 Daily Tech News Show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you, including DeGrasia, A Daniels, Irwin Sturr, and Ken Hayes. Coming up on DTNS Good News and Bad News in the chip industry, but have we hit bottom? Plus, Tech to Grow Better Berries and a free music streaming platform that actually helps your local musicians. This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, November 16th, my mom's birthday. Happy birthday, mom. 2022, in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. And on the show's producer, Roger Chang. Quick programming note, those of you who were still waiting to find out if you needed to be afraid of AI or not, hang in there. Dr. Nikki was going to tell you today, but then an AI got to her. No, she's sick. We hope she feels better soon, but we will have her back on the show. Meanwhile, we have these quick hits for you. Indeed we do. Amazon announced it will lay off 3% of its staff. That's approximately 10,000 workers in its retail, devices and HR divisions, including people who work on voice services and the Luna game streaming service. The cuts don't affect warehouse workers or anyone working on AWS. Microsoft began rolling out a new games for work app for Microsoft Teams. Your coworkers and you play Solitaire, Minesweeper, Wordament, Icebreakers, all during meetings. The feature is only available to enterprise customers. With the launch, Microsoft cited a Brigham Young University study, Utah Connection, if Scott was here today, that found playing short video games together made workers 20% more productive than those who participated in more traditional team building activities. I feel vindicated for paying a little less attention in meetings that I should have in the past. You were 20% more productive. Exactly. You know, you just, you should have listened to me bosses. The Financial Times reports that YouTube will roll out shopping features in shorts starting in 2023. It will roll out an affiliate marketing system to pay a commission to US creators that promote products. It would also allow users in the US, in India, in Brazil, in Canada and in Australia to shop in shorts videos through embedded links. Sponsor my shorts, please. Samsung announced apps for Xbox Cloud Gaming, Amazon Luna, GeForce Now and another system all coming to 2021 model Samsung TVs next week. The apps and a Samsung gaming hub are already available in the 2022 model Samsung TVs. The Samsung gaming hub will not be coming to older TVs. So once again, it's Xbox Cloud Gaming, Stadia and GeForce Now, as well as Utomic. That's the other one. I have an older Samsung TV. So probably time. Yeah, I have a Samsung TV that's like from 2006. It's never getting any of those. It doesn't. Mine is 2013, also too old. Autonomous Vehicle Company, Wabi, announced a product for semi truck manufacturers, semi truck manufacturers, big trucks to use when assembling big rigs to add autonomous functions. Wabi Driver is plug and play. It's a product that can be integrated at the assembly line to make any semi autonomous. Wabi Drive software is mostly trained in simulations to save on cost and capture more edge cases than real world driving encounters. Wabi is led by Uber's former chief scientist, Raquel Erdison. Some companies are facing an economic squeeze, particularly AV companies, meaning that cost is a differentiator in a crowded market. That includes companies like Waymo, Aurora, TwoSimple, Kodiak and Plus, as well as car companies like Daimler, Volvo and Navistar. All right, let's talk berries. Let's talk berries. So if you happen to run a farming company and you want to grow plants that have high yields, which you do, you also want your plants to have really good taste, which you would, and require low amounts of fertilizer, pesticide and labor. This might be interesting to you. Bloomberg has a write up on a company called Mineral, a project from Alphabet's XLAB. Mineral has been working with Driscoll's. Yeah, you may recognize this name. If you if you buy berries across the United States, they can even in Canada. Driscoll's is a California company known for its berries, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries. Mineral is testing out unmanned rovers with Driscoll's that basically move like van sized vehicles up and down crop rows, doing what's called phenotyping. So they're basically collecting data that shows which plants are doing well and which aren't. Genotyping tests the genes. Phenotyping looks more at how they're doing something currently done by humans walking around with notepads and tape measures. So very labor intensive until you get to the mineral vehicles, minerals, vehicle, minerals, vehicles have all terrain wheels, say that 10 times fast. They also have GPS six cameras and some LiDAR. A human drives it remotely. But there are plans to try to make these autonomous at some point. Mineral is also testing several other vehicle types besides the ones they're using at Driscoll's. They've got some smaller carts for raspberries. They have sensors that can just go on existing tractors. And besides Driscoll's, mineral is working with a dozen other companies, including China's state owned Singenta. Singenta is using it to help identify weeds so that herbicides can be targeted more efficiently. You know, I don't know not running a farm myself. First of all, I also love Driscoll's Tom. Driscoll's blueberries are in my fridge at all times. Yep, me too. Yeah, I got excited when I went home to Illinois and I saw that they had Driscoll's in the Schnooks there. I'm like, oh, I thought I only could get these in California, but you can get them in a lot of places. Yeah, they're everywhere. The idea of having an autonomous vehicle going up and down, you know, crop rows, spraying pesticides, that