 This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you, including Hi-Tech Oki, Jim Hart, Logan Larson, and our new patron, Kim! Welcome, Kim! On this episode of DTNS, what would you pay for a Disney Plus and Hulu combo app? Amazon looks to replace Android in its Fire TV line, and Humane's wearable AI device is real, everybody! This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, November 9, 2023 from Studio SecretPunker. I'm Sarah Lane. From Columbus, Ohio, I'm Rob Dunwood. I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. And joining us today is Tristan Jutra, host of A.I. Named The Show, and also the Momentous Podcast. Prolific Podcaster, you've got a friend in us. Tristan, welcome. Too much free time, apparently. Until you have too many podcasts, as I've learned, and then you don't have much free time at all. But we're really glad to have you with us today. We've got a lot of good stuff to talk about. And let's kick it off, starting with the quick hits. Privacy-focused app Signal launched a public test today to let users sign up without a phone number through a new beta build available in its community forums. Signal VP of Engineering Jim O'Leary says, after rounds of internal testing, we've hit the point where we think the community that powers these forums can help us test even further before public launch. Activision Blizzard wasn't super bullish on its Overwatch League early this year. And Thursday, the company confirmed that the league the first was announced in 2016 is being sunsetted. The Overwatch League was based on a home and away matches, eventually culminating in a playoff series and world championship. Omega, the anonymous video chat service that you may not have heard of, but many people use that randomly connected users with strangers is shutting down after 14 years. Founder Leif K. Brooks said that operating Omega is no longer sustainable financially or physiologically, and that fighting to prevent it from being misused was simply too much. Omega's shutdown comes at a time when strict legislation to prevent things like child sexual exploitation is being introduced by lawmakers, and Omega did not feel that it could properly mitigate those risks. In its latest quarter, Sony reported operating profit fell 29% between July and September due to weaker performance at its image sensor and financial divisions. Profit for the quarter was 263 billion yen or $1.74 billion, which was below estimates. Sony has also cut the number of live service games it plans to release over the next few years, in half. Sony originally planned to have 12 live service titles in the market by its fiscal year ending in March of 2026, and that was up from three during its last business year ended this March. Reportedly amidst the PlayStation exec team saying it partnered with Destiny Studio Bungie for rigorous portfolio review processes, some projects have been scaled back. Things happening at Sony, things also happening at NASA. NASA launched a free on-demand streaming service inside the recently updated NASA app. NASA Plus, because of course, what else would it be called, is NASA's first on-demand streaming service and available on most major streaming platforms, Android, iOS, Apple TV, Fire TV, which we'll talk about later on the show, Roku, and the web. NASA Plus is focused on news and educational content including updates on current missions, behind-the-scenes videos, live streams of interesting events, and documentaries and docu-series. Alright Rob, let's talk more about what Disney Plus and Hulu might get us. Well, Disney CEO Bob Iger announced that the company will launch a beta test of a new app next month combining Disney Plus and Hulu in a single experience for subscribers of both services. Disney is still in the midst of closing its deal with Comcast to buy out NBCUniversal's 33% stake in Hulu. In a filing last week, the company said it would pay at least $8, excuse me, $8.61 billion to Comcast to secure its Hulu stake. Can you imagine if it was like just $8, okay? Homeboy Shopping Network prices is just $8, yeah, cutting prices. Tristan, are you a Disney Plus and or Hulu user? And if so, or if you have either, would you like a combined product? Well, when Disney Plus launched in Canada, I gave it a pass the first year. I did like a free month trial, watched I think season one of The Mandalorian. But at the time, the content on there was mostly kid and family oriented. We don't have any kids here. So we waited until the next year, when The Mandalorian season two came out. And then not too long afterward, I think we started to see the schedule coming with all of the Marvel series and not too long after that, they acquired Disney acquired Fox. So we started to see stuff from FX and Star and all things coming together. So yes, we got in when Disney Plus was cheap. And of course, they keep ratcheting it up every year. Like all the streaming services seem to nowadays. Now here in Canada, we don't actually have Hulu, but some of what appears on Hulu shows up on another service that's a Canadian service called Crave, which is owned by one of our telecom companies here, known