 Coming up on DTNSA MC theaters and Universal reduce the theatrical window Kodak makes pharmaceuticals and thoughts on the big four tech executives testifying to Congress This is the Daily Tech news for Wednesday July 29th 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt and from studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane It's all like city. I'm Scott Johnson Roger shang the shows produce We were just talking about variations in podcast editing Sarah getting into mm-hmm the the the video source camera our Why the congressional testimony made me want tacos that's all on good day internet become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS Let's start with a few tech things you should know AMD expects 2020 revenue to grow by 32% on a surge and chip demand as more people work from home Q2 sales rose 26% on strong demand for Ryzen and epic chips AMD reported earnings per share of 13 cents and revenue from computing and graphics Which includes sales of graphics chips to data centers rose 45% US Federal Judge Lashan DRC Hall ordered the state of New York to pay unemployment benefits to for Uber and Lyft drivers Who filed for payments in March or April the New York Department of Labor considers ride hailing delivery employees Sorry drivers employees, but Uber and Lyft have not provided wage data to calculate benefits the judge ruled the state still has an obligation to Pay benefits promptly using data supplied by the workers if necessary Judge Hall further ordered the Department of Labor to clear the backlog in 45 days and process new applications within 14 days Forms smart swim goggles has updated its firmware to add support for open water data things like stroke rate elapsed time other outdoor swimming info Users with an Apple watch series 3 or later or a recent Garmin watch can integrate GPS based metrics and heart rate data as well The updates available now for the form smart swim goggles, which sell for 199 bucks Spotify reported its active users grew 29% in Q2 to 299 million subscribers Paying users active users rather paying users of those active users for the premium plan grew 27% year-over-year to 138 million Spotify forecast those numbers should hit 312 to 317 million in Q3 with 140 million paying users Spotify losses increased 76 million euros to a loss of 356 million euros despite the increase in users a large portion of the loss was attributed to payroll taxes spurred by increased stock price podcast advertising rose and spotify reported 21% of its users listen to podcasts on the platform It's a lot of growth Google announced. It's making some features of Google one available for free Such as the phone backup feature for Android and iOS and a free storage manager tool Google's also rolling out a new iOS app that lets users store photos videos contacts and calendar events with Google Moving in on on the old iOS backup thing see competition Turkey's Parliament passed a bill Wednesday requiring social media companies with more than a million daily active users So Facebook Twitter, etc to ensure they have local representatives in Turkey Turkish users data stored on servers in Turkey and to comply with court orders over the removal of certain content if companies Don't comply the new regulations say they'll have advertisements blocked and bandwidth decreased by up to 90% All right, let's talk a little more about tick-tock because tick-tock didn't get to testify Scott So we have to give them some time here. Yeah, they have to have a little time of their own tick-tock CEO Kevin Mayer Published an 800 word defense of the company which has been accused of having ties to the Chinese government Has been shut down in India and is an under investigation here in the US and other countries Mayer said shutting down tick-tock would leave Americans with fewer choices Mayor wrote quote let's focus our energies on fair and open competition in service of our customers rather than the lining attacks By our competitor namely Facebook Designed or excuse me disguised as patriotism and designed to put an end to our very presence in the US Unquote mayor also announced tick-tock has launched a transparency and accountability center for moderation and data practices And we'll let experts view how tick-tock's algorithm works and how moderation is conducted in real time So a couple thoughts here smart timing for tick-tock went on a day when everybody's going to be talking about any Competitive practices to put out a big thing basically accusing Facebook of anti competitive practices by maligning tick-tock I'm not sure that's going to solve their problems But you know it's an interesting PR message and I think it doesn't hurt And we talked about the transparency and accountability center before on the show So a good day to launch that as well to say look you have questions about how our algorithm works Whether we're going to game the system to favor the Chinese You're worried about stuff getting taken down because it's critical of the Chinese We're gonna let you look at our system and see how it works So you can see that that doesn't happen is essentially what they're saying Yeah, it also puts them in a position of saying well really you know firing an arrow over the bow saying hey Facebook by name We don't like how you're doing it. We think we're doing it better And not only that we're making a unique feature that you probably just want to copy anyway There's some subtext there about how Facebook doesn't make their own products They tend to just sort of copy other people's products or