Major Details Emerge in the US TikTok Deal - DTNS 5109

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2:14Robb Dunewood: Today, there are new details in the saga of a U.S. TikTok deal, and Oracle makes some big changes at the very top of its C-suite. That's right. So many big stories today. I'm Jason Howell. And I'm Rob Dunwooy. We're going to start with what you need to know with the big story. And, you know, some days are just like this. It's like, which big story do we do? Because they're all big. But we decided to go with TikTok. Over the weekend, the White House revealed new terms in its proposed TikTok deal that would keep the app operating in the U.S. The terms would have ByteDance, which is TikTok's Chinese owner, creating a duplicate TikTok algorithm that it would lease to a new American-led joint venture.

3:03Oracle would actually oversee the algorithm's retraining as well as safeguard U.S. user data. Now, ByteDance could continue running TikTok on a global scale, while the board that's governing TikTok in the U.S. would include new investors, existing ByteDance investors, and one ByteDance representative. Now, the U.S. government will not have a board seat, nor will it appoint anyone to the board directly with the proposed deal. It will also not have any equity or what's called a golden share in this joint venture. And then when you're thinking about new investors, what does that look like? Well, Fox Corp, led by CEO Lachlan Murdoch, is negotiating to acquire a stake in the U.S.

3:54entity. Others named include Oracle's Larry Ellison, who, like I said just a few seconds ago, Oracle also has other aspects, involvements in this deal. Dell's Michael Dell, Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz. That's just to name a few anyways. And legislation had aimed initially at blocking any sort of cooperation with ByteDance. So it is possible that Congress might actually challenge this lease structure. This is all kind of developing right now. But the U.S. president and the administration is expected to sign an executive order, possibly even later this week, according to Axios anyways, to finalize the sale with another, or the deal rather, with another 120-day extension to fully implement.

4:44So we've got another extension probably in the works. We've got a lot more details here, and this can get really kind of complicated. But what do you think, Rob, of this idea of like, it's the same TikTok, But with a, you know, kind of like a duplicated algorithm that now the U.S. has the ability to monitor and I don't know, you know, do they have the ability to control it? And what does that even look like?

5:10Robb Dunewood: It's very confusing. What do you think? So I don't play a lawyer on TV, nor did I sleep in a Holiday Inn Express last night to feel like a lawyer today. But I wonder, does this meet the criteria of the actual law that we have not enforced that was supposed to go into enforcement all the way back in January? I don't know that this does, because the big thing was that the algorithm is the problematic part for our legislatures, at least it was when they passed that law back last year. So I just wonder, does this actually do what it needs to do? I don't know. The other things that are around this as well is like, okay, the government isn't picking who is on the board or who ultimately will own this stuff.

6:01Robb Dunewood: But the names mentioned seem to be very, very friendly to the current administration. Selective. So I just, you know, so there's that. So I wonder if that's going to, you know, be the way that it is or will there be other folks on there? You know, maybe, you know, some other, you know, other viewpoints. But what this really feels like is that they said a lot of words to tell us that this is still going to be suspended. ended we know at least until December, but it potentially could even go longer than that. We might be into 2026 before something's actually done. Oh, yeah. I don't think that this necessarily means and the changes are going to happen immediately and suddenly everything is going, the veil is going to be lifted or whatever.

6:45Yeah. I mean, the changes to the algorithm based on what we're hearing right now, the idea that I understand out of this is, okay, beforehand we passed you know we we made these uh we drew these lines in the sand to say we don't trust the algorithm because it's controlled by tick tock or it's you know which is potentially controlled by the chinese government or whatever that allegation you know whatever was driving that kind of purpose and so as a result we don't trust the algorithm itself and so with this new deal we're going to have our own version of the algorithm same algorithm but we're going to have a lot of people here in the US who have a drive and a purpose to make sure that that algorithm isn't sending our secrets to the Chinese version of the app or the Chinese government via TikTok or whatever, that we have control over this amazing algorithm that drives TikTok so that US users can still continue to use it.

7:45And is that enough, like you said, to satisfy the original requirements or the original intention behind why this all started in the first place. And nothing's easy and simple in this current kind of world that we live in with politics and technology overlapping. And it's just getting so confusing and so complicated. So I think that remains to be seen.