as Bell Media. And you can get Crave through your cable provider. And it's basically kind of like you get HBO Canada through that and a bunch of other stuff. So I'm a little confused. Like, so this is going to be for people who subscribe to both Hulu and Disney Plus in the US and they'll get a combined app experience. So if they subscribe to both, they can access Hulu through the Disney Plus app. But if you're Hulu only, you still got to use the Hulu app. And if you're Disney Plus only, then you still use the Disney Plus app. But there's still just two apps. There's not going to be three. Is that what I'm understanding? That's how I understand it as well. Rob, I know, I know you have some thoughts on Disney Plus and Hulu, both having content that you like. And what do you think is might be a good, a good move here by the two companies to combine. Combining these two apps together could. I see it as a good move because there's, I would imagine that there are quite a few people like me. I actually cancel and resubscribe to Disney Plus fairly regularly because there's only certain shows on Disney that I watch. You know, I can only watch a Marvel movie so many times. I can only watch a Disney movie so many times. So for me, it's really when new Star Trek content comes out. So I will, you know, when new Star Trek comes, content comes out, I'll get about halfway through the season. Then I will subscribe to it, watch an episode or two a week. And then when that season is done, I cancel and wait another two months for the next Star Trek thing to comes out. This probably would keep me from doing that because I also use Hulu and I watch stuff on Hulu every day. So in my mind, if I'm paying for both and I have a unified, you know, app, I probably don't think, oh, I need to go cancel Disney, the Disney part of it. I probably just leave everything running. So if there's more than just a few people who are like me, this would actually make financial sense for Disney to do this. Well, in financial sense, hopefully, but also just, hey, one app instead of two. You know, that's just that much less time you have thinking about where is that, you know, show that I want? Is it Hulu? Is it Disney Plus? Tristan, you mentioned the Mandalorian. I'm with Rob and I do this not only on Disney Plus, like the Mandalorian is a show I like very much. When it's over, I just stop paying. No, not to say that the Disney Plus, the library isn't robust in many other ways. But yeah, a lot of kids content, it just depends on what you're looking for in a household. You know, are you a single person like me with a dog? Probably not caring about all that much Disney stuff. But sometimes, but I do the same thing. I've done that with HBO for years, Netflix for years. You know, anytime I'm not penalized from saying like I'm out and I might come back later. I've done YouTube TV plenty of times, you know, outside sports season. I'm not paying for it. Are they doing an exit interview every time you cancel? Thankfully, no. But I mean, if they were to, I'd say it's because you guys just don't have what I want anymore. And I'll be back maybe. Game of Thrones effect for sure there. I would add that because of some of the box office performance of some recent Disney movies, there is a very real impetus, especially the theme parks, not bringing the revenue that they expected. Iger is under the under the gun to kind of turn things at least in a more positive direction, finance wise for the company. And if you can make the Disney Hulu service more sticky, so as Rob was saying, people aren't ditching it as soon as they're done binge watching their Mandalorian or Marvel series. And then, you know, waiting the three months and then resubscribe again. If you make it sticky enough, you can at least have a consistent level of revenue. One of the things that, you know, Disney was doing was bundling Disney Hulu and, of course, ESPN. And over the last holiday shopping season, they bundled Disney Plus as well as the Hulu, the ad version, which is what I'm paying for right now, five bucks a month, right? So the idea is to make it super attractive. And instead of splitting your attention between two apps, everything's in front of your face. And so, hey, I don't need to see, I don't see need to see the little mermaid again for the fifth time. I can go watch, you know, whatever is on Hulu, whether it's an old season of X files or something new. You know, the idea, of course, is to keep and retain, which is the problem right now is to retain the eyeballs. Well, their losses have been, whether it was the previous fiscal year, they lost $10 billion on the streaming. And now it seems, it's a bit less, but it's still, they're decreasing their losses. That's the good news. Anything they can do to reduce churn would definitely be helpful. And to your point, Roger, if you're keeping both the Hulu and Disney Plus stuff in people's face, maybe they'll be encouraged to keep both. Yeah. I mean, if you have both in a single lap and you're paying one fee, you see it as the one thing. Right now I see Hulu and Disney Plus is two separate things because they're two