 Our birds are very skittish with anything new So they have to get used to anything that is new they've yet to land on the tree But the more exciting development I'm glad you asked Sarah about the birds of Oakland, California in our apartment is that Milo bird aka fat mr. Milo aka the fat doctor because he looks like doctor He has taken to both Cooper and Milo the rescue birds that we got were a little more skittish than doc doctor flies all over the place That's whatever he wants But now Milo has taken to walking down this little ladder We have in front of the cage and exploring the floor which is something that he had not done before now He's doing it because food has landed on the floor and again He's fat mr. Milo looking for food wherever it is despite that. There's a three dishes He needs the floor that also landed on the food the food that Yeah, when your food motivated you get brave. Oh man And he's he's just having having a great time But I took a little TMZ video of it for for my for my wife Ashley and she was very excited Fat Milo seems like you could train him to do some pretty crazy stuff just by using food You know, we need to put more work into it because he loves food. In fact, I don't know if I've ever done this This is very embarrassing This is a thing that happens every day in my house I'll feed the birds and there's one cage that has two dishes and one that has one and I'll walk up I'll fill the dishes with food and I'll walk up and I'll say affecting a cowboy dialect Well, it's a big breakfast for mr. Milo And I'll put it in and then I'll try to distract mr. Milo with this copious bounty Only to have Cooper shy reserved gothic professor You know have a private reserved me It very rarely works because Milo likes to eat all the food. Yeah, I was like, no, it's all mine Yeah, he's like, no, no I prefer to start with the private reserve meal and then I'll move on to my drink drop. Yeah Well, you know, it's it's a Not a similar issue in my house But an issue of if Otis were to when the cats are eating, you know, he's kind of curious But he'll he'll hang back because they'll swipe him if he gets too close when they're eating It's like you don't you do not get near us But they're also trying to get into his food. It's not fair. Yeah That's that's selfish cat behavior. That is. Yeah. Well, I think they have some boundary issues that they have to That they have to sort through sure Who doesn't Amazon certainly does that's what we're gonna talk about in today's show Gdi has become animals and food Become actually somebody with some very nice person emailed us today saying animals and food Why they actually took the time to support us on patreon? Because of the Gdi conversation. Hey, listen, you know, you can like tech till the cows come home But you got to eat you got animals are you know, they're they're we're all part of God's Creatures, but let's let's do our show And I don't know like 15 seconds Is that good sounds okay? Yeah, I'm Witted All right I'll count us in that and here we go five four three two Thanks to everyone who supports independent tech news directly if you're not already become a DTNS member right now do it right now patreon.com slash DTNS This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday November 29th 2018 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio feline I'm Sarah Lane from Oakland, California I'm Justin Robert Young in a hoodie and from a soggy greater LA area. I'm Roger Shane the show's producer Today today there's little soggy in Los Angeles, which is unusual for us. So we're all fascinated with the water falling from the sky However, we've got some Amazon news to talk about they are they're the next in line Apple Google Facebook They've all come under the gun Amazon is gonna be next but let's start With some tech news you should know Google Assistant on speakers and smart displays now includes a pretty please feature for families it teaches kids to be polite It was first announced back at IO earlier this year notes and lists will soon support a few third-party apps Google keep any do bring and to do us and broadcast replies Which allows two-way communication between a smart display and a speaker and phone and home devices comes out next week Plex now offers access to titles high-quality music streaming service the $10 a month service is only $9 if you are a pex Plex pass subscriber Or if you can say it. Yeah, which I am although. I'm not a title subscriber. So You know those scams that cause a fake antivirus pop-up to appear in windows And then it's followed by a phone call from some nice person that asks you for money to fix that fake Infection well Microsoft and authorities in Delhi have tracked down and arrested 36 people at 16 locations Where those people were running exactly these types of scams I think a lot of people thought that you'd never be able to catch these folks. That's crazy I know oil companies and trading firms can start finalizing crude oil deals on a London-based blockchain platform called Vact VAKT Created by a consortium of oil companies energy trading firms and banks Geneva based comm go is going to provide financing To the VAKT deals integrated right into the blockchain The system will replace Significant amounts of paperwork previously required and lower the costs of trading as a result. So who knows? I mean being pretty optimistic here, but it could lower the price at the pump. Maybe some nice Yeah, let's talk a little bit more about a bad headphone vulnerability. Oh, yeah, listen up folks Germany's a Corvo security consulting disclosed a vulnerability in Sennheiser's head set up software Sennheiser was installing