8:09Robb Dunewood: That remains to be seen. And one of the technical bits that I just wonder about is that if we license the algorithm, that algorithm will be running on a significant subset of the total population of TikTok users. It would just be running on US-based users, not the world as the algorithm currently operates, or at least my understanding of how it operates. So I just wonder, it could be siloed already. I know we do stuff with Project Texas already, but I just wonder, does it feel different? Because if it feels at all different, Americans are going to complain. So that has to be something that they've got to look at.

8:43Robb Dunewood: Whatever algorithm we do use, it has to look and feel and smell like TikTok that everyone knows. Because if it does, even if or to get better, people will complain that it's not the same. So that's something we've got to look out for. It's, you know, it's new Coke. Like, just go to old Coke again. Coca-Cola Classic is what we want. Important to point out another fact or some other details about this. the app itself, this like new version of the app will run as is or actually sorry. Sorry. Let me rephrase that. The app as it is right now is going to run the way that it has until the new form is finalized.

9:24From there, users will have to migrate to the new platform in the US. And so you hear that and you think, oh, so are users going to have to like download a new version of the app in order to do this? Some U.S. White House officials are alluding to the fact that U.S. users will not need to download or install a new app with this new deal. So I don't know how those two things kind of cooperate, you know, those two facts like we'll see. I think there's still a lot of details, technical details to iron out here. And just another bit of information, there is no word on the price tag of all this yet.

10:00We really haven't heard anything in regards to that, but I can guarantee you it's a lot.

10:06Robb Dunewood: Most definitely. Yeah. DTNest is made possible by you, the listener. Thanks to Erwin Stirr, Ken Hayes, Phillip Shane, and our new patrons, Ronald, Alan, Al, Dylan, Kent, Steve, Oliver, Therry, and Boris. And we've also got raises from Brian and Andrew. So it has been a busy time over on Patreon, and we appreciate you for it. You guys like us. Thank you. Thank you so much.

10:34Robb Dunewood: Hey guys, it's Giraffe Wallow from the comment section. Listen, it's time to stop settling for hair products that just don't work, baby. With all the prestige brands at Sephora, upgrading your routine is easy. If your hair needs repair, they've got the K18 Leave-In Molecular Repair Hair Mask. If you're trying to level up your wash day, the Kerastase Elixir All-Time Hair Oil leaves your hair looking ridiculously shiny without feeling heavy. Also, Sephora makes it super convenient with free shipping and same-day delivery. Shop hair at Sephora and give your hair the upgrade it's been waiting for.

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13:11There's more we need to know today. Let's get to the briefs.

13:15Robb Dunewood: Oracle has appointed Clay Mugoriuk and Mike Sicilia as co-CEOs replacing Safra Katz, who will now serve as executive vice chair. Mugoriuk previously led Oracle cloud infrastructure and Sicilia managed Oracle Industries, which included work in applied AI. The move comes at a time when enterprise demand for AI solutions is booming and each co-CEO's experience is seen as important assets in Oracle's push to scale its cloud services and strengthen its position in AI-powered business applications. In other news, Oracle advanced talks with Meta for a potential$20 billion cloud computing agreement that would supply Meta with a massive amount of computing power to train and deploy its AI models.

13:58Robb Dunewood: The deal is still under negotiation. Jeez, Oracle, leave some like tech news space for somebody else. You're just like hogging it up right now. I think Larry Ellison liked being the richest person in the world for that couple of hours back a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. And he's doing everything that he can do to say, hey, I want to get back there. I like being number one. He's like, let's just keep this snowball rolling. Yeah, I mean, this, you know, the deal, the Meta Oracle deal, that's a pretty massive cloud compute deal. could give meta a lot of resources for the development of its own llama models could also serve i mean undoubtedly it would serve as a major boost for oracle as a really strong key ai partner in the realm of infrastructure and you know we've seen wall street uh tending to agree on this i think it was four percent up since the news of the meta deal broke if you care about that sort of thing just kind of signals their approval um yeah oracle making some big news right now in many different ways last friday the u.s president issued an executive order requiring employers to pay a 100 000 fee to process applications for h1b visas now that is a temporary visa that's issued to skilled workers with a bachelor's degree or higher who get to work in the u.s but do not intend to immigrate there.

