 This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by you, the listeners, thanks to all of you, including Mike Cortez, Philip Shane, Paul Boyer, and our lifetime supporter, Kevin Bolanka. Thanks, Kevin. On this episode of DTNS, all about Apple's scary fast event, can countries band together to stop cybercrime ransoms? And Charlotte Henry tackles the big question, how does the horror movie genre continue to thrive? This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, October 31st, 2023. Happy Halloween everyone from Studio Secret Bunker. I'm Sarah Lane. From Columbus, Ohio, I'm Rob Dunwood. I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. And joining us is Charlotte Henry of the edition newsletter. Welcome back, Charlotte. Thank you. Hello. Yes, here in London. It's great to see you. I'm kind of nervous because we're doing it kind of evening time, my time. So I could be invaded and interrupted by trick-or-treaters at any point. You'll understand if I have to dash off and distribute. Are you in a place where, you know, they can just kind of come up, ring the doorbell, expect candy? Not quite, but you never know. You never know these days, Sarah. It could happen. We could have live trick-or-treaters. Is it a kid or is it a real ghost? That's always my question. That's what we say. Stay vigilant out there, everyone. All right. Well, this is a tech news show after all. So let's get into the quick hits. X, formerly Twitter, is currently valued at $19 billion. That sounds like a lot, and it's given employees restricted stock units at a share price of $45. However, this valuation is interesting because it comes one year after Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion, and that marks a 56% drop in valuation from what he paid for the company. The company, a bank that lent over $300 million in financing to Musk's takeover of Twitter, has written down the value of its X shares by 65% over the first 11 months. Even though government information is not being compromised, Canada has banned China-based messaging app WeChat and Russia-based Kaspersky on government-issued mobile devices due to concerns around privacy and security. Canada's chief information officer ran an assessment and determined that the apps present an unacceptable level of risk to privacy and security. Chrome on iOS doesn't look the same as Chrome on Android, and the differences between the apps continues to widen as iOS now has the ability to move the address bar to the bottom of your screen. Some people really want that. In moving the address bar to the bottom, it also gets combined with the toolbar just like post iOS 15 Safari. So there's no UI at the top of the screen, but you can still pull to refresh. The U.S. Security is an exchange commission charged IT services management software maker SolarWinds and its chief information security officer Timothy Brown with fraud and internal control failures. SolarWinds is accused of misleading investors about cyber security practices prior to a Russia-based attack in 2019. The SEC says SolarWinds allegedly misled investors by disclosing only generic and hypothetical risk at a time when SolarWinds and Brown knew of specific deficiencies in the company's security practices and potential risk involved. The Public Interest Research Group has petitioned Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to not junk millions of computers that still run Windows 10. Windows 10 is set to receive security updates until October of 2025, so for some time, but not that much time. Windows 10 still powers more than 71% of Windows PCs. That number could shrink a little bit in the next couple of years, but still it's going to be a lot of PCs. Windows 11 requires a functioning TPM chip, which many PCs at hospitals, businesses, various homes just don't have. The end of support of the 10 year old Windows 10 could present the biggest junking of PC hardware in history. Alright, let's talk a little bit more about what Apple announced at a somewhat unusual evening event that took place at 7pm APM Eastern Daylight Time last night. So it was called Scary Fast, and as expected, it was about computers that go fast. It happened well after Showtime last night, our Showtime, so as promised, we're talking about it today. The big news, Apple's new M3 chips. We have the M3, the M3 Pro, the M3 Max, they're all the industry's first 3nm chips for PCs, and Apple's biggest leap forward in graphics architecture. The GPU is faster, it's more efficient, it introduces a new technology called dynamic caching that can handle rendering speeds up to 2.5x faster than the M1 family of chips. What's on M1 here? Because Apple didn't do a lot of comparing between the M2 and the M3, right Rob? They did not. So with the introduction of the M3, Apple unveiled a new entry level 14 inch MacBook Pro without the touch bar, so touch bar's gone on MacBooks. They also upgraded 14 inch and 16 inch MacBook Pro laptops with the M3 Pro and M3 Max processors. The company also refreshes 24 inch iMac to the M3 processor, claiming it will be twice as fast as the M1 24 inch iMac. So the prices on these, the new 14 inch MacBook Pro, that's the one that's going to have just the M3, it starts at $15.99, the M3 Pro and the 14 inch MacBook Pro is $19.99, the M3 Max and the 16 inch MacBook Pro is $24.99, and then the M3 iMac starts at $12.99. Now I saw a lot of people saying, hmm, these are some interesting prices, especially for the iMac, and yeah, I also saw a lot of people saying, well hold on a