 This is the Daily Tech News show for Friday, December 27, 2019 in Los Angeles on Tom Merritt and from studio Redwood I'm Sarah Lane from studio snubs. I'm Shannon Morse From Oakland, California. I'm Justin Robert Young and from the pod feet podcast Empire This is Allison Sheridan and I'm clever. Oh, sorry Roger. Oh, it's okay. And I'm Roger James shows produce The clever folks among you may realize that this is exactly the same assemblage of people that we did last year For the predictions episode and this is something I love to do. We did it at buzz out loud. We do it At daily tech news show. We did it at tech news today It's a chance for us to look at the predictions we made last year and see just how great we did How amazingly accurate all of our predictions were? Thanks everybody for being able to come back together today and look at your predictions straight in the eye and Decide whether they were true or not. We'll sort of take a community approach to that and and sarah will start with you What was your first of your two predictions last year? The first of my two predictions Was henceforth apple will start stop rather selling the home pod and instead insert seri into competing smart speakers I didn't have a lot of faith in apple at the time not because the home pod isn't a good product But because they were late to the game and it was also very expensive I did not get this correctly Uh what ended up happening over the last year as you might recall back in april apple lowered the price of home pods Down to about 299. It was 349 And do you think okay? Well, maybe they're you know, maybe they're hurting a little bit Not that I would be rooting for the home pod to die But I was kind of thinking of my type prediction thinking i'm so smart No one else thought that this was going to happen And the market share as of august um, according to certain data Had not really risen based on that price cut home pod. It was about five percent way behind obviously amazon and google competing products, but This did not happen as as I thought it would home kid has been added to variety of smart TVs over the last year But uh, but apple did not do the 180 that I thought might happen I think that was a logical guess I would have Maybe they should have I feel like stopping selling the home pod was a decent bet I could see them pulling it off the market possibly or or replacing it with something new like home pod too, right They didn't do that. That's surprising to me siri. I feel like eventually they might do that, but it was I just wasn't going to happen the soon Yeah, I uh, I can't take credit for this. I thought Can I sort of take credit for them at least? Give it a little bit of price drop. No, I got this one wrong. I just got it wrong All right. What about your next one? Did you do better on your other one? I wish I could say yes, tom I predicted in the smart video devices category such as facebook portal They will be shunned by the public and will not last the year Now I will say facebook portal Hasn't gotten a lot of love by anybody that I know, but it is alive and well And a lot of black fratty deals for facebook portal And competing video products, um echo show for example Nest home alive and well, alive and well I don't uh, and I think I believe that It was either in our tech predictions of last year or some sort of a episode of dts around that time I kind of said I just don't really get it and I got more than one frustrated Emailer in just saying well just because you don't get it doesn't mean that it's not really helpful for me And that is true and that is why I will go ahead and eat my lunch here because I'm o for two Yeah, and this one went the opposite instead. We saw more models We saw amazon come up with multiple versions of different screen sizes and the same for for google And in fact integrated into the nest brand and and all of that So so it's you know, sometimes you make a bet and things just go the opposite way Has anyone on our panel Either bought the facebook portal or had a lot of experience with it because I have not I know that there's been some kind of well, it's facebook You know, this is the last company that aren't going to buy one of these things from But I get the impression that the company feels pretty confident that it's going to Continue to capture some market value. Yeah, I I have not but it's more Because I don't trust facebook's hardware because they don't really have a track record with it Then it is necessarily any particular A fear of facebook data harvesting considering that the other key players in the space are amazon And google what you're doing the same thing just in different way I also have not had any experience with the facebook portal But I have tried other devices like Lenovo has a smart hub and also the google one as well And I feel like that market is kind of exploding right now We've seen a whole bunch of them I mean not just from the major players But some of the smaller players as well because it's so easy to integrate The smart voice assistants now So I think if anything we're going to see that market grow larger and larger I didn't realize that it was really taking off until one of my family family members asked for an echo show for christmas And I was like really? And and you want to know what uh allison that has been the gift that I have gotten for It's all of my my wife's family out in ohio and and my mom and brother Out in in florida. They're all getting echo shows. Uh, so sorry to spoil christmas if any of them are