 On this episode of DTNS, the Digital Markets Act in the European Union went into effect today with lots of opinions from a lot of companies who are affected by the DMA. RobinHind is also getting into sports, we'll explain why and how, and is TikTok going to survive the US protecting its citizens from TikTok? This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, March 7th, 2024. From Studio Animal House, I'm Sarah Layton. From Columbus, Ohio, I'm Rob Dungley. From Deep in the Heart of Texas, I'm Justin Robert Young. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. Happy DMA Day today. Happy DMA Day. Yeah, some of you might like it, some of you may not. In fact, many people don't. We're going to talk about that ad nauseam in this episode, but let's start with the Quick Hits. A new report from stand.earth warns that new semiconductor plants in the US being built by Intel, TSMC, Samsung and Micron could use a ton of electricity, more than twice as much electricity as the entire city of Seattle uses once they become operational. The nine facilities under construction could add 2.1 gigawatts in new electricity demand. Now all four companies building those facilities have made commitments to reach 100% renewable electricity for their US operations. But their plan for doing so, the purchase of renewable energy certificates, or RECs, is viewed as flawed by many due to RECs being a mix of renewable but also fossil fuel powered energy and can be written off as 100% renewable. On yesterday's DTNS, we talked about Fortnite developer Epic Games announcing that Apple terminated its developer account, which would have allowed the company to make its own Epic Games stores on iOS in Europe and relaunch Fortnite on iOS devices. Apple responded to Epic saying it was an egregious breach of its contractual obligations determined by US courts giving Apple the right to terminate its relationship with Epic at any time and at its sole discretion. The European Union has confirmed it is looking into Apple's decision to close the Epic Games developer account. In a series of posts on X Wednesday, Elon Musk said that seen metrics like likes, reposts and favorites counts at a glance would be disappearing from the main feed of X in a future design update, but not going away completely. X user CB Doge, who appears to have inroads to Musk, initially announced this change, also adding that soon users will have to click on the post itself to view these metrics. Musk said in a reply that was on main, only view counts will be shown when you're just going through the actual feed. In a separate post, Musk said, I've been dying to do this for a year. Nikon announces acquiring digital cinema camera maker Red, which will become a subsidiary of Nikon after the deal closes, allowing Nikon to expand into the digital cinema camera market. Nikon says it can draw from Red's knowledge in cinema cameras, including unique image compression technology and color science to help this expansion. Red was founded back in 2005 and currently has around 220 employees. DMA news is going to be a theme on the show today. Apple is readying, letting EU based iPhone users uninstall its first party Safari browser by the end of this year and is working on a more user friendly way of transferring data from an iPhone to a non-Apple phone by fall of next year. A new compliance document published by Apple outlines all the ways it's compliant with the European's new digital markets apps, which is law as of today. Transferring data between browsers on the same device, also a new perk, and Apple plans to make that available by late 2024 or early next year, along with changing the default navigation app on iOS by March 2025 for users in the EU. Alright, I keep saying DMA, so let's get into some of the news that is making headlines today. Today is when the European Union's digital markets act goes into effect. We've been talking about it today is the day. And the US Biden administration is dealing with it. We've got US based industry associations telling the White House that Europe had used subterfuge to hobble US companies. We've got members of Congress claiming that the new EU law is de facto discrimination against US firms and workers. Also warning, it's going to give more power to China and Russia if it continues going forward. The Biden administration has already sent two official letters of protest to the EU raising concerns hasn't really pushed the issue. The Washington Post sources say just raising concerns for now. This is reportedly based on differing views within the administration regarding the interests of big tech with the added complexity of the ongoing war in Ukraine. There are issues with China and other issues where the US has been seeking cooperation from the EU. Now, Justin, we're going to talk about the DMA pretty much throughout this entire show and its repercussions throughout today's show. But let's start with how you think it might be affecting US strategy. Well, you know, there's doing something and then there's doing something when you're dealing with stuff like this. And right now, the Biden administration has relied on pretty official benign channels. What big tech or what we would, you know, collectively refer to as Google, Apple, Amazon and the like. What they want to do is more of a full court press. They want the State Department to be a very much going to Brussels and saying this is something that needs to be either changed, carved out or not exist. Unfortunately for them, it does not appear that that is going to happen. And it does demonstrate right now the arms length that American politics has with these companies. And it's not just on the Republican side that has a lot of culture war issues with them, but on the Democratic side that are facing a progressive left