 Daily Tech News show is made possible by you listening right now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Jeffrey Zilks. It was good to see you in Austin. Kriya Artam, Tony Glass, and new patron Mike. Welcome, Mike. Welcome, Mike. Good to have you. On this episode of DTNS, the EU's DMA popularizes small browsers. Scott reads the tea leaves on Xbox Forward compatibility and why China is easing up on video games. This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, April 10, 2024 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Animal House, I'm Sarah Lane. In Salt Lake City, I'm Scott Johnson. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. My friends, we have a lot of gaming news for you today and a little not gaming news for you today and all of Scott Johnson. Oh, uh, well, part of it. I mean, you are a wonderland. I mean, you're entirely here. All of you is here. That is true. All 84.5% of my normal self is here. And I'm glad to be here. Very good. Very good. And considering you're 70% or so water, you know, that's. It's not bad. Yeah, it's not bad. Could be. Now I'm like record 10 Kobo announced two new color ink e-readers, the Kobo Libra color and the Kobo Clara color. Both use ink collido screen tech, which offers 150 ppt in color with the which the Verge describes as a pastel hues. The Libra color is compatible with the Kobo stylus to sold separately. That costs $220. The Kobo Clara color offers 16 gigs of storage and improved processor for $150. Both are IPX 8 waterproof and both color ink ink readers are available to order now shipping in April coming to a beach near you Kobo Libra, please. Piper Sandler survey found out that 33% of teens in the US own a VR device and that's up from 31% last year. Weekly use has risen from 10 to 13% of people using it at least once a week. That's not what I would call an Apple vision pro halo, although a lot of stories are working hard to try to say it is. But hey, it's still pointed up, right? The survey of us teens also found out that tic-tac is still the favorite app of teens in the US. But Instagram has actually moved into second place above Snapchat. Snapchat got kicked over to third. Finally, teens spend 29% of daily video consumption on Netflix and only 27% on YouTube. You know, I really would have thought YouTube would have been the larger of the two security researchers at SOC radar discovered a Microsoft public storage server on Azure was left open without password production. It contained code, scripts and configuration files containing passwords, keys and credentials used by Microsoft employees. The researchers notified Microsoft on February 6th and Microsoft secured the files on March 5th. Nintendo shutdown servers supporting the Nintendo Wii U console on Monday. And yes, there are some people who are still using it. So a group of open source coders created the pretendo network to give those who wanted to keep using their Wii U a little bit of a workaround. Now, originally you needed to jailbreak the Wii U to access it which you know a lot of these folks were going to do. That's that's fine, but not all of them wanted to do that. So Tuesday pretendo announced a workaround. You need to make a DNS change on your Wii U but you can use the stock firmware. You don't need to jailbreak it. So it's easier even if you don't mind jailbreaking. The workaround was discovered thanks to an SSL exploit discovered by pretendo developer Shutterbug third party titles that use their own SSL won't work if you do it this way. So no watchdogs or YouTube and of course if Nintendo pushes out a firmware update for the Wii U it could remove the bug and therefore the workaround. I really like the name pretendo. Me too. That's awesome. It just works. The march of AI service announcements shows no signs of slowing and continues this week. Google announced two new coding tools. We have Gemini code assist that can handle 22 different programming languages including debugging and explaining part of Gemini for Google cloud and code Gemma is Google's own code in Python, JavaScript and Java all in one. There are three versions one of which can work locally. Open AI announced that GPT for turbo with vision is now generally available through its API. That means third parties can take advantage of open AI is newest and most capable model in their apps. That means practically they won't need to call separate models for generating text and images at this point. Very nice. All right before we get into the big news. I don't usually call out titles from the live chat while we're recording the main show but fred 819 just submitted your Scotty is a wonderland. Oh wow. All right. I know what my mom calls me that that's fine fine. That's all fine here. I like how Scott's like politely like yeah that it works. He's like yeah I don't mind being compared to the John Mayer song but Scotty. Yeah. Don't want that. Don't want that. Oh Scotty. All right. China requires foreign companies to partner with domestic companies in a lot of situations. One of those situations is game distribution. You want to publish a game in China. You got to partner up with a Chinese company that can navigate all of the restrictions and approvals and such and such. During a crackdown on gaming over the past couple of years Blizzard and net ease couldn't come to an agreement on renewing their relationship to do just that and therefore most Blizzard games stop being distributed in China on January 23rd 2023. So it's been more than a year since you could legally get most Blizzard games. There is an exception for Diablo Immortal which was actually covered by a separate agreement but otherwise you're out of luck. Microsoft however says it has reached an agreement to once again distribute Blizzard games like Overwatch Diablo and World of Warcraft in China. Phil Spencer wrote on X that Microsoft is quote exploring ways to bring more new titles to Xbox demonstrates our commitment to bringing more games to more players around the world. Look at us. We're not doing those things you accused us of when we bought