Microsoft Shares Its "Community-First" AI Infrastructure Plan - DTNS 5184

0:04This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, January 13th, 2026. We tell you what you need to know, give you the important context, and help each other understand. Ah, yes. Here I stand with another CES survivor. Ah, yes. We return. Today, Microsoft is saying all the right things about building power for data centers. Do we believe them? I'm Jason Howell. I'm Tom Merritt. Let's start with what you need to know with a big story. Yeah, so Microsoft is rolling out what it's calling a community-first AI infrastructure plan. And we've talked plenty of times on this show about kind of the pushback, the response, the recognition that all of these AI data centers, they're rising costs for a lot of people's power and utility bills and everything.

0:55So this is really, at least according to Microsoft, a response to that rising public opposition to how all of these large data centers are having direct impacts on electricity bills, on water systems, local budgets, all sorts of things. Microsoft is pledging to pay the full cost of power and grid upgrades to keep utilities from shifting all of those related expenses onto residents. So I'd say, you know, if you're a resident, that's good news, right? The company also committing to not seek local property tax breaks, also to improve water efficiency by 40 % by 2030, while at the same time replenishing more water than it's actually using, to promote job training and AI education programs, along with the development of its new data centers.

1:51And like you said up at the top, Microsoft's saying a lot of good things. I mean, when I read through this, I'm like, okay, you know what? I can get behind that. Like if you are a major company, you know, a big tech company, and we are in a moment where, you know, these AI data centers, they're thirsty in a lot of different ways. Why shouldn't a company like Microsoft, who stands to benefit the most from building and operating these data centers, why shouldn't they be paying for these things? And I think your question is valid. Do we believe them either in their reason, their rationale, or do we believe them in the execution?

2:29And I guess time will tell as far as that's concerned. Yeah. Actually, I would recommend everybody read the Microsoft blog post. You're going to see a lot of people saying a lot of things about this in a lot of places, including us. I would say go read that blog post because it starts very strong. In my own critical reading of it, I'm like, they are saying they will ask utilities to set their rates high enough to cover electrical costs for the data centers. That includes the cost of adding and using the infrastructure needed. So this is them going out of their way to say, we're not trying to leave a loophole here.

3:03We want to be charged what it costs for everything, including building this stuff out. And then gave me examples. They're like, we're doing this already in Wyoming with Black Hills Energy. You want to look into that to make sure we mean it? Go look there. In Wisconsin, we're supporting a new rate structure that would charge very large customers, including ourselves, the cost of electricity required to serve them. So it starts very strong saying, this is what we want to do. We're trying not to leave a loophole. And there are examples of us doing that already. they're also planning before they build the data center to make sure that the infrastructure is there to support it so that they don't put the community in trouble have blackouts and things like that they cited mid-continent independent system operator miso as an example of contracting them to add 7.9 gigawatts of new electricity generation to the grid before they started building their data centers they talked about trying to make the data centers more efficient that started to get a little slippery like we're using our own llms to help plan efficiency that could be true uh there's a little less evidence behind that but it's the right it's the right idea uh water they uh are launching designs that use a closed loop system something i think everybody who listens to us talk about this is like yeah why do they waste the water why didn't they release the water why did they let it evaporate always that's always top of mind for me like what the heck is that yeah very glad to see that and and already deployed in wisconsin and georgia georgia were potable water no longer needed for cooling their data centers so again saying the right thing leaving no loophole pointing to an example of them already do that doing it i like that uh in phoenix and uh nearby nevada communities using leak detection partnerships to help reduce water waste outside of the data centers so that's when they talk about replenishing more water than they use.

5:03They're trying to reduce the amount they use. And then they're doing plans and not saying they're going to do it, but they're doing plans to say, let's help you reduce the amount of water your community uses overall. They're doing some wetlands restoration. That's a little more slippery, especially because it's a wetland. Do you ever try to walk around one of those? Yeah, be careful. Incredibly slippery. But also it's like, that's a good thing. I'm not arguing against it. How much that really replenishes water or not, It could be arguable. Then they get into the really slippery stuff about jobs.

