Apple and Google Push Back Against EU’s Digital Markets Act #1808

Lead story for Thursday, March 20. Apple and Google are pushing back against the EU's Digital Markets Act, claiming new interoperability and openness rules hurt consumers' innovation. The European Commission says these tech giants are abusing market dominance with Google facing potential fines for favoring its services and restricting developer freedom. Apple isn't under pressure to take to make iOS more compatible with third party devices.

The tech giant argues the rules compromise security and user experience, highlighting growing tension between Apple, Google, and European regulators. As this lead story portrays, it is once again the EU doing things that probably, in some instances, probably should be happening here in The United States. You know, they're demanding more interoperability and I always think that's good and fairness in App Store and so forth.

And of the two decisions made by the EU on Wednesday, the implications are more immediately worse worseome worrisome for Google than Apple. The commission issued a preliminary finding following an investigation into whether Google search favored promoting company's own services. Well, duh. And, of course, the Google Play Store prevents app developers from steering people to other channels

as well. And, of course, on both counts, Google was failing to comply with the DMA, meaning it could be in line for fine up to 10% of its annual global turnover. And, of course, both practices negatively impact many European and non European businesses that rely on Google search or Google Play to reach users in the EU. When it comes to Apple, the commission issued guidance as to how it wants the company to make third party products, smartwatches, for example, interoperable with iOS and pad iPad.

The aim, it said, is to give people in Europe more choices of products they can buy that will be compatible with iPhones and iPads. I guess the question is which products I would ask you. What is that list that isn't interoperable now? Now at the same time, we know that

some of this activity has been more of a money grab than anything else. But at the same time, we all know that, you know, Apple and Google, are pretty, pretty hardcore when it comes to the App Store and the percentage of monies that they're able to earn from sales and, you know, for subscriptions that are happening, through the iOS phone.

So time will tell how this ultimately boils down whether or not the president will get involved because he has indicated in the past that he doesn't like how the EU is essentially funding its IT tech off the backs of American companies. With that, I wanna welcome you to episode 1,809. I'm your host, Todd Cochran. Of course, a short a shout out to our incredible sponsor at GoDaddy. Score exclusive deals and discounts at geekinesscentral.com/godaddy. And to all our listeners, you're the heartbeat

of this show. If you wanna support g and c, head to geeknesscentral.com/insider and become a g and c insider. We're live and lit or lit and live, but just don't listen experience the show live by grabbing a modern podcast app and you can do that at podcastapps.com. Of course, you can check out the full geek news central universe at geeknewscentral.com where you'll find all of our partner shows and, of course, tons of new content.

Stay in the loop, follow it up, or subscribe to the podcast via your favorite podcast app. And, of course, don't forget to sign up for a newsletter and, it's on the website. And you can always get all the insider scoops if you're on the newsletter. You can join the conversation at geeknews.chat or email me [email protected]. You can hit me up on x at geek news. And of course, you can even find me on Facebook. Geek News Central listeners, you save lots of money when you use my

GoDaddy discount codes. So get exclusive savings right now at geek news central dot com forward slash GoDaddy. You can start with a website or podcast or maybe it's a place to put your bio. Just never know. The great get online, get set up, start a store. GNC codes make it easy and affordable. Grab GoDaddy's economy hosting for just $6.99 a month. That's a full year of hosting with a free domain name, professional email, and SSL certificate. Are you interested in WordPress, which is my

personal favorite? WordPress managed hosting is just $12.99

a month, which includes a free domain professional email and, again, an SSL certificate. If you need a domain name, get yours for just $11.99. Of course, they've got GoDaddy website builder. You can get a free thirty day trial on personal business or business plus plans. Geekness Center uses all of the GoDaddy products and services, and your support keeps this podcast alive. You can use our codes, at checkout or you can click and save. Again, you're back in the independent team of

creators. Share my codes or website link with friends and family because every time a code is used, it supports Geek News Central. Thank you so much for keeping us online and going strong. So I hope everyone's doing well. Just found out that the green screen is delivered. I have to go downstairs and and pick that up today. So maybe we'll be with a a green screen on the next show. It's already Friday here in The Philippines. I'm looking forward to the weekend. Very, very full, work week.

Lots of meanings, lots of things going on, lots of moving parts. It's amazing when you add just a few more people to the team just how much more work, can be accomplished as a whole. It's really it's really quite incredible. It really, really is. But, doing well. And, anyway, let's go ahead and and get into the stack of content and let's keep this tech train rolling.

