Tech News: When the Chips are Down

darn quickly right now. But let's get to the topics as I chose for today's episode. First, we're going to look at a changeover at Intel. After serving as CEO of Intel for two years, Bob Swan is getting the boot. Swan had taken over the job in two thousand nineteen when the previous Intel CEO, Brian Kerzanitch, resigned after it was discovered he had had an undisclosed affair with another

Intel employee. Yikes. Now the chip manufacturing company has made this decision to replace Swan after losing the coveted most valuable computer chip company. It's kind of like beauty pageant, I guess, but no. Intel had been the most valuable chip company in the unit US before Video took that

crown in July. Intel has had more than its share of problems lately, including manufacturing issues that have resulted in delays for Intel's next generation of chips, and once the company had to say, you know, we are a year behind where we're supposed to be, it really hurt the company big time. The stock market saw shares in Intel

dropped by seventeen. Replacing Swan will be Pat Gelsinger, who currently serves as the chief executive of vm ware, but before that ten years before joining vm Ware, Gelsinger spent thirty years of his career at Intel, so he is no stranger to the halls of Intel. We'll have to see if Gelsinger can guide Intel back to its former

leadership status in the industry in chip manufacturing. And because that last story was about chips, and because we all know you can't have just one, by the way, message me if you happen to get that reference I made. But let's talk about Qualcom. Qualcom is also known as a semiconductor microchip company, primarily known for developing chips for mobile devices like smartphones. Now, the company is making a one point for billion dollar acquisition of another chip company

called Nuvia. Nuvia has a core chip design that was originally based on ARMS architecture. ARM meanwhile, is in the process of being acquired by in Vidia. So we're kind of seeing some big chip manufacturing companies, you know, big titans of industry, kind of squaring off against each other. In Vidia, but you know, they added Armed to their arsenal.

They're sitting at the top right now. Intel's trying to regroup and regain that old top dog spot, and then Qualcom is adding Nuvia to its business in an effort to carve out a bigger space for itself in the chip game. Will have to keep an eye and see where this goes from here. Apple announced an initiative in which the company will contribute sixty million dollars to help fund various projects that share the goal of challenging systemic racism.

The company will provide funds to venture capital firms like Harlem Capital, which in turn will use that money to help entrepreneurs who are people of color and help them get their projects funded. There has long been a distinct lack of diversity in tech in general, but when we look at venture capital in particular, there is a stark gap. So in ten, for example, out of the eighty five billion dollars in VC funding that went to various projects, less than one percent of that money went to projects

helmed by women of color. Now, these problems are multi layered, from a lack of visibility for these projects, a lack of diversity in the banking institutions themselves, a lack of support for STEM education projects for people. It's it's sort of an enormous challenge that has lots of different facets to it. So projects like this aim to change that, which is great news for everybody because, as I've often said, when we get to hear everyone's idea, we all benefit

from the best ideas that are out there. But for a really long time, there have been entire populations of people who have had their ideas unheard. My hope is that we are going to see more companies support efforts like this, and the tech sector will tackle the problem head on. Because while sixty million dollars is a lot of money, I mean, we were talking about eighty five billion dollars in VC funding total, so that tells you that sixty million is just it's just a drop in

the bucket. Really, when we're looking at the big picture. It is, however, a step in the right direction. So I wanted to give a shout out to Apple for making that move. And we also have a couple of Facebook stories here. It wouldn't be a tech stuff news

without them. One of them is that signal a messaging app has experienced quote unquote unprecedented growth, a warning to a report on Reuter's the reason for the apps sudden rapid adoption, Well, that actually goes back to Facebook changing the terms of service for WhatsApp, indicating that the company would be mining data in the WhatsApp messaging service and then sharing that information with Facebook proper. Likewise, another messaging service called Telegram has also seen an uptick in user

numbers as people begin to move to alternatives. When Facebook first purchased WhatsApp, I remember seeing people concerned about issues like security and privacy. Now it seems those fears were well warranted. And just to be clear, I'm not saying I predicted any of this. Rather, I'm saying some very smart people who pay much closer attention to messaging services than I do. We're pointing this out years ago. So how big of an uptick are we talking about with signal.

