 Coming up on DTNS Intel Pixel Ohio for its new U.S. chip fabs a polarizing phone camera lens that can detect skin cancer and black ice and I don't know people maybe Netflix's future is gaming I give up this is the Daily Tech news for Friday January 21st 2022 in Los Angeles I'm Tom Merritt also Los Angeles I'm Lamar Wilson and from somewhere around the location of Los Angeles and the show's producer Roger Chang there is a longer version of the show called Good Day Internet lots of food topics in today's episode you can get that wider version of the show patreon.com slash DTNS big thanks to our top patrons including Brandon Brooks Alexander Nishev and Robert Hillman let's start with a few tech things you should know executive moves continue under new Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal chief information security officer aka CISO Rinky Sethi and head of security Peter Mudge Zotco are out Zotco has already left and Sethi is set to leave in a few weeks New York Times reports they are leaving because of an assessment of how the organization was being led and the impact on top priority work previous Twitter departures included at Dantley Davis former head of design and Michael Montano the former head of engineering. Windows Central obtained a mid 2018 pre-release build of Microsoft's Andromeda OS running on a Lumia 950 a council version of Windows intended for the service duo and the OS emphasizes a journaling inking experience letting users take notes directly on a lock screen with the journal app always running in the background for quick access. Animations and a multitasking UI from Andromeda were purred it over to the version of Android that shipped on the duo. So it wasn't a total abandoned piece of software. Yeah. Forest River Farms in Forest River North Dakota has filed a federal antitrust class action lawsuit earlier this month claiming John Deere made excess profits by preventing farmers and small shops from accessing diagnostic software for repairs. Specifically the suit alleges that John Deere monopolized the repair services market for John Deere agricultural equipment with engine control units or ECUs. The case has been assigned to Judge Martha M. Packhold in the US district court for the district of Northern Illinois. A detailed analysis of the case really well done detailed analysis of the case is available on agweek.com. You may have seen headlines saying Peloton has halted all production of its bikes and treadmills as demand grinds to a halt. You may have also seen headlines about the negative effect these stories have had on Peloton stock. Now ahead of upcoming earnings Peloton CEO John Foley released a statement under the heading rumors that we are halting all production of bikes and treads are false. The statement went on to say that with pandemic driven demand waning it will right size its production. So it did not deny reports of Laos but Foley said that the company is considering all options. OK so bad just not quite as bad is what I'm getting from that. Right. The Bahamas Nigeria Cambodia all have official central bank digital currencies. Of course China is far down the road of its testing of them but the US is still in the investigative stage. Thursday the US Federal Reserve issued a review of the idea of a US issued central bank digital currency. The report seeks public feedback and includes 22 questions which the Fed would like the public to submit answers for. So if you got thoughts on this now's your chance. Let the Fed know what you think. The report also notes that any US CBDC would need to be faster and cheaper to use protect privacy and not replace the existing financial system. In fact the report clarified that any CBDC would be issued through existing financial institutions not direct to consumers. The Fed also noted it would not proceed without a specific authorizing law to do so. All right let's talk a little more about this big Intel announcement Intel's bid to catch up to Samsung and TSMC took its next step on Friday Intel has selected a thousand acre site in New Albany, Ohio just outside of Columbus as its third US chip making location. Operations there are expected to start in 2025 so they're going to start breaking ground soon and finish up in four years. CEO Pat Gelsinger told Time he expects it to become the largest silicon manufacturing location on the planet. Intel is committed to build at least two chip fabs there but they could build as many as eight. But why in Ohio? Time reports that it costs approximately 30% more to build a plant in the United States versus Taiwan, South Korea or Singapore forget China even those non Chinese mainland places are cheaper. That's data according to the Semiconductor Industry Association. Building factories in the US however helps politicians so politicians will help you with maybe some tax breaks and stuff. It also theoretically could ease supply chain problems though keep in mind in practice most chips will be sent overseas anyway. You may make the chip in Ohio but you're going to send it to Taiwan or Singapore or South Korea for assembly for testing for packaging and and not even just one of those places for those. It's