 Coming up on DTNS, Microsoft finally announces its surface buds. Shopify has a great quarter and Facebook names the first 20 people to its Supreme Court of Content Removal. This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, May 6th, 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane from Salt Lake City. I'm Scott Johnson and Roger Chang. The show's producer. We were having a rollicking debate about hot sauce on Good Day Internet today. If you want to get that wider show and all the extra conversations that come with it, become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Facebook's Libre Association has named Stuart Levy as its first CEO. Levy comes from HSBC, where he served as chief legal officer. In April, Libre's governing body said that Libre would be linked to individual national currencies and overseen by global watchdogs. Libre now plans to launch as early as mid-November of this year. Google announced Wednesday. That's today. It's delaying its Android 11 release, beta one and all subsequent milestones by about a month, with a final release still due in quarter three. Beta one release moves to June 3rd, beta two moves to July and beta three moves to August. Uber says it will lay off 3700 employees and a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, CEO Derek Hosershahi will also forgo his base salary for the rest of the year. His salary was a million dollars in 2019. Ring is launching a new version of its entry level video doorbell. It now includes 1080p video, improved night vision and motion zones for $99.99 shipping on June 3rd. It replicates most of the functions of the more expensive and now discontinued video doorbell to ring now also offers a new solar charger frame for $49 and that's coming in July. Protocols sources are saying that nine to five Google sources said in March that Google will launch an Android TV powered streaming dongle. Protocol says it will be under the Google Nest brand and have an interface focused on individual shows rather than apps. Meanwhile, nine to five Google sources say Android TV will be rebranded Google TV. The NFC forum unveiled the wireless charging specification or WLC to allow devices like chargers and smartphones to transfer power to compatible devices at up to one watt. So that's good for things like smart watches, wireless earbuds, etc. NFC forum chairman Koichi Tagawa explained that NFC wireless charging is truly transformative because it changes the way we design and interact with small battery powered devices and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Apple, Sony and Google are NFC forum sponsors. Samsung is a principal member and Huawei is an associate member. Tevo, remember them? They launched its Tevo Stream 4K, the HDMI dongle with sling TV built in. It was announced at CES TV, TV streamed 4K also supports Dolby Vision HDR, Dolby Atmos and Chromecast. It runs Android TV and has Google Play Store apps. I guess that'll be Google TV eventually and Google Assistant. It also features a streaming service called Tevo Plus. The Tevo Stream 4K is available now for $49.99. Lots of things got launched. In fact, right before we started recording, Sonos announced a player called The Arc for $799. It replaces the Playbar and can play PCM stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby Atmos audio. DTS and multi-channel PCM audio not supported, though. The Arc will be available in either black or white. All right, let's talk a little bit more about another story that came close to showtime. The Verge sources say Spotify is testing video podcasts in its app. The Global Test lets creators upload their recorded video footage to the app and will show up for 50% of the show's Spotify podcast listeners. So this is a test. Doesn't mean they're committed to this. The first podcast to test it is YouTube's Zane Hijazi and Heath Hussar, hosts of Zane and Heath Unfiltered. So I guess the idea here is that you'll get your podcast, in this case, Zane and Heath Unfiltered, the way you normally would. But some people will see video that will still play audio when it's in your pocket. It'll pause when there's an audio ad. So this isn't a video podcast so much as it is video, a video version of the audio podcast. I don't know. It's an interesting way of going about it because it's not a separate feed is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, it's weird, I think, because the way I look at this thing is I'm old enough to remember when like Apple and a few others experimented with video podcasts and they were just destroyed by the concept of YouTube content creation. So I don't know why they think this is going to be a thing again. I really I think this will be a test and that's it. If I'm to make bets, I would put my money on this is a fun little test. But why would anyone be going here for their video? I mean, it's a thing the way that if you listen to your favorite morning radio show, there might be some video feed where you you tune in and go, oh, that's what they look like. The ringer, for example, which Spotify bots. That would be that would be a, you know, a good example of audio podcast, pretty popular, some of them anyway, that you might, you know, think are nice to have as video, even though you don't necessarily as a producer need to do a lot to make the video podcast a thing. You know, I mean, we're basically doing that here in a way. My morning show is that every