 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners. Thank you to all of you including Ellison Javi, Andrew Bradley, and Dale McKayhee. Coming up on DTNS, where are we at in the great workforce resignation? Plus Uber Eats gets more autonomous, and how does Netflix get back on track? This is Daily Tech News for Monday, May 16th, 2022. From Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. From lovely Cleveland, Ohio, I'm Rich Trafalino. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Cheng. We are going to talk about all the things. But first, let's start with a few tech things you should know. Germany's federal finance ministry issued its first nationwide guidance on how to treat cryptocurrency on income taxes. Germans can sell cryptocurrency tax-free if they hold it for more than one year. Income tax also doesn't apply when redeeming so-called utility tokens. These are for things that give a particular right, like redeeming for a product or network access. In other crypto tax news on the campaign trail, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yul said he was in favor of raising the tax threshold on crypto investment gains to 50 million won, or about 39,000 U.S. dollars. However, a new notice from the National Assembly Research Service of South Korea says the tax threshold should be 2.5 million won, or just under 2,000 U.S. dollars, with a tax rate of 20%. New tax rolls in South Korea are set to take effect in 2023 with a new regulatory body for digital assets. The NFT marketplace OpenSea rolled out features to improve authenticity on its platform. OpenSea will roll out new two-part copy detection system that will use image recognition to scan for NFT copies, also looking for flips or rotations of authentic pieces. Humans will then review any NFTs recommended for removal. OpenSea will also send invite-only verification applications to accounts with at least 100 ether and volume. That's kind of a lot, with plans to expand eligibility soon. Back in February, you might recall that OpenSea disclosed that 80% of the NFTs it removed from its marketplace as spam or duplicates were generated from its free maintain tool. Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal published a Twitter thread explaining why the company has confidence in its estimate that less than 5% of its users are spam accounts. He said this estimate relies on private data like IP addresses, account activity, and browser signatures to help sort accounts that might superficially appear to be spam. He said external people trying to look at numbers of spam accounts wouldn't have access to this information. He further said the estimate is based on multiple human reviews of thousands of accounts sampled at random over time from its monetizable daily active users every quarter. Tech industry trade groups NetChoice and the Computer Communications Industry Association appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court for an emergency stay on Texas law HB20, which created liability for large platforms that moderate content based on the viewpoint of the user or another person. This request will be reviewed by Justice Samuel Alito, who can either unilaterally decide on this day or refer to the entire court. Justice Alito gave Texas until Wednesday to respond to the request. Now if Alito denies the request, NetChoice could ask another justice to intervene so the story is yet unfolding. On Monday, Apple announced new features for its Apple podcast service along with software updates for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Managing podcast storage across devices is one feature along with tools to enable annual podcast subscriptions and the newly announced Apple podcast delegated delivery system, which will let creators distribute their paid podcast directly to Apple podcast from third party hosting providers more easily. This gives Apple a way to compete with services like Spotify's Anchor. This fall, hosting providers such as Acast, Art19, Blueberry, Buzzsprout, Libsyn, Omnistudio, and RSS.com will support the delegated delivery system. Apple says these providers represent around 80% of the premium content listening and expects more services to be added over time. All right, Rich, let's talk about streaming services and particularly Netflix, which has had an interesting couple of months. Yeah, they've definitely been feeling, especially on the earnings front here, and less than inspiring earnings, their last report, user growth, numbers not great. Yeah, we kind of have some idea of how Netflix plans to turn things around, things like an ad-free tier and a crackdown on password sharing kind of on the way, but the streaming giant is also reportedly working on a new way to deliver content kind of for the service itself. Yeah, so as somebody who is very much a streaming service subscriber, but I also subscribed to YouTube TV for live television because where else can you get it? For all the things that Netflix offers on its service, and it has been the king for some time, although quite a bit of competition as of late, live content is an omission. You don't watch the Oscars live on Netflix, for example. Deadline sources say that Netflix began working on live streaming on its platform. At least it's in the works in some capacity. This we use for live voting on unscripted competition shows, talent contests, or live streams stand up comedy specials. So it does sound like somewhat of a limited test, but at least something where you're watching something live, you're participating, and somehow that data comes back to you in a positive or negative way. Yeah, and it sounds like Netflix is focusing on content that they already have, right, integrating a live streaming component to that because there's no indication that sports would be included with this plan. That's kind of, you know, one of the golden gooses of kind of live on demand or, you know, appointment television. Netflix has seen some success with things like sports documentaries thinking like the F1 series Drive to Survive, but that seems