 Coming up on DTS, spoiler everything that will happen in 2021. This is the Daily Tech News show for Thursday, December 31, 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. It's all Lake City. I'm Scott Johnson. Some more in St. Louis. I'm Patrick Norton. From cold and snowy Columbus, Ohio, I'm Rob Dunwood. From Los Angeles, I'm Lamar Wilson. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. I have the show's producer, Roger Chang. Man, it's like the Avengers assembling to take on 2021. Thank you all for doing this. Thank you for committing in advance to coming back at the end of 2021 to check out how we did. It's always a good time. This is the last Daily Tech News show of 2020. So we can all say goodbye to 2020 at the end of this episode as well. Well, let us start with Ms. Sarah Lane. Tell us what is going to happen in technology in 2021. All right. So a lot of the stuff is stuff that I'm just hoping will happen. But I think I, you know, there might be some legs. We'll start with Oculus. I am an Oculus Quest aficionado at this point. I love it. But I love certain things about it. And the Quest 2 was the hardware that came out after I got my original Quest earlier in 2020. I don't have that. I just have the original. So I don't totally know what I'm missing as far as I hear. It's, you know, a little lighter, a little bit more comfortable, a little bit snappier. But you're still using the same Oculus App Store. And whenever a friend of mine, and I'm always telling everybody, just get it, you're going to love it. So great, especially with the pandemic. A lot of people being home, I'm like, you move your couch out of the way, have some fun. It'll be great. But my stuff is always based on, like, movement apps. I love exercise apps. I mean, even Tetris, which you could, Tetris Effect, which you could play sitting down fine. I find it more fun to kind of be, you know, up and moving around. Well, I mean, you don't really, you really don't. But I just, I get excited about, you know, clearing levels. And so I like to stand up. I just, I find it to be a very fun physical experience. But not everybody feels that way. For example, a friend of mine got a quest too recently. And it was partly because I couldn't stop talking about it. And he was like, yeah, I watched a movie. It was cool. It was like, watching a movie in theater. And I was like, wow, I never even do that. I'm just all about the apps. So there's some sort of, where there's a tipping point that I feel like there's got to be that killer app that it's not Beat Saber, because that was sort of the one that everybody was like, oh, you love it. So much fun. But again, physical, physical app, it's really an exercise app that's like fun, you know, set to music kind of thing. And I like Supernatural. I've talked about it ad nauseam. And then there are other apps that I'm not really into because it's a little bit more of that like gaming. You know, you get sort of far enough into a game and then you know, you dip out and you get back into it. What are you predicted here? What are you predicted? My prediction, I'm sorry. I know I'm getting along with this. My prediction is there is going to be some sort of an app. And I don't think it exists yet that people far and wide will say, oh, you're not a gamer. You don't like exercise. Maybe you like both, but you already have other ways to do it. There's going to be something that gets people into VR more than ever. I don't know what that app is. I don't know yet what it is, but it's going to be something that captures the hearts and minds of folks who didn't really understand why VR would be fun for them. I'll get right up on it. You're going to make it? Yeah, I'll get it. Yeah, please make it. I mean, that's been a big kicker with VR since the beginning, though. What is the killer app? When will that killer app happen? Will it coincide with when they're smaller, lighter, cheaper? That's the great Holy Grail. I hope it's 2021 that happens, because I think VR deserves a stage. But right now that thing just doesn't exist. In terms of that killer app, it'll bridge the gap between nerds, gamers, and otherwise enthusiasts. Exactly. It's kind of like, what's the Twitter of VR or equivalent? Something that people are, you know, for the most part, everybody's involved in. So that's my first prediction. I know what happens. We'll know it if we see it. I think it's not a hard measurement, but I think we'll be able to evaluate this one. It's a good one. All right. So next one, we've talked a lot about social networks and what's good and what's bad about them. And when we say social networks, now there's TikTok and there's been Instagram for a while. But I always sort of think of it as like Facebook and Twitter. Those are like the social networks that have been around for over 10 years, aren't going away anytime soon, but are rife with problems, which we talk about on DTNOS all the time. There will be some sort of alternative social network. So it's social. It's meant to bring people together in some way, but it isn't LO. Remember LO a few years ago that was going to be, it was going to be the new Facebook, but not Facebook. And everyone was like, this is a great idea, but no one's really here. And so they all kind of went back to Facebook. Then there's Parler. Parler is a great example of a social network that was like, we don't like, well, not we, but a lot of people who use Parler were like, we don't like the options that we have thus far. So we're going to go ahead and do that. Somewhat thriving, certainly got a lot of engagement in 2020. But then you see again, this trickle back to Twitter of, well, but that's where everybody else is. Not everyone's moving to the other network. So you can triumphantly go hang out somewhere, but it's all about the people that are around. I think that the social network as it stands has to be reimagined. And we haven't seen that yet. And it might happen in 2021. So not a new type of social network, which we've seen with Snapchat and TikTok, but you're saying there will be a new social network that will directly take from Facebook and Twitter. Because TikTok and Snapchat really didn't take from Facebook and Twitter. Exactly. They're different and they're fun. And that's all great. But yeah, they didn't they didn't erode the stalwarts. So hear me out real quick. So hear me out real quick. There's Apple Plus. There's Apple Plus out there, right? The Apple TV. There's there's a Disney Plus Google. Wait, hold on. Just bear with me here. What if Google put a plug at the end? Just hear me out here. Yeah, you made Rob cringe. I saw that. I mean, this is because they probably will and then they'll cancel it. I'm not sure I've ever