true that a chip passes maybe a dozen borders in the course of making a product so that's always true no matter where the original chip is made. To help this make financial sense. The US House is considering the chips act. They're so good with anagrams on the hill. That has passed the US Senate back in June. It would deliver 52 billion in subsidies to chip makers. They're trying to get enough votes for it in the house. Gelsinger has indicated that if the chips act is passed, it might build more assembly packaging and testing sites in the United States bring in more of that supply chain in. You could see that making sense much of the sand that is used to make semiconductors worldwide comes from the US South. Gelsinger told Time quote my objective would be sand to product to services all on American soil. He's a third of the way there already because the sand is here. Intel already has US operations in Oregon and Arizona. So Ohio will be the third location. TSMC is building one in Arizona as well. Samsung is expanding its operations in Texas and Europeans don't feel left out. Intel plans to build $100 billion complex in Europe as well. Intel's cave in S for Johnny said that decision will come in the next three or four months. So Lamar, the I wonder how this goes down because to me, I'm not sure that it makes sense to try to replicate the entire supply chain in every location, right? There are advantages to a global supply chain where chips pass borders 12 times because people are better at it in one part of the world than another. And yes, the pandemic messed it up for a while, but eventually we will have good global shipping lanes open. So what do you think of this? Yeah, when you mentioned Ohio, I immediately thought of, okay, the Midwest manufacturing cars Detroit. And so, you know, there's always been that promise to, we're going to bring back jobs to, you know, the manufacturing jobs to the Midwest. So everybody can, you know, you can go on a factory job, you know, everybody can have a job. And I get that. And I think also you mentioned, politically, it's great to be able to say that to people say, hey, we're working on this for you. But and I also think there's this sentiment that we just need to be doing more of our own stuff here. The article mentioned that in 1990, we manufactured about 37% of our stuff here. Now it's down to 12% of chips, right? Of chips. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Of the chip. So, you know, it has gone down. But here's, I think I'm with you on part of this is that if they're going to be passing through all these words, which I didn't really think about, I didn't think that we can make all the stuff here and he still has to go somewhere else to do testing because it's cheaper to do, or for them to quality control. Is it worth it? At what point do we just say, no, we're doing it all here? Can we can we absorb that cost? It's 30% right now. Maybe it's 40. If you bring it here, maybe it's 50, but you know, can't can we absorb that? And if they're not willing to subsidize it? Are we okay as consumers with the prices going up? Yeah, this is a complex topic. And I don't I don't want to oversimplify it because I think it's good that Intel on its own without a subsidy, they're getting some property tax breaks from Ohio. So there's some subsidization. But without the Chips Act, Intel finds it worthwhile to build a plant in Ohio. And that is a reflection that it is not as cheap to go elsewhere as it used to be. And there are other advantages, including the sand to having things in Ohio and the global supply chain of diversification is now important. And I think that's that's worthwhile. I think the companies risk overreacting the sort of like one person may have had a bomb in their shoe once and now everybody has to take their shoes off kind of reaction. Right? But I don't think building these plants is bad. What I think people have to wrap their heads around is, I don't know that the subsidization and encouraging everything to try to be built in the US will get you the result you want. It may still raise prices. And it may not lead to efficiency. The the the efficiencies are having the best and most efficient operations, no matter where they are in the world, make the stuff. And this is a lot more complex than just like, Oh, if you build the chip here, now everything's here. It's it's a lot more complex than that. And I'm not sure you would ever get every part of the production chain in one country. Yeah, I think I agree with that. So I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what the, you know, end goal here, the solution is other than to just sound like, Hey, we're bringing jobs back. And you know, this, this is a good thing for everybody. It makes politicians happy, it makes people happy in the Midwest. But other than that, I'm, yeah, I'm not, I will love things to be here. But I guess where my heads at right now is I'm all for supply chain diversification, build some plants in Ohio, build some plants in Europe. Let's let's have them in more places. They were a little over localized, being in East Asia and Southeast Asia. But let's not try to like, build little