 This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by you thanks to every single one of you including Mike Akins, Norm Physicus, and Chris Allen. Coming up on DTNS, Google I.O. is next week and Shannon Morse tells us what she's excited to hear about. Plus, does Apple even have an A.I. strategy? Should they have an A.I. strategy? And a search engine that lets you pick what sites go in the index. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, Cinco de Mayo 2023. In Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Revit, I'm Sarah Lane. From Studio Colorado, I'm Shannon Morse. And I'm Roger Chang, the show's producer. How do you all celebrate Cinco de Mayo? I sometimes don't, but I think, since it's Friday, maybe a little Pacifico in a taco. A little Pacifico in a taco, Shannon? I think I'm going to have a beer and play some video games. Beer and video games? Like a normal Friday night. Roger? I have a bag of Mexican shredded Mexican style cheese that I will liberally apply to anything I eat for dinner. I've got some of that as well. I like that. I'm going to have shrimp. Ooh, yummy. Very Cinco de Mayo of you. I don't know how to say it. It's not that it's not. I mean camarones. All right, let's start with the quickets. Bloomberg sources say that Microsoft is teaming up with AMD to make processors for AI workloads. The sources claim this includes a Microsoft developed processor code named Athena. Now, Microsoft has said, in fact, it's working on a processor called Athena, but denied AMD's involvement. So whether AMD is in on it or not, it would be meant to offer an alternative to Nvidia's AI processors, although Microsoft will continue working closely with Nvidia as well. I wanted to make some joke about it springing fully formed from the forehead of Sacha Nadella, but I figured Greek mythology jokes just don't get the pickup that they used to. Yeah, it inspires more questions than answers. It really does. If you like third-party game controllers, gamepad maker 8-bitdo has a new $30 version of its ultimate controller called the Ultimate C2.4G wireless controller. It comes in purple or green and is compatible with Windows, Android, Steam Deck and Raspberry Pi. Connects using a 2.4GHz USB dongle and 8-bitdo says it can last up to 25 hours of playtime, so technically more than a day and recharges fully in two hours. Also supports asymmetrical rumble and vibration feedback on Windows, has a wired mode and is plug-and-play on the PC. JBL's Tour Pro 2 Buds have some impressive specs. One of those is eight hours of battery life with adaptive noise cancellation on, more if you have it off. And up to 30 more hours of charge from the case, plus lots of audio, bells and whistles. But the charging case itself is the standout in that it has its own 1.45 inch LCD display with three brightness modes and support for wireless charging. Now, if you have a smartwatch, you might say, do I need a display on my earbud case? Maybe it's not necessary for you, but. And Gadget notes that just having more information on charge progress while the earbuds are inside the case can be handy and can also be a big lifesaver. The Tour Pro 2 Buds start shipping today in the U.S. for $249.95. Oh, yeah, I feel that. When I've had some long travel days recently through airports, I had to keep trying to figure out, like, let me open the AirPods case and see if it shows up. We have left, just one knob, you know, yeah. BBC reports that TikTok gave a phone call to journalist Christina Crittle in December to inform her that it had caught two members of its internal audit department looking at logs of IP addresses associated with one of Crittle's accounts. The reason the audit department was looking at it was to compare it to staff of TikTok who were suspected of meeting with the press without authorization. The members who accessed that information, however, were fired because that was not an authorized use of the logs. Crittle's account, though, was on a personal phone, not a work phone, and under the name of her cat, Buffy, with just pictures of the cat and videos of the cat. Her name and occupation were not mentioned in the bio, but she had been talking to staff unhappy with TikTok, so it's likely they found her account, cat and all, by comparing the IP addresses from the employees they were looking into to those of any other TikTok account that was using that IP address. Still, that wasn't allowed. Those staff got fired, and Crittle now keeps TikTok on a separate phone that she keeps in only one location because she needs it for work because she's investigating TikTok. Back in October, former Uber Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan was accused of covering up a 2016 data breach, and he has now been convicted on obstruction of justice and hiding a felony. U.S. District