 This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners thanks to all of you including Philip Shane, Paul Boyer and Brad. Coming up on DTNS Cloudflare makes it easier to start your own mastodon server. One password implements pass key for your master password and why Apple hasn't laid anyone off. Come on Apple, get with it, that's your chance. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, February 10th, 2023 in Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. From Columbus, Ohio, I'm Rob Dunwood. Drawing the top tech stories from Cleveland, I'm Len Peralta. And on the show's producer, Roger Chang. Yes, folks, we have, I guess it's among the many, many bad layoff stories, a good layoff story in the sense that no one got laid off. And we're all very curious why. We're going to get to that in a bit. Let's start with the quick hits. General Motors signed a long-term deal with Global Foundries to provide exclusive production capacity at a plant in upstate New York to make semiconductors used for auto parts. Global Foundries CEO Thomas Caulfield said it will take two to three years to ramp up production. GEM expects to double the number of semiconductors that it uses over the next several years. We talked about streaming consolidation yesterday on the show. Here's one little bit of it beginning. MX Player is one of the largest on-demand video streaming services in India, claiming more than 150 million active users. TechCrunch's sources say Amazon has begun talks to acquire MX Player from Time's Internet, which has owned it since 2018. Windows Central reports that the latest insider dev build of Windows 11 includes hidden integrated RGB lighting controls. These controls let users match the current Windows theme color, as well as control things like brightness, effects, speed, and also set specific colors. It's not clear what peripheral makers might support Microsoft's integration since they often use their own control software. But Windows Central also reports that Microsoft is considering supporting other lighting effects as well for things like incoming notifications or muting a mic. Okay, I'm glad I didn't do that. The Verge's sources say Microsoft will soon tell us all about plans for integrating its Prometheus model, that's the one behind the new Bing chat GPT-like features, into Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook in the coming weeks with a tentative rollout date set in March. This reportedly includes the ability to generate graphs and graphics in PowerPoint. If that's not enough AI for you, JD.com says it plans to roll out an industrial version of a chat bot called ChatJD. That won't be confusing. An opera owner, Kunlan, tech says it will integrate Chat GPT itself into its products, although they didn't say if it's part of an open AI partnership and whether it would go into opera because Kunlan makes other products and services. Investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board, or NTSB rather, issued a final report on a fatal crash involving a Tesla Model S back in 2021. Now at first, investigators saw evidence that the driver's seat was unoccupied, opening up the possibility that Tesla's autopilot driver's assistant system was in use and failed in that instance. However, NTSB investigators determined there was in fact someone in the driver's seat at the time of the crash and that autopilot was not in use and not at fault. All right, well there you go. It's good to have the follow-ups on those. This doesn't seem to make as many headlines as the first story. That's why that is. All right, since Mastodon started to explode with new users in November, one of the potential stumbling blocks for new users was what server to join. You can always move your account between servers, so it's not something you have to get right the first time, but it's still preferable not to have to. While there's no shortage of servers to sign up for, one option you might consider is setting up your own server. And to make that more attractive to more people, Cloudflare announced a service to make that a lot easier. Cloudflare's Mastodon server deployment service is called Wildebeest. It lets you set up a Mastodon server on Cloudflare's existing page service, which hosts static websites. Wildebeest supports Activity Pub and other Fediverse APIs with the ability to publish, edit, boost, and delete posts. And of course, the server will sit behind Cloudflare security from DDoS and other types of attacks. You'll need to feel comfortable using GitHub and Cloudflare's dashboards to get everything up and running, but it involves significantly fewer steps than something like DigitalOcean's Marketplace one-click Mastodon server. And it doesn't give you everything that you could do if you self-hosted everything. So right now, Wildebeest instances let you post text, images, no video, although they say it's coming soon. So it works with most Mastodon clients, but not all of them. Ivory, for example, the client from the makers of Tweetbot, they've been working on Ivory for a while, doesn't yet work with Wildebeest, probably will in the future, but there are some limitations for now. You also have to