 Coming up on DTNS is Apple done for hope for data portability and a free streaming TV service low-cast finally gets sued This is the Daily Tech news for Wednesday July 31st 2019 in Los Angeles on Tom Merritt rocking and rolling in Salt Lake City I'm Scott Johnson, and I'm the show's producer Roger Chang Sarah Lane is out today on another assignment. We wish her the best. We miss her. She will be back next week But if you missed good day internet, you missed us talking about the Kevin Costner verse Along with cryptocurrency and much more get that and more at patreon.com slash DTNS Let's start with a few tech things you should know Spotify added 8 million subscribers last quarter that missed estimates by a half million But Spotify says monthly active users grew 7% to 232 million and paid subscribers grew 9% to 108 million due to free trials and discount promotions However, the average revenue per user fell 1% since last quarter to 4 euros 86 Spotify reported a revenue rise of 31% over last year that narrowed its operating lost down to 3.34 million dollars and as lists had expected I'm to lose 62 so that's better Spotify has reached new licensing deals with two of the four major record labels with active talks Ongoing with the other two and Spotify's podcast audits grew more than 50% since last quarter Still pretty new still doing good DJI announced new first-person view or FPV goggles a high-definition camera and transmitter The FPV experience kit includes goggles to transmitters and two cameras for $819 US the fly more kit includes a phantom style controller the goggles and one transmitter and one camera for 929 The kids can stream 720p video at 120 or 60 frames per second With a latency of 28 milliseconds at a range of up to 2.5 miles drone racers check it out Samsung reported its profit fell 56% last quarter as memory chip prices decline due to oversupply In fact Samsung's head of investor relations Robert Yee warned that trade restrictions not just between the US and China But also between Korea and Japan Are going to mean quote We no longer believe it is possible to reasonably predict or forecast our free cash flow for 2018 through 2020 Samsung projected its NAND chip inventories will start to come down That should help ease the price pressure and it reported server customers are buying more DRAM And they expect that to continue operating profit for Samsung's chip division fell 71% and profit for mobile fell 42% over last year Well Chrome 76 has decided to make some news today. It's launched on Windows Mac Linux Android and iOS it now blocks flash by default That is to say it'll be flashed for those maybe not the no users can turn flash back on it's air on in its settings If they want to but keep in mind that flash will Have its full support removed entirely from Chrome next year. So they're taking it all out This right now is temporary gonna be gone for good then Chrome 76 also prevents websites for knowing if you're using incognito mode And an install button from progressive web apps now shows up in Omni box or in the Omni box I should the spirit of 76 Alright, let's talk a little bit more about Apple. We gave you the the hard numbers yesterday But refresh your memory Apple reported revenue of 53.8 billion dollars up 1% year over a year Despite revenue declines in Europe and China iPhone revenues overall fell 12% from 26.5 billion last year to 26 billion That means if you're doing the math in your head that iPhone now makes up less than half of Apple's revenue And that's the first time it's been that way in seven years Services, which is Apple's new hope grew 12.6 percent year over year to 11.45 billion dollars and Apple says they have 420 million paid subscribers Across all offerings. So Apple music iCloud etc. Etc driven by strong growth of the App Store in China So even if they're not making the revenue in China based off the phones They are still making some money off the App Store there and then help drive services growth Other categories like wearables iPad and Mac each contributed about five billion dollars to revenue Apple also noted a 50% increase in monthly users of its TV app and reported that Apple paid doubled since last year to Almost reach one billion transactions per month. So the all of that's going well Apple said that despite slowing phone sales It's install base of phones is higher than ever Including a rise in the install base in China and if you're like well, wait a minute They're not selling as many phones. How's that possible? Well, they say customer loyalty People keep their iPhones. They don't trade them in for other things They just keep them longer and a strong aftermarket So the people who do get rid of their iPhones are selling them to other people and that's that's continuing to go And Apple seems to be okay with that because they want to sell those people services Next quarter Apple will have more services to report Apple card is going to launch in August according to Tim Cook And of course, we already know that Apple TV plus and Apple Arcade are going to launch in the autumn And we're probably gonna get new iPhone models at least announced maybe not for sale But at least announced by the end of the next quarter So they'll they'll have a few possibilities