that would like to see more antitrust and sees things like the DMA as a good step forward. Yeah, I was actually thinking that very point. I saw that. Well, there's we're going to send you a letter. Maybe we'll send you to, but we're not really coming at your heart on this just because we need to get reelected in our reelection campaigns. And there's a lot of Americans who are really liking some of the things that the DMA is doing. There's a lot that don't, but there's a lot to do. So I saw this as we're going to say something because we have to support, you know, our business interests, but we're just not going to go. We're not going to take it to that next level to where we actually are really pressing hard with this. Yeah, I mean, it would be impossible to have this conversation without mentioning that, you know, we're in an election year in the U.S. Many countries are having election years this year, but it does strike me as convenient for, you know, a lot of folks who may be able to make some significant changes or even, you know, try to go after the DMA. If they really feel that, you know, it's wrong for these big tech companies, you know, and we're talking about Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, all U.S. companies, but also TikTok, you know, and ByteDance, the parent company, which is headquartered in China. I mean, those are all, for the most part, the companies that are, you know, have had significant changes forced to be made to how they do things and how they treat their users. Again, in the EU specifically, this is the DMA after all, this is not a worldwide thing, you know, and it varies by market. But it does seem to me that unless this is just, you know, the torch you will carry and you really care about it, I think a lot of politicians might say, let's just get through the elections first. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, although I do think that this is long simmering. This is not necessarily something that is particularly inflamed by the election, mostly because you don't see this on one side or the other. It's not like Donald Trump is coming out and saying that the DMA is awful and Joe Biden is defending it. This is pretty bipartisan that big tech doesn't have the kind of burgeoning support that it might have for eight or 12 years ago. What's interesting to me is that these big tech companies will be the first to tell you to keep government out of our business except for when we need government to be in our business to help us with other governments. So, you know, that point is not lost on me, but you're right. There's not a lot of folks who are just saying these companies to make these ridiculous amounts of money that we really feel bad for you because you can't do business that may in some ways be adverse to citizens of other states. Yeah. So if we're going to change gears a little bit, you know, one of the things that I found interesting, there's an article that's talking about Robin Hood and Robin Hood is that commission free investment platform that is popular with beginner and intermediate investors, particularly because of its mobile app and gamification of investing. It has partnered with clutch sports. The rich Paul at sports agency whose biggest client happens to be LeBron James Robin Hood is looking at to take, you know, sports entertainment and media and do just a bunch of different things with it that we normally don't necessarily see from a company like Robin Hood. You might wonder why the company is doing these things. CEO of Latin have said working with the rich and team at clutch sports is really the way that Robin Hood is going to get his brand out there to a wider audience and partner with athletes and organizations that are aligned with our customer needs. Clutch said that it has been connecting Robin Hood executives with teams, owners and athletes as the company looks to expand its reach beyond tech and finance. So, like I said, I thought this article that I read was really interesting about this because you don't normally see agents, which clutch is clutch sport, you know, they support agents LeBron James is clearly the biggest, but there's others out there. They are almost, you know, acting like they are the, you know, they're the thing themselves that they're the media company in many ways to where it helps a company like Robin Hood to say, hey, we're latching on with clutch sports. Look at what we're doing. That's just something a little different than what you see generally from agencies that are dealing with sports. But when we were talking about this before the show, I was like trying to wrap my head around why Robin Hood would want to partner with clutch sports besides just being like LeBron James cool. Yay. It's like, oh, are they creating some sort of a fund that someone like me could use Robin Hood to the invest in. But that doesn't sound like it's the case, right, Justin? No, it's not the case. You know, number one, agencies make deals with these kinds of companies all the time. It's really the reason why agencies exist, especially in our more 360 degree world of these these kinds of partnerships. What is fascinating is that as Rob mentioned, that it's this public that it's worth coming out. And part of it is because the media environment agencies have become extraordinarily forward facing in the world of sports media. When you talk about the transactions of basketball, it's very hard to not say the term clutch because of their connections to LeBron James. And if you follow the sport, these players tend to stay together. They get bunched up and they get put on teams. You can sort of have the tea leaves be read. And so anything that gets repeated that much on television is going to be something that is worth a media deal. And that's what's