 Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners. Thanks to all of you, including Daniel Dorado, Howard Yermish, and John Atwood. Coming up on DTNS, Amazon's plan for rural deliveries is Microsoft too early to game streaming, or are they perfectly on time like a wizard? Plus, we say goodbye to a beloved revolutionary product line that touched us all. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, May the 10th, 2022 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Rebel, I'm Sarah Lane. Also from Los Angeles, I'm Lamar Wilson. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. We know Elon Musk said stuff today, but who knows if he means it. We'll wait until something actually happens with that. Instead, let's start with a few tech things you should know. Intel announced its release schedule for its discrete arc GPUs. Entry level A3 GPUs will ship to system builders and OEMs in China in Q2, with A5 and A7 cards coming to OEMs later this summer. For laptop cards, arc GPUs are currently available on Samsung laptops in South Korea, but Intel said it's working with Lenovo, Acer, HP, and Asus to get laptops with arc 3 GPUs released ASAP. Couple updates on the game console world. Nintendo announced it shipped 4.11 million Switch consoles in its fiscal Q4, bringing 2021 shipments, fiscal 2021 shipments to 23.06 million. That is down 20% on the year. And Sony announced it sold 2 million PlayStation 5 units in its Q4, down 40% on the year, and bringing lifetime console sales to 19.3 million. PS4 and PS5 games sales increased 15% on the year to 70.5 million titles. The New York Times reports that in a recent note to employees, Netflix executives said that they're now looking to introduce an ad tier sometime in the last three months of 2022 with a crackdown on password sharing, starting then as well. You might recall that amidst slowing revenue growth. That was last month's big news. Co-CEO Reid Hastings originally said he'd try to figure it out over the next year or two. So seems like they're fast tracking this. Yeah, he figured it out faster than he thought. Good for him. Microsoft introduced the Microsoft adaptive mouse kit that's modular and lets you adapt it to different accessibility cases. The core is a square with a scroll wheel left and right buttons and the optical sensor underneath as well as Bluetooth. Then there's a bumper on the back you can remove and attach a tail to get a more typical mouse shape position for either hand to use works left or right, or you can attach the core to a hub that has five mini jack and three USB C ports, a Bluetooth button and a profile switching button that hub can then connect to assistive tech switches. The kit comes with one called the button, which is actually a square with eight buttons in a circle. You can program those buttons for tasks like scrolling or opening apps or little macros, keyboard shortcuts, stuff like that. You can also replace the wheel of buttons with a joystick, a D pad or what they call a dual button. It's just kind of one on each side. You can also use shape ways to 3D print your own adaptations that work with the button or the core. The Microsoft adaptive mouse kit is coming out later this year. In the autumn, they have not announced a price yet. IBM started working on quantum computing some time ago, in fact, 40 years ago. And now the company wants to further expand that technology into practical applications using what they already have, the 127 qubit Eagle processor that uses quantum circuits, the Qsik runtime API as well. But the company also said Wednesday it has a goal of operating a 4,000 qubit system by 2025. IBM plans to release its 433 qubit osprey chip later this year and migrate the Qsik. I don't know. I have some time with that Qsik, like Trisket, but Qiskit. Qiskit, runtime to the cloud in 2023. So that's coming right up, followed by Condor. That's a quantum chip that IBM is building as the world's first universal quantum processor with over 1,000 qubits. All right. I'm probably pronouncing it wrong, too, but that's the way I would do it. Let's talk a little more about a gauntlet being thrown down by a now former Apple employee. But yeah. So this is an ongoing issue that many people who have formerly worked in offices and maybe work remote now or maybe are some sort of hybrid of the two might be able to resonate with. On Saturday, the Verges, Joey Schiffer, tweeted that Apple's director of machine learning in Goodfellow sent a note to staff saying he's leaving Apple because of its policy requiring workers to return to the office for one to two days per week. Goodfellow wrote, I believe strongly that more flexibility would have been the best policy for my team. Recently, a group calling itself Apple Together published an open letter in opposition to the policy of bringing people back to the office. So Goodfellow apparently isn't alone in his feeling that this is not the right move. Now, among the reasons that he cited