a self-signed root certificate with an encrypted private key into the trusted root CA certificate store Problem was the key can be extracted using a man in the middle attack on all otherwise secure websites The user visits the passphrase Sennheiser CC was stored in plain text in a configuration file And was the same for all installations the encryption key was found by reverse engineering the software binary Users are urged to update the software and make sure the original certificate has been removed or blocked. Yeah You know, you should go check out something like hack 5 or security now if you really want to get deep into understanding all of this But the short version is The root certificate was not properly secured in such a way that once you were able to extract that key You could then spoof any website For any computer that had this software from Sennheiser Installed and it was software that that allowed you to to work directly with the browser with the headphones in a little better way You could have all kinds of complaints about why can't we just have analog headphones, you know, but but This this was supposed to provide better audio for you And if you're buying Sennheiser, you're concerned with better audio. Yeah. Yeah, you were trying to spend on a premium product Yeah, you're concerned with better audio, but a lot of folks who would have The headphones in question and had had used the software in order to you know pair them with computers Aren't necessarily even going to see this story. So that's where I think it's you know, it's the most Troubling, right? I mean we've explained it I don't know how this I I understand how it works I'm not the kind of person who would ever be you know in these root areas to to figure this out myself, but But but then how do you explain it to you know? Somebody who got a cool Sennheiser headset, you know for Christmas last year that they need to make sure that their certificates are updated I would normally say just keep your software updated But there's some confusion on whether the Sennheiser update actually removes the bad certificate or not exactly Well, let's move on now to South korea South korea indicted the CEO and eight other employees of a company called top tech co on suspicion of leaking Samsung's flexible display technology secrets to a chinese company top tech makes automated equipment for display panel production But the company denies the claims of wrongdoing the nine people are accused of creating a separate shell company that received information from samsung display And then sold it for 15.5 million one Which is about 13.85 million us dollars So yeah, it's kind of hard to to figure out here if you're confused out there But top tech is saying we didn't do anything wrong our employees who created a separate shell company did something wrong So even though that includes the CEO of top tech top tech itself as a as a company may not be held Responsible for this, but it's a huge bust Well, and and obviously it's corporate espionage. Uh, I wonder whether or not this is something that puts any kind of damper in in samsung's plans considering the fact that they have always been In addition to creating top of the line phones They like all of manufacturers for the stuff that they're in are playing in an increasingly commoditized game And if the words already out on the the stuff that they're doing then that kind of shortened some of that runway Yeah, it's hard to say If we start seeing a bunch of of companies coming out with flexible displays that are very similar to samsung I suppose samsung could try to pursue a remedy in court about that Anyway, i'm sure they have patents filed on all this stuff on the other hand It may be that knowing how the display is made is not the same as being able to make it, right? Like it takes some expertise and capacity to be able to make these displays in the first place with which samsung does Uh, so it may not be as easy to imitate as the folks who paid for this information Well, but it also depends on where they were getting it manufactured if they were getting it manufactured in china And now it is chinese companies that are making display makes it. That's the key. Okay. Okay. So they they make it Well, then look, but once it gets to china, man, it is a wild west out there Well, and how sucky to be the ceo if you truly didn't know that this was happening With eight employees that worked directly for you or under you. Anyway, the ceo definitely knew this was happening I don't think there's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah, that's for sure Can't let this party The bbc reports that innovators in togo, uh, togo is a west african nation right between gana and benin Are taking some of the 500 000 metric tons of e-waste to the country imports each year and turning it into robots One example is a spider-like robot made from a discarded 3d printer We see a fully bb who made that also made a 3d printer from other discarded parts He takes the robots to schools to try to foster student interest in science He was inspired by genuku afate who made the first 3d printer in togo And took first place at the barcelona fabrication technology conference in 2015 Now don't get me wrong This is not to minimize the problem with e-waste that togo is facing The bbc article does go into the fact that a lot of times they have to turn waste around and send it back to be properly recycled If they want to do that to europe because they don't have the proper facilities for that But i like the idea that at least a few folks are trying To figure out how to reuse and and turn This 500 000 metric tons of electronics into