By GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO from NYT Arts https://nyti.ms/2SuMsMW
Monday, 31 December 2018
‘They’re Doing It Out of Love’: The Big Band Rises Again
By GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO from NYT Arts https://nyti.ms/2SuMsMW
2018 was a year of massive mergers and acquisitions with AT&T/Time Warner, Disney/Fox, and Comcast/Sky. The #MeToo movement made headlines, and the dominant emotion in boardroom discussions around Hollywood and beyond was fear … lots of fear in the ranks of our tech-infused world of media and entertainment (as well as in the world itself).
So what does the crystal ball predict for 2019?
Here are some of the narratives that will shape the world of entertainment next year and set the stage for the roaring 20s of the media industry.
PREDICTION #1 – Blood continues to spill in the relentless battle amongst premium OTT video giants, as Apple and Disney join the subscription video fray and add to the epic collective assault on Netflix. In the midst of it all, smaller “niche” players either find their singular voices that attract “fandom” and broader monetization, or risk being marginalized and swallowed up by their strategic investors (for a fraction of what they would have commanded a couple years back).
Originals continue to be the primary weapon used in the premium subscription streaming video battlefront, extending media’s new “Golden Age” for creators and further skyrocketing content-related development and production costs (including the price tags for A-list marquee talent). Fierce premium OTT video competitors increasingly use content both offensively and defensively, like Disney withholding its crown jewels from Netflix (Star Wars, Pixar, Marvel, Princesses, X-Men, Avatar). Netflix feels the heat, as will its investors, as the collective crew of “Netflix-Killers” put increasing pressure on its pure-play business model.
Meanwhile, the newly expanded list of virtual MVPDs (multi-channel video program distributors) fix their initial flaws, offer consumers real competitive choice, and hasten consumer cord-cutting even further. Whereas we started 2016 with 2-3 real, viable mainstream choices in the U.S. for live television, as of 2019, consumers now can access nearly 10 (cable, satellite, Hulu Live, YouTube TV, DirecTV Now, Sling TV, PlayStation Vue, fuboTV, etc.). And, even in these nationalistic times, let’s not forget about massive international players like Tencent, Alibaba or Baidu’s iQIYI, which went public in the U.S. markets this past year.
Amidst this battle of video giants, several smaller so-called “niche” or segment-focused video players either expeditiously find their uniquely compelling voice and build a fandom-fueled multi-pronged monetizing brand around it, or simply get lost in the noise.
FILE – This June 27, 2015, file photo, shows the Hulu logo on a window at the Milk Studios space in New York. Hulu said Monday, Aug. 8, 2016, that the company is dropping the free TV episodes that it was initially known for as it works on launching a skinny bundle of streaming TV. (AP Photo/Dan Goodman, File)
PREDICTION #2 – Media-Tech driven M&A continues to rule the day in all segments. On the video side, both traditional media companies and undercapitalized and underperforming privately-held new media companies languish in this beyond-crowded OTT video space and become logical M&A targets.
M&A is a hallmark of the overall digital, multi-platform tech-infused transformation of the media and entertainment business. Just like AT&T closed its acquisition of storied traditional (yet slow-moving) Time Warner ($85 billion), Disney beat back Comcast to acquire Fox’s entertainment assets in 2018 ($71.3 billion), Comcast struck back and acquired Sky ($39 billion), and SiriusXM acquired the remaining 81% of Pandora it didn’t already own ($3.5 billion), expect more massive deals in 2019, together with a number of smaller, yet still significant ones. Viacom/CBS is one likely candidate.
And don’t just look within U.S. borders. No virtual wall exists in our borderless new media world, which means that M&A’s pace will accelerate internationally as well. Remember, the Comcast/Sky deal represents a U.S. behemoth’s ambitions to significantly expand its footprint into multiple European territories. Lots of mega-companies around the globe desperately hope to expand their footprints to places where, up to now, they have never been.
To be clear, not all M&A will flow from weakness. Sometimes the numbers offered simply will be too high to reject. But make no mistake. Weakness will abound amidst hyper-competition, and winners will swallow up losers in an environment of accelerating M&A. Many of the so-called niche-focused OTT video services still primarily rely upon ad dollars (especially the younger ones), but remember, Google and Facebook already own about 2/3 of that global digital advertising market. That means that most pure-play OTT video players simply cannot succeed on ad dollars alone. And, for most, other means of monetization will be beyond their reach, as they fail to deliver a sufficiently compelling, differentiated and emotionally connected media experience. So, much like Uproxx did this past year when Warner Music Group acquired it (likely for a song), expect several of the new media players to lose their Indie status.
PREDICTION #3 – The music industry’s streaming-driven turnaround continues and streaming revenues accelerate, but pure-play music services led by Spotify continue to hemorrhage money as losses mount. Meanwhile, the giant “big box” retailers of the day — Apple, Amazon and YouTube (particularly YouTube) — brazenly march on, indifferent to that suffering with their fundamentally different underlying marketing-driven business models.
Yes, Spotify boasts massive scale. Yet, scale alone does not financial success make. In fact, pure-play growth success leads to higher and higher losses due to sobering industry economics these pure-plays can’t stomach, but the behemoths can due to their multi-pronged business models. These harsh realities mean that investors of many pure-play streaming music services will take a hard look at themselves in 2019 as they contemplate their next strategic next steps. Many will realize that they can’t go it alone. And that leads to more M&A, much like we saw this past year with SiriusXM buying Pandora and LiveXLive buying Slacker. Spotify is not immune here. Unless it successfully expands its business model and drives major new revenue streams, it too could be bought. Facebook anyone?
NEW YORK, NY – APRIL 03: The Spotify banner hangs from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on the morning that the music streaming service begins trading shares at the NYSE on April 3, 2018 in New York City. Trading under the symbol SPOT, the Swedish company’s losses grew to 1.235 billion euros ($1.507 billion) last year, its largest ever. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
PREDICTION #4 – Tech-driven media companies thrive and increasingly dominate the entertainment world by using data to their advantage. They use AI, voice and machine learning to dominate further and even more broadly infiltrate our lives and impact our media and entertainment experiences.
Netflix, Amazon and Facebook increasingly mine their deep data about all of our hopes and dreams to maximize “hits” and minimize “misses” as compared to traditional media companies. In many respects, the studios simply can’t compete. Faced with that reality, the quest for data — and the services that provide, analyze and inform – takes on new urgency. Further, the Hollywood establishment and creative community still have yet to understand – at least in large numbers — the power of new cost-effective tech-driven ways to test and measure new characters, stories and engagement in order to more smartly and efficiently place their big expensive bets.