separate apps on my device. And so psychologically it makes a smarter play for them. I wonder what's going to happen when the, when Disney, sorry, NBCUniversal finally divests and then it's just Disney holding the bag. Are we going to have that NBCUniversal content eventually disappear and will Hulu be less attractive proposition? And I mean, that could also well be like you gotta fortify something all around. Yeah, there's something, I mean, the Hulu saga will never end. I mean, maybe it will, but it certainly hasn't since, I don't know, I first heard about it in 2007 when it was a very, very different prospect. You know, this is, this is the early days of streaming television. And Hulu is now, you know, it's a very, very interesting player in the game, has lots of content associated with Hulu. To put Hulu and Disney Plus together, I think is very smart. And I mean, unless it's $26 a month, I don't know, maybe it will be, but probably not. I think it is in the best interest of people who maybe have streaming service fatigue to have more bang for your buck in that one app. And it's a quick little footnote. One of the things I understand is that Disney will be re-architecting things a little bit for parental controls, because once you bring all that Hulu content in there, it's not all of it's quite so family friendly and whatnot. So, a bit to do under the hood. Well, Janko Rockers writing for lowpass at lowpass.cc reports his sources say that Amazon is readying a new operating system to replace Android on its Fire TVs and smart displays and other connected devices that use the Fire TV ecosystem. Reportedly known as Vega internally, the new OS has been tested on Fire TV streaming adapters and Amazon has told select partners it plans to transition to a new application framework soon. Although no exact date or at least not that one that we know about. Now, Rob, you're in the Fire TV ecosystem, so let's talk about what you like about it and what might benefit from a refresh. So I am I own a couple of fire TVs. I have a fire stick and I even somewhere around here there is a fire tablet. I could honestly care less what they do with the operating system on the television or on the stick. If they change from Android to something else on the tablet, in my opinion, they will sell significantly less than they sell right now, which is not all that many. So, you know, like I said, I simply don't even use that Android tablet because it doesn't feel like Android. So if it's not Android, there's really no reason for me to ever pick that up or to ever ever purchase that. Now, that's just me. There may be people who really love those devices. I know a lot of folks get them for their children because they are so inexpensive and they're in their fairly rugged. So maybe that's the play for them. But as a tablet, I just do not like Amazon's version of Android, you know, you know, on those devices and this would just push me even further away. But what I mean, if you don't like Android on, you know, the Amazon version of Fire Android, you know, what who's to say that the next generation, you know, known as Vega apparently might not be better. Could be. I just wouldn't. Trust me, I just don't want. I've seen Amazon do these things before and, you know, like, you know, it's like, I don't believe what you say because I see what you've done. I just I don't know that I would trust that. So, you know, Android is a pretty solid operating system. It doesn't feel like Android when you're running it on a fire tablet. So maybe maybe maybe you're right, Sarah, maybe the fact that they if they do just completely move away from Android to make it something else. But now you know, you've got to you now got to compete with these giant Bohemians called Android and called iOS. I just I don't know that that's going to work for them. Tristan, what do you think? What do you think about, you know, Amazon's own version of Android? Do you have experience with the fire TV ecosystem? Well, not so much the fire TV ecosystem in our households since we're pretty in the bag for Apple. So we've got Apple TVs all over the place. But when the fire, the first fire tablet came out, I think it was the Kindle, the original Kindle tablet. And it was after they bought from my wife, Stephanie, the original Kindle came down to the States to get it. And that was one of the keyboard and everything. It was wild. We still have it in a drawer somewhere. But then the first the Kindle tablet came out that was basically had a was running a nerfed version of Android. It was I'm not even sure if they called it fire OS at the time. I think it was a Kindle fire tablet. It was a little one. And it was fine, except it was weird. Like down to Rob's point, it's Android, but it's kind of not because you didn't have access to the full Android ecosystem at that point. So, you know, I'm not sure not having had direct experience with what's happening on the fire sticks and the fire TVs. The way I see it, though, is this is maybe going to further fragment things? Are they getting not invented here syndrome? There's, you know, why not hit up ties? Samsung, maybe they got a