Coming up on DTS, secret airwaves that could make your phones connection faster. Use your voice to keep people from stealing your wheels and what could ruin Apple's good Q1 news. This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, January 29th, 2020 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. Salt Lake City, Utah has me, Scott Johnson in it. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. We were just talking about sweetened drinks. We were talking about the coronavirus. And so much more on Good Day Internet. You got to get that by becoming a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg will meet with EU officials next month to address antitrust and privacy concerns over how the company is handling user data. Facebook said in a statement that Zuckerberg will meet with, quote, European decision makers in Brussels to discuss a framework for new rules and regulation for the Internet. The European Commission is expected to overhaul liability rules for platforms with a proposal slated for the end of this year. Samsung announced a 5G version of its Galaxy Tab S6 set to go on sale in South Korea on Thursday for 999,900. And I never say the Korean won thing, right? So I'm not going to even try. 850 bucks is what you need to know, folks. Samsung did not say when the device would be launched in other markets. Those who buy the tablet by March 31st, however, we'll get a free Samsung book cover keyboard. The Galaxy Tab S6 5G has the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor and the 4G and Wi-Fi only versions, but only uses the Snapdragon X 55G modem. The tablet is a single configuration with six gigabyte of RAM and 128 gigabytes of storage. Google announced it paid out more than $21 million since launching its bug bounty program in November 2010. This past year, it paid $6.5 million to 461 different security researchers. $800,000 went for Google Playbugs, $1 million for Chrome bugs, $1.9 million for Android, and $2.1 million across other Google products. In 2019, the biggest single reward was $201,000. That's up from $41,000 in 2018. Also, just coming in right as we're recording the show, Cloud Services Company Microsoft reported revenue up 14% on the year, net income up 38% on the year, and earnings per share of a buck 51. All of that beat expectations. Earnings were only expected to be $1.32. Digging down, Office 365 commercial revenue grew 27%. Azure grew 62%. Office consumer products in Cloud Services, that's the stuff you and I are more likely to use, grew by 19%. And Dynamics 365 grew 42%. LinkedIn also grew 24%. Microsoft also does some non-Cloud stuff you might have heard of. Surface revenue grew in the single digits, and Xbox digital products fell 11% on the year. All right, we'll talk a little bit more about Microsoft's earnings on tomorrow's show once we have a little more clarity around all those numbers, but let's talk now about some spectrum. Well, let's do. Monday, the US Federal Communications Commission approved four companies, including Google and Sony, to become spectrum access system administrators of the 3.5 gigahertz spectrum. The companies will prevent interference among users, existing users, including the US Navy got priority, military and all, followed by companies that by rights at auction, bottom priority goes to free use by open access users. The frequency in the spectrum can deliver LTE at faster speeds and let 5G service reach further than millimeter wave frequencies. The spectrum is already used in Japan and Europe, so phones can already access that. Yeah, this is the area around the 3.5 gigahertz spectrum had been reserved for use by some smaller companies and the Navy, the Navy being the big one and the FCC for a couple of years now is trying to try to figure out how they could take some of the empty parts of this spectrum that aren't used by anyone and make them available. And what they hit on was that spectrum access system administrator that you're talking about. So they have four companies on board to administer. That's all they do. And you can use it for free. Half the spectrum is available for no charge. Now that makes you bottom priority. When I say priority, it doesn't mean priority of your bits or your packets. It means that if the administrator sees that there might be some interference, it's going to prioritize the Navy and the existing users first and you'll get knocked out of that area of the spectrum. But the Navy isn't using all the spectrum. So there'll be large areas here that you should be able to use pretty consistently and reliably. And for that, mobile carriers may just try it out. The phones already have the chips to be able to access this. It doesn't cost them anything except the infrastructure to broadcast in that spectrum. They don't have to pay for a license. Even though they get bottom priority, there's enough spectrum out there. They'll probably try it out for nothing. And then if it looks like, hey, we're actually delivering some high-speed LTE or it makes our 5G rollout easier, they might be willing to go in on that spectrum auction, which will happen probably this June. Just like the old days when they do mid auction up the stuff for broadcasters. Well, it's not like that. That's my point, is it's not like the old days because you could just go use it now for nothing. And the spectrum auction is more traditional, but you don't have to get the spectrum to use it. You have to get the spectrum if you want to make sure that you're prioritized above people that aren't paying, but you're still not going to be prioritized above the Navy. But there's a lot of spectrum out there. There's a very interesting low-risk way for these carriers to jump in this and start