in the letter. No, no, no, this is Apple Together cited in their letter. Apple Apple Together's letter. Company teams are already siloed. So if you return to the office, are you really increasing serendipity? You know, what do you really get out of it? Number two, traffic in the Bay Area, anybody who's ever lived here or even traveled here knows that traffic is a huge issue. And many folks don't live right next to the Apple campus. And also, Apple's own products are sold as being helpful for other people to work remotely. So you got Apple employees saying, well, OK, can't we also take advantage of our own products? So a little bit more contact. Apple's Chinese operations are working because of live streams, video calls, AR, also all helps California employees collaborate with those employees who are in China. And many of those employees say this is working. This is how we can do this. And Apple isn't alone here. Dropbox, Twitter, Lyft and Facebook have had to think about when people work from home and all of those companies have, at least for now, said you can permanently work from home as long as it makes sense for your job. So why do we think companies, in this case, Apple, but other companies as well, want this at least partial and office situation instead of just being at home? You know, part of it, I think it sounds cynical, right? But, you know, that control aspect comes up where they're, you know, they want to see employees doing something or maybe they just need to, you know, see them that are doing their work, justify their things, but maybe it's to sign some things off. I'm not really sure. I haven't been in office in years. So I'm not sure what they're thinking this now, but it feels like it's a form of control. And I don't I don't want that to sound like like like I'm being too harsh on the company. But that's that's that's what it sounds like to me. I mean, it seems like there's there's a lot of there's a lot of factors at play. I mean, when you when you consider Apple in particular, you've got the big spaceship down in Cupertino that it more or less was finished right before covid. And so we've we've seen it in many Apple announcements, you know, pre-recorded Apple announcements, looks pretty great. But boy, is that a big old place with a lot of people not there. So I think there's there's probably some insensitive for the company to be like, let's make use of this thing that we paid all this money for. But at the same time, like you say, Lamar, I think it depends on management structures. There, you know, there are certain teams that, you know, we're a manager or even the employees working under that manager are like, we're better together in person. But a lot of other people don't feel that way. We've talked about the studies that that show that there is some something to the serendipity, right? There is something to the idea of being in person. There's a little more creativity that can happen when you're in person, even just in a meeting for forget even the serendipity of running into each other, you know, having a meeting over Zoom. It's a little harder to come up with solutions. We talked about that not that long ago. I think this weird thing of like, OK, let's have you in two to three days. To me, doesn't make any sense. It's like either the office is better or the home home is fine. And then you come in the office when you need to. Why why why this random two to three days just feels like a committee decision where they're like, well, we have some people want to stay home and some people who don't. So let's compromise on something that doesn't work for anyone. Because really, this is a battle between extroverts and introverts. All the extroverts who tend to be in management all want to be in the office because they like being around people and they miss it. All the introverts have loved working from home and don't want to go back into the office. So you end up with this like weird two to three day thing, which seems to be the standard. And I don't think there's any evidence that that's in any way beneficial for anybody. And I think for a lot of folks that that just complicates your weekly structure. You know, if I if I have to wake up on Monday, go to the office and I do that until Friday afternoon and then I come home. OK, fine. If I'm working from home, which I do now, also great. But the sort of like, OK, what day is it? What am I doing today? Kind of thing. I think that gives a lot of people anxiety. Yeah. All right. Another thing that can can cause you a little stress in your life is if you can't get a package delivered to you. And this is a particular problem for people in rural areas. Amazon has amazingly fast delivery times. If you live in cities, sometimes it's a day or even less. Sometimes they can do same day. But if you live in a rural area, that extends it to two days, sometimes more. Right, Sarah? Yeah. Yeah, I live in a rural area and I'm I'm close enough to the urban areas