 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners. Thanks to all of you, including Chris Allen, Chris Smith, Mark Gibson. Coming up on DTNS is the Mack Line, the most complex it's ever been. Allison Sheridan investigates, plus new chips put AMD back in the desktop game and Mexico's soccer league's mandate facial recognition. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, March 15th, 2022 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. I'm from Studio Red, but I'm Sarah Lane. And this is Allison Sheridan of the Podfeat Podcast. And I'm Roger Chang. The show is pretty soon. We are very happy to bring you an investigative report from Allison on the complexity of the Mack Line a little later in this show. But let's start with a few tech things you should know. ARM said that it needed the cash infusion from Nvidia to maintain itself. And it is sticking to that story. Now that the Nvidia sale is off, the Telegraph reports that ARM told staff that between 12 and 15 percent of its workforce may become redundant, about 1,000 people. ARM CEO Renee Haas said in an email to staff, quote, to stay competitive, we need to remove duplication of work. Now that we are one ARM stop work that is no longer critical to our future success. Of course, cutting costs is also something that companies do before going public and soft bank has said it plans to take ARM public. I got a mega Microsoft quick hit for you. Microsoft released its direct storage API for Windows 10 and Windows 11. That is the thing that makes games load faster. It originally shipped on the Xbox Series X console and lets NVME, Solid State Drive, send game data right to the GPU without it having to be first processed by a CPU. Games will have to implement a new SDK if they want to take advantage of direct storage on Windows. Square Enix is forespoken, will be one of the first to do so when it comes out on the PC in October. Also in Microsoft news, Florian Bois tweeted a screenshot Saturday of an announcement for Microsoft editor showing up in a Windows 11 preview version of File Explorer. Now, many call this an ad, but don't get confused. Microsoft is now putting paid announcements from third parties. It's putting messages about Microsoft's own services in there. Microsoft has actually done this before. They promoted OneDrive subscriptions in the Windows 10 File Explorer. Microsoft Senior Program Manager Brandon LeBlanc told the Verge that this announcement, quote, was an experimental banner that was not intended to be published externally and was turned off. Samsung's One UI 4.1 is coming to more than just the S22. The Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3 will get it next, followed by the S21, S20, and S10. The Note 10 plus up, the Note 10 plus and up, several unspecified Galaxy A series phones and all the rest of the foldable line. The Tab S7 FE and several other S models will also get One UI 4.1. The update adds Grammarly to the keyboard, Expert Raw editing app, more advanced object removal and simpler photo sharing among other features. Intel confirmed its plans to build two chip factories at a single site in Magdeburg, Germany. Intel's calling that complex Silicon Junction. Construction is expected to begin in the first half of next year, with production expected to start on chips there in 2027. Intel also confirmed that its first Alchemist GPU will be the Arc A370M discrete graphics for laptops on March 30th, coming right up. Google Stadia, what is it? Who knows? Depends on who you are and what you care about. But at Google for Games Developer Summit, some announcements may have clarified where Stadia is actually going because there has been some questions there. The company says it will no longer require users to log in in order to browse the store or also to play free trials. White label partners like AT&T will also be able to offer free demos and add games of their own. And new tools will make it easier to port games from Unreal Engine and Unity to Stadia. That gets rid of some of the friction that users had in the past to try to go through to get to Stadia content. All right, let's talk a little more about AMD's chip announcements until... You never notice how Intel and AMD always have news on the same day somehow. It's almost like one of them notices the other is making a big announcement and then they make a big announcement too. Anyway, AMD made some desktop chip announcements and we're gonna try to make sense of them for you. The 8-core Ryzen 5800X3D. So not the top 5,000, but the 5800, not the 5900. And 3D, because the 5800X was already out. So 3D version of the 8-core Ryzen is available April 20th for $449. They announced this chip back at CES. You may remember them talking about Vcash. Vcash relates to the 3D in the name. That's what's new. 3D stacking means that the 5800X has more L3 cache, 96 megabytes to be exact. That's up from 32 in the non-3D version. If you're part of the just tell me what this means crowd, AMD says it'll mean 15% better performance. And the Verge notes