I've always said if you are a Mac user, you are not exempt. Mac users are in danger of a well known Windows phishing attack. And what what it basically is, it just scams it's a scam way to make you think that an update is needed. You'll get a pop up basically saying your computer's got a a bug or virus or it needs to be updated and it tries to social engineer you into, clicking one of those links. And, don't do it. Just maintain your updates as you would with any other

Mac product. Don't be enticed by some pop up saying that you need to update something. You get you know how Mac is updated. Just follow those normal, updates. And I I truly believe you should run

a Norton and Malwarebytes. I I do. I've run it for years on my on my Mac and picked up a virus here and there, picks up a malware, picks up me trying to go to a site I shouldn't be going to. It's all, all in the name of security. I know many of you run without any antivirus and without any malware. I'm just not willing to risk it, especially in this economy where we're all working. Oh, many of us are working from home and using our computers and keeping security up is really, really important.

Stalkerware data breach potentially hits over 2,000,000 users including thousands of Apple devices. And this is kind of, it's really bad. A widely used consumer grade stalkerware operation was hit by a data breach in 2024. TechCrunch claims the beach the the, the breach affected Spy x and two related mobile apps impacting information for almost 2,000,000 people including 17,000

Apple iCloud credentials. Now I'm not familiar with what Spy x is, but Spy x calls itself the best phone monitoring app and provides real time recording video and audio screenshots of the target's device. And these are often used by spouses that are, have, you know, maybe some infidelity going on on the other part. They're trying to catch them or it's also it's often marked as parental control, but we know that's probably not true. But, Spy x never inform people

of this breach. So if you're if you have been using Spy x, be aware, stuff about you is out in the wild. There's an interesting article about Five Eyes. Now those of you that are not familiar with five eyes. Five eyes is an alliance between Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Canada, and The United States where they share intelligence information. And we know that there has been a pause in intelligence sharing from The US to Ukraine that happened, earlier in the month.

And that pause has since been lifted, but

what has really been found is even though The United States stopped sharing information, that wasn't the case with, Australia, New Zealand, UK and Canada. But there's been some reporting going on that really the information coming out of those countries was very very slim and that The United States bores the majority of

the intelligence sharing. And I I would say based upon, you know, my thirty some years of having been read in and have access to classified material, very rarely did I see something coming out of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Some more coming out of The UK during the Gulf War and Australia as well. But, yeah, it, it definitely the bulk of the information is with The United States.

YouTube is, investigating a bug causing low res videos. So apparently, if you're playing shorts, some of them are streaming at a 44 p versus 03:60. So they're looking into that. So be aware of that if you're seeing some low quality videos. Also, WhatsApp has patched a security flaw which lets hacker which let hackers install spyware. WhatsApp is huge here. It's the number one way to to communicate. People don't have telephone numbers.

They just have digital plans or they have a telephone number with very little data or you're not able to forward incoming phone calls or text. So WhatsApp is really the the big one. And they fixed a zero day vulnerability, which it was apparently used by nation states to spy on journalists, dissidents, political opponents, and others. And, of course, that's what happens. Of course, that's what did happen in The United States, but, it's happening outside The United States on a on a regular basis.

A data breach in the Pennsylvania Education Union potentially exposes 500,000 victims. Pennsylvania State Education Association has potentially exposed more than half a million people to identity theft phishing. So just be aware of that.

This public sector union sent a data breach notification letter to the individuals. So if you're infected, you will get a, a letter over that. And my Windows machine over here, which just does one simple job, it does streaming, audio streaming, is sitting here raging. It's just screaming like it's, like it's out of control. I'm gonna have to look to not use that. And it's sitting here, the fan's running so high. It's just driving me

crazy. Those of you that are are watching the show can see if I can point it can see it over here. It's really doing nothing

more than and it's just sitting there howling. NASA's examine options for another Starliner test. Oh, really? After at a briefing after the return of the Crew Dragon spacecraft to complete the Crew nine mission, Steve Stitch, NASA commercial crew program manager said the agency expected another Starliner test flight with or without people on board before beginning crew rotation missions with the vehicle. He says, what we'd like to do is one flight and then get into the crew rotation flight.

So the next flight up would be to test all the changes that they make into the vehicle and then the next flight beyond that would need to get Boeing into crew crew rotation. So a step backwards, potentially going without a crew. Again, the test flight could be with an uncrewed mission that would be able to support crews even if we were flying the vehicle without a crew. We want to be able to be crew capable. So we want to have all the systems in place

that we fly with a crew aboard. So you run everything like someone was in there, you know, soaking up oxygen. So, anyway, you know, they they prove themselves capable of bringing the the spacecraft back. So I guess, you know, maybe they get another shot at it. This is kinda shocking here. A man has filed a complaint after ChetGPT said he killed his children.

