 Daily Tech News Show is made possible by you, the listener. Thanks to all of you, including Michelle Sergio, Kirk Stephenson, Miss Music Teacher, and tune brand new patrons Daniel and Oswaldo. Daniel, Oswaldo, yeah. On this episode of DBS, Scott Johansson explains how NVIDIA went from a niche game company to one of the three most valuable companies in the world. We evaluate Mark Zuckerberg's evaluation of the Apple Vision Pro and why Netflix is number two to a local company in Africa. This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, February 14th, 2024 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Animal House with lots of love, I'm Sarah Lane. From Studio Heart Shaped Box in Salt Lake City, I'm Scott Johansson. From one of the rooms in my house in the show's producer, Roger Che. You know who my Valentine is today. Who would that be, Tom? Who would that be, Tom? The bosses of Daily Tech News Show. Oh, I was going to say I'd leave. Also, I lean. But yeah, yeah, the bosses always in my heart, bosses. Thank you. We love you. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone. Yeah. Will you all be our Valentine? We'll be your Valentine. All right, enough of that. Let's start with the quick heads. Samsung announced an update for the Galaxy S24 series coming this month, which will improve its display experiences, which some people thought were a little lackluster, with a new vividness slider for adjusting saturation. The update will also include several camera improvements, like upgrades to the device's zoom functions, portrait mode, nitography, rear camera, video shooting capabilities, and more. Sony lowered its projected sales of PS5 consoles. They expected to hit $25 million eventually. Now they're saying just $21 million. Not all bad news, though. Q3 sales for Sony's PS5 were up a couple of million from $6.3 million last year to $8.2 million this year. However, Sony had expected it to be closer to $9.2 million, so they fell short of their own estimates, especially with the success of Spider-Man 2. They thought they would sell more consoles. Anyway, Sony is calling this peak PS5. It now says it will move into the stage of every console's life when you look at your Medicare check and plan for retirement and focus on profitability and selling games rather than selling the actual hardware. Slack is launching a suite of built-in AI features for its enterprise paying customers designed to make summaries of threads and channel recaps easier to digest. The company first tested the features last year. Apparently, they went over well and now they're rolling them out to enterprise. Slack AI will also let you ask questions about a project that you've been working on or maybe your workplace policies provided that that information somewhere lives in Slack already. Slack says it's hosting its own large language models and that customer data remains siloed, so it won't be used to serve other clients. Slack AI is available in the US and UK in English, rather, to start with support for additional languages and plans coming soon. DuckDuckGo's privacy-focused browser has a new sync and backup sync and backup feature that lets you keep your passwords, bookmarks, and favorites the same across multiple devices. You don't even have to set up an account if you're like, oh, great, now I'm going to have to give it. No, you don't have to give him anything. DuckDuckGo says the data is end-to-end encrypted, should sync across most Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS devices, and include data you might import from browsers like Chrome if you want it to. What you do need to do is scan a QR code or enter an alphanumeric code to identify which instances of the browsers should be connected. Clever. Microsoft and OpenAI issued the results of an investigation of how bad actors are using tools like chat GPT. This is an expected result, but it's always good to see what the studies find when they look into it. Generally, seems like bad actors are testing the use of LLMs to improve scripts and social engineering techniques. One organization is also using it to speed up the search for known vulnerabilities. Right now, appears to be only in the testing stage with no significant attacks detected by the usual LLMs. A large part of the report also indicated possibilities of future vectors. As you might expect from a report involving Microsoft, AI tools for cybersecurity are being developed by... Who would it be? Microsoft to help you fight fire with fire. There you go. Microsoft says you know what the solution to this problem we discovered is? Us. Yeah, we got a tool for that. