 This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you, including Justin Zellers, Pepper Geesey, and Eric Holm. Coming up on DTNS is machine learning coming for game dialogue writers now, and is that a bad thing? TikTok says, trust us, we're keeping the US safe. Encounters Track 2 might be available to you ahead of its release. This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, March 22nd, 2023. From Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. In Salt Lake City, I'm Scott Johnson. And from a soggy LA area, I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Well, we hope everybody's keeping dry or humidified, depending on where you live in the world. But if you're here, you're with us. So let's start with the quick hits. Amazon announced Wednesday it sold more than 200 million fire TV devices. That's a combination of fire TV streamers, third-party TVs that run fire TV software, and Amazon's owned televisions. That's 50 million since CES 2022 when Amazon said it had crossed 150 million sales. The company also announced smaller 43-inch, 50-inch, and 55-inch options of its flagship fire TV Omni QLED series and is launching a cheaper TV lineup called the 2-Series, limited to HD resolution, but also starting at $200. That's a pretty good deal. Well, Amazon also announced Panera became the first restaurant to deploy its Amazon One Palm reading payment system. The initial rollout started with two locations in St. Louis, but will expand in that market and Seattle with 10 to 20 locations by the end of the year. Customers will link their MyPanera account to their Amazon One account. Amazon also added the ability to link loyalty accounts to Amazon One ID to use the scan at different locations. Users can also pre-enroll in Amazon One online ahead of the visit. Earlier this week, security researchers revealed that the markup tool on pixel devices allowed people to partially recover content that was edited out of an image. Now, software engineer Chris Bloom confirmed a similar issue is impacting the Windows 11 snipping tool. When saving over an original image file with an edited file, the snipping tool does not properly truncate data. It's not visible on the PNG file itself, but a simple Python script could partially recover content. Microsoft says it's looking into the issue. Well, I hope so. Microsoft-owned GitHub announced a new version of its app called Copilot that uses OpenAI's language generation tool to help software developers write computer code. Copilot X adds new chat and voice features that can surface explanations of code segments and propose bug fixes if any are needed. They always are. GitHub first previewed the Copilot in 2021 and released it to the public last year. GitHub will also start using GPT-4 for chat, but code implementation features will continue using older language models that optimize for pace rather than accuracy. Copilot X currently offers a waitlist for preview. According to the annual report from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, global recorded music revenue grew 9% in 2022 to $26.2 billion. Of this subscription, audio streaming grew revenue 10.3% to $12.7 billion, with $589 million paid subscription accounts. Ad-supported streaming generated $4.8 billion. Physical media revenue increased 4% on the year. It just keeps increasing, everybody, with Asia accounting for 49.8% of those physical sales. Final records are back, baby! They're back! Alright Scott, let's talk about how you write video games and how that might be changing. Well, Embattled Studio, I'll say, and publisher Ubisoft for lots of reasons we won't get into today, announced they are going to be using a new tool called Ghostwriter. And this is designed to help its developers write game dialogue. Company said the tool was developed in-house and is used to generate first drafts of MPC barks. The phrase is made by game characters when players interact with them. That's what those are called. Kotaku's Luke Plunkett says, quote, or Luke Plunkett rather says this, Calling this tool artificial intelligence imbues it with an underserved sense of awe and respect stemming from the association of the term with examples from science fiction. It's wildly inaccurate. The stuff is machine learning, not AI. There's a difference. But calling it AI is exactly what its creators and chief profiteers would like us to think. So I did a little digging here because, you know, on DTNS and sort of elsewhere lately, we're all talking about AI, you know, coming for the human jobs. But is it really? And how will humans, you know, you know, I don't know, make this tool work for them rather than, you know, be out of work? Quite a few folks were not thrilled about this concept. We have Alana Pierce on Twitter. I'll read a couple tweets now saying, as a writer, having to edit AI-generated scripts or dialogue sounds far more time consuming than just writing my own templates. I would far prefer AAA studios use whatever budget it costs to make tools like this to instead hire more writers. Ed Coates echoed that sentiment saying, I feel so sad and powerless. Don't be fooled by their claims of support. This is exactly how it starts. They're clearly testing the routers of the small stuff before rolling out more aggressive forms of AI. This work could have created a job for a junior. Beep disgusting. You get the sentiment there. And then Patrick Weeks said, notably absent are quotes from all the writers saying this is definitely a new tool that we asked for. Not something that someone in another department pitched to a manager who doesn't write content themselves, who is now making us use it. So, okay. Scott, you know, there are some questions about, you know, how these sorts of things help people in various industries, particularly in the script writing category. When it comes to games, I'm not sure that, you know, a lot of folks