 Coming up on DTNS, deep learning that can save lives from COVID, why you might care about the new chiplet standard. And Epic bought band camp. Why? This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, March 2nd, 2022 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. In Salt Lake City, Utah, I'm Scott Johnson. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. We have a longer version of this show where we talk about things more and kind of let our hairs down. If you'd like to get that expanded show, go sign up for Good Day Internet at patreon.com slash DTNS. Big thanks to our top patrons. Today, they include Pat, DeGrasche, A Daniels, and Irwin Stur. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Apple announced its first event of 2022 and will take place on Tuesday, March 8th at 1 p.m. Eastern Time in the Steve Jobs Theater in its campus in Cupertino, California. It will be a remote event, though. Nobody's going to actually be at the theater. Apple is expected to announce a next-gen iPhone SE, a new iPad Air, and a Mac with an Apple Silicon chip, which could include the Mac Mini, the 13-inch MacBook Pro, or both. I kind of feel like when they do it in front of people again, that signals the new era we've moved past this. So keeping an eye on that. Maybe they never will. Meta president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, said Instagram will let users in Ukraine and Russia switch to encrypted messaging, something already available in WhatsApp and Messenger. We briefly mentioned this on yesterday's show. Clegg also said it will demote posts with links to Russian state media on Facebook and Instagram. Ford announced restructuring that will create separate units for its EVs and internal combustion engine, or ICE vehicles. Ford Blue will oversee existing and future ICE vehicles, while Ford Model E will focus on EVs and connected services. Ford also revised its EV guidance, now expecting EVs to make up 50% of global sales by 2030. Google began removing users' submitted location in Google Maps within the borders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, and will pause all new edits there. Company said this was done out of an abundance of caution. Google also blocked apps connected with Russian media outlets RT and Sputnik from the Google Play Store. I mentioned that yesterday too. And Apple has done the same. Apple, as we mentioned yesterday, also confirmed it stopped all product sales from its online store in Russia. Netflix has made an offer to acquire Next Games, a finished game developer that has made, among other things, Stranger Things, Puzzle Tales. You might be familiar with that if you are a Netflix gamer. This is not one of the games offered through Netflix Gaming Service, however. Netflix VP of Games, Mike Verdu, said that the company wants to build a library of great games for our members to enjoy. If the shareholders accept the board's recommendation to accept Netflix's offer, Next Games would join Night School Studio, which Netflix acquired last September. All right. We're promised we're going to talk about other things because I know some people start to get a little weary about hearing news from ongoing situations like this. But one difference between Ukraine and other wars is that it involves a lot of white European people. There's no getting around that. There's no dancing around that. But there are other differences as well. One of which is that unlike previous wars in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Mali, Sudan, even Syria, Ukraine has a robust tech scene. I mean, actually, Syria had a pretty good one too, but not as developed as Ukraine's. Last year, for example, Ukraine saw its first deck of corns. Those are startups valued at more than $10 billion. The BBC has a story on how the tech startups in Ukraine are faring after a week of war. Tech Consultancy Truman had planned a technology awards ceremony to happen in Ukraine in April. All the nominees have now turned their attention to the war instead of the awards. Truman says internet connectivity has remained stable as plucky admins are setting up connections in shelters and bunkers. So they're helping with that. Olviv IT cluster is a tech community supporting around 200 companies in that western Ukrainian city. Its office is now stockpile medicine, bedding and food. And members are driving supplies around the country where they are needed, sometimes at considerable risk. It's also helping companies who fled bombing in the east who weren't part of the IT cluster to keep their businesses running in the new temporary locations in the west. Keeping companies bringing in their income is incredibly important right now. It really does give tech company a whole new meaning in this situation, don't you think? Oh, yeah. This is interesting because one of the things that I'm involved in with a lot of what I cover obviously is gaming news. We do a lot of that on Wednesdays. And as much as the tech scene is big, the gaming scene is even bigger, or at least it's growing to the point that some big games that a lot of hardcore gamers are looking forward to are coming out of Ukraine. In particular, everybody's really looking forward to Stalker II, Heart of Chernobyl, which