day we stream it every day. We, you know, people get to see us interact with us and whatever I just think those formats and those platforms already exist. Maybe people want to do it over there at Spotify. I don't know. I don't know. Going to be a hard thing to, I want to see how this all turns out. Microsoft announced its new line of surface devices. The surface book three comes with a 10th gen quad core Intel CPUs and NVIDIA GeForce GTX GPUs and up to 32 gigabytes of RAM. The three 13.5 inch model starts at sixteen hundred dollars and the 15 inch model starts at twenty three hundred dollars. Both are available on May 21st. The surface go to has a 10.5 inch display starting at three hundred ninety nine dollars. That's coming on May 12th and the surface headphones to promise better sound and 20 hour battery life for two hundred forty nine dollars. Wireless surface buds will sell for one hundred ninety nine dollars. Both headphones available on May 12th as well. Few other accessories include a surface dock with USB C ports on May 26th for two hundred fifty nine dollars ninety nine cents and a USB C travel hub with Ethernet HDMI and VGA port later this month for ninety nine ninety nine. Yeah, nothing like super shocking here. I guess the big news is that surface buds are finally real. They announced those back in October and everybody's been wondering if they were still going to come out with them. Yes, they are. They're going to come out May 12th for one hundred ninety nine dollars. So a little cheaper than a lot of people expected to. And these other surface upgrades are nice spec upgrades. If you were about to buy a surface device, if you're one of the people who really likes these and there's a bunch of you who are it's it's a it's a nice time to jump in because you get some upgraded CPUs and some better specs and higher amounts of RAM, etc. Not not any big design changes here either the surface dock. It's a nice upgrade to USB C from DisplayPort. So overall, you know, this is not a shocking announcement but but a decent across the line upgrade. Slightly annoyed that this was in the same announcement that they might talk about the Surface Studio and you were quick to point out this morning when I brought that up that probably a different event or a different announcement. Seems like they did mostly tablet laptopy stuff here. So yeah, and that makes sense. This is more of a more of a mobile portable sort of announcement set or a bunch of upgrades. I'm still hopeful about that though. So other, you know, people working in professional art capacities. If you were hoping that maybe a studio three was on its way with better specs because the one and two were pretty disappointing. They'll have to wait a little while for that. But the rest of these look all right. Incremental nice upgrades should be fine. Alphabet, you know, Alphabet. Well, they have Lune. They sign an agreement to integrate with AT&T's worldwide roaming system to provide international data service. One of Lune's main businesses is to provide emergency data service and says one of its most time consuming tasks is emergency response and setting up carrier agreements. The agreement will give it access to more than 200 of AT&T's global partners. Lune must also work directly with local carriers and regulatory agencies. Lune's first commercial saloon. Excuse me balloon. That's the same other commercial delivered internet. It's coming to a saloon near you. Although saloon delivered internet service is an interesting idea. Let's put a bar with Wi-Fi. That's coming to Kenya soon. So that'll be. Yeah, yeah. No, the point there being that we talked about the commercial service and some of the delays in Kenya that they've been running into. But but another big part of Lune is that they can be a disaster recovery help. And they did that in Puerto Rico with the hurricane. They've done that in other parts of the world. I think earthquake and Peru is another example. So having the carriers already lined up is a huge benefit. It Lune says that one of the biggest problems they have is is getting those approvals and getting the data service lined up AT&T worked with them on that in Puerto Rico. So having AT&T's roaming is a step forward. It doesn't mean they still won't have to coordinate with carriers on the ground. And of course, regulatory agencies, like you said, Scott, but but this helps them do the emergency response a little faster. Yeah, as a as a as a solution to emergencies, I think this stuff is super cool. But I wish that Lune and maybe they will still but maybe maybe eventually these these are our big, I don't know, interconnected ways of getting to the internet no matter where you are and no matter what you are and not just on our cell phones. I love the idea of balloon based internet. And I don't even know why it's probably not even that great. It's probably okay. Like it's like that's why they're going for emergency service and underserved areas that are hard to roll out infrastructure to because there are some problems with it. It's you know, the balloons don't stay in one place and it's a little bit it's a little bit of a trick for Lune to figure out how to make this work. So so they they're doing it in places where maybe some some fault tolerance. If they haven't quite perfected it is okay because it's better than nothing, right? Even and and whereas competing with like a very well-covered 4G LTE layout, people