 Coming up on D T N S is big tech taking a competitive turn. Who's benefiting from the apple privacy change? You might be surprised and Facebook's new name is so meta. I mean just meta that the new name is meta This is the Daily Tech news for Thursday, October 28, 2021 in Los Angeles on Tom Merritt from Austin, Texas And I'm the show's producer Roger Chang we have a longer version of this show called good day internet It's available at patreon.com slash D T N S We were just talking about cultural differences in queuing and shouting big. Thanks to our top patrons like Alexander Nashev Hector Bones and Tim Ashman. They are why you're able to listen to the show right now in large part Let's start with a few tech things you should know Get up says as many as as much as 30% of new code on its network was aided by its AI programming tool Copilot that's the one we talked about a while ago that suggests further lines or alternative code to help you avoid Repetition company also plans to roll out copilot support for all popular programming languages including Java since launching in July 50% of programmers who have tried copilot keep on using it feels like a toothbrush commercial, but that's what they said The European Commission launched a competition investigation into NVIDIA's planned acquisition of chip maker arm The Commission now has until March 15th, 2022 to clear the deal That deal gets worse and worse all the time. Some people starting to doubt it's gonna happen The Raspberry Pi Foundation released the $15 Raspberry Pi zero to W which the Foundation claims is about five times as fast as the original zero at multi-threaded performance Features a slightly downclocked version of the Broadcom system on a chip found on the Raspberry Pi 3 512 megabytes of LPDDR2 SD RAM some Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2 Sony has changed its name on steam PlayStation games published on steam for play on PC We're previously published by PlayStation mobile. They now show up as PlayStation PC Which honestly makes more sense. Sony formed a company called PlayStation PC earlier this year. That's a day for name changes Apple's newly released MacBook Pros include a webcam notch That interrupts the top of the display covering part of the menu bar in the center of the screen a space that isn't normally used Until it is and then it annoys everyone with reports of some programs having menu options floating under that notch and becoming inaccessible Apple released a support document to address the situation If you go to an apps get info option you have to go into the applications folder right click Choose the get info option you can change settings for specific apps to scale to fit below the built-in camera In other words the top part of the display where the notch is becomes a dark bezel your screen gets a little shorter But you can see all the menu items that display modification stays while you're running that program But the display returns to normal operation when the app is closed and the support document notes that the option will go Away once the app is updated to work properly with the notch All right, let's talk about a little something I heard on the Economist podcast this morning The Economist intelligence podcast pointed out that while big tech companies are still growing They're growing slower than they were and a lot of smaller tech companies are growing fast Prophets for alphabet Amazon Facebook Apple and Microsoft are all in and they total up around thirty percent this quarter Last quarter profits grew 90% so things are slowing down from the pandemic lockdown fueled boom That's probably to be expected But the next thing they talked about on the podcast may not have been as expected by you the Economist created a Tier two definition for tech companies Those are companies that have a market cap of more than twenty billion dollars With their incorporation happening after the year 2000 But aren't one of the big five 42 companies were qualified under this definition. These are less well-known companies Data platform company snowflake was mentioned identity management company Okta The market cap of those 42 companies combined to make up 22 Of the big five as of early 2020 And now that number has risen to 31 percent The implication being smaller tech companies are now growing faster than the big five Partly the pandemic pushed people into the cloud raising the tide for all the boats But as that tide is going out the smaller companies are still riding a little higher To the point that facebook wants to shift its whole business to focus on younger users Remember they mentioned that in their earnings call this week and that is pretty much in response to tiktok They didn't say it by name. They didn't have to That indicates in the opinion of the economist us technology editor Ludwig Ziegler That tech is beginning to get more competitive Even the big five are competing more with each other. You're seeing amazon moving more into ads You're seeing google expanding its cloud services to compete with amazon and microsoft so justin It says real are we turning the corner to more competition? Or do you think the big five can use their size to consolidate all this and drive the smaller companies back away? Uh, well Let's let's caution everybody before we whenever we get into the our companies in trouble conversation We we tend to kind of Flow into hyperbole and and we have long discussions about whether or not Microsoft is going to be dead like we did over the last decade right right going to die Will it be diminished from the position that it was in? Yeah Certainly microsoft was from the 90s until now not to say that they're not a gigantic company that does a lot of stuff A lot of these companies that we're talking about will continue to last well well well into the future Including facebook slash meta and we have a lot more to talk about with them, but To me the under reported story and all of those facebook leak documents