 Daily Tech News show is made possible by you, the listener, thanks to all of you, including Jim Hart, Logan Larson, Mike Acons, and new patrons Ingrid and Steve. Yay! On this episode of DTNS, 25% of CEOs say AI will eliminate jobs, accounting software sent 900 innocent people to court and sometimes jail, and Fujitsu says, it's really sorry about that. Plus, Peacock sets a record for streaming with an NFL game. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, January 16th, 2024 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Animal House, I'm Sarah Lane. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. How does it feel not to have CES? Oh, Tom, I feel like it feels different for me than you. Limpin' Back, you did the hard part for the rest of us. Thank you. Well, and the avalanche is over. Thank you for helping me sustain under that. We do have news, though, right? There's good news. Good news, everyone. Let's start with the quick hits. 13 years ago, Samsung nudged Nokia off the top spot in worldwide smartphone shipments and has stayed there until last quarter. Both Canales and IDC agree that Apple shipped the most smartphones worldwide with 234.6 million shipments versus Samsung's 226.6 million. China phone makers Xiaomi, Oppo, and Trangin round out the top five. Oppo makes the OnePlus and Realme brands. Trangin focuses on selling phones in the African market. And if Apple wants to keep its top spot, it will need to revive sales in China, where CounterPoint estimates its sales fell 11% on the year. The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple has been advertising big discounts on iPhones in China ahead of the Lunar New Year. The smartphone market as a whole was down 3.2% on the year, reaching its lowest volume in a decade. Good news, I guess, some. In November, some users noticed that YouTube.com was loading slowly if they had their ad blocker running. And at the time, YouTube acknowledged the fact. Yes, if you have an ad blocker running, it might impact site performance. So it was reasonable to assume this week that the return of slowdowns to YouTube.com when ad blockers were running was another round of YouTube's war against ad blockers. However, this time, YouTube says, it's not us. A representative told Android Central recent reports of users experiencing loading delays on YouTube are unrelated to our ad blocker detection efforts. And ad block found a bug in its latest update that may be the actual cause of this round of slowdowns. Also, UBlock Origin says its users have not experienced the slowdowns. The US Supreme Court has declined to hear both Apple and Epic's appeals in Epic's lawsuit about the app store. So that means the Supreme Court did not see enough reason to weigh in, leaving the lower court ruling as final. The lower court also ruled that Apple was not anti-competitive, but that Apple should not prohibit app makers from lining to the web in order to pay companies directly. That means that developers can include buttons, external links, or other ways that direct customers to the developer's own website for purchases. In a similar situation, the EU's Digital Markets Act goes into effect on March 7th, and Apple has indicated it will operate the EU app store separately from the rest of the world as it must allow side loading there under the DMA. The US Customs and Border Protection Agency has approved Apple's modification to the Apple Watch that would let the company avoid a ban on selling Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra II models in the US. The US ITU ruled that Apple's implementation of a pulse oximeter violated patents by a company called Massimo, and the models were briefly paused from sale before Apple received a stay on the ban. Apple's proposed modification would be to just remove the pulse oximeter feature altogether via a software modification. The whole thing is a legal thicket though, because none of this means anything immediately. Existing watch users will not have the pulse oximeter function removed. New watches won't have them removed either right at the moment as Apple waits for a decision on an appeal to the ITU ruling. Apple asked for a stay on the ban to be extended during the entire period of the ITU considering its appeal. So I guess the upshot is, pulse oximeter might go away in software for new Apple watches if Apple loses all its appeals. Yeah. Microsoft has made co-pilot AI available to all Microsoft 365 users on the $30 per month plan, no matter the total number of users on that plan. Co-pilot launched in November and was limited at first to organizations with at least 300 users. Divya Kumar, global head of marketing, poor search and AI at Microsoft said, given the demand and interest we've heard from small and medium-sized businesses, we're removing that 300 seat minimum. Oh, very nice. All right. Have you heard about this UK Postal service, Fujitsu thingy? Well, it has sort of Tom and it sounds kind of messy. Let me tell you a story. All right. From 1999 until 2015, the UK Postal service used Fujitsu's Horizon software for its accounting. During that time period, a bunch of sub-postmasters and post-mistresses were prosecuted for theft and false accounting when money went missing from their branches. Cause you know, if money goes missing from your branch. It was assumed that maybe somebody was pocketing some things, yeah. And they would go to Fujitsu and Fujitsu would say, we will provide evidence, we will testify that nobody but sub-postmasters could access or alter these records. So if the records show the money went missing, they're responsible. Which means that some of them went to prison. Some of them fought the