 Okay, not bonehead whale bow heads one of those Finish up the paragraph saying whales are also very smart Immortality that just means you're living way longer than the rest of us In a sense, it's you know No, like well, I was reading in Reader's Digest Since I've even heard it lots of activity. It is still out there I like to think that Sarah didn't just search and find that but like she had you know reads Reader's Digest regularly and just had it to hand Oh, yeah, sure. Why would I ever cancel my subscription? There's another term for sturdy turtle. It's Kentucky senator. I don't know if you guys have heard that before A little politics for you today. It looks like a turtle Don't even get it I don't even get it either Mitch McConnell looks like a sturdy turtle. He's a senator This is why I don't read the news Can't trust a turtle-looking man, I thought it was an entourage reference that totally Oh, yeah, another turtle Then they were my neighbor's turtles that I saw the other day have not seen them since and I do a lot about ariana grande's Song seven rings today. Well, they also don't know turtles die of old age Do they just say they get killed by everything else before they had right with all that turtle violence? How could they how could they get eaten they get run over by cars Tough turtle come after them. Yeah, there are a lot of turtles in the road Well crossing the road. Yeah, and they're just they're just real slow. Oh, it's sort of like a snail What did you learn about ariana grande tom seven rings? is is about the fact that she was so depressed about Various things including her breakup with Pete Davidson that her friends took her out shopping And they had a great time spent too much money and she bought all her friends rings and during the day Someone said you should write a song about this. Oh Wait, she she bought everyone seven rings or not her friends all rings Did she buy one master ring to control them? I think probably ariana grande is a dark lord And and we know about the the ill-fated tattoo on the palm, right? Yeah, so it's it was she Didn't that just happen how's their song about it already? Well, she reference Oh No, I you think I see you're talking about the misspelling tattoo that yeah reference that she references a different tattoo thing because the The tattoos part of the song very very small. Yeah. Yeah, it's also weird because it's on her palm, right? Wasn't there where she put it? Yeah, which is a curious place for a tattoo. You don't see a lot of those So every time she gets a palm reading it'll just be an incorrect spelling. Mr. Rourke agrees Hey today, sir, could you start us off with line three please? Yes, I could All right. I know that happened quick. All right. I know time flies when you're talking about turtles. Here we go Three we're gonna break for daily tech news show. Good day internet people three two Wanda Walker has supported independent tech news directly for five years be like Wanda become a DTNS member at patreon.com This is the daily tech news for Wednesday, February 13th 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio feline I'm Sarah Lane. I guess sort of thawing Salt Lake City I'm Scott Johnson and in the drizzly LA County area. I'm Roger Chang the shows producer So we we were doing our show right as Activision Blizzard was doing their earnings yesterday And of course in the wake of these rather disappointing earnings from the likes of EA and take two We've talked about that in the past. It was good that we waited to kind of find out all the facts We're gonna talk about what they actually announced what they did with their layoffs And Scott who is of course also the host of the instance a Blizzard-oriented podcast is gonna give us the scoop on what this means for the community But let's start with a few tech things we should know The NPD group reports that dollar sales of smartwatches were up up 51% in fact in 2018 and unit sales rose 61% the top three brands Apple Samsung and Fitbit made up 88% of those unit sales Fossil and Garmin however continued to expand as well 16% of US adults now own a smartwatch, which is up from 12% in 2017 That means if you're in a room of a hundred people 16 of them will be wearing a smartwatch. Whoa I'm gonna count your I'm gonna hold you to that next time. I'm in a room Someone wiped out most the excuse excuse me almost two decades worth of data and backups at an email provider VF email in a matter of hours. Oh my gosh That's scary the attacker had passwords and use multiple means to access multiple servers including mail hosts VM hosts SQL server clusters and Reformatted most drives VF email is sending email again But subfolders and filters for most users were not in place any longer VF email was founded all the way back in 2001 I haven't heard that the name VF email in ages It was it was founded after the I think the I love you virus In response to that to take to provide a better email solution to to scan for malware. So yeah, this is this is sad DJI will roll out its geospatial environment online or geo 2.0 system in 19 European countries starting later this month the system creates safety zones and kind of a bow tie shape around airports Prevents drones from interfering with air traffic and flight paths 13 European markets had geosystem 1.0 already and those 13 will also Get the 2.0 update bringing the total to 32 markets The California DMV released its annual report of how many times various autonomous car companies Experienced disengagement meaning when a human driver had to take over Waymo drove 1.2 million miles and when an average of 11,017 miles between Disengagement 50% improvement over 2017 moving in the right direction GM's cruise drove 447,621 miles with disengagement every 5,205 miles Apple raised its number of test miles from 838 so not many at all in 2017 to 79,745 with important disengagement every 2,000 miles in the second half of the year Ford Tesla Lyft and Bosch performed no test miles in California last year Yeah, they're registered to do so they and they test elsewhere. They just didn't do it there All right, let's talk a little bit more about Amazon and Google just just wanting all the data Scott. They just want all your data Yeah, well, it also