to drive revenue up And if those phone models do go on sale before the end of the quarter that will boost iPhone iPhone revenue We'll see if it brings it back up above 50% but it I look at this Scott and I Think this is Apple doing what they say they need to do They know the phone market worldwide is slowing and they're gonna make that up with services And so we see phone revenue declining not precipitously not falling off a clip But declining as expected and we see services revenue coming up. It's not outperforming. It's not going gangbusters But at least it's going in the right direction And their revenue was flat, you know up 1% your rears pretty much flat. Yeah, I I actually have a theory I don't know how much water it holds Clearly they know what was coming or that you know, they've talked about this for a while about services being beefed up Slowing at the market of phones blah, blah, blah, that'll make sense to me But I have this theory Tim Cook's gotten up on multiple Occurrences or he's been on stage and said we know you're keeping your phones longer. Oh By the way, we have a reporting tool that will tell you how much time you spent in what apps on what on which phone and how long Also, we're gonna do some things with battery to make your older phones last longer Basically, they've said we know you're keeping them longer And so we're gonna give you more services and abilities to use those for phones longer It's like they've embraced this idea that people aren't going to necessarily buy a new phone every fall year after year after year I think for a while obviously that was the goal and people did but they they've embraced that in a way that actually feeds the services side So it's a subtle message, but I actually think it works for him I mean you could also cast the exact same thing you said as Apple noticed what people wanted And responded to that market We tend to think that corporations have all the power and just dictate what we do but turns out, you know People on Moss maybe not each one of us individually But but people as a whole have an effect on companies too and they're like well People are holding on their phones more often Maybe we should move from making our money off of unit sales to making our money off of selling people services For the entire life of their phone. We're gonna make more money that way well speaking of Apple They announced it will join the open source data transfer project, which is developing interoperable systems to let users move data between services The aim is to allow direct transfer of data without having to export to a hard drive and then import into a new service Think iCloud and Dropbox and a million other services the data transfer project includes Tim Berners-Lee solid Mastodon Google Microsoft Facebook and Twitter Now Apple joins that consortium and I guess we'll see what they want to do if you have been following DTNS closely, you know that I have been very bullish on the idea of open source data transfer I've mentioned Tim Berners-Lee solid several times as an example of a good project that if it can get momentum Could provide what we want and solve a lot of these privacy issues because if it works and is adopted You would control your data and you could withdraw consent to see it from people And and you wouldn't have as many of these concerns about my data is in a million places I don't even know where it is, right? So seeing Apple join this following on our Apple earnings Comments make sense because they're like well We want to make it easy for people to join our service And if that means letting them bring their Google photos in at the risk of also letting them take their Apple photos to Google Then so be it maybe that's a good idea I did not realize Google Microsoft Facebook and Twitter had already joined the data transfer project as well They joined last summer So this is it's not done by any stretch. It's not like hey, we've solved the problem But this is looking very positive. This is what you want to see is Apple joining with the others to say yeah, okay Let's let's make it so that you can move your data between our different services So then we can just compete on who has the better services rather than monopolizing the data That also makes sense for Apple because Apple says we don't want to monetize you We just want to sell you services, right? I think that is I agree 100% across the board and it reminds me of other changes that are happening the video game industry is experiencing this a little bit but not so much with data but with universal logins via multiple platforms Playing over those multiple platforms like this is the same kind of battleground or not battleground but this is a this is a place where Companies are finally starting to figure out ways to be more interoperable and compete on Actual products and services and not on those on restrictions or how much of a pain it would be to switch a service I really like that. I feel like that actually is pro-competitive and Happy to see them join and anxious to see what these guys all come up with Yeah, I am too and then if it was just the companies joining I'd be like, okay That's that's interesting But the fact that it's got Timberly solid the fact that it's got mastered