Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 01/03 – NFTs On Smart TVs?

Starting point is 00:00:00 On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech meme right home for Monday, January 3, 2022. I'm Brian McCullough today. CES kicks off with some major Samsung TV announcements.

Starting point is 00:00:43 As per usual, are we about to get the biggest MacBook air redesign in history? Did Oculus and VR generally have a big holiday season? And does OpenC helping folks get their stolen NFTs back? Point to the reality of decentralization in the NFT market? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Well, it's that time of year again. CES is here, and it is still in person, at least at the time of this writing, though, you'll recall a lot of companies have elected to skip in person this year. And I believe CES itself elected to cut things short by a day, perhaps reflecting that. But look, this week, I will try to squeeze in as many CES-related product announces as I can in between the usual news. Samsung is always one of the big. participants every year at CES, and they kick things off this year with this, unveiling the Samsung Gaming Hub, coming to select 2022 Samsung TVs, to add built-in support

Starting point is 00:01:47 for Google Stadia, Nvidia's G-Force now, and Utomic Cloud Gaming, quoting the Verge. Samsung is revealing a new lineup of smart TVs at CES 2022 today, including features as exotic as radio wave powered remote controls and support for NFTs. And they also happen to be the first Samsung sets in a while to let you play AAA video games from the cloud instead of just your Xbox, PlayStation, or PC. After a vague tease in October, Samsung is now confirming that select 2022 models will explicitly offer access to Nvidia's G-Force Now, Google Stadia, and the Utomic Cloud Gaming Service as part of a new Samsung Gaming Hub, a user interface, which Samsung's intending to expand to additional services as well. The Samsung

Starting point is 00:02:35 Gaming Hub isn't just for cloud gaming either. Intrigingly, the company says that your H-DMI-connected video game consoles will be part of it as well, complete with pass-through controller inputs. That means you might be able to play cloud games and console games with the same controller instead of having to maintain separate controllers or pair back and forth, with both PlayStation and Xbox controllers supported at launch. It's also promising AI gaming technology that will create curated game recommendations on your TV's home screen, which, okay, sure, it's interesting to see TV manufacturers embrace cloud gaming again after a bit of a lapse, while LG and Samsung both competed for the rights to stream games from Gaykai on Live back in 2012, and

Starting point is 00:03:17 some Samsung TVs offered Sony's PlayStation now between 2015 and 2017. It's only this winter that LG and Samsung are back in the game with Nvidia and Google services. It's not clear whether Samsung's TVs will offer the best picture and audio quality for cloud gaming quite yet, as the company was unable to say whether either G-Force Now or Google Stadia would offer 4K streaming. We are working with partners to bring their best levels of service to our platform, reads part of a statement from Samsung Gaming product director Mike Lucero to The Verge. We will be announcing details as we get closer to launch, end quote. Note, also the mention of TVs supporting NFTs.

Starting point is 00:03:57 Yes, Samsung says its 22 TVs will support NFTs including displaying, browsing, purchasing, and showing history and blockchain metadata. Quoting the verge again, but from a different piece, staring at your non-fungible tokens on a smartphone or laptop screen is fine and all, but why not remind everyone who visits your home of the money you spent on digital art NFTs by showcasing them on your TV screen? Somehow we're in a world where that's about to become a reality. Samsung says it's planning extensive support for NFTs,

Starting point is 00:04:27 beginning with its 2022 TV lineup. According to Samsung, this platform will let creators, quote, share their art with the world and let potential buyers preview an NFT before purchasing it and learn about an NFT's history and blockchain metadata. Samsung is also minding the details when it comes to viewing NFTs on its 2022 televisions. A smart calibration feature on the TVs will automatically adjust display settings, quote, to the creator's preset values so you can have peace of mind that your work looks impeccable, with true to the original image quality, end quote.

Starting point is 00:04:59 You've heard of things like Dolby Vision or Netflix Calibrated Mode, and now NFTs will get a similar treatment, end quote. And finally, Samsung also showed off new monitors, including the world's first 4K 240 Hertz gaming monitor, quoting Tech Radar. Hitherto gaming monitors with ultra-high definition have shown a latency of up to 144 hertz display. Now Samsung is upping it to a high refresh rate of 240 hertz,

Starting point is 00:05:26 and 4K resolution with Odyssey Neo G8. This is expected to ensure a smoother motion than is possible in the conventional ultra-high-resolution monitors. The new 32-inch monitor will use quantum mini-light-emitting diode and has a curvature of 1,000R, meaning the curved monitor would form a circle with a 1 meter radius, end quote. Apple rumors have a way of surfacing the week of CES, and this year is no different. First, our friend Ming Chi Quo says that second-generation AirPods Pro do sometime in the second half of this year, I believe, will have lossless audio support and a charging case that can emit a sound for location tracking purposes.