are the fact that they are a company in decline They're having the same conversations that a lot of companies that become muddled and unsure of where their next path is Have with each other they start squeezing the things that they do well even tighter They start trying to emulate Businesses that they might not fundamentally understand or the business will not allow them To really replicate in the way that would be most fruitful I do think that there are There is a moment of maturity and decline that is coming with these kinds of companies And I would say facebook which is very tied to advertising that needs to happen on its platform And therefore they need to be the social hub is probably the most vulnerable Man, there are so many signals here. There's there's a principle I I found and I'm sure I'm not the first person to observe it So tell me if you can cite the person who created it, but a principle that We get the most concern and public debate Over stopping something right before it stops being a problem Everybody was trying to force cable card to be open right before everybody switched to streaming video You mentioned microsoft microsoft's a great example. We got a breakup microsoft Their dominance on the operating system is killing everything right before the operating system stopped being the measure of success And microsoft had to reinvent itself as a cloud company You are only thinking about that because media is fundamentally broken after the aol time warner merger Exactly exactly. So I feel like all of the stress and anxiety About these big tech companies is a clear signal that they're about to all come under assault from tick tock from snap From whoever the next Upstart is that we are moving into that cycle. Maybe this time the cycle took a little longer. You're right IBM didn't die hp didn't die Uh and microsoft certainly didn't die apple didn't die they reinvented themselves or they become something different That's what's going on here And I I really think this is an example of that of the processes are just working a little slower than they usually do And maybe you can only be the lead dog for so long Yeah, yeah, and and and real quickly before we wrap this up your point about the internal memos at facebook I hadn't thought about this till you said that Really remind me a lot of the internal memos in microsoft that came out during the antitrust trial about We've got to crush linux and we have to stop netscape and you know Trying to figure out and it wasn't till such an adela came along and said forget about reacting to them This is what we do really well. Let's do that Let's just do more of that rejuvenated the company. Yeah Well tom thursday tech dirt wrote up a study from a few weeks ago about kids and screen time by dr katie polish Dr polish intercolleagues at the university of colorado boulder analyzed data from the adolescent brain cognitive development study, which includes 11,875 participants aged nine and ten They looked at how screen time could be linked to issues of mental health behavioral problems academic performance sleep habits and peer relationships And then they published their results in the journal plo s They found that more screen time was and we quote now from the study moderately associated with worse mental health increased behavioral problems decreased academic performance and poor sleep but Heightened quality of peer relationships They found no effect on depression or anxiety social media texting and video game use went along with stronger peer relationships They noted that the effect was modest and that the socioeconomic status was more strongly associated with each measure than screen time The scientists concluded that quote analysts Do not establish causality and the small effect sizes observed suggest that increased screen time is unlikely To be directly harmful to nine and ten year old children and quote So tom What is the takeaway for parents? Well for that, I'd like to bring in an actual parent producer of the show roger chang Because this is another study where you you could do what tecter did and said see there's no problem Or you could say like ah, they found a problem But really it just shows like we're not seeing evidence of any harm But we also haven't found conclusory evidence. So roger. What do you make of this? I would I mean, I would I would broadly agree with with with an exception in that Screen time, especially for my my eldest child who's six and going on seven in three months She picks up a lot of her social cues from a lot of the videos she watches Which includes a lot of kind of game streaming Individuals and a lot of meme videos But what's interesting is a lot of kids do that It's the same way we all used to sit around the tv and watch the a team or night writer And we go back to school and we talk about those things And so what I think what's what's happening is not so much that the screen time is causing the anxiety My child already is anxiety. She she she copes with it with the screen Right. So that's kind of the way she she I don't say self-medicates, but that's the way she becomes that Yeah, that's how she goes. So I In many ways the screen use is more of sims for me more symptomatic than an actual cause of Of a problem Would you would you agree that it's different for every child and really parents probably at this point until more studies are in and they have some Conclusions your best advice is just look at how your child's behaving and do your best from there. I mean, there's some there's some broad general measurements of your child for example the eating disorders My child has very picky eater, but the thing is she's getting weight. She's getting taller Doctor said those are the two big big measurements and those aren't dipping. So she's normal You just try to expose her more food with screen time It really is depending on how your child interacts with other children If they spend all their time on the screen and loathe interacting