 Coming up on DTNSO and JJ Stone is here to help us understand when we can start paying attention to 8k Is it soon plus NVIDIA may lay down arm and Google has an even nicer way of tracking you for ads This is the Daily Tech news for Tuesday, January 25th, 2022 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio Redwood I'm Sarah Lane And I'm the show's producer Roger Chang joining us oh and JJ stone aka. Oh doctor You can text him right now eight four four nine eight six four five six three That's a real number. You can actually give it out that number to everybody. That's so cool I like what people say hi to me say hi to me and join my revolution Against Tom Merritt where I come on his own show to start a revolution. This is the problem I've been doing a newsletter. I'm like email me and I'll email you oh and has to big time me and be like Well, you can text me. It's even easier You you get right to the captain of the ship over here, baby I mean Tom Merritt's too big time I'm still small fry in the bottom of the bag. You know me. I'm the extra fried the bottom back I'm here for you. We need to have everything else you reach back in there, and I'm still waiting on you, brother I I I upset oh and before the show With a heartbreaking pun You can find out more about that in the long version of the show good day internet available at patreon.com slash dtns Let's take things you should know. I was supposed to say sorry sir. I go That's fine. I just wanted to thank a couple of our top patrons first high-tech oaky Martin James and David Mosher Why am I so messed up? It's cuz Owen's here. He got me off my game I'm so happy When Tom messes up Oh, it's great episode of DT and it's already a perfect show. Let's go All right, let's start with a few check things you actually should know the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is adding a new tax center to help U.S. Customers figure out how much they may owe the IRS Oh, what fun the new section gathers every taxable transaction showing a personalized summary of a customer's taxable activity on Coinbase Broken out over time by realized gains or losses and miscellaneous income with the information able to be used with tax software Microsoft issued a warning that hundreds of office 365 customers are getting phishing emails trying to trick them into granting OAuth Permission that would let attackers read and write email post of their calendar read and write their contacts The app that requests the permission is just called upgrade and appears to come from a verified publisher So it's kind of hard to detect if you're not paying close attention Microsoft has deactivated the malicious app in Azure AD This is a type of attack called consent phishing which tricks the user just into granting access by clicking okay without having actually hand over a password Signify announced three new Phillips Hue outdoor smart lights with home kit support coming March 1st home kit among others The NARA features an Edison style bulb for outdoor use hundred dollars for that The Phillips Hue Luca will offer white and color changing lights also $100 and then the Resonates wall light will go for one hundred sixty dollars all three lights require the Hue bridge and do work with the Hue app Home kit as I mentioned Google home Amazon service and Samsung smart things the Hue Apple soon offer new candle and fireplace effects for all bulbs as well Well nice YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki's quarterly update revealed the platform was going to test new ways for YouTube shorts Which is kind of their tick-tock Instagram reels type thing to make money for creators through brand connect And is in the early phases of testing how shopping can be integrated with shorts The platform is also looking at ways to support NFTs Wojcicki continues to defend YouTube's hiding of public dislike accounts saying the feature was harming parts of the ecosystem through dislike attacks Though she did not specify whether the ecosystem refers to creators or corporations The Ethereum Foundation has decided to change the name of the Ethereum 2.0 to the consensus layer that part of the network Handles smart contracts and network rules aka the Ethereum 1.0 And will now be called the will we will be called the execution layer The point of the exercise is to make the transition from proof of work Which uses a lot more power to proof of stake once the new system is ready to replace the old mining system The two layers will merge and go back to being just plain old Ethereum Hope you were taking notes the name change will help repent scams that try to imply that there are two Ethereum networks being created, which isn't the case. Yeah calling it Ethereum 2.0 when it was just gonna get merged back Was was probably confusing. So that makes sense to me. All right Let's talk a little more about Nvidia Bloomberg sources saying they might just abandoned their attempt to acquire Chip designer arm from Softbank that deal was agreed upon in September 2020 and has been awaiting Regulatory approval, which may now never come and video reportedly told partners It does not expect the transaction to close Softbank is reportedly prepping an IPO for arm just in case that doesn't happen So I