5:34We're going to train people. We're going to train people for construction jobs. We're going to train people in our academies. Some of that's a little self-serving. That doesn't make it wrong. It just means like, oh, you probably do that anyway. Not asking local municipalities to reduce their property tax rates. Granted, I mean, we will make sure, you know, we'll have to watch until they're done to make sure they didn't do that. So maybe if you don't trust Microsoft, you don't trust that. But that's the right thing to do. And then there's some stuff about educating people in using Microsoft products, which I'm like, okay, yeah, that's also a little something.

6:09Like use them better? Yeah. Well, they're going to invest in local education to teach them how to use LLMs. I'm guessing it's Copilot. Sure, of course. But overall, the stuff about actual utilities and electricity charging and efficiency, really strong. The stuff about water, pretty strong. wrong, the rest of it starts to feel a little bit more like PR. You know, well, and so then when I look at this, I see that, you know, a large part of this and by Microsoft's, you know, sort of admission here is, you know, in many ways a response to the public backlash, right? I think in the US data center projects that like they've been around like 25 or something that have been canceled because of different backlash to the impacts of those data centers and everything.

6:59So it's in Microsoft's best interest to figure something out here. And I think the questions that come up for me around this is, at least the first question that I have is, will locals, when presented with this effort and now suddenly facing, let's say, a new data center coming into town, are they going to feel or recognize that this particular moment, this particular statement, this kind of commitment from Microsoft is actually a step in the right direction enough so that they don't actively push back on the data centers as a reaction like is is something like this enough to kind of turn the public perception tide which is so difficult to uh to kind of turn around right now especially because uh you know tensions are so high for a lot of people around how they feel about ai in general and ai is just ruining the world in all these different ways.

7:55Here's one concrete proof. I don't care what Microsoft says. Don't bring your data center here. Yeah. I mean, it's always hard to tell. It's going to depend on the location. I am constantly reminding myself that what I read three people saying in all caps on the internet is not representative of what people in Cheyenne, Wyoming might actually think. So I do think that's why they have the jobs and the education and stuff in there, because those are the kinds of things that even though they're a little slippery will catch attention like, oh, okay, so you're creating jobs. Maybe I'm less mad about that.

8:29But yeah, that becomes a public relations challenge, right? For sure. They're doing all the actual right things. But yeah, yeah, it becomes a challenge. The other side of this though is they are making it more expensive for themselves to build this by doing it. They're gambling, I think, on the fact that if they don't do it, they might not get to build the data center where they need to build it. And so it's worth it and no one else will either. But there's always the possibility that somebody comes in and does get the property break and does let the electricity company give them a lower rate and then can operate their data center cheaper if they're able to withstand the public opposition to it.

9:12On the flip side of this, another question that I have is, is this the sort of thing that will encourage other companies to follow in its footsteps is this kind of the beginning model for other companies to be like oh if this works yes yeah but and when do we even know that it works you know like a couple of years from now we'll be like oh hey i guess nobody made a big deal about those data centers they built a bunch of them you know yeah yeah i mean and that's a that's a long time to wait or we get the information and axios uh in-depth reporting about how microsoft lied about all the promises it's one of the you We could go multiple ways with that.

9:50Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll be curious to see the impact in two years. So let's talk about it again in two years, Tom. We will talk about it again, probably more times between now and two years. Definitely in two years. And I think this is what I would mostly like to see from companies. So I want to end on that note of like, yes, I hope they mean it. I like that they gave me solid examples of where they're already doing it. and so good for Microsoft. I give them a B plus on this. Yeah, that's a good grade. I give them that too. DT &S gives you an A plus for being a listener to this show. Thank you, Jeffrey Zilks, Alo, a.k.a.

10:30Adam L, Philip Less. We got new patrons. Everybody welcome in Christian and Mahmoud for coming in. It's good to have new folks in the crowd. And welcome back, Ian. We missed you. Welcome back. Thank you for returning as a patron.