something useful that that potentially could help students, etc i'm i'm very curious to see what the You know where the trajectory of the e-waste problem goes because i you know even Colloquially and i'm sure everybody listening to this has had that that problem where all of a sudden you Go into a bag or a closet where you've kept stuff that the last time you went in there was all very very very useful And now you look at it and you're like none of these plugs work Not none of these cords make any sense anymore. Everything has been totally different You know things move so fast and yet Uh, the the e-waste is the shadow it leaves behind Yeah, there's so many problems with e-waste from not properly disposing of it, right because uh You have to do something extra if you want to properly dispose of it. You can't just put it in your bin Like you normally would to even when it's properly disposed of you know The companies that are collecting all this stuff in the u.s. And europe generally do export it somewhere And then what happens to it when it gets there So i again, i'm not trying to to be someone who says to see it's not a problem You just have all the people in togo turn it into robots and it'll be fine But hey, isn't it better that some of that happened and experimentation happened and maybe start to spur an industry there If we're going to have this problem before we finally get around to figuring out how to solve it for real I mean look all us dilatants in the western world are all going to be You know living our comfy lives when the the the togo Gigantic robot spider starts dominating the globe. I think these guys got it going on. Yeah More power to you down there in togo. Mr. Fully bb Keep your robots going and maybe inspires the you know the the next big startup Mogul to come come from west africa Because he took this robot to a class and got somebody thinking I mean some of the great art installations of the world made from trash. This is this is one step further and cooler. Yeah Nintendo saying that it has been humbled by its fans loyalty and quote has issued new guidelines on sharing gameplay video In youtube that lift most of the previous restrictions and no longer require people to register for a revenue sharing scheme The only requirement now is that you add your own creative input or commentary The exception to that rule is if you are sharing short screen captures using the switches built in tools video makers Who follow these rules will be allowed to monetize videos without sharing any of that sweet green With nintendo. I love the idea of an apology Turning into we're humbled by how loyal you are to us. Thank you Yeah Even though we treated you so poorly on you as far as youtube videos go for years you've stayed Humboldt. Thank you. Blast Yeah Look Nintendo really misjudged this. This was a dumb Plan from the from from the jump if you're unfamiliar with it. They had a system in which Now the way that video games are discussed and shared throughout the internet is Through live gameplays on twitch through recorded gameplays on youtube and obviously shared throughout social media They decided that they were going to play middleman on that because the sweet Sweet money was going to be too much for them to bear going into other people's pockets Uh, uh when in reality, hey, look if some kid's going to get paid to advertise your your games like super smash brothers Which is why they want to you know repeal this now because they have a massive game That is coming out that is going to be very popular on these platforms Then, uh, I think they realized let's not screw around with something that's already working for every other video game creator This you can use this uh this This decision, you know as a weapon in your rhetorical argument about copyright either way You can say see we don't need to change laws Because eventually companies will realize the right way to do things on their own even if they aren't forced to Or you can say man if the rules were That nintendo had to do this in the beginning we wouldn't have had to wait years for them to finally get around to figuring out This is in their best interests Yeah, I mean look if if if if nintendo got to the right position It's just a shame that they Had to be so nintendo About the way they got there. It's a him a mario It's a me the middle man Theratocom executive editor brad brad sams has a new book out called beneath the surface that describes among other things Microsoft's potential surface roadmap in the book's final chapter. He might say well, this is all speculative, right? But sams has an excellent track record with his sources and he writes a few interesting things Perhaps a surface pro tablet with usbc could be coming in q4 of 2019 about a year from now A surface laptop running on an amd processor might arrive toward the end of next year Next spring microsoft might show off an ambient computing device that responds to your presence Low-cost xbox one s models could potentially be offered without a drive And maybe also a reimagined surface studio desktop with a modular design and Last but not least a foldable device often called andromeda might arrive next year But be more like a pc than a phone. Yeah that andromeda it's it's like It's like the I don't want to say it's a white whale. That's the wrong metaphor But it's it's sort of uh, it's a unicorn, right everyone Everyone thinks they've they've seen it and then it never appears and for a long time It's been presumed that this would either be a tablet or a phone because of the foldable nature of the leaks around it But sam's is saying it might just be I guess more like a tablet But