 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners. Thanks to all of you including Dale Mulcahy, Matt Zaglin and Scott Hepburn Coming up on DTNS Patrick Norton checks in on the chip shortage and how much easier it is to find the computer stuff You're looking for plus what Meta's new meta account means for Oculus users and what the heck is a co-tweet? This is the Daily Tech news for Thursday July 7th 2022 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt From the st. Louis, Missouri, I'm Patrick Norton and I'm the show's producer Roger Chang It's the st. Louis, Missouri not any old st. Louis, Missouri The I'm I have to I have to admit I'm struggling with a cat invasion on my desk right now and The cat has managed to shove my keyboard off. There's a lot. There's a lot going on here That has been playing with your keyboard since like our prep meeting an hour ago. Like what is up? Today the cat wandered off and came back for the show That's what I'll tell the cat they need to get in touch with Roger if they would like to be on the show And we can take care of that in the meantime a production so well. Let's start with a few tech things usually The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency the FBI and the Treasury Department issued a joint advisory warning of North Korean backed threat actors deploying the Maui ransomware Against healthcare and public health organizations the FBI said it began responding to and detecting multiple attacks in May 2021 compared to other ransomware Maui requires manual deployment on a compromised network with operating targeting specific files for encryption The advisory also provided indicators of compromise for Maui This was a much more detailed and much more practical announcement than one that the heads of FBI MI5 issued against potential Chinese spying Oh my goodness Blueberg's Mark Gurman says his sources say Apple plans to launch an extreme sports version of the Apple watch extreme and Now I'm thinking about Harold and Kumar this year the watch would reportedly have a 7% larger display Extreme stronger metal case that is not aluminum I'm gonna guess titanium and a larger battery because you're in the middle of nowhere being extreme Maybe able to detect elevation and fevers as well I myself would like to vote for a panic detection alarm. Yeah, if you've got a fever at elevation, you probably need panic detection too Reddit launched an avatar marketplace Thursday that uses NFTs to tie the avatars to a purchasers account This is another example of not just issuing NFTs out on an open blockchain But using NFTs for tracking purposes The Ethereum compatible polygon blockchain will mint the NFTs, but buyers will use reddits built in vault wallet to manage their purchases So basically anyone can use a credit or debit card and buy them and access them in their reddit app You won't have to get a separate wallet or manage cryptocurrency or anything like that Avatar is licensed for use on reddit and you can custom it's customize its look with items from an avatar builder If you're a member of our slash collectible avatars You might get an invite to buy the NFTs and then they're gonna open it up to everybody Within the next few weeks prices range from 10 bucks to a hundred bucks. That's a expensive avatar Inside EV notice that a fact you're on EV charging published by the US executive branch in June 28th started Stated excuse me later this year Tesla will begin production of new supercharger equipment that will enable non Tesla EV drivers in North America to use Tesla superchargers Tesla opened up its superchargers in Europe last year in Europe non Tesla drivers Use the Tesla smartphone app to activate the chargers for their cars Whoever in the US non Tesla drivers would also need an adapter. Ah, that's so it's more complicated Tech run to sources say India's glance Which is partially backed by Google plans to launch its lock screen platform on Android in the US Within a couple months glance delivers casual games and media supported by ads to around 400 million smartphones in Asia Already in those markets though it partners with the handset makers in the US. It'll reportedly be partnering with the carriers All right, let's talk about meta changing the way you access your Oculus. Oh my goodness Kick a code Sorry According to code references from that is Oculus iPhone app discovered by developer Steve Moser It's upcoming high-end mixed reality headset known as Project Ambria will be called the MetaQuest Pro Bloomberg's Mark Gurman sources say it will cost more than a thousand dollars and when it comes along He won't need a Facebook account to log in kind of kind of Literally won't be a Facebook account In 2020 Facebook started requiring users to log into the quest VR headsets with a Facebook account Users with an Oculus account were given until January 1st 2023 to make that switch. That's still the case However, at the time a lot was made of the requirement Which I saw essentially as a back end change Oculus's login system pre-dated Facebook's acquisition of Oculus. So this was a way to get everyone on the same system And Facebook already owned the Oculus data The new system did not require Oculus users to use Facebook. Just use Facebook to log into Oculus Well, it just made them look at Facebook when they logged into Oculus in any case I honestly Yeah, okay I think it was just the idea of having to have a Facebook login Getting back the system separated data from Oculus and Facebook You keep your VR name unlike Facebook that requires real names and you could keep separate friends lists Which I can see being incredibly useful for many users Right. So again, I was I was looking at this like if you just take Facebook, then sure I get it but but honestly this this feels like More of a technical change than a policy change that they already had all your data anyway Uh, it seemed like back then the idea was that Facebook the company Was trying to be the company not just the