 Coming up on DTNS Scott Johnson explains why Sony and Microsoft's acquisitions are more about metaverse than consoles. Central Bank digital currencies spread farther across the globe and a contender for the next big content app is also a shopping app. This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday two to twenty twenty two in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane in Salt Lake City in the frog pants studios. I'm Scott Johnson. And on the show's producer Roger Che. There's a longer version of this show called Good Day Internet where we talk about the buzzy TV shows today. You can get that at patreon.com slash DTNS. Speaking of patrons let's thank a few top patrons today they include Vince Power, John and Becky Johnston and Chris Benito. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. In its third quarter earnings report Sony said that it shipped 3.9 million PS5 consoles through the holiday quarter that's up 18 percent on the quarter through the end of twenty twenty one in total Sony shipped 17.3 million PlayStation five consoles three million fewer than at the same time from its release compared to the PlayStation four overall gaming revenue decreased 8 percent on the year to 813.3 billion yen which is about a hundred ten million US dollars. Its image sensor division saw revenue increase though 22 percent to 57.5 billion yen. Space X announced a new high performance tier for its satellite inner sir internet service called Starlink premium coming in Q2. This will use a high performance antenna that can perform better in extreme weather conditions and something pertinent right now offering download speeds between 150 and 500 megabits per second and upload speeds up to 40 megabits per second. The antenna hardware will cost you twenty five hundred smackaroos and service for that tier starts at five hundred dollars a month. Oh wow. I mean it's going to appeal to some people but boy is that not cheap. The company log me in which owns go to meeting and also last past announced that it will change its name to go to the company still plans to proceed with its spin off of last pass into an independent company. They should have called it go to log me in. Oh I see you did. Alphabet earned thirty dollars and sixty nine cents a share in Q4 and revenue up thirty thirty two percent on the year to seventy five point three three billion. Important part of all of that number salad is that beat analysts estimates all of it. Overall ad revenue was up thirty three percent on the year. YouTube ads brought in eight point six three billion missing analysts estimates so a little less than they expected. Cloud revenue a big one for Google grew forty five percent to five point five four billion with the units operating loss down twenty two percent on the year to eight hundred ninety million. So still not making them money but make losing them less than they used to its other revenue segments are revenue up twenty two percent other revenue being all the other non Google stuff. CEO Sundar Pichai said it had an all time sales record for Pixel phones in the quarter. Well if you're following the Apple car which isn't a thing yet but might be a thing in the future this might be interesting to you. The U. S. patent and trademark office granted Apple a patent for a car sunroof. The sunroof uses variable opacity glass to let a driver adjust transparency you know sunny or cloudy or whatever opens in sequence with the side windows rather than being a fixed panel on its own. Yeah intriguing always goes with our normal patent disclaimers of patents don't even usually end up in products but hey maybe this one will. All right let's talk a little more about pop ups Sarah those things that asking me about cookies they always make me hungry and frustrated. Yeah so in Europe these are most often part of the transparency and consent framework. Let's call it TCF provided to sites by the International Advertising Bureau or AIB Europe. Belgium's data protection agency find AIB Europe 250,000 euros saying that the transparency and consent framework tool violates GDPR both in the nature of consent and also the data that it collects. The key contention is that the framework itself shares your preferences with third parties for purposes of knowing how many people choose which options. In addition to the fine the regulator ordered any data collected under the process to be deleted and AIB Europe to issue a series of remedies to come into GDPR compliance and a statement the chair of the regulators disputes chamber said quote the processing of personal data like recording user preferences under the current version of the TCF is not in accordance with the GDPR because of an inherent violation of the principle of fairness and lawfulness. It asks people to give their consent when most of them don't know that their profiles are sold countless times a day to expose them to personalized ads. Now Johnny Ryan who's a senior fellow at the Irish Council for civil liberties says this is a pretty big deal for Europe but it could also have ripple effects elsewhere. For example Ryan says American lawmakers and regulators have often looked at the consent spam if you want to call it that happening in Europe and called it one of the worst consequences of GDPR. Ryan also says that