Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 01/18 - Gadget Reviews Now Mean Sneaker Reviews

Episode Date: January 18, 2019

Netflix starts to open up, Cortana stops competing, gadget reviews now include shoes as a category and the weekend longreads suggestions. Sponsors: DataDogHQ.com/ridehome Tiny.website Links: Netflix beats on subscriber growth, but misses slightly on revenue — stock falls after hours (CNBC) It’s Official: Satya Nadella Confirms Cortana Defeat (Thurrott) Nike's auto-laced future (TechCrunch) NIKE'S NEW SELF-LACING BASKETBALL SHOE IS ACTUALLY SMART (Wired) The SmartTouchUSA.com Weekened Longreads Drone Radio Show Delivery Drones Use Bird-Inspired Legs to Jump Into the Air (IEEE Spectrum) Why Do Shareholders Agree to Give Up Voting Rights? (New York Magazine) The Attention Economy Is a Malthusian Trap (The Atlantic) The Story Behind Meta, the AR Startup That Just Had Its Assets Sold to a Mystery Buyer (Variety) Rekindled yet again, Nokia’s next-gen phones offer more than just nostalgia (Digital Trends) INSIDE THE STRANGE YET PROFITABLE WORLD OF RETAIL ARBITRAGE (Mel Magazine) EA’s Troubled Decade Of Star Wars Games (Kotaku) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Tech Meme Ride Home for Friday, January 18th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Netflix starts to open up.

Cortana stops competing. Gadget reviews now include shoes as a category. And, of course, the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Tech earnings season is back. And first out of the gate, Netflix reported mixed Q4 earnings last night with revenue of $4.19 billion versus $4.4.5. $8.21 billion originally estimated. But the company said it added 8.8 million global paid memberships up from its own estimate of $7.6 million. In total, Netflix added 29 million paid subscribers over its full year 2018, a 33% increase over the 22 million subscribers it added in 2017. The stock was down this morning, but not terribly so. What was interesting from last night's report, though, is that

Maybe because of the complicated year it's expecting to have as competition rises to the four. For the first time, Netflix is beginning to be forthcoming about other numbers. For example, Netflix said it estimates that in the U.S. alone, it is responsible for 10% of total television screen time. It once again touted viewership numbers for Birdbox, saying 80 million households have watched the Sandra Bullock Blind Blind fold meme, I mean movie. Netflix defines you as a viewer of a particular show or movie if you've watched at least 70% of it. Netflix also touted numbers for other things. The new shows, You and Sex Education, Netflix said they should reach 40 million households in the first six weeks that those are on the service.

Netflix also reported how many viewers saw new shows and movies released in Spain, Italy and Britain, again over the course of the first four weeks of being. available. Netflix has never done anything like this. Why is Netflix suddenly singing from the rooftops about its audience numbers when for years it has steadfastly refused to report anything like that? Is it to please shareholders by offering them a different metric of success? No, says Peter Kafka. This audience data is aimed squarely at Hollywood, and it's being revealed precisely because Netflix knows competition is coming. Quote, that bird box number is big, no matter how you parse it.

And if you're a Hollywood star, you may well end up concluding that it makes sense to try making a movie with Netflix, even though they are still relatively new at it. They'll pay you whatever you would get, and perhaps even more, from a conventional Hollywood studio, and you don't need to worry about the show

disappearing into a pile of unseen documentaries and reruns. Netflix would be happy if you and or your agents slash managers slash lawyers reach this conclusion, end quote. And at the same time, almost in contradiction, Netflix wants other Hollywood studios, other content producers, to know, in their opinion, there's room for everybody in this game. In the earnings statement, the company said, quote, we earn consumer screen time both mobile and television

away from a very broad set of competitors. We compete with and lose to Fortnite, more than HBO, end quote. Microsoft Satcha Nadella says it's Cortana personal assistant won't challenge Alexa and Google Assistant directly anymore, saying instead Microsoft will focus on making Cortana a skill on other voice platforms. As Brian Heeter put it in TechCrunch, Microsoft is calling an audible on smart speakers.

Speaking to journalists, Nadella said, quote, Cortana needs to be that skill for anybody who's a Microsoft 365 subscriber. You should be able to use it on Google Assistant. You should be able to use it on Alexa, just like how you use our apps on Android and iOS. So that's at least how we want to think about where it'll go, end quote. Microsoft had already enabled Cortana and Alexa integration and has said many times it wants to do the same with Google Assistant.

So this is not exactly a surprise. still, as at Manon said on Twitter, this is shocking, but not as much at the same time because Nadella's strategy is to not compete where they've already lost. But also, no mobile, no wearables, no voice assistant is the antithesis of a consumer tech company in 2019, end quote. I would point out, though, that burning the boats on mobile has actually paid off for Microsoft. It doesn't have to worry about smartphone saturation or smartphone recessions like Apple and Google do. And who's the most valuable tech company in the world at the moment?

But Paul Therot is the Microsoft Watcher par excellence, so I'll let him sum up, quote, Microsoft never made any serious effort to compete in this market. And it let it fall through its fingers years ago despite repeatedly talking about making the next wave after mobile. Ambient computing is the next wave, now the current wave. And whether Nadella's new approach will work over the long term and make it a major player in this computing wave is still very much unclear, unquote.

All right. First time I've ever covered shoe tech on this podcast, but as we'll mention later in this episode, everything is tech now. There's nothing that cannot be gadgetized. The embargoes broke, allowing tech journalists to give their impressions and reviews and background stories on Nike's new $350 Bluetooth-enabled Adapt B-B shoe with automated power lacing, which will allow basketball players to change their shoe tightness via a smartphone. So, self-lacing shoes via a smartphone app.

The Hyper Adapt 1.0 was the first truly self-lacing shoe when it came out in 2016, but the BB goes further, and 1.0 was the 1.0 was. was also $720 for the privilege of not lacing your own shoes. So this is almost half price. In the notes, I've linked to two in-depth stories about how the adept BB shoe was developed, one from TechCrunch and one from Wired. I encourage you to read them both for more details on how the technology has evolved, but for now, two quotes should summarize things.

From Wired first, quote, The resulting shoe is something that by design may always be involved. visible to the shoes wearer. Under the insul and tucked flush into a cavity is the 40 by 50 millimeter casing. Inside that is the magic. There's a three-axis gyroscope and an accelerometer to match. A capacitive copper layer to register foot force. A Bluetooth sensor.

A battery that can last between 10 and 20 days and charge wirelessly. Just put your shoes on a plugged-in key compatible charging mat and they'll be ready in three hours. And of course, a motor. In this case, a motor that's capable of exerting 240 Newton meters of force, enough to lift a 30-pound weight, and more than enough to tighten the sneaker all the way to tourniquet territory. All told, it's less than two ounces, light enough to keep the adept BB within serviceable weight range,

a size 9 comes in at exactly a pound, lighter than some LeBron models, end quote. This one is from TechCrunch, quote, Here's how the system works. You slip your foot into the shoe. If you've already set up a lace tightness, a new magnetic system, no longer pressure base like the first adept, senses your foot's presence and tightens them. That's it.

If it's your first run, you pair the shoes to the Adapt BB app, which will be on the app store and Google Play Store. When you pair, you're linking your shoes directly to your Nike Plus account, so there's no chance of anyone either connecting to or controlling your shoes. No login, no control via the app. Apparently, once you've paired, you can set different lacing profiles and tightness levels. You don't have to use the app to use the shoe, but if you do, this is what will allow a basketball player to say, head over to her phone and adjust the shoe mid-game. And what about all that other gear, like the gyroscope and accelerometer and things like that?

Again, let's quote TechCrunch's Matthew Panzerino. This shoe can, if it chooses, determine things like gate. Foot strike pressure, pace, and even in-air motion of your feet. Imagine, if you will, a coach that tells you're putting a foot too far forward or back during a layup or launching too late or leaning back too far. This is possible with the hardware Nike already has on board, end quote. Panzerino got to wear the shoe playing actual picket games of basketball, and he called the shoe wearable, period. even for someone with a wide foot and high in-step, and he said it was less heavy and stiff feeling than the Adapt 1.0.

It's time for the weekend long reads. Suggestions brought to you by SmartTouch. SmartTouch provides design installation and integration solutions for home automation, home audio, whole house audio, home security, home control, including lighting, HVAC, and more. Smart Home Control and Entertainment right at your fingertips. Check them out at SmartTouch, USA. dot com.

Okay, for the podcast recommendation this week, I wanted to continue to experiment a little further a field, and I'll explain why in a second. The drone radio show is my recommendation. The drone radio show is a podcast that talks about the latest and greatest in drone tech, but also, and this is what I found fascinating, the people that use drones for business, fun, and research. I mean, this is obvious in retrospect, right? There's a whole industry of professional drone operators and pilots out there.

So I really found it fun to listen to episodes talking to entrepreneurs and innovators who, you know, this is their gig. This is their profession, their craft. You know how some people like to go to open houses so that you can walk around and imagine yourself living in a different home? I guess it's the latent entrepreneur in me, but I like doing things like that. I like learning about other industries because I like imagining myself in those industries. Could I hack it in that business? So the drone radio show, search it out on your podcast app, interviews with industry leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, pilots, and tons of others who share their insights on using drone technology to make money or just have fun. If you've ever asked the question, what can I do with a drone? Dron radio show podcast is for you. Speaking of drones, the first long read is from IEEE Spectrum, quote, drones have a fundamental design problem.

The kind of drone that can carry large payloads at high speeds over long distances is fundamentally different from the kind of drone that can take off and land from a small area. In very simple terms, for the former you want fixed wings and for the latter, you want rotors, end quote. So, for the first long-read suggestion, but also with lots of photos and videos, I introduce you to the passerine sparrow, which utilizes over-the-wing engines to solve this problem, but also two legs. very much inspired by birds that allow the drone to jump into the air to take off, then tucking those legs underneath during flight, and then the legs come back out to serve as shock absorbers for landing. Quote, what the system means is that you can have all of the advantages of a fixed-wing drone, payload, speed, range, and efficiency,

along with the pinpoint landing capabilities of a rotor craft without having to compromise with some kind of hybrid design, end quote. The next two long reads are on the short side and their opinion pieces, but they both raise provocative issues that has affected how I am thinking about things lately. First, in New York MAG, Josh Barrow asks, in light of, I don't know, maybe this week's WeWork headlines, why do shareholders agree to give up voting rights to founders? One of the reasons Adam Newman can do what he wants at Wee is because, as part of an investment round in 20, 2014, he was granted Class B shares that gave him 10 votes per share, so he effectively controls 65% of WeWork's overall voting shares.

Borrow links to a recent Harvard Business Review study that has a few answers to why investors would be willing to give up control like this. Traditionally, multi-class stock structures were intended to allow management to focus on creating value for the long term, to avoid short-term juice. the numbers for the next quarter kind of thinking. Quote, but the rise in popularity of dual-class shares may simply reflect a reality in capital markets over the last decade. There's a lot of capital around that people want to invest and few opportunities to invest it for high returns. When a founder has a company that investors are excited about, he or she gets to set terms

about how investors will get into the deal. It's a seller's market, end quote. And then over at the Atlantic, Derek Thompson notices that tech companies, with the recent downturn are now trading at one of the smallest premiums in history. Quote, on September 28, 2018, tech died. That's according to a widely circulated eulogy prepared by Vincent DeLuard, a strategist at Intel FC Stone, a financial services company. If technology is everywhere, the tech sector no longer exists, he wrote.

If the tech sector no longer exists, its premium is no longer justified, end quote. When the Financial Times got its hands on the document, it leaned into the death thesis declaring the tech sector is over, end quote. Thompson goes into why tech no longer commands an investor premium over other industries, and it gets into a lot of things we've been talking about. Software has eaten the world. We know this, but also every industry is now arguably the tech industry. Also, peak smartphone, peak everything, law of large numbers. assume every consumer that tech can touch will have been touched. And also, a lot of tech looks an awful lot like the media industry.