second, what is Apple doing here with the M3 chip that is supposedly the best chip ever, but when you look at specs, they're comparing it to the M1, not so much the M2, and especially for that middle M3 Pro chip, it does seem that Apple is rolling back somewhat. Roger, I know in our pre-show we were talking about why you think this might be. What are your thoughts? The shift I think is because that a lot of the, one of the things you do when you make a chip is you on a wafer, you get what they call yields, that your yield is how many good chips you get off the wafer versus the ones that aren't so good, and oftentimes, at least in PC suppliers, they have a process where they call binning, where they take a chip that maybe won't perform as well as expected and they remark it so it's a lower spec chip, so they're not tossing away and they're wasting anything. So with the M3, especially with the Pro's missing two cores, is that it could be just a yield issue and instead of just binning or tossing the chip that doesn't meet spec, they could just take off two and just say it's a Pro. So Charlotte, I know you've got an M2 MacBook Air, right? You missed out. It's full-title. It's the very sexy M2 MacBook Air, and it's a wonderful machine. I love it. I was, I watched it when back. Actually, I'm going to start with a gripe, Sarah. You know me. I'm not a gripey person, obviously. No, you certainly are not, but let's hear it. Well, this event was midnight my time. Tim Cook, my friend. You've been to the UK. You like the UK. Come on, play nicely. We don't need Apple events at midnight. Let's sort this out. So I watched it back this morning. And as I was watching them describe the new chips and as you see it and the various Johns and Johnny's are talking about the different machines, I think we had more Johns on there than women, didn't we? There was a couple of, didn't we? At certain points, a couple of executives. And then they revealed these new computers are like, oh, shiny. And then you look into it. And it's a bit like, is this so much better than the machine I have? And sure, if I wanted to build a recording studio, maybe I'm wanting a MacBook Pro with the top, top, top M3 chip. And I get that. But you're right. The performance you're getting from these newer chips is not so great from the M2 series. The M2 series was, by all accounts, a really big step forward. I would also say in my personal experience, it's about what you want as a user. So for me, having a light, very portable machine was really, really important. So the more heavy-duty MacBook Pro wasn't quite appropriate for me, whatever chip was in it. And when you start doing things like rendering videos, getting movie out of videos on a M2, the MacBook Air and whatever, like it's doing serious business. Like, this stuff is really, really quick. I'm exporting half an hour of 1080p movie in minutes, you know, a couple of minutes. Like, I'd be really interested to do some real tests between the M2 and the M3 and how much better things really are. Unless, like, I accept if you're building like a high-end gaming Mac and you want the GPU that's in that, well, maybe. Maybe maybe you're noticing a difference. But I just don't see. I mean, jump in and disagree with me, Roger. But I just don't see how a normal user is noticing that much difference at this point. I think what you might be getting to is that, you know, Apple's been making their own chips for a few years now. And chips don't just, they just don't double in power every year. It just doesn't go that way. But Apple is kind of trying to claim that, doesn't they? They're trying to claim every generation is a huge step forward. So are they going too fast, even? Like, do we need the speed they're doing this at? What I think you're seeing is kind of a two-fold issue. One is what Rob was alluding to. You're going to get diminishing returns with this architecture. They came out of the store red hot, and the next generation or the next iteration came out. It was still pretty hot. Now you're getting into like, nah, it's cooling off a little bit, because there's only so much you can do. Really the biggest advancement that I see with this chip is with the GPU. However, because Apple purposely designed it as a system on the chip, it's not like a PC where, okay, I can replace the GPU, leave the rest of the PC box alone and get a new Nvidia or whatever. To do that, if you're going to change the GPU on the SOC, you might as well change the CPU portion as well at the same time. So I see the greatest appeal is someone who does need AV1 encoding directly in hardware instead of software rendering. If you need any of the, if you need the ray tracing functionality, if you need the mesh generation, because those are all things that are part of the GPU, but because it is a single part, they got to make the whole thing as a single part. Can we talk about some petty stuff that's annoying me with this? You guys are going high level. I want to go petty. Let's go petty, yeah. Please, for goodness sake, please, can we have a new magic mouse? Like, what is this charging up, turning it over? Like, I don't know what. Sort out the magic mouse, Apple, you can do it. It's been a long time. We can have a better charging magic mouse. You know, this is, I'm glad you brought this up because- Thank you, Sarah, for your solidarity. Well, I stand in solidarity with options, but I'm also, I haven't used a mouse in quite a few years. You're a trackpad all the way. However, I know that everyone's work