 This 10th year of Daily Tech News Show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you, including Chris Allen, Chris Smith, Mark Gibson, and another Chris, our new patron, Chris, welcome. On this episode of DTNS, Meta doesn't seem to be able to lose its user base. Tesla has some explaining to do. That's an understatement. And Patrick Norton is here to explain why the Calyx Institute might be right up your alley. This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, July 27, 2023, from Studio Secret Bunker that needs a new name. I'm Sarah Lane. And from Columbus, Ohio, I'm Rob Dunwood. At the edge of St. Louis, I'm Patrick Norton. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Well, we are going to get into meta earnings, Tesla, I don't know, fudging some numbers, and a few other things too. We've got Patrick Norton here so you know it's going to be a good show. But let's start with the quick hits. The European Union opened a formal antitrust investigation into whether Microsoft abuses a dominant position by bundling teams with Office 360. Now, you might recall that back in 2020, teams competitor Slack filed a complaint against Microsoft stating that bundling in teams gave it an unfair advantage over competitors, which violates EU laws. So there might be more to the story. After a 95% drop in second quarter operating profits, Samsung, the world's largest chip maker announced it will cut back chip production, citing weak demand for consumer devices. On a brighter note, the company will focus on higher end chips to meet the demand for generative AI. Samsung also expects global demand for memory chips to rebound gradually in the second half of this year. US Senators Elizabeth Warren and Lindsey Graham sponsored a bipartisan bill to establish a new federal agency tasked with regulating online platforms. The new bill would create the Digital Consumer Protection Commission that would be empowered to go after giant tech firms, you know the ones, for a slew of anti-competitive behaviors and failure to protect consumer privacy. Sony announced that it has sold 40 million PlayStation 5 since the consoles launched in 2020 and that includes 8 million units this year despite pandemic related supply chain issues. Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan assured fans that the PS5 is currently well stocked. Adobe announced a new feature in Photoshop's new beta called Generative Expand which uses AI to expand images beyond their original bounds. You might say, what? So you sort of use the crop tool in reverse. You select an image, you can expand the canvas and then allow Adobe's Firefly family of generative AI models to fill out that additional white space that wasn't part of the original photo. For example, maybe somebody got cut out of the group selfie that you took on vacation. Photoshop will generate the rest of the body in the face of the person that you cut off and hopefully they do a good job and you'll still be friends with them afterwards. And those are the quick hits. Alright, let's talk a little bit about Meta's earnings. Now, Meta has had an interesting few years for a variety of reasons. They released and I might say they crushed Q2 earnings results for the month, for the quarter ending in June. Revenue was up 11% year over year to $32 billion. Net income was up 16% year over year to $7.79 billion. Facebook monthly active users up 7% year over year to $3.07 billion in June. Now you might say, huh, what? Yes, Meta said that Facebook passed 3 billion monthly active users for the first time for the month of June. As for its family of apps, which is not only Facebook, but also Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, going forward threads will be part of this as well. Those overall grew 6% year over year as well to $3.88 billion covering nearly half of the world's population. Well, some of this is recovery and advertising. Apple's at tracking transparency or ATT screwed up Meta's digital ad sales big time with revenue declining for the first time ever last year, but things seem to be rebounding. Meta still has a long goal with its reality labs division, which now has lost more than $21 billion since the beginning of 2022. Meta said in his report that it expects operating losses in the reality labs unit to increase meaningfully year over year due to our ongoing product development efforts and augmented and virtual reality and investments to further scale our ecosystem. Patrick Meta is making money in the present, but is losing it in the future. What do you think about this? What are your thoughts? This is a terrifying sci-fi moment, you know, we're making money now. It's remember the days of the dot com era where, you know, we lose money on every bag of dog food we ship, but we're going to make it up in volume. It's like, we're going to make more money now and lose it in the future, which is not really what they're saying. I think the last leader thing is, I mean, it's not, you know, Meta's not the only company to be doing this and hoping that long term it comes back. But yeah, there's a lot going on here. It's funny, right? Because it's true, right? They are operating losses, you know, they are pumping a staggering amount of money into the reality labs division. And part of me is like, okay, is this like, you know, Zuckerberg's in an interesting position. He controls the voting and unlike most companies, pretty much controls, you know, he controls his company unlike most publicly held companies because the way the voting