with other Kids in her peer peer group or anyone else then that's a problem. Those aren't situations my kids have they they Do more than I think they're fair share of screen logic But they definitely are very gregarious and outgoing and that hasn't been an issue My only concern has always been Making sure that their vision isn't locked at a fixed distance for too long and they're you know Exercising their eyeballs a little bit more. Gotcha. Yeah, I think the biggest thing here is is the idea that socio-political or socio-economic issues rather are More correlative than the screen time and and I definitely definitely look at like hey If you've got two parents that are that are working and and and I was a raised by a single mother I know that there are Economic realities to how much you can spend if if iPads and youtube were around when I was when I was being raised You better believe that I would have had one in front of my face so I could Busy myself But I think that Really is is I think more of an issue if you are working a lot and you're away from your kid Then these are the issues that will that will crop up and I think that's Unfortunately, it's kind of the tale as old as time. It's the same thing about books radio television and video games It turns out it's not the device. It's the same kind of things that have always been around in terms of raising children Uh parents or even kids Email us your takes feedback at daily tech news show dot com Another thing we learned from this week's earnings reports was how badly companies have been impacted by apple's change in ad tracking Of course, uh, you probably know this but just as a reminder apple requires developers to get explicit permission If they wish to share trafficking info with third parties Uh, just with third parties But sharing that info lets them do a better job targeting ads for you elsewhere However, we've one survey found only 16 or so of people on ios are allowing apps to share tracking data with third parties And that means ads are less effective Because they're more often shown to a person who is less likely to respond to them because you don't have the data on it And that means advertisers have to spend more money to get the same return From their ad spend facebook and snap both indicated that this has impacted their bottom line negatively And you might think that well wait if advertisers are spending more wouldn't that be good for facebook? What the problem is they're not spending more on facebook Where they used to be able to get sales by only maybe using facebook ad tracking They now have to take some of their ad spend elsewhere to make up for the lower effectiveness They're experiencing on facebook's third party data fed tracking system A july poll of 118 e-commerce store owners by e-commerce fuel found that 62 Had decreased their facebook ad spending One beneficiary has been twitter we mentioned that yesterday Saw little impact from apple's ad change because it relies on brand ads Brand ads are meant to just affect your perception of the company. You don't have to have a direct sale You don't have to be able to track what the reaction is So you don't need third party targeting data for those to be effective another beneficiary has been google It had its highest sales growth in more than a decade last quarter Why? Because google can target you As soon as you search if you're searching for mulch Gardening centers who sell mulch can jump right on that. No third party tracking needed So even though google does a lot of third party tracking They've got a lot of products and i'm sure duck duck go also benefited That don't need the third party tracking To see a benefit of that. Justin, what do you think we've learned from this little experiment this past quarter? I think that again when we're talking about facebook Like the fact that facebook fought back so hard on this and now we have seen the reality of what it has done to their tracking And and i've heard this colloquially through other people who are in various different Companies that that facebook ads are now just less effective At least compared to what they used to be first they because of a lot of the the political blowback They turned down some of the ways that you could target certain Uh Users and now they just have less data coming in like you pointed out google is something where as more people pivoted online throughout the lockdown There is one thing that is guaranteed if they're searching for something that is close to your product You can buy those search terms and you can put your your content out in front of it facebook used to be a gold standard Of predictive ads We know the kind of person that is into your stuff We know based on their activities that they are probably going to be in it And we were just going to throw that ad in the middle of their feed while there's doom scrolling about whatever Now that doesn't exist for them. I think that they are very very very dependent on it and it's why I think You are you are dead right with the idea that the more we complain about the absolutely unbeatable facebook That must now be caged and and uh villainized in the public square the more we might be really singing A song about its decline Yeah, I uh, I I think it's just An externalized cost Is now being realized There the cost was externalized to us We were the product of the facebook ad and when apple Interceded and said hey, do you want to continue bearing that cost or is that not worth it to you 16% said Yeah, i'll keep bearing that cost. It's worth it to me to have more efficient ads And the rest of everyone else said no I don't want to bear that cost you bear that cost and therefore the cost of advertising went up facebook's trying to make it sound like apples hurting small businesses It's at what to me anyway from where I said it looks like apple is helping to Externalize that cost and give you a choice of whether you want to bear that cost or not I think it's shocking