 This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by you the listener. We cannot do this without you Thanks to every single one of you including Ali Sanjabi, Andrew Bradley, and Dale Mulcahy Coming up on DTNS, tech needs data centers and data centers use energy Is there a way out of that expanding spiral? Mollywood tells us plus haptics for VR that don't get in the way of your hands and our phones Finally just the commodity like a camera or laptop Yes This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday April 27th, 2023 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio red But I'm Sarah Lane deep in the heart of Texas. I'm Justin Robert. Yeah, and from Oakland, California I'm mollywood and I'm the show's producer Roger check my friends We have assembled the most wonderful panel you will get in technology probably all month certainly today And we're here to celebrate the fact that Microsoft announced its mice keyboards and webcams will no longer be Microsoft branded But surface branded instead Or I will never stop crying. No, no, I know we'll try to get through the rest of the quick hits Amazon has killed again One of its product lines the company has stopped selling its three health tracker halo products That's the view the band and the rise and that's it for the halo division as well Support for halo devices including cloud services will end on July 31st and all remaining data will be deleted Anybody who bought a halo device in the last 12 months can get a full refund and unused prepaid subscription fees will be refunded as well Some good news out of meta's quarterly earnings if you're meta Facebook averaged 2.04 billion daily active users in March and that is up from 2 billion last quarter And when you throw an Instagram and what's that they reached 3.02 billion daily active users up 5% Tick-tock imitator reels is starting to have an effect on time spent on Instagram that grew 24% That's enough for the good news revenue for meta's reality labs fell 51% on the year But CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that's expected they plan to lose money on it for a long time In other meta news the US Court of Appeals for the District Court of Columbia ruled in meta's favor letting stand a lower Court decision that meta did not violate antitrust law with its acquisition of Instagram in 2012 or what's up in 2014 well Samsung is having a little bit of a rough go its profit fell to its lowest point since 2009 that's down 95% on the year revenue fell 18% on the year and so Samsung said it will reduce memory Production however like TSMC it still is Expects a limited recovery in chip demand in the second half of the year on the bright side the galaxy s23 led a resurgent mobile division Which reported business rose 22% Remind us to check in on that second half chip recovery in autumn sometimes if you would folks. Thanks Monday Google launched cloud syncing for Google authenticator. This is similar to what athi provides You can you can store them securely in the cloud Well, mostly securely Tuesday security researchers at misc concluded that the sync was encrypted in transit and at rest But not end-to-end meaning that potentially somebody at Google's endpoint could see your two FA codes Now if you trust Google to safeguard its end and not misuse its own access fine but many security conscious people don't trust anybody so Offering end-to-end encryption would mean that they wouldn't be having to worry about that on the other hand Average users might lock themselves out of their authenticator In fact sophisticated users might lock themselves out of their authenticator And not be able to get their codes back because they're the only ones with the key Google says it will offer end-to-end encryption pretty much when it figures that part out down the line in compliance with the European Digital Services Act Apple disclosed that the iOS app store has 101 million users in Europe and iPad OS has 23 million the Mac app store has six million and the TV OS app store has One million the watch OS app store has somewhere under one million hat-tip to i-generation Which spotted the disclosure first the numbers were based on an average taken over six months ending in January and show that Apple books and Podcasts paid subscriptions are being used by less than one million people in Europe per month. All right Who's are the quick hits? Let's talk phones. Let's do it So IDC reports that smartphone sales fell 1.6 percent on the year not a ton But it also is the seventh straight quarter that smartphone sales have fallen year over year IDC's research director said The industry is going through a period of inventory clearing and adjustment adding that IDC thinks that the sector will recover by the end Of this year, but will it people are using phones for a lot longer than they may be used to Phone designs are less variable less important to customers than they used to be Might sound familiar sounds like what we've been saying about laptops and tablets in the past So Molly let's start with you. Do we feel like the smartphone is becoming more of a commodity? I Hope so I sincerely do like simply from a sustainability perspective It makes no sense for people to discard perfectly good phones year over year And I understand that there are plenty of recycling options But still these are great devices that you can hold on for two for a long time And yes, it is not very exciting to get a new phone anymore. You might have like us another little camera Blob on the back and you don't really know why or what that has and then you transfer over your Stuff from the last phone and then all of a sudden the new phone looks exactly like the old one I also would not discount the ability to have Apple replace your battery now and some of the new repair ability Things that have come into play that actually make these devices last longer and that's a win across the