Netflix Wants to Manage Your Streaming Bill - DTNS 5338

0:00Robb Dunewood: Take this as your sign to go. Just get out there and go. This summer at Best Western, get 1 ,000 bonus points and a chance to win 250 ,000 bonus points. Life's a trip. Make the most of it at bestwestern.com. No additional purchase necessary for sweeps. See bonus points, TNCs, and sweeps rules for details. Hey guys, it's Drew Afualo from the comment section. Listen, it's time to stop settling for hair products that just don't work. With all the prestige brands at Sephora, upgrading your routine is easy. If your hair needs repair, they've got the K18 Leave-In Molecular Repair Hair Mask. If you're trying to level up your wash day, the Kerastase Elixir All-Time Hair Oil leaves your hair looking ridiculously shiny without feeling heavy.

0:46And if you're into that glossy, healthy hair vibe, the gisu honey infused hair oil is a must have. Also, Sephora makes it super convenient with free shipping and same day delivery. Shop hair at Sephora and give your hair the upgrade it's been waiting for.

1:16to a polished video of you in minutes. No production crew required. Whether you're a creator, consultant, attorney, financial advisor, or real estate agent, HeyGen helps you create consistent, professional video content without making content creation your full-time job. It's rated the number one AI video platform for small business on G2, features some of the industry's most realistic AI avatars, is trusted by more than 30 million people and 85 % of the Fortune 100, and supports over 175 languages. so you can communicate with audiences around the world. Here's the wild part. Record yourself for just 15 seconds, and HeyGen builds an AI avatar that makes professional videos for you on demand so you can post everywhere your audience is, as yourself, without filming every time.

2:00Your first three videos are free at heygen.com slash pod. That's H-E-Y-G-E-N dot com slash P-O-D.

2:08Robb Dunewood: This episode is sponsored by Morning Brew Daily. If you're anything like me, you want to stay informed about what's happening in business and finance, but you also don't have an hour every morning to sift through headlines. Morning Brew Daily is the go-to business news podcast for millions of people. It's a daily business news podcast that's a quick, fun, and easy way to start your day. Whether it's the latest in tech, markets, or the trends shaping the economy, the show breaks it all down in a way that's clear, engaging, and actually enjoyable to listen to. Hosts Neil Fryman and Toby Howell make the show feel like you're catching up with two friends while giving you the context you need to feel smarter and more confident throughout your day.

2:47Robb Dunewood: New episodes drop every weekday wherever you get your podcasts. Tune into Morning Brew Daily wherever you get your podcasts.

3:02This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, August 24th, 2026. We tell you what you need to know, give you important context and help each other understand.

3:11Robb Dunewood: Today, Netflix inches closer to becoming the platform to manage your streaming subscriptions. Does it really want that? I don't know. I got some thoughts. Rob's got some thoughts. I'm Tom Merritt. And I'm Rob Dunwood. Let's start with what you need to know with that big story.

3:28so the new york times becoming the latest to say its sources say folks at netflix have considered adding on programs what the new york times has that we haven't seen before is names uh netflix considering selling access to peacock and fox one uh and possibly making it available from within the netflix app that that part was not sure maybe they just haven't decided yet but whether you would get the programming in the Netflix app or just add the bundle and then you'd go to the Peacock app or the Fox One app. This follows a similar report that Netflix execs were considering this. The Wall Street Journal put that out back in July.

4:06And starting on July 19th, Netflix began offering France's TF1 programming to subscribers in France. No extra charge there. You get the TF1 linear channels and all of that. It's sort of an experiment. Netflix is saying, if this goes well, we might do more of this sort of thing. What we're talking about is something that already exists. You can add channels to Amazon. In fact, Amazon and Apple, both you can add channels to, and you can add each other's channel to themselves. If you're on Amazon, you can add Apple TV to your Amazon. If you're on Apple, you can add Prime Video to Apple. Roku Channel also does this.

4:44Hulu lets you add some services as well. And YouTube, very interestingly, lets you do this through YouTube TV. You can add like stars and HBO Max and all of that to YouTube TV, as well as YouTube premium. Even if you don't have a YouTube TV subscription, which is their more cable-like subscription, you can add some channels to YouTube premium. In fact, you can add Peacock right now to YouTube premium, but starting next year, YouTube and Peacock reached a deal where Peacock will just be available as part of your YouTube premium subscription, no additional charge. And a lot of people don't realize this, but in the United States, a lot of the cable companies, Comcast, Cox, et cetera, include streaming services with your cable subscription.

