 Coming up on DTNS Google's version of the Windows browser ballot, but for search engines and Android Amazon and Microsoft bid for Jedi money and cord cutting. Is it becoming too darn complicated? This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, August 2nd 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and I'm the show's producer Roger Chang Sarah Lane still out on another assignment But we're very pleased to have Patrick Norton host of AVXL back on the show Patrick How you been? I am full of mirth and good cheer Tom We were just talking about all the mirth and good cheer that the various Unlimited internet plans from mobile carriers bring us on good day internet. I love you so much, but when you lie it hurts me I know I'm sorry. I shouldn't lie It was a good conversation and you can get that if you are a patron and get a good day internet at patreon.com Slash DTNS. Let's start this show with a few tech things you should know Apple has followed Google in suspending its program to review a small percentage of Siri voice requests in an effort to improve responses Apple says it will review the process of those Reviewings and issue an update to Siri that gives users a choice to not participate in the review process That's the first company I've heard to do that and that is one of the things I think they should absolutely do the US FCC voted to approve digital opportunity data collection rules Those would require ISPs to provide more accurate maps of broad bed coverage I think we need to provide geospatial maps of where they provide service rather than just being able to report a Census block served by having one house connected or even not even having any houses connected But being close to network facilities census blocks are between 600 and 3000 people They could count coverage if no one had service, but they were close The new system will require smaller polygons of coverage And actual connections or connections that only require you to drop cable like the lines there They just haven't actually brought it into the house You can't just say oh well if we add a base station if you need to add a base station It's not a connection the rules also call for the creation of a crowdsourcing system to collect public input on the accuracy of ISP Covered coverage maps coverage maps gonna get better. I'm not saying they're perfect They're not gonna have price info on here. Just speed but better Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has joined the list of states attorneys Assuming to block the merger of T-Mobile and sprint bringing the total number of states to 15 Remember that merger received approval from the Department of Justice and FCC with provisions for transferring some prepaid service Infrastructure access and spectrum to dish. However, the objections of the state attorneys need to be resolved before that merger can occur So keeping you up to date on that. All right, Patrick. Let's talk a little more about Google's browser ballot. I mean search engine ballot But but I want to yell about the FCC and the internet Um, oh my goodness. So, uh, yeah Tell the folks what's going on here Google announced starting in early 2020 It will offer a search engine selection screen during setup of your Android device That will become the default surgeon search engine on Android's home screen and in the Chrome browser so far so good You're gonna get a choice now along with Google Three other search providers will be offered with the options determined by sealed bid Indicating how much a company will pay per user selection? So you'll only get four options Google and three others and those three others will be determined by people bidding on How much they'll pay each time someone selects them as their default search engine search engine operators must meet a minimum bid and Be among the three highest bids in order to show up on an EU country's search engine selection screen will be different per country And if fewer than three search engines meet the minimum bid the remaining slots will be filled at random Google in justifying this says an auction is a fair and objective method to determine which search providers are included in the Choice screen it lets search providers decide what value they place on appearing in the choice screen and to bid Accordingly the deadline for search providers to apply for inclusion is September 13th with winning bids to be confirmed by October 31st okay, this is Probably a step in the right direction and kind of a complicated mess And right, you know, it's ironic. It's not the right word But you're talking about Google gets slammed with a five billion dollar fine because they keep tying their apps and their services Operating system, right sounds so familiar. Wherever did they get that game plan from? You know the mere fact that it's gonna be like, you know in your face you get to choose your search engine I think it's a fantastic step. I also think 90% of the planet is automatically going to go Google because that's what they automatically do You know a bunch people might choose duck. Go which isn't going to be an option I don't think they're gonna be able to pay the money for this I think it's gonna be really really really really interesting to see who actually shows up as the other three Yeah, you know, you know, I also find it really interesting that Google is not saying what the minimum bid is You know, it's probably different per country is my guess So they're gonna set they're gonna set a minimum for Germany and one for France and one for yeah You know, I'm also curious how they will randomly choose three like okay. It'll be a thousand per user I wanted to be on YouTube live with a big ping-pong ball thing full of all the names of the search engine