Meanwhile, the new tech-driven media giants hope to increase their overall Media 2.0 dominance through the soothing voices of Alexa and Siri (sorry Google, yours is a little less so) and the overall AI/machine learning revolution. “Virtual assistants,” “smart speakers” (or whatever you want to call them) increasingly dominate our home conversations, improve significantly over time, and serve up our favorite content via “intelligent” recommendations (as well as increasingly targeted and smarter incentives, promotions, ads and goods). 71% of us already use voice assistants at least once per day (most frequently for selecting the music we like to hear), so voice most definitely is here to stay.
More exotically, and perhaps somewhat alarmingly, AI also increasingly drives so-called “intelligent” creation. AI already develops movie trailers that some believe approach the impact of their human-generated counterparts. You be the judge — check out the first AI-produced movie trailer, care of IBM’s Watson, for the fittingly AI-themed 2016 motion picture thriller Morgan. And, just imagine how much AI has advanced in just these past two years since then. Can AI screenwriters be far behind? Gong Yu, founder and CEO of China’s leading streaming platform iQIYI certainly doesn’t think so. In his words, AI “will reshape the entertainment industry over the next 10-15 years, much more so than the Internet did over the past three decades.” Just chew on that for a bit.
So, AI may become a real threat even to creative pursuits that, up to this point, most in Hollywood believe are untouchable by computers, bots, and robots. Tesla maven and global futurist Elon Musk is downright dystopian and takes things even further, warning that AI may be an ultimate global threat to us all. Musk tweeted in 2017 that “competition for AI superiority at national level most likely cause of WW3.” Those were his precise words, so that was either Musk’s particular form of Twitter-speak, or his mind had become a bit hazy during one of his notorious cannabis-fueled interviews!
Amazon is releasing a software development kit that will let developers integrate Alexa into smart screen devices.
PREDICTION #5 – Behemoths Apple, Google and Facebook, together with other tech-driven media giants and deep-pocketed financiers from around the world, increase their already-massive investments in immersive technologies and accelerate mainstream adoption of AR.
AR’s gold rush means continued growth in the related wearables market and consumer adoption of AR-driven eyewear. Investors of all stripes also continue to throw boatloads of cash into the overall immersive space to fuel the development of experiences (including real world live entertainment and storytelling, not only games) to feed these new platforms. Expect significant investment in content. The immersive market opportunity is still so nascent, yet its ultimate promise is so great, that the money working to capture it in 2019 and beyond will seem endless. And, when so much money chases a market, that market becomes our consumer reality.
The onset of 5G wireless networks will only hasten the growth of extended reality (XR) in all its forms. Speaking of 5G …
GUANGZHOU, CHINA – DECEMBER 06: Attendees look at 5G mobile phones at the Qualcomm stand during China Mobile Global Partner Conference 2018 at Poly World Trade Center Exhibition Hall on December 6, 2018 in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province of China. The three-day conference opened on Thursday, with the theme of 5G network. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)
PREDICTION #6 – 5G Networks launch, reveal their early media and tech promise and possibilities, and begin to transform our media and entertainment experiences (as well as the overall ecosystem that supports them).
5G networks are critical for media experiences that require low latency, including AR, VR, and eSports. For AR, 5G reduces the size of consumer headsets, because processing is now done on the network itself rather than on the device. That makes wearables increasingly user-friendly and fuels further innovation and adoption. 5G also accelerates more high quality video consumption on our mobile phones, thereby pushing purveyors of premium OTT video like Netflix to increasingly focus on mobile-first content experiences.
Jeffrey Katzenberg’s and Meg Whitman’s new mobile-driven Netflix-like premium video service Quibi (formerly NewTV) certainly saw this train coming, and jumped on first.
PREDICTION #7 – The oft-overlooked, yet potentially game-changing, live entertainment and event plank increasingly finds itself in multi-platform Media 2.0 strategies, deepening overall brand engagement and monetization possibilities. Expect more significant “offline”-related experiments, initiatives and M&A by both traditional and new tech-driven media companies.
Call this the “Amazon Effect,” as players across the Media 2.0 ecosystem stop scratching their heads about Amazon’s direct-to-theater film releases, brick and mortar retail expansion, and Whole Foods superstore operations – and, instead, increasingly study, respect and emulate them. Netflix certainly did in 2018. After trashing Amazon one year earlier for releasing its features first in theaters, Netflix announced it would begin to do the same.
Amazon understands what most still haven’t even considered – that direct, non-virtual offline consumer engagement may be the most impactful plank of them all, driving online engagement into the real world (and then back again) to create a virtual cycle of daily brand engagement and consumer monetization every step of the way. Even traditional media company Viacom now shows signs of understanding these online/offline brand synergies. It bought both youth-focused video industry conference VidCon and music festival SnowGlobe in 2018.
So, while MoviePass may go the way of the Dodo bird in 2019, movie theaters themselves will not die. They simply will be re-imagined. We humans, after all, are social creatures. We like to get out, and we won’t be satisfied binging on Netflix alone. Movie theater subscription services most definitely are here to stay, and Amazon will offer one soon for Prime members. After all, in a fun fact that may surprise you, more museums populate the planet – significantly more – than McDonald’s. See, there is hope!
PREDICTION #8 – The #MeToo Movement continues to transform the face (and faces) of both old and new media. And, new faces will invest new industry dollars in new (and frequently very different) content choices, bringing us new (and frequently different) stories and transforming our media and entertainment experiences.
Revelations aren’t over. Abuse was simply far too pervasive. Old players are gone. New, frequently younger, tech-driven media savvy faces get a seat at the decision-making table. They change the game of “what” and “how” we experience content.
Ultimately, #MeToo both cleanses the overall new media industry, and fills our plates with very different media and entertainment choices.
PREDICTION #9 – Fake news, fraud and breaches of privacy continue unabated and accelerate, as does marketing concern for “brand safety.” These seemingly unstoppable negative forces continue to place downward pressure on ad-dependent open platforms.
Make no mistake, we are in the midst of hacking wars, the likes of which we’ve never seen. This “good versus evil” reality is here to stay, and players across the tech-driven media and entertainment ecosystem either significantly increase their investments in counter-measures and related PR, or risk the wrath of consumers and the overall ad market (much like Facebook did this past year).