would be like, Oh, that Lune service. It drops out on me sometimes, you know, I don't know why it appeals to me, but there's something about dirigible. There's just something sci-fi related, right? Cause you don't imagine little weather balloons that you can't see. You imagine huge dirigibles bringing your internet service. I think that's what it is. I mean, the only thing that I guess somebody would be like, Oh man, this isn't a cool story is if you don't like the idea of Lune partnering with AT&T, you know, if for some reason that company you're like, Yeah, you know, I wish it was a different company or you know, something that was, you know, less corporate. But otherwise, yeah, I mean, it's step forward. Like you said, Hopefully this means since Lune is partnering with AT&T and Lune also has commercial service launching in Kenya that Kenya will get HBO Max. It's the only logical conclusion, right? 320p. They're looking forward to it. So am I Shopify reported its Q on gross merchandising volume, the GMV. That's the value of everything sold on Shopify. One of the biggest numbers for a platform like that rose 46% year over year. Shopify says that growth continued to accelerate in April too, which is the first month of Q2, but the company is being careful to say we're uncertain how sustainable that trend is given the uncertain economic environment. That's that's a refrain you're hearing in a lot of these earnings reports, no matter what. Shopify noted that in-store sales were down 71% through its platform, but that was balanced out by a 94% rise in online sales. Merchants are downgrading to cheaper Spotify plans. So that reduces some of the ongoing fees, but Shopify is also taking on new customers and not just small customers. They're taking on big customers like Heinz and Lint, the folks who make the candy bars. So this is fascinating to me because we, it's a bright spot on a rather bleak outlook of retail to say like, Hey, if I was a gift shop say, and I had to shut down my business because of the lockdown, I could keep selling things through Shopify. This could have been a savior for me. And in fact, they talked in their earnings report about tier eight calls from some of their customers, including a farmer who was like, I can't go sell my stuff anymore in person. But Shopify saved me because it allowed me to distribute in a way that I couldn't anymore because I was having a hard time getting my product to customers and there's a whole separate issue with farm and everything. But I think this is fascinating how we probably would be in even worse shape if it weren't for some of the technology that we had. And this is an example of that. Yeah, already have a service that's that's up and ready to service smaller clients to larger clients has an offline and online component to it. Like they were really well positioned, but you have to appreciate their not caution, but their and what is caution to caution, caution at looking at what the future may be because who knows, like all over this initial buying that a lot of people are seeing right up front. We're about to get to another one here and our next story is about, Hey, I need things. I need them now and thank goodness we're online because we can get the things we need further down the road. If job losses continue, if job if people aren't able to make ends meet, they're not going to be able to buy even online. So what do these guys say in six months or a couple of quarters like who knows, but it's good to see that they're, you know, they're they're doing well at this very moment. That's good. Also, you know, even though these platforms exist, I've got an example. A friend of mine opened a retail store in Washington, D.C. selling, you know, coffee and sneakers and clothing and books and, you know, very much a in-person experience. Well, it was really bad timing. You know, that was only a couple of months ago, stores closed. They didn't have an online presence. They have since moved to Shopify, but then that requires a bunch of like marketing because it wasn't in place otherwise intentionally. And now that's the only option that they have might be, you know, a unique case, but, you know, it's it's it's just weird times. All right, Scott, as you mentioned, Activision Blizzard's quarterly sales rose 21% year over year and earned 65 cents a share beating analyst expectations. Call of Duty Modern Warfare has sold more copies than any other Call of Duty tile at this point after its release. Similarly, EA reporting an earnings rise of 12% for the quarter over last year. Interesting. So I'd love to see actually what the what parts of EA did well because they really are sparse in terms of new products, new games, new developments. I think this is probably on the backs of things like Apex Legends and some of their other long running games that are being pretty well received, but they took it on the chin with some other stuff. So I'm not sure where that's coming from, but in Activision Blizzard's case, this makes sense to me from a short term perspective. A lot of people sort of trapped at homes, especially the target market for games like Call of Duty and turns out that game is actually really good from most standards in the Call of Duty franchise and shooters in general. They also, and it doesn't really mention it here, but they also released a huge update to the game called Warzone, which is a gigantic competitor to things