pay. Cloudflare pricing starts at $5 per month, so not going to break the bank, but you can see where this would add up. I think this would be a good solution if you want to control your social data or if you want to operate a small server, just for your friends, you're not worried about huge compliance things. But this also comes as the tide of Mastodon's popularity is kind of rolling back in. Earlier this week, Wired reported that active users on Mastodon sat at 1.4 million down from 2.5 million in November. I think that's probably going to stabilize. It's probably not going to plummet all the way back down to where it was last year. But Rob, you have some thoughts on this, I know, because you're somebody who I think looks at this and says, well, I think I could do that. Maybe I'm interested in that. What about everybody? So the installation method for this is easier than, as we said, than it was, but it's still not, like, discord easy. So there's a lot of folks who just aren't going to use this for nothing. It costs money, so that's one reason. But the other reason is that it's just not simple and easy to set up. You have to think about some things. So I think that when you think about social media, when Mastodon started becoming ridiculously popular, was when Twitter started going through all the things that Twitter has gone through. I don't want to say that Twitter has completely stabilized, but we see that the numbers have pulled back. So Mastodon doesn't necessarily feel for folks who are trying to set servers up like a regular type of social media user type of thing. This is going to be more for, as you said, people who they're really concerned about controlling their data or you're setting up a server specifically to use with certain groups of friends. I don't know that we're going to see Mastodon ever get to the uber popular type of social media platforms that are all self-contained like an Instagram, like a TikTok, like a Twitter. Also, I think, and I kind of fall somewhere in the middle of this camp. On one hand, I'm like, well, I'd probably have to learn a few things before I get super comfortable with setting up my own server, but it can be done. And I like the idea of saying, all right, well, if it's my server, then I get to set my rules. I get to set anybody who wants to be a part of the server, you have to adhere by kind of the way that I want things to go. And I think that that is why Mastodon and other decentralized social networks are really gaining in popularity with people saying, oh, okay, we don't have to have the centralized system where we're just told how everything is working, what the rules are and how we have to adhere by them. But that's also the rub, right, is that so many of us are used to just being like, okay, well, what are the rules? What aren't the rules? I don't want to do anything to get me kicked off the network. You know, I can't take this into my own hands. But in the case of these kinds of things, you legit can. And a lot of people are going to say, yeah, that's what I wanted this whole time, especially there's been some confusion and many of my less tech-centric friends have pinged me as of late saying, which Mastodon server should I join? And the truth is like, well, I mean, there's no right answer because there's so many choices. And that's great. But when you're not used to that, you don't know what to do. I feel like Wildebeest is not the answer to anything. And Mastodon's future is far from guaranteed. But I think this is an interesting step on the way to an evolution that might possibly turn into something more widely used. So imagine a scenario, if you will, where this becomes popular enough that somebody goes, well, that's easier than what Digital Ocean was doing. What if we made it even easier? And eventually we get a product where people are able to just log in and it's like, yep, your default Mastodon server is here. You can customize it if you want, but you don't have to. And now you can connect to any Fediverse and you don't have to run a server. But you can decide which ones you want to connect with and which ones you don't. We've made it super easy, great graphic interface. Like that could really be a template. I don't know. Maybe Twitter's blue service, or it's blue sky, not blue. That's the subscription service, blue sky service that's spun out. Maybe it does something like that. Maybe it eventually federates with this. I don't know. But I feel like there's a possibility there. It's not a guarantee, but it's a possibility. And that could lead to something that gives you more control over your own data because it's a template for controlling things. Tom, I think you're absolutely right. I think what you have to look at, though, is that you can't compare what Mastodon is and what it may even turn into in the near future. You can't compare that to what Twitter is or what Facebook is. We're going to be dealing with a couple of million users, three, four million users. If it gets wildly popular, 10, 15 million users, that is largely different than 800, 900 million, a billion, a billion, five. So I think when you think about Mastodon, it's just fundamentally different than