Twitter housecleaned 70 million fake and automated accounts in a two month span last year (and 1 million more daily), Instagram conceded that over 50% of engagements on its posts tagged as #sponsored are fake, Spotify similarly conceded prevalent ad fraud and decreased its total reported content hours streamed by hundreds of millions of hours, and competing music service Tidal faced accusations that it had falsified tens of millions of streams. Just a few examples of how pervasive fraud and audience manipulation has become in our Media 2.0 world. These fake accounts create, in the words of Variety, “a shadow army of followers that has comparatively little monetary effect. But perform the same manipulation with music streams, and it constitutes fraud.”
PREDICTION #10 – Blockchain technology and crypto-currency-fueled investment and experimentation, already over-hyped and under-performing, continues apace. Yet, once again, there will be little to show for it in the world of media and entertainment. At least for now.
Early blockchain leaders continue to be irrationally overvalued, which is always the case with any nascent market. But, on a happier note, the voice of blockchain technology – heard thus far mostly in investment circles with promises of “instant millions” (or even billions) – becomes increasingly heard for its more positive potential for the world of media and entertainment. Blockchain technology conceptually holds revolutionary industry-transforming new offensive and defensive power. On the offensive front, blockchain enables new ways to monetize content via micropayments and direct creator-to-consumer distribution sans today’s leading middlemen. These possibilities begin to reveal themselves in 2019. On the defensive front, blockchain promises to eradicate piracy, but that happens in years, not this coming year.
THE BOTTOM LINE
2019 certainly will push 2018’s Media 2.0 boundaries noticeably further, driven by these and other industry meta-forces. But, these changes will be barely noticeable compared to the seismic shifts to follow in the next ten years.
I close with Paramount futurist Ted Schilowitz’s perspective on all of this. In our conversation, Ted points to two phenomena — the first of which he calls “the known unknown,” and the second he calls “the ten year curve.” “The known unknown” refers to what he calls the “scary” fact that we all know that massive tech-driven change is coming, but we don’t know the “twists and turns that get us there.” Meanwhile, “the ten year curve” refers to “big dynamic change waves” that follow ten-year cycles. In Ted’s view, we just recently finished the YouTube and iPhone 10-year cycles, and now essentially everyone around the globe participates in those dual phenomena.
So, what’s “the next big thing?” Ted calls it the “the evolution of the screen” – so-called “visual computing” via new forms of eyewear (wearables) that replace our smartphones. Think Minority Report-like data and content interaction, and you get the general idea. “Surprisingly little has changed with human/screen interaction in the past 30 years,” Ted points out. He reminds me that while user interfaces have become more sophisticated, actual screen interaction is not massively different — comparing interaction on Mac screens 30 years ago and on iPhones today.
That is all changing right now — as you sit, read and soak in Ted’s thoughts either in print, or more likely on your own v.2019 screen. According to Ted, we are only about 3.5 years into this 10-year visual computing cycle. “In 2013-2014, we saw the first idea of commercializing a track-able screen, a spatial screen. That is a massive change. We will fundamentally change how we use our screens. I see a very distinct future where these things will emerge from their cocoon and replace the iPhone, laptop, etc. You will notice an evolution of 30 minutes per day, then one hour, then two hours, etc.”
Think that overstates things a bit? Well, Ted cautions you this way. “It’s the exact same paradigm shift we saw with mobile phones decades ago. Just imagine back then that you would – decades later (i.e., today) — carry a device with you almost every waking moment of your waking life. Even Bill Gates would have said that is ridiculous.”
Yet, here we are. Today. In that “unimaginable” world. That’s how fast it goes.
Ted is adamant about this inevitable “evolution of the screen” reality, and he is convincing. “I know the next evolution is coming. All of these experiments today are on their way to something really, really significant. 2019 will be very subtle in this revolution. Still for the early adopter, because none of these head mounted immersive devices today will replace our smart phones. But the constant and continuous evolution of this tech is happening
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Oysters Lead Lives of Excitement and Danger. Especially in the Balkans.
By MARC SANTORA from NYT World https://nyti.ms/2EYasoI
Wielding Rocks and Knives, Arizonans Attack Self-Driving Cars
By SIMON ROMERO from NYT U.S. https://nyti.ms/2Qfmrzc
Serena Williams and Roger Federer to Face Off for First Time Ever
By BEN ROTHENBERG from NYT Sports https://nyti.ms/2SrnTAw
Are rightsholders ready for public domain day?
On January 1, 2019, the New Year will ring in untold numbers of additions to the public domain in the U.S., including hundreds and maybe thousands of works with at least a small public reputation. This, of course, is due to the expiration of the terms of their copyrights, some of which have been extended multiple times since the 1960s.
This is a good thing from many perspectives, including that of authors, publishers, museum curators, teachers, old-book readers and music and film buffs. It possibly may be a slightly bad thing for a few people — primarily certain estates representing long-dead authors and other creators.
What’s a “term” in the context of copyright?
The duration, or term, of U.S. copyright is set by Congress, and has gradually crept up over time from the original 14 years (plus 14 more if the author was still alive and renewed the copyright) — in Thomas Jefferson’s time — to a whopping “life of the author plus 70 years,” as set by the 1998 “Copyright Term Extension Act” (CTEA, which extended it from life plus 50).
For works first published between 1909 and 1978, the maximum term was finally set by Congress at 95 years (assuming the author complied with a whole lot of rules, alluded to below). And for post-1978 works, in instances where the author/creator is not a human being (such as a business commissioning a “work made for hire” under rules developed in the case-law) or the work was published under a pseudonym for an unknown person, the term can be as long as 120 years! The copyright in a work, duly registered at the time that registration was required (pre-1978), may never have been renewed, and so its protection may have quietly lapsed some time ago; for many more obscure works, it’s hard to know.
Fun fact: This Copyright Term Extension Act is also known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. Congress named it in memory of the composer of “I’ve Got You, Babe,” who, as a member of Congress from Southern California, was among the authors of the bill; he unfortunately happened to die while it was being worked on in committee. Prior to 1978, the term of U.S. copyrights was determined by fixed terms of years, subject to publication, registration and notice requirements. Here are more details on that.
How do works pass into the public domain?
Currently, works pass into the public domain according to a complex schedule, combining (sometimes awkwardly) the rules of various laws implemented over the past century.