involves a company. I like that is logitech Let's talk about a Bloomberg reports the logitech and other device makers have objected to constant requests for data from Amazon and Google smart assistance in other words Send data every time a light is turned on or off what channels the TV has changed to and whether the door is locked or unlocked All the stuff your device does Amazon and Google want the data to improve response time to voice commands Logitech is responded by purposely providing generic information Amazon says it does not sell the user data for Advertising yeah logitech particularly said with their smart remotes that Amazon one of them to send Channel changes and logitech just said well, we'll just tell you in the TVs on right whether they use the smart assistant to turn it On or not now there there's another company in this Bloomberg article that does smart fans And they said hunter fan company they said that the their fans used to kind of turn themselves off sometimes Before this was done and so they think it's worth it. They think it has improved things Like you said Amazon particularly said we're not gonna use this data for advertising but there's nothing in their privacy policies to stop them from doing that and Companies these days don't have a great track record of not using this kind of information For things if you don't specifically get them to promise not to Yeah, I guess the question is do do we believe that these companies are saying we just want our products to be better So let us do this so that our products are better. Sure. You you couldn't believe that But I know a lot of people don't Yeah, also, I don't know like in the in the in the case of a remote control from logitech who kind of has that smart remote Market source sewn up for themselves What could you really glean from this other than data people may not want to share like what channels are you switching to? Yeah, what programs are you watching right? You can figure that out by time of day and channel and prime video could use that data quite well Couldn't it to figure out what shows are popular? I Think it's it's legitimate for them to say look even if they're not using our smart assistant to turn on the light It's useful to know how many times they turn on the light And so we can anticipate and train our systems better that that is a legitimate reason for the data What what I what I would like to see them do is spell that out and and confirm and commit That if they are going to get this data from these third-party devices, they're gonna let the users know they're doing it That's the big thing is users don't know they're doing this And they're going to promise to you know Verifiably not use it for anything else, but that specific purpose of improving the voice assistant's response to controlling those particular devices All right guys. Are you ready? Buzzfeed reports and sources say Apple will hold an event on its campus March 25th to introduce that subscription news service We've been hearing so much about Supposedly for nine dollars and 99 cents per month Apple will offer unlimited access to pay walled sites Such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal It also might include magazines some details are a little scarce at this point the Wall Street Journal itself reports that Apple wants to keep 50% of the revenue that it would gain from something like this and Divide the rest among participating news publications based on how often users read those articles Apple would also not share subscriber data with the publications reportedly Sources also tell CNBC that Apple is aiming to launch that TV service in April or May with stars CBS including Showtime and Viacom expected to offer subscriptions through Apple's TV app So we have a couple things here There's probably this is not official but Buzzfeed seems to think those are going to be an Apple announcement March 25th And Apple usually does a March announcement so that that wouldn't be shocking We might hear about not only the news service, but also the TV service. We might hear two service announcements here What the sources aren't saying is you'll hear hardware announcements We we may not get the iPad mini or new AirPods or anything like that. It may be fully a service announcement Yeah, I think this is going to be interesting because we talked about this a little bit earlier Pre-show, maybe even on TMS a camera where we yeah, I was on TMS this morning Was it okay? Yeah, I did it's too much But the idea that The they may end up with a music situation here a little bit where the people creating the content the New York Times Wall Street Journal so on May want more information to be sent back to them that Apple's unwilling to give them because that makes this deal more palatable for them Otherwise once again, here's a model where Apple gets a cut and you don't really have a choice and it's not the best deal We saw this come up, you know with the original iTunes store and certainly see that was streaming music now So I'm just curious if this happens how that all pans out like what will what will these these publishing companies these Journalistic entities require back from Apple more than just hey, thanks for the extra subscriptions Well, and I also wonder, you know as as folks who are we're kind of news junkies, right? Because this is what we do for a living something like ten dollars a month for unlimited access to Various publications that are paywalled otherwise or at least have limits that is pretty attractive to me I don't know how attractive that is to the regular person and and that ten dollar Number is sort of the sweet spot for music subscription services. I subscribe to Apple music for ten dollars Do I now subscribe to Apple subscription for twenty dollars because that's starting to get a little bit weird That's that's too much money per month for me Well, the the New York Times alone its digital subscription is three seventy five a week Although you can get it for two dollars a week for one year right now So it's a little bit cheaper to just get the New York Times didn't get then to spend ten dollars a month So I can see if they get these bigger names like the post and the Wall Street Journal on board Where a