 This tenth year of Daily Tech News Show is made possible by you. Thank you so much. You, you might be Howard Yermish or John Atwood or Pat or someone else, but we thank all of you. Coming up on DTNS, Google's Paris announcements were good, just maybe not what everyone expected, plus whether the Microsoft Activision Blizzard merger is done for, and Scott Johnson tells us if game pass is worth it. Whether you should take a game pass. This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, February 8, 2023 in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. In Salt Lake City, I'm Scott Johnson. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Oh, my friends, I cannot wait to talk tech news with the lot of you. It's a good time. Thank you for being here. Enough people in a room podcasting is called a lot. So nicely done. Yes, a lot of podcasters. That's what we are. Rather than a murder. Yes. That depends on how we do on the show, whether we become a murder of podcasters. Actually, that would just be a true crime podcast. Let's start with the quick hits. Apple's App Store requires rules require any third party browsers to use its WebKit rendering engine. Now earlier this week, Google Chromium's blog revealed it began work on a browser based on its blink engine characterized as experimental only, not a launch bug for a shipable product. The Register reports Mozilla also hosts code for an iOS version of Firefox using its Gecko rendering engine, although that was last updated on October of 2022. In Q4, Uber raised its revenue 49% on the year beating analyst estimates. Analyst had also expected a loss, but Uber reported a profit. Thanks in part to $756 million from unrealized gains on investments. It saw trips in the quarter up 19% on the year to pass $2 billion for the first time and active drivers at an all-time high as well. The ride hailing business passed delivery gross bookings for the fourth consecutive quarter. So we are officially back to riding in cars more often than we're ordering food to be delivered. On the heels of the announcement of Baidu's Ernie Bot that we told you about yesterday, Alibaba says us too. We're working on a chat GPT-like system currently in internal testing. The newspaper 21st century Harold sources say that the company may integrate this with Alibaba's Ding Talk app. Everybody's doing it. Netblocks reported Wednesday that network data indicates Twitter has been restricted on multiple network providers in Turkey, including TTNet and Turkcell. The restrictions were put in place at the same time as search and rescue efforts are underway in the wake of that major earthquake that happened on the Turkey-Syrian border. Turkey often restricts social networks to prevent disinformation spreading during national emergencies, but those are usually human-caused emergencies. Netblocks says this is the first time it has implemented restrictions in response to a natural disaster. Elsewhere in the Twitter world, the company's subscription service Twitter Blue is rolling out to users in India, Brazil and Indonesia. This latest rollout makes Twitter Blue available in 15 markets now. Rather than accidentally updating help pages, as companies tend to do, Netflix is actually expanding its plans to cut down password sharing to Canada, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain. Users in those countries will be able to add up to two people who don't live in their household to their account. It's an extra Canadian 799 in Canada, 799 in New Zealand, 399 in Portugal, and 599 in Spain per month per person. Netflix says it will begin to block devices used by somebody outside the primary residence after a certain number of days, but didn't give details on how many days that would be. Main account holders will have to set their primary account location and in some cases may need to get a code to use Netflix while they're traveling. Yeah, this is how you will expect them to roll it out, like this with an announcement rather than just updating those help pages. Let's look at the quick hits. We had some fun tech event scheduling drama this week, didn't we? If you recall, Google scheduled an event on Monday and then Microsoft scheduled an event for the day before the event that Google had scheduled and then Google followed up with an announcement to try to preempt the Microsoft announcement. That's all done now. We talked about the Microsoft announcement yesterday, and the Google event that started all this tit for tat was held in Paris Wednesday morning. If it was the last shoe to drop in the sequence, I would call it a very small shoe. Let's look over what Google announced, starting with you, Scott. All right, let's start with multi-search in lens. Just to let you add text to a search that is based on an image. If you've used lens before, you know about this. For example, you can use a picture of red pants and then you type show me these pants, but in green, that makes sense, a usable thing. It's launching in beta in the U.S. to start off. Google translate also getting more contextual translation options later this month. This is actually kind of cool. For instance, if you write novel in English, it'll know there are some choices. And maybe from the context, whether you mean novel as in novel, a new thing, or novel as in a book. And lens is also getting a feature to blend translated text into the image that it came from. All right, so far so mildly interesting. Immersive view in Google Maps is expanding