rights are structured. So he can do something. A lot of companies out there don't do a lot of long term research. So what if we think of the reality labs division as being this great grand, deep long term research division, you know, his version of Xerox Park, he's going to pry us all off of screens, slap goggles on our faces and make sure we never do anything outside of Facebook in the future. You know, I'm looking over because somewhere in this wall of books over there is ready player one. But I, you know, I'm that whole expects operating losses to increase meaningfully year over year. Like, did they put an end on that? I know it's like, how meaningful exactly, you know, meta and reality labs. I mean, listen, I know I'm, I'm the person in the group who's always crowing about how I think VR is really cool and people just don't get it yet and you just have to have that cool app that you love. And then you get it, even if you only have a few apps, you don't really need like that many it's not unlike a mobile phone, you're probably going to use the same five apps over and over. But the quest experience is the only VR experience that I've ever had. Obviously, that's the meta quest. And they own it. So you're obviously bullish on Meta's future. I mean, because one of the things we want to be because I don't want it to go away. I mean, it's more that I'm slightly worried that it's going to go away. I'm going to be like, oh, that was a fun thing that I did for a couple of years. I wanted to be a cooler part of life. I know we've, you know, the whole AR conversation is a whole other thing and Meta is only one player in that whole business. And I still don't really understand what the metaverse is otherwise. But, but yeah, I, I wonder how much the losses are going to be. I mean, listen, Meta has bought itself some time here with this latest earnings report. You know, people go, cool, all right, let's buy some stock. But, but that's not going to last forever if, you know, if the company still bleeds money from, from, you know, reality labs. It's also kind of crazy, right? Because the first part of this was three billion global users. I like, there's just a little popping noise above my head just contemplating that. You know what I mean? Like that's just, even if you make, you know, just a tiny bit of money off each user, that's going to pile up in a huge way and offset the losses. I don't know. I'm actually really curious to see, right? Because the kind of the early looks in the metaverse, like almost every AR and VR experience we have, there's like the advertisement and it's going to do this amazing things and people finally get it. And it's, it's in order of magnitude worse than, you know, what you thought it would be based on the initial hype. But, you know, can we create this giant online place? I mean, are we replacing Discord? Are we replacing, you know, are we all just going to sit around and watch virtual shows? Are we going to interact? Is it going to be dancing? Is it going to be a, will there be a neural cutout like a William Gibson novel and we're going to actually physically feel present in there? Nobody knows. I just want to say the fact that they said that they've lost 21 billion on this unit and it's going to ramp up from that. Mark Zuckerberg is spending money in this area. So it sounds like he's going to do everything he humanly possibly can to make sure that your MetaQuest will still be viable in a couple of years from now. So we have to see, because they're spending, we're talking about billions, like it's millions. It's like, no, these are billions of dollars that they're spending on this. You know, the old joke, a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon we're talking about real money. I know. What's a billion? Not cool anymore. But yeah, when I saw, my first reaction was like, who is still going to Facebook? And that is, that's a naive way to think about this. Just because I don't, and a lot of people that I used to hang out on Facebook with a lot more back in the day, so don't seem to be very present there, does not mean that other people are not present on Facebook. Clearly these numbers reflect that. So, you know, that's something to take into consideration. It's like, okay, you know, Roger before the show would mention the Facebook marketplace and that that's really helpful. Like what does drive people there globally, not just locally, but globally? And, you know, what is driving people there? And because whatever it is, it's working. Well, it's funny, right? Because one of the challenges, you know, we're in a group for a school that my youngest son goes to. They don't have any presence outside of Facebook. My wife, who had, you know, burned Facebook to the ground and walked away from it, ended up reinstating her account so she could deal with some of the communications coming from this group. There are a ton of places. I'm always shocked when I run into places where their website redirects their website URL redirects their Facebook page or we only do Facebook or the group is on Facebook or the schedules. And there's so many places that are locked in. But it's also kind of crazy. I'm looking at this breakdown. I think it's overload.com. They're claiming they have the statistics for the current global distribution. 370 million users in India, 186 million users in the United States, 135 million users in Indonesia, 114 million users in Brazil, you know, 93 million in Mexico, 91 million in the Philippines. There's just a lot of people. 