unrelated to this streaming development, again, focusing more on its monetizing its in-house assets. So if you're thinking about, you know, really near impact to Netflix earnings, this probably isn't happening within the next quarter, maybe it is, maybe it is, but probably not. The effort is reportedly in early development. So something that Netflix is thinking about, such as having it, you know, and add an ad tier in order to get more revenue, but no word on exactly when this kind of live component would become available. Now, if you're keeping score, Disney Plus, hosted its first live stream back in February, will become the home for Dancing with the Stars as a live series later this year. If you like the show, that's where you're going to watch it. Prime Video, that's Amazon, has been streaming live sports for years and is going to be the exclusive home for the NFL's Thursday night football coming this season. So I think Netflix is playing a little catch up here, but yeah, Rich, what, where do you think Netflix is going to shine most in this capacity? Well, again, it's part of this is an ability to highlight their already extensive catalog, right? Where they're talking about like, Hey, you like love is blind, you like watching that already and like talking about it with all your friends. What if we added a live component to it where you can actually do, you know, we introduce a voting opponent or similar show stuff like that. The other thing I think is that they could get into is kind of the, the Pluto TV market or a lot of these, they're already doing ad supported or they're going to be doing ad supported, right? That's, that's in the works, right? So if you combine that with a live stream component, you could have this very sit back experience. That's a very traditional TV experience. Seems weird to be talking about Netflix, the king of the cord cutters, like trying to embracing this traditional linear TV model, but have something like, Hey, you have your Gilmore girls channel, you get home, you pop that on whatever's on and then you just kind of, you know, passively absorb that. But again, it's, it's one of these ways where they can, we have this extensive catalog. We're adding new stuff all the time. How can we get people to make it more either, either appointment television where it's, you know, it's your particular show. It's your guilty pleasure or whatever. It's a comedy special, something like that. You want to be the first to see it with all your friends or it's something with a more passive kind of sit back experience. Both of those, I think could at least engage more people. And when you're talking about integrating and add support into that as well, I think that'll be key. It's funny to me. And I know there are a lot of solutions, but we have been talking for over a decade now about like, what is the best way for you rich who, you know, you live across the US and I to watch something together and it's live. And we can chat on the back channel and, you know, there's no sort of lag. We're watching the same thing. And that is fun because we're not in the same room together. There are other solutions for this, but I feel like this is something that these streaming services, once they crack it, that really, that introduces all sorts of other fun for, for live content or even content that was once live that you decide to watch live together. Well, and Netflix was not alone during like peak lockdown at the start of the pandemic of rolling out like watch together tools, right? That you could do in a browser or something like that. Right. I just don't feel like anyone's, I don't know. I don't hear people talking about it. This could be a compliment for the live, like I think what they've determined is it's easier to get people to watch something altogether when it's live. And hey, maybe we can offer, like integrate those into a total package, right? Where we have the chat client, you know, kind of in there, if you want it, you can have your group, watch it, but it's easier to get people together when it's, hey, it's nine o'clock Eastern. Everybody has to tune it at the same time rather than let's schedule a time, blah, blah, this is, it's a whole, it's a whole big deal. Well, also a big deal is getting your food when you want it delivered on time and appropriately. Uber eats one of several companies who does exactly that all over the world announced two interesting autonomous delivery pilots in the Los Angeles, California area with two different approaches that users can opt into. So Rich, tell us more about that. Yeah, one pilot is the sidewalk delivery startup serve robotics. This will focus on shorter trips in West Hollywood. The company has a definite history with Uber. They were spun out of the company actually late last year as part of, they were originally part of the Postmates X robotics division. So kind of a coming home for serve robotics here. Postmates X first debuted its small serve delivery robots, which it is the company is now named after in 2018. So they have been at this for a while and beginning some operations in LA with delivery service in 2019 serve claims. It's robots operate at level four autonomy in some scenarios. Hopefully one of those includes, you know, sidewalk delivery. I mean, that would probably be the most useful for those little robots. But you know, these are, these are one of those when you'd think of, hey, a robot going on the sidewalk service right up there. They're not alone, certainly. But one of the bigger names out there for sure. Yeah, a friend of mine who lives in the area, uh, got some food delivered recently and was like, took a bunch of photos and was like, look at the robot that brought me my sandwich, you know, on a Sunday afternoon, it's crazy. So serve, uh, again, one of several companies focusing on sidewalk delivery. These are robots going on the sidewalk. Hopefully nobody kicks them over. If all goes well, you get your food, all good for longer distances, though, Uber announced another pilot with the autonomous vehicle company at