 Daily Tech News show is made possible by you, the listener. Thanks to all of you, including Norm Fizikas, Chris Allen, Chris Smith, and Gabriel Hermosillo. On this episode of DTNS, why the solar eclipse reveals solar power's prominence. Tech has spurred comedy's renaissance. And Patrick Norton is here to tell us how to avoid wasting money on GPUs. You need that money. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, March 8, 2024 in Los Angeles. I'm Top Mary. And from Studio Animal House, I'm Sarah Lane. At the edge of the 314, I'm Patrick Norton. Drawing the top tech stories, in Cleveland, I'm Len Peralta. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. I'd also like to tell everyone to pre-order my book. Thank you for mentioning it on yesterday's show, Sarah. I appreciate that. Well, you're very welcome. I know I told you to do it, but. I want people to read your stuff because you're a smart person. If you didn't hear yesterday, I've got a book coming out about technology called Sinked. And if you go to tomsnewbook.com, you can pre-order it. Please do find out more about it there. If you like my perspective on technology on this show, you just have more of it within arm's reach on a bookshelf near you. All right, let's start with the quick hits. In a blog post posted on Friday, Microsoft said that attackers gained access to some of its source code repositories and internal systems and what the company describes as an ongoing attack first detected in January. It's not clear what source code was accessed, but Microsoft warns that the attackers are using secrets of different types. It has found to try to further breach the company and potentially its customers. Microsoft is working with affected customers to mitigate the attacks. Thursday, we talked about the bipartisan effort to pass a law in the United States that would require bite dance to sell the US arm of TikTok or have it effectively banned in the country. President Trump signed an executive order along similar lines during his term as president, which is why it's possibly surprising to some people that he indicated support for TikTok and opposition to the ban. To be very clear, he didn't say either of those explicitly. What he did say was that if you got rid of TikTok, it would benefit Facebook and he doesn't like Facebook and doesn't want Facebook to do better. TikTok has also been flexing its muscles a bit, sending a notice to US users Thursday, asking them to call their congressional representatives and apparently a lot of them did. Phones have been ringing. VisionOS 1.1 for the Apple Vision Pro is now out for everybody and adds the multiple device management option enterprises that some enterprises rather have wanted, including enterprise support for email, contacts, and calendars. Apple has also improved personas. Some people like them, many people didn't. The beta feature that creates a digital version of yourself for use during video calls. So you don't have to hold it in your hands anymore when you set it up. And also the avatars should look better. Apple changed its mind, I guess. I guess it's convinced that Epic has changed its way and will play by the rules. Epic Games wrote on a blog post, Apple has told us and committed to the European Commission that they will reinstate our developer account. The European Commission had said it was gonna investigate Apple's decision to revoke the developer account of Epic Sweden and see if it violated any provisions of either the Digital Markets Act or the Digital Services Act. If you recall, Apple had revoked Epic's developer account in 2020 after Epic admitted it broke the rules on purpose. Apple briefly approved a developer account for Epic Sweden earlier this week, but then asked Epic to give assurances it wouldn't break the rules again and then Apple found Epic's short response insufficient and revoked the account. But after the EC said it would investigate, Apple has changed its mind without commenting as to why, leaving us all to assume that they believe Epic after all, if those two should get a room. Reddit launched more business tools to help companies make better use of Reddit and who knows, maybe pay for more ads. Among the tools a Reddit pro users gets is trending topics relevant to the brand, mentions on subreddits and publishing tools for creating drafts and scheduling posts as well. Then there's the stuff that you might expect like analytics, you can also turn posts into advertisements if you so desire. More than 200 businesses have started using Reddit pro as of this recording. All right. I'm getting ready for a trip, Sarah. You are getting ready for a trip, Tom and I know tacos will be part of it, but you are headed to Austin, Texas for Brian Brushwood's event during a very interesting time, a solar eclipse and in fact, a total solar eclipse. Now, there is some power stuff that might