Tech News Weekly 352 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

0:00:00 - Mikah Sargent
Coming up on Tech News Weekly. It is the first week of the month. That means Abrar Al-Heeti of CNET joins me this week and Abrar talks about autonomous trucks making their way onto the highways in California and elsewhere. We also talk about Tesla's upcoming RoboTaxi reveal and a general conversation about autonomous driving. Then I take the stage with Bluetooth 6.0. Is it possible? With just the Bluetooth we have in our devices, we could have better, more precise item tracking? Well, that is what the Bluetooth Special Interest Group says. Afterwards, Mark Gurman of Bloomberg joins us to give us a rundown of what we can expect from Glowtime, apple's September 9th iPhone event. Before Kate Knibbs from Wired joins us to have a conversation about the Internet Archive losing an appeal to a copyright case surrounding the Internet Archive's National Emergency Library program. All of that coming up on Tech News Weekly Podcasts you love.

0:01:10 - VO
Podcasts you love. From people you trust. This. Is TWIT.

0:01:17 - Mikah Sargent
This is Tech News Weekly with Abrar Al-Heeti and me, Mikah Sargent, episode 352, recorded Thursday, September 5th 2024: The Future of the Internet Archive. Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking that tech news. I am one of your hosts, Mikah Sargent, and I am so pleased to say that it is the first week of September, which means I am joined by the wonderful, wonderful, no, the wonderful Abrar Al-Heeti. I was getting ahead of myself there, hello, Abrar.

0:01:53 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Hello, thank you so much for having me. I'll just take that as you being so excited that you can even get the words out of your mouth, so I love it.

0:01:58 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, I am really pleased to have you here. I know that the listeners are as well. For those of you who are tuning in for the first time, you should know that the way that we kick off this show is by sharing some stories of the week. My guest co-host joins me with a story, I provide a story and we chat about them. So let us hear, brar, what story you are bringing to the table this week. Let us hear, brar, what story you are bringing to the table this week.

0:02:26 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Yeah, so I want to talk about self-driving cars and robo taxis and self-driving trucks. So the news peg here is that the California DMV issued draft regulations for the operation of autonomous vehicles on highways. And this is really interesting because if you live in the Bay Area or if you've been to the Bay Area, you've seen a lot of Waymo cars driving around San Francisco and surrounding areas and that's just within the city, right. So these things don't really drive on highways yet in the area, but Waymo is testing its autonomous ride-hailing cars in the Phoenix area on highways, but that's still just tests, right. So that hasn't really rolled out widely. But these draft regulations for operating these vehicles on California highways is interesting not only for ride hailing in an autonomous car, but for trucks. Autonomous trucks are also something that these companies are really trying to tap into.

So imagine delivering things in these self-driving vehicles and how that could change. You know everything and I don't know. I just feel like it's a little scary to think about self-driving trucks. I mean, self-driving cars are really cool and I'll be the first to say that I love riding in a Waymo and I think it's really convenient sometimes to just be you in the car and blasting whatever music you want to listen to, but trucks are a really big deal, right? There's a lot more that you have to think about, um, a lot more related to safety, Um, also related to I mean, we talk about this with any form of self-driving cars. We think about jobs that might be lost or changed as as these become, you know, fully autonomous.

Um, but for now, uh, these, these regulations say that there needs to be somebody, um, you know, somebody in the car, like a human driver in the truck as they navigate these highways. That's usually how they start out before they become really fully autonomous. But there's also a startup called Wabi, and I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but this is backed by Uber and NVIDIA, and these they operate autonomous trucks, still with drivers behind the wheel, but their plan is to go on commercial routes and be fully self-driving by next year, which is very, very soon, and so I'm sure other companies, like you know, potentially Waymo could be looking into that. I know they have in the past, but I don't know, Mikah, have you? Are you somebody who rode in a Waymo before? How do you feel about generally, even just like ride hailing in a Waymo car, not just in the city, but like on a highway, for example.

0:04:48 - Mikah Sargent
So I have to tell you I'm a little bummed that before I moved, I didn't get the opportunity to try out one of these vehicles While it was still you'll have to remind me, it may still be invite only, but certainly during the invite only portion I did get an invite and had planned on making my way up to the city, but then there were all of these things that were happening where it was like right after the city had made some choices that resulted in people getting upset, and so I thought I don't want to be in one of these things while people are banging the sides of it with sticks or whatever. So I was like I'll just hold off, I'll hold off. So I didn't ever get the opportunity to do so. I will say that I am.

I remain very fond of the idea for a couple of reasons. One is what you talked about a little bit, where you can just be in the car. I have a problem with setting my own boundaries and like not feeling bad about that, and so I, even in a vehicle where I've marked like the preference of I want it to be quiet, I still feel guilt about not interacting with the person in the front seat and so having nobody in the front seat means I can truly just exist in bliss and do whatever it is that I want to do, so I like that idea. I'm not keen on some of the issues that they've experienced, like, unfortunately, stopping traffic when they get confused, or there was a recent time where it held up like a fire truck. I think I would be just beyond mortified and would probably melt into a puddle if I was in the vehicle when that happened. Mortified and would probably melt into a puddle. If I was in the vehicle when that happened, I don't know what I would do, what I would be expected to do, but I certainly think it would kind of ruin that for me, that experience for me, and so I really would want this to be super locked down. By locked down, I mean like figured out.

