Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 03/15 – Rebuilding The Cable Bundle, Example #937

Starting point is 00:00:00 On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech meme right home for Tuesday, March 15th, 2022. I'm Brian McCullough today. Layoffs at arm signal their IPO is nigh. Microsoft has brought that fast-loading games technology from Xbox to Windows. Twitter heard you. Heard you were mad and has decided to back down. Crypto dodges

Starting point is 00:00:52 another bullet in the EU and some solid tangible numbers to prove that streaming has taken over Hollywood. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Now that the Nvidia acquisition is dead. I guess it's full speed ahead on the IPO. According to an internal memo, Arm plans to cut up to 1,000 jobs or 15% of its workforce in the UK and the U.S. before its anticipated IPO. Sources say that most of the cuts will not affect engineers, quoting the Guardian. The Cambridge-based company said most of the job losses totaling up to about 1,000 jobs would be in the UK and the U.S. Arm employees more than 6,500 people worldwide, including 3,000 in the UK. NVIDIA said, despite the failed takeover, it would remain a close partner because of

Starting point is 00:01:42 Arm's strategic importance in the global chip industry. The prospect general secretary, Mike Clancy, said, Arm is one of the most important providers of high-quality tech jobs in the UK. This latest news will send shockwaves to thousands of ARM employees worried about their jobs. We always knew there was a risk once the sale to Nvidia fell through that the company would seek to restructure or cut costs. We urgently need leadership from government now to protect British jobs and British research and development spending, end quote. Microsoft has brought its direct storage API from Xbox to Windows in order to improve or even eliminate game loading

Starting point is 00:02:24 times for Windows gamers, while also improving graphics details after promising to do all this all the way back in September 2020, quoting PCMag. With the software developers, kit for direct storage, game companies can begin incorporating the tech into their latest titles. Starting today, Windows games can ship with direct storage, Microsoft says. This public SDK release begins a new era of fast load times and detailed worlds in PC games by allowing developers to more fully utilize the speed of the latest storage devices, end quote. The feature is based on Microsoft's game-loading Velocity Architecture technology found

Starting point is 00:03:03 in the Xbox Series X. Direct Storage is designed to fully leverage the higher bandwidth on today's NVME SSD drives, which have become common across consumer PCs. According to Microsoft, the existing storage APIs for PCs are outdated and can create bottlenecks in the loading experience, even if the game is installed on an NVME SSD drive. As a result, the company created a new direct storage API, which has been optimized to streamline the data processing for faster load times, while also freeing up. the CPU. Microsoft adds that direct storage can accelerate the load time potentially overquote any kind of storage device, such as a hard disk drive. But the biggest improvements will occur when the applicable game is installed on SSD starting with PCIE Gen 3.0, end quote. Look at this. After tons of complaints, Twitter has reverted its latest iOS update,

Starting point is 00:04:05 removing the latest tweets tab and restoring the home tab and the default chronological tweets option. Quoting the verge, We heard you. Some of you always want to see latest tweets first, Twitter said in a tweet on its support account, we've switched the timeline back and removed the tabbed experience for now while we explore other options, end quote. Some users shared criticism of the change almost immediately after its March 10th announcement as the latest feed is preferred to the home feed for many. The out-of-sequence home feed can at times be

Starting point is 00:04:39 confusing, especially for people who use Twitter for updates during a breaking news event, like the war in Ukraine. However, two Twitter execs noted in replies to Verge contributing editor Casey Newton that they would be working on the problem, and it appears that the original change won't be going through as planned. We take feedback seriously, and in this case we heard the new pinned home and latest wasn't giving you the level of control over. your timeline that you want. Twitter spokesperson Shouki Amdo said in a statement to the verge. However, based on what the execs said, it seems Twitter may be investigating other possible changes to the timeline in the future.

Starting point is 00:05:16 Giving people choice and control over their Twitter experience is super important. Twitter's newly named VP of Consumer Product, Jay Sullivan said in reply to Newton on March 12th, I'll be working on this. Stay tuned. Sullivan added that he was hoping the platform could achieve, quote, a nice balance for all, end quote. The great Peter Kafka tweeted about this. Did Twitter people complain so much that Twitter actually fixed its timeline thing it messed up a few days ago? Because that would be great. Better Twitter. And also scary. Who knows what will demand next, end quote. Apple has rolled out iOS 15.4 with the ability to use face ID while still wearing a mask.