guess soft banks move if Nvidia decides to abandon the deal is to just spin out arm as a public company Companies including Qualcomm Intel and Google claimed arm could not maintain Independence under Nvidia and would therefore harm competition So they were pushing regulatory agencies to prevent the merger and video promised to sell arm licenses to All but apparently that didn't convince anybody in October the EU began an investigation of the deal over competition concerns The UK began its own investigation in November on antitrust and national security grounds and in December the US sued To prevent the merger over concerns it would stifle innovation So a tall order for Nvidia to try to surmount China hadn't even got into it yet China had expressed concerns and probably would have opposed the merger But it doesn't even like look like it'll get that far publicly Nvidia is not saying anything yet Still saying it believes the deal provides an opportunity to accelerate arm and boost competition and innovation But Bloomberg says writing's on the wall. I Wonder I know that there is a breakup fee Which is really commonplace in these sorts of acquisitions that don't end up going through and if this doesn't end up going through Who suffers more here? You know is it arm is it Nvidia? and I mean, I suppose it's you know people who care about products from both companies, but It seems like arm may suffer from this unless there's a really great IPO to be seen in the future Yeah, so according to this real quick It's it's Nvidia paid a fee that soft bank gets to keep if the the deal doesn't go through Yeah, which I think it's two billion dollars, which is not uncommon You know because it's sort of like okay We all have good faith that we really want this to happen And if we spend a lot of time and resources and legal fees and it doesn't happen Then somebody walks away with some money But yeah, I just I wonder how how this might be bad news that going forward because clearly Yeah, you know a lot of folks didn't think it was a great idea and the simplest terms Why didn't the argument just have their hands up like this and say but Apple? Could you help us out like we're trying to we have to make some things happen where they're trying to merge and get together like There's a reason we're gonna sell to everybody because trust me. We need more money. So I don't know the IPO Is this market and this climate? Good luck Yeah, I feel like My instinct is that soft bank gets hurt the most by this because soft bank was the one trying to cash out And and yes arm would have benefited from increased resources from NVIDIA there But I don't think it hurts arm as much and in some ways it may be better because as the US FTC phrased it Arm is the Switzerland of the chip world and this keeps them in that position now if Doing an IPO doesn't bring in enough money for them to fuel further innovation and arm starts to go into a long Slow Intel like decline. I guess that would be the worst case scenario that I could think of but I don't think suddenly arm Just collapses overnight. I don't get the sense that they're in that bad of a situation So it's bad from NVIDIA because they're out a couple billion dollars and they don't get arm It's probably good for the chip sector in general because even if NVIDIA was the best behaving Possible it was still consolidation no matter how you looked at it And it's bad for soft bank because they wanted the money and and if arms IPO of arm does fall off for some odd reason Then they could go back later on to play. Hey, well, we're here again. If you want to who wants us Yeah, like we're trying to buy you now like somebody's gonna either way it'll be fine There'll be innovation will be creation and if they falter someone will be there to scoop them up Probably the discount. Yeah, that two billion, but then it becomes who would be allowed Who who would not even who would be allowed who would do it after seeing NVIDIA go through all this for more than a year? That's true too. Yeah Well Google's been in the process of looking for products to replace what we all know is cookies Splitting the difference between privacy, which some people care about very much and ad tracking which other people care about very much Google's first idea was called federated learning of cohorts or flock That would have added you based on data that Google knew about you into a group of people who had similar preferences That way an advertiser would only really know that they were showing an ad to a group of people Maybe Owen and I both like dogs and we both recently bought a car We might be in the same group there tracking IDs would apply to that group, but not the individual themselves However, there were concerns that flock could be used to help form a browser fingerprint or otherwise to do Other information about any user so edge Mozilla brave and Vivaldi all declined to implement it in their browsers Google just announced. Okay. We've decided to stop development of flock and replace it with a new attempt We're calling topics in this new system your browser Let's say you're using Chrome keeps track of what categories of websites that you're visiting fall into Sensitive categories like gender or race aren't tracked But