On the other flip side of things, I think that driverless vehicles are a fantastic idea and I love that that is a possibility, but it needs to be done well, because you know flipping a little bit to now talking about these trucks. These things are huge and they wear a car and some kind of, you know, crossovers, and even some SUVs are designed in such a way that if they were to hit a pedestrian underneath a certain speed at least, that there's a good chance that the person would not be completely killed. There's very little chance that you're going to survive a collision with a semi truck. And, given that, I think that more consideration needs to take place, and it does, in a way, make me feel a type of way that the DMV alone is I mean not alone, but that the DMV is kind of the ruling body for this.

It almost feels like it needs to be I don't know, some sort of elected body that takes charge because of the fact that the choices that they're making have literally a direct impact on the humans and the safety of humans who live in a place, and so it's kind of it's like oh, so the DMV gets to decide whether we have these trucks that in some ways, are not tested as much as we would want them to be out there on the road, uh, doing their thing at speeds of 70 miles per hour, or 55 or 60 or whatever they'll go. And so all of that makes me think is it going to be a situation where you see one of those coming and you just get the heck out of the way, and so there'll be this weird sort of invisible force field around these vehicles, around these trucks. As you see, the cars kind of go. Okay, let me just get out of the way of this thing or get past this thing.

0:09:04 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Yeah, absolutely. I feel like these companies are navigating very tricky territory pun intended, because of the things you mentioned, where there is a lot of concern when it comes to safety, but because they're overly cautious they tend to back up traffic. When I'm walking to work all the time in downtown San Francisco, the other day I was at a at a. It was essentially a, an alleyway, and I was waiting to cross the alleyway but there was a Waymo there and it was patiently waiting because I didn't want to take any risks and even if I took like a little bit of a step forward, it would instantly stop. Like you know, it's. They're super, super touchy about that because they don't want to have, you know, the bad publicity and the ill feelings from people who are concerned about a self-driving car, which still sounds kind of creepy to people. Waymo, of course, has their own statistics about the safety of their vehicles. So they say that they're up to three and a half times better in avoiding crashes that cause injuries and two times better avoiding police reported crashers than humans. You know again, this is from Waymo, so they're going to have the statistics to say, hey, this is actually smarter than what humans are capable of, and I do think there is some validity to that if the tech is there Right. And so, like you mentioned, like humans are humans and we get distracted and we have our phones and we have even our touchscreen displays in our cars. That can be a distraction get distracted, and we have our phones and we have even our touchscreen displays in our cars. That can be a distraction.

So I think you know, really making sure that you know these Jaguars that are driving in downtown, that those ride hailing vehicles are able to handle the task, is really, really crucial and I'm sure the companies know this. Making sure that that's locked down before you go onto a highway where, yes, people are going 70 miles an hour or more and and there could be some, some issues or some concerns there. But yeah, that the trucking aspect is really interesting because I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that trucking was kind of one of the main drivers again pun intended for self-driving, because think about the ways that companies could utilize that and get things delivered and perhaps in their book, a more efficient way or a speedier way. And then I think companies kind of said all right, let's start with ride sharing and dealing with like within cities before we branch out into that territory. So this could again open the door for that area too.

0:11:23 - Mikah Sargent
That's almost also a pun open the door for that area too. That's almost also a pun open the door. Yeah, this is fascinating because it becomes multi-layered right when I think about how rideshare, part of the gig economy, is a far newer concept and a far newer sort of business and job area than the sort of trucking industry in the United States and elsewhere, and so it's almost like what you're saying there. You know they were able to disregard the newer workers and sort of try to to to to make a change there, versus what I might imagine has some money behind it and some lobbying uh ability behind it with the trucking industry.

And so the idea that, uh, that they encroach on that territory is troublesome, because any and I only know this from having a dear friend of mine during college her dad was a. He trucked I can't think of exactly what they choose to call themselves, but he would drive trucks and learning about how it really is the backbone of everything that we do as consumers. And any downtime when it comes to that means so little access to all of the things that we rely on regularly. All of the things that we rely on regularly. And, given that you really don't want to poke that bear or disturb that beehive or whatever metaphor you want to use, and I am curious how poking that bear is going to have an impact on things going forward.

Will we see strikes? Will we see things going forward? Will we see strikes? Will we see, you know, greater legal concern that is backed by money coming from the industry? So there's, I mean, it's not going to be an easy change. I don't think, and that's only one aspect, aside from the safety and security aspects and what is going on there. So, yeah, there's a lot to pay attention to here.