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a video to his Instagram account, which got a lot of attention over the last 12 to 15 hours on Tuesday, explaining why he was just not all that concerned when comparing the Vision Pro to the Meta Quest 3. Now, of course, the Quest has several iterations, but he was talking about the Vision Pro versus the Quest 3. Seth points out that the Vision Pro is like seven times more expensive. That's a good point. Also notes that the Quest 3 weighs 120 grams less than the Vision Pro. Also a good point. And has greater motion due to not needing to be tethered to a wired battery pack and also has a wider field of view. He also says physical hand controllers and hand tracking for input is better, at least for now. Though he did say Meta plans to bring back eye tracking after first debuting in the Quest Pro. I don't just think that Quest is the better value. I think the Quest is the better product, period. When I first set up the Vision Pro and I'm being totally honest, I was like, wow, this is so cool. The Quest feels like a toy. The Vision Pro feels like almost something where I'm like, I should become a developer. To make the most of this like very expensive. And oh, Sarah, that was a clip from our episode two of Apple Vision Show, which is about the Vision Pro, but it's about all things Apple that I co-host with Eileen Rivera. And I think I sound a little silly there. And perhaps I was oversimplifying the two, but if I have to compare the two first reactions, I stand by this. Setting up the Vision Pro is like, oh, wow, this is really fancy. Now, is the Vision Pro going to be something that you're going to love and need and use all the time? Maybe not. For a lot of people, they're sort of going, what's this for exactly? I think Zuck points out some varied interesting stats. It makes good points that the Quest is cheaper. It works differently. It definitely has a more robust ecosystem now. Scott, what resonated with you? This idea that there is room in the market for more than just one killer headset. And I realize this is even too early to decide who those players are. But what we have is two extremes. We have a very affordable, quote, unquote, entry level. It's almost made more entry level by the price of the Vision Pro. And I think meta benefits a little bit from that. And I think I'm getting out in front of this and talking about it in this way. He said nothing unexpected, but it does kind of help illustrate there are these two choices. And one is very good at VR and a few other things, but is kind of OK at AR, better than the last model. But a little better at AR, it's OK. And then on this other extreme side, you have this very expensive, but very good at AR display and pass through and all this stuff. That thing is like miles ahead of any other competition. But it's not really a VR device. And what little it does to remove things in your view to make it seem like you're in a place in a kind of VR way is not as good as what the Quest 3 can do. So it's just for me a good reminder that there's going to be a range. There is no one killer device, at least not yet. And even then, there will always be room for something that comes in and says, yeah, but this part of the market wants this more than they want that. Or the more affordable model is going to do most of what you need. So therefore, that's going to be the one you get. And I think it's probably a good sign that Meta will continue to be, if not dominant, at least be there all the time, nipping at the heels of whoever's next. And if Apple becomes the leader in this space with lower cost models and whatever they do down the line, fine. But I don't think we're looking at a future where it's a little like the iPhone. We're not looking at a future where they are going to absolutely dominate it and no one else is in. Other people will come in. There'll be good competition. I think this is actually healthy for everybody. This is a false comparison. This is just pure propaganda. Zuckerberg wanted to make sure that people talked about the Quest more and he got what he wished. This is simply Zuckerberg getting everyone to talk about the Quest because when you actually look at what he's comparing, he's not comparing the Quest to the Apple Vision Pro equally. He's saying, what does the Quest do the best and how does the Apple Vision Pro compare to what the Quest does the best? And he makes it feel reasonable because he's like, well, it does have better resolution and that eye tracking. That's pretty good. Of course, we have eye tracking. We have that in the Quest Pro. We'll bring that to the Quest 3. But this is a bit like comparing the Nintendo Switch to a Lenovo laptop. Right? The Lenovo laptop is heavier. And it doesn't have all the games that the Nintendo Switch has. Ah, the Nintendo Switch. Such a superior product to the ThinkPad, except the ThinkPad's meant for an entirely different thing. And I think that's true of the Apple Vision Pro as well. I mean, this Instagram video was, I don't know, two to three minutes in its entirety. Imagine if he had just posted this. Zuckerberg had just posted this to be like, reminder, Quest 3 is pretty cool. People would be like, yeah, I know. I mean, of course, you want us to buy a Quest 3. We got it. We got it meta. But to be able to compare it to something and say, and here's where they're different, and here's why you're thinking about this more, is a pretty good PR move. It was a little canned. You know, I assume he was reading off some sort of a teleprompter and it was sort of like, here I am just sitting in my living room with one of my best buds. Because the point isn't the production value or the content. The point is to get people talking. Right? Yeah, exactly. And it definitely worked. And I do think that the points he makes are valid. And for anybody who's like, Sarah thinks that the Quest 3 is just a toy, I think it feels like a, not like a toy that's made poorly, but something for