 Coming up on DTNs Oracle pulls a Chinese government move on TikTok Facebook crosses a Rubicon or maybe it's a Volga in this case and Patrick Norton lets us know if it's time to try buying a GPU again. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, March 11 2022 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane. Some more in St. Louis. I'm Patrick Norton. And I'm Roger Chang. The show is pretty. There is a longer version of the show called Good Day Internet that's flipping up its format starting Monday. If you'd like to get DTNs and more, subscribe to it. Also, big thanks to our top patrons today. They include Tim Ashman, Johnny Hernandez and High Tech Oki. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. The Financial Conduct Authority, or FCA, is warning cryptocurrency ATM operators in the UK to shut down. The FCA says that the crypto firms who've registered with it haven't been granted permission to operate ATM services and as a result, operating crypto ATMs is illegal. The Telegraph reports that there are around 81 functional crypto ATMs in Britain, the least at this time, based on data from the Quain ATM radar tracker, the majority of which are in supermarkets and convenience stores. Meta announced Code Verify. It's a Chrome browser extension that verifies the content of WhatsApp's web app to make sure it hasn't been tampered with. It's not an unusual situation. It just hadn't been applied to WhatsApp before, so they're using it. It works by automatically comparing a hash of code in the browser with a hash held by Cloudflare. The extension doesn't read messages. No data is sent to Cloudflare. No data is sent to Meta. It's just making sure that your extension hasn't been tampered with. A Firefox version of the extension is coming soon. Regulators in the EU and UK have opened an antitrust probe into Google's agreements with Facebook, now Meta, over online advertising. US regulators are also investigating the agreements. Google and Facebook reached agreements on minimum and maximum bids, which aren't unusual in the advertising space. However, the concern is that the relative dominance of the two companies means that the agreements had an outsized and anti-competitive effect on the overall advertising market. The Reserve Bank of India has blocked Paytm from signing up new customers pending an audit of its IT systems. Paytm is one of the biggest online payment systems in India, so it's kind of a big deal. It will continue to be able to process transactions while the audit is conducted. Just can't sign up new folks. In a final ruling issued on Thursday, US regulators eliminated the need for automated vehicle manufacturers to build fully autonomous vehicles with manual driving controls designed to meet crash standards. Back in February, just last month, General Motors and its self-driving unit crews asked the US National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration for permission to build and also deploy a self-driving vehicle without human controls, without an ability for a human to even get in there later if necessary. Steering wheels, brake pedals, that's the sort of thing a human would need. Of note, the NHSTA's rule says that children shouldn't occupy the traditional driver's seat given that the driver's seating position hasn't been designed to protect children in a crash, but if a child were to be in that seat, the car would not immediately be required to cease motion. Yeah, so slowly catching up with the regulations. All right, that's a big step for autonomous cars, though, is the ability to not have to put in stuff it doesn't need to have in there if it gets to a fully autonomous level five kind of situation. All right, let's talk a little bit more, but this is going to be like a retro story, going back to TikTok and the committee on foreign investment. Tell us all about it, Sarah. Let's harken back to 2020. Remember that great year? Wow, so many great things happened. Among them, the US government threatened to make ByteDance sell its US TikTok operations and companies like Microsoft and Oracle angled to get a piece. China made moves to stop that and a new US president did not continue that push, but the committee on foreign investment in the US did formally order ByteDance to divest itself of US operations. ByteDance successfully obtained a preliminary junction to stop a sale and the story kind of faded away from public view. We had other things to think about, but the deal making kept going. It's been going on behind the scenes and it looks like a settlement may have been achieved. Reuters sources say that Oracle will get a contract to manage US user data for TikTok. So this isn't a sale. It's an agreement. It's a partnership. Buzzfeed says seven current and former TikTok employees at the so-called Project Texas, as it is known internally, at least according to some people, has been ongoing for months. Right now in the US, TikTok data is hosted somewhere in the US or in Singapore. None of it is hosted in China. However, that may be changing. Oracle is reportedly cloning some TikTok systems like tracking and analytics tools, the kinds of things that report content by vitality and how well the algorithm is doing. All US data would be hosted in the US and processed by Oracle. That is part of the agreement, at least as