Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 02/08 - The Jeff Bezos Stuff

Episode Date: February 8, 2019

Yes, we’re gonna talk about the Bezos thing, is Amazon reconsidering HQ2, Sprint sues over 5G, maybe digital media is just fine, and the weekend longreads suggestions. Sponsors: FlatironSchool.com/techmeme Metalab.co Links: No thank you, Mr. Pecker (Jeff Bezos on Medium) Facing opposition, Amazon reconsiders NY headquarters site, two officials say (Washington Post) Sprint sues AT&T over its fake 5G branding (Engadget) Google warns about two iOS zero-days 'exploited in the wild' (ZDNet) Can Subscriptions Save All Media Companies, or Just the New York Times? (NYMag) Amid bad news in the industry, Business Insider parent says it crossed $100m revenue mark and is profitable (Digiday) The Weekend Longreads Suggestions: How To Be Awesome At Your Job (Podcast) “Do We Want to Be in Business?” The Strange, Never-Ending Saga of MoviePass (The Ringer) The CRISPR machines that can wipe out entire species (Cnet) Inside Wisconsin’s Disastrous $4.5 Billion Deal With Foxconn (Bloomberg Businessweek) Fortnite Is the Future, but Probably Not for the Reasons You Think (Redef) FINDING LENA, THE PATRON SAINT OF JPEGS (Wired) https://kimberlite.fm/ridehome/ 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 Memeride Home for Friday, February 8th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, yes, we're going to talk about the Bezos thing.

Is Amazon reconsidering its HQ2 in New York thing? Sprint sues over 5G, maybe digital media is just fine after all, and the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Dear listener, if you're wondering how it is that we live in a universe where the lead story will require us to talk about nude photos of Jeff Bezos. Believe me, I'm right there with you in the mouth of madness. Late last night, Jeff Bezos published a post on Medium that began this way, quote, something unusual happened to me yesterday. Actually, for me, it wasn't just unusual. It was a first.

I was made an offer I couldn't refuse, or at least that's what the top people at the National Inquirer thought. I'm glad they thought that because it emboldened them to put it all in right, rather than capitulate to extortion and blackmail, I've decided to publish exactly what they sent me, despite the personal cost and embarrassment they threaten, end quote. Bezos then went on to publish letters, he says he received from National Inquirer owner, AMI, that he said detail threats to publish nude photos belonging to him unless he stopped probing AMI's reporting surrounding the purported intimate texts from Bezos himself. Bezos says that AMI wanted him to cease his personal investigation into the matter,

which is apparently looking into whether or not the leak of the original texts was politically motivated. Bezos obliquely hints at a political connection by specifically mentioning AMI's relationship with President Trump. Also, I saw a Washington Post reporter on the Lawrence O'Donnell show last night saying that Bezos investigation team thinks it's possible that a government entity access his personal texts. As Kiff Leswing tweeted, If the picks were intercepted by a government, it really underscores that the content of any green bubbles, SMS, can be read by carriers and pulled by governments slash law enforcement, end quote. Josh Marshall is speculating that it's the Saudi Arabian government that might be involved somehow. and Bezos did specifically mention the Saudis in his medium piece,

which all leads me to say, first of all, come on Jeff Bezos, you as much as anyone should surely know about encrypted messaging. But that also leads me to say, why was Medium the venue you chose to release this on? But that also leads me to say, allegedly blackmailing the richest man in the world, was that really a good idea? But then that also leads me to say,

what the heck is even going on here? Oh man, the universe of hot takes out there about this is endless. But everyone really is kind of just feeling around in the dark because none of us know what's going on. So let me just do this. Let me quote this graph from Bezos's Medium Post. Quote, of course, I don't want personal photos published, but I also won't participate in their well-known practice

of blackmail, political favors, political attacks, and corruption. I prefer to stand up, roll this log over, and see what crawls out, end quote. Then I'll end with this excellent point from Casey Newton, from his excellent newsletter, The Interface, which you should definitely subscribe to if you haven't already. Quote, the sex columnist Dan Savage has prophesied a day when so many people have had their nudes leak that the threat of them leaking will diminish and people will no longer have to fear losing their jobs over them. Bezos's post feels like an important move. in that regard. Even if the nudes do eventually leak, his move helped to normalize the act of

taking them and sharing them. Five years ago, if your nudes got leaked, the blame was generally on you. Going forward, the blame is going to be on the jerks that stole them, end quote. Is it possible that Amazon's HQ2 might not be coming to New York, after all? Sources are telling the Washington Post that Amazon executives have had internal discussions reassessing the idea of bringing a second headquarters to New York City after a wave of opposition locally here, especially in Queens. Quote, the company has not leased or purchased office space for the project, making it easy to withdraw its commitment. Unlike in Virginia, where elected leaders quickly passed an incentive package for a separate headquarters facility, final approval from New York State is not expected until 2020.