fun. Yeah. Right, exactly. Exactly, yeah. That's just, those are the comparisons that I've made. The Switch is also a toy and a great one, right? So yeah. Also, you're talking about something that's been in development for a decade versus something that's been out for not two weeks now. So it's very hard to compare the two. They're just different. Yeah, and the Switch comparison is a really good one, Tom, because when I first got the Steam Deck, I felt that feeling of, wow, this is a solid state and heavy and like, wow, bigger, all these things. And it's easy to lose sight of the fact that, well, yeah, because it's a different category and the price is significantly higher than I'm going to pay for a Switch. So if anything, I think Met is best chance for what they do in the future is to always be more affordable. It doesn't mean they have to be dirt cheap. And I don't even think the Quest 3 is considered dirt cheap, not compared to the two anyway. But I think that's a part of the market that is going to need some good occupation and will drive sales. And it may be that Apple, if anything, Apple may feel forced, if they do that, right, to go down and not up. So, yeah, it's going to be interesting. He's canned anyway. That's what he does. So I'm not surprised about that. He doesn't know how else to talk about things casually. I'm just not in him. That's an expired can of cream corn. Yeah, kind of. All right. Let's shift our attention to the streaming world. Restofworld.org notes that a streaming service called Showmax has 2.1 million subscribers across the continent of Africa, as far as at the end of November. And that puts it in front of Netflix, which is in second place with 1.8 million and well in front of third place Amazon Prime Video, which has 300,000 subscribers. Percentage-wise, across the African markets, Showmax has 39% of the streaming market compared to Netflix's 33.5%. And Restofworld notes three things Showmax did to get in front of Netflix. First of all, it beat them on international English language content, contracting with HBO and NBC Universal to get high quality content, not just from HBO and NBC, but also using the NBC Universal Contacts to get some BBC stuff and Lionsgate, etc. Landed English Premier League Soccer, so you got top quality international content, top quality international sports, and then having strong relationships with local creators in multiple African countries because its parent company, MultiChoice, runs cable TV channels and broadcast channels across Africa. The last was the most important differentiator. Showmax goes beyond paying for local content to fostering connections. There's a story in this RestofWorld article about having a documentarian pitching a show and having Showmax say, you know what, you're MultiChoice, I think, saying you should talk to this other documentarian. He's doing a similar thing, and then they teamed up and made something even better. Also doesn't hurt that they're still in the customer acquisition phase, so they cut their subscription fees by 50%. They'll eventually have to raise them just like everybody else, but it's an earlier stage of the market there. I thought this was fascinating because Netflix has been complimented, and I think rightly so, for doing well in regional markets by partnering with local creators in India, in Korea, in Germany, in Latin America, but as good as Netflix wants to be at that, they don't have the same experience as a company like MultiChoice who has been there forever and can say, hey, we want to get you on Showmax, our streaming service. Yeah, one of the things I think Netflix has done well worldwide is, as you mentioned, curate content that is kind of from all over the place. Like some of the most popular stuff on Netflix now are Korean dramas, for example, and other parts of the world that might be something else. And I think they know that's important. What it sounds like to me is the Showmax organization is just organically doing that because that's where they are. They're doing that automatically and they're bringing in stuff from other places, but they're so focused on local content, local culture, local programming. And by local, I mean African programming, whatever that is right now, I don't know, so I can't speak to it. And it varies from region to region within Africa, right? Kenyan programming is different than Nigerian programming, different than South African program. Exactly. If you go into a market like that and all you have is localized language versions of Seinfeld and Friends, you're probably not going to make much headway. How you do it is you say, where's part of the fabric here is anything? And so that will drive sign-ups. Also, I do think the 50% cut in subscription price is probably probably helping fuel this, right? That doesn't hurt at all. And for those at home, I know there have got to be people here at Showmax and go, what is this, a rip-off of Showtime and Max? We have no idea. That name could just be completely... It's actually a pretty good name, no matter what. I like it. Yeah, I kind of like it. Showmax, got it. Yeah. That's a good name for a streaming service. I also think, if we're talking 2.1 million subscribers and this is, again, a more regional offering than something like Netflix or Amazon, there is room to grow. That