board. I think Well, I think that part of it is we've seen such incremental change in not only the hardware But also the software and a lot of the top tier phones that normally would drive this kind of replacement Factor in also that we had this gigantic pandemic Crunch in terms of chips and so there were just less phones available or people were not buying them at the same kind of Pace that they were buying other things that they would use for a home office At the same speed the one thing that I would say that I can see being a killer feature in the way that we thought of killer features Through the tens really driving phone sales would be something that would be specifically chipset powered that would allow you to do AI Stuff on the phone. I think that that is a huge revolution that will probably come for this But until then yeah, I do think that these are commodities. Yeah, and that's fine I used to replace my laptop every 18 months. Don't thank goodness. I don't need to do that anymore laptops last a long time and yeah every once in a while you get an Apple Silicon you get an M series Chip that makes you go Hmm I might want to swap my laptop out a little earlier because that seems pretty amazing and when we can definitely have that with phones Like you're talking about Justin and I think we will But it is something where this story was up near the top of tech meme today And I'm like I don't know that this is really a story other than we've arrived We've arrived at that point where like yes, smartphone sales are not going to like go crazy The bigger story to me would be if you saw a significant change It's still Samsung at the top then Apple then Xiaomi Oppo and Vivo what you know that starts to significantly change Then there's something interesting the way it would be interesting if suddenly a brand new laptop maker was dominating laptop sales It'd be marginally interesting Also, I would be very I'm sorry Sarah. Go ahead. No, please I was just gonna say I would be very curious to see who would be willing to give up the data in order to Allow on device AI processing nobody Well, there's a lot of device AI processing happening I mean, yeah, I mean there is but like in terms of needing a chipset big enough to be doing like AI level or chat GPT level I would think that they want the two-way data share there not to derail us. No, no, no I do agree with you I think that I don't think that on device fully on device AI is something that we are going to see in the near-term future especially as we have become hooked on The AI that we have seen now which it requires a lot of computing power But something that makes the process more streamlined and easier to ping a server somewhere I could see it I and I certainly said whether or not the technology is ready. We are going to be sold phones with AI Being a marketing ploy starting five. We already are that it's just been on cameras for now It's gonna it's gonna expand off of the camera stuff It's also gonna expand on to the commercials It's going to be a thing that you will be so what's on the commercials now, but they don't use AI which that's it are going to do Yeah, they say The photos are better. They don't say AI AI something GPT large language. That's going to be a thing I mean, we've joked about the coming CES for which every toaster Yeah, for sure I do think that there will always be things that the larger machines can do in the cloud better than you can do on Device, but I have noticed that a lot of new features make a point of marketing themselves as on device By the way, this is on device. We're not sending things to the cloud So I don't know Molly I think there is a little pressure that's causing them to want to do things on device More often than they used to I think also and you know, I mean I used to do an iOS Specific show so I was getting a new iPhone because that's that's my My mobile phone of choice every year, but that was basically a business expense I wouldn't have done it otherwise if it was just coming out of my own pocket, but even then until the last I'd say three years. It was you know, there's a new size You know or the camera significantly different or the OS itself is doing stuff that you know It apples really really you know pushing the envelope here I don't feel that way and again Maybe it's just because now we have so many choices with I'm not just talking about iOS But just using iPhones as an example There is no like the iPhone comes in lots of sizes now and it has for a while And if you have the one that you like and you haven't cracked the screen and maybe you got Apple care and your batteries doing okay Why would you upgrade? I mean you can upgrade to new software, but until yeah, it's like this foldable phone can fly I'm gonna keep my iPhone 13 for the foreseeable future. I don't want that to fly. I wanted to stay with me Like it's a what if it's a jet pack Okay foldable jet pack iPhone 27 I'm in yeah until then I'm not buying it. I'm not not now when Well, let's look towards the future VR has been the future of technology for at least 30 years And we have another advancement for it haptic feedback is important for VR applications You want to be able to feel the virtual objects? But that usually means you have to hold something or maybe you can strap something around your hand But that gets in the way right? You can't actually grab things with your hands if you got a big strap around them Scientists at the University of Chicago's human computer integration lab have demonstrated a way to give you haptic feedback in VR Without needing anything on the front of your hand So your hand can be free to do whatever you need to do in the virtual world You know sometimes you might have an actual prop like a golf club if you're playing mini golf or something like that Their devices attach electrodes to the wrist and the back of the hand and the back of the fingers And then