emotional that will operate in Santa Monica. That's also in the LA area over on the West side. This is Uber's first partnership with an AV fleet provider. Now interestingly, emotional hasn't yet been granted a commercial deployment permit by the Department of Motor Vehicles. That is something that it needs. So we can only charge a fee specific to the food delivered, not for the delivery service itself. So the human safety driver will be on board, but it gets a little weird when it comes to service fees and tips and et cetera. So listeners who live in the Santa Monica area or LA proper, you might be able to score some slightly cheaper food deliveries because of this. Yeah. Your, your receipt will look slightly different because you won't see as much of a service charge. I don't, I don't actually love the idea of this, right? You know, you're like, Oh man, you know, the driver's kind of just sitting behind the wheel making sure they're all doing good. But like, you know, it's still their time. That's true. I don't know. I'm assuming those would be like full time or contractors, right? They would be in like an hourly wage, I would imagine. Sure. But you know, going forward, we're seeing this is definitely an area of focus for Uber Eats. The company says it's also looking to partner with other players in this autonomous delivery market. These aren't like their only trials that the public will or might see more pilots in the future. The fact that they're saying that means I'm pretty sure there are talks like they wouldn't say that unless they were fairly confident, but they're saying might at this point. It is unclear if this might include the autonomous company Aurora, which Uber partnered with in its freight business, you know, that they've been exploring recently. And Aurora actually bought Uber Self-Driving Car Unit in 2020 with Uber currently holding a 26% stake. So, you know, again, kind of bringing all these spun out or sold off bits of Uber and finding new uses for them, at least potentially with Aurora. You know, as a person who's used Uber since its inception, way back in San Francisco when it was still kind of doing trial stuff and now uses Uber Eats delivery quite often where I live, sometimes you just want to get sushi delivered. And that's what we're doing. This is, it's been interesting and especially, you know, obviously pandemic-based, there are a lot of reasons why the company has seen more growth in certain areas rather than others, although by all accounts, Uber's getting a little bit back on track as far as people doing ride-hailing stuff. But in other Uber Eats news, the company will launch Uber Eats service at certain support stadiums, basically letting you order foods, get the line. We've talked about this in the past. Uber Eats is getting into the game as well, launching at Dodger Stadium, that's in Los Angeles, and also a Angel Stadium, also in Los Angeles, Yankee Stadium in New York, perhaps you've heard of it, Capital One Arena in DC, San Jose's PayPal Park, and Houston's Minute Maid Park. Yeah. And, you know, this is kind of a, at least in the ballpark area, this is kind of a trend, you know, Amazon did their just walkout tech actually at Minute Maid back in April. But I think this, to me, this development is like for the longest time Uber was going to be the or app for like all transportation services, right? And I see this expansion by Uber Eats being like, hey, we're going to be this front end so you can order it and, you know, you don't have to, you know, wait 20 minutes and miss the third inning or something like that. You can just go pick it up as being, increasingly being, they're in this in a number of capacities, but being this, this food ordering front end, whether it's delivered to you, whether a robot brings it to you, whether, I don't know, a genetically cloned pterodactyl delivers it or you just go ahead and get it. I'm just suggesting that I will, you can do it for free Uber. I don't mind. But yeah, being this like all front end for food ordering down the line. All right. Well, moving on, there is a ever growing number of IoT and embedded devices around us in our daily lives, sometimes described as ambient computing. It just, it's just kind of there. I've heard miscomputing also. I'd like ambient a lot better. Yeah. Miscomputing sounds like there's an error. Yeah. Or it's like moist also. But even though these are low power devices, powering them can be a challenge. Sometimes changing batteries or connecting to the mains says impossible, but science has found a potential biological way to power some of these devices. Pretty exciting stuff. It is. So scientists have used algae to power a low energy computer chip for up to six months. You might say, how is that entirely possible? Well, researchers from the university of Cambridge sealed a colony of cyanobacteria. You might know them more by their commonly known name, blue, green algae inside a metal enclosure, a very small one, the size of a AA battery. According to new scientists, the unit was then left on a windowsill. That's where the algae photosynthesized and generated a tiny current of electricity that powered an arm cortex M zero plus chip. This is proof of concept at this point. So we're not totally looking at blue, green algae powering our IoT devices, but it's creators hope that algae powered chips could be used in future Internet of Things devices. Yeah. And of course, some of these devices could use things like solar power. That's another thing. That's another option. Yeah. That's like a more direct way to get power from the sun. But the advantage of using algae over solar or traditional battery that just lasts a long time on a low power device, you have a smaller environmental impact and could potentially provide continuous power even longer term than something where like a solar panel can, I mean, I guess the algae sealed in this tube could get worn out over time. I don't know how algae colonies work. But I love this idea because there are, especially when you get in like that embedded market and a lot