company can make lots of money if it keeps doing what it's doing and grows in the right way. And maybe that's the sweet spot. Not just for the African continent, but certain markets where you can just put together a package from scratch that feels just more like home than something that Netflix is doing. I feel like the magic sauce here is combining the international content with the local content. Because you see a lot of localized or regionalized offerings like Vicky or Britbox or Hotstar that are out there. But a lot of times, they don't bring the international. Now, Hotstar is an exception to that because it's Disney, right? But they said, we're not going to just do African content to compete with Netflix. We're going to get HBO. We're going to sell a chunk of our company, 30% of our business to Comcast, so that we can get that NBC universal content and connections. And I think that's the magic sauce. And that is a threat to Netflix because you could have a showmax of the Middle East. You could have a showmax of India. You could have a showmax of Southeast Asia. You could have a showmax of South America pop up. And then suddenly Netflix is fighting intense battles in every region and getting itself stretched thin. And in a way, it wouldn't against other global competitors like Disney, for instance. Yeah. And it's interesting that these conversations are always Netflix and something else. To me, that's just a reminder that there are other services there. I mean, Amazon announced they're downsizing their efforts across Africa and the Middle East for Prime and stuff. So, you know, as much as it's, I don't know, they have become the elephant in the room that we will now compare all this stuff to from a video streaming service standpoint. And it feels like they're kind of there to stay for a while. So. Yeah. No, that is true. It is always Netflix that they're up against in whatever region to look at. So that is a strength of Netflix as well. Well, folks, if you want to recap of the week's tech headlines with insights into how technology affects and disaffects communities of color, you need to check out The Tech John, where hosts Rob Dunwood, Stephanie Humphrey, and Terence Gaines dive into the top tech stories of the week, delivered from their points of view. Points of view you're not always going to hear in mainstream media. New episodes land on Tuesday afternoon, so there's a fresh one there waiting for you right now. Find it wherever you get your podcasts or visit TheTechJohn, J-A-W-N, dot com. Yesterday, we mentioned that Nvidia's market cap had been pushing up into the top five tech companies. Wednesday, it passed Alphabet to make it the third largest company behind Apple and Microsoft. All right. So today, let's talk about how a company, such as Nvidia in this case, most often associated with gaming became such a crucial player in the generative AI space in a short amount of time, really, using its chips to power servers that run chat GPT, AWS, Azure, Google AI services. Now, Scott, you've been looking into the space pretty heavily, so what can you tell us? What's Nvidia doing right? Well, one thing I totally forgot about earlier, and it just hit me, and we were talking about the switch, they make the CPUs for the switch as well, and probably will for the switch too, but yeah, it is interesting, right? You look back in those heady late 90s days of GPUs when that was just a brand new thing and really the two players were Voodoo and the newish company then, which was Nvidia and their GeForce cards, and they became so renowned for being the better choice so quickly that they wiped out Voodoo, basically, and went on to sort of dominate their market. They've had competition since in the form of ATI now owned by AMD, so AMD is their chief competition these days, but they don't even come close, AMD does, in the desktop department. You mentioned all these other innovations, and it got me to thinking about where they've positioned themselves. They've put themselves in a really interesting place in the market, so I'm going to make a prediction that is based on nothing but Scott's little brain working away with the little monkeys I keep inside my head, and here it is. There's all this talk, and we may find out tomorrow how true some of this talk is, but this talk that Microsoft may be having a big brand kerfuffle, and we talked about it last week in a little bit more depth. We found out tomorrow on their podcast what they're talking about, but they may be getting out of the hardware part of Xbox. Maybe that's a long-term plan. Maybe it's a short term. We don't know any of this until we hear it, so without knowing that information, let's just pretend for a second that tomorrow Phil Spencer gets on the show and he says, sorry everybody, but we're not making an Xbox hardware after this Series X and S were done. That leaves a big, huge competitive gap in the market that Sony would then own, basically, Nintendo in a sort of a distant second, but they're very different markets, so really on the top end, cutting edge side of things, Sony would be standing alone. And many have said, well, that's not healthy for the markets, not healthy for gamers. We need competition. I agree with them. The company that seems the most ready to fill that void is Nvidia. And hear me out