 Ryan W. has supported independent tech news directly for about a day. Why not be like Ryan and become a DTNS member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Hello, folks. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, June 18th, 2019 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Feline, I'm Sarah Lane. And from It's Always Sunny in Finland this time of year because the sun doesn't go down. I'm Patrick Vader. And I'm the show's producer. Roger Chang. It's Always Sunny in Finland, Delphia is my new favorite show. I can't wait to watch it. We have a lot to talk about today. As Facebook announced its new cryptocurrency project, we will explain what it is, how it works, what you don't have to worry about and what you might have to worry about. But let's start with a few other tech things you should know. The Verge reports that Google is launching RCS service in France then in the UK, both later this month. RCS follows other efforts like Google Talk, Google Voice, Google Buzz, Google Plus Messenger, Hangouts, Spaces, Allo and Hangouts Chat. RCS, which is known for rich communication services, is a planned upgrade of the carrier-owned SMS service and is a GSMA standard. So maybe it'll stick around this time. Roli, which makes electronic music instruments, announced its new 24-key Lumi keyboard with an array of features such as keys that light up through internal LEDs and connect to a Lumi app to teach users how to play. The Lumi starts at $250 and is expected to ship to Kickstarter pre-orderers by October with traditional retailers also offering it this fall. Cute. Apple TV has new picture-in-picture mode, letting users stream two shows at the same time as part of the new beta software for all of Apple's operating systems. Picture-in-picture support will only be available for content provided by Apple in the Apple TV app. So that means your iTunes stuff, stuff that you streamed through the Apple TV plus subscription service later this year. If you subscribed to HBO or Cinemax, et cetera, as long as it's streamed through the Apple TV channels or in the Apple TV app, you get the picture-in-picture. Also known as Not Netflix. That too. Also known as Not Netflix, POM opened pre-orders for an unlocked version of the POM phone. If you're not familiar, it's the quote-unquote tiny Android phone that will work on Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and the prepaid Metro brand. Not Sprint though, not as, as of yet. The phone was previously limited only to Verizon's network. The 3.2 inch phone was originally meant as a secondary phone, or at least marketed that way, with a Snapdragon 435 chip, limited cameras, and shorter battery life. The unlocked model cost $350, and shipping is expected within six to eight weeks. All right, let's talk a little bit about what's going on with Twitch, Patrick. Indeed, Twitch acquired Bebo, which of late has been a service for organizing and running tournaments for streamers. Bebo launched back in 2005, almost couldn't read that number, it's so long ago, and after ending up with AOL, then criterion capital, Bebo's original founders bought it back in 2013. Twitch acquired the assets and 10 employees who will now work on Twitch rivals, which organizes competitive events for Twitch streamers. I mean, this does take me back to when on Buzz Out Loud, it's seen that we would talk about how, well, Bebo is like the MySpace of the UK. Well, and when AOL bought Bebo, it bought it out of premium. Bebo was still in the up and up. Facebook hadn't taken that dent out of all social networks that eventually happened. It was in the 800 millions. And then when criterion capital bought it back, it was like 25 million. When Bebo's original founders bought it back to kind of like say, all right, well, we've been through lots of incarnations. We were the ones who made this initially and we care about it and we're gonna jumpstart the brand. They bought it back for one million. So the value of Bebo has fluctuated quite a bit over the years. And do we know, I didn't check this, I should have, but do we know how much the Twitch bought it for now? Oh, 25 million. The going rumor is 25 million tops, but neither company has just closed in. Right. If that's, well, that's a good return on investment. It's also a complete shift in activity. This is interesting what's happening with Twitch rivals. Essentially the eSports athletes are realizing that they can make a lot more money by just being Twitch streamers, many of them. And when they end up in competitions as Twitch streamers, they're often not qualifying for the top spots. So what Twitch did, which was really clever, was organize Twitch rivals, which is kind of invitational type tournaments where you really invite, you get the streamers a specific spot that they will get no matter what. And that is a lot more, well, I shouldn't say a lot more, but this seems to be very effective in getting interest around those people in eSports-ish environment. So it makes sense. This is a relatively new initiative. So it makes sense that they would need a team that knows what