be affected. While you're there, tell us about that. Yes, it is an eclipse of more than just my heart, visible in the US from Texas all the way up to Maine in the northeast part of the country. USC professor of physics and astronomy, Vahe Perumian wrote an article for the conversation about how the advances in solar power in the US mean that power grids are going to have to take unprecedented steps in order to stop the eclipse from causing blackouts. Okay, so this is not the first eclipse. Many of us as kids remember wearing the eclipse glasses, looking up at the sun, be careful, super fun. Why is it a bigger problem this time? Because the US has three times the capacity for solar energy generation now than it did the last time. There was a total solar eclipse in 2017. In Texas, the eclipse is gonna last a little less than three hours. It's only four and a half minutes or so of total darkness, but it's blocking out the sun for a good long time, which stops solar power from working, just like it does at night. It's not just solar, it affects either. The lack of light reduces heat, reducing the temperature, which causes the winds to die down, so that has an effect on wind power as well. Okay, so you say, all right, three hours of darkness, solar power got it, but isn't solar already affected by something like a cloudy day or everything after sundown? We know the eclipse is coming, so can we not mitigate the issue ahead of time? It's not like the eclipse lurks behind the moon and just pops out. They're like, ah, you didn't know. It's like a total eclipse. Exactly. And we actually have pretty good models for anticipating cloudy days and dealing with those as well. There are battery banks out there in larger numbers, helping even out the variables, but cloudy's not the same as darkness. A total eclipse is more like night falling for a few hours and it happens faster than sunset. It gets darker than cloud cover. So even though we know it's coming, it's going to cause a different kind of strain on the grid. Okay, so we know it's coming. People who understand what's going on are warning others. What is actually happening to prevent a real issue? Yeah, to make sure that there isn't a problem and there probably will not be. We're not trying to spread fear here, but I thought it was curious that the grid operators had to prepare for this. So they're readying local reserves, especially if they have battery banks or unaffected sources like natural gas plants, coal plants, stuff like that, making sure that they've got enough in reserve to crank those up. They're also limiting power transfers between grids so that another grid doesn't start pulling a bunch of power out of a grid that needs it. That'll reduce strain on the transmission lines and all of that should prevent there from being any problem. It's not like there was going to be a huge problem, but if they hadn't done anything, there could have been a problem. So it's good to know that they're thinking of it ahead of time, right, Patrick? I think it's better to prepare and not have issues than be like whatever and then have something terrible happen. It's funny, right? Because I'll be driving down to Carbondale, Illinois or somewhere around there to see the, I want totality because it's an extraordinary experience. It's like seeing the Grand Canyon, but better. But it's like, at least it's, I feel like it's running through a path where it's not going to do as much trouble as it could in other paths across the United States. That said, I know people down in Texas that use solar and are probably looking up and wondering if their battery power is going to last them. I mean, I'm kind of curious to see what the after report is like in terms of how it impacts things. Yeah, I mean, the more I think about it, the more I'm like, well, I don't have solar panels on my roof, but let's say I did, it's like, I don't know, maybe my energy consumption that month might be a little wonky later when I get my bill, but what if you're a hospital or some sort of municipal situation where a lot of people would be affected by systems going down even for a brief period of time. There are probably situations that we're going to hear about after the fact where it's like, oh yeah, they should have prepared better because that's how these things go. But otherwise, it surprises me that something that is pretty quick, I mean, just several hours could potentially be such a big deal. Yeah, the speed of it is part of the problem, right? When the eclipse happens, the total eclipse blocks out the sun real fast. And it's not like the sun slowly going down with the long twilight. And totality in this one's a fairly long event. It's like four minutes, which is... Yeah, 4.27, I think, yeah. Yeah, which is huge. I mean, I'm actually, the thing I'm really curious about is how many people just have no idea it's coming