interesting is that it's not odd that something like Robin Hood would make a deal with an agency. What is odd is that we know about it. Yeah, so clutch, they help facilitate a three year patch deal with the Washington Wizards. And what's interesting about that is that they're coming out and saying that, yeah, we just signed this deal in October, but we're already seeing the entire Washington DC metro area is now more aware about Robin Hood. And one of the things that this deal reminds me of right now in sports podcasting is enormous. You're seeing clearly you're seeing the people talk about sports podcast, but you're actually starting to see even the sports athletes themselves as you're actively playing these games. They're creating our own podcast as well. And a lot of those podcasts are driven by sports books. You know, you know, every third one that you look at there's a little icon of some place where you can bet on the game that they're talking about. But there are a lot of players who say, no, I don't want to be involved with betting at all. So I'm looking for other types of sponsorships and you're starting to see Robin Hood pop up in that place. I am, you know, two of my favorite things are tech and investing. So when I see, you know, I can tell you I've actually noticed the Robin Hood logos on the billboards, you know, at games, I've noticed the patches on the Wizards jerseys. So this this seems to be working. And, you know, like I said, as as the CEO of Robin Hood said, it's like we want to be in this space and it looks like they're getting into it in a big way with clutch sports. I mean, but like, is this partnership anything more than like a sponsorship partnership? Because I could see, you know, talking about the podcast side of things, I could see where, you know, clutch sports and LeBron James and a variety of things. There's a variety of athletes that are affiliated with clutch sports, either being talked about or being guests on a variety of podcasts or shows in general, whatever, you know, we can talk traditional TV as well. And, you know, Robin Hood being mentioned as like, yep, this is this is the trading app that you want, you know, this is the investment app for the next gen like that's a sponsorship opportunity. I just wonder how much deeper this is. So I think that's exactly what this is when I think of creators that are on TikTok or Instagram or doing YouTube, you know, you know, videos. A lot of times brands will say, hey, they've got millions of people that are looking at them every day, they've got millions of people who are listening to them every day. Let's go do a deal with them because the people that they talk to match up with our demographic. So when you think about Robin Hood, Robin Hood is not the, you know, is not the, you know, the old school type of brokerage firm. There are a lot of first-time investors that are using this type of app. It probably skews a little bit younger than the average investor. And that is absolutely the market for people who watch a lot of sports, folks who may, you know, have some disposable income but have not actively started investing yet. I think Robin Hood has said, you know what, I think we can actually get some people here and it seems to be working thus far. Well, folks, Tom Merritt is writing a book. Tom Merritt has written quite a few books in the past and you might have enjoyed those books. And if you want to be able to say that you helped make the latest book happen, you can get in on the pre-order action right now and be one of the first to get Tom's new book called, Sinked, Understand Technology and Make It Work for You. It's like a version of Tom that you can have on your shelf whenever you need to understand something about tech instead of, you know, knocking on his front door. Or explain it to somebody else because it's always good to be the person who can explain something to someone else in a measured way. And Tom Merritt is that guy. Go get your pre-order in now, tomsnewbook.com. Yesterday we mentioned in QuickHits that a bipartisan bill had been introduced to force ByteDance to sell TikTok, this is in the U.S., if it wants to remain in the country. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Appliance Act would give ByteDance a six-month window to sell TikTok or face a ban from U.S. app stores. TikTok and other similar apps would also need to provide users with a copy of their data in a format that can be imported for competing apps. Despite the name, TikTok referenced several times in the bill. The legislation would allow for banning other foreign adversary-controlled apps. So it's not TikTok specifically, but it's very much TikTok as, you know, the grandmaster here. If the president felt they were all a threat to national security, they would all be applied. So Digital Rights Group and the ACLU are not happy about this. They've all criticized efforts saying that they were unconstitutional and restrict free speech. TikTok itself said the legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform that they rely on to grow and create jobs. So Justin, can you help us break this down a little bit and tell us what the effects would be? Justin's not in the call. Just you two. Justin's not in the call. We'll hack him. Justin was going to tell us all about this. Should we give him a second to reconnect? Oh, he's rebooting his laptop. Okay. So yes, let's talk about this amongst ourselves because Rob, I know you weren't on the show yesterday, but we did mention this in Quick Kits and it was like, huh, this is interesting. Glad that Justin Robert Young is going to be on the show with us on Thursday's show, March 7th, to talk more about this because if anyone can explain this whole thing, he can. It sounds like it's sort of like we've been doing this