 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners. That is you, thanks to all of you, including Paul Thiessen, Ollie Sanjabi, A.B. Puppy, and our lifetime supporter, Doug Inman. On this episode of DTNS, AI is coming to Google Maps. We have more momentum ahead of Apple's Vision Pro launch on February 2nd, and Justin Rubber Young breaks down the Kids Online Safety Act. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, February 1st, and on February 24th, happy February, everybody. From Studio Animal House, I'm Sarah Lane. From Columbus, Ohio, I'm Rob Dunwood. From deep in the heart of Texas, I'm Justin Rubber Young. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Well, before the show, I had two power outages that one might say was related to LA Rain, which we're having, but apparently, I just can't plug too many things into one outlet. So, yeah, that's tech for you. All right, without further ado, let's get into some quick hits. Comcast will stop using terminology over its Xfinity 10G network brand. Comcast lost an appeal of a ruling that found the marketing term misleading. After both Verizon and T-Mobile challenged, Comcast's advertising of 10G. 10G references 10 gigabit broadband connectivity speeds. Xfinity doesn't actually offer those speeds. Comcast said the term 10G was to represent 10th gen from Comcast and was found to confuse consumers, surprisingly, and seemed to be a way of countering 5G hype generated by wireless companies. One day after Apple's Apple Vision Pro initial release to reviewers, many of them posted a flurry of hot takes post embargo. Apple has fixed a zero-day bug in the mixed reality headset that may have been exploited by hackers in the wild. Apple released its Vision OS 1.0.2 with a fix for the vulnerability in WebKit, the browser engine that runs Safari and other web apps. Apple said it exploited the bug allowed malicious code to run on an infected device. It is not immediately clear if malicious hackers use the vulnerability to specifically exploit Apple's Vision Pro. The US Consumer Protection Product Safety Commission has recalled SNAP's pixie-flying camera warning users to remove the battery and stop charging the drone due to four reports of the battery bulging, one fire, and one minor injury. Full refunds will be issued for the entire drone and any batteries owned by customers if the drone is in fact returned. The CPSC reports that SNAP sold about 71,000 units, so not a ton, but hey, just takes one fire, though the number of drones is fewer since that includes batteries sold separately in some cases. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced that as part of the company's latest earning report that Google subscription services, including YouTube Premium, YouTube Music, YouTube TV, and Google One Cloud Storage hit $15 billion in revenue in 2023 with descriptions up 5X since 2019. Without providing a breakdown of the revenue, the service Pichai did say the company's Google One Cloud Storage service is just about to cross 100 million subscribers. The service originally launched in 2018 starting at $1.99 per month and offering users 100 gigabytes of storage shareable with five people but has evolved to add extra perks. Meta announced its QuestVR headset line is getting an update to play Apple's Spatial Video Format in 3D video shot in 1080p at 30 frames per second with its V62 OS update, which is also adding PlayStation 5 DualSense or PlayStation 4 DualShock controller support for the Quest and browser support for controllers for game streaming. Facebook's live streaming and expanded hand gesture quick actions are also part of the new update. So let's talk about a little bit what's going on with Apple here. So Vanity Fair's Nick Bilton has a write up. Apple was probably holding until the day before the Apple Vision Pro launch with interviews from Apple CEO Tim Cook, Hollywood producer and director James Cameron, John Favreau and others within Apple. The point of the story is to highlight the incredible ways to watch TV on the Vision Pro. Yeah, if you've seen this Vanity Fair report, Bilton himself says, yeah, I didn't used to be interested, now maybe I am. Listen to all these visionaries talking about how the future of how we watch televisions and movies will change with the Vision Pro. And that may be the case. We're definitely not there yet though, although Apple did today announce that over 600 apps have native support for Vision OS and will be available on the Vision Pro when it launches in the US this Friday as of this recording, that is tomorrow. Now that is up a pretty significant amount from the around 150 apps that were natively supported on Vision OS about a week ago. Doesn't mean that iPad apps and iOS apps wouldn't be supported, many millions of those would be. But again, these are apps for Vision Pro specifically. Streaming and sports apps like Disney Plus, IMAX, Max, MLB, NBA, PGA Tour of Vision, and Red Bull TV have all been optimized to take full advantage of the Vision Pro's spatial design elements and immersive capabilities. Basically, Apple is leaning very, very hard in on this is how to watch content in the future. If you're a soccer fan, you can subscribe to MLS, Season Pass, and the Apple TV app as well. With the NBA app, rather, and an NBA League Pass subscription, for example, Apple says basketball fans can use a multi-view feature to watch up to five broadcasts live or on demand, view real-time stats, scores at a glance, and stuff like that. We have a bunch of other apps that have come on board to be natively part of Vision OS. We've got Air Mail, we've got Box, Carrot Weather, some of these we've talked about in the past before, but the list is growing. DJ, Fantastical, J Crew, Lowe's, Navi, Night Sky, the list goes on. So, Justin, it does seem as though Apple is saying we need to win over