5:28It's a way to keep people from canceling cable. Like, hey, we'll just give you Peacock. We'll just give you Disney Plus as part of your subscription. So we have definitely entered the stage where streaming services are sorting themselves into platforms and programming providers. This is something that on the other show I do, Chord Killers, I've been talking about for a long time. We were in the consolidation phase, which we're still kind of in with Paramount trying to buy Warner Brothers Discovery, and that platform phase where companies decide, do we just want to make programs? That's what Sony's doing.

6:00Do we want to have a channel, but not try to run everything? That's what companies like Starz have done for the most part show times kind of like that? And it looks like Peacock might be leaning that way. Or do we want to be the platform provider? Do we want to be the bill that people pay and decide when they add channels and when they don't? Rob, I know you are way into this as much as I am. What do you think of all of it?

6:28Robb Dunewood: So Tom, I am a serial turner. I will cancel a subscription just because there's nothing on it that I want to watch that month. And if I pay for it, if I can just cancel it and I pay for it and then come back a month or two or three later and then watch the thing that I want to watch. So because of that, I am a huge fan of Amazon. That's where I do a lot of my viewing because I can just buy everything. I've got MGM through Amazon. I now have HBO because of Lanterns through Amazon. As soon as Lanterns is over, HBO probably gets canceled again unless there is a Lanterns 2 that comes out the week after Lanterns 1 stops.

7:02Robb Dunewood: So for me, it makes sense because it's much easier to remember that I only have to go one place to subscribe and to cancel to stuff. And because I do it so regularly, I am literally in and out of accounts almost on a monthly basis. So for people like me, it makes sense. I think another part of this is that the industry is just maturing. Some of the when you look at a Netflix, Netflix has been around for decades. It was a whole different company before it is the company. now that people don't even remember. And it was huge when it was doing DVDs. It was ginormous doing that. And people don't even think of it as that type of company any longer.

7:37Robb Dunewood: So they've been around, they've been doing this for a while, and they're probably no longer looking to add users by leaps and bounds. Why? Because they've already added all the users in leaps and bounds. They're going to get a few here and there, but now it is as much as anything about churn. Can we keep the people that we've already subscribed and keep them from going to someplace else? So if doing that ultimately comes with, we're going to allow you to sign up to this other thing that's not our IP, but you can sign up and we'll get a percentage of it. And you just stay in Netflix where we really want you to be as compared to you logging out of Netflix and going to a whole different system to watch.

8:15Robb Dunewood: I think they're saying that this is probably the future of where our company resides. Yeah. When you are the platform provider, you get a retention advantage, right? You are less likely to cancel Prime Video because you're using it to manage all your other stuff. And Netflix looks at that and says, ooh, that's kind of tempting. The other thing Netflix gets out of this, the other thing any platform gets out of this, is revenue per user. And you're absolutely right. Netflix has reached the saturation point on adding users in its biggest markets. There are still markets around the world where it's adding users and it's doing things to try to get those users on board.

8:49but they are focusing a lot on how do we increase the revenue per user one thing they did to do that was an advertising supported level because when you are advertising supported the more people watch the more money you make unlike a flat subscription level where it doesn't really matter how much people watch as long as you keep them paying that's what you're going to make you're also never going to raise what you're going to make without raising your prices so they look at this platform is another way to add revenue per user without having to add advertising for the people who just want to subscribe to netflix at a flat fee with no advertising you can increase the amount of revenue you make off of them if you get them to add peacock or get them to add fox one uh because you get a cut of that and so every one of those you can get them to add not only gives you that retention level like you're saying but it also increases the amount you're making off of them Yeah.

9:41Robb Dunewood: One of the things that Netflix is trying not to become is a big cap company. We think, Tom, you and I are old enough to remember when IBM was considered a tech company. It is absolutely a tech company, but it's a big cap. We don't look at how it moves, you know, in this day to day operations like we do a Netflix or a or, you know, a Disney as far as their streaming services. Netflix is really, really big. And they don't want people to start looking at them with just a big cap. It's just this is just what they are. This is what they're going to be. So they're trying to figure out how can we just increase the amount of money that we make per user by let's add this in here.

10:18Robb Dunewood: Something that 10 years ago, Netflix would have never thought about doing this. But 10 years ago, they were still adding users by leaps and bounds. That's no longer the case. So their business changes. Yeah. The other direction they can go is a direction they've gone before, which is to add a product. You know, don't forget Netflix started as DVDs by mail. Then they added streaming, which became the dominant product to the point where they had to retire the DVD by mail service and spin it off into its own separate thing that they don't own anymore. Video games is one of their bets to do that. But that is not working out as well as the streaming did.

