Okay, future: Netflix is ​​at war with the App Store, Microsoft is at war with election hackers, voice assistants are at war with each other

Microsoft is set to become the global election cyberguard, Netflix and Fortnite are reluctant to share revenue with Google and Apple, and ecosystems have entered the fray for the user's vote. About this and much more - in The Bell mailing list about technological breakthroughs, their place in business and our lives.

Global corporations will protect the elections. Microsoft President Brad Smith spoke about the corporation's initiatives to counter hostile influences on democracy. Microsoft's Digital Crime Intelligence Unit (DCU) has executed a court order and seized control of six domain names from the Strontium (Fancy Bear) hacker group, whose members are suspected of interfering in US elections and having ties to the Russian government.

The most interesting thing here is that the DCU has already enforced such court orders 12 times over the past two years, shutting down 84 fake sites associated with this group. In other words, large corporations become executive bodies protecting the interests of sovereign governments.

Microsoft will deploy the AccountGuard early warning system for political organizations and campaign headquarters, as well as audit their networks, providing training if necessary. In the near future, Microsoft, which has just been suspected of taking bribes and corruption in the Hungarian market, will start defending elections in other countries as well.

What do I get from this? This will completely change your view of the electoral process. States have practically admitted their inability to protect elections from manipulation. In the coming months, similar protection programs will almost certainly be announced by many other players, and the credibility of the elections will be determined by an independent private audit. Not to mention the fact that Microsoft began to perform some of the functions of the cyber police and cyber bailiffs.

The personal assistant will turn into a personal crowd. Facebook is developing a voice assistant called Aloha and a Portal column. This means that personal assistants will not only be available to all major software and device vendors, but to any significant ecosystem. Google, Amazon, Alibaba, Xiaomi, Apple, Yandex and others are already releasing their own "smart speakers" with assistants.

No one wants to install multiple smart speakers from different manufacturers, so the market is slowly brewing up a war over households and cars. And the example of Yandex shows that niche players can try to capture country markets until the world leader is determined.

In the next 2-3 years, you will have to carefully choose a voice assistant, learn to communicate not only with the usual Siri or "Alice", but also Alexa in hotels, Google Assistant at friends' houses and many other unusual voice interfaces.

What do I get from this? A future in which we have our own smart assistant is becoming less and less likely. Instead, personal assistants will try to pump as much personal data out of you as possible, taking up even more of your communication space. Using them will have all the signs of insincere relationships with several personalities at once - albeit artificial ones.

Apps are hacking mobile ecosystems from within. Over the past two weeks, two super popular apps have decided not to share their earnings with mobile ecosystems.

Fortnite, which brought together 125 million players in June, will be distributed on Android devices outside the Google Play store. Streaming video platform Netflix, with its 130 million users, has decided in 33 countries not to share part of the profits with iTunes.

In the second quarter, Fortnite made $109 million and Netflix generated $1.9 billion in revenue outside the US. Since May 2018, Netflix does not allow subscription through Google Play, thereby not giving 30% of the subscription cost to ecosystems.

What do I get from this? App stores are likely preparing retaliatory measures that will affect both app developers and consumers. Stores may make registration more difficult, reduce required subscription fees, or prohibit fee evasion. The former will worsen the lives of users, the latter will reduce the revenue of stores, and the latter will lead to sharp conflicts and fragmentation in the camp of application developers. We are talking about a business that brings Google 10 billion dollars a year, and Apple - 12.

One thing not to do this week

Don't update Apple devices.

• Don't install the iOS 12 beta. It's too late. iOS 12 beta testing is almost over, it's better to wait a few weeks and install the final version, which can be released as early as September.
• Don't buy a 13" MacBook Air. According to rumors , in October-November, the Air will have a Retina screen (the dream of many).
• Don't buy a replacement Mac mini. Bloomberg writes that along with Air, Apple is repositioning the Mac mini, which has not been updated since 2014. It will be offered to professional consumers, not as a cheap home computer or media server.

+1 efficiency

• Download the Fabulous app . It is amazingly effective at building healthy habits into your morning, afternoon, and evening. For a relatively small amount, you will learn how to eat healthy food, not abandon personal projects and get enough sleep in 30 minutes when you need sleep, but there is no time for it.
• Set up Twitter in the style of businessman Stepan Danilov. On his Facebook, he told how to get the most useful information per unit of time. The basis of the method is separate lists of sources and a Tweetdeck client for reading them.
• Install the Nudge browser extension. Half of the Russian-speaking Facebook goes crazy about it. Nudge can disable addictive sites and clean up your Facebook feed.

Read later

• A timeless list of news resources, start-ups, people and events on the top two themes of the decade: artificial intelligence and machine learning.
• Stories of 300 developers who entered hi-tech when they were in their 30s, 40s and even 50s.
• What is the difference between a modulus and a remainder . A small but fascinating and simply written excursion into programming, cryptography and arithmetic.