Judge William Orrick sentenced Sullivan to three years of probation. This case marked the first time a corporate executive was convicted of crimes related to an outside data breach, and the judge said that the unprecedented nature of the case influenced the sentencing. All right, let's talk a little bit more about Apple. The earnings were unremarkable. We're not going to dig into a bunch of the numbers, but iPhone sales stayed strong in a down market, rose to 2%. Services, Apple Music, Apple TV grew 5.5%. That's a little less growth than was expected. Everything else fell, which was also expected because people are cutting back on spending. But the numbers really aren't the interesting part of Apple's earnings. It's what CEO Tim Cook says on the day of the earnings that is usually worth noting, Shannon. So CNBC asked Cook about layoffs, and Cook specifically said, quote, I view that as a last resort, and so mass layoffs is not something that we are looking or we are talking about at this moment. That certainly left some wiggle room, obviously, but that's to be expected whenever you're speaking on the record about financials when you could be sued later for everything that you say now. True. Apple showed Apple slowed hiring during the pandemic and they have slowed hiring again. So it seems like it probably is in a good position not to lay off a lot of folks. Apple execs also mentioned India about 20 times during the earnings call, highlighting Apple's pivot away from China. And Cook also had to address the surge of interest in AI. Yes, in response to a question about his opinions on the category of AI, Cook noted that Apple has integrated AI and machine learning into lots of products. He cited fall detection, crash detection, ECG measurements, he said and now quote, we view AI as huge, breaking news, we view AI as huge and we'll continue weaving it into our products on a very thoughtful basis. He also said, I do think it's very important to be deliberative and thoughtful. Now that's very thoughtful of him to say, but it may not be what you'd expect to hear when Google and Microsoft are in a breakneck race to get AI into their products really fast. So Sarah, does it seem like Apple even has an AI strategy and does it need one? Well, I think Apple definitely has one. This is not the sort of company who's like, eh, who cares about this big old trend that all the competitors are focusing on? What Apple does do, you know, whether it's a hardware product or a service is sit back and kind of let the lay of the land reveal itself and then Apple comes out and many people will say, Apple was the last to the market and says, here, we've cracked the codes. We've decided that we're going to do this better than everyone else and here's the Apple product that you will know and love and will surprise and delight you. That's what Apple does. Do, you know, is the whole AI kerfuffle and kerfuffle, you know, by that I mean, we have been talking for the last few months, certainly on the show on a daily basis really, about companies saying like, okay, so here's where we're figuring out, you know, the cogs in the machine. Here's where we have to, you know, dial back and make sure that people aren't hurt or there isn't misinformation being, you know, put out there. Apple doesn't want to have anything to do with any of that stuff. That's a good point. Apple wants to let everybody else stumble so that it can prevail at the end. Yeah, I feel like Apple has always been cautious when it comes to these kind of technologies and like you said, Sarah, they always tend to build on top of what other people or other companies have already announced and they tend to make things really, really nicely, very, very well. So when you look at their technology compared to others, like they are definitely like one of the best of the best and I'm generally a big Android fan myself, but I appreciate that they take a little bit longer because it does keep people very, very influenced by their products and it does, you know, introduce their products to a much wider consumer base than what Android can necessarily do. Yeah, and it's not as if Apple doesn't have its own stumbles. It certainly does and it has. But the sort of like wait back and see approach does work for Apple generally. It does. I was also reminded that back in February, on the 7th of February, Apple held an AI summit for employees that was at the Steve Jobs Theatre at Apple Park. At the time it was sort of remarkable because we were still talking about was Apple going to do big in-person events, you know, post-COVID? So that was part of the story. But the other part of the story is that they're having an AI event for employees. Apple is working on this. They've got a strategy. You're right. I totally forgotten about that. Yeah, I mean