was this gigantic announced sequel to a very, very popular game made by the company CSC Game World. And CSC have put out a bunch of statements talking about what their plans are, how they're dealing with this. The game is delayed. It was already delayed for other reasons, but chances are it's going to be delayed even more. I think it's easy sometimes for us to think of far-flung countries having conflicts of whatever kind that they're just, oh, well, they're already a mess or there's no other, the infrastructure is just not quite like our awesome setup or whatever. But the digger you deep, you find there, the more you deep, find out that these guys have a lot of stuff going on and they have really cool stuff going on that will directly affect you if you are a tech fan or a gamer or whatever. It turns out Ukraine has a big role to play here and this is doing them zero favors by having this conflict. Yeah, no kidding. Scott, are there certain games that, I don't know, feel like they're, you know, they are, the people behind the games are scrambling more so? Yeah, in the case of CSC or GSC, which I just mentioned, they have, you know, this delay of Stocker 2 is a big one. This is one that's coming out day in date on Microsoft's Game Pass. It is one that was announced at the Microsoft events and has just a ton of hype behind it. They're pretty much at a standstill at this point. And they can, you know, in a lot of cases, some of these games, a lot of the stuff they do for these games is being formed out to third parties and contractors. And so not all of it is being done right there in the Ukraine. But in their case, the Ukraine offices for that company, they're pretty much in charge of Stocker 2. And this is a big, big deal. But there's lots of smaller ones too. They're, you know, Riot Games has a eSports division in Ukraine. There's the Polish based 11 bit games. They piped up and said, look, we're going to do all we can for our friends over there because we work with these people. Like there's just too much crossover now. And the way the industry works these days, it's no longer little pockets of developers making separate things across the world. They're often in cahoots with each other, even if it just means we're using art from here and programming and coding from here and design from here, they're in it to win it. And I, you know, I don't think anybody really thinks of it that way. And obviously the story is about the larger tech scene, but that's definitely a part of it. Before the conflict that we're all in right now, were these games highly regarded? Oh yeah. That's the other thing is they built a reputation for making great stuff. And in all honesty, there are some Russian developers in the same boat who people really like and respect their work. This disrupts all of that and makes that region less explosive. There's less explosive growth happening as a result of this conflict. And there was a real, it was looking like a real chance for that part of the world to become a leader in that part of Europe and Asia. And it's still possible and probably in the long run will happen. But right now this kind of puts a pause on it. And it's a bummer because they have a real unique vision and voice. Those stalker games are really cool. And I don't know, for me anyway, this is one of the, the sadder parts of, of that, you know, that tech sector seeing this, you know, this depression from this, it's a real bug. A lot of examples in this BBC article, Reface is now doing push notifications of verified news. You wouldn't expect a face swapping app to be doing that. Security company called Ajax Systems is developing an app to pass along air raid warnings to people who might be out of earshot. Just answer, which is based here in the United States, is letting its Ukrainian employees leave to join the army, will continue to pay them half their salary while they're gone and guarantee full employment when they return. And employees from Wix in Lithuania drove to the Poland-Ukrainian border to help Ukrainian Wix employees and families get across. And Joel Frick in our chat room points out there are many outsourced knocks in Ukraine, knock meaning network operation centers. So, yeah, this is, it really does highlight that we are not as regional as we were in the 19th century. We are a global civilization in many respects and these sorts of things affect folks well beyond borders. That's weird how I think this is, I hate that it's this doing it, but it's almost like you had to test it to see what the, just to be reminded how tight it all is now. There's no avoiding it. Like you can't do this in the dark. You can't do this in the quiet night. You can try to do it, but everybody's got cameras. We all have the internet. The way that commerce works today, like it's just a small world. So I don't know, in some ways I really like how the reaction has been and I really hope it comes to a good end as a result. Well, speaking of a small world, depends on who you are at chiplets. If you're not familiar with the concept of a chiplet, it is a component of a chip like cores, memory and IO made so you can mix and match them to create a new chip. They're like Lego building blocks, but for making chips, which reduce costs and