it's doing to organize this. It's like the Twitch equivalent of barnstorming back in the old 1800s days. What's that? Well, I don't have time to go into it, but professional athletes used to go in the off season and just show up in a field by a barn and play for money to people who couldn't. I see, got it, yeah. So it would be kind of like a, it would be kind of like Twitch rivals more or less. Yeah, that's why I said that. Oh. Just the 18th century version. No, that was, that was the funny thing. Mac Stories editor Federico Vetticchi noticed that Apple has added a prompt to iOS 13 beta two when you uninstall an app that says, do you want to keep the subscription for this app? Apple changed its app store guidelines this year to require developers to make, quote, the amount that will be billed must be the most prominent pricing element in the layout, end quote, and added an extra confirmation step during sign up. This is really helpful. You hear all the time of people saying, well, I thought I downloaded a free app, but there was some sort of mixed messaging going on and I ended up subscribing to something. And many people think if you want to install an app and you don't use it, you're not going to be charged for something. But that's not always the case in the app store. Yeah, this is a good thing. Anything that makes it easier to tell what you're subscribed to is a good thing. I just wish they would make subscriptions even easier to get to in the settings. But I understand there's a lot of things you need to get to easily in the settings and they've made it a little easier, but I think it could be even better. I would say the subscriptions are, it's not just a little bit too hard. It is really hidden behind a cascade of menus and that seems like it should be a little bit prioritized. But yeah, this is especially good for apps that will maybe offer a free trial and then charge you an inordinate amount of money, which we've seen reports on. And for ordinary people, they delete the app, it takes care of the problem, it's probably the right way to do it. In a victory for social networks, the US Supreme Court ruled that a private company is not subject to the same First Amendment requirements as a state organization in the case of Manhattan Community Access Corporation versus Halleck. Manhattan Community Access Corp ran a public access channel on a contract with New York City and two producers were fired from the channel after publicly criticizing it. They said, you said things that you shouldn't have said about our channel, we're not employing you anymore. The producers sued, arguing that since the government contracted the channel, the government was paying Manhattan Community Access to run the channel, that it was therefore a public forum and subject to First Amendment protections. The Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling written by Justice Kavanaugh said that the public access channel was not a public forum because it did not take over, and I quote from the opinion here, powers traditionally exclusively reserved to the state. So in other words, they ruled very narrowly that unless you're doing exactly the same thing as the state, just because the state's paying you, doesn't mean you're subject to all the same constitutional law as the state. And they use things like, you know, government licenses people to drive and because you are going to a private company to apply for your license, which you can do sometimes, that doesn't mean you're allowed to say whatever you want. You know, it's all in there saying, it's strictly if you're doing things that are exclusive to the government that you're subject to this and this company was not. So they even hinted that other things, so the ruling got a little wider, like social media platforms should not be considered public forums. A lot of people were worried that the court would rule in favor of the producers and that the ruling could then be used to go after Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, et cetera, for moderating content saying, well, you're silencing me, and so that's a violation of my first amendment. Justice Kavanaugh went on to espouse the wider principle that I quote, a private entity who provides a forum for speech is not transformed by that fact alone into a state actor. So sort of pointing to that, if you tried to bring a case where you're going after a social network, it wouldn't wash, at least, it wouldn't wash with Justice Kavanaugh and the five people who joined him. And in fact, Justice Sotomayor, who wrote The Descent, also acknowledged that if there was not a state actor involved at all, then there wouldn't be any protection. Right, I think this is the most interesting part of the ruling. The actual contentious, somewhat potentially contentious part is, if the state is paying you, should the First Amendment apply? And there, I think there could be an argument to be made and actually, the four to five ruling shows that legally it's not completely, I guess it is clear cut now, but the argument could have been made. But yeah, there were just the