providing faster LTE to the phone you already have and possibly some better 5G as well. Well, moving on, nothing says Google like a good messaging service. You know what I'm saying? The information sources say that Google may unify its existing communication services, messaging being part of that, into a workplace oriented app to compete with the likes of Slack and Microsoft Teams. The unified app is said to include Gmail messaging and the company's two Hangout apps, that's Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet, plus also Drive Access so teams could share content, photos and files and stuff like that more easily and all be offered as part of G Suite. Well, what took them so freaking long is what I'm saying. Yeah, like having all these, having all this stuff being so disparate from each other and also having them being in sort of a weird pattern of we don't know when this is going to be updated, but you don't know if this thing still sort of works or not. Do they even care about this version of Hangouts versus this version of Hangouts? Like this is good, I think. Let's get that stuff consolidated. Well, it's good if it works. And we've seen messaging apps from Google fail left and right. The Hangout situation, just the fact that there are two different apps is don't even get me started on that. But we're all big Slack users. We use it. We talked about this on the show this week, how we use it particularly in remote environments. But there are other options. If Google could come up with something Slack like that was comparable or better, I'm in Google Drive all day every day for lots of other things. Google's my email clients. I use Gmail in various accounts. During the day. So to have it all be one ecosystem that worked better, I'd love to see what that looks like. And I like the idea of it, but I'm skeptical. Well, everybody's skeptical of Google and the word messaging in the same breath because there are nine different Google messaging apps. There's Talk, Voice, Buzz, Plus, Messenger, Hangout, Spaces, Allo, Chat, and Messages. Not all of those still exist, of course. But this is a good idea. Instead of adding a chat, it's saying let's integrate chats together to make a Slack-like thing and put in email. That's compelling. That's where this starts to be different than Slack. If Gmail, which a lot of people are already in already, because their enterprise uses G Suite or they just use it themselves, suddenly is available easily in a messaging Slack-like environment. I think that's pretty compelling. Of course, it's all in the execution, but I think this is a better way for Google to go than to create a Slack competitor. Actually, take things you already have and try to make them work together if they can make them work together well. Yeah. And you're already sort of have leadership position on that email side. So there's no reason why you can't leverage that better. I've always said this. And it's nice that they make it, you know, lots of API hook-ins to do things with Gmail and other apps, other services. But to actually take advantage of that themselves, that could be the thing that would make me use it. I mean, I would be more inclined to try this out site unseen knowing that my email was more integrated than if not.  Not impossible, but it's getting harder. So thieves who always go for the easier, more lucrative targets have started to target stealing car parts instead of a whole car. It's easier to take off a wheel than it is to break into some cars and steal the whole car. So people who pay for high quality parts like your alloy wheels need to secure them with locking nuts that require a special key to loosen. But thieves are onto that. They can get a hold of keys that work. They're not all unique. So Ford is developing 3D printed locking nuts that are unique to the user for just for you. Software takes the sound wave of your voice and converts it into a printable pattern. That pattern is turned into a circle in the design software and then used as the locking nuts indentation and key. The nut and the key are then 3D printed in acid and corrosion resistant stainless steel. So it's going to be hard to get through these things. And the nuts are designed with gradually widening ribs and indentations so that wax molds break if you try to make a mold of it and reverse engineer the key. That would prevent a thief from making a copy of your individualistic key. I don't think any of us actually have alloy wheels on our cars, but I'm fascinated with this idea of taking easy to make voice prints, which we all kind of just take that for granted, but that used to be hard to do to make it make a map of your voice. And then using a 3D printer to print out the locking nuts to keep your wheels on your car. I don't think my buddy Andrew is listening to this, but if you are Andrew, this is your dream come true. He is a freak about this stuff.  And he would go to incredible lengths when he and I were hanging out more to park his car in places where he was sure he had a lesser chance of somebody getting his rims. And that's all I could think about when you guys put this in the notes. I just thought, oh my gosh, Andrew finally has a solution to his lifelong problem of keeping his rim safe. So this does sound a lot safer for the owner, for the driver of the car.  I mean, you don't have to lock it every time you park the car. This is just how the wheels are attached so that nobody can come up and just undo the nuts and take off with your wheels. They would need your your key to actually the only time you'd need it is if you want to take the wheel off for some reason. So you'll probably have to give it to your mechanic. And they were so they were so similar before that a thief might have like five in his pocket and or her and I mean, I wouldn't want to say how that worked. But it was. Yeah, they were not all unique. So it was easier to be able to find one that would work. It's pretty cool. I don't even know what an alloy wheel is, which means I probably don't have one.  