lot of people may say, you know, and this is worth it because I'm getting multiple sources And I could choose what I want to read especially if this would allow you into their paywall on the web In other words, it's not just in the iOS app the devil's in the details there. Yeah, plus this I mean in a way It's well, we know it's been a good time for the New York Times recently They announced a bunch of numbers that were super cool and made everybody think oh, wow They're they're adding people all the time. So this is just more people. It's not like they're suffering at the moment in terms of Draw and you can still go get your paper from them directly and do all the digital services from them directly, but What's the harm and another potential 70% revenue split on top of that from a bunch of people who want to Stay on one device or in one ecosystem like it's no real harm done to them So yeah, Apple historically has held the line remember They only had one of the labels on board for iTunes At the beginning and it took a while to get everybody in the tent They only had ABC on board for TV shows and it took a lot of time to get people in the tent There was resistance for nine changing 99 cents per track for iTunes back in the day There's been resistance on subscriptions where they wanted to take 30% all the time and they reduced that to 15% So I I think what they want to do is keep things simple So it's easy for customers and it protects customer data What they're probably trying to get is an agreement that says look if the if the subscribers log into your site Using our thing then you can get the data from them with their consent But we are not going to hand over our customers data to you Well, we move on just what just one more note on this March announcement potential March announcement of the the news subscription service followed by perhaps in April or May Production company Subscription service which we've been hearing about for quite some time my initial reaction was there's no way They they wouldn't dilute something that's that that's a great package like this but we have heard so many rumors about the fact that they're having Apple rather is having issues with TB providers to figure out deals and It could be that the company doesn't have a choice But to push some of this back a little bit Well, and they used to not do more than one fall announcement and lately they've taken to doing two fall announcements You know one for the phone one for the tablet So they might change their ways is is all I'm saying also a Mojam asked it doesn't Apple own texture Yes, that's what this service is. It's it's Apple Apple's purchase of texture, which is a subscription news service Turned into an Apple service. Sure. It's like Siri before it buy it then make it your own Let's talk about sleeping. We're not gonna put you to sleep. We're gonna talk about sleep Company not eight like I ate it but eight like the number eight sleep Announced its newest adaptive phone smart mattress called the pod Previously mattress covers and mattresses from eight sleep allowed you to adjust bed temperature With options to set different temperatures for different sides of the bed very temperature focused however But anyway, the pod adds a smart temperature option that adjusts the temperature throughout the night in response to not just temperature But also your body behavior how much you're moving that sort of thing an AR algorithm uses sensors to determine the best temperature to Keep you asleep. It also does sleep tracking and vital signs The pod is available for pre-order starting at one thousand nine hundred ninety five dollars for a full and 2195 for a queen it starts shipping in April Well, okay, not a discounted mattress But a smart mattress is something that Scott and I were talking earlier a little bit about this like this would be great for me I cannot tell you how many times I wake up in the middle of the night where I went to bed Maybe with socks on because it was kind of chilly and all of a sudden I'm a hundred and three degrees. I want to die. It's too hot if something in the mattress itself without me Screwing up my covers for a while could could could help regulate my body temperature or keep it stable It might be worth the money Yeah, good night sleep is priceless. It really is I have a similar problem Although it's not so much temperature related, but I have to admit a few times it has been It's usually my wife's really cool comforter She got as a gift that she refuses not to have on the bed and that thing just bakes me in the middle of the night If there was a bed that was smart enough to sort of adjust things for me This seems interesting to me Also, I have a terrible time sleeping at night and all the little phone apps and watch apps in the world Don't seem to really tell me anything to be honest like they just kind of show me alright Well, you moved around a bunch between 2 and 4 a.m Tell me why or what I should do to change Sleeping well, right? I am all for smarter Smarter beds like I actually I think this sounds great I would be more happy if it was a less expensive like $300 duvet cover type thing, you know like some kind of you sell a mattress cover It just doesn't have the the AI stuff because you need the sensors built in for that. Sure sure But yeah, I mean if you're if you're in the market for a mattress anyway, and you're going all out You're already looking at about this price anyway, so maybe it's worth checking out I don't know how good their beds are as just straight-up beds, but I'm all for smarter stuff Yeah, I like the idea that we're starting to see some of these things show up in in non phone computer tablet devices That makes sense. I'm not saying they work because I haven't tried it Maybe they don't but it makes sense to me that you could create an algorithm that would be able to Use some machine learning to tell like okay when we see bodies move like this It usually means they're too hot, so let's adjust the temperature I could I could see where that might work And it's and it's cool to see this start to to move out into other devices Yeah, I'd as somebody who has a nest thermostat for the first time never had one before But it just happened to come with the