almost seems like what I would expect this story to be. But the story being something that is potentially just a little bit better for everybody, you know, making us healthier, making the plants healthier, that is a step in the right direction. Yeah, so if you read this Bloomberg article, and I recommend you do, if you're interested in this, you know, it talks about the labor that it takes for someone to sit there and look at a plant and mark down, OK, this plant has, you know, the leaves are touching the ground. That's not a good sign. And then take all that data, collate it and decide, OK, well, we need to spray some more herbicide in this area in that area. That is all made extremely efficient by these machines because the machine learning is good enough to be able to just capture all that. They don't get tired the way a human does when they're like, oh, what am I looking at again? You know, you just start to wear out. You know, in the high heat of the summer. Exactly. All sorts of things that happen on farms. So so this is going to improve the accuracy, improve the efficiency, just make it faster, which means that you don't have to waste herbicide spreading it in the wrong place. You don't have to waste pesticide spreading it in the wrong place, which means you're not using as much herbicide and pesticide, which is better for the environment and it's better for yields because you get more blueberries, which means that you're spending less money growing the same, you know, for the same amount of blueberries. I feel like this this is all for the win. I guess it's a matter of whether they can make mineral cost effective on the front end, right? Yeah, I mean, Driscoll's is for anybody who's not familiar. I mean, this is a very large company. Probably you'd call it has the monopoly on raspberries, certainly in California and maybe throughout the US. So a company like Driscoll's working with mineral makes a lot of sense. If you were a smaller homegrown kind of operation of which there are many around where I live, which, you know, is a little bit more kind of farmer's market word to mouth type stuff. I'm not sure how soon this would come to a smaller operation. I would love that to be the case, though. And I think, you know, as long as as long as the customer says, Hey, you know, maybe costs can come down a little bit because you didn't have to spray herbicides and you just had more intel on how your crops were growing, you know, off the bat. And also the idea that, yes, workers who work for the company could be doing things that lend more to their expertise than just kind of being going up and down the assembly line, so to speak. You know, I think this is great. These are the sorts of stories where I go, yes, autonomous tech. Let's do it. Yeah. Well, especially because there is a farm labor shortage. So that automating things around the farm is less fraught with worries about, you know, throwing workers out of work. You can't get enough workers right now. So you kind of need some automation to fill in that gap. Motherboards, Claire Woodcock has an article up called Libraries Are Launching Their Own Local Music Streaming Platforms. You might say, what, how is that possibly true? More than a dozen public libraries in the US and also Canada now offer a music streaming service that pays local artists for a non-exclusive license to stream music to their community. Yeah, this has an interesting history. Developers Preston Austin and Kelly Heiser started the software for the Madison, Wisconsin Public Library to create what they have now, which is called the YAHARA Music Library. That was back in 2014. And then they took the work that they did for the Madison Public Library and they created an open source piece of software called Music Cat for music catalog, but also it sounds like a cat. Then they used the Music Cat software as the product for a company they started called RABBLE and RABBLE administers Music Cat, the open source project. It can be used by libraries as long as they agree to pay artists for including their music. RABBLE also works with libraries to help them get started with the project and create the website that users can use and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, you might be wondering how did this even get started? RABBLE released an emergency version of Music Cat for libraries to use for free during the pandemic. You know, people weren't leaving their houses, they needed information, which is getting third party grants and foundation funding now as well. More people are getting involved. It normally charges libraries for help setting up the software with different rates for libraries serving more than or fewer than 150,000 people. So if you're in a big city, your rate is going to be a little bit different than if you're in a small town, but rates nonetheless. Yeah, so musicians get paid, they get exposure they wouldn't get, libraries get to offer more content. RABBLE has a way to get money. I mean, it seems like a win for everybody. So you may be wondering like, how does it actually work in practice? Well, each library can set their own rules within the guidelines of what RABBLE requires them to do. But here's an example, New Orleans has one called Crescent City Sounds that accepts albums released in the last five years from artists that either reside in New Orleans or play gigs there regularly. If you don't live in New Orleans, but you're like, I'm always playing down in the French Quarter, then they'll accept your submission as well. You have to submit at least one track from an album. Crescent City Sounds tries to select albums that are going to expose users to different types of music. Right now it has 29 albums because it just started and includes surf rock, funk, hip hop, Mardi