dance for a while, right? The whole idea of like, hmm, you know, bite dance is a Chinese company, but TikTok is based in the U.S., but a lot of people don't feel like that's enough. And a lot of people feel like the data that TikTok is being collected, you know, because it has servers in Singapore rather than China and some in the U.S. as well based in Santa Monica, California. Still, we're suspicious, you know, we've been talking about that for a couple of years. This sounds like it's like a, we're for serious, serious this time. Yeah. So we have been talking about this for a while and it kind of cooled off, you know, for the better part of 2023, it kind of cooled off where no one was really saying anything. But as you said, Sarah, it looks like the government is for real, for real about this because TikTok has, they basically are looking at this like, okay, something a little bit different. So they've decided to actually go out and do a push notification to 170 million Americans and let them know, hey, contact your congressperson. Let them know that this is going on now. I don't know if that's actually going to work, but it is a bit of a different reaction than we've ever seen come out of ByteDance and TikTok on this. You know, the fact that they are actually, you know, you know, going directly to their own people or their own users and saying, hey, this app that you love may go away. You need to contact your congressperson and talk about it. So this has bipartisan support. We have not liked TikTok from a government standpoint for a myriad of reasons for a long time. And this one seems like it may have some weight behind it. Justin Rubber Young, are you back with us? Allegedly so, yes. Yes, we can hear you excellent. We know you had to drop off, you know, computer stuff happens to the best of us. We were just talking about this whole U.S. Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act going after ByteDance very specifically in TikTok. But, you know, broad enough to apply to other companies, but this is really a TikTok thing, right? Yes. Yes. Absolutely. It's a TikTok thing. And look, this, the song has kind of remained the same when it comes to TikTok for the last year and probably more than that. Number one, there's bipartisan support because people are mad about social media for different reasons. There's bipartisan anger toward China, but also there is a push on the left that there is a cost to social media. And then you get into all the issues of bias. When it comes to TikTok, they have not a lot of industry support, so let's go back to the DMA conversation. You've got Apple, you've got Google, you've got Amazon all fighting on the same side. When it comes to this, Google and Meta are saying, well, somebody needs to do something about this Chinese spyware. They do not want to stick up for TikTok. What I'm concerned about, or at least in terms of looking at the strategy of this, is I don't know how many more cards TikTok has to play when it comes to something like this. If they're trying to weaponize their audience, which they are right now, that's pretty much it. If they cannot move the needle with this, then, you know, aside from lobbyists, I don't know how many other cards they have to play. Okay, so let's say that TikTok gets banned in the US. Let's just say that's what happens. Unless you have a clever way to pretend that you're somewhere outside the US, which many people do, but let's just say it means that you can't use TikTok anymore. Does that change some sort of social media landscape? Because right now, TikTok is a major player, not the only one, certainly. I would say it most directly competes with the YouTube shorts or Instagram reels. But it's a pretty big deal. Do people just kind of go, all right, well, I guess it's illegal now. We'll just hang out somewhere else. Or what happens after that? Well, the question becomes exactly what does ByteDance think that its options are? Because the big push here as it was toward the end of the Trump administration is, will you sell? TikTok and ByteDance have obviously been tremendously resistant to that. They do not want to be forced to sell. And they have tried to make deals like they did in the Trump years with Oracle. They have continued to push Project Texas as a solution to allay fears that there are backdoors for the Chinese Communist Party to access this data. But that hasn't really quelled anything. And the government is in a bit of a pickle as evidenced by the White House. They pushed to ban TikTok from all official government phones, and yet the Biden-Harris reelect campaign have an official TikTok account. That is the quandary that we are in right now. It is obviously intensely popular, and specifically during an election year, there are people that very much want to make sure that this continues to be used as a mobilization attempt. But there is bipartisan support in Congress that wants it to be sold and is willing to ban it if it doesn't. I don't see a situation where TikTok just goes away. I think the worst-case scenario for ByteDance is that they end up being sold and they meet the requirements that the United States is saying, this is what it's going to take for you to exist inside of our borders. I do believe that they will ultimately – I don't cave as a strong word, but I think that they would go to that point, just because at one point they were the most trafficked website on the Internet. We're talking billions and billions of dollars that this company ultimately can make, and if a change in ownership is required to continue making money, that will happen. As far as users are concerned, users will be outraged. They will be upset, and then they'll find something else. Because one thing I do know about people on the Internet, we're adaptable and