0:13:49 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Yeah, and you're absolutely right in that the trucking industry is a lot more established than think of Uber and Lyft, upended taxis, and so that's already been an area that's been in turmoil and changes over the last several years, and so it was easier to be like, well, let's just change it again, let's see, you know why not, and so I think it will take a little more effort. I do also just want to mention that Tesla is reportedly also going to unveil a fully autonomous robo taxi next month. The report suggests this would be at Warner Brothers Studio, which is really fascinating to me. That would be like a Hollywood treatment for something like this, which sounds very Elon Musk.

But that's another area that I think could potentially inspire a lot of unease for people, because I think there've been a lot of claims on Tesla's part about having fully autonomous and fully self-driving, when that hasn't actually like. Their full self-driving feature is not a fully self-driving feature, so there's been a lot of confusion there. So we already know that autopilot has also led to some crashes and deaths too, so it'll be interesting to see how Tesla navigates into that new territory and says okay, here's really this fully autonomous robo-taxi, which I also want to mention. One of the interesting things that Musk has said is that if you are a Tesla owner, you will be able to essentially use your car like an Airbnb so someone could summon it. It was like a ride hailing service and your car would drive off and pick up that person, and then it's just interesting. We'll see how much of this materializes and how much we'll actually find out next month.

0:15:17 - Mikah Sargent
How much is fluff and how much is reality. Yes, that's always one aspect of any Tesla announcement. We do need to take a quick break before we come back with my story of the week, joined here by Abrar Al-Heeti.

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All right, we are back from the break and that means it is time for my story of the week. I was pretty excited to see that the Bluetooth SIG that is, special Interest Group has announced the release of Bluetooth 6.0. Bluetooth 6.0 is the latest version of Bluetooth. That includes some new features and before I get into that, I do want to mention the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, or SIG, is the kind of governing body, so to speak, behind the Bluetooth specification. So anytime new features or new bits of the specification are announced or rolled out, they're coming from the Bluetooth Special Interest Group. So with this latest version, the core spec has gotten an update that includes a few new features, including Bluetooth channel sounding, decision-based advertising filtering, monitoring, advertisers, isoal, isole enhancements, ll, extended feature sets and the frame space update.

We're going to talk about a few of these. Some of them are very, very, very, very, very complicated and involve stuff that as just kind of Bluetooth users, we aren't going to be impacted directly by. But one of the big things that's happening is the introduction of Bluetooth channel sounding. So with Bluetooth channel sounding, it is a feature that it gives sort of it sends out signals across a few frequencies of it sends out signals across a few frequencies, and by sending out these signals, it's able to determine how close something is, according to the Bluetooth special interest group, up to centimeter precision. So with this it gives you a better accuracy of understanding the distance between two devices, and so you can imagine that a signal gets sent out to your iPhone from an AirTag, for example, and another signal gets sent out at a different frequency. They know how long it takes these frequencies to travel between two places, and by comparing the time that it takes for that signal to reach its destination and the other one, you get have more information about that, and that means that the distances are much more precise, which is pretty cool. So right now, the way that Apple provides for being able to precisely measure the distance between two items is using what they call the ultra wide band chip.

This is a different technique that also claims to provide centimeter and, in some cases, millimeter accuracy, although that has not been my direct experience. And with this it wouldn't require, you know, an extra chip. It could do it with just Bluetooth alone. Now it's not just Find my Stuff that the channel sounding has been introduced for. It's also for things like unlocking your car or unlocking a hotel room.

So up to this point, lots of vehicle manufacturers who have introduced technology like this have either used NFC near field communication to provide this kind of unlocking mechanism, or they've gone the route of using Bluetooth, knowing that it is less secure and that a man in the-the-middle attack could happen, where someone sort of replicates the signal being sent from one device to your car and, you know, grabbing that and then using it itself.

With this new channel sounding, you would at least have a more precise understanding of where the originating device is, and then you could know that if a man in the middle of attack was happening. That's the hope anyway. So it would make that more secure, which could mean that more cars choose to adopt something like Bluetooth unlock for their vehicles. So there are a couple of other features that I think are interesting, but I did want to ask, um a bra, if you have used at any time any of the kind of tracker uh technology that exists, if you find it helpful, um, and how you're feeling about having, in theory, even more precise understanding of where something is.

0:23:42 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Yeah, absolutely so.

I, um, my air tag is always on my keys and, unless I'm traveling and it's in my suitcase, Um, but I uh I like what you mentioned about the, the ultra wide band on the iPhone and how things like precision finding where you can kind of really get that more accurate idea of where something is, that can be really helpful.

But I love the idea of something like this being, you know, across device, that level of accuracy being across devices, Because if there's one thing about Apple that we know, it's that they love to be exclusive. Think about the fact that AirTags don't even work with other devices. So I think having this kind of feature is really helpful so you could use it across whatever your device or tracker of choice is. And I think that safety element of you know, having your car keys or your hotel key not be intercepted is also something that should give a peace of mind, and I noticed in this article this is Bluetooth's last major update within 2016. I mean it's time right, Like it's about time we had something that really brought it into the modern age and also tackled any modern day issues.