Bear in mind, however, that many works have passed (or “fallen” or “lapsed,” as the older phrases had it) into the public domain in the U.S. for reasons other than term expiry, even during the 20 years of the CTEA extension. According to the law in effect prior to 1978, if the work was published but never registered in the U.S. Copyright Office, it did not receive protection under copyright law; a work might also not be protected by U.S. copyright law if it lacked proper notice — the © symbol and the proper wording — or if the work’s registration was not renewed after its first 28-year term expired. Or if, as a work of the federal government, it never enjoyed copyright protection in the first place.
Qui Bono? (get it?)
As it turns out, it is not just re-publishers of “classic” texts, such as Dover Thrift Editions, which benefit when new works become available. Textbook and educational publishers frequently re-use old short stories and essays in larger collections, and a work of marginal utility might become more attractive as a potential addition to these collections once the cost of clearing the rights is reduced.
For example, a few years ago a 1922 story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” (whose U.S. copyright had lapsed) was adapted into a feature film. To me, the lesson to be gleaned is that many works of the early 20th century still appear to bear some cultural cachet (or at least continuing value to society) — such that more no-cost access to these works (by their passing from copyright protection to the public domain) should have the overall effect of helping them find new audiences.
Note: Bear in mind, all of these examples are simply illustrative — without a full and careful copyright search, it is difficult to be certain of the copyright status of almost any work. On that, more below.
New works coming into the U.S. public domain also will have the effect of giving researchers new texts to run Text and Data Mining (TDM) algorithms across. It also may add to the richness of film and cultural studies.
Mark Twain proves this isn’t so easy
Unfortunately, determining when a work has in fact “fallen” into the public domain due to the term of its copyright having expired is not always as simple as one might hope.
For example, one might think that everything ever laid down by the pen of Mark Twain (S.L. Clemens, d. 1910) would be in the public domain by now. But, since he left a treasure trove of unpublished works, their copyright protection has extended for many years after his death, because, under pre-1978 law, those works’ copyright protection would not start until the works were published. The distinction between published and unpublished works has been discarded under post-1978 law, but won’t be fully effective for another 30 years. So, some items in the microfilm edition of Twain’s letters and manuscripts (their first publication) are still considered to be under copyright. He’s also enjoyed considerable success recently with the full and final publication of his autobiography.
Twain, a student of intellectual property, steadfastly argued for a perpetual copyright, but he came to realize that this was not permitted under the copyright clause of the U.S. Constitution, which refers to “securing [protection] for limited times.” But, in an age when copyright only protected works for which registrations had been obtained, he did point out that most books wouldn’t be affected by a longer term at all — for the vast bulk of them had no commercial life remaining to them a very few years after their initial publication:
One author per year produces a book which can outlive the forty-two-year limit; that’s all. This nation can’t produce two authors a year that can do it; the thing is demonstrably impossible. All that the limited copyright can do is to take the bread out of the mouths of the children of that one author per year.
I made an estimate some years ago, when I appeared before a committee of the House of Lords, that we had published in this country since the Declaration of Independence 220,000 books. They have all gone. They had all perished before they were ten years old. It is only one book in 1000 that can outlive the forty-two-year limit. Therefore, why put a limit at all? You might as well limit the family to twenty-two children.
– S.L. Clemens, in testimony to Congress, concerning proposed copyright legislation (1906)
“Forever minus a day,” another idea which has been occasionally bruited about (particularly by Congressman Bono and his widow, who was later elected seven times in her own right to Congress), would not constitute much of an effective limit, and so would, I believe, violate the Constitutional limitation; 95 years (an estimated average of the “Life plus 70” term) seems closer to a natural lifespan for a copyright — to me at least. If you and your heirs somehow can’t get the commercial value out of your work before nearly a century is out, I think there’s a takeaway lesson there.
On the other hand…
… some works do have cultural lifespans exceeding the term of copyright. The estates of certain literary, film and musical creators may stand to lose when the copyright in some of the works in their respective repertories lose copyright protection due to the lapse of their terms. For some examples of works entering the public domain on January 1, 2019, that may still have financial value to the author/creator’s heirs: Hemingway’s “Three Stories and 10 Poems” was first published in 1923; it was also the year of release for “Safety Last!” a silent film from Hal Roach Studios, starring Harold Lloyd, which many people remember. The same year saw the first publication (of the sheet music) for “Who’s Sorry Now?” which was a hit recording for Connie Francis in 1958.
But, on balance, “Nothing gold can stay,” as Robert Frost observed in a poem slated — I’m pretty sure — to enter the public domain on January 1st.* The reading, listening, and viewing public should expect to be the main beneficiary of these works entering the public domain. Indeed, 95 years is a good run for the commercial exploitation of a work. Now it’s everybody else’s turn to benefit.
*If it hasn’t already. Copyright searches, on the detail level, can be quite difficult and time-consuming. See: https://www.copyright.gov/rrc/. For any proposed commercial republication, it is certainly the course of wisdom to consult with an attorney and have a full copyright search done.
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Soulja Boy’s game consoles pulled from store weeks after launch
As anyone from the Gizmondo to the Virtual Boy can tell you, it’s tough to launch a console. Of course, it’s helps when your device apparently comes pre-loaded with thousands of games from big name companies like Nintendo, Sony, Square and Bandai.
It was clear the moment they were launched that Soulja Boy’s SouljaGame console and handhelds were too good to be true, in spite of his insistence that he’d struck deals with game publishers. Now, around three weeks after launch, both have been pulled from his online store (which also stocks a…familiar looking wearable and headphones).
I had to boss up, I didn’t have a choice.
— Soulja Boy (Drako) (@souljaboy) December 29, 2018
What caused the systems to be pulled from his site isn’t clear, though the rapper appears to have acknowledged as much in a tweet, stating, “I had to boss up, I didn’t have a choice.” Of course, given Nintendo’s history, it seems unlikely that a deal was struck to license titles to what appears to amount to a rebranded emulator.
As Variety notes, titles like Tekken and Tomb Raider were also features in ads for the systems, which is practically crying out for publishers to intervene. Meantime, he’s promised “big plans” soon, including his already stated intention to launch an eSports team at some point next year. For now, however, the rapper appears to be doing just fine, thank you very much:
— Soulja Boy (Drako) (@souljaboy) December 31, 2018
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Despite Scary Buzz, Director at Under the Radar Says Don’t Worry
By ELISABETH VINCENTELLI from NYT Theater https://nyti.ms/2QfX4xe
At Prototype, a Posthumous Play Revived as Chamber Opera
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Here’s what to expect in cybersecurity in 2019
Around this time every year, my inbox fills with the same repetitive junk.