out there, you know, some folks in the DTNS audience will know. But what an NPC bark is, you know, and how that works. Well, let me get to where you might see this in a game that Ubisoft had published. They currently make the very successful line of Assassin's Creed games. And every one of those games is chock full of NPCs, non-playable characters that are scattered around the world. Let's use Assassin's Creed Origin as the example. This is set in ancient Egypt. And in every little town or city or village you're in, there's a scattering of people standing around doing various things. Barks might be you're walking past the guy running the stables. And as you do so, he'll say, boy, my horse shirt is sweaty today or whatever you may say. Yeah, I'm a human. Exactly. Hey, look at me over here. And he might be doing that for a couple of reasons. One might be he's trying to encourage you to come check him out and buy a horse from him or take a quest from him. Or some other interaction that the game is looking for. A lot of times this stuff is used just as filler to make the world feel alive. These are all people going about their lives. They often have actors portraying these characters in their native languages and or accents. So it feels very real and very immersive, especially in ancient Egypt. And it works out really well. This is what Ubisoft's claim is at this stage anyway, is that these tools will be used to create these starter lines for those kinds of NPCs in the world, not necessarily the big arcing story that you and your character you've made are going to experience as you run through this 60 hours of content or more. That's not what they're saying. They're saying it's going to be these small examples. And that may be true. That may be exactly what they tend to start with. In fact, I think if you were going to implement a tool like this, this is where you would start. You would start with the stuff that is a little bit more low hanging fruit, a little easier for the humans who already write this stuff. It's their easier job as it is. I don't want to make any of it sound easy. It's not what I mean, but this is not the in depth, very dialogue heavy stuff. These are little small bits. But I agree generally with the sentiment that the goal here isn't to just forever be that. The goal here is to test the waters, see how it goes, and then see how much of this stuff they can write without having to pay human writers. And you may say, well, that's sure jumping straight to the end there, Scott. How do you know that's their intent? Why wouldn't this be their intent? If that works well, and they move up the chain and say, okay, well now our main story writers are going to get these as well. They're going to start in draft form. They're going to get refined by machine learning. You might have one editor somewhere down the line who will go over it all to make sure we're cool. But if they can do that and do it successfully and the technology goes along with it in terms of it continuing to get better, this means that a gigantic development savings for them. And the fact that they can also turn around and have a bunch of AI generated voice actors do it as well. You can kind of see the problem. It sort of starts stacking on top of itself and people are not going to be happy. Yeah, I can see where Ubisoft is like, but these are the most sort of general, yeah, the guy with the horse. Let's just write that for you so you can concentrate on the more overarching story of the game. This is going to make things easier for you writers, writers saying, I don't know, we don't like it. By the way, the blanket term AI, which is what Kotaku's Luke Plunkett had issue with. AI does get used a lot as a blanket term, not necessarily the most illustrative way to describe these particular tools. This is more of a machine learning thing. So if you are confused between the two and you want to know a little more, do we have something for you? Tom Merritt's know a little more episode called about machine learning to know a little more, dives into exactly this. We will have the link in our show notes where you can, if you're a patron, you can also look it up on our Patreon. Sounds great. Let's stay in the gaming space for a little bit and talk about Valve. They tweeted Wednesday, and that's today. The Counter-Strike 2 is official. Long rumored, nobody was 100% sure Valve made it official today. They are going to do this with a limited test for CS2 rolling out today for some Windows users. That is to say Steam users. That's where you'll be playing this. Valve said the game is an overhaul to every system, every piece of content, and every part of the CS experience. That's the end of the quote. With a website for the game promising years of updates and new features. Counter-Strike 2 will be free to play for everybody after the expected wide release this summer of all times. Yeah, so Valve's Source 2 engine is powering CS2, Counter-Strike 2, with updates to core mechanics like improved smoke grenades, sub-tick updates that Valve says will let servers know the exact instant that motion starts, or a shot is fired, or a grenade is thrown. There are revamped maps, better visuals, UI enhancements, and reworked audio. At least that's what has been promised. As for who gets the limited test, the company says your recent playtime on Valve official servers, your trust factor, your Steam account standing, all play a role in this. If you're selected, you get a notification on the CSGO main menu to enroll, and then you're allowed to stream and post videos. But you'll only be playing the limited test on Counter-Strike's Dust 2 map in deathmatch, and unranked competitive matchmaking modes for the time being. Scott, some of this is a little lost on me, but it's not lost on you. I have to say, first, are you part of this limited test? I'm not. I think I adhere to all of