on gives me hope that maybe this is This is for real and you need all of those you need you need the open-source projects And you need the the big companies to make this work All right, let's talk about reading your mind a team led by neurosurgeon Edward Chang at the University of California San Francisco funded by Facebook reality labs Published in the journal nature communications that it had developed a brain computer interface that can decode words and phrases Both heard and spoken in real time now. This isn't a product. This is We're watching someone speak and we're looking at our our machine learning Algorithm to see if it is correctly saying. Yeah, that's what they're saying, right? So it's a cheat right now, but the question is can they actually do it and They can the process decodes two kinds of information from two different parts of the brain to increase the accuracy They're adding context So a machine learning algorithm uses the activity in the brain to determine is a person listening or are they speaking? Then the algorithm uses context of what the patient heard to determine What sound is being imagined? So if there's two sounds that are looking very similar in the in the speech cortex They can use the context of what was asked to figure out which of those it is That's going to help the machine learning algorithm get better of course in the in the future and the system right now Can decode perceived sound what you hear? 76% of the time and produced sound spoken speech 61% of the time Granted, this is a restricted set of questions and answers The aim of the research is to restore speech and stroke or spinal cord injury patients and the next steps are To improve the algorithms and widen the vocabulary that the system can understand so it's early early days But you might have noticed that I mentioned this is funded by Facebook reality labs And what Facebook wants to do is get this tech up to speed so it can put it into augmented reality Headsets so that you can control them by thinking. Yeah, 100% that and you know prosthesis that you could have for a missing leg or something There's huge application for this and your brain can kind of go crazy. It doesn't just stop with with the immediate Discussion of what the research is for it goes really far and wide and I Really like this sort of stuff and I would I would argue even though those questions are limited and it's not like these statements are super complex 76 and 61% is a really strong showing for For the potential of this Attempting to just go like yeah, okay. They're reading your mind, but I know what they it's a restricted set I think yeah, but they're reading your mind, right Better get excited about a thing because this seems like science fiction made real Everything starts poorly. I mean I say things to my echo these days that if I had told you 20 years ago I was gonna be able to do one day you would laugh me out of the room so Small steps baby steps. We'll get there and the idea of being able to for me to be able to think things and have things happen Outside of my normal body processes is so exciting. I'm ready for my chip I guess is what I'm saying. Let's go. Yeah, and and right now. This is UCSF researchers This is meant for medical use, but with Facebook funding it. We are absolutely gonna have a lot of controversy Once Facebook starts to try to make use of this about Facebook reading your thoughts You think people overreacted to the idea of Facebook setting up an independent cryptocurrency Imagine Facebook taking this research and saying, okay, we've got a way to read your mind like Get get ready for for people to flip out. Yeah If that if Facebook is still around by the time this gets perfected, which this is not gonna be perfected soon It's gonna take a few years get on board for the long haul everybody Security researcher Beto on security nothing to do with the current presidential candidate Notice that the Netflix app on Android requested access to his physical activity data Meaning you're you know, which I wanted to know if he's swimming or biking or it's a very weird thing to Know what your accelerometer is doing as a service that just gives you movies and TV But anyway, Netflix told the next web quote this this was part of a test to see how we could improve video playback Quality when a member is on the go In a car in a train, I guess at the gym running at a trend for activity data Yeah, it would be at the gym running swimming, etc. Yeah, sure. Sure. So not all Netflix Netflix while they're swimming I Mean you could I mean you could right you get enough waterproof stuff I guess you sort of list and you could have it off to the side while you're swimming you're listening to David Letterman interview somebody Yeah, very weird But anyway, not all Netflix accounts are in on the test and that flicks doesn't have any rollout plans at this time So don't worry. It's not coming to you anytime fast Android Q has added an activity recognition permission to Android Q to let developers know you're in motion when you're using the app This could be used to help figure the best way to buffer video. So it doesn't skip as an example I still find this a little head scratchy like I don't I don't I'm not saying I don't buy their