like Fortnite and other leaders in the business who are all having Battle Royale money. That's their attempt to get into the Battle Royale business and they've done a really good job of it. A lot of people have defected or moved over there or are playing there. A lot of major streamers are playing that game. So I'm not surprised to hear it, but it is interesting that every time I hear about Activision Blizzard doing okay in otherwise down times, it's always on the backs of one of the products. Like if it's not Call of Duty, this would have been a few years ago, you would have said, well, World of Warcraft is keeping it all afloat. Right now, it's this game is keeping it all afloat. And I'm not sure that's good for them in the long run. It's been a complaint for a long time, actually. They don't have enough in the fire at any given time to be able to maintain faster growth or better growth. And so while this is good and it's really good for Call of Duty and actually for fans too, because like I said, the game is awesome and it's better than it's ever been. I'm not sure this is hugely sustainable in an environment where Blizzard in particular is very slow about new releases and Activision has had very few new announcements and they don't have a lot in the cooker either. There's rumor of a Tony Hawk game getting announced soon. But without E3 and some of the other mechanisms to sort of get word out there, I worry that this is more short term than long, but it is good to hear that modern warfare is shouldering the brunt right now. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's a lot of 21% sales. That can't all be Call of Duty. So obviously there's more going on than just that. But look at Riot, Riot just existed on legal legends for the most part until Valorant came out this summer. So for 10 years, yeah, they were a one game go for 10 go far. Yeah. For 10 years, they did that. And now suddenly this year, they have a card game that competes with Tharstam. They have Valorant, a shooter that competes with Overwatch and CS go and those sorts of games. And they've got other stuff in the pipe and RPG and some other things like they're going nuts and exploding out, but they kind of need to too. That's a long tail that, that League of Legends tail. So I think Riot is very smart to do that. They need more sticks in the fire. So does Blizzard supposedly that's all happening. But, you know, we'll see. This is a weird year. And I don't know what this looks like in six months. All right, folks, to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes might be valuable to you if you're real busy these days. So go subscribe to dailytechheadlines.com. Facebook announced the first 20 people that will make up the Facebook oversight board. This board is intended as an independent entity to take up content moderation disputes that have exhausted appeals on Facebook and Instagram. So if you are upset about a piece of your content being removed, you've appealed it at Facebook, Facebook has ruled against you. You will be able to take it to this independent entity that is not ruled by Facebook. Facebook did select four co-chairs who then worked with Facebook to select the next 16 members and the board itself will then work to appoint the next 20 members to bring the board to about 40 people. The board is going to start work now with the 20 folks it has and begin hearing cases this summer with the idea of being fully up and running by autumn. Facebook has endowed it with 130 million dollars to an independent legal trust. So they can't take that 130 million away. That 130 million is expected to last about six years. So the trust is good for six years to operate without any influence from Facebook and can accept funding from other sources as well. There aren't any other sources lined up, but let's say Facebook wanted to not add any more to that 130 million conceivably. This trust could go find the money elsewhere. It was built with the idea that other tech companies might want to use it as well. So that's kind of part of the idea. Here's how it works. Like I said, if a user has exhausted appeals at Facebook and Instagram, they can appeal to this oversight board. Facebook can also decide to refer cases maybe before the appeals are exhausted to say, you know what? This is just a really interesting issue. We want the oversight board to rule on it. Now at the beginning, it's only going to deal with cases of your content being removed, but they do say that over the first few months, they'll start to consider cases where a user is saying content should be removed and Facebook hasn't removed it. So that will be included as they go along. The board itself will decide which cases to take. This is similar to the U.S. Supreme Court and other high courts where they don't take every case on appeal because there's only so much time. So they'll try to take cases they think are representative or interesting or new. But the board decides that not Facebook cases will be heard by smaller panels from within the membership of the board. So they'll be rotating members. It won't always be the same members and the panel will then refer their decision to the full board of people. And if the full board majority disagrees, then a new panel with new members is created to rehear the case. If the majority of the board agrees with what the panel decided, then that decision stands. The board's decisions will be public