good deal on ties in right now. But I see that. But I get it from a strategic point of view, wanting to own the whole stock. Speaking of the alternative OSes. But you know, just like with Apple and Tim Cook saying, oh, we want to we want to own all our key components of our key technologies and our products. Maybe Andy Jassy is thinking the same thing when it comes to Amazon. Like why are we relying on a third party operating system that we have to customize when we can build our own from the ground up? And maybe it'll let us do more data mining than Android lets us. I mean, I like to think I'm not an Amazon apologist of any kind. But if any company needs its own OS, it's Amazon. Well, I mean, it's also Google and Apple and, you know, the variety of other companies. But it's also Amazon. I'm frankly shocked that we haven't been talking about this until now. Now, not to say that, you know, all of a sudden fire TVs are going to be running, you know, Amazon OS or whatever. But it does sound like the company feels that they've probably gotten enough feedback from like what you said, Rob, is like, it's fine. But it's not anything great. You know, it's like, you know, Amazon forked version of Android that, you know, is is just not going to impress anybody. And Amazon is a company that can that can reimagine this. I'll be interested to see where it goes. Especially if they do something interesting like LG, how they adapted web OS. It's quite a different interface. I mean, most of what we're seeing on streaming sticks and streaming boxes are just glorified web apps. Right. So, you know, it would be great to see Amazon do something different than your rights there. There's that's there being an OS has been conspicuous by its absence, an Amazon native OS. So maybe maybe they were thinking the operating systems were a thing of the past since, you know, everything is web now. And who knows what the next thing is everything. I suspect that maybe it's going to be deeper AI integration because they, you know, they've been kind of quiet. I mean, they invested in Anthropic recently. They were kind of ahead of the gate with Alexa, but, you know, their commitment to Alexa has seemed suspect over the last year or so. And they've recommitted to it, but maybe they're going to double down and this will be like the AI TVs. Well, y'all, if you're ever wondering what Tom Merritt thinks the top five technologies are impacting the world of news reporting because nobody would know better than Tom Merritt. You're going to want to watch Tom's top five this week. This is the show where Tom breaks down the top five things you need to know about technology. News reporting is top of mind this week. Catch it this Friday, youtube.com slash daily tech news show. It's powered by a Qualcomm snapdragon processor and comes with a built in camera, deaf and motion sensors, Bluetooth, a speaker called a personic speaker and a green laser projector. The green laser projector is used to project visual information onto your hand. Yeah, so the device doesn't automatically record or listen for wake up. As you might expect a device like this would it needs to be activated by either tapping and dragging on the touchpad. The pins trust light also blinks when it's collecting data. So, you know, when it is listening, so to speak, the AI pin runs on an OS called Cosmos. Are you listening? Amazon that uses an AI framework called AI bus to eliminate the need for users to manage their apps or at least cut down on the need for them to do that. Humane says that chat GPT access is one of its main features on the pin, but its press materials also mentioned collaboration with Microsoft in addition to open and open. Interesting. The verge suggests the idea behind the pin, if you're kind of going like, do I really want to put something, you know, on my lapel? Well, how is this going to help me is to remove all of the user interface clutter and have a straight interaction with a large language language model. Using either voice or simple touch or both. An analog to the way that people interface with LLMs and generative AI using text prompts. The price for the AI pin $699 plus a $24 per month subscription fee, which also gives the phone number and data service through T-Mobile's network. So you get, you get something here, but this is an ongoing cost. Wired reports that pre-orders begin November 16th and will start shipping in early 2024. Tristan, I don't know if you saw humane's initial TED talk. Oh, yeah. You know, at the time, and we talked about it here on DTNS, at the time we went, seems interesting. Also seems vaporware ish. Like, what is it? We didn't know. That was months ago. So what do you think now? Well, they've been operating under the radar for the better part of four or five years now. And I think that's why people were so surprised when the, Imran Chowdhury did his TED talk back in the spring. It's like, where does this come from? And hence the vaporware talk. And when we watched that at the time, a little skeptical, some cool ideas. I actually kind of dig the projection onto the hand, especially if you are in a situation where you