other side of that, for sure. Right, right. That was the interesting legal question, which also had societal implications. The really interesting thing is, as you mentioned, they went out on their way on both sides of the issue to say, however, if you are a private company, First Amendment does not apply to you. And this is, it almost seems like they had heard all of the rumblings starting to gain traction in the public for various reasons of people starting to say, oh, First Amendment left and right in the context of social media. It's really interesting that they took the time and effort to say, don't even try bringing the case to us because no, it does not apply, period. That's it, case over. Thank you, goodbye. I think that's significant. Yeah, and it was unexpected. A lot of people were worried that the court might rule in favor of the producers and leave, even if they ruled strictly, leave a hole open for more court cases. But like you say, Patrick, instead of doing that, they ruled against the producers and went out of their way to say, and don't file a bunch of other cases around this because here's how we'll probably rule. So yeah, I think that's significant. You know, although I would say the public access channel, which I assume you got rabbit ears or OTA antenna is free if you live in the... Public access channels are usually delivered over cable, actually. Oh, interesting. So this is not something that you could access for free, necessarily. So I was gonna... It's on the basic cable plan, so maybe sometimes... Okay, because I was going to argue, well, you know, you can't really throw social networks into that because how can any of us access social networks without some sort of an internet connection of some kind, whether it's cellular or Wi-Fi or otherwise? But if this is not something that was readily available to New York citizens in Manhattan specifically for free, then I can see where you could make that comparison more easily. Yeah. Hey, folks, if you wanna get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to DailyTechHeadlines.com. All right, Libra, what is it? Facebook announced it is launching a cryptocurrency sometime next year, first half of 2020. So at least by June 2020, they expect to have this thing ready and launched. It is a coin that you can exchange real money for and then use like you would any kind of cryptocurrency like Bitcoin to pay for things and avoid a lot of the burdens of the financial system. So it is not like Bitcoin in that the value is just determined by the marketplace. It is backed by assets in something called the Libra Reserve. And that is made up of low volatility assets, things like bonds, bank deposits, government securities, currencies from stable and reputable central banks including the US dollar, the British pound, the Euro, the Swiss franc and the yen. So you'll hear it called a stable coin and it's almost exactly the same. It kind of depends on who you talk to but it's not as uniform as a directly pegged stable coin. A stable coin is often pegged to a single currency like one Libra with equal one dollar. That's not what's going on here. It's pegged to this basket of different currencies and securities. So it's not as volatile as Bitcoin but it's also not subject to fluctuation of one currency because the other assets in the basket balance it out. Now, ideally this means Libra holds a more stable value as one currency or asset can't throw it out of whack. There is no fixed supply of Libra. It's not like Bitcoin where there's mining going on and a certain amount of Bitcoins always exist at a certain time. Libra is created when you buy it and it's destroyed if you cash out. So the only amount of Libra that will exist are the amount in the system. Initially it's going to be used for low cost fast money transfers. This is useful for the 31% of the world that is unbanked. Don't have bank accounts, can't store money without paying a high cost developing economies for the most part. Facebook is running it and building it through the end of the year but then we'll hand it over to the nonprofit Libra Association. So Facebook won't be running this currency by the end of the year. The Libra Association currently has 28 partners. Now Facebook is one of them but they're easily outvoted by the other 27. It's headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. It includes Facebook through a subsidiary called Calibra that we're gonna talk about in a while. It also includes Coinbase, Mastercard, Visa, eBay, PayPal, Stripe, Spotify, who wants easier ways for people in more parts of the world to be able to pay them for their subscriptions, Uber, same reason, Lyft, Vodafone, some venture capital people like Andreessen Horowitz and some nonprofits involved in the financial sector like Kiva or Women's World Banking. Libra's Association is committed to recruiting more members they wanna have up to 100 by the end of the year or at least by launch. Members have to have $10 million to buy in and they have to have half a rack of server space at least 100 megabits per second or above dedicated interconnect