because facebook should be able to target ads very very well since they listened to you via your microphone Just kidding But but in reality it does show you how important that data was because it's like that do exist And now they don't have it mobile tracking is a huge part of their business iphone tracking specifically the fact that it doesn't exist anymore We are seeing the cost of it. Yeah, and it won't take down facebook facebook will be just fine. They'll be fine. They'll be fine Uh You've got thoughts on this. I know you do uh jump in our discord You can join it by linking a patreon account patreon.com slash dtns At facebook connect facebook stopped being facebook and changed its name to meta met a Seems obvious in in retrospect now. Uh, the social network will still be called facebook So i say somebody say we're not going to stop calling it facebook keep calling the social network facebook because it will Continue to be called facebook the company that owns facebook and reality labs and instagram And uh oculus will be called meta CEO mark zuckerberg said from now on We're going to be meta versed first not facebook first. So for those of you keeping track facebook is youth first now and meta is meta versed first Which i don't know where that leaves the youth That also means the end of the oculus brand name too andrew bosworth wrote on meta's facebook social network Starting in early 2022 you'll start to see the shift from oculus quest from facebook to meta quest an oculus app to meta quest app over time meta spent most of facebook connect uh trying to explain its approach to the metaverse meta CEO mark zuckerberg said It's not a thing that a company builds It's a broader platform that i think we're all going to contribute towards building in a way that is open and interoperable That's what you want to hear. Uh, he talked about the metaverse being a place you're in Not looking at so he's like it's not really going to be that different. It's just you're going to be immersed in it You're going to be able to be inside instead of looking at it through a screen like you do now Reality labs head andrew bosworth pointed out that the metaverse will not exist just in vr either But it will be better in vr and ar Before we get to the announcements justin. What do you think of them? Changing the name which i hasten to add is not a restructuring like alphabet did alphabet actually restructured google To be a new organization. This is really just a name change Yeah, it's a fine name horizon was supposed to hint at the idea of a metaverse We knew that metaverse was something they were very very focused on meta works I guess that makes mark zuckerberg a meta ceo, which I think is kind of funny I do think that it is a mistake to lose the oculus branding oculus to me was the first Breakthrough vr device that you could just hand anybody and because of its room scaling It worked right off the rack. I do think that that is a mistake to not continue with oculus. That was a great brand name Yeah, and and now it's a meta quest Yeah Yeah, that scans I'll take a minute take a minute. All right, let's get to the announcements horizon home Is going to let you use a meta quest to to hang out in vr space You're embodied as an avatar in a virtual home where you can watch videos and launch apps and play games Do all that with your friends? It's getting 2d apps like slack dropbox facebook and instagram Though it will work as 2d panels in your virtual space first 2d apps are in The oculus store now using progressive web app standards. I was happy to see that This joins the horizon workspace and horizon worlds offerings They said that worlds is still in testing that's supposedly growing every day There's also quest for business that lets you log in with a work account instead of a facebook account And comes with a lot of business management tools like device management enterprise management quest for business will begin testing this year Move into open beta next year and full availability to businesses in 2023 Side note. They said they are going to transition account management app meta to be outside of facebook So that you won't need a facebook account It's a little bit of a change in definition But you'll be able to create an account for the quest without creating a facebook account It will be a meta account, but you could also have a facebook account Our battle net prediction was correct. Yep. Yep. That's that looks like where they're going You'll also be able to make messenger audio calls from within the quest Eventually, you'll be able to visit vr destinations together with your messenger friends For developers meta announced the mixed reality presence platform This is a range of machine perception other ai type stuff that includes environmental understanding content placement persistence voice interaction standardized hand interactions generally things that make the environment feel more real While you're using them meta's polar app will let anyone design ar filters effects and objects on ios closed beta That's going to launch later this year. Meta is partnering to launch several vr games on the quest later this year including Grand Theft Auto San Andreas As for hardware meta is partnering with bmw to test its project aria augmented reality glasses in cars This is like the neural interface that doesn't use lenses to show you things. So you're not wearing a headset It helps you navigate kind of gives you put heads up display kind of stuff Whole new headset is coming as well project cambria Will supposedly be capable of vr and ar because it'll have high res pass through cameras Face and eye tracking optics that make it slimmer. They're going to try to make it feel more like Paraglasses these there really were no other deals other than meta plans to release that sometime next year and even fewer details on project nasa ray ar glasses that are going to try to fit displays projectors batteries radios custom chips cameras speakers and sensors