that I don't really have this issue with Amazon. The next day deliveries is pretty common here. But in cities, yeah, Amazon contracts with small entrepreneurs to drive Amazon branded vans with Amazon uniformed employees. You've you've seen them ever been in a city. One truck can deliver dozens of packages per hour, you know, at best. But you don't have the density in rural areas to pull that off. You just don't. So you don't have the entrepreneurs who can make a business just out of contracting deliveries to Amazon. So the company relies on UPS and the post office for rural deliveries. And that costs Amazon more money. But the company has an interesting attempt to fix that. Yeah, recode has a story out reporting that the experimental Amazon Hub delivery partner program, as it is called, is available in 10 US states. They'll pay a small business around three dollars per package, two fifty to three dollars to deliver within a 10 mile radius. Referrals to the program are available in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska and South Dakota. The way this works, your business, let's say you're a florist. Each morning, the parcels are dropped off by Amazon and you commit to delivering them or somebody that works for you, delivering them by the end of the day, seven days a week, three hundred sixty days a year. There's five holidays built in. The business does not have to have prior delivery experience or even be in a related business. I mentioned a flower shop, they do deliveries, but IT shops and restaurants are also taking advantage of this test. You know, I wondered why this was. And I think the answer is insurance, liability insurance, which most businesses already have. Plus these businesses aren't relying on the deliveries for the main source of income. This is supplemental income. Yeah. And this is not the first time Amazon has done this. There's a similar program has existed in India. That's been going since 2015. Yeah. So this makes me wonder is Amazon trying to make it seem like, hey, we're not trying to destroy mom and pop stores. We're helping them. We're giving them we're giving them jobs. So so so we're not the big bad. I wonder if that's part of this. I feel like that. I mean, yeah, that's one of those happy side effects. Right. Yeah. It's sort of a yes and no. Right. It's it's Amazon doesn't care about woman pop shops. But if they can work with them to make Amazon customers happier in the long run, then yeah, these sorts of partnerships work. Yeah, I feel like the reason they want to do this is because they have a section of the business called AMZL for Amazon logistics that already oversees around two thirds of Amazon's customer orders. They want to get that to 100 percent. And then they want to make that part of their business like AWS. AWS is the cloud business that was built first to serve Amazon. And then they started allowing other people to take advantage of it. It's one of the biggest money makers. Amazon wants to do that with logistics. So they need to build this out and they need to have great coverage to be compelling for people to use. And it's a happy side effect, Lamar, that they can also say like, and look, we're helping the mom and pop shops at the same time. Yeah. So yeah, it makes me wonder, is this last mile type of delivery? Is that is that profitable for the I know you said supplemental income? Can can that be profitable? Three bucks a package if you get enough of them and you're fast enough? Yeah, I think it depends on the business. If you're if you're open seven days a week already and you have some employee downtime that you can devote to this, then yeah, it feels like it's on the edge at three dollars, maybe maybe closer to four. You know, from from what people have done with analysis might be better. But but yeah, something around there might be useful for somebody who's like, yeah, we're we're not busy every second of the day so we can afford to do this. I imagine there could be some general store type places, too, that they know that people are going to come into the store that morning. They just hand on the package. Don't even have to drive it to them. So listen here, Microsoft is going to do a great thing. It's going to let you stream games or at least what it currently does. Excuse me. I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm so excited. It's going to let you stream it. Let you stream games on Xbox, PC and phone. And there are more options apparently coming. So Microsoft said it plans to bring Game Pass to streaming sticks and smart TVs. I'm excited about this. Venture Beach sources say Microsoft will release a cloud gaming streaming stick of its own within the next year. It will have Game Pass Ultimate as well as movie and TV services. And Microsoft and Samsung are supposedly working on a game streaming app for Samsung smart TVs. This is all part of Microsoft's Xbox everywhere initiative. Is Microsoft smart to get ahead of this? Or is it too