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China’s TikTok fury is your problem

Good morning! This Wednesday, ByteDance and China speak up about TikTok, Disney keeps reinventing its streaming business model and Rippling becomes a busywork unicorn.
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ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming is furious. As negotiations continue between TikTok, Trump and Microsoft, Zhang told his employees that "this is not their goal, or even what they want. Their real objective is to achieve a comprehensive ban." Zhang also disagreed with the CFIUS decision that ByteDance has to sell TikTok U.S., saying that the company has "always firmly protected the security of users' data, the platform's independence and transparency."
Is this just yelling on top of other yelling on top of other yelling? Of course. And in terms of retaliation it's not like China can kick out the American equivalent of TikTok — say, Facebook or Snapchat — because it already doesn't allow those companies in.
The fallout from all of this could actually be widespread, because China still has options.
All you tech CEOs: Now is the time for worst-case-scenario planning. As with every piece of this saga, seemingly anything could happen in the next several weeks, but there's now a very real chance that the Chinese government deems this whole thing a step too far. After so many years of making plans to get into the world's biggest market, you might need to start making plans to do without it.
Parker Conrad loves supposedly boring software. After founding Zenefits to fix HR systems — and eventually leaving the company in the midst of serious compliance and company-culture issues — he's now building Rippling, a tool for managing employee information and data. "We give you one button to click where you say, 'I'm going to hire an employee,'" Conrad said. "And then everything that needs to happen to get that employee up and running," all the email lists and Slack channels and app permissions, "just happens."
Boring software certainly has its perks: Rippling just raised $145 million, valuing Conrad's company at $1.35 billion. And Conrad told me the last three months have been Rippling's best sales months ever. In part, he said, because the company didn't try to just do one thing really well.
Rippling sits at the front of a crucial trend in tech right now. Every company is dealing with all sorts of informational sprawl: Conrad said he likes to look at companies' checklists for onboarding employees, because buried in those laundry lists is a map to how a company really works.
I like to imagine there was a Disney executive brainstorm a few years ago, filled with ideas about the future of streaming and TV. And then when Bob Chapek was named CEO, he took all the ideas from that brainstorm and just went, "yeah, let's do 'em all."
The latest streaming plan from Disney: It's going to release "Mulan" in September, as a $30 rental (funky new price) on top of Disney+ (funky new idea). It's also building an entirely new streaming service (because you know, what's one more) called Star, that'll be available internationally.
This could be huge for Disney if it goes well: It would basically be charging movie-theater prices without giving up movie-theater royalties. Honestly at this point it's one plane fleet away from basically owning the entire life cycle of a movie. (Oh, and you know who's going to hate this? Every movie theater everywhere.)
Disney+ is obviously doing well — it's up to 60.5 million subs — but I do wonder how complicated Disney can make the system before users start to revolt. Diverse revenue streams are a good thing! But paying for a subscription only to pay surprise extra fees for content feels like … cable.
Qualtrics' Work Different free virtual event, on August 12, will explore how successful organizations like Atlassian, Microsoft, the NBA, and many others are listening to and taking action on the feedback from their customers and employees to create a "new better" for their business. Register now at Qualtrics.com.
Anthony Levandowski was sentenced to 18 months in prison, and Judge William Alsup said it's a warning to engineers everywhere:
All the bluster about the FCC and TikTok and everything else is just about Trump's own agenda, Ron Wyden said:
Andrew Bosworth posted an interesting look into how reviews work at Facebook — and why positive feedback isn't a big part of them:
Phil Schiller is now an Apple Fellow. He'll keep overseeing the App Store and Apple's events, but Greg Jozwiak is now Apple's head of worldwide marketing. (If "Apple Fellow" sounds to you like a nebulous title that probably means Schiller's stepping back over time, I'd say you're probably right.)
Jonathan Benassaya is the new chief product officer at Life360. He comes from Deezer, and has been working on subscription products for a long time.
Ajey Gore is leaving Gojek. He's stepping down as the company's CTO, and joining Sequoia India as an operating partner. Gayatri Vasudeva Yadav is also joining as CMO, and Shweta Rajpal Kohli to run public policy.
Tom Moss is taking Skydio international. He's heading back to Japan — where he was based for years as Google's Android GM in Asia — to take the self-flying drone company to Asia.
Christina Smedly is Robinhood's new CMO. She comes from Facebook's Novi / Libra project — one of the few fintechs more controversial than Robinhood! — and has worked at Amazon and PayPal.
Booking.com is laying off up to 25% of its staff, which amounts to around 4,000 employees.
So Apple launched a new iMac yesterday. It's … medium exciting: faster, better screen, normal new-computer stuff. BUT! The iMac's best new feature is a 1080p webcam, which is somehow both a decades-old technology and still a gigantic improvement for Apple webcams. (The only way to get one before was to buy an iMac Pro, which costs approximately as much as a used car.) The new iMac also has an improved microphone. First Apple fixed the butterfly keyboard, now we get a video-chat setup that doesn't suck? What a world.
Qualtrics' Work Different free virtual event, on August 12, will explore how successful organizations like Atlassian, Microsoft, the NBA, and many others are listening to and taking action on the feedback from their customers and employees to create a "new better" for their business. Register now at Qualtrics.com.
Today's Source Code was written by David Pierce, with help from Shakeel Hashim. Thoughts, questions, tips? Send them to david@protocol.com, or our tips line, tips@protocol.com. Enjoy your day, see you tomorrow.
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