into glasses that are five millimeter thick Really no more details on that other than the name project nasa ray Um Good luck. Yay. Yeah Obviously a metaverse future folks. Yeah a lot of this is focused through the oculus And that's probably why they wanted to go with meta and not oculus because this is going to be so key and essential to their entire Business going forward the most exciting ideas within it to me Are building virtual workspaces and businesses within the idea of a metaverse that to me is the biggest profit possible motivation for them beyond that I I believe in the oculus quest too. I think it's a great device. I've bought multiple of them to give to friends So I I can see why they want to push forward on this I think it is a good idea for them to Push beyond A facebook login because that was a barrier for some people but ultimately let's all remember this no matter what you call it mark zuckerberg's company sells ads Whatever needs to happen for that to be the thing there that that is where they will go Zuckerberg is making noises that he sees the future as being a marketplace So that may shift they may shift they haven't shifted yet. That's a very good point They may shift to selling things not ads keep an eye on that and also let's not get lost that we were saying If if you want to succeed the way microsoft and apple has You have to reinvent yourself. That's what facebook's doing. They're trying to reinvent themselves right now before The ad-based social network part of their business declines Or if they could pioneer the metaverse ad Yeah, they could do that too the wall street journal took a look at the chip shortage and Following with the halloween theme it's very scary For example counterpoint research estimates that because of chip problems the smartphone industry will grow at six percent this year half of what was previously Expected the cause of all this shortage wasn't initially a ramp down in production and an unexpected rise in consumer demand Then weather and fire problems combined with the virus outbreaks at factories and ports Which made it difficult to catch up with the unexpected demand and global supply supply chain problems make it hard to get supplies and make parts And make products all of that leads to stockpiling aka the toilet paper phenomenon where companies order more chips than they need Earlier than they need for fear of not being able to get them and thus spiking orders beyond normal levels leading to Yes more shortages When will we finally work through it? Nobody knows But it's certainly not now the wall street journal article shows that we haven't passed the peak of the problem yet Wait times for chips have continually risen over the past year from one to around zero weeks in 2020 to 22 weeks now that wait time for microcontrollers Needed in car production is now at 38 weeks Yeah, so uh, we do you want to see that peak? That peak won't happen until next year for sure Good good gravy Uh, uh, yeah, especially for electronics. I really feel like the the the pain is yet to come if what we define as pain is shortage Uh, let's launch ourselves into a more positive story MIT's computer science and artificial intelligence laboratory aka sea sail is deploying Deploying not testing deploying autonomous passenger boats in amsterdam The vehicle is actually called row boat boat roboat Like robot but a boat But it's a boat Sea sail has sea sail By the way has been developing these for six years and is ready to launch its full-scale service That can carry up to five passengers or transport stuff around They even showed it like coming together to make a temporary bridge like a bunch of row boats Row boat is a fully electric Boat gets 10 hours on a charge can navigate waters on its own and dock in a port or approach another boat with close Approximity approach mode uses GPS for routing and cameras and lidar to avoid obstacles And an onshore operator monitors it remotely and sea sail says that one operator can monitor up to 50 of these things at a time New row boats will get underway in the canals and waterways of amsterdam starting now They're there on the water go get them people This thing would have ruined the old man in the sea like Made it just a garbage book although probably would have saved that fisherman spoiler alert for old man in the sea listen, uh, if you're if you're in amsterdam Uh, and and and you feel the urge to go take a ride on a row boat and send us a picture Send us a little first-hand report. Please do we would Are the row boats the new autonomous lifts in vegas like That's the thing we want. We want on the ground reporting on. I don't know where it can go But I want to ride one Feedback at daily tech news show.com also. Thanks to our brand new boss john boy. Just started backing us on patreon. Thank you john boy I bet john boy thought, you know, I'm gonna back them on patreon I'm gonna get my name shouted out on the show and they're gonna make a walton's joke But no No, we're not. Uh, except maybe I just did. Okay, but anyway, thank you john boy and thank you. Justin robber young No, uh, thank you tom Uh, uh, I would like to let everybody know that by the time the next time I'm on the show, uh Election day will have passed november 2nd here in america. So please make sure you're registered to vote and go and vote In all of your local propositions. That's what we cover on the px3 podcast That will come out tomorrow and throughout the next week I'll be covering the va gubernatorial elections on the ground in old virginia. Yeah, man That uh, that yamkin melcala phrase. I've been following that. That's tight. Check it out folks. Go do it We are live monday through friday 4 30 p.m. Eastern 2030 utc find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live back tomorrow with lamar wilson Len peralta will be here drawing the top tech stories of the day This show is part of the broadband's network Get more at frogpants.com I hope you have enjoyed this program