Gras Indian music and more. And at least with New Orleans, each artist gets $250 for a five year license. There's other examples too, though. Capital City Records in Edmonton is one. It includes more than 200 local musicians because it's been around a little longer. And it has led to having library focused music events where the bands actually play and even some vinyl album pressings apparently. Yeah, other libraries from Music Hat based services include Seattle, Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh, Fort Worth, Nashville, Chapel Hill, Appleton, Davenport, Euclare, Austin, Minneapolis and Portland, all in the US obviously. More than 2000 artists are featured in total across all the Music Hat installation. So, you know, you get enough cities where there is a local music scene. You're going to be exposed to some pretty cool music. Yeah, you're not joking. Like Austin, Portland, a bunch of these make sense. I'm curious that, you know, we don't see Kansas City on there, but we do see Seattle. Salt Lake City for sure. Like these all have good local music scenes. And I think that's what's cool about this is it's not a replacement for Spotify. This is a way for your library to offer you something. And by the way, I didn't even have to be a patron to go try out some of these musicians. Like it's just available on the website for anybody who can get to the website. So it's exposing them to more than just the patrons of the individual libraries. But it's a way to boost the local musicians who don't have big record contracts, don't have that exposure and to let you as a patron of that library to get something more out of it and to feel more connected to your community and get some free music that the artists actually get paid for. I think that that's the other part that really gets me is like, this isn't just like, well, for exposure, give us your stuff for free, which might be worth it for a lot of musicians. But I know they're not getting paid much, but at least they're getting paid. Yeah, my first reaction was like $250 for a five year license. You're not getting much as an artist, but the exposure is often what the artist is looking for anyway. And, you know, just to just to give big ups to local libraries, I belong to my local Sonoma County Library. I don't actually go into a physical library, although I could, but I don't. But I take advantage of a lot of stuff that is afforded to me as a library member. Magazines, you know, ebooks, you know, stuff that would cost money over on Amazon. And, you know, I might want to buy something and that would be a different kind of situation. But the library does a lot of good stuff for you. And when it comes to music, like you said, Tom, this is not a Spotify or an Apple Music competitor. There's no way there. There's just no way, not at this point anyway. But to to to be able to, I don't know, build a cool playlist of of of folks that are, you know, maybe your style and and maybe not that far away from you. Maybe they're playing down at the pub, you know, on on Saturday night, and you can meet some new folks. That sounds great to me. Yeah, I don't know that everyone realizes. I know some of you out there know this, but your local public library probably has, if not just a website, an app that you can use to borrow e-things. And and and you don't even have to go to the library to do it. So I'm looking at Hoopla, which the Los Angeles Public Library uses. I can check out Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the ebook or The Woman in the Library by Celarie Gentile. Like there's good ebooks that I can check out. There are audio books as well. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is available in audio book. There's comics, the Sheets comic or Big Nate comic or Wolverine, for instance, I can check out a comic. I can check out movies alone together, The Night Watch, Leap. I can check out TV shows. I don't know any of these TV shows that they're showing me here. London Kills, I've heard of that one, The Rev, Doc Martin. But popular music, you may have heard of Taylor Swift's Midnights. I can check that out and listen to it. Can't keep it. But if I just want to check it out and listen to it, I can get Taylor Swift through the library here. And it costs you nothing. Right. That I mean, that's I don't know. I libraries, I was about to say they get a bad rap. They don't get a bad rap. But I think that people just forget that libraries are a great public service. They get an absent rap. They get no rap. They need to get a rap. Yeah, they need a rap, a good one. But it's pretty easy to join your public library. Well, you might live somewhere where there isn't one nearby. But chances are you do live near a public library and you should take a gander. I've learned a lot since I did my Live With It On, the Remarkable 2 tablet earlier this year. And a lot of that was kind of like understanding EPUB and what is available to me and what isn't. And there's some gray areas as far as what you're allowed to be able to procure. But for the most part, I see no problem with at least being part of the community. It's not just the fact that it's free. That's great. But the library system is just a good one. And they're great people that work for libraries and they're doing good work and it's all for us. So take advantage. I don't know what you meant by gray areas, but I do want to hasten to add that librarians want you to use their apps to check things out, right? Like, it's not like you're sneaking around if you use an app at a library. Like, it's totally about that. You know, there are some third-party apps that we're able to get new books that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Go with the app that your library authorizes and you'll be