They saw downloads hit seventeen point nine million over the last week, which is sixty two times greater than the number of downloads they saw the previous week, which is a significant signal. WhatsApp saw a decline in downloads, but it was still downloaded ten point six million times, So

it's not exactly going anywhere anytime soon. And as I mentioned, I'm recording this on Wednesday, janu as I record this episode, Reuters reports that a Facebook spokesperson has indicated that the company has seen an increase in messages and activities that indicate potential future acts of violence in the ongoing political

chaos unfolding in the United States. The spokesperson called the siege on the US capital a galvanizing event and that numerous groups were posting messages indicating a possible repeat of what we saw on January six in various states around the country. All capitals in the United States, all the dates capitals are on alert for this sort of thing.

The FBI actually has issued warnings about planned armed protests set to occur across the US in the days leading up to and including Joe Biden's inauguration and The spokesperson said that Facebook is sharing more information with law enforcement across the nation. In related news, YouTube has suspended President Trump's YouTube channel, following a similar course set by companies

like Facebook and Twitter. While communication channels are being more carefully monitored or in the cases of parlor or if you prefer parley, uh, they're being removed entirely, and it appears as though will be having to deal with the long term consequences stemming from years of misinformation and propaganda campaigns. And again, as I have said many times on this show,

I advocate everyone employing critical thinking and compassion. I think the lack of both of those things leads us to terrible violence and a general disregard for the welfare of our fellow human beings. And we can be better than that. We just have to put forth the effort to do it. And our last story for this section is again about parlor or parley. I'm just gonna keep saying parlor. I know that it could be the French word parlay, but I'm I'm gonna stick with what most people are saying.

In the US, Parlor filed a lawsuit against Amazon. The company has accused Amazon of making an illegal, politically motivated choice to shut down Parlor specifically to benefit Twitter, which is an odd thing to to say. However, Amazon has responded in this lawsuit by providing a large amount of correspondence from Amazon to Parlor, pointing out how many times there were cases of Parlor posts that violated the terms of service that Parlor agreed to when they secured the

server space with Amazon Web Services. So, in other words, Amazon is saying, listen, we told you numerous times about this illegal material that was appearing on your platform, and it was only getting worse, and it was clear that you could not stop it, so we had no choice but to boot you because you were your your platform was violing the terms of service. This is probably not going to go so well for Parlor, I would think.

I think that the evidence is pretty strong, and I think the public sentiment is also fairly strong on this matter. So this I expect we'll see end up being dismissed. And as it turns out, Parlor still having trouble figuring out where it will go next, if it will go anywhere next. So that story is still unfolding as I record right now. Well, that wraps up that first section. It was a short one today, but I wanted to

spend more time talking about less heavy stuff. So when we come back, we'll take another look at some of the crazy stuff going on at the virtual c S one after this short break. Okay, over at the virtual cs let's say it's a virtual Las Vegas. Razor showed off a couple of interesting ideas. There's Project Hazel, a

k a. The World's smartest smart mask. During the pandemic, Razor actually used its manufacturing facilities to create disposable medical grade masks for people who work in healthcare, for frontline employees, that sort of thing, because there was a real lack of that, and that's really cool. I think it's awesome that tech companies were able to pivot quickly and start to reconfigure their manufacturing processes to make stuff that there

was a real need for. It actually reminds me a lot of the stories we would hear about the Second World War and how the manufacturing facilities across Europe and the United States would all get reconfigured to produce things for the war efforts. Now we're seeing that with the pandemic. However, Razors also said the new normal has inspired them to make their own smart mask, and according to Razor, it's classified as an in n respirator, meaning this would be

an incredibly efficient mask for fil trading airborne particles. This is the kind of stuff that verse responders need to be wearing. It's also the kind of stuff that tends to be at a real shortage, and so the general public is encouraged not to get in respirators because it means fewer for everybody else who needs them. However, this is sort of a concept Razor is showing off, and it has an active heat exchange system. It's supposed to allow cool air into the mask and release hot air

exhaled by the wear. The mask also has a clear face plate, so instead of it being like a solid cover over your mouth you see, it's transparent so people can see your mouth, and ideally that would mean to be easier to understand what someone is saying. It also apparently has a microphone built into it and a speaker built into it so that people can hear you. You don't sound muffled personally. I hope it has a voice modulator in it so that way I could talk like Bain.