their needs except for... I haven't played a lot of Counter-Strike in the last five years or so. I used to play a ton, so they don't have a lot of recent activity for me. I'm guessing I'm not on that list as a result, but I'm in pretty good standing. Here's the thing, though. Some of you may be listening to this or watching this and going, hold on a second, why are we getting this gaming story in the middle of my tech show? There is a bit of a tech angle, at least a tech strategy angle. I think it's kind of interesting. In a lot of ways, Valve created what we think of now as a free-to-play, team-based shooter game that gets a whole lot of people coming in there and playing for free and then selling things like hats and skins and gun skins and all the things you get for your microtransactions, that sort of thing. The only real thing they didn't innovate in that time were battle passes, which sort of came later. But things like Fortnite, Overwatch... Oh, countless others. I can't think of them all of a sudden. But all these other shooters that are like free-to-play shooters that are out there taking the time of gamers, a lot of the blueprint that they are built on in terms of how they attract people, how they keep people around and how they make their money are based, quite frankly, on a lot of what Valve did with Team Fortress 2 and a game like Counter-Strike, Global Offensive, and before that just regular old Counter-Strike when it was a mod for Half-Life. I see this as a big strategy for a major platform, the biggest, most influential gaming platform on PCs, without a doubt, saying, look, we gave you guys a bunch of ideas. Hey, Riot and Valorant, good job kind of basically copying Counter-Strike and adding a few of your own twists, but really that's what you did. We're coming back at it and we're coming back at it with a brand new game, not just simple updates, not a couple of tweaks to the engine, but a ground-up effort to say to them and Epic and others who kind of control this base right now, don't forget Valve has a foot in all of this and we've never left. And I think they have a chance of taking a lot of that business back. And a lot has grown since then. Call of Duty has an enormous free-to-play player base right now. So Activision is in their crosshairs. A lot of people are. I also suspect this is going to mean Counter-Strike back on consoles, which has not happened for a very long time. They didn't commit to that yet, but I'll bet you money that'll happen. So I see it as kind of a big move by a massive company, still privately held company, and on the backs of other successful franchises, including a very popular Steam Deck hardware solution, this is a pretty good move for them if they want to have a little dominance in that space again. I did notice that some Windows users, only Windows users, will have access to the limited test. No mention of Steam Deck. Does that surprise you? It shouldn't matter. I mean, they didn't mention Steam Deck, but the truth is, if it has controller support on the get-go, this will run on Steam. Yeah. Or excuse me, on Steam Deck. The only thing that runs on Steam, for the most part, will run on the Steam Deck. They definitely have that in mind. Whether it's part of the test or not, that's hard to say. Whether they even have controller support in this version of the test is hard to say. But ultimately, they will have controller support. Certainly, it will run on the Deck. And I don't think there's any question about that. And since it's through Steam, in theory, when you're on the test, you will eventually get to play it there. But even that said, hook a keyboard and a mouse up to your Steam Deck and you'll be playing the keyboard mouse version of the game on your Steam Deck, no problem. So it's just, in their minds, another PC and it doesn't really matter because it runs Steam. Got it. Well, you might have thoughts on this or anything else we talk about on the show. So let's remind you of our email address so you can give us feedback because we want it. Email us. Feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com. All right. It's TikTok news again. Bloomberg reports that it has reviewed TikTok CEO Xiao Chu's prepared comments for the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee ahead of him testifying to Congress tomorrow, Thursday. Chu reportedly plans to say that TikTok hasn't and won't share information demanded by the Communist Party as it's merely ByteDance's U.S. and Singapore-based subsidiary. Prepared opening remarks say that, quote, TikTok's parent company ByteDance was founded by Chinese entrepreneurs but has evolved into a global enterprise since its founding. Under this structure, there is no way for the Chinese government to access it or compel access to it. Chu also is expected to outline the $1.5 billion plan with a B to protect American users by keeping U.S. data in Oracle's domestic servers right here in the United States. Plus, it will allow auditing of TikTok's algorithm and appoint an independent third-person board or three-person board that is approved by the U.S. government for U.S. operations. Measures to keep users, I think kids in this case, safe include blocking under 16-year-old users from sending direct messages and forcing one-hour scrolling limits for those below the age of 18, a new policy already in place, actually. Yeah, you know, very new but still in place. Chu is also looking for support from TikTok users themselves in a post Tuesday on TikTok's official TikTok account that's already received more than 65,000 comments. Chu asked users what they would tell U.S. representatives why they love the app. The information Jessica Lesson notes, this is not unlike when Uber pushed users inside its app to write a letter to politicians and cities that were trying to ban the Uber service. Yeah, that happens a lot. I think with a lot of