we're fickle. So ultimately, yeah, if it goes away, it goes away, but it's not like people are going to stop making videos and putting them in places where they can actually put them. And ByteDance needs to be careful and not think that people are going to start using VPNs so they can still get that app. That's not going to happen by large enough numbers to make any kind of difference for them. So as I said, I do see that if push comes to shove, they may end up selling this to someone else that actually meets the requirements that the United States is putting set forward. Also call me a cynic, but ByteDance sells TikTok. Let's think about that scenario. So TikTok is now owned by some other entity, and that's where the data is being collected and lives. In a world where companies sometimes have partnerships, ByteDance could still stand to benefit from this whole thing, and you're just kind of moving money around and keeping up appearances. Not saying that that's the solution, it just happened before. The money is not the issue here. And this is contended very, very fiercely by not only TikTok, but some security experts, that the issue is whether or not the Chinese Communist Party has a backdoor to the data. And whether or not TikTok, no matter how much they protest that this absolutely doesn't happen, indeed is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party. We are in loggerheads with that organization. And so that is the end all be all of this. TikTok has said repeatedly under oath that this is not an issue. There is no proof that can be produced that this actually does happen. However, the fears are not going away, nor do I think they ever will. Well, we will continue to be watching this story because, again, a lot of people listening to the show right now and everybody on this panel care very much about what ends up happening. So you know as much as we do at this point of recording, and yeah, we will stay on the story. But for now, let's check out the mail back. Got another one from David as far as EV's keeping charge in cold weather. David says, following discussion about EV batteries on show 4719, few things to note about those batteries or any kind of cell batteries. In fact, discharging and charging does generate some heat within the cells. So the battery heater might have to work all the time in cold weather once the battery is warm. Also, a car that has a battery heater will keep the battery warm when it's plugged into the charger. However, one of the biggest drains on the battery is heating that cabin during winter on very cold days. Now, Rob, we talked about this over the last couple of days quite a bit. We've gotten so much feedback, not only because a lot of our audience has an EV and has an opinion, or at least understands a little bit more about how heating up a battery is important and how certain models, particularly the newest models of EVs, not necessarily every single one, takes that into consideration so that people don't experience this huge drain on their charge. But you live in the coldest climate of all of us here, at least in the winter. What are your thoughts? So we got to see, there were some days back in the winter, towards the end of last year, where particularly, I'm thinking of Chicago, it got really, really, really cold. And there were EV owners who were getting stranded at charging spots to where the lines were so long. Which is kind of the EV nightmare, right? Do I park, turn my car off, and go inside a building so I'm not going to run out of battery before I can actually get to the charger? These are real things that you need to worry about. And I just remember a buddy of mine saying, gas burns hot. So I was like, that's not really helping folks who don't have gas in their car though. So yeah, this is, I wonder if maybe, what is it? Not lithium ion, but is it sodium ion batteries? I think they work a little better in extreme temperatures. So maybe we'll start to see more of that type of technology or maybe a hybrid of the two. I'm not certain, but cold weather is a thing in the Midwest, in the East Coast. Definitely in the mountains. When it's cold, cars don't work as well. Yeah. I can say when I was in Iowa, it wasn't just EVs. There were people I knew that in the negative 20 degree weather, which was extreme even for Iowa during January, that their cars just wouldn't start. They had gas cars. But when the battery isn't turning over, then just nothing's turning over. Oh man. Yeah. Negative 20. Oh, it was brutal. So Justin, Robert Young, we got to thank you for hanging out with us again another week. What are you doing? What do you have going on this week? Where do you want people to come check you out? Well, presuming my laptop starts charging again. I will have a full breakdown of the state of the union that people can find on politics, politics, politics. Meanwhile, on the show this week, we previewed Super Tuesday, which obviously has already come and gone. Nikki Haley is out of the race, so go ahead and find us. Politics, politics, politics. We're all podcasts are found. Well, Justin, thanks for being a good sport. We all love a good laptop dying, especially during a live show. Super fun. Good show. Yeah. Super Tuesday has got nothing on us, but you're a real pro. Also pros are patrons. Stick around for the extended show. If you're a patron, that's good day internet. You want to know that what's going on with the Apple foldable phone rumor because that is a rumor that's floating around. But I might not want to hold your breath. We'll tell you a little bit more about what we know at this point. You can also catch the show live Monday through Friday at 4pm Eastern 2100 UTC. Find out more at DailyTechNewShow.com for slash live. We'll be back tomorrow with Lynn Peralta and Patrick Norton.