this new decision exposes that spam is a violation of the law and not a fulfillment of the law. Maybe this is far from over though. It's it's pretty clear that AIB Europe is going to appeal the part about data collection. They haven't said they will for sure but they indicate that they will and that's kind of the more damning part of this decision. It's it's the idea that telling you we're going to record your cookie preferences and we might share that with third parties is far from telling you and that could be used as a fingerprint to serve you ads somewhere else when you agree to cookies elsewhere because then we'll know like based on your pattern who you are. It's not exactly personal info but I get what what Europe is saying that that looks like it's going to turn into into a fight. The framework part of it sounds great. We're like oh right when they try to trick you into accepting cookies by making a complicated. It'd be great if that changed but I'm guessing whatever AIB Europe comes up with and submits won't be that much simpler than what we have now. Yeah I can't imagine that they that there's ever a scenario where where cookies themselves are completely removed from the scenario in the same way that other obvious tracking methods are used or other obvious data collection methods are used. I just think it's too universal that genies out of the bottle in a way that even the Europeans who get much more strict on these sorts of issues. I just don't think they do it because there's a lot of arguments that can be made about how cookies are not just important to the internet but maybe required these days and if people want to do business and have an open commerce platform across the web that they can't get that picky there. I don't know it just seems like they can't and maybe that fight will be big enough that maybe they can and maybe all the right people involved can make it happen but I don't see it. Yeah I when I when I was kind of trying to make sense of the story this morning I I was really stuck on this whole like what is personal information versus what is not personal information. Sure somebody may not you know as as as an advertiser that wants to target me in the future they might not get enough information to do that accurately through cookie settings but once people kind of get wind of the idea that this information is being shared and floated around it scares people. Yeah well and the contention wasn't that they shouldn't be allowed to collect it the contention was they weren't making it clear what what's done with it later. Yeah that's a pretty easy fix it's just one that IAB Europe does not appear to want to make because they would rather you not quite know what you're getting into right just makes it easier to collect. And I think this is another example of honestly the right instinct is to say let's force those websites right we all are like yeah let's force those websites to tell us what they're doing with cookies but look what's happened when you write a law they just figure out a way around the law whereas a better way might have been to just promote plugins that block cookies and give you control over it rather than relying on the websites in IAB Europe to come up with this janky way that tries to get around the point of the law and will continue to be an issue I think. We tried to tell them about those plugins they didn't listen. You can still use a plug it so yeah that's true. Tuesday we mentioned multiple tech related policies announced by India and among them was a plan to issue a central bank digital currency or CBDC. The Reserve Bank of India plans to launch the digital rupee on April 1st. And side note yes India does know about April Fool's Day but that's when they scheduled it. It is happening. India plans to follow the launch with strict controls on cryptocurrency so look for that. But they did not give details on the technical aspects of the digital rupee so it's fair to expect this launch is going to be a pilot not an active currency right from the start. But I think I figured it was a good time to check in and see where CBDCs are. We've been following them on DTS for a long time now and so those of you who listen you're up on this. 87 countries are in some stage of development of a CBDC. Nine countries have launched one at this point. The Bahamas was the first. It launched the sand dollar in October 2020. The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank launched something called D-cash in March 2021 and that covers multiple countries. The ECCB as the bank is called operates for eight member countries, seven of which have adopted D-cash. That includes Antigua and Barbuda, St. Kits and Nevis, Montserrat, Dominica, San Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada. Of the ECCB countries only Anguilla has not fully launched the cryptocurrency yet. And the most recent launch was the Enera in Nigeria. That was in October of last year. So India, if it did launch on day one, would be the fourth bank to launch one. They probably won't launch. They'll probably go into a pilot like I said. But there are three banks covering nine countries that have launched one. You might say like, wait, I thought China did. China is the biggest currency that's in the pilot stage. Also in the pilot stage are