 Coming up on DTNS, Amazon might buy a movie studio why Apple thinks gaming is in fact different than Netflix and all the announcements from Google I.O. from Android 12's new soft bubbly look to the unification of Wear OS and Tizen. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, May 18th, 2021 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. I'm the show's producer Roger Chang. And joining us, CTO at Skidmore Owings and Merrill also venture partner at Spark Labs Global. Rob DeMillo, welcome back. Hello, thank you for having me back. We were just talking about how much school has changed since Rob and I were young. And also some of our impressions on Google I.O. and the presentation itself, you know, Google's attitude towards it. If you want that wider conversation, get good day internet. Become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Foxconn and the carmaker Stellantis signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding to form Mobile Drive, a joint venture to supply in-car and connected car technologies. Mobile Drive will supply infotainment, telematics and cloud services software and hardware to Stellantis and other interested automakers. On Monday, a Palestinian user in the U.S. named Rami said that a $50 Venmo payment he received labeled emergency Palestinian relief fund had been flagged as under review and unavailable until it could be examined by Venmo's compliance team. Venmo then followed up asking the purpose of the transferred money. Rami told restofworld.org that he was collecting money from friends for the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund. Rest of World noted that transactions with keywords like free Palestine, free Palestinian, Palestinian emergency and Palestinian fund all completed with no problems. A Venmo spokesperson said the issue was OFAC related. The U.S. Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control maintains a list of people and organizations impacted by U.S. sanctions. Bloomberg's Mark German sources say that Apple will release a redesigned MacBook Pro as early as the summer in 14 and 16 inch models featuring an Apple Silicon system on a chip with eight high performance cores and two efficiency cores in either 16 or 32 graphics core variations with support for up to 64 gigs of memory. Apple's also reportedly working on a new Mac mini featuring the same chip and a Mac Pro desktop set for 2022 with a choice of 20 or 40 computing core variations with up to 128 graphics cores. The New York Times obtained documents that it says show Apple moved iCloud data of Chinese users including their encryption keys from servers outside China to a network of servers from state owned Operation GCBD. Apple denies the report says it has control of the encryption keys. Apple says the documents are outdated. It uses the latest protections and it keeps third parties disconnected from its networks. Chinese government also made a statement that it quote strictly adheres to principles of data security protection and prohibits and cracks down on relevant illegal activities in accordance with the law. Logitech launched a $1,200 whiteboard camera called Scribe which uses AI enhanced software to make a presenter transparent so viewers of remote presentations can see the whiteboard. Scribe currently only supports zoom room but support for Microsoft Teams will arrive later this year. Now we have been talking earlier this week about how sometime mid next year Warner Media and Discovery are going to merge and form an independent company outside of AT&T but another shoe in that consolidation trend has dropped. The information sources say Amazon is in talks to acquire MGM the movie studio movie and TV studio MGM variety reports the deal could be worth about nine billion dollars and variety sources said back in December that MGM was looking for a buyer and senior VP of Amazon Studios Mike Hopkins is reportedly negotiating directly with MGM board chairman Kevin Ulrich on the deal. MGM is an independent company it stands alone so right now everybody who is smaller and stands alone is looking to team up with someone else Discovery with Warner Media CBS and Viacom teaming up and it looks like Amazon might be running a movie studio soon. Well MGM is you know indicated it would like to be bought back back in December we knew you know this probably was going to be a deal with with some entity Amazon buying MGM obviously MGM has some pretty attractive movie franchises a lot of you know television programming I guess I it also makes Amazon Prime or some version of Amazon Prime that would be bundled into an MGM offering like this should this deal pan out could you know could be another revenue stream for Amazon but you know it's it seems inevitable right that Amazon is going to buy a studio whether it's MGM or another or both. Yeah Amazon has Amazon Studios which you know we nimble collective we sold out to Amazon they use some of the software that we wrote for some of their animation and special effects so they have Amazon Studios already which is producing a lot of television shows so it makes sense they're in the market for kind of a larger professional studio. MGM has been like shopping itself around though I think for like a decade it's been a while and so it's interesting that they they they held out until the streaming world and now they're now they're grabbed into by Amazon. Yeah it makes and I was reading I think it was ampere analysis about how legacy media can win by mining the programming they either already have or can make based on the IP they own but you have to have the ability to make your streaming service the way that peacock is for NBC for example MGM has tried that they've tried that with Stargate they've tried that with a