totally fine. Exactly, exactly. Badfink's mentioning Libby, Quastar is mentioning Canopy. So, and sometimes there's multiples. I think the Los Angeles Public Library does Hoopla and Libby both, if I remember correctly. Or maybe it is Canopy. But yeah, just go check with your library website. If you have a thought about something on the show but you don't know our email address, let me fix that for you. Email us feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com. We have no fish, but we do have chip news. Good news and bad news out there today. Let's make a sandwich out of it anyway. First some good news, then a slim bad news filling, finishing with the good news bread at the bottom. NVIDIA began selling the RTX 4080 for $1,199 for those of you who want to spend more than $1,000 on a graphics card of less than $1,599 that you'd spend on a 4090. So yeah, the 4080, it's a good hesitate to call it bargain, but less expensive than the 4090 option that's now available. Well, if you're keep and score, meanwhile Qualcomm announced its new flagship, smartphone system on a chip, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. On the CPU side, it offers up to 35% better performance with up to 40% more power efficiency. The Andreno GPU is 25% faster with 45% better power efficiency. The SOC also includes Wi-Fi 7 support and the X70 modem with its own AI processor and support for dual active 5G sims. Qualcomm says you should start seeing it in devices by the end of this year. Now the bad chip news. The chip shortage continues to look like it's becoming a chip glut, which I don't know, maybe that is good news, but it's bad news for Micron. Yeah, yeah. Micron says it's lowering production of chip wafers for DRAM and NAND flash by 20%. Micron expects supply growth for DRAM to fall next year and only grow in the single digits for NAND flash, which could bring prices down. So come to think of it, it might be good news for consumers that way, but certainly bad news for Micron's bottom line. Well, so back to for sure, not bad news. Again, your mileage may vary. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway disclosed Monday that it invested $4.1 billion into chip maker TSMC, putting it in Berkshire Hathaway's top 10 holdings and one of its few major tech holdings, along with recent investments in Amazon and HP and its largest holding, which is Apple. Well, this is another signal that we may be at the bottom of the chip market. TSMC is headquartered in Taiwan, which has seen rising tensions between the US and China recently. Yes, I was on the TMO Daily Observations podcast, talking about the Buffett stuff with Ken Ray, if you wanna check that out. But it is interesting to see Warren Buffett getting in because often he is the indication of the bottom of the market. The other thing you mentioned there was Taiwan, which is worrisome for people who are like, well, do I wanna go in on TSMC when there might be a war happen in the China Straits? But TSMC is trying to diversify its locations. It's looking at Japan, it's looking at Singapore, it's looking at Europe, and it's building several plants in the United States. In fact, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that Apple CEO Tim Cook told employees the company will begin sourcing chips from a fab under construction in Arizona as early as 2024. Now Intel's building some plants there. I think Samsung is building a plant there, but they're probably talking about TSMC since TSMC already builds chips for Apple. Cook reportedly said that 60% of the world's processors come out of Taiwan, and he doesn't think that is a strategic position. That's too many chips coming out of one place. He also said Apple may expand its supply of chips from European fabs as well. I would wonder where those European fabs would be. No, there's fabs in Europe. There's plenty of them. Totally, but just which ones? You're wondering which ones he means. Yeah, no, I'm curious about that. Yeah, just yeah, like where are we talking? At the same time, if you would have told me five years ago, there's gonna be, Apple's gonna be manufacturing a lot of stuff out of Arizona, I would have said, oh please, there's no way, but times have changed. I think a lot of this news is just further indication that times have changed over the last few years and companies are, whether they're under duress or we're already thinking about it anyway, are trying to figure out, okay, what are some other options? So we're not so dependent on one particular place because if something goes down in that particular place, globally, a lot of people suffer, depending on how many of these chips you wanna buy. And that's just sort of simple economics, but it is interesting to see play out on a global scale. It's heartening to me to see, they're not just saying, oh, we had a problem getting chips from China, so let's have all of our chips in the United States because we're a US company, that they're saying, you know what, we should keep getting them from Taiwan and keep getting them from China and also get them from India and also get them from the United States and also get them from Europe. Because honestly, globalization is a good strategy in the sense of wherever in the world it is most cost effective to make something is the best place to make it, but it shouldn't just be one place in case those conditions change drastically like they did in 2020. So let's hedge our bets, let's diversify the supply chain. I think that's all to the good. And also going back to Warren Buffett, getting into TSMC in a big way, that's a big sign that he, a very smart person who is often, but not always right, thinks we're at the bottom on the chip market and that things are gonna start straightening out and turning around in the next