providers So we can see that it's actually random Yeah, I don't think that's how it's gonna I this is you know, this is in some sense This is you know, you know the whole joke about the engineer on top of the building in in in the western United States And and he yells, you know, you're above me in the air and somebody's like Oh, I'm in Redmond in Washington because that's such a Microsoft danger because it's technically correct But completely useless like this is one of those classic moments where we're gonna get the EU off our Collective posteriors and we're gonna do it in a way that makes it as difficult and unclear as possible If I were to take the side of Google What I would imagine Google might want to say if they were not worried about Every single word that they choose in public is that if they don't do this Well, how should they pick which search engine show up? If you pick every search engine available, that's gonna be a long list There's more search engines out there than people think especially when you get in specialty search engines So how do you narrow it down? The browser ballot was a little easier because there were fewer major browser as you could go specifically by market share Except in this case Europe's market share is pretty much all Google So if they're like, well, we don't want to pick the winners and losers Let's make a system that allows the search engines that have the resources to provide good service Get on the ballot and one way to do that is a bid now why there's a minimum there I'm not certain about maybe that's a way to ensure quality. I don't know Maybe that's a way to ensure that that it's the most desperate. Well funded I mean that that's where the guy who what who's counting the beans comes in and goes Let's put a minimum ends, you know, so we can make sure we get at least a you know Some decent bids from these people But yeah, I mean, how do you select this search engine ballot in a way that's useful for people that doesn't have Doesn't leave Google exposed to being the one that's picking who should win or lose if they don't pick Well, I don't know. It's it's on some level, you know, when you when you look at like it's like Gabriel Weinberg The CEO of Dunkirk Go was basically like it's got four slots Consumers are barely gonna get any choices, right because you know when you start thinking about listening Okay, we probably still knows about yahoo Google yahoo You know sophisticated kind of you know privacy oriented people know about duck duck go I think you start realizing there are literally, you know, two dozen that you've never heard of that are out there competing You know, the fact that it's pay-to-play bothers me the fact that it's not truly random bothers me Not that truly random would be a good thing. In fact, I think truly random would benefit Google because if they throw Never heard of and everybody like that definitely picking Google because I don't even know Yeah, I mean when you realize don't forget you can pick any search engine to be your default search engine This isn't changing the behavior of Android. You can go in and change it yourself. This is just saying at setup We're gonna suggest a few we're gonna make you pick one instead of having Google be the default and you having to go in and change Yeah, but I think Google's still gonna be the default for most people because most people like Google equals search engine The challenge I think is that you know, this makes it any one and okay Okay, you obviously get a choice during setup, but they've rigged it so that it's probably going to be them and a bunch of people You've never heard of well They will be it'll be random ordering so Google won't always be the top choice and the auction is meant to be like Well, the companies that have the resources probably are the most likely for you to recognize Yeah, I don't know Google and ping Maybe Yahoo, maybe yeah The US Federal Trade Commission is investigating an agreement between Amazon and Apple to sell Apple products directly on Amazon Remember when we talked about this as part of the deal Amazon agreed to only let Apple authorized resellers sell Apple products on Amazon and that got rid of a lot of small sellers of refurbished items Because to be an authorized reseller you have to handle a lot of products and smaller resellers don't qualify for that I'm Minnesota man named John Bunstead says he was contacted by a group of FTC officials who wanted to know how selling on Amazon and eBay worked for him and how being barred from selling Apple products on Amazon has affected his business so This is part of a broader effort to investigate Anti-competitive behavior by big tech companies, but it is interesting that this particular deal is under that scrutiny Yeah, it's so peculiar. I mean it's also been so odd to watch Amazon as they fought with Google They fought with Apple they fought with anybody who competes with them And ironically it never seems to be Amazon that's getting investigated You know, so maybe this is when you know, the FTC becomes more like gosh Amazon does some really pesky things for consumers Well, because a lot of the attention on tech companies I think up until now has been around data handling and Amazon has an advertising program, but it's a very small one So they weren't the biggest abuser of your personal data Now they have gotten so big that people are starting to notice how they use their market dominance in retail And so this is an example of that whether whether it's an abuse or not is what the FTC is investigating it But they certainly have a dominance and are able to swing these deals because of it It's gonna be I go ahead. Sorry. Yeah Nintendo and Tencent announced more details in how the switch console will be