charges and were financially ruined when they lost their case and had to pay for court costs on top of financial penalties. But it turned out later that the money was missing because of an unknown bug that allowed remote access. That at some point Fujitsu was unaware of, but at some point became aware of. And the big question now is when did they become aware of? The UK Post Office knew about the bugs as early as 2010 according to the head of the Post Office, Mr. Patterson. Only 93 convictions have since been overturned. Thousands are waiting for compensation settlements because this isn't an issue. Everybody's like, yeah, the software was a problem. We didn't know it was a problem. We should overturn these convictions, but the bureaucracy, right? The bureaucracy is slowing things down. Global Chief Executive of Fujitsu Takahita Tokita said this week that Fujitsu has apologized for the impact on the Postmaster's lives and their families. So that helps, right? It's a start. Fujitsu Europe had Paul Patterson said the company has, that's the, Mr. Patterson I was mentioning earlier. Fujitsu Europe had Paul Patterson said the company has a moral obligation to contribute to compensation for sub-postmasters wrongly prosecuted as a result of its faulty software. So that's better. Moral obligations, not the same as guaranteeing it though. Right, yeah. And finally, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that his party will introduce legislation to clear all sub-postmasters and postmistresses convicted of wrongdoing as a result of the horizon scandal. Oh my goodness, Tom, where do we start? Okay, so first off, if Fujitsu had a bug in its software that was wrongly accusing people of stealing, that is not something that Fujitsu was doing on purpose. Let's just assume that, right? Fujitsu didn't know about it. Nobody was trying to falsely imprison people, but that's a really, really bad thing. The fact that then the company and the post office kind of became aware of it. And yeah, some people got compensated but not the vast majority of the people who were wrongfully accused. We're not talking about me being like, hey, you owe me 10 bucks. This is like, I went to prison. You owe me years of my life, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the fact that this is even dragging as much as it has been is a real shame. Yeah, all credit to Computer Weekly for breaking the story 14 years ago says work with Toby in our chat and to Private Eye Magazine for keeping the story alive. Also popularizing it recently, an ITV drama called Mr. Bates Versus the Post Office really put the issue in the public spotlight, particularly the case of Mr. Bates who joined the post office in 2019. So right, right, or 2015, I think, right towards the end of this, but yeah. I think Mr. Bates is the one who lost $300,000 in this and would like that back since he was not in fact guilty of anything. I mean, there are many, you know, when convictions are overturned for a variety of reasons, not just this case, you know, there is compensation and you think to yourself, okay, what's the appropriate compensation? There kind of isn't one. You know, there is no monetary value that will give you back years of your life. Yeah. It's one thing if you just had financial problems, but if you went to prison, that's kind of hard to put a price on. Right, and even if you had financial problems and they were able to, I don't know, give you all the money back, it's like pain and suffering, you know, that's all part of this too. It's pretty terrible and the fact that it just goes back to like software, oh, that buggy software never works right, doesn't it? I mean, that's a tough one to swallow. It really smacks of a company that didn't want to admit there was a problem. Right. In other words, it was not evident that there was remote access and a company given uncertainty would like to choose the fact that it was not their fault and so they did that. And I think they maybe thought they could get away with it because they weren't sure if there was a problem for a while and then once they became sure, they had already testified that there was not a problem and so, you know, it's harder to say, okay, we lied earlier when we said there wasn't a problem because there was a problem. Well, yeah, I mean, Paul Patterson, you know, snowball rolled downhill. Europe had seen like, I had a feeling, something was weird. As of 2010, so it took them 11 years to have a gut feeling but then five years, they kept going for five years thinking like, I have a gut feeling but I don't want to get in trouble with my boss so I'm not going to push it. Well, I mean, we've all been there, right? You know, like, oh, I think I might have screwed up but I don't want anybody to know that I screwed up. That's okay. That's one thing, but hey, when you're a company of this magnitude, especially dealing with, you know, people who are, you know, working for the people, it is pretty terrible. Yeah, and this is a big story if you're watching the BBC and if you're in the UK and it's a software story. It is a testament to needing strong pressures whether they be legal, public or otherwise for companies to be transparent about their bugs and get them fixed. Indeed. Also a big story over the weekend. Peacock's AFC wildcard game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Miami Dolphins was the most live stream event in US history, accounting for 30% of internet traffic during the broadcast. The game had a total of 27.6 million viewers with a peak average of 24.6 million during the second quarter. The game, however, did not come without controversy. Many viewers complained about having to sign