miniature self contained supply chains. In every reason, I'm not sure that's if that might be overdue, that might might not get you the efficiency you're looking for. I think last year, meta lens, you spell that with a Z, by the way, meta lens, developed a smartphone camera lens that uses nanostructure to bend light rays, that allows it to use a single lens to get the same functionality as a stack of lenses, because the nanostructure can do the reflections and the focusing. And that means phone cameras that use meta lens would take up less space, no bump on your phone. First product with a meta lens lens is coming in Q2. But they're already on to their new products as well. Meta lens announced another lens with nanostructure that can maintain something called polarization information in light polarization of a light wave changes, not just based on where it came from, but the type of surface it bounced off of light that bounces off smooth surfaces oscillates differently than light that bounces off a rough surface and that changes the polarization. If you've ever worn sunglasses, they probably had some kind of polarization that reduced glare and reflections. Polarization image sensors are new, they're used for detecting skin cancer already in labs, but you got to go into a lab to do it. Sony came out with a polarization image sensor a few years ago, a little bit inefficient, a little bit not exactly cost effective and meta lens believes its version is more efficient. And it can work in a smartphone, which expands the availability of it. That means more data would be captured by these lenses if they're in smartphones. And that means you'd have more data to train algorithms to detect things in the polarization that would be useful. An algorithm could be trained to use polarization information to verify that a facial recognition system is actually viewing a human face and not a flat picture of a human face. Other possibilities include more widespread skin cancer detection. So you could do some screening on your own phone instead of having to go into a lab, assessing error quality, detecting black ice on the road. In fact, it may even help autonomous cars see through fog and rain better. Meta lens said devices with this polarization preserving lens could be available by 2023. Yeah, I find it's pretty fascinating. I don't, this is not the type of tech or science I'm very knowledgeable of. But you know, we mentioned the the availability of being able to screen yourself for skin, you know, skin cancer or some other type of things that that's that's exciting. You know, apples already or in Google too, are already working on, you know, different things connecting your health to your to your phone and different things you can already do. So that I find to me personally, as I get older, being able to at least look at that now, it's not going to be like 100% diagnostic, you need to go to the doctor to verify. Yeah, it's not going to replace the doctor. Yeah, but it could solve some it could solve a lot of problems. I did not even think of the whole like, Tesla or other alternative autonomous cars have been able to see better with using using that different lens. So sounds fascinating. I want to learn more about it because I don't know a lot. Yeah, I'm very curious that that first gen, what phone it's going to end up. I was wondering if it might be in the Samsung Galaxy, but I doubt it because that's going to come out before Q two. And so yeah, I'm curious where it'll pop up first and whether they'll be able to get the polarization one in there. I don't want it to be over promised, right? It's not like, Oh, polarization allows us to do everything, but it certainly will. I don't know that we know all the things that it could allow us to do until we get it into a phone. Is this a polarizing topic? It could be. It could absolutely mean by definition has to be. Yeah. By the way, Tom told me to say that guys. He never told me now or polarized. Exactly. If Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard ends up closing probably sometime in 2023, one of the things Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer wants to do is dig into the archives and bring back some classic games. Spencer told the Washington Post. I was looking at the IP list. I mean, let's go. King's Quest, Guitar Hero, Spencer said. We're hoping that we'll be able to work with them and when the deal closes to make sure we have resources to work on franchises that I love for my childhood and that the teams really want to get. Activision Blizzard also has Spyro the Dragon, Tony Hawk and PlayStation's original mascot, Crash Bandicoot. We know several of you are crying. How about something original tune? We hear you. But humorous, is there a forgotten IP that you would like to see Spencer throw resources at? Pitfall? Kaboom? Fishing Derby? I love the idea of a reboot of Fishing Derby. I think that was one of the original five, I think, that Activision put out when they were still working out in the garage. Yeah. Pitfall is what my heart is. I loved Pitfall. Pitfall, Harry, Pitfall 2. Pitfall, yeah. It was a hero of mine. But I know they tried to reboot