connection, a full-time site reliability engineer and enterprise grade security because part of being a founder of the Libra Association is running a node in the blockchain that runs the cryptocurrency. In exchange for all of this, members get a Libra investment token and money from sales will be placed in low-risk assets with revenue going to support operating expenses and any revenue left over after operating expenses goes to the partners of the Libra Association as dividends. So there's an incentive to invest because you may get some money back. Libra blockchain will be released under an Apache 2.0 license. It will be open source and it is available right now as a testnet. You can program for it in the Rust language. They are going to change that to their own move language to allow you to build apps that take advantage of the blockchain. Now the blockchain itself is what's called a permissioned blockchain. That means you have to have permission to run a node. Validator nodes are run by association members. Remember they have to have all of the connections and reliability in engineers, that's why. But anybody can build an app on top of it. There are plans to eventually transition from this permissioned blockchain to a permissionless blockchain. It would be proof of stake like Ethereum, not the way Bitcoin is run. They wanna get to permissionless in about five years. There are also a small transaction coin, a cost fraction of a cent per transaction. Most users won't notice it but it would help to deter spam or denial of service attacks. And the Libre blockchain is expected to run at about a thousand transactions per second. By comparison, Bitcoin runs at about seven transactions per second, Ethereum about 15. And they're working with hacker one on a bug bounty system later this year. Now, that's the coin, that's the association that is unassociated with Facebook, except for Facebook being a member. Before we get to what does Facebook get out of it? How private is it? Any questions before I continue? Well, one of the main questions, because I've been pulling a lot of folks, especially folks who work in more of the financial sector than I do, like, how do you feel about this? Is it scary, blah, blah, blah. And what I've heard more than once is people saying it's super frightening that Facebook might, this might be a hit and Facebook is going to be acting as a sovereign state with that many users and that much amount of money that, yes, is somehow mirroring government financial systems, but absolutely not that. I said, okay, well, what about the Libre Association, though? Doesn't that kind of quell some of the fears because we're talking to a lot of different companies and nonprofits and venture capitalists, as you mentioned, Tom, that are going to be overseeing this and, well, he, in this case one person in particular said, no, I mean, these are companies for the most parts of those 28 companies, which Facebook is one of those 28. These are companies that are working on profit above all else, venture capitalists, same thing, looking for the highest rate of return on an investment. And this, not to say that government currencies don't have their issues, they certainly do, depending on the country, of course, but this is, it is a capitalistic solution to something that we've never seen at such volume because it's Facebook. Well, but Facebook, okay, as you mentioned, Facebook is separate from the Libre Association. Libre Association will eventually have a hundred members if they get it done right, which means Facebook will be less a part of that and they want to have about a quarter of those be nonprofits. So keep that in mind. Keep that in mind, but also this is tapping into Facebook's user base, right? That is how this whole thing ran so quickly. It is, it isn't. It's not no more tapping into Facebook user base than it is tapping into anyone else's user base. Facebook is going to be using it. In fact, let that actually, let's get to what does Facebook get out of this and the privacy involved in it. Cause I think that informs this opinion. Facebook has created a subdivision called Calibra. So in other words, the way Instagram and WhatsApp and Oculus are subsidiaries, Calibra will be an independent subsidiary owned by Facebook. They are going to create a digital wallet that will be used in Messenger and WhatsApp, I guess it'll probably go on Instagram and Facebook too, but they mentioned for sure Messenger and WhatsApp, as well as Android and iOS apps. If you are using this and you get hacked or scammed, Calibra will provide 24 seven support to refund your money the way you would with a credit card. And if you're wondering, okay, but how does Facebook make money from this? Facebook's vice president of blockchain, David Marcus, said, if more commerce happens, then more spa businesses will sell more on and off platform and they'll want to buy more ads. So it'll be good for our ads business. And we'll talk about that in a second with privacy. Calibra itself may also offer credit lines or investing options. So they may be able to make some money