Sony Kills the Game Disk - DTNS 5301

0:00You want to get your backyard summer ready, but you don't want to break the bank? Wayfair gets it. Planning on dining al fresco or relaxing poolside? Wayfair has everything you need to prep your space. Shop now and save up to 70 % off during Wayfair's 4th of July clearance. Score huge deals on outdoor furniture, area rugs, and more. We're talking thousands of products for every style and budget. Plus, surprise flash deals July 6th. Don't wait. Shop Wayfair's 4th of July clearance now through July 6th at Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. This episode is brought to you by Capital One.

0:33Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.

1:10This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, July 1st, 2026, a brand spanking new month. We tell you what you need to know, give you some important context, and try to help each other understand. Today, Fable 5 is back, but it's going to cost you. And Sony is killing the game desk. Ah, murderers. I'm Tom Merritt. I'm Sarah Lane. Let's start with what you need to know with that big story. Yeah, so I'm sure nobody is upset that Sony announced on Wednesday that it will stop making physical discs for new PlayStation games starting in January 2028. So about a year and a half from now. And until then, games will be available on disc.

1:52After January 2028, all games will be sold digitally online, either through the PlayStation Store or a retailer's website. Now, Sony will continue to sell physical boxes for some games, you know, when you have the big collector set with the figurines and stuff. But instead of a disc, you're going to get something else. They haven't told us what, but it's likely to be some kind of digital code or something like that. Now, some folks noticed that the change isn't happening until January 2028, which you might think, oh, it's to give people plenty of notice, or it could be that we're not going to see a PlayStation 6 until after January, 2028.

2:29So file that went away. Sony reported that digital downloads accounted for 85 % of its full game software sales in 2025 and it's rising. So they're basically saying by 2028, almost nobody's going to be buying the discs anyway. Also Sony announced it's shutting down the PlayStation Store for the 20-year-old PlayStation 3 in Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua in August, the rest of Latin America, and Middle Eastern countries in late 2026, and then everybody else, it'll shut down in 2027, as well as for the PlayStation Vita in July of next year. So by July of next year, no more store on the PlayStation Vita or the PS3.

3:12And even after the store shut down, you'll still be able to download your previously purchased games on those ancient machines. You just won't be able to buy new ones. But back to the main story here, no more physical discs. A lot of people saying they're mad, not as many people actually buying them. Yeah. I mean, I think that whole 85 % of full game software sales last year, 2025, was not a physical disc, it's inevitable. That's where we're going with this. And there are people like physical media totally understand that. At the same time, it's an expense that a company like Sony is like, why are we doing this?

3:54There aren't enough of you buying this version to make it make sense anymore. I tend to, and I know this sometimes is not the opinion that people like, but I'm just like, great, less waste. Less waste. Yeah. And the physical discs have only had a stub of the game anyway. You usually have to download most of the game onto your hard drive, onto your local machine when you put it in. So it's been kind of a fiction that you're getting the game on the disc to begin with. I think 85 % 2025, let's say 90 % in 2026, 95 % in 2027. By January, 2028, you'll have maybe 5 % or less of the people buying physical discs.

4:43This might actually make it go down faster if people like, well, why buy the disc now? Could make it go up though. Like I should buy them while I can. But what we're going to have in 2028 is 5 % being very loud. That's a lot. Sony has a lot of game buyers and 5 % is going to be a large number. So you're going to hear a lot of complaints, but the majority of people aren't buying those things anyway. Well, and there's always the person who's like, here's why this works for me. Yeah, absolutely. My internet connection is hit and miss. It's good enough to download it originally, but I want to play offline after that.

5:14Well, you can do that with a digital download too. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're moving into an era where we're just getting less and less physical things. Like you mentioned, though, some kind of collector's item, physical boxes are still going to be happening for those who care. And I think that's cool. And people like that. I mean, that part never goes away. Something that you put on a shelf, it's like a digital version, it's just not the same. The big downside to physical going away is you no longer own the thing. So this is a bigger deal in eBooks where like, if I buy a print book, I have that book, You can't take it away from me.

5:52The theory with physical discs is now I own the game. You can't take it away from me. But again, so much of it is digitally administered anyway, that even having the physical disc doesn't give you that much protection. It sucks, but it doesn't. And, you know, music, there's that conversation, you know, the same way. For me, I cannot think of one incident in, I don't know, since I've been basically just all online subscription-based with music, where I was like, this album went away and now my life is ruined. Now, like you said, like with books, it could be a little bit different. Or if you really care about an album, also that would matter.