apartment that I live in now I'm like, oh, you know depending on the time of day like I can get real real granular with What temperature it is and when and am I eating dinner? Am I hotter? Am I you know colder? Do I want to know snuggle up and watch TV all that stuff? But taking it to the bed would be another level entirely because I don't know when I'm going to overheat But it does happen sometimes How about a wrist thing? How about that Sony's Wina wrist watch watch band is now available outside of Japan Available for pre-order in the UK now the band is designed to be worn with any watch face It's not a new watch face You could you could pair it with a watch face that you already own a tiny display in the buckle shows alerts and does basic activity Tracking as well as NFC for payments Now I'm not gonna say I have a Rolex or a tog because I don't but I guess if you did if you're the person Who does have that you might not want a smartwatch be because you want to keep your your fancy Watch that you paid a lot of money for this is a cool Intermediate thing that up till now was only available in Japan So I'm curious actually if anybody out there has been waiting for this kind of thing to show up If you're in the UK and and you've got a fancy watch that that you want to add this band to please Please email us feedback at daily tech news show. Yeah a quick note I've got a friend who I immediately sent this link to today was your prep and show notes because he is this guy He is very frugal about his entire life except for his love of watches and he buys them all He's got multiple tag hours a couple of Rolexes that he got deals on but he loves a fancy watch And he's not down with this smartwatch business But he's a little jealous that we get functionality out of them that he can't so he's gonna be stuck He hasn't answered yet, but he'll be stoked about this. I guarantee there's a market It's just a question of how much it's gonna run it. Yeah, check back and let us let us know what he thinks I'm gonna tell you what he says. I'm curious as well Johnson and Johnson Not not Scott and Kim, but but the company the the big you know the company sells band-aids and stuff and and no more tears shampoo Johnson and Johnson is buying oris health a u r is which makes the monarch Not a villain from the venture brothers But a robotic scope used in respiratory and lung cancer procedures Oris was founded by surgical robotic scientist Frederick mall who is also co-founder of intuitive surgical a leader in robot assisted Minimally invasive surgery now mall will join Johnson and Johnson after the acquisition and it's not just the beginning of Robotics for Johnson and Johnson last year. They acquired orthotaxi a developer of software-enabled robotic technology for surgery And Johnson and Johnson formed a robotics focused company called verb Surgical with alphabets verily verily is alphabets health arm that spun out of the X Research Johnson and Johnson formed that that joint company with verily back in 2015 So you are seeing the band-aid maker move into the robotics industry through a a System that makes sense which is doing it in the in the medicine industry. Yeah, I noticed so this is gonna date me but my daughter my oldest daughter's had a baby and Everything went great and we were in the room and I noticed a Johnson and Johnson Thing I don't know what it was doing, but some kind of device that was testing some Doing readouts and all of this and I thought oh interesting brand to have on this stuff now that we see this and we see how they've been expanding and have been for a long time It's obvious to me that they are way more than making lotion and band-aids these days. There you go folks That's Johnson on Johnson and John Hey folks if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes I know sometimes it's hard to keep up with 30 minutes a day So if you just want to catch up or if you just want to know a briefing at the beginning of the day Check out daily tech headlines at daily tech headlines dot com All right, those Activision Blizzard earnings are causing a lot of consternation a lot of heartbreak With with with people that the community loves being laid off and a lot of anger and some misunderstandings So we thought we'd take to the opportunity here to first set out what's actually happening You're going to see a lot of headlines that say a lot of things and it's easy to misunderstand What's actually going on and it's always better to make your criticisms from a base of of better information So here's that information Q4 earnings for Activision Blizzard showed earnings per share of $1.29 that meet expectations by one cent That is great. That is the when you see like record earnings for Activision Blizzard That's what they're talking about $1.29 per share for Q4 However, revenue for Q4 was 2.84 billion which missed expectations of 3.04 billion This is not a great quarter for Activision Blizzard. It's an okay quarter Where the Wall Street people get nervous is the guidance for the coming year So Activision Blizzard also put out guidance that said okay Here's what we think we're going to do in 2019 and there were expectations for that from analysts that were not met Activision Blizzard said they thought they were going to end up getting 20 cents per share in Q1 Analysts had hoped they would tell them 46 cents They said they expected 1.18 billion dollars of revenue in Q1 The analysts had hoped to hear them say they expected 1.45 billion and the guidance for the entire year wasn't any better Activision Blizzard said we're going to have earnings per share by the end of the year of two dollars and ten cents The analysts had expected two dollars and fifty four Revenue was 6.3 billion for the year They hope an analyst had expected them to tell them it was going to be 7.25 billion again This is all like this is our forecast and they're forecasting less than everybody thought they would Net bookings are expected to drop in 2019 to 6.3 billion down from 7.26 billion during 2018 and 7.16 billion during 2017 So a big reversal big drop in bookings for sales now. Why is this? Blizzard says Activision Blizzard says in-game execution was inadequate on some franchises They had weaker than anticipated