early? I feel like they're right on time. I think they're doing the wizard thing that I said. Why not be first? Yeah. Well, you could be too far ahead, like Friendster was, right? Like that's an example of being first. It didn't help them. Friendster wasn't ahead of its time. It was just the first. Well, yeah. And first isn't always best, right? Right. Yeah. You learn, you learn things along the way. You want to be at the time where the audience is going to grow with you, not where you've spent a lot of money doing something in the audience isn't quite there yet. I feel like Microsoft is just ahead of the wave, which is kind of where you want to be. You want to have everything ready when the large portion of the audience finally gets there. And so making streaming sticks and TV stuff, it's the earliest part, right? It's not available on every TV, but that's OK, because not everybody's ready to do that yet. Right. And, you know, what's exciting about this? First of all, being able to game without a console, it's not a new thing, Stadia. And a company before that, a couple companies before that tried that, but Stadia was the most recent one to do it. And I think, you know, in terms of the actual technology, very successfully, it's just the marketing couldn't get it out there. But Xbox, their everywhere program has a has a better name, better reliability and just been able to say, hey, we don't care if you don't have a PC. We don't care if you don't have an Xbox. You that's not where we make our money. You have Game Pass, you can you can play. You got a controller, Bluetooth, you can play. And I think that's a compelling concept. And I look for a time where it's just naturally built in gaming for all consoles. Microsoft is the first. But I think the other ones will will follow suit. And then this need for a box attached, you know, like who has a cable box? Well, a lot of people still do. But but it's getting closer to less closer. Like by the end of this year or next, it'll be left that less than half of the US has a cable box. So it's funny. A friend of mine, he he asked my advice recently about he he wants to buy his mom a new TV. And he's like, I just want, you know, the smart TV that can do all the things. I was like, you don't even really have to think about it that hard. You know, with streaming sticks, which are relatively inexpensive, you really have a lot of options here, although it could be built into the TV as well. I don't think his mom specifically wants to game, but we're getting to the point where, yeah, this the sort of set top box life is not long for this world. Yeah, it's it's the best optional, maybe for people who have an older TV. They can't get updates properly anymore. You get a streaming stick to extend the life of it is where this is going. And yeah, I think Sony's smart, too, for because they have an advantage over Microsoft right now. So so they're they're kind of taking it easy. They know that the majority of the audience isn't streaming games yet. They're OK and they want to consolidate their gains on the platforms they have. I don't think that's wrong either. I think Microsoft is smart to say like, well, we've got a cloud business in Azure. So let's let's get ahead of that game. And they'll they'll be able to sell this technology to others in the future, possibly I mean, Sony's already an Azure customer, but you know, possibly Sony competitors as well. Yeah, real quick. Sony did try this and could they do own TV? They do make TVs, they did try this with their PlayStation now service. And they got rid of it I think a few years ago for some reason just kind of disappeared around 2018 or so. So but it's it's something that has been floating out there. I look forward to see what Microsoft does with it. Yeah, it'll come back to those Sony TVs. I'm going to guess next year, not this year, next year. Feeling social, folks, you got you got thoughts on this. You're like, Merit, you're crazy. Get in touch with the DTNs audience on the socials at DTNs show on Twitter and DTNs pics. That's P I X DTNs pics on Instagram. The music lives on, reads the announcement from Apple, but the iPod will not. The iPod touch was the last surviving member of the music player's line was basically an iPhone without the cellular network. But Apple is discontinuing the iPod touch. In fact, in its own announcement, it couldn't even bring itself to say those words, simply saying in a subheading, iPod touch will be available while supplies last. They just can't let go. They just can't bring themselves to admit it. First iPod was launched October 23rd, 2001. That was the old Firewire version. The iPod touch launched shortly after the first iPhone launched by in September 5th, 2007. Apple discontinued the nano and the shuffle in 2017. Those were the last of the non iPod touch iPods, the ones that didn't support apps. The last update to the iPod touch line, the seventh gen came in 2019. That one has been still made ever