few years. He's a very long-term investor, so he doesn't mean he thinks it's gonna turn around tomorrow, but he thinks that it's not gonna get cheaper to buy TSMC, so this is the time for him to get in. I think that's significant to pay attention to. Well, Tom, I've got some good news for you. Yeah? Well, they did, I guess it depends on who your favorite YouTuber is, but we have a new champion online. Brian Brushwood is not the most followed YouTuber, nor is Lamar Wilson, but they both deserve it. YouTuber MrBeast has eclipsed PewDiePie as the YouTuber with the most subscribers. This is pretty significant because it's the first time it's happened in almost a decade. You might recall that PewDiePie, very popular, became the most subscribed YouTuber back in August of 2013. Well, quite some time ago and was the first account to hit 100 million subs in 2019. But MrBeast, government name Jimmy Donaldson, gained his 112th million subscriber this month, which puts him above PewDiePie's now 111 million. So they're kind of neck and neck, but I think we have a new winner. Donaldson has also gotten a lot of attention from videos featuring big cash giveaways and prizes. If you're not familiar with his shtick, I guess, he does a lot of charity work as well. His additional philanthropy themed YouTube channel has more than 10 million subscribers on its own and he also runs a charity org to feed communities across the US. So good stuff going on here. Also a lot of, how do we say, pomp and circumstance around doing the good things? This is YouTube after all, right? You want the most attention possible. If you take PewDiePie, who was all about just getting attention and add an appearance of conscience, suddenly more people like you is what this teaches me. It doesn't mean that he's doing, that Mr. Beast is doing bad things or anything, but yeah. Like he's playing the same game as PewDiePie, but he added a positive element. And it's kind of nice to see that the positive element has become the most popular. Even if it's done to get views, it also does some good. So yeah. I've got a lot of Mr. Beast friends who are fans and they just think he's the greatest thing. And other people go in, oh gosh, Mr. Beast. But I think that just also happens when you're that popular is that people go, oh, he's trying so hard. Totally, totally, yeah. I know of Mr. Beast, how can you not? I've definitely heard. I have not watched anything by Mr. Beast. Well, Tom, you might win a car. I should win a car. I deserve to win a car. I know. I'm curious, not counting Lamar and Brian and our friends, do you have a favorite YouTuber? Yeah, that'd be good to know. Do you? Oh, me. I thought we were asking Feedback at Daily Tech News Show. All of you, Feedback at Daily Tech News Show.com, but I'm also curious if Sarah has one. Oh gosh, I don't spend a lot of time on YouTube. Again, our friends, I'm subscribed. I was watching some YouTube long form stuff, but they've shut down a lot of that. So yeah, I don't know. I'm gonna stick to Plex for now. All right. My favorite is- Although you can pull YouTube stuff into Plex too. You wanna know my favorite? I do. Carrie Cakes. Does she make cakes? No, she doesn't. That's the best part. She doesn't even make cakes. I don't know if she used to make cakes. I never found out, but she does like travel videos. And there's like lots of cute dogs and pretty cafes. She goes to the best cafes. She also has a book channel. So there's like the whole bookish aspect of it. Pretty great. Oh, I love it. Yeah, check out Carrie Cakes. All right, let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. Matthew wrote in in response to our conversation recently about various visas that you can get, specifically the digital Nomad temporary resident permit that allows a visitor to stay in a country and work remotely on a computer to a foreign-based employer or business. These visas typically have a duration of about 12 months. They can be extended though for one or more years depending on the country issuing the visa and what you're doing. Matthew says, I'm planning to do this myself in Ecuador. I'm going for a month to check it out before I commit to the lifestyle, but I fully expect to come back to the US in February and then downsize considerably. Ecuador and Colombia are two years. Certain Caribbean countries are doing six months or more. Thailand offers up to 10 years in some cases. And unsurprisingly, there are whole communities around this lifestyle. Oh, that's so exciting, Matthew. I'm glad to hear from an actual digital Nomad. That sounds exciting. Yeah, trying this out. We heard from Jen Briney when we talked about this. And like I said then, we're trying to schedule her to come on and talk about her tips and tricks because she is full-time digital Nomad. Like that's how she lives right now. And it's pretty cool and pretty interesting to watch. So I want her to be able to share some tips and tricks with you all. For those of you like Matthew, who are into this. Yeah, really cool, Matthew. Thanks for letting us know. Also, special thanks to Ronald Huss. Ronald, you already know this, but you're one of our top lifetime supporters for DTNS. And now everyone else knows it too. Thank you for all the years of support, Ronald. To you, Ronald. You're the boss of bosses. Thank you, Ronald. Patrons, stick around for the extended show, Good Day Internet. Just a reminder, you can also catch the show live. Monday through Friday, we do live. 4 p.m. Eastern, 2100 UTC. Put it on your couch and find out more at dailytechnewshow.com at slash live. We will be back doing it all again tomorrow with Justin and Robert Young joining us. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Priming Club hopes you have enjoyed this program. Ha, ha, ha, ha.