Anguilla for the D-cash, Jamaica, Sweden, Lithuania, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, Ukraine, Hong Kong, separate from the digital Yuan, Malaysia, Singapore, and just at the end of January, South Korea finished phase one of its pilot and started phase two. So those are countries that have a digital currency out there that some people can use, but it's not fully launched yet. Of the rest of the world's biggest economies, Japan, Russia, Australia, Brazil and Canada are in the development stage. So they've got something under development, but it isn't even in the pilot stage yet. And the US, UK, and most of the EU, with the exception of the previously mentioned Lithuania, are in the research stage. That's where they're writing papers about it, but they haven't actually started developing one. So I have a question. The idea of a crypto, and it's not really a traditional cryptocurrency. I don't know if a lot of people know that or not. Yeah, it's just a digital currency. And it may be backed by some of the cool technology that cryptocurrency is benefiting from in terms of security, but it's not quite the same. They're not mining coins or any of that. So is the idea here that if you have a digital currency backed by a government that that automatically, not automatically, but maybe helps ensure that it's less volatile than say, you know, cryptocurrency, as it currently stands, Bitcoin is well, they're gonna be less volatile than that. Yeah, I would say I would assume so, right? Tom, like, is that the idea would be it's only as volatile as the currency it's based on. So a digital dollar in the US would be as volatile as the actual dollar, which is very volatile at all. Israel tied to fiat currencies. Exactly. Yeah, these are central bank digital currencies. Now, sometimes they're issued in a different way. Depending on how how they're operated, there's different developments. But but mostly they are backed one to one by the currency of that same central bank. And the other thing I didn't realize is the the main advantage here isn't blockchain. In fact, some of these in development, don't use a blockchain, they actually use a central database that you may go like, Well, how is that different than right now? And I just, you know, spend money with PayPal, and I never actually see the money. In those cases, every dollar, let's say for simplification, every dollar you spend has a dollar somewhere that represents it. With a digital currency, it wouldn't. And so with a digital currency, you need some extra technology to make sure that that's not replicable, that you can't alter that record that each digital coin is unique from the other, they may be fungible, you know, they may be replaceable for each other, but that it's that you you are safely keeping the number of coins in the system limited and you know how many they are and who has them. Blockchain is very good at that. That's why blockchain is used for this, because it's very efficient, and it's good at handling a unique digital thing. That's why NFTs are popular on blockchains. But some people, some countries are doing it with just a database that they they're trying to say, Well, we'll keep this database distributed, we'll have multiple copies of it, and we'll keep it extra secure. So I was surprised to learn that not all central bank digital currencies use a blockchain, although most of them do because their advantages to keeping that system. But the thing that's similar amongst all of them is none of them need an actual physical object backing them. Yeah, and you need the I guess the important thing here is if you're backed by blockchain tech, or if you're backed by whatever distributed database you're going to use, the point is you cannot make it easily manipulatable. Yeah, you can't replicate that money. The same reason that we keep redesigning our paper money. So it's harder and harder to do. Right. Same thing. So I'm personally ready for this. Let's go. I am too. I really feel like the the the situation where this would not go well, is if this became the only option, and then you have a bunch of people who don't have mobile phones or otherwise aren't able to participate in digital currency, not happening anytime soon. But you look at a country like India where, you know, the, the, the, you know, the, the, the spread of wealth is not it's, it's, it's, it's different, depending on who you are. And it's a real big country and a lot of, a lot of people there. So I, I know that people aren't going to be cut off from cash, the rupee in this, in this case anytime soon. But it is interesting to like, where do we get, how do we get to the point where this is just what money is? And we all remembered, you know, putting things in our wallets. Yeah. And there's lots of ways to do this. If you're thinking about like, well, not everybody has a smartphone. Well, a whole lot more people have smartphones than you, than you might think. There are also ways to use digital cards to handle currency this way. And one of the big advantages to a central bank digital currency is it makes it easier for someone to just have digital currency without having to open a bank account, because opening a bank account requires a whole lot more things like an address and a financial history and stuff like