and Facebook has made a part of their bylaws that they will be bound by these decisions even if they don't like them. The board can also make policy recommendations to Facebook though Facebook is not bound to follow the policy recommendations. So again, this board is supposed to look at Facebook's rules and say, okay, this is what you should have done and Facebook is bound to follow their decision. They can say, well, your rules say you should do this, but we think your rules should be different. Facebook isn't required to change its rules. How about accountability? So how do we ensure that this board is doing the right thing? Well, first of all, it will issue reports on a yearly basis. So in addition to the public decisions, you'll get a report that says how many cases they did, how many decisions they did. This is just to make sure that it's working, that they're actually doing the job. Then there's the fact that Facebook cannot end the board. They have locked themselves into this to say as long as this board exists, we can't end it and we have to follow what it says and the board members themselves serve three year terms with a maximum of three terms. So no board member will be on this for more than nine years. That's really the only accountability that the board members have is that, well, I'll be gone like somebody else will replace me and the board selects its own replacement. So one of the questions I have is what if we don't like, like not Facebook, but what if we the people don't like the decisions this board is making? Who can tell the board to stop making decisions that way? There is no external pressure other than the funding and the funding can only come from tech companies. So there is a little bit of big companies are the ones who will push the influence on this board. The board itself will self perpetuate. So if there are any biases within the board, they can make sure that those continue, which might not be such a good thing. So there's not a perfect system, but it has been engineered to try to be independent of pressure directly from Facebook. And I think they did a good job of that. Well, yeah. And I mean, in a perfect world, it doesn't even go to the oversight board, right? There's some sort of discrepancy. Somebody complains about something. It's fixed. Doesn't even get that far. At until now before pre oversight board, this is something that it either sort of gets lost in the fray of Facebook or there maybe isn't, you know, you've got differing opinions of what needs to happen. You've got unhappy users. And so this is to me, it sounds like Facebook's like, okay, let's just create this entity that is our Supreme Court of sorts. And you know, if it gets all the way up there, then we're off the hook. Even if you don't like what they say, we still, you know, they're not going to be able to create all these laws that make Facebook work differently, but it's case by case basis. And so the pressure is off of us. I'm also all for this is just a structure in most companies. If you get big enough in your founder or your chief visionary in this case, you would maybe call that Zuckerberg is still the end all be all for all major decisions. That just seems dangerous because of how big you are. And by dangerous, I just mean he's one guy and he's one guy with a lot of knowledge and a lot of neat ideas and a lot of whatever about a third of the world's population is at his whim about what they get to say on this platform, right? Exactly. It's a huge, huge, not just responsibility, but a gigantically impactful position. And so this makes perfect sense. I wish we'd see this across more large tech companies where as an example, if you know people, if there's a problem with something Tim Cook decided to do, why not have a chain of command like that? Why not? I mean, people are used to having boards as it is. These companies already have boards for different reasons. This just seems like a more, I don't know, purposeful board of directors that can say, look, this needs to be changed or look, we should do this or we're going to recommend these policies. I'm a little bug that they, you know, Facebook can just say all out no to a policy suggestion, even if it's a good one. But I also, I don't know how you do that. And also Tom's point about who watches the watchers, watchmen here in this case. I don't know. Like eventually you do run out of oversight. And so hopefully these guys do enough to make it. So you don't have to have further oversight. That's the idea, right? They don't want governments saying and doing more to try to control this and try to regulate this. They're trying to do it internally. So yeah. And these board decisions have to follow local laws. They can't tell Facebook to do something about a post that violates the local law in Turkey or the United States or anywhere else. Also, I think it's important to note that the board is made up of people who've lived in 27 countries speak 29 languages. Five of them are from the United States. So 25%. But that's also reflective of the majority of Facebook's users being in the United States. Four are from Europe. Three are from Asia Pacific or Australia. Two are from Latin America. Two from sub-Saharan Africa. Two from the Middle East and two from Central South Asia. So they tried to make it global, although it is U.S. heavy. The co-chairs are the former U.S. Federal Circuit Judge and religious freedom expert