to full cities. If you had used immersive view before, you could only use it on a few hundred tourist landmarks like Tokyo Tower, for instance. So now you can go into five full cities from an aerial view, zoom into specific locations. And in the cases of airports and train stations and some shopping centers, you can even go inside buildings. A time slider is kind of the cool part here, lets you see what the location looks like at a different time of day, including expected weather and traffic conditions. First cities to get it are London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Tokyo. Maps is also getting more EV driver features like a filter to find just the fast chargers or the ability to add charge stops to a short trip. Now the big thing everybody expected were details around Bard. This is Google's version of chat GPT. Google said Monday that Bard is being used by quote unquote trusted testers right now. The promise will become more available to the public and for testing in the public in the coming weeks. Google demonstrated how Bard will be able to summarize a search using the question quote what are the best constellations to look for while stargazing unquote. The response included the usual search results but then Bard added a few key options and how to spot them. Yeah that was cool. So they're like we're not gonna pretend like Bard can get everything right so we're gonna give you a few options. They call this NORA which is named after my niece. No it's not. It stands for no one right answer. So they're like you know what we're not trying to be the oracle here we're just trying to give you some options. However sometimes it might mean that one of the answers is just plain wrong. For example a gift shared by Google on Twitter shows Bard answering the question what new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my nine year old about and of the three NORA responses one of them was it took the very first picture of a planet outside of our solar system except that's not true. As NASA states on its website the first picture of an exoplanet was taken in 2004 17 years before the James Webb Space Telescope was launched. Google responded this by saying yeah that's why we're launching Bard with a trusted tester program before widening the availability. They want to catch those kinds of things. Still haven't taken the gift down though. I mean the whole idea of no one right answer that comes into practice all the time in life but of those answers one of them shouldn't be just category wrong. That's an oversight. Google obviously probably rushing maybe part of whatever implementation they wanted Bard to show off to impress everybody and of course everybody focused on this whole thing of like well Bard isn't ready for primetime. Google saying we know but we had to do it. Look what Microsoft did. But you know the whole point of these things whether it's chat GPT or Bard or anything else is they are just predicting one word at a time what the most likely next word will be. They are not trying to tell whether it's true or false. Yesterday Microsoft went at great lengths to explain how they're going to correct for it getting things wrong and they had filters and checks and all the safety stuff. Even then they still put in their fact. Sometimes we will say wrong things and when we do please report it. That's how we can train it to get better. This is an example of Google not doing that. In other words it wasn't Bard that posted the GIF. Bard created the responses and then someone didn't check them. And it's an example of how you shouldn't rely on these things to be truthful yet but also you need to be extra careful and this is not a good look for Google when it's trying to say well we're going to be extra careful. Now I know that Google did not mean for this to happen. Of course not. It's embarrassing. Although if you kind of think like okay how would this somehow help any of us going forward with wrong information. I could sort of see something like this be part of an educational part of Bard or any chat GPT chat bot like service where let's say you've got multiple choice questions for students and you know the chat bot is going to surface something that is clearly wrong and if you know your information then you kind of know to say aha I see what you're doing and I'm better than this. Yeah but then wouldn't Bard have to know it was wrong in order to tell you whether you chose right? Well yeah I mean this would definitely be like in an educational circumstance you know I'm trying to be like you're trying. No I appreciate that. How could this work because if nobody knew that you know what what NASA versus the James Webb's space telescope were saying then you know we would all just be like okay I guess it's true but people are like no that's not true. And so there's something to be said like there's something to be said about human information in this context. I think there's a difference between what Bard in the context of Google and giving you information and having big warnings that's saying hey this information may or not be correct if you find it in correction please mark it here because that is how these things get better is a lot of people using it and then marking the incorrectness I'm fine with that. What I'm not upset about well what I find interesting is that Google didn't do that themselves. This wasn't something that Bard just put out by accident this was a gift they chose and looked at and then held up as an example of Bard working and so they failed to catch the thing themselves. I think that's I think that is significant. The big takeaway for me and the only thing I would add here is that this is a bit of a gold rush and you're going to see the seams while they do it. Neither of these companies want to be the info seeks and the you know likeoses of the path. They don't want to be that. They want to be in the front edge of this thing and they're going to stumble a bunch trying to beat each other there and I think we can expect more of this weirdness but in the end I think it'll be good. Well Microsoft wants to buy Activision Blizzard. We're all aware of this. Here's the latest. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority released an initial view that Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard would further consolidate what it called Microsoft's strong position in cloud gaming and therefore could result in substantially lessened competition for UK gamers. The agency suggested remedies to its concerns including divesting Activision's publishing unit which owns the studios that make Call of Duty just a tiny little game no one's ever heard of as well as possibly selling off Blizzard all together. Now as an alternative it also said it would consider enforceable commitments that would guarantee rivals continued access to games at the same time they're released for the Xbox. That's something that Microsoft had said it would be willing to do. The CMA also asked both companies to propose their own ways to ease the concerns. It will publish its final decision on whether to allow the acquisition by April 26th. Yeah I feel like what we're looking at here is a very real possibility that Microsoft could back out of the deal if they get too nitpicky about it because at some point you have to look at that number that they offered $69 billion or excuse me $1 billion or the B and decide where that value is coming from. If they force them through regulatory means to just chip and peel away until the husk is left whatever that husk is that isn't going to be worth that amount of money and it may not be worth the trouble for Microsoft to have gone that far. So I think that's where this is headed unless something as simple as Microsoft already being willing to do it if something as simple as them saying look we'll let these be out day and date on PlayStation. I'd also like to know what they mean when they say that because when they say day and date on competitors are they going to force Microsoft or Activision Blizzard or anyone else to put their games on platforms like say the Switch which is a competitor in that market but it's not the same competitor that device doesn't play the games in the same way they would have to make way cut down versions of these games to work in that environment and so there's not an equal playing field already as it is as close as you get to that is Microsoft and Sony. So are they just talking about their chief competition or are they talking about the entirety of the business are we talking PCs like it gets a little muddy when you start really thinking about what that request means and Microsoft's being willing to do that probably means they're willing to do that for their chief competitor being Sony and not really anything else. I mean they're fine on the PC side too but I think there's a lot of stuff there that gets really in the weeds and if it gets too much into the weeds and it chips away enough at this deal I don't know why Microsoft would continue to push it. Yeah that is the question right because this is obviously a negotiating tactic they know Microsoft is not going to sell off Blizzard in order to get Activision Blizzard and just end up with Activision they're certainly not going to want to sell off Call of Duty's publishing arm so this is a negotiating tactic to say well it could be worse we could make you do this to get the deal what you got and that's when they get into the weeds and I've just got I think you nailed it. The question is can they come up with language that adequately describes what Microsoft is willing to do that satisfies the UK CMA and that's just for the UK. Don't forget we've got the US and the EU going to weigh in on this as well so this is far from over. That was that was going to be my question before we move on is okay let's say in a scenario the UK I don't know gets what it wants and says okay Microsoft and Activision Blizzard you're going to have to figure out something else would there be different rules in the US and absolutely yeah yeah and that's where it gets real messy there could be I'm not saying there absolutely will be but they're absolutely could be so the problem with that is is they need the European market they need the Asian market they need the American market they need North America they need South America now like if they really want this deal to be worth 69 billion then they they need all those markets yeah so just to say wow we'll just live by the rules in the US it's just not going to be worth the money the the the thing that could also happen is if the UK CMA were to come do an agreement the EU and the US could look at that and say that's a pretty good agreement if you agree to that here you know it could have the effect of speeding things along too you just don't know folks if you haven't thought about something on the show and you are like gosh what's their email address I know I could find it at the website