“Would you consider putting [any random company] in your gift guide?”, “are you going to CES and if so can I pitch you [a gadget that literally won’t be around this time next year]?”, and, “do you want to cover [a company you’ve never hard of’s] predictions for next year?”
To which I always respond: “No,” “absolutely not” and “predictions are not news.”
The “predictions” emails piss me off. Most of the companies that offer predictions don’t seem to fully understand the security field outside their particular niche, or worse, have an agenda they’re trying to push. This year was no different. I trawled through my inbox, scanning literally dozens of emails pushing “predictions” for the coming year.
“Artificial intelligence will stop a data breach,” said one email. “The supply chain will face more attacks,” said another. And, my personal favorite, “bad actors will combine multiple attack types to create synergistic super threats.”
Hate to break it to you, but “super threats” are not a thing.
If you thought 2018 was a tough year for tech, 2019 is going to be so much worse. The groundwork we laid this year will roll over into the next, and that’s when things will start to hit hard, from new laws and political (in)decisions to privacy issues and how employees — not companies — will start to call the shots.
Here’s what you need to know for 2019 in security.
Expect more data leaks and exposures — but not just breaches
2018 saw a rising trend in data leaks and exposures — specifically data that’s not protected with even the most basic security, like a password.
We’ve seen a ton of sites and services exposed in the past year — from gym booking sites, anonymous social network Blind, Urban Massage, FedEx, Canadian internet provider Altima, Amazon and fitness app Polar, to name a few.
Exposed databases and user data can be easily found, yet are entirely preventable — often simply by setting a password. Breaches, where a hacker exploits a vulnerability, are more difficult and require some level of skill, making them less common. But human error, a lack of security smarts or just sheer laziness makes exposed data more discoverable, and yet there’s no sign of data exposures dying down any time soon.
California’s privacy rules will come to a head
After a long fight, California passed its consumer privacy law — set to go into effect at the end of 2019.
Think of the law as like GDPR for California, which will mandate that companies disclose how they collect user data and what they do with it. The law will allow authorities to impose fines on companies that don’t comply or which violate the rules. It’s particularly important for consumers, given most of the world’s largest tech companies have their headquarters in the state.
Tech companies opposed the law. After spending collectively billions of dollars to comply with GDPR, many didn’t want to face another hefty bill to comply with more privacy rules. Instead, many companies pushed for a federal law to overrule and upend California’s soon-to-be-enacted rules. With enough lobbying power in Washington, DC, tech companies and telcos want lawmakers to roll out weaker legislation.
With almost exactly a year to go before California’s rules are set to go into effect, expect to see Silicon Valley work together — for once — to get their own way at a federal level.
Brexit will hamper U.K. tech, startup growth
Brexit, the U.K.’s departure from the European Union, is set for March 29 — and all signs point to a “no deal” that will cause serious, if not as of yet untold problems with immigration, trade, and even intelligence sharing and security arrangements with the U.K.’s European partners.
Leaving the EU without any trade or immigration deals in place will hurt startups and the wider tech scene. Attracting good overseas talent will be difficult without knowing what the immigration rules will be. Even practical things like GPS will begin to struggle, as well as data transfers in and out of the U.K. without a deal in place once the U.K. goes over the cliff-edge. It’ll be a nightmare for companies trying to comply with what’s left of the EU data protection and privacy laws.
Certain technology industries will see more trouble than others, like the gaming industry, which contributes £2 billion ($2.5 billion) to the U.K. economy every year. And, startups won’t get off easy either.
Australia’s draconian encryption laws will begin to hurt
Following in the footsteps of the U.K., Australia passed an anti-encryption law that compels companies operating in the country to turn over encrypted data on request from several government departments.
Many U.S. tech companies, including Apple and Cisco, called on the Australian parliament to ditch the proposals for fear that the law could be abused or harm its customers’ privacy. That didn’t stop a bipartisan effort to pass the bill in time for the Christmas break.
Some companies have already said they can’t — and therefore won’t comply. Signal, the encrypted messaging app, said in a blog post that it “can’t include a backdoor in Signal,” despite the mandate from the country’s capitol. Other companies will find themselves facing the same dilemma. It might force companies to think about their presence in the country altogether.
Facebook’s privacy woes will spread to other Silicon Valley giants
Silicon Valley is split largely into two camps: your data for money, or your data doesn’t make money. You have Facebook, Google and to a lesser degree Twitter and Snap in the first bucket — then you have mostly hardware makers, like Apple, chip manufacturers like AMD and Intel and computer makers like HP and Dell in the other.
Facebook had scandal after scandal this year, after years of playing fast and loose with users’ data. Facebook claims it doesn’t sell your data, but it made money from it at every opportunity. And when it wasn’t actually selling access to your data, it was giving it away.
Many have wondered why other data-hungry, ad-focused companies haven’t had their reckoning yet — and many are asking the same questions. Facebook may be one of the biggest consumers of user data going, but it’s not the only one in the game. In making some of the world’s largest social networks and ad platforms, these companies have inadvertently become mass surveillance tools — either for governments with access already, or hackers and nation states that punch their way through the company’s defenses.
Their time will come — and hot on the heels of Facebook’s slew of scandals, expect it to be sooner rather than later.
Employees, not companies, will dictate how the technology they build is used
This year saw a resurgence of tech employees rising up against their employers for — in their eyes — misusing the products, services and technologies they made for uses outside their moral parameters.
Amazon employees complained that the company’s facial “Rekognition” shouldn’t be sold to law enforcement after the technology was found to racially discriminate against African-Americans. Microsoft staff complained that the company had a $19 million contract to serve U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, during a time where the agency was separating children from their asylum-seeking parents at the border. And Google employees complained when they found that the technology they helped to build would go on to serve Chinese users that enables state surveillance.
Now it’s employees who are trying to call the shots. So far, they’ve had mixed success. Amazon executives didn’t care; neither did Microsoft’s — but Google buckled. Given it’s the talented folk at the companies that make the products, they believe they have a right to say how their products are used and who gets them.
This isn’t something likely to change in the new year, as the government continues to rely on tech companies for enforcement and surveillance. Whether they will be successful, however, will be something to watch.