something like team sports or rock fan might be so might know your music habits Might know what kind of sports you're into Google says it'll be about 350 such categories to start though That will expand over time to a few thousand and your browser will keep this categorical data for three weeks And then it'll delete it will never be stored on a server But it will remain local to your device Google categorized major websites and will also use some in browser machine learning to determine the categories of other sites going forward Still in its infancy here the ad serving side of this works as follows when you visit a site that supports the topics API The browser will look at your top five most visited categories from each of the past three weeks and choose one from each week at random To share with that site. Maybe I looked at a lot of sports and music things and Linen sheets, you know gets one the site will then share ads on the page that targets people also interested in those topics in Chrome you'll be able to see what topics are in the list So you're not in the dark about this and then you can remove them if you want to you can also turn off the topics API Altogether if you so desire Google plans to trial the topics API starting at the end of this quarter So pretty soon and if you're in for if you're kind of like now still don't like it Do not track me. You're not happy with topics either But it does seem like Google is trying to come to a place where privacy focused folks would feel a little bit more comfortable with this Oh, and what do you think? I? Live in a world where I Don't care about the cookies anymore I don't get you're tracking me and the things are free if I if I'm that worried about you tracking my browser history There's other ways that I can get around doing that at this point. I don't want to have to click off your topics I don't have to say I don't want this topic in my group I don't really want you serving my topics to people to my friend I just I just want cookies to stay cookies and just going about your day. I don't need flocks. I don't need topics I don't like it. I don't like change. I'm a 72 year old man, and I'm grumping on this whole idea It's terrible. I don't like it I mean, it's probably and it definitely depends on how you use the internet But there there was there was a day where we all complained about ads just add stupid ads everywhere Most ads that I see now are targeted toward me and sometimes that it's pretty obvious Why oh, I just looked at that website and now it's you know in my Facebook feed But sometimes it's a little bit more like huh What why am I in this? You know how they get me here? And so I feel like this is Google's way of kind of saying we're we're not trying to target you that Specifically, but if you're interested in how this is working here's how it's working Again, I rebuttal with the grumpy old man. I don't trust it You know what bothers me most about tracking right? I buy a watch They know that I went online. They know that I bought this watch for 92 days I see the ad to say buy this watch and I'm like I already bought this watch So unless topics allows me to click off of that one thing and say stop showing me that Which I've already spent my money on Okay, if it does that I see it actually would do that Because it wouldn't have the cookie that tells them you bought the watch and it would look at your Recently visited sites and notice like oh, he hasn't been going to watch sites anymore. He must have bought the watch Let's show him something else as a 72 year old man. I have learned things on this planet I have my position. I am not ignorant. I am all for topics. Give me topics today Yeah, I think what I like about it is that you can just turn it off If you're if you don't like it and the and it knows less about you than cookies However, if you're coming at it from the other side of I don't want it to know anything about me Will this prevent that? No, no, there's certainly ways people could use it but they they do make it very difficult to build a profile of you because this isn't even Identifying you as part of a group. It's just saying when they when the when you go to the website Oh, if you want to show an ad here are three topics you could show ads for and it won't be the three Same three topics every time you visit that site, right? It'll change Because it's random every time so that makes it harder to build a profile around people But of course, you know what's more secure Just first party ad that says oh, I'm at a site that sells watches Maybe advertise the watch to this person and don't advertise the watch if I'm not at a site that sells watches Yeah, I mean I can I complain myself back into it. So I'm fine now and I'll give it a try I just didn't want to have to do anything else. It's I'm already I'm already mad when I got to accept cookies Like that's you're making me do work. I came here to do well get rid of that too You wouldn't have the cookie stuff anymore because they wouldn't be setting cookies. I mean that that alone is worth The price of it. I am back on board. We are flocking and grouping and tagging and all the things top topics As Google ends their flock Twitter begins one input magazine reports that engineer