Shelter in Bass

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Shelter in Bass
Number 3773
Broadcast Date MAY 1, 2020
Episode Length 35:16
Hosts Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang
Guests Robert Heron, Len Peralta

With more people spending an increased amount of time in front of the TV, we asked Home Theater guru Robert Heron on tips to improve on the HDTV sound experience.

Guest

Quick Hits

Microsoft opened registration for its virtual Build conference, making registration free for all attendees. The event will feature opening remarks by CEO Satya Nadella, the usual keynotes to start the conference with 48-hour workshops streamed on Twitch. The 48-hour event will start May 19th at 8AM PT. The in-person Build conference required a $2,395 entry fee last year.
Reddit's vice president of product and community Alex Le announced that the company rolled back the release of its Start Chatting feature, which was just released on April 30th. Le cited several errors with the launch, including a bug that would show a "Start Chatting" button on all subreddits, even those not part of the initial rollout. Le also said Reddit will give subreddit moderators the ability to opt-out of having the feature appear in their communities. In a statement to The Verge, Reddit said they will "reassess our rollout plan and evolve the product to meet the needs of our community.”
The board of ICANN voted to reject the sale of the .org registry to Ethos Capital, citing concerns on how Ethos would use the registry to pay down the $300 million in debt the acquisition would require. The Internet Society currently manages the .org Public Internet Registry, and announced plans for the sale in November. The deal also faced scrutiny from California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, as well as several ICANN founding members.
The US House Judiciary Committee called Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to testify whether Amazon’s associate general counsel Nate Sutton lied to Congress when he claimed Amazon did not use third party seller data to develop its own products. The Wall Street Journal reported April 24 that Amazon employees had used such data for such purposes. Amazon released a statement last week saying it does not believe the claims made in The Wall Street Journal article.
Nvidia Chief Scientist Bill Dally released an open-source ventilator hardware design called OP-Vent. The ventilator can be made with off-the-shelf parts that cost less than $400. It uses a solenoid valve to control air flow and a flow meter for precision delivery. The design has yet to be cleared by the US FDA and Dally is seeking manufacturing partners to make it at scale.
In an interview with CNBC, Xbox Chief Phil Spencer said the launch of the Xbox Series X is still on schedule for a holiday 2020 release, but that game production was a "bigger unknown." Some titles for the console, like Wasteland 3 and Minecraft Dungeons, have already been delayed due to work disruption from COVID-19, with Halo Infinite the only first party title confirmed to launch with the Xbox Series X. Microsoft is hosting an online event next week to highlight 3rd party games for the console.
Epic Games announced the cancellation of the 2020 Fortnite World Cup citing the “limitations of cross region online competition” making it impossible. The company will continue to support third-party events, but these and all other Fortnite events will remain online until further notice.