retail demand in-game monetization is not expected to improve quickly So they didn't make a lot of money in the games and they don't expect that to change Fewer new major content releases than they should are going to happen in 2019 So they're not going to have a big franchise come along and save the day And of course as we've talked about they lost the rights to publish destiny though those went back to bungee So in response to this they are laying off 800 people That's a lot of people. It's 8% of Activision Blizzard Coddy Johnson Activision's chief operating officer said our restructuring plan That's the layoffs Sheds investment and less productive non-strategic areas to our business and will result in a net headcount reduction of approximately 8% While also driving a significant increase in investment focused on capabilities around our biggest franchises So what Activision Blizzard is saying is we're laying off people from areas of the company We don't think are performing well But we are going to hire more people in the areas that are performing well And those areas are to increase the number of developers working on games by 20% this year while focusing on live services eSports and the successful franchises they have that includes Candy Crush Call of Duty Overwatch Warcraft Diablo and Hearthstone. All right, those are the facts on the ground Scott now Let's talk about the feelings. Well, you mix in the emotions and things get a little dicey so so In brief people who listen to this and have heard me at any other time not on this show But on the instance or something else know that Blizzard has not not with Activision necessarily But Blizzard on their own has a very special kind of fan and player loyalty and they've had it since really the very beginning They are known to be this company that works on something and polishes it until it's done And they won't release it until it's absolutely ready And they'll even take a major hit and cancel something if they don't think it's right And so we've all looked to them and said ah the the great night here to save us from the otherwise Terrible way video game industry paves. It's Blizzard with their with their cool You know mottos and gameplay first and every voice matters and all the stuff they have written in their in their credo and We have now entered a phase in Blizzard's history where a they're tied to Activision in a very Major way and have been since 2008 when that merger was completed They've always had somebody At the at the at the money side. It's never it's they've never been truly independent people forget that but they kind of haven't been But they've always kind of called more more of the shots They're also printing money compared to what you see for the rest of Activision's divisions and so They just always seem like the ship that would never crash They would always have something to do even if they canceled a major project project like Titan Something would rise out of the ashes like overwatch and save it and it did those were great successes And I think we're always just proving the the the way they did business It just kind of proved out that that was the right way to do business and then along comes a major industry dust disruptor like Fortnight completely devastating not just Blizzard and Activision that devastating them. It's a that's a hard word, but making things a little rough for them and Everybody else in this business They're all suffering a little bit the only bright point in this entire month is a little game called a peck Merling child because they got a very successful sudden hit on their hands and probably a huge moneymaker But fortnight has just taken a dent out of everybody and Activision Blizzard probably the most Call of Duty has been waning for years I would argue they've been slow to do much about that and on Blizzard side They have successful franchises all in the middle of doing things to one degree or another But they have nothing new planned for 2019 in fact today. They confirm that we have no new products set to release in the year of 2019 that means everything else is either in development or they're gonna have to figure out how to squeeze it out of their existing oranges and People are very upset for one major reason and that is well the people in my circles We deal with the community side of Blizzard more than anything else these layoffs with there may be an exception I don't know of but these layoffs did not hit developer jobs this hit community PR eSports periphery stuff that isn't directly involved with building the game Like you would have with programmers and key artists and all that stuff animators Those guys weren't weren't touched in this as a result the people we interface with as a community Are the ones getting hacked and they're the ones that we love and interface with because we know them and we know They're names and they know hours and they reach out to us and we reach out to them So I think that the emotion of this is way way way higher than it would be anywhere else Given Blizzard's traditional outreach with the community. Yeah, because that's now been stirred in a way We're all freaking out about and that really explains it right because I think you know if you take the emotion out of it It's reasonable for a company to say yes, we're making money now But we won't be if we don't change anything We're about to lose a bunch of money because of fortnight So we need to change now before we start losing money It's a lot of people like in our chat room even right now like they have fantasy profits They have unreasonable profit expectations. It may be that it may not it may be that their expectation is if we don't change Something we'll lose money and you don't wait if you're a good business person You don't wait to lose money to change your behavior You tried to change the behavior in advance. So you don't lose money and that seems to be what they're doing Unfortunately, the bet they're making is what we need to do is double down on development So that we can make something that can compete with fortnight and to do that We need to pour a lot of money into developers and we can't afford to spend as much money on community management And when you pull money out of