rolled out in China Tencent will host servers and cloud services for switches online platform handle localizing the game and simplified Chinese The Nintendo e-shop will support Tencent's WeChat payment system and Nintendo confirmed that Super Mario Odyssey and the Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild will come to the Chinese market No data price was given The company still need some more government approval before this can actually happen And if you're wondering China had a ban on consoles from 2000 to 2015 The ps4 became the first of the modern consoles to return to China in 2015 so this is still kind of a new process for Nintendo to get into the Chinese market They have to have a partner and Tencent may or may not be the best partner Tencent's had some problems getting their video games approved By the Chinese government and that has been hurting their bottom line as well, right? Yeah, I mean it's interesting because Tencent is a company a lot of people don't know about side of Asia It is a massive huge holding company inside of Asia, you know So much of what people think it was the internet and a lot of Experiences is basically WeChat, which would be kind of like in some level to me sound so much like Experiencing the internet as Yahoo circa 1996 or 1997 I was still I'd be honest with you like I'm excited because the switch is already doing so well as a platform I mean, it's it's just doing amazingly. Well, they're gonna open up this huge market in China assuming they get government approval but the thing that blew me away was still the idea that there was a ban on consoles from 2000 to 2015 and Me sitting there like wondering like what was the entire sort of black market for imported consoles in China like, you know Were they everywhere already or or is it something where like nobody really did much gaming other than on ancient? No, no, the marks of the market effect was that China became the one of the biggest video game markets in the world for desktop and mobile and And that's why you you know things like World of Warcraft so popular in China and mobile gaming there is huge Right. That's where you could game No And that's also what everybody could afford. I think was phones too. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and my mobile phones definitely You know we're we're a booming market in China. They're finally starting to level out like they are in the rest of the world There's still kind of a booming market in India look to be becoming a booming market in Africa lots of places in Africa anyway But yeah, anyway, good good to see that Nintendo has found a partner in China I'm still curious that this is all going to fall apart because of 10 cents previous issues, but we'll see And the US Department of Defense has delayed a decision to award a contract for the development of its joint enterprise defense Instruct infrastructure. That's J. E. D. I that is the Jedi program Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are the last two bidders being considered to run the program Google actually withdrew its bid after some employee pressure The Jedi program will offer AI analysis host classified information and provide a few other services The contract is for 10 years and worth Round 10 billion dollars. So this is a big fat government contract for Microsoft or Amazon to get you a secretary of defense Dr. Mark T. Esper just took over his position July 23rd previously. He was the secretary of the army So he's familiar with this contract for sure being the secretary of the army But in his new position, he told Congress when he was confirmed that he would look over this contract to make sure that The government was getting its money's worth Amazon had been expected to win the Jedi contract before the pause It has an existing contract with the CIA So it's got some experience handling classified information and Microsoft is actually expected to win a different contract the defense enterprise office solution or DOS contract. I'm really sorry that doesn't spell SITH But that contract involves providing email calendar video calling and other productivity tools to the US military So it was looking like Amazon's gonna get 10 billion for Jedi But don't worry Microsoft's gonna get 8 billion for DOS and right now. Anyway, the Jedi program is being held up I'm kind of curious to see where this I'm first of all I'm still deeply fascinated by the CIA kind of outsourcing its cloud Which is the whole point of putting something on the cloud and the whole idea of the defense infrastructure will probably be more secure and more available I'm kind of curious how this sorts out because one of the claims One of the one of the the the complaints I said would say for Marco Rubio was that this was really arbitrary how did they come to this decision and It was you know, the more you dig into it It's the more you got to wonder like why are they stopping this now instead of picking someone? And I guess also if I was gonna be dealing with this day in and day out I might as well if people are gonna hang me for the decision being made on my watch I'd probably want to take a closer look at the contract myself to or the yeah, that is reasonable It's also reasonable to note that Oracle fell out of the bidding and really wanted this contract but they they the the bidding process eliminated them and they didn't want to be eliminated and They're very supportive of of senator Rubio Those are all facts that I stated in in particular order Not trying to connect any dots there. You can do that yourself. Well, I you just connected them because I may have you know teed up something for you to whack I was trying so hard not to say this just reeks of politics. Yeah, I mean there's more to this Then