it stands right now, and tools would be maintained by a new US-based team called US Tech Services. That team would report to middle managers at TikTok in the US who report to buy dance execs in China. Two people told Buzzfeed they're looking at ways to legally restrict the Chinese executives from having access to US tech services for information. This is similar to what a lot of US companies do in China currently where they operate cloud services, but the data for the services is maintained by a Chinese company. Microsoft's operations in China go through 21vionet, and Amazon works with Ning CS, Western cloud data technology, and also Synet. Yeah, so first of all, if you thought that that was all just a, I don't know, some kind of fake thing. When you get the Committee on Forward Investment in the US to investigate something, they investigate it, and they keep investigating it until they're satisfied one way or the other. And they have been continuing to investigate it. You know, the hot, buzzy news went other places, but the committee kept doing the work that it was ordered to do, and they weren't ordered to stop. So they came up with this, and I remember, maybe I'm remembering the way I want to remember, but I remember back when this story was new saying, I doubt they're going to make TikTok sell part of itself, but I could see them coming to an arrangement that China has where China makes the local data be held by a local company, and it looks like that's what's actually going to happen. And Oracle is going to be the provider of that data here in this case, but it will be very similar to what China does, and so China will have less of a leg to stand on and objecting to it. I got to say, I really thought that Oracle deal was dead, and that just goes to show you how much goes on behind the scenes when we all pay attention to the other shiny thing. Yeah, just because you're not hearing everyone scream about something doesn't mean it has stopped. We were distracted for what that's worth. I mean, also, we can't keep track of every single thing that's happening in the world, right? People sort of pretend like you can know everything, and if you haven't heard about it, it must not be happening. It's like absolutely impossible for that to be true. I think you can't. I don't know about the rest of us, Tom. No, I don't. Even I can't. Nobody can. Come on. Tom can't. No one can. I will try, though, even if I can't. And here's an example. Lots of news related to Russia to round up for you today. We'll start with the brief for things and get to the more more complex things. The National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team Coordination Center of China says that IP addresses that appear to be coming from the United States, Germany and the Netherlands, mostly from the US, though, have been taking control of computers in China in order to launch attacks on Internet targets in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. If you're like, that sounds familiar. Usually the story goes the other direction that you're usually hearing someone accuse Russia of hijacking computers in China and using China. Chinese IP addresses to launch an attack on the US. So China's saying it's going the other direction now. Also, we've noted before on the show that about 50% of the world's neon gas used for chip lithography is refined in Odessa, Ukraine, and apparently in Mariupol, too, which is being heavily bombarded. Reuters says that Ukraine's neon refinement has halted. They have confirmed it with both of the companies that do it. It may be difficult for those companies to reopen later because machines might get damaged. Even if the machines aren't damaged by bombing, they may not be able to get the raw materials since 90% of the world's neon gas is a byproduct of steel manufacturing in Russia. The largest chip makers do say that they have secured their own neon supplies for now, but smaller chip makers may run into shortages now that these refineries have been shut down for a while. Reserve supply estimates vary from a few months to a year. But it could take nine months to two years for alternative suppliers to get up and running and fill the gap. So the most optimistic scenario is you fill that gap right at the time you need it, but that may not happen. Also, in 12 Eastern European countries, Meta's Facebook and Instagram are allowing a spirit of the policy, in their words, exemption to hate speech rules. This relates to the post that object, or that if the object of the post is a Russian soldier, someone who is not a prisoner of war. They say if it's prisoner of war, it's a different matter. But if you're talking about Russian soldiers, we assume you mean the Russian military. And if your post is clearly related to the war in Ukraine, then we won't bring the hammer down. The policy will continue to prohibit hate speech against ordinary Russian citizens, however. And this is getting lost in a lot of the rhetoric around this. The exemptions are only allowed in these countries. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and Ukraine. In other words, countries bordering Ukraine. A Meta spokesperson told Reuters it will also make an exemption to allow praise of a hate group, an extremist militia in Eastern Ukraine. And the Meta spokesperson said, quote, strictly in the context of defending Ukraine or in their role as part of the Ukraine National Guard. In other words, again, they're not encouraging those posts. They're saying when we see that if it's defending Ukraine or as part of the Ukraine National Guard, we won't remove the post at that point. We'll leave it where it is. In response to all of that, Russian prosecutors asked a court to designate Meta as an extremist organization itself and prohibit its activities in Russia. Russia's communications regulator also announced it will issue a block on Instagram. They're giving folks 48 hours, so March 14th, to get time to get your photos off the platform if you're in Russia. Facebook had already been restricted in Russia, so Instagram joins that. No action is contemplated against WhatsApp because they say that is mostly a messaging app, whereas Facebook is a platform. Instagram is a platform. Facebook has 7.5 million Russian users. Instagram, if you're wondering like, why didn't they just block Instagram at the beginning? Instagram has 50.8 million Russian users. And WhatsApp, interestingly, has 67 million Russian users. You know, of all the information in this story, what caught my eye at least at first as I was trying to make sense of it was, wow, okay, Russian Facebook users, 7.5 million. Not a lot of, you know, considering the size of the country. Instagram, 50.8 million. What's up the most? What's up the most with 67 million? And the fact that WhatsApp is at least at this point of this recording, not being, I don't know, technically shuttered, right? The way that the others are is sort of telling because that's what most people are using. Well, and Patrick, we can't hear you right now. I don't know if you muted yourself, but yeah, you're talking about WhatsApp is encrypted too. There's less of an ability to control the message on WhatsApp. Go ahead, Patrick. What I was going to say for a lot of people outside of the US, WhatsApp is this primary, it's what they use instead of texting in a lot of cases. And I can see that for eating as many problems for them internally as it would, you know what I mean? I think they lose more by shutting it down than they gain by shutting it down. But the thing with Facebook slash meta is, you know, it's so a part of everything else they've been doing. It's just, I don't know. I think that a lot of people will look at this and have an opinion on whether this or that message should or should not be allowed. I would encourage you when thinking about this to separate yourself from that and say, well, what if it wasn't Russia? What if it wasn't Ukraine? You know, what if it was Yemen? What if it was the Tigray region? What if it was Mali? What if it was one of these other wars? Why isn't Facebook coming in and saying, well, in this case, it's okay to criticize the Saudi military or it's okay to criticize the Yemen Revolutionary Guard? It does feel a little bit like they are making it up as they go along. Well, I mean, for them to actually announce a policy beforehand seems kind of unusual for meta. And two, you know, it's never too late to virtue signal when you've made a name change in an effort to rebrand your organization to make it more palatable to any of a number of investigations and or futures. You know, I don't want to be cruel to Facebook. I mean, yeah. But, you know, it's it's a it's a it's an it's an interesting move for them. You know, I wonder if they'll remember to change their policies when this if and when this thing lines itself up. If you saw there was for some reason I can't pull it up right now. I'm not sure if it's been taken down, but there was an original writer's story about the spirit of the policy exemption that you had had laid out a couple of minutes ago, Tom, as it relates to hate speech rules and what is allowed in the context of the war, depending on where you live and what platform you're using. And that caused a ton of confusion, you know, even among a lot of journalists that I like and respect who are, you know, trying to figure out. Okay, at this point, you know, what what is responsible reporting in the sense of this is the tweet that a respected news organization, you know, has laid out that could be construed in a way that isn't necessarily what the story is. Yeah, and I. I think you can you can overreact to this because it is limited to certain countries, it is limited to military action and I and there's it's understandable that, you know, tempers are running high, but it is also one sided, and it also isn't following a clearly established religious principle, as far as I could tell, one more wrinkle that that is related to the the war in Ukraine, what that might have some long term effects on how the internet works, Russian websites can often not renew their existing TLS certificates right now because you know, there's no way that the nations prevent payment processing, and that means no HTTPS. And if you don't have HTTPS these days that means your browser is likely to warn you, even if that site is a totally legitimate site. You know, there's no way that you can renew your existing free TLS certificates to things like the Bank of Russia, etc. However, for a certificate authority to be set up and respected and has to be trusted by the browser so far, so far, only the are recognizing these