 Here everyone, this is the Daily Tech News Show for Monday, January 2nd, 2023 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. 2022 is over. It's in the past, but it was filled with some fun and fact filled conversations both on Daily Tech News Show and the extended show, Good Day Internet. So we challenged our video producer Joe to pick the best conversations we had all year and put them together in one concentrated bundle of joy, information and gladness. Here they are. Enjoy. I want to welcome everyone to the ninth year of Daily Tech News Show. Kudos to you, Tom Merritt. Well, seriously, though, I mean, that that's a good run. There's only one other thing that I have done for nine years. Marriage. Okay. Yep. Being a child. Oh, well, okay. Yeah. Being a child. True. That's true. East meets West. Yes. Oh, I've done East meets West Walker. We'll have to do one for this one. That's still going? Yeah. It's an irregular show, much like my belt movements. Oh, my goodness. You know what? Happy new year. Hi. I've been there. My bro. Been there. Anyway. Thank you, Sarah. And thank you for helping to make this show last through eight years of Rogers' life. Yeah. Sincerely. You know, sometimes you're just not consistent. Microsoft CEO Sachin Nadella delineated cloud community and content. Mentioned that yesterday as three main areas the acquisition of Activision Blizzard addresses. Why do they want it? Who wouldn't want to take the big money from the big titles on consoles and PC and put them in front of that huge mobile audience? Cross platform cloud services, Mary, the big title attraction and money with the big mobile platform. An easy way to have Microsoft own games on PlayStation though would be to have Gamepass available on PlayStation. Microsoft's going to have 32 internal studios if this acquisition goes through. Sony right now has 17. So Microsoft will have an edge in content. In the case of Sony and Microsoft, this is where the war is. And I think this signals Microsoft saying we don't care about what's happening on the ground of this war. We care about what's happening in the air of this war or what will happen in the future of this war. It's not about the console wars anymore or hardware. It's about dominance and services and bringing games to people on whatever platform they're on. That's a game changer just in terms of the conversation. So I think there is a future where Sony, but other platform holders of lots of types, Roku and, and Amazon fire sticks and Apple TVs and a lot of people would maybe line up and say, well, Microsoft is like, it's like Netflix now and we all want Netflix apps on our devices. Right? Why aren't we, you know, why aren't we making a deal with those guys? Such in a Della is like, Hey, remember when everybody thought we were crazy for giving away windows because that was our big money maker. And then suddenly we were dominant in cloud and Microsoft Azure made us more profitable than ever. And we're a hugely profitable company. Let's do that in gaming. And the other part that they have is being able to compete nicely. They make hardware and yet also have hardware makers as clients. So they may be trying to look at Sony and say like, Hey, we make surface stuff at HP still fine with us. We could be the same way. I think that's their plan to continue is to say, Oh, all right, well, if you don't want it, that's okay. And then just keep making it bigger and bigger and bigger and they'll have all the studios in the world. And before you know it, everybody's doing some form of game pass. I think that's what they want. PlayStation plus is running on Azure. Then it's in Microsoft's best interest to have PlayStation plus be very successful. So they still keep getting money from Sony for Azure. Yeah. When we talk about this, how they've got like so much that they would not control, but like, we have you on Azure. We also have game pass. We own all these studios and we just spent 70 billion on whoever it starts to smell a little fishy even though I'm stoked about it and generally have optimism about it that's still starting to feel a little like someone's going to get talked to, I guess. I don't know. Yeah. Ask the movie industry how the world felt about them owning the theaters, the distribution and the content, the movies and they broke that up. I told the rest of the folks that Otis, the dog and I had quite an event last night. It was about 8 p.m. or so last night. It's dark. It's raining. So I was like, hey, you know what, buddy, just go out and do your business. You know, just do your business and, you know, let's get back in and get comfy. And I was kind of outside, I'm looking at my phone, speaking of that. And all of a sudden I hear a splash and I'm like, what was that? Otis is in the pool. He's fallen in. He doesn't know how to swim. He doesn't know if he knows how to swim. Yeah. He's like, I've never been in this situation. It's just never happened before. So I'm like, swim to me, swim this way, come to this side, look, there's a step. And he's just like flailing, flailing. And finally I'm like, it was like a Seinfeld episode where I'm like, I'm going in. All right. I'm going into this pool right now, a very, very cold pool at 8 p.m. Fully clothed. Shoes on. Pool thing. Wow. Because I'm going to get my dog. We got out. Okay. Otis is still mortified. He's never going to do that pool again. Mortified. Yeah. I mean, for hours last night, he just kept looking at me and shaking and being like, what was that? And I'm like, I'm sorry, buddy. You jumped in the pool. I don't know why. Thank you, Trish. And not one mention of Metamates. What's Metamates? It's Meta's new thing. When you have friends on Meta, they're your Metamates. Oh, I hate it. I do too. I do too. I just, the whole Meta thing. I'm like, everyone knows VR chat and second life exists, right? Yeah, Mates. I don't know. I think Mates, I think like going out with your buddies. I guess. Sure. Yeah. I'm all right with that. I'm just going to bring it with Meta. Maybe it's the alliteration. Maybe cause we now are just sick of the word Meta and everything. That's it. Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner. I used to get grasshopper pie at Red Lobster. I would get the free breadsticks and then I would leave. Breadsticks, they didn't have breadsticks at Red Lobster. Breadsticks is a loose term. Got them heights claims, they are called Cheddar Bay Biscuits. Ah. Cheddar Bay? I don't remember it. I think they're Cheddar Bay Biscuits, not Cheddar Bay. It's not Cheddar Bay Biscuits. Oh. It's from Cheddar Bay, but it could be your Bay. Nor is it an inlet from the ocean made entirely of Cheddar. Oh, good. Thank goodness. Cause. I would swim in Cheddar Bay. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And just kind of open mouth. Yeah. I mean, it's probably not super great for you. I would sail it in a boat made of tortilla chips. Yeah. Great. If you construct the boat correctly, you sail on top of the Cheddar. You're going to, you know, you will sink eventually. Right. But you've got a little time. You need a lot of chips. So you can row. And the way you row is you dip a chip in and then just eat it. And then you get another chip. Yeah. And then you walk out of the water, which is a sea of Cheddar. Cheddar. And your boat is gone because you ate it. Yeah. If you time it right, you arrive right as your boat is done. And you don't arrive hungry. Scott, how you feel about it? NFTs. I don't like them. I noticed. Yeah. You seem to have very pointed comments about them on the social networks that I follow. My problem with NFTs as currently constituted or as currently, I don't know, as that space is currently being run and, and, and, you know, used is that it doesn't take in the perspective of the artist very often. And I don't mean the artist selling an NFT or something like that. There's very little artfulness in it. There's not a lot of soul in it. Also, because of its current, again, this is really important that I try to emphasize this, its current scammy nature. And what really did to me was the two separate emails I got from people who took some of my art from my webpage, they'll take it somewhere, mint it, and then come back to me and say, you better buy this for someone else does. None of this is artful. It's very. Transaction. Very monetized. Like it's just feels gross right now. It's gross. If I, if I understand you, what you mean isn't the technology, as you said, it's what a lot of people are doing with them. I am 100% sure that there is a future in all of this. I know there is the coexistence of artful beginning and smart investing can coexist in a scam as scam free as possible environment. It's never completely 100%. It's wild west. Like you said, it is very wild west. And here's the thing about the gold rush. How many people found gold in those rivers when they went out there? Very small percentage compared to the vast amount that got sick and died going out there. You know, who made some of the most money out of out of the gold rush? Levi Strauss. Because the stuff to the gold rush people, including jeans, including jeans, right? There are stories about multi-millionaire, now billionaire family lines that their entire claim to fame was they went to San Francisco in the 1800s, set up a shop that sold shovels and picks and made bank. And another thing about baseball, and here I am like, I'd like to be waxing. I'll look you off to the basics to be honest. I know. It's pretty. I just like that. Really good. Wow. Look at Skype. Sorry we're leaving you Skype. Stick out your tongue. Stick out your tongue. This is great for the audio. It doesn't really work that well. Just surprised Pikachu face. For folks on audio, Skype has a filter that turns Sarah's actual face into an anime character. It's snap camera. No, it's snap. It's not Skype. Okay. Meanwhile, you can't see this audio listeners, but Sarah has become a radish. I am. I'm a radish. Ah, because you're rad. I'll tell you, it doesn't work that well. You're a daikon icon. Of all of all the filters, I feel like being a radish is one of the last things. It's a bit of a ravishing radish too. It looks, it looks very, very. Ready to be painted. Yeah. Yeah. It is a little Kate Winslet in the back of the car. Oh gosh. I don't play with filters very often, but when you do, you're like, this is fun. Yeah. Look, I can become a, this one's called the nun. Oh God. Not a very nice nun. Zombie movie called the nun. Well, that's probably what this is about. Yeah. Cause that one, I know, I know audio listeners are like, this is lame. Let's talk about filters. Black and white, ghoulish. Yeah. No, that's going to give me nightmares. That's hard. All right. I'll turn it off. Despite the Beijing Olympics attempts to promote a message of international cooperation, Russia declared a peacekeeping operation and mobilized land, air and sea operations to invade. The military actions were accompanied by cyber attacks on government websites and servers. It was 2008. That's what I'm talking about. Russia invaded Georgia in support of two self-declared republics in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. That was 2008. That was 14 years ago, but they say history rhymes. 