Alessandro Paluzzi found code in the Twitter app Describing a close friends feature if you if you've noticed Instagram has a close friends feature that lets you share stories with a list of people That you create instead of just to anybody who follows you Twitter shared design concepts for a similar thing. They were calling trusted friends last July But Paluzzi just found a description in the code that calls it Twitter flock Although this one spelled FLOCK It says you can add up to a hundred fifty people to a flock You can keep it just two if you want but you can have up to a hundred fifty when you post to your flock Only those people in your flock will be able to see your and reply to your post People will not be notified if they're removed from your flock So they'll just stop seeing those and they'll never notice otherwise Paluzzi also found a label on posts that says you can see this tweet because the author has added you to their flock So they will know if they're seeing a post because they're in your flock But they won't know if you remove them Twitter told the Verge that flock is a placeholder name But it didn't share any more news about the feature It would seem like a pretty obvious one if that was the The the name at the end of all this but okay, whatever flock ends up being in Concept I like this. This is not how I use Twitter. I figure anything that I say on Twitter It's like you're they're gonna get it or you're gonna like it or you don't or you see it later And it doesn't apply to you and that's fine. It's the Wild West but Twitter is drying as and with a roll out of lots of different products has been trying to be much more of a focused way to use a social network as You know a place for news a place to talk to friends, you know the DTNS We could have our own flock, you know or that sort of thing stuff that a lot of other companies have already offered services for a Lot of the stuff that Twitter talks about I I still I still want to know We get what what team out there is like yep, Twitter's suite of services or the way that we go and Because it seems a little bit too Too little too late as far as Twitter goes, but I don't know it's it's always good to give people options where for example You know, I I have a group of friends who have Their Twitter accounts locked I mean they can say that it's okay that I follow them and then I can see their tweets But it kind of breaks the service overall. So this seems like some sort of a bridge between the two Show title grumpy or old men. I mean I I tweet the way that I tweet and at some point I got to click through 92 levels of things. I've got to select now who can reply don't reply I've got to put it a poll my locations on my locations on draft not like I go there to be Grammatically incorrect say the dumbest thing possible and hope that it catches fire and a million people retweet it Okay, that's what Twitter is for and again like you said too little too late You're trying to throw all this garbage into kitchen sink at me now when I'm here Because guess what I could cultivate my own group. I'm only following like 600 people, you know I mean those are the people that I I need to hear and listen to if you want to be willy-nilly and follow 150,000 Celebrities that's on you if you want to again, the only thing I heard that was great about that is if you have a Group of people that listen to your podcast or your show or their their influencers maybe and you want to say hey We got this new product you guys get to see it first or something like that cool I guess throw it in there cuz Twitter's gonna do what they want to do but at the end of the day It's just too much stuff in my Twitter now. I gotta be a Twitter blue I got a but the premium you should have been half real. You don't have to do any of that stuff Right. I have to do it all because once they put it in there. It's like drugs. I gotta try it. That's free It's a gateway drugs. I gotta try it baby, you know In defense of flock would be like The old Twitter people talk about man It used to be you could just talk to your friends on Twitter And you didn't have all these random people coming in because it didn't have that big of a user base flock would let you Simulate that where you could just be like here are the people I want to talk to sometimes I want to talk to the entire world, but sometimes I want to say something and I don't need everybody jumping in because they're not gonna get it Yeah, I mean honestly, that's the problem, right? That's where I that's where I end up back where you where you are Rowan is like but people don't use Twitter for that. So yeah group chats. They use telegram They use but also there are people that I'm friends with on Twitter Not as the only social network, but Twitter as an example where I'm like I don't really even know their number or like putting us the five people that I think would like my tweet on a group chat would See him a little strange because we're already on Twitter That's where this kind of thing comes into play. How much this would replace group texts. I don't know Yeah, last question Will others be able to see that you created a flock like well They say oh Sarah's created two flocks and I'll tell you what if I'm not in those flocks