buy them and integrate them and that's an interesting stand This guy's old Disney executive. He's got some fire in his shoes. He's ready to rock and I don't know I kind of like the energy if I'm honest Yeah, I mean the transparency part of what they're doing is they kind of have to do this but it's at this point the argument would be okay, well your Reports that you're giving people is false. Otherwise. This is this is a good thing This is this is it's goodwill for the public and also, you know government officials who have issues with with what? Tiktok is potentially doing or representing. So, yeah, it's it's they're really going hard on this hole We're separate. We're open. We're transparent. Oh, and by the way, we're not awful like Facebook Yeah, I think that's what's smart about the transparency and accountability center It's not just a report of them saying here's what we did. It's we will let you see our algorithm in practice We'll let you see our moderation queue in practice We'll let you look at what's actually happening so that you can rest assured that we haven't Colored the data in any way, but the fact of the matter is I don't think any of that's going to stop the push Against tiktok because it's not motivated by those concerns really it's motivated by ties to the Chinese And we have some news that there might be some movement on untying tiktok from its parent company Indeed Reuters sources say that investors who are interested in buying tiktok away from its Chinese parent company by dance value tiktok at a cool 50 billion dollars the sources say that bite dance has received acquisition proposals from its own investors Including yeah, kind of the big guns sequoia general Atlantic by dance has supposedly valued tiktok at more than 50 billion So, you know might be a little bit of a bidding more here by dance as a whole was valued at 140 billion earlier this year, you know tiktok's not the only thing by dance does No, that's a lot. That's a lot both both those numbers kind of hit me like a truck today And who knows like it's an early valuation and Tom mentioned a pre show that you know that can change and stuff But still that is a huge amount of money But tiktok's a genuine phenomenon you can we can get all mired up and in the weeds about all the things We're worried about with it if we are or if we're not if we should be if we shouldn't be but Yeah, like you can't deny that it's a force to be reckoned with and I may just get funny dog videos out of it But it's a lot more than that Yeah, if I had if I had to guess I would say I expect That we will see bite dance not want to give up majority ownership of this and instead Restructure to make tiktok a wholly owned subsidiary that is headquartered and exists outside of China So you could put it in Switzerland or Turks and Caicos or you know something like that and and try that I think what they want to do is not lose that majority ownership But it sounds like they're having serious conversations with Sequoia and general Atlantic about Going the whole yard and saying fine We'll become a minority stakeholder in this and and that would be the only way to fully satisfy people Actually, the only way to fully satisfy people is it bite dance sold all their interest in it But I don't see that happening at all Nah, it's too powerful It's too big of a deal for now anyway thinking of a big deal Universal pictures and AMC theaters have agreed to reduce the 90-day exclusive theatrical window for some movies The multi-year agreement will let universal rent not sell Digital copies of its movies to customers for around 20 bucks. They can't rent them cheap It's gonna be an expensive rental, but they can do it 17 days after the movie first appears in theaters Right now the theaters are very insistent that you don't get to do anything with the movie But show it in a theater for the first 90 days So this is a huge concession on the part of AMC theaters in return AMC will get a share of the digital revenue of some sort. We don't know what the details are It may be just getting to rent out the movie on its own lines online service AMC theaters has a video on demand service on its website where you can rent movies So it may may be that they they get to keep all the money of it there or something like that We don't know it is expected though that major blockbusters like Jurassic World comes out of universal We'll still have the 90-day theatrical run that this isn't gonna make every movie show up for rental 17 days after it premieres in the theaters. It's more for mid-tier movies comedies independence stuff like that Not that universal is independent, but they have smaller indie-like films Not all theaters are going to play along though. Cineworld has already told deadline We do not see any business sense in this model now That may be them saying we want to stake out a tough bargaining position ahead of agreeing on this But it is going to be interesting to see what other theaters do in reaction to this and interesting to see what other Studios like Disney and Sony do in reaction to this I'm not trying to read to into this, but it seems to me This is universal decided to kind of against the wishes of their friends at AMC Put the movie trolls out early and in a similar model. It was a you know a fairly steep price, but it was Your honor, I would I think that's a mischaracterization I think they the theater was okay with them putting trolls out I think I think that when they said that was going to be a precedent is when the theaters got upset, right? Okay, so that's a