They're very expensive. All right, let's talk about the electronic frontier foundation announcing that rings Android app uses multiple embedded third party trackers from branch apps flyer mix panel and Facebook and Facebook's and everything. Each app gets different data. For instance, Facebook gets time zone device model, language preference and screen resolution, as well as the app options open, close and lock due to an activity. Branch gets much of the same info like the device model and screen resolution as well as IP address. And by contrast, apps flyer gets even more info, including wireless carrier info and sensor data like gyroscope and accelerometer data. Mix panel is the only one that actually gets usernames. Email addresses along with other drive info. Only mix panel is on rings list of services to work with. Yeah, so they disclose that they give info to mix panel. They didn't tell you they were giving them your email address and your name. It could be worse, but that's annoying. And these other three, branch, Facebook and apps flyer, were not disclosed at all that they were giving this. Now, except for the email address and the name, none of this is considered personal information. So maybe that's why they disclosed mix panel and not the others. This is just telemetry. But the problem, the increasing problem with people being sensitive to this data being shared without their knowledge is that this kind of data is what makes up a fingerprint. And if you can take this data and compare it to other data you have, which all three of these probably have other data from other sources about you, they can then start to build a profile of who you are and what you do. They don't generally share this information under, you know, like, ah, we figured out it's Scott Johnson. Here's what he does. But they do share it under, oh, we know 45 to 55 year old males in Utah that like video games and we'll be able to sell you the right to advertise them because we have this information on them. Yeah. And I know the EFF took a particular issue saying, okay, the fact that you disclose in your privacy policy, which hasn't been updated in a couple of years, that you do share this sort of information and did disclose mix panel somewhat, not full details, of course, but not the other companies is like, well, I mean, that just makes, it just makes ring look bad. Was it an oversight? Was it, you know, is there something more nefarious going on here? It's like, just lay it all out there. That's what they're for. It's never nefarious, almost never nefarious. It's not that they were trying to reveal who you are somehow and steal your identity, but it's, well, we don't need to tell people this because what harm's going to come from it? And if we did tell them, they'd freak out. Well, if you're saying if we did tell them they'd freak out, then you either don't do it or you tell people you're doing it. Yeah, you figure out your messaging on your side instead of holding it. It wasn't over and over. It will come out. People will figure it out.  Yeah, it just surprises me that we're still having these conversations. It seems like it's so, on the minds of everybody, this kind of security stuff is such a big deal that that's an oversight immediately. Like somebody in a room had to have heard this and went, ooh, maybe not. And they just didn't do anything about it. Again, I don't think they're being the fairest. Somebody rationalized it as like, oh no, this is standard stuff. Everybody collects this because in 2007, yeah, everybody did. Jody Hunt, Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. Justice Department Civil Division announced the department's first ever enforcement actions against two groups that facilitated hundreds of millions of robo-calls each month. The Justice Department is seeking court approval to stop the organizations from operating, which include two Arizona-based companies, tollfreedeals.com, SIP Retail, and their owner operators, plus New York Defendants, Global Voicecom, Global Telecommunication Services, Cat Telecom, and their owner operator as well. The DOJ says that the companies serve gateways for fraudulent call operators, then get paid for facilitating the calls and passing them into the regular U.S. telecommunications network using digital voice over IP technology. Please tell me, Jody Hunt called the people that they're bringing this action against with a recorded message that says, there is an enforcement action against you. Please call this number to resolve the action. Or maybe Jody left a voicemail, but half of it got cut off. And was it made? So you just hear like, I repeat, account number one to four. And then you're like, okay, thank you. Thanks for the voicemail. Yeah, this is good news. This is, I preach my hate of robocalls regularly on the show. I know a lot of people feel the same way. I don't know if I'm just more bothered or I'm just more targeted, but I mean, I am getting, I am not getting at least 10 robocalls every single day. And sometimes they're happening in the middle of the night now and they wake me up and I'm mad. And there's nothing you can do about it, because if you, it's rare at this point that you would actually have somebody, you know, who's a human on the phone kind of thing. But if you get to that person, they just hang up on you. They don't care. Yeah, all that means is, oh, this number's good. Make sure to mark this as one that people will answer. Yeah, exactly. And so it's just, it's so maddening. And I have, I'm on Verizon and I have noticed that not all of them, in fact, it's just a small portion of the total amount of calls now say suspected spam.   