new Russian certificates, you can manually add that certificate authority to Chrome and Firefox, if you trust the provider. That is until that provider is actively blocked as part of the certificate revocation list now right now this certificate is not so you could add it if you want. So there's two questions one is if the browser makers will add this to their CA list so that you don't have to, or will they discover that this certificate authority is intercepting traffic as some people suspect might be the case, in which case they would add it to the revocation list, further causing the splinter net, as they call it so one to file away in the back of your mind for a future day if you see a story about Russian websites. Being pushed off the Internet or something, if you see certificate authorities come up, it'll be useful to know about this. Hey, if you have a thought about something on the show, and you want to send us an email, it might be handy to have our email address so here it is feedback at dailytechnewshow.com send us an email, please. Last week TechRadar's Alex Whitelock published a story on TechRadar.com about falling GPU prices he said at the time that the trend was looking good but we still had a ways to go. Patrick's been looking at this himself, digging into the numbers and has some information for folks wondering when it's going to be safe to try to buy a GPU again what do you found Patrick? Oh my goodness, so one props to Alex Whitelock and TechRadar reader Ted. The reader actually has been tracking GPU prices and the chart that was posted goes from November 21 and then the peak at of course right around Christmas of 21 and then you just watch this. And the max price on on like a 3090 was $3,024 right before in that Christmas shopping holiday madness Christmas frenzy Christmas frenzy and as of the middle of February in 2022 is down to 2,362 which is still more than I ever planned to play for an entire gaming machine. So the prices are down right and part of this is Tom and I were talking about this the other day I talked to a friend of mine who's who's deep in the mining community. I talked to a couple other people like the biggest thing is probably Ethereum switching to proof of stake. Which means you know when people buy a GPU to Bitcoin mine they they expect to make a certain amount of money off of it and the ability to essentially make money mining Ethereum off of cards is is just basically going to end. Because proof of work means your computer is putting in the work to crunch numbers proof of stake is like we're just going to use what you've got. So you don't have to run that GPU hot. Yeah. Yeah, so you know the GPUs and me and you know it could be a great time to buy use GPU in the none do distant future so it feels like the supply chain is actually catching up. And you know kind of the TLDR on this is you can buy cards right now which is weird. You know say for like the first time in 18 months I think I can buy almost any GPU I want from AMD or Nvidia right and of course we also should point out that that Intel is going to be coming online later this year with their discrete GPUs right. There are tons of cards in stock at New Egg being sold and shipped by New Egg Micro Center has cards in stock. Not I'm waiting at 9am on Tuesday or Thursday or Friday when the truck shows up and I see what shows up in the truck but literally I can't buy it online but I can see that they have in some cases dozens of cards in particular models in stock. I haven't seen that in forever. You know it's it's a little crazy to see they are still painfully expensive, which is a big deal. You know the $249 price that RTX 3050 definitely a fantasy. I'm seeing $420 to $490 for those the not so beloved AMD 6500 XT you know I've seen it as low as like $230 on its $199 MSRP. So if you're desperate almost acceptable like we're in we're in shouting distance of like OK fine I'll pay a little premium to get it. Yeah. I'm going to call that a 10% big on a card at this point is more than acceptable. Yeah, yeah, 10% big. So eBay listings for I'm going to use scarecodes here new and unopened box are lower than New Egg for example on 30 80s. Oh wow. Or some Amazons. You know I'm not going to be as patient as Alec Whitelock's reader and tracking the number or the numbers on the auctions. But of course that also varies on auctions and what time the auction ends and fear of missing out and whatever announcement gets made in the next couple weeks. And there are a lot of weird things going out there. If you start shopping around you'll probably see RTX 3050s RTX 2060s and GTX 1660s all in the same 430 to $490 price range which is weird because these are three completely different generations of cards. And the 2060 you know if you're looking at raw gaming performance is as much as 20% faster for 1080p gaming. It's got a healthy 1517% lead in frame rates at 1440p gaming. So you know I'm not saying buy one you know I'm not saying buy one now but boy you know take a look at the numbers that are available for the cards that are shipping and it's just a really weird collection of cards. You know so you know I laugh because somebody's like you should get a 3050 Mike I have a 1080ti. I have to get at least a 3080ti to have comparable gaming performance and again I'm not spending I paid