good point, but my point is is deeper than that the subtext to me is That went really well for them They made a bunch of money on that movie as a first run straight to digital Let's go kind of experience and it was a big movie for families that everybody could watch together And a whole bunch of people watched it. So I think this shifting around is them going Yeah, there probably is some money in the short term anyway if we reduce the days and we put them out for a Premium and we get a cut of it. Like why wouldn't they want a part of that? It's that or you just start watching studios figure out other ways to work around AMC's wishes. So I think that's why they're on board I know a lot of people are like well But you know the only reason that you know the movies like trolls as you mentioned Scott did well Is because everybody was stuck at home and nobody had any choice and that's true except that as as it has been with lots of things that people have discovered during shelter-in-place times that were in some things aren't just going to go back to normal and The movie theater box office business as it was before is not going to go back to normal either because people are going to be like you know what it was actually like way easier to run the movie and In order to kind of keep the ball rolling This makes sense to me the AMC is like we just got to do it You know we got to roll over on this a little bit because it's just we Nobody's really on our side at this point and frankly no one's going to movies anyway So you know it's it's it's gonna be a bit of a process to sort of get that momentum back up as it is for all of the theaters I think AMC said look we're not gonna have as many screens We're not gonna be able to show your movies as much and Universal said exactly So we can either come to an arrangement where you get a cut of those movies that aren't gonna be on your screens because you don't have as many screens Or you can just lose out and and that that is an essential bargaining position for AMC to say fine We'll agree to a shorter window for some of your movies That we wouldn't be able to show anyway because we can't fit them because we've got theaters going out of business How are they gonna decide what the major blockbusters are that still have the 90-day theater right? Where's that line right? It's not sort of like Jurassic World will not be but yeah What what where's the underline that says we expect less than 200 million? Is it 100? Exactly like what are the analysts predicts for you know worldwide box office gross animated movies about trolls There's your line All right next up Bloomberg and Reuters sources tell Google or sorry report Google and Samsung are discussing a revenue sharing deal They would see Samsung prioritize the play store and Google assistant over Samsung's own app store and their own Google or their own assistant called big Spee Samsung has resisted this in the past But may be more receptive to its smartphone sales because there's most smartphone sales are in decline as it seeks other ways to monetize It's market share so no more a big speed only world for them Maybe maybe they're on to the mainstream and maybe maybe it's anti competitive in today's environment Well, it hasn't been a big speed only world They've always had Google assistant But they just prioritized a big speed in the interface and then telling you everything that they had available This would be a huge shift for Samsung to tell you to use Google assistant when big speed still on the phone It would be an admission that Bixby is over. It would be a even bigger shift for Samsung to say yeah, go use the play store It's fine. You know our store was always kind of a silly thing and and I think that You could accuse Google of abusing its market dominance if you can get Samsung To shift to promoting your stuff on your platform Android Because they just need the money Yeah, Bixby Bixby, I mean it it it makes sense that Samsung would be like, okay, you know, let's let's let's figure out a deal here But yeah, given given the timing of all of this it is It's somewhat curious This is perhaps curious to you turns out they've been working on it for a few years Kodak has obtained a 765 million dollar loan to expand its production of ingredients needed to make generic drugs used to fight COVID-19 a new division called Kodak pharmaceuticals will take three to four years to reach large-scale production Kodak filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2012 and shifted its focus from photography to printing and professional services But Kodak begin making drug ingredients back in 2016 something I did not know Yeah, so that was something I just learned today, too that they had already begun making these drug ingredients It makes perfect sense to me though That we would see a company who specialized in film Which means they specialized in making chemicals for developing film for creating film Look at a declining film market and go well We got all this equipment that that makes all this stuff What else can we do with it and one of the right ended up being able to do with it was pharmaceuticals and now At a time when the United States wants to shift more pharmaceutical production domestically because they're worried about world trade Kodak stepping up and say yeah, we'll take a loan We'll take a 765 million dollar loan and expand that part of our business because that's a way to keep us in business Yeah, I you blew my mind today when you mentioned the chemical connection because it just to me it wasn't making any