Starting point is 00:06:15 Meanwhile, Mark German says that Apple will likely entirely ditch Intel by WWDC this year and also plans to debut the biggest MacBook Air redesign in history, as well as launching iPhone 14 with a whole punch-sized notch. Quote, the company has a bevy of new Pro Max in the works based on the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips that are already inside the MacBook Pro. That includes a smaller Mac Pro with up to 40 cores

Starting point is 00:06:45 and 128 graphics cores, a new Mac Mini, and a large screen IMac Pro. I'd expect Apple to finish announcing its transition to its own silicon from Intel chips as early as June at WWDC 2020. Also, look out for the biggest MacBook Air redesign in the product's history, an updated entry-level MacBook Pro, and a new iPad Pro with wireless charging. Given that the performance of the iPad Pro is already so strong and that the M2 chip is still a bit far away from launch, I wonder if Apple will stick with the M1 or wait for the M2.

Starting point is 00:07:20 And speaking of Macs and iPads, I'm hoping Apple's next external monitor, destined to be about half the price of the Pro Display XDR launches in the coming year. In terms of phones and watches, look for a 5G version of the iPhone SE in the first half of the year, along with a revamped iPhone 14 range with a hole punch-sized notch in the fall. Also in the works are three new Apple watches, a new SE watch, a Series 8 watch, and a rugged version aimed at extreme sports enthusiasts, end quote. There have been signs that VR, at least in the form of Oculus, had a pretty good holiday season. First, there was the news that around the Christmas weekend, the Oculus app, hit the number one position in the iOS App Store charts. And now an estimate

Starting point is 00:08:12 from IDC says that Oculus device sales in 2021 were between 5.3 million and 6.8 million units, which was up from around 3.5 million units back in 2020. Now, that is a real glasses half full, half-empty situation, because obviously there is growth here, but still less than 10 million units still makes for what in any other hardware sector would be considered a niche market, a growing market, but still a nascent niche one nonetheless, quoting the Wall Street Journal. Either sales figure would be a nice jump from the 3.5 million Oculus units estimated to have sold last year, and it is far better than the anemic sales from before the company put out its first Quest headset in mid-2019. Oculus devices before that mostly required a cable running to a

Starting point is 00:09:01 high-powered PC. Such tethers have severely limited the appeal of VR devices even to the gamer crowd. Analysts estimate that Sony sold about 5.5 million units of its tethered PlayStation VR headset in the fiscal years 2019 to 2021, according to consensus estimates from visible alpha. That is equivalent to about 12% of the total PlayStation console units the company sold in that time. estimated Oculus sales over the past five years amount to less than 3% of Facebook's daily user base in North America and Europe, the two markets that account for the vast majority of its business. It's also anyone's guess, how many people who got a headset for Christmas will be anything but casual users, end quote. Remember how China cracked down on its tech industry last year, and that included a major crackdown on gaming, which even featured time limits on how much gaming kids could do. in a week or a month. Well, according to a new report,

Starting point is 00:10:03 Chinese regulators have not even approved any new video games for release, full stop, since July, resulting in about 140,000 gaming-related companies shutting down in China, quoting the South China Morning Post. About 14,000 of these enterprises have been deregistered since July, according to a report on Friday by state-run newspaper securities daily, which cited data from business registries tracking firm Tianyancho. That number signified a considerable acceleration from the 18,000 video gaming firms that shut down throughout 2020. Larger firms such as TikTok owner ByteDance, online search giant Baidu, and Tanwan Games trimmed their losses by laying off a number of employees involved in the video gaming segment of their operations. Meanwhile,

Starting point is 00:10:50 industry leaders, Tencent Holdings, and NetEase are putting more resources in overseas markets. National Press and Publication Administration, or NPAA, has neither provided an official explanation for the latest suspension, nor any hint on when the process for new video game approvals will resume. NPAA, which is in charge of licensing video games in China, has typically announced newly licensed games either in the middle or at the end of each month. Between 80 and 100 games are usually approved each month, end quote. And a follow-up to another recent story. AT&T and Verizon have rejected the U.S. Transportation Secretary and FAA's requests to delay rolling out new 5G services near airports.

Starting point is 00:11:41 However, a pause may come to some deployments, quoting Bloomberg. The two wireless companies on Sunday said the request from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Steve Dixon, administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, would be, quote, to the detriment of millions of mobile customers. The companies said they might offer a six-month pause near some airports. The FAA and DOT were considering the response Sunday, but airlines and regulators predicted substantial impacts on flight schedules if there aren't some adjustments to the 5G service set to start January 5th. The Airlines for America Trade Group, using worst-case assumptions, said there could be as many as 350,000 commercial flights impacted per year at a cost of $2.1 billion.