wanted a prediction to come true more often than this, Sarah. This is like, this is the thing I want the most right now. Maybe of all my tech life is a is that I don't know how that works though, because at the end of the day, an open system is what people want. But open systems at scale tend to lead to bad actors, you know, problems of scale, like all the things we're dealing with with Facebook and Twitter now. So I don't know how they do it, but I want you to be right. Yeah, I know. I want to be right as well. And I don't totally see where this goes. Well, you're predicting somebody will figure it out. That's what I like. Yeah. And there have been so many think pieces, especially in the last six months of there's there's a social network fatigue, but we can't quit them because you get your news there. It's where your friends are. You see photos. You see videos. There are all sorts of things that are good about it, but a lot of things that are bad. And so, yes, rise up new network. We're waiting for you. All right. Real quickly, what's your what's your hat trick prediction to bring in three for three? Yeah. Well, so, uh, we're all going to get super rich because Bitcoin is going to come back. And the reason that I said this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 1000, which is the highest it's ever hit. Yeah. This, which sort of my prediction happened like a week ago when it wasn't there. But now I see that just just by thinking it into existence, we're on our way. You're saying it's going to stay there. It's not going to go. It's not going to plummet back down. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And the whole thing with Bitcoin is, you know, I, I had put like a very small amount of money into somebody that was managing a fund years ago. And we, it was like, whoa, doubled my money in like a day. And then it was like, oh, no, I'm back to like almost zero. And it's been at almost zero since then. And I was kind of like, well, that sucks. But that's what you get when you, you know, you kind of bank on something that you don't necessarily understand super well enough to do it yourself. But I think we are getting to a point where crypto is no longer this kind of like weird, nerdy niche thing that like people pay for like weird stuff on the dark net for it is, it's becoming more mainstream than ever. And I think that that's where it's going to, it's going to, it's going to, it's going to rally in 2021 and stay there. All right. Everybody likes it. We're getting nods. All right. Scott Johnson, what's your first of three? All right. This one feels like a bit of a low hanging piece of fruit, but whatever I got to try to win next year. So here goes. Netflix will lose a massive share or start to bleed audience. And at a, at a faster rate than everyone can expect, their shareholders aren't going to be happy. It will be due mostly to Disney Plus, Hulu, HBO Max, others with really strong showings in the coming year, especially Disney Plus. I feel like that even with their price hike to eight bucks in March is still an incredible bargain. And if people are looking at the services, trying to decide which one or two they're going to hang onto, I feel like it's less and less likely to be Netflix. I feel like right now, even though they have the most production happening behind the scenes, it's not the best production happening behind the scenes. It's a lot of noise and it's hard to sift through in terms of original content. And I think this is going to hurt them in a short term at least maybe longer, but it will force them to eventually either price drop after all these increases or to not ever raise prices again and tell the rest of the market reacts with their own price raises that take it past the $20 mark. Right now, their high end four screen option is $17.99. It's freaking ridiculous. It went up two bucks. It's a lot for what you get at Netflix and Netflix is great. Don't get me wrong, but it's starting to make everything else look really tempting. And I think that's only going to benefit these other services. So my prediction, my prediction in the TLDR is Netflix is going to lose a bunch of ground. Everybody else is going to benefit from that. I can see it. I can see it. I cut the cord this year. The reason was not because of a love of Netflix. It was because a hate of how much I was paying cable. And if Netflix replaces cable, then they get on the same chopping block that cable was on. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of my take generally with, I mean, I've cut the cord and I want to say 08, 07, some crazy time ago. Never looked back. Haven't paid for cable since and it's all been streaming stuff. So for me, it's just gotten better and better, although more crowded and more crowded, which is a whole other issue in a different topping or topic to talk about at some point. But, but I really like the direction. It's all gone. I just think Netflix has gotten really big for their own breaches and have gotten to a place where now others can scooch in, do amazing original content, mostly on the backs of things like Disney's acquisition of Fox and therefore their stake in Hulu and all this other stuff makes them just a power player almost overnight, plus their own original programming. I just think it's going to get harder to compete with. Netflix can't sit in that, you know, that top spot for too long. They feel like the Internet Explorer of browsers. When it comes to movie streaming, eventually people are going to go, Oh, there are other browsers and I like this one better and they're going to start using it. So that's that. Patrick, we can't hear you. Do we want to hear you, but we can't hear you. Oh, you don't. You don't really watch any of the original series on Netflix. I do. I feel like I've run out of them, though. So a couple would pop and I'll say, Oh, I haven't seen that yet. And then I'll kind of fall off of it because I didn't like it very much. And there are plenty of series for me to binge there that I've never quite gotten to. But as far as like original series goes, I've gotten most out of Netflix what I think I want. And what they've announced for the coming year doesn't look anything near as aggressive or ambitious as some of the other services in particular, Disney Plus. So I again, that's primarily driving my prediction that they'll drop in Market Share. Original. Go ahead. No, I was going to say original content is tough, you know, because, you know, as much as we say we want new stuff, we really don't want new stuff. We want comfort food. We want, we want, we want the nostalgia. And so that's why we keep going back to it. So yeah, I concur. Netflix is in some, this is some trouble in the next