know these moderators because if they were to do that they would empty Their user base the number of users who are on reddit pretty quick and in a hurry It's you know reddit is huge is not going to it's not going to be replaced by anything else anytime soon But you could kill yourself by by basically thumbing your nose at your users and they feel like you know You are not in this for us. You're in this for yourself at our expense. That's not a good place for reddit to be Yeah, there's some interesting projects going on like lemmy in the Fed averse to provide an alternative The critical mass isn't there for them yet to really be a strong alternative Stay was true of mastodon at one point and then Twitter pushed it far enough that it did get critical mass And now it is a legitimate alternative. Even if it hasn't replaced Twitter, it's a strong enough community of its own I I don't think reddit wants to get in the position where they push lemmy or any of the others of the Fed averse efforts to that point on the other hand this strikes me as somebody trying to hide something this if if If they were arguing in good faith, this would look different This would be Steve Huffman saying, you know, I've talked to Christian selling multiple times And there's just a gap here and unfortunately the costs are such But we'll keep trying to work it out He's saying that about some of the third parties He's trying to throw shade on the four that have said they can't keep this up and imply that everyone's being reasonable But them if it stops I mean, just this go back to the IPO. Well, may you know, but you know, it okay Okay, but bear with me for a second If it stopped there, then I'd be like, well, it is just the IPO It's just a cost thing and they can't get get around it and he's upset about the people that can't afford it But he's not just drawing the line there. He's using intimidation tactics He's he's threatening subreddits by saying hey got a nice subreddit here hate to You would probably hate to lose being the moderator of it. Wouldn't you? I'm not gonna do that But I could that's that's a way to try to scare people into stopping a protest He's also trying to massage the message and say like hey I know these these developers are out there screaming about how unfair they are But most of the developers aren't and most of the users don't care. That's like political campaigning That's trying to mold public opinion. That's not good-faith negotiation to say like let's see if we can come to an Accommodation which would then show whether those third-party developers were really being unreasonable or not and that's not what he's doing So anyway to bring it back to your IPO question, Sarah That just the fact that they might IPO which he hasn't acknowledged because he can't because it's confidential IPO is Not enough to explain this to me like there's there's there's got to be something more you you could still Negotiate in good faith with third-party developers and say I can't really budge on cost with and still have a decent IPO And this wouldn't be for every single Third-party application, but I'm shocked that they didn't even have talks with with Apollo to do some type of aqua hire I mean that that app I've never used it, but I but I have heard this week that the people who do those are the power users of Reddit Those are the folks who are in every day up voting down voting and posting content So it's kind of shocking that if you know that this is going to affect them to the tune of $20 million a year You didn't figure something out to where you could make Everyone happy so to speak Yeah, it's not like reddit has not heard of Apollo and internal memos No, of course, you know, they've talked to the whole thing has been like we need to make our you know our internal Tools better You know not speaking about Apollo specifically, but like okay well Until you do that you're gonna have some upset people out there and and they have they have ground to stand on Yes, you don't get advertising money from the third-party developers work on that give them an olive branch say look if you accept our third-party ads Then maybe we can give you a break. They haven't done anything like that And Apollo's dev even said that he was willing to do that So there's there's just a lot of parts of this conversation not happening Which imply that there's something else that we're all missing Behind that Well on your next trip, you might want to you know check your favorite subreddit when you're visiting Let's say a national park in the US, but you might not be sure you're knowing about all the national parks that could be Could be visited on that next trip not to fret Chris Christiansen has your back and your backpack This is Chris Christiansen from amateur traveler with another tech in travel minute when I travel domestically in the US I travel with the National Park Passport a paper passport But there's also an app version of this called just National Park Service that has information about all 420 plus national park units within the United States and the advantage of Using either the paper or the app is you find those parks. You wouldn't have known were around the smaller parks For instance, I think of being on the big island of Hawaii and getting to Oh Now now National Historic Park, which is the second best national park name in the North America only behind Head smashed and Buffalo jump in Canada But that's a park I wouldn't have known about if it hadn't been for the National Park Passport And now you can do similar things with the National Park Service app. This is Chris Christiansen from amateur traveler Ah, very good park names that we learned today too. Thank you Chris Thank you Len Peralta for being with us drawing the show. What tech story from the week have you drawn this time? well, you know, I noticed today and part of my job is really sort of looking at the At the theme of the show and I noticed a lot of themes today of you know, obviously the Reddit API is Seems like it's very contentious You got Google Domain shutting down domains, which could could possibly be contentious And so I thought I looked at it not from each thing but from a bigger point and I created a character named wrecked and The wrecked is what I like to call the internet ruiner Coming soon. He's already here, man. He's ruined the internet for everybody, but I don't know I mean shutting down domains. Shutting down domains. He's adding new pricing for Reddit APIs. He's they called him Wrecked now. We know it's not Steve Huffman. It's wrecked. It's right. Don't blame these people It's just the the general internet of ruiner of Under your bed. Yeah, that's correct Absolutely. Well, if you like this image and you want to put it up and you're a big fan of wrecked Which I can't imagine you wouldn't be you can go to my patreon patreon.com forward slash then you get it immediately If you are a DTS lover Level backer or you can just go to my old old-fashioned way at my store At lend for all to store.com where I am also drawing monsters So if you want a monster for Father's Day or whatever your graduate, yeah, check me out So check, you know, you may want to do that Dads and grads check out lend for all to store.com Absolutely, Rob Dunwood. I don't know. I know you're a dad Not sure if you have a grad this year, but let folks know where you're Hanging out these days. So I celebrated my 17th year in podcasting. I did my first Guest appearance 17 years ago last Friday about two years after that Two years after that I started my first show which is still running today called SMR podcast We are 15 years in the game over at SMR podcast So that is where folks can go and find me and then another little show that I launched here on on daily tech new show called The Tech John that started about two years ago, but I'm also running over there as well Fantastic good good stuff and congratulations on that anniversary band. That's awesome. Snuck up on me. Yeah. Yeah, I bet Alright patrons stick around for the extended show. Good day internet We are going to play a rousing game of who had it first iOS or Android and no the answer will not always be Android. Sometimes iOS did have things first We're gonna we're gonna test the knowledge of our panel today. Stay tuned for that But just a reminder we are live and you can catch the show live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern That's twenty-hundred UTC and you can find out more at daily tech news show at comm slash live We're gonna be off on Monday for the US Juneteenth holiday But we're back on Tuesday with Patrick Norton joining us talk to you then have a great weekend This week's episodes of Daily Tech News show were created by the following people host producer and writer Tom Merritt host producer and writer Sarah Lane Executive producer and Booker Roger Chang producer writer and host Rich Strafilino Video producer and twitch producer Joe Coons technical producer Anthony Lemos Spanish language host writer and producer Dan compost Science corresponded dr. Nikki Ackerman's social media producer and moderator Zoe Deterding our mods beatmaster W. Scott is one bio cow captain kipper Steve Guadirama Paul Reese Matthew J. Stevens a.k.a. gadget virtuoso and J.D. Galloway modern video hosting by Dan Christensen music and art provided by Martin Bell Dan looters Mustafa a a cast and Len Peralta live art performed by Len Peralta a cast ad support from Tatiana Mattias contributors for this week shows included I as act are Scott Johnson Justin Robert Young Rob Dunwood 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 frog pants.com Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program