and are gonna reek out when it happens. Well, given the fact that you cannot rent a car in Austin on April 8th, the day of the eclipse, it tells me that there's a lot of people do know it's coming, and hopefully they'll tell the other people, but yeah. Yeah, I wasn't totally aware of this until I saw a Facebook post. I was telling the guys before the show, friend of mine was gonna fly to, I think it was Austin, it was somewhere in Texas. And she just had to give up her plane ticket, she couldn't go. And I mean, people jumped on that in two shakes of a lamb's tail. Oh my gosh, it was like, we want the tickets, we wanna go. Yeah, cause it's hard to get there. I think because there was just one in 2017, there's a lot of people who were like, that was so cool, I wanna do it again. And a lot of people who heard from the people who were there, like that was so cool, and now I wanna try it. But it's also... To me, the significance of this story is not that we're worried there's gonna be a problem. It's that solar power has reached a large enough percentage of power generation in the United States that they have to think about it ahead of time. Yeah. Yeah. It's not just that tree-hugging. A little blip in the radar actually. Yeah, yeah. It affects a lot of folks. And it sounds so accessible. Oops, sorry. Don't be sorry, Patrick, just laugh because comedy is having a renaissance. But not necessarily just because people are funnier, although that would be cool too. Variety is reporting that between Netflix specials, COVID streaming numbers that peaked for a lot of folks, and social media in general have all been boons to modern comedians. Modern comedians who formerly relied on things like comedy clubs and late night stuff, maybe a sitcom gig, maybe an occasional special on HBO, if you were big or lucky enough to have something like that to build their names. Today, comedians have other options to get the jokes out, so to speak. Variety notes that in 2016, just for laughs, executive Robbie Praw joined Netflix as VP of standup and comedy formats. You might have noticed around that time you started to see a lot of comedy specials on Netflix that gave performers potentially seven-figure deals that they might not have gotten otherwise to make Netflix specials and turn the comedy landscape into a seller's market and help make comedians, Ellie Wong, for example, Household Names. She does good Netflix specials. There are other indications of this independent artist's media partner Dave Rath says that Netflix created an imbalance in the marketplace because before that, you had Comedy Central, you had HBO, a few other places doing those long-form specials, but not paying the kind of money that comedians can get now. And then of course, as I mentioned COVID, you've got in-person restaurants that weren't a thing, bars, not a thing, comedy clubs, not a thing. Where are you gonna get your laughs? Well, you turn to the internet. You got YouTube channels now. You've got TikTok, you've got Instagram. Comedians have podcasts or appear on other podcasts. Not that they didn't before, but they are in larger numbers. I don't know, I'm cool with this. I don't love every comedian in the world, but boy, do I like a good stand-up special. Yeah, I think this is really interesting in the sense that it didn't replace a lot of the new streaming world is replacing cable. We're watching it happen slowly. In this particular instance, it's not that it did that. It's that it enhanced. It said, we are going to give more comedians a path to getting those specials. And the specials won't just be HBO specials available to a limited few. There'll be Netflix specials and there are others out there, Paramount Plus, HBO Max, or just Max as it is now. So I like this. And in fact, I have a cousin who does stand-up and I consume most of his humor through Instagram. Like that's where I see it and he's hilarious. And it does work. He's like, yeah, I get most of the people coming out to my shows saying, I saw you on Instagram, maybe on TikTok and elsewhere, but it's his entire livelihood and it's done an entirely different way than he would have had to do it 10, 15 years ago. Well, and to go to a comedy club, I mean, that's super fun. But it's often late at night. You might have to be over the age of 21 because it's in a bar type thing. Maybe it's only in certain cities or you're gonna see the comedian you really wanna see. So it's limited, but the internet is not. And the idea that it's driving more folks to get audiences that really think that this comedian deserves their own special and then those comedians getting the specials, getting more eyeballs, getting more laughs, getting paid, it just seems like, it seems like a better time than ever to try your hand at it. So Patrick, get on up on that stage and give us your best. Nope, I'm a little late to start stand up. I