of you know, like long, like long range stuff where you have sensors and things like that. And that's what these cortex M zero chips are, right? They're really meant for like IoT sensors, medical devices, that kind of stuff. They really allow for things that just need to ping back every once in a while like, Hey, is it raining here? Doesn't really need, I don't need like minute by minute, maybe every 10 minutes or something like that. It could be super really low power frequent, but constant need to ping back or send a signal or something like that, where you could have an extremely low power situation, just kind of set it and forget it. Unless you have like ethical qualms about sealing blue, green algae in a tube, which I am not prepared to say, I'm 100% comfortable with at this point. Really? Okay, I just, I just weird. It's a seal, like just change the word. Don't say seal the tube to say enclosed in a tube. I'm fine with it. Sure. Yeah, you know, you've got a you've got a portal you can see outside. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think we focus, we focus so much on the best battery life possible for a variety of devices, but those are power hungry devices. And, you know, I just bought a new iPhone just a couple of weeks ago and, and you know, I'm still sort of navigating like, well, my battery life is like really great compared to my old iPhone, which was falling apart for some years. But that that is not what we're talking about here. This is kind of like that passive background. Things are on the grid. They're working. And if something that is already prevalent in the ocean or swamp or pond or wherever it is, blue, green algae that can that can power certain devices, not all of them, but like you said, you know, that kind of that solar type thing where you can, I guess, set it and forget it for better lack of a term. That is that is that is really cool for the future of a lot of things that people do need power for. Yeah. And hopefully they can see if they can scale. And the question is then it becomes cost effective versus solar for really small devices where I think there's a question of you need a certain size solar panel to be effective, right? Well, if you all are thinking, I've got a thought about blue, green algae or anything that we talk about on the show, we love to hear your feedback. If you don't know our email address, I'll give it to you right now. Feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. All right, Rich, it's been gosh, about a year since the term the great resignation was blamed for staffing shortages across industries. This is largely COVID related, but you know, it's economics related in various ways. The narrative around this was that people were leaving the workforce in droves due to pandemic related forces. And that caused issues with everything from keeping restaurants open to the semiconductor shortage. But we're now only starting to get some more hard data and research into what, if you want to call it, the great recession has actually done to the workforce. Great resignation rather. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, great. I'm not going to call us in a great recession yet, although give me a minute. We definitely have some hard data about the great recession. The great resignation though, a little bit more recent, but the conversation looked at data from the UK's labor force survey to try and figure out if these narratives have any merit and what's actually happening in the workforce. We see whatever we want to call the great recession, we see the effect. We see, hey, everybody's hiring and they're saying they're paying so much amount like walk-in interviews, that kind of stuff. But the great resignation is more than just a great name. Figures do show a sharp increase in resignation starting in Q4 2020, well exceeding pre-pandemic levels all the way through the second half of 2021. Q3 2021 saw resignations of 25% from pre-pandemic Q3 2019 as just for some context there. But there is a lot more depth than just kind of those broad swath figures right there. Yeah, because the numbers seem to confirm that we're seeing a great resignation or something like it, but only those over 50 have been actually leaving the workforce and retiring in greater numbers, something we can say, okay, that's a trend. That is something that is happening and that's earlier than you would think the retirement age would be. Looking at the labor market as a whole during that same period, unemployment and actor figures kind of remain the same. They were somewhat flat with resigning employees just going to new jobs. Yeah, no one's, you know, I think a lot of the conversation was, oh, just no one wants to, some people are saying, no one wants to work anymore. It doesn't want a job. We have to raise rates or whatever like that. But turns out people is kind of shifting around. And you may think with even that in mind, all those resignations left room for workers to upgrade their positions, move up the corporate ladder. Maybe, hey, I'm leaving my assistant manager role. I'm going to become a manager somewhere else here. But the data shows that these resignations have not met a massive change in overall job roles with workers upgrading occupations, like going from an administrative position into management or downgrading, looking pretty consistent with the levels that we saw before the pandemic started. Most people that resign take jobs that or don't change their roles so much. And those employees that did see, now to be clear, employees did see higher income games when they switched jobs, just not a change in role, because the demand for labor has remained high. Yeah, we've talked in the past of, well, are there certain sectors certainly in tech where you kind of, you kind of got to, you know, figure out your second career, because those jobs are going away, robot taken over, that kind of thing. That's not really what we're talking about here. The data shows that the people in this great resignation sector aren't necessarily changing careers. Researchers