sense I'm like how do you go from cameras to this because in my head it was more about cameras than film It wasn't about their decades and decades of film development and innovation in the space of Chemicals that make your film develop and to me they were more like oh no They make cameras and they made digital cameras for a while But then it all went away and everyone thought they were gone or whatever and now suddenly they're making drugs It seemed crazy. It's only right like think about the not only the expertise involved, but you know Production and and and capability and whoever's running the thing They've got experience in making chemicals that do what people need so what is that if not drugs? So yeah, it makes sense now, but before today. I was like head scratching on this one. It's crazy I know that headquarters or Rochester, New York I have not been there, but I would assume there's an ample amount of warehouse space as well Especially if something like this is gonna take three to four years to get to large-scale production I mean you've got you've yeah, you've got the space. You've probably got a lot of folks in an area where there might be unemployment, you know Big unemployment numbers and this is it's an interesting it's an interesting thing to do. It's uh, you know, why not Kodak? Yeah, this is my I mean when I was growing up my dad had his own a light room He built it in our house and he would do all his photos manually and he also did a lot of slides and stuff Which were terrible, but anyway forget about slides for a minute But the actual like film developing I just will always remember walking past that room and there was a certain smell to it It had a certain chemical Quality to everything when that door would open I would go in there and you'd see the Telltale yellow logo everywhere because every box he had seemed like it was made at Kodak And so I don't know this one also pinched some nostalgic nerves and I just I don't know Maybe I'll get a bottle of ibuprofen in my in my medicine cabinet one day That's got a big yellow Kodak name on it and then we can all laugh again. Oh wouldn't that be nice I remember the days where you know you get a roll of film and it's like if it was it was 36 rather than 24 You were like, yes, I got 12 more photos and one canister, you know, and that was back That was back when a Kodak moment didn't mean popping a pill, right, right, yeah I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go see Kodak now. Oh, I'm seeing the true colors And they're Kodak chrome Folks if you want to get all the tech headlines each day at about five minutes and keep up on tech news efficiently subscribe to daily tech headlines comm The US House antitrust subcommittee called Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Apple CEO Tim Cook Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pachai to assemble like the Avengers to discuss their market power Which Congress like Thanos would like to snap its fingers and make 50 percent smaller In opening statements Google's Pachai argued that Google exists in a highly competitive market that benefits the average American Amazon's Bezos emphasized job creation and supporting small business Apple's Tim Cook claimed Apple does not have dominant market share and has benefited more developers by opening the gates of its app store Wider if I'm a gatekeeper then I've made the gates more open That's actually what he said and Facebook's Zuckerberg said it had more to do with fighting It had more to do fighting disinformation and argued Facebook has made products. It has acquired better and safer So how did Congress react did they go? Oh, those are great arguments. I guess we have nothing to talk about No, they talked for three and a half hours. And in fact, they are still talking right at the second They've been grilling Facebook about buying competitors to stop them from competing In fact, they had some some pretty headline grabbing emails about Mark Zuckerberg talking about needing to buy Instagram to eliminate it as a competitor that it was urgent the verge has published those emails now There was also some questions to Facebook about suppressing conservative voices Although on a couple of occasions they asked Facebook about why Twitter Was getting rid of of certain accounts and Facebook just said well, we didn't do that So I can't tell you about that They talked to Google about favoring its own products in search And as well as suppressing conservative voices Accusing them of delisting or or or pushing down in the search results conservative websites They mostly had talked to Apple about the app store and and whether they were, you know abusing their dominance by Being the only one that had an app store on the iOS platform And being the only way that you could pay for things in the app store and with amazon They talked about driving out competitors About becoming a dominant retail business. They talked about driving small business office platform There was some some audio played from a an amazon Affiliate who said that they got driven out by amazon And accused amazon of boosting its own products And and looking at and even like promoting counterfeit products in order to drive competitors out so they could replace them all in all It's been a very long more than three hours almost four hours now Of theater, don't you agree? I mean, I I this is a game that was already going on We knew they were investing Investigating these companies none of the issues they've brought up today seem new to me There's a there's a little bit