sends a modulated electric signal through the hand from the back to the front That ends up giving the feeling of a tactile sensation at 11 points on the front of your hand Even though the signals begin on the back because the front of your hand has around 60 times as many receptors as the back And they were able to calibrate this to come from not only the right spots But at the right intensity that your brain doesn't notice the stuff in the back But localizes the sensation to the front and in fact when they tested this about 90% of the touch Sensations were felt in the front as intended it can let you feel things like the touch of a button the shape of an object and One demo showed a user molding actual clay so the haptics weren't getting in the way of the clay and They were wrapping it around a virtual teddy bear In virtual reality Justin is this just cool science? Which it is or is there a significant change this could make for VR? Significant it would probably be the word that I would debate I Would say it's an important step forward for not only VR But also any kind of immersive element of technology. I would say that haptic technology is something that is probably a very very invisible but impressive technological march forward, and I'm thinking specifically about AirPods and Apple watch and and iPhones There's a lot of stuff that's done that makes things seem like they are physical or tactile buttons when in reality It's just very very clever haptic feedback in terms of VR Obviously, I think the biggest Impediment there is just processing and getting the field of vision that you were seeing through to be something that you feel to be immersive without making you throw up but Having applications that don't require you kind of pointing and clicking like a mouse Would would certainly help for things to be more immersive Yeah, and let you grab they should one where they had an actual rope and they were doing a virtual rock climb Because you could actually grab the rope it didn't you didn't have the haptics getting in the way And then you could have virtual handholds and do a virtual rock Depends on what you're doing What your brain is telling you that you are in a place that you are not right that you are buying into things that are That are functionally not your reality. This does make things go faster But I would see this in the same way to be very very beneficial in AR to be very beneficial in Just wearing them as gloves so you yeah and interact with other Elements right right now. It's a box with a bunch of wires. So it's not exactly convenient But though, you know, it's in the also doesn't answer the sort of fundamental question. Does it make you want to wear this on your face? Like we just keep coming back to that all the technology related to it Gets cooler and cooler. But do you want to wear it on your face yet? Because I'm still kind of in that That really depends on the this right if the this is is the glasses that you're wearing right now You're already there right if the this is a gigantic box that hurts your neck I mean, I and I feel like I'm sort of in the opposite end of the camp like Tom said I I'm very into VR because I like exercise games and I don't know how I would play those Well, I could play a version of the game, you know with my controllers in a TV, of course But it wouldn't be the same. I'm used to it. So I'm like, it's fine now in 10 years I'm gonna laugh at this I'm gonna laugh at exactly this moment and be like remember when I used to wear that thing on my face and say it's fine Because that's the only thing I knew how to do. Yeah, you know The idea of playing golf without kind of something in my hand that feels club like even if it's just a controller I'm like, do I want that even if it maybe sort of feels like a club? Like I I like the idea of touching things that go beep and boop Even playing Tetris, you know, it's like I don't know that I want to do that with my hands But once I am able to I might change my tune as if you could grab the block and just pull it down Okay, that'd be fun. I could be fun. Hey folks quick reminder tomorrow We are closing our 2023 survey so we can start compiling the results So if you haven't done it already and it's not past Friday, April 28th Please fill out our latest survey. Just visit daily tech news show comm slash survey A lot of people note that data centers use a lot of energy they do but then does it all industry use a lot Of energy banks use a lot of energy factories use a lot of energy So I've always felt that it's probably more complicated than just pointing at the energy and saying bad But it's also true that as we build more technology and tech gets more pervasive in more people's hands used by more people Tech is using more energy than tech used to is it contributing to more energy use overall? Well, Molly just wrote a column on this at mollywood.co and you brought up the Jevons paradox is that how you say that? Jevons, okay, I was Exactly the Jevons paradox But that that kind of sums up the idea here. Well, what what what is the Jevons paradox? Yeah, I mean first I do want to say that globally Data centers specifically account for anywhere from one to one and a half percent of all energy demand on the planet and it's closer to three percent of the EU's energy use so That specifically there are other industries that do a lot of emitting and whatever but data centers alone just as a class Do in fact consume a lot of it or not consume. I guess energy can't be Created or destroyed and there are literally people Will correct you but they use a bunch the Jevons paradox is very interesting It is the idea and it's been a big sort of pillar of environmental economists and environmental Economics, it's the idea that the more efficient Electricity gets the more efficient or resources the more you consume so a really good example of this actually is LED lights Like everyone