14 years later, right here in 2022, shortly after another Beijing Olympics. Russia once again declared it would conduct a peacekeeping operation in support of two self-declared republics, this time in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. But the world is reacting much differently to the Ukrainian invasion than it did to the one of Georgia in 2008. Let's start with cyber attacks. Even if they are targeted at Ukraine, malware often leaks out elsewhere on the internet. And the attacks may not focus solely on Ukraine. So it's good to be aware of this, even if you're not in Ukraine. We mentioned yesterday that denial of service attacks continue against Ukrainian government and financial websites. That has not stopped. The Verge notes that Cloudflare is reporting that Ukrainian ISPs are mostly operating, with the exception of some connections in Ukraine's second largest city, Kharkiv, disrupted. In addition to denial of service attacks, ESET says it discovered a data wiper malware installed on hundreds of machines in Ukraine. In one organization, attackers had appeared to be able to take control of active directory and then push the wiper via the default domain policy. This is one where collateral damage could get you. Maybe it wasn't meant for you, but maybe that wiper shows up in your system somewhere, so it's good to know about it. It's important to be aware of this stuff, even if you're not necessarily directly in the line of fire. Absolutely. I think that there are a few things that we should keep in mind here. Number one, while both of them involve the internet, I do think that it's helpful for us to separate out cyber attacks like denial of service and malware from the idea of propaganda. It's not to say that they are not often from the same areas, but one of them is a different threat than an info war. You should always think twice before believing something you see on a social network. These days, right now, maybe think three times, four times. Yeah. This is like a daily fight that people have on the internet of you're not paying enough attention. You're just blindly retweeting that video and that video is fake. And here's why. And, you know, it's like 30% of the conversation. When it comes to getting your news information from social media, that is a peacetime treat. We do not have... When we are talking about time war, we should probably not be going on the dumbest websites on the planet in general. This is before we even get into the hate-run agitprop. Probably just to try to find slightly more sober level-headed sources than the things that are getting the most retweets on the bird. Scientists analyzed electrical activity of ghost fungi, enoki fungi, and split gill fungi. They assumed that the spikes were used to communicate in a mycelial network and grouped the spikes into words for linguistic analysis. The split gill fungi had the most complex sentences. There are many similarities in information processing in living substrates of different classes, families, and species. I was just curious to compare. Man, the split gill fungi vocabulary is just ridiculous, right? You ever sit down with a split gill fungi and you're like, whoa, college boy, using your $6 word. We get it. You have an MBA. I totally prefer a conversation with a ghost fungi because of that. It's just more straightforward. Yeah, if you can. I mean, we've mentioned before the show and I'm going to bring it up now, so Star Trek people beware, but I'm now starting to think that Star Trek Discovery was onto something with this whole, we're going to travel through space much faster because it turns out space mushrooms have all kinds of cool ways to make things happen in space because I kind of thought it was real dumb before and now I'm not sure I was right. Yeah, cool. I mean, some of this was already known before this particular paper and that's what they were riffing on in Discovery, like, oh, no, we didn't disprove it. We just took it a little bit farther into understanding the mycelial network, whether we can use it to traverse space and time. Folks in the chat, what did you think about our explanation of the law? Did you find it useful? Did you follow it? Let us know. Yeah, I like the back and forth way of doing that. Yeah, I mean, have you gotten a lot of feedback on that? I'd say like 70 to 80% people are like, I really like doing the like back and forth. It's easier to follow. People bring up questions that I have. The 20% who don't like it think it sounds scripted. More accurately, what they are trying to say is this sounds like a different script format and I got used to the previous... Yeah, but that's true too because it was written out before. I hate to pull back the curtain and show the man controlling the Wizard of Oz, but every time that I've been on any version of this show, I have had things in front of me that I was reading. DTNS is an informative show and I think at a byproduct of that is that the reads can get very dense because DTNS will never spare you the knowledge for the sake of, you know, aesthetics. Like DTNS, it's why it has a following the way that it does. So this... I like to say DTNS, knowledge, not... That's it. Exactly. We use that all the time. Only in post-show. Why not both? First, first