couple other properties and I don't think it has gone so well for them so I think they see that partnering up with somebody whether it's somebody as big as Amazon or somebody else is the way to go Amazon apparently is the one willing to shell out the $9 billion so yeah they never had a distribution channel before so yeah yeah there was a disturbing story here of course about all the consolidation of of content providers until you're actually anything that you're watching is only coming from about five or six different places. Everybody's complaining about having too many streaming services well pretty soon you won't they'll all come from from three companies. Yeah just like the old days. Apple's Phil Schiller testified in the epic versus Apple case on Monday explaining why Apple keeps streaming services like Stadia out of the App Store. Schiller says it's because for each game offered through the App Store Apple wants to provide an age rating parental controls a product page privacy policies stuff like that Schiller says that games are different than Netflix because Netflix has one sign in and one privacy policy that covers all of its video content but with games even after signing into Stadia players often sign into individual games to track progress play with friends Schiller said it's something that requires you to do much more than just play video Schiller added quote the App Store is not a movie store it isn't about movies it's an apps and games store so when you bring in games in a different way that no longer works as designed in the game store. It's a very Apple response isn't it to be like look we designed it this way this is the way it works I actually get the logic behind what Schiller is saying I'm not sure if I was running it I would apply it exactly that way I think you need to create a new category for things like Luna and Stadia and Project X cloud but if you're not going to adapt to that reality somehow and you're like nope this is the way it's set up that I guess that makes a sort of sense. Well it's a good way to lose control of your ecosystem right if you if you put your stake in the ground there you know the reality is they're just trying to keep their 30 percent that's what this is all coming from. You know I don't think you're wrong but I don't think that's all I think because it's Apple I think there's also like well sure we want to keep our 30 percent but also these are the rules we created right and we follow our rules they're kind of dogmatic that way yeah they're falling back on that but think of the children like you know that they that they always have in the past and what's going to wind up happening is what Epic is doing and it took a company like Epic to kind of bring this to the face of Apple in the face of Google. Google had an interesting response like they look like they are and I'm not sure if they're connected or not I'm sure that they are but they're dropping their App Store royalty fee to 15 percent for the first million dollars earned and that that came out around the same time Epic started making a lot of noise about this so yeah I'm very curious what the fate of the Google Epic court case will be I would not be shocked to see that settled out of court after the Apple Apple Epic case is kind of known we're going to see appeals of the Apple Epic case but but once they know like okay here's the here's the parameters in which we can play on an appeal I think then they'll be able to go to Google and say all right fine let's let's figure this out yeah well folks sometimes you don't have all the time in the world that's why we provide just the headlines check out our related show Daily Tech headlines all the essential tech news in about five minutes at DailyTechHeadlines.com Google I.O. kicked off with an in-person live stream they didn't have developers attending yet but they did have Google employees in attendance socially distance while the actual Google executives including Sundar Pichai came out and spoke on a live stream not a pre-produced announcement the main thing that came out of Google I.O. as everyone expected was Android 12 and the main thing about Android 12 is it's very pastel and bubbly now thanks to the new material you design it offers customization you can choose your color palette now it does need things like adapt to your widgets so they slide around and and the color adapts you can have it reset your color palette to match a background photo so that everything looks nice when it's over the background there's nifty dynamic lighting on the lock screen that kind of follows your finger it can adapt in other ways too the clock gets bigger if there are no notifications for instance on the more mundane side Google pay home mic and camera settings are all in quick controls now so you can go up and quick control turn off your mic turn off your video for everything privacy dashboard now gives you more info on what data is being captured by which apps and things like now playing and smart reply run inside the private compute core so that ai is walled off from the rest of the os and audio and language processing happens on device nothing going in the cloud finally there's an android tv remote built into the operating system now i know android tv fans are are very excited about that and android auto now supports more wireless connections to phones and digital car key supports you can use your phone like a key more easily android 12 beta is available right now if you can run it on a pixel a one plus or a xiaomi phone rob how you feel about android 12 it looks kind of cool i mean it's it's almost a reorganization release more than anything else android 11 had a lot more uh tech involved in it that that elevated it higher 12 seems to be you know finally