community management You're pulling it from right in front of the noses of your entire audience who are like Hey, you put this person up as the face of you and now you just fired them. I'm mad You made me like this person and then you fired them and so it's no surprise that people are very upset about that And it's also very personal when this happens because they're your friends. They're your family They're people, you know, but outside of that even there's a whole nother show to be talked to to be had We won't be today But there's a whole nother show to be had about talking about how public companies work and why they kind of suck If that's an opinion somebody wants to float because there's a lot of problems with it They just hired a CFO for 15 million dollars signing bonuses and a lot of people look at that and go Oh, well, you got that. Okay, but all these people are really doing the grump work for you No, it's right off. So there's a whole other conversation we could have about that structure sucks But if we're just what's the aftermath of this alone within that structure, it's a little more nuanced than that I want to go with this is you have other options. You can you can take a you can take a an executive pay cut We've seen companies do that before you can like Nintendo did Commit to finding new jobs for everybody that you want to lay off and figure it out and use that internal experience And we've seen Blizzard do that before actually within Activision So I think there is some deserved criticism of did you have to lay off 800 people here? But I don't think the criticism is your money grubbing the criticism is you're you're not doing what's best for your workers or Necessarily the long-term strategy of your business. I think those are fair criticism That's the only other thing I would add. I know we're short on time I just want to say this the the big hang-up I have with their decision to do what they did Both from Activision side and from Blizzard's leadership is They have burned a whole lot of goodwill whether or not it's it's business sense or it isn't business sense That's gonna sting for a while. It's gonna make people wary It's gonna make people it's gonna break the illusion and they had a genuine illusion and they had it because they earned it They earned that illusion, but you got that so big now that illusion is cracking and people are Blizzard's not what I used to think it was it used to be my dream life to work there now I don't think I'm even gonna try like people. I know people at the university. You're all studying a games program They're all super wary of this all of a sudden for this they could do no wrong now We're like that's freaking harsh and you also pay those people very little it to begin with and they did a lot Of heavy lifting and like there's a lot of real Criticism going around that I agree with I think that's another big part of it too is these people, you know You're not saving that much money You're always saving a lot of more money on headcount than than people think but you know Takes a lot of these people to amount to $15 million. Yeah I'll hide by the way on Fridays the instance I'll go nuts with all this So if people really want to hear us go to town what we have all kinds of talk about so we we will One community that is thriving and only growing is our DTNS subreddit You can submit stories vote on others and make a friend or two at daily tech news show at reddit.com We're also on Facebook. You'd like to hang out there. We've got a group Facebook comm slash groups slash daily tech news show Let's check out the mail bag. Let's do it We actually we got a we got another email from Brad with some more feedback on our Apple VA story on Monday show Brad says it may amaze some people to know that the VA is very often at the forefront of new things when it comes to health care They were the first to allow anyone under their care to download their full medical record with a single button The introduction of Apple to the mix is great news for the younger vets that are finding it to be difficult to deal with the VA In some respects the VA has issues, but this is a great step in the right direction Also, Brad says I travel a lot and some hotels have YouTube on their TVs I've started to search and then play DTNS on the TV since it's a different user count than mine So just a little something extra to get those views up. Thank you, Brad. I love that. So cute. Yeah, Brad Brad you are doing God's work Doing the Lord's work Brad. Um, also before the instance and Scott's rant Which I'm very excited about on Friday Scott let folks know where they can keep up with all of your other work well, I've got That ruin if you want to check that out It's over at the instance net will likely do something live on Friday morning And then it'll be up on the feed for everybody but a lot of interest in talking about this stuff So definitely check that out for everything else you can go to frogpants.com all my shows are there all the art stuff I do is there. It's all there and you can follow me on Twitter at Scott Johnson as usual our goal each month is to get one more patron than last month and We need about eight people right now if you are one of eight people who are not supporting the show right now Please start supporting the show at patreon.com slash DTS You'll get an ad-free version of the RSS feed special episodes for me this this Friday My editor's desk episode for patrons at the $5 and up level is going to be about analyst expectations And whether they're crazy or whether they're useful There's also special episodes coming where we look back on the tech news of the past We taught we're going to be talking about five years ago lineups from DTNS all that more at patreon.com slash DTNS Could be a valentine's gift for your loved one our email address is feedback at daily tech news show calm We're also live Monday through Friday at 4 30 p.m. Eastern 21 30 utc If you want to join us live, we'd love to have you find out more at daily tech news show comm slash live I'm tomorrow with Justin Robert young talk to you then This show is part of the frog pants network get more at frog pants.com Hope you have enjoyed this bro Hats off to the chat room for having