that the original 5800X had four more cores and eight more threads than this 3D version. So you're getting more performance out of this new one, but with fewer cores and threads. The extra cache is really useful for communicating with GPUs, which means AMD is gonna market this to gamers. Productivity users aren't gonna see much benefit. So you're better off with a non-3D Ryzen if you just want productivity. For example, the 5800X 3D and the 5900X, the top line are actually the same price, $449, but one has more L3 cache and the other has more cores. So if you want great gaming, get the extra L3 cache. If you need more productivity, performance, go with more cores. AMD also announced six new Zen 2 and Zen 3 desktop processors ranging from $99 to $299. And yep, you heard me right. The three cheapest are still Zen 2. These are all 4,000 series. So those finally are available at retail. And this fills in the lower half of AMD's desktop offerings, giving Intel some competition finally in that space. Five of the six will be bundled with the AMD Wraith Cooler starting April 4th and the Ryzen 7 Zen 3 will not become an April 4th. It's coming a little later. AMD also announced it's gonna ship code to motherboard makers to support Ryzen 5000 processors on its older 300 series chipsets. Good news for builders. Look for supported beta bio us as early as April. And if you are the chip head out there looking closely to hear us say the words Ryzen 7000 or maybe Zen 4 or five nanometer, sorry. You're gonna have to wait until the second half of the year. We're not, we don't have any news on any of that. And then tech points out that these announcements today along with the Threadripper Pro for workstations announcement that AMD made last week indicate that AMD no longer has to reserve its seven nanometer wafer allocations for the highest margin products. Which means for now the chip crunch is beginning to ease and Roger, that's pretty good news, right? So one of the things that was very interesting about it is that AMD feels that there's enough slack in the fabrication chip fabrication market that they can actually start moving away from just high margin, high dollar products into something in more of the mid range. The other thing, basically saying that potentially they might move from a straight sellers market to something that's a little more beneficial to consumers. The other implication is that AMD felt that because they are gonna be announcing the 7000 at the end of the year, the second Q3, that they need something to bridge from what they have existing to what they might announce either implicating that there might be, they might when they do have the Zen 4 parts that they might not be able to have enough of them on hand to meet consumer demand. So they just need something in the channel there to satiate people wanna buy something new. Also, it probably means that Intel's doing something that's making AMD nervous, whether it's turning around or going to more of a fab approach to some of their stuff to farm me out some other stuff, but that they feel that Intel is best definitely becoming more of a competitor than they have been in the past couple of years. And finally, the AMD decision to kind of support older 300 series chipsets, although that's really dependent on the motherboard maker of whether or not they release firmware updates. I think they just wanna make sure that there are enough avenues available for people to upgrade who don't necessarily have enough money to buy an entirely new motherboard, a new motherboard, new RAM, all the rest of it. And so it's an incremental, so I'm spending up the four or 500 bucks and I get a new PC instead of having to buy a bunch of new stuff that's gonna send me back $1,200 for a new PC. Yeah, and you know what? These are good price points for people. If you can get them at that price point, of course, that's always the rub. We'll see what the supplies are, all right. But yeah, good stuff. Well, moving on, a French company called Moto MOTTO, not to be confused with Moto, is launching electric bike rentals in Paris. Moto isn't selling the bikes though, but it's also not offering the hourly rental model that many other cities have and you may have used depending on where you live. Here's the Moto deal. For 75 euros per month, you get a Moto branded hybrid bike. It's an e-bike with a motor on the rear wheel so you could pedal as if it were a bike you could also go and reach speeds up to 25 kilometers per hour. If you wanna cruise right along, safety first. It also has GPS tracking and anti-theft system which is sort of a big deal with any rental models because people tend to want to steal these things for parts. Also has a carbon belt and a removable battery under the seat that you can take with you. Now, somebody stealing a wheel, not gonna get them quite as far as if they can steal your battery. The monthly fee includes damage and theft insurance plus maintenance and repair. You request repairs in the Moto app and then the company claims it can