the big centralized social media platform. I think about Mastodon as its own thing. The way I think about Taco Bell separately from Mexican food. It's its own thing. It's not a replacement for anything. It's a subcategory of sorts. The idea of a password manager, however, I think of as very important. It's pretty simple, but the big knock on it has been that it's a single point of failure. What it gives you is you don't have to remember or write down dozens of passwords. You just have to remember to open your vault. OnePassword already announced plans to support secure logins using the new Passkey technology by spring of 2023, but that was for storing the Passkeys. So if you create a Passkey in your browser or on your phone, OnePassword would be able to securely store that in the Password Manager for you. Now OnePassword is doing that one better, saying it will support using a Passkey to unlock your OnePassword account itself. As a reminder, vital compliant Passkeys use a cryptographic token from a pre-authenticated device rather than a password for logon. In other words, you use a thing to unlock stuff instead of remembering a password. Your OnePassword Passkey, like all Passkeys, stays on the device and uses the same biometric authentication as your device. If your phone uses Face ID, you need Face ID to access the Passkey. Right now, OnePassword accounts using passwords can also use biometric authentication, but ultimately fall back on a password that can be used on other devices. Now OnePassword says support for account Passkeys will arrive as an option by this summer. So support in the vault in the spring, support for unlocking in the summer. But its Chief Product Officer, Steve Wan, says our goal is to go Passkey only as soon as possible. In other words, Passkey support comes in the summer, but eventually they're going to say, you know what? Passkey's the only way to get into your vault. The knock on Password managers has been, as I mentioned earlier, that they represent a single point of failure. But if you use a Passkey without a password, which is what they eventually want to get to, there's no password to get. It becomes much harder for that single point to fail because the Passkey is only on your device or devices. Maybe you've got it on your laptop and you've got one on your phone, but it's a lot smaller attack surface. Rob, do you think this meaningfully changes the equation here? I think that it can, and it can eventually. The big problem is that there's just not enough stuff that uses Passkey. But this is changing. You know, if you think about LastPass and the breach that they had, their Password Vault was actually compromised. There is no Password Vault with this. So you literally are creating tokens or you're creating a private key on your device. You know, and there's a public key on the site that you're going to. And there's a bunch of magic that happens with math on the back end. And you never really have to type in a password, even a username to authenticate. This is going to change everything when everything uses it. But right now the backup is still password. So your question, is it meaningful? It's meaningful in the sense that it can be eventually, but it's not today. There has to be a plethora of sites that are actually using this technology for it to really take off. Yeah. And there's some good questions in our chat, too. Kapalicious is like, until your Passkey fails, which I'm not sure how a Passkey could fail because it's just an inert thing, but I'm willing to entertain ideas on that. And I think it was someone else said, you should always want more than one key. It was you, Nick, I agree. And in which case, yes, the idea with one password is that you've got your Passkey stored in the vault. And so that means you've got it wherever one password is. However, the one password Passkey is only stored on the device. So it does become a problem of recovery where it's like, well, I need to make sure I don't lock myself out because my phone died. Right? I've got to have some kind of replication or backup system or something that happens all the time. Yeah. I was trying to think of, OK, when would this be a bad scenario? I mean, the bad scenario was people saying, what's a Passkey? We all know people who would ask exactly that. How is that different from a password? How is this better? And you can explain that. But yes, there still is a point of failure when it comes to, yeah, your phone dying or, I don't know, you drop it in the sink. Or you just happen to be on a device and you really need a password. And I don't know, maybe you're using your friend's computer or something and you're like, man, this isn't going to work. So yeah, there are still issues. However, if you're one password or last pass or any password manager, you're definitely thinking about how do we make this as strong as possible? Because as we have seen over the last couple of months, even password managers are vulnerable to attacks. And you want to be as safe as possible if you're paying them for the service. And you can use Passkey on another person's device as long as you have your Passkey holding device with you. If you're confused