10:49there's more we need to know today let's get to the briefs yeah uh you've probably thought this already happened it was reported so much uh but in an internal post leaked to bloomberg uh meta is beginning the cuts the job cuts around a thousand jobs it's about 10 percent of its 15 000 person reality labs division although if it's 15 000 it's a thousand yeah that's not exactly kind of work out. Anyway, cutting 1 ,000 jobs out of its 15 ,000-person reality labs division, and those cuts affect mostly the VR headset teams and companies working on metaverse social networks like Horizons and stuff like that.

11:28I think it's easy to overestimate this. 1 ,000 jobs sounds like a lot, but when it's out of a big division like that, that just means they're reducing their efforts. Meta is redirecting their money and attention to next-gen models and infrastructure and mobile devices, according to Bloomberg. That includes wearables. In fact, Bloomberg also saying that Meta is working with SLR Luxottica to double production annually of Ray-Ban AI smart glasses to at least 20 million by the end of 2026. I mean, saying AI there is kind of redundant. They're smart glasses. The smarts are LLMs. And that's where Meta is moving to is saying, we want to work more on the LLMs and our successful product, which is something we can't make enough to sell right now.

12:14Is that to say, I mean, I guess we don't actually know exactly, but the meta Quest, how many versions have we had of this headset now? I think we're on the third major version. Quest 3, yeah. Quest 3. Yeah, and I mean, there's other kind of side iterations off that and everything like that. And now we're also a couple of years into the meta kind of smart glasses territory and i mean is this to at least some degree in admission by meta to say that hey the vr effort you know that was something but it's not quite as much something as what we're seeing out of smart glasses and um because i mean granted we were at ces so take it with a large lump of of salt like a like a salt lick but um i saw those things everywhere at ces saw everybody wearing them and you know i i get that that's the pool that we were swimming how many vr headsets did you see i didn't see any vr headsets wandering the show floor so there's that or or or even in booths i mean i think i saw one or two very yeah yeah totally a couple no i i think it's very tempting it's almost irresistibly tempting to clown meta for renaming its company meta after something that might someday be called the metaverse uh and then pulling away from developing something that might someday be called the metaverse.

13:38But I bet if you ask Mark Zuckerberg in private about this, he'll say, yeah, we're still going to do the metaverse. But to get there, this is the path we have to take. And we thought the path was this way, but any good business is going to adapt or die as the reality on the ground changes. And to me, that's what's really going on here. Is there like, yeah, we did really good with VR headsets. We're not pulling out of it. We're going to continue to develop those. But surprisingly, the growth area was Ray-Bans. I don't know that Meta expected that either, but they're like, we have to double production of those.

14:15That is clearly the successful product line. So we'd be idiots not to double down on that and also try to expand the infrastructure that makes those kinds of glasses more useful, which is the AI infrastructure, LLM infrastructure and all of that. And I have to give, you know, I know that when, and I talked about this at length on Friday's show as the big story, but I got to give Meta a ton of credit, whether they deserve it or not. I think they deserve it for, in many ways, validating this product category from a consumer acceptance perspective. I think they have really kind of, you know, whether, I mean, of course they probably hoped to, but whether it was their direct intention or not, they have basically, you know, built a product that everybody else wants to emulate right now.

15:05And that was super clear walking the show floor at CES. Everybody's trying to do the meta Ray-Bans of their own. The question is, as I'm getting older, everything becomes a historical parallel. Sure. Is the Ray-Ban, are the meta Ray-Bans the Palm Trio or the iPhone? that's a good question yeah that's a that's a really good question i don't know i don't even know how to answer i don't know either i'm curious i'll be curious to find out apple announced the release of apple creator studio it's a cross-platform subscription that includes okay final cut pro logic pro pixel mater pro motion compressor and main stage uh all in a single bundle for the mac the new package also includes you know a bunch of releases for the ipad including the first official release of Pixelmator Pro for iPad.

15:56That actually includes optimized support for touch, of course, but also the Apple Pencil. Every app in the bundle is also getting a bunch of new features. So Final Cut Pro gets transcript search if you want to search the transcripts of the video you're editing. Visual search if you want to kind of use AI to match up and search for certain things in your video. So there's a cool beat detection feature that's all about timing music that you import into your project to visual cuts and kind of making them work together. I think that's neat. Logic Pro gets some AI integrated features as well. A chord ID feature for mapping out chord progressions.