Top Stories

Apple reported revenue growth last quarter of 1% year over year, overcoming shutdowns to Apple stores worldwide in March and in China in February, along with disruptions to its supply chain. Wearables revenue rose 23% on the year. iPhone, iPad and Mac sales decreased 7%, 10%, and 3% respectively. Sales in China fell $1 billion year over year. Service revenue rose $2.2 billion to $13.3 billion reaching 515 million subscribers across all offerings, with Apple News up to 125 million monthly active users. Apple CFO Luca Maestri did say that Apple Care and Apple advertising would be affected in the next quarter, lowering service revenue. Tim Cook said sales were recovering in the second half of April and the supply chain was full throttle at the end of March. Apple has opened stores in China, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan and plans to reopen stores in Austria and Australia in 1-2 weeks, followed by a few stores in the US in the first half of May. Apple employees will not return to the Cupertino offices until early June at the earliest.
Walmart confirmed plans to launch a new grocery service called Express, which would provide 2 hour or less grocery delivery for an additional $10 fee. The service has been in testing in 100 US stores since mid-April, and Walmart plans to expand it to 1000 stores by early May, expanding to more than 2000 in coming weeks. Express delivery slots will be available when traditional delivery isn't available same day or even days out, but Walmart says it will not push back standard delivery orders to make capacity for Express.
Amazon reported revenue rose 26% last quarter. Subscription revenue rose 28%. Advertising revenue was up 44%. AWS cloud services revenue rose 33%. Profits dropped to $2.5 billion from $3.6 billion last year. Amazon forecasts a 28% rise in revenue next quarter but also its first quarterly loss in five years. Jeff Bezos expects to spend $4 billion or more in the quarter on COVID-19 related expenses. Amazon hired 175,000 people this quarter and says it will spend $300 million this quarter to develop virus testing capability. Amazon also raised warehouse worker pay and is paying for protective equipment. It also notes warehouse efficiency has dropped as it attempts to maintain social distancing at worksites. Amazon Prime's goal of 1 day shipping has been put off until later in the year.
May 1 is International Workers Day and employees from Amazon, Whole Foods, Instacart, FedEx, Target, Shipt, and Walmart have joined in a work stoppage to protest working conditions. Instacart workers want better distribution of protective equipment. Whole Foods is calling for locations with positive cases to be shut down for 14 days. Amazon delivery service partners are asking for professional cleaners to sanitize vehicles at the end of each shift, rather than having drivers do it themselves. Amazon employees are asking the company to be transparent about the number of cases at Amazon facilities. In response, Amazon said, “Masks, temperature checks, hand sanitizer, increased time off, increased pay, and more are standard across our Amazon and Whole Foods Market networks already." Target told Wired the concerns come from “a very small minority." Instacart said it "has invested nearly $20 million in the last few weeks to support the health and safety of shoppers.”
A couple of surveys are trying to get a sense of how tech usage has changed since the advent of COVID-19. A survey from NPR and Edison Research says 35% of US smart speaker users say they listen to more news and info and 36% say they increased music and entertainment consumption. 18-34 year-olds report 50% increase in news and 52% increase in music consumption. Smart speaker owners who work from home were more likely to request news but less likely to ask for weather or time. The number of users considering buying a second smart speaker for kids has risen from 47% last spring to 71%. In a separate report, Sensor Tower notes iPad downloads rose 40% in Q1, the first year over year growth since Q4 2013. Spending on iPad apps rose 16 percent the biggest rise since Q4 2014. Games and entertainment lead but education apps came in third topping 100 million downloads for the first time.

Discussion

Upgrading Your Home Theater's Sound

Why?

Everything Netflix makes in-house is Dolby Atmos (and Dolby Vision)
Other streaming/broadcast sources providing multi-channel sound
Gamers/gaming

Check your TV's sound settings

Some premium TVs feature room audio correction
Try out different sound modes
Compression (or not)

Headphones

If your TV has BT, use your favorite wireless headphones/buds
Many TVs have a way to connect wired headphones

Soundbars

Always seem to sound better w/ a separate sub
Smart or not
Mounted TV? Mount the soundbar.
RTings.com is a terrific resource for reviews/testing/questions

Quit screwing around

Get an AVR and do the room right
Dolby Atmos w/ a 7.4.2-ish setup is simply awesome

Thing of the Day

Allison Sheridan has a recommendation for another podcast worth your time, for a very specific, boat-shaped reason.
Submitted by Allison Sheridan

Mailbag

On the topic of AI's ownership of the patent, there is a "monkey selfie" that is famous among photographers. Because the photographer publicly said he let the monkeys take selfies, he lost the copyright dispute.

More importantly, the Copyright Office said "only works created by a human can be copyrighted under United States law, which excludes photographs and artwork created by animals or by machines without human intervention."

I don't know too much about patent or copyright laws. But isn't AI kind of like smart animals right now?
Sent by Komei

YouTube

Links



Preceded by:
"Theaters vs Studios - FIGHT!!!" 		Shelter in Bass
 Followed by:
"Donkey Wronged"
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