will say, there's a couple of comedians like Taylor Tomlinson I discovered through Netflix, but I think one of the big things about this is they're actually making real money. And I hate to say real in quotes, but it's like more than I'll make in the next 10 years, they're making for a special. But the fact that they're actually creating a bidding war because there used to be some pretty limited outlets and people so wanted to be on that outlet, they were willing to do it for the exposure. So now to see people actually making considerable amounts of cash off these and getting the boost, it gets them in the live appearances, it just seems nice. Yeah, and it's driven more festivals because people are more aware and more interested. So you see Netflix doing 200 venues, New York Comedy Festival, 250 venues. Like, it's not that there weren't comedy festivals before, but they are more popular now because more people are into more comedians. Yeah, South by Southwest, which was, well, it was never dead, but it wasn't a thing. Again, a couple of years ago, because no live events and festivals were a thing, has a big comedy line up coming up for the folks that are gonna be joining that festival this year. And yeah, it's a renaissance of sorts for comedians. And yeah, it's a genre that has benefited well from the fact that we were all struggling, you know? It's an unusual side effect, isn't it? Yeah, to think. It actually caused more people to be interested, more people to make a livelihood, and not just on the internet. It caused people to go out in real life and go see more comedies, so that's cool. Well, folks, when you're not buying my new book on pre-order at thomsnewbook.com, you can also watch Tom's Top Five, the show where I break down five things you need to know about technology in about 60 seconds. And this week was so much fun. With everybody making their predictions and their reviews about the Apple Vision Pro, we looked back at what people got wrong about the iPhone when it first came out in 2007. So go check out some of the hilariously wrong predictions, hilariously wrong reviews, sometimes right, but for the wrong reasons, at our top five, you can find it at Daily Tech News Show on TikTok, DTNSPIX on Instagram, and of course at youtube.com slash Daily Tech News Show. If you don't wanna worry about buying and maintaining hardware, you might like Nvidia's GeForce Now streaming service more than ever. GeForce Now added day passes that lets free players try out advanced features without having to pay the $10 to $20 for a whole month. So $3.99 gets you trying the priority tier, $7.99 to try the ultimate tier, and if you do have the ultimate tier, you can now take advantage of G-Sync if your monitor supports variable refresh rates. Windows users will need to be running on an Nvidia GTX 1650 or newer. So you might as well just say, why not buy a GPU at this point? If you do wanna mess with the hardware and buy a GPU, Patrick has been keeping us up to date for years on GPU price trends, what to look for to get the best deal, and Patrick, it sounds like prices have been edging up a little bit again. What's going on? Well, it's kinda interesting. First of all, the GPUs are flowing as in, gosh darn, I remember when this whole aisle of Micro Center was glass doors with nothing behind them, and now there's a huge section of GPUs and Nvidia and AMD, and then there's an aisle, and then there's more GPUs. These are the ones that nobody buys except for servers or stuff like that. But I'm still adapting to the new reality of being able to buy a GPU somewhere near MSRP. MSRP is not a fantasy. It was for a long time. As you get into the most expensive cards, though, MSRP is gone again, at least by a couple of hundred bucks, which sounds outrageous on, say, a thousand or $1,500 card, but compared to the bad times when the GPUs were scarce, it's not so bad at all. So when you say MSRP is gone, in other words, you can't find some of these GPUs at the price they're listed at. You're gonna have to pay a little more. So if you're looking at a 4070 Super, an Nvidia RTX card, great for 1440p, MSRP on that is $599. They're selling anywhere from like $599 to $700. Get into a 4080 Super, they're selling closer to, you know, 1050, 1100, 1250 MSRP, and those is a thousand. And the really tough one is when you're looking at like the 4090s, I wanna say the 4090, the MSRP is $1,599, and those are selling for 1,800 to 2,000, so two to 400, so, you know, at $400 over MSRP, that's a 25% bump over MSRP. That's steep, but not as steep as it has been. No, and that's, you know, and it's not like I need a 4090 anyway, but you know, it's interesting, right? When you look at the Steam hardware survey, most folks still game at 1080p, right? 1920 by 1080, 1080p, 58.82% of people on Steam. 