And I have missed calls that are important because I didn't recognize the number. They're not in my contacts.   And we all kind of lamented like, oh, no one calls each other anymore because everybody's got all these messaging services. And now it's ruining phones and something must be done. So good on you, Jody Hunt. To get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to DailyTechHeadlines.com. All right, as we mentioned on yesterday's show, earnings for Apple were good. $91.8 billion of revenue well above expectations. As we mentioned yesterday, earnings per share, $4.99. And the expectation had been $4.54. Products brought in the lion's share of Apple's revenue as usual, $79.1 billion. The iPhone had a record quarter. It bounced back. If anybody was doubting the iPhone, which some people were, $56 billion in iPhone revenue, Tim Cook highlighted that the company posted all-time records for services and wearables as well. And this is where people are looking more because iPhone is going to hit a saturation mark if it hasn't already. Services is where Apple wants to go long-term and wearables and accessories are in the interim where it might be able to make up some of that hardware shortfall if it happens. Well, services revenue came in at $12.7 billion. That's up from $10.9 billion a year ago, but a little softer than some folks thought. And Tim Cook said, well, Apple TV Plus isn't bringing in revenue yet. It's a lot of free trials out there. Wearables, however, came in at $10 billion, higher than Mac at $7.2 billion and higher than iPad at $6 billion. So significant watermark for your AirPods, headphone, Apple Watch category. It's coming in strong and looking like it's doing what Apple wants to do. So now that we already know what they did in Q1, Ming-Chi Kuo at TF International Securities is like, let me tell you what my sources say Apple's going to do for the first half of 2020. And it bears out that move into accessories and bolstering iPhones by trying to go into parts of the market that might not be buying iPhones yet. We're going to get ultra-wideband tags. Those are like the tile type tags that will let you find stuff. That's already built into the new iPhone 11. So there you go. High-end wireless headphones, apparently. It doesn't say what kind, but more headphones. High-end. That 4.7-inch iPhone, the bargain iPhone that will be probably at a lower price. Refreshed iPad Pro, refreshed MacBook Pro and or MacBook Air. That seems like, yes, that's about time for a 13-inch MacBook and an iPad Pro. We didn't get those last year. And a small wireless charging mat. Remember, they got rid of that mat that was going to charge everything. So I'm curious what kind of wireless charging mat they might come out with. So guys, this looks like for the first half of 2020 if Ming-Chi Kuo is right, as he often is, we're going to see more wearables. How are you feeling about Apple over the next six months? I know that Apple is well aware that the iPhone is bringing in the majority of revenue and has for some time. And there are certain product categories, Macs, iPads, that have sagged. But the services and the new categories, such as the accessories and smaller gadgets, for example, the Apple Watch, are making ground. But the idea that Apple wants to diversify so that it doesn't have to depend on the iPhone so heavily, but just make another low priced iPhone, I mean, that doesn't really solve the problem. But I see what the company is doing there. I'm excited personally for a new MacBook Pro because I kind of need one anyway. So I'm like, let's see what the refresh is like. But yeah, I don't know how many inroads the company is going to make, even though there's a great quarter, great numbers, the company's very happy, I'm sure. How does this change this whole feeling of, well, okay, but what else do we have besides the iPhone that's making us all our money? That's like Tom was saying this morning on this TMS segment. We haven't had a star product in a while. Like we haven't had that moment at Apple where they come out and blow our minds with some hot new thing that ends up pushing trends across the industry for a while. We're sort of in this mode of like saturation point on phones and now, okay, cool, we got accessories. And I think this is actually really good because what it shows to me is that Tim Cook and company are figuring out ways to sort of bring balanced everything and have eggs in multiple baskets. And whether it be services, wearables, or their hardware, they are continuing to make shareholders very happy in a time where you would think we'd see, we'd have seen them peek already and start to drop. So to me, this is a very positive thing across the board. And it does feel like Q2 should probably be solid for Apple. There is a lingering question though, and that relates to the coronavirus that is now in a very dangerous position in Wuhan in China, in that province around Wuhan, and starting to show up in other parts of the world. Apple says that it has alternative sources for components that are made in Wuhan, in case Wuhan's factories don't reopen. What's less clear is impact on suppliers in other parts of China. The Chinese government extended the New Year holiday break from the end of January to February 10th, which will delay the startup of Apple supplier factories. And we don't know if they might extend it again after February 10th or if this will all start to clear up in the next week and everything