for a second. Not only do they have the market cap to support it and even just experiment with it without losing their shirt, they've also been doing a lot of things over the years to help shore up potential future entrenchment in gaming. And it isn't just their dominance of the GPU market on desktop and all of this infiltration into AI and everything else, but their GeForce Now service has been quietly plugging along, doing real well. People like it. It's a streaming service, but a very reliable one and they have a free tier and they also have paid tiers. That thing does really well. There's some issues, but they've got the infrastructure for it. Then when it comes to their, so my thinking is if you need a hardware replacement for whatever Microsoft provided for the market, who better to do it than Nvidia? They have experience with all these services and they have experience making their own hardware in lots of ways, not just GPUs, but they made GeForce devices that hook to your TV and do sort of a steam link sort of thing. I think Roger has one of those and has been enjoying it for years. It's not even a really a big thing they promote anymore, but they've got the experience with it. They have the logistics behind it and they could get that done and introduce a console that would be the premier technically profound console in the next console race. So with my fake theory that Xbox might be going away hardware-wise, you could see an Nvidia console going up against whatever the PlayStation 6 would be that would have built-in on-board AI, large language model, game affecting, who knows what all, plus just cutting-edge GPU technology and they would be going up against what I would assume would be another AMD-powered PlayStation, which is currently the case as it is with Xbox. And all they're missing is just a bunch of developers for exclusives and big titles, big AAA titles that they develop themselves. If they had that part of it, they'd be golden. This is where my theory maybe gets a little weird, but that's perfect for aligning themselves with Microsoft, which they already do. Game Pass is available on GeForce Now, by the way. To make this console, this fake console I've made up my head would be just chock-full of the Xbox services that Xbox is pushing so hard to have happen. So in a way, Xbox gets to keep their foot in the console race via this direction and Nvidia gets to embark in this brand-new direction for themselves and even dominate AMD in a space where AMD has beat them in consoles. They just keep getting these contracts and Nvidia doesn't. Now they would have it a dominant place in there. And now you're looking at all of those advantages as a direct competitor to the big dog in the room, which is Sony. I mean, that would be crazy, but it's possible, is all I'm saying. It's possible. Tom, what do you think? Do you think that I'm up in the night? Roger, you got anything? I know Roger loves this stuff. Roger, what do you think? I mean, if you were to ask me, personally, I probably would bet against an Nvidia console because for traditionally, game console ecosystems are very dependent on the disposable razor model, right? They sell you the hardware, but that locks you into the ecosystem, which then they can sell you the games that they take a licensing chunk out of from the publishers. I don't think Nvidia wants to do that. Nvidia has been very shrewed in using its technology. So GPUs are specialized microprocessors that chew on parallel data. So 3D graphics, image editing, data analytics, AI, these are all things that GPUs from their inception, they weren't focused on it, but it does do parallel processing. And over the years, Nvidia has looked, what is the next big market? It's not that they saw gaming going out. They just saw it plateauing. So they figured, why don't we pivot our technology into doing what we call GPGPU or general purpose GPU calculations? And you see the evidence of that with CUDA where you use it with Adobe products or any other kind of creative software where it accelerates things like encoding, transcoding, accelerates certain Adobe functions. And it wasn't a huge leap to go from GPGPU to AI processing. And in all those instances, their product just needed a pivot away into the new market. But it wasn't an overhaul of the design. It wasn't like we have to start from scratch. It's, we already have on paper a design to parallel process. Hey, guess what? Also parallel processes very well. Generative AI. Gotta shove a bunch of images down the pipe and have it have a processor crunch on it. GPU is great for that, which is why NVIDIA is where it's at right now because they've managed to position their product is, hey, you guys want to chew, you guys want to chew down on all the images on the internet so you can you can feature your generative AI. We have this, we have the technology. You build your servers with our chips and I guarantee you'll have something. And that's what we're doing. And that's what they're doing. However, the wrinkle is that a lot of companies are like, well, do we really need to pay NVIDIA? Why don't we design these chips ourselves? And you see some of that with Amazon, with Google, with Apple. And NVIDIA is always looking over the shoulder, very dependent, but it's not that gaming will not be important. I