10:53And it may yet work out one of these days. But, you know, Netflix just shut down a couple of studios. so it doesn't seem like that is the direction that is going to pay off fastest. That leaves them with the idea of like, well, we can either be a holdout, right? And be the one option that you have to have in addition to your platform. Like you probably have, right? You have Prime Video where you add and subtract things, but then you also have to have Netflix because you can't add it or subtract it to Prime Video. So I think it makes sense for Netflix to consider this. The question is, do you want to just be a bundler?

11:28Like, yeah, we'll manage the bill for you. You'll still log into Peacock, but, you know, it'll be a little bit cheaper because you get it through us. Or do they want to be the destination and say like, no, all your Peacock videos show up here, your MGM videos show up here. That is the way Apple does it, where you say, and that's the way Amazon can do it too, where you're like, no, you're using our Apple TV app to watch your Paramount subscription, your MGM subscription and everything else. And I don't know if Netflix wants to do that because they love you identifying the TV with Netflix. And if suddenly you're watching a disappointing show on MGM or Peacock and you attribute it to Netflix because you launched the Netflix app to get there, Netflix doesn't love that.

12:17Robb Dunewood: I think that Netflix will do what the revenue dictates they do. So right now, they probably don't have to do that. They can still be known as Netflix. if i'm honest when i think of amazon prime the only thing that i can think that i actually watch just like an amazon prime exclusive maybe is reacher um everything else that i watch on amazon prime outside of sports because you know it does have live sports i do watch a lot of live sports on amazon but as far as like regular content most of it is like going to the mgm portion of amazon or going to the hbo portion of amazon and watching other stuff that i subscribe to through amazon because Amazon just makes it easy to get in and out of those subscriptions from one place as compared to having to have, you know, a spreadsheet with 19 different apps that I may be subscribed to at any point in time.

13:05Yeah. And then Netflix is going to solve that, right? If they look at that revenue and they're like, we need to do this, they're going to want to solve it by giving you a separate part of the app. Well, this is the not Netflix part. Go over here to do it. And that's not the way Apple and Amazon have done it. You know, you know, you're going to your HBO row, you know, you're going to your Fox one row, but it's all part of the interface. And so Netflix is going to have to decide what they're comfortable with, which is why we haven't seen them make an announcement on this yet.

13:35Robb Dunewood: And one of the really cool things about this is that I miss the cable TV guide. You know, the guide on your cable subscription just told you what was on what channel. Sometimes there might be something that I want to watch because there's literally 19 different places that you could watch it. You just don't remember where you need to go. So I've got to go do sometimes do Google searches to figure out on what platform can I watch this piece of content? Yeah, that's kind of disappearing. It's like I see the stuff that I'm interested in show up on Amazon Prime's, you know, whatever their home page is when I go there.

14:10Robb Dunewood: It's not all Amazon stuff. It is mostly not Amazon. It's mostly stuff of the things that I watched that are on two or three of the other networks that I just pay for through Amazon. And I don't think Netflix wants to do that. But once again, I do believe that if the revenue dictates that they do that, I think that would be a change that they would be open to if the revenue dictates it. I just don't know that it necessarily does right now. Yeah. And we are headed towards that world, whether Netflix joins the platform wars or not. We are headed towards that world where you pick your platform because they offer the stuff you want, but it's going to be a while before every platform offers most of everything.

14:47If you remember back in the early cable TV days in the 80s, you would talk to friends in the next town and they'd be like, oh yeah, we don't get that channel on our cable, right? That kind of went away in the 90s and most cable systems had the majority of the channels that people talked about. We're going to have that conversation again. We're like, oh, right, I'm on Amazon, but they don't offer access to that particular streaming service. But the improvement is back in the 80s, you were stuck. You either had to move to the town that offered the channel or you just didn't get it. Now you'll have the option of like, well, I can subscribe directly, you know, or I can even go to another platform that operates it and just use it for, for just that channel.

15:28So there's a little more flexibility built on.

15:30Robb Dunewood: Another analogy to the old cable providers, there was a lot of content that you got on cable that if you didn't care about, it didn't matter. If you didn't care about sports, you still got ESPN. It didn't matter. It's just, if you paid for cable, you got it. What I like about what's happening now is that if I, you know, if I think about the old cable model, it didn't come with Showtime. If you wanted Showtime, you just say, hey, I want Showtime. And your bill goes up a little bit per month. If you wanted HBO and Cinemax, you didn't come with it. You just said, can you add this to my plan? If you wanted a few other services, it didn't come with cable.