15:22The White House said the new fee will only apply to new applicants, not existing visa holders, and the H-1B fee may not be charged for all new applications. The executive order says that the fee will not be imposed if the Secretary of Homeland Security determines that hiring such workers, quote, is in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States, end quote. In other words, basically what that means, the government can give tech companies exemptions from the fees. They could give the exemption broadly and only apply the fee for positions that would be sensitive to things like espionage, or they could apply the fee broadly and use it as leverage to negotiate with tech companies.

16:10And that's, yeah, that seems like a big part of this is the negotiation fact. How can how can we keep keep the money rolling in on this, you know, this other stream? It's just tied up with so many things right now. Immigration. Yeah, it's it's all there.

16:26Robb Dunewood: Yeah, this is this is big news because there are a lot of foreign workers who utilize the H1B visas. The problem comes in is that when you think about the biggest of the big tech companies, they can they can afford it. But if you're the small startup to where there's someone that you went to college with and their college visa is ending and they may have to go back home, but you're doing this startup and it costs you$100 ,000 to just stay here to continue to do the work in the garage that you were doing. This doesn't help that at all. In fact, it hinders it significantly so. So it'll be interesting to see how the exemptions are given, because I think that we do like the story of the kids in the garage that build Microsoft or build Google or do that.

17:13Robb Dunewood: That is in jeopardy if those kids aren't from the United States and they have to go back to their country and it cost them one hundred thousand dollars to come here to work on a project that they particularly pick the skills up in school while they were here. That's that's one of the big issues that I see with this. yeah yeah indeed agreed be interesting google chrome 141 for iphone introduces liquid glass with ios 26 this is google's first visual redesign tailored to the new ui style changes including a floating keyboard updated context menus and lots of rounded corners chrome for android also gets an unrelated update that improves the read aloud feature the new update will lean on notebook lm style audio overviews and generate a two-person podcast summary of the web page currently in focus.

18:02Robb Dunewood: Users can tap the more icon and select listen to this page. Yeah, with the redesign, it's so interesting because, you know, Google has its own app kind of UI. You know, it's called Material 3 Expressive now. It used to be Material Design or Material U. It's all over the place. And so we've seen in the past how Google has taken its own UI and applied it to its apps on iOS. And I guess the question is always, do you stick with your own internal kind of approach, in this case, Material 3 Expressive? Or do you adapt your app to the platform that it's on? And I think depending on the app, I don't know, I'm assuming, but maybe I'm wrong.

18:46Are you an iOS user? I am not. Is there inconsistencies across Google?

18:49Robb Dunewood: So I am a I have iOS devices, but I'm I'm all in on Android. I am. I'm an Android user have been since the original iPhone came out. It was just too small for my big giant hands and I didn't like it. And I just went Android because they made big phones back in the day. Yeah. What I think is going on here is that, you know, Google is is intimately aware that from a market share standpoint on their phone, not necessarily their operators but on their phone, Apple has significant advantage. And if you're going to try to woo someone who is using an iPhone to come over first to Google or come over first to Android and then maybe to a Pixel, making them mad at the experience they have on their existing device using Google products does not help you.

19:38Robb Dunewood: So I think what Google has decided to do is that we have users who use iPhones And iPhone has they have design language that those users probably want to have their iPhones work on our applications in the same way that Apple applications work. And that's probably, in my opinion, not a bad idea for Google. Yeah, totally. I think that where Google kind of gets lost sometimes with these things is the inconsistencies across its different departments and efforts. And I think what I have heard, what I understand about Google apps on iOS devices, that some of them are attuned to the iOS experience and design aesthetic.

20:18Some of them are attuned to Google's design aesthetic. They're not all on the same page. This one going to Liquid Glass is going to make it feel really integrated and everything with the Liquid Glass aesthetic. I'll be curious to see how they bring that to some of their other apps. And if they make that a priority and they all kind of fall in line with that. The Apple iPhone Air finally got its iFixit teardown, which reveals that the slim device, oh so slim, can hold its own on repairability, actually scoring a pretty reasonable 7 out of 10. The battery design is the same as the iPhone 16, which means easy battery swaps using electrically released adhesives.