there's no way that the company is like maybe we just sit this whole AI thing out. Yeah. That is smart. And this is now that you point that out, it's like, well, yes, they are talking about it. They have products. They're just doing that Apple thing that they do, right? Or they just kind of, you know, hang back and let everybody else make the mistakes while they kind of slowly perfect whatever it is or at least in their opinion, perfect whatever it is, they're going to eventually come out with. That's a really good point that they don't, they don't want anything to do with the backlash that's happening about these tools. Here's a tool that I think solves some backlash against search engines. One of my big problems with search engines is that they are filled with people gaming the SEO system. And so depending on your search, a lot of times you just have to dig past a lot of crap. And I get frustrated with other people in my friends and family circles who use a search engine and say, oh, well, I found out this information and it's from a totally unreliable source, but it happened to be at the top of the search results. So they feel like, oh, it must be believable. Well, a French developer, Fignesh Terrar posted on Hacker News, a search engine for your personal network of high quality websites. It's at usegrasp.com. The way it works is you pick at least seven websites you follow as the basis of the search engine. You can pick more if you want, but at least seven. Grasp then builds out a customized search index for you by following not only the websites in those seven that you link to, but any websites that those seven websites link to. So it builds a graph based on that up to four degrees away from your selected websites. It needs to have at least 70,000 websites to build a decent index. So if it doesn't get that in four degrees, it'll go up to seven degrees away. The site is free to use for up to 20 searches. They're not taking any advertising though. So if you want more than 20 searches, you got to pay $15 a month, and that gets you up to 800 searches. Now, when I was onboarded, they gave me a search engine where I could look for sources, but when I was looking, they didn't have the BBC, they didn't have the Verge, they didn't have Ars Technica, the St. Louis Post Dispatch. So I was a little skeptical at first until I got in, and then I found out they had a tool where you can bulk add by URL. So I was able to add all of those just by putting the URL manually in. This is obviously an early stage product, so they've got a few things to work out. But is it just me, or is this a really appealing basis for a good search engine? I'm so fascinated by this, and I also signed up. I was going through all the different websites that you can use as part of your search functionality, and I was fascinated by the fact that they have a lot of personal blogs on there, like a lot of very, very famous hackers, like Dan Kaminski, who rests in peace, Dan, but he's one of the founders of many different technologies that we use to this day. He was a huge researcher when he was alive. And I did run into the same complications that you did where I didn't find all of the new sources that I wanted to find, but once I was able to log in, I was able to add those myself, too. So no major issues there. You can definitely tell it's new. For example, I tried to search for Google Pixel Fold, and it said, as of May 5th, it has not officially been announced yet. It's unclear whether or not it will come out in the future, and I was like, okay, well, I think that it's a little delayed with the information that it gives you, because that was announced yesterday. They did tease it yesterday on social media, and a lot of the sites that they are linking to have written articles about the Pixel Fold being announced yesterday. So it was the summary, the AI written summary at the top that was wrong, but it did have the articles underneath it. Yeah, exactly. So I thought that was kind of strange. So it does have some little quirks to it that I think it needs to work out before I could actually use this as my search engine. But I do see the potential. Yeah, I used Grasp this morning. In fact, I was like, all right, well, we're gonna talk about Apple AI today. Let me just plug in Apple AI. I linked it to my Twitter account and got, you know, it surfaced some, for example, the February article that we talked about a couple minutes ago about Apple holding an AI summit for employees. We talked about that on DTNS. Yeah, yeah. But I had forgotten. And that was great. That was like, you know, that's something that I could find in lots of other ways. But it was almost as if Grasp was like, I get what you're doing, Sarah. And here are some things that are going to help you today. So my first impression of it is, this