Tennessee officials have also embraced Amazon's plans to bring five. thousand jobs to Nashville, which this week approved 15.2 million in road, sewer, and other improvements related to that project. Amazon executives have had internal discussions recently to reassess the situation in New York and explore alternatives, said the two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about the company's perspective, end quote. Now, I do have a healthy bit of skepticism about this story. I feel like it's a strategic leak. by somebody to calm some of the political opposition that has boiled up here in New York City. Basically, okay, you don't want us. Maybe we'll just leave with the intention being to have the city and the state beg them to stay.

Although, wasn't that the whole point of the billions of dollars in tax breaks that Amazon received? Isn't that what the money's for? Also, I'm sorry, but given today's context, I can't resist quoting Alex Perruy. tweet, quote, I mean, speaking of extortion, end quote, Sprint is suing AT&T over AT&T's 5G evolution branding, claiming that it is false and deceptive advertising that is damaging to the reputation of actual 5G. Quoting and Gadget, in its claim, Sprint said it commissioned a survey that found 54% of consumers believed the 5GE networks on AT&T were the same as or better than 5G, and that 43% think that if they buy an AT&T phone today, it will be 5G capable,

even though neither of those things are true. Sprint's argument is that what AT&T is doing is damaging the reputation of 5G while it works to build out what it calls a, quote, legitimate early entry into the 5G network space, end quote. I'm actually going to bite my tongue here and resist the urge to editorialize on this one, but I will say this. Watch your feed this weekend for a timely weekend bonus episode digging into what exactly 5G really means, the promise, and what we can realistically expect, and when we can expect it. If you haven't updated your devices to the iOS 12.1.4 update, there's another reason to do so.

There are two zero-day vulnerabilities out there, and unless you update your devices now, you're still susceptible to them. Quoting ZDNet. A Google top security engineer has revealed that hackers have been launching attacks against iPhone users using two iOS vulnerabilities. The attacks have happened before Apple had a chance to release iOS 12.1.4 today, meaning the two vulnerabilities are what security experts call zero days. The revelation came in a tweet from Ben Hawks, team leader at Project Zero, Google's elite security team. Hawks did not reveal under what circumstances the two zero days have. been used, end quote. We've spoken a lot about the troubles in the digital media space recently, so I thought

that this was worth noting. It's not all doom and gloom for digital media. Digiday says that, for example, Business Insiders parent company, Insider Inc., just had its best revenue year ever. Quote, Insider Inc., the parent company of Business Insider and General News Spinoff Insider, achieved profitability for the full year in 2018 with total revenue growing 20% year over year, said Pete Spandie, publisher and chief revenue officer of Insider. Spandi declined to provide specific revenue numbers for Insider. In December, Insider CEO Henry Blodgett said the company was on target to hit or get close to $100 million in revenue by the end of 2018, said a source familiar with the matter.

The company has exceeded that mark for the first time, end quote. Add to that, the recent news that the New York Times has reported 709 million in digital revenue for calendar year 2018, which means it's likely on track to hit its target of 800 million a year in digital sales by the end of 2020. Also, interesting, for the first time ever in Q4, digital advertising revenue surpassed print advertising revenue for the New York Times. But the biggest news was that the Times digital subscription business grew 18% last year to $400 million. Given that, Max Reed in New York Magazine asks, can subscriptions save all media companies or just some of them? Business Insider is a mix of subscriptions and digital ads, but so too is the New York Times, basically. it's a super interesting piece that I suggest you read in full.

The TLDR though is that media generally is unlikely to ever drop ads entirely. It's just that the balance of the equation might really be shifting to that, let's say it again, sweet, sweet subscription revenue. But if that is the future, and this is super interesting, one of the assumptions in this rush to subscriptions, to there's one app I use for entertainment, one app I use to buy food, one app I use for transportation, and someday I'll just pay a regular recurring subscription to get my needs met by all of these.

One assumption in that theoretical future world is that it's usually a winner-takes-all situation when this happens. Currently, we're used to a universe of news and media entities, but in a subscription universe, is there room for only one or two? and actually maybe the New York Times is furthest along towards becoming one of those. Quote, like a software platform, the Times can grow unimpeded.

Its attractiveness to both readers and writers only increasing while its rivals are left out in the cold. It's true that for now people seem to be willing to pay for more than one subscription, even for largely overlapping coverage. But if the Times or one of its rivals can sufficiently chip away at its competitors, poaching journalists, generating big stories, and attracting larger audiences in that same virtuous cycle, it could potentially crowd other papers out. Why pay for two or more subscriptions if everything you want comes in one paper, end quote?