a lot of developers, and we know this, but what you can do out of the box is watch some stuff in ways that you've never watched before. And I think that's where we're seeing Apple understanding that that's their killer app. That's the one thing that you can buy this, and no matter what, it will blow you away. It seems like in all the reviews that I have read, that is 100% on point. A lot of the downsides of the reviews are its bulkiness, whether or not the hand tracking always works, but nobody has said that the screen's bad. Nobody has said that the immersive element of it is anything less than the best-in class for a device like this. And Apple is in the entertainment business. Apple TV is something they've invested a lot in. They essentially put in so much money into their deal with the MLS that they got, Lionel Messi to play in a tiny stadium in Miami, and they're going to make sure that you are able to experience what they believe is the best-in-the-world way to experience entertainment on this device. And for something that you're paying $3,000 for, hopefully you can at least get that. Yeah, they had to make sure that movies look real good on this because the use case right now is that it's going to be folks who had the disposable income to afford these in the most part. Clearly there are some developers who have bought these because they want to develop the killer app to come out. But for folks who have it right now, they're going to be watching movies on planes and trains and other forms of transportation. So Apple had to absolutely make sure that that part is just top-notch. And from what the reviews are saying, that seems to be what they've done. Now, I am more of a practical person. Okay, what else is this thing for? And it does a lot, you know, it does a lot. The reviews I've read, the reviews I've watched are actually saying, this is arguably the best VR headset that we've ever seen, but it's still kind of, there's not a lot you can do with it specifically because it is a VR headset other than look at really, really cool movies. And the funny thing is that Apple is trying so hard to say, well, this isn't just a VR headset, this is spatial computing. It does so many other things. However, what it does really well and so many, you know, the partnerships that we already have in place are designed to make you sit back, relax, and enjoy something in VR. There is nothing wrong with that. I mean, I'm a Quest fan. I've talked about this at length. I think VR is extremely cool if you get the app or the experience that's right for you. But yeah, it will remain to be seen how much this will win over people who just don't get it. What Apple wants this to be is the iPad experience. People only thought of an iPad as a consumption device initially. It has since blossomed because of the power on it to be a laptop replacement for a large amount of the public. The problem with the Apple Vision Pro is that it's priced as a laptop on your face now. So you better be able to do some work on it in the meantime. It's a great consumption device, hooray. So it shouldn't be too surprising that Google is bringing generative AI to Google Maps. Generative AI is pretty much being added to everything. The ability, however, to help users find cool places through the use of language, large language models may help Google turn maps into a search engine for places, something the company has been laboring to do for years. Yeah, so most Google Maps users can find directions from point A to point B with the easiest of ease. We're all used to this at this point. Some are familiar with finding fast food places near me or as I looked on earlier, power outages near me or I don't know, a department store in your area, that kind of thing. New generative AI features though would allow a user to ask Maps specifically to find what they are looking for like places with a vintage vibe in San Francisco. So yeah, so this is actually really interesting to me because Google, as I said, they for years have been trying to figure out how do we turn maps into a search engine? They've been doing this for five or six or seven years. And now because they're adding VR to every VR, they're adding AI to everything, this is something that we're gonna add to it anyway because it just makes sense, they're adding to everything else, but it actually may help Maps become that thing that they want it to be because I look at it, like right now, it's hard to search Google for very, very specific things. You kind of have to already know what it is you're looking for, but if I just said, hey, I'd like to pay some frisbee in the park, can you show me, I don't wanna say the word because my devices are starting going off, but you say, hey, word, can you show me places where I can buy a frisbee near this park? That's not something you really can do today, at least not easily. And I see the promise of that with something like adding large language model support, I don't know why I get time to listen to these platforms. What this is good for and will be good for, and let me just also say, it's not when it's not if, this is going to be everything. I very much believe that with generative AI, especially with the companies that are gonna have to put it in all of their products, we are gonna fundamentally look at things like search, different by the end of this year than we do right now on the cusp of February. But for maps right now, the value of this is not even saying anything that you might be using as a search term. It's place for a first date that the large language model knows, okay, for a first date, you want something a little fancy, but you don't wanna spell all that out. If you wanna say, great, if I'm on the road and the Pittsburgh Steelers are in a playoff game, great place to watch a Steelers game. Now, instead of me searching