I will be offended. This is a verbal contract that I will be included in your flock Sarah I will be get the sense that you only create one flock though. So If you want want bigger stuff you get communities and you do a community That's that's me go to Twitter blue and you get an extra flock You got to pay $4.99 you get a bonus block you get two blocks so many flocks Well, hey folks if you would like more DTNS you're like I don't need more flocks But I want more DTNS Nikki Ackerman's dr. Nikki Has the latest installment of her scientist and tech mini series out she interviewed a researcher who uses drones to help map out ancient Pueblo archaeological sites And if you're like where do I find that right here in the DTNS feed check out this past weekend and listen in It's really good. Enjoy All right 4k is the current standard for high-def video whether you're talking about displays You're talking about content that's going on to an eventual display But 8k offers pretty big jump in resolution in fact It's like going from 1080p to 4k 4k to 8k now everybody who listens to DTNS has certainly heard of 8k But for many of us still too pricey kind of hard to find good stuff So when will 8k be necessary and will it be necessary oh and you're here with us So, you know, we're gonna put you in the hot seat to tell us all about how you as a photographer feel about 8k and how it needs to be Embraced by the the greater human race So as you heard earlier, I'm a man of strong convictions until I get instant feedback that turns my mind but Previously I just bought a camera to do work. I was like I only need 4k. I don't need 8k Nobody displays 8k nobody really uses 8k. I don't need it and I spent five thousand dollars on the camera and then three weeks later a new 8k camera came out and I just was like I think I need 8k now displays are really expensive. No one's Streaming 8k or anything yet, but I'm like do I have FOMO? Am I am I missing out like on the future? Should I future-proof myself and that's what I told myself. I need a future-proof myself Well, and that I think a lot of people feel like well, okay If we're going in this direction, that's if you if you've got the cash Future-proofing is you know a great way to to upgrade some of the things that you really care about But as far as the person who is watching in 8k Right now if you're shooting an 8k with your with your really nice camera And you'd like somebody to to reap the rewards of that. I mean how many people are really doing so? No one is reaping the rewards unless you're at the Comcast building and you've got 42 screens And there's a 3d lion coming out of the wall. No one is actually really reaping the benefits of it And that's that also you could barely get true 4k streaming. I tried to upgrade YouTube to 4k I didn't see any difference. I downgraded it doesn't matter this show right now People watch you and love you and we're probably in 720p or 1080 and people have no problem with it on your phone So it's not even that you can even use it in most circumstances, but I do have a situation where 8k is Super viable and could work really well for a lot of people All right, I'm intrigued. Yeah. Yeah, so I so it's not good enough for my TV. It's not good enough for my YouTube What is it good for them? so I had to shoot an interview of a Cast for a play and there were 10 people and I was like alright I'm gonna set up three cameras and run all this stuff and I realized that one of my cameras is 8k though I never use it. I shot an 8k and I turned out Each person's frame will be 1080 So I could I could punch in Hmm to 1080 from the 4k resolution see more options later Yes, and that's where it works out because you can up you can up res 1080 to 2k Which is basically fake 4k and it looks really good That is a good reason to use 8k just for the zoom and crop factor You know when people like to punch in on the YouTube videos you actually zoom right into an eye It'll still be crispy So that's the only value and reason I found to use 8k because also the media that it eats up is Tremendous and you've got to be a rich person to shoot more than 10 minutes right now. It's just insane But that's a good reason that's a really good reason I think that's that's a really good reminder that when we talk about these new Technologies sometimes we just focus on one use like oh 4k. It's just a marketing term to get me to buy a new TV Maybe maybe and probably it will be used to that But that doesn't mean that it's the only use for 8k Because what you're describing is not an end user benefit But a creator benefit for for somebody creating content 8k might be really important because While when costs get a little cheaper it simplifies things. Yep And you can always scale down and punch in and things like that I got when you watch the movies and always like enhance enhance really isn't a real thing But now there's enhance like if I really count the 720 I could put 16 of them on the screen You know what I mean? So that that's the the best benefit. That's what I talked myself into Spending more money and I justified it to myself. I said what if I needed to talk to 10 people all the time and they need their own screen That's how I convinced myself That's a really really good