 This 10th year of Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners and thanks to all of you including Brandon Brooks Hector Bones and Tim Ashman coming up on DTNs Scott tells us what Xbox had to say in its developer direct Why one new model of MacBook Pro has slower storage than the old model and what it means the chat GPT passed its MBA final exam This is the Daily Tech news for Wednesday, January 25th 2023 in Los Angeles on Tom Merritt and from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane in Salt Lake City. I'm Scott Johnson and I'm the show's producer Roger. Oh my friends We've got game news. We've got Artificial intelligence doing well on tests better than I probably would have done. Let's start with the quick hits Microsoft earned 2.32 dollars per share in Q2 on revenue up 2% on the year to 52.75 Billion dollars it missed analysts revenue estimates, but beat on earnings Windows OEM and devices revenue both fell 39% on the year with Microsoft predicting similar declines next quarter as well Xbox hardware revenue fell 13% while content and service fell 12% on the growth front intelligent cloud revenue increased 18% on the year server and cloud services grew by over 20% and Azure revenue jumped 31% on the year Microsoft 365 consumer subscriptions grew 12% to 63.2 million While teams passed 280 million monthly active users. That seems like that cloud business was not a bad idea Good good job Sacha Nadella Honda announced that it would begin online sales of Acura electric vehicles later in 2023 with plans to exclusively sell Acura EV online In 2024 the car maker said it's still finalizing details on the strategy including how it's going to set the pricing Garmin launched a new ECG smartwatch app available on the venue to plus watch in the US This marks Garmin's first FDA cleared app on this feature This allows users to record 32nd ECGs and look out for signs of atrial for Relation yeah, don't want that that exactly political sources say European Union anti-trust investigators plan to open an investigation into Microsoft teams Looking into if tying it to its office suite Unfairly impacts competition this investigation would be based on a 2020 complaint from You guessed it slack Last week the Indian Institute of Technology announced a new mobile OS called bar OS, that's BHAR OS and India's Minister for Education and Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Dharmendra Pradhan Demonstrated it this week Pradhan claims that the OS shipped with no preloaded apps Shares no user data and worked with private app stores He also claims that the OS can't run malware, but didn't really provide any more details about why that's possible Screen search of the OS show what looks like the Android keyboard app with design elements that look similar to Android as well First of all saying it's impossible to run malware is just a challenge to see how fast someone can get malware to run Second of all, I'm sure it's gonna be just as successful as the Chinese Russian and German versions of state operated operating systems Which of course none of us have ever forgotten May we never forget hey previously on how Apple handles solid state storage It's a really riveting tail by the way the base model m1 and m2 versions of the MacBook Air each offered 256 gigabytes of storage But they did it in very different ways the m1 version split the storage between two 128 gigabyte chips and the m2, which is just out used a single 256 gigabyte chip that's not a problem for most uses that you might need these devices for but it means you can't read and write Simultaneously for or to the same chips or from the same chips That can slow down transfers of large amounts of data and cause slower performance if the RAM gets filled up to compensate And the drive is used to just swap data back and forth. Well now That same effect has happened into the MacBook Pro The base level 14-inch MacBook Pro running on an M2 chip has slower read write speeds than the older version with an M1 chip now I fixed noted that the m1 version had two NAND chips on the front of the motherboard and Two on the back in the MacBook Pro that is how they added up to be 512 gigabytes They were each 128 9 to 5 max Derek wise opened up the new M2 MacBook Pro and Noted that there's only one storage chip visible on the front of the board He didn't look at the back, but it stands to reason that if there's one 256 chip on the front There's probably only one 256 chip on the back and once again The difference here is not going to be noticeable in most uses except in those edge cases like Scott was talking about Yeah And this only applies to the base level 14 inch MacBook Pro with 512 gigs of storage and ours Technica found that the M2 MacBook Pros with higher levels of storage like 1 terabyte or even more had faster internal storage speeds That the comparable that the as the comparable M1 MacBook Pros so Yeah, I think in most cases. This is a non-starter Something that would upset you. I think it's important to know First of all why it's like oh, they didn't they didn't like, you know do it on purpose necessarily there They're using a more efficient assembly using one chip. Unfortunately. It's not more efficient It's almost like it's a side effect of like oh We had to use multiple chips in the design before and that had the side effect of making it faster read write in some cases But we didn't design it to be that way. We just had to do it that way and now that we can get these 256 chips we're just going to use those and in the vast majority of cases you're not going to notice but yeah If you were really pushing these things to the edge, you would notice. Here's the thing It's only in MacBook Airs and the entry-level MacBook Pro So it's not the device that people are most likely to get if they are using these like extreme Heavy cases, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah I'm my concern is as an M1 Mac mini owner been very happy with that thing And I'm tempted to get the M2 mini over even the studio or waiting for a studio M2 because I