reasons They they have the money and the and the desire to test all sorts of use case questions and and whatever And I think they should probably do some of that and they certainly ask you first. You can say no Yeah, right. This is part of Android where you give the app permission. It's not stealing it It's just an odd thing to ask me though for a video to tell me on why because I You're not asking me like you said to be on a train, right, right? Oh, are you okay? Can you let us know if you're if you're moving on a train? I mean, I guess they're given the accelerometer would would let them know that but I feel like The optimization of video while moving is a real thing But it feels like you only really can make a difference if you're trying to optimize it while I'm in a car Or train or something going high speed, right? I mean I run pretty slow the other people run fast They still don't run fast enough to like flip from cell tower to cell tower every couple of seconds. So What exactly is Necessary like also if I'm running on a track or if I'm swimming Or if I'm cycling in place. Does that matter? I mean it feels like they just want to know what activities people are doing while they're watching video But that's not what they're saying what they next web is they want to improve video playback quality, right? And they they also didn't say I mean they just straight up didn't say it So I don't know if they could say it but this isn't saying that they're gonna, you know This is they're not taking this data and saying well, we're gonna make a whole bunch of exercise Video, right, you know, they didn't say that either. So so for me None of the use cases seem that and that I have no problem with Netflix having that information if they ask for it Like hey, can we know about your activity so we can decide what videos are great for people while they're working out? I'd be fine with that if it's all above board But they're saying it's for video playback quality and that's the part I know we have people out there who work in in video streaming Let us know feedback at daily tech news show calm if you're like, oh no The legitimate reason you might want to do that for activity is X because I'm not quite seeing it. Yeah me neither Low-cast poor low-cast low-cast if you don't know is a free donation supported internet service that operates in 14 cities right now in the United States Streaming local broadcast stations over the internet only in their home markets You're like wait didn't area get run out of business for that. Well There's the difference area was a for-profit company Sports fans coalition New York which started low-cast is a non-profit operation and is taking advantage of a 1976 law That lets non-profits Retransmit broadcast signals as long as the nonprofit does not receive any and I quote direct or indirect commercial Advantage so low-cast is saying we're we're taking donations from people to cover the cost of operations We're not making any money off this all we're trying to do is make it Available on the internet for people to watch their local broadcast if they live in a building where the broadcast isn't very good Etc. Etc. It started in New York by people who wanted to watch sports games that were broadcast over the air now It's operated for a year and a half and Finally as we all knew what happened ABC CBS Fox and NBC have jointly filed a lawsuit against low-cast The suit alleges that low-cast has admitted it is used to help authorized services negotiate lower carriage fees with broadcasters I don't know if low-cast has admitted it but charter did charter said hey We're in a carriage dispute with broadcast stations. Go use low-casts. They're free Yeah, the suit also alleges that low-cast is securing commercial advantages in the form of nationwide app distribution and collection of viewer data And points to AT&T and dish as being commercial beneficiaries now remember what I said the law says you can't have direct or indirect Commercial advantage as part of your operation The suit is saying that AT&T and dish are getting commercial advantage from low-cast So it's kind of flipping the language of the law on its head a little bit and also the commercial advantage That AT&T is alleged to get is that AT&T gave money to low-cast which it did And in return has included the low-cast app on the direct TV and you verse set top boxes Which anybody can do I have the low-cast app on my Apple TV Low-cast founder David Goodfriend also used to work for dish And that appears to be the commercial advantage that somehow dish gets is that a former employee has started low-cast I think they're trying to imply like oh dish told him to go do this so that they could get better negotiations It's all about negotiating carriage fees. I Have no idea if you convince a judge that low-cast is illegal under this But I know that this gives you the shakes Scott as someone who loved ARIO and ARIO Which was for profit and went to the Supreme Court the Supreme Court said yeah Saying you have a million antennas doesn't really exempt you from having to pay a carriage fee How do you how do you feel about this? I know low-cast isn't available for you But but does it bother you well? I mean I'd heard about it and got excited about