got super excited about LED lights because they are way way way more energy efficient than fluorescent light bulbs and Then that led to us putting up strings of LED lights everywhere and getting a whole bunch more for outside And then putting like a light bulb over here and 50 million more like putting way more lighting Installations in our houses and so that you could argue that we basically made up for all of the energy efficiency by Adding a bergillian LED lights everywhere. I've got a personal example on this I got a heat pump right suddenly the same air conditioning cost me less. I Had to really fight to resist the urge to be like well, I could let the air conditioner run a little more I'm using less energy, right because right that's what you do Exactly. It's more efficient. Yeah, and so it comes up a lot in the column I talked about how I was watching a guy on CNBC Justifying not even justify just saying like yeah, I'm buying a ton of oil and natural gas stocks because We're moving so much more to the cloud and more and more technology whether we all get a new iPhone every year or not We've all got one or you know six per person And and the more technology we use the more energy we consume meaning we're not going to be able to keep up with renewable energy Resources, yeah, so that was going to be my question is do we get to a place where we Generate enough energy from sources that are less polluting or even non polluting as some companies promise will happen in the foreseeable future Or do we increase efficiency of cloud services hardware or is it a combination of both? It's pretty much all of that. Yeah, it's more and more deployment of renewable energy, which you're starting to see be a bigger deal the inflation reduction act that just came out actually all of the major pieces of legislation that have been passed the Not including although there's even a little bit in the COVID relief bill but the chips act the infrastructure bill and the inflation reduction act all Collectively include something like two trillion dollars of incentives for clean energy rollout and for climate-related R&D, so The big challenge is deploying it in a way that keeps up with energy demand And there are lots and lots of startups actually working on I mean certainly like Google and Microsoft have a very vested interest in Making their data and Amazon anybody who has a bunch of data centers and making them more efficient I would argue those companies actually have done a pretty good job And then we're starting to see all kinds of new technologies come out to try to you know improve the efficiency of air cooling and So that it uses less water and less energy But yes, it's a both. It's a solid everything Yeah, because it seems to me that the problem isn't the energy usage If we make the data centers more efficient, we'll just build more data We just talked about that with the Javits paradox What you want is sustainable energy that that is not going to make things worse in other ways And that you've got plenty of Which is why the heat pump situation for me to go back to that was interesting because I have solar panels So I was trying to keep the extra use of of my efficient heat pump under the amount of energy My solar panels generate because then it didn't raise my cost and that that feels like a very small analog to what we're trying to figure out But it's it's sort of exactly the right analog and then I think the question becomes I think fundamentally It sort of becomes it needs to be part of the conversation every time So I wrote about it in the context of AI which is massively energy energy intensive, right? It takes a lot of energy to train a large language model specifically, right? There are lots of kinds of AI and then when we're talking about large language models specifically they need a lot more training and they Consume energy every time they generate a response like somebody Effectively did the math and determine that every time I asked chat GPT some dumb question It is the equivalent of like charging my iPhone six times over and then happen to know somebody who works at our goal who said that Those numbers are probably way worse than internally. They know it and so it so I tried to sort of point out that We did this with cryptocurrency and Bitcoin Which is massively energy consuming to produce and then you saw the aetherium network switch to a much less energy intensive technology But we just ran headlong into it and now we're running sort of headlong into AI in the same way And we need to have that conversation at the same time like are we okay? With propagating a technology that's only going to get more energy hungry And especially is there any stopping it because if we stop AI there'll be another use Maybe it's technology. Maybe it's not but but that's where I go back to the Jeven's thing is like Humans are hard to keep from using stuff So it's like we it feels to me like we really need to focus on coming up with those sustainable sources Yeah, absolutely. It's all about it's all about energy transition. I would just like to point everybody to Mali series how we survive because I do think that the key to all of this is Understanding that innovation tends to run wild looking at innovation and saying stop it Will often be a very very futile thing and I think we're seeing that right now with AI the solution is to figure out how to innovate alongside of these things and and Create solutions that that actually integrate into it as opposed to just pointing at it saying shame now Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of possibilities, right? There's there's way generation Sea cooling not saying any of those are a silver bullet, but we can try the better chance We have a hitting on one that really works You can have rules, right? Like you can have rules without saying stop So you can say if you are a data center training in large