spaces are different. So if you're out there and saying, yeah, what the heck is up with the magic mouse, let us know. We would like to- It's just really unnecessarily stupid. The other thing is they're calling these pro devices, and in many ways they are, but they still only have a 1080p camera in them. It's just like a standard FaceTime camera. You know, your iPhone is taking 4K pro-raw footage. Like, surely Apple can do better and put better cameras in its- Oh, they have a 100% good. I think Apple just knows that you've got third-party accessories, people like, you know, we're all used to the iPhone, why even bother? And you've touched on probably the third-fold issue with Apple and their hardware is, as a hardware vendor, they need to make it, especially because they can build all this stuff themselves or at least contract it out. They're probably sitting on some inventory of those parts that they need to clear the channel of, and why give you a 4K camera when they need to clear out all these 1080p cameras first? Because you're calling it pro, like, come on. You want people to film and recording strategies with this camera like- Pro has been a marketing term for Apple since they swung it out for the iPhone. You cynic. They're gonna call it pro, but they're not gonna mess with their margins. So if they have old stuff sitting around, they're gonna be- You said it, Rob. You said it, Rob. All right, well, the U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor, Ann Newberger, announced that the U.S. is leading a 40-country push towards an alliance to sign a pledge to never again pay ransom to cyber criminals. Cyber criminals often hack into systems and say, we're gonna screw y'all up unless you pay us money. And sometimes they get that money. And a virtual briefing to Reuters. She said that the alliance, which is called the International Counter-Ransomware Initiative, is meant to eliminate the hacker's funding mechanism altogether. Newberger says the United States has a vested interest in this, by far the worst hit with 46% of such attacks. So key to this initiative, two information sharing platforms will be created, one by Lithuania and another jointly by Israel and the UAE. Partner countries will share a blacklist through the U.S. Department of Treasury, including digital wallets being used to move ransomware payments plus AI to analyze the blockchain with the goal to identify illicit funds. According to analytics firm Chainalysis, back in July, the volume of crypto payments to ransomware attackers is on track for its second biggest annual total on record. So it's pretty lucrative for these folks. And I understand why the U.S. is leading this because we are getting hit and getting destroyed with it, you know, 46%. But I'm skeptical just a bit on how this is gonna work because companies are looking at what just happened to MGM or we could just cash out somebody real quick and this problem goes away. I think that companies are going to, they're gonna do what's best for them and what they think is in their best interest, what's going to affect their bottom line the least. So I hope that this eventually catches on but I think it's gonna take an enormous, I don't wanna say an enormous amount, it's gonna take some time. This is not a next year type thing where everybody is complying with this. I think it's gonna take some time. 40 countries don't just say, okay, we're not gonna do it anymore and now the problem goes away. The problem is not gonna go away. I was thinking about this. Yeah, I was thinking about this this morning of like, all right, well, if you just say, I mean, in a perfect world, according to this alliance, no country ever agrees, no company that's associated with country never will ever agree to pay the ransom that is demanded by data that would otherwise tank the company or at least severely embarrass the company. And it would take a lot of money to get back on track in either case. So sure, that's the goal, but no company is exactly the same company and no data breach or a bug that is exploited or anything that turns into a situation like this is the same. We talk about this on the show all the time and sometimes ransom is paid. Other times the company goes public and says, here's what's going on, we're not gonna pay the ransom and we just wanna, we want everyone else to know about this to kind of help mitigate the problem. I don't think either of those things are necessarily wrong. I think sometimes companies are thought of as weak security-wise if they pay the ransom, but again, it depends on what's been stolen. It depends on what's been stolen because look, people, there's a certain amount of money that everyone will pay to stop really embarrassing stuff coming out, right? Like everyone has a price. But equally, we're talking about like this almost in a way that it's new and it's not, this has been advice in cybersecurity circles for a long time not to pay the ransomware, not to pay the hackers. Now, as I say, people will get desperate, a certain point might and be like, no, I've just got to pay it. I don't want that picture, that text message, whatever, whatever, coming out into the public. But this has been the advice for a long time. Right. So can't get enough Android in your life? Then listen to Android Faithful. Every week, Android affixionados, Ron Richards, and Juan Toydo bring the latest Android news and information. Catch it Tuesdays at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific or watch it live. Subscribe to it