So I guess he asked for ChetGPT for some information about himself and he basically said that he, he had been, convicted and went to jail for, for killing his kids. And, the response Chet g p t included that he was a Norwegian individual gain attention due to a tragic event. He's it said he was a father to young boys, seven and 10, which were tragic and found dead in a pond near their home. Oh, I guess so. It didn't say he murdered them. It said he just so it found it wrong.

Mister Holmes said the chat g b t got their age gap roughly right suggesting it did have some accurate information about them. So was this was any of this information clear? Did he did they actually die? I don't think so. They don't make it clear here. But it's not clear if there was a a drowning or not. So so maybe the boys did actually drown but okay. So there is some confusion here. But anyway, yeah, it it posted wrong information about

him. So check what it's saying about you. Google Gemini is coming to Chrome for faster, easier browsing quote unquote. Google's testing integration of Gemini at the top of the browser and the latest Chrome Canary build to facilitate access to the AI and make your browsing experience easier easier. Thanks to browser researcher, new details about the feature works have emerged. So, yeah, you knew this was coming. It was gonna be embedded right in the browser. I'm not surprised, whatsoever.

Apple apparently isn't happy what's going on with the Siri. Apple is undergoing a rare shakeup of its executive ran ranks and may aim to get its AI preference back on track. Bloomberg Bloomberg News reported Thursday citing people familiar from the report chief executive team Cook has lost confidence in ability of AI head John, oh my gosh, Gia Andrei, Gia Andrei to execute on product development. So he's moving over another top executive to help VisionPro creator Mike Rockwell.

You think this guy's gonna help considering what's happened with Vision Pro and how it's really not advanced? Time will tell. Chromebooks are not dead. Acer has just launched

seven new Chromebook, Chrome OS laptops aimed at students and professionals. Prices range from €329 or about $430 to around €729 or about $800, be available in May. So a whole stack of new Chrome OS laptops. TikTok is adding Amber alerts for to the for your feed. So this is interesting. So via the via their blog post is teamed up with the National Center for Missing Exploited Children to bring these alerts to users and to leverage the power of the TikTok community to help reunite kids

with their families. So good move on TikTok. And you can see they're they're doing some things right now to,

try to keep the, them in the public eye. I've been seeing ads for them on digital TV ads, which is curious. So forget the folding iPhone. Apple has patented a foldable Apple Watch with two screens. It looks like something out of a spy kid movie. Interesting. So I wonder if you'll see the normal screen on top and then dual screen on the bottom. So it reels a unique feature, also features a camera and even a rotating and slight and sliding elements.

So, that would definitely be a radical design for me. I think that would be a quick trip to a broken watch. I'm always banging my watch on stuff, So I'm not sure that would work out for me, but, hey, I'd probably buy one just for this nostalgia fat factor of, you know, beam me up, Scotty type of a deal. Right? Nvidia is selling RTX GPUs from a food truck. Yes. At GTC twenty twenty five, Nvidia has a couple thousand RTX 50 a's and fifty ninety cards

reserved for attendees only. I set nine ninety nine and nineteen ninety nine. So I'll be honest. I was watching the keynote of the NVIDIA founder. It it it really and I'm looking at the hardware that they are creating and their road map. They got some serious juju going on right now. I mean, unbelievable advancements in GPUs and rack stack and storage and density. There are there I I think they're using AI to build these machines or or there's an alien over there helping them.

I'm literally blown away at the fast iteration. They're going from a specific GPU to how they're involving their rack, and the amount of power that, the just incredible amount of power that these racks require. And, you know, they're they're counting every watt on these boxes because when you replicate across the whole data center, you know, extra watt or two or three or five here or there, just so they're they're reinventing tech just to lower the power consumption.

If you get a chance and I'll see if I can link it in the show notes, the keynote he gave was astounding. My my jaw was just literally on the floor. It looking at the hardware advancement and where where they're coming from. I had to kind of giggle this next article talks what's behind the change relationship between Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump. What's behind it? You

don't wanna piss him off. You know, and, you know, there's has been this love hate relationship and, you know, Bezos has got a lot of stuff going on. Amazon, Blue Origin, you know, you you you wanna you wanna you wanna fight with the administration? Sure. Go ahead. See how that works out for you. You know, that's why they don't like him, but they gotta work with him. That's just the way it is. Either that or you, you know, we you're definitely you're gonna garner no favors.