up to a streaming service to watch an NFL playoff game which historically has been a free thing to watch on terrestrial television. Oh, Tom, can I even tell you how many text messages I got over the weekend of like, Peacock, how do I get Peacock? I wanna watch the game. How do I get Peacock? Did you send them a let me Google that for you link or how did you handle it? I mean, one would think it's like, I don't know, just like Google Peacock and Peacock.com and probably some sign up thing. But this just goes to show you people being like, well, hold on, it's kind of like the Amazon Thursday night football thing, which happened a year ago where people were like, how do I do that? Like, well, go ahead and download the Amazon Prime, Amazon Prime app, whatever it is. Prime video, yeah. Prime video, exactly. It's just that much harder to watch something that a lot of people are going to be talking about. Of course, Kansas City Chiefs also means Taylor Swift. So I think that gave it a little bit of a boost as well as far as viewership. But yeah, I watched it, good game. Yeah, it's one of those issues where everyone complained ahead of time that they had to get Peacock to watch this. And then apparently they all got Peacock because it was the highest watched, it was like up a bunch over the previous Peacock exclusive game, which was a regular season game a month ago. And frankly, it's not that hard to get for most people. Yes, there are edge cases. And I expect to hear from you about those edge cases of somebody you know who's a big football fan who doesn't have a solid internet connection or lives in a rural area where streaming is not possible. Just so people who don't live in those areas know, in Kansas City and Miami, which were the two teams playing, the games were broadcast over the air. So locals who are fans of these teams were able to get it over their regular television stations. You could also get it on NFL Plus, the mobile service, and you could get it on Peacock as well. So I feel like this is the same thing that happened when cable came along in the 80s. I remember my grandpa complaining that the St. Louis Cardinals games were moving to cable and he didn't have cable and he didn't want to get cable. And he didn't, you know, he was complaining that, oh, I have to get this thing to watch the games. Well, then I just won't watch them. And it seems like a lot of people were in that same mood over the weekend. My grandpa solved it by coming to our house to watch them, at least sometimes. In this case, it seems like most people just went, wow, it's not that much for just one month and I actually have the internet and I could sign up and I could watch it. So I'll do that, you know? Because TVs mostly have Peacock built in as an app these days, new ones anyway. It reminds me of the old days of, you know, if you wanted to watch the big boxing fight. Yeah, get a pay-per-view, you know? And some people were like, yeah, I'll do it. And other people were like, well, I'll pay but I don't know how to do it. And then you have people like me who were like, yeah, I don't care that much. You know, I'll just hear about it later. Granted, when I'm thinking of the golden days of this, there was no internet to just look at the score live. But yeah, we're only going to see more and more of this kind of stuff. It's like, do you want to watch this, you know, specific prestigious game, whatever that game may be, whatever the match may be, you have to see it this way. Yeah. Don't have Peacock? Well, you know, sign up and then cancel later. A lot of people are gonna do that. Unlike pay-per-view too, you get more than just the game. Right. Like pay-per-view, you got the fight and then that was it, your money was spent. This is, you get the game and you get all of Peacock which has other sports, other live events. You get, it's got news, it's got other things. So I still argue that the streaming landscape as fragmented and as uncertain and as much of a change as it is now is still preferable to the cable service where it was like, you can get it or not, your choice, pay an introductory price and then remember to complain every year to keep that introductory price or we will gouge you. Most of the average bills for cable over the last 10 years were much more expensive than getting even four or five of these streaming services and you have control over which ones you want. You can get rid of them. You can have Peacock for a month, watch the games, cancel it, like it's so much easier than cable. So it's new, it's annoying when you have to learn and navigate a new thing. I don't discount that, but I think in the end it's actually going to end up being better. Yeah, I mean, I remember, well, I remember the days of cable are still among us, but where if you were to, I don't know, try to cancel your service before the first 12 months, like you get like a cancellation fee. It was like really hard to do that. So you got locked in in a really bad way and that's why people hated cable and just sort of rolled their eyes and was like, ah, but it's just like easier to have it than not. And YouTube TV, another service where I come and go. It just depends on, is there a series that I'm interested in on this particular station that I wouldn't get otherwise with some of my a la carte services, pay for a month and then I cancel and I can come back. Yeah. Well, one way to watch TV is Android TV. That's an operating system. And if you're into Android, we've got a whole show just for you. Android Faithful every week, Ron Richards, Wen Tweedow and Jason Howell bring you the latest Android news and information. This is going to be a big week. They're going to