a realization of the material design stuff they've been preaching for the last five or six years so that that's really great to see it's very pretty i like that i like the you you you almost could tell you could almost bet money that once they released chromecast or what do they call it google tv with chromecast tv yeah yeah that the next thing was going to be to incorporate it into the os on the phone which is what they did so that's that's very fun to see the the keyless entry to cars though that requires a lot of partnerships i think they've just got bmw is the only one that's holding to that right now they showed a bunch of logos but they only said bmw by name so i think there may be more in the works or they were combining the wireless android auto with the key thing to be like we've got partnerships with companies but yeah so far so far you're right just bmw yeah that's nice i advancements like this are always welcome so i mean the pastel thing is true you mentioned pastel i mean it's it's you know i don't know easter colors whatever but that aside just the customization it looks really nice and i know some people are like eh what do i care if you know my widgets are yellow rather than lime green or something and some people don't but i mean it there's just it's just one more level of not just customization on the user's part but a unification so that everything just looks a little bit less of an app mass which we are used to on lots of different mobile os's so yeah i mean i i was really impressed i'm glad they didn't um jettison widgets i was a little concerned as we kept advancing through the os releases that widgets were getting devalued i i still use them a lot i love having them on the on the phone and so it's nice to see that they've been incorporated in this design pastel or no pastel yeah and and uh works with any app that's the yeah any developer can can work with this now too so it's you're not going to have that jarring situation well you don't have to have that jarring situation where your your app design is like yeah we we we don't adapt uh to your color palette sorry that you can do that you can have them blend right on in probably the biggest news quote unquote news of io is that samsung and google have unified where os and tyson it looks to me from the outside here that most of the tyson unification here is under the hood and it still looks like where os and it's still called where os but it does mean that google play is coming to the samsung galaxy watch the next versions will be where os powered watches and samsung welcomed developers uh encouraged its tyson developers to develop on google play also fitness features from fitbit coming to where os i don't think that's a big shocker and fitbit devices in the future will run where os so trying to bring some of the best of that fitbit fitness area into where os makes sense too yeah the yeah it is a little bit of a shocker because it took google as as a company when they buy another larger entity that has a competing product it does take them a while i mean i weighs in google maps for instance it they're just now starting to like touch code bases together and you can see features from one bleeding over to the other so for uh the fitbit io the fitbit os to get incorporated into where os i think is kind of a big deal well to be fair uh i i believe park the co-founder of fitbit said we're bringing features over not we've brought features over so we'll see we'll see how fair enough yeah that's fair enough that the tyson thing is surprising because that that was samsung going yeah no we're we're we're gonna go do our own thing we don't really care about where os and this is them throwing in the towel i'm thinking is what it sounds like yeah i'm you know i think the idea was on a watch the app ecosystem may not be as determinative as long as you've got some of the majors uh because people don't you know install apps as widely on a watch but uh i think they really the the tone that i got from this announcement is that samsung really wants more developers working on its watch basis and this was the way to do it it is interesting to see google allow it to be a collaboration allow it to be we're teaming up not just like yeah samsung if you want to switch to wear os great otherwise forget it like they google moved a little towards samsung on this somebody who has a fitbit smartwatch i have the versa two and i'm very invested in the fitbit ecosystem i pay for fitbit premium the whole thing uh you know because of that i you know i look the other way on how lacking my versa two is in a lot of other things to be able to have uh any number of wear os devices that can handle all of the fitbit stats and data that i'm already uh that i already care about but also just be a better smart smartwatch in general super attractive to the fitbit folks are you uh sarah i forgot are you uh iphone ecosystem i am so yeah which is why why the fitbit versa two is right it's only so useful yeah it's only so useful but uh but no i i'm i'm excited about this cool very cool uh google was also showing a lot of its engineering prowess off uh announcing new tensor processing units the tpu v4 for ai uses a new quantum ai campus to develop stable cubits for quantum computing uh they they even did the let's have a celebrity join us uh and michael pania uh was there because he's in ant-man i guess which involves quantum stuff anyway uh it was kind of fun i guess uh they also talked about lambda lamda an open domain language model that learns concepts from training data for more conversational natural responses a little more context awareness uh showed a discussion with pluto the planet as an example of how lambda is implemented where where pluto can kind of know