listening Well, but it's december 27th, justin so they already know You know, I think I think part of it is A it's just another device and especially for my my brother and his wife that have two kids It's just another device that they can use either in the kitchen or to distract the kids and then it's also It you know, it is one of those form defines function kind of things where yes, of course We all have FaceTime or or duo or something like that to do voice chat but having a little dedicated Mirror where you can communicate with friends and family is Uh an attractive idea. I think for whatever reason 2019 it clicked just by the fact these things have been out for years I think if you'd narrowed it to Facebook portal wouldn't last the year. I would have I would have supported this it still did Uh, but I I can't imagine Facebook portal last another year like that. Come on I well I thought a year ago Right, I believe that this prediction came from Facebook portal because at the time it was brand new And it didn't make a lot of sense to me. And so I sort of said well this, you know, Facebook portal dies It's probably because The form factor is not necessary for a lot of folks. But as we're hearing now, uh, people love it All right, Shannon, let's move over to your two predictions. Uh, how'd you do? Yeah, well speaking of user security My first one was paranoia will create regulations in the privacy and text sector Sweeping more countries than just the eu's gdpr So I suspected that we would see major tech companies hit with large-scale fines from GDPR now for that last part if I said just large-scale fines I would have gotten it right because we did see the ftc find facebook five billion dollars For a privacy settlement. So we did see that We also did see a real estate company in germany get fined via the gdpr for 14.5 million euros So, you know, that's a decent amount of money, but it's not a tech company. It's not a large tech company Um, and as far as hearing about sweeping more countries with gdpr-esque type of legislation We haven't seen that yet. Um, it's been very slow. I mean, it's government work So go figure, but we did see the ccpa in california That is going to be enacted in january and that's the california consumer privacy act. I believe it's called And a lot of people are suspecting that that might end up making the rest of the u.s States start to take security more seriously and maybe create other legislation But we haven't seen anything sweeping for any other countries like we have in europe So I there's some things moving there's traction as far as my predictions go, but none of it I could say like straight up like yes, I got this right We are seeing a lot of movement for proposing federal legislation now that ccpa is coming in On both sides of the aisle. So so you may see that still happen. What do you think panel? Do we give her partial credit on any of this? I think we have to give her partial credit because of the cpa stuff Yeah, I'm I'm I'm I'm awarding partial credit I too believe you deserve partial credit Thanks. All right. Well, uh, you may you may go for a win there. How'd you do on your other one? I don't think I'll go for a win on this one My second one was that AI will be used in cyber espionage campaigns and social engineering Which may have happened But we did not see any kind of public publicized news about anything like that happening I did read that there are a lot of businesses trying to start using AI to thwart hackers But nothing really vice versa So I'm still waiting for this to happen. I feel like it's still going to happen But 2019 was just not the years for hackers to figure out AI. So we're we're still waiting on that fact Keep this one rolling. Hi, Shannon. Yeah, we'll keep this one rolling Now Allison, you did make a was it a prediction that you made in 2017? Well, this is bad for me to try to remember but according to our notes We say that Alice gets a quarter of a point if evidence proves AI was used as social engineer hacks and campaigns in 2017 But that doesn't make any sense. We must have met 2019 or 2016. Yeah I'm not exactly 16 Yeah, so if we say it's 2016 I mean technically the conversation uh reports that uh highly sophisticated micro targeting operations Uh, I lost my place for a light on big data and machine learning to influence people's emotions Different voters receive different messages based on predictions about their susceptibility to different arguments That would suggest that I got credit. What do you guys think? I would think so Yeah, I'm not sure I even understand what I said before so I'm stretching here I mean, yeah, so so basically the only thing is that whenever these kind of things who wind up getting reported You have to sort of take a grain assault with sophisticated micro targeting because it probably just means they bought facebook ads But did it use machine learning if it used machine learning then yeah, no, they were they were crunching the the numbers and again it was probably fairly Routine of just saying like if you're in a facebook group that uh, or people from this facebook group Uh, would probably be peoed about a certain language. But yeah, I I think it's I think it it it tracks I don't know. I I think you you you would have had to have an election break in or something like that Uh, I might I might hold the line a little bit on this one. I'm not sure because this is just emotions not actually Attempted manipulation of of behavior is different than than a hack into a campaign or