That was a bit of a long read, so that must mean it's time for the weekend long reads suggestions brought to you this week by no one in particular. If you're interested in sponsoring the long reads each Friday, do get in touch at podcast at techmeme.com. We do, of course, have a podcast recommendation this week. This week I thought I'd find something in the direction of self-improvement. So I'm going to recommend the podcast, How to Be Awesome at Your Job. Every week, Pete Makedas interviews thought leaders and what he calls results getters

to discover specific actionable insights that will boost your performance at work, whatever that work might be. Pete is coming up on 400 episodes at this point, so you're bound to find some great advice among the many guests he's had over the years. Some of the recent topics have included embracing emotion at work, maximizing your mental energy, preventing burnout, and how not to suck at managing. If this sounds interesting, search your podcast app for how to be awesome at your job. First up for the long reads, the ringer gives us a deep dive into the never-ending saga of movie pass,

which I believe at the time of this recording is still alive. To say that the story of MoviePass is circuitous and confusing would be an understatement. And there's plenty of interesting anecdotes in this story. For one, it was the weekend that Mission Impossible came out last year that nearly put Movie Pass in the grave and made it first limit its customer's usage. But also, according to MoviePass's own internal numbers, MoviePass users accounted for 6% of overall movie ticket purchases in the first half of 2018. And 2018 was a record year for the movie industry.

Admissions were up 4%. So how much of that was the movie pass effect? Next, CNET has an absolutely gobsmacking piece about the CRISPR machines that could potentially wipe out entire species. You know CRISPR, that cutting-edge generation. genetic engineering tool that can basically edit genes. Well, this piece talks about gene drives, a technique using CRISPR that could in a few generations literally wipe out selected populations of flora or fauna.

The idea would be that you could wipe out, say, malaria carrying mosquitoes or other harmful species. But this would basically give us total power over natural selection. itself. Quote, playing the game of genomes means we may in the future choose which species live and which die. A near unbelievable capability that scientists and ethicists agree presents us with unique moral, social, and ethical challenges, end quote. And I haven't talked about this much, so this is a bit of a catch-up with a complicated story that continues to evolve, but I just didn't get to. You might have heard that Foxconn was supposed to create a manufacturing facility in Wisconsin

at one point. And at one point, promised to employ 13,000 workers there. The state of Wisconsin gave $4.5 billion in tax incentives for Foxcon to do so. Well, to say that the reality hasn't matched up to the promise would be putting it mildly. Check out the Bloomberg piece for a whole TikTok of what is increasingly looking like an expensive boondoggle. And please read this piece. Matthew Ball is the former head of strategy at Amazon Studios. For a year or so now, he's been writing long, multi-part analyses of Netflix and the whole streaming wars theater of war. Well, he's back with another amazing piece.

This time about Fortnite. Fortnite is the future, Ball says, but probably not for reasons you'd think. TLDR. You know that whole virtual reality slash social network future that VCs have been spending billions over the last several years to try to bring into fruition. Well, it looks like while no one was looking, Fortnite just went and did it. Something, something, something metaverse, something, snow crash. If you listen to my A16Z podcast with Chris Dixon last December, the analogy that we used

to the early web is super strong here. As I said then, sometimes just barely good enough is more than good. enough. And finally, this is a little nugget of computing history that pops up from time to time, and it's resurfaced again with a new angle. Lena Forsen was Miss November in the pages of Playboy in 1972. Computer researchers used her centerfold to test their latest compression algorithms. The result? The JPEG. Well, Wired has a piece up where they got in touch with the 67-year-old Ms. Forzen to see how she feels about her seeming immortality in tech history lore. But also, they delve into the tricky gender issues involved in venerating women as almost

disembodied avatars in tech development throughout history. The list is almost endless, actually. There's Suzanne Vega's vocals from Tom's Diner, which led to the creation of the MP3, for example. But then there's also, like the female voices that are used for most voice assistants like Siri, or even think about the movie her. It's an interesting look at how using women in this sort of pedestal way in tech history can act as an excluding force for women in tech more generally. That is all for today. I've been your host, Brian McCullough. I haven't bugged you guys for ratings and reviews of the podcast in a while. We've gotten a bunch of new listeners since the new year. So if that is you, if you're one of the new listeners and you've never rated or reviewed the podcast, do that on a while.

whatever platform you listen on or wherever you can find to rate and review us. I was just on Apple Podcasts this afternoon, and we've gotten a bunch of new five-star ratings there, but we haven't gotten a written review since December 12th. So if one of you wanted to change that, I'll tweet you a smile over the weekend, if you let me know. Talk to you on Monday.