then then just I'm new to the job Let me take a look at this because he was he knows this contract But there's necessarily mean it's a bad thing to review it if it's reviewed in a fair way and and especially if maybe it Finds some some loopholes and things that need to be tightened I would be very curious to see how it ends up and then how the decision gets justified because obviously Oracle's gonna be As long as it's not Oracle or girls gonna be pissed and they're gonna do everything I mean, it's just that's Oracle, right? It's just it is what they are as a company But it's also interesting like to watch, you know, good one of things the article the BBC article notes It's like well, maybe they don't want to order they don't want to have, you know Both contracts handled by the same company or you know and something, you know Maybe it's just because certain people in certain places hate Jeff Bezos and everything that makes him money. Like it's it's it's all very peculiar. It's all messy. I guess yeah IBM was was up for this contract to and also got eliminated from the bid process Just just to be fair and say it wasn't just Oracle that got eliminated Folks if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes There's a great way to do that. Go subscribe to daily tech headlines com at its television critics Association Press tour Thursday CBS all-access said it will offer 12 original series in 2020 with additional plans to expand programming into sports movies and nonfiction titles and series Acquisitions new offerings will include world series of poker bracelet events the documentary console wars about the Nintendo versus Sega era And streaming rights for the CW series Nancy drew president and COO Mark de Beauvoir addressed questions about the increasingly crowded field of streaming services saying he noted consumers subscribe to an average of 3.4 subscription services and noted that all access has 12,000 pieces of content versus 8,000 from stars and 3,000 from HBO very telling that he compared himself to premium services Not the Netflix in Hulu on April 2019 poll by hub entertainment research found that the plurality of respondents to a survey agreed with the statement The network a show is on makes no difference to me So we've got a couple of things going on here. We have CBS all access saying like we think we're the choice We've got all these pieces of content. We've got great originals coming We think we're a better value play, but you have people out there going. I don't know what any of these names are I just want to watch my show Hollywood reporters survey found that people say they're willing to pay $21 a month for streaming now keeping my most of those people are still paying for cable So maybe that number change is if they actually cut the cord entirely, but it's still not a lot. I Think and I want to talk with Patrick about this. I think you've got a Few different kinds of viewers here There are the hoarders the ones who want to have access to everything and those people are the loudest and most upset Because it's getting more expensive to have access to everything when you have so many different providers of television You have the laybacks who just want to turn something on maybe sometimes it's news or sports Maybe it's reality TV. Maybe it's like I just want to see what's on Those people have some interesting free options. We'll talk about and then there are selectives I probably count myself in that which is I have a few shows that I definitely have to watch And I will pay for whatever service has them Star Trek discovery. Yeah, I take my money CBS all access Star Trek Yep, I'm there We have some changing conditions too that are affecting people's opinions about this the amount that you pay for traditional cable or satellite is declining Sometimes it's declining because you're canceling cable and that you know hundred dollars is out Sometimes it's because you're getting a skinny bundle Where you're like, I just need to pay for the broadcast channels That's it over the top services are making it cheaper PlayStation view sling TV YouTube TV We talked about them raising prices, but the prices still are usually less than you'd pay for cable Original shows are also not available on DVR anymore. It used to be you paid for cable you DVR'd everything and all your shows were there Now you have to make choices. There's a psychological burden Okay, I can't just DVR it so how do I make sure I have the services that have the shows? I want to watch and this is being caused by the originals coming from multiple different streaming services and being Exclusive to those streaming services and we have multiple content producers attempting to grab market share for the streaming budget So we have way more streaming services than we need right now as every one of them thinks they're the one who can survive Right my predictions are We still have yet to see some more live TV services focusing on sports and news That's the piece of this puzzle that's only kind of blanket covered by your sling TVs and your PlayStation views and your YouTube TVs And I think something bigger is coming there. That's gonna affect this whole landscape I think budgets are gonna change as people adjust to not paying a hundred dollars a month Which depending on what you look at the average cable bill in the US is somewhere around a hundred dollars from 85 I saw it to 120, but it's somewhere in there If you're not paying that that changes that $21 amount a little bit and not all these new services are gonna survive I think some of these companies are gonna switch from providing a Streaming service to making shows for other streaming services We're gonna have a limited number of subscribers and there's still the the shakedown