companies trying to get the best possible spin on things, but The New York Times notes that of the 150 million users in the states alone, some accounts are run by small businesses and notes that Gina Ramondo, a Commerce Secretary or the Commerce Secretary, has pointed out some of the world's largest news organizations, including The New York Times itself, now have TikTok accounts. That's true. Shutting down the app could be seen to be shutting down the spread of fact-based news in order to counter the Chinese disinformation that is being alleged. Then there's the question of the algorithm itself. Even if sensitive data never gets collected, influential content served up to TikTok users has power all in itself. Indeed it does. Roger, we were talking in the pre-show about our feelings on this and where we think this might go tomorrow and in the future. So what say you? What's interesting is the grilling is going to be very bipartisan. There isn't one party that is more favorable to TikTok than the other. Both leading parties are very skeptical of the service. There's a lot that TikTok could do, I think, to assuage fears, but I don't think any of that would actually matter in the end because the parent company ByteDance is domiciled in China. That whole concept is very loaded for the company. If TikTok was started by a South Korean company or a Singaporean company, even with all the same issues, I don't think it would receive as much scrutiny because being attached, having China as part of your brand, even if it isn't directly, TikTok is the international version of Douyin, which is a Chinese-only service that is like TikTok. But unless they're willing to go the extra mile and just set up a separate company that's outside of China, that is not subject to whatever national intelligence laws that China has that compels individuals and organizations to assist the government in whatever activities that it deems necessary to secure the national interest, there's always going to be questions around it, regardless of if they could be an entirely altruistic company and there would still be this kind of scrutiny and skepticism over how they operate. Yeah, I think there's no getting around that and the problem is, as long as it's a fruitful political football to kick around, they're not actually that interested in seeing any of this get fixed or even what Chu has to say in this committee meeting. I have my own mixed opinions about all of this, but my main takeaway is like them or not, hate them or not, think they're up to no good or not. It kind of doesn't matter at this point because whether they completely make themselves transparent to Congress or any other governing body or not, I don't know how it's enough and I don't know how TikTok can make any kind of statement that doesn't have some sort of counter to it because, again, for good or bad, it is politically advantageous to keep that ball in the air. Yeah. There's really no simple way around it, unless ByteDance decides to upstakes and move their headquarters to the Cayman Island where they're incorporated internationally. There's an understanding because it is political, but it's also competitiveness. A lot of national governments see TikTok and I guarantee the U.S. won't be the only one that's doing this, but when they look at TikTok, they see a competitor to whatever local industries that they might have, especially in the media space. But more importantly, there is a sense that whatever this is, it's Chinese and because it's Chinese, it just has a target on its back from the get-go. Well, the Association for Computing Machinery, the world's largest society of computing professionals, has awarded Dr. Bob Metcalf this year's Turing Award for his work creating the Ethernet Network Technology Standard. Kind of a big deal. Dr. Metcalf, along with colleagues David Boggs, Chuck Thatcher, and Butler Lampson, developed Ethernet during their time at Xerox Park. If you're not familiar, Park stands for Palo Alto Reacher Center. Metcalf was inspired by the University of Hawaii's Lohanet, that was a pioneering wireless data packet network using high-frequency radio waves and a new technique for coordinating intermittent transmitters into a single communication channel called Aloha Random Access. Way back in 1979, I was three. Dr. Metcalf started 3Com to commercial Ethernet technology. Yeah, that's when it started. Before the 80s, the name Ethernet was named after the medium that was thought responsible for propagating light waves through space by 19th century academics. Congrats to you, Dr. Metcalf. Yeah, nice job. I feel like this is not the kind of thing you hear people talking about at restaurants, but I'd still be proud, you know? I remember when there was a bunch of companies in the 80s, and I helped my friends set up one of these local area network using one. It was called Little Big Land. But I remember how what a pain in the tush it was to get it set up. You had to set up software. And remember, DOS was still the main operating system for PCs, DOS 5.0. And you had to set up software on one PC and then the other. All these things that you take for granted today when you just plug in an Ethernet cable or you attach yourself to a Wi-Fi network, everything just works. It required four hours of our time that evening to get both. And these are only two computers. Like, to get them working so they could share data, they could share a drive. And, you know, we still use it today. And it's amazing how resilient that technology has been. What's wild to me is how often Xerox Park Center gets brought up in the historical sense of different tech and different startups and different people who are inspired by what they saw there, mouse technology leading to what ended up being in the Mac, or the Lisa, I guess, and then the Mac, all this stuff. Like, hearing that that's the epicenter of this