think they see gaming as a service in the same way that Microsoft does. So, hey, you run your games on our chips and your server and your cloud stream it to your providers. Everyone's golden. Yeah. And the other thing to mention, regardless of my prediction or their future, the one thing that I think is certain is AI technology, as it matters to gaming, and that is like character behavior, NPC behaviors, the way a game reacts to you and interacting with it, whatever it may be. That stuff is only going to get more dependent on their technologies and technologies like it. So, the quicker they get behind that, the better. If it's just cloud gaming, fine. They want to be what's in the cloud doing that stuff on chip. If it's something in your living room and it's doing it locally, they would like to be that also. So, I think regardless, given where they're at and the potential verticals that they could jump into, NVIDIA is not slowing down by any stretch. NVIDIA's focus is on making sure they maintain the gains they have, right? They're going to keep showing Amazon, Alphabet, Meta that, yeah, you can design your own in-house stuff, but you're still going to need us. They're also out there talking to governments. We mentioned this yesterday. Like, hey, y'all should have your own large language models for every country. We'll help you build that. They're fighting against Sam Altman, who's going around to countries and saying the same thing. Like, you need to work with me to make hardware to power AI because I don't want to have to be relying on NVIDIA for everything. So, that's where the big fight is for them. But I don't think you're wrong, Scott, that there will be some gaming hardware strategy for them, whether it's building on the NVIDIA Shield to make it more of a console, whether it's working with Microsoft, because I just don't buy that Microsoft wouldn't come out with a stream box, even if they get rid of the physical drive. They're going to want to have flagship hardware, like they do with tablets and laptops that say the best way to do a game stream is on the Microsoft Surface Xbox or whatever it is. And NVIDIA can help power that, too. So, I think you're on to something, Scott, that NVIDIA is going to play a part in the consoles. But, Roger, you're 100% right that their focus is on making sure they expand that AI market, because it's what's made them, at least briefly today, number three in the world. We are now talking about Apple, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Alphabet, and Meta. That's crazy to even hear it. But, yeah, I think your guys are making some really good points. The only final thing I'd say is, Microsoft's so in bed now with open AI that some of that's a bit of a conflict. So, part of my prediction is maybe Kibosh from the very beginning, given those conflicts. But, you know, we'll have to see. They're big now. Microsoft's good at playing two sides of the street, though. That's true, yeah. Yeah, that's true. All right, let's check out the mailbag. This one comes from Maurice, who says, I believe it's important to label edits. This is in response to our conversation yesterday about the Super Bowl and subsequent viewings of certain Super Bowl halftime shows soundin' a little different. Maurice says, ideally, to have pre-edit versions available so that historical references are clear. Reaction tweets make sense. In future generations, know the difference. We shouldn't have to rely on the audience to catch it and then inform people. I wonder how many new WWE fans remain unaware of the extensive edits that company has done in their past, notably swapping themes, many songs, and almost entirely removing certain players' existences after certain tragedies before their families, et cetera, et cetera. Maurice says, a voice tweak may not matter much, but the principle of presenting an unacknowledged altered history does. Yeah, if you want to find that full conversation, where we acknowledge Maurice's point and some others, become a patron and get good day internet. That was our conversation yesterday on that show. Thanks to you, Scott Johnson. Always a pleasure. Let folks know where they can find out your latest. As I mentioned, Microsoft is going to tell us what they mean about these business and brand changes. It may be nothing. It may be something big. We don't know, but they are going to do it tomorrow, sometime tomorrow, via the official Xbox podcast. When that happens, we are going to listen to that and then tear that stuff apart and figure out what it all means on the show called Core. You can find it at frogpants.com.com or wherever you'll get your shows. It is three guys who love video games and the industry around it. Talking about it each and every week. If that sounds interesting to you, tune in today. That's frogpants.com slash core. Don't forget if you are a good day internet person that we've got good day internet coming around in just a minute. We'll talk about the latest with Waymo autonomous cars and where some of the loaded questions are coming from patrons. Stick around. You can catch our show live Monday through Friday. 4 p.m. Eastern, 2100 UTC. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live and we're back doing it all again tomorrow with Justin Robert Young joining us. Talk to you soon.