on the pc end of tablets like a hybrid Uh, I mean geez although I don't want to I don't want to take a dig at microsoft because they have been good at Their hardware over the last five years. They've they've created really good products It's 14 of their revenue now and they are you know in a running race to be the most valuable company with Right alongside apple absolutely. So I don't want to take this as a dig But the andromeda thing just doesn't that just read a ces like all over it that we're going to see that It's like in a bygone era and I don't think it's this microsoft I think it's it's a microsoft of the past like that would be the thing you'd see at ces and it would just never come out Right. Yeah. No in the bill gates era right where the gates gave the keynote at ces every year Yeah, he would have shown you this. This is akin to the tablet Exactly exactly the big the big table, right? Yeah, uh, uh, that being said holy smokes brad sam's calling his shot That that would that would reverberate for years to come like moses with the tablets We're gonna be referring to this for years and years. Yeah, no brad sam's is a great guy I've had the pleasure of meeting him a couple times at ces as a matter of fact And he's he's not only a pleasant fellow to chat with but he's a really good journalist and really good at cultivating sources It's it's a thing that i'm horrible at myself And so I admire people who do it as well as he does Putting it all in the last chapter of your book brilliant to first of all One more thing promoting the book go check out the book folks. Uh, but also, uh, just just a great Uh, a great rundown of of his his prowess at saying like, okay, here we go folks You know call me in a couple of years because he has these things going through 2020 and let's see how they match up Obviously not every one of these things will come true because even if they're all true right now Companies change their roadmaps and modify things and kill product right so but he's saying as far as we can tell This is what they're thinking at this moment Well, you know, justin you mentioned boxes full of cables that no longer work or uh, Have have any use. You know what I have a lot of? usbc chords Surface bro rumor is actually something I might be interested in. Oh man. I'll tell you what we need We need to figure out a chord for chord trade lane because uh, I I've had my switch die on me plenty of times What would narrow your usbc chord? Yeah, live in the now man Hey folks, we want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes Be sure to subscribe to daily tech headlines dot com So a couple things going on regarding amazon in the news today. Germany's federal cartel office has begun an investigation of whether amazon is abusing its market position in relation with third party sellers It's looking into how it ends its relationships with third party sellers The timing of payments to its third party sellers the shipping conditions when amazon handles the shipping for them Uh, this isn't the first investigation into amazon in europe The european commission is also looking into amazon's dual role as a retailer and a marketplace If you're not aware amazon sells things directly As amazon they buy things wholesale and then they sell them to you But they also operate something called amazon marketplace which allows others to sell things through the amazon system They've been doing that since 2002 So the european commission is looking to see if amazon's house brands Are hurting the retailers on the marketplace platform In other words, is amazon looking at all the stuff the marketplace people are doing and going Hey, that's a cool product. Maybe we should come up with our own house brand version of that and put it into competition Recode has a really interesting article about how retailers are starting to get tired of this They use a company called popsockets as an example of the problem popsockets got tired of amazon demanding lower prices or Demanding the popsockets spend more money on marketing in order to stay as a wholesaler to amazon through retail So popsockets decided to stop selling to amazon and instead sell to a company called iserv Which sold things on amazon iserv is one of those third parties while amazon notified Uh popsockets that iserv would not be allowed to sell popsocket material as a matter of policy Although Unaffiliated merchants in other words merchants that got ahold of popsockets products without any kind of relationship with popsockets Would be that would mean that popsockets couldn't sell Their material with the manufacturers warranty and with their own qa process You would only be able to get their products from third party sellers who couldn't give you that stuff This is all in advance of something called one vendor Where amazon is going to try to bring all those independent sellers and the big brands into the same Back end and some brands are being notified that they're only going to be allowed to sell to amazon In other words, they won't be allowed to sell on amazon marketplace Where they would control the sale price run their own promotions and more importantly get to keep all that data Remember amazon is becoming a bigger and bigger advertising revenue generator. They want that data It's not a new policy actually, but amazon hasn't enforced it always in the past. So now they're starting to crack down They're also adding to the policy That a retailer can't Sell through their agents licensees or other representatives In other words, they they can't say, okay, we're not selling to amazon We're just going to sell to these other people, but we're not selling on amazon So