just think this is a very Capable little box may as well call it the studio junior I have some concerns that they would push that into desktop stuff And that is where you might run into problems and see some drops in performance where currently I For example when I do a live stream to a show. I am recording raw Waveform audio at the same time that I'm recording raw Video data and those things are happening simultaneously to the exact same drive I could probably work out a situation where I have externals or Thunderbolt base drives or something doing some of that heavy lifting But I still like the idea that we have the burden being shared I don't know how many people are doing that kind of work that work with notebooks Which goes to your whole point this may not be an issue for most or let's say some large percentage of users But I could see why it would cause concern first of all just just for anybody who wasn't paying close attention just now You know somebody cut you off on the highway or whatever dogs barking at you This doesn't apply to the Mac minis. This only applies to a base level Macbook Pro Let me ask you this Scott if this ended up being a problem in some hypothetical world But it was just the base level Mac mini as it is here and it's like oh But if you get the terabyte Mac mini or anything bigger, you're not going to see this problem at all Would you care? No, no, I wouldn't because I'm gonna have to get a bigger exactly configuration anyway So you're absolutely right like what they probably found is it was a little redundant for the lower-end models because people aren't using them that way I don't know if they have data that says that they use them that way or not But that's probably what I'm for the people out there saying but I would we're with you Many people aren't that's why it's important to know but I again, I don't think Apple is like Undermining a Causing a huge problem here. It's it's a very few cases that were like no, no, no I only need 512 gigabytes. I only need the base level 14-inch MacBook Pro But I absolutely do need to transfer data. You're right Sarah There's somebody out there that that does fit that use case. It's just not very common Yep, and it's still not like it's impossible to do it It's just slightly slower than the previous version in which case maybe you just want to buy the older one in that case Yeah, that's true I am excited about the new minis and I'm excited to hear this doesn't affect those but you know You'd like to be aware of changes like this I think on the whole even if you don't need it keep an eye out for it, right? Yeah, yeah watch for it Know that that's going on behind the scenes Xbox and Bethesda held a 45 minute developer direct live stream today that ended 15 minutes before we started this show So a little bit of scrambling a big thanks to our producer Roger for for taking copious notes on this course Scott you were paying attention to this as well What if anything was notable in this announcement? All right? Well the big thing They kind of had tempered our expectations prior to this Microsoft to get out in front of it on social media and said look Don't go in there expecting huge huge things. This is just sort of a little one You know we've got other stuff planned they get their big starfield Bethesda event coming up still So there's a lot to look forward to but we did get a couple of things that were interesting for one a game That was not previously announced as best I can tell or find and was not leaked Which is also kind of amazing in this day and age and that is a third-person rhythm action game called high-fi rush And this is from tango game works. You're probably familiar with a bunch of their stuff. They usually do horror games But this looks like a very colorful very animated Action game where you try to stay to the rhythm of the beat while you fight waves of enemies and There's a story there. It looks like a lot of jaunty stuff going on and here's the weird bit We didn't know about it and it's also coming out today, which we also didn't know about so if you have game pass Or we'd like to just buy the thing this will be out on all the platforms tonight That includes PC as well as their own Xbox consoles no PlayStation obviously and So that was a big deal other stuff for the show Stuff we either knew about maybe was highly anticipated, but we kind of knew what was up like Redfall from Arcane Studios This is from Arcane Austin in particular. It's an FPS co-op shooter in the Ken you know think of like Left 4 Dead or You know dark tide some of these newer games where It's you and maybe up to three of your friends running around killing stuff in this case. It's vampires It looks great. It will support single play as well and Arcane doesn't make bad video games. So that is one that is still Highly anticipated by a lot of people and we're expecting to see it On the 23rd. No, excuse me. That's not it may may 2nd 2023 is when that's hitting the Hitting the everybody's console. Then we had kind of a weird one in my opinion Minecraft Legends Which looks like a hybrid MMO slash tactical slash action hybrid Of some sort, but the idea is you've got some cross-platform play Action-oriented video game you're building up cities people can attack your cities try to take them over There is pvp cooperative and pvp You know player versus player stuff teams of four players each And it looks pretty neat. This is coming in April April 18th. I'm not really a Minecraft guy So this is not really super on my radar. But I'm sure this is a dumb question But is legends a completely different Minecraft experience? It is. Um, so Minecraft is its own thing There's also Minecraft Dungeons, which came out what two years ago now Which is like a Diablo like game where you're you're sort of soloing through a bunch of monsters That's a more three-quarter view camera thing very different play experience This looks like that as well and this was previously announced and known but we didn't have a lot of details So today was good for that and I'd check out the bot if if