I just wear a mask. I was born in the dock. Okay, enough of that. There are LED lights on it because I mean, Razor makes gaming material stuff like gaming keyboards and controllers, so a core their LED lights on it. Uh. I don't know that that's necessary, but I guess it makes it more cool. The recharging case, because obviously it has to have a recharging case if it's got these other electronic components in it has ultra violet lights built into the inside of the case in order to sterilize

and disinfect the mask in between uses. And just as a reminder, there is no actual product here. There there are prototypes, but this is not a thing you can go out and buy. And Razor also has a history of showing off things that are interesting ideas at c e s, but they never make it to market. So I wouldn't expect this to become the new fashion accessory of one, but it might encourage some other companies to, you know, kind of give it a go and innovate

in the mask space. Razor also showed off Project Brooklyn, which I think is best described as the Iron Throne but for gamers, like if a Project Brooklyn gaming chair with the grand prize and a Fortnite tournament, I would not be surprised. Now, again, this is a concept. It is not a commercial product, but it looks pretty sick. Imagine a gaming chair. It's got a dusk that can be built into the front of it just attaches to the front of the chair, so you can put your

keyboard and mouse there. And it has a sixty inch display, a curved sixty inch display giving a panoramic view that hangs in front of view at head level. The concept video, which I should add, is all just concept. It's not an actual thing. It's like c g I. It shows this chair with a screen emerging out of the back of the chair on extendable arms that then move the screen so that it is in front of the player sitting in the chair and stretch it to the full

width of that sixty inch display. Motors in the seats would provide haptic feedback, so when you're piloting that chopper in a game, you would feel the thud of the rotors as you beat the air into submission. And except this is again just a concept, is not an actual product. It is cool. But then if I said, imagine I made a pair of shoes that can make you fly.

That would sound cool too, but it doesn't make them real. Now, if you do want a gaming chair that can hold displays right in front of you with an arm that extends over your head to hold those displays in place, and you can look like a member of the Legion of Doom in the process, you can check out a gaming chair from Aser called Thrown Nose. They have such monstrosities, and according to the website, the going price for one of those babies is just a low, low fourteen thousand dollars.

Over at LG, the company showed off the Rollable, a smartphone device with a flexible oh Lad screen. It's a little hard to describe an audio, but imagine you've got a smartphone. It's a typical smartphone size. It's in your hands. But then you decide you want to tablet. So you take the edges of your smartphone and you pull them so that they are more of a tablet shape. You actually stretch the frame of your smartphone and the screen

stretches along with it. That's kind of what we're talking about here, although you would probably have a control to do this automatically. The oh Lad screen rolls up inside the device and it's kind of like a window shade in that way, and the device can change shape based on whatever form factor you need at any given time. LG, by the way, is not the only company to show off rollable oh lad screens like this. There's a couple of others, like TCL. Foldable smartphones are so last year.

This year it's all about rollable smartphones. Now. There's no word yet on when something like this might come to market, or how much it will cost if it does, or you know, if people will actually think it's you know, useful enough to spend money on it. But the technology behind this is super interesting, and there are a lot of other possible applications for flexible to place, so I think this is neat even if it never becomes an

actual phone. A lot of car companies skipped this year's c E S, but one that showed off an interesting concept was GM, and it's called the E v O t L. This is a flying car concept. Those letters stand for Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing and it looks like a funky quad copter drone, just you know, a

drone that's large enough to carry people in it. So the two front propellers are mounted at the base of the front of the vehicle, and the rear propellers are mounted at the top of the back of the passenger cabin, so it does have a bit of an odd look. The four rotors are not all on the same plane.

In other words. The company also showed off another concept vehicle called the Cadillac Halo, a silvery van looking like thing that would be autonomous and it would have various entertain ament systems on the interior to keep people occupied as they get, you know, robos shuttled around. I don't think we're going to see either concept transform into actual vehicles anytime soon, but they were cool to look at.

