Hey, MAAA!
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| Hey, MAAA! | |
| Number | 3518 |
| Broadcast Date | APRIL 25, 2019 |
| Episode Length | 29:51 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang |
| Guests | Justin Robert Young |
Microsoft Q1 earnings push earnings up 20% per share, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that warrantless police access to real-time cell phone location data intrudes on a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy, and Walmart opens a concept store called Intelligent Retail Lab in Levittown, New York.
Guest
Quick Hits
- Uber drivers in seven US cities are planning a 12-hour work stoppage for May 8. That's the day of Uber's stock market IPO. Drivers will be trying to raise awareness for better wages, clearer policies, and better employee benefits and representation of workers. Figures suggest that Uber and Lyft drivers are paid on average $8.55 an hour in the US. The work stoppage will happen in San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Washington DC.
- During an earnings call, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said It is very much in everybody’s interest to maintain” the Hulu relationship. He added that Hulu is "really valuable and we’re glad we own a really large piece of it.” Apparently they want to find out just how valuable, since CNBC reports Comcast is in talks with Disney over whether to sell its 1/3 stake in Hulu.
- During Nintendo's earnings call, CEO Shuntaro Furukawa we’re always working on new hardware and we will announce it when we are able to sell it." He added the company has no plans to announce new hardware at E3 in June. Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal are among outlets who had sources saying Nintendo might launch a less expensive Switch with fewer features, possibly in June.
- Amazon.com beat expectations for profit for the first quarter of 2019 — reporting $3.6 billion net income, an all-time quarterly record. Sales increased 17% with earnings of $7.09 per diluted share. Amazon’s AWS cloud division grew revenue 41% to $7.7 billion. Amazon Studios greenlit more than 20 new and returning local original series in Q1.
Top Stories
- Facebook reported its daily active users increased 8% to 1.56 billion, monthly users also up 8% to 2.38 billion. If you include Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, Facebook says 2.1 billion people use one of the services every day. Sales increased 26% year over year, beating expectations. 93 percent of all advertising revenues comes from its collection of mobile apps. Facebook also reported it will set aside $3 billion, which is 6% of its cash, in anticipation of a possible FTC fine later this year. In a related note, Canadian regulators said Thursday they will take Facebook to court over its mishandling of users' personal information.
- Verizon opened its orders for the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G alongside its announcement of actual 5G mobile service in 20 additional cities beyond the previously-announced Chicago and Minneapolis areas. Verizon mobile 5G is available to users of the Motorola Z3 phone with the 5G Moto Mod. AT&T has a fake 5G service that shows up on 4G phones, but it also has actual 5G mobile service in 12 cities that only works with a mobile hotspot at the moment. So if you're on AT&T and you see 5G on your phone, be aware you're getting 4G service that AT&T is marketing as 5Ge.
- Microsoft Q1 revenue rose 14% over last year. Operating income was up 25% and earnings per share up 20% to $1.14. But with Microsoft the interesting parts are always in the segments.Productivity and Business Processes (aka Office, Skype etc.) raised revenue 14% pretty evenly across products though LinkedIn stood out a little up 27%. Commercial Office 365 subscribers was up 27% and consumer subscribers up 12%. Office 365 revenue was up 30% while non-cloud Office licenses fell 19%. On to Intelligent Cloud (that's Azure and company) up 22% in revenue with Azure itself up 73% and the Enterprise Mobility installed base growing 53% to more than 100 million seats.But the one most of you care about is more Personal Computing (Windows, Xbox, search, ads, etc.). As a whole its revenue was up 8%. Surface revenue grew 21% and gaming revenue was up 5%, driven by a 12% rise in software and services. Number of Xbox Live users is up 7%. Search revenue rose 12%. But the big star was... Windows. Yup. Windows OEM Pro revenue grew 15% on higher than expected demand for commercial systems. OEM non-pro was down 1% and Windows subscription and service revenue up 18%. This is probably driven by the coming end-of-life of Windows 7 and being drawn out by some Intel chip shortages.
- In US v. Carpenter, on June 22, 2018, the US Supreme Court ruled that people have a constitutional right to privacy in their physical movements and law enforcement must get a warrant before obtaining the data. But exceptions have been sought and the Carpenter decision is being tested in lower courts. Tuesday, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Almonor that warrantless police access to real-time cell phone location data-- whether from a phone company or collected in a device like a stingray-- intrudes on a person's reasonable expectation of privacy. The Justices said cellphones serve as a proxy for an individuals location and that society's expectation is that "law enforcement could not secretly and instantly identify a person's real-time physical location at will.” The ruling however, was based on Article 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, which the court notes "may, afford more substantive protection to individuals" than the US Constitution. A similar case, State of Maine v. O'Donell is still at trial.
- The Information reports Amazon is testing "Utility Patent Neutral Evaluation" to fight patent infringement. A seller claiming infringement makes a $4000 deposit to make a claim in the program. If the accused party doesn't respond the product is removed by Amazon and the deposit returned. If the accused party puts down a $4000 deposit, a third party attorney makes a decision in the case, and collects the deposit from the losing party. Amazon will take any fees from the deposits or payments.
- Walmart opened a concept store called Intelligent Retail Lab or IRL-- for customers in Levittown, New York. The store contains 30,000 items in 50,000 square feet, staffed by 100 employees. Cameras monitor inventory levels to restock shelves, and pull expired items. Restockers know exactly what to bring out without needing to walk the floor and check. The AI will also make sure shopping carts are available and registers are properly staffed. A data center in the store is visible to customers.
Mailbag
- Last week, you talked about how several of the online grocery shopping giants (Amazon, Walmart, and ShopRite) were implementing SNAP as a payment option for purchases. I teach coupon and moneysaving skills to people in a mental healthcare setting, and we're all in agreement that this is a great way to alleviate the stress and anxiety that grocery stores can bring. We're already using store online shopping sites to do price checks while compiling our shopping lists, and as stores still allow you to still use coupons, I view this as a massive win. The small shopping fee is easily worth it to avoid a public panic attack, and what's a few bucks when you're already saving 70+ percent on your groceries?
- Sent by Phil
- Allison has researched and explained the whole gigabyte - gigabit-gibibyte confusion.
- Sent by Allison Sheridan
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| Preceded by: "Are Magazines The New Vinyl?" |
Hey, MAAA! |
Followed by: "Facebook Too Big for Its Breaches" |