6:31But for the most part, it doesn't happen that often. Yeah. It really doesn't. The unfortunate thing is that Sony is going through a dispute with a studio whose name I can't remember off the top of my head right now. And people are losing access to previously purchased TV shows on Sony devices. And so it is a reminder that when you buy digital items, you're buying an extended rental, basically. You don't actually own it. Yeah. Yeah. It's a long-term lease. Well, DTNS, we, I don't know, I guess are on lease because of you. And we love your continued support. Thanks to all of you out there. Special thanks today to Justin Zellers, Chris Beneteau, Jeffrey Zilks, and Christian Wattengard.

7:24You want to get your backyard summer ready, but you don't want to break the bank? Wayfair gets it. Planning on dining al fresco or relaxing poolside? Wayfair has everything you need to prep your space. Shop now and save up to 70 % off during Wayfair's 4th of July clearance. Score huge deals on outdoor furniture, area rugs, and more. We're talking thousands of products for every style and budget. Plus, surprise flash deals July 6th. Don't wait. Shop Wayfair's 4th of July clearance now through July 6th at Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. This episode is brought to you by Capital One.

7:58Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge, and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. All right, there's lots more to know. Let's get into the briefs. Let's do it. But security researcher Tyler Murphy, co-founder of Easy Optouts, said he discovered a method to reveal the email address behind Apple's Hide My Email feature.

8:41The whole idea is that your email is hidden and nobody can see it. It's right there in the name. He reported it to Apple more than a year ago. Apple apparently reported it fixed in March, but Murphy says his method is still working. Apple asked him to hold off on revealing the bug's existence and that a fix would come in June. But guess what? It's July 1st. Yeah, this isn't great. And there was the story we talked about earlier that Apple is changing the domain name for Hide My Email, which could make it easier to block those emails. But it also probably is an attempt to fix this. I don't know.

9:18It's unusual for Apple to take so long to fix things like this. I don't think it's that they're not taking it seriously. it sounds like they thought they had it fixed and the fix didn't work. But they have not revealed the method by which he is able to get the emails until it is fixed. He's just saying that the vulnerability exists. But he does say 100 % of the time, it works every time. Well, and for anybody who's like, what is this feature? You know, other companies do this too. But the idea is that you can have an email conversation with whatever entity and they don't actually know your real email address, which is a good privacy and security measure.

10:00Yeah. If you want to make sure that you're not going to get spammed, you know, or if you start getting spammed, you can turn it off right away. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Stuff like that. Hat tip to DJ Sakani for noting this one on the DTNS subreddit. the U.S. government lifted its June 12th export control order on both Mythos and Fable 5 on Tuesday. So those Anthropic products are back. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in a letter to Anthropic co-founder Tom Brown, not to Dario Mone, that Anthropic, quote, agreed to proactively detect and address security risks associated with the models.

10:39Source told the Financial Times that Anthropic had implemented a new safeguard that was approved by the U.S. Center for AI Standards and Innovations. And Anthropic posted both on X and in a blog post, in the near term, some routine tasks like coding and debugging will fall back to Opus 4.8. Like, if you just try to do stuff, it'll just fall back to Opus 4.8. They said, we'll continue to refine these classifiers over the coming weeks to reduce false positives and better distinguish genuine misuse from legitimate requests, but they're basically erring farther on the side of safety. Anthropic still asserts that the jailbreaks that Amazon researchers found that caused this whole incident were not unique and that testing, and I quote, confirmed that many less capable models, including Opus 4.8, GPT 5.5, and Kimi K27, could identify the same vulnerabilities as Fable 5 did in Amazon's report.

11:35So they're still holding on to the idea that this wasn't a thing that was unique to Fable 5. But Anthropic is going to work with Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and other Glasswing partners. Glasswing is the project that gets Mythos 5, the more capable model, on a consensus framework for assessing the severity of AI jailbreaks and how developers should respond to them. I think this is Anthropic's way of saying, we want to stop this from spinning out of control in the future. Fable 5 is available now at 50 % of your weekly usage limits through July 7th. After that, you will need to purchase usage credits.

12:13A lot of developers not happy with how expensive Fable 5 is going to be. Also, since we're talking about Anthropic, it also released Claude Science, an agentic app tailored to scientific uses. In fact, I'm planning to get Dr. Nicky's opinion on that. And Sonnet 5 has been released across all plans, including for free users that can do better agentic things like plan, use tools, carry out tasks with less of your step-by-step input. So I think Claude trying to, or Anthropic trying to flood the zone there with like, Fable 5's back. Don't get mad about the stuff. We're giving you Sonnet 5. Look at that instead.