off interest. All right, privacy is obviously the biggest thing on top of everyone's mind here, right? There are public private key pairs. This is a cryptocurrency. There is not anonymity because it is a public ledger, but there is some anonymity protection of a sort. And I'll get to that in a second. Anyone who signs up for Calibra has to share a government ID and other personal information. That is a regulatory requirement. And that is something they are being very careful to follow regulations in every region they want to operate in. You do not need a Facebook account to use Calibra. If you just wanna create a brand new account on Calibra, you can do that. Facebook also promises not to source account info or data from Calibra without consumer consent. Keep that last bit in mind. They will ask for your consent. Calibra will not share data with third parties of any kind, except for legal compliance, like they got a warrant or product performance. In other words, you're paying somebody. They have to share some of your personal information when you pay a merchant. And they're like, we'll do that, but we won't do anything beyond that. No sharing of info for ad targeting without permission as well. Okay, so when you give that consent, when you give that permission, what's that gonna look like? We don't know, but my guess is they may ask you like, hey, would you like to connect your WhatsApp contacts? Would you like to connect your Facebook contacts and see if they're on Calibra? When you do that, boom, you may be giving consent or permission. So keep that in mind. It appears though that all of this would be opt in according to their privacy statements, but they don't have terms of service written yet. So you'll wanna double check to make sure that carries on once the terms of service come out. Calibra also settles accounts on internal ledgers for payments within the Calibra system, then records to the Libra blockchain in aggregate. That provides you a little bit of anonymity. In other words, your transaction wouldn't be exposed on the general Libra blockchain. It would only be exposed on the Calibra ledger. So you'll need to trust Calibra to keep that data safe, but it at least provides one little speed bump before it gets out to the wider blockchain. So what are the benefits? Well, money transfers are slow two to three days right now and they're costly. If you're doing remittances, they can charge an average of 7% of what you're sending. If I'm in Canada and I'm sending money home to Pakistan, 7% just gone. If I'm using Libra, then almost nothing is gone when I send that money back. Reduces transaction fees for sellers quite possibly. Micro payments could become feasible because you don't have these large fees attached. However, you gotta get merchants to accept it by providing some rewards for signing up customers or something. You gotta get consumers to use it. Again, maybe rewards, maybe they give you a few free Libra when you create an account or watch a video or something. You have to do that regulatory compliance in every country that you want to operate in. That's really tricky. And of course, the last challenge is trust. We just heard some of that from Sarah just now that there are people who are like, yeah, but I don't care. I don't trust Facebook. Yeah, that is where I have a little bit of a, I guess issue is a strong term, but from where I'm standing and I'm very happy to be contradicted about this. The way Facebook has set it up makes it no different than if a well-known open source organization had set something like this up. Like if this came from Mozilla or the Wikimedia or something like that, I think everyone would be looking at it and say, yeah, this looks pretty kosher. It is. Facebook has no control over it any more than any other member. It is completely open source. Of course, I understand the fact that it's still Facebook so people will be hesitant to not assign nefarious intent to it, but I don't think they've set it up so that it seems at least impossible on the base level to do anything nefarious with it. Now, the way they implement it with Calibra, that's another question, but it would be the same for any other system. Am I correct? For security, where you have Google and Apple, you have these big companies coming together and saying, let's make an independent thing so that we can all benefit from it on the security end. This is Facebook saying, let's make an independent thing so that all of us PayPal, Visa can benefit from it. And Calibra is Facebook's way of trying to benefit from it. I would be surprised if Google and Apple didn't join this. That's how well-structured it seems. Yeah. Well, because it is, Gouchin is like, but it isn't coming from an open source org, but it is, they're open sourcing the Libra Association is administering an Apache licensed open source blockchain. Well, Patrick, you mentioned nothing about this seems like nefarious in any way. The fact that it's Facebook gives people pause, but I think that that's really important. And I think that that's why I'm hearing some dissent in some of the