One incident away from sparking another Apple v. FBI crypto-war
Two years ago, the Apple v. FBI dispute could have taken a completely different path. The FBI was pushing a legal challenge that would forever undermine encryption protections — making it easier for the government to compel companies into complying with orders to undermine their own software security. This year, we saw the government approach Facebook to force the company to rewrite its Messenger app to allow federal agents to wiretap calls. It was all in secret — and only became public thanks to leaks.
We’re still dangerously close to another “crypto-war” (that’s “crypto” for cryptography) that could result in heavy-handed legislation or a legal precedent.
Nobody wants a mass casualty event. But as with San Bernardino and the apparent threat from MS-13 — whether inflated or not, lawmakers and prosecutors use bodies as a bargaining chip to push for more access to our data under the guise of preventing another national crisis.
Gloves are off for U.S. and China in cyberspace — again
The 2015 pact between the U.S. and China that promised to curb each others’ cyberespionage efforts amid rising tensions and escalating attacks between the two nations was delicate and frail, but it was almost inevitable that it would fall apart someday.
In December, when the Justice Department accused two Chinese spies of conducting state-backed hacking on dozens of U.S. companies and government departments, including the Navy, the gloves were off, and the pact was over. The writing was on the wall for a while. Security firm FireEye said in its look-ahead at 2019 that China’s reorganization of its offensive cyber operations units “will inform the growth and geographic expansion of Chinese cyber espionage activity through 2020 and beyond.”
In other words, expect the U.S. and China to begin sparring in cyberspace again.
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Democrats Agree on Plan to End Government Shutdown Without Wall Funding
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG from NYT U.S. https://nyti.ms/2Qc6fih
5G Is Coming Next Year. Here’s What You Need to Know.
By DON CLARK from NYT Technology https://nyti.ms/2Qfknr1
A Father Confronts His ‘Spider-Verse’ Problem
By LAWRENCE WARE from NYT Movies https://nyti.ms/2RohFUV
Stocks Rise as Wall Street’s Terrible 2018 Comes to a Close
By MOHAMMED HADI from NYT Business https://nyti.ms/2Rn6w6J
New Year’s Eve Around the World: Countdown to 2019, in Photos
By THE NEW YORK TIMES from NYT World https://nyti.ms/2EZQIkz
He Takes to the Stage to Alleviate Fright
By JOHN OTIS from NYT Neediest Cases https://nyti.ms/2s03p6n
A Couple With a Glass-Filled House (No Stones, Please)
By WARREN STRUGATCH from NYT Arts https://nyti.ms/2EWc7KF
At End of a Violent Year, London Police Take No Chances in a Stabbing
By ANNA SCHAVERIEN from NYT World https://nyti.ms/2EZsLsL
Four More N.F.L. Coaches Get the Axe, Including Marvin Lewis
By VICTOR MATHER from NYT Sports https://nyti.ms/2ApjnvD
Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Season of Turmoil
By KATIE THOMAS and CHARLES ORNSTEIN from NYT Health https://nyti.ms/2EVPHt4
When Doctors Serve on Company Boards
By KATIE THOMAS and CHARLES ORNSTEIN from NYT Health https://nyti.ms/2EVPKoK
Why Isn't Climate Change The Story Of The Year? And Other News
The majority of Americans believe in #ClimateChange and want their leaders to act https://t.co/sayE0rXttM
— Climate Reality (@ClimateReality) December 31, 2018
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Elizabeth Warren Is In
Elizabeth Warren announced her intentions this morning, in what's expected to be a wave of Democrats in the coming weeks.
(CNN) Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren took a major step toward a presidential run on Monday, announcing in a video message and email to supporters that she is forming an exploratory committee ahead of an expected campaign for the Democratic nomination in 2020.
With her announcement 13 months before the Iowa caucuses, Warren, who became a progressive star by taking on Wall Street after the 2007 financial crisis and, more recently, President Donald Trump, is the first Democrat with a national profile to take formal action towards a likely presidential campaign.
In a four-and-a-half minute video, Warren makes clear some of the very themes that catapulted her to national prominence will define her upcoming presidential run: economic equality, government accountability and reining in big corporations.
"Corruption is poisoning our democracy," Warren says in the video as images of Republican leaders flash across the screen. "Politicians look the other way while big insurance companies deny patients life-saving coverage, while big banks rip off consumers and while big oil companies destroy this planet."
Or as one wag put it,
Elizabeth Warren is out-trending Louis CK which is good practice for when she has to try to beat a sexual predator in 2020.
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Fox & Friends Goes Off The Rails When Host Says Dems Are Not Killing Migrants At The Border
Three Fox & Friends hosts on Sunday disagreed about who is not killing migrant children at the border: the Trump administration or Democrats.
"You talk about a tragedy," Fox News host Pete Hegseth opined. "There was the tragic death of two migrant children, which no one wants, everyone's willing to talk about, obviously they were in bad shape when they went into custody but you still do everything you can."
According to Hegseth, President Donald Trump took the issue "head on" with a tweet blaming "Democrats and their pathetic immigration policies" for the deaths of children.
"Border Patrol agents didn't kill these migrant children!" Hegseth insisted.
"Of course not!" co-host Rachel Campos Duffy agreed.
"And neither did the Democrats," co-host Ed Henry added, pushing back on Trump's tweet.
"Well, they created policies that incentivize illegal immigration," Hegseth shot back. "Not saying they killed them! But the policies are dumb."
"Democrats are not the ones shouldering them being killed, let's be clear," Henry replied.
"I didn't say that," Hegseth complained.
"That's what the president said," Henry pointed out.
"It's their policies!" Hegseth said. "It's different than people."
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Sen. Lindsey Graham Admits He Wants The Taxpayers To Pay For Trump's Border Wall
While discussing the Trump shutdown, and whether or not there's a deal to be had with Bad Faith Donald, Sen. Lindsey Graham actually had a brief moment of honesty on CNN's State of the Union when he admitted that it would be the American taxpayers that paid for Trump's border wall.
Graham contradicted Trump's talking point that somehow modifying our trade deals with Mexico is the equivalent of them paying for the wall. However, that didn't stop Graham from pretending that Democrats should trust Trump to bargain with them in good faith and that he won't just pull the rug right out from them once again if Congress manages to come to another bipartisan agreement on border security that includes some sort of relief for the Dreamers.
BASH: You talk about everybody changing their position.