12:47I continue to be optimistic that the more good actors and bad actors, the more that the good actors have access to this stuff, the better off we're all going to be eventually. Yeah. And I know that sometimes the bad actors get in there first. And that, you know, was the big worry here. But it just feels like people who their job it is to, you know, squash bugs, make sure that things are working well, develop new tools, all of that stuff, that that's, that's who really wins here now i know that uh the security implications are difficult uh because it can it can get bad out there but yeah i i just i think this is a win for everybody and there was a lot of government stuff involved uh just kind of some political theater for sure but yeah claude science uh that that is cool i would love to know what dr nikki thinks about that yeah Yeah, yeah.

13:53We'll try to get her thoughts on that for later in the week for sure. Cloud science is more of a interface to say, if you're a scientist and you're using cloud tools, we'll make it easier to pipeline stuff and add your databases and all of that. It's not a specific model for science, but it is interesting. Going back to this stuff, I think what probably happened is a, I feel like this is a general principle. The wide principle that you stated is one that I also subscribe to. The more openness, the more secure, because the bad guys aren't going to play by the rules. They're going to try to get around things.

14:32If you put rules that stop the good guys from getting in, they're going to not see the problems as fast as other people. Right. Yeah. It's like, it's not like AI security researchers are like, eh, who cares? Yeah. They care. You know, it's like, give us the tools. But that sort of principle works in general. When you have a specific instance happen where the bad guys got ahead, it's harder to say, well, that doesn't happen all the time. I guess we lost that one, but we win more than we lose. It becomes very panic-inducing, especially if you're the U.S. government who knows way more than we do about what China and Russia and North Korea and Iran are actually doing and looking at Fable 5 and saying, well, we can't let them have that.

15:17We don't want them to have any wins. And that's when you get organizations like governments or companies or anybody else saying, let's lock it down. Let's try to make it impossible. even though that general principle is going to work over the long term, they don't want to have that one incidence where it didn't work. Sure. Yeah, because that's what everyone will remember. You know, these tools aren't safe. Well, 83-year-old Vint Cerf happens to be stepping down from his 20-year role as chief internet evangelist over at Google. Cerf is very well known, but best known for working with Robert Kahn to develop fundamental internet protocols like TCPIP in the 1970s.

16:00Cerf announced his retirement while participating in the Open Frontier Conference. During a panel discussion, he noted that he thinks the agentic model of AI with multiple agents from multiple sources interacting with each other is going to force composability and a requirement for interoperability and standardization. channel. The guy knows standards. The guy knows the internet. I really hope he's right. You know, I think what he's saying here is because these agents will want to be as capable as possible, you're going to see the same pressures that caused something like matter to happen in the smart home, right?

16:41Where everybody was developing their own protocols. And then everybody realized, you know, if we combine on a standard, it's actually better off. It's actually he feels like, yeah, agents and MCP, a standard for agents to be able to talk to each other is an early indicator of that. MCP is a standard that all the agents are implementing. And in fact, usually touting once they've implemented Gemini Spark, just added MCP to the desktop app. So I think he's, I think he's onto something and I really hope that he's onto something because I think that would be a very good outcome for all of us. Well, you know, Vint Cerf, congratulations on quite quite a run yeah no kidding you know I wonder what Vince is is gonna read first what's his his first ebook going to be well and I wonder if he's even gonna retire like he's stepping down at Google but like right this doesn't seem like a guy who's just gonna go lay out by the beach no at least not for very long he might do that and also think of a new yeah exactly and he'll be on a panel over zoom while he's on the beach yeah uh well folks We're very excited that July is here because new Patreon perks are here for the first time in years.

17:54We have new benefits, including exclusive ways to find out what's going on behind the scenes, even have a voice in the show. One of the ones I'm looking forward to is the Progress Bar, where a bunch of us just jump on a video conference with our favorite drink, alcoholic or non-alcoholic, and just chat with people at the top level of Patreon. And from now until July 31st, if you use the code experiment in anticipation of experiment week next week, new patrons get 26 % off their first pledge. That can be monthly or yearly. 26 % use the code experiment. Check out the new tiers at patreon.com slash DTNS.

18:38You want to get your backyard summer ready, but you don't want to break the bank? Wayfair gets it. Planning on dining al fresco or relaxing poolside? Wayfair has everything you need to prep your space. Shop now and save up to 70 % off during Wayfair's 4th of July clearance. Score huge deals on outdoor furniture, area rugs, and more. We're talking thousands of products for every style and budget. Plus, surprise flash deals July 6th. Don't wait. Shop Wayfair's 4th of July clearance now through July 6th at Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. This episode is brought to you by Capital One.