3 billion is just a staggeringly large number two. So I'm kind of, you know, it's apparently, I don't know what they're doing, but boy, they're doing a lot of it. Or a lot of people are doing it on Facebook. Yeah. Well, yeah, this is all very true. And yeah, a good anecdote from you, Patrick, about, you know, people who are like, well, I don't really like it, but everyone else is, I have to talk to other people from my kid's school, for example. There are quite a few of those situations that I've heard about as well. Real quick, just, you know, because we're talking about the meta family of apps. WhatsApp has also added short messaging, not unlike the voice messaging feature that the service already supports. They announced that earlier this year, I think about six months ago, what's that video messages can now be up to 60 seconds long and miraculously will auto play on mute in chat. Now voice messages don't auto play. They can also be as long as you want. So it's a whole different thing, but what's that getting into video messages. So this next one is like, it kind of got me, but Reuters is reporting that for about a decade, Tesla has been purposely exaggerating range estimates on its lineup of EVs at full charge and was done so at the direction of Chief Executive Elon Musk. The report also claims that Tesla last summer created a Nevada based diversion team focused solely on canceling service appointments from customers concerned. They were experiencing range related battery issues. Oh boy. All right. So according to Reuters reporting, an anonymous source said the Tesla used algorithms that would inflate projections at full charge. Then once the batteries actually got down to 50%, the numbers became a bit more realistic so drivers really weren't going to get stranded or had a better chance of not getting stranded, you know, if they need to recharge. Along with a 15 mile buffer allowing the vehicle to drive on battery even after it reaches zero. Now, I've pushed this with gas cars enough to know that Tesla you're not the only one here but according to this source, quote, Elon wanted to show good range numbers when fully charged. I know that anybody who runs a company like Tesla would want to show good numbers when fully charged, but it is a very different story. If you, you know, if you're, you know, listening to Reuters sources Reuters is, you know, has a good track record with this stuff track record with this stuff saying, yeah, the company was doing all sorts of things to make you think that your range was way better. When you set off on your journey. It really, it really, I don't want to say it shocked me, but I was like, wow, this is, this is what they're doing because they, you know, they're saying that, you know, Reuters is reporting that they were inflating these numbers to the point that customers calling in was such a problem for them that they created a whole team whose sole purpose was to know you're good, you really don't need to get your car fixed. And the only reason that people were thinking they needed to get their car fixed was because the numbers that Tesla was reporting were inaccurate numbers on purpose. So it's like, you know, you created this problem and then you created a team to rectify the problem. You know, people's cars really didn't have an issue. They were doing what they were designed to do. They just weren't doing what you were told that they were going to do. Yeah, that is a, that's a big deal when you think about what Tesla was doing. They're not the only company that does it. It's just the fact that they've now been caught. This is a big deal. Yeah, I mean, I feel like at some point there's going to be the argument that, you know, well, if you go into insert automotive makers vehicle here, they claim this is your gas mileage or this is your real world gas mileage or this is your range. And if you drive it in the real world, it never matches that, you know, or that they're our algorithm is designed to maximize the theoretical range based on optimal conditions to it. You know, I mean, for whatever reason, I don't know if there's, I don't think I don't see Congress getting together to launch the automotive manufacturers must make more realistic expectations of the instrumentation and their vehicles, you know, with some crazy acronym that nits that all together. But I was laughing because I was trying to remember the whole diesel gate Volkswagen diesel gate thing, right? It was like a half a million or see me half a billion 500 was 500,000 cars. They got fined a billion dollars. And there's this funny car and driver article that's basically, you know, General Motors and Toyota have had their massive scandals now it's Volkswagen's turn and it's like what in the 21st century we have to have a massive scandal for every automotive manufacturer. Will this be elons? But I mean, it just like call me crazy here. But okay, let's say I'm a Tesla owner. I am not, but many people in our audience are many contributors to our show are. And if I go, hold on, this doesn't seem right. No, I'm not getting the range that I'm supposed to get. Let me let me take it in. And there is a team that has been erected to say, Nope, you're fine. That is such a waste of talent and resources. Isn't it? They were saving a thousand dollars per canceled appointment. And this is intended for these folks gaslighting Tesla owners. In a weird way. Yeah, like you're, you're driving it wrong. You're fine. Don't worry about it. Let's let's not have you