social network So it would be the name of the login for everything. However, since that time Facebook changed the company name to meta And on Tuesday meta announced that in august I'm sorry on thursday meta announced that in august new meta accounts will be rolled out for logging into quests that are separate From Facebook the social network. So you will no longer log in with a Facebook account. You'll log in with a newly created meta Account. Now those meta accounts will have to have a meta horizon profile Which is the VR social network, but they will not be linked to Facebook's social network in any way If you're a current user that logs in with Facebook, you will need to create a meta profile in august Uh people still using the old oculus logins can keep using those until january 1st 2023 But you're gonna have to create your meta profile by the end of the year And if you want to you will still be able to link to a Facebook or Instagram account But you won't have to and you you didn't have to before but you still won't have to The changes will have new features people will be able to have multiple meta accounts now Facebook account only allowed you to have one account You could have a VR name separate from your real name, but you could only have one account now You'll be able to have multiple accounts And suspensions on Facebook will not affect access on meta That was one downside of the unified account if your Facebook account went away your login to the oculus went away So Sorry, I'm just thinking of all the ways that could happen Okay, so I look at this in my immediate response It's kind of like what is the point of this? Are they trying to distance Facebook from meta did oculus sales tank when they did the Facebook login? Which as you point out technically is not Facebook, but I I'm not sure I understand why is yeah technical thing. Is this a marketing thing? Is this a You know, we're making the way for the new Virtual world. So when the black sun opens, you'll have a fresh experience. I'm just I don't get it I I think it's multiple things as these things often are when they switched from oculus to Facebook back in 2020 as I said before I imagined that that probably started with some database manager saying Hey, we've got this legacy database from oculus from before we owned them It'd be really good if we could just merge all of that into one login thing so we can manage it And then someone else said well, let's just use the Facebook login because there are some other advantages to that We might be able to nudge some more people into using Facebook and we already have their data But it's easier to manage it that way this feels like Facebook saying Not that sales are tanking, but having Facebook On there Distracts from our purpose of renaming the company meta renaming the company meta was to say Facebook is a social network There are other things we do that are not related to Facebook Some of those reasons are because of bad press. Some of those reasons are just they don't want the confusion They don't want people to think that it has something to do with the social network So having a meta account makes sense in that respect of having a google account to log into youtube, right? Let's have a meta account that you use to log into things That is separate from Facebook so that we can do things like give you multiple profiles that we couldn't do under that Facebook system So there might even be some technical reasons in there I feel like all this would be so much simpler if Facebook just hadn't done hadn't done so many nefarious things with data and users and I okay, I Is this one of those moments where we just kind of wait with baited breath to see what exciting things of all that of the Meta evolution, honestly, I don't think anything is that I think people are making a way Based, you know for a few seconds just for you, Tom It's just a log in right like it's not that big of a deal How many times you think back think back? How many times did yahu buy a company and then say oh from now on you'll log into flicker with your yahu account And we'll slowly merge you over this is this this has all been that kind of thing Which there's a company that's like oh we want to handle logins in a little different way I don't know, you know at this point I'm really bitter because dark sky my favorite weather app on ios is finally going away on ios at the end of this year So I am probably not in a rational mood as far as acquisitions changes logins And your experience will be the same just with a different login until we end the company that you love so much That we bought because we don't understand how to make new products This won't make you feel any better, but they'll end the company whether they change the login or not They're not necessarily linked No comment, let's let's move on to something that will make me confused Twitter began does a new feature called co-tweets as my guests from the name it lets two users co-author a tweet Wow, you're thinking editing working together collaborative Well, okay, so some users are going to have access to it for a limited amount of time But really how is it going to work top? Yeah, uh, okay, so It starts logically one author starts the tweet And then if you have access to this feature, you can select the co-tweet icon And pick a co-author from your list of followers So anybody that follows you you can co-author with you press send invite And the co-author receives the invite in their dm where they can accept or decline If if if they accept the tweet posts to both authors timelines if they decline the tweets deleted A few other considerations here only the first author can pin the tweet to their profile That feels like a technical way. They implemented it You cannot pay to promote a co-tweet yet. I bet they'll figure that out if it catches on The first author moderates the replies. So if you start the process, you're in charge of moderation The first author can also delete the tweet at