about Passkey, folks, head over to know a little more dot com. We've got an episode called About Passkey. I'll put a link to it in the show notes as well that kind of walks you through all that. All right, folks, if you're feeling social, get in touch with the DTNS audience on a social network near you. Perhaps it's at DTNS Show on Twitter or at Daily Tech News Show on TikTok. Or possibly you like the Instagram at DTNSPIX. That's DTNS-P-I-X. Say hello. Now, we don't report on every single story about tech companies cutting jobs because that would be all we talked about these days. It's a thing. But it's worth talking about in aggregate, especially since the tech sector is seeing huge layoffs while jobs are being added in many, if not most, other sectors. And you might say, what's going on with that? Now, there are big layoffs from big companies that have gotten big headlines. For example, last month Microsoft said it planned to cut 10,000 jobs. On Thursday, Bloomberg sources said that some of those now eliminated positions included people working on surface devices, hollow lensed, mixed reality hardware, even Xbox. But it's not just Microsoft. We've seen Meta layoff 11,000 people recently. Amazon laying off 10,000 people. Alphabet laying off 12,000 people. The list goes on. But one company we really haven't heard this trope from is Apple. Why not? Well, during the pandemic lockdowns particularly, a lot of tech companies hired a lot of folks to deal with the new normal and the windfall. Let's say that they were getting from people using the internet a whole lot more, needing devices, needing services to do that. Apple, while still taking advantage of that windfall, did not hire a lot of new folks. They hired some. They didn't hire nearly as many as these other companies. According to data from Bloomberg, Apple added fewer employees than other big tech firms by a lot. Apple's headcount increased 20% between 2020 and 2022, compared with 60% at Alphabet and Amazon nearly doubled its headcount. Since then, both Alphabet and Amazon have announced layoffs of around 30,000 positions combined, like Sarah was just giving you those numbers. The idea behind hiring during a boom like that is you're adding productivity and that that productivity is going to increase the company's bottom line, paying for itself down the road. The risk Apple took was under hiring. When they weren't hiring as many people, you could have had folks pointing the finger and saying, they're not taking advantage of this. They're wasting an opportunity. If they didn't take advantage, their growth could have been outpaced by competitors who did. Now, you can measure that by looking at the revenue per new hire. Apple's outpaced everybody else by far, which indicates they didn't suffer in productivity. They just hired smarter. Well, you know, one might think, I don't know, maybe Apple already felt that they had, I don't know, they were sort of pushing the higher end of the employees that were helping the company's bottom line. But the temptation was like, ah, but we've got all these orders. People are buying the MacBooks like crazy. They're using our services. Yeah, that was true. They're signing up for Apple TV. We should hire more people in. And take advantage and use that money and build new things. I mean, it's sort of like, yeah. So like, what did Apple benefit from? I mean, you could compare Apple to any other company and Apple's always still going to be kind of on its own island because it's Apple. But sure, you sold a lot of iPads. You made a lot more service revenue, right? Because people are like, I'm home. What do I do? Maybe I'll sign up for Apple Music, you know, or that sort of thing or Fitness Plus. So Apple reaped the rewards, but, you know, it's quite possible that the company was like, OK, let's just reap the rewards. Yeah. We have all the people to do this. We're not going to significantly reap more rewards if we hire more people is what Apple gambled on and won. Rob, does this make sense to you? Well, I think one of the things we have to do is we have to think about what is Apple. Apple is a giant hardware manufacturer. And when you think about where their stuff is made is not generally here. So they contract a lot of other companies to build their stuff. Those companies may have hired new people in the wake of what was going on in the pandemic, but Apple didn't have to. You know, the Apple's core here in the U.S. pretty much stayed where it was. They just didn't have to go out and hire a lot of folks. And that's just because unlike Microsoft and Alphabet and Facebook and all these companies that are basically they needed people to create more code to create more services to create all that stuff that is kind of ethereal. And you use a web browser to get to most people who are dealing with Apple by iPads, MacBooks and iPhones. And they're just their business is just fundamentally different than a lot of the other companies that had to go out and do all these hires. Yeah. The really interesting headlines I've been seeing Apple Insider had this Apple services revenue. Apple services just the services revenue exceeded Nike and McDonald's combined. And