what you mean rather than being very literal about what you're saying also had a conversation with a paper airplane which was a little more metaphysical uh but still showed off lambda skills uh and showed off project starline which is a big concept thing it actually reminded me of when sisco was doing those big installations for video conferencing except this is 3d and uses holography uh cameras and depth sensors make a high res holographic capture of you in real time this is streaming video compresses it a hundred times sends it over the internet and at the other end a light field display is used to create the hologram of who you are talking to this is meant right now for health enterprise maybe some media uses very enterprise level stuff but certainly in the video looked impressive and they had a lot of people that they had brought into try it who were raving about it but this is this is that kind of thing where google has moved out of being like here's the next consumer product to here's the research we're doing and what it can do yeah it's also a good way to rescue princess leah yeah when they get it smaller and can put it in a droid it's going to be amazing but i i mean i i definitely want to go try uh this at some point to see just how how well it works but the idea is that you can actually make eye contact it will adapt to your position so that it looks like a person is sitting there and it doesn't like kind of flicker out when you move around to the side and and the lambda stuff a little more whimsical with the demonstrations but again showing off uh you know the prowess they have with deep mind and and ai and and everything else yeah i think but both are really really impressive i mean the the machine learning stuff in lambda i'm fascinated with back when i was in ad tech you know we would work with with um lexical translations and and having uh uh you know these these trees that would remember phrases but this is this is light years beyond that yeah yeah very cool yeah being able to tell what you mean that's a big deal folksonomies and taxonomies and yeah this is this is one level beyond all of that one of the things i was getting a little hung up with project starline was okay i understand the lifelike 3d quality of it but how many situations and i'm sure some are obvious but how many situations would that be so much more useful than someone on a nice big monitor in a video we're struggling so we're in the situation now where we all went home for a year right because we all got the flu we all went home uh and now we're uh planning our course back to the various offices and we have 11 offices there from wide and we're struggling right now with each of those offices understanding how a hybrid environment would work um and you know zoom calls and skype calls and all that stuff are great when everyone has a laptop in front of them or you know set up a rig like this where it's just you know there's sara there's tom there's rob and you're all on the screen and talking but the second that breaks into half of you are in a conference room and there's a camera in the corner of the conference room and maybe there's a mic on the table or maybe there's you know you're in this like weird audio vacuum and video vacuum it does change the dynamics of the meeting very very quickly and so if you had a situation where you could holographically project somebody into a conference room regardless of where they were i think it would make a difference yeah as long as it was playing field being leveled somehow yeah somehow somehow reduces some of those zoom fatigue factors that are caused by the fact that you're not really there and you're you feel like you have to pay more attention right if if everybody feels like they're actually there then you go back to like all right i don't have to constantly be looking at somebody but this is this is also not ready for your house yet which is why i think they mentioned media and health because health i can go do some some virtual like i could consult a specialist who's halfway around the world and he'd be able to see you know she'd be able to see me in 3d which which helps the diagnostic process obviously media you know you can bring in a guest and it looks like they're sitting there on the set with you that kind of stuff on the consumer product front search is testing a multitask unified model or mum that can be more context sensitive like you could show it a picture of your boots and say here these good to hike mount fuji this is it's again more of that contextual understanding it would know how to answer and even be able to translate some japanese resources for you so this is something that will come to some queries in search at some point they're testing it right now google maps is getting some more practical things for your everyday use virtual street signs key landmarks indoor augmented reality of directions in fact indoor train station directions are rolling out to this week tokyo next month google shop is incorporating google lens so you can find a product by picture take a picture of a of a chair and and be able to search for it easily that way even a screenshot any merchant can now list on google shop for free they're partnering with Shopify to bring in 1.7 million merchants google photos added a lot of controls from looking for innovative patterns to create new memory collections to giving you the ability to hide people or time periods from your memories if you don't want them and you can lock a folder in photos to keep it out of shared albums finally a dermatology assistance tool is coming to search for you to find more than 288 skin conditions and answer 90 percent of the most common searches how did that work you take a photo of your you just described