couple of years if they don't get them, they're losing all the, all the comfort food is going away. All the dessert is going away December 31st for, for, you know, for a lot of them, you're losing office. That's a good point. You're not going to be able to watch friends there. You can't watch Seinfeld there. You can't watch these things that used to be just on in the back, on the background. I don't like friends either. I'm the exact opposite. Same here. Same here. I watched like five friends episodes last night. Oh my gosh. Sarah's a real fan. Which year is this? Let's try to like pinpoint the 90s, you know? I can probably say I've never seen an episode of friends, not one. And it's a badge of honor. So I go out of my way. I will make myself uncomfortable to not see it. Wow. Well, Sarah will carry the torch from here on out as needed. Well, until the end of the year. And then Patrick, you're being too polite. I see you chomping at the bit to say something. Just say it. I'm just laughing because I've seen one episode of Seinfeld. It was the same twice. I've seen two episodes. I've seen the same episode of Seinfeld twice. It was the soup Nazi episode. And it still pisses me off because I used to get soup at the place that was inspired to not see something like whatever. But it's also, I mean, like, like for me, Lamar, it's like I'm looking for a lot of original stuff. And at one point I was getting frustrated because obviously Netflix used to have all the movies and now all the movies are spread across Netflix and Amazon Prime and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's like, I think, I think they're all in trouble because Netflix is spending an insane amount of money. Disney is going to try to spend an insane amount of money. HBO Max, who finally got Roku today, is looking around and going. So we've have several subscribers and we need more. So that's going to be a really interesting. I think they're all going to be in trouble next year if they don't get a lot of. Well, I'm not going to use one of my predictions, but I think you're all wrong. Netflix is going to be fine. And all of these other services have lots of room to grow. I, I, everybody, nobody's gone broke underestimating Netflix. And they always prevail somehow. So how much, how much stock do you hit? I own zero stock in Netflix. I own a lot of stock in Lamar though. So maybe we all hold a lot of stock in Lamar. All right. We got two more predictions. Scott, you got, you don't have a lot of time left. Yeah. I'll rip through these. I'll rip through these. Nintendo will release a full generation sequel to the switch. They'll probably call it the switch too, but who knows? It will have a couple of huge Nintendo titles and be a monster hit. Oh, wait, you like a hold console, Jen? You're already this. Yep. Cause we're like what? 2016 was the last one. I agree with this. They have to. Yeah. They do have Jen and they also don't care like what Sony or Microsoft are doing. They're in their own niche and they will be incredibly successful with it as long as they don't get too weird. Like we went from the Wii U to the switch, we're going to get the successor to the switch. I do. I do think that, but I also think I also think this is a little more in line with Microsoft and Sony's plan, even more Microsoft than anybody, which is these consoles are now designed to take the games you own and move them forward with whatever the hardware iterations are more like a PC environment in the past, the way we're used to playing PC games. And I think, I think Nintendo is going to want to do that. I think I don't want to say, Oh, your switch stuff, bring it forward. That didn't used to be the way that used to be very unusual for Nintendo. So I think that's kind of so you don't see a switch pro. You you literally see a, it's not like a, the Xbox. I mean, or like the PS pro, PS4 pro. Yeah. I don't think it'll be a half step. I don't think half steps are happening anymore. I think they go full sequel. At least I kind of hope they do. So this is partly colored by my hope. And I actually, so we'll see how that goes. And then finally, another game related one, Game Pass will make, or sorry, take Microsoft to the top spot for this console generation, at least in the United States and Europe. I doubt Japan ever gets truly penetrated by their stuff, but that will be in terms of units sold profitability overall. Sony will spend most of the year trying to figure out how to match the value and features of things like Game Pass Ultimate and everything that's bringing people even now before cloud gaming is fully out of beta, before all that other stuff happens. I think Sony's got an uphill battle as console generation. And like tradition has it, this use, that's what happens. Stuff changes hands and the other guy starts to win. I think this is Microsoft's chance. And by the time we talk again, they will be the clear leader. All right. Good. Yeah. Nods all around. Of course. Yeah. All right. Low hanging fruit. You'll be two for three, Scott. I have a feeling you'll be two for three. Patrick, what do you got for us? So it's been interesting watching this latest generation of mobile processors on Apple and the outrageous, ass-kipping, epic performance they've delivered, even when emulating non-native programs. So I'm saying Lenovo, HP, or Dell, those are the top three PC manufacturers by Market Share. They work with Microsoft to follow Apple's lead and start their own custom ARM CPUs to be more competitive. I cannot imagine the amount of screaming that's been going on inside of Intel in the last few weeks. But I don't see that screaming, stopping any time soon. But I'd be very curious to see if anybody else tries to do what Apple did and consolidate everything onto a single chip and go for a massive performance gain. So you say all three of them will do it or at least one of them will do it? At least one of them. Yeah. I think this is smart. There's smart monies on this pick. And I think the part of the reason I like it is I got, well, I got a chance to use a mini with a new architecture with a new chip in it. And I was blown away, like blown away. I want to try a mini. It's a freaking mini. Like it's not supposed to blow me away. And it blew me away. It played World of Warcraft, like full-screen, beautiful resolution, all stuff up to Macs. That's not supposed to be possible on a Mac of any kind. Yeah. And it's, and their performance was always so like, you know, from generation to generation for so long. And now it's just whack. And everybody's looking around and going, oh my God, look what it did. Look, I mean, like you just did, it's kind of ridiculous. And I think it's going to be a really interesting nail