service those repairs within 48 hours, not bad. Certainly better than my local car dealership. In the future for additional fees, customers can get a front rack, baby carrier, customization stuff that you might need based on who you are and what you're doing on your bike. Now, a small group, pretty small group, 2,000 users rather have tested Moto service in Paris already and the service will open to all in April. Now, if you happen to be one of those 200 users, you might recognize Moto as Bloom. That was the original name of the company. It has since been renamed to Moto. This isn't the first company to do this though. Germany has dance and the Netherlands have Swapfjärts and Veligo. I think this is fascinating as an example of the subscription universe having a middle ground, so to speak, right? Instead of like lime or bird where you're paying by the minute, you can pay by the month, 75 euros. I mean, it's not nothing, but if you bike every day, that's worthwhile, especially if you're like, I don't wanna sink a few thousand dollars on an e-bike. I mean, granted, it's always cheaper to buy the thing because you got resale value and all of that, but if you're living paycheck to paycheck, you just may not be able to save that up. The first thing I thought about with this is that I think the rent by the minute thing is really nifty and cool, but it's got that whole leaving the scooters and bikes laying around problem, right? And if it's yours, essentially, you're renting it, you're paying for it, you're responsible for it for that length of time, then you're more likely to take better care of it, not just leave it any old place, I would think. The other side of this, and I don't know, maybe I'm just an old lady get off my lawn here, but I am more and more terrified by young people riding electric bikes. There's kids in my neighborhood that are like 11 years old riding without helmets, illegally, of course, without helmets, but I've seen a kid change into the oncoming lane of traffic, straight at a truck, and the truck just stopped and waited to see when he was gonna notice that he was gonna run into a truck. And it seems to be everywhere around me and they're down on the beach going really fast. It says eight miles an hour, they're going way over that. So I don't know, electric bikes have a place, but I don't know, I'm real nervous about them. I mean, there's certainly the danger aspect of it, as somebody who, for a while, especially at the beginning days of the pandemic, I was like, do I get a Peloton or something like that? I like bikes, but maybe I put something in my garage because I've got some extra space. And the truth is, I prefer to be out and about and it would be a little bit of a stretch to say that I could do most of my grocery shopping on an e-bike, where I live, but I could get a lot more done than I could just on foot. I would save time and perhaps even be a little bit safer on certain streets, being on a bike rather than on foot. So for something like this, if it turns into like an exercise, but also, exercise for me, but also this is just a point A to point B thing, then yeah, I think having it, like you said, Allison, feel like your own bike, not something that you're just gonna leave over on the side of the road to kind of just take up space and sort of turn into this wasteful thing that seems very fad-ish and not actually very helpful. This is the best idea. And I'd love to know if anybody who's using either motto or dance or Swap Fiat or the Ligo, and I'm sure I'm saying both of those wrong. If you have thoughts, we'd love to hear them. I also think it's interesting, they did it in Paris where they've just shut down the city center, right, from cars. Well, they've shut it down from cars going from one side of the city to the other. It's not as dramatic as it sounds, but yes. But it's an interesting place to run as a test. It will make it more bike and pedestrian friendly for sure. Yeah, yeah. Mexican soccer teams have added facial recognition to stadiums, and you might say, okay, is this good or bad? How does this help anybody? Here's Dan Campos from NTX with more. Hello, DTNS crew. Here in Mexico, the president of Liga MX, Miquela Riola, and the president of the Federación Mexicana de Fútbol, John de Luisa, announced the creation of a security and intelligence department as well as the implementation of the FAN ID system which uses facial recognition. These measures are aimed to improve the security within the stadiums during the games, facilitate access to events using facial recognition instead of tickets, and eliminate ticket resale by scalpers. The first game using the FAN ID system took place last Sunday with the Santos versus Cholos de Tijuana match, and teams like the Diablos Rojos del Toluca have established alliances with the firm Security Tech for the implementation of security controls and visual recognition systems. These measures are taken after the riot that took place in the Atlas versus Gallos Blancos game, where 26 people were badly injured. If