can't grab your phone out of your pocket to do things. That's sort of neat. And they actually, one of the things they revealed today that wasn't alluded to in the original TED talk, I believe, was the ability to sort of interact with your hand. So by tilting your hand one direction or another, you could select some of the options on the screen and then tap your fingers together, not unlike what we've seen with the Apple Vision Pro, to actually choose the item that you've selected. So there's some, obviously some human interface challenges that they are addressing. One of the things that I was wondering about is, like, do you have to have the voice talking to you? Or can you have it with the speakers? Or can you have it in earbuds? Sounds like it's got Bluetooth, so that's less concern even though. One would think. Yeah, yeah. But apparently they're pretty quiet, pretty directional. Like we've seen with the Meta Ray-Ban glasses as well. So that all that kind of beamforming and whatnot, it seems to be happening. But in a lot of ways, like I'm excited. This is the, you know, is this the Star Trek communicator? Come to life. I have a lot of questions. I have a lot of other thoughts and concerns when we dig into this. But there's potential here. Yeah, yeah. I don't know, Rob. I mean, we talked so much on the show of, OK, well, you know, we've all got smartphones or, you know, many people who are on the show or listen to the show do. And OK, you know, our smart glass is the future. Is there some sort of AR, you know, pass through situation that, you know, we haven't thought about that. That's, you know, like the Vision Pro, like you mentioned, Tristan, that's going to be something that is just status quo. Or is a company like Humane thinking a little outside the box to the point where you just have something that's attached to you and you can use, I don't know, a hand or a piece of paper, you know, all sorts of things that that doesn't require you to fish something out of your pocket or a handbag of some kind. I so want this to work. This is a device for me. I don't know the first iteration. I think I need to see the second one come out when it's been proven to be a good idea. But if they if they ever make this thing look like a communicated badge from, you know, from Star Trek, I know I'm wearing a Star Wars shirt right now, but I'm just a bigger fan of Star Trek, maybe even a little bigger. If they make it look like that, I'm getting one just because. Right there with you. Yeah, but this this is really cool technology. The fact that you have a device that you can wear and it is your computer. I mean, and they make the voice if they make it the, you know, the I can't think of a name off the top of my head, but the lady who actually did the voice for the, you know, for the bridge computer, you know, TNG. Yeah, if they did that, yeah, I'm just getting one. But this is really, really cool technology. And, you know, the fact that you could, you know, just, you know, you get a message. You need to see it real quick. You hold your hand, you know, you know, close to your chest and you just read and then you're done while you're walking down the street. I am really into this technology. I just hope that it actually works and they can bring this to fruition. And, you know, it is going to get some mass adoption. And anything that you attached to clothing is all going to depend on the clothing that someone wears. And, you know, is there any friction involved in this and that what I what I equate this to most closely is a smart watch. I mean, I wear my Apple watch all day every day. I mean, unless it needs to be charged, but I even wear it overnight. You know, I'm into it, but it's a thing that has to pair with a phone. And I assume that, you know, humane's model will as well, you know, for a certain amount of information. But it's also something that I have to wear, you know, I have to wear in lieu of something else on my wrist or, you know, instead of nothing at all, which a lot of people prefer. It's great, but it's not perfect. It's a great sort of, you know, tech thing that does a lot for me. But I still don't feel like it's really a standalone product. Well, if it was good enough for all those runway models at Paris Fashion Week, Sarah, you know, we should be able to figure it out. Who am I? Who am I? And now it seems like humane has thought through some of the practicalities. One of my concerns out of the gate, when I first saw the original demo at the TED Talk was like, well, is this a clip? Is this a pocket? What if you don't wear a shirt with a pocket? I wear turtlenecks in the winter. How's that going to work? But they do have a wide variety of accessories. Some are included. Some are add-on. So they're coming out of the gate with a whole accessory ecosystem, you know, Alla GoPro and others where that's where the margins are, right? So for your $699 US, you get the AI pin, you get a cable and adapter, you get a charge pod, you get an extra battery booster. And so you put the front goes on the front of the front of the device goes on the front of your shirt. The battery booster goes on the