16:02Robb Dunewood: You added it to your plan. And that's what I feel like the streaming, you know, the streaming industry is kind of doing now. If I go to Amazon, it's like, here's what comes with Prime, but I can also get a little bit of MGM and I can also get a little bit of HBO and I can also get a little bit of paramount i can also get a little bit of you know whatever else they offer through their through their interface and i like that because it gives me choice it gives me the ability to watch the stuff that i want to watch without having to jump through an enormous number of hoops to do so yeah uh speaking of espn a side note since we're talking about streaming espn announced it's going to raise the price of espn unlimited uh thirty dollars to thirty two dollars a month uh and if you are an ESPN Plus subscriber, which is now called ESPN Select.

16:45That's basically everything that isn't on ESPN's cable channels. That one's also going up from$13 to$14 a month, and the bundles will be going up as well to reflect these cost increases.

16:58Robb Dunewood: DTNest is made possible by you, the listener. Thanks to ThatCharlieDude, Justin Zellers, Chris Benetal, and Kelly Berryman. Thank you.

17:11Robb Dunewood: Episode prep gets messy when research, Slack threads, and script trackers are all in different places. That's where ChatGPT Work comes in. Give it the goal and connect to the tools where work happens, like apps and files, and it can help pull the pieces into a draft you can review without you having to re-explain the project at every step. For example, ChatGPT Work can gather team feedback from Slack and use it to suggest updates to a project brief in Google Docs. You stay in control, reviewing the draft, and deciding what moves forward. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects.

17:46Robb Dunewood: Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting Work Mode. Available on Plus and Pro plans. Granola is an AI-powered notepad built for the way real people actually meet. Here's how it works. You take rough notes like you normally would, and in the background, Granola securely transcribes the meeting. Then, it turns everything into clean, structured, actually useful notes when the meeting ends. And the best part, Granola works through your device's audio, which means it integrates seamlessly into the video conferencing tools you already use. No setup, no awkward bots. It's just your normal meeting, with superpowers.

18:20Robb Dunewood: You get to actually listen instead of frantically typing every word, and still walk away knowing exactly what was decided, who's doing what, and what comes next. My first time using it was in a meeting that had a lot of moving parts and was pretty technical. I couldn't believe how organized and complete Granola's notes were. If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer. You can try it totally free. Just head to granola.ai slash dailytech. That's granola.ai slash dailytech to get your time back. Try it for free at granola.ai slash dailytech. Hi, I'm Nick, co-host of The Best One Yet.

18:56Robb Dunewood: You optimize your workouts, your portfolios, and that rando startup idea that hit you in the middle of the shower. But if you're not hydrated, you're already playing catch-up. So we keep a stash of Liquid IV in our studio. One stick mixed into 16 ounces of water is clinically demonstrated to hydrate faster than water alone with three times the electrolytes of the leading sports drink, plus eight vitamins and nutrients. Whether you're traveling, exercising, or podcasting, the best business news ever, Liquid IV makes it easy to stay hydrated wherever life takes you. So shop now at liquidiv.com. Liquid IV hydration that goes wherever life takes you.

19:29Robb Dunewood: back to school is busy enough the last thing you need is shopping that makes it harder whether you're moving into a dorm your first apartment or just getting organized for the semester wayfair makes it easy to get everything you need in one place furniture bedding storage decor study essentials all at prices you'll love with fast shipping before move-in day get everything you need for back to school season shop wayfair.com today

20:23Way fair, every style, every home.

20:25Robb Dunewood: and some monthly listeners and check out Morning Brew Daily wherever you get your podcasts.

20:32There's more we need to know today.

20:34Robb Dunewood: Let's get to the briefs. Game Preservation Group Does It Play began a one-week boycott of PlayStation from Sunday, August 23rd through Sunday, August 30th to protest Sony's decision to stop making physical media next year. The group calls for those who agree with their position to make no logins, no play sessions, and no purchases on any of Sony's platforms. Now, here's the thing. I'm very sympathetic to does it play. I'm very sympathetic to game preservation. I'm even pretty sympathetic to people who are like, man, I'd rather have a physical disc, but I don't think most people are. And so I think this is going to be, this may backfire in the sense that Sony looks at it and goes, okay, we've now seen how many people are actually serious about this.