it essentially essentially what happened to popsockets you either sell to us or you Can't sell to anybody that sells on amazon. They have to find it some other way amazon often uses this data by the way to create those house brands we were talking about earlier, so A lot of people are attributing this to the fact that senior vice president dug herrington Who has been running the retail side of amazon for 14 years now? Is over the amazon marketplace side of things as well and is applying some of that retail mentality amazon just says we're trying to make it easy for people It's confusing sometimes when they think they're buying from amazon and they're not We just want to clear up that confusion have fewer differences in price among the same thing It's all about the user. Justin the thing is though is that Well, I'm sure there are exceptions, but as a frequent amazon customer. I don't care I just want the thing so amazon saying, you know what we just want sarah to be less confused about third-party sellers versus amazon products themselves kind of yes uh Yes, and no uh, uh, they're uh, there are a couple ways that you can deal with amazon if you are a small Of a retailer like let's say a mom and pop game Company that has games like the contender and action news available You would uh, either sell directly through listing on amazon and then you ship the product yourself That's one way to do it the other way to do it If you're a little bit bigger is that you send products to amazon's warehouse that allows you to control Uh, uh, you are still getting paid from that directly But now amazon can offer prime shipping or if you are a big volume player Like the ones that we are talking about here amazon is actually buying at wholesale A large volume of that moving that into their warehouses Then whatever they do with that is up to them and their business from there now What they want to do is flatten that out a little bit They want to make it easier for somebody to walk in and just get the most bang out of the amazon buck What they don't like is when you search for an amazon product And you've got all these listings that all have the exact same picture and are offering different prices But maybe there's hidden shipping on it and some offer prime and some don't and many times Those can come from the same source, right? It's just different people They're they're selling to different places and it is hitting amazon in in one way so i can I can uh understand and sympathize with amazon's position saying hey look It's very hard to make amazon a shoppable website considering how many Products we have on here how many people we deal with to do it it takes management However, what they are their complications are twofold number one like tom said They are also in a position like grocery stores like walmart like target like whole foods They have their own products that compete With other name brand products and they use the sales data of what is flying off the shelves to determine Who is going or what kinds of those products? They are going to put on the shelves right next to the other people that they are also taking money from The other problem is they're the everything store and they are always going to be under increasing governmental scrutiny specifically in europe because it's europe Uh, but also in america where now anti competitive behavior is going to be magnified or the idea Of anti competitive behavior is going to be magnified because they are such a big player and as brick and mortar retail dies And now we're in a situation where like the idea of opening up a walmart My me and my wife are joking around if they opened a walmart in downtown oakland But people would be like oh cool jobs for people like what a quaint cool thing That's coming to our town in a way that would not be the case in the odds Would not be the case in the 90s when big box stores were the where the enemy They are amazon's going to be the bad guy as these other forms of buying stuff start to fall by the wayside Yeah, and when you start to think about it You bring it up walmart made me think about the fact that walmart used to be amazon right like you're saying the attitudes have changed I dug up a 2003 motley fool article That pointed out that at the time it was 15 years ago walmart accounted for 28 percent of dials sales 24 percent of delmonti foods sales and 23 percent of chlorox's sales And motley fool said if walmart has too much power over these companies now What will happen? Well walmart share hits 50 percent at the end of this decade Right and walmart didn't even have the complicating factor of allowing third parties Right, you didn't have a flea market happening inside walmart like you essentially have happening inside amazon What happened to walmart was amazon came along and they no longer have that dominant market share because of that So the the curious question that we will leave as an exercise for the audience Uh, who is amazon's amazon well and also the the question then became Look walmart as many many many of these kinds of retailers, but walmart was kind of the most famous for being Uh non negotiable on hey, this is what you're selling it for and this is where we're gonna put it We're walmart Yeah, and either we're gonna give you this gigantic order that you can Build your entire business on at a fraction of the price that you normally sell it Or you can kick rocks They were a bully like that and amazon is not quite there yet But you might think that the more they edge toward it the louder it's going to be as We are all more Plugged in to the the ups and downs of amazon then we necessarily work with walmart We're one