0:24:45 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely. It's really what you're talking about there with the exclusivity. This should be something that all people are able to have access to, and especially given that it's apparently something that can be achieved with Bluetooth, which is already a technology that's in so many devices. So it makes it less exclusive and it also makes it more helpful. And you can imagine then you know Some stuff that has Bluetooth in it, like a pair of headphones. A firmware update potentially could result in me being able to find my headphones, where before I had to have an AirTag attached to them or I had to, you know, use a tile tracker attached to them. Now I can just use my phone with an app and find where it is. I think that's so cool.

I wanted to mention a couple of the other things that are kind of fascinating. They talk about decision-based advertising, filtering. That is a lot of words. That basically means that, as it stands, when a device is, say, your computer is looking for a specific product, there's a kind of main channel that sends out signal and so it will kind of give information to your computer. So a mouse, let's say a mouse, will give information to your computer on this primary channel, and the secondary radio channels will have other information on them that the computer might need or might not need, and so in doing that it can kind of result in things taking a little bit longer because it doesn't know which secondary channel it should be looking for or it has to do that with every single item. So decision-based advertising filtering just means that kind of both devices will have a little bit more information about each other and it can also send more information over the primary channel, meaning that it's not taking as long. So if you've ever opened your settings app and you've gone into Bluetooth and you've watched it spin and you've waited and waited, and waited and finally an item appears, this is what is going to help improve that, as well as something called monitoring advertisers bit.

Like the first one, except this time, think about if you went into the Bluetooth settings on your computer, thereby activating kind of the search feature, and you were looking for a pair of headphones that you have in front of you and it keeps not showing up, but finally it shows up, but it's as you stood up and walked away and you were in frustration, and so you come back. After having chucked the headphones across the room, you come back and the headphones are still showing up in the Bluetooth settings and you're like, oh, now I can connect them. You try to connect them, no, you threw them across the room. They're no longer within range and this is going to help with that kind of thing.

Basically, what I'm saying is if an item moves out of range, it's going to know that a lot faster than it would have otherwise and get it off of that list faster when it's actually out of range. So a few little changes there that I think folks can be excited about. But of course, um, folks can be excited about. But of course, yes, Bluetooth 6.0 is that main or the the sort of finding functionality of Bluetooth 6.0 is definitely the main feature there. Uh, a bra or anything else you would like to say about this, uh, this topic, before we let you go.

0:28:33 - Abrar Al-Heeti
No other than I'm glad people don't have to chuck their headphones across the room anymore. This would be great.

0:28:38 - Mikah Sargent
Yes, we could all be pleased, although I guess the drywall repair industry might be a little upset. But what can you do? I'll take it. Thank you so much for your time, Abrar. Of course folks can head over to CNET.com to keep up with what you're doing, but where else should they go to always be ready for what you've got next?

0:28:59 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Yeah, you can follow me on Twitter it's LHT, underscore three or on Instagram. It's my first and last name of our LHT, no spaces. And if you want to have a little fun, I'm on TikTok. It's not professional at all, but you know it's a good time.

0:29:10 - Mikah Sargent
It is a good time. Everyone should head there. It's been a pleasure today and I will see you and Otis next time.

0:29:20 - Abrar Al-Heeti
Yes, thank you so much. Otis says thank you.

0:29:23 - Mikah Sargent
All righty folks, we're going to take a quick break before we come back with the first of two interviews, this one with a familiar face, who will be talking to us about the upcoming Apple event.

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And now we are back from the break. As many of you know, Apple has an event on Monday and, as many of you also know, September is typically the time when Apple announces a new iPhone. Joining us to talk about whether that is or is not the case is Bloomberg's own Mark Gurman. Mark, welcome back to the show Thanks for having me.

0:31:00 - Mark Gurman
Yes, they will be announcing new iPhones this month. Yes, yes, yes, shockingly on Monday. So you'll see new iPhones, you'll see new AirPods and you'll see new Apple watches. So they're sticking to the usual formula and I think the big things this time around will be more so the non-iPhone products. I don't think the iPhone update yet again is going to be anything of massive significance. I guess last year was pretty significant with the move to titanium. You can argue how big of a change that is, but I think it was a pretty big change. This year, the phones are going to look essentially the same. You're going to get that camera button to control the camera hardware key for the first time. The Apple Watch and the AirPods will be getting the bigger enhancements.

0:31:51 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, so let's, then. I guess we should start with the iPhone, since there's not a whole lot to talk about there. We've been hearing about this capture button for a while now, and I was curious to hear your take on the capture button in terms of, um, well, first and foremost, are all of the iPhones going to have action buttons, uh, this time around? And then, is the capture button truly going to be another button, uh, than the action button, the side button, the volume up and down button, and what do you know about? Whether it's going to be a physical clicky button or a capacitive button, or what all that involves? Can you tell us about that?