that. You, you can create digital wallets much easier that are secure without having to need to bring in the whole bank infrastructure into it. Hey, folks, what do you want to hear us talk about on the show? One way to let us know is our subreddit. We look at our subreddit every day and see like, well, what are you all interested in? We're going to take that into account, submit stories and vote on them at DailyTechNewsShow.Reddit.com. Game company acquisitions have really out of year in 2022. They're not closed yet, but Microsoft has a deal to acquire Activision Blizzard. Sony has a deal to acquire Bungie. Epic already owns Fortnite. And those three facts led the verges, Tom Moore, and to conclude that we're heading for a platform war, not of consoles, not of hardware, but of virtual worlds. Microsoft, if this goes well, will have Minecraft and Warcraft. Sony might have Destiny. And of course, Epic has Fortnite. Sony backed that up a little on an investor call saying that it plans to launch more than 10 new live service games by March 2026. They're buying Bungie for its expertise and technologies in order to do that. Scott follows this space closely, of course. And now that we've had a few days to digest and hear these comments from Sony, Scott, where do you think all of this is going? Well, it's interesting. When the news dropped about the Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard King, my first impression was, oh, okay, well, they're just doing the let's get everything under one umbrella so we can control as much of the space as possible. We've already got a good install base for our subscription service. And I kind of saw that as the place. And when I would see headlines that would say Microsoft bets big on the metaverse by purchasing ABK, I was taken aback by that and kind of annoyed by it because I thought, well, that's not what they're doing here at all. This has nothing to do with quote unquote the metaverse, no matter how you're defining it. And that's the other problems. No one really knows how to quite define it yet. But I've given that some more thought. And in the wake of the news that Sony is interested in buying Bungie, I'm more convinced than ever that while Microsoft might have taken a scattershot approach to this. And I don't just mean this buyout, but like their Bethesda buy all these separate individual publishers and people that they Bob Mojang is a good example. All those guys, they did that in a way to yes, capture as much with one big net as possible. So you've got all of this meat back here. But ultimately, that does push them forward in being a leader in a potential quote unquote metaverse, whatever that ends up being defined as or what, you know, what we end up getting. And the Sony acquisition, some of the same things were said in different headlines and articles. And I was a little more, okay, interesting. Let's see where this goes, because I actually think the overpaid for Bungie. If you're just going to look at what Bungie is today. Today, Bungie is the studio that made all the Halo games, but they don't own those. Not even the old ones. Microsoft owns all that stuff. So what do they have? They have Destiny one and two. When Destiny one is essentially dead, Destiny two is their active running game. It's a very popular game across all platforms and was like sixth most played game on Sony service, I believe last reported. So, you know, a big revenue generator. But really, if you look at it just as what did they get today, they get a big name with a lot of cred. Everyone loves Bungie and they know how to make great shooters, but they really get one game and then whatever little secret thing that might be working on next, which is called matter. By the way, we don't know exactly what that game is, but there's a lot of talk about that. Anyway, then I started to think, well, OK, well, what if this is a more forward thinking purchase? If you're going to make worlds that are first person, potentially VR, potentially not potentially both like a combination of how I get into this world doesn't really matter what interface I'm using, I'm just getting into it. Who better that to have than somebody who knows how to construct and flesh out these 3D worlds in ways that is really kind of top shelf. And that's Bungie for sure. So now that that high dollar amount doesn't seem as high to me. I think maybe that's what they're investing in. And if they really are going to have 10 live services a game or live games as a service style games slash experiences ready by that date. That tells me that this is a huge cornerstone to that effort and they were willing to pay, you know, top dollar for that kind of talent and the kind of management, the kind of the kind of people they have over there. So if this rumored IP matter got Sony's attention and they probably got it from a few ways. I mean, the only way we know about it is an art direction job posting, which said, are you are see are you on a mission to create games that bond players together into deeply into invested communities? Would you like to work on something comedic with lighthearted and whimsical characters? That'd be a departure for them. But anyway, whatever that all of that means tells us they've got something that's big that social that is potentially aimed to