in the forehead rather than the coffin of Intel or maybe AMD. Do any of these companies die because of this? No. I noticed the extra prediction prediction, but I'll just, you know, I'm looking at these names, you know, Lenovo, HP, Dell, and I wonder, does anybody fold here because, you know, the kind of harm, I don't say harm that's done to Intel. Intel can still, you know, be used by those companies. But, you know, Apple, Apple kind of, you know, struck a blow there. They did struck a blow, but Apple's still like 7%. If you take, if Apple's like 7% of the overall personal computer market, I want to say Lenovo's 24, 25, HP's 23, 24, I think Dell's like 18%. Then there's just a whole umpteen million other people on that list. Apple's number four, they're the fourth largest. I think there's still such a barrier to entry for so many people going from Windows to Apple, unless a whole lot of people buy a whole lot of these, these, these, you know, like next generation MacBook Air and people sit next to them at the cop. Well, eventually, right? When we can go to coffee shops and and stare at other people's computers. That's another prediction. We'll be able to go to coffee shops. Okay. That'd be nice. Remember having breakfast in a diner? I do. I'm a greasy diner. Yes. Do you hate Patrick? Let me ask you this. Do you think Intel turns around and does some arm-based architecture chip as a result? Do you think that happens? Well, they tried to do this. Firstly, they had an ARM license. Then they gave up on that. Then they realized that the largest area for growth in computer processor sales was mobile phones. And then they tried to spend the x86 architecture to mobile phones. And, you know, there were at least two Chinese only mobile phones made with Intel mobile processors several years ago that no one I know in the real world ever actually touched. So, you know, do they want to? Absolutely. Can they at this point? I don't know. I think 60% or 70% of Intel's business at this point, and I have not checked recently, is not based on the sale of processors. So, they may not even care as much as they might have a few years ago. All right. Prediction number two. By some minor miracle, Starlink actually manages to blanket most of the United States with $99 a month unlimited internet, which is going to be like 50 to 150 megabits up and down, which will cause radical changes in data pricing by Verizon and AT&T and T-Mobile, and also could potentially make some radical changes in where people are able to work from home, which won't be as big a deal I think by the end of 2021, but it's still going to be interesting. There's one of the things we noticed when we were traveling. We spent a lot of the last year traveling by RV. We left Cali and before we ended up in St. Louis. And there's a couple things I noticed. One, there's a whole lot of fixed point wireless in large parts of the country that are fairly empty, that is of extremely good quality and extremely high speed that nobody knows about. And two, that the biggest complaint we ran into with people who were full-time, either mobile or working in rural areas, is that there are just, if you aren't lucky enough to have one of those wireless operators, fixed wireless operators, you have satellite traditional satellite internet, which is a mess, or you're using mobile if you didn't even get anything at all. And I think it'll be really interesting to see what Starlink does in terms of bringing mobile access to large parts of the country, or I should say bringing internet access to large parts of the country that have incredibly limited options. It was amazing how many places that were close to major cities in the U.S. that had the $89 a month plan was five megabit ESL. I might not even just be Starlink. I think you're right to call Starlink out by name because they're the most likely, but there's some other players in this too that might crop up as well and help with this. It would be nice, especially if the prices are talking about. Finally, my low-hanging fruit, 3000 series NVIDIA GPUs named the 5000 series CPUs won't be easy to buy at normal MSRP prices until these shoot. Softball. That was very low-hanging right there. You know, some days you just, I apologize for throwing myself a wiffled ball. It's a prediction. That's right. That's right. Perfectly reasonable prediction. Well, a friend of mine was like, I'm going to build a really, I'm finally going to build that big gaming PC like in January, right after. I'm like, no, you're not. Believe me, if they had those processors, they wouldn't be waiting until Jay, there's nothing, dude. Yeah, the only companies who have them are the pre-built or the ones who make it like origin, like they have them. And they don't have much. No, they don't have a lot. You want a 3000 series GPU. You're spending over $2,000 right now to buy a full Zoot gaming PC. Oh, that's it. All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again. You all feel so familiar. All right, Rob Dunwood, let's move on to you. What are you going to predict for 2021? Okay. So my first prediction is boutique consulting or gig consulting is just going to absolutely skyrocket next year. I went with this just because, I mean, COVID has changed how people work. You've got really a bunch of things happening. A lot of people are not working, so they had to figure out side hustles. So they're trying to start their own businesses or just do what they can do via the internet to get by. You've got a lot of people who are no longer going into the office. They have discovered that they like this, and they're not going to want to go back. And they're going to be looking to do things with their skill set that, oh, maybe I can do this marketing nomination for this company, or maybe I can edit a podcast for someone. You're going to see these little jobs. So when I say boutique consulting or gig, I'm not talking about the big staff augmentation type of gig where someone comes in and they're embedded in a company for six months. I'm talking about to where you literally may work for someone for eight hours to do a very specific job. And you're going to see just a lot of things on Fiverr and Upwork and on other sites like that to where people who are now working from home and want to remain working from home are going to start seeing what they can do with their skill set to generate some additional income just because of how they may have been displaced earlier this year. Do you think you see a lot of tools crop up as well that will help support this? You mentioned a couple of services there, but do you think that will coincide with this where it'll be much easier for people to say, that is my gig specialty and I will