 This 10th year of Daily Tech news show is made possible by you. Yes, you. Thank you especially Chris Allen Chris Smith and Mark Gibson coming up on DTNS Warner Media's new name for HBO Max is just Max and You now get the chance to pay more for 4k Also Scott Johnson's thoughts on rest of worlds article about the replacement of gaming artists in China and is AI the future of non-player characters Come join us. You're here. Welcome. Come on in This is the Daily Tech news for Wednesday, April 12th, 2023 in Los Angeles. I'm John Mary and from studio web it I'm Sarah Lane from Salt Lake City. I'm Scott Johnson and the show's producer Roger. Oh my friends We have got a packed show. So let's get right into it with the quick hits Nvidia officially announced the RTX 4070 graphics card, which will be available Thursday, April 13th Starting at $599 as a Founder's Edition The 4070 is the more affordable younger brother to the 4080 and it's small enough to fit in most cases It also supports ray tracing 1440p video at more than 100 frames per second the new DLSS 3 upscaling and includes 12 gigabytes of VR RAM and support for the game-friendly AV1 codec Intel Foundry Services is partnering with ARM Oh Yeah, let that sink in To let semiconductor designers build low-power systems on a chip with ARM designs using Intel's Manufacturing on its 18a process the deal will start with mobile chips But eventually expand to automotive internet of things data center aerospace and beyond there will be a combined Intel and ARM Mobile reference design. Oh Look at the Intel ARM reference design will be a thing people will say ARM designs can now include Intel's power via power delivery tech as well as the ribbon-fet transistor architecture Media tech and Qualcomm have signed up to use Intel Foundry Services So they could take advantage of this and Nvidia is considering doing so as well Being a started to include a full chat bot responses to search queries in place of snippets The answers show up at the top of search results and the label tells you that it was summarized from multiple sources And you get a text box so you can continue chatting about the topic if you so desire Sony's semiconductor solutions subsidiary has invested an undisclosed amount into Raspberry Pi and as a result You're gonna be able to put Sony's atreus platform and IMX 500 imaging sensors into your Raspberry Pi and do a bunch cool computer vision stuff LinkedIn announced it's partnering with security identity platform clear for user verification in the United States This goes beyond airports to use the feature you need to provide LinkedIn your government issued ID and phone number Then your profile will display a new verification section under the connect and message buttons Global LinkedIn users will also be able to prove where they work with a verification code that's sent to their company email address They put it back in and LinkedIn says okay We really work there the company also says this feature works with 4,000 companies on the platform and hopes more are to come LinkedIn also partnered with Microsoft to let work Workplaces use the Microsoft entra verified ID platform to issue digital workplace IDs for free for eligible users rolling out at the end of this month And yes, we know LinkedIn's owned by Microsoft, but you know weird things happen Operated independent partnered with each other and stuff like Sony's subsidiary going off and doing Raspberry Pi stuff Yeah, you know, I used clear to get into a stadium the other day. Oh Yeah, I think a lot of people still think of it as oh, that's what you do at an airport Yeah, and you do you do and you stand in line longer than you used to Have been told that's because the new administration Changed the rules on what clear could do they could used used to be able to take more people at once Anyway Hey good man Warner Media has not done this because of the government. They did it on their own They changed the name of HBO Max to Max and the new tagline is the one to watch Warner CEO David Zaslav said that details on sports and news elements of Max will come in the next few months Because they want to be the one place you watch everything But they did announce a whole slate of dramatic programming including Duncan egg a Game of Thrones show from George R Martin a new true detective with Jody Foster and a decade-long TV series covering the Harry Potter books They said we're gonna do it for a decade. We don't care if you hate it. We're just gonna keep doing it Max will have a more stable underpinning once it relaunches and a redesigned UI So the hubs will be genre-based not brand-based They will have user optimized recommendations So each user will get a different set of things at the top as well as a built-in kids profile right at launch So you don't have to dig into it and the biggest one is that the app icon is now blue Not purple to distinguish it from prime video and Paramount plus and all the other blue Icons anyway, Sarah. How much is this and when we get it? Oh Tom? Glad you asked so max is coming on May 23rd in most cases your HBO max app will become max on some platforms You may have to download a new app and you'll be prompted to do so the ad free tier will stay $16 per month and ad supported tier stays $10 per month both will support to simultaneous HD streams Then a new $20 per month tier offers for concurrent streams plus support for 4k and Dolby Atmos Discovery plus will still be available separately as its own app for 499 dollars per month So knowing what we know now. How do we all think of max? Oh, I think this is a sensible name change I was worried. I thought they were gonna get all weird and have too many words in it and be Discovery ultimate max Max-plus. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't want that so I think max is a reasonable thing I already call it that in our household someone says what that what's that movie? We're gonna watch tonight. I think it's on max. I mean, it's it's already a natural thing. So think from a branding standpoint. This is fine I think moving HBO from the title Gives them a chance to have more diverse programming but still the prestige of the HBO max programming So they didn't really lose that I kind of disagree and here so and maybe this is just me But every time even you know knowing what HBO max has been for some time I think of max as oh Cinemax not the same. Okay. Well, let's say we get we all get over that I feel like taking HBO off of the name kind of I don't know it takes a hit to the prestige and maybe it's just because HBO has always been something that when I was a kid was too expensive or not even available for us and It all it's you know, I think of HBO is my my my my favorite series Won all the awards, you know the wire and some pranos and you know game of thrones and I feel like taking it off The name hurts it rather than helps it, but maybe I'm just living in the past Listen, well, yeah, go ahead y'all. I understand what you're saying When when ESPN never fulfilled on the promise of the entertainment the e in its name I knew it would be a failure No, I'm I'm with you Sarah like I I think yeah HBO is your strongest brand You're gonna take it out of the name, but at the same point I think people get used to really fast understanding that HBO is in the max app and Yeah, probably ends up not really hurting them. So and and it's an easier thing to say. It's an easier thing to market So yeah, I I'm with you It may not be the best in the short term for branding because HBO is a stronger brand But I'm kind of with Scott that it's more inclusive not that they couldn't they already do things that aren't HBO there But but it does sort of signal like, you know, blah blah blah blah What's in a name though? Like really what matters is how much does this thing cost and what do they have on it? And that's where I I'm kind of laughing at all the people throw and hate at this thing today I'm like they're not raising the price. They're just adding a tier with new features and Announcing a bunch of stuff. Yeah, it's gonna have a bunch of new stuff. So I'm not sure there's much to hate here really Yeah, if you're already annoyed with just I don't know The Warner Brothers situation or you know discovery HBO and all that. Oh sure. Yeah. Yeah I understand that colors people's opinions of this but this actual announcement It's not nothing because there is a bunch of new stuff. There's new content coming We would have probably gotten that without brand change too, of course, but But I don't see anything here that I'm really like having a problem. I don't think your hate is incremental in relation to this You know, it's probably just stays where it was You're annoyed. You're already annoyed. You'll stay annoyed. Yeah, that's fine The point I was making earlier about well, but HBO, you know, it has such prestige Kind of thing. Maybe the company, you know, the combined companies now realize, yeah But they're all they're gonna be all these people who maybe could part with you know $10 per month type thing, but they go oh HBO. Yeah, I don't know. You know, it's not gonna have the stuff that I want It's you know, it's it's it's always been sort of that, you know Oscar or Emmy winning series that maybe I'm just not that into or you know, I'm I'm interested in other things And this is the company being like we're still that and we're gonna have more of that. That's a subsection Yeah, but but but it's but it's it's it's for everybody. It's it's one to watch Yeah, it's gonna have sports. It's gonna have news. They're gonna work CNN in this they're gonna work the NBA into this They're gonna work the NHL into this. They're gonna have all this drama the Game of Thrones stuff The thing is like eventually HBO is gonna become meaningless It because if as cable winds down, there's not gonna be a place where you just get HBO and kids are gonna wonder like Why is this good programming called HBO? I don't know Well, and you know, that's when's the last time you heard home box office. I know what it means Yeah, right, right, but but I it's sort of an antiquated term at this point. It's like we have lots of them box offices Yeah, the real the real the real thing that needs to happen is long term sustained quality content from the HBO brand Then no one will worry