come in after all you're going to be okay on your road trip. You know, this is stuff like, as you mentioned, Patrick, the, you know, my gas mileage on my, my SUV is, you know, I feel like it's, it's, it's what Volvo would hope that I would get. I don't ever expect it. I'm not taking it into the shop. If I don't get, you know, the like 27, you know, miles per gallon type thing that I'm assumed that I will get on the freeway type thing and much worse on surface streets. But, but yeah, there, I think Tesla is probably under a lot more scrutiny than any traditional legacy company would be. That's, that's fair. That said, there does seem to be something more going on here. I mean, how everyone in this conversation, I, Rob, I presume you drive a car on a regular basis. I do. You know, I just double checking because every so often I run into some of you actually has functional public transit or lives on their bicycle. But how many of us have actually gotten the gas mileage we were promised by the sticker on the side. You know, when I had a Honda Civic, it was pretty solid. I'll tell you that much. I had a Toyota. It's only my own fault that I didn't stick with that. No, I laugh because I had a Toyota Corolla that would get like 30 miles a gallon on the highway and 30 miles to the gallon standing in traffic on the west side highway. I don't know how that worked. The physics doesn't make sense, but the mileage was so close, I couldn't tell the difference. I would be curious if any of the major audit, the other major auto manufacturers actually have groups that operate like this. I also feel like this is really disappointing as a Tesla owner because if you are expecting 350 miles, but it's winter and you maybe have a lead foot and you're driving fast and thus minimizing your potential range. You know, if this is a worse situation than people run into with gasoline engines, or if this is, you know, nothing to worry about. Well, and you're also, you know, even, you know, even a stock Tesla model of any model, you know, in the lineup is not a cheap car. You know, so you might be thinking you're paying up front for something that's going to save you money later. Well, something that will save all of us is if Molly Wood comes on the show more often. We all love Molly. Thanks to everybody who became patrons. We did a push over the last month. We increased a lot of pledges on Patreon. Really thank you because of your support. We are bringing Molly on the show one Friday every other month starting in August. So just, yeah, just a gosh, August is next week. How's that possible? But to reach our goal of having Molly one Friday every month, we do still need more help and we need your help. So if you haven't already, consider supporting the show, visiting patreon.com slash DTNS. If you already do support the show, thank you so much. Maybe you know somebody who's on the fence or maybe you've been on the fence. Appreciate it either way and thank you in advance. Well, yes, yes, I can. So Calyx is sorry. A little too much Phineas and Ferb in my life lately. Calyx is all about online privacy and security. Their focus is kind of on privacy by design, not privacy through a desperate struggle and battle with everything you touch at your ISP in the Internet. The Calyx ISP for example, it's run by a nonprofit called the Calyx Institute. You know they have some for-profit subsidiaries that worked around that to kind of help power the Institute. Maril, Nicholas Maril. He was the first executive in an ISP and it was a very small ISP to fight against the Patriot acts expanded police powers and he won his case. And it's kind of crazy when you when you look at the history of the Calyx Institute. I think he founded the Calyx Institute in 2010. He had just been ungagged from national security letter he got from the FBI in 2004. They were like give us this information and he's like no and they're like you have to give us this information and you can't tell anybody we sent you this letter. And it was the first constitutional challenge that was filed against the USA Patriot Act and his experience and struggle and epic legal battle on that led him to come up with the idea of the Calyx Institute. You know and I also I will say I'm a big fan of Corey Doctro and I love how he puts it. One I have found a secret tunnel that runs underneath the phone companies and emerges in paradise. And he calls Calyx a famous heroic radical ISP that has been involved in groundbreaking litigation. It's a 501 you know C3 nonprofit. They do research and their goal is you know they the three things that the three kind of core things people can can get from them outside of you know more education on privacy and security is they do Calyx Internet. Which is they have a relationship with T mobile it's unlimited mobile Internet and they do everything they can to ensure your privacy on that. And it's legitimately unlimited. And if you've ever been a full time kind of traveling you know if you're living your van life if you're full time RVer actual unlimited Internet is really unusual this isn't like 30 gigs and you get dial up speed this is actual unlimited 24 seven 365 you know unless they're throttling you a bit and they charge like $750 $550 a year for that. I'm actually kind of moving from T mobile to that because some hardware issues I'm having with T mobile. They also had now have the Calyx OS and it's an Android mobile OS that quote puts privacy and security into the hands of everyday users. They do proactive security