social engineering As far as my context goes, I was thinking more along the lines of hackers hacking into like industrial control systems with ai And we didn't see anything like that. Um, so I wasn't thinking along the same lines as allison But I think both of those Have a place. I mean, it's definitely Going to become a concern if it's not that much of a concern yet. Yeah, you may have just been too early on that one I'm afraid I'm I'm gonna have to side with Tom on this. I don't think I get the quarter Well, you were trying to surf in on shannons anyway, so it would have been just bonus material All right, allison. Let's actually look at your predictions yourself starting with your first one. How'd you do? I may not even need that quarter point My first prediction was google will finally come out with a single Unified messaging service that actually works It will fail to get immediate adoption because no one trusts them not to drop things anymore Eventually it will be widely adopted, but not till 2020 so And they did start to move people to messages and they did They did something with rcs where they're they're trying to improve messages Yeah, so they got rid of aloe and hangout. So they consolidated down to five messaging apps That was that was clearly in the direction. I was going. Um, I mean, it's not like they invented rcs or anything, right? They're just saying let's put rcs And they only did that uh, what a month and a half ago the middle of november Um, so technically it might be the single unified messaging service that actually works And it was not universally that widely adopted What do you think and and they are retiring hangouts? They haven't done it yet, but they've announced that it is sunsetted Duo, they've turned into like this isn't a messaging service. This is FaceTime. This is a phone colleague Video calling. I think you get at least partial credit on this I don't give her full points, man. That's I mean, it was a very good prediction if you think about rcs I've already adopted rcs for my non signal You know non pro encryption friends and family And uh, so far it's working great. So I I do think that we're gonna see pretty good adoption next year Uh, given that message messages does work and I can say that from experience So actually works Not widely adopted because they just did it a month ago Yeah I give you I give you thumbs up on this one. Yeah, I think I think we're all in the same boat We're gonna give you thumbs up on that one. What about your next one? Well apples tv app will come to another service like roku or amazon That is that is a 100 you are number one got two for two Wow, and and it came to roku and amazon and amazon. I know How did I samsung just of you know, I used to go in the cake How did you know these things? Oh, I crowdsourced my predictions. I'm terrible at this. I didn't write any of these Well, this this was the pick because uh, uh at this point last year We we were aware of apple tv that they were Probably going to launch in the next year and that would be the reason that is the reason why they wound up putting There their tv app on the other services, but still full credit for for knocking this one out of the park This may be I you know, we'd have to go back and double check This may be the most correct prediction that we've ever had like there's no room for interpretation here like apples tv app Did come to roku and amazon And it was specific too Man, wasn't a general one, right? Yeah. No, it was pretty it was very specific. You even named names. So Well done 110% uh and credit with the no silicast a ways who wrote it They had to do this too. Like they it's possible that they they might not have done it because they're apple But to make apple tv plus successful. They had to be doing this and and so it makes sense to me that they did All right, justin robber young we turn to you now. How did you do with your first one? Not so good al That will sell Which not only did it not sell to anybody, but it has uh tripled its stock values since I made this Making it less likely to be sold far less likely. Yeah, I mean this was pretty much at the height of Uh, you know, there was another push on the spectacles last year instagram had so thoroughly kind of uh taken a lot of the the uh market share at least of those stories thing But that being said stories have endured. This is just a a tremendous way that people like to share. So if uh, uh, every other service is adding stories ask versions, uh of of themselves so they can continue to add Users then snap has not only, uh gotten themselves, uh into a good space, but the the business seems to be thriving I feel like i'm surprised how well snap is doing a year later. I really did I wasn't sure they would be sold, but I really did feel like snap was fading away and uh, they haven't In fact, if anything they they've reconsolidated their position and and and weathered the storm and seemed to be on the rise again a little bit Well, they did have a big surge in those lenses You remember there was there was a like a couple of week period where everybody was a woman turning into a man and vice-versa and looking Old or whatever everybody went bananas at least for a couple of weeks in a row there I mean, I know my family all we did was sit around make each other laugh for a couple of weeks with it Yeah, you know, it certainly was able to maintain its its relevancy and also, uh, there is Uh, just a very winning position for them as their user base does get a little older and we've something