19:12Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade and value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. All right, let's get to the headlines. These are just good to know. You will feel smarter knowing these in the future. We hope so anyway. Sources tell Business Insider that Microsoft is planning to announce more job cuts soon across sales, consulting, and gaming.

19:57that will amount to less than 2.5 % of the workforce. So big company, but not a big number of them. Yeah, and definitely a cost-cutting measure. I don't think that's obvious, but that's what they're saying. U.S. Supreme Court will hear an appeal from Apple of the ruling that it was in contempt of court in its case with Epic Games. Now, if you don't remember, District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers found Apple in contempt of her 2021 ruling to let developers direct users to third-party payment options, calling Apple's 27 % fee for such redirection malicious compliance. Now, an appellate court said, you can charge a fee, that just seems like it's quite a bit.

20:40And Apple said, I don't think we are in contempt of court for doing this. And the Supreme Court did not offer an injunction against that, but did say, all right, we'll hear your arguments. The arguments will be heard in October with a ruling expected next June. Google's Gemini Spark agent is now available for macOS and the existing Gemini desktop app. Spark is available to Google AI Ultra subscribers in the US. Yeah, if you remember, beginning of last year, Getty announced it was going to merge with Shutterstock. Well, that's not happening. They have called off the merger because Getty did not want to comply with a UK Competition and Markets Authority requirement that Shutterstock would have to sell off its global editorial business, which included celebrity and news photo agencies, probably a plum part of the business that Getty wanted.

21:30So, so Getty said, no, if that's a condition for the merger, then we're just not going to merge. I mean, when's the last time you looked at a non-celeb Getty image? I know there are plenty of them, but I probably didn't realize that's usually where I end up where I'm like, oh yeah, who's wearing that dress at the Cannes Film Festival in 1895. Well, that's why the UK, they're like, yeah, if you take Shutterstocks, then we have one less competitor to you who are already dominating the industry. Yeah. Samsung released a teaser for its next foldable that is rather opaque. It shows a chocolate bar with one row of squares broken off next to a photo booth photo strip with the top broken off and a puzzle with the top row of pieces removed.

22:19The image has the teched new shape, new joy. What does it mean? We don't know, but we could venture a guess that the next Samsung foldable will be shorter and wider. Yeah. I don't think it means that the phone will be able to break off the top, which would be the other interpretation. That would be a party trick for sure, but I'm not sure what kind. That'd be kind of fun if it had a modular thing. What if it's just a chocolate bar? Maybe the phone is made of chocolate. Not going to last long in your house, but it's fun while it lasts. People are having a lot of fun with this. Netflix, Eleven Labs, and the Gene Wilder estate have partnered to recreate the voice of Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka for Netflix's new reality show, Wonka's Golden Ticket.

23:09it's a reality show with an oompa loompa actually one of the original loompa loompas from the 1971 movie uh you're competing to try to win a wonka level prize and uh of course people are not happy that netflix recreated gene wilder's voice even if the estate approved well i mean if the estate approves just because you can do it they say well doesn't mean sure i i get it but i don't know that anger is really the right response maybe you know discomfort i think there's definitely discomfort as well yeah yeah but listen i mean if if the family is like this is not okay yeah it's not okay period but the family is okay with it so yeah you know at this point if you don't like it don't watch the show which i probably won't but you know it's neither here nor there i probably I wasn't going to watch it anyway.

24:04I'll probably give it a shot. Yeah. Because, you know, that original movie is just my favorite thing. Motorola announced a feature for its phones called Global Connect, a built-in travel eSIM that gives you one gig of complimentary data when you're traveling in more than 160 countries. So, you know, it's pretty far and wide. After that, you can add as much data as you want through the included app, starting at$299 for one gig, $5 for three gigabytes, and discounts on up to 20 gigs. That is convenient and insidious because you might be able to find cheaper amounts, but those amounts aren't crazy.

24:39And if it's already in your phone, you're just going to be like, oh, yeah, exactly. It's convenient. Meta is planning to develop a cloud infrastructure business similar to AWS or Google Cloud or even CoreWeave to sell computing power and model access. Imagine in the future when everybody is laughing because Facebook is no longer popular, but Meta is just making money hand over fist as a cloud services company. Meta announced it will place a three-hour limit on conversation focus. That's an on-device feature for its smart glasses, which amplifies the voice of the person that you're talking to. Meta's like, oh, only three hours.