it because it seemed like a cool solution and immediately was reminded of area Like immediately I was like oh that thing it's like that kind of except Maybe better because this is not for profit and maybe this will come here And I can't freaking wait and I can finally cancel cable for the all three other reasons. I want to cancel it and I already canceled cable. I guess I have direct TV for free right now with a phone deal I got but anyway, I just I would really like local programming in this way and now I feel the same burn as I did last time It's not gonna happen probably. I mean they have to win this suit I guess but that's ABC CBS Fox and NBC they got deep pockets. They have lawyers willing to go the distance You've got Fox and Universal In the case of NBC, how do you fight that I'm cast is also benefiting from low cast it on its cable business Well, and that's the other thing I wanted to say real quick The idea of the director indirect commercial advantage thing the law that they're they're sort of using as the reason they should be able to operate in this way It's so different now than it was in 76 and I and I don't mean just the times have changed I mean Collection of data is everywhere all the time on any service and if you're a nonprofit You're still doing that and that stuff is perceived and or maybe legally recognized as Commercial advantage because now you have yeah names and names or money contact information matters like I don't know how they thought they would get away with that particular Squeeze by without getting some heat. So like you said, we probably knew the suit Oh, they didn't in fact in interviews David. Good friend has said yep. We've been preparing for this We knew we knew this would happen. You know, we've been digging in our heels I guess the dots they're trying to connect is AT&T gave money and a former dish employee founded this so they're gonna try to convince the judge This is AT&T and dish Creating something that they get commercial advantage from they're gonna have to establish that AT&T and dish are Responsible for low-cast then they can say and low-cast Indirectly provides a commercial advantage to them But whether you can say that AT&T giving them a donation and whether you could say a former employee founding something makes them responsible for it I think is a tall order. Yeah, I think I agree All right moving on to a tablet bit of news. No, it's not an iPad Samsung announced the 10.5 inch super amulet Samsung Galaxy Tabs s6 tablet with a snapdragon 855 processor up to 15 hours of charge and an S pen Charges wirelessly and attaches magnetically to the back The tab s6 also has a rear dual-lens camera with a new or sorry with a built-in neural processing unit for scene optimization and Optical footprint reader that is built directly into the screen the tab s6 sells for 649 with six gigabytes of RAM and 128 gigabytes of storage For 729 or eight gigabytes of RAM and 256 gigabytes of storage Let's say they don't have the prey. Oh, no, that's Six gigabytes at 729 for you pre-order start August 23rd. So that's coming right up as a I use a tablet all the time now my current tool of choice is an iPad Pro a pencil and Smart software that I think is crucial for anyone creating Art and design these days talking pre-show about the the artist who currently works on the Captain Marvel series for Marvel not the movie but the the comics is doing the entire process in an iPad Pro with a pencil and Procreate which is also amazing and it's kind of become a tool Dijour for artists and illustrators everywhere and I've said this on the show a few times What I would really like so that Apple keeps making good stuff is for all these guys to keep competing in this space and I think Samsung if anybody would have the ability to do it given that they're the only ones that seem to really be spending a lot of time and tablets since Google seems to have pulled away a bit and focus more in Chromebooks So that's what I would need to see here. I would need to see their commitment to my particular need for me to get super jazzed about it but I also think that The tablet market needs Competitive alternatives and right now there really aren't very many so this is good for everybody I just whether or not it's a tool I can use or not I guess I need to see when this thing hits and we get some reviews and stuff It's all about that S Pen for you, right? Yeah thing and Samsung also has their decks ability Which is the ability to turn this thing into a my more Laptop desktop type experience where you can have multiple windows and everything and that's built into this as well But that's that's less of an issue for the artist in you. I know like yeah, and I should mention that like I realized Mike I have a I have a very, you know specific Corner that I'm aimed at here and and I'll fully admit that there There's a million things people are doing with their tablets these days iPad or not And so I'm not really thinking about any of that Surely this is gonna be great at watching video and it's gonna be great at flicking through my news feeds and all the other Things tablets are great at And even more so in Doc mode like that stuff's gonna be awesome Can I create a beautiful painting on it? I don't