1440p, 2560 by 1440, that's another 19%. And then when you get into, let's see, the dreaded WXGA, which I think it was a miserable laptop screen, that's like 3.56%. 2560 by 1660, which is the wide WXGA, it's like 3.14%, 4K is 3.45%. You know, 21 by 9, 3440 by 1440, my personal desktop monitor, which I wish was faster than 60 frames per second, that's like 2.13%. So 78% of gamers are 1080p, 1440p, and add in WQXGA and you're up at like 81%. And 6K and all its flavors is still under, well under 6%. So that means you don't necessarily need a high-end GPU. And if you're building 1080p, you can actually build a relatively inexpensive machine. You know, bargain build, entry level 1080p, Radeon RX 6600, I think it's gonna be like $200. Stepping up to better 1080p performance, Radeon RX 7600, those between 270 and 290, GeForce RTX 4060s that are somewhere between 290 and 390 dollars. The other thing is like, I've been fascinated by as GPUs are available in like more than one in that store over there that's surrounded by angry people. It's been funny to watch all of the, you know, they're overclocked. They're super cool. We have nine fans, they're water-cooled. So you're watching some pretty significant deltas on the price depending on how fancy it is. I'm just looking for the longer warranty which should mean better components and longevity. But if you wanna spend money on a GPU, the industry is ready for you. They will take your money. They will take your money. 4070 Super, which is a great 1440p card. It's got better ray tracing. That's when you're starting to get the okay space for 4K, not great. That's six to $700 on an MSRP of 599. 10% bump, I think, for a 4070 Ti Super, then you're around $800 to $900. 48 is super, 4080 Super, NVIDIA RTX 4080 Super, pretty serious 1440p performance, better 4K performance, then you're in that $1,000 range. But for most of us, I think we're gonna be pretty happy, you know, unless you're going to spend significant money with a 4060. And if you wanna spend more money, you can get pretty serious gaming performance for well under $1,000, which is not what you could do for oh, so many years during the challenges of gaming. The question, I know a lot of people are like, no, but I want 4K, even if I don't need it. The more rational question is, how future-proof am I at these different price points? Like if I have to spend $600 now, so I don't have to replace it in two years, is that worth it? Well, let me ask you a question, Thomas. What's the last time you replaced your desktop gaming monitor? Oh, I'm a horrible person. I never replaced it, but yeah. Let's not judge here. Let's say I don't like to maximize the value of my investment. I've gotten several years, right? But most people, you know, maybe actually looking at the Steam numbers, it's obviously the most people, but most people change their monitor, never? Every five years, right? And if you're upgrading your GPU without changing your monitor, you're not taking advantage of the GPU, so. Well, we could argue, and my elder teen is not obsessed with frame rates yet, because a lot of the gaming he's doing is not super much gaming. But I know people who are like, I want 400 frames per second. I run my games at 720p for superior response, and it's like, not my world, but it's out there. I think a lot of cases though, most people are probably getting, if you're not a graphics artist, if you're not obsessed with color fidelity, if you're not obsessed with upping your frame rates on your monitor, I think most people are sitting on their monitors for at least one or two PC builds, if not more. So I feel that unless, until your games you like to play start to slow down, your GPU is fast enough. I would say level up if you can when you're buying a new GPU, but that may be hopefulness off my part. I'm shocked at how many games are basically designed around on machines. Six years ago, that huge number of people are still playing today, so do with that as you will. You can get a lot more mileage out of it than maybe you expect. All right, let's check out the mailbag. This one comes in from Eric, who says I've been a listener of the DTNS podcast, MP3 downloads from your DTNS.com webpage for many years, dailytechnewshow.com. Back to the buzz out loud days. I visited patreon.com looking for that ad free version, but after signing up for a trial membership, I didn't find a way to download the short version of the podcast. I don't want the longer GDI podcast. I don't want to have to use an iOS app on my phone. I just want a way to get the membership and be able to download that same MP3 that you have on your website, but without those ads. Is there a way to do this? Thank you for your help. Yes, and I've already emailed Eric directly back, but there is a way. I know that what we do with Good Day Internet and what we do with the Patreon is say, look, if you're supporting us, we're not only gonna give you an ad free version, we're