Starting point is 00:06:01 and iPadOS 15.4 with Universal Control, quoting the Verge. Universal Control allows you to use a Mac's keyboard and mouse to control an iPad completely wirelessly, including the ability to drag and drop files from the tablet back to a computer. Universal Control requires your Mac to be running MacOS Monterey 12.3, which was also released Monday, and iPad to be running iPadOS 15.4. We already have a pretty good idea of how Apple's new mask-friendly face ID implementation should work after trying it out in beta. In short, it does a decent job of recognizing faces even when the nose and mouth are covered with a mask, but can still get tripped up by glasses, sunglasses, and floppy hats. Apple does warn that turning the new feature on

Starting point is 00:06:48 could make face ID less accurate overall. Other features include new anti-stalking features for Apple's air tag trackers, as well as a new more gender-neutral Siri voice. There's also new support for a new tap-to-piping feature that lets iPhones accept contactless payments, though third-party providers like Stripe will have to add support to make it useful, end quote. As noted, Apple also rolled out MacOS 12.3 with universal control in beta, also 40 plus new emoji, a new Siri voice, dynamic head tracking for spatial audio in some AirPods and more, quoting 9 to 5 Mac. Apple's Silicon Mac users also gained dynamic head tracking in the music app for spatial audio with support. AirPods. More changes include the ability to add notes to saved passwords in Safari, support for the

Starting point is 00:07:38 PS5 Dual Sense Adaptive Trigger, and a screen capture kit framework for, quote, high-performance screen recording. There are also a number of security updates that come with macOS 12.3. One in particular patches a flaw that allowed apps to spoof system notifications and UI, and could have allowed for serious fishing trouble, end quote. Sigh of relief in Crypto Land, in EU, Parliament Committee has rejected a provision for its markets in crypto assets framework that would have effectively banned proof-of-work cryptocurrencies. Quoting Coin-desk. The provision, which was added to the draft last week, sought to limit the use of cryptocurrencies powered by an energy-intensive computing process known as proof of work across the EU's 27 member states. The proposal met with a

Starting point is 00:08:30 heavy backlash from crypto advocates worldwide. Stefan Berger, a member of the EU Parliament, tweeted the success, quote, first stage win at MICA in committee by accepting my proposal members have paved the way for future-oriented crypto regulation. It is now a matter of accepting the report as a whole and the final vote and sending out a strong signal for innovation, end quote. CoinDesk reported yesterday that the vote on the provision in question was too close to call and a small majority might defeat it. The proposal required all cryptocurrencies to be subject to EU's minimum environmental sustainability standards with respect to their consensus mechanism. And quote, for popular proof of work cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether, which are already

Starting point is 00:09:13 traded in the EU, the rule proposed a phase-out plan to shift their consensus mechanisms from proof of work to other methods that use less energy like proof of stake. Although there are plans to move Ethereum to a proof-of-state consensus mechanism this year, it's unclear whether the same can be done for Bitcoin. Proof-of-work has come under heavy criticism from some regulators and politicians around the world over energy concerns. Some EU leaders are concerned that renewable energy may be channeled into sustaining cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin instead of national use. After the Parliament vote, the MICA draft will move on to a trilogue, a formal round of negotiations between the European Commission, Council, and Parliament, end quote.

Starting point is 00:09:58 Discovery's chief financial officer made waves yesterday when he said that HBO Max and Discovery Plus will be bundled together early in the Discovery and Warner Media merger and will eventually be combined into just one service, quoting the Hollywood Reporter. We're in the ninth inning right now in closing that transaction. Discovery CFO Guna Widenfelds told the Deutsche Bank annual media internet and telecom conference during a session that was webcast. He argued that combining the subscriber acquisition power of HBO Max with the customer retention power of Discovery Plus content will, quote, make for a blowout DTC or direct-to-consumer product that should certainly drive very healthy revenue growth for years to come, end quote.