about it. If suddenly HBO put out nothing but garbage from this point on Then then then dig the grave and we're done with HBO, but I think as long as they keep that up It's not gonna. You give me dragon shows. I will watch. Yeah, you call yourself whatever you want Well, we talk a lot about whether AI is Scary or great or we'll take our jobs or we'll make our jobs better an article from rest of world org talks about how Generative AI has helped game developers in China create visually stunning landscapes with greater ease and efficiency That sounds good, right? For example NetEase one of China's largest gaming companies use AI to generate terrain and foliage for its game Naraka blade point which helped the company reduce the time and cost associated with creating these elements manually However, this increased efficiency also resulted in the displacement of traditional 2d concept artists who in certain cases at least were no longer needed for this part of the production process This above was written by chat GPT I had slight edits because I'm a human But that was what chat GPT told me to say and chat GPT also had this question for you Scott All right great as an artist and podcaster Scott What is your perspective on the use of AI technology and the creative process? Do you see it as a threat to traditional art forms or an opportunity to innovate and explore new possibilities in the arts? Well, they Scott thank you chat GPT for your Scott say, I'm sorry Yeah, I'm sorry Jeff GPT. I can't do that. Um, yeah I it's funny this came up today because I was already brewing on this kind of all morning I've been thinking a ton about everything from mid journeys latest version to what chat GPT for has been doing and and this gold rush We're witnessing and how is it really going to affect people and then Tom tossed that article over and I went So we actually have a real world on the ground example of it's a meeting what people are afraid of yeah And seeing the results like these people have lost their jobs or they just fear the actual things Yeah, exactly and it's always been you can always it's especially in the video game world And and that's where I'll come at this from for this example, but when you look at China It is often that that is the accelerated version of everything else So we're we're doing a slow dev over here. They are like ooh people like RPGs We're gonna just churn out 50 of them and they're all gonna be kind of bad But it doesn't matter because it's volume and it's fast and it's on budget and blah blah blah like there's a lot of that Going on over there and say what you will that's just a way of things So when you hear about that effect happening there immediately That tells me the rest of the world will get there eventually We'll have a slower go of it, but we will get to a place where we start to see His job gone and her job gone and that sort of thing and while I think to answer chat GPT's question Sarah's conveyance of it. I think that that's true To a small degree. We're gonna have some of that happen I'm more and more coming around to the idea that if there are 10 people on your art team and You reduce that team to two because it turns out two people with good prompts and then good Abilities to then take those prompts generate content go well We need to tweak it the go in they change it they tweak it Whatever two people can now do what ten people did and they can do that a lot faster If that's the scenario That sounds like doom But what it probably means in practicality is suddenly the production pipeline is shrunk The cost of doing business is shrunk small indies all the way up to big publishers that process shrinks So that more projects can get done We always go back to that Lotus 123 Excel example where you know accountants were worried that stuff was gonna kill their business And instead it it exponentially expanded it. Well, why well? It's because you could do so much more now with the time you have and the employees you have Which just translates to more employees and better budgets and blah blah blah, so I'm half convinced that those eight people of those 10 will end up in jobs similar to the two that stayed There will whether be less 20 man art teams on on teams building out art. Yes Will there be more opportunities for those artists to fill those new nuanced roles? I also think yes Yeah, so I think it's complicated as usual like all these things are complicated There is a media. There's immediate fear part of me has a little bit of like ah freak out and part of me has a little bit But wait a minute. Let's think about this logically. Where does this stuff usually lead? I have a lot of conversations with chat GPT just to see where it can go and where my brain goes I find it cathartic in a weird way because it's like hey do this. I asked it to write a comic strip today It did a terrible job. It's horrible. It's not funny It doesn't know comedy It's comedy is bad like really bad and it ended at the end of the joke It it forced me to read an explanation of why it came to that joke and as you know explaining your own jokes It's pretty bad for me. Tell you why it's funny Yeah, that's