0:32:33 - Mark Gurman
Sure, yes, all the phones will have the action button, All the phones will have the camera button. And it's interesting because, you know, most people thought they were going in the other direction, moving as many buttons as possible, but here we are, adding two buttons now to the regular models and adding one new button to the pro models. Obviously, the action button came to the 15 Pro and Pro Max last year. It's a physical button, so you can physically click it, but it's capacitive in the sense that you can swipe on it and it's pressure sensitive, but it's a real button. There was speculation that Apple was moving away from physical click and buttons around the phones, something called Project Bongo, but that was abandoned due to cost and engineering issues, so that's not in the picture anymore. So, physical button with a capacitive sensor layer on top and it works almost exactly like a DSLR button, where you can push in a little bit to focus and keep pushing to shutter and you can swipe on it in order to zoom in and out of a subject.

0:33:47 - Mikah Sargent
Okay, that's pretty cool, the zoom feature, because I was not fully aware of everything that that button would be able to do. So, outside of that, materials wise. Remind us what we should expect for these iPhones, is it? You know we're still rocking titanium on the pro models. What's the what's the rundown there?

0:34:11 - Mark Gurman
I will tell you, like, the button is cool, fine, but what is that doing for the user? Right, it just seems like they came up with something that will get people to take more pictures in order to buy more storage, physical storage, storage. It doesn't feel like a real innovative addition, right, it feels like an addition for the sake of an addition. There's nothing more convenient, in my view, of using that capture button, uh, versus using the screen, right? I mean, who knew touchscreens are the thing of the past? Now, right, uh, to use the screen to zoom in and out and to take pictures. So, uh, you know, obviously I'm going to get the phone and, you know, looking forward to trying it out, and obviously they're going to sell a lot of them. But the the reality is is that we're not talking about a game changer here.

0:34:59 - Mikah Sargent
Right, yeah, no fair enough. So, speaking then of, maybe, game changers, you mentioned that the Apple Watch might see quite a few improvements this time around, arguably for the first time in a while. It would result in people making an upgrade, if it's going to at least look a lot different from what we've had thus far. So tell us what are the changes that we should probably expect when it comes to the Apple Watch?

0:35:34 - Mark Gurman
The non-Ultra models are getting updated designs with a thinner bezel and a slightly larger display and a thinner case. There's also a faster processor in there, and there's one other thing I haven't written about yet, so I'm going to hold my tongue on that one, but it's a health-related feature, and so we'll see that on Monday as well. And then the AirPods as well are going to get some pretty big enhancements on the low end. They're going to replace the second gen and the third gen AirPods with two fourth generation models. One of them is going to be a bit more premium and have noise cancellation. The others are a replacement for the $130 second gen ones that haven't been updated since 2019.

0:36:21 - Mikah Sargent
updated since 2019. So, when it comes to the AirPods, how are we differentiating between the pro model and the non-pro model? If all, or if if we've got, you know, noise cancellation in, uh, in the, the non-pro, now the active, yeah no, that's a good question.

0:36:36 - Mark Gurman
So, okay, so if you look at it in terms of three models of the non-headphones, you have the base model, which doesn't have noise cancellation and has more of a basic case without the speaker and all that. Um, then you have the mid tier model, which is going to look pretty much the same as the entry level model and look similar to the AirPods pro. That's going to get the noise cancellation in sort of that better case, and then at the high end, that Pro model. I believe you're going to get some of those software-related features that you're not getting on the mid-tier model right. So maybe you're getting better transparency mode, better active conversation mode, some of those software modes they've been adding.

There's a few other software things coming that they're going to be announcing on Monday as well. That will be supported probably on the AirPods Pro only and not that mid-tier model. So a lot of software differentiation there. I believe the Pro model has the water resistance or sweat resistance. I would assume that's not coming to the mid-tier model. The other differentiator there would probably be the better audio quality on the Pro model, even better noise cancellation on the Pro model, maybe better ear tips and fit. So I think they are going to delineate a little bit between them. And then, obviously, the AirPods Pro are going to be updated as well, not until next year the end of next year, I believe and that's going to create more of a gap as well. So if you think about how long they're letting these AirPods generations run for right, it's been five years since they upgraded the entry level model, right, so you got to soup them up and then they'll create that gap over the next several years Understood.

0:38:13 - Mikah Sargent
Now you had kind of an interesting take about the capture button on the iPhone. Now you had kind of an interesting take about the capture button on the iPhone that it was sort of adding for the sake of adding a new feature. When it comes to the Apple Watch, there had been rumors of a change in the band design that I was reading about, and then I also had a few questions come through about what Apple is going to do in terms of the pulse oximeter and whether you can still count on that hardware being there, even if it can't be activated in software, or if a future Apple Watch would, or if this Apple Watch would completely lose a hardware feature. That is still in the midst of that lawsuit. I see a smile. Are you able to talk about any of that?