any time without the second author's Approval the second author can only revoke their own participation Which would remove their name from it, but it wouldn't delete it It would just become a regular tweet from the original author But here's the best part patrick and you alluded to this You may have noticed that you write the tweet you invite the person if they accept it posts Co-tweets cannot be edited at any point after the invite is sent Which means if you need to agree on what it says before you send the invite You're going to have to do that in dms or some other way once you send the invite that tweets locked in So basically they're recreating the experience of doing a press release with a major multinational corporation, which is Here's our press release involving you Can you sign off on that? Thanks so much. Um I Get the tweet. I actually am one of the very few people who understands why tutor doesn't want to do an edit button And I'm fine with it. I I would mind if they implemented one There's some great ways to implement them out there But I I'm not one of those people who rages against this However, this is a prime example of where you do need editing where you should send a draft to someone who says Oh, yeah, I like that how it is or hey, I'd like to edit it this way and they send it back You can use the trade system from any fantasy sports engine as a model for that Um, yeah, no, I first of all, I agree with you. I think once you've posted a tweet You should not be able to edit it for any of a number of reasons kill it post a new tweet I'm fine with that. But literally this is This sounds co-tweet. It sounds Collaborative like you might be co-working on a co-released Oh tweet instead of document. Um, I'm also I'm also laughing because I was I was working with an organization that had a very unusual tool in place that they thought of as a collaborative writing tool And it was not google docs. Uh, it was essentially A online storage system that had a document editor But anytime anyone made a change it changed the document and eliminated all of the other work that had been done and resaved the document out and Even that because at least the two people could go back and forth Would have been a step beyond what this is, which is I made a thing You want to release the thing with me? It's a co-thing You basically have to you have to agree on the thing before you go into this process And then this is the process to get it published Um If you're wondering like why would anyone want this I I can definitely see brands wanting to do this Uh lisa from blackpink shows up in paris fashion week with selene and so the selene account and lisa's account They do a co-tweet or or or just music collab sigh and and sugar Combine on that that and they both want to do a co-tweet promoting the song There's there's plenty of those kinds of reasons I could see I I get that I feel that I just feel that they could have made this less awkward or unless you know what We are looking for what maybe what we are looking at as bugs are actually features because The marketing companies that desperately want to do this Find it easier if the talent or the sponsors or the influencers or whatever it is can't actually tweak Their perfect branded message or or that we're going to have meetings to discuss what goes into this finely crafted tweet Before we ever get to the point of putting it in a compose box, right? You know That would seem reasonable especially given some of the things that randomly pop up This isn't this isn't me saying like, you know, like, uh, thank goodness Boris Johnson resigned before Justin Robert Young went on his Vacation and then trying to get Justin to co-tweet it with me, which is how I was going to test this, but I didn't get access to it Darn it Folks if you're feeling social, uh get in touch with the dts audience on twitter We can't co-tweet with you yet, but we'd love to hear from you at dts show is our account Or on instagram dts picks or on tiktok daily tech news show There's nothing there yet, but who knows what there might be so Follow it and find out along with us Along with the decline in consumer pc sales we mentioned earlier this week The price of memory has also come back down to earth trend force estimates The contract price for DRAM fell 10.6 percent on the year last quarter and is still falling contract prices The price amongst people who are contracting to have flash made for their products It's not your retail price, but it affects the retail price NAND flash memory has not declined as much, but Wall Street Journal points out that's due to a contamination issue at two factories earlier this year that reduced production And temporarily lowered supply that effect is now starting to fade So you may see NAND flash memory prices start to fall too Demand for a lot of chips is falling because of the economy the crash and cryptocurrencies reduced the demand for people who build mining rigs That's what we talked about earlier this week inflation and other economic headwinds are reducing consumer demand And we've got new evidence of that ampere analysis this Forecast that the global video games market will decline by 1.2 percent this year after growing 26 percent between 2019 and 21 Uh, so it'll still be up. It just won't be growing. Oh, uh this next year What does that mean for you? Well, the verge is Sean Hollister has an article up called the gpu shortage is over Hollister found he could buy the nvidia rtx 3070 ti founders edition at msrp On best buy although he did have to go into the store to pick it up. He couldn't have it shipped to him He's also been doing the lord's work tracking ebay prices And found that these have now hit msrp as well on average Use gpu average prices are also starting to dilip dip below msrp Hollister found some new cards above msrp here and there and points out that next gen gpus are still coming Though nvidia did push them off until late autumn, but it's all together a better picture