the web for where the Steelers bar is in that town, it's gonna know immediately how to find that in a way that a SEO world isn't going to be the best at. Well, yeah, and I mean, going back to the whole example of like vintage vibe in San Francisco, it's like, think about that first date. Maybe you know enough about the other person that like, maybe they'd be impressed by this kind of vibe, but how do you explain that in SEO search terms? That would be really hard or a little bit too time consuming. So it's a little bit more of like the, instead of saying, all right, well, search has to be dumbed down to make it like, I want ramen near me, go. And more of like, ramen near me, but warm and lively and good music kind of thing. You know, one of the biggest things I saw which had GPT when that first came out was people that were great at searching and had learned all the tips and tricks of searching, quotes and plus and all that, you had to unlearn that when you're talking to a large language model. So for example, on the Austin subreddit, there was somebody that posted in there, I want a steakhouse with Wolf of Wall Street vibes and a bunch of people had a bunch of recommendations because they know the area, but a large language model will be able to unpack that in a expedient and scalable way. So one of the things I want to point out here is that Google knows that they cannot mess mats up. So what they are doing is they're not just going full-born to this, they're going to be working with local guides. That's the community of contributors who write reviews, share photos, answer questions, edit places and check for accuracy of Google Maps. So they're going to be working with them at least initially to make sure that people who still search the old way are still able to get from point A to P. Well, just to remind everybody that all these companies continue to race towards whatever the horizon of AI is, Google also launched a new AI-powered image generator called ImageFX developed by Google's DeepMind team and underpinned by Image2. ImageFX offers a prompt-based UI to create and also edit images. Similarly to how you might do on Dolly or Mid Journey, Imagine with Meta and Microsoft Designer. Artificial intelligence is moving fast and that's why you need to listen to AI name this show. Each week Tristan Jutra and Teja Kastodi examine the hype versus reality to keep you informed about the latest news in the AI world. Catch it at www.aionametheshow.com. Yesterday, the CEOs of Meta X, TikTok, Discord and Snap all faced allegations by U.S. senators that their platforms were harming child safety and raising questions about what they could be doing and doing differently. One of the more eyebrow-raising things to come from this session is official support that Snap and X and Microsoft gave for COSA that stands for Kids Online Safety Act. Critics contend the bill could allow censorship of important self-harm and suicide prevention material and could also be used to target LGBTQ content. All right, Justin, I know you've been following this closely, so where are we? Well, before we get into COSA, I do just want to highlight what I think probably the majority of the clips that folks who are listening to this show saw about this hearing online because it was not only the typical grandstanding that you see in Congress, it was especially circus-like. Many of you have seen a clip of a Senator asking leading questions to the TikTok CEO, something that we saw a lot of last year. Lindsey Graham, Republican Senator, compared social media to guns and cigarettes and said that blood was on the hands of all the CEOs. That's charge language, even for Congress. And Josh Hawley, Senator from Missouri, got Mark Zuckerberg to stand up, turn around, and apologize to parental rights and children's advocates that were there in the hearing room. This wasn't just animated, it was animated beyond the level that even I was expecting. And the reason why I wanted to highlight this is just to point out to people that part of the reason from the political side that this happened is because there was a hearing a couple months ago where a Republican Congresswoman, Elise Stefanik, asked charged questions to presidents of Ivy League institutions. They answered those incredibly poorly. And two of them are now no longer presidents of those institutions. So there is blood in the proverbial water when it comes to grandstanding. And I just want to highlight to people that that's part of the reason why things got animated as they did. It was definitely very performative. Very, very, very performative. I would also say this, I don't think that any of those CEOs have to worry about their jobs, like maybe those college departments did, because it looked clownish at times. Because I actually watched, I didn't watch it from beginning to end, but I probably took a look at a probably good 30 minutes of clips. And it's like, okay, at some point though, our government is gonna have to figure this out. There are real dangers here. The tension is high, everybody's fever is elevated. They've got to figure this out. So they've got to get beyond the, I don't want to say name calling, but it kind of did dip into that at some point. They've got to get beyond that. And actually, okay, here's what we can do to actually agree on some type of compromise to where we are going to do something to make it better than what it is right now. Well, it's also right now, they're in a very, very easy spot. When we were saying the blood is on your hands, then okay, so what are you gonna do? What are you asking them to do immediately, aside from saying your product has an undue negative influence on teenage girls? Okay, well what is their solution or what is your solution in terms of the government? With that being said, let's look at the specific law or the