more for at least one of the cars I've bought in the last 10 years. For less for at least one of the cards about the last 10 years than that card and would cost me right now. So you know and as you mentioned earlier things are going to get really interesting in the next year as far as chip production because all of the neon that was coming out of Ukraine has suddenly ended. You know I'm going to keep my so so the there's good news for now but the magic eight ball says the future is cloudy. Try again later. Yeah I mean I was yeah the whole neon thing came up and I may have said some words that my mother would not have approved of loud enough that my wife may have suggested that I tone it down. But the the yeah it's really crazy right because it seems like demand is easing the fact that let me say it again the fact that you can actually go out and buy a card without spending hours hunting. Yeah great right. And honestly these these prices are painful but they're not as painful as some of those eBay prices would which was the only way you could even get a card for a while. So yes so if you're like stuck and you have to have it and it's like I'll just spend the money. Well wow you can actually do that if you're you're trying to spend a reasonable amount of money and not quite there yet for all the We're not there yet but we're closer and you know it's like I said it's been really interesting. I don't know where all these 2060s and 1660s are coming from but you know somebody must have found a bunch of stuff in a warehouse somewhere and is cutting it loose so I'm yeah I would say wait as long as you can dot dot dot up until the point where prices start creeping up and you know I don't know how helpful that is for everybody but you know it's it's nice to see like if you if you've been desperate for a GPU and just getting really ticked off because you haven't been able to buy one well you should be able to buy one right now may not be happy about the price but Like gas. I know I know and you all I'm going to steal your line here because now in stock dot net is always the place to go to shop around as well and we'll have that link in the show notes as well. Yeah it's it's it's good like it's really you know if you have a micro center near you they have cards in stock but you're going to have to go into the store. Some of the prices on Amazon are good some of the prices on Amazon look like they haven't heard the news about the eBay prices coming down and eBay is always a crap shoot may get a fantastic deal if if somebody screws up and ends an auction at three in the morning on a Wednesday. Well shoot Amazon's almost as bad as eBay on on stuff with resellers these days. Yeah. Well let's move on to something that I think we can all agree on that quad copters are cool. Yes. But but what copters also are sometimes loud and years one objection is noise especially when it comes to quad copters delivering things. You know because the drone delivery future we were all promised but I love the idea love the idea of drone delivery Sarah but if I'm getting my meal at night. Are my neighbors going to be OK with that. Well sure yeah it's like outside of normal standard working hours people don't expect to hear leaf blowers and they don't expect to hear quad copters either. Exactly leaf blowers descending from the sky. Basically airborne. That's what a quad copter. My worst number will see no reports that NASA's innovative advanced concepts may have found and funded a solution MIT aerospace engineering professor Stephen Barrett and the MIT Electric Airface Initiative have been working on a silent solid state drone. The aircraft uses a series of electrodes beneath the wings to create a high voltage field. This accelerates nitrogen molecules in the air which then propels the plane. It's small might be best for vertical takeoff and landing in urban areas. You don't have a whole lot of a wiggle room as far as taken off and landing perfect for package deliveries. We've been waiting for this for quite some time but the folks in urban areas really are the ones that have to think about how this is going to work out the most. Of course NASA is interested in it for Mars and space exploration in general but the fewer moving parts the fewer things to go wrong. But we would like silent burritos delivered to us at 9pm everybody. I mean let's be honest this is a thing. NASA wants your Mars we want silent burritos. Yeah yeah I want the burrito. I mean it won't be silent while I'm eating it. But it will be silent when it lands in my backyard. Barrett's team will receive $175,000 in phase one of NIAC funds to develop the technology over a nine month period. And then they'll work on improving efficiency also flying time and do some outdoor tests to make sure that the proof of concept indeed works. Yeah because this thing can't fly for very long hence urban areas right. You're not going to be going over rural distances. And they've only tested it inside where the air is calm so they need to get it to fly outside where you've got wind gusting up. Let's talk an ice store of everybody and let's see how this goes. So lots of things to work out but silent drones. It could get over one of the objections to drone deliveries perhaps maybe not the only one but it's some cool technology and cool science anyway. Listen