Blizzard. Scott you know you've been following Blizzard closely for 20 years or whatever what do you make of Microsoft being able to come in and ease the tensions because like there was some high tensions between net ease and Blizzard around the time that they ended that deal. Yeah it was pretty ugly actually they tore down a Overwatch statue in China at the offices of net ease to symbolize the breaking of this deal and they filmed it and it went viral and it was a big mess. It basically looked like when you when you tear down a giant statue that probably costs I don't know a fair amount of money to build and put up that felt like like Taliban stuff. Yeah it's kind of final it felt like a final nail in the coffin to me. But in light of the new acquisition and Microsoft's desire to expand into other markets which they've already been doing in every other way why wouldn't they do it here. I'm sure that they stepped in with a bit of a fig leaf and said look guys maybe we can put that statue back together at the very least can we just get contracts back in place where you know we'll give a little bit and you guys can have back what you liked about having us over there and then everything will be fine. I think that is probably what happened and I think it is a positive move for them if they want them you know more of that market over there. The Chinese market in general though has been a little touch and go in the last few years like a lot of new regulations and a lot of new stuff causing develop both developers publishers outside and in to hit the skids a little bit on a whole bunch of projects so this isn't that unusual for a bunch of stuff to fall apart the weird part is it's coming back together. Well and some you know restrictions on especially younger folks and how long they can game in any given day you know that all plays into it. I would say that at least on paper it sounds like you know the consumer wins here NetEase and Microsoft coming back to an agreement saying yeah you know all right World of Warcraft folks and you know you know Blizzard folks in general can now enjoy games in China and we want to work together to you know bring more titles to NetEase. You know I I'm looking for holes in the story but it sounds like it's just two companies getting along better. Yeah we're dummy asked there wasn't another company who could do it. That's an interesting question like why didn't Blizzard just go somewhere else. I wonder how much of it was hoping that they could rebuild the relationship at a later date and not have to start over from scratch because there's a lot that goes into creating the distribution networks for this and how much of it might have been you know a little bit of being black bald of like well you're not going to work with NetEase you're not working with anybody else. I think that's probably there's some truth to that I also think your first point is probably the more accurate one or the one that had the most bearing here working with NetEase was something they were already used to doing they had systems in place and infrastructure in place that probably hasn't left like it's probably still sort of just been there doing its thing running other games whatever NetEase is pretty big and there are other choices who Tencent Tencent already has a little stake in everybody including a little bit of Blizzard although I don't know what that changed with Microsoft's acquisition how that actually plays out but NetEase is probably still the best choice for them to go with and if if my inside sources are to be believed Diablo immortal makes more money than any of it ever did so in a way this is like saying well we're already the cash cow which no one thinks of but mobile is the cash cow is already happening over there and it's going great don't you think fellas and they're all like yeah I'm making this up of course and then they say well why don't we bring all our stuff back into the fold and they said you know what why not new leadership new management let's do this and you know rumors were that there was a very particular executive that they did not like back then one NetEase exec called one of the Blizzard execs a jerk but didn't say which one yeah the other thing this is all happening around the background of a lot of jerking executive yeah how could you tell this is all happening around the background of the easing up of game restrictions like Sarah alluded to you know there's a rule that says you can only play an hour on Fridays and weekends if you're under 18 and you can only play 90 minutes Monday through Thursday if you're under 18 they were going to restrict that even farther in December and there was a backlash MIT technology review has a really interesting interview with Angela Wei Zhang a law professor in Hong Kong who said she thinks the investment community overacts to these announcements and Chinese governmental agencies use the fact that they will overreact to punish companies without having to actually punish the company in other words you want to punish some game companies and get them in line announce that you're going to put in restrictions and investors will start pulling out it will punish the company and therefore you can get them to play ball without actually having to pass a new policy I think that we're not seeing that anymore says the law professor Zhang that because there is an economic downturn in China and so the agencies don't want to be seen as hurting the economy by scaring off investors and so we're seeing a little of that softening I thought that was an interesting theory for why that's happening yep I think she's got a point well the digital markets act which went into effect in the EU on March 7th forced Google and Microsoft and Apple among other things to make it easier for consumers to switch to alternative browsers in mobile ecosystems according to data provided to Reuters by six independent browser companies the DMA's goal to limit unfair competition by making tech companies offer mobile users the ability to select from a list of available web browsers from a choice screen