mining up been in your town. Yeah, maybe walmart ends up becoming amazon's amazon uh Also, I just side note in 2009. I found an la time story talking about walmart and netflix being sued for conspiring to create a monopoly on online video rentals What of dvds? Uh, because walmart, uh stopped Renting dvds over the internet and started referring customers to netflix Yeah, there is there is a great a great hall of fame of the monopolies that everybody thought would kill us that didn't There are some really funny ones in our past member blockbuster Wow Hey, thanks everybody who participates in our subreddit You can submit stories and vote on them at daily tech news show dot reddit.com if you hang out on facebook a lot Well, maybe hang out on our facebook group facebook.com slash groups slash daily tech news show Who is that the mailbag? Oh, it is tom. I'm glad you asked Uh, we actually got a real real nice email from dwayne in germany Says he loved our discussion with amos yesterday about technology in the military and how it's evolved over the years Dwayne says with my 21 years serving In the u.s. Air force it brought back memories of how things were and how they are now I'm about to retire in february But last year I completed a 2.5 year stint as a planner building Bear bases in europe and africa and it's so funny that once the base is up the first thing that's complained about Is wi-fi last year we had a deployed based leadership She's wi-fi over better beds and better quality of life items that shows what deployed personnel priorities Are like dwayne also weighed in on our google fi Discussion from yesterday as well formally project five dwayne says i've lived overseas since 2001 in japan for eight years south korea for one year now germany for eight years And wow google fi is crazy expensive. I was looking at what a five gigabyte plan would cost me It's 70 bucks compared to around 40 yen in japan. I currently pay 29 euro for 15 gigabytes in germany I was considering jumping to google fi when i'm in the us as a secondary number here in europe But that's not really financially efficient. I have o2 That's his his provider here and I was hoping to ditch my second number And I only pay seven euro for one gigabyte of data My issue is that o2 doesn't have any deals with any of the telcos in the u.s. So it doesn't work for him Might have to just switch a second line to t-mobile to fix my issue Yeah, maybe if you're coming from europe to the us google fi not such it doesn't work so well It is a it is a decent deal in the us comparatively speaking Especially because uh t-mobile t-mobile gives you free roaming, but at a reduced speed where fi doesn't Well, thank you dwayne uh for for the feedback. It's always nice to know how things are working for people all over the world And also thanks to jesson robber young for being with us Besides being a bird whisperer. What's been going on? Oh, thank you sarah Of course, everybody can sign up for my free political newsletter at free political newsletter dot com five stories a day five days a week However, you can also Go ahead for your holiday shopping if you happen to be a fan of night attack or jury or The politics politics politics podcast the one stop for merch for your Uh yourself or a friend or a loved one is stickers or diaf Dot com Uh, that's where you can get the diamond club or sorry the night attack pin set 10 pin or sorry button set Well for that's 10 buttons for for 10 bucks You have politics politics politics t-shirt and our new politics politics politics shirt the less horse Sorry less bs more horse s Uh t-shirt which has a great design done by one of our uh our awesome diamond clubbers penny So go ahead and check it out that is stickers or diaf Dot com Folks, we are but five people away of having one more patron than last month Uh with two days left in the month. I know we can do this Thanks to everybody who has signed up in the past couple of days If you didn't realize if you become a patron or stay a patron between now and december 5th And the clock is ticking on that which is seven days away Uh, you will get a holiday postcard with a special message from the dTNS team Remember you do have to give us your mailing address in patreon to get that card You can add that in your settings or if you're signing up new just add it right when you sign up new If you're not comfortable giving that we understand that's fine But if you do want to get the card you will have to give us the address Uh, so anyway get a free holiday card sign up and be one of the people that pushed us over the edge And got to our goal of at least one patron more than last month at patreon.com slash dTNS We also love your feedback feedback at daily tech news show dot com is where you can send those emails We're also live monday through friday if you can join us live Please do so for 30 p.m. Eastern 20 130 utc and you can find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live Back tomorrow with patrick norton telling us about audio gear you might want to get talk to you then This show is part of the frog pants network get more at frogpants.com Let me guess he's not going to recommend sennheisers He might just don't install the softwares. Yeah Limited uh my cats are doing the dog food thing again. I can hear you Do when the dog food? Get out of the dog food cat Bad cats, uh, what should we call this here? We have uh the amazon's amazon Walmart used to be amazon amazon colon the everything store There's also if you want to do something a little more toto-ish Uh, where is it where I just see it the bless the spider bots down in togo Ha Africa uh colon the mother of invention Okay, what's