is really cool, especially if you are researching a specific topic. And you, again, like Tom said, you got seven sources that it's drawing from that then, you know, permeate out into many other sources, seven at the minimum. And, you know, my sources were, you know, nothing crazy at Bloomberg, Wired, TechCrunch, you know, that kind of stuff. But it also, the search results were kind of exactly what I wanted to get. Yes. Without it, without having to explain to anyone, no, this is what I want. Yeah. You didn't have to skip past the three or four results. You're like, I don't even know what those sites are. I don't trust them. Like it was just the stuff that I trust. It was. Yeah. And it gave me context that I didn't know I needed. So, you know, it was a, it was a, it's a fun experiment. And, you know, I'm probably not going to pay $15 a month for more than 20 searches. So I wouldn't be able to use it on a daily basis, but it is a pretty nice little handy tool to have in your back pocket. Yeah. No, I like the, I like the concept a lot. A lot of people on Hacker News were comparing it to Kagi, K-A-G-I dot com. That one doesn't have the customization, although you can mute results and stuff, but it is the non ad oriented thing. That one also has a lot more free searches. I think, I think use grasp would benefit from having a higher limit of searches so people could really try it. 20 seems to be pretty low before you get people to decide to plunk down some money. But again, this is like barely out of the gate. So it doesn't even have things like the ability to go in and manage your sources. I was like, oh, I want to go see what I have in here. There's no way to get to that. I'm sure it's on the roadmap, but it's that new of a product. So I'll be jumping back in there from time to time to see how they make progress. I'm fascinated by it. Whether it's this or something else though, I love the idea of saying, give me a base list of websites to build my index off. I love the four degrees of separation, so it's not limited to those, but I'm giving it an idea of like, these are the sources I trust. So build the index on that. I really like that. Folks, I hope you trust me when I tell you that I've got a great series called Top 5 at youtube.com slash Daily Tech News Show. If you don't already subscribe to our YouTube channel for Daily Tech News Show, well, you should subscribe for Top 5. The latest episode is about eSims. eSims are something that can make it really easy to get a data plan when you travel. So if you want to know about whether your phone has it or to get good eSIM plans, go over to youtube.com slash Daily Tech News Show and get a look at that Top 5. And there's a bunch of other Top 5s in there too. We've been doing it for several weeks now. So go check those out. On Thursday, Google posted a teaser video for the Pixel Fold device saying it will announce the device at Google I.O. which takes place Wednesday, May 10th at 1 p.m. Eastern. We've seen some leaks. Google says it's a real thing, but that's not going to be the only thing that Google talks about. What else can we expect at I.O. next week? It's a developer conference, so they're going to talk about Android 14. They'll talk about a lot of Google Bard, other AI efforts, one would think. But the company loves to bring out products at I.O. so everybody claps and is excited about it. So also expect the Pixel 7a, the Pixel Tablet, maybe a sneak peek at Pixel 8 and some surprise announcements. Pixel Watch, too. We're an update on AR glasses. Now, Shannon, I know you follow a lot of things Google, so what are you most looking forward to? Oh, all the things. Send me every single product. I want all the products in my household. I'm so excited about everything. Android 14 sounds really fascinating. Apparently they're going to be making some big changes to security and privacy. Things that I never even knew could be available on an Android device. They will no longer allow you to side load super old apps that haven't been updated in years. I guess that's going to be a major upgrade. One of the things that I'm very much looking forward to is limiting the ability of an application to share specific things with said app. For example, if you open a TikTok and it wants access to your entire photo album, now you could specifically limit what photos or what albums that it has access to. I guess that's going to be a thing with Android 14. I thought it would just need access to the entire photos app, so that's going to be a very nice implementation that will add more privacy whenever you are allowing these permissions with different applications. One thing I have a feeling they'll probably talk about in terms of software and Android 14 will probably be pass keys, especially with the most recent news that we got about