it, like what, 98? I didn't play that one, but you're right. They did. And it was not good. Yeah, it was not good. They did a 3D one, but that was in the 80s. The 3D one was at yeah. Yeah, they did a 3D one in the 80s, too. So a respectful reboot of Pitfall could be great, although part of me is like, no, just leave it alone. That one, that one, maybe you have to leave it alone. I don't know. Do you have any of those Activision Blizzard classics? So one I thought of, I was kind of thinking of, there's one called Ultimate Air Combat. I remember playing. It was, I think, was it Atari? No, it was Nintendo. It was Nintendo, I think the original one. It was just a flight game, stupid, but I remember that one. Also, Double Dragon, I believe they owned IP. Yeah, that's their IP. I would love, I mean, that's as a fighting, I would love to see that rebooted. They did Streets of Rage or Fist of Fury, something recently, not Activision necessarily, but yeah, I'd like to see that one. Another one I looked up was Ghostbusters. They seem to own the IP to that game, although it's from the movie, but we haven't had a Ghostbusters game in a while. And there's a new Ghostbusters movie, although. Yeah, I wonder what happened to the game coming out with the movie. Yeah. Oh, Hexen. Hexen is another one that I see people kicking around, although Microsoft kind of already owns some of Hexen's, like the distribution rights, so once they get Activision Blizzard, they would get all of Hexen, which would make it easier. So, yeah, I don't know. Folks, let us know. What do you think? Send us your Activision reboot that you would like to see if you would like one. FeedbackandDailyTechNewShow.com Oh, I thought you were going to say something. Oh, I was. Sorry. I'm a big lover of Guitar Hero. Before Rock Band, that was mine, so I know those games died like Toys to Life did a few years later, but I really want Guitar Hero back in some form. I think Guitar Hero seems perfect for VR, doesn't it? I didn't. Ooh, yes, because they already have a music game in there that I just played last week. I forgot what it was called. Beat Saber. So, yeah, Beat Saber is one of those. So, yeah, that'd be awesome. Okay. Well, folks, like I said, send us that email. Also, big announcement. All next week, you're getting more in your feed if you're not already subscribing at one of the top levels on our Patreon. We are doing what Justin Robbie Young calls Free HBO Week. Back in the day, sometimes if you didn't subscribe to HBO, they'd just give it to you for free for a week to see if they could lure you in. We are making all our exclusive Patreon content available to everyone. So, if you're on the free public feed, you're going to get it. Just keep an eye on our feeds. If you're at a lower tier on Patreon, you'll get the higher tier episodes. If you like what you hear, you can learn more at patreon.com slash DTNS. As we briefly mentioned yesterday, Netflix reported it added 8.28 million net subscribers in Q4 for a total of 221.8 million worldwide. That was not exactly good news. They'd missed its own forecast of 8.5 million and analyst expectations of 8.3 million. It's also about half the number of people it added during the same quarter in 2020. In a letter to shareholders, Netflix said streaming competition, quote, may be affecting our marginal growth sub. You think? While that's certainly true to some extent, Netflix is also what some people are calling a pandemic trade company. That's a company that benefited particularly from people staying home more and saw accelerated growth as a result. We mentioned Peloton earlier in the show. Peloton's another example of what people sometimes call a pandemic trade company. But Netflix in particular has been up until recently cruising along pretty well. They were doing well before the pandemic and that just boosted them. So what do you do now if Netflix's growth is slowing and its own forecast for Q1 of this year, isn't that great either? Well, two months ago, Netflix launched mobile games to get all of its members into titles like Stranger Things Three the Game and Bowling Ballers. We just had the most recent additions to this. There was a card game and a puzzle game. In the wake of a bad earnings quarter, Netflix says it wants to expand its portfolio of games across both casual and core gaming genres. So all these casual games we've been seeing, that's not where they want to stay. In fact, some recent job listings point to live services games. Those are games that regularly get updated with new content. Think Fortnite, Apex Legends, Overwatch. They also have job listings that indicate they want to develop PC and console games. In fact, Netflix's COO Greg Peters said the company was generally seeing good growth with the 10 mobile games it published and wants to explore Netflix's in-house IP more and Netflix might look outside of itself too. Peters added, quote, we are open to licensing large game IP that people will recognize. I think you will see some of that happen over the year to come. Squid Game Game. Okay, Squid Game Game is on. Obviously got to happen. A Lucifer game, maybe. I have thought that, and I have been