It's a good article around Ars Technica talking about the DOT must not give Tesla or other automakers a free pass. Consumer advocates of families of Tesla crash victims both called on secretary transportation, secretary Sean Duffy this week not to weaken oversight of the automotive industry as other government agencies since the change administration. They wanna make sure that safety is followed in a Tesla autopilot or FSD.

I think they're going to. I would cons you know, I I think the general public is smart enough to understand if if safety has been reduced and more risk are being taken while you're the person sitting in the vehicle with this with the autopilot, You're the one at risk. You're gonna want some oversight on this for sure.

China's Baidu Baidu and I think I pronounced that wrong, which is a big, search engine there, denies data breach after one of his executives, the daughter leaked personal information about someone she was having a little fight with online.

And we go, The company, one of China's largest cloud providers, was thrust in the spotlight last week after online users accused a teenage daughter of Baidu vice president Xi Zheng Zhong of posting personal information of other users such as their phone numbers after getting into an online argument. Excuse me. Sneezed on you there. Baidu said all employees and executives at all levels were prohibited from accessing user data.

Baidu has also filed a police report regarding false information circulating online.

But how did the teenager get this information? The teenage admitted her father had provided her with database access as the controversy over the incident continues to swell. Xi, who is part You know, they're covering six here for sure. Anything in China, it's open. Backdoors backdoors everywhere. We've talked about censorship a lot in this show, but x has sued the India government over content removal in a censorship fight.

New Delhi, India's IT Ministry, has unlawfully expanded censorship powers to allow the easier removal of online content and empowered countless government officials to execute such orders. Axe is allegedly has alleged in a new lawsuit against New Delhi. The lawsuit and allegations mark an escalation and ongoing legal dispute between ex and prime minister, Narendra Modi's government, over how New Delhi's orders

content to be taken down. It also comes as Musk is getting closer to launch his other key venture, Starlink and Tesla in India. But I'm gonna tell you, every country is

different. You know, freedom of speech, I don't think it exists many places truly without the government putting their thumb on it. Something that you have to continue to watch. This is a really good article. Our genes reveal mysterious split in human population one point five million years ago. This is at sciencealert.com. And I started reading through this. I got about it a third way through it. It it is really, really interesting. Comes with a couple of cute graphs too.

It talks about the evolution of man and, how things split and win. So definitely, if you're into anthropology and into, this type of information and understanding, how we developed, this is a good one. It really, really is. Definitely, give it a look and, and give it a read. Very, very, very good article. Okay. Google is working on a cleaner backup interface for Android users, and they're redesigning backup page on Android to

give a cleaner and more organized appearance. That's one thing about my my my iPhone, iPad. It it'll remind me if it hasn't been backed up, but it just works. I don't even have to think about it. You know? I I really do. It it it's just one of those things that it just it just happens.

And on Android, I I don't think it says clean. Now Android backup page can be found in settings under system backup that allows users manage control their data backed up from their phone to their Google account. You can initiate backups or various data types including apps and app data. So the updated design for the backup page is still a work in progress, but they've got some preliminaries. And,

you know, let's let's make that happen. I think it's good because it's never completely clear, how the backup is went on an on an Android device for sure. Well, if I tell you, Roku has definitely pissed off some people. We talked about in the last show that Roku's home screen ad experiment is just not setting well with people and people are complaining about it

in in a big big way. I won't rehash it but, you know, we talked about it in the last show and them showing ads before they show the home screen and, yeah, people are not at all pleased and and they say, hey. This this is just too much. Same time, Tesla has recalled more than 46,000 cyber trucks after some trim has started falling off. The truck steel trim is attached using glue that's susceptible to environmental embrittlement.

So they're going to put a fix on those cyber trucks. So 46,000 vehicles recalled. LG's NFT marketplace, which I never fully understand for TVs where you could buy digital art is being, shuttered and they're gonna close a platform on June 17. So if you I don't know what's gonna happen to anything you bought, but, anyway, they're closing the platform. Netflix CEO is really amped up the words. He, talked a lot of smack about, Max specifically.

And it's not every day that you see a tech exec dunk on their competitor competitors. But this week's Netflix CEO, Todd Sarandos was feeling a bit bold and he just thinks that the HBO, HBO Max yeah. I I was even confused. There was HBO, HBO Go, HBO Now, HBO Max. There was Max, Max Plus, Max Premium, Max, you know, Superstar. Really? What what was this? You know? And just call it HBO. Just call it HBO and make it simple. We all know HBO, but I don't think they're gonna rename again. Who knows?