16:32That's just kind of a big deal right now in music production circles. Logic Pro for iPad gets quick swipe comping for vocal comps. And for those of you who aren't nerdy about music production kind of topics like I love to get into, it's basically taking like five different recordings of a single vocal line and taking the best pieces of each of those into a single timeline. So it's like it's a compilation of the best moments of that entire vocal part. That's coming to the iPad, which is kind of the thing that you would normally do on a desktop. So I think that's pretty neat to have on mobile. Pages, numbers, and keynote, all getting new feature integrations as well.

17:09and this is going to launch in the App Store on Wednesday, January 28th. One month free trial followed by$12.99 per month subscription or you can pay up front for a year,$129. You save some dollars doing it that way. Yeah, I think there's an educational discount too. If you're a student, you might want to look into that. But this is a great example of what Rob and I were talking about yesterday about Apple really touting its services as a growing part. obviously services money for Apple right now still dominated by the App Store. But this is part of the App Store, right? Even though it's Apple's own product.

17:46And being a service provider of this kind of stuff right now in a creator economy, right? Everybody is looking for better ways to edit and create on the go. And Apple's got a very compelling lineup. So why not bundle it together and be able to provide it across your devices? I think if Apple's smart, they need to make these available off Apple devices. But that's the cross-platform lover in me probably may be business smarter not to do that. I don't know. Yeah. And this also just reads to me like a creative cloud kind of competitive angle for Apple as opposed to Adobe, which charges a lot more on a monthly basis for all their tools.

18:28Granted, there's more tools in there. and you know yeah it's cross-platform and and all that stuff uh but still you know i think this is smart of apple to offer this up in a package i don't think that 12.99 per month is a horrible price for getting access to all this stuff depending on your situation yeah if you need it it's not bad at all arstechnica has a write-up on confer c-o-n-f-e-r on open source llm being put together by Moxie Marlinspike. Yes, the creator of Signal. So as you imagine, there's a lot of encryption involved. User data and conversations are encrypted in a trusted execution environment or TEE on the server.

19:08And the decryption key remains on your device in the form of a passkey. It's just a traditional old passkey. I went and signed up and it said, great, here's your passkey. Can you want to store it on this device? And I said, yes, and I was done. And now I can log in. It's a great execution of this. Moxie Marlin Spike, really good at marrying security and usability. Because the key is in protected hardware storage on your device, it cannot be accessed even if an attacker has physical access to your device without authenticating it. I mean, if they can face unlock you or if you have a really weak passcode or something, they can get to it.

19:44But otherwise, they can't. The passkey logs you in. And all access from there on is end-to-end encryption. That means nobody, including the server administrators from Confer, can access your conversations without breaking that encryption. And that encryption is incredibly hard to break right now. You can sync your conversations across devices. As long as you own and authenticate that device, you can bring it back down. And if you're a security enthusiast, you'll want to read more up on this. But it's good to know that Confer also uses forward secrecy and the cloud server uses remote attestation.

20:18Each release is digitally signed and published in a transparency log. And this is all open source if you want to go look at the source code. Another LLM making news today is Proton's LUMO, L-U-M-O, which also uses end-to-end encryption. It's a little more complicated on the back end than Confer because it uses both symmetric and asymmetric keys. But it's also considered well-protected by security pros. Users are the only ones with their key. They can choose to store encrypted data on the Proton servers or not. But they can decide, you know what, I don't want to do that. And the news today is that there is a new protected encrypted space called the projects area where you can keep files you want to refer to in the future.

20:59You know, PDFs, documents, something you're working on for school. Lumo is free to use, but there's limits. You can only have one project, for example, or you can spend$10 a month. Ars Technica also noted there's another option called Venice out there that is open source and stores all data locally. I mean, what can you say about this other than the more tightly encrypted this stuff is, the better? I'm really happy to see so many options and so much dedication to this, especially on an open source project like what we're seeing with Confer. That's really great to see. Yeah, the only thing I could not find was which model Confer is using.