of you know interestingness with the with the Facebook emails being made public But those emails still read to me like a company that that is is working hard to compete In the marketplace and whether or not they show anti competitive behavior I don't think was determined Uh in these hearings today, and I don't think it's expected by any of the participants that they will This is this is a way to get in front of the cameras and try to sway some public opinion Either to not be so mad at your company or to vote for you in the next election Yeah, I I watching the hearing. I mean besides that, you know Members of congress bickering amongst themselves before anything even got started Um The the the sort of like okay, you've got your opening statements from from the ceo's and they're all very dramatic and you know You know to heart string Pulling and that's fine. It's you'd expect nothing less. Uh, but then You know as questions are are pointed toward uh toward each gentleman in this case It's funny how there'll be a question and then you get the ceo being like Hmm very good question Let me answer that real slow because I want your your minute to run out You know, and then you know, you've got the you know congressperson being flustered and sir, please I only have a little bit of time Let me finish your question for you because I think I'm trying to catch you in some sort of a lie And it's like not working One of the things that stuck out to me was somebody asked uh mark zuckerberg You know back in the day you had a lot of social networks that you were competing with and None of those social networks are competitors of yours anymore And you know, let's talk about that shall we and he was like well But we have lots of different competitors now Your facebook is the social network, but there are a lot of other New and emerging technologies Called you know tiktok look at tiktok for example I mean facebook wants people who are creators on tiktok to hang out on facebook to bring people to facebook so And he has a point. I mean you can't argue that facebook is any smaller than it is. I mean it's huge. It's it's crazy I mean Zuckerberg is going to do his best and you kind of snicker at it a little bit But it is true that the company continues to have competitors It's not weird that the company would be interested in what the public is interested in You know and he was pretty upfront about that. He was like Yeah, I mean It's not anti competitive of us to Want to be able to deliver a product that people like And if someone else is doing it then we're going to put rnd into figuring out how we could also do that too Yeah, I I guess my big takeaways are similar to yours. Um It's a naive thing to say. I I just wish public hearings meant more than just Getting in front of cameras and convincing Um Either in the case of the tech companies their consumers or in the case of the lawmakers their constituents That they're tough and cool or smart or whatever they that's there's not enough substance here for me to get excited about And it really bums me out tom made a comment earlier, which I agree with you're going to have more substantive change Or understanding or agreement or whatever behind the scenes in personal conversations and Lunch with you know one of these CEOs or having conversations with your congressperson in a different setting I get that But it bums me out like I just want I want more out of this I'm so tied to the tech world in so many ways and so to have these guys get up there And be questioned like this and have a lot of these questions Just be simply like the old fashioned 1950s Senate hearings where it's like sir, is it not true that you prepare And you just know where those questions are going to go and that means they're not going to go anywhere and The fact that it is kind of just a dog and pony show More of a muppet show to be honest the way it's running today Uh, I it really makes me sad just as it is an individual take on this It saddens me a bit because I just wish there was more substance to it and it was less of the Let's get all the common denominators to be on one side or another and it it was a good show It was a good show The real stuff happens in the court when they take them to court when they sue them That's where the real stuff happens. Uh, the one thing that that did catch my eye. I couldn't help myself I think it was a representative gets Who accused uh google and later later corrected himself and actually got the story right so kudos to representative gets But accused them of helping, uh, the chinese military while refusing to help the u.s military and i'm like, okay I there's some representatives who just make crazy stuff and it's it's not worth paying attention representative gets doesn't usually seem to be one of those So let me find out what he's talking about Schumann. Xi is a lead scientist or was in google's ai team Researched in beijing and co-authored a paper about new computer human interaction technology That's the subject here is it was a it was a google person working with chinese scientists on something that sounded like ai But it wasn't It was using statistical models to improve Target selection which sounds military, but doesn't have to be It could be used to improve app interaction as well, which is why google wanted to participate on it Also google or any u.s company having its scientists work with chinese scientists is common that itself is not a smoking gun Either there's a lot of collaboration happens among scientists there So the paper was a general research