wrong, that Netflix was just going to be like using games to extend their IP and that was it. Then they started doing card games and stuff and I'm like, okay well maybe they're just going to very slowly get into mobile and add games the way they did with streaming and then a few years later it'll build up to be big enough and then they'll maybe split it off on its own if it's successful but this kind of indicates that they want to be a little more accelerated than that. That they're out there, I mean I don't know what they could license what with Microsoft and Sony kind of dividing up the developer world but what Indies are left, I guess EA, they could go to EA and say like okay let's license an EA game into Netflix and they are going to try to be one of those cloud-based gaming competitors. It definitely seems like that's what they want to do. I think so, yeah the PC and console games are interesting, it's a crowded market for that. One thing, I want to go back to the mobile games I saw on Yahoo Finance this morning when they were just talking about Netflix, they mentioned that the Netflix app is on pretty much you know everybody's phone, you know but that's not where people really watch it, they really watch Netflix on TV and laptop, those are the two biggest ones so there's an opportunity for Netflix here to get their name, get people back into using phones and the mobile market is there, you can combine PC, VR, console, all the games and you won't even come close to the mobile gaming market so we may see here in teas all mobile gaming but it is the biggest market out there and even if they got a tiny share we're talking about billions of dollars and and so that's why a lot of people wanted them to hey buy take two because they own Zynga and you get Zynga games and yeah you're all the met then you have all kind of IP so I think they're going to play around with mobile for a while I don't I don't know what they're going to do with the with the console and PC stuff but I think you're right eventually it's all going to be cloud-based anyway and you can access the game from your phone and then it Chromecasts to your you know like starting to like Stadia to your TV that doesn't matter where it starts from and I don't know. It's a really good point about mobile if I can absolutely see a Netflix meeting where they say we have this huge mobile install base and yet we're not making the best use of it we have this big of install base and this small utilization what else can we do and mobile gaming is an answer to that like let's add mobile games and and get people using us on mobile that will maybe make them use Netflix to watch video more often which increases our utilization and keeps subscribers but it's also a new business we can build as we talked about all this week in relation to Microsoft and Activision the mobile gaming space is the biggest opportunity to generate revenue Apple is the number three and likely to become number four biggest gaming company in the world because of mobile they don't do anything else so they do yeah yeah so there's there's a huge opportunity there for Netflix to get into mobile and I wasn't trying to say they won't but I kind of thought that's all they would do and it looks like they're like I know we're not going to just sit on mobile well yeah we'll do mobile and you're y'all are right but but we're gonna we're gonna get on the console we're gonna license some stuff yeah maybe it's take two stuff in addition to mobile stuff they could license from take two maybe they'll license some other stuff I wouldn't be shocked to see Netflix use Google Stadia's back end which is what Google seems to want to do with it to create a streaming service I was I was going to mention uh I was going to mention that somewhat like that I didn't think that I forgot they do have a back end they're offering to companies for them yeah like the white label that's what they call it the white label yeah so if you if you start it on your phone but you end up with a controller or something then you know doesn't really matter to you know to Netflix because it's going to be in a cloud that's fascinating yeah the last thing the last tab they can add if all of sales is they can make a Netflix talk just like just a tick talk that's in Netflix of shorts of red notice kind of what they have with those previews on the mobile app those little circles like I know that's more snapchat than ticker it's more but but it's it's in that direction though yeah yeah uh yeah that talk coming soon all right uh chris christensen highlights the potential benefit of NFTs on your next outing this is chris christensen from amateur traveler with another tech in travel minute when we talk about NFTs I'm not the biggest fan and some of the things that I see that people are starting to use NFTs for in the travel space are fairly gratuitous the NBA is going to have a series of NFTs commemorating their summer league okay and then there's also a private dining club in new york city where you purchase your membership via an NFT okay I think you're largely doing that just for the PR purpose but one that was a thought a little more intriguing as the national