language model You are required to have a mix of energy use that is primarily mobile energy, right? You have to have a plan you can't just like do it and then try to fix it later So I do think there's a I like that. This is like the Texas Oakland Conversation, you don't have to stop it No, you can have rules for your rollout before the rollout has gotten away And that's a thing and understanding and being aware of the actual tools that you have to do it is is a key part of it before you know As we understand that the world around us being realistic is I think an incredibly important part Especially if you are focused on issues like green energy Well speaking of energy and power NASA's Voyager 2 If you haven't thought about it in a while, maybe it's because it's 12 billion miles away from Earth It also takes 22 hours for signals to reach the probe that comes from NASA It's been doing this a while Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 launched in 1977 and Voyager 2's power has been gradually fading over time So mission planners had planned to shut down one of its pretty key five scientific instruments next year until now NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab announced in a press release that the probe got a little adjustment That redirects a tiny amount of power meant for an onboard safety system to keep all five Scientific instruments aboard the probe active until 2026 No, there's some risk to doing this because the system was originally protecting the Voyager 2 from voltage Irregularities so that could be an issue, but NASA says we're gonna give it a try Yeah, it kind of feels like the time for that of like well Let's not protect it from voltage irregularities when it's about to just run out of power Anyway, might as well use that see if we can squeeze a couple more years out. I love it Yeah, I just really want to say voltage irregularities a lot of times Can I throw that into the title ring because that's amazing. I feel like I have I have them right exactly Hold on guys. I'm having a voltage irregularities. I have like senior moment voltage irregularities. Sorry regularities. I did not say that, right? It sounds like a forgotten hair metal band Yeah, it might actually be I'm not gonna bet against that So many levels. All right, let's check out the mailbag Let's do it Martin wrote in and said I wanted a voice that in the ad study which was discussed We talked about it two days ago Tom mentioned that people who had pre-existing knowledge about say coffee We're able to use that to make a more informed decision when buying something that was being served as an ad Martin says I think I speak for most of the DAT Nest crew that we have family and friends ask us about technology all the time I always get asked if the new Mac or PC or gadget is worth purchasing or replacing for existing tech because they don't want to make their decision only on what that company is marketing to them ads work Especially if people are tired and don't get help when they don't know otherwise just my five cents Ah, thanks for the extra three cents Martin. Appreciate that. No kidding. No, it's true though I I I I can't tell you how many times I know we've all been there somebody says well, this looks pretty great But what do you think Sarah expert that I know? Hey, can you look at my DNS records and make sure that they're accurate because I'm trying to get That's what Molly sent me earlier today Yeah, that's just double-checking It's a short list of people you can get send that screenshot to so the next time you get like I don't know some Instagram ad for like DNS brownies Back in stock you can be like nah Tom said there wasn't a thing worth that money Were these made at a hundred seven twenty seven dot zero dot zero dot one Anonymous who works in tech also wrote in reaction to our discussion of people over fifty who game to say I'm happy to say I'm fifty nine and my favorite games at the moment are God of War Ragnarok Which are three and dishonored so one of the twelve percent who are not doing the puzzle games. Thank you anonymous Also, thank you to you Molly wood for being with us today Excited for all that new stuff. You've got cook and let folks know where they can keep up Thank you. You can find it all at mollywood.co. That's where you can subscribe to my newsletter and keep tabs on the forthcoming Podcast it's coming. There's a podcast coming soon. Yeah Also, thanks to you Justin Robert young also a busy bee these days let folks know where to keep up with you Buzzing around the internet Sarah world's greatest con is The all four of our scripted episodes are out right now So if you want the full story of project alpha two teenagers in the late 70s pose as psychics and in turn bring down The vast majority of all parapsychology research Please go ahead and listen to that on all podcast platforms We have two more episodes coming out an interview with the two boys now men and then a Q&A episode after that But we're very very proud of it So please go ahead and listen to it as part of the dog and pony show family as well as know a little more Oh, yeah merit. I got we had a we're not wrong live show on Monday many people many people are saying It is the number one show that you should be listening to Please go ahead and check that out know a little more as well Well, we're glad to have you both on the show today Many many things also a special thanks to D laser D laser is one of our top lifetime supporters for D TNS And we see you. Thank you for all the years of support D laser a big virtual hugs for D laser You're the best D laser is a patron and if you are a patron stick around for the extended show good day internet We're going to talk about a sperm injecting robot that can be controlled using a PlayStation controller Now if you can resist hearing the rest of that story good on you. 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