pregame the Samsung Galaxy Unpacked announcement on Tuesday. And then when's going to come on, on Wednesday and talk about the announcement with us. So don't miss today's Android Faithful Tuesdays at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific at youtube.com slash daily tech news show or subscribe to the feed and watch it and listen to it when you want to at androidfaithful.com. A survey from PwC released at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Did you go to Davos, Sarah? No, it doesn't look like you went this year. Not this year, Tom. No, no. I have been. It was very cold, but very. You have actually been. That's right. I forgot about that. I went once in 2016. Yeah. How was it hanging out with all the bankers? Uh, it was fine. No, it was cool. I mean, it was. Listen, you're you're in the Swiss Alps. What's not to like? What's not to love? Sure. Well, a survey released at Davos found that 75% of chief executives do not see generative models leading to a headcount reduction. That's not the headline you're seeing. The headline you're seeing is that 25% do think generative models will lead to a headcount reduction, but I feel like it's worth flipping the perspective there. Most chief executives do not see a reduction. So the 25% that do, let's look at what they think. Uh, of those who do, they expect the reduction to be about 5% of staff. So not huge, but significant. 5% is a chunk. Yeah. Most of the CEOs who said they expected reduction were in the media and entertainment, banking and insurance and logistics industries. So these are the industries, your, your TV, uh, your media, your financial services, your insurance companies have huge bureaucracies. Uh, they, they could probably benefit a lot. And logistics, which has, has a lot of, of tedium. I have a friend in the logistics industry who says probably in the customer service side of things is where he thinks the automation might fall. Um, but still, uh, these are industries that say, yeah, we're probably going to drop a lot of jobs. Engineering and construction, least likely to anticipate reductions. Uh, you need human engineers to really figure out problems. You need people nailing things and hammering them to do construction. Next least likely. Can you guess the next least likely, uh, to reduce because of automation? No. Metals and mining, metals and mining, metals and mining, digging in the ground, looking for the, looking for the rare earth, uh, stuff like that. Not quite there yet. And then right behind engineering and construction and metals and mining technology, technology companies least third least likely to reduce because of automation. I've not seen this in the headlines anywhere. And I think it's because again, technology knows like we need people, we need programmers, programmers can be assisted, but we're not going to eliminate them. We're just going to make them more productive. Uh, so it's customer service and tedium and stuff that this is going to get rid of. Okay. 46% said that staff reduction or not, they expect generative models to increase profitability. Uh, so even amongst those who are not cutting staff, they think they're going to make more money by using these models, right? Some of them with the existing staff, because the existing staff just get more productive and they don't want to get rid of them. They want to get them more productive and make more money. Uh, 47% expected no change to profitability with generative models. I guess 7% were on the fence, but I thought that was interesting. That's about 50-50. 32% of companies surveyed had already started adopting it and 58% said they expected to improve product or service quality in the next year. Well, all right. So looking at these numbers, uh, the vast majority of CEOs of companies saying, don't worry, we're good. Um, that is, uh, I don't know. That's encouraging, I suppose. It's what I've been saying is that a smart company looks at this and says, well, we want to keep the people we have and make them more productive and then we make more money versus getting rid of people because then we don't have as much workforce. Right. And, you know, we, we talk about this on DTNS a lot. It sort of like, okay, so what, what's the big worry? You know, the big worry is that, uh, a human loses their job, you know, and falls into financial ruin, right? But that's the worst case scenario. Um, I think sometimes it's like, okay, what about, uh, when you get like a spam robocall? Well, nobody likes those, but that used to be a human, you know, like does, you know, are there a bunch of humans who were like, I wish I still had the robocall job. You know, there are, there are ways that we have become accustomed to this and that is just going to continue to be the case when, you know, a human, um, uh, you know, what, what you're good at as a human, you're just not good enough to not be, you know, replicated by a machine of some kind. Now that's not a bad thing. And, you know, to your point, Tom, it means that the humans get to do what humans are really, really good at, that, uh, machine models, generative models aren't good at, at least not yet. Yeah, the robocall thing's a great example. Uh, what happened there? Yeah, I guess it got rid of a few people's jobs calling you with spam, but it mostly increased the ability to make calls. There are way more calls because of robocalls than there would have been otherwise. That's a negative, but there's plenty of positive versions. But you also can argue like it's more productive, which is that no one likes it, but it's still more productive. There's plenty of positive versions of that where, oh, we can now, uh, proactively provide