seems to be working we've got duck duck go brave opera aloha Ecosia and Vivaldi browsers all saying they have increased usage as a result of the DMA going into effect they've also criticized the rollout of new features saying it could have been handled better it could have been less convoluted and you know as a result maybe we would have even more users but I think the point or the takeaway at least is that when people are given a choice sometimes they make different choices then just you know using Chrome Safari or edge well they were always given a choice this is about advertising not choice you all you always had the ability to download a different browser and I'm talking about the ability to get a different browser that was running on Safari's WebKit engine not the idea that these browser makers could create their own versions because creating your own version is a separate effect of EU regulation this is just saying your default browser doesn't have to be Safari it can be something else so the choice screen is making all the difference and it's not surprising to me that if you force everyone to be aware that there are multiple browsers that you will see people like experimenting with more browsers like that was the idea of forcing the choice screen and surprise it works it makes people aware that there are browsers they didn't know otherwise I'm sure apps in other categories would love to have a choice screen for their particular app to so they could get the free advertising nevertheless the question is is it going to stick it's one thing to let people know like hey there's a browser called Vivaldi and then go huh that's interesting I want to give that a shot and them continuing to use Vivaldi and not just going back to Safari right yeah I think a lot of people do that I I had a weird experience where I kind of thought that would be me and I ended up sticking with a combination of Firefox and Duck Duck go for my search engine and I kind of thought well maybe the browser will stick but I'll probably bounce around with the search engine and this isn't really about which search engine but I didn't bounce back I stayed and so that combination has been really good to me and I don't know that I need anything else but once in a while something will come up and they'll go oh we require Chrome to run this I'm like okay yeah I have it and then someone will say well sorry this is Safari only well I have that too like I always have about five browsers installed it's just a matter of who's getting a preference and right now it's all Firefox these days but I think you're right I don't think it's that cynical Tom I think people will do this because that's there that's just human behavior they're used to whatever they're used to they'll at first go oh choice and then they'll kind of end up where they're comfortable yeah I mean I feel like once a year if not more the three of us specifically talk about like browsers you know let's talk about browsers what what browsers are we using and why and I go back and forth between Chrome and Firefox I feel like they're pretty equal for everything that I need from you know is tapped into the you know larger Google Docs ecosystem so it is advantageous in certain ways but for the most part they're kind of the same I mean maybe there is a news paywall that I can get around on one browser versus another so I do tend to have a few on hand at any given time but but yeah I think offering people choice is a good thing that's a good thing forcing choice because the you know the company's Google Microsoft and Apple in the scenario are too big you know there are a variety of ways that you can look at it but I also I also I mean I've I've not heard of I mean I've heard of Opera Vivaldi and Duck Duck Go I've not heard of Ecosia maybe it's a great browser you know give it a whirl why not mm-hmm yeah for all we know it's amazing yeah I think we've even talked about it on DTNS a long time ago because it's it's spin is if I remember right is that it is environmentally friendly you know I don't know if it means like the more you browse the more carbon credits they buy but there's something there's something like that like yeah sustainable power and well I think I think browsers because there are so many to choose from and really it's like what do you use a browser for mostly search you know go somewhere that you want to go specifically you already know where you want to go you know the browser isn't doing anything really crazy different depending on you know the browser that you use your experience if it works as advertised is kind of the same but they all have their little like here's why we're special type thing and you know it's it's good to know what one you like the best I'm gonna I'm gonna make my prediction now that a year from now the European browser market will be mostly dominated by chrome yeah probably I think you're probably not chromium browsers because all of these are chromium based browsers I just I mean Google's chrome will still be the dominant like it might drop a couple percentage points but I think usage wise people are going to try these different browsers they're going to run into a situation where their companies you know intranet thing or some podcasting tool they use like we do or something's just not going to work right and then they're going to go back to chrome does that seems to be what happens to a lot of people I give it I give it the not only my endorsement but if there was money involved I would bet I would put money down on your color that you've chosen here or how it works and get in fact I'm going to create a calendar entry for April 10th 2025 do it do it right now that says check in on wow it's way the EU browser market yes yeah check in one year from today let's all gather back April talk about what we're all using all day events she's really just it's really hard to create a year in advance in Google calendar when you don't know what you're doing no all right never mind I'll do that later this is taking too long what else would you like to hear us talk about on