21:20And it's not that many. Because that's what Sony has been saying is, we're not selling that many physical discs. So it doesn't make sense to keep making them after next year. And we're giving you a lot of time to get used to the idea. And does it play as trying to say, well, let's put rubber to the road and show you that there's more people than you think. and I don't know that there are.

21:42Robb Dunewood: So, you know, there is a part of the world, I would imagine a large part of the world, the things that most people who play games play on things like PlayStations and Xbox and Nintendo Switches and things of that nature, but that's actually not the truth. The truth that most people, where most people play most games is on their phones, and one thing that no one has ever done for a phone is buy physical media for it. all your games come via download when you're playing on your phone, when you're playing in the cloud. So I think that Sony has put their finger in their mouth, stuck it up in the wind to see which way the wind is blowing.

22:19Robb Dunewood: It's like, yeah, there's people who are going to be really upset about this, but there's way more people who really just don't have any dog in the hunt. They don't care enough. And the savings for us and not having to create that media is good business for us. So we're going to have some folks upset, but how many of those folks are actually going to stop playing PlayStation games because they can no longer buy physical media. There will be some, undoubtedly, there will definitely be some who will no longer play PlayStation games because they can't buy physical media for it. But that number probably is a rounding error as far as Sony is concerned, as far as what they have, the metrics that they're getting back on, how big of a hit is this going to be for us?

22:56Yeah. And unfortunately, I think this is about to prove it to Sony and confirm their belief rather than dissuade them. I think what would be smart to push for, if this doesn't work, is the right to have your game, right? Forget about physical. One of the reasons people like physical is like, and then I can do, I own the game and I can do what I want with it. Problem is you can't really. Yes, it's put on a physical disc, but you still have to download a lot of it to get the game to go. I think what is more logical to focus on is pointing at good old games and saying, look, I buy digital copies of games from GOG and then I own them.

23:39I can play them offline. I don't have to check in with them. I am able to back them up. That's what I want from PlayStation. Not necessarily I need physical because I think most people are arguing I need physical so I can do what I am doing with my GOG games, right? So I know that sounds harder to get done, but honestly, I don't know that it's harder than getting them to keep making physical discs at this point. Yeah.

24:08Robb Dunewood: And I'm a person who has an enormous number of physical discs. But do you know the games that I play the most? The ones that are installed. Because they're installed and they're the newer games. The newer games, they require you to have a persistent connection because you're playing with other people or you're just playing in an immersive world. So as games have evolved, the game that you don't install and just play offline just doesn't exist in the same way that it is. Those games are all there. They were already all made, still have all of them. The new stuff isn't that way. So I understand people's frustration.

24:40Robb Dunewood: I kind of, you know, I kind of was, you know, in my feels about it when I first heard the news. But when I think about it, how often do I go to my Xbox or to my PlayStation and insert a disc? I don't think I've done it probably in the last year, year and a half. Yeah. R.W. Nash noted on the DTS subreddit that at the second annual World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, a humanoid robot ran faster than Usain Bolt's world record of 9.58 seconds for the 100 meter dash. I keep seeing this, that the robot broke Usain Bolt's record. The robot is not a human. So the robot didn't break Usain Bolt's record.

25:17Usain Bolt still has his world record. However, the robot did run faster than that record. A Chang 'e Ultra robot ran the 100 meters in 9.39 seconds. Again, Bolt's record is 9.58. And an Honor, yeah, the phone maker, Honor lightning robot ran at 9.47 seconds, came in second place. So two of them ran faster than Bolt. Those are huge improvements from last year when the winning time for a humanoid robot was 21.5 seconds. I could beat the robot from last year. So we are seeing humanoid robots really improve. And we're talking about bipedal robots here. We're not talking about ones on wheels. None of them mastered the art of stopping yet, Rob.

25:58I don't know if you saw the videos where they all like slid or crashed into foam pads at the end of the course.

26:04Robb Dunewood: Or running in straight lines. They still. Yeah, I'm still having a hard time with that. There's a little line changing. So for the hundred, they pretty much maintain their lines. Go look at the same event. Look at the 400. The 400, there is not a robot that maintained. I mean, the robots that actually completed the race, not a single one stayed in their lane. So there's still a ways off. But this is, I mean, we've all seen iRobot. We know that IS-9 is going to run faster than we can. I mean, that's not new. I mean, it's a robot. Of course it is. It's a robot. It's a machine. The trick is the agility and the balance, right?