different brands deciding to form a coalition around pass keys. That's something that I'm going to be really, really focusing on probably in the coming year is how pass keys are going to be implemented, especially with Google. Google this week announcing that you can log into Google with a pass key. That's got to be part of the Android stuff too, I would imagine. That's going to be really big news. In terms of all the hardware, I already talked about the Pixel Fold. Yesterday when that was announced, I verbally guessed while I was sitting in a coffee shop and everybody looked at me really weird because I was so loud about it. I was very excited. It's very pretty. I know it's first generation, so it probably won't come with... It might have some caveats. We'll say it that way. Just like the Z Fold did when Samsung announced that one in the first generation. Hopefully not as many problems with its hinge. Hopefully not. Hopefully Google learned from that experience. Even though we have seen some teases about AR glasses from last year in 2022, I'm not putting all my money on them actually announcing the AR glasses here. We might see some additional teases, but I think that's going to be a product that they will release slowly very similarly to the Pixel Fold, which we've seen rumors about for it's been a couple of years now that they've been talking about a foldable device maybe coming out eventually. Google likes to just tease these things slowly. They do. The Pixel tablet has been previewed at the past two. They did it at IO last year and the fall announcement. One assumes it's finally going to be real this time. I think you're right. I wouldn't be surprised if they give us a couple more tidbits about AR, but maybe not announce it. I think having AR glasses is going to be a wonderful experience. They obviously have a history with making Google Glass and I would love to try that, especially for translating conversations in real time. That's going to be something that I could actually use this for on my travels internationally. I can see where I could use that. The other products like the 7A, that one looks really interesting. I recently posted a video about comparing that to the Pixel 7 I probably wouldn't wait, especially since it's going to increase in price most likely to $500 while the 6A was $450. Do you say jump on the 6A because it's cheaper? I would actually jump on the 7 even though it's a little bit more expensive because the tech is a little bit better. That's just my personal opinion. I would love to see the tablet come out. Hopefully that does get announced even though they haven't officially said anything. It's about time. I would be shocked if they don't announce it. I'm really curious if it's going to be another cheap Android tablet or we've seen a few rumors about prices but not a lot about these specs. If it's a tablet that I could actually get some work done on then I would seriously consider it because that would integrate very, very well into an Android content creator lifestyle. If that's a thing that would absolutely be a product that I would purchase. We'll see. They're going to come out of left field with something. They always do. What was the name of it when they did the project where the AI talks to people for you and makes reservations and blank it on the name of it? There's always something like that. I can't wait to see what that is this time around. Yes, absolutely. I would like to see some updates to Bard. I tried it myself and it was not that great. I would like to see them show us how development is going with Bard because I can see implementing this for content creation ideas or Instagram captions. Things like that where I constantly need to come up with new ideas for my own content creation. Especially since Google has been dragged through the mud a bit of Google Bard was a little behind open AI. Aren't we all right type thing? This would be a great situation for Google to say here's why Bard is actually way better than you thought it was. They're going to throw a ton of AI stuff. Here are all the things that we've been working on and here's why it's the AI that you want. Beyond Bard. It's not going to just be Bard. They're going to show off their chops at IO. I'm convinced. I'm excited. I'll definitely be covering it and hopefully be able to chat about it more with y'all. Duplex, thank you Skelly 2909. Google Duplex. I wouldn't even remember that. I remember now. Google is going to give us some concrete stuff but other times people make things just for fun. That is the beauty of the internet, right? In that spirit AJ, a.k.a. Altered Clone on Twitter created a pixel castle generator at the domain end.city which is kind of exactly what it sounds like. You visit the page end.city you get a custom pixel castle that was generated