point that as a creator you have so much more leeway because you just have these huge files But sure, I mean, maybe my eyes can't even see 8k But the the fact that there there's there's going to be no discernible artifacts that I will also see with my naked eye You know being able to to take advantage of this but is there is there a situation where I as the you know I'm tired. It's the end of the night. I'd like to watch an 8k movie You know, is it is it at all worth it at this point? No, it is not because are you gonna get his buffering errors if you did have an 8k TV and you try And again the the the difference to what you're saying even still like that's why the phone The screen the the resolution doesn't even matter the screen so small You're happy with what you're seeing it at 1080 or anything like that people 90 Hertz like you can't really tell the difference I can give you 10 phones. It's hard for you to pick it out Let's you're playing a game So your eyes can't tell the difference and your screen at home isn't big enough that 4k to 8k you're gonna be like Oh, that's definitely 8k 4k looks pretty dang dumb good when you got true 4k coming through and you're watching like the animal planet on blu-ray or something like it I don't I don't in my mind. I don't know how it could get any better So right now where to stand still of the value of what your brain can consume and realize I believe I mean if you want 8k look look with your eyes. Don't look at the screen Enabled to HDR to work really well So 4k was handy for a reason that didn't have anything to do with resolution Maybe something comes along like that with 8k, but we don't know we don't see yeah 4k is pretty perfect right now Well John Lennon you may have heard of him He has a couple of sons and his older son Julian a salient memorabilia from his father's personal collection as NFTs Examples include a black cape from the film help handwritten notes by Paul McCartney for the Beatles song Hey Jude things that you know if you were a collector you might be pretty interested in But the physical items themselves not being auctioned off These are NFTs that are audio visual collectibles of each item with Julian Lennon himself narrating the story behind each piece Okay, all right I was like if you're into NFTs, obviously, you know, maybe you're into this if you're not into NFTs You're gonna scoff at this just like you would anything else But adding in the the narrated story behind the piece kind of a nice touch. I like that And the physical item, you know not being sold off somewhere like if it ended up like in a museum one day Yeah, I wouldn't mind being like what the biggest thing about NFTs when you say oh, it's just art I wouldn't mind being one of the ten people that have a Digital ownership of the Mona Lisa and it's sitting in the Louvre for the next billion years Yeah, I got my little piece of the Louvre, you know, so that's that's neat All right, let's check out the mailbag Let's do it this one comes in from Jeff who wrote in based on our discussion yesterday about waste heat and the idea of Trying to more efficiently use heat and not waste it Jeff says I saw an article over the weekend about using waste heat For additional power generation via the thermal electric devices I'd be excited to see when these types of developments were are able to make it down to the consumer level of products for instance Having thermal electric devices on solar panels could increase panel output by transferring heat buildup on the face of the panels into liquid Coolant or disperse it via radiators under the panels another potential location in homes could be Flue gases from water heaters or furnaces those with cooling loads could Possibly have these on their AC compressors or even on the outside of the house power plants could efficiently utilize this technology But also things like data centers Jeff finishes off with as the joke from James s a quarry made when asked when do the spaceships in the expanse universe? What what do the space ships in the expanse universe run on they replied efficiency? Yeah, no, these are good These are good examples. Thank you Jeff. Appreciate that Uh, thanks also to our brand new bosses Thomas Taylor and Wayne Dernan court both just started backing us on patreon Yeah, you're our new bosses of the week. Thank you Thomas. Thank you, Wayne Man we make a big deal when we get a new boss. Thank you Wayne. Yeah Stan, you know also standing out to oh and JJ stone Oh doctor always good to have you on the show let folks know where they can keep up with everything you feel about AK 8k and otherwise I'm a qmz.com. Oh doctor on everything. I'm currently building my flocks for the first hundred fifth people You ought to get put in a flock. That's what that's what this is. I'm out here in these streets Well, we're so happy to have you on the show today. Please come back soon and early and often reminder Yeah, it hurts. We're live on this show Monday through Friday. We hope you heard our show every day That's 4 30 p.m. Eastern 21 30 UTC You can find out more at daily tech news show comm slash live We'll be back doing it tomorrow with Scott Johnson. Talk to you soon This show is part of the frog pants network get more at frog pants comm