26:39And the ability to stay in your lane, right? Which they're still having problems with. I like the NextWeb pointing out, there were 51 competitions over the five days of the humanoid robot games. The next web thought, the Galbot was more impressive. The Galbot robot completed 100 consecutive autonomous tennis rallies against a retired number 15 tennis player, Zheng Jie. The robot model was unnamed. Galbot said it was created in collaborations with the scientists at Tsinghua University, but it was impressive in that it was able to do coordinated things, right? A rally is even more difficult to do because of the changing of the paddle and the movement and the following the ball than just maintaining your balance and running.

27:25We also got some unrelated news off the pitch, as you might say. Xpeng announced the largest single round of private financing yet for Chinese physical AI companies, valuing it at$6.3 billion. dollars. That unfortunately collided with the news that Xpeng was forecasting its Q3 revenue below expectations. But still, robots are hot, and China has got the hottest humanoid robot companies right now.

27:50Robb Dunewood: They definitely do. Data centers are shaping up to be a bipartisan issue in the U.S. with all parties against them. Texas Governor Abbott followed Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and New York Governor Kathy Holschel in declaring a pause in the development of new data centers. In November, Governor Abbott called Texas the epicenter of AI development. In June, Abbott directed state regulators to make sure that data centers pay the full cost of any new electrical infrastructure needed to support their operation and phase out tax incentives. Earlier in August, he ordered regulators to audit data centers before allowing them to connect to the Texas power grid.

28:24Robb Dunewood: On ABC on Sunday, the governor said that tech companies need to get the support of local communities and blame the companies for the backlash against them. The U.S. president criticized the move, saying for Texas to say no to data centers is a mistake. Yeah, we've done a couple of debates. We've had Justin Robert Young on the show. We've talked about, like, where are the parties going to fall in the U.S. midterm elections on data centers? And it turns out most of the parties are falling against. They are like, everyone in my district is mad at the data centers. So I am going to be on their side.

28:59I think what Governor Abbott is saying actually makes sense, which is you need to pay for your electricity. You need to pay for your water. Although, as we've discussed in previous episodes, the water is becoming less of an issue in new designs. But a community should make sure that that's the design being used, right? You want that zero water use or very low water use use. But the electricity is a big deal. And so making companies pay for whatever infrastructure needs to be built to support them and, of course, pay for the electricity that they use in a way that makes sure that your community stays powered and your prices don't go up for your electricity is important.

29:40And, you know, maybe Governor Abbott took a couple extra months to get on that page, the same page as Kathy Hochul and Josh Shapiro. But he's there now because that's what people in his state want.

29:53Robb Dunewood: So I live where I live here in central Ohio. I'm right next to, you know, in Columbus, right next to New Albany, Ohio. That's where the new Intel super foundry is being built. But there's also a ton of data centers, like just in residential neighborhoods that you wouldn't even realize. There's like, oh, what's that big building? It's like you look it up, it's like, oh, that's a data center. Now, here's the thing with these data centers. They aren't quiet. They make noise. Now, it's not like you're living next door to a steel mill. It's not that kind of noise. But if you just go outside and listen and you're less than, you know, you know, a quarter mile away from a data center, there's like a constant just hum, you know, in the air, you know, at night.

30:33Robb Dunewood: You can hear these things. So people generally, they just don't want these in their neighborhoods. And, you know, people's political power is making a mark right now. You see you seen in Texas to where the governor was full bore. We love data centers. And now it's like, nah, not necessarily coming here. We want to stop this for a year. We like data centers. Maybe we don't love data centers. And we really don't want it built next to people's houses anymore. Yeah, no, it's a good point. Like, it's not that the computers make any sound, really. It's that the cooling systems and the operation systems and all the things you have to do to keep it going make sounds.

31:08And like you said, it's not like a steel mill. But you wouldn't want a steel mill built next to your house. You probably want to keep these a little farther away from anywhere that is noise sensitive, like residential areas as well. And that just makes sense. Right. Yeah. Well, folks, if you don't know, Daily Tech News Show also is live on the YouTubes. We're also live on Patreon and Substack and Twitch. And you can catch those live streams. For instance, on Mondays, I do a live stream where I just chat with the audience. It's called Office Hours, talk about what's going on in the world, talk about what's going on with the show.

31:42We have a little tech tournament on storage. What was the best storage technology that ever came along and we've been playing with that. You can watch those and become a subscriber at youtube.com slash daily tech news show.

32:18by over 16 ,000 fast-moving companies like Ramp, Cursor, and Harvey, who are shaping the future with AI and staying ahead of AI risk. Get started at Vanta.com.