you want to know more But it's it's like a new way to play in that world And I think after now two of these I think this the signal should be clear at this point that Microsoft's Trying to make Minecraft more than just Minecraft They're trying to branch it out and turn the ip into things that are maybe whole different experiences And retaining that that Minecraft feel that kind of low death blocky feel that they're that they're going for and that seems like They're definitely doing that here Another big one here shown was forts and motorsport This is the next game in the series and it is coming this year though We didn't get a date but definitely this year. This was mostly a tech demo They showed a lot of really cool underlying tech stuff including art and sound You don't normally get at one of these I actually appreciate that and like it a lot Some players maybe like wins a game coming out and that's all they care about But if you're really into high-end racing and high-end car Stuff this is going to be your jam Especially if you're on their platform And then finally the other one I wanted to mention was elder scrolls online and mmo that I am fond of I quite like it They have a new expansion coming out called net chrome New class and some new stuff If you play the game you already kind of know how that game works What I thought was interesting here was this game Is a known quantity it's been out since 2014 and this What was unique here was I feel like they were just advertising it to people who have never played it And I thought that was just a little bit weird They spent a little bit of time on hey, here's our new content coming But mostly we want to tell you if you've never played this think of the great times you had in skyrim And all these other elder scrolls games you can come and have those great times here And you can do it cross-platform and and also we're going to have a limited time trial All the content they've previously released is free This sort of thing so anyway, they did give a june 5th announcement for the upcoming expansion But this really didn't seem like a push of like all right microsoft you own a viable mmo now It may not be warcraft numbers, but it's good What do you want to do with it? And I think what they want to do with it right now is like inform people that it exists More so that they can maybe check it out and see how it's matured and I don't think that's such a bad idea For the most part that's it though. No Phil Spencer. No talking heads outside of the devs Just a brief 45 minute to the dot look at what's coming soon and in the future for microsoft Well, that is wonderful If you want more about it though head over to core where I know scott will be talking in more detail about it And if you have thoughts about it and you want to tell up to the world including us get in touch with us on social media Dtns show on twitter daily tech news show on tiktok and dtns picks with an x dtns pix on instagram Nvidia's broadcast software version 1.4 has a new update among a few appropriately titled eye contact that swaps out your realize for digital eyes that never stop looking at your webcam Even if you are not for anybody who might be watching the video version of this show right now You might notice that I am looking down at my monitor This would have me looking at the camera instead Even if I wasn't looking at the camera kotaku calls it very creepy and one more sign of how unnatural you have to act online to become a popular streamer In 2023 the point they were making being that eye contact gives off the impression that the creator is Engaged maybe more than they actually are even if staring at the webcam 100 of the time would Be pretty impossible otherwise Well, there's an argument that this type this kind of tech anyway could be Legitimately a helpful tool for people that have some issues People say autism or have a hard time keeping eye contact or find that more challenging I have to admit when I'm talking and thinking when I'm broadcasting I often am not looking at the camera. I look down. I look over It's my brain working and I don't notice that I'm doing it. So maybe you know people like that would benefit Or maybe remote meetings would be more productive Anyway, then they're their content creators who are just excited that eye contact will benefit their youtube or twitch streams Without having to invest in a teleprompter or memorize a bunch of copy and that sort of thing the old ways of doing this Other depth updates to nvidia's broadcast Stuff include more video background options plus a new tool for developers to integrate the sdk's powering nvidia broadcast Known as maxine directly into their apps I can tell you right now as somebody who use a lot of nvidia stuff After seeing this demoed a few times I'm actually really impressed with it and I where I think it will best be used Isn't natural conversational shows like this one that we're on right the second It's going to be for these youtube shorts and things where someone is popping in and has a bunch of stuff to say But is maybe not staring at the camera the entire time press for time Yeah, whatever and the longer they sit there the creepier gets like I think in small doses. This is not so bad On the creepy factor I think it's very impressive But if you stood there and looked at me the entire time and barely blinked and never looked away I would start to wonder what the heck's going on. It's creepy. It looks like someone's reading prompter even when they're not What one of the tricks of of reading a prompter that I picked up Over the years was even though you're reading Look away from time to time because if you don't you just look like you're staring creepily at people And that's what this does. It's I mean, yes, I think you're right scott that in short Bursts like shorts or tiktok. It might not be as bad And you it won't you won't be long enough that you really get that creep factor But but yeah when when the eyes never leave the camera, uh, it doesn't look natural I don't know. I I was impressed by the demo. I