specific bill that is going around and that's the Kids Online Safety Act. Scope-wise, what COSA does is targets covered platforms such as social networks that connect to the internet and are likely to be used by minors. The bill exempts certain entities like internet service providers, email services and educational institutions. It mandates that covered platforms provide minors or their parents or guardians with settings to restrict access to minors personal data. Parents or guardians must also have tools to supervise minors use of the platform, including control over privacy and account settings. Covered platforms are required to disclose information about the use of personalized recommendation systems and targeted advertising. The bill prohibits platforms from facilitating advertising to on age restricted products or services like tobacco and gambling to minors. It requires platforms report foreseeable risks of harm to minors using the platform, creates a duty to act in the best interest of a minor and also has research access, control and limitations and independent audits. None of that is particularly controversial. What is controversial is this, the threshold of what harm to minors is defined as. And that's where not only free speech advocates but also some of the platforms that have not signed on to that are blinking a little bit because they want something far more detailed that can't be stretched. So now all of a sudden the platforms get dinged for something that they otherwise wouldn't have and they feel did not have an ability to look out for or might fall under some of the gray areas that were brought up earlier. Suicide prevention, LGBTQ plus issues and specifically some of the more controversial elements of our modern world, including good children's trans healthcare. Like that those are issues for which we have tremendous divide in terms of belief on whether or not that is considered harm. And the platforms don't want to have to play referee on that if they don't want to and they would not like to be forced to do it by the government. Well, and there are other issues, not exactly these issues, but that have come up in the past, such as no nudity and it's like, well, what about a mother breastfeeding type thing? Or what about someone who is trying to raise awareness for breast cancer? There are lots of gray areas that an algorithm is just not gonna get right. Case by case, sometimes the company can say, yeah, yeah, sorry, let's do things a little bit differently. We're learning as we all are going forward. I think that's the biggest issue really here is that you have these huge, huge, huge money-making platforms saying, we're doing our best. We don't want anybody to get hurt here. We don't want anybody to have a bad time here. But they don't exactly know how to fix all of this stuff. It's a long process. Now, I'm not saying that some of these companies couldn't do things differently because very clearly there have been some huge missteps, which is why we're in the situation that we're in right now. But yeah, as we mentioned this on yesterday's show on DTNS is the whole one-size-fits-all thing simply just doesn't work in any case like this. I think one of the things that companies aren't gonna say this, but this is what they want. Legislators, legislators tell me what the law is so we can apply it and basically run our organization by what you say the law is. Stop making us try to figure out what's best so that you can basically waffle, we went too far, we didn't go far enough. You tell me what the law is, let me actually apply the law that you actually write as compared to trying to make us figure out how to solve this problem. Like, so they're not gonna say that, but that's where they wanna be because that gives the company cover. If the company says, well, this is what the law is, we are abiding by the law. If there's a problem with that, go talk to your congressperson and get it changed. Like I said, once again, they're never gonna say that, but there's no question that back in some of these boardrooms, those are conversations that don't necessarily get recorded in the notes that are happening. Oh, there's a reason why a lot of these companies have signed on and they're the bigger companies because there's also an element of regulatory capture to this, if complying with these laws requires a lot of staffing or requires more money to set up a more sophisticated algorithm to track stuff, then the larger companies are gonna wanna do it because they know that it'll be harder for competitors to come in onto their corner. I don't think that this is going to be done anytime soon. I think a lot of the stuff here is fairly commonplace, but anything that deals with free speech on the internet is going to face stiff resistance and until you see some of the folks sign on that have not and I'm mostly circling meta here, then there is going to be fight back and negotiation from the lobby inside. Absolutely. All right, let's check out the mail bag, Rob. So Matthew chimed in on our GDI story from yesterday on generative AI in the fashion industry. And you write, I've worked in the footwear and apparel industry for almost 20 years, Timeline's typically run between 12 and 36 months with buys getting locked in six to 12 months before things hit the market. Agencies are mostly doing supply chain analysis rather than actual forecasting. Pantone's color of the year isn't some type of intricately researched guess, it's known because they can simply look at the chips and formulas they sold two years ago for the current production year. The fall sweater, I should say the fall sweatshirt and sweat pants was known issue and it was locked because fabric vendors and orders were locked in the same way that means she quote, predicts Apple movements with chip suppliers. These agencies