that I've noticed a lot in in 2019 is a social strata for Demographics and social networks that it's like it in the early days. We were so used to it's like Oh, no the the the youth will go to the new thing and we will all move in a herd and that was just the early adopters because Facebook is an older demo Twitter is a Middle-of-the-road demo and now you're seeing snap and instagram and uh tiktok be Their own kind of social strata for age-wise. So snap will just live on and as they get older You know people who are selling cars will be able to sell them cars I wonder how much the the the tiktok folks and the rise of tiktok will eventually Eat into snap to the point that it is suffering hasn't happened yet Even though tiktok is has the the the thing that snap has no matter how Weird it is to use It is a vital messaging app for its key demographic and that is something that as of now tiktok really isn't tiktok is shooting editing watching videos uh and Snap is just an integral part of life for many uh for many people I wonder if tiktok isn't helping snap In an odd way where people are looking at tiktok consuming the videos and then wanting to talk to someone about it in a similar form Yep, they seem to kind of go hand in hand sort of like facebook and twitter for us old people Yeah, i'm calling old how many people here use snapchat I haven't opened up snapchat in over a year Yeah, it's been i even get notifications when someone's added me as a friend and i'm so lazy I just haven't turned those off So i've i've gained quite a few friends over the last year and i haven't opened it once Sarah that is that is a big mood big mood Mind you these are not friends that i actually know No, no, so there's so there's that i don't actually We are living on snap and you never friended me back so oh crap. Oh, it's an ellen de generous moment I think it's probably the let's open now. It's great. There's a lot of activity I think we use our um we use snapchat in the family Maybe once or twice a day And it's sort of like, you know, you want to I think part of what i'm doing is i'm pulling away from posting a lot of stuff publicly I'm getting tired of like when I send stuff to facebook My immediate reaction is that I get drawn into well, how many likes did I like did anybody comment and And so I the people I really care about is my immediate family And so we send funny pictures to each other and and use it use it like that That's cool. All right, Justin. What about your second one? All right now we're we're we're in the market for partial credit My prediction was Amazon will be hit with an antitrust case Which I use the strong language because those always make for the best predictions as of now With the recording of it of this episode They have not been officially hit with an antitrust case. However As reported by bloomberg There is a looming possibility that an antitrust that antitrust scrutiny could come to amazon's aws service so I and that was only uh, uh yesterday As of recording as well This is a prediction where we definitely are going to have to drop the veil for a second and admit We're recording this on december 5th because This could become true still by the end of the year You could Have the ftc bring the case and I would venture to say that the fact that the ftc is sniffing around not only in retail But in aws means they are going to bring Something whether it's an actual antitrust case or some kind of like out-of-court settlement of a fine that That remains to be seen But i'm going to give you 90 credit on this because something is going to happen And and specifically the reason why I made the prediction was because there were so many targets with amazon specifically And I thought it was going to come to the store Where they are not only The the judge of who gets to list but also the creator of their own products So I assumed that's where it would come but the fact that aws is also there You know gives me a little bit rounder of a target, but but i'm feeling good about this one I don't I don't want to be a hard nose here tom, but i'm going to challenge you a little bit is I agree that it probably is going to happen But I don't think it's we have any indication that it's going to happen in the next 25 days We don't you're right It could or it might happen next year, but I I bring that down from 95 All right, all right, you can't you can't give him close to full credit when it hasn't happened I want credit on layaway, you know I was thinking you want an advance on your salary Listen, just if you just sign up for my credit card, I will give you 120 credit I will be the credit card and uh demand credit immediately Uh, yeah, I this is one of those where it's like you are right. You're either We're either recording too early or you're right too early. Uh, it's I mean, yeah, it's one of those there I add this to yet another uh bits of my frustration about the slow moving wheels of government Yeah, yeah Not their horse and rode a little sooner Having done these predictions episodes shoot every year since 2005 Uh, I I have learned to try not to make the prediction that'll be true in five years because You know, so I've had really good predictions that do end up becoming true, but not for years after my prediction show Uh, so let's turn to my my predictions from last year. The first one I think is 100 wrong in every way I can look at it. I said Because I was caught up in this story in December of 2018 I said lots of hand-wringing that food delivery will kill traditional