recommendations and do automatic updates. And the idea is that you know you have a Google Pixel phone. You can download and get the operating system for free or you can become a Calyx Institute member and your reward for that is going to be a phone preloaded with the Calyx OS, which eliminates a lot of the stuff that so many carriers do where they're just. We'll just take a little of your information because we can reset and make more money. So I think you know a lot of people listening to what you've laid out Patrick say, well that sounds great. I mean, I care about privacy. I run a VPN on my internet service now. Does Kellex do anything different than that. They actually also have their own free VPN service Calyx net. That's based on the leap open source project and I think they've talked about actually doing a privacy centric email service to on that one but they're an interesting company now or I should say you know group or foundation I don't know if a lot of people know about it. I was also kind of fascinated I didn't realize that Jack Dorsey's start small had made a significant donation to them, along with the tour project the signal technology foundation and the graphene OS. And I actually somehow missed Dorsey's Twitter thread where he started to start small back in the pandemic, but it's like it's just fascinated this he's basically giving away like a billion and a half dollars. And I'm all for anyone supporting privacy projects like, you know, I'm obviously signal on me huge fan tours amazing. And it was cool to see graphene OS and Calyx on that list. But essentially, Calyx net is the location for the free VPN and Calyx Institute.org is the primary web page for that if you want to learn more about what they offer, or more about helping to secure yourself while you're out on the internet. I don't know Rob, you sold your internet now feel private enough. It sounds good. It sounds it all sounds pretty good. True unlimited is kind of awesome. True unlimited for mobile is incredibly awesome. I mean the last the last time I had true unlimited mobile it was capped at five megabits per second it was through AT&T and it was approximately 30 $350 a year on $700 of two generations behind hardware. This is much better. I will say if if you're living LaVita, you know, fiber you're not going to want to go from fiber to one of these modems unless you are profoundly, profoundly invested in in in privacy over speed on your internet. You know, they're fast like I'm not saying that T mobile services and fast. I'm just saying, for most people, if you just want all of the speed fiber or some of the other local options, maybe good cable mode or maybe better for your gaming performance or things like that, although I will say that the I'm actually kind of amazed at how low the ping rates and how high the speed gets with a lot of 5G services out there. And you mentioned the for the Calyx internet 500 to 750 your first year, including hardware. Does that mean that it's less afterwards? Yeah, well what they do is when you get an internet membership in the Calyx Institute, your perk is that you get a mobile and a subscription. So they have different levels. There's like 4G with a Franklin T10 hotspot. There's 4G 5G with a quanta 5G hotspot. And there's what they call the that's the contributor and the contributor plus the sustainer is a my fi x pro 5G, which is a pretty impressive hotspot. If you're buying a hotspot and they offer that one, it's a good choice. That's 4G 5G top line performance. That's the one that costs $750 in the first year and then it's $500 every year after that. And, you know, I have a kind of a sweetheart deal on my current T mobile plan based on my old sprint plan. I get 200 gigs a month for 60 bucks. So this is unlimited for a similar price after the first year. I probably should do the math on that one. 500 divided by 12 equals $41 a month. So my unlimited on Verizon is, you know, something like 80 bucks, which was great, but I never really know what the throttle lean issue is. It's never really impacted me all that much. But they also tend to creep that, you know, my last bill was like 95. I looked at it itemize now is like what, where's the other 10 no, I don't know. Yeah, you're just kind of doing that whole thing, because I probably had the initial contract that I signed with you. So now you're just going to nickel and dime me. So there you go. Well, we are never nickel and dime by you, Patrick Norton. Thank you so much for being with us on the show today. Let folks know what you've been up to lately. I am still on Twitter at Patrick Norton. If you have a preferred mastodon or other alternative system, feel free to kick me a tweet about that while Twitter is still up and running and being itself. And of course, I do AB Excel, the podcast with Robert Herron where we talk about home theater and audio and you're always welcome to go search for AB Excel on your favorite pot catcher. Beautiful. Well, we're so glad to have you on the show today. And just a reminder, patrons, stick around. We have an extended show. Good day internet. The conversation does not end here. We'll be talking about child proofing the internet. What could possibly go wrong? Probably pretty easy to do, right? But just a reminder, you can catch this show. Live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern 200 UTC. You can find out more at daily technewshow.com slash live. We're back tomorrow with Lynn Feralta drawing some tech stories. And I'll wait to see you then.