and free services A lot of people don't realize that Pluto TV voodoo. I am DB TV Roku Crackle to be the list goes on Provide absolutely free and those laybacks are like I just want to watch something Maybe fine. Just turning on Pluto TV most of the time. So hey, here's where we are. It's a it's a mess It's hard to tell where your money is going and how to budget for it And if you just wish for the simple days, I've got one bill and that got me everything. Well, those days are gone right now So it's funny because part of the reason I wanted to bring this up Was because I've I've been looking maybe first of all I will point out that when we last had satellite and cable our bill was extraordinarily high because where we lived at the time and So it was really easy for me to realize three things one I don't need, you know, thousands of the channels they're offering or I should more accurately say, you know Two or three hundred of the channels they were offering were of no interest to me And I'm also I I can also sit down and be like wow It's a Korean translation of a three-year-old poker game that I didn't want to watch three years ago But this is fascinating and uh, so, you know for for for, you know, my ability to sleep it was a very good thing for me to get rid of cable and satellite but It was interesting to watch right because a lot of people when they started when they started cutting their cord they were You know in the early netflix days netflix had the carriage agreement that got through stars and everything was on netflix and People react to uh people are still ticked off about everything not being on netflix and it's interesting to watch I want to address that because that is a psychological fallacy. Everything was not on netflix In fact, it seemed compared to netflix for years was that they don't have everything And then when they started to lose things is when people started to characterizes Well, netflix used to have everything and now they don't have stars. They're gonna die and then they didn't Well, netflix used to have disney and now they don't now they're gonna die and they didn't I mean It is a psychological thing netflix has never had everything It's it's that psychological thing where when we lose something we see we notice that more Okay, so first of all, thank you for calling out my hyperbole netflix used to have an astonishing array of content admittedly at a relatively low resolution for an incredibly low price Dot dot dot so what's been interesting still has an astonishing array of content It certainly doesn't have it at the low price though, right? Yeah, and it's gotten somehow it's managed to get harder and harder to discover But that's a search engine issue that I won't get into right now But it has been for me It's been interesting to watch as everyone whether it's netflix or amazon prime or eventually later this year apple and any of Of of what feels like dozens but are probably maybe a dozen core Uh streaming services, you know, I started realizing how many things I was tapping into to get access to a particular program You know for for me like there's almost nothing I want to watch on cbs all access except for the star wars Star wars except for star trek and it was not worth it for me to do that Now I may finally break down and do that But it's been interesting to I've talked to people where they are sort of managing like okay I'm gonna sign up for this for this bunch and bend watch a bunch of stuff then cut it off Then I'm gonna go over to here and watch this Um for me, it's been interesting because you know, I got an access to stars so I can watch american gods I got access To showtime so I can watch rodies And it's been interesting to watch how these things as more and more places split off to create their own channels and You know, hopefully their own content Uh, it's been curious to watch how that's impacted for example, uh, you know Netflix bidding all of the money to maintain friends on the netflix platform versus yes I think the overreaction to uh, you know, disney moving off of netflix to start the sort of, you know, disney and marvel standalone channels, uh, you know It was interesting for me because a whole bunch of content that my kids really enjoy was on netflix For example, phineas and ferv phineas and ferv ended up like, you know The contract ended all the content disappeared a few weeks later It showed up on amazon and in the meantime I was like, you know what i'm done with this and I bought the best possible You know format of that so I can permanently own that moving into the future It's been interesting to watch because it's it's shifting and at some point you can be like Okay, my cable bill is going to be huge this month if a whole bunch of stuff launches from a whole bunch of channels And I want to watch it all Yeah, and I think that's the biggest thing is think about the explanation that patrick was just making right now folks He was a he's talking about people saying i'll sign up for one month and then i'll cancel You couldn't do that in the cable days, right? Right. You can actually control this. It's gone from Uh, well, I have a cable bill and there's not much I can do about it to Well, I have total control over how much I spend I just have to make a decision about what I want to spend it on And it was nicer when you could just blame the cable company for that and say well I don't have a choice than having to have responsibility for it. I think that's part of what's bugging people Yeah, and it's also it's been interesting to watch how difficult some Channels have made it to sort of start or stop their channel. Um, you know, which is You know, I was also laughing because you know, I was dealing with a third-party service It has