accomplishment for this guy, it's not that surprising anymore. They're not just copies, people. They make cooler stuff there. There's an entire history of Silicon Valley that would blow your mind if you go back far enough back to the children of the Fairchild. That's awesome. Well, thank you, Dr. Bob Metcalf, for making our current life what it is. All right, let's check out the mailbag. So James wrote us from Patreon, and this was in response to our story yesterday that DPReview had shut down the photographer community. James said, this has stunned the community. No one in the community saw this coming. It was a go-to site every day. The forum on the site is massive. I'll miss it. Been going there off and on for 17 years. Never purchased anything camera-related before checking it out on DPReview first. Everything on the site linked to Amazon if you wanted to purchase. Amazon's pricing was in line with the other major camera companies. Photography, just a hobby for me, says James. And even entry-level purchases in today's camera market are expensive. It's hard to see where Amazon was losing, even with the market for cameras down. Time will tell. Thanks goes to the staff of DPReview. Hopefully a brighter future for them. And Amos, who is one of our camera and photography aficionados in the DTNS crew, notes that some of DPReview's most front-facing personalities, for example, Chris Nicholas and Jordan Grake, have said they're moving their video reviews to the new pedipixel YouTube channel. So, sounds like people who care about the stuff aren't gonna stop doing it, but, you know, they're going elsewhere. Yeah. It's a bummer when your community fractures or when something gets shut down and what tied you all together is kind of up in arms and you gotta move. But it's good to know that they'll find homes and people will be able to seek out the content they were looking for. For sure. Another James, not the same one. James from Columbus, Ohio wrote in about our story the other day about Netflix, getting into gaming, you know, trying to figure out their ad-supported model. James says, as somebody who recently canceled Netflix, what it needs to do to get back my patronage and maintain it is to actually release content I wanna watch. I don't say the reason to maintain a bunch of video streaming services at the same time. I watch the content I find interesting and I cancel when the service runs dry for me. Then I subscribe to a different service instead. Netflix ran dry really quick, my latest round. I wasn't really interested in a lot of their new content. James says, I'm a gamer. I never checked out their gaming content and probably won't in the future. My Xbox satisfies my current gaming needs and I don't really see the point of exploring Asper. What do you think about all that, Scott? I think that the... I mean, I'm trying... When they announced the gaming initiative, I had real questions. I think I talked about it on the show before. And I still kinda do and I still don't think they really know ultimately where they're gonna end up. There've been recent comments internally at Netflix about how they wanna have their games on every TV, every smart box, every everything that can play Netflix, also to play games. Which sounds a lot like what Apple tries to do with their Apple TV devices, running games from the App Store. And I get it, I guess. But I never really saw the connection of why they thought, anyway, somebody would be having a Netflix account and never get to a moment where they're like, boy, none of this is doing it for me. I've seen all these shows. These new shows aren't interesting. Oh, but wait, I'm not leaving because they got these mobile games. I just don't see that as a draw to keep spending your $17 a month, or whatever level you're at. And so, until they convince me otherwise, and so far they haven't, not saying they can't, I'm kinda with him. It's like, what's the motivation? There's just not a lot of reason to do it. If you're super hardcore about the games they have now, I get hanging around because then you'll get the best of both worlds, still get your programming, still get your games. I just don't think that's a huge bunch of people and it's also marketed weird. There's a lot of other questions I have about that service. Well, as somebody who is into hardcore gaming, Scott Johnson, thank you for being with us on this show today, but let folks know where they can keep up with your other gaming work. Well, sure. I have a show on Thursdays called Core, which we put out the exact same night once it's done on podcast form. So if you would like the podcast or the video version or want to be there live, all the details are at frogpants.com. Me and my co-hosts talk about the big stories of the day, including the stuff that Ubisoft and computer-based ghost writers. We're going to have a lot of discussion about this this week. We also had a big successful test of Diablo 4, which we're going to talk about. If any of that's interesting to you, check us out at frogpants.com. Core or wherever you get your podcasts. Excellent. We also want to thank our brand new boss, Dimash. Dimash just started backing us on Patreon. Thank you, Dimash. We're so glad to have you. Patrons, stick around for the extended show, Good Day Internet. We're going to talk about yet another food delivery service that is going the way of the dodo. Not necessarily totally the dodo, but food delivery services are having a hard time. As are scooter services and many other services. But just a reminder, we do the show live and you can catch the show live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern, 20 hundred UTC. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We're back tomorrow talking big news from the game developer conference, the GDC, with Trisha Hershberger joining us. Yay, talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.