21:01The device also has a modular USB-C port, making it a little easier to replace. iFixit shared that the slimness of the device actually makes repairs, quote, more approachable, not less. I think that was kind of surprising to me, to be honest. And if you really, really like the iPhone Air, perhaps you'd love having two of them joined with a hinge on the side. And apparently that's what you can expect. coming soon according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman who shared details of Apple's upcoming foldable over the weekend in his power on newsletter he also said that the price tag would be more than two thousand dollars which I think that's pretty that's what I expected anyways and that the device would be quote super thin and a design achievement so you liked your iPhone air so you

21:51Robb Dunewood: got two of them and joined them at the hinge that is huge news because i have not really heard regular you know um regular android users say or i should say regular iphone users say you know what i really like the design of that of that of that google device i want to just go over there and get one of those that's usually not the conversation but when it comes to the flip and in some cases even the fold there are a lot of iphone users who have switched just because they thought the device was really cute and it fits in their pocket better so i wondered how long it was going to be before apple would say okay the earth is telling us we see enough signal out there that everybody except us is making foldables let's go ahead and get on board and let's do it so well that everybody forgets in two or three years that we didn't have them first and they'll think everybody copied us oh and that's just how it goes isn't it MediaTek unveiled its Dimensity 9500 chip, its latest and greatest mobile flagship, aiming for high-end phones along with top-shelf on-device AI, strong performance and power efficiency.

23:01Robb Dunewood: The chip uses its third-generation all-big-core CPU with three premium cores, four performance cores, and up to 4.21 gigahertz clock speed. MediaTek says it delivers 32 % better performance in single core operations and 17 % in multi-core operations over the previous version. New phones with the chip are set to begin appearing in Q4. So I actually looked up, I said, well, who uses MediaTek? And most of the phones are not phones that are sold here. Even the Samsung ones aren't generally ones that are sold here. But this is a nice processor to go into probably what would be a mid-range phone. No, you know, MediaTek has made a lot of strides in the last couple of years.

23:42I have, you know, I've been talking about these processors a lot, even though I am fully, you know, I'm the first to admit I am not a processor spec kind of stand. Like, I'm not the person to really dive deep into systems on a chip and all that kind of stuff. But from a user perspective, I got very used to seeing MediaTek in low to low to mid-range devices and just kind of always assumed like, oh, MediaTek's just that processor that they use when they can't afford the Qualcomm chip. But that has changed a lot in the last couple of years, and MediaTek has gotten way more competitive on their top end chips.

24:18chips. And so I think this chip is probably their aim to at least attempt to get closer, if not go toe to toe with Qualcomm's biggest chip, which is, by the way, this news comes a day before Qualcomm's big Snapdragon summit happens tomorrow. They're going to officially unveil what they've already announced, or at least teased the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. that's their top of the line premium flagships smartphone SoC. And I think MediaTek is making a lot of strides to bring an alternative to the market from their portfolio that can go toe to toe, whether it will, that remains to be seen. But yeah, I have regularly fallen victim to just believing that MediaTek's, whatever, they're a second rate and been corrected many times for it because they've made a lot of changes and they've actually proved themselves in a lot of ways.

25:11So I'll be curious to see how it performs. We shall see. And finally, Suno's courtroom saga. Suno, of course, AI-generated music service. Their courtroom saga continues as major record labels have intensified legal action by alleging the company illegally, quote, stream-ripped copyright songs from YouTube to train its models. Now, the RIAA's new complaint claims Suno bypassed YouTube's encryption in the process. And what that means is they ended up violating the DMCA's anti-circumvention rules, if found to be guilty of this. The lawsuit seeks statutory damages of$2 ,500 for each act and up to$150 ,000 per infringing work.

26:01And Suno has not made a statement or, you know, about these claims publicly yet that I could find. But yeah, I think what what this really reminds me of is we've seen in the last handful of weeks, the anthropic book authors case and what's been happening there. And Judge Alsup in that case ended up setting aside the books that were part of the case that were actually procured legally, let's say. I mean, essentially buying used books, which is legal to do. And at that point, he basically said, well, it's fair use. You bought the books. They were legally acquired, whatever. It's the fact that you illegally torrented a bunch of books and basically procured those illegally.