0:39:00 - Mark Gurman
Well, I think it's ridiculous that Apple hasn't settled with Mossimo right, Because I think the blood oxygen feature is really essential and I think it's interesting that people are probably going to have models with blood oxygen. Obviously, they added blood oxygen with the Series 6 in 2020. And you're going to have to ask yourself like do I want all the new features of this new Apple Watch Series 10? But then if I do that, I'm going to lose blood oxygen because, as far as I know, there's not going to be blood oxygen on these new models. Now, you were very specific in your question Will the hardware support it? My anticipation is the hardware will support it and it would have to be re-added, a software update later.

0:39:35 - Mikah Sargent
Interesting. That's good to hear that, at least from your interpretation, that the feature would still be something that could be activated later, versus them designing kind of redesigning it, but all these hoops are so ridiculous, right, they should just light the bullet.

0:39:51 - Mark Gurman
They have enough money, but at the same time, they don't want to set the precedent with who they believe is a patent troll. You know, I think there's an argument to be made that you know, they fairly own the patent. Clearly, Apple thinks otherwise and they're going to take this all the way to the courtroom.

0:40:06 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, that, but it's kind of like what you're saying there. What is the holdout? Because it's only impacting Apple's customers and it's not like. It's not like this is some I don't know. It's not like we're in France, where you have people storming these buildings all the time and protesting. It's very different here in the US that it's not like we're. All those of us who are customers are chasing after Mossimo going make this change. Like who? What is it actually doing except making it so that the customers don't have access to a feature that they once had access to? What is the hold up there?

0:40:46 - Mark Gurman
I think it puts a hole in Apple's argument that their number one priority is the customer, right. No, their number one priority is their pocketbook, and if it was the customer, they would have paid whatever they needed to get this resolved.

0:40:57 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, I agree.

0:40:58 - Mark Gurman
Argue with me on that one.

0:41:01 - Mikah Sargent
So you know we've got always, you say, iphone, you've got AirPods, you've got Apple Watch. You have, of course, written a lot about what can be expected, anything that you expect to be talked about at the event, when it comes to kind of the non-hardware stuff. So a lot of times Apple takes this time to bandy about its Apple TV offerings, or you know what's going on there. Is there anything else we should expect other than you know? Just a strict focus on the hardware.

0:41:39 - Mark Gurman
Well, I'm sure they'll get in pretty nicely into the Apple TV stuff. They're going to talk a lot about Apple intelligence. I don't anticipate any Apple intelligence features that haven't already been announced being shown or anything like specific to the iPhone 16 Pro. So yeah, I mean I think people have been holding out hope there's more AI features to come. I don't anticipate that.

0:41:59 - Mikah Sargent
Understood. Well, of course, folks can head over to Bloomberg.com to keep up with what you're doing. Uh, you also have a wonderful discord community where people can stay up to date. Um, I don't. I you mentioned that there's something that you were holding your tongue on. Is that something that, if people are following along, they'll be able to catch? Are you waiting until after the event airs? And then I'll also add to this question that I'm asking you if you'd like to tell people where they can keep up with what you're doing. That'd be great.

0:42:28 - Mark Gurman
Yeah, you can subscribe to my weekly column on Sundays at Bloomberg.com. Slash power on and I'm an at Mark Gurman on X threads pretty much anywhere, mastodon, however you pronounce it. So find me on the social and I'm around.

0:42:44 - Mikah Sargent
Awesome. Thank you, mark, we appreciate it. Up next, we'll be talking about an internet darling losing a major copyright case, but I want to tell you about 1Password, who are bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. A question for you that I think I already know the answer to Do your end users always work on company-owned devices and IT-approved apps? Yeah, no, I didn't think so. So how, how in the world do you keep your company's data safe when it's sitting on all of those unmanaged apps and devices? How do you do it? Well, 1password has an answer to this question Extended access management. 1password extended access management helps you secure every sign-in for every app on every device, because it solves the problems that traditional IAM and MDM simply can't touch.

Imagine your company's security is kind of like the quad of a college campus. You've got these beautiful brick paths between the buildings and those are the company-owned devices, those IT-approved apps, those managed employee identities. But then you look around and you see how people are actually walking through the quad the paths that people actually use, the shortcuts that are worn through the grass, that are the actual straightest lines from point A to point B. Those are the unmanaged devices, the shadow IT apps and the non-employee identities. Like contractors, most security tools, they only work on those happy brick paths, they're only keeping those in line, but a lot of security problems actually take place on the shortcuts. So 1Password Extended Access Management is the first security solution that brings all of these unmanaged devices, these apps, these identities, under your control. It ensures that every user credential is strong, that it's protected, that every device is known and healthy and that every app is visible. It's security for the way we actually work today and it's now generally available to companies with Okta and Microsoft Entra and, by the way, it is in beta for Google Workspace customers. So check it out at 1password.com/twit. That's 1-P-A-S-S-W-O-R-D.com/twit.