25:19Then no more amplification anymore. subscribers of the$20 a month meta one premium subscription won't have that limit though. This is unconscionable. In my opinion, this is an accessibility feature. This is for people who are hard of hearing. You don't put it behind the paywall. You don't make that the feature you put behind the paywall. Come on. Yeah. I just, it's like, in what scenario is someone going to be like, yeah, three hours is plenty. We just don't need more than that. Yeah. Also let's punish us if we happen to, you know, I don't know, have a lot of meetings that day. It doesn't even cost Meta anything to run it because it happens on device.

25:57I just, I don't get, I don't get who thought this was the thing they should put behind the paywall. That's just crazy. Somebody who wants to make money. Yeah, that's a really bad way to try to make money. I'm just saying. China's UB Tech announced its UWorld U1 robots. These are the letter U, not Y-O-U. The UWorld U1 robots have 88 degrees of freedom, a dual pivot biomimetic cervical spine. They move like people and they've got soft synthetic skin. Yeah, they look like people and run an emotional intelligence model to make the expressions look realistic when they grin at you. I had a friend come over over the weekend who had not seen my Amazon Astro yet.

26:42and they were like what's that and i was like a robot that i don't know i don't really know what it's just a robot it does things yeah it's a he just i don't know i i decided that it was a he but okay um but uh yeah robot with skin interesting yeah um humanoid robots with skin i mean these are just meant to be your pal there's well like a person yeah listen and i don't i don't necessarily say like this is bad this is creepy and horrible but uh kind of creepy but this is potentially horrible maybe horrible yeah the uk culture secretary wrote to paramount giving them until july 6th to respond to concerns that its proposed merger with warner's warner brothers discovery is going to reduce the plurality of news sources in the uk the deal has been approved in the u.s And a remedy proposed in the EU looks likely to gain approval there as well.

27:40So dragging their feet a little bit, but it's probably going to work out. Yeah, UK's culture secretary has done this before with mergers, and then they ended up happening. So if you look at this and thought, oh, maybe it won't happen, 50-50. I think it probably still happens, but it's going to be a slightly bumpier road. The thing that would be bad for Paramount is if it delayed it long enough that it has to start paying a fee that it guaranteed Warner it would pay if it takes too long to finish the merger. Thanks to Motang for noting this last one on the DTNS subreddit. File compression app Winrar posted the following.

28:17Thanks to all of your recent payments, we've been able to develop a new version. Winrar has just released the new shiny version 7.23. Now, those of you laughing already know why that's funny. But if you don't, WinRAR is somewhat famous for warning you that your 40 day trial has ended, but never disabling the app or forcing you to pay for it. So it's very self-aware for them to be like, thanks to all your recent payments, because we know all of you paid after the 40 days. It kind of reminds me of Flickr being like, all your photos are going away, but not really. But maybe not. Yeah, we're just going to make it more annoying for you.

28:56haven't heard from flicker in a while i should probably check in with them he's still there you should check hard to know yeah uh we end every episode of dtns with shared perspectives and we thank all of you for helping share those perspectives today sparky 64 had this to say after learning that microsoft had extended support for windows 10 for yet another year Sparky wrote, I just deleted Windows 10 yesterday on an old desktop and replaced it with Linux Mint. I still have Windows 11 on my desktop and laptop, but this now gives me more time to learn more about it. Microsoft probably doesn't want to spend time, money, and resources on it, but they should say, we'll just triple the price and say it's due to AI.

29:43That definitely is like the going, like, it's AI. I mean, yeah, because AI, yeah, data centers, water, energy, you just have to pay more. Everybody so much compute, so much compute. Yeah. So, uh, help us help you. Well, if you're thinking about anything that we talked about on the show today, if you have an insight into a story, we'd love your emails. We read every single one, share them with us. Feedback at daily tech news show.com. Big thanks to Sparky 64 for contributing to today's show. and thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. Don't forget that discount. If you're not a patron, 26 % off your first payment with the code experiment at patreon.com slash DTNS.

30:29The DTNS family of podcasts, helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this broker.

30:41You want to get your backyard summer ready, but you don't want to break the bank? Wayfair gets it. Planning on dining al fresco or relaxing poolside? Wayfair has everything you need to prep your space. Shop now and save up to 70 % off during Wayfair's 4th of July clearance. Score huge deals on outdoor furniture, area rugs, and more. We're talking thousands of products for every style and budget. Plus, surprise flash deals July 6th. Don't wait. Shop Wayfair's 4th of July clearance now through July 6th at wayfair.com.

31:37Way fair, every style, every home. That's technology at Capital One.