speeds up production. But there hasn't been a standard connection in the past. So if you wanted to use chiplets, you had to decide which chiplets you wanted to use ahead of time and then make sure that they work with each other to make sure that they're compatible. Still an improvement over on dye, but not as easy as just buying parts off the shelf. Well, a group of chip makers, including Intel, AMD, ARM, TSMC and Samsung announced the formation of the Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express or U C I E consortium to develop and promote open source design for dotted eye interconnects between chiplets. U C I E will rely on existing protocols like PC I E and Intel's compute express link or CXL and also expand to more protocols in the future. It can also support connections off the chip to things like pooled memory, which makes data rack computer configurations systems more practical. U C I E also aims to be just as ubiquitous and universal as other connectivity standards like USB, for example, PC I E, as we mentioned before, N M N V M E. And the standard will let chip makers by chiplets off the shelf and know that they will work with each other, which further expands the cost and speed of advantage of using chiplets. All three of the leading foundries will adopt this technology along with the x 86 and arm ecosystems, no word from R I S C V and Nvidia. However, we might get something from them at some point, but we haven't yet. This is most beneficial for you, dear reader, folks building data centers, but it would be a big benefit. And consumers could see the benefits in the services that they use, not relying on data centers altogether. Yeah, risk is risk is not a part of this because they're mad because they did it first, but they only did it within the risk ecosystem then. And the big advantage here with chiplets is they're like, this works, whatever chip you can build an arm chip, you can build an Intel chip, you can build an AMD chip. We're going to make a standard so that you can just buy a chiplet off the shelf when you're putting that chip together and make it and not have to be like, wait, is this part of the proprietary system, the chiplets that I have bought into? So it's it's a big deal. And it makes this like Sarah said, it makes that advantage of speed and cost efficiency potentially much, much greater. I agree. Also, doesn't it it seems to me like it might have an impact on things like, let's say the kinds of chips refrigerators use as an example, I can't think of another one right now, but the kinds of chips you put into a smart fridge, they don't need everything that's in your usual processor. And by usual, I mean like a desktop processor or even an arm based, you know, mobile processor. There's like extra stuff in there that you don't necessarily need as overhead when it comes to what you're trying to do with your fridge. So the chip idea, what are you trying to do with your fridge? Well, that's a good point. You're not trying to play video games on the fridge. Exactly. There's no GPU needed. You don't need much more than to run a simple UI and to do simple temperature regulation, maybe Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, something to you, whatever it may be. But the point is, because these are components, essentially, you only use the the chiplets you need, right? So it seems like that would be cheaper in the long run and stuff. I'd love to hear what Roger has to say because he's your chip guy. The whole idea behind the chiplet is moving off of trying to etch everything onto a single piece of silicon. Now the advantage of putting everything on the single piece of silicon is that you would have greater power efficiency and greater speed between the different components in the chip. The downside is that you get lower yields. In other words, you can have more bad batches. So when you have a big wafer, say like you're only 40% or bad, you're ditching a big chunk of cost right over the side. So if the chiplet is like, well, why don't we break this down? And so we etched only the stuff we're really sure that we're going to get good yields on, and then we'll stack stuff on top. So we'll go 3D. We'll put these chiplets on top. Now the problem with that is, chiplets aren't as efficient when it comes to connecting and interfacing with different components. This is why you have the interconnect situation right here. Currently a bunch of companies, AMD and Intel, have their own proprietary system. And that's what you're alluding to, Scott. This just basically makes it more cost-efficient. So instead of everyone kind of working only in their secretive little corner, everyone shares. And so you can basically spread or amortize the cost across a group of companies instead of say like Intel absorbing all of it by itself. Yeah. So one company can make the IO chiplet that everybody uses. And then it doesn't have to be like, oh, wait, I'm in the AMD universe. I've got to get the AMD IO chiplet. I think this is a big deal. It's mostly going to be beneficial for admins building data centers and stuff, especially with the pool memory and all of that. But that will trickle down. It might lower chip costs for consumers, but mostly you'll see services being able