and so that's the services part. That is McDonald's service revenue. No, no McDonald's entire revenue. Oh, just Apple services revenue. Yeah, I know it's hard to write. We're not comparing services to services. We're comparing just Apple services revenue to all of McDonald's and all of Nike's revenue and Apple services is bigger. And as Rob just pointed out, that's the small part of Apple. I mean, it's getting bigger and bigger all the time. And so Apple can afford to kind of just let that simmer. Because like you're saying, Rob, I think it's a great point. The the ability to let contractors take care of the hardware gives you a lot more flexibility. And you did see Foxconn doing layoffs. You did see the people who build the devices for Apple doing layoffs. So getting back to your point, Rob. Yeah, I think they outsourced some of the risk. It's a good it's a good point. Yeah, I mean, depending on who you are, you might say, well, that kind of counts as, you know, Apple, Apple layoffs. But not when it comes to stats. Apple's got their hands up like this when you're looking at their books. Hey, we didn't lay anybody off. Yeah. We're talking to these that we contract with did, but that's not us. And so I try to compare it like, OK, but Google makes hardware. But they make so much more of their money off advertising. Meta makes all of their money off advertising. On the other hand, Meta and Google do outsource a lot of theirs to contract. There's I can't remember the name of it anymore that there's a huge company that provides the contract workers to Google. And and so it's not like they don't have contractors and and and those contractors couldn't have got laid off. I feel like it's just a different division in Apple that helps them. And and honestly, I think it's partly that. But going back, I'd still give Apple credit. I'd still get Apple credit for just saying like, yeah, we knew this wasn't going to last forever. And so we didn't want to just blow all our money off of it. That is the way Apple does things. It's pretty normal for them. Yeah. People will come back to our Kerberino Death Star. Yeah. And they will have to because we'll make them come back. Of course, the reality of tech layoffs means a lot of people are looking for new jobs. Vox wrote up a really interesting piece on how this has impacted the culture of LinkedIn, which has seen 12.6 million more people add open to work on their profiles in February with traffic up 60% compared to January 2020. We'll talk about that a little more on Good Day Internet right after Daily Tech News show finishes. But before that, let's talk about love. All right. It's almost Valentine's Day. Isn't it though? Yeah. Thanks for reminding me, Tom. No, Eileen and I will go have dinner. It'll be great. But if you happen to be a person who's into online dating, you have quite a few options. And to match you with potential dates, if you're an OKCupid user, some other dating apps do the same thing. But OKCupid will ask you questions, getting to know you. What do you like? What are you not like? What are your deal breakers? That sort of thing. Your answers help them try to give you the best match as possible. Well, OKCupid announced that it is testing the six match questions generated by ChatGPT. Yes, folks. Chatbot is coming to dating. OKCupid's head of global communications, Michael Kaye told TechCrunch, quote, We found that daters who believe ChatGPT is a lifesaver get almost 40% more matches than those who think it's too big brother. That sparked an idea. What if we use ChatGPT to draft our famous matching questions that power our algorithm? I might say, awesome. So I don't have to do some of that small talk in the beginning. Well, the test questions include things like, are you a morning or night person? What do you value in a partner? And how do you know when to take a relationship to the next level? So this is not reinventing the dating wheel here. But without AI, think of how much time it would take for you to come up with these yourself. Maybe you're too shy. I don't know. I'm into it. I think that, you know, Valentine's Day is coming up next week and somebody over at OKCupid said, so what's the hot story that's dominating all tech news right now? ChatGPT, OK, well, how can we write that into something that we're doing so that people will take notice and will be talked about? Yeah, it's kind of cool. These are just questions that OKCupid staff come up with. And it's not like the ones they had generated here are ones that the staff couldn't have come up. Yeah, these are pretty broad questions, not unhelpful. And there's a good chance that ChatGPT is actually scanning some of these questions from OKCupid that have come out in the past. And it's just regurgitating things that OKCupid writers have already done. That's not a bad idea. I don't know. I think, you know what, I'm going to look at this story as like, this is a milestone for ChatGPT. It has now joined Bitcoin and cryptocurrency and NFTs in the realm of please find a way to put it in your press release, whether you're doing it for real or not. Congratulations, ChatGPT. You've made it. All right, let's check out the bail bag. Drew