will start to get back to normal. We just don't know what the timeline is. Cook said, however, that disruptions to sales in China, both from supplies, but also retail sales. Retail sales, those stores are closed in China. Apple stores are not selling iPhones in Wuhan or elsewhere because of the extended holiday, because of the fears about the virus. That's figured into projections, which Apple is now projecting $63 to $67 billion in the next quarter, a bigger range than what it normally provides. But this is a risk. Yeah. Also, it'll be nice to see when they see some turnaround on those memberships to Apple TV plus and also in theory, Apple Arcade. And I would actually like to know how Apple Arcade is doing. They're not reporting on those numbers separately. It's all part of the services package. And I would love to know, I mean, it's kind of like wearables. They weren't talking about Apple watch numbers as an individual product. They never have. It's always been lumped into wearables and accessories. So I wish they would split that stuff out. I'd love to know what, for example, Apple Arcade did or is doing or is projected to do and to see if that was as big a splash as I'd hoped it was on mobile. Yeah, because in this kind of situation, if Apple had its services up and running stronger in China, you would assume they would do better because people would be staying inside, playing games, watching TV, right? Like it would be stronger, but it's not quite there yet. Yeah. Well, if you've got stories that you want us to see, you want the other members of the DTNS community to see, our subreddit is a great place to post. Submit stories and vote on them at dailytechnewshow.reddit.com. Thanks to everybody who gives us very good news leads every day. You can also join in the conversation in our Discord, which you can join by linking to a Patreon account at patreon.com slash DTNS. What's in the mailbag? Tom, I'm glad you asked. Kevin actually wrote in our conversation yesterday about remote work, and it was our technical article that was very thorough about how that team works remotely and has done so for decades. And we're kicking around how we do it here as well. Kevin says, I work in accounting for a growing civil engineering firm. With multiple offices, we outgrew our office space. As a solution, just over a year ago, our accounting team all volunteered to become testers of remote work. The technology and improving availability of high-speed internet in rural Utah, that's where Kevin lives, has made remote working very feasible for us. Prior to our going remote, we already had those Polycom IP phones that can be plugged into any network switch and connect to the three-digit extension. So that's helped us remain connected. Additionally, due to having multiple locations, our firm utilizes Zoom and Microsoft Teams for communication for video voice and text. Due to the success of how our accounting group and the entire firm has adapted to having remote workers, we've now been able to hire engineers living in more remote rural areas to better serve clients and also involve students who we hire on a part-time basis when they're studying engineering to gain experience and often come on full-time once they graduate. It does take the right person to work remotely and setting personal boundaries with routines. We also get together a time or two during the month in person where a remote worker will travel to the nearest office for meetings. The success of remote workers, Kevin says, who reduced the need for physical office space and commutes along with being available to better service clients and family members who require additional care. We're just having better personal lives are all great reasons to consider it. The cost savings that remote work can bring, both in dollar cost and mental health benefit, should be an ongoing driving force in proliferating high-speed internet to everybody. I agree. I want to know what town he's in. There's a lot of rural in my home state. I don't live near any of it. I'm in the city, but I would love to know what that is and where it is and what this company does because that's a great little success story. It is. It's long been the thing. Like we all want, I don't know, that whole remote workplace thing to work out better. We're all in an interesting position. We're actually doing that by necessity in a weird way. But there are companies who really are still resistant to it and I love hearing success stories like this. That's awesome. Yeah, and I think, Kevin, he makes some good points. It's not for everybody. It's not just the solution as everybody works from home. Never have to go to work again kind of thing. But in some situations, cost savings actually is advantageous to companies. Shout out to patrons at our Master and Grand Master levels, including Michael Keper, Paul Rees, and Steve Aya Darola. Also, thanks to Scott Johnson. Scott, it's been a long, sad week without you since last Wednesday. What's been going on? Well, a lot of stuff going on. Too hard to name them all. So what I would say is if you are thinking, man, I'd sure like to dip into one of the things you're doing, head on over to frogpants.com and you'll find all sorts of cool stuff. I will say I'm getting close to launching my first new comic project in a long time. And it's been a long time coming. And I'm really excited about it. Also a little nervous about it because I haven't done this in a while. And I really want it to go well. So keep your eye on that site because I'll have something there soon. And for everyday interactions, I'm always happy to talk to people on Twitter. I'm at Scott Johnson over there. 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