than it has been for a while Patrick, what are you finding out there? Oh my goodness. Um, so I kind of I saw this I retreated it big fan of Sean's work Big fan of watching the way he's been tracking these prices. Uh, I also want to Kind of key in something that you said a second ago eBay prices are closing in on msrp or less than msrp. That is I believe for used cards Which is important to remember which generally speaking if if it's used and not vintage antique or collectible The prices would hopefully be lower than what they would cost new um, I was kind of Fascinating because I was like oh he bought a card for msrp and immediately went up to you know My local computer store is essentially microcenter when a microcenter's web page and I was like this is not msrp There was a 30 90 for like $50 under msrp on sale But when I was looking for things like 30 50s 30 60s 30 70s Not at or below msrp significantly higher So I was like well, okay Was that a flash in the pan with with best buy and I went and I was able to you know Dig in and open up my best buy account and you know, there was a really uh, I'll call it an amusing Waiting show sort of waiting process where it was like, you know, we're checking the queue. We're lining you up We're looking at the things and uh, it was a very peculiar process, but eventually it did say okay You can pick it up, you know at your local store on the 13th or store nine miles away on the 10th and Pay your money and it was I was I literally sat there and stared right Because it was an actual new gpu at msrp Which is so weird, uh, you know a few months ago. We mentioned that cards were available and you know Ethereum had kind of changed the whole mining scene all of a sudden hard seem to be showing up You know the prices weren't exactly dropping But you can actually walk into a store or go to an online source and buy a card then the prices started coming down You know, I it's it's I'll say it right now the cheaper the card is the harder it's going to be to find for msrp Yeah, I just I just feel that's the cruel reality You know, I'm still also laughing at a 30 90 for $50 under msrp But you know 30 90s are insanely expensive To begin with so it didn't feel like a discount even though it was technically a discount under msrp But you know, if you're looking for something like this there are Outlets out there where the prices I I guess the to to babble a bit less and gives a focus advice Shop everywhere You know amazon not so much best buy absolutely Based on this because they had 30 70s and they still had 30 70 ti's that they're getting in I guess on a regular shipment There's not a lot of options out there from best buy. There's like the card they have at msrp and lots of cards for more than msrp But you know shop everywhere, uh amazon new egg best buy your local computer store Micro center there's lots of other options out there And and keep a track of the prices and you know again like was it a few months ago? Hey, you can actually buy a card now So if you've been sitting, you know, wondering if you'll ever be able to buy a card again The answer is yes, you know, will you ever be able to buy a card in an msrp? Well, the answer is for at least two cards from one source Yes Right, you know and I was I was texting with Sean about this and he pointed out He's like the shortage is over the prices may not have stabilized So, you know that the the shortage is the thing that is is now gone Like you can find the cards you you won't it won't even be shocking to find the cards Now we get to the point of like we can occasionally even find them in msrp or below possibly dependent I'm still feeling shocked. There's a whole bunch of inventory Uh, I will vape because it's been a couple years and I'm old And apparently it takes me a while to become unshucked at things like that It'll I think it'll still be shocking to find stuff at msrp for a while It's also curious to watch like you mentioned d-ram prices coming down You know the words glott have been starting to show up again in terms of reporting about that or that, you know the semiconductor Uh, you know sales will or semiconductor production will catch up with the demand I am just all in favor of this and looking forward to it and would like it to happen faster Yeah, in case anybody out there with the magic button Get that when we did our predictions episode in december I I made the prediction that ship shortage would end by the end of this year Uh, Stephanie Humphrey very nicely commended my optimism, uh, even though she differed with me on the prediction Now i'm starting to feel like maybe it's a monkey's paw situation where I might end up being right But not for any of the reasons that I wanted to be Like the economy will be in the tank And therefore there won't be a chip shortage anymore because no one will be buying any chips Uh, but let's hope that's not the how it rolls. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I will not feel good about my prediction if that's how it rolled Uh The next web's kate lorence, uh does excellent reporting go check her out on the next web, uh, dot com Her latest post is about sand batteries Uh sand is an excellent way to store heat. It had you know people have known that for a long time It can hold temperatures 500 600 degrees celsius for months in the right conditions and finland's polar night energy is Making 4 by 7 meter steel containers with sand in them to take advantage of that their implementation Is heating the sand by using wind or solar energy when it's available And then the system can preserve that heat and discharge up to 100 kilowatt hours of heat power So it's using it to heat homes offices factories swimming pools in the kan kan pa district of finland That's about 270 kilometers northwest of helsinki And it's good timing too gas prices have been rising in finland natural gas prices have been rising in finland Lately so not that this is going to fill the gap But it's certainly a good