be an answer to things like Fortnite and other, you know, other sort of quote unquote metaverse experiences. I spent the last two weeks in and out of speaking of meta, the actual company metas slash Oculus's world world that they're building called Horizon Worlds. And it's in beta. It's available in Canada in the U.S. I think it's still sort of dependent on who you are if you get access. But I've been in there for a couple of weeks, talking to various people, including some game developers and some folks at meta. And that'll all come out later with some other stuff. But the big takeaway while spending my time in there was that everybody meta included and maybe foremost are really hungry to be the space, not to be the game or not to be the collection of games or whatever, but to be the place where everything happens. And that means games within games, worlds within worlds, connected worlds to other connected worlds within those worlds, literally the metaverse. And it was clear to me how I mean, they really want it. And they're in a good position to, you know, they're in a bit of a lead right now on the VR side. I think they all are thinking this. I think Microsoft wants that real bad. I think Sony wants it really bad. And after talking to a few of these people, including ex Naughty Dog founder Jason Rubin over the week, it's very clear that this is the holy grail and next step for not just tech, but for the gaming business in general. And, you know, they've got a lot of they've got a huge bunch of huge plans. He's head of play at Oculus, by the way, that's his title. And this is a guy who founded one of the most successful devs of all time. He doesn't even need to be there, but he has enough passion for it. And I could tell in his voice how stoked he is about the idea of this being the place. Now, whether it's their place or somebody else's place, they also said we'd love to see more interoperability between these spaces and places. But this Sony acquisition to bring it back home, of course, all about that. All companies could be like, oh, we hope we hope to have that. We're not going to help you do that. Yeah. I mean, maybe, maybe not. Wouldn't that be nice? I think they need to personally if this is all going to work, but or at least work in the way that the hot the pie in the sky is being described to everybody. Oh, it will. Someone will do it and the companies that resist it will lose out. I agree. If you're not interoperating, you're losing. You're going to lose this because it's just the internet. Yeah. And hearing you hearing you talk, Scott, I really do think that the way this might evolve is people go to games and start hanging out doing other things. I mean, we've seen that in things like League of Legends and World of Warcraft, etc. Where people just they go for the game, but they stick around and hang out and chat and do other things. You start adding that intentionally as part of a metaverse play, whether you're Microsoft, Sony, Epic or somebody else. They come for the game. They come for the open world, but they start sticking around for other things. And it's when where those other things start to merge with other companies things that it becomes the metaverse will see will see if and when that happens here. But I don't feel like Facebook, aka meta has an advantage on the software side. You have an advantage on the hardware side. Right. If they're going to if they're going to be a player in this, they just need to be the way people access it. Not. I don't think anyone's going to come there. We have never seen people go to Facebook to play games. We've never seen people go to Oculus to play Oculus's games. They go to play games in general. So yeah, I think it's the people with the content, the Microsofts, the Sony's who have the early lead on this. Yeah. And the way I look at it, I don't know if this is if my quote is going to last the test of time, but they all talk metaverse, but they really mean our metaverse when they say it goes back to service point. Yeah. So that interoperability is still a little bit of a far away thing. I think we'll get there. But back to Sony for one quick point, they had a thing for PlayStation three that took on some popularity called PlayStation home and they ended it kind of unceremoniously and not that far into its lifespan. But a lot of what they're talking about wanting to do are a lot of what all of these companies are talking about doing. A lot of those ideas were happening in PlayStation home and it was a lot like for, you know, second life and second life is maybe in some ways the grandfather here. But but there's no doubt in my mind that if Sony has a plan moving forward, it isn't just to match game pass. It isn't just to match some install days or or who owns what developers and how many games are they making? I believe now more than ever this acquisition and others like it are all intended to say, we want to be the next place that people come and hang out regardless of what games are here. That's the platform now. It isn't that box anymore. It's whatever this is and and they all want it. I might watch for Sony Microsoft Epic to partner with a decentral and to partner with one of those more second life, maybe even second life itself, like companies as like, you know, this is our this is