was like, uh, I see what they're doing there He did he if you only saw the version of uh, in this particular video, uh, the man looking at the camera I don't think it would seem weird. It would seem pretty I mean like like he actually is looking at the camera, but you mentioned teleprompter tom It's like to me. This is really not different than that, you know, spoiler alert, you know, lots of people who seem like They're just looking at the camera and just have so much stuff to say or actually reading things So that I mean that's been going on for a long time the fact that AI could make this Easier in certain situations where people don't fixate on the creepiness of it That's where that's where it's cool. I agree and it does seem a little tweakable the the video I saw if somebody reviewing the beta, um, he was messing with settings that made him occasionally Blink more and look in different ways And I think there's a tuning that can happen. It is in beta, of course So there's a lot that could happen here, but I think they can get this to a place Where you're not going to be able to tell the difference or you'll be able to Switch in and out of it seamlessly That could be really cool. So you could have presentations that are like I just hit this little switch and now my eyes are squarely on you But I'm actually reading over here and then I hit that switch and without people noticing You're kind of back to your normal eye movement That that would help a lot because don't forget there's there's there's you know, non-verbal Signals we pick up when someone's staring at you. It can be seen as aggressive You know just concerning actually j-rom saying when someone's staring right at you My reaction is to look away. So this would make me not want to watch you if you stare at me too much Yeah, it's also not going to be we we've brought up streamers here And I I don't think I sure there's use cases for streamers But streamers are the least use case in my opinion because I don't if they're playing a game and they're being really engaged in that game They are not looking into my eyes. But if this thing is staring into my eyes while they're reacting to being headshotted in call of duty That's a really weird combo. I mean, I guess on the other end of you know, this conversation is Okay, if you get used to not really having to engage in eye contact, but sometimes I find intimidating Depending on the situation in life Then you know, what does that say going down the road some I don't know. I mean If I never have to do it, I'm probably not going to get any better at it, right? I also I also well, I mean that's true of any technology, right? Like oh, if we have google search We'll never remember anything and it turns out it's never quite as as bad as all that Uh, I would I would like this to be able to replace my eyes too Like if you can make me look at the camera, I'd like give me some different eyes, you know That's eyes demon eyes Well, then you just add like a snap filter or something tom. Yeah technology already exists just the eyes I mean the eyes are the window to the soul right now. Yes. That's right. Yes. They do eyes have it But they do a lot. Please transition us I will professor christian tear wish of the university of pennsylvania's warden school decided to give The final exam for his operations management MBA course to gpt3 and guess what it passed with a grade of b-minus So, okay, he didn't get an a-plus, but you you passed tear wish found it did really well at basic communications management process analysis questions But made mistakes at sixth grade level math wasn't good at handling more advanced process analysis questions either However chat gpt3 did respond well to human hints and learned over time. So the hint was no longer needed eventually Tart wish also had chat gp3. Uh create exam questions found found them well worded Sometimes they were kind of funny, but they needed substantial adjustments before becoming usable exam questions. So Uh, let's talk about his takeaways talk Yeah, so tear wish thinks the experiment shows that we still need a human in the loop when the human was giving hints It did better. So in order to take best advantage of chat gpt3 It can't run things on its own and a lot of people's reactions are like if we just let this thing do stuff Well, don't don't do that. Don't rely on it. But then but then you can get some good stuff out of it He's not going to allow chat gpt3 during his exams. It's usually like yeah, bring your computer open book whatever But he compared using chat gpt3 to calling a friend for the answer He he's like, yeah, you can use your laptop in class, but you can't call your friend on skype with it And same thing. He's like you can use your laptop, but you cannot use chat gpt3 He says he will use chat gpt3 when teaching case discussions in his classes In order to emulate consultants who sometimes come in and give compelling recommendations that are wrong Because it was wrong. Sometimes he's like, this is perfect. It's very persuasive It sounds like it knows what it's talking about, but it does it always and Having the like a real human right having the students be able to guess Or or tell like wait a minute. He's saying something, but I'm not sure that's right He said he will now need to come up with more challenging assignments He's like, I'm going to let them use it in their assignments Maybe not on test, but in their assignments and I'm going to push them to think more creatively as a result Like yeah, you can get chat gpt3 to do that part So now you have to take that and push it farther. I thought that was a really good recommendation as well Any intends to use chat gpt3 to improve his own productivity those test questions it created needed work But he said even so it could probably cut his test creation time in half Wow, I I'm I tended looked at the positive side of this. I don't know why everybody wants to freak out about I'm not saying you guys, but I've heard this today People are freaking out. Yeah, it's fun to freak out But I like the idea that