knowledge then Jamaican Airhorns. Yes. Right, right. There's a priority level. There is a priority. There's priority to all of it. I'm wondering now after doing that, whether that battle is over. English is a living language and sometimes you just have to admit that the language has moved on. Is hacker one of those words? Is it generally a negative term now? Jack, I can't imagine you haven't given this something about yourself. Yeah, I think hacker has become such a common-day parlance term. I mean, I'm thinking immediately about hacker day. There's a book called Parenting Hacks. I mean, I've got an aunt who's not into computers much at all, yet when I go with her to the smoothie shop, she's like, I've got a hack on how to get a certain kind of smoothie that they can't make on the menu or something, like check it out. And I'm like, that's not a hack. But I love how everyone thinks that they're a hacker just because they can navigate a food menu properly. So I think that term... and she doesn't have that hacking mentality. We imagine what a hacker sounds like. What is hack anymore? And so I think it definitely doesn't have a negative connotation just in the sense of like, yeah, I've got a travel hack or I've got a parenting hack. That's totally not negative at all. That's a great thing. Oh, I want to hear about that. Tell me about your parenting hack. So I take... I disagree with the idea that hack has such a negative term. I think it's used very commonly now. Quinn, you made a video saying that Apple might have accidentally made the best gaming notebook on the market. For example, we played The Witcher 3 and that was something that this is an x86 Windows binary that's running it's being virtualized by Windows ARM, which is being virtualized by parallels inside of the Mac, which DirectX is being virtualized into metal. And so it's just there's so many different layers to this onion that by the time you get to the end, you're like, this has got to be abysmal. And it in some cases is actually playable. So the next obvious step would be if you can't virtualize Windows, maybe you can emulate something less advanced. And so emulation on the the new Macs is actually fantastic. There's Dolphin, which has long been known as one of the best Wii and GameCube emulators. And so the question becomes well, what if you could run titles that were designed and built for the Mac on the Mac? And the problem is that Windows don't really exist. Because the Mac has never been a place where gaming has been much of a thing. It's just a matter of getting the games. I get what you're saying now, which is they made the best gaming laptop. They just didn't create all the on ramps. You know, to make it easy for developers to transport it over there. It's the best laptop display period. And so to see all of that available in a price point that's only marginally more expensive than the best PC gaming laptops is really exciting. The downside is that we come back to Apple and software. And I don't know that that's going to change. In fact, in 2018, the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple recorded an 8.8 billion net profit in that fiscal year, which was more than Sony Microsoft Activision and Nintendo combined. So Apple is just making an extraordinary amount of money on the App Store. And I think because of that, haven't really cared to push into a much more competitive kind of AAA gaming market. But they now have the hardware to do that where previously they did. Well, 3D printing is pretty great. You can 3D print tools for various projects. You can print art sculptures. You could even print something simple to replace a broken part around your house. But for a lot of people, unless you're already part of a DIY or maker community, getting started with 3D printing can be a little intimidating. Let's say you're starting out and you've got nothing. You're like, you know what? I've seen Joel. I've seen others talk about 3D printing. I'm interested. How do I get started? It's a great way to think about it because a lot of people think 3D printing drives necessity drives the need. There's a lot of people that get started with 3D printing because perhaps they're doing D&D miniatures or they are role playing games where they have miniatures. They want to be able to make those in real life. Or there are projects around the house that need the advantages that 3D printing has, jigs and fixtures and little things to kind of help with day to day life. Once you've identified and I mean it's just because it's really cool. I'm not going to lie to you. It's just really cool. So if you can't define your need then being able to pick out a machine and a material to use really is just part of the next process. It's more simple to get into additive manufacturing 3D printing now that it ever has been before. Filament is the material that 3D printers use but they're not all the same, right? How do you know what kind of filament you need? A really simple material for 3D printing is called PLA. It's corn based and it melts at one of the lower temperatures. It comes in lots of pretty colors and it's just one of the easiest materials to print with. But I would imagine if you had a specific use in mind then you would go researching the right material for the job because all sorts of materials have different temperatures that they melt at. They have mechanical properties as far as stretching or rigidity or being able to withstand certain limits. It's one of those things and I liken it to