sit-down restaurant businesses Which there was a little bit of hand-wringing in December of 2018 Uh, I don't think the hand-wringing actually got any larger over the course of 2019 There's still a little bit of it. Uh, we also haven't seen any big businesses go out And and the number of food delivery only businesses Hasn't really made a big impact. We haven't really heard about like, oh, there's that one business that only exists on postmates Or anything like that they exist, but they aren't like top of mind Instead what we're just what we're seeing is the traditional retailers of food like mcdonald's taco bell, etc Just moving into partnerships with all of these food delivery services Yeah, I think there'll probably be some restaurants ring in their hands And and watching inroads being made At the same time, I think that this is all being adopted more and more universally and Not that there's anything to be nothing replaces the restaurant business. It's two different things, right? I mean, you could order food every night and never go to a restaurant But you probably were already doing that some other way, you know But before, you know, a lot of these apps came to your town So so yeah, I don't I don't feel like anyone's really talking about saving the restaurants well You are missing the hand ringing. So obviously that is the the the operative phrase here. However You have seen, you know the uber push to to create more of these headless restaurants Yes, sir You they are just there for uber eats. You don't have any sit-down area and that in the very cost conscious of Volatile world of restaurants would be a tremendous way to cut down costs and to actually get things off the ground So in that in in in a weird way, you're wrong only because you thought people would be upset about it like Well, yeah, I thought it would start to like, you know, we'd see closed up apple bees Across the across the country and that's that's not that that didn't happen bees will never close down The place will exist after the apocalypse All that will exist is our cockroaches and yes the lime chicken Should we get him a a quarter of a point then? What do you think? Yeah, I think so You guys are too generous. Uh, I I do think this I I'm not gonna give you anything because Also, like what you're betting on hand-wringing. Like what yeah, what kind of fiction was this anyway? Well, I really I had seen a couple stories about Food delivery it's it's causing problems for restaurants that aren't adapting and I really and and saw these headless restaurants starting to pop up Which we still have and I thought okay. This is going to be a trend We're going to see a lot of a lot of think pieces, you know deep dive from vice about the decline now We didn't see any of that sort. I think I think you might be right next year This may be an example of I was too far too far ahead of the game I do think what's happening is that food delivery is stealing from different areas than we thought People still like to go out to a restaurant because they like to go out to a restaurant Where they're ordering food Sarah, I you you touched on this they're ordering food instead of making a frozen dinner instead of You know going through the drive-thru It's not it's a burrito not a not I would like a nice dish of pasta with a glass of wine And the place with the drive-thru can easily start doing the food delivery through uber eats and postmates So they're not negatively affected now, although Allison I do sometimes order a nice pasta and a glass of wine through postmates and I pay dearly for it Just a glass of wine I just in general you sometimes you're like, you know, I feel like being fancy But I don't want to leave the house and then later you're like that was 70 dollars and it was To me, huh, that was a bad idea. I had a plate of pasta and a very mediocre red All right, I think I did better with my other prediction though I said that 2019 would be the year of wearables The category will be successful higher shipments multiple new form factors Now you can argue with me whether it was the year of wearables Certainly didn't see as many form factor changes as I thought But as of q2, which is the most recent idc numbers I could find here We have seen a 28.8 percent year over year growth and wearables and we certainly are starting to see wearables Treated as a growth opportunity to the point of Fitbit being purchased by google Now when you talked about wearables, did that include hearables? No At the time I wasn't really Yeah, I was thinking more about the wrist worn devices But yes now that you say it, of course it includes hearables because that is also taking off and and it's not a new form factor, but yeah, yeah Yeah, have we seen any new form factors announced? Not really not really. I mean earbuds without wires on them is the newest form factor. I think we Really seen it's not and it's not that new so sorry tom monitors tom sorry, I thought one of the Wireless earbud manufacturers has a heart rate monitor in it Don't they yeah, but that's not really a form factor. Is it that's just a feature Headphone, I mean it makes it more like I'm really trying to throw you a bone here It makes it a different form factor and it's more of a wearable than a hero Yeah, it's a different form factor than on your wrist. Yeah, but maybe not crazy successful. Yeah I I think I deserve at least Majority credit because this this was the year that wearables really did Start to come into the foreboard. We talked about it a lot more often than we