you want to get all the details, go and listen, or better yet, watch today's NTX, Noticias de Tecnología Express. Back to you, amigos. Thank you, Dan. Good to have Dan along. I love these bits that he's been doing for us, and that one was especially interesting. We were trying to figure out like who's behind all of this, so I'm glad he was able to find that. I get stuck, Dan. Hey, folks, what do you want to hear us talk about on the show? One way to let us know is our subreddit. You can submit stories and vote on them. Head on over there. Check it out. You can find it at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. When Steve Jobs came back to run Apple in the late 1990s, one of his first major acts was removing the 300 or so different build-to-order options that Apple had at the time. He simplified everything so that you could figure out what to buy easy. But as Apple has been rolling out its M1 and then M1 Max, and now M1 Ultra-based Max, is the company going back to a confusing and complicated array of options that make it hard, if not impossible, to figure out which configuration you need? Allison has been charting this for you, and Allison, you are like the master of charts. It's always good to see your stuff there. What have you found? Well, I've been trying to identify through diagrams, basically, I started doing it to try to understand the things myself. When they came out with the M1 Max and M1 Pro MacBook Pros, in addition to the regular M1 MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac Mini, I started to get really tangled on which ones could do what? I mean, there's a lot of subtleties to what you can order based on which model, which chip you start with. And so I started diagramming that, and that was madness, that particular chart was madness. And then this most recent week when they came out with the Max Studio with the M1 Ultra, and that's when I started realizing, if you look at my diagram, the M1 Pro, you can get the 14-inch MacBook Pro or the 16-inch MacBook Pro, but you can't get an M1 Ultra in the 14-inch, but the Ultra can only be in the studio, and it gets really, really confusing. And then, of course, there's three iPad models now that are also M1. So we've got two laptops, two desktops, and three iPads that are all M1, and it's just getting really hard to look at. And so I went back and I watched Steve Jobs' speech where he talked about when he came back in 1997 and he looked at all the different options and he said, I can't even describe to my friends and family what they should get. So if I can't figure it out, I think we've got a problem. So I took a look at what models existed at the time that he took over and how many he killed off, and oh, I'm gonna have to count again, five, six, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 different models, just not configurations within models, completely separate models existed. And the only two of those were allowed to gracefully retire. The Macadosh performer, 6360, and one of the power books, not power books, what were they called back then? Yeah, power books. And so I look at what they've gone to today and I think they've made it really hard. If you start with how much money you have and then start with a chip and keep trying to go down these lines of different things you can do for how much money maybe you could start to put together what you can afford to buy, but it's not even clear why you need to buy it. I don't know why I bought a Temcor M1 Max with a 32-core GPU. Maybe I could have lived with a 24-core GPU, I don't know, but I was really in a panic and it was available and I clicked it. So I don't know how to tell people which one to buy but I can tell them which ones they can buy. Does that make any sense? Well, I think part of the, if you notice that early slide that you had from the, when Steve Jobs returned, that was all model-based and there are still fewer models, right? There's the MacBook Air, the MacBook Pro, the Mini, the Studio, the iMac and the Mac Pro, right? And the iPad, these are all M1s, they're all M1s. They had count because there was no tab. I mean, that's not an apples to apples comparison. True, I left the Newton off the other one which did exist when he came back. Yeah, so, but it's a simpler range of products, no? Or do you think it's a good point? I mean, I think Allison has a really good point where you say, okay, M1, great chip. I was one of the first people that I know that had the M1 MacBook Air. It's still my primary computer when I'm not actually here in my studio. Every day, love it, I have no real issues. M1 Max is okay, fine, but then when you get to the M2 nomenclature, M2 being more like the M1 or M1 Max. We don't have an M2 yet though, there is no M, but when they do. But going forward, it's more comparable to what we know as the M1 Ultra, which is where I'm like, okay, I mean, you can forgive people for getting a little confused. Well, originally I'd heard that the M2 would actually be the lower end processor, so an M1 Ultra would be