be available for six hours instead of whatever setup we have now to do all that? I think you're going to see that. And I think a big part of this is that a lot of people, the reason that they weren't working for themselves is just because they were comfortable working for the organization that they were with. It wasn't like they needed to go out and do something else, but now that they're home or now that they're out of work, they kind of, wait a minute, if I can do this working from the house for this company, I could just as easily do it working for the house for someone else. So I think that you're going to just see a lot of that. And because of all these little companies that are popping up for the folks who do go back to work, per se, they're not necessarily going to want to give up their side hustle. So where they had time to do things before because they weren't in the office or they were furloughed or what have you. Well, I still want to keep this podcast going. So now I've got to find somebody to do the editing for it. I need to find somebody to do the transcription work. So you're just going to see all these micro gigs that are just going to pop up all over the place next year. And there's a bunch of services in place for that kind of thing, like Indeed and those kind of places out there. Yeah, go ahead, Patrick. You mentioned Fiber. My first thought was like, oh, gig work for starvation wages. I mean, do you see these micro gigs paying well? Or are they going to be kind of, and maybe I've just been on the wrong parts of Fiber. But I remember looking at somebody like, wow, 17 minutes of voiceover for $12. That's. So Fiber in a lot of ways gets a bad rap because it's a global market. So you're seeing a lot of people who are willing to do stuff from other places for a lot less. But generally, if you've got a good skill set, you might start off on Fiber just to get your name out there. But what you end up happening is you may have done a $50 gig just to get the gig. But that could very easily turn into a $500 gig, a $5,000 gig or even a contract where you're just given someone so many hours per month. I've seen that happen. I've done that myself. So I can definitely see, I don't have a problem with Fiber as much as a lot of other people do because additional things come from it. You've got to start somewhere. Copy that. Thanks. All right. Prediction number two. Prediction number two is that, and it's, Sarah, you kind of touched on this, but I think you're going to see, let me go ahead and just read it here. 2021, by the year 2021, we will see a Copycat Clubhouse social network company come around. So I don't know if you guys have been paying attention to the social network Clubhouse, which is really different. It's audio only. There's 100 million reasons why every developer is going to try to figure out, hey, I can do that and I can do that better. So I think you're going to see a plethora of these voice only type social networks prop up next year. Well, I think Twitter is one of the companies that has been actively working on something like that. Twitter has definitely added their voice tweets, but I'm looking at, I personally have not been able to get an invite to Clubhouse yet, but I've joined via watching someone else on their iPad. It is ridiculous from outside the club. Is that what you're saying? I'm not in the club yet. Is anybody wants to give me an invite? There's going to be other ones I can go to, but you know, there's a lot of room in this particular space and I actually think that you're going to see someone like Facebook actually just straight up copy the idea. Facebook is showing over time. Facebook could never. That's not. First they'll buy it. They'll buy it, then they'll copy it and rebrand it. First they'll eliminate the competition, ruin it and then create a copy that's tighter integrated into Facebook, but completely useless. Yeah, there you go. I actually have, Rob, I think this is a good one. I was given a Clubhouse invite from folks who would not stop talking about how great it was maybe a couple of months ago and I immediately, because I was I was accessing it on my iPhone, I was like, I mean, the audio was really bad, right? Cause everyone's just kind of on their iPhones like, you know, we're, we're kind of used to pretty good audio and headphones and everything. I was like, huh. And if you're in a sort of lively conversation, conversations could be about anything, but there were sort of a lot of, I don't know, industry people and celebrities that were getting people like me and be like, okay, I'll join the group, you know, or the room as they call it and see what's going on. And it's a bit of a mess. You can kind of tell who's talking because their avatar lights up. But when all of us are talking at the same time, there's a lot of lighting and you actually have to do the Patrick Dorton hand raising thing. If you have, have joined the room, but you haven't actually been granted access to join the conversation and, you know, be, have your, have yourself unmuted. So it's going somewhere, but it seems like it's a bit of a mess to me at this point. It absolutely is a mess right now. And there's all type of issues with just content moderation and people getting bullied and that kind of stuff on there. And that's one of the reasons why I think you're going to see a lot of, a lot of other developers jump in and try to create something similar like this because this company got, you know, a huge injection of cash from, who was it? You know, Anderson Horitz. You know, I think the venture capital firm. And it's got a valuation of over $100 million. And they've got literally a handful, a couple of employees at this point. So I think that you're going to see a lot of other developers try to recreate this and do it better. And then also make it cross-platform, make it, you know, available to most of the world on Android because it's just an iPhone app at this point. I like this tandem, like tandem jumping, tandem picking here. That's good. All right. What are you going to finish this up with? Okay. My last one is mobile payments finally have become mainstream next year. And I will just say this, this is probably as much of a hope as anything else. But I do see a room for mobile payments. And I'm not necessarily talking about your Apple Pay and your, you know, your NFC type stuff. I'm thinking more of like the Starbucks app to where, you know, you kind of order in, you know, order and pay before you go pick it up. Or I think that the, the actual PayPal is going to make a lot of noise. I used PayPal. I think I was in, it was either CVS or Walgreens. I can't remember which one. And I was actually able to pay with PayPal, you