I have to ask you about something that seems to be getting lost in this conversation, which is that, when you were running against the president in the Republican primaries and then all through the general election, he did say that this was a campaign promise to build a wall.
GRAHAM: Right.
BASH: But he also said Mexico would pay for it, not the American taxpayers. What happened to that?
GRAHAM: Well, I'm not asking Mexico to pay for it.
BASH: But he did.
GRAHAM: I'm asking the American people to pay for it.
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MSNBC's Richard Lui Cuts Off Matt Gaetz For Claiming Democrats Say 'Walls Are Racist'
MSNBC host Richard Lui cut off Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) on Sunday after the Florida Republican repeatedly insisted that Democrats have claimed that border walls are "racist."
During an interview on MSNBC, Gaetz attempted to gaslight viewers after he was asked about ending President Donald Trump's government shutdown over funding for a border wall.
"What I can tell you, Richard, is that there are multiple offers that have gone back and forth really from the White House to try to get that type of a solution," Gaetz said. "So, yeah, if you have a $25 billion border security package, I think that you could possibly get there. If you had the Bridge Act, I think you could have more of that 25 billion spent on a wall or steel slats or strategic fencing."
"When you look at San Diego, when you look at places in Arizona that have built walls on borders, those have been the most effective ways to stop the most harmful forms of illegal immigration -- the child smuggling, the human trafficking, the drugs and the cartel activity," the congressman continued. "That gets very dangerous people in this country who kill folks."
When asked if he supported $2.5 billion package for a wall, Gaetz changed the subject.
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Dems Can't Make Border Wall Deal Because Trump Doesn't Know What He Wants
CNN New Day's panel tried to pin down exactly what Trump is demanding in a shutdown deal, without much success.
"Joining us now, we welcome CNN political reporters Nia-Malika Henderson, and Jackie Kucinich, and Brian Karem. You can be forgiven for being a little confused about exactly what President Trump is calling for with his wall because even he seems to be having a hard time defining what it is that he wants," Alysin Camerota said.
"Let's remind people what he has said about the so-called wall. Hold that thought."
She proceeds to play a clip montage of Trump explaining his wall.
"Now slats and it's 500 miles. How are Democrats to know what to negotiate with here?"
Panel members tried to untangle the mess, but they take the long way round to explain something we already knew: Trying to deal with Trump is like shadowboxing.
Same as it ever was...
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Report: Amazon is planning a Whole Foods expansion to benefit Prime Now
Amazon is planning a Whole Foods expansion in the U.S., according to a report by The Wall Street Journal published this weekend. The goal is to put more customers within the range of Amazon’s two-hour Prime Now delivery service, including those in suburban areas outside cities, as well as those in regions where the grocer has yet to establish a presence.
Currently, Amazon’s Prime Now delivery service offers two-hour delivery in over 60 U.S. cities, and thirty minute-plus grocery pickup in nearly 30 cities. Amazon is planning to expand those services to almost all its 475 Whole Foods stores, the report said, citing sources.
The retailer will also continue to use perks for Prime members to acquire and retain customers, much as it does today.
Because of its lack of a brick-and-mortar footprint, many U.S. consumers living in the outskirts of cities or in more rural areas don’t have access to Amazon’s Prime Now two-hour delivery service. However, they do have access to Walmart stores, which today offering their own online grocery shopping service with pickup and delivery options in a number of markets.
Walmart says that 140 million customers shop its stores weekly, and 90 percent of Americans today live within 10 miles of one of its locations. That makes it a significant challenger to Amazon in terms of offering fast delivery and pickup options. It also doesn’t require an annual membership.
Other companies are competing with Amazon on same-day delivery, too, including Instacart and Target’s Shipt. Target is also rolling out a curbside pickup service called Drive Up, and is planning to expand Shipt’s assortment and reach in 2019.
The WSJ report didn’t confirm store locations, but did note Amazon was scouting retail spaces in parts of Idaho, southern Utah and Wyoming. Some of these were slightly larger than average Whole Foods stores, at 45,000 sq ft. – which hints at their ability to operate as a hub for delivery and pickup, in addition to being a traditional grocery store.
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Popsugar’s Twinning app is leaking everyone’s uploaded photos
I thought the worst thing about Popsugar’s Twinning tool was that it matched me with James Corden.
Turns out, the hundreds of thousands of selfies uploaded to the tool can be downloaded by anyone who knows where to look.
The popular photo matching tool taking the web by storm is fairly simple. “It analyzes a selfie or uploaded photo, compares it to a massive database of celebrity photos to find matches, and finally gives you a ‘twinning percentage’ for your top five look-alikes,” according to Popsugar, which developed the tool. Then, you share those matched photos on Facebook and Twitter so everyone knows that you don’t look at all like one of the many Kardashians.
All of the uploaded photos are stored in a storage bucket hosted on Amazon Web Services. We know because the web address of the bucket is in the code on the Twinning tool’s website. Open that in your web browser, and you’re looking at a real-time stream of uploaded photos.
We verified the findings by uploading a dummy photo of a certain file size at a specific time. Then, we scraped a list of filenames uploaded during that time period from the bucket’s web address, downloaded them, and found our uploaded image by searching for that photo of a certain file size. (We didn’t download any more than necessary to preserve people’s privacy.)
TechCrunch reached out to Popsugar president Lisa Sugar and vice-president of engineering Mike Patnode, but did not hear back.
As data leaks go, this is definitely on the low-end. You might not care that their selfies were exposed and easily downloadable. (Many photos were already leaking out of Google’s search results — even before people shared their selfie matches on Twitter!) It’s not as if the site was leaking your passwords or your Social Security number. Most probably didn’t go in expecting any reasonable level of security or privacy to begin with.
But like any free app, quiz or some viral web tool, it’s worth reminding that you’re still putting your information out there — and you can’t always get it back. Worse, you almost never know how secure your data will be, or how it might end up being used — and abused — in the future.
This is Captain Buzzkill, signing off.
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2019 looks to continue another lights out year for fintech startups
This time last year, the crypto bull market stole the spotlight. In the midst of bitcoin’s wild run, we announced the Matrix FinTech Index in recognition of the top 10 publicly traded U.S. fintechs quietly surpassing $100 billion in total market capitalization. We predicted that in 2018, the fintechs would prove to be the more relevant disruptors and their equity value would continue to outpace the incumbents.