better than an M2. And that is, that doesn't make any sense to me. The company says that's the way it is, fine, but it doesn't make any sense. I was talking to a guy the other day who didn't know about all the different models and he said, yeah, I need to do a new laptop. And I said, okay, well, what do you do? And he goes, word processing. I said, okay, you can have a MacBook Air, it's gonna be amazing, it's gonna have a 22 hour battery life, it's gonna be this really wicked fast machine, you're gonna love it. And he says, I need a 16 inch screen. I said, okay, well, you just went to the highest end model you can buy, almost the highest end. And that's complicated, like how do I explain to him that he's buying an M1 Max when he really only needs an M1, but he wants the 16 inch screen. And I've studied the diagram enough that I can actually explain this to people, but for Muggles, this is real weird. Tommy, you said just go ask the genius. Is it any different than when there were multiple Intel chips? Is it just that we notice because we're all caught up in the excitement of these new M1s, which are admittedly amazing chips? Yeah, I think that's a big part of it, yeah. Because there was an i3 and i5 and i7 with different gigahertz and all of that. Oh, but see, oh no, you're perfect. You're walking right into why that works, because the answer is the middle one. There isn't a middle one anymore. There's 14 different varieties depend, and which one you can get depends on which laptop you buy. You used to be able to get all the configurations and all of the, whether it was a 13 inch MacBook Pro or 16 inch MacBook Pro, you got the same options, pretty much, within the processor line, at least. Pretty much. Pretty much. I don't think we were paying as close attention. I was like, I think we were like, man, it's an i3, it's fine. These are all M chips, that's the same, but there were differences between those chips. We just didn't think they were that important, maybe because the chip. They were important when you were checking out and you were like, oh, so if I go i7, that is that much more money than what I thought I was going to pay for this laptop, because I want nicer things. I think Apple introducing Apple Silicon, which is the entire M1 line and whatever it becomes in the future, that was exciting. It's like, wow, look at this, fun, great specs. Look at that. Yeah, the right answer to everybody is, whatever you get, it's going to be amazing compared to what you have today. No matter what you have, it's going to be amazing, so just be really happy with your choice and just celebrate that. That's the good news. And I think Apple looks at it as like, oh, you don't need to know. Just ask the person at the Apple store. The Apple genius will tell you, they'll ask you what you need and then they'll tell you which one to get. I kind of think that's Apple's perspective. And I have seen the Apple people not tell you you need the most expensive thing either. It's not like in the old days of Best Buy where they would, or CompUSA, where they would drag you down to the top of the line. They'll just tell you what you actually need, I think. But I don't know, it's been fun to follow along. Yeah, it's been fun to see these charts that you made too. The only thing I'd add is that if you go to Dell and try to make the same chart, it's going to be even more complex. We're just looking at Apple's to Apple's comparisons. Again, I had to say it again, I'm sorry, it just didn't get the laugh the first time. The joke is so good, you have to make it twice. It just works. That's how I know it's good. Yeah, just fits. Well, I'd like to present a sentence to you all that you just may not hear every day and that is Kawasaki has created a robotic goat that's rideable by humans. That's not a sentence I expected you to hear. So the RoboGoat's name is Bex. This is a real thing, by the way, named after the Ibex, which is a type of wild goat. Its horns can light up, but more importantly, its legs can be lowered and then transform into wheeled feet. So you can ride it like an Ibex, but also like a RoboGoat because what RoboGoat wouldn't have wheels. Some background here, if you're like, what? Kawasaki, don't they make motorcycles? Kawasaki started working on a robust humanoid platform or RHP called Kaleido back in 2015, been working on it for some time. In an interview translated by IEEE Spectrum, Kawasaki's Masayuki Suebe explained that the company saw an opportunity with both legs and wheels, Suebe added. That's why we started developing Bex, a quadruped walking robot. We believe that the walking technology cultivated in the development of humanoid robots can definitely be applied to quadruped walking robots. Now Bex, the walking RoboGoat, can carry up to 220 pounds, that's about 100 kilograms, and includes cameras that can help with things like industrial plant inspections. So you already get the idea of where this might go. You're probably not gonna see a Bex walking down a sidewalk anytime soon. They also, for