just for you and if you're like I don't know I'd like to see another castle you can refresh the pages many times as you like to generate another castle if you want a different one. This is not tied to some monetary thing. It's just for fun. AJ also happens to be a lead designer at Apparel company neoforic.com that's neo, the number 4ic.com. Kind of some fun stuff over there. As for the pixelated castles, people love them. I at first was like oh that's it that's all it is. I can take a shot and that's it. RedPandaMan68 reminded me, that's Twitter handle, that people sometimes like things like this. They wrote, this is the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life. Oh. You know what? That's hyperbole a little bit. I think it's so cool. This reminds me of playing bulletin board system games like Legend of the Red Dragon and having that pixelated art. Oh my gosh it's so cool. I kind of had to talk myself down off the ledge a little bit where I'm like what's it for? Sometimes things aren't for anything except fun and happiness. This is not an NFT. This is just joy. It's joy. So good on you AJ. Keep it coming. I just made one that looks like it has a little space invader up above the castle. I did quite a few refreshes. That's so cool. All right. Let's check out the mail bag. In Roger's latest two cents, that's his newsletter that we post in our Patreon feed. He detailed the reasons for selecting his latest GPU upgrade to an RTX 3060ti. In response to that article, which you can find on our Patreon, it is unlocked, Brian wrote, hope the new GPU serves you well, Roger. I did a similar upgrade a couple years back with an RTX 40690k and GXT 970. I upgraded the GPU to a 3070 before the great GPU shortage. A year after that, though, I swapped out the motherboard and CPU to AMD and, of course, got a new ram with it. But for sure, that GPU upgrade will help your workflow quite a bit for now. That's great. And if you didn't know that Roger has a post column every Thursday on our Patreon. I called it a newsletter. I guess a column. It's kind of like a newsletter from Roger, right into Patreon. It's good stuff. It's good stuff, guys. Go check it out, patreon.com. Also, Big Jim, a longtime member of the community here announced that his tech and trade podcast is coming back. So if you're a trade nerd or tech nerd or a little of both, keep an eye out for tech and trade episodes coming to your podcatcher of choice. Thanks for letting us know, Big Jim. Thanks, Big Jim. Also, thanks to you, Shannon Morse for being with us today. Let folks know where they can keep up with you. You can go to my YouTube channel. It's youtube.com slash Shannon Morse. I have a ton of videos coming out this month about security and privacy for everybody. Very excited. Congratulations on your 100,000. Thank you. By the way. What a milestone. Fantastic. I cried. That's a big milestone. Yeah, it's a very big deal. Well, we also want to extend a special thanks to Brophy Wolf, one of our top lifetime supporters for DTNS. Thank you for all the years of support, Brophy Wolf. Yay! Yeah, howlin' to Brophy. Brophy's a patron, so he will get to stick around for the extended show Good Day Internet on Fridays on Good Day Internet. We like to loosen up a little and play some games. And Roger has brought us a food technology quiz. So patrons, get ready to pit your food tech smarts against ours. Stick around. Just a reminder, DTNS is live Monday through Friday. You can catch the show live at 4 p.m. Eastern, 200 UTC and you can find out more and set your calendar by going to dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We'll have a wonderful weekend. We'll be back Monday with Justin Robert Young joining us. Talk to you then. This week's episode of Daily Tech News Show we're created by the following people, host producer and writer Tom Merritt, host producer and writer Sarah Lane, executive producer and Booker Roger Chang, producer, writer and host Rich Strafilino, video producer and Twitch producer Joe Koontz, technical producer Anthony Lemos, Spanish language host writer and producer Dan Campos, news host writer and producer Jen Cutter, science correspondent Dr. Nicky Ackermanns, social media producer and moderator Zoe Detterding. Our mods, Beatmaster, W.S. Goddess One, Biocow, Captain Kipper, Steve Gutterama, Paul Rees, Matthew J. Stevens, a.k.a. Gadget Virtuoso and J.D. Galloway. Modern video hosting by Dan Christensen, music and art provided by Martin Bell, Dan Looters, Mustafa A, Acast and Len Peralta. Acast adds support from Tatiana Matias. Contributors for this week's show included Chris Ashley, Nika Monfort, Scott Johnson, Justin Robert Young and Shannon Morse. And thanks to all the patrons who make this show possible. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at FrogPants.com.