how you know, yeah, that's basically it and so as a to sum it up I would just say It's a little bit from column A and column B. How it all susses out more than numbers land We don't know but I'm more confident now than I was initially that we are gonna find ways Around this that we just don't see yet. Yeah. Yeah, so that's my overall My my and I listen I'm never in favor of people losing their jobs because you know, you know, they weren't good at what they did You know, let's assume that everybody's great at their jobs We also talk about and especially people who work in larger organizations middle management. What's this person doing? You know, what's this manager actually doing and not that they're not doing anything But in many cases it turns out that if you go back to the drawing board You can be more efficient with fewer resources depending on who you've got on the team Rather than well, this is the way we've always done it So I think we're we're this is this is the beginning of the next stage of okay Well, we don't have to do it that way anymore So the people who are freed up to do other things aren't necessarily just gonna sit around jobless It just you know, it remains to be seen exactly what that's gonna look like in another five years Also, don't forget this rest of world article talked about a lot of illustrators who are now working more Because this makes them more productive. They're being overworked. There's a danger of overwork Not lack of work because they can now make more games Yeah, and it's like oh you have this AI tool Well, you can do three times as much work now Because it doesn't take you as long to do every individual item And then there's a backlash people know sometimes if it was AI made or if they hear it's AI made They may just decide like we don't like it We're not paying as much for that. So so this is not all over. Yeah, no not at all But if consumers can't tell the difference then then well If they out on the whole can't really tell the difference that just means you're gonna want to try to sell to them more often Which means make more games, which means you need more people Which means you need better people. We'll just go used to six six-fingered people. It'll be fine Yeah, it's fine. We're all heading there anyway eventually. We'll all have probably yeah, but humans will imitate art And will for that one six-fingered man, but you know It's a new era inconceivable I Love the general banter and odd topics. It's easy to see that you are all friends as well as co-workers food talk quizzes have been fun more zany tech and science topics these are all Human things written by humans in response to our survey. Thank you everyone for taking our survey if you haven't taken it yet Here's your chance to express your opinion opinions on DTNS Let us know and what you think is working and what you think is not working at daily tech new show comm slash We may know the future of the MPC the non-player character Scientist at Stanford University created a sims like RPG virtual world and then let 25 characters play in it each character controlled by a chat GPT if a little custom code to Increase capabilities from memory and experiences and they have a pre-print paper up on archive org That's what the X the paper one AR X IV dot org if you want to see what they found Here's the short version. They created a town called smallville get it. Yeah, yeah With a bar cafe college grocery park and some houses each character was given a paragraph description That was their seed memory to get him started Then they let the characters just wander around the town to see what they would do. What do you think they did? I'm guessing they interacted in Human like it sounds like a lovely town seems like they'd you know probably get some coffee and yeah These are just I mean you're not wrong. Here's here's what they they said in the paper They wake up cook breakfast head to work the artist paint the author's right They form opinions notice each other initiate conversations They remember and reflect on days past as they plan the next day Here's where it gets really weird Humans can also enter the town so you can go in and control a character You can either be a new character or you can act as the inner voice of one of the AI controlled players So you can like give it prompts and be like you should go do this Though and here I'll quote again the full generative agent architecture produced more believable results than the humans Who did the role playing? Because they had an independent group of humans assess like how realistic were these characters not knowing which ones were humans in which were AI? Scott tell us what the scientists what else the scientists well Here's what they found and by the way, they really should have put us a little mild-mannered Clark Kent in Smallville I don't know why they didn't do that, but whatever there's next time scientists Anyway, they identified three main types of emergent behaviors. I was talking about emergence in video games So this is good a number one information diffusion This is sharing info that spreads throughout the town So think of I you know my guy