but I'm listening right now and I'd rather Tom would just tell it to me well I'm here for you feedback at dailytechnewshow.com Xbox Game Pass that's that cloud service that the UK CMA is so so concerned about having a too strong of a market position because it's often held up as an example of game subscriptions done right if you're unfamiliar you can pay ten dollars a month for console game pass that gets you to access to more than a hundred games on the xbox series x and s as well as the xbox one you can also pay for a different plan called pc game pass ten dollars a month get you access to more than a hundred games on a windows pc or you can get both for fifteen dollars that's game pass ultimate and that'll not only get you the console and the pc but smart tvs android and ios via the beta cloud gaming option scott has been spending a good amount of time with this service scott how do you think it works and do you think it's better than the alternative subscription services out there you know you got gforce now and others sure well in the case of microsoft's game pass they started um it's been a while now a couple years that i've been using it pretty solid i'd say oh gosh right around the time i got my series x and uh by then they had it in a pretty mature format so that people could just start using it and uh there were a few things that weren't there yet but at the very last minute they added some some bonus stuff like if you do the ultimate edition on consoles you get ea play which is a selection of ea games as well and on the pc just having the pc game pass gets you those ea play uh get you a play access and i've used it all um benefits are are all over the place i'll mention a couple of them uh one is all of your progress in games you may play on the xbox if you have ultimate will be saved in the cloud and that progress will be resumable or continuable on the pc and vice versa um that's four games that are on both platforms they're not always that way but most of the time that's true certainly first party games are always that way in terms of the service overall having spent enough time with it and also spent time with playstation's new three tiered plus system uh i've spent time with the middle tier that is and various other subscription services around gaming gforce now everybody else in their dog um i do think that game pass is the best one on the market as of right now and they have a sizable head start they have a ton of video games they got a lot of third party content um some have argued it's too much and it's hard to make a choice in what to play my argument is uh there are a bunch of sort of non triple a let's call them triple b titles well let's just call them a titles that in the past were a little bit harder to find or pick up because you're like do i really want to spend 39 on this thing i've never heard of might be good might not be good i don't know game passes this great way of saying here's a lineup of games some of these you were never gonna buy because you just don't know anything about it or whatever and now you can just download it and try it or better yet you can just stream it and try it before you even download it i'm more of a download it and play it on the hardware kind of guy because streaming you know still has its hits and misses but the fact that that's part of this has has been a nice benefit for me when i'm on the road or whatever and overall point for point stack it up against what the competition has available to them this is the superior service for now i think that sony has a desire to catch up and they want to i don't think they have near they have a lot of legwork to do before they get there is the best way i can put it um and microsoft's kind of run away with this a little bit so it doesn't mean that you uh suddenly you need to throw your playstation away sony's got lots of cool options and all of that but if you're looking for the best bang for your buck in particular ultimate is just kind of the best thing going and my biggest concern is it will not stay as inexpensive for long as it is right now i feel like the price increases probably coming i don't want to jinx it by saying it but i just feel it down the road now when you save $15 per month is the best bang for your buck it clearly is as far as options go and you mentioned that uh you're you're you're you prefer to enjoy a game not streaming just because there are less limitations but how many folks do you think are taking advantage of you know smart tv gaming and pc gaming xbox gaming and mobile gaming and using all of those options well more and more clearly but um i still think it's secondary to the to the way that you would want to play the most like if you've got a big 4k tv and you've got a series s or x you're going to download those games that you want to play you might stream them first to make sure it's a game you want to play right that's really cool because i don't need to wait for my isp to download uh the 80 gigabyte game to see if i like it i can just quickly hop in and go oh this is all right you can even get far enough in that game to save two or three times and when you do the full download because you're like i want the full experience you'll do that download and that progress comes with it so you don't lose anything by testing it that way and you also don't lose anything by saying up i gotta go somewhere i'm going to be on the bus for an hour pull out your phone and continue that game on your phone