noise pollution is something that is already an issue and depending on where you live it can be pretty restrictive as far as your happiness goes. So yeah I think this is really cool. Alright let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. Jerry asked I'm just wondering why you're changing the format of GDI, DTNS meaning that the times and kind of how we're formatting it. Jerry says I kind of like GDI as pre and post show for DTNS as it is now. Yeah if you only get Daily Tech News Show you may not realize that a change is coming and no change is coming to Daily Tech News Show. What's happening is our live stream is going to start 15 minutes earlier starting on Monday and then when we do that we are also going to start the show with DTNS. So we'll start the live stream with the GDI theme song we'll say hi to everybody but we're going to go right into Daily Tech News Show to start. The idea behind that is we've done a survey on this for years and there's a split in the audience some people like the way it is mostly because that's always been the way it is. But a lot of people are like yeah I don't listen to GDI because I want to just get into the Daily Tech News Show and I don't always have time for everything else. If we start with Daily Tech News Show on good day internet that means you can choose when you want more but the days when you don't have time once you get to the end of the 30 minute show you can bounce out and maybe save the rest for later. But you've got the most essential stuff at the top. It's classic journalism tell them the most important stuff first. So that's why we're switching. I mean not to say GDI butter is not important but yes we also have had folks say you know sometimes on GDI before the show you say you're going to talk about something after the show but then you don't because you know there's been a whole show in between. So I think this this is kind of helping our brains stay the most focused possible we think. And if you've ever been like you know what I don't need to get good day internet from Patreon because I just want DTNS. Well now it's you can you can just go get it from Patreon and you'll get it right off the top every time. So if that's been an objection to supporting us on Patreon well that objection has been removed. Well as always your feedback is appreciated feedback at Daily Tech News Show dot com is where you can send us thoughts on format changes or anything that we talk about on the show and you know strength and numbers. Thank you in advance. I also wanted to extend a special thanks to Justin Zellers. Justin is one of our top lifetime supporters for DTNS. So Justin today is your day. Woo Justin. Thank you Justin for hanging out with us. We still need 11 patrons to bring us back up to the level of February. Our March level is 11 below February. Yeah make March madness work for you. Also thanks to Patrick Norton for being with us today and bringing the knowledge on GPUs and everything else. Patrick let folks know where they can keep up with your work. As always just follow me on Twitter at Patrick Norton or hang out with Roger Roger Robert Herron and I not Roger Chang and I. No one wants to hear Roger Chang and I wine. But Robert Herron and I think plenty of people would that would be a podcast the dad cast I'm digressing and I'm supposed to do this like 10 seconds. AVXL.com or I'm sorry you're out of the cell. Never mind Patrick. They'll. I've cut it off right at the T's do AVXL.com AVXL.com. We're going to keep reminding y'all because we know we're going to have a few questions about it so we'll just keep hammered in. We are changing our format starting Monday March 14th. And this has to do with daylight saving time starting in the U.S. on Sunday March 13th. We will be live starting Monday March 14th 4 p.m. Eastern. That's twenty hundred UTC. Find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live. If you have any questions let us know. Hopefully you get it. Now tomorrow science correspondent Nikki Ackermans has the monthly science highlights. That'll be a fun thing. And we'll be back on Monday. Have a great weekend everyone. This week's episodes of Daily Tech News Show were created by the following people. Host producer and writer Tom Merritt. Host producer and writer Sarah Lane. Executive producer and Booker Roger Chang. Producer writer and host Rich Strafolino. Video producer and Twitch producer Joe Coons. Associate producer Anthony Lemos. Spanish language host writer and producer Dan Campos. News host writer and producer Jen Cutter. Science correspondent Dr. Nikki Ackermans. Social media producer and moderator Zoe Deterding. Our mods Beatmaster W. Scottus one bio cow Captain Kipper. Steve Guadirama Paul Reese. Matthew J. Stevens and JD Galloway. Modern video hosting by Dan Christensen. Video feed by Sean Wang. Music and art provided by Martin Bell. Dan Looters Mustafa A. Acast and Len Peralta. Live art performed by Len Peralta. Acast ad support from Trace Gaynor. Patreon support from Dylan Harari. Contributors to this week's show included Nika Monford. Terence Gaines Justin Robert Young. And Patrick Norton. This week was Jennifer Briney. And thanks to all our patrons who make the show possible. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Well, I hope you have enjoyed this brawl.