to do things they wouldn't because it costs less to build the data centers because the chips cost less. Interesting. Well, let's move on to an exciting thing that happened in a less fun topic. That's COVID-19. The most reliable way to detect COVID-19 is a PCR test. That's now the current kind of standard. And you see a lot of these people doing them at home and offices and that sort of thing. You swab a nose and see if the coronavirus is present. You don't need a lab, or you do need a lab to do it rather. And you need to scale that up to test for a lot of people. It's kind of a big deal. Not every part of the world has that. And it's even not that efficient when you do countries with the buildup of PCR labs are also often the countries that haven't received enough vaccinations. So countries without the Oh, without, sorry, to protect that populace. So that makes sense too. They don't have the vaccinations they need. And even in countries with good lab infrastructure, the PCR test takes two hours minimum turnaround time, more in practice because of transportation time and backlog. Sometimes you need a faster diagnosis no matter where in the world you are. A team of scientists from the University of West Scotland and Durham University wrote in the conversation about a method they developed using CT scanners and x-ray machines to detect COVID fast. The bottleneck on imaging tests for COVID have been the need for a radiologist to examine and go over those chest images and then make determinations. So it already worked. That's worked the whole time, but it used to be a lot more work to get to the results. Scientists developed and trained a deep convolutional network algorithm on a database of 3000 x-ray images. Some of the images were from patients with COVID. Some had viral pneumonia and some were healthy. They developed one algorithm that could correctly identify the disease 98.0% of the time. That is a great percentage. Then they developed a PC app that could run the algorithm on a typical laptop or PC with no additional equipment needed. Images can come from the web or a storage device, anything like that. This can help emergency departments quickly identify COVID patients and move them along for treatment. It can also be used in places that have imaging technology but no PCR labs. The scientists are planning to test this in Pakistan. I think that is really cool news and a little bit of machine learning that makes me smile. I love it. Yeah, I love seeing one of these machine learning stories, in this case a deep learning story, deep convolutional network, that is practically applicable and literally going to be used to save lives. I know there was a lot of fear and certainty and doubt about deep learning and still is. When I would say yes, but there are also good uses like assisting with medical diagnosis. Occasionally people would say, like what? Well, here we go, like this. Like diagnosis that literally makes it faster to identify, actually not only COVID, but if apparently this one can identify viral pneumonia, which could also be useful separately, and speed things along. If you're in a place that doesn't have PCR lab infrastructure, you can use existing imaging technology that is more likely to be available. In places that do have PCR labs, it could be a situation where you're coming in emergency room, you're getting a chest x-ray anyway. Instead of having to do a separate two-hour long plus PCR test, you just look at that same chest x-ray, run it through the algorithm and you know immediately which wing of the hospital you got to go. Do you have to do the extra protocols, etc. because they tested positive. And 98.04% is pretty good. I think that's better than PCR. Yeah, that's really good. It's good enough to make me go, well, I would maybe prefer this test next time if I want to go get tested or whatever. And they can also find those. Yeah, they can find other stuff too. Like you mentioned, you know, like viral pneumonia and other things. And also in this test, they talked about that, but like, I would love it if they all of a sudden said, Oh, also there's a dark spot we should look at here. And you know, like there's other benefits to this for other diseases. And one of them is that it can tell if you've got COVID or not. I love this great progress. Love it. Well, folks, if you're feeling social and you want to get in touch with us, we have social networks. You can find us on Twitter at D T N S show. I know it's kind of redundant, but it's just a good handle to remember. It's easy to remember D T N S show on Twitter and D T N S picks D T N S P I X on Instagram. Say hi. Epic Games has agreed to acquire music marketplace band camp. Epic says band camp will quote, keep operating as a standalone marketplace in music community. Epic also wants to use band cap to quote, build out a creator marketplace ecosystem for content, technology, games, art, music, and more. In other words, it sounds like what Epic wants to do is take the band camp special sauce for music and bring it to everybody. It might be a little Patreon competition going on there. Epic and band camp both say they want to add merchandising, mobile apps, and live streaming features to the music part of it already, and Epic's