All righty, we are back from the break and that means it's time for our second interview, this time with Senior Writer of WIRED. It is Kate Knibbs who joins us again on the show. Welcome back, kate. Hey, thank you so much for having me. Yeah, I am pleased to get you here to talk about this. You know a lot of our listeners, a lot of our viewers are big fans of the Internet Archive and have probably been watching as the Internet Archive kind of works through this court case involving copyright, and so I'm really glad that you were able to write about this and join us on the show to talk about it. I was hoping you could start by explaining what the Internet Archive's National Emergency Library Program was and then why it's led to a lawsuit was, and then why it's led to a lawsuit Sure thing.

0:46:03 - Kate Knibbs
So the Internet Archive, in addition to archiving most of the web, its most popular project is definitely the Wayback Machine, which basically preserves different copies of old websites. It does lots of other archiving and it has a book lending program that it's had for years, called the Open Libraries Initiative, where it would scan physical copies of old books that it had either purchased or had received as donations, and then it would allow people to check the books out for free, on a one-to-one loan ratio. So if they had one copy that they purchased or otherwise possessed, they would loan it out one at a time, the same way, as though it was a physical book, even though it was a PDF. During the pandemic in March 2020, when, all of a sudden, it was incredibly difficult for people to access libraries and bookstores and there was a lot of demand for different ways to access books, the Internet Archive made the decision to launch its National Emergency Library, and what that was was it took that one-to-one cap off of some of the books and instead it allowed many different people, sometimes theoretically thousands.

I don't know if that many people actually check them out at once, but they allowed a lot of people to check out these scanned versions of physical books out, and that really made a lot of book publishers pissed off. So for years, the book publishers had kind of been looking the other way I think in large part because the Internet Archive is so beloved. But when they went and removed the cap, it made them mad enough that they filed the lawsuit, and the Internet Archive actually only ran the National Emergency Library without the caps for under six weeks, so it was a very short-term program that was really only meant to fill this gap that arose during the pandemic. That was really only meant to fill this gap that arose during the pandemic, but the damage was sort of already done, and so the publishers filed this lawsuit in June 2020, I believe, and it's been winding through the courts ever since.

0:48:09 - Mikah Sargent
Understood. Now let's talk about the main argument when it comes to Internet Archive. You know in this lawsuit what has been the main argument there that the Internet Archive has used and then I think more importantly now, why was it used, rejected in this appeal of the copyright case.

0:48:32 - Kate Knibbs
So the argument that the Internet Archive used, is it mounted a fair use defense? So the fair use doctrine is something in US law that actually permits copyright infringement under certain circumstances. It's why, for instance, someone who's writing a satirical poem can take elements of a copyrighted poem and not get sued. It's why journalists are allowed to quote from different texts without having to license said texts. Copyright law that exists to sort of balance out the interests of the public and being able to access information and speak freely and comment on events with the interests of copyright holders. Fair use, I mean it's been around forever, but recently it's been in the news a lot because it's also sort of the linchpin of a lot of the defenses that are being mounted by AI companies that are being sued for copyright infringement. So people are hearing about it more and more and the Internet Archives defense was. You know, the way that we are using these books is fair use. We've purchased copies of these books or they've been donated to us. Yes, we are scanning them and making them available, but the way in which we're doing it should be legal. It's transformative. There are four different factors that are taken into account when a court is going to determine whether something is fair use and whether it's transformative is one of those things. So that was their argument. It wasn't denying that it was a copyright violation. It was just arguing that that copyright violation was fair use and thus legal.

And actually there are a lot of really important internet law cases that have hinged on fair use. One very famous one is a Google Books case, where Google argued that putting the snippets of books that you now see whenever you search for a book on the internet was fair use. And Google won that case and that's why we have Google, that's why Google Books exists. So the Internet Archive thought that they had, I think, a decent shot of winning this, considering that fair use defenses had been successfully mounted for book digitization efforts in the past.

However, last year, the district court judge who ruled this case basically rejected all of their arguments and found in favor of the publishers case basically rejected all of their arguments and found in favor of the publishers. And now, just this week, the appeals court has once again found in favor of the publishers and just did not buy that the fair use defense was applicable here. You know they, reading through the judgment, you'll you'll see the. The judge says you know it's not transformative. They argue that even though the publishers couldn't really, they didn't have to prove that it caused them financial harm. But the judge basically said well, you can't prove that it didn't cause financial harm and take sales away. So it was a pretty resounding loss for the Internet Archive.

0:51:55 - Mikah Sargent
Internet Archive. Yeah, and apparently there was some involvement in the initial district court's decision with the status of the Internet Archive as a nonprofit. Can you explain, because that part was a little confusing to me. I'll be honest.

0:52:07 - Kate Knibbs
It was confusing to me too when I first started researching it, because the Internet Archive is a nonprofit. It really is not operating based on a profit motive at all. It's existed for decades, really, with the intention to just make more information accessible to people. It doesn't have huge coffers that it's sitting on, but what it does have is solicits donations. It has a donation button on its website, as most nonprofits do, and it also purchased this company called Better World Books, which is sort of like a used bookstore online bookstore situation, but that's not a very lucrative operation and that basically existed to help them also solicit donations of books.

