Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 03/26 – The House Tech Hearings Were… Whatever…

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 Tech meme right home for Friday, March 26, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. The House Tech hearings were a big nothing burger, but I'll try to explain what that means. Apple is considering a more rugged Apple Watch. Slack is doing a Clubhouse clone and Stories. WeWork is back with

Starting point is 00:00:53 us back. And of course, the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. So the big House tech hearings yesterday were, I mean, they were, I mean, they were whatever. They were sort of infuriating to listen to while somehow at the same time being completely boring. No real news was made while at the same time there were all of the usual flashpoints erupting all over again that we could cover. Let me lean on how the tech meme editors summarized it on page last night. The tech house hearings revealed unorganized lawmakers who conflated issues of competition, privacy, and moderation, and were unable to move past personal grievances. Lawmakers accused CEOs of being evasive and condescending. CEOs seemed

Starting point is 00:01:42 barely able to restrain their exasperation with gotcha yes-no questions. Oh, and a lot of folks can't seem to be bothered to learn how to pronounce Sundar Pichai's name. Though, given my own track record for butchering people's names, I guess I shouldn't throw stones. Anyway, here's how McKina Kelly summed it up for the verge, quote, In the middle of Congress's first hearing of the year with the chief executives of Facebook, Google, and Twitter on Thursday, Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, tweeted out a poll. It was just a question mark with two answers, yes and no. It was an obvious troll directed at the lawmakers questioning Dorsey, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, over the roles their platforms have played in spreading misinformation and inciting a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol earlier this year. With limited time for questioning, the members would interrupt the CEO's responses asking,

Starting point is 00:02:30 for yes or no answers or nothing at all. But while the hearing was focused on finding solutions for some of the most serious free speech conflicts in history, Dorsey's tweet symbolized just how seriously everyone was taking it. Not very seriously at all. In some cases, lawmakers were asking the tech executives to do more than they're able to achieve themselves. Representative Doris Matsui pushed the executives on the rise of anti-Asian violence and hate speech, for example. But as rightly pointed out by my boss, Nilai Patel, on Twitter, the U.S. doesn't have any hate speech policies, and it would be difficult to get any related bill passed. When do hearings fail to force the change Congress says it once? On Thursday,

Starting point is 00:03:13 it seemed like we were quickly approaching that threshold. From Zuckerberg and Pachai, little new information was uncovered, Dorsey favored, favorited tweets and sent out silly polls. It doesn't seem as if the House has moved any closer to drafting real legislative reforms. In other words, Congress has failed to move past airing their personal grievances and toward providing real solutions, end quote. Sources are telling Mark German that Apple is considering launching an Apple Watch with more rugged casing as soon as late 2021 or early 2022, which would be aimed at athletes, hikers, and the like, quote.

Starting point is 00:03:55 This is at least the second time Apple has mulled a rugged smartwatch. After launching the first version of the Apple Watch in 2015, the company weighed a new model to better appeal to extreme sports athletes. The current version is still popular with runners, hikers, and swimmers, and Apple has added several sports and activity tracking features via its annual update cycle. However, Cassio and other watchmakers have seen strong sales from sturdier product designs with extra protection. If Apple goes ahead this time, the rugged version would be an additional model similar to how

Starting point is 00:04:26 Apple offers a low-cost option called the Apple Watch SE and special editions co-branded with Nike and Hermes. Sometimes dubbed the Explorer Edition inside Apple. The product would have the same functionality as a standard Apple Watch, but with extra impact resistance and protection in the vein of Cassio's G-shock watches. The latest Apple Watch models are already water-resistant to 50 meters at the high end for most smart watches, but Apple could make a new device more rugged by giving it a rubberized exterior that would be useful for environments where the current aluