Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 01/14 – Russia Cracks Down On REvil?

Starting point is 00:00:00 On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the TechMeme right home for Friday, January 14th, 2022. I'm Brian McCullough today. Russia has cracked down on Reval, question mark. Investing in crypto is so hot. FtX has launched its own Monster Venture Fund. Why has the Android 12 rollout been such a disaster so far? How long is the cyber truck going to be delayed? And of course, the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Did not see this one coming. Russia's FSB says it is detained and charged members of the our evil ransomware gang at the request of the United States, although according to sources, Russian citizens will not be handed over to the U.S. for extradition,

Starting point is 00:01:19 quoting Reuters. The arrests were a rare apparent demonstration of collaboration between Russia and the United States at a time of high tensions between the two over Ukraine. The announcement came even as Ukraine was responding to a massive cyber attack that shut down government websites, though there was no indication the incidents were related. A joint police and FSB operation searched 25 addresses, detaining 14 people. The FSB said listing assets it had seized, including $426 million, rubles, $600,000, $500,000, computer equipment, and 20 luxury cars. Russia had informed the United States directly of the moves it had taken against the group sought by Washington. The FSB said on its website, the U.S. Embassy in Mosley,

Starting point is 00:02:03 said it could not immediately comment. The investigative measures were based on a request from the United States, the FSB said, the organized criminal association has ceased to exist, and the information infrastructure used for criminal purposes was neutralized, end quote. There continues to be an absolute land grab going on in the crypto space. VCs are raising mountains of money to pour into crypto startups, and now Crypto Exchange FTX itself is launching a $2 billion venture fund aiming to invest across startup stages, investing anywhere from $100,000 to maybe hundreds of millions of dollars in given startups. Again, this is a crypto exchange itself with a $2 billion fund. That's worth noting. You don't think a lot of people see a lot of money just waiting to be picked up in crypto, quoting the Wall Street Journal.

Starting point is 00:03:00 We could possibly deploy it all by next year, but it depends on the opportunities we see in the market, said Amy Wu, the fund's chief, Ms. Wu, joined FTX this month from Lightspeed Venture Partners, where she led investments in gaming, crypto, and other startups, including Nassau-Bahamas-based FTX itself. She will head FTCS's mergers and acquisitions, partnerships, and gaming initiatives in addition to leading FTX ventures. The $2 billion for FTCS ventures came from FTCS, which was recently valued at $25 billion, and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried, Ms. Wu said, noting that, quote, Sam does everything big, end quote. Ms. Wu said she is a special interested in investing in crypto gaming companies through FDX ventures, whether in spinouts from

Starting point is 00:03:43 traditional gaming studios or new crypto-native studios. Other areas of interest include insurance and security products for crypto, which could help reduce concerns over hacking, she said. Developer tools and infrastructure that help applications run on different underlying blockchains or systems of record are also interesting, Ms. Wu said, end quote. Now, I could have put this in the long reads, but there's also been a substack piece that's been going around this week from startups and econ that takes a look at Coinbase and what can happen if you're, you know, one of the people controlling the crypto marketplace. What happens when you list a crypto on your marketplace? You should maybe draw your own conclusions as to why I included

Starting point is 00:04:26 this with that, but it does seem that in exchange like FTX might have some really interesting insight into what is bubbling up in crypto land. This also could have been a long read, but Did you know that Android 12's rollout has been, shall we say, not great, despite it being one of the biggest Android launches of recent years? It's been so not great, in fact, that Samsung and One Plus have both paused their stable Android 12-based updates amid the reports of serious bugs. Quoting the Verge. Android 12's release started predictably enough with a formal announcement at Google I.O. in May 2021. After that, the timeline looks a little different from previous years.

Starting point is 00:05:11 A full stable release came a month later than usual on October 4th, 2021. The Pixel 6 and 6 Pro launched later that month with Android 12 preloaded. A handful of bugs were to be expected, but Google's December Pixel Update included dozens of fixes despite Google having that extra month. Even worse, the December patch itself proved problematic as some Pixel 6 owners complained about network connection problems, worsened by the update. Google halted the update and later removed it from its archive to prevent manual downloads. When asked, the company didn't offer an explanation for the problematic update but pointed to a statement that a fix is coming in late January that will include all of the bug fixes planned for the December patch.

Starting point is 00:05:51 And Google is not alone in having trouble with its new OS. Samsung users in South Korea reported serious problems with their Galaxy Fold 3 and Flip 3 devices after installing the 1UI 4.0, which represents Android 12 stable release, including flickering displays and bricked phones. Samsung acknowledged the problem and responded initially by releasing a fourth beta version of the software to fix bugs introduced by the stable release. One Plus's stable release wasn't so stable either. Its Android 12 skin was so buggy that the company paused its release like Google after

Starting point is 00:06:23 it was widely criticized. In a brief statement, One Plus explained that the fact this release marked the company's attempt to integrate its oxygen OS and color OS codebases into the same build, quote, led to the software experience not being smooth, end quote, and that its software team, quote, collected the community's feedback and released a new build of Oxygen OS12 within a week to deliver a better user experience, end quote. In each case, these stable releases were anything but, and none of these companies offered much detail about what went wrong. What the heck is going on? The short answer is that there are some unique complicating factors at play this year, but also

Starting point is 00:06:58 that Android is inherently a little bit messy. That just comes with the territory when you're designing a delightful public park compared to Apple's walled garden. Despite a refresh look and some appealing new high-end handsets, Android is still Android, the good and the bad, end quote. Maybe Android 12 just wasn't ready for primetime, wasn't ready for release, but Google felt like it couldn't really delay things. Sometimes you just got to bite the bullet and delay, right? Is that what's going on with the cyber truck? Quoting the verge again. Tesla, has never been fantastic at meeting deadlines, so it's not too surprising that the company's ambitious electric pickup, the cyber truck is running a little late. Recently, reference to a 2020 production schedule

Starting point is 00:07:49 was scrubbed from the Tesla website. And Reuters is now reporting that production of the vehicle won't begin until the first quarter of 2023. The cyber truck was originally announced in 2019, with Tesla promising that the vehicle would be rolling off production lines in late 2021. Then in August that year, full production was delayed to sometime in 2022. Now that deadline seems to have been waived two. Changes to the Cyber Truck Order page were first spotted by Edmonds. The site originally told buyers, you will be able to complete your configuration as production nears in 2022. Now it says you will be able to complete your configuration as production nears, with archives showing that reference to the year was removed at the end of December 2021. According to Reuters citing a person familiar with the matter,

Starting point is 00:08:35 the delay is a result of changing features and functions that Tesla is introducing to make the vehicle more attractive in a growing market for electric pickups. Ford recently committed to doubling production of its F-150 Lightning, which it says will start shipping in the first half of 2022. Buzzy newcomer Rivian finally started shipping its first R1T's to customers, while brands like Hummer and Chevy have their own electric trucks scheduled for late 2022 and late 2023 releases, respectively, end quote. The piece does go on to note that Tesla's other models have had such fantastic sales years that maybe the cyber truck has become a lower priority for Tesla. Though with that competition coming through this year, I'm for the weekend long read suggestions. One of the reasons that people have been buying my book lately is because it's been adopted

Starting point is 00:09:32 by crypto people. They're looking for historical analogies from the first 25 years of the web and internet era. So with Web 3, I thought it was worth pointing out some actual historical precedents for the Metaverse and NFTs and the like. First of all, from HowTo Geek. Does anyone remember VRML? How virtual reality and a Metaverse was going to be baked right into the web itself as a standard? Quote, in that original paper, Ragget coined the term VRML for virtual reality modeling language. He positioned this new 3D browsing technology as the VR equivalent of HTML, which was the primary markup language used to create pages on the World Wide Web at the time. As these concepts coalesced,

Starting point is 00:10:14 Pesky and Parisi created the first VRML browser in November of that year. After picking up support from other developers, the VRML standard debuted in November 1994. At first, VRML only supported 3D static objects, but over time, the standard grew to encompass avatars, animations, pulling in multimedia and more. Early on, VRML drew support from major corporations, such as Microsoft, Netscape, Silicon Graphics, and dozens of others. For a short time, its future seemed pretty solid. Spoiler alert, though, VRML didn't take off like its creators hoped. While VRML 2.0 became an international standard with the ISO in 1996,

Starting point is 00:10:53 the final version of VRML known as VRML 97 was standardized in 1997. Around that time, interest in VRML began to wane, as it became evident that 3D online worlds weren't as practical or useful as futurists had promised, end quote. Then from Vox, a look back at the Beanie Baby Crays of the 90s that famously made eBay, but what happens when a frenzy ends and the world suddenly doesn't value your speculative valuables? Quote, the problem with bubbles is that even if at some point it becomes clear what's going on, it's impossible to gauge when the bubble will burst. If bubbles were predictable, people would start to sell early and the bubble would self-enplode. Obviously, they don't. And what was in the

Starting point is 00:11:40 bubble never really goes away. The objects themselves don't disappear. They become zombies. For people into Beanie Babies now, the fundamentals don't really matter. If the world moves on from something and you don't, you don't for a reason, end quote. Then I just wanted to put this on your radar. Serious crypto regulation looks like it might be coming from Washington very shortly. And Bloomberg looks at how the crypto interests are now lobbying hard in Washington to make sure things shake out the way they would prefer, quoting Bloomberg. They're going to be having a busy year, said Owen Tedford and analysts for Beacon Policy Advisors in Washington. It's pick your poison. There are going to be a million different things this year from regulation to legislation for crypto lobbyists to deal with, end