Verizon users will soon be able to text via satellite with the correct phone. Google Pixel nine, Samsung Galaxy s 25. Those are the only two devices that supported on the Verizon network. So if you got one of those new bad boys, you will be able to text via satellite when you're in an area where there is no connectivity. I was pretty shocked to see this next one. Apple TV has a billion dollar annual loss. A billion. Of course, that's just a rounding error for Apple,

but that blows me away. That's a billion

dollars. And I have to admit, I spend probably 90% of my time on two or three services, Netflix, YouTube, and my IPTV service here. That's it. So very interesting that they've lost a billion a year even though they got 45,000,000 people that are subscribed. They gave away a lot of free access to that whenever you bought,

an Apple device too. So I wonder if that was part of it. I don't even know if I've got a subscription to Apple TV plus. I I don't think so. I think I would see that in my in my charges. I you know, I don't think so. McDonald's is revealing a Minecraft movie meal with a bar bizarre set of collectibles and most sinister sounding sauce ever. So, this is definitely a sign of the times, a Minecraft meal. So, the items will be available from April 1 in The United States and March 26 in

The UK. Collectibles at in game goodies will be up for grabs. And, what is the sauces? They have,

the Big Mac allegedly mined from the sea of a special sauce, whatever that means. The blocky purple grimace egg. So they're big mac crystal, birdie wings, fry helmet, grimace egg, soda potion, zombie hamburger. So that's what will be available on your local McDonald's meal. You know, in a flash of the past, there's a fun thing on digital trends talking about a BBC report from 1971 talking about a car radio of the future. And, it's,

it is kind of fun. It's a fun little thing to watch and see how far we've come in in the world of tech and, you know, not to mention, tech but hairstyles as well. I guess that was the time of of turtlenecks in the seventies. God. Please let those days never come back. I'm definitely not a turtleneck fan at all. Now if you're a Plex user, Plex is raising prices making a great key feature no longer free. So I saw this and, you know, I've had a love hate relationship with Plex

over the years. But if you use Plex to manage your home media library, not only are all of its prices about to rise, but the platform developers announced that you'll no longer be able to remotely stream your media for free.

Isn't that some BS? The changes revealed on a blog post, Plucks Day, the monthly price for Plucks Pass will increase from $4.99 to $6.99 while the annual price rise from 39 to $6.99 $69.99. And the most eye watering setup was the rivers or plaque to ultimate pass, which will more than double from a hundred 19 to $2.49. That just that's just crazy. So the incoming price hike has a lot of subscribers contemplating signing up to the lifetime pass. And, what is lifetime

yeah. So that a hundred $19 is the way to go for that lifetime pass. So before the pay in for the before the price increases. But this is such a bad move by Plex and, you know, maybe this just marks the end. What are you guys using now to manage your internal digital movie collection? You know, I have all mine on Plex. I you know, that was painstakingly done as well. So AI is taking over your favorite fast food restaurant as Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC team up in Nvidia.

Five hundred locations by the end of twenty twenty five. What are they gonna do? So if you've been to one of the more 100 AI powered restaurants, you may have already ordered a Crunchwrap Supreme by speaking to AI. For rest of us who've yet to experience an AI server, your closest Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC, or Habit Burger might be doing this soon. So I guess you send your order to the AI. There's another job lost, to a digital being.

Finally today, talk about the 16 e, the first iPhone to feature the Apple design c one modem talking about speed test. So there's some good data in here. This is from Okla, the people that do speed test and it talks about high how the 16 e offers better worst case speeds, but iPhone 16 has higher top end performance. So, again, when it comes to actual, transfer speed, they've got the benchmarks there. So very, very cool. Hey. I wanna thank you for for

being here. Thank you for tuning in. For those of you been watching the show live, I I did, make some tweaks to the audio output. So hopefully, the audio is much louder on the live stream and didn't realize I was doing that until, someone said it in a live my my

mom had sent me said, hey. The audio is low and I couldn't figure out. She was watching on Facebook or something and could barely hear it. So, my apologies. Still, that's not perfect with OBS. It really is not, especially from an audio chain standpoint. I'm doing the show here. It's pretty good. But when I have a guest, it's a little more tricky. Now the Mac I mean, the Windows machine fan just shut down as I'm getting ready to close here. As always, don't forget [email protected],

geek news at g mail dot com. Don't forget about becoming an insider at geekness central dot com forward slash insider. Your 25101520 or 25 donations are greatly appreciated. We'll get you caught up on on those insider donations on the next episode. Also, don't forget about, streaming sats to the show through the value for value program where I provide the value you provide your time, talent, or treasure in return. We definitely appreciate when you participate in the treasure part

of the show. It's been my pleasure bringing the podcast. I'll be back with you on

Monday for another edition of the Geeked Essential podcast. Everyone take care. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.