21:41I don't know if it's using a cocktail of models or it's just using something it hasn't published. Or maybe it's published and I just couldn't find where it was published. A couple of sources indicated they thought it was Google's open source models that it was using. But I don't know that. So that would be one thing I'd be curious about. I played around with it this morning, though, and it's pretty capable. It's at least as capable as ChatGPT4. There you go. So as kind of along these lines, Anthropic launched Cloud Cowork as a research preview, turns Cloud into a desktop agent that can operate in the background.

22:18And so the idea here is, you know, minimal interaction from you, the user, while it just kind of goes about carrying out its various tasks that have been assigned to them. It's built on top of Cloud Code, has a pretty kind of a wider range of capabilities, including browsing macOS folders, using connectors, using skills, running through multi-step workflows, all those things. And all of it's designed to feel more like assigning tasks to a colleague, to like a collaborative environment and checking in on the work later as opposed to interacting with a chatbot specifically in the way that we're getting very used to interacting with chatbots right now.

23:00Now, Anthropic has built in a verification system to ask for confirmation ahead of certain actions that might have a higher, let's say, payload or require your permission before it carries it out. Deleting all the files in your directory, for example. Yeah, exactly. Anthropic plans to quickly iterate on the features to include cross-device sync, Windows support coming somewhere down the line, and a whole lot more that they're working on as well. The new research preview is limited to Claude Max subscribers. So you got to pay a penny, a pretty penny for access to that. But, oh, that sounds interesting to me.

23:40And I think the, you know, kind of what's going on here, as we know, with Anthropic, they are very they're very outwardly kind of aware and, you know, acknowledged openly about the potential bad use cases of AI technology and its own. So they're saying, you know, even with co-work, it can take, quote, potentially destructive actions on the part. OK, which I mean, I think I think it's good for companies to acknowledge that. But it's also kind of an opportunity for them to to be like, see, we're we're so smart that it can do all of this capable stuff. We're protecting you from it by letting you know in the background with minimal interactions.

24:23But don't let it do too much. Yeah, exactly. This is for risk takers. This is for early adopters. I wonder what the Venn diagram between people using Claude Cowork and people who want the security of confer are. Because confer, the point is you can say anything to this and no one else will know it. So it's safer to use. That's for somebody who is not very risk friendly, I think. Yeah. And also, you know, this has been coming up time and time again when we're talking about agents. We're regularly talking about the risk of prompt injection attacks. Anthropic has, you know, has kind of clarified that around this as well, being, you know, it's not completely free of the risk of prompt injection attacks, nor are really any of these eugenic systems that I know of right now.

25:10It could always just be the case that that is a threat that kind of haunts systems like this. But nonetheless, I'm very interested. Anthropic isn't the only company doing things similar to this. OpenAI, of course, has chat GPT agent. Microsoft has its co-pilot actions. Those happen in virtual kind of separate desktop environments compared to this, which seems to happen just like on your computer. And you've just kind of given it full access, given you've given it that access, actually. Just be careful. out there, folks. Yeah, be careful. Yeah, it's definitely for that. And I guess you're paying a lot of money for that.

25:45So maybe that puts you into a place of being careful. I don't know. Finally, some quick headlines that are just good to know if you want to understand the news in the future. Yeah, IDC estimates PC shipments rose 9.6 % year over year in Q4. So that's good news for PC makers. And maybe the last good news, because IDC points out that prices are going to rise for PCs this year because of memory shortages, tariffs, et cetera, waves at everything. Yeah. Yes, indeed. Anchor's Solix E10 is a home backup system. It's a modular approach that unifies solar, batteries, and a DC link generator into, I found, because I saw it at CES, an approachable DIY-friendly system.

26:26It's like a stackable system that can power large houses through prolonged outages. I thought that was pretty darn cool. digital eye published research showing netflix's ad tier has risen from 26 of its users to 40 of its users in the past 12 months so almost half of netflix people have the tier with ads total of 190 million users now amazon prime video just turned on ads for everybody and made you take action uh to get rid of them so it still has 82 of its users on the ad tier uh that's 315 million users, but that is down from 88 % last year. Anthropic investing$1.5 million over two years in the Python Software Foundation.