know, with just scanning the QR code. And I don't want to say that I'm a germaphobe, but we are in a pandemic right now. And I don't like touching things. I don't want to touch the screen, you know, to enter in a pin or even to hit the enter button to not have to enter in a pin. I don't want to have to physically touch it. And like the Starbucks app, you don't have to touch anything. PayPal, if you can pay with it in the store, you don't have to touch anything. So I think you're going to see, you know, other apps like that come, you know, come about or just add maybe additional features to what they already have. And then when I say mainstream, I don't think that, you know, the majority of people are going to use it. I just mean mainstream in the sense that it will be normal. People aren't going to look at you sideways when you're trying to use your phone to pay for something like they, you know, like they do today. I think that, you know, we're going to finally get to that point to where it's just a normal way of doing a transaction. You mean in the US too? Because it's kind of out there. It's definitely that. Yeah, I feel like you're describing the WeChat that the US will finally figure out how to use. Yeah, or Europe or Australia. Yeah. Yeah, I use my I use my watch yesterday to pay for some groceries. And I felt I felt powerful. I think I think this is your your low hanging fruit one. I think this is rock solid. You're this is definitely going to be like, yeah, do you visa, master, you're going to be looked at funny if you want to write a check more than you will be if you want to do a mobile payment. Exactly. I wish I would have said that myself, but you're absolutely right, because I just I think that the weirdness is going to go away from you trying to flip your arm over to pay or let me pull my phone out and pay with that. I think it's going to be just a normal thing by the end of the year. All right, I like it. Prediction number one. So anyone who's in the theaters, I expect you to hate me for this one. And that's fine. But I do expect all movies to go same day theater and streaming for all major distributors by the end of 21 21. Everybody everybody. Everybody. This is bold. Yeah, I agree with you. Well, you know, just we saw what Warner did very ambitious. They did, you know, 17 movies next year. We got Wonder Woman end of this year. And look, this was always, in my opinion, the plan, you know, the virus to me just accelerated everything by two or three years. I think this was the this was the 20, you know, 2023, you know, 24, maybe plan of action. Anyway, we saw the we saw the window shortening from 90 days. And I think it recently got down to 71. You know, now you have universal with their 17 day window. It's it's it's definitely shrinking. You know, and here's the thing, people have had nine months to get used to content in their home, premium content in their home this way. You know, whether you consider school or trolls, premium is up to you. But you know, the Wonder Woman 1984, that's pretty premium. Yeah, that's very premium. There's no there's no joke. They were used actually pretty pretty good came out today. I think you mean it came out a couple weeks ago because today's December 31 course. Yeah, exactly. It was it was great, by the way. I love wonderful program. She's so powerful. She's so wonder. Yeah, yeah. But I think this is the right way to move forward. Now, listen, it's up to the studios to decide about profit sharing. I don't think that's my business or job. I mean, like as a consumer, like that's their job. You know, they want to say, you know, like what Universal did, hey, we'll share profits off the vods with with with you a theater's right or with you, you know, and you know, they want to do something like that to help out the you know, the I don't I'm not calling for the depth of theaters. I'm just saying what inevitable is you get you have now by the end of by 2021, literally by end of this year, but going into 2021. Thanks to Warner have gotten people used to this system and you cannot go back from it. Once that Pandora's box is open, it's open and I think this is a long shot because Disney didn't announce it at their investor day. But I think they got good clothes. You could be right. If if the early results of HBO Max look positive, if if if Warner starts to go like this is really working, then you might see the others crumble. Like you've got a shot. You've got a shot of getting this one right. Yeah, I think I think Disney got as close as they were comfortable getting without really upsetting. I mean, they put a lot of stuff on Disney Plus. There's a there's a lot of premium things that, you know, could have rightfully been theatrical. And so, you know, so here's the thing. I people want to go to theaters can I'm not saying get rid of them. And I say, you know, streaming only, you know, but I think I like options. Even if you got to pay for a premium, even if it's like, hey, and there's, you know, like Disney trying to deal with Milan, which I don't think it was a good movie to do it with. But, you know, if there's a premium for day one access, sure, if it's a good enough movie, I think that's an option. That's a fair option. It's because you're already paying that premium at the theater anyway. When I would take, you know, my kids and my wife, we'd walk out of, you know, an $80 bill or whatever, just to go see a movie with three people. And I'll happily pay $49.99 for your new release that weekend streaming on a nice setup at home that I would to go. I'm totally with you on this. I do think it's unlikely this year, but I think we're on the road to that no matter what. Oh, I think if Warner looks good after the first few releases and suddenly Disney and Universal and Sony can point to that and go like, look theaters, it wasn't as bad as you thought, or it worked out really well. We can't resist. I think that that's where the market can win on this one. I think it's going to be interesting because there's a lot of lawsuits have been threatened by various and sundry, you know, people that were who's movies were basically nobody. Yeah, like legendary, right? Yeah, like that's going to be interesting to see how the lawsuits settle out from that. So like a lot of people like, oh, you know, HBO Max currently has, I think, 7 million pure subscribers. So they felt that they lost money. Mulan, I think the number was $35 million on that that paid launch before they opened it up to all Disney plus subscribers compared to $135 million in an opening day weekend. Like, I think if they can bring the numbers up, either movies are going to come a lot less expensive or they have to get the numbers way up. But also they have