found that most presiding employees went back to work in the same industry. They maybe just took a break, you know, maybe life stuff got in the way. The ultimate takeaway is that it appears this great resignation isn't a cause of recent labor shortages. Instead, more of a symptom of employers poaching staff from rivals within the same industry. So you get a bunch of people leaving a company and people go, oh gosh, where'd they all go? Well, they went to a rival company in some instances. Yeah, and this, we've seen a lot of signs that this is kind of an overall, like maybe a more of a generational shift in a lot of the workforce because we saw a separate study by the job site Muse that found that 72% have in fact experienced surprise or regret after taking a new position as part of this great resignation. Something the study authors dubbed shift shock. And this was kind of looking specifically at Gen Z. They said, 48% of respondents also said they would try to get their old job back if they experienced the shift shock at a new company. Lots of interesting takeaways here. And this Gen Z component was really interesting where there's a lot more emphasis on, you know, things that like finding a job that aligns with your values and stuff like that. But you know, the narrative, I guess the dueling narrative that we've seen is yeah, people don't want, we've heard people say people don't want to work or that kind of stuff. But it seems like people are just saying, hey, there's a sign across the street that says I can do this job for more money. Why don't I investigate, look into that. And that's having knock on effects across the labor market. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, as far as the inability for certain, I don't know, restaurants to hire employees, for example, I see that a lot around where I live. You know, help on it, all positions want it kind of thing. And you think, I mean, somebody might want this job, right? I will add that I think part of it is people use the term great resignation. And I was reading, I'm trying to remember the article that the term would be better place as a great churn. Because when you say resignation, you're, you're, you're, you're implying that now they're not working anywhere else. It's just people are just like, I'm out of it. And what you have is a confluence of pandemic restrictions. So you have that great inflow of labor that you used to have, whether it was through immigration or visa approval, where people came in to do specific jobs, the pandemic put a put a stop on that because suddenly you had to worry about infectious diseases. And then you had the churn of kind of an unstable economy working in that environment where companies are trying to figure out where exactly their labor market needs are. And then you also have a lot of, I mean, I mean, you have a, as you were saying, rich, a generational shift where people are saying, like, you know, I'm not happy at this job, especially for what I make. So if I'm not going to be happy at this job, I might as well go to a job that I'm also unhappy at, but I'll possibly make enough to kind of, you know, make things even. And I think I honestly, it's one of those things that that was bound to happen because you have, you know, three very large things that are coming together and adjusting and shifting people's attitudes towards the labor market. Yeah. And as someone who has experienced shift shock, not recently, probably back in 2015, it's definitely like real where you think, Oh, this, this job is telling me all the things that I want to hear. And they're saying I can, you know, have whatever I'm looking for in a new job more pay or more responsibility or something like that. And, and having that experience of being like, nope, I'm going to, I've made a huge mistake. It is very real, very real indeed. Indeed. Also very real is Valve's portal. Anybody ever played it? Yeah. So this is one of the best games I have ever played. It's no shining force to the load of the crochet. If you, if you, if you need a refresher, it was originally released back in 2007. Valve has been around for a while recently, a programmer named James Lambert was working on a portal remake for a Nintendo system. But in his latest development video, he re reals that he has made some huge strides behind the game on the game engine that he's got the portal gun working again in a video that he released. He shows his progress with portals attached to the walls with some smart detection stuff in place to get around corners, this and that. And when you walk up to them, you can look right into them and everything reflected inside of them moves as expected. Lambert says in the video that he would normally have some sound effects in the game by now, but he wanted to verify that the Nintendo 64 could even do portals before doing it here, which he did. The, the ingenuity to not just be like, I'm going to make a mod to make it look like, you know, portal on the end 64. I'm, I'm, I'm developing this on the hardware. And the fact that you do like, he said he was being able to do like four rooms if you do the portal through portal kind of view to do four up to four rooms of that kind of infinite view is on 90s, a 3d hardware that could barely do 3d at the time is pretty amazing. I'm going to have to take your word for it. It sounds great. The question is, did he have a little role player? I just, I'm like, that sounds really great. Did he have the RAM expansion pack? That's what I need to know. I will add this one thing and I'm going to channel Scott Johnson here. This is very much of a certain demographic looking back at older technology and it's like, what if I really push this beyond what they originally designed, you know, 3d mario or, or, you know, some other n64 game was a donkey con country. Yeah. There was a lot that I never played, although rope squadron is still the best. Well, we'd like to thank some people that we think are the best and those are our brand new bosses. 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