better service because our customer service agents can spend time with the people who actually have a problem instead of being spread thin because they're not enough agents and a bunch of agents are doing very tedious things. So an automated customer service agent can take care of a lot more of your questions in a way that's easy. And then when you actually need a human, you get to the human and the human isn't spread so thin that they, they can't help you out or, or that it takes you 20, you know, hours to get a call response. So I, yeah, I think customer service, uh, get, is probably going to get a lot of, of this kind of automation and it's going to make it easier for you. It's going to make it easier for those providing jobs. I guess where I, I land on this though is there was the computer revolution, which, you know, automated a lot, but really just shifted people's jobs. We shifted into being able to have program managers and product managers and things like that. Uh, there was also the industrial of revolution, which got rid of people's jobs and then they didn't have a job. And so they rioted, uh, and, you know, sabotage industry and stuff. I think this is somewhere in between. 5% is significant, but it's not huge. And I think we've, we've seen what the reaction is going to be with the writer strike and the actor strike and things like that. There's, there's going to be some pushback in those industries that are affected and it's going to take some paying attention to what people need, right? When somebody, when an industry has a number of jobs that are eliminated and those people have to a new job and step in and say, okay, how do we retrain? How do we help these people? How do we make the transition? You know? Um, sounds like a robot got, uh, into Tom's connection there. Uh, you're back now. Um, uh, yeah, I, I, I, I don't know. I mean, I, I don't want to sound pessimistic about, uh, people, humans being on staff. Um, but 5% of staff going away is what a CEO wants to do in general. That's a good point too. A lot of this 5% of staff going away would have happened anyway. Yeah. It's like, where do we cut costs? Yeah. How do we cut corners? You know, this is, and, and it, people in many industries are feeling this crunch more than ever. Um, we're, you know, we're in a bit of a downturn. So, yeah. Um, I think, I think this is, uh, I guess overall kind of a positive story for anybody who's like, ah, you know, these models, you know, you know, what are the humans going to do? Just twiddle our thumbs all day. No, we're not there yet. We might have a different conversation in five years from now, but, um, at this point, I think it's, yes, how do we get, uh, how do we do away with the, the, the tedium and, uh, put people to work where they're needed? Engineering. Construction. Metals and mining. Technology. You know, this is stuff where if you have expertise, you can't be replicated. All right. Let's check out the mail bag. What do we got today? Oh, if recent airline news has you even more curious than usual, what kind of a plane you're going to be traveling on next? Chris Christensen has a handy tip for you. This is Chris Christensen from Amateur Traveler with another tech in travel minute. You may have heard that last week, Alaska practiced an open door policy. Unfortunately, they did it with one of their airplanes and it was a 737-9 max. One of the interesting things that has come out of that is kayak, which is a popular booking site for travel for flights has reported seeing a 15 fold increase in use of its aircraft filter. You can filter by type of aircraft that you'll be flying before booking. Now, I don't personally feel a need to do that, but it does shine a light on the interesting feature that when you do use one of these metasurge engines like kayak, there are a number of different filters you can use if you're looking for the shortest flight or you're looking for the cheapest flight or you're looking for a flight specifically and you know you're going to do carry-on luggage or you're not going to do carry-on luggage, although those sorts of things. So do check out those flight filter options the next time you book your flight. This is Chris Christensen from Amateur Traveler. There are no of those particular 737 Max's flying right now, which caused a lot of delays, but nevertheless kind of a cool feature, right? Interesting to know. Especially if you really know layouts and you're like, I want to fly that dreamliner. I want to fly that really fancy plane. It's a good way to do that as well. Regarding our discussion of the best of CES on Friday, specifically the year GyroGlove, a non-Junior wrote on Patreon, the glove sounded nice. One of my post-cancer treatment drugs gave me random and bothersome hand tremors. My deepest sympathy for anyone who has to deal with that on the regular. Oh, a non-Junior. I'm with you. I'm with you on that. Life is better these days, but yeah. Yeah, that's a real thing. This was specifically for Parkinson's, which when we talked about it on Friday, but yeah, I can see other use cases as well. Patrons, stick around for the extended show, Good Day Internet. Are people going to use the Apple Vision Pro to watch 3D movies and TV? Well, Apple and Disney hope you will. We're going to talk about what they're offering. We are, but just a reminder, you can catch our show live. We do it live Monday through Friday 4 p.m. Eastern 2100 UTC and you can find out more at DailyTechNewShow.com. We're back doing it all again tomorrow with Huan Tui Dao talking Samsung Unpacked. Going to be fun. Back to you then. The DTNS family of podcasts. Helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.