anybody who's interested enough to watch some of the demo videos, it's cool, but they do not move quickly. You will not rob a bank and get away on the streets. But there's one more really important point about Bex, is it's got light-up horns, unnecessarily adorned with light-up horns, but you said it in the pre-show, maybe that's the first. Yeah, necessary, I say. Night time, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, you know, as a person who wears a headlamp to walk my dog, our last little walk at night, light-up horns sound pretty good if I'm on a robo-goat. All kidding aside, you know, this is a demo, this is a concept demo. It's showing some incredible technology when you think about the ability for a robot to be able to switch between wheels and walking. So that's more terrains that it can maneuver on because it can go faster someday. It can go faster on wheels that it can while walking, but if it hits steps or it hits uneven terrain, it can switch, hopefully, in the future faster to the ability to just kind of maneuver using the four legs. And because it's a quadruped, it's a little more stable, could allow someone to ride it if need be. So yeah, this is not the final form, though I do hope the final form keeps the light-up horns. A friend of mine who has a three-year-old son, I sent this to him, not even for his son, but I was like, this is cool, right? And he was like, oh my gosh, you have no idea what kind of a hero I'm gonna be later when I show my son this. Apparently, his son is like obsessed with all things Boston Dynamics because kids love robots. Well, that's what we really need to see is the robot wars between the Ibex and the dog, right? Yeah, no, the big dog or spot, maybe spot. Well, some of them are gonna be dancing around the outside of the ring while it's going on. You can have a cheer squad and everything, yeah. It's like gladiator. Exactly. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. This one comes from Alan. This is based on our conversation yesterday when we were saying, what is HBO and Discovery hybrid service going to be in the future? Alan says, if past behavior is any indication, I suspect if there's a combined HBO Discovery service, there will be a discount subscription rate for Discover Plus current subscribers. HBO Max had a discount introductory price. Then just a few months after that, they had a win-back discount for customers that had lapsed because of a kerfuffle with Amazon. And then they recently extended it from March to July. I've never paid more than half price for HBO Max with only a short gap in service, so they seem to be quite willing to offer discount pricing. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. They will probably offer Discovery Plus to existing Discovery Plus, the combined at maybe the same rate, like temporarily. For the first year, you get exactly the same rate, but certainly they'll do some kind of discount. I think Alan nailed it there. Well, thanks, Alan. If you have feedback, anything we talk about on the show, love to hear it. Keep that feedback coming. Always helps us become smarter every day, feedback at dailytechnewshow.com. Also, thanks to Alison Sheridan for being our first guest in the new DTNS format. And if you've just listened to DTNS, you might say, what's the new format? Don't worry about it, but we're happy to have you, Alison. What's been going on in your world? Well, I'd like to make a plug for a Ukrainian developer named Oleksiy Sribnya. If you ever have to teach your family, friends, coworkers, how to do stuff on your computer, Mac or PC, and you'd like an app that is dedicated to creating tutorial guides with screenshots and annotations and text explanations with beautiful export to PDF, HTML, all kinds of different formats, his app is called Folga, F-O-L-G-E, at folga.me. It's a little bit of a non-standard interface, but it is a terrific way to create guides that look fantastic, especially I love the rich HTML export from it. So check it out at folga.me. Excellent. Good stuff, Alison. And thanks to our brand new bosses. Hey, we have three of them today. Robert, Carlos, and Dolan, all just started backing us on Patreon. So big thank you to Robert. Big thank you to Carlos. Big thank you to Dolan. Good to have you in the fold. We're getting closer to break even on the month. So thank you, Robert, Carlos, and Dolan for being part of the solution. Just need eight more. It's March Madness, but in the best way possible. March Madness. Yeah! Hey, there's a longer version of the show called Good Day Internet, available at patreon.com.dtns. And if you're watching live, you're gonna get that in a second. But just a reminder for all the folks who love DTNS, we are live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern, 200 UTC, and you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com.slive. Guess what? We're doing it all again tomorrow with Scott Johnson. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. 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