So we'll begin commanding media industry valuations. And also, everyone is salivating over subscription revenue. Everyone wants to be the app for that. And since everyone is playing the tech game now, everyone can possibly do that. Quote, Jeff Bezos is famous for saying, Your margin is my opportunity. Well, the converse is also. true, Amazon's opportunity is everybody else's dream margin, end quote. So the days of tech being

able to disrupt any business or industry just by default are over if everyone has adopted the same lessons and strategies that tech has been using for 25 years. Next, I was talking to a friend about this just this week. You know who you are if you're listening. Variety has a piece up looking at the sad saga of meta, a super promising AR startup that just had its assets sold to a mystery buyer. There are all sorts of different lessons here about betting on one type of technology over another and maybe that being a dead end, but also the Chinese trade war and a very, very real, very recent cautionary tale for tech startups about that. Next, digital trends checks in with modern day Nokia, the company that as recently as 2007 had 50% of the global handheld device

market wrapped up? Well, technically, it's not Nokia anymore. The company is called HMD now. Quote, since the company's founding HMD has catapulted to become a top smartphone manufacturer and, in the process, resurrected the Nokia name in phones. But in a business that leaves no room for new players, can HMD crack into the U.S. market while continuing its rise to the top? HMD believes it can, end quote. Next, and I did not know this, though maybe I kind of did, turns out there's this whole strange and strangely profitable world of retail arbitrage that involves thousands of people doing nothing more sophisticated than going to their local Target or Walmart and taking advantage of their everyday low prices by buying out, say, the entire shoe aisle, and then turning around

and selling these same goods at a higher price online. Mel Magazine takes a look at this quasi-industry. Quote, in one video that I stumbled upon in Arbitrager purchases 182 Monopoly for Millennials board games from several local Walmarts for $19.82 each.

Then, within less than 24 hours, he managed to sell 131 of them on Amazon for $77.29 each, which leaves him with an impressive profit of $2,500, even after deducting shipping costs and fees. He presumably sold the remaining 51 board games on a later date for even more profit, end quote. There's a whole course you could teach here about the nature of economics, asymmetries of information knowledge, and the value people are willing to place on convenience.

Trust me, this piece is super, super fascinating. And finally, Kataku takes a look at EA's troubled decade of Star Wars video games. Most people think the recent Star Wars games have left a lot to be desired. And a lot of video game fans blame EA for this, which has the exclusive Star Wars development license. But not so fast. If video game designer is your dream job, and maybe you think that designing Star Wars video games is your dream job, quote, back in 2017, one ex-visceral developer described the Lucasfilm approval process to me in Brutal Fast. With Star Wars, you could be talking months, potentially years. Oh, would Dodger really look like this? What would his weapon look like? Potentially years of that. Would he carry this? Would that really work in the Star Wars universe? With Uncharted, they can build any world they come up with because it's their world. With Star Wars, you have to have that back and forth. People think, oh, it must be so cool to work on Star Wars. It actually kind of sucks, end quote. That's all for the weekend Long Reads. Suggestions brought to you by

smart touch. The folks at SmartTouch are regular listeners to the show just like you. So if your New Year's resolution was to finally jump into the smart home future, especially if you're in the New York City or D.C. area where they're based, get in touch with SmartTouch at SmartTouchUSA.com. There's two T's in that. SmartTouchUSA.com. Smart technology designed for you. And because these are friends of the pod, if you get in touch to trick out your home, Helden Brian sent you.

That's all for the regular week, everybody. I've been your host, Brian McCullough. We're going to do two bonus episodes this weekend, one Saturday and one Sunday. And I will be doing a regular episode on Monday. Again, the goal here is to work our way toward a full 365 day-a-year show. So that includes holidays now. I'll talk to you again on Monday, but you will hear from me a couple of times. between now and then.

See you soon.