going to help band cap expanded to new markets that they couldn't get into before. There was quite a bit of confusion this morning following the announcement with many wondering what's going to happen next. Band cap's been in business for 14 years, which is impressive for any kind of startup to just be going it alone. It also has a long standing reputation for putting artists first and helping them circumvent costly middlemen in the music industry. So Scott, you followed Epic. You followed the fort nights. You followed the lawsuit with Apple. Sure. What's Epic going to do with band camp? What do you think? It's a really good question. My first inclination was, I know what's in it for band camp. And, you know, we kind of said that already. But they get a broader potential. They get money to go places they couldn't go before. Like this is good for their growth for the thing they already do. But what's in it for for Epic is a bigger question. And I'm not sure I have the exact answer, but I have a couple ideas. And I think this exactly the opposite. Like the, what's in it for Epic is obvious. What's in it for band camp? I'm still scratching my head a little bit. What do you, what do you think's in it for Epic? Cause that's the part I just, I mean, what do they need a big indie music scene to not have to deal with licensing music going forward for a variety of games? That could be true, but I'm not, see that's a, that's a decent point. A lot, a lot of artists are putting their stuff everywhere, including band camp. So you could make the argument. You still got to have to license the music though. Band camp doesn't, owning band camp doesn't give you the license to use it in fortnight. No, no, but I think it would be, you would probably, yeah, exactly. So, so if I, if I was to guess the bigger picture is they're diversifying in my opinion. I don't think this actually has much to do with games at all. They're not making games, hand over fist. So it doesn't make sense to me that the music would somehow be there for that. They make really right now one big game. They have a couple of other things in development. They bought a few other studios that have their own projects, but for the most part, none of them strike me as anything. They're like, dude, now we're going to have access to a huge library and maybe we can negotiate licensing better, faster, cheaper or whatever. I don't think they're doing that. I think they just are expanding into a market that they don't have a finger in right now, and it could turn into things like streaming and competing with the Spotify's and Apple Music's of the world or something, but I don't think it has much to do with games. I can't, I can't find it. I think, I think it does and it's adjacent. So one of the things that Epic did acquire a while back was, uh, Sketchfab, right? The whole 3D model sharing platform. And I think the whole idea is that as games become a huge wellspring of creativity, 3D artists, musicians, for example, EA actually licensed out the music from the Medal of Honor Games. You can actually go to like a music, a bed music licensing site and you can license out that music. And this allows them to basically have a way to monetize some of the assets that potentially they could be creating or perhaps partners could be creating and offer another additional revenue stream that isn't solely, we sell this game, you get a portion of that. You, you make, you make assets for this game. You could possibly reuse or sell those assets to another company that wants to use the same music or maybe use the same art or use the same models in a way where it's, it's less, you know, once it's in this game, it can never be used again kind of attitude. Possibly. I think there are three things Epic gets out of this. One is a company that fits their mores, so to speak. Bandcamp and Epic both portend, and I think Bandcamp has shown over 14 years that they really are, and Epic has shown too, that they are creator focused. They are artist focused. They want to help the people who develop games. They want to, they want to have a fair marketplace on the internet. That's what Tim Sweeney is always railing against Apple, right? Because it's a closed marketplace. They want to have an open marketplace that helps the widest variety of people. So, so they fit with each other and what they say they want to do. Also, Epic gets a way to be in place for whatever the metaverse ends up being because the metaverse is going to have a marketplace that involves lots more than just games, but Fortnite is often put forth as a potential entryway into the metaverse. And so having a way for people to have an open way to exchange things on the metaverse is a long term thing here. The other thing they get, and I don't think this is why they bought Bandcamp. I think the first thing I said is why they bought Bandcamp to expand that creator marketplace. And it goes with what Roger was saying. But one of the things they get, and it's probably one of those like, and also I don't mind this part of the deal. It's not the only reason I'm doing it, but I don't mind is leverage over Apple because Bandcamp feeds music into Apple music. It's not like they bought Sony or Universal music or something where they're