The company Sigma Phase really knows how to speak my language, because that company has introduced an ice cream making machine that produces ice cream out of single serve pods, kind of like how curig machines use pods to make coffee. This machine is called the cold Snap Now. According to c Net, it takes between sixty and nineties seconds for this machine to make your ice cream, you know, or your sorebet or your frozen margarita. There are apparently many options.

The pods themselves are made from aluminum not plastic, and the company says this was done in order to make them easier to recycle. But like a lot of things on this list, it's a prototype and a heavy one. Apparently it weighs about fifty pounds. Uh it way is that much because it has to have a heavy duty compressor in there to do rapid heat exchange in order to to create the freezing action needed to produce ice cream.

The company does not expect this to go to market until at least two and it will likely set you back a big chunk of change, maybe as much as a thousand dollars. Plus the pods will be a couple of bucks each, so this is definitely more expensive than buying an ice cream maker and just getting the ingredients together to do it yourself. Still, it looks super you know cool. Pana Sonic introduced the Nano e H in a six seven w hair dryer. Thanks Pana Sonic. That

name is very easy to say. We'll just call it the Nano by the way, that's nano with an E at the end, not to confuse it with nano from like nanotechnology. Panasonic says this thing pulls moisture from the air in order to dry your hair, which, yeah, I don't. I don't know how that works. Like that sounds wrong

to me. I mean, is the idea that the hair dryer actually just makes the air more dry around you, and then the moisture in your hair moves from an area of high concentration to low concentration, making the laws of thorout dynamics do all the work for the hair dryer. I really don't know. Also, I haven't had hair since, so hair dryers frightened and confused me. As a matter of course. Oh, I hear you say, but what about toilets? Can you tell me about any smart turlets? And I sure,

can you know me and my toilet humor? Or at least I can tell you about another concept product. This one is called the Wellness Toilet from Toto, and as the name suggests, this toilet monitors your health by well by by looking at your poop. Yeah, it's meant to analyze waste to help provide recommendations for living a healthier lifestyle. But as I mentioned, it's a concept. It's not an actual thing you can buy, so I guess that's kind

of crappy. There are, of course, a lot of other products on display at c S. One that I did not mention is Samsung showed off a one hundred and ten in television of four K resolution TV. It is a monstrosity. It looks gorgeous, it is huge, and it's going to actually go on sale in March, So this is a product that's actually going to market. We don't know how expensive it is, but I have seen people make guesses, and the guesses tend to be around the

neighborhood of a hundred fifty thousand dollars. Yikes. But yeah, it is a pretty impressive thing to look at, at least the videos. I obviously haven't seen one in person. So there are a lot of other things to cover. Maybe next week I might do a quick wrap up on anything that was, you know, particularly interesting or was

standing out. But it's mostly the stuff you would come to expect, the various consumer electronics that we're all familiar with, just with sometimes new bells and whistles, and sometimes they are literal bells and whistles. When we come back, will cover some assorted news items, but first let's take a quick break. All right, we're back. Disney has been making some big changes in the company's strategy for video games

set in the Star Wars franchise. So for eight years, e A has had the exclusive rights to create titles using licensed properties from Star Wars. But then e A has also been the target of a lot of criticism from the game's industry in general, the game's journalism world because of how it has handled that responsibility, from canceling highly anticipated games that people really were excited about to instituting a pay to win micro transaction mechanic in Battlefront two.

Before you know, public pressure made them move it out of there. EA has managed to take off Star Wars fans a lot, But now Disney has formed Lucasfilm Games, which will oversee the licensing of properties and will partner with game studios to create new Star Wars titles. One we've recently heard about is coming from Ubisoft and will be an open world game set in the Star Wars universe.

We do not have much more information than that, other than it will depend on the Snowdrop game engine, which is the same game engine used by games like The Division and The Division two. There's no word on what the game will be like, who it's going to focus on,

what era in the Star Wars mythology. It will be set in or anything like that, but the move shows that Lucasfilm Games is going to be working with some heavy hitters in the video games space, and e A is no longer the exclusive developer for these sort of things. On a similar note, Lucasfilm is also partnering with Machine Games, subsidiary of Bethesda, and Machine Games produced the most recent

Wolfenstein games. Machine Games will be developing an Indiana Jones game, So here's hoping we'll see some high quality titles for these franchises. I still haven't played Star Wars Squadrons. I feel like I missed the boat on that one. But that was a game that had me hopeful that we'd see more great titles come out. It was the first Star Wars title in a while then I really got excited about and then failed to play, So that's on me.