a Sort of a raucous and and good debate about this Activision Blizzard while we were doing this But but without you know, sliding into demagoguery and name-calling or anything. It's good to see very nice Yeah, you get the chat room you deserve Tom. I heard that from someone once. Yeah, so they're just pedantic Yeah, it's a heated issue I I'm actually kind of stressing about Friday because it's so much heat around this it's gonna be Yeah, yeah, well, I and there's there's there's a lot of reason for heat And then there's a lot of of things that are like, no, that's that's not the thing to get mad at Yeah, it was a nice run for me because I got to be reminded of the facts on the ground Mm-hmm and then look at look at it from that angle and then look at it from the emotional angle What does it all mean and all of that and yeah, I just steal those numbers out of the rund out if they're helpful for you On the instance, they actually are yeah, let's wipe those for that. That'd be good Anyway, yeah, very cool chat room. You guys are great as always Hey, we have Johnson on Johnson and Johnson as a potential Headline, which is hilarious Activision's new pitfall Fall Activision game back in the 80s. Yeah, also laying off people kind of a pitfall for them called off-duty That's pretty good There's this new pitfall that I Yeah, that was really a blizzard of layoffs. I think I've seen that one actually that one's good, but Yeah The smart the smart tristes is are coming like smart mattress That's too smart, yeah What's a smart dress Adding by subtracting should be smart mattress. Let me sleep on it I'm I'm actually like I'm torn between called off-duty and activision's new pitfall. Those are both amazing Those are really strong and they're great puns and they're not mean and they're perfect both of them So I couldn't I could go either way I'd almost I'm almost leaning towards called off-duty because you got that one faster. I did I just forgotten the pitfalls and activision game. I don't know All right, we're going with called off duty called off-duty Called off-duty fall of man and woman So we called off duty. Yeah, I put it in He's there and run down for you We've called it off duty Plus it says duty who doesn't like that Was it Eisner in the eight nineties eighties nineties for Disney? Yeah, I stir my father is there Eisner. He used to so when he came in It just reminded me of this blizzard's kind of the Disney of video games in a lot of ways It's a lot of pure happy thoughts about it Happiest place on earth sort of thing and then this feels a little like the Eisner thing where it kind of comes in it gets a little rough And things get weird I've been trying to think of a good comparison for this, but that's how this feels So I'm since it's still in my mind. I don't mean to keep talking. I mean, we're we're stopped becoming this kind of rose tinted rose tinted glasses view of of The Yeah Yeah, but then on the other hand Tom mentioned Nintendo and I was gonna say what we didn't have a lot of time Nintendo is also famous for their two chief executives chief creative officer and chief operating officer both took like 50% something pay cuts the year they were sucking it before the switch and Didn't fire anybody like it was a it was a nice little example in the gaming world of hey You can you can tighten up internally and Well more more more partly it gives the feeling that the Executives feel that they are part. They're all in the same boat not just like I'm in the lifeboat. Yeah, the ship's sinking Maybe some of you can jump off and lighten the way, you know kind of thing. It just feels like You're in for a penny in for a pound Yeah, there's a it's a nice there's a nice feeling of camaraderie when you when you can kind of do stuff like that Yeah, I mean I was trying to walk the line and I was doing this in the chat room as well as on the actual show between There are good reasons to Make cost adjustments while you're making money, you know, it's easy to go like they're making profits Why are they cutting back? It's like well cuz you know, you're not gonna make money, right? If you look at it and I'll go into this more in the editor's desk on Monday But if you look at it and say hey, yeah, we made money But we should have made more given what we know about how our business runs and we know if we don't put resources into development We are gonna start losing money soon. So let's not do that I mean, there is a real problem with unreasonable profit and growth expectations But I don't think that's what's going on necessarily with Activision Blizzard I think they're trying to head off a real A real downturn because we're seeing real downturns from EA and take two, right? So they're trying to get ahead of that. That's smart. They should do that Headcount is expensive So if you've got a bunch of people working in areas that you've decided you're not going to do anymore because they only cost you money And they don't bring in a return Then you probably should shut those down and let those people find jobs and help them find jobs somewhere else And I wish we had mentioned this in the show, but they are providing comprehensive benefits They're extending health care even after people stop working there They're doing things to try to help these people find other jobs What I do wish they would do is say but can we find other jobs within the company for these people? Activision is trying to say nah, we can't but Google does this too where you rarely ever hear about Google layoffs because anytime Google shuts down a department They work really hard. They have this thing called bungee where you can like spend months Working in other departments to try to catch on and find another job They go they bend over backwards trying to find places for people in other parts of the company So, you know, I wish I do wish that that Activision Blizzard was doing that. Yeah, they're doing I mean, they're doing some stuff The rest of the industry stepping up in this major way like there's some there's some really cool take takeaways from all of this that's happening that's community level related like people reaching out and Crossing borders of usually very competitive companies and you know in some ways you could