time to be experimenting with things that could fill that gap I'm kind of fascinated by it. Um, you know thermal mass and Passive solar heating is something I've been reading about since I was a very very small child Um And to see it in a place where they're like this works and it works now and it's a product and uh, I you know I also just want to shout out that the sort of aesthetic they're using on their prototypes their early versions that they built with this sort of military Uh Yeah, if you're watching the video you stenciling kind of thing, uh, which is on and off all over their website I find utterly desirable. Um But it's interesting. I think that uh, I think it's three megawatt hour running test pilots In tamper connected to a local district heating grid provides heats for a couple of buildings And this is really to me. This is really exciting And also given how hot it has been in the midwest for the last couple of weeks I would like them to start experimenting with pooling the sand as quickly as possible That's what I was wondering and I I don't know enough about it to say maybe somebody out there Is an engineer who can explain that but could you use the heat that you store in the sand? Like in a heat pump sort of situation to create energy Uh with with that difference. I I you know, I wonder what else you can do with this But but to start with just using it for heating certainly in a place like finland where that's important Uh makes sense to me I would love to learn more about how they're actually insulating these things but they're talking about having you know again, uh Tremendously high temperatures and being able to store this thermal energy for months and that is that is interesting and fascinating and deeply I my curiosity is just amped right now. Indeed. All right. Let's check out the mailbag Uh, we have one of those insiders sharing their expertise. Uh, jay miller wrote to me Hey, tom listen into dts and heard elastic search and elastic We were talking about the shanghai police department Having a bunch of their information exfiltrated Because they had not properly configured their elastic implementation Jay wrote up until this year I worked at elastic as a developer advocate and I just recently started at microsoft Love that you and snubs put focus on securing elastic search instances The only thing I would add is somebody familiar to the tech Is that elastic has been working to make building these databases secure by default But that requires user adoption The biggest problem I faced trying to encourage people to update was providing a business case for upgrades Convincing developers the security updates were worth the time to migrate to more up-to-date versions Anyway, doesn't affect me beyond equity, but I hope that when these things happen It will lead to people upgrading their software faster He also followed up with a linkedin post from elastics philip kren Uh indicating that a commented out section of code on the shanghai police website might be at fault No confirmation on that but the you know somebody who knows the space Speculating like this could be the problem Jay said I haven't verified this but it came from my old management team Which would have access based on security audits so It does seem like that situation is not a bug in elastic as maybe you've heard but but a Probably a misconfiguration And it's the age-old problem that jay describes of like Everybody knows they should be secure, but then when it comes time to allocate the time and resources to spend on it People start to go. Ah, maybe we can get by for another month Yeah, this is I Was talking to somebody recently about ransomware They're like it'd be very expensive to you know back all this information off site And i'm like uh-huh and if your business is shut down for multiple weeks that there was just Pause and the confirmation. Well, it's that thing of like. Yeah, but that won't happen to us. Will it it's like maybe not Maybe you'll be lucky right like No one can put all the people not wearing seatbelts. We're thinking yeah makeup the majority of the vehicular deaths in the I never went through a windshield and I never sat a car seat as a baby But I still think car seats are a great idea for babies. So you know your mileage may vary Keeps it from crawling around the car Well patching gordon, thank you as always uh for for being with us remind folks where they can find the other great work You're doing out there I well avxl avxl.com researcher avxl on your favorite pod catching tool It's the weekly podcast about home theater and audio. I host with robert heron Go check it out if you're into audio video and excelling It's not about this spreadsheet. It's about excellence, right? Yes, yeah, you know, it never really occurred to me that people might be thinking that's about Excel the spreadsheet now. I'm horrified Going to go cry softly. I had thought about it As those words were coming out of my mouth right then myself. Oh, no Uh, thanks to our brand new boss craig who just started backing us on patreon Thank you craig for keeping the streak alive. Who's going to pick up the ball from craig? Get great benefits. I just posted a new editor's desk about why we do the show live At the associate producer level So if you are a listener if you're especially if you're a new listener You want to get an ad-free version of the show join craig become a new patron at patreon.com slash dts Where you'll get the extended show good day internet, which is going to continue for patrons right after this We are live Monday through friday 4 p.m. Eastern 200 utc find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live We like to have in patrick so much. We're gonna have him back again tomorrow Where he will reunite with his revision three alum trish harsh burger We're gonna talk about the return of e3 talk to you that This show is part of the frog pants network Get more at frog pants dot com Time and club hopes you have enjoyed this program