circles that are following Libra and Calibra saying, yeah, but it's Facebook. This is all, Facebook is so strong. And yes, you're right. You don't have to have a Facebook account to sign up for a Calibra wallet, but most people will have one. And Facebook is going to do its best to make sure that its users know what their options are and get on board. The whole kind of like getting someone to use this who's not on Facebook, that's a lot harder than leveraging the people that are already in the system using a variety of Facebook's apps. And I think that that's where it frightens folks because Facebook for a variety of reasons has real privacy issues. The company is trying to turn that all around. And so this comes at a complex time for messaging from the company as they try to get this new initiative, which on paper does sound pretty kosher. I will say, I think the reason they're doing it and it informs kind of why we should or shouldn't trust them. I think they need this tool for future developments they want to do with their apps. We've heard about Zuckerberg wanting to essentially create, change Facebook into the Chinese super apps like WeChat and stuff like that. This is like, let's push the analogy. It's a horse breeder who sees things, imagines cars and he thinks, well, I need wheels to create cars. Let's get together and make wheels and then we'll all use wheels to do cars. But I kind of need this to make my car and my car is gonna be super useful. This is the wheel that Facebook needs to continue developing their app and transforming Facebook. And the attractivity of a cryptocurrency that actually works and that scales, meaning the removal of charges for payments, the instant and 80 of money of transfers. I mean, we all use Patreon, for example. We lose 7, 8, 10% in those charges. I would switch to leave for a tomorrow and earn more money. Maybe not tomorrow, I'm exaggerating, but you see what I mean? Yeah, the rate is very attractive. And all the fear around Facebook has forced them to not do what WeChat did. WeChat did it easily. WeChat just said, well, we'll set up payment processing. Boom, done. We're not worried about remittances. We just want people to use WeChat when they're checking out online or offline. Facebook wants that too, but they know if they did that, everyone would scream even bloodier murder than they're screaming about Libra. So they went to the extra work to say, let's use the advantages of a public ledger. Let's make an open source platform. Let's create an independent association. Obviously we want a voice in that, but we're gonna give Kaliber the voice and we're gonna outnumber ourselves so that we deflect as much of the things we can be accused of doing wrong away from the currency itself, so that we can then take advantage of that and use it in the Facebook platform. So Tom, let me ask you this question as a conclusion. My assessment is that this is not Facebook. This is as much Facebook as HTML is Facebook. Facebook uses HTML, but Facebook isn't HTML. Would you agree that this is not Facebook in almost as many ways? Facebook didn't design HTML. No, no, no. This is something that Facebook was- I'm pushing the analogy. HTML is not a great analogy, but Fido is a really good one. And this is like Fido. Fido, we're hoping we'll solve passwords, right? But nobody says, but Google's behind it. I don't know. I feel like the Libra Association is not Facebook. Facebook has done what they needed to do to create an independent association and it seems pretty bulletproof there. Where Facebook is going to have problems is in the public perception that confuses the two and thinks they're issuing fiat currency or trying to undermine world currency. This thing's pegged to actual currencies. It needs real currencies to exist in order to run. And what they do when they trick people to giving them consent and permission and start tracking their purchases because they desperately wanna compete with Amazon too. Amazon knows everything you buy and why you bought it and how much and when. And Facebook wants to have that same information because they need to be able to compete with Amazon on more than just advertising as Amazon is starting to compete with Facebook on advertising. So you want that diversification and you want the ability to make some money on the financial system, which is another income stream outside of retail and advertising. Well, thanks to everybody who participates in our subreddit. Unsurprisingly, Facebook's Libra story was up at the top today. Thank you in advance for submitting stories and voting on others, dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. Y'all are the best. You know who else is the best? People in our Facebook group, facebook.com slash groups slash dailytechnewsshow. So thanks to everybody who helps us make our rundowns every day. And also thanks to Patrick Beja for being with us on the show, talking a little Libra, talking about all sorts of stuff today. Patrick, where can people keep up with the rest of your work? It's very easy. 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