Starting point is 00:12:26 The new 5G signals would use a set of airwaves made freshly available to mobile communications providers. The frequencies are near those used by altitude sensing radar altimeters. Airlines and aircraft manufacturers have said that creates a chance of interference that could leave some landings unsafe. But the wireless industry says power levels are low enough to preclude interference and the gap between frequencies is sufficiently large to ensure safety. The carriers on Sunday cast the 5G rollout as a priority, citing a race with China,

Starting point is 00:12:56 it to offer extensive high-speed mobile broadband and escalating demand for wireless service amid the COVID pandemic. Stakes are high for both industries. The wireless industry paid more than $80 billion in an auction for access to the frequencies in question, and AT&T and Verizon will rely on them for network upgrades to compete with T-Mobile in providing the next generation of fast mobile broadband, end quote. Finally today, NFTs. OpenC has frozen 16 ape NFT, worth around $2.3 million after they were reportedly stolen, leading some folks to point out the lack of decentralization in the current NFT market, quoting Coin Telegraph. The Todd Kramer.eath account, which links to the Ross Plus Kramer Art Gallery in New York, fired off a series of tweets detailing the

Starting point is 00:13:52 16 NFTs that were stolen from his hot wallet and pleading with OpenC and the NFT community for help, While the NFT community was often unsympathetic to the trader's plight, open-sea froze trading on the stolen items. A hot wallet is a type of cryptocurrency software wallet that is connected to the internet, most commonly metamask. Whenever the device it is installed on is connected. Kramer tweeted that he lost his collection through a fishing scam that gained access to his hot wallet after he clicked on a malicious link. His initial tweets received harsh vitriol in the comments, and he later deleted the tweets in question. Kramer most recently tweeted on December 31st that he was surprised by the reaction from the NFT community. The freeze on buying and selling the NFTs has some traders decrying a lack of

Starting point is 00:14:39 decentralization, one of the cherished aspects of the crypto industry generally. One Twitter commenter, KW.sOL, said, who was able to freeze the N? Feels pretty anti-crypto to be asking third parties to do this, and ideally they shouldn't be able to, end quote. Famed software engineer Grady Boo, chimed in about the lack of decentralization in this case when he commented, quote, Silly me, and here I thought that the code is the law, and one of the very ideas of cryptocurrencies was the elimination of any possibility of centralized intervention, end quote. Yeah, but that brings up a point I've made before. I get that decentralized markets are the goal in crypto, but does that mean any sort of

Starting point is 00:15:22 orderly market protections and regulations around the edges should be completely ignored? Can someone be so committed to libertarianism say that if their house was broken into, they wouldn't want a police force to attempt to find their stolen loot and return it? Here's another perhaps more imperfect analogy. Let's say you're a radical environmentalist. You don't want to mess with Mother Nature. Literally, don't touch her, don't impact her, don't do anything that would impact nature in any way. Would that mean you would be against any technology that would keep hurricanes from striking land. Even if I was the biggest greenpeaceer in the world, I feel like I'd make exceptions for hurricanes and earthquakes. I told you that was an imperfect analogy. Anyway, another thing that is

Starting point is 00:16:05 making NFT critics grumble is, according to chain analysis, users spent nearly $41 billion on NFTs in 2021 with transactions of less than $10,000 accounting for more than 75% of the market last year. So that sounds healthy, right? Sounds like a democratic market, except for when you learn that around 32,000 wallets hold 80% of the value in the entire NFT market. So is it just a market of Wales at the moment? Quoting the Financial Times. This year witnessed the NFT market explode from a sub-billion dollar market to a multi-deca billion industry, said Mason Nystrom, research analyst at CryptoData Group Masseri, adding that buyers were rushing to uncover art that aligns with their digital identities. The core value is still exclusivity,

Starting point is 00:16:56 said Nystrom, noting that expensive collections also offer purchasers access to gated channels on chat platform Discord and to meetups and parties. They are country club-esque. There is a high barrier to entry, a capital cost, and you are around high net worth and other individuals, he added, end quote. I will note that if NFTs are now a $41 billion market, the entire traditional global art market was $50 billion last year. So that escalated quickly, as they say, quoting Derr Obisangio. The unintuitive thing about the NFT market is how relatively small it is, only 360,000 wallets in total, yet how rich the participants are. 32,000 wallets hold over $32 billion in NFTs. That averages out to about a million dollars in NFTs for

Starting point is 00:17:49 each of those big wallets, end quote. It's also that time of year when I say the wrong year in the intro of the show a lot. I actually caught it today, but it did take me a good two weeks last year to break the 2020 habit. So like that old thing about writing last year on your checks, if I do screw up once or twice this month and say 2021, instead of 2022, my apologies. Talk to you tomorrow.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 01/03 – NFTs On Smart TVs?

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