being able to utilize a tool for something else. If you're going to build something you're going to do some research into the right materials of how you're going to build it. It's exactly the same with the filaments for 3D printing. If you're just doing some decorative things, there's a good chance that PLA is going to work for you. There's a filament called ASA which has some UV resistance. If it has to withstand really high temperatures perhaps you go with something called ABS. It's the same material that Lego is made from. Perhaps you have to think about a material that has to replace a metal part in an industry. You can look at materials like peak, peck or ultim and those materials are on the industrial side. But those can actually be the geometries that you can print with these materials can sometimes replace metals. Wow. Let's say I'm thinking of projects around my house. I actually have a tell rack that broke recently. You will probably have a general idea of what you want. If you put on paper you can start to sketch some things just to kind of how it would look. Then you go to a 3D program such as Tinkercad and it's essentially shape math. You can take a cube and add a sphere to it and then subtract that sphere from the cube and you're left with this 3D geometry. So now using that sort of thinking you can go build yourself the tell rack ends and then you can print them out and then you can try it out and if it doesn't work or if it doesn't look exactly like what you're thinking the great part about this 3D printing is you've probably only used pennies worth of material and you can go through Tinkercad and adjust your design little bits here and there and then print it out again and try it again. That's amazing. I set up my 25-year-old self to be I'm 25 live in Austin, Texas in 1995. So in the description it says this person lives in 1995. I work at half price books and just dropped out of grad school. I'm working on a website, make a zine showdown saloon. The first thing I said was what's up and it said not much. I spent last night at the Texas showdown and was really drunk this morning. I'm like accurate, accurate for 1995 me. Can I ask you some advice? I have a crush on this girl in my poetry group. And then he talked about there's this other girl Marcy and she's beautiful but she's always hanging up with this guy Steve but should I go with Carrie? I was like wow, you really are 25 bought. That's what you thought about when you were 25. For some of the listeners may be interested in this I don't know but there's a pre-built bought up there, a chatbot called the text adventure game and I got into that pretty quickly just to kind of see what's up. I thought it would be sort of like Zork but then who knew where it would go and it would get weird and break down. It's way fun and I'm close to convinced that might be the future of some text adventure gaming maybe already is for all I know but it's great it basically starts out with you hanging from a sticky giant spider web and there's a boot knife on the ground within reach it starts that way for everybody but from there you can go anywhere pick up the knife leave the knife use the knife to cut the web put the knife into your toe and see what I like you can go nuts with it and it will build a story around your decisions and choices and you only have so many hit points so it tracks that and if you get hurt it minuses your hit points and if you gather things it remembers that you got those things and they're now part of your loot or your you know whatever you've looted it's great I'm kind of blown away by it to be honest. Things are getting a little weird over Let's check in with Virtual Sarah. Are you dating anybody She says I'm dating a really sweet guy named Scott. He's very understanding and a supportive beyond expectation. I said Scott sounds really great where did you meet him. She says we met on OkCupid of all places on my first date with him he gave me his Kindle with all of my favorite books on it I knew it was a sign. We became very close during COVID and then he moved here he's my rock and I said where does Scott work She says he works from home as a systems administrator he also built himself an office that looks like the Starship Enterprise Wow with his work computer a game console and a small TV he is a geeks geek he sounds like a catch well done getting weird I wonder if anybody else out there creates a character at beta.character.ai and if you do would you share some outtakes with us well doctor here we go for your request Hey Ho I'm the detienist host here Kermit my love when do I get to take the stage baby Roger the internet is completely different culture isn't it everything here is immediately followed by sarcastic comments and nasty responses we're finally where we belong alright I'm going to attempt my chef you ready here we go can't believe we're doing this you boys can you boys can you boys can bark bark bark ladies and gentlemen the Swedish Kermit I get to take the stage sorry piggy gotta go that was a whole lot of fun and a whole lot of memories thanks to everyone who made that year possible and continues to make things possible in the new year our patrons at patreon.com slash dtns we cannot do this without you that is it for our holiday programming we're going back to being live Monday through Friday 4pm eastern 100 UTC you can find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live back tomorrow with the beginning of our CES 2023 coverage talk to you then