right now on AndroidFaithful.com. All right, y'all, it is Halloween. October 31st is when we're recording this. You might be listening to it later, but you know, get into the spirit. We're all in our, well, I was about to say we're all in our costumes. I don't know if Charlotte and Rob and Roger are here. I'm dressed as a Rob. I mean, I'm kind of scaring off anyway. But yeah, like. I always say I'm dressed as a person of comfort. Yeah, I am. Meaning that I just wore what I wanted to wear today. I feel you. Person of comfort. Yeah, but in the spirit of Halloween, let's talk a little bit about horror movies. They are a staple element around this holiday, but they're also just really, really popular in general as a genre and they're becoming a favorite among film producers, not just the John Carpenters, not just the Wes Cravens, but also those that produce content for streaming platforms. Netflix, Amazon, Peacock to name a few. But why Charlotte? Is there some sort of horror film playbook that makes it a more attractive investment for studios? TLDR, it can be really cheap to produce a horror movie. And so the streaming services like it because they don't have to splash out so much cash. The producers like it because they don't have such a big budget but they can get money back. Like it's a thing. It's a known thing that it, for whatever reason, these films can be made on a smaller budget. Like we're not taking four years and goodness knows whatever Martin Scorsese's budget was for Killers of the Flower Moon to make. Had to be big because that movie is long as heck. Yeah, well, we again discuss our fare, I have thought. But like a classic slash a movie or whatever, it just doesn't seem to take that much time. If you've built up a kind of staple in a series, people like that. So yeah, they just don't take up that much money and another key thing is that I was reading is apparently people will watch horror movies just for the sake of watching a horror movie because they're into horror movies because they like that style of movie. Whereas you don't, so you don't need the big name superstar to actually get people to watch it. Yeah, I was about to say, but don't people like romantic comedies too? But I feel like, you know, and there are breakout hits but you kind of do have more like, ooh, so-and-so's in this movie, therefore I'll watch it kind of thing. It's the Adam Sandler movie, it's this, it's that. Whereas, look, there are famous people that go in horror movies, of course there are. But people, as I understand it, and I'm not a particularly massive horror movie fan myself, but as I understand it, people who are in that community like it for the genre. And like, there are specialist streaming services as well as the big names that you mentioned up top. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Netflix being one of the, you know, obviously big streaming services. Sure. Has 12 horror releases that started September 28th through December 8th, something that you wouldn't have seen otherwise. Obviously the timing makes a lot of sense. Yep. Rob, where are you on the horror genre and where do you find your horror movies if you even like them? So it is so apropos that we're having in this conversation today. Just last night, without knowing that this was gonna be the topic, I actually watched Train to Busan on, I think I watched Netflix. I can't remember what I watched it. I watched it on something. Did you sleep afterwards? Were you okay? Yeah, because I like the zombie movie. So this was one where I said, you know what? I'm gonna go watch another zombie movie and see, okay, what do the zombies do when they're on a train? Same thing they do everywhere else, but it is still kind of, you know, there are moments that make you jump. Zombie is with a twist. Yeah, you know, zombie's on a train. And it was, I watched it from beginning to end and I actually enjoyed it. And you know, I mean, there's times when I might have, you know, this is a Korean movie. So, you know, you have to actually read the subtitles, but it is a zombie movie. You can miss a lot of the dialogue and still understand exactly what is going on, why it's going on and what's about to happen. So, I actually really enjoyed it and I'm probably gonna watch Pat Cemetery too at some point, you know, on, I think it is on Hulu maybe. So, they're out, I'll check them out because these are movies that catch my attention. I don't feel bad if I get up and walk away for 20 minutes and come back and it's like, oh, people are still getting blown up or killed or whatever the case is. And I enjoy that. I think. Yeah. And there's also like the low, if you want a streaming service in particular, you've paid upfront, right? You haven't paid your $25, I don't know how much cinema is in your neck of the woods, but you know, you haven't paid just to see the movie and hope it's good. Like, if you turn on a bad horror movie, and let's be honest, there are plenty of those, you like, it doesn't matter. You've paid however much, you can turn it off if you want. You've seen a silly horror movie, but they do tend to do well. And Rob made an interesting point about watching on subtitles because of course, horror movies from around the world, as I've learned looking into this are a thing, there's different styles from all around the world. And so you might not want to sit in a big cinema, you know, one-off evening, reading the subtitles to the horror movie. But if you're chilled at home when it suits you, it's more, you're more