it but yes you could also take a photo that you take a photo at from three different angles and it will be able to give you a better result based on that that's interesting yeah otherwise you know i end up on real self dot com and it always leads to cancer yeah yeah you have cancer dot com yeah yeah i i i love the idea the mount fuji example with the hiking boots is a great one because it's like really just changing the nature of okay what how many query options do i have how do i want to approach this question because right now i might say what's the best hiking boot for treacherous terrain like mount fuji or something like that and then you start you get into a rabbit hole and you're on brand websites and you're buying shoes and you know it's it can get out of control quickly but if you have something a lot more specific this is a great way to to keep that that query a lot more focused well it's also i mean this technology plus lambda um which is why i'm actually more interested about lambda than i am what the holographic research it it's providing an interface into not just a computer but a larger computer enterprise a larger organization that's more conversational you would you would interact with google as a search engine the way you would interact with any of us as a search engine or a resource you know and it's like yeah do these are these boots good for my hike up mount fuji and what else should i wear and what are the restaurants nearby you can have a you can have a conversation as opposed to understanding how you have to structure your search yeah yeah google fu goes away and you know like you shouldn't need to be good at search you should just be able to ask your question right that's right a few other notable announcements obviously google really emphasizing security by default privacy by design over and over again smart canvas for improved project management coming to workspace uh customizations coming to google meet for everyone not just workspace users duplex type technology incorporated to help you change your password uh if it notes uh you know that your password has been in a breach it'll guide you over to changing your password in the google password manager can also import uh from other password managers if you want to easily move in uh bring your passwords easily across devices there's some easier ways to delete the last thing you searched for if you're like i don't want this showing up in my customizations you can you can now just immediately delete that search and also delete your history now from the top level of settings a little faster to get to and they're improving computational photography algorithms to take better pictures of people in color people of color rather uh so that that you don't have the darker pictures for darker skin tones uh and they talked a lot about sustainability uh and trying to reach a goal of being 24 7 carbon free in all their data centers and offices by 2030 that's wonderful yeah that that last one is is important for everybody the 2030 initiative is a big deal at som right now obviously uh it as it is everywhere so it's great to see google hop on board with them all right there you go folks google i l let us know what you thought feedback at daily tech news show dot com well if you're an engineering student you might want to listen to this one the w l k a t a or w l kata mini robot six access mini robot arm is a professional grade tool designed for engineering students in fact it's specifically for engineering students mimicking robotic arms that are found in ultra precise factory scenarios the arm uses an arduino control board it's also open source and it's only nine inches high and 0.2 millimeters repeated position accuracy to let engineers and manufacturers simulate real world robotic uses in a test setting right from a desktop attachments for the arm include a micro server servo gripper a pen holder a suction cup pneumatic two finger gripper universal ball gripper go pro carrier even a bluetooth remote controller students can get the w l kata micro bot six access mini robot arm professional kit also there's an educational kit for just over $1500 and $1300 respectively i mean if you grew up with lego mindstorm that's totally what this is this is you're an engineer who grew up making lego robots now you can make real robots with this that that price point is amazing the most the cheapest professional one i believe is an order of magnitude more expensive than this oh yeah yeah so it's kind of neat it would be fun to see the mods that come out within weeks of this thing yeah yeah yeah yeah you get yourself a mere robot six access mini robot arm do send us emails on everything that you've built and created feedback at dailytechnewshow.com if you have questions or comments you can always send all that stuff there too thank you in advance shout out to patrons at our master and grand master levels including eric home carmine bailey and matthew stevens also we have a brand new boss and his name is john ruh who just started backing us on patreon thank you john also thanks to rob de mellow for being with us today rob where can people keep up with everything that you do oh my lord well you can go to about me slash rob de mellow to find out all those locations uh follow me on twitter at uber rob and uh it's about it i pulled myself off facebook so we'll go from there well congratulations i guess yeah that's something i consider doing often as well we are live on this show Monday through Friday at 4 30 p.m eastern 2030 utc find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live we are back at it tomorrow with scott johnson talk to you then this show is part of the frog pants network get more at frogpants.com i hope you have enjoyed this program