back and so it's magnetic sticks together nicely. There is a tiny built-in battery so it doesn't lose its state while you're swapping the batteries out and they didn't mention in the launch video with the two co-founders, Imran Chowdhury and Bethany Biongiorno, who are both Apple alumni. And there's other Apple alumni working with them as well. Ken Casienda, who worked quite heavily on the Apple keyboard. So these are user interface experts, thoughtful design type people. You get a charge case with it, which looks like a futuristic AirPods charging case. It looks like shiny metal. So they have thought some of the wearable aspects through. There's also an optional clip to attach to different types of clothing or handbags. It's rotatable. There's a latch for thinner, delicate clothing or for workout wear. And there's different shields to customize the front so you can do different colors on there. So Rob, you could designate your rank in Starfleet perhaps by your choice of color. But the price? The price upfront? Sure. I know. We kind of glossed over that through this entire conversation. The price is it's high and listen, you know, early adopters, you know, they're going to adopt. I, you know, the price gives me pause. I want someone to try it out and then tell me that I need it. Quite frankly, the upfront price concerns me less than the $24 per month each and every month. That's neat. For a separate cell phone plan with T-Mobile. I mean, I get that this is not attached to your phone. So it's, you can't do like an add on five or $10 a month plan like you can do with iPads or Apple Watches through some carriers. But that's a heavy lift if you're already paying for a cell phone plan. But you know, it's unlimited to talk, text and data. It's got cloud storage. So it's more than just the cell access through T-Mobile. No details for Canada yet. But if it was, if it was $10, maybe even 15, that would be a little easier to swallow, but an extra, you know, almost 25 bucks a month. I don't know about that. It also, this is something that I went through with my Apple Watch. Again, apples and oranges. But at first I did pay for a cell plan because I thought, you know, let's see how often I need it. The answer was kind of never because it's just so rare that I don't have my phone with me to pair to. You know, it just, some people are like, oh, I'd love to not take my phone on, you know, my next jog, you know, out the front door. I just have it with me, you know, I want to take photos and, you know, there's so many, so many reasons to do that. So I'll love to see how many people find a subscription like this worth the money. And Tristan, we're counting on you. So you let us know how it goes. Well, they, I'm sure we got to wrap it up. We've got lots more thoughts on this. And Tasia and I will be digging into it on the show next week as well. But I mean, are we, is this take us into an AI field dystopia where we've got things on us all the time with their, even with their safety lights? Oh, I think, I think we're already in that dystopia. It just, you know, let's just talk about how far it goes. But Tristan, you did mention AI named the show that you and, and Tasia Custody host together. And I know you've got other stuff going on. So let folks know where they keep up with your work. So you can follow AI, us and AI named the show dot com. We have new episodes drop every Friday, midday Pacific time. And Tasia and I also co-host another show called Momentous Live that usually we live streams on Tuesdays. And then the podcast version comes out a couple of days later and we get to get around to it. And that's just like general tech. It's like, it's like a, it's like a low rent version of this, but just once a week. And that's a momentous TV. Don't say a sound joint. Come on, you know, AI named it after all. Well, we're so happy to have you on the show. Thank you so much. I hope to have you again soon. Just a reminder to patrons, stick around because we have an extended show, Good Day Internet, where we talk about more stuff. We're going to talk about what Microsoft wants you to know, or at least wants to know about you when you ditch one drive, if you do. But just a reminder, our show is live. DTNS is live Monday through Friday, 4pm Eastern, 2100 UTC. And you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We are off tomorrow for the Veterans Day holiday in the U.S. But we will be back on Monday with Alice and Sheridan joining us. Don't miss it. Have a wonderful holiday, everybody. Our mods, Beatmaster, W. Scottish One, BioCow, Captain Kipper, Steve Guadirama, Paul Rees, Matthew J. Stevens, a.k.a. Gadget Virtuoso, and J.D. Galloway. Mod and video hosting by Dan Christensen. Music and art provided by Martin Bell, Dan Looters, Mustafa A. Acast, and Len Peralta. Acast adds support from Tatiana Matias. Patreon support from Dom McNeil. Contributors for this week's shows include Chris Ashley, and Scott Johnson. And guests on this week's show included Tristan Jutras. Thanks to all our patrons who make the show possible. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. I hope you have enjoyed this program.