amenable to it. I will also add demographically Gen Z. And then I don't know if this also applies to the generation after them, but have a high, at least 33% of that are open to watching horror films. And horror films is a very broad category. It includes psychological horror, like jump scares, and then you also have your slasher movies. And then you have, for example, I watched Five Nights at Freddy with my daughter who really wanted to see it, but couldn't sit through it because it was too scary, but it's a PG-13 horror movie. But you also have comedy horror movies like Megan, the one with the creepy doll that... And so... Right, which was sort of a, I mean, a hit more than I think a lot of people thought it would be. Again, it probably didn't cost that. I don't think it cost that much to make. So it's a win. You've got your hit, you haven't spent that much money. That's what studios love. If you think about the big budget movies that have been cranked out by the industry over the past five, six years, they're either some sort of superhero or sci-fi or fantasy epic. And those are expensive because you have costumes. You have, and it's not just one person, everyone has to wear a costume. Then it's special effects, and then it's visual effects, and then it's post-production. And it's a bunch of different camera angles that you all need to get at the same time. And then you need big name draws to make sure people sit their butts in the theater to pay that $16. So you need your, you need Bender Dick, what's his name? Cumberbatch. Cumberbatch. Chris Evans, you need big names to get people in because otherwise they probably wouldn't watch that movie. Oh, what was the movie where they couldn't talk or the monsters would get them? Silent. The whole, what was it called? Sorry, what? I think it was Silence. A silent place. Yes, yes. I mean, you know, that was like, you know, big stars where, but like somebody said, yeah, no, I mean, they don't talk. There's no dialogue in the entire movie. That's the point. You know, I was like, I'm not going to watch that, but I kind of like these actors. So maybe I will, which I eventually did. That's the quality of their acting, Sarah. What was the dumb horror movie where- It's a quiet place. It's a quiet place. What's the dumb horror movie with Paris Hilton? Well, I don't know. TMZ. I mean, it's a dumb movie. But you know what that does? I think that that speaks to what we're all kind of getting at is there are certain genres of movie, whether it be, you know, drama, action, comedy. Then you get into the horror genre and it's like, I mean, horror movies can be really, really scary. They can also be really campy or somewhere in between. And maybe they get more of a pass from the people who just like the genre more than we get from, like if there's going to be like a Fast and Furious that just completely sucks on CGI, I'm like, that sucked. Because that's all it was supposed to be. It's something that just like looks cool. But the horror stuff can pull at different strings. I just want to jump into one thing that we sort of touched on. Is this idea of the specialist catalogs and specialist streaming services for people that are really, really into it, but you know, more than us going, what's the one with Paris Hilton? What's the one where they don't talk? They're really dedicated aficionados of horror movies. And there's a couple of streaming services that I don't think are very expensive that are aimed for them. I read in an IGN article that apparently the Netflix horror catalog doesn't have anything beyond 1990, was before 1998. But there are people who are super, super dedicated to the genre as a whole in the same way you might be dedicated to a musical genre, whatever one records from all over time. And so streaming again is kind of providing for those niches as well. Well, Charlotte Henry, it's not every day that we can talk about the horror movie genre with you on Halloween itself. So we very much appreciate you coming to talk about that. It's almost like we plan this stuff, guys. It's almost as if we have a calendar of sorts. Also fun to talk about Apple's announcement with you and always fun to talk about everything with you. So let's let folks know where they can keep up with everything that you do outside of the show because you're quite prolific. Yeah, thanks so much. If you head over to the edition.net, I blog there, I link to a whole lot of stuff there. And as you can see, there is a newsletter. Please put your email address in that newsletter box. And if you would really want to make me happy, you can put your bank details into the box as well and be a paid subscriber. Covers all things tech and media. Well, we're so glad to have you as always Charlotte Henry. Listen, if you're a patron, you know that we do GDI right after DTNS. And today is no exception. Stick around for the extended show, Good Day Internet. We're gonna talk a little bit more about a story we brought up last week about Spotify changing its royalty model to reward what it considers more established artists and weed out some of the junk. But there's some kerfuffle with all those who are affected in between. But just a reminder, you can catch the show live. DTNS is live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern, 200 UTC. And you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We're back doing it all again tomorrow with Scott Johnson joining us. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Bob, I hope you have enjoyed this brover.