our backyard. You may come to play destiny, but you'll head over to the decentral and to hang out and we've partnered and interoperated. Maybe that's where we see the beginning of interoperations because you're basically the big guys right with with these newer companies. You're basically saying the internet, but this and I agree 100% the internet was never going to stay in AOL's backyard. It was never going to stay there, but they wanted it to, but it didn't and they may as well get used to that idea right now or else this is all the lost cause it needs to be there needs to be at least that common public square and we can all run off and do cool stuff, but let's interoperate in that way. And now now you're talking and also that's when core gamers start to listen. All right, real quick. Just just something to keep an eye on live stream stream live stream shopping huge in China, big parts of Asia growing fast in the US. A possible rising star to keep a look out for is whatnot. It's a formerly LA but now Phoenix area startup valued at $1.5 billion is expected to expand its workforce from 120 to 300 people by the end of this year. And to that end whatnot just acquired pastel labs in order to acquire the services of former Pinterest growth advisor Jeff Chang, he'll focus on expanding the creator slash selling side of the business. What not also just hired away lifts head of growth and engineering Ludo Antonov who will become what not's head of engineering. So what is it? What not is a combination of YouTube and eBay for lack of a better comparison or for older folks think of it as QVC meets Twitch creators develop an online live streaming persona that folks enjoy following and then sell them stuff. What not started as a funkel pop enthusiast marketplace but has expanded to people selling all kinds of collectibles, sports and game cards, toys, comics, vintage games, sneakers, vintage fashions, LP, final records, stuff like that. I mean, the idea of this is not unlike when I walk into a physical store and go, I really like the vibe of the store. I'm probably going to get something today. It's the same thing. Sure, it's digital virtual rather, but well, and digital probably for however you're paying for whatever. But yeah, this is the this seems to me like just the the gradual progression of how we all sort of like something how it's presented. How are you selling this to me? And and a lot of folks online have have reaped the rewards. Yeah, you see this stuff like on TikTok all the time, somebody's entire account is dedicated to I just got these in and I'm wearing them now and I love them. And then you have this option to say, well, I'm going to go find those two and buy them. This integrates those two aspects of that and says, oh, you're wearing them right now and I'm buying it right now. You know, like you really close the gap. And if you like the creator, you don't mind being sold to. Right? That's that's the key. You're there. You want to be there. Patreon comfy merch hoodie and drinking out of a Patreon. It's true, a lot of people would be like, what? I'm going to sit there and watch somebody sell something to me. What about all the people who watch KVC? You know, Home Shopping Network? I mean, let's let's let's get real here. You don't have to. But if you want to and you like the folks that you're interacting with, I'm using quotes, then this it makes perfect sense. Yeah, one of the next big apps following on from TikTok might come out of this space. Keep an eye on it. Well, we wanted to thank a very special patron today, who has been with us for some time, and that special patron is Lynel Lane, who happens to be my mother. Lynel Lane is one of our top lifetime supporters for DTNS. Thank you for all the years of support, mom. Thank you, Sarah's mom. Yay. I just I mean, we love all of our patrons, but this particular patron is my favorite. It was her turn on the list. We didn't have special treatment. Yeah, there's no yeah, we're not cooking the books here, guys. This is just she's just a supporter, mom. Also, I didn't know that you had supported in that fashion. Thank you so much. Wow. Also, thanks to Scott Johnson for being with us today, Scott. What have you been up to? Oh, man, part of what's been keeping me so busy has been all this VR stuff, but also in a weird way, the opposite. I've been talking about retro games for the last five weeks and doing it on a brand new show called Play Retro. And I am having such a great time. I'm so obsessed with things. I started buying different controllers and reviewing them for how you're going to play your old games, playing those old games and VR, what it's like to grow up in an arcade family. And my dad ran arcades. If any of that sounds interesting to you and you want to get your nostalgia on, check out Play Retro or every get your podcast or you can check us out on the site over at frogpants.com slash play retro. Excellent. Well, just a reminder to everybody, if you want to join us live, if you can, we are live Monday through Friday at 4 30 p.m. Eastern. That's 21 30 UTC. Find out more at daily technewshow.com slash live and we're going to be back tomorrow doing it all again. Just over young. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. I'm in the club. Hope you have enjoyed this program.