NASA announced that data from the New Horizons mission indicates that there are actually far fewer galaxies out in the universe than we had previously estimated. So back when the Hubble Space telescope was making observations, it led scientists to estimate that there may be as many as two trillion galaxies in our universe. We're in the Milky Way, We're in one galaxy. Just imagine that there would be two

trillion other ones out there, yelza. However, New Horizon says, Yo, it's real dark out here, man Like, it is so dark, there cannot be that many galaxies out here, or else I would see the light coming from them, which has led scientists to now revise those estimates, and now we're talking more about the number of galaxies being in the hundreds of billions rather than trillions, which, don't get me wrong,

that's still a lot of galaxies. However, this really does illustrate how little we know about our universe, including how much stuff is in it. Personally, I find this interesting because it tells us we've got a lot more to learn, and I'm always excited to see how we do that. How do we find ways to discover more information about our universe? Really exciting stuff. I'm sure that James Webb Space Telescope, when it goes online, will be looking into

these mysteries as well. Over at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, engineers from the University of Pennsylvania submitted a paper that suggests we could construct robots with parts that are made out of ice, because ice would allow robots to be able to do lots of stuff. If you needed to change the shape of a part, you can do it by melting and refreezing ice. If you need to replicate robots, ice is a pretty easy

material to replicate. I mean, you just get some water and make it cold and then shape it the way you want it to be. And if you need a robot to repair itself, getting access to more water to more ice could be an easy thing, depending on where you are. Obviously, some planets would be completely devoid of ice, and that would make it difficult. But it's a really interesting idea. Now, obviously not all parts of the robot would be made out of ice. Then you would just

have an ice sculpture instead. Imagine a robot that has maybe a solid body of ice, or wheels that are made of ice connected to an axle made out of metal, or maybe it's you know, some other form that I'm not even considering right now. It's a really nifty idea. Now, I'm still working my way through the paper as I record this episode, so I haven't been able to digest all of the stuff they were talking about, but I

find the concept really intriguing. Another paper, this one published in Nature, reveals that scientists have sequenced the DNA of dire wolves, a species that doesn't just exist in Game of Thrones. In fact, it was a real species that when extinct here on Earth thirteen thousand years ago. The research shows that dire wolves split off genetically speaking from gray wolves more than six million years ago and evolved

as a separate species. In fact, this branching was so prominent that the DNA tells us the dire wolves and gray wolves would not have been able to breed with one another. According to one researcher, Kieran Mitchell, the dire wolves appeared to be the last member of a line of canines that were distinct from all the living canines today, So, in other words, they don't resemble anything from a DNA standpoint to any canines that are around today on Earth.

As to why the dire wolves went extinct when gray wolves managed to survive, scientists don't have all the answers. It is possible that the prey that the dire wolves were depending upon also when extinct. So if your food source goes away, then you're not very long to follow behind.

Or it could be that other canines like gray wolves were interbreeding with each other with other canines, and that this actually led to better immune systems, that these animals that resulted from this interbreeding were better able to withstand stuff like disease, and the dire wolves, because they didn't have this genetic diversity in their line, were more vulnerable to disease. That's another possibility, but we don't have all the answers, so I'm sure we will learn more as

time goes on. Finally, TikTok users are uploading videos of themselves singing sea shanties or singing along with someone else who already created a video, and they're creating these really fun mashups and harmonies along the way. And I'm fully on board so to speak with this trend. As I was singing sea shanties before it was cool. Okay, now technically I was singing them way way way after it was cool, but before it was cool. To do it again. And if you want a really nice see shanty, I

recommend leave her, Johnny, leave her. This was nice. There was one time where I can cover a TikTok story and not be the grumpy old man yelling at people to get off of his lawn. That was a refreshing change. That wraps up the news stories for January four twenty one, and I will be back next week with more news stories. You will also have your your normal Tech Stuff episodes as well. I look forward to hearing from you guys.

If you have suggestions for things I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, be sure to reach out to me. The handle is text stuff H s w Over on Twitter and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H