27:09That's meant to strengthen and support Python's security ecosystem for millions of its users against threats, including supply chain attacks. Oh, good for them. And Google is behind developing manufacturing of, or it's moving, developing manufacturing of its new Pixel Series phones and foldables to Vietnam this year, according to Nikkei Asia's sources. The company does plan to keep making its Pixel A line in China. So, yeah, the supply chains are slowly diversifying. Shifting. If you've got thoughts on this or anything else, join our Discord. There's always a good conversation to be had there.

27:50You can link your Patreon account to get access. Just go to patreon.com slash DTNS.

27:59We end every episode of DTNS with some shared perspectives. Today, B Evil C has a question about smart glasses. Yeah, this was posted on our Patreon, actually in response to the editor's desk. But I think it's applicable to everybody because B says, I didn't hear all the programs across CES, but I heard Friday's recap. and in the section on AI glasses, I did not hear once about prescription glass wearers. Now, that might be because it's not a thing or not an issue, but if it is a differentiator, I'd love to know. I also realize it is probably more complex than yes or no, as it would depend on the lenses one needs, but it feels important because especially I wear glasses.

28:39That is important. I mean, especially, yeah, it's interesting because this whole smart glasses thing, part of what I find fascinating about it is there is a large population of people that don't have to wear glasses, right? They are not required to wear glasses in order to see things in the real world. And yet now suddenly they're presented with these reasons too. And does that in the process leave the people who were there from the beginning behind? Because I think to a certain degree, some of these technologies, it is a challenge to bake in, you know, not just the waveguide, you know, kind of stuff happening with projecting the displays into the glass, but then also having corrective vision tied into it.

29:19I think some of these companies aren't talking about it because they're still trying to figure it out. Some of these companies are putting a layer, like giving you a removable layer for your prescription to put in front of the lens, which is a little wonky. Yeah, kind of like inserts. And other companies are saying, yeah, we're going to be able to have this as a prescription. It's an important note, though. I think I need to kind of keep track of that on my own as we talk about these things because, yeah, I'm a prescription lens wear guy, too. I just happen to wear contacts more. I haven't seen as many of these as you, but everyone I've seen has had an answer to this.

29:53Obviously, the Ray-Ban style ones, they are like, oh, yeah, just give us your prescription. It costs a little more, but we'll put the lenses in with your prescription in them. The ones that are more like X-Real and stuff usually have the inserts or Galaxy XR has inserts. Have you run into ones that have no strategy if you need a prescription? I mean, I've run into ones where they aren't really talking about what the prescription kind of angle is quite yet. And so that kind of leads me to believe either they're leading with it, because I think it's an important topic for people who do have prescriptions.

30:29They're going to be really paying close attention to this stuff. And sometimes the companies just don't have an answer for it. So I think that just means that they're working on it. I think most shipping products have an answer, but maybe the ones that are still in development don't. Is that fair to say? yeah yeah i'd say that i i will say i have been ready to pull the trigger and buy a pair of these and then hit the part where it asked for my prescription i'm like where is that so making that making that easier even though i have my prescription i know i have it because i bought a pair of ray-bans first generation with the zero battery life uh i i can't remember where i put it you know and yes i know i can find it but it's in a file somewhere and i'm like you know what i'll go back and finish this later and i never did so i do this i do the same thing with uh ring wearables where it's like oh yeah what's your what's your ring size for the you know middle finger or for the pointer finger i'm like i don't know and i don't even know that i have what i need to figure that i'll just do that later and then it never happens yeah uh well that was a good question thank you be evil c uh what are you thinking about give us uh some insight into a story share your expertise with the audience ask a pertinent question you can do all that at feedback at dailytechnewsshow.com.

31:42Yeah, thanks to B Evil C for contributing to today's show, and thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You can keep us in business by becoming a patron at patreon.com slash DTNS. We'll see you tomorrow.

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