nothing to do with streaming except for hosting rss services And there is literally no way to cancel their service once you stop using it And then you had to email then email was ignored and eventually I had to cancel payments to that the automated payments Through my credit card provider because there was literally no one was answering and there was no way to make the payments go away Wasn't a streaming service. You said that wasn't a streaming service, but I think about the time I found it to be quite easy to cancel all of these services Uh, I I found it ridiculous. I found it surprisingly easy. I should say You know and also it could be interesting if you end up organizing through if you If it is a subset of a different service you use that's where it gets kind of interesting like I still have no idea I let me rephrase that I still have not committed the energy to figure out how to shut down stars on my amazon prime accounts You know Brian brushwood raves about how easy that is on the amazon prime account So some of it's just user interface and and whether you look into finding out the place because I I know I know that that is one of the advantages is you get it all in one bill if you do it through amazon And amazon lets you start them and stop them There's there's no Prevention of that it's like you say you do have to know where to look to to find it Nothing is usually easy on amazon site. I found that to be true It's consistently not easy. I don't know. I mean, we're also in a situation Where we do have an embarrassment of riches whereas if okay, so you started stars and it's like, oh I've got american gods look at this selection of additional movies that are not available the other things I subscribe to It is curious to watch right because you know I think you'll agree with me that the golden age of television was certainly not the 1950s not to take anything away from it You know, but the array of content and the availability of content is getting incredibly extraordinary It is also still kind of an exciting challenge to figure out where something is and you know The best way to get a hold of it My theory for years has been we're trans We're transferring from a system that was different to a system where television is like books You'll never be able to read all the books You'll never be able to watch all the tv shows and you certainly don't expect to have a service that gives you access to All the books in the world all the time And and I think we're gonna have to shift our way of thinking about television shows to that same way I also find myself buying more discs again than I did in the past for a while Yeah, I think I think people need to Figure that in and again It's part of the thing of like well now I have to do a lot more thinking about tv than I used to and I don't like that And I know and that's not fair But if you're saving money on that hundred dollars on a cable, maybe you spend some money buying You have digital copies blu-ray copies, whatever, uh, and then you've got them Uh, you you don't you don't lose access to them and Netflix can't you know lose a contract and they disappear Oh, well next everybody participates in our subreddit submit stories and vote on them at daily tech news show dot reddit dot com and facebook.com Slash groups slash daily tech news show in the mailbag today Uh, we had a few people with different perspectives on AI. Uh, yesterday we talked about how patent law Could or should apply to creations by artificial intelligence We got some other areas of intellectual property law that people think need resolving Robert wondered what's being done about all the ai's creating books and music Because there are plenty of that and uh, yeah, uh, there's a Just do a search for ai Books and music copyright and you'll find tons of think pieces about what should happen But nobody's got the answer yet and brian was curious how we'll handle liability of ai That's something that is being worked out right now in the autonomous car world But again, I don't think there's a solution for it exactly other than well for now I guess the company making the autonomous car is going to take on the liability, but Uh, none of our intellectual property law is equipped to handle any of this well yet no Thank you. That's martin uh for joining us Folks want to find out more of what you got going on. Where should they go? Uh avxl.com robert herron and I are uh relaunching the show uh new show coming up next week That would be a good place to find me uh or uh head over to twitter twitter.com slash patrick norton And you'll find out what's coming out as it comes out and of course I still do this week in computer hardware every week With sabastian peak who's the editor-in-chief over at pc per dot com and that's twit dot tv slash twy c h If you want to hear a couple of of people geeking out about hardware in a geeky manner Listen folks, if you enjoy the independent perspective that we bring on tech news, uh, we enjoy bringing it And the only way we're able to bring that is through independence provided by you If you fund us, we stay independent and we're able to talk about this In that weird way where we're considering multiple sides of an issue instead of coming at it to drive Buzzy clicks or satisfy an advertiser So if that sounds like a good idea to you and you're not already doing so Please consider supporting us at patreon.com slash dts Our email address is feedback at daily tech news show.com. We're live monday through friday 4 30 p.m Eastern 20 30 utc you can find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live sarah's back on monday. We'll talk to you then This show is part of the frog pants network Get more at frogpants.com Diamond club hopes you have enjoyed this program