the best one? Who is am who is amazon's amazon? no He don't sound sure Yeah, it's that or an amazon the everything store amazon the everything store just sounds like their tagline Yeah A story really yeah, so I'll go with that who is amazon's amazon. Yeah I like it Did you get the the food away from them? It's in a huge bag like You know, it's rolled over So the caster just kind of doing this but you can tell that they're like There's salmon in here Yeah, it just goes to show you Otis. You've got a really cool new food Everybody wants your new food Otis. Everybody wants it Yeah, they didn't really seem to care all that much about his former food We've upgraded. Yeah I want to thank Justin Robert Young for that excellent analysis You know from from the point of view of mom and pop store that yeah here here uh, it's funny because I've for for reasons that I might be able to discuss In the coming future, uh, I had a long conversation last night about Uh, the different ways that you sell not only to amazon but also to retail chains like barns and noble and target and stuff like that and uh spoiler alert, uh There are not only demands on what you can sell your uh products at price wise for a lot of these big retailers Uh, they often demand their own products and they want specific sizes weights titles Uh, and either you can create a product for them or you can Bugger off. Uh, our friends across the box That's that's that's what they used to do with uh, consumer electronic stores That's why good guys in circuit city could sell these only, you know We're the only ones that sell this model at this price is because you know, blah blah blah same model number except for the very last Uh number or letter is different because they had you know, basically, uh A quote-unquote custom model that they sold through their stores uh, yeah, uh, it's uh very very very interesting because in the um You know in in some of these fields It's fairly expensive right and and you have to put a lot of time and effort and When you look at the margins that you're getting man, are they razor thin but You make them up on volume, right? Yeah, a lot of the problem that that amazon's getting into is not that they're setting prices or making demands on on sellers Like you say that's actually fairly normal. It's that they have a marketplace That they're then saying and you also can't sell over here Well, because for them They probably look at it not unlike Uh a ban evasion or something like on on another website if you are in violation If you if you opt not to play by the rules Then you can't just You know set up another thing and say all right. Well now i'm a new person Yeah, no you're doing the exact same stuff as you were doing before You you can't just sock puppet your way out of playing by the rules that we are setting That we're trying to set for a reason that means that I don't care if they are you know, uh Have all the greatest intentions and and they are only looking at the consumer at heart We are in a dawning age and I will focus on american politics because that is what I am most familiar with a dawning era of People wanting to understand exactly what are what what the roles of these companies have in our lives and Are increasingly talking the buzz is more and more around regulation be it In the warehouses for amazon be it in how they are Uh Be it in how they are doing the marketplace and the one last thing to think about I would say is unlike Facebook unlike twitter unlike Uh, some of these other companies that are dealing with data In a way that we don't really have existing laws for We already got laws on the books when it comes to market share And price fixing And that kind of stuff like there's no one's going to need to pass anything through congress to say Hey amazon you are running a foul Of anti competitive practices like these are things that you can use off the rack tools for In a way that some of these other companies Uh might be able to run under undercover of night until The legislature could kind of catch up with but I do think the thing that is new with amazon Is the fact that they are uh doing something that that normal retailers don't they're running a flea market Yes, they're like they're like we're a mall You know we're a swap meet area, but we're also a retailer We're also a big box store in the middle of that area And and that's where people are going hold on no one's ever done that before Is it fair for you to take data from the flea market and then start selling things that undermine the market for the flea market Is it fair for you to take somebody who used to sell you something in your big box that you sold in your big box store And tell them you either have to lower your price to us or you can't even sell it in our flea market anymore Uh unless someone gets it in you know some roundabout way Uh these these are all brand new questions because Stores generally don't operate marxist ebay ebay has store fronts to operate ebay, but they don't have ebay stores amazon Uh is doing both they're being ebay and they're being jc penny uh sears Nordstrom's uh sacks fifth avenue, etc those are all really I I I do feel for that problem because same man It would it is Kind of a miracle that amazon is as easy of a shopping experience as it is considering how many people Are are are feeding into it like and and the going after the shopping stuff is the low hanging fruit Wait wait till they start going after the same things They're going after facebook and google about because amazon does have a lot of data About a lot of people and it's trying and it's more and more making its money off advertising. Well, yeah