to get people on board. They can't just do it. Warner did and tell them like two minutes before they announce it and get everybody else. Yeah. All right. What's prediction number two? Yeah. So prediction number two is kind of in the same vein a little bit. It's streaming services. So, hi, Scott. I think Disney folds Hulu into Disney and into Disney plus app as a hub and combines the subscribers to over 100 million. Now, you know, here's where our base is on. You know, in 2019, they did the deal with Universal, you know, where they, you know, or where they would get the rights to own or manage Hulu, right? And that goes into 2024. You know, but what's not said is, you know, the price that they have to pay out in 2024 is really based on the, how the value of Hulu. And I, you know, and I'm not saying Disney is going to do something underhanded here, but at the same time, why would they put so many resources into Hulu, you know, to end up paying a premium to these guys. And so I don't think they're going to kill it off, but I don't know if they can do this without Comcast's approval, though. That's very, very possible. Yeah. We don't know the details of the deal because I think you're absolutely right. And the only reason this doesn't happen in this coming year is if Comcast won't let it happen yet. Exactly. Yeah. I just think it's confusing marketing to have some Marvel products on Hulu, some Disney. And listen, we talked about Netflix earlier, right? I think this is a good example. Netflix has Netflix. You log in, it bugs me all the time. Netflix. And then there's Netflix Kids. There's, you choose one that to click. And I think of, you know, Disney kind of said, okay, I know that this is a family app, but there are adults here. I mean, that's why they have the Marvel stuff. That's why kids aren't watching. Those are grown adults watching all that stuff. You know, if they had a hub like they have for National Geographic or whatever, I think that would not only just be good for the app, but then it gets their $80 million with Hulu's, what, $30 million. And now you have what Scott was saying earlier, now you have a powerhouse going after Netflix. And they're already in the groundwork for this, because they're doing it with Star overseas. It's just like you said, it's just a hub, and they're moving ESPN content into Hulu some more, so they're trying to blur those lines. You're definitely onto something here. Yeah, that's the pieces are coming together here. All right. Last prediction. What do you got? Yeah, this was actually really quick, even though it was really controversial. Scott, don't hate me. I think game streaming, and I'll mean streaming like, hey, I'm streaming on Twitch right now. I meant the cloud streaming like Stadia, Luna, who I tested out today. It's ambitious, but mainstream might be pushing it, but I think it's going to be part of the conversation much more by the end of 2021. Stadia has a bunch of games now. I think they have up to almost 100 if you get the pro subscription. So you're kind of on par with the Xbox Game Pass, not in the sense of the premium thing, but just a sense of sheer. Like when Stadia came out, they had no game. They had two games, two or three games. Now they have a kind of more robust catalog. And I think Amazon coming out with Luna is going to at least get people to think, okay, if I have a decent internet connection, my internet is getting better. The 5G thing is cool. Maybe I can give this thing a go. So I think I have Xbox has their xCloud as well, which is incredible. So it's ambitious, but I don't think it's going to take over anything, but I think it's going to be part of the conversation. I don't think it's going to die. Well, I definitely don't think it's going to die. And I think it's going to do, it will become the most mainstream it has been, certainly. And Microsoft getting worse. Microsoft getting into the game with an already established base of ultimate users who are already going to be set to do this immediately with a huge catalog of games, including premium AAA stuff that Microsoft puts out and their acquisition of Bethesda and all the other stuff going on this year with Microsoft. They are the ones poised to push that streaming stuff right up in front of everyday people. And nobody can buy a 4k gaming card right now. Right? Right? Right? I mean, there's a whole bunch of reasons why this could coalesce. And the more pressure it puts on ISPs and service providers to improve services to offer better services to drop caps, like wherever we can do to get that move in more, the better for that. So I'm actually looking to this to be a bit of a game changer if it takes off the way it should. I think you're totally right. Whether it's fully mainstream and that's all we care about. We never buy another physical thing or download a game again. Probably not this year, but we're definitely getting a lot closer to that day where it's indistinguishable from how we used to do it. We just turn on something instead of plug it in. I mean, real quick, look at what Cyberpunk is actually making stadium look good. Yeah. It's actually working really well in the stadium. That should be a headline itself. They should go with that for the marketing. Yeah. All right. I'm done. Good talk. All right. Those are good ones. Those are good ones. I'll finish us off. My first prediction is that AI-based defense systems like Microsoft's Defender have been the sort of the bulwark. Like if something can get past the definitions, you got these AI-based systems that can still catch stuff. I think we're going to have the first big attack by self-learning malware this year. And it won't be the first attacks. There's already been some tries at this, but we're going to have the first big successful AI-based malware. I got to go vomit, and I'll be right back. I think you're totally right, but I got to go vomit. I'm going to go vomit on a high note, Tom. Yeah, that's exciting, right? You just said that they're going to build Skynet. Tom, is that what I heard you say? You can't. There's no AI in Skynet. No. That's accurate. Well, and to maybe give us a jink of light of hope here, we are going to see more of the machine learning-based Defender-type systems. They're going to get better, and this is going to push them to get better and better, but the arms race will be on. I think you're right about all of that, and it will be freaky at first, but it'll be like anything else. Well, the systems will have to rise to the task, and that's the part they don't put in the movies. So I think I sound like you a little bit here, actually. I think that it will be good for the cyber security world. Yeah, they'll have stuff. The game will be up, and