Michael McConnell. He was a Bush appointee. Constitutional law expert Jamal Green from Columbia University, a Colombian attorney, Catalina Botero Marino and former Danish Prime Minister, Hela Thorning-Schmidt. So these are well-respected, thinking independent people from various corners of the world, various corners of opinions. And the board members reflect that too. You've got a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate from Yemeni on here. You have a Pakistani digital rights activist on here. So it's an interesting collection of people. I think the last thing I want to say before we move off of this is it's really interesting to see Facebook create a government. This is a world government. Now it has to respect world laws in whatever region it's talking about, but it is a global court, you know, in a way that is privatized, that is created independently. I don't know. I want to take this concept projected a hundred years and have Corey Doctor write a sci-fi book about it. I'd read that. That sounds great. I also noticed that oversight board on Twitter. It belongs to Facebook's oversight board. So they've obviously been thinking about us for a bit. Hey everybody, you can join in the conversation in our Discord talk right now if you want. You can join by linking to a Patreon account at patreon.com slash DTNS. I love getting email. What'd we get today? Oh, I'm so glad because we got an email from Mark. Mark says, I've been working on a half-hour podcast called company man where I share stories. They're not related to the coronavirus necessarily, but they've made me smile and offer and I offer my thoughts on coping with loneliness or anxiety during these times from somebody who understands the struggle firsthand. It's not a self-help podcast. I'm not a psychologist. The idea is just for the listener to know that for a half hour every weekday, there's a warm empathetic and friendly voice to keep them company or keep them distracted. You can find the show at companyman.fm and all of your podcast places. Ah, that's lovely. Mark, thank you. We're trying to share the love here and help each other, help all of us help each other out. Help us help us. Yeah, companyman.fm. Go check it out. Yeah, very cool, Mark. Thanks for letting us know. Also shout out to patrons at our master and grandmaster levels, including Tony Glass, Kevin S. Morgan and Dan Dorado Hankins. Also, thanks to the one, the only Scott Johnson. Oh, thanks. You know what, I started doing this too. I really liked Tom's idea or your collective idea to give creators a little bit of a platform at the end of your show. So we started doing it in the morning stream and it's been great. All kinds of podcasters, creators, photographers, animators, video guys, like we're getting we're getting the word out and it feels good. So thanks for the inspiration here on DTNS. If you are interested in a really, really silly idea, then you might like my webcam like I put out every, every week, every Monday. In fact, called Fred and can at Fred and can .com and this week is all about murder hornets. So if you heard about those and you want to be able to laugh along with Fred and his sentient can of expired cream corn who live in an apartment together in parts unknown. Well, then good news. Go to Fred and can.com and check it out. You can find all my podcast work and artwork and stuff at frogpants.com and I am on Twitter at Scott Johnson. Hey, real quickly, they'll be I'll be posting more about this, but they just let us know at Patreon that they are going to have to start collecting sales tax in some parts of the world starting July 1st. They're trying to give plenty of notice about this. The idea, well, not the idea is a lot of states, I think 37 states in the United States and 17 countries worldwide have enacted rules specifically targeted online services. A lot of times these rules were targeted things like Netflix, but they affect Patreon subscriptions and so they're letting people know ahead of time. Hey, this is coming. We have to collect the sales tax. It's the law. We've worked with all these local governments and state governments and national governments to figure it out. It'll be different depending on where you are. So they can't just tell you what the percentages is. It depends on what your government decided and the taxes are different depending on what kind of rewards we have. Somebody who ships off a lot of high price merchandise has a different tax rate than somebody like us who mostly just does digital things. So there's more information coming on that, but just to give you the heads up that by July 1st, if you're a patron, there will be a small percentage of tax added to any subs. We don't like it. Patreon doesn't like it. I'm sure you don't like it, but hey, maybe it'll help pay for a school or some roads for you. So there's more on that coming at patreon.com slash dtns. And of course, if that hasn't dissuaded you, please support us. Patreon dot com slash dtns. If you've got feedback, we have an email address for you and that email address is feedback at daily tech news show at dot com. We're also live Monday through Friday for 30 p.m. Eastern. That's 2030 UTC. You can find out more. Tell a friend daily tech news show dot com slash live back tomorrow with Justin Robert Young talk to you then this show is part of the frog pants network. Get more at frog pants dot com. Hope you have enjoyed this program.