32:29Robb Dunewood: This is Hannah Berner from Giggly Squad. O-Pill is the first over-the-counter daily birth control pill available in the U.S. Let's be real, getting a birth control prescription is not always easy, and it's so much admin. In fact, about a third of women face barriers to access prescription birth control between Between scheduling appointments, missing work, class, or just trying to exist. It's a lot. But now Opill is putting birth control in our control. Opill is a daily birth control that's FDA approved, full prescription strength, and estrogen free. And 98 % effective when used as directed. Grab it online or at most major retailers, no prescription or doctor's appointment needed.

33:07Robb Dunewood: So if you're thinking about birth control, check out Opill to see if it's right for you. Use code Giggly for 25 % off your first month of OPILL at OPILL.com. That's code Giggly at OPILL.com. Birth control in your control. We love to see it.

33:27Now some quick headlines that are good to know might make you look smarter.

33:33Robb Dunewood: Xiaomi contracted TSMC to manufacture its own 3 nanometer system on a chip called the Zhring 03 designed for more power efficient image and neural processing. Ah, getting on board. Apple, Google, everybody's doing it. Samsung has done it for years. About time, Sally got on board. The makers of a privacy-focused mobile phone operating system, I know a bunch of you in our Discord have heard of this because you're all, we're talking about it. Graphene OS posted on Mastodon that Motorola phones with support for Graphene OS will go on sale starting in 2027. Now, they won't come installed, but they will have the specs that Graphene OS needs.

34:12Graphene OS needs some very sophisticated, privacy-focused hardware. So until now, only the Pixel phones met Graphene OS's requirements. And, you know, Pixel phones aren't necessarily the cheapest ones. So having Motorola phones that you could buy and then install, you have to install the Graphene OS yourself, is a big boon in choice for people who like a privacy-focused operating system.

34:34Robb Dunewood: Yeah, this is good news here because there's more Motorola phones being sold than Google phones right now. So, or Pixel phones right now. So, this is a good thing for graphene. In this week's Power On newsletter, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says that Apple's forthcoming foldable iPhone, presumably called the Ultra, has impressed early testers. It fits easily into a pocket and has a durable hinge and an iPad-like layout. Expect to hear more, including whether it will actually be called the Ultra at an Apple event in early September. Yeah, I think we're going to get that on. Everybody thinks it's going to be the ninth.

35:05We haven't got an official invite yet. And certainly Apple has an interest in getting sources to tell Gurman they like the phone, but Gurman's pretty good at weeding out those kinds of things. So it does seem like it's a decent build.

35:18Robb Dunewood: Tom you haven't heard me say this I'm excited about this iPhone coming out because that's heard me say anything like that about an iPhone but no I know I have it that's amazing anything like the Note 8 if it's that kind of good which I got to play with for you know fair amount of time you know a couple days um it's I'm excited for this phone all right I I'm I'm now even more excited to see what it's like to Asus announced the ROG Flux Charger Dock it's an all-in-one hub with a built-in 1.9-inch LCD screen for status and stuff. It's not a monitor screen. It's very tiny. USB-C, 140-watt charging, 10 gigabit per second transfer speed capability, HDMI 2.1, and could support monitors plugged into it up to 4K at a 144 hertz refresh rate.

36:04No price or release date on this yet, but it's a nice little gaming creator, Doc.

36:09Robb Dunewood: Yeah, not bad at all. Gamescom starts Tuesday, August 25th in Cologne, Germany, and runs through Sunday, August 30th. Yep, Gamescom is always a big one. That's probably why Asus is announcing that. Sheehan filed the price for its IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for September 1st at a price that would value the online retailer at around$26 billion. It's amazing how quickly these online retailers have gotten as big as they are. No kidding, right? China's AG.AL won the club championship at the Esports World Cup in Paris this weekend after a dramatic win in the Trackmania game and a first place finish in Tekken 8.

36:48Robb Dunewood: Saudi Arabia's Team Falcons finished second. Oh yeah, Paris took third in their own hometown. That's so sad. Phonak launched a hearing aid platform. It's called EON, that's E-O-N, which uses a processor that can run a deep neural network and a sound classifier in parallel, but still draw 37 % less power than the generation before it. Eon is 25 % smaller and 20 % lighter than Phonak's previous generation and can run 38 hours on a charge. Licensed hearing care professionals in the U.S. will be able to place orders now with more markets to follow in September. So you'll want to talk to your doctor if you want to get one.