Starting point is 00:10:42 White and Fells also discussed the direct-to-consumer strategy following the merger of AT&T's Warner Brothers with Discovery that will include an early bundling of Discovery Plus and HBO Max, followed by eventually combining both streaming services into one consumer platform and offering. We will start working on an interim solution in the meantime, so right out of the gate, we're working on getting the bundling approach ready, maybe a single sign-on, he said. The goal is to get early benefits from the merger, but the main thrust is going to be harmonizing the technology platforms, building one very strong combined direct-to-consumer product and platform, and that's going to take a while, Widenfeld's added. The Discovery Financial Chief said most major milestones

Starting point is 00:11:22 toward finalizing the merger of Discovery and WarnerMedia had been reached. On Friday, Discovery shareholders formally approved the mega-combination of the factual and lifestyle media powerhouse discovery with AT&T's entertainment arm. The final green light for the mega deal came at a special shareholder meeting held online. Shareholders of AT&T led by CEO John Stanky do not need to vote on the combination. Last month, the merger received approval from the U.S. Department of Justice, the key regulatory hurdle, the European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, had approved the deal in December, end quote. Which brings me to the reason why I am flagging the story for you. I've joked for years on the show about how we've basically blown up the cable bundle only to

Starting point is 00:12:07 reconstruct it in a more complicated fashion. Usually when I've said that, I've meant that in the sense of, oh, I don't have to pay $150 a month for cable anymore, only to realize when you total up all the streaming packages you subscribe to, you are, in fact, paying $150 a month or more for TV. But think of how this is that argument from a different angle. Another benefit of cutting the cord has always been you only pay for the content you want. If you're not a fan of reality TV, for example, well, fine. You no longer have to unwillingly pay for HGTV and Bravo as part of your monthly bill. But guess what? Soon, just to get your hands on HBO programming, you're going to have to unwittingly pay for all of Discovery Plus's reality stuff. They'll probably

Starting point is 00:12:55 add CNN as well in a couple of years. So it's back to paying more for a bunch of content you don't actually care about just to get your hands on the stuff that you do care about. Goodbye a la carte. Of course, you can't blame Hollywood for going down this road because it's all about scale. If you combine those folks who like Discovery stuff with the folks who like HBO stuff, you're getting pretty close to Disney Plus numbers, which is what Warner, HBO Max wants to do. And also, whether or not all of this makes sense or even makes money is not the issue. The issue is this is Hollywood's game now, all evidenced by these recent numbers from the Motion Picture Association. According to them, streaming contributed about 72% of the $99.7 billion in global movie market revenue

Starting point is 00:13:51 in 2021, up from 46% back in 2019. By global movie market revenue, I mean everything, theatrical releases, home entertainment releases, like everything Hollywood does. Streaming went from 46% of that to 72% of that in just three years, as streaming subscriptions hit 1.3 billion globally, quoting Axios. That number excludes pay TV subscriptions which shrank over the last two years, as more people adopted streaming alternatives. Pay TV includes cable, satellite, and fiber TV subscriptions. The global theatrical market, which decreased significantly in response to COVID-19 was worth $21.3 billion in 2021 compared to $42.3 billion in 2019. In the U.S., the estimated number of films that debuted online exclusively was 179 up from 113 in 2019.

Starting point is 00:14:47 The number of original series in the U.S. ballooned to 1,826 up from 1,346 in 2019, thanks to investments in original content by streaming companies, end quote. and then quoting from variety. Media consumption is nearing levels from 2019 when revenues hit a record $101 billion. That year was the first time in history the global entertainment market surpassed the $100 billion mark. Though the box office has started to slowly recover from the pandemic, streaming is mostly responsible for the growth of the industry overall. When factoring in pay TV to theatrical and home entertainment, worldwide consumer spending reached $328.2 billion matching $208.2 billion matching $20,000.

Starting point is 00:15:29 2019's all-time high. The pay TV market includes monthly subscription fees for cable and other services, as well as on-demand content. Another important takeaway in MPA's theme report, there was a significant return to production in 2021, once Hollywood studios and networks were able to implement health and safety protocols. In 2021, 943 films entered production a 111% boost compared to 2020, end quote. Quick reminder that we are now raising funds for Q3 of the Ride Home Fund, which invests in early stage companies, as you know. As of this moment, there are 13 Ride Home Fund portfolio companies, and I'm targeting making five to seven new investments this next quarter beginning April 1st. So if you want to invest in these companies along with me, start your subscription to the Ride Home Fund now. More info at Ride Home Fund.com. Talk to you tomorrow. Thank you.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 03/15 – Rebuilding The Cable Bundle, Example #937

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