wrote in to explain what happened when his town of Superior, Colorado passed a law to investigate the possibility of municipal broadband. Drew says, before the town could really even start the wheels turning for figuring out how to actually cost and implement its own fiber service, our main provider for the town, which was Comcast Xfinity, dramatically increased available speeds and lowered prices. I currently pay $60 per month for 1,000 megapits per second down, 20 up, over cable. It no longer made financial sense for the town to pursue its own service and the issue has been largely forgotten. Drew says, I think it was probably a win-win for us though. The mere threat of some competition caused an improvement in an existing service and the town didn't have to follow through with an expensive infrastructure investment. This is a great example of why it should not be against the law for a city to consider putting in its own internet. Sometimes it's going to work out great like it has in Chattanooga. Sometimes you won't even need to do it, as in the case of Superior, Colorado. This is a great email. Thank you, Drew. All right, let's thank Len Peralta as well. He has been illustrating today's show. Len, what have you been drawing for us? Two words, hire different, right? That's what this is all about. I mean, that's kind of what Apple's been doing. They've been thinking different and they've been hiring different. And obviously it worked out for them here during the pandemic. This is what this image is all about. It's very minimalist, but it is. It's about hiring different. It's about thinking different about the... Look at the employees. Yes, it's very kind of scary. There's a little last of us going on at the moment. Exactly, a little nod to the last of us going on. Yes, hire different, think different. That's what it's all about. If you'd like to see this image or you'd like to get it, if you can join my Patreon, patreon.com. Len, at the DTNS Lover Level, you get this right free for just joining. Or you can do it the old-fashioned way and go to my online store at lennparaltestore.com where I am also taking commissions right now. So think about it. Great gift for Valentine's Day for sure. I was going to say, I like that you can join the Lover Level, the DTNS Lover Level, without having to have any chat GPT questions. No, no, believe me. None of that is happening at lennparaltestore.com. So we've got that going for you. Well, good stuff as always, Len. Also good stuff from you, Rob Dunwood. Let folks know where else they can find your work. Well, I am at Rob Dunwood on pretty much all the things and you can check me out on my other shows, SMR Podcast and The Tech John, where we talk about tech. And specifically with The Tech John, we talk about it from a perspective that you don't ordinarily see. It's a good show, too. Many DTNS folks are very familiar, but if you aren't, do check it out. We also want to extend a special thanks to Miss M. Miss M is one of our top lifetime supporters and a frequent e-mailer. Miss M, we love your feedback for DTNS. So thank you for all the years of support. You get a gold star. Yay, Miss M, you're the best. Now, listen, you can't leave Miss M hanging out there, along with the other patrons. We need some new folks. The patronage only works if we have new folks coming in. A lot of folks are having a hard time, and I understand if you're one of them that means if you can support us and you're listening for free and you're like, you know, I could afford a couple of bucks a month. Now is an important time to sign up at patreon.com. It helps make sure we stay able to do this and do special episodes like the gaming round table we're doing later this week. And it means that you're picking somebody else up who's in a hard time right now and you get a bunch of extra free stuff as well. So go check it all out, patreon.com. Speaking of patrons, stick around for our extended show, Good Day Internet. And just a reminder, our show is live. DTNS is live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern, 2100 UTC. You can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com. As Tom mentioned, this is not a regular weekend because we have a special DTNS Saturday with our video gaming round table featuring Scott Johnson, Trisha Hershberger, and Max Govel. Talk to you then. This week's episodes of Daily Tech News Show were 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 Struffolino, video producer and Twitch producer Joe Coots, 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 Deterdake. Our mods, Beatmaster, W.S. Goddess 1, BioCow, Captain Kipper, Steve Guadarama, Paul Rees, Matthew J. Stevens, a.k.a. Gadget Virtuoso, and J.D. Galloway. Mod and video hosting by Dan Christensen, music and art provided by Martin Bell, Dan Looters, Mustafa A. A. Cast, and Len Peralta. Live art performed by Len Peralta. A Cast ad support from Tatiana Matias, Patreon support from Dylan Harari. Contributors for this week's shows include Ayaz Akhtar, Patrick Norton, Scott Johnson, Chris Christensen, and Rob Dunwood. Our guest this week was Brian Brushwood, and thanks to all our patrons who make the show possible.