26:49And so I think here is similar to that, right? Like the provenance of where this material comes from is a really big deal. And I think there's going to be some overlap between these two.

27:02Robb Dunewood: And if you think about that copyright, you know, you know, case the judge set the one point five billion dollar settlement aside, said, no, that might not be enough. So which is we thought a billion and a half dollars is a lot of money, but it's not a lot of money compared to what it could be. And we may be seeing that judges are saying, we might want this to be more. So this is going to be really interesting to see how this ultimately plays out, because if they are found to be violating this, the penalty could be put out of business big. It could be we just no longer can exist as a company if this is the fine that we now owe.

27:42Totally. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Very curious to see what that what that ends up in.

27:48Robb Dunewood: what do you want to hear us talk about on the show one way to let us know is in our subreddit so submit stories and vote on them at www.reddit.com slash r slash daily tech news show

28:04Robb Dunewood: hey guys it's giraffe wallow from the comment section listen it's time to stop settling for hair products that just don't work baby with all the prestige brands at sephora upgrading your routine is easy. If your hair needs repair, they've got the K18 leave-in molecular repair hair mask. If you're trying to level up your wash day, the Kerastase Elixir all-time hair oil leaves your hair looking ridiculously shiny without feeling heavy. Also, Sephora makes it super convenient with free shipping and same-day delivery. Shop hair at Sephora and give your hair the upgrade it's been waiting for. Monday, AI agents took over my work.

28:40Robb Dunewood: And I absolutely love Love it. Chasing deadlines, writing status reports, updating stakeholders. Agents handle the daily grind now. They live inside Monday.com, so they see the full picture. My work, my team, the whole company. And I don't have to worry about the data. It's safe, which means I'm free to focus on the big stuff, knowing everything runs smoothly in the background. It's completely shifted the way we work. Create your own AI agent in minutes on Monday.com.

29:11we end every episode of dtns with some shared wisdom today mohan has a thought regarding friday's story we talked about me and jen uh talked about samsung turning on ads for smart

29:23Robb Dunewood: refrigerators right so uh mohan writes regarding samsung and its fridge with ads i've never been happier with my choice of running a pie hole on my network thanks samsung yeah pie hole would do it So for those who don't know, Pihole is a network ad blocker that uses Raspberry Pi. You can do a whole lot of different things, cool things with a Raspberry Pi computer, very cheap and expensive computer. And yeah, this is one great way to use it. I know a lot of people have their Raspberry Pi specifically for a Pihole that really kind of monitors on a network level and filters out certain types of traffic and stuff like that.

30:03Here you go. Suddenly ad-free experience.

30:05Robb Dunewood: When I first saw the news that this is what Samsung is potentially going to do, I started to think about the minority report and how just everything that had a screen on it was advertising. And I'm like, oh, totally. Please don't do that. It's like it would be cool maybe to look at a box of cereal and it's got a cartoon or something on it. But I don't want to look at the fridge and be told, hey, you know what? You don't have eggs and eggs are on sale over at Bucky's for$1.99. Yeah, no, not digging it. That's the example that I end up comparing it to as well. And then when we think about a future where we're wearing AR, augmented reality glasses and all this kind of stuff, you can see where this is really far enough down the distance.

30:51Yeah, it's there somewhere hiding in plain sight. What are you thinking about if you have insight into any of the stories we talked about today or maybe a story that we didn't talk about? but share with us feedback at dailytechnewsshow.com. Big thanks to Mohan for contributing to today's show. Thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You can keep us in business, and we hope that you do. Become a patron at patreon.com slash DTNS. We'll see you tomorrow.

31:21Robb Dunewood: The DTNS family of podcasts. Helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.

31:33Robb Dunewood: Hey guys, it's Giraffe Wallow from the comment section. Listen, it's time to stop settling for hair products that just don't work, baby. With all the prestige brands at Sephora, upgrading your routine is easy. If your hair needs repair, they've got the K18 Leave-In Molecular Repair Hair Mask. If you're trying to level up your wash day, the Kerastase Elixir All-Time Hair Oil leaves your hair looking ridiculously shiny without feeling heavy. Also, Sephora makes it super convenient with free shipping and same-day delivery. Shop hair at Sephora and give your hair the upgrade it's been waiting for.

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