since then, but will be made no longer. iPod is survived by the iPhone and the iPad. And it's distant cousins, the Sony Walkman audio player in the SanDisk clip. SanDisk clip, I got to do that to me, Tom. This this this was a long time coming. And I don't think it's a huge surprise to anybody. But you know, it's it's it's interesting to to to look at that product roadmap all the same because it really has been, you know, 20 years in the making. So we're going to share some of our own memories of the iPod and some of yours from our Discord. But we're going to start by hearing from a person you're going to be familiar with that used to use an iPod touch instead of a cell phone for years. That's our former co-host at Tech News today. This is I as actor. The iPod touch has a special place in my heart because for a couple of years it was my cell phone. Anywhere I went, I had an iPod touch along with a mobile hotspot. I'd use that combo with Google Voice and a pair of headphones for calls. One big bonus in the early days was being able to use FaceTime on the go because FaceTime worked on Wi-Fi only back then. I get asked, what kind of phone is that? And I'd say it's not a phone. It's an iPod touch. So long iPod touch. Yeah, I was fascinated with the fact that that I has got around with just an iPod touch and a little Wi-Fi. Often I was like, does that really work? And he's like, yeah, it does. I mean, you have to want it to. But yes, it's a little jiggery pokery, you know, to make it work. But you know what I miss about the iPod? What's that? You know, I miss nothing because I didn't have one. I was a guy. I never had an iPod. I never. I was a Zoom guy. I had a creative Zen touch. You were the Zoom guy. I was the guy who had the Zoom, not the brown one, the black one. OK, OK. All right, fair. Yes. And and the closest I got was a creative Zen touch. It was white and I got closer. I just wasn't ready to just wasn't ready to take. Did you ever do any squirting with the Zoom? That was a feature they had. They called it squirting. I don't remember squirting at all. No, they called it squirting. Yeah, that was unfortunate. Yeah, that's what we're going to talk about. The iPod Lamar. OK, OK. My last iPod, the iPod video that was the last iPod I had a 60 gigabyte. Oh, wait, this isn't mine. This is Eileen's fabulous iPod on the back. I was I was looking for my my it was actually my dad's iPod from probably 2001. I don't know what's around here somewhere. But yeah, I mean, long in the tooth, but still was it was a proud product. Yeah, I changed music. Yeah, it really did. We wouldn't have the streaming stuff if somebody hadn't done that. And Apple is the one that did that. Real quickly, a few things from our discord. Doffee James said, shout out to having to unplug my iPod from my truck, bring it into work to wait for buzz out loud to come out, then download it on iTunes for the commute home. Yeah, we we we got quite a few responses in our discords or a brings bacon rights. An iPod touch was the first Apple product I got and led me into getting an iPhone a few years later. I still have it lurking in a drawer, even though I don't have that first iPhone. Just charging it up now. And S. Kelly recently resurrected an iPod video using an adapter from I flash dot X, Y, Z. So it runs completely off micro SD rather than the original hard drive. I imagine we're going to see lots of folks doing this now that it's been discontinued. A bunch of people are going to start modding it and resurrecting them by and I'm on eBay. So that's cool. We'll have a few more of people's reminiscences in our show notes as well. Well, I'd like to welcome everybody here to Star Harbor. If you're saying, if you're not not for our harbor, Star Harbor, a group of astronauts, engineers and business folks are launching this new initiative. It's a space flight campus designed to train future astronauts. Star Harbor says it's acquired fifty three acres in Lowentree, Colorado. If you're not familiar with the area, it's just south of Denver for about twenty five million dollars and plans to open a mixed use development campus by twenty twenty six. You might say, OK, what are they doing there? Star Harbor Academy looks to include things like micro gravity flights, a neural buoyancy facility, high gravity centrifuge, land based and underwater habitats, hyperbaric and and hypobaric and hyperbaric chambers and a human performance center, among others. With private space flight becoming a regular occurrence, more than just SpaceX are going to be doing it. It feels like this is a good bet. Talk about being early to something. But like there will eventually be a need for places that can train folks to get these jobs to work on on private and commercial spacecraft. I mean, everyone who listens to the show knows that I will not be going to Star Harbor. Sarah, we'll have to take in those jobs. No, no, but but Lamar, if you're if you're pumped about it, I'm I'm excited to hear