on the end of the street says oh my Can is down the road Gossip big gossip. They got gossip basically. That's it My mother would be all about the informational diffusion. Anyway, number two relationship memory Remembering past interactions with each other and sometimes talking about them So this is you coming up to a dude at the store Week he remembers weren't you the guy that cut me off in the parking lot? Yeah, we're not friends. Exactly. I've got a beef In third was coordination. This is planning a party together attending an event together You can view a pre-computed interactive demo online as well. I don't know. Do we think this is the future? Okay, I kind of do by the way I think you skipped over the event planning part because here's an example an agent That went under the name Isabella Rodriguez planned a Valentine's Day party at Hobbes Cafe and invited friends and customers Decorated the cafe with the help of her friend Maria who invited her crush Klaus to the party 12 people heard about it five attended threes that they were busy and The other four just didn't go this is frighteningly like right It's like it actually like hurts my heart a little bit because I'm like, oh man So many people didn't come to my Valentine party Now you know how I mean, they didn't tell us what a class winner If we if we park our biases to the side and when I say we I mean people in my circles who are very skeptical of all Things AI just park those biases for a second and think about what you come to a video game for Since this is kind of modeled after that you come to a video game to be impressed by what the technology gives you either in gameplay or presentation or whatever it may be and What are we trying to do in a small town in an RPG? We want that place to feel lived in we want these people to feel real We want those can't conversations or barks as they call them We want that to feel natural and as if it was always meant to be there This feels like a huge step in that non-scripted direction And if you if you are a gamer who enjoys that stuff, I don't think this is something to be concerned with like at all No, I feel like it's something where you're like, I don't know what's gonna happen Yeah, that's exciting just you real life if you've ever wanted to go up to that orc that gives you the mission to kill 12 pigs and Turn them into a vegetarian Technology that could make that happen, right? Yeah, right was it this show that you introduced care. I think you introduced me to character.ai here Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was that was a rudimentary but real example of of This that kind of thing you can kind of create your own, you know your own adventure your own Text adventure as you went along and it did go in some ridiculous ways But given the right walls and the right sort of I don't know human touch on the outside of this You could create really compelling Emergent experiences. We're all we've been begging for those for decades as gamers This might actually be the first time we see true emergent behavior in our games And it's to me is absolutely fascinating and exciting. I love it Can't wait Well, uh, you might have waited to use your print screen button for the lifetime of your board Yeah, the print screen button if you're not familiar This might be kind of fun because it's getting new life So this is the button that's probably up on the top row of your keyboard to the right next to scroll lock and pause break Buttons if you're a MacBook user don't worry. You are not you're missing anything You don't have this Microsoft though plans to change the default behavior of print screen in Windows 11 right now in Windows Print screen captures your screen and puts it in the clipboard. That is that's helpful, right? However in Windows 11 preview insider builds it now launches the snipping tool that would give you the option to capture the whole screen or capture a portion of the screen and You know be able to do a little do a little mustn't fuss from there You might say okay. Well, I already do Windows shift s. Why should I stop doing that? You can't you can still do that That's not going away You just have other options with this button that you may have never used before and for the kerm legends who say I don't like new behavior I want things to go the way back to the way that they were before you can change the behavior back in accessibility settings And if you've remapped print screen the update won't even change that are we all happy? I think everybody gets covered there except for the person who's annoyed that they have to go change the setting Right, that's the only friction point if you're like no, I like the print screen to do the whole screen I gotta dig an access Yeah, it's gonna take you 30 seconds. Yeah for me. It's a key I never use so I'm all I'm happy to have keys that have let sat long dormant actually have some usability So I'm actually kind of screen button worked on Mac I mean, I know you could just do three or whatever but commensia three and commensia four are All right, I mean I use them all day every day. What's the clear button? We have a button called clear I