football league is starting to partner with Ticketmaster to mint tickets of select NFL games as NFTs so you went to the game and now you have proof that you are at that game where that amazing play happened that's something I think was worth thinking about in terms of how you can use NFTs to actually add a value to the experience I'm chris christensen from amateur traveler you know that's a good point without paper tickets these days usually that used to be you know when we were young lamar that that's how you'd know you went to it a movie or a concert or or a sporting event was you had that ticket stub and and with mobile ticketing you don't have that ticket stub anymore that's really interesting yeah I I still say it's like my going to CES or E3 passes though so I I I wanted those old people that saved the physical yeah and in the future you'll they'll just give you an NFT of your CES badge I'm fine with that seriously like people like to have that proof and with without paper tickets anymore I could see NFT like just including it right it's like hey as part of your ticket you get an NFT that says you went to the game and you got this online you know ticket stub collection I like that idea and and then you can do things like add in highlights from the game and stuff which is even cooler than than just the ticket stub so yeah that's intriguing all right let's check out the mailbag got an email from Mike who said well I'm sure there will be some costs associated with customers having items they are interested in being shipped to the amazon clothing store that's the one open in glendale that we talked about yesterday I bet it is a lot less than the cost they now have shipping and returning individual items to individual homes almost everything I purchased lately seems to have free returns as a result we frequently order items that we are far from certain that we will actually want to keep shoes are a great example I bet my wife has had me return more than 20 pairs over the last couple of years as an aside we have a coals very close to our house and returning items on items there is an almost completely painless option it would have to be cheaper for them to do that with deliveries they would be making as part of everyday business at a retail store I thought the coals deal was they think amazon cancelled that that's cool is that over now? yeah well I mean it might I don't think they're gonna renew it but like I always thought that was a really good idea go to our department store and and do your returns well with amazon wanting to make their own clothing stores I imagine coals might be like yeah okay we're not gonna partake exactly yeah we got another email from Josh he says first of all those jaw excuse me ooh those jaw operated earphones really need to be bought by jawbone but more importantly for for me having limited movement in my arms for my disability I have never been able to use tapping features on my AirPods Pro and rely on my phone to control playback while possibly not the intended use case this will be amazing for me and likely others with limited movement Josh thank you so much for writing in I I had the thought crossed my mind of like I wonder if there's any accessibility appeal here so it was great to get Josh's email to confirm that at least in his case yes there is definitely an accessibility appeal if you're if you're forgetting what we talked about it was these this technology being developed that would have sensors in the earbuds that would detect your jaw movement so instead of tapping to play or pause you'd just be able to like you know tap your teeth or or you know do something to control playback yeah was that that wise here right was that what is wise here that's right okay yeah okay yeah I like that special thanks to Jim Bailey one of our top lifetime supporters for DTNS Jim Bailey supports us in many different ways not just monetarily thank you Jim for all the years of support really appreciate it and thank you Lamar good to have you man glad to be here glad to be here thank you if you all like like me which you probably don't I'm just kidding I love you man what are you talking about but yeah I'm Lamar I'm at Lamar Wilson everywhere I do short form content basically been known as the CEO of unboxings that that was a playful name that TikTok gave me and I'm keeping it nice nice congratulations on your your promotion thank you I appreciate that we are live Monday through Friday 4 30 p.m. Eastern 21 30 UTC you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live back on Monday with Rich Strafilino see you then this week's episodes of Daily Tech News Show were created by the following people host producer and writer Tom Merritt host producer and writer Sarah Lane executive producer and Booker Roger Chang producer and writer and host Rich Strafilino video producer and twitch producer Joe Koontz associate producer Anthony Lemos Spanish language host writer and producer Dan Campos news host writer and producer Jen Cutter science correspondent Dr. Nikki Ackermans social media producer and moderator Zoe Deterding our mods Beatmaster W. 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