about. Oh, I'm going. It doesn't matter. About 50, 60, 70, I'm going. I will be in space in some way. And you're going to be there, too. You just don't realize it yet. You'll be you'll be trying out snacks and unboxing things from orbit. I listen. I actually got to keep people excited about it. I actually kind of feel like the this is like a fun version of being like, let's, you know, to kind of try out space stuff. Yeah, I don't actually have to go. But check it out there and hang out in Colorado, right? Check this out. I'm going to unbox space. Whoa, that's a promise, folks. The promise I like it. I like it. Yeah, I don't know what that looks like yet. But yeah, no, if anyone can do it, it's you. Do you have a timeline on that? Do you? Yeah. Could you say like in how many years? 2077. OK, so someone said a reminder for May 10th, 2077. That will also be alive somehow. I should be so lucky to be alive in 2077. But OK, while we wait for that, let's check out the mailbag. Let's do it. So Benjamin heard our story recently about the drop stack overflow, the key micropad. Oh, yeah, that's the thing. And he writes, I have the V1 version of this. Mine didn't have the RGB enabled, but the LEDs are on the PCB. You just can't see them because of the aluminum housing. So I desoldered the switches that came with put the switches I wanted on it, enable the LEDs and the program and the and program the buttons to do what I wanted. It is a great little product. The translucent housing would make those LEDs look really nice. Oh, so so still respect for the V2. But but being like, you know, I did a little work and got pretty much all the way there on my own. That's cool. I like that. Yeah, it's soldering, not my strong suit. But you know what, Benjamin? I love it. If you if you could send us photos, that'd be cool. Yeah, would love to share those in the discord. We also got a couple more positive reviews because we talked about the email from someone in Australia who was using a QR code at a restaurant, and then they could also pay an order from from the app, not just view the menu. Clinton in Australia and Ed in Texas both wrote in with similar rave reviews for that kind of system. And Clinton added that Woolies, as they call it in Australia, Woolworth's has implemented loyalty card with NFC. So you tap the phone for your loyalty card and then tap again to pay and is converting to electronic price labels. And while the news articles all focus how they're smaller and harder to read, they have NFC so you can actually tap your Android phone against the price tag and it launches the web page for that product right there on Woolworths.com. So pretty cool stuff. I can't believe Woolworths is still around. Yes, it's it's it's weird for us. It's like we go to Australia to see that brand name. But yeah, it never went away. And it's it's basically a grocery store there. It's not it's different than it was when it was here. Yeah. Yeah. Work out all my clothes from. OK. Yeah, it's just where you settle up and get some ice cream. I bought if you're really good. What are those little French miniature sweet cookie sandwiches? I can't remember the name of those. Oh, neither. What is wrong with us? Macaron. Yes. Thank you, Roger. I bought some macarons for my nephew's mother-in-law because she let us stay with them and I bought them at Woolworths. Never never liked a macaron. I don't know why. Yeah, I think she did. At least I. They're they're very pretty. They're very pretty, but you know, to each their own. Thank you to Lamar Wilson for being with us today, Lamar. I don't know how long it's been since you've been on the show. I feel like it's been too long. Let's just know what you've been up to way too long. Yes. But yeah, I'm making short form vertical videos across my socials. I just recently did a post on a Twitter saying that I'm no longer doing the traditional YouTube anymore. So that is done for me. And I'm in this new era, having a lot of fun making tech, gaming and entertainment videos and just having a blast. So you can find me at Lamar, Lamar dot TV, excuse me, if to see all of my socials. Appreciate it. Well, you're part of the future. Thanks for taking us along for the ride before we all go to space, except me. Also, thanks to a brand new boss that we got since yesterday's show, Nikolai just started backing us on Patreon. Thank you, Nikolai. There's also a longer version of this show called Good Day Internet. If you don't know about it, we talk about food and all sorts of other fun stuff. It's available at patreon.com slash D T N S. Just a reminder that D T N S itself is live Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. Eastern. That's twenty hundred UTC. And you can find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live. We are back doing it all again tomorrow. Was Scott Johnson joining us talk to them. This show is part of the frog pants network. Get more at frog pants dot com. I hope you have enjoyed this program.