going to get a huge amount of leverage, but they're going to have another thing that they can use to just kind of make Apple's life uncomfortable because Bandcamp is a huge way that people get their music into Apple music. Yeah. And it's also a very profitable thing already. It's not like it's a, you know, a failed project. They're going to pick up and make better like, Bandcamp's going great. So it's not, they can both needle Apple with it, and it can be an ongoing enterprise and do well on its own. So I think that's what it's doing anyway, but that's just a bonus. That's the cherry on top of the icing on top of the cake. Yeah. I don't know. It's going to be interesting to see. I still don't see the game connection as well as maybe some are. I think it's just a little. Yeah. It was a confusing morning for me as well, Scott. I was like, okay. Hey. Okay. I get why this is good for Epic, but not so much why this is good for Bandcamp, but we've, you know, kicked around a lot of options. Expansion. That's pretty much the only thing I can come up with for Bandcamp. They get to, they get the money injection from Epic that lets them expand faster than they would have. Yeah. Well, speaking of expanding, that Tasmanian tiger, AKA the Thylacine has been extinct since 1936, been gone a long time. It's marsupial, not so much a tiger. After previous failed efforts to resurrect this beast, the tiger may see new life yet because a group of researchers from the University of Melbourne announced the creation of the Thylacine Integrated Genetic Restoration Research, or tiger, get it, lab made possible with a 5 million Australian dollar philanthropic donation. Marsupial evolutionary biologist and Tasmanian tiger expert, Andrew Paske, who's leading the effort, says, although the challenge of the research is to resurrect the Tasmanian tiger from extension, the biotechnology being developed will also help current marsupial conservation efforts because, you know, with climate change and all sorts of other reasons, there are marsupials on land right now that need a little bit more help. How will we do it? CRISPR, a powerful DNA cut and paste tool, gives scientists a way to recreate the genetic code of extinct species by taking cells from a related species and changing that code. Paske's group already decoded the full tiger genome for this particular Tasmanian tiger back in 2017. So you might say, okay, well, what's holding it up? The work needed to mold one species into another is still at least 10 years away. It requires quite a bit of work and is dependent on tech advances. So we are on the move with the tigers. First, the woolly mammoth. I think it's like 20, 27, 25, something like that. They want to be able to clone a woolly mammoth back into existence. Late 20s. Yeah. Now the tiger. And this one, I think, really is just a way to get people interested in the project, because one of the examples they gave in the CNET article is there's an animal in Australia called the coal that for some reason likes to eat toads that are toxic to it. And so they're like, if we can come up through this project with a way to modify quolls so they can resist the toxicity, it'll keep quolls from dying out because they also get hit on the road by cars. So if they're getting killed by toads, they eat and cars. I mean, yeah, they should not eat the toads, but we try talking to a quoll about that. They're not giving up their toads. So maybe a little gene therapy could help them. And this project with the Tasmanian tiger could develop the technology to help the quoll a lot sooner than they'll make a Tasmanian tiger. Well, and a lot of folks have asked, OK, well, let's say that you're able to make the Tasmanian tiger, which has been extinct since 1936. Then what? And researchers say, well, this is good for just the general, you know, the diversification. Exactly. Exactly. But at the same time, you don't just like make a bunch of tiger babies and drop them off. You know, this all has to be something that is that is thought about for probably the next century. Indeed. Well, let's thank our brand new boss. Do we have any brand new bosses today? In fact, we do, Tom. Our brand new boss today is Mitchell. Mitchell just started backing us on Patreon. Thank you, Mitchell. We are so glad to have you. Thank you, Mitchell. Speaking of things, thank you to Scott Johnson. Always a pleasure to have you, my man. Let folks know where they can keep up with your work. Well, that sounds great. If they want to have bigger, broader, thinky conversations about video games. Boy, howdy. Do I have you covered head on over to frog pants.com specifically go to slash core. Core is a show I do on Thursday nights where we talk all about gaming, the news, the latest releases, controversies, all of it. And it's usually a pretty long and really interesting show. And we're having a great time with it. So check that out. If you haven't, that's frog pants.com slash core or anywhere you get your podcasts. Do it. Do it now. We are also live on this show Monday through Friday for 30 p.m. Eastern 2130 UTC. Find out more at daily tech news show.com slash live. Join us live. If you can, we are back tomorrow with Chris Ashley and Len Peralta. You're on the news. Talk to you then.