Mobile World Canceled?

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Mobile World Canceled?
Number 3716
Broadcast Date FEBRUARY 11, 2020
Episode Length 30:49
Hosts Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang
Guests Patrick Beja

Samsung Unpacked 2020 rolls out new phone reveals and product announcements. We unpack the info-dump and explain what you should know.

Guest

Quick Hits

A new Nielsen study shows that in the last three months of 2019, Netflix accounted for 31% of streaming to TVs. YouTube was second with 21%, Hulu came in third with 12%, and Amazon took 8%. Other free and ad-supported options including new offerings from Apple and Disney took a combined 28% chunk of viewership. Nielsen also reported that of overall US video viewing on TVs, streaming now makes up 19%.
Microsoft is reversing its plan to by default install a Microsoft Search extension for Office 365 ProPlus customers using Chrome, which would have changed users' default search engine to Bing. The installation includes Microsoft's Search in Bing Intranet search capability. A new plan for the extensions rollout will come in the next few weeks.
US District judge Victor Marrero ruled in favor of the Sprint-T-Mobile merger, which still needs the California Public Utilities Commission's approval to go forward. Attorneys General from a dozen states argued the merger would stifle competition and raise prices. But the judge found that Sprint "does not have a sustainable long-term competitive strategy and will in fact cease to be a truly national," if the merger was not allowed. The case may yet be appealed and the Attorneys General are reviewing their options.
Apple has joined the Fast Identity Online (FIDO) Alliance which makes a Universal 2nd Factor, or U2F, an open standard meant to replace passwords. Other members include Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Samsung. Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Opera browsers natively support U2F, and in iOS 13.3, Safari also supports FIDO2-compliant physical security keys like YubiKey.
Google is partnering with the non-profit Defending Digital Campaigns, or DDC, to distribute Titan security keys for free to political groups, plus offer help setting up the second factor keys. DDC already offers reduced price Yubikeys.

Top Stories

The US FTC has requested information from Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft about mergers that were too small to report to antitrust agencies. The companies are asked to provide terms, scope, structure and purpose for each transaction made between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2019. They will also be asked to provide details on post-acquisition integration, product development and pricing. The FTC said the request was part of a study of the issue of companies buying potential competitors to reduce competition. The results of the study are intended to inform future policy.
Facebook, Vivo and Intel joined Amazon, Sony, LG, Ericsson, McAfee, NTT Docomo and Nvidia in canceling plans to attend Mobile World Congress in Barcelona which starts February 24. Google and Microsoft are still planning to go to MWC but more companies are still reviewing plans. 2800 exhibitors are still planning to attend as of Tuesday morning. The GSMA has said any attendee from China must prove they were quarantined for two weeks prior to the show. Reuters sources say the GSMA board will meet Friday to discuss canceling the conference altogether. The board contains 26 leaders of telecoms groups and is chaired by Stéphane Richard, the CEO of Orange.
Switzerland's Crypto AG started building code-making devices for the US Army in World War II and provides encryption systems to more than 120 countries today. Throughout the Cold War, the company was secretly owned by the US CIA and Germany's BND intelligence agencies. The BND left the company in the mid 90s but the CIA stake ended in 2016. The advent of digital encryption reduced the usage and utility of the company for the agencies. But at its height the intelligence agencies used their access to Crypto AG to access communications during the Iranian hostage crisis, the Falklands War, the Egypt-Israel peace negotiations and Libya's bombing of a West Berlin disco in 1986. Iranian communications were allegedly 80-90 percent readable during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s according to documents seen by The Washington Post and German broadcaster ZDF. SwissInfo reports the Swiss government has officially opened an investigation into Crypto, and the general export license for Crypto devices has been suspended "until open questions have been clarified."
Microsoft launched a preview SDK for developers to adapt applications for dual screen devices running Windows 10X. Among the tools are an emulator to see how apps would work, since no Windows 10X hardware is out yet. The SDK includes patterns for three main kinds of apps, including expanding apps across two screens, putting an app on one screen and tools on another and running connected apps side by side for easier multitasking. Microsoft also added dual screen support to its UI toolkit in the Xamarin cross-platform development platform and is also making React Native dual-screen modules available. Microsoft is also proposing to the W3C a new JavaScript API and CSS Media Query that support dual screen devices. Also out of Microsoft Developer day, Windows 10X separates system, drivers and apps in a way that lets it reboot and apply an OS update in 90 seconds. Microsoft uses container technology for Win32 apps meaning they cannot interfere with system files or data. Also, if Windows 10X runs on an Intel Lakefield processor, developers can choose which core the app runs on. Powerful apps can run on the larger core for performance while lightweight apps can run on the smaller core and save battery.

Discussion

Mailbag

I commissioned Len Peralta (again) to do a drawing of my wife and I for our upcoming anniversary. Thanks for having him participate in the show, never would have thought of this otherwise.

Side comment, I really like the Editor's Desk episodes. Getting into the process is very interesting, at least to me.
Sent by Al from Acworth, GA


Hi guys,
I just wanted to point out that, since today is February's Patch Tuesday, Windows 7 users haven't missed anything until today. Personally, I won't miss the monthly reboot.

Love the show,
Sent by Ben

YouTube

Links



Preceded by:
"The Butterfly Keyboard Effect on Writing"
Mobile World Canceled?
Followed by:
"Low Visibility Into Blizzard"