37:27Robb Dunewood: Shox announced a new ear clip earbuds called OpenFit Air 2 at 7.2 grams per bud. The weight of a handful of paperclips, they go on sale August 27th for$130. dollars an anonymous model called aux alpha is causing a lot of buzz and speculation launched on open router at the end of last week with a free million token context window open code says that they hear it'll be free for a week with capacity of 100 million tokens per day developers have found it pretty impressive but everybody wants to know who's behind paying for that much computers even for a week opening i said on august 21st that it will cut the developer prices for gpt 5.6 soul by more than 20 for the next three months yeah there's a little there's price pressure uh on these ai services these days and finally chinese car manufacturers say they are coming up 20 to 30 short for the number of printed circuit boards and multi-layer ceramic capacitors i mean these These are like less than a cent sometimes per capacitor, but they can't make enough of them for the auto world.

38:34And so they can't build as many automobiles because they're being bought up by people making data centers.

38:40Robb Dunewood: Absolutely. We end every episode of DT. That's with some shared perspectives. Today, Brian and Raleigh has some thoughts for the judge who ruled that Google needed to change how the third party app store listings worked. Yeah, Brian says, I have been stewing on this ever since I heard your story concerning Judge Donato's directives moving beyond requiring outcomes and instead specifying solution design in the Google Play third-party app case. As a recovering business analyst, I like that phrasing, one guiding principle when specifying requirements is to avoid locking yourself into specific UI elements that may prevent product evolution or force a design implementation that is outside the parameters of your established design language.

39:22Examples from the judge include make that install, not view, remove the are you looking for screen, and difficult to measure requirements like a search query that is even 70 % properly phrased must find competing app stores, and searching directly for Aptoid or App Store should surface normal results rather than route you through a special banner or page. Those are the types of constraints that dictate how a product must render rather than an abstraction of what the product must do. For example, it may have been stronger for the court to require something like this. Third-party app stores must receive treatment equivalent to comparable applications and cannot be subjected to additional friction without a demonstrable security justification.

40:06This is an outcome requirement versus a solution spec. And to top it all off, these changes must be implemented in a week. You have your own sprint cycle and release cycle. I don't care. One week. I just found all of this cringeworthy. Thanks for letting me rant, Brian. I love the recovering business analyst giving us a business analyst analysis of this decision.

40:28Robb Dunewood: I'm not mad at it. I get it. I get everything that Brian and Raleigh is saying. I think what the judge is saying is like, Google, you knew. You knew better. You should have just made this work like any other app. Yeah. That's probably if they would have done that, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation today. But because they didn't, they made the third party app stores absolutely feel like, you know, like a redheaded stepchild, so to speak, you know, on this platform. It's like you will know that, you know, you you spelled the name correctly to get to it. I think I mentioned that when I first tried to find the app store, I did spell it incorrectly and did find it.

41:03Robb Dunewood: That didn't last very long. That went away. So I get where Brian and Raleigh is coming from. I think what Google, they probably overstepped is that they should have just made this work like any other similar app. The exact remedy that Brian and Raleigh is saying that they should have implemented. Yeah. And maybe Epic should hire Brian as an expert witness next time. I'm just, you know, just a thought. Well, folks, we want to know what you're thinking about. So if you've got some insights into a story, please, please, please share it with us at feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com. Yeah, big thanks to Brian and Raleigh for contributing to today's show.

41:39Thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You're the folks who keep us in business. Become a patron if you aren't already. It's easy, fast, and gets you perks. Patreon.com slash DTNS.

42:01Robb Dunewood: The DTNS family of podcasts. Helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.

42:13Hi all, this is Kim and Penn Holderness from Laugh Line. Summer is here, which means it's officially travel season. And when you're out there making plans, you need somewhere reliable to stay. That's why Best Western is such a solid option. This summer, get 1 ,000 bonus points and a chance to win 250 ,000 bonus points. So wherever you're headed, make it count with this limited-time offer. Life's a trip. Make the most of it at BestWestern.com. No additional purchase necessary for sweeps. See bonus points, T's and C's, and sweeps rules for details, and visit BestWestern.com for complete terms and conditions.

42:45Your team just added its 67th AI tool and also your 67th security blind spot.

42:51Robb Dunewood: The good news? The Vanta agent works like a GRC engineer in the background. finding every app your team uses, scoring the risk, and drafting fixes for you. Vanta is the platform used by over 16 ,000 fast-moving companies like Ramp, Cursor, and Harvey, who are shaping the future with AI and staying ahead of AI risk. Get started at Vanta.com.

43:27Thank you.