had been Previously on dts we would talk about wearables. Is it ever going to catch on? Is there going to be anything besides the apple watch and and this year we saw Big rises from Huawei and Xiaomi and even Fitbit and Samsung doing doing better all raising their market shares. So It was a good year for wearables Yeah, I give them some credit, but uh, I don't know. Justin's our toughest judge No, I think I think you get you get credit here. Um, you know, I I don't know exactly how bold of a prediction it was but I don't know exactly how bold mine was so no one asked to judge it on boldness No, it isn't although I will I will say that uh, allicens is is the the like highest boldness to correct ratio because That definitely even if there were signs it went against long-standing apple tradition whereas like A successful and growing market will continue to be successful in growing or a company that has Sprawled without regulation will hit Uh, you know hockey waters are are more They are they are good earners, but they are not You know explosive no the apple tv app coming to I mean, I'll even say like yeah, there's precedent for this They they brought iTunes to windows. They they brought apple music to android But those are the exceptions that prove the rule without yeah, so this was definitely a uh Highest risk to highest reward prediction. I don't know if we've ever given a prediction of the year before but if we did I think that would definitely this year stand out from the rest for sure The nacella casue is gratefully accept your praise Well, this has been super fun as it always is so thanks everybody uh for joining us around the horn Let people know where they can find more of what you do shannon starting with you Uh twitter.com slash snubs i'm at snubs on the twitter's and that's where you can always follow me and find out where i'm going What i'm doing what convention i'm going to be at i'll be at cnet by the or cnet i'll be at ces by the way Cnet will be at ces too i assume. Cnet will yeah a lot of my friends work over there So i'll definitely be stopping by their booth as well And also i wanted to mention snubsy.com slash threat wire I did just open up a new store where you can buy t-shirts and stickers and stuff like that for threat wire All of the contributions go directly back into the show. So uh since it is the month of giving I wanted to say thank you so much to my patron supporters of threat wire and everybody who watches and subscribes to that content as well Because I love doing security and privacy and threat wire has been very successful because of our community. So thanks everybody awesome Joseph robber young what about you Well friends, I have a brand new history podcast by the name of raise the dead and you can download it at raise the dead podcast.com It's also where you can find links that go to all of the pod catchers of your choice Uh, you know, of course we're we're several episodes into the series by the time that you are listening to this and Everyone loves it. It's the biggest hit of the season Boy, it's it's good. Just be alert. I wish I had predicted how dominant it would be Oh, my god. Yeah, those last two episodes I listened to were amazing. Thank you. Oh, wow unrestrained praise uh for raise the dead episode three By the way, the nixon episode Definitely my favorite that is the nixon episode. Yes. So yeah, everyone's got a free count as soon as they get their Feast their eyes on young dick nixon All right, all right, allison sheridan you keep mentioning the nocilla castaways. How does someone become a nocilla castaway? Well, you go over to pod feet dot com and my flagship show is the uh, the nocilla cast where the nocilla castaways come from And uh, you can also catch uh chitchat across the pond Which is an interview show and one of my favorite things to do every other week Is the programming by stealth series with barbou shots where he's teaching us to program in an audio podcast Whoo, sarah lane, uh, we're steaming towards the end of the year. Can you believe it? I I You better believe it. Yes. It's uh, it's uh, it's been a wonderful year. Um, especially with with uh Plethora of guests not least of which are still with us here on this here show I'm a little salty right now because my predictions didn't go as planned But you know, I was first so I got my shame out of the way and then got to listen to everyone else Glow and get partial credit for stuff that they didn't even deserve Enjoy that postmates red. You'll be fine Yeah, no, well, they they don't deliver out in the sticks where I live now So I really made some interesting traces this year But no, it's been it's been a really good year. Hey, you know studio redwoods going strong Excellent, uh, folks, we have new patreon reward merchandise to celebrate our six years of dtns Len Peralta created a special six-year anniversary dts logo You can get it exclusively through our patreon On a stick or a post or a mug or a t-shirt depending on which level you back You just have to back that level for three months find out more at patreon.com slash dts slash merch Our email addresses feedback at daily tech news show dot com write us right now We're live monday through friday at 4 30 p.m. Eastern 21 30 utc in our regular show You can find out more at daily tech news show dot com slash live See y'all back on monday with our tech predictions for 2020. We're gonna do so much better. I swear This show is part of the frog pants network get more at frog pants.com Hope you have enjoyed this bro