As we look back, this prediction proved to be true. The market cap of the Matrix FinTech Index grew 50 percentage points in 2018, far outpacing the incumbent financial service giants and the S&P 500. Looking ahead to 2019, we predict that the fintechs will continue to steal the show—creating innovative tech-enabled products, providing access to underserved demographics, and putting consumers first.
The FinTech Index continues to outperform in 2018, though volatility has increased
In this 2018 year-end edition of the Matrix FinTech Index[1] , we are excited to provide a refreshed view of last year’s index. As a quick reminder, the index is a market-cap weighted index that tracks the progress of a portfolio of 10 leading public fintech companies. For comparison, we also included another portfolio of 10 large financial services incumbents (companies like JP Morgan and Visa), as well as the S&P 500. In 2018, the total market cap of the top 10 publicly traded U.S. fintechs grew to nearly $170B and the 2-year returns of the fintechs are now at 133%–100 percentage points higher than the 2-year returns for the incumbents.
Definition: Matrix Partners considers “fintechs” to be venture-backed organizations that are (a) technology-first companies that leverage software to compete with traditional financial services institutions (e.g. banks, credit card networks, insurers, etc.) in the delivery of traditional financial services (e.g. lending, payments, investing, etc.) or (b) software tools that better enable traditional finance functions (e.g. accounting, point-of-sales systems, etc.)
Compared to 2017, volatility increased in 2018. While part of this is the broader state of the equity markets in 2018, it’s worth noting a few specific headwinds (e.g. the TIO security breach that impacted PayPal, Amazon launching Amazon Pay) as well as a few general macro concerns like rising interest rates. But looking ahead to 2019, all 10 of the publicly traded fintechs are expected to continue to have double-digit growth. The only incumbents expected to squeak into double-digit territory in 2019 are card issuers like Visa (11%) and Mastercard (13%) –enabled, in part, by the growth of fintech payment companies like Square and PayPal.
2019 Prediction: The Matrix FinTech Index will deliver 200% returns over the three years ending in December of 2019, outperforming the incumbents and S&P 500 by at least 150 percentage points.
Liquidity is starting to trickle in for private fintech companies
While the FinTech Index performed well on the public markets in 2018, we also saw some very promising liquidity events for privately held companies. In 2017, there were only 3 fintech exits in the U.S. over $100M, totaling just over $700M in value. In 2018 that number grew by a factor of 10 to over $7B in value. More than half of that value came from the GreenSky IPO, but there were also a number of significant M&A events. We expect M&A activity to increase as financial services incumbents acquire fintech companies in an effort to stay competitive. And we continue to believe that the fintech sector will prove to be one of the most fruitful sectors for venture returns in the 15 years following the 2008 financial crisis.
2019 Prediction: Total aggregate value for fintech liquidity events will exceed $10B in one year for the first time ever.
The fintech unicorn pipeline is primed for some big outcomes
What’s even more exciting than 2018’s liquidity is the backlog of privately held fintechs, led by Stripe, that are valued at over $1B. There are now 20 fintech unicorns. In fact, there are more fintech unicorns than any other industry vertical in the Unicorn Club. More than 50% of these raised big growth rounds in 2018 and five of them (Circle, Plaid, Brex, Root and LendingHome) made their debut on the U.S. fintech unicorn list for the first time. The expansion of this list shows that there is no shortage of high-potential areas to disrupt in financial services.
2019 Prediction: Total aggregate value for fintech unicorns will cross $90B and the total number of fintech unicorns will begin to close in on 30.
The next wave of value creation from younger fintechs will be even bigger than the first
Despite these successes on the public markets, in liquidity events and among the unicorn ranks, we are still in the very early innings of the fintech revolution. 2019 will be even more impressive than 2018 as there are an additional 40 U.S. fintechs that have raised more than $100M in equity funding and are on the brink of entering the unicorn club. As many of these companies make that transition, they will sprout another wave of more interesting fintech companies as early employees go on to start their own companies in a virtuous wave of value creation.
We expect these newcomers, and others aspiring to follow in their footsteps, will threaten to end the rule of the financial establishment. They will continue to offer better financial products to consumers, empower more efficient payment channels, and create a more open financial system. At the same time, the incumbents will continue to struggle with innovation, hamstrung by their scale, regulatory burdens, and decades of accumulated technical debt.
Make no mistake. What new fintech companies are attempting is very ambitious and incredibly difficult to achieve. The existing ecosystem of incumbent providers dates back 150 years and represents some of the largest global financial institutions. That said, digital transformation is afoot and the financial service industry will not be spared.
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Elizabeth Warren vs. Donald Trump: A Blow-by-Blow History
By NATALIE RENEAU and WHITNEY HURST from NYT U.S. https://nyti.ms/2EYtiLF
How Early Do Presidential Campaigns Start? Earlier Than You May Think
By SARAH MERVOSH and MATT FLEGENHEIMER from NYT U.S. https://nyti.ms/2SovnnU
Elizabeth Warren Announces She Is Running for President
By ASTEAD W. HERNDON and ALEXANDER BURNS from NYT U.S. https://nyti.ms/2AnrSHv
California Today: A Hollywood Actor Remembered as a Working Dad
By JILL COWAN from NYT U.S. https://nyti.ms/2EZzcNu
Fox Pretends Pelosi Is Already Speaker Of The House , Attacks Her For Vacationing In Hawaii
Someone let me know when the propagandists over on state-run TV, a.k.a. Fox "news" start chasing around soon to be former House Speaker Paul Ryan to find out where he's been spending the holidays. Trump's favorite morning show went after Nancy Pelosi for vacationing in Hawaii during New Year's while Trump stayed at the White House, as though she has the power to negotiate anything before Democrats take control of the House in January.
CAMPOS-DUFFY: He is so serious about this situation with the shutdown and what's happening at the border that he has actually canceled his New Year's Eve plans. We know he canceled... he wanted to go to Florida for Christmas. Now he is saying... they are saying that he is going to stay home for New Year's. Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi was spotted vacationing at an $899 a night luxury hotel resort in Hawaii.
HENRY: You know what, $899 I believe is standard room. […] Mar-a-Lago is opulent as well, but to Rachel's point the president has decided not to do that sort of opulent New Year's bash. He's staying at the White House to try and negotiate, and Nancy Pelosi, we are told by the White House, has not wanted to negotiate, whereas the White House believes, and we heard from Mick Mulvaney on For & Friends yesterday, that he believes Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer wants to cut a deal, but Nancy Pelosi won't allow it.
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