we'll have to respond. That's fine. It'll be fine. Yeah. I just realized none of my predictions are very positive. I mean, this next one, you may or may not consider it. I think by the end of the year, Walmart, Amazon, and Alphabet will all be offering some kind of health care to people. I don't mean just like selling pharmaceuticals. Amazon's already doing that. I mean health care. Yeah, some kind of like, maybe it's health insurance. Maybe it's clinics. Maybe it's like telemedicine. Telemedicine seems like a pretty good one. You know, somebody who's who's a somebody who's a I am a freelance worker, you know, and I pay for my own health insurance and, you know, I try to pay for what I can afford, but it's never like really the best. But that's just what I got to do. I look forward to having more options, not saying that Amazon or Alphabet or Walmart or any other company that's kind of in this in in this bucket is going to give me anything better than what Kaiser is giving me now. But more options, not necessarily a bad thing. What is thinking there? There's a Walmart around the corner from my house with an urgent care like right next to it. It's just like, is that is that urgent care? Next year's to go to be Walmart urgent care. Right next to the McDonald's. That's inside. So there you go. And so we'll all be healthier. That's positive. I do think like remote, this is based on the idea of like telemedicine and remote care and stuff is becoming more acceptable, obviously. And so I think that there'll be some movement along that lines. And then the low hanging fruit. Yeah, the low hanging fruit. And this is where I reveal like I might have to rerecord this one depending on what happens between now and the actual 31st. Any trust suits will be lodged against Amazon and Apple by the United States. Man, it feels like that could happen before. I mean, yeah, it could happen like today. Yeah, that could that could be happening now and I just need to check my feeds. I was like, Tom, you nailed it. Yeah. Also, it'll rain once in 2021. She's going to make Patrick go barf again. All this barf. This one you're good with. All right. We found the Pepto Bismol of predictions. Just a little a little amuse-bouche here. Here's some buzzwords to keep an eye out. These buzzwords already exist. So this isn't a prediction. This is keep an eye out for these buzzwords in 2021. Internet of behaviors. Anywhere. Anywhere ops. Security mesh. And hyper automation. Internet of behaviors makes you want to dry heave like Patrick. I'm there. Well, but like behaviors to me is is what does that mean? Well, when I, for example, some of my smart home stuff already feels like an Internet of behavior because my, you know, Amazon assistant periodically asks me, hey, you've been doing this, this certain way a certain amount of times at a certain time of day, do you want to keep doing that? And sometimes I'm like, yeah, thank you. That feels like an Internet of behavior to me. Yeah, it's an extension of the Internet of things. And and ask five people what it is. You get probably get five different answers right now, but it's essentially the data that you collect from the Internet of things and the behaviors that you can make happen around that. I like security mesh. That one to me is something that's I'm very interested to see how this works and how it plays out. It's interesting technology and just it's almost a thought experiment of, you know, putting security around the person as compared to around the actual files. Right. Interesting way to look at it. And then that might be the antidote to the AI based attacks because you make it more complicated than you have it closer to the person. Yeah, yeah, it'll be a good one. All right. Well, thank you all for joining us and putting your predictions on the line. I can't wait to reconvene in a year's time and find out how we did. Tell folks where they can find more of what you do in the new year starting with you, Scott Johnson. All right. Well, I've got all sorts of stuff going on, but all of it will point to frogpants.com. If you want to listen to shows, find my art, check out my comics and projects coming up in the new year, that's the place to go. So frogpants.com and follow me on Twitter. I'm Scott Johnson and thanks for having me, Tom. You bet. Patrick Norton, what about you? I'm still doing AVXL, weekly home theater and audio podcast with Robert Herron. You can catch it at AVXL.com and for anything new that's coming up, just head over to Twitter. I am at Patrick Norton. Excellent. Rob Dunwood, where can find, find folks, find more of your fine self? You guys can get to me at the SM or actually smrpodcast.com. That's where I do my podcast with a couple of my buddies and I can't actually announce it now, but I do have a new podcast coming out early next year. I guess I did just announce it. I just didn't. You did. Happy new year. There's a new podcast cover for Rob Dunwood. Got a new podcast going to be good. I'm leaking it too. Excellent. Keep an eye out for that folks. Lamar Wilson, what about you? Yeah, I'm doing a lot of major different things next year. So I actually go to LamarWilson.com. That's kind of like my link tree of all the different cool things that'll be part of us. You know, LAMARWilson.com. And you know, of course, follow me on Twitter too because you'll get those cool things there too. Excellent. Thank you, man. Thank you. Thanks everyone for helping support the show. We could not have done it without you. We've got the Patreon loyalty rewards in full gear. You can get a sticker, a mug, a t-shirt, or a hoodie, depending on what level you support us on. That's got art with the DTNS seven year anniversary logo. We're about to turn seven. We've got versions with just the logo and then another three months after that, you get one with Roger and after that one with Sarah and then one with myself. You can get all the details at patreon.com. And just, man, it befuddles me how we are still here seven years later and that is entirely thanks to you all. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you once again, especially in 2020, for making another year of Daily Tech News show possible. We couldn't do it without you. We've had a special week this week, but we are live regularly Monday through Friday, four 30 p.m. Eastern 2130 UTC. You can find out more at daily technewshow.com slash live. And that is it for DTNS 2020. We're off tomorrow for New Year's Day because we're all going to be, I don't know, hungover or something, but we'll be back on Monday in the new year with Tim Stevens. It's a tradition that Tim Stevens kicking off the year. Happy New Year everybody. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com.