gonna give you more. And for most people, that's a good thing. They're like, hey, I like the show enough, giving me more show is a great thing. And if I run out of time, I just skip it, but it's fine, give me more show. And what we've been trying to do, and I think we're doing it well, is that more show is also full of substance, right? It's fun, it's a little more laid back, but there's a lot of value in it. I also understand that there are people like Eric who are like, I just want the 30 minutes, can I get that ad free? And we do have an option for people like that that you may not be aware of. Go to adfreedts.com and it takes you to Acast Plus. Acast Plus gives you the exact same feed you get in public with ads, except without the ads. So you pay $3 a month, you get no ads, you get an RSS feed just like you would otherwise, and you can download everything as you would. So go check that out, adfreedts.com. Meanwhile, Len Peralta has been drawing today's show. Which topic did you draw this time, Len? You know, getting back to Eclipse Talk, the path of totality actually comes right through Cleveland. Avon Lake is gonna be having like a million people. So I'm kind of disappointed that you didn't show up, you're not showing up to Cleveland, do you? Now I regret it, yeah, that's all right. You're not showing up in Southern Illinois either. That's his birthplace. Exactly, why aren't you going there? But you know, it's kind of funny, we don't know if it's going to be cloudy or anything else that's going to affect the solar energy. So that's what this is sort of about. My friend's over in Avon Lake saying, oh, it's cold and dark in Cleveland. The end, oh, wait a minute, that's cloudy, dark, it's cold. That's just Cleveland, man, so. They're just like, oh, it's the same as any day. Yeah, exactly, I wish you could come out here and spend some time, but it's gonna be, you're gonna have a great vantage point from where you're at. Yeah, Brian's been planning this. Like he actually founded his business on April 8th with the idea of being able to celebrate its five-year anniversary on the eclipse. I was planning my eclipse stuff during the 2017 one, so sure. If you, you know, it's so funny because I was actually at a store last night and they had eclipse t-shirts there. So if, but if you wanna celebrate this in your own way, you can go to my online store, lennparallelstore.com, and you can get this, or you can go to my Patreon, patreon.com forward slash lenn, and you can, and you get it right if you back me at the DTNS lover level. So happy eclipse, everybody, and hopefully those in the path of totality will be, will have a great view and no clouds and no solar stopping either. Yeah, exactly. Patrick Norton, always good to have you. Let folks know where they can keep up with what you do in between appearances on DTNS. Well, I'm ramping up my appearances on X and other alternate Twitter-like platforms, but really though, what I'm thinking about right now, Tom, is it true that your new book synced at, well, website? Is that really about understanding technology, making it work for you instead of work for me? I'm glad you asked, Patrick. Yes, it is. Sorry, I couldn't resist. No, thank you. Appreciate that. Tom'snewbook.com. At Patrick Norton. And Patrick will talk about it on his Twitter as well. Patrons, stick around for the extended show Good Day Internet. It's Friday quiz time. Get ready, movie buffs. We're gonna recall which movies debuted, groundbreaking computer-generated animation technologies, play along with us, and learn something on Good Day Internet. Patrons, stick around. Reminder, you can catch the show live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern, 2100 UTC. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We're back on Monday discussing the explosion in handheld Steam Deck-like machines with Shannon Morse joining us. Have a great weekend. We're just being popularity. They're not exploding. This week's episode's The 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 co-host, Rob Dunwood. Video producer and Twitch producer, Joe Coontz. Technical producer, Anthony Lemos. Spanish language host, writer and producer, Dan Campos. Science correspondent, Dr. Nicky Ackermanns. Social media producer and moderator, Zoe Dutterding. Our mods, Beatmaster, Delia Scottis-1, BioCal, Captain Kipper, Steve Guadarrama, Paul Reese, Matthew J. Stephens, AKA Gadget Virtuoso, and J.D. Galloway. Modern 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 adds support from Tatiana Matias. Patreon's support from Tom McNeil. Contributors for this week's shows include Nika Monford, Chris Christensen, Scott Johnson, Justin Robert Young, and Patrick Norton. And thanks to all the patrons who make the show possible. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. The DTNS Family of Podcasts. Helping each other understand.