The only difference is that Unless there is a business outcry for it most most of amazon's data business is b2b Uh, uh get more and more out out away from that though Yes, yes and the the the thing that's gotten uh Facebook well Facebook's its own thing Uh in terms of the kind of data that they are using and it's also a little bit more Uh in People look at it differently because it is finding you in a place that you are You know enjoying yourself theoretically right like and even google is like here Here's a tool that you are using and we are also going to show you advertising on it I think we we perceive whether or not we should We perceive that if you are in a shopping mall Seeing a sign for Hey, here's some other stuff to shop for is not as offensive as deceptive or Manipulative ads in a place where i'm looking at my young infant nephew Uh, I don't know man. I think there's a scenario where All of a sudden you're seeing ads for political candidates and you find out Oh, I'm getting those ads because they know I bought this kind of stuff I don't want political campaigns knowing what I shop for that's creepy Well, funny thing about that that's been done forever. I mean really the first Yeah, the the first ever Data that kind of targeted data that was pioneered by political campaigns were buying magazine Subscription lists. Mm-hmm and you would know know what you read. Yeah All right, if you're buying guns and ammo Uh, we need all the guns and ammo Uh subscribers that are within this district that we need to appeal to because we have a strong second amendment candidate And we need to make sure that we send them a flyer saying hey Not for nothing, but we all agree that the second amendment should be supported right and then meanwhile the opposite candidate would would have You know other the magazines that would uh be critical of Of the proliferation of guns. So and that was something that was being done in the in the 70s Maybe 80s. Yeah, I don't know but I it doesn't matter if it was done before if it's if it's done by a tech company Well, I mean I I do think that to me Amazon will will be lower on that tier list because they are a third place player between or after google and And facebook on that kind of stuff. I think that they are they are a massive ad resource for Sellers specifically inside their own No, but amazon is is more and more getting into the business of Placing ads on consumer-facing sites. Oh, I no, no, no, I'm aware I'm just saying that I think that if we're looking at that specific issue I I just find it. I I agree with that that train of thought I just think it's more likely that amazon winds up getting stung for Anti-competitive marketplace stuff first. Oh, yeah That I think that facebook and google are more likely to find themselves getting stung by anti-competitive Stuff in in the advertising I guess where I'm going is is not that I disagree with you at all there But amazon could get stung more times as it starts to move and also amazon is probably more laid out for The the the the dreaded solution which would be a breakup A government mandated A breakup Separate your retail from your aws from your etc etc etc. Yeah, uh because a lot of their stuff is fairly segmented in a way that Is independently success. I mean like if if let's say all right hammer god comes down And in in in four different scenarios The hammer hits, you know the four big tech companies apple amazon Uh google and facebook and now they have to break up all of their top five most relevant uh sectors into operating businesses I think amazon has the most businesses still standing in 10 years. Yeah compared to the other companies where You know the other companies kind of have Geese that laid the golden egg and amazon happens to have a couple geese that are laying golden eggs and I think I think the other thing too, uh is Yeah, the other side of this conversation is regulatory actions Don't often really have the drastic Impacts that we sort of think of when we're talking about them, right? like like AT&T is the exception that proves the rule it got broken up and even then it's pretty much reassembled, right? so Maybe it's worth it because it can it created a marketplace for long-distance companies, which has led to competition etc etc etc, but Uh, uh, microsoft never really got broken up. Uh, they made them put a browser choice window in europe. Okay Uh, microsoft's now competing to be the largest company in the world again, right? So I you know, i'm not sure that these actions always have The the impact that that some people feel they will have Yeah, I mean I think it's also a very controversial and dangerous thing to do. It should not be done willy-nilly. Uh, you know you Oftentimes these the thing with 18 the AT&T breakup for the little that I have read about it is fascinating because part of it is also That AT&T was protected by the government for many years and and worked in in league with the government for many years so There was almost a responsibility of like okay, well Now you're being anti competitive and we've kind of given you guys a leg up So now we feel our responsibility to break you up because these innovations are not happening as fast as they should yeah B master points out but ie isn't the big monolith anymore in europe I'm not sure if that's because of the browser choice probably because it sucks Yeah, also because they don't even make it anymore. It's microsoft edge. It's edge. Yeah now now you're edging throughout europe Not a verb. Okay moving on Video people. Thank you for sticking with us through all of that. I hope you enjoyed it and uh, audio people stick around There's more to come