question that used existing statistical models on that It did not use ai or deep learning. However, it could be used to improve interaction with military applications specifically a chinese jet which we think it was used to improve and so That's what got joseph dunford then the chairman of the joints chiefs of staff upset is that venture Indirectly benefits the chinese military and creates a challenge for us in maintaining a competitive advantage And he said they shouldn't have worked on that even though the paper itself Wasn't destined for military use because it could be used for military and because it was done in china and would Be taken by the chinese to be used in whatever way they saw fit They saw it was uh, they thought it was a problem. So I don't know I just couldn't help myself to go down that rabbit hole and find out what the truth behind that accusation was I also just Go ahead Janks, um, I also yielded reminder of my time before we move on One of the things and I'm really not on anybody's side here The whole thing is as you said tom largely theater, but I I did get a small thrill every time Somebody would direct a question Let's say at tim kuk and say now. Don't you do it exactly this way? and and Gotcha, and he kind of goes no you misunderstand our business model completely And that's like oh Because really if both people understood the technology Equally, which is just not going to happen But if they did then there would be a conversation to be had or you wouldn't have made the accusation in the first place So it's uh, that's just you know, it's like when the joke falls flat Yeah, I'm gonna before we move on I'm going to pick my star of the game from congress I did this for a representative karen bass when they did the encryption hearings with apple She won my star of the game for for actually understanding encryption and and actually asking intelligent questions about them My star of the game this time goes to representative kelly armstrong of north dakota for understanding gdpr and privacy and asking Very well crafted And I thought pertinent questions on on compliance and privacy. So good job representative armstrong Well, many of you may have thoughts on the congressional hearing Or anything else that we talk about on the show and you know where you can have a good conversation about that in our Discord, which you can join by linking to a patreon account at patreon.com slash dtns What do we got in the mail bag? Oh tom, I'm glad you asked norm from visalia Wrote in and said I just wanted to thank you for the updates on the covid vaccines In fact, tom has been doing those pretty regularly knowing I can trust your research saves me time Looking into the latest status. Ah, thank you norm. Yeah, it's a little bit outside our normal purview But as I've said a few times I feel like it's important to to pass along that good news specifically focusing on the phase three trials Which are the ones closest to becoming vaccines that could be put into production or in some cases. They're already in production and used Uh on on the populace uh to to help protect us. So thank you norm I'm glad to hear that And shout out to patrons that are master and grand master levels including jeff wilkes, sonia vining and ruchan brantley Also, thanks to One scott johnson a man. I hope we'll never have to sit before congress Oh, man. He does. I hope he has a good time. Yeah Well, if I do hopefully that means big things are happening that well, it could be bad things. Anyway Uh, yeah, thank you It's always good to be on and I wanted to just make a one more quick point out because by the time we have another episode of Dts that I am on which would be next wednesday We will be out of time, but right now you've got some 50. What is it tom 48? What are we? What's the numbers? I don't have it in front of me anymore. Uh, it was 52 earlier today. Uh, so it's probably like 47 now Yeah, probably about 47 or something like that. Uh, if you use support dot current dot com You can support this This great new thing tom and I are doing the first episodes are already out because we unlocked it because of your support We've funded but we have other stuff we can unlock and we still have time to do it So go read up on it. Get the second episode right away I get more great content. Maybe there's even an extra episode in the future that you wouldn't get otherwise All of it's there laid out in plain english and translated all over the world except for the video That's me and tom talking Anyway, go check it out support dot current geek dot com and see what you're in for Thanks to everybody who supports this show directly on patreon. It's the best way to keep us independent to keep us moving keep us improving and Thank you to everybody who supports us. If you don't support us on patreon I'm just going to keep playing this congressional hearing that they in fact have used that power in ways that we need to root out That's not kind Congressman my testimony in the past and today All right, fine. Fine, but get over there and support us at patreon dot com slash dts And if you have thoughts our email address is a great way to share them with us the ur the url address is feedback at daily tech news show dot com You see what the hearings do to me we're live monday through friday at 4 30 p.m Eastern at 2030 utc and you can find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live tomorrow the committee calls Justin robert young This show is part of the frog pants network get more at frog pants dot com I hope you have enjoyed this brover