So, even though I think it's pretty clear to like 99 people in a room if you take a glance at how the internet archive operates, that it's a non-profit, the original ruling argued that it it might not be and it might have commercial interest because it had that donation button and this new ruling. The small victory that emerged for the Internet Archive from this ruling is that the judges were like no, okay, it's clearly a nonprofit. So, yeah, I guess that's sorted out. People now can point to this ruling and say, no, it's not commercially motivated, this is a nonprofit.

0:53:37 - Mikah Sargent
Understood. Are there other legal challenges that the Internet Archive is facing, maybe because of the way that this is going, but also just in general, given what the Internet Archive does and how it seems to be somehow a thorn in the side for some organizations and groups?

0:53:58 - Kate Knibbs
Yes, this is one of several serious legal challenges that the Internet Archive is facing. In addition to this lawsuit, there was a lawsuit more recently filed by music labels for copyright infringement for a different project. Um, the internet archive has this great 78 project and they upload recordings of 78s, which is like an obsolete uh record, uh format, and some of the major record labels, like universal music group, sony. They came together and sued for copyright infringement and that case is still like winding its way through the court system and it's also I think some of the lawyers are actually the same. Um, so that case is actually even more of an existential threat than this book publisher's case, because the book publishers, now that this is sort of all sorted, unless the Internet Archive appeals to the Supreme Court, the book publishers will get some money from the Internet Archive, but it's not going to bankrupt the Internet Archive.

To the Internet Archive, the music labels case, the damages that they could ask for is in the hundreds of millions of dollars, like an amount of money that will be very hard for the Internet Archive to come up with without endangering its operation. And in addition to that, I am very concerned that this will sort of encourage copycat cases to come forward that could also further hurt the Internet Archive financially. And yeah so even once music label cases sort of that doesn't necessarily mean that all of the risks that the Internet Archive faces for doing this kind of work go away. I suspect there will be more challenges down the road.

0:55:56 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely yeah, that's what it certainly sounds like. Can you tell us a little bit about the reactions to this ruling from the now the publishing industry and authors advocates, who probably, you know, are pleased to hear the changes here or the update?

0:56:15 - Kate Knibbs
Yes, there's definitely a lot of trade groups that are thrilled with this outcome, that really see themselves as advocating for writers and authors and who believe that they've scored a major victory.

You know, the Authors Guild, the American Association of Publishing, the National Writers Union a lot of different groups had been really on the side of the book publishers. It's been interesting as a writer to see the reaction, though, from individual writers, because a lot of us really rely on the Internet Archive, and a lot of us specifically rely on the Internet Archive's book digitization project, because it's really one of the best resources available online for out-of-print books, books that are otherwise unavailable. You can find really great old books that you would have to stumble upon in real life or pay like $550 from Abe Books or something online to get, so there's been, honestly, quite a big outcry from a lot of scholars and individual writers who are worried that this is going to make research harder going forward, and there's a big concern that this might impoverish the writing community in a way, even though it's being spun as a copyright victory. Yeah, so it's definitely not a situation where, like every writer is thrilled about this, there's a lot of writers who are really upset about this.

0:57:49 - Mikah Sargent
Understood. And then lastly, kind of a more open question and you kind of touched on, lastly, kind of a more open question and you kind of touched on, I think a little bit here, given the Internet Archive's importance in digital preservation, what do you think are maybe some potential impacts that this ruling could have rather on Internet history and research?

0:58:08 - Kate Knibbs
Yeah Well, if this ruling ends up creating a domino effect and endangering the Internet Archive and making some of its services unavailable to people, it will be an incredible loss. The Wayback Machine, the Open Libraries Project these are all incredibly valuable sort of unparalleled resources. There's no easy replacement out there for them. I just used the Wayback Machine last week on a journalistic project and I would have been totally screwed without it. So just anything that threatens the internet archive is truly a threat to the preservation of digital culture. And then, zooming out even further, there are arguments to be made that this is like a blow to the very concept of controlled digital lending, like the very concept that you could own a physical library book and then share a digital version of it, and I think that that could have some negative ramifications for lots of different libraries, not just the Internet Archive ramifications for lots of different libraries, not just the Internet Archive.

0:59:17 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely, kate. I want to thank you so much for taking time to join us today to talk through this and help us understand exactly what's going on here and what the future might hold, given that, of course, folks can head over to wired.com to check out your work as a senior writer for Wired. If they want to follow along to stay up to date with what you're doing, where should they go to do that?

0:59:34 - Kate Knibbs
On X, I'm nibs, my last name K-N-I-B-B-S, and on threads, I'm extreme nibs and you can also check me out, just yeah. wired.com is a great place to read.

0:59:46 - Mikah Sargent
Awesome. Thank you so much for your time. We appreciate it. Thank you, and with that, folks, we have reached the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly.

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