Starting point is 00:12:21 quote. Dapper Labs, a Vancouver-based company that helps create and sell non-fundible tokens, registered its first lobbying firm, Crossroads Strategies, last week. The company also recently hired FSVector, according to a person familiar with the matter, though that firm hasn't registered. The first lobbyist for Stablecoin Company's Circle Internet Financial registered in November, and one of its competitors, Paxos Trust, also recently hired its first firm. Crypto mining firm Marathon Digital Holdings also registered its first lobbyist last week. Some crypto executives say they're also ramping up political giving in an effort to elect candidates they think are most likely to support pro-crypto policies, end quote. Then earlier this week I learned that Xbox players are fed up with playing in the same games as PC players, quoting the verge.

Starting point is 00:13:11 Games like Call of Duty Warzone and Halo Infinite force Xbox players to match against PC gamers in a variety of playlists. You don't have to look very far to see why people are angry about it. Now that cheating in Halo is confirmed on PC, can we have the option to opt out of crossplay? Asked one Reddit post in November just weeks after the multiplayer version of Halo. Halo Infinite launched. Microsoft's decision to force crossplay in its own Halo Infinite title runs against previous commitments from the company's head of Xbox. I'll never force somebody in our games who's playing with a controller or a mouse and a keyboard to play against somebody with a different control scheme, said Xbox Chief Phil Spencer in an interview with GameSpot in 2016.

Starting point is 00:13:51 Mouse and keyboard rotation speed is faster than controller. We know that. You'll lose, end quote. Nothing has changed in the classic arguments between mouse and keyboard players and controllers. players simply want the option to be able to opt out of crossplay and not have to be forced to play against PC players. A lot of PC players would also like to avoid control or aim assist in games like Warzone and Halo Infinite, end quote. And then finally this week, more video game stuff, but through my favorite lens of history from the Washington Post, academics want to preserve video games, but the games industry is fighting this in court because, see, the historians argue that it's not just enough to, you know, preserve a cartridge, and put it in a glass case or something. If you really want to preserve the essence of a game for

Starting point is 00:14:36 historical purposes, it needs to be playable for people so they can get the authentic experience. Quote, game makers have argued that enabling the access sought by the academics would economically harm their companies. The ESA has argued that even old games still hold value since they can be re-released or remastered, noting as an example that thousands of older games are currently available on Microsoft's Xbox Marketplace for digital download. The ESA's legal opponents have argued that such a stance allows the game industry to gatekeep, which titles are made available or preserved, effectively limiting the study of gaming's history. In its court battles, the ESA has stated that increasing such access would, quote,

Starting point is 00:15:15 risk the possibility of substantial market harm for publishers. In a 2018 Copyright Office filing related to expanding exemptions to existing copyright laws, the ESA said older games are, quote, regularly reintroduced or reimagined by way of reissued, remastered or remade versions for modern gaming platforms. It also took issue with allowing researchers to essentially relaunch online multiplayer modes for games that publishers no longer support, and argued that existing laws are sufficient for researchers' needs. Do we really want to erase all that from history? One historian asked, it's a medium you can put alongside film and literature. It has that kind of impact. Companies arguing for restrictions don't see the cultural valuations of games.

Starting point is 00:15:56 It's a knee-jerk reaction to copying and protecting rights. We're interested to support the research and to teach courses on games, end quote. All right, everybody. Monday is a holiday here in the U.S., and I am going to take it off, so no show on Monday. But one of the reasons why we held last week's Twitter space until this week was to account for this weekend. This is, I believe, the longest Twitter space we've ever done, maybe the longest episode of this podcast ever, more than two hours. And as I said before, it's a sort of unique one-off format. Chris and I and a bunch of listeners just talk about our favorite tools, round robin style, our favorite apps, platforms, machines, anything that helps us do the work we do. It was partially me being selfish,

Starting point is 00:16:52 wanting to learn about what people use certain things for so that maybe I can adopt them, things that I hear about all the time, but haven't adopted yet myself. But it was also just all of us trading tips on things that we can't live without. So maybe, maybe sit down with a notepad when you listen, because chances are you're going to learn about some things that you might not have heard of, or you've always heard of and meant to get to like me. And as I said, it's two hours plus of learning. So hopefully that will more than make up for not having a show on Monday. Talk to you on Tuesday.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 01/14 – Russia Cracks Down On REvil?

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