have a direct access to many companies, vendors, et cetera. They are also packaging known things and smaller player to smaller players. They are incorporating AI machine learning solely because the entire footwear and apparel industry is unbelievably risk averse right now. And to be truly, you know, to be truly innovative and trend forward requires a large investment and nobody wants to do that unless the return is guaranteed in which it never will be. The industry would rather trust poorly constructed quantitative data than will research qualitative data. AI and machine learning is a way for the industry that has seen a qualitative position to change itself into a quantitative one. Oh, Matthew, that is such good intel. Thank you. It really is, yeah. I never knew that about the Pantone thing. I always just thought it was like a big stab in the dark but that makes a lot of sense. No, it absolutely is not. So personal experience on this, I have a friend who actually works in the fashion industry. And that was one of the things she would always say is like, yeah, I think that these trends are coming out. Like it's just somebody said something this is cool for the spring. And it's like, no, we knew that was cool two years ago. I remember distinctly having those conversations. So what Matthew is saying here absolutely confirms that. I mean, I made a joke about devil's product yesterday, but it's like, that is a, if you haven't seen the movie, I hope I don't spoil it, but Meryl Streep goes through a very long, like you're wearing this blue sweater because five years ago something happened and it all trickled down to the point where you're wearing this blue sweater. We all know what we're doing and it's been going on this way for a very long time. So yes, again, Matthew, thank you so much for that intel. We also got an email from Kevin from Milwaukee who chimed in on our future of TV conversation. We had with Charlotte Henry from Tuesday's show. Kevin says, I just want some background noise that Sarah brought up while watching TV is a real thing. And one of the reasons that my wife and I like cable. On cable, we can always turn on Big Bang Theory and then do whatever. It's a great show. It's always entertaining. We've seen it so much we don't need to concentrate on it. I would love a way to go to Netflix, select multiple TV shows and then maybe a weight distribution for each show to create a channel that I can just let play. We flip on the food network for the same reason. Someone else is curating a random list of programming. It's very contrary to the current binge watching style that I would like support for some sort of replay channel. Now Matthew, sorry, Kevin and Tom went back and forth on email and Tom said, have you heard of Pluto TV? Which Kevin had not. Kevin, if you're enjoying Pluto TV which is just one way to have a curated list of cable-esque without being cable channels, ad supported of course. Yeah, that would be great for you to weigh in on later on. But yeah, I was talking about watching reality television saying, all right everybody, I get it. I get what it is. I know what I'm doing, but I just want something on in the background sometimes. When I'm making dinner or folding clothes or whatever, and that is the promise of cable that I think a lot of the cord cutting solutions still seem overly complicated to replicate. Yeah, these fast or free ad supported television services like Pluto, like Samsung TV, 2B TV, I mean there are a myriad of them out there, but they are awesome. I absolutely love Pluto, and I would say that probably a good 15, 20% of my watching is on Pluto because where else can you go and watch Riptide followed by the 18 followed by Night Rider for 12 hours a day of each one of those programs? Yeah, yeah. I mean, full disclosure, I worked for Pluto TV for a little while back in the day, but yeah. When I would tell people like, oh, here's what I'm doing. Just log in and get a sense of it. They'd be like, this is so awesome. Wow, cool. And I just don't have to think about it. Not everything television or movie related needs to be mind numbing, but for those of us and Kevin, I think you're with me on this. Sometimes there are quite a few options you might not have known about that does exactly what you're looking for. Justin, Robert Young, you always bring the knowledge that we're looking for, so thank you for that. And let folks know where they can keep up with the rest of your work. Well, I will be back on the campaign trail tomorrow. I'm heading out to Nevada where there is both a primary and a caucus next week for the Republicans and one of them counts and the other will assign the delegates. Why is all that the case? Well, in my episode next week, I will tell you, it is the legacy of a political legend's desire to shake up the calendar. A man who died before he was able to see the fruits of his labor that was misappropriated. Go ahead and subscribe now, politics, politics, politics, wherever you find your podcasts. Indeed. Well, patrons, you know that our show doesn't end here. Good day internet rolls right along after we wrap up DTNS. Today, we're gonna be talking about new features for threads, the X or Twitter or whatever you wanna call it competitor that makes it yet more like X or threads. But just a reminder, you can catch our show live Monday through Friday. We are live at 4 p.m. Eastern. That is 2100 UTC. You can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Tomorrow, it's gonna be a fun day. We're back talking about the Apple Vision Pro release with none other than Terence Gaines and Nika Monford of SnobOS Podcast and Eileen Rivera, who happens to be my new co-host on Apple Vision Show. We'll talk to you then. The DTNS family of podcasts. Helping each other understand. Time and Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.