In Amazon We Antitrust

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In Amazon We Antitrust
Number 3770
Broadcast Date APRIL 28, 2020
Episode Length 31:06
Hosts Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang
Guests Patrick Beja

How are various countries implementing contact tracing apps and which ones should we be concerned about?

Guest

Quick Hits

DJI announced the Mavic Air 2, with a bigger image sensor than the original Mavic Air, and DJI’s own OccuSync transmission technology replacing traditional Wi-Fi. It has up to 34 minutes of flight time and comes with a redesigned controller. Preorders start today for $799 and start shipping May 11th in the US. DJI's Fly More bundle now includes ND filters, a carrying bag, prop guards, charging hub, and three batteries for $988.
UK payments company Checkout.com has joined the Libra Association. The Libra Association recently reconfigured itself to use one-to-one currency backed stable coins on a centralized blockchain. Shopify, nonprofit Heifer International and cryptocurrency brokerage Tagomi, also recently joined the Libra association.
Facebook will host #Graduation2020 on Facebook and Instagram on May 15 at 2 p.m ET. Oprah Winfrey, Awkwafina, Jennifer Garner, Lil Nas X, Simone Biles, and others will address the 2020 graduating class and Miley Cyrus will perform. Event video will be shared on Facebook Watch and highlights will be shared on Instagram's official account. Graduates can also host their own ceremonies in a special virtual graduation hub which includes custom filters and celebrations in Messenger Rooms. iHeartRadio is also hosting speeches for the Class of 2020 from Jimmy Fallon, Hillary Clinton, John Legend and others.
The NPD group estimates consumer tech sales in the US rose 23 percent year over year for the week ending April 18. Tech sales happened across work and entertainment. TV sales rose 86 percent, computer monitors rose 73 percent, soundbars up 69 percent, printers up 61 percent, PCs up 53 percent, streaming TV sales up 42 percent and DVD and Blu-ray players up 27 percent. The biggest gain was for microphones, up 147 percent. Overall consumer spending across all industries fell 23 percent.
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds or PUBG is free for Stadia Pro users including a season pass. Stadia Free members can buy PUBG for $29.99 or bundled with a season pass for $39.99. PUBG on Stadia will support cross-play. Google is partnering with EA to bring Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Madden NFL, and FIFA to Stadia later this year.
Instagram is launching “live fundraisers” to allow nonprofit donations during live video feeds, which the company announced last week. Broadcasters choose a nonprofit to support, and viewers can make donations using their credit card which unlocks an “I donated” sticker, similar to the “Stay Home” sticker the company introduced in March. Instagram users could previously fundraise for nonprofits through their Stories.
Apple earnings will be announced Thursday. Ahead of this, Bloomberg reports Apple's vice president of retail Deirdre O'brien told employees she expects that "many more" Apple stores will reopen in May. One store in South Korea and several in China are the only Apple stores open. Canalys estimates sales of iPhones in China jumped 21% last month from a year earlier. Counterpoint Research estimates iPhone sales in India rose 78% year over year in Q1. Analysts expect Apple to report a 6% drop in revenue and an 11% fall in net income.
Alphabet just released their Q1 earnings, beating analysts estimates for revenue. Google experienced a smaller drop off in advertiser spending than it had anticipated. Google ad sales were $33.8 billion, up 10% from last year.

Top Stories

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley wrote a letter asking the US Justice Department to open a criminal antitrust investigation into Amazon over whether its employees used sales data from independent sellers in order to develop its own competing, private label products. Last week, The Wall Street Journal published a report indicating that Amazon may have used third-party data to develop its brands. An Amazon spokesperson told The Verge that the company bars employees “from using non-public, seller-specific data to determine which private label products to launch.” And New York's Attorney General Letitia James wrote a letter to Amazon raising concerns over the firing of five employees who have spoken out about health and safety concerns at Amazon warehouses. Amazon says all of the employees were fired for policy violations not for expressing concerns.
A webinar about Microsoft's Surface engineering was leaked on Twitter. In the video, a Microsoft employee says that the Surface does not have Thunderbolt support or removable RAM because of security concerns. The employee explains that Thunderbolt has direct memory access allowing a well-crafted stick to access data stored in memory. Removable RAM can be frozen with liquid nitrogen and removed and the data read. Laptops from Dell, Lenovo and HP support Thunderbolt and Windows 10 has built-in Kernel level protection for Thunderbolt 3 that protects against devices using Thunderbolt ports for Direct Memory Access. But in a possibly more controversial move, Microsoft is updating Word to highlight two spaces after a period as an error by default.
As factories, construction sites and stores begin to reopen around the world, social distancing will still be required to keep the spread of COVID-19 under control. Reuters reports on computer vision software being used for compliance. Chicago's Pepper Construction is using software from SmartVid.io at a project in Deerfield, Illinois. Samarth Diamond polishing factory in Gujarat, India will use Glimpse Analytics. And two Michigan shopping centers will deploy RE Insight's distance tracking software. Similar software has been used to detect helmet compliance at construction sites and count people in shops but distance gauging and mask detection are new functions.
You learn from failures as much or more as from successes and what works in a lab doesn't always work in practice. Google Health created a deep learning system that examines eyes for evidence of diabetic retinopathy, a leading cause of vision loss. The tool worked with 90% accuracy in internal tests. So Google Health took the tool to test at clinics in rural Thailand. The normal procedure is to take images of a patient's eyes and send them to ophthalmologists for a 4-5 week turnaround. The Google system was supposed to do this in seconds. In practice, the project ran into a large number of images rejected by the Deep Learning system because of insufficient quality. Slow and intermittent uploads also reduced the number of patients that could be seen. Some patients were uncomfortable with the idea they might get the results right away and have to go to a hospital immediately, so they declined to participate in the study. In a paper about the project, the study's authors said, "attending to people—their motivations, values, professional identities, and the current norms and routines that shape their work—is vital when planning deployments."

Discussion

Comprehensive testing and contact tracing of infected people is considered the best way to limit the spread of the virus and let healthy people leave their homes with a low risk of infection. We mentioned yesterday that Germany has opted for the decentralized system of tracking that is also being used in the Apple Google platform for exposure identification. The UK and France prefer a centralized system. Both systems use Bluetooth to detect exposure and send anonymous alerts when it is determined that your phone has been near the phone of someone else who has been diagnosed with COVID-19. The difference between the two is Apple and Google's keep the data on your phone and do matching there. The centralized approach does the matching on a server. The centralized system carries greater privacy risks but allows for research purposes like anonymous graphing of data to look for patterns of spread, as well as asking users to voluntarily share location data to help study how the virus propagates. A technical difference specific to iPhone is iOS does not allow most apps to do Bluetooth data handshakes in the background. The Google Apple system will be allowed to do this. The UK system will wake the app regularly to do this meaning it will use more power.

Mailbag

I work in marketing for global technology company. Since the announcement of GDPR a few years ago, it's been a major priority to make sure we were fully compliant, and in fact, extra cautious, given some ambiguity in some of the wording of the rules. This meant changing online form entries and opt-in policies, not just for Europe, but all markets. It also meant changing webpages and web experiences, how we work with third parties, how we run advertising campaigns, backend tools and platforms to make sure data is filtered/collected properly, etc.. And we did indeed see impact and major effects from these changes. I can't speak for all companies, but not wanting to be made an example of and being fined 4% of total annual turnover, the company has made sure to follow the rules well.
Sent by anonymous

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"The TikTok Doc is In" 		In Amazon We Antitrust
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