say that's a competitive thing to do is to reach out and hire their old people but I Don't know. There's something good to take away from some of it. The big bottom line for me is Probably shouldn't put publicly traded companies in a higher Moral frame of mind than they than they deserve, you know what I mean, like yeah Hold them to moral expectations on the other hand. I I would like to I would like to make sure that what they're doing is actually morally a problem before I do that And I'm not convinced this is as bad as some people think it is. There's some bad in here though, right and yeah And whether whether people want to Blame Activision more or not that's Yeah, I mean, that's the other thing right We're in some of this stuff and maybe I'm being too forgiving because some of this stuff is masked by the fact that this is a Problem with every company every company is underpaying its workers every company is overpaying its executives So I do tend to discount that like well It's not like Activision Blizzard is the only one all the companies are doing that So I sort of you know, I cancel that out of the equation like that's that's not new But you shouldn't excuse them for that Yeah, I agree Well, it's good to talk about they're doing if they're doing maybe they're not. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know It is gonna be a rebuilding time known regardless of what any if even without this drama It's a weird time for everybody. The whole business is just in this freaky place And it's hard to figure it out. We haven't been here before not for a long time I mean, I think of it and I look at I look at all layoffs through the prism of of tech TV getting shut down Tech TV was profitable internationally It was in the black on the web and it was moving towards profitability on TV It was doing everything it should do and it got shut down like it didn't make any sense Those layoffs were idiotic that was a lot of wasted talent and wasted intellectual property And so I look at Activision Blizzard. I'm like, that's a lot of people. That's a chunk But at least what they're saying makes sense to me like, oh, you know what? We're spending a lot of money on these areas that just aren't Bringing in a return. They're they're not helping us improve game sales And what we need to do is make better games. So we need to hire more developers to do that that all makes sense From there, it's all in the execution and how you how you do it. Yeah in some ways this was coming Anyway, it's just this battle royale fad is pushing them Well, yeah, exactly to hurry up because they they were already kind of in a rebuilding phase just trying to figure out what was next Hoping that you know overwatch would take him over the edge and it did for a while and then fortnight happened Hey, I'll change a topic here If I may yeah Sarah did you see the email we got about a garlic twist No, tell me about it. So it's the way there's somebody heard that we both mentioned our garlic presses as our favorite kitchen gadget mm-hmm and Randy Randy Norris Said I would like to share my favorite alternative to a garlic press You peel the garlic just like with a garlic press, but then you read this As an upside you don't have any loss of garlic that gets stuck in the press Yeah, I mean I I will mince my garlic sometimes Sometimes a friend of mine who is a really great Italian cook his voice will echo in my head where he's like do not use a garlic press You're ruining it. You want to use the whole garlic? That's the point Okay, you know, I'll I'll I'll peel and mince But I get that 20 bucks the garlic twister looks pretty easy The only thing is it's plastic and the one thing I like about my garlic presses is not gonna break because it's metal Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I might try one of these though and some plastics kind of retain the smell I mean, even though it's a garlic presses. You don't want it smelling like garlic in your drawer Yeah, it doesn't bother me neither. I love the small garlic Great prefer it You know, that's the thing I like garlic too, but there's like my my sink garlic belongs in certain places Roger you and I are vampires, dude. I'm with you. I mean, I love eating garlic I just don't need my kitchen to smell like a clove of garlic every time. Oh, but like that smells like food That's that smells so good But but I understand it's it's you either want to smell that when you're not eating it or you don't It's probably because I worked in food service for a long time and coming out smelling like the kitchen after work Yeah, I work service a long time, too I'm a Sarah on this one I only disagreed because you said you don't want your kitchen if you had said I don't want then I got no I got no coral with you. I get it. Well, I mean, it's also sort of like Sauteed onions, right? That goes in lots of dishes. Some people just do not like the smell of onions. It's overpowering You always know that it's there and I get that but I again, I like it. It makes me feel like it's home Yum, we're making something. I also understand that I am I am living in a world where I have few guests And I might feel differently if I had people over all the time going why does your kitchen smell like garlic? Are you cooking something? No, that's that's my blade plug-in. It's garlic alone Well, but it's not like hey, I've got guests over and they think my kitchen smells like poop. It's Yeah, but I mean like, you know, I'm not saying you're making you're making a false dilemma of like your place smells like garbage or garlic So you're you're saying it's it's not the girl like it's that you don't want your kitchen to smell like food Fresh like a deal. I want it to smell like yeah It's ready for anything else you want to do in it Right garlic dishes or yeah, if you if you want to bake some cookies in your house smells like garlic Yeah, they don't go together although So video folks we're gonna say goodbye if you're a co-executive producer on the patreon or above analyst advisor master level check out the Bonus show that's gonna be looking back at February 2014 DTNS rundowns that'll be coming into your feeds shortly. Everybody else have a great day audio folks stick around. There's more to come