technology you said google earlier about You know searching was going to make us remember less I think we were wrong about that. It just freed us up It said we don't have to remember all this because there's a giant repository of all the things you want to have at your fingertips So that you can now focus on this stuff and you can do more of this and more of that You couldn't do before because you were constantly thinking about this stuff over here And I don't think this is going to be all that different And if it pushes us in ways that says our current testing kind of stinks a machine can just ace it And I think we should do better than this. I think that's good for us as a species and as a people So I'm all for it as weird as it can be and as freaky as some of these chat gbt three things are that you see every day I I don't fear it and and dislike it the way I do art generation It's all such early days too. It's like, you know teachers being like, you know what? This is actually helpful for me and here's why instead of this is the worst and it's going to ruin everything We've always done perfectly well before. Yeah, it's not all or nothing All right, let's check out the mail bag This one comes from umong who wrote in about our recent conversation about our podcast dying or not What is with all the podcast? Decline numbers umong says I wonder if there's a trend where podcasts are released with the intention that they just have a Short duration or number of episodes for instance I was listening to a podcast called after the whistle Which was released during the world cup and it was about each match day once the world cup was over the podcast ended No, that's a good question umong I see I see no evidence that that would in any way materially contribute to the huge drop Uh in the number of podcasts we saw there. There are definitely been limited Limited run podcasts for almost the entire history of podcasting. It's so so it's not new and and I I haven't I don't have a source on this But my guess is there probably aren't any more or less of those kinds of podcasts than there used to be So I don't think that contributes to the drop, but that's a great question to ask Yeah, I've been doing this long enough too to know that You know having started and ended many podcasts in my time There is this weird assumption that podcasting in the early days Especially meant that you were just going to go in perpetuity and we're never going to end it And I don't think it needs to be that way. It doesn't need to be any of that could be a one-off Yeah, I mean it's it's if you think of it in terms of a series so many different kinds of series It would be 60 minutes where you just do it for 60 years Or a nine episode run. Yeah, I know why not? There are a lot of those kinds of podcasts Maybe there are more than there used to be but I don't see That there are so many more that that would cause that that huge percentage drop. We were talking about Tyler wrote in from lovely Cleveland, Ohio I wanted to take a moment to express Their appreciation for the show. Thank you. Tyler as a long-time listener I found the discussions on the latest technology trends to be both informative and entertaining Your show has become a staple in my daily routine and has helped me get through my many long commutes Thank you. Tyler. Happy to be along for the ride. Watch out for that puddle I also wanted to comment on a security concern that was discussed in today's episode During the segment on the potential for someone to exploit smart speakers By sending malicious commands through an answering machine speaking them over the answering machine I immediately considered that it's possible for someone to tell a smart speaker to make a phone call And then listen in through the speaker without the owner's knowledge I hope that you will continue to discuss important security concerns like this in the future As well as all the latest technology trends. Keep up the great work And thank you for all the entertainment and information p s That email is good enough on its own right p s Keeping on topic with the episode most of this message was written by chat gpt Oh, tyler. Oh, well the ideas are all mine. I couldn't find the right way to put them together And I thought it was a great way to try it out for myself Always look forward to hearing your opinions on the show It always brightens my day and I appreciate all of you. Oh tyler. That was awesome You know until we got to the end. I thought well tyler is kind of you know, he writes by the book But but very you know, thank you for the praise All the sentences made sense And now now I get it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Tyler thanks to you and thank you chat gpt for the kind words Thanks to you as well scott johnson for being with us today Let folks know where they can keep up with your latest Well as mentioned earlier, uh, we go pretty deep on the issues of video games during the week And it's everything from industry top stuff down to what we're playing And this microsoft stuff is going to get hashed out. So if you want to hear that that is on the show called core We do it every thursday night. You can find it wherever you get your podcast. Just search for core Or go to frogpants.com slash core and we would love to see you there We also have a brand new boss. Mr. Happy Mac has joined us on patreon. Thank you, mr. Happy Mac Glad to have you. Oh, thank you. Mr. Happy Mac. I'm glad you're happy I was like burgers computers. What could it be? Maybe both mr. Happy. I'd be happy too. You're welcome to happy windows Speaking of patrons do stick around for our extended show good day internet We roll right into it when dts mess wraps up But just a reminder dts is live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern 2100 utc find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live We're back tomorrow talking about section 230 with jesson rubber young who else talk to you then This show is part of the frog pants network Get more at frogpants.com Club hopes you have enjoyed this program