assuming you have the bandwidth to get to the office or whatever these are all possibilities that are either not available through other services or less convenient or less built in uh in terms of functionality so getting a game seeing if you like it first playing it deleting it reinstalling it keeping your saves across the board that stuff is easy said and forget it not hard at all super simple and it becomes it's become the kind of service that i don't know like certain streaming services that i like i just know i'm always going to be paying for that now if they suddenly said well we've decided it's uh 50 bucks a month i might have issues but i think at 15 it's very hard to find a better value in game subscriptions and it's funny to act like there's a ton of them there really aren't there's not a million game subscriptions this is a new idea kind of and they're a major player with a new idea and the back the back end to handle it and others who are also major in the market be be they sony nintendo or whoever they're playing catch-up partly because they don't have billions of dollars of azure servers just waiting for them to use them and in some cases they do but they have to pay microsoft to use them so yeah that's what that's what sony's do it they're they're paid for space on azure yeah yeah exactly so it's it's a it's a it gets a little complicated when you get into those weeds but this is this is the thing that they've been banking on this is their strategy i think so far it's working do you think someone could get away with just game pass because i mean with games costing 60 dollars 15 dollars a month if that's all you have to pay it's going to save you money is that going to work for anybody oh 100 there are people who the way that they game is you know everybody's a little bit different i'm checking out stuff all month but a lot of people are like i'll try this one game and three months later i might look at another one some people only buy madden once a year um some people play everything they can get their hands on but you're not getting all the games all the time are you you you have access to everything in that game pass library anytime you want it but not all the titles you might want are in there i guess is what i'm saying well exactly so like there are obviously sony titles you're never going to see on the platform but even third party titles that don't make it there or make it there later sometimes microsoft gets a hold of one and has it for six months so most of the titles you would buy for an xbox are in there yeah for if you're talking first title or first party uh almost well all first party is in there yeah when i say all i mean you know there may be some older titles are there yet or whatever but if you know when when a new halo comes out you will have it on game pass day one got it when you have a new version of gears of war that comes out you'll have it on day one the the big first party stuff and these new studios that microsoft has bought the fezda id software maybe activision blizzard those all show up now on game pass and they are a game pass game whether you buy and you can still go buy it if you want you buy it on steam if you want to in some case you can buy that stuff on your playstation if you want to like a death loop is an example of that but these games are there permanently if you're paying for the service and they never go anywhere there are third party games that come and go but most of those have long lives on game pass some have been there since day one of them never left so i'm not sure what the rules are uh on third party stuff because some do leave but for the most part stuff stays and even if it does leave they say well this third party game is leaving how would you like to pay 65 percent less for it in the store and have it permanently outside of game pass so they get you on that end as well um all of that just makes for a really well-rounded experience with very few limitations it's a strong it's a strong play well thank you scott for living with xbox game pass simply to talk about it here on dtns i know you would never would have subscribed otherwise right no it's my only reason they're scott that's right yeah anytime uh if you like this conversation and you want to hear more of what scott has to say as well as if you're like well wait a minute what about gforce now what about the other options out there i know there's not a lot of them uh we are going to get together a round table led by scott uh featuring max scoville and trisha hearseburger uh later this week they're going to discuss how the different game subscription services stack up and how game subscriptions are disrupting how we consume games uh so look for that in your feeds uh after friday a good weekend listening for you well whether or not you're gaming while on the road you might be traveling soon and you might have noticed that many cities such as rome have multiple airports now if you're unsure whether that airline ticket you booked to rome in italy is really going to land at the airport you think it's going to land at chris christensen has a tip for you this is chris christensen from amateur traveler with another tech in travel minute you're probably aware already that every airport has a unique three-letter abbreviation that's called an iata code iata the international air transport association it's good to know the codes for your local airports i once spent 15 minutes trying to convince someone at