the show then Tom trying to create a calendar appointment in the middle of it one way to let us know is our subreddit you can submit stories and vote on them at daily tech news show dot reddit dot com some internal Microsoft emails that Windows central just happened to stumble across show that Xbox president Sarah Bond has reiterated plans for a new Xbox saying in the email we're moving full speed ahead on our next generation hardware focused on delivering the biggest technological leap ever in a generation she also touched upon ai's role in future Xbox development and revealed that Microsoft has set up a team to ensure future playability of Xbox games future forward compatibility of Xbox games adding we remain committed to bringing forward the amazing library of Xbox games for future generations of players to enjoy Scott that's a nice big pile of tea leaves there in that email can you read it let's dig down through some of these leaves some of them are oak and that's a problem just kidding all this is fine she said so I wanted to address real quick that I I haven't really thought about until just now when you when you talked about it again and that is that this game preservation team this team that is is there to not only ensure backwards compatibility but some forwards compatibility I feel like is a very cool thing and very good for the business but also it's I wouldn't call it disingenuous but it's also a little obvious and by that I mean the Xbox architecture and even a PlayStation fives architecture are now fully x86 architecture machines moving forward they are designed to be portable and by portable I mean port to other systems including PCs this sort of thing I think their job is easier than ever is what I'm trying to say they don't have a weird you know power PC chip or something to have to think about 10 years from now they're going to be kind of in a safe area with all this stuff moving forward so it's not to diminish it I think it's just the natural way of things and the fact they have people on it now dedicated that is a very cool thing this does this announcement though does go kind of counter to all of the assumptions that were being made about a month ago which were boy they're sure talking about services and importing their former exclusives to machines that are competitive for them like like PlayStation 5 that must mean air go they're getting out of the hardware market and this sounds like they are doing the exact opposite they are all in on the next round of hardware and I think that's both interesting and also an opportunity for them because they could really spin the industry on its ear a bit if they really came out of the gate with something much much more powerful than a normal jump if they can do that and get out ahead of stuff even it means taking a loss on hardware sold which I think they'll do anyway no matter what when they launch they got deep pockets they can do this they do run a better chance of giving Sony a harder competitive fight because Sony will be forced to do something similar and Sony doesn't have the same pockets Microsoft has so we are going to see I believe this whatever this next generation looks like it is going to be the fruition of all of these acquisitions all of these small party or these small developers and big developers and publishers and everything in between that are now housed under the Microsoft Xbox banner we're going to see all of that come to the table you're going to see them taking anything they've learned about hardware wars bringing that to the table and I still think whatever's next is kind of a switch a really powerful switch I think this thing will have a portability aspect to it that you'll walk around with your game pass games on on a installed on a device sort of steam deck wise they will easily plug into televisions you know this is Scott making a lot of predictions here but this next run is theirs to lose I really really feel strongly that this is like the moment where Microsoft plants whatever their hopes and dreams are because you don't spend 67 million on one group of developers plus you know up to umpting millions and billions of dollars more on others without having a moment like what's coming for them and I and I feel positive about it like what it will actually do for them but they've got to nail it they have to learn all the lessons from the Xbox one era and what happened there coming in so strong on the 360 and then losing all that footing to Sony and even though there's not a giant gap between sales for the two uh you know that for Sony and Microsoft the two big names right now there's a lot on the line in terms of future brand recognition and acceptance and this is their chance to either totally run away with this or blow it completely and I can't wait I'm going to be on the sidelines watching this whole thing it's going to be awesome yeah I think Microsoft continues to prove that the simplistic corporations are always greedy and will think short term uh doesn't always work uh I don't think Microsoft is doing any of these moves because they're good to people although they probably are that's not why they're doing it they're doing these moves because there's a lot of acceptance uh good business thinks long term good business treats its customers well the businesses that don't do that and are you know profit-taking and short term generally don't last all that long and so I look at this and people are like well I'm kind of surprised that they're committed to continuing to make consoles like no look at them continuing to make surface the machines it's a demonstration of what they're doing and the fact that there are a lot of people mad that they might lose consoles shows that so I think this is good for us to note continually that these companies that do well pay attention and are creative and come up with ways of making money even when they're self-interested that end up benefiting consumers I completely agree with that mid-generation bump from them like an Xbox one pro like an Xbox slim or something they may do a slim slims are always