don't know what that does on max either. What is that? Is everyone ever use the clear button on there? I don't have a clear button on the Macbook Pro. It's probably because this is my magic trackpad I don't I don't or a keyboard rather. I probably clears out the ROM Yeah, you need more cloud storage. We'll just clear that out for you hit it right before defibrillation All right, let's check out the mailbag All right We got a bunch of thoughts on VPNs from our discussion with dr. Nikki that we had yesterday Andrew wrote in that he likes using VPN through Apple one because it uses to VPN So no one company has the full set of your data and is already on your Apple devices for free for iCloud plus subscribers Eric wanted to point out that HTTPS will thwart most man-in-the-middle attacks and attempt at Attempts at impersonation. So if you don't have a VPN, which you know, we said you should but if you don't you can look for HTTPS when you browse to just be a little bit safer John uses a travel router John says he has all security provisions in place every time he sets it up in a hotel and his devices already know how to connect Oh, that's smart and very smart and finally RW Nash wrote I don't want to well actually you Tom But I think Allison Sheridan went with P. I a yes, he did and she she she texted me this morning Saying thanks for the shout-out, but you got it wrong Apologies for that Allison did not go with proton. She went with P. I a so go and will link to her VPN breakdown In the show notes today as well. Sorry for for misremembering that also Stoic squirrel says and Amos Our producer says that the clear key is used for calculator apps So you can just clear, you know without having to find the little Weird Key because I'm using logitech K 120 which is meant for Windows Tony says I had a job previously where we sold products on Amazon and we had to battle all sorts of shady things going on on Amazon this is in response to us talking about the the review merging fraud One of the crazy things that people do other than stealing each other's buy box was to revise a Listing with a new product that had no relation to the original product that way you gain all the positive reviews from the old Product it's always good to check and see when a listing was first created and really do your homework and read all the reviews and pay Attention to when the reviews were posted. Thank you, Tony. That is something. I've never thought to do. Hey, when was this? product Listed yeah, I do Was it like four years ago because it was yesterday all these reviews wouldn't make a lot of sense I've read a couple reviews where I'm like, that's not the product here which immediately raised a red flag to Well, thank you to everybody who gives us feedback feedback a daily tech news show comm is where to send those thoughts Keep them coming. You make our show better. Also you Scott Johnson make our show the best let folks know what they can keep up with your work Well, that's very nice for you to say it's not true, but it's nice. Hey check this out If you are interested at all in the card game I keep bringing up on the show every couple of weeks or so Called rock or excuse me. That's the last game. I made this game is called dungeon murder And it is the next game I'm making and we're gonna I think push go on the Kickstarter tomorrow So now would be a great time to go sign up for updates and such at dungeon murder comm I'm very proud of this game and everyone who keeps playing it keeps telling me how great it is So must be good. Yeah So if you want to follow this and be a part of it and maybe get a copy for yourself that Kickstarter should start tomorrow I'll let everybody know on all my socials and that what you can find at frog pants comm or go straight to dungeon murder comm And you'll find it as well. You could do a sequel called dungeon murder rocks. Whoa, that's pretty good. Just do all air metal band enemies something like that. Yeah Maybe kind of an American idol Yeah Are you exactly? Yeah Well, we want to extend a special. Thanks to you as Monday Herx Dodd who is one of our top lifetime supporters for DTNS as Monday We see you we hear you we support you and thanks for supporting us and thanks for all the years of support in fact Now if you're a brand new patron you also get a shout out on the show So if you want to start a new streak of new patrons today's the day patreon.com slash DTNS You will start to get the ad-free extended show on Patreon if you do that it's called good day internet and today on good day internet in a world After news organizations leave Twitter will the social network return to its heady days of lunch updates and misfire DMS Only one person knows for sure You the patron who gets the extended show John Wick returns this summer You can also catch this show live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern Twenty-hundred UTC find out more at daily tech news show comm slash live We are back tomorrow with drum roll, please Patrick Norton joining us. Maybe he'll smash a computer. Maybe not. I don't know talk to you then This show is part of the front pants network Get more at frog pants comm