jfk that he had just booked my luggage not to san jose california sjc but to san jose costa rica sjo but did you also know that there are metropolitan area codes for some cities rome for instance rom london lon new york city nyc and chicago ci and those can sometimes help you find a good alternative flight to a different airport in the destination where you're going this is chris christensen from amateur traveler that is a good tip yeah for for sure especially london i've used that where it's like oh it is a little cheaper and better times to maybe go to gatwick or something like that instead of lhr yeah i have to go to chicago in june for a wedding and i know word but there are other there's midway there are other options yeah exactly good stuff uh thank you chris anybody ever went to paris and went to paris texas by accident well there's also that right yeah like knowing the codes does paris texas have an airport is the best oh yeah good you'd probably figured out before you got the paris but i think it might but it wouldn't handle most of the flights that people are booking to paris that's for sure all right let's check out the mailbag this is a good one from germain who wrote in about an idea he's had for several years germain says it's become old had in the tech sector to say that apple is nothing but iterative but replacing the iphone pro max with what i call the let's say iphone x he doesn't mean 10 he just means you know x you know because it's not been named yet could create differentiation and help kill that iterative view in short the iphone 15 or 16x whatever would be a public beta product this would be the phone where apple says here's what we want to put into the public over the next couple years try it out germain says as long as they're straightforward with the marketing and don't pull the google glass thing telling everybody you have a consumer product when you have a public beta thus create the disappointment that was google glass in the eyes of the general public it could work not to mention they generate a lot of revenue from the apple fangirls and fanboys who would spend extra money on such a product this is a really intriguing idea that i would love if apple took from germain uh and as good as the idea is from germain because i i think it's a it's a fun fun way to like generate sort of a less than zero information yeah chance that apple would apple just doesn't like doing stuff like that they want everything they put out to be perfect and if it's not perfect they'll tell you that in fact it is perfect you're wrong yeah exactly so i just can't see them doing it but i love the idea i love this i love this thought germain i do too i like the idea of okay let's say it's not apple but another company saying this is a hardware beta you are used to hardware betas but maybe not as far as smartphones go because we're all used to the smartphone being as perfect as possible when you know it's finally released and you know if it's not then it gets fixed quickly and the company is super embarrassed about it but if it was a public beta to begin with that's a little different anybody just see people see it as a i don't know apple apple sees it as well then then we're not giving them magic anymore we're we're showing them how the sausage is made yeah and we don't want to show people are the way we make our sausage and i i just can't see apple ever doing it but i think it's a fine idea yeah apple actually till we'll tell you it's not sausage it's a fine cut of steak right well they'll say it just works yeah because that's us yeah but yeah i i do actually i i think a lot of people would prefer the public beta an option of this as germain is laid out i don't know maybe we'll see more of that in the future yeah cool idea thanks for sending that germain indeed and if you have cool ideas do send them our way feedback at daily tech news show thanks to you scott johnson for being with us today let folks know where they can keep up with your work sure if you are interested in hearing more in-depth discussion around the video games business from the big corporate wranglings all the way down to what we played this week we have a show for you it's called core you can find it on thursday nights and anywhere you get your podcast just go search for core and find us at frogpants.com slash core and i guarantee you will hear me talk about more than just game pass maybe we'll talk about sony stuff this week oh i don't know maybe and i'm really looking forward to friday's thing as well so check that out and get prepped cool also a special thanks to matthew stevens matthew stevens you know who you are but for everybody else matthew is one of our top lifetime supporters for dtns and we want to thank matthew for all the years of support thank you thank you matthew look look the folks who were new supporters yesterday someday they'll be like matthew so you know i you you can start on the path to being like matthew today thank you matthew for supporting us at patreon.com slash dtns speaking of patrons do stick around for our extended show good day internet what will we talk about today you can also catch this show monday through friday at four p.m eastern that's 2100 utc find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live we are back doing it all again tomorrow with brian brushford joining us talk to you then this show is part of the frog pants network get more at frogpants.com diamond club hopes you have enjoyed this program