possible right technically the S is sort of already slim sure but I have a feeling like there's pretty good intel on Sony coming out with the PlayStation 5 Pro like they did last generation they may do one of those again I think this says pretty clear that Microsoft's not playing that game this time I don't think either company benefited the mid-generation bump and I could be dead wrong on that but I don't think it actually really shifted the landscape much and a lot of players were just like stick with what I got I'm not spending another $600 so now my mind turns to well what are they gonna do next what does that look like what are these specs what are the innovations I won't say revolutions because we're kind of past that point this is all gonna be about innovation and we'll find out probably given her talking right now and giving all this this stuff we could hear as early as this fall on what this plan might be they could get out ahead of it and maybe even beat Sony to the punch this is my favorite part of a generations turn is just all this like crazy speculation phase yeah it's great it's like sports I love it yeah it is and just one little button on this conversation it should not be lost that that memo was talking about future compatibility because Microsoft still believes that cross-platform cloud-based computing is going to be where they make a large portion of their money in the future so I it does it does tell me that they are seeing gaming as a service and they're not abandoning hardware because of that they're seeing hardware as a way to feature their service there you go yeah all right let's check out the mail bag let's do it this one comes in from Ken a recent acquired viewer I came over from an Android faithful and had to chime in on the EV debate we talked to Chris Ashley about this on Monday Ken says I live in a fairly rural area of New York near Buffalo and commute typically around 70 to 80 miles per day in the two years I've driven an EV I've taken a few longer trips which is a 2021 Hyundai Kona EV typically rated at about 230 to 250 miles per charge the idea of taking longer trips in one of these not for everyone around us we have some of the open networked Tesla superchargers which have lent significantly decreased a lot of people's range anxiety and Ken says I can see where other manufacturers have made their switch over to the NACS standard and they're free to use the Tesla superchargers this will significantly help with the range anxiety concept as they have a much more robust network then Electrify America or Chargepoint a few Ken says personally I head up to Northern Ontario Canada a few times per year I found it takes me about to 20 to 30 minutes for most of my charge stops which is usually enough to grab a coffee or a snack run to the restroom if you're lucky enough to stop and charge in South River Ontario you can run into the brewery and have a local craft brew in an order of notches by the time I'm back in the car it's time to go or stations that are down for upgrades something that can always be a roll of the dice I look forward to the day where these are always consistently reliable and an enjoyable experience for all Thank you, Ken and good to have you along with the rest of the DTNS folks Everyone's always welcome to join the DTNS crowd it's good to have new people I loved this response because it was someone who's enthusiastic but also realistic to say like hey yeah it isn't perfect I'm also able to drive up to Northern Ontario with my EV and it's not you know it's not a disaster so I think that a lot of the varying perspectives on EVs in range particularly are differences between planners and panzers as they call it in writing panzers just start writing by the seat of their pants and just like see what comes next planners are fine with EVs because they're used to like oh yeah I'll plan my supercharger route and I'll figure out where it is panzers see this as a nightmare like wait I can't just wait until I see the next charger and then pull over I'm going to go ahead and guess that you're a planner Tom I would be a pancer absolutely 100% of the time where I'm just like not even worth it it's going to be we're going to go sideways I will run out of energy and EVs are not really optimal for that approach right so we'll get there but thank you Ken for writing in also thanks to Chip from Boston Dean Andrew Sakane Tim and Michael who also weighed in with very excellent perspectives by email appreciated those emails as well indeed yeah thanks everybody we love when a story resonates so keep the feedback coming feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com also Scott Johnson please keep coming back to the show because we like you a lot let folks know where they can keep up your work man I was this close to never coming again but now you've said that I think well I felt it yeah now you're locked well now I'm locked in well I may as well tell you about another show I do I do a show called Core we do it on Thursday nights it is all about big focus on video game stuff and this will definitely be a discussion this week we're going to talk about the potential of new Microsoft hardware what Sony might do in response maybe what Nintendo got right around the corner and just look for core wherever you get your shows Patrons stick around for the extended show and you're always welcome to become a patron come on everybody once you get on in here patreon.com slash dtns today on the extended show could a video game developer win the Nobel prize for literature a professor of humanities has argued the answer is yes and we're going to talk about whether we agree with him reminder our show is live and you can catch it live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern that's twenty hundred UTC find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live we're back tomorrow with just some Robert Young joining us what will we talk about then you'll have to tune in to find out the dtns family of podcasts helping each other understand Diamond Club hope you have enjoyed this program