know. Yeah, just need to find out So I guess I just shout out to the other artists keep your eye on this one. It's possible I'm still holding up for Microsoft surface to get better like we have options. It's just You know, it's just good to see you Samsung sticking to that market and throwing some love its way Hey, folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes Although today was like six minutes. I guess I read slow subscribe to daily tech headlines Also, big thanks to everybody who participates in our subreddit You can submit stories vote on them a daily tech news show dot reddit.com and our Facebook group Facebook comm slash group slash daily tech news Show, let's check out the mail bag Michael from suddenly summer, Yokohama here I hope you're keeping cool Michael. They they've been having a major heat wave in Japan the first purpose I thought that the solely radar in the new pixel for phones would serve is Interpreter for the deaf says Michael if you don't remember solely is the chip that Google says It'll put in the pixel for they'll be able to read your hand gestures So you can control the phone without touching it Michael says your description of the technology a month or so ago Screamed accessibility feature with precision to distinguish finger gestures and why invent a whole new gesture vocabulary When such a language already exists granted It'll need to be translated to the various sign languages that correspond to spoken languages since there's not one single sign language for the World but they've already got the Google Assistant working for those spoken languages I remember learning a little bit of sign language in elementary or middle school in the 1970s And I don't recall if it was part of school or not But like many of the accessibility functions on computers and phones some of these things leak out to the general population as they are Handy get it sign language hand. I imagine that such functionality could initialize a revolution in tech for the deaf I don't know anyone who is deaf personally. So this speculation may be way off But when you first talked about it, I recall hearing the word accessibility leading me to think it was for sign language I was sure that if Allison was on the show she'd appointed that out to yes She would have the air conditioned shirt on Monday show caught my interest as well looking into it as always take care Yeah, Michael if you got to get that get that shirt next year Let us know how well it works and great great point The solely radar demos have been much more precise than the one that they discussed for the pixel 4 I imagine that has to do with maybe power consumption or the the amount of space they want to put in the chip Somehow but but it does seem like the pixel 4 is a little less precise But those finger gestures that it can do in the demos man That's you could you could definitely have a phone that recognized sign language for sure. Yeah Love it. Well, thank you Scott Johnson as always for being with us. What you got going on to tell folks Oh, man a lot of stuff So I have this I have this game that I've been making called space rocks incorporated It's card game and I've been working on it for a long time and then I found out that An internet friend and someone a lot of people probably know Gary Witte has a game that he's working on called space rocks and I went oh shoot About this. Well, let's change it around. So now it's called rock runners incorporated, but the game is pretty much the same Anyway, I'm this close to launching it. So sometime before the end of the week There will be a web link ups not up yet, but it will be so write this down or remember it or make fun of me for Doing it now before it's up, but the address is going to be frogpants.com slash rocks and On that page, I will have details about the game how it works how it's played some images of the actual card game I have another sample coming to me in the next couple of days I'm very excited about it. It's a thing. I've wanted to do for a very long time So if you have any interest in that check that out and in the meantime, you can also follow all my goings-on including that over on Twitter at Scott Johnson Folks folks folks. We are an independent organization We are not beholden to anyone, but you and we want to keep it that way To stay independent. We're one of the only independent tech voices probably the only independent daily tech voice out there at all Which means when we're thinking on all sides of the issue like we like to do we're doing it because we want to We're not doing it because we think it's the best thing for our masters So if you want to keep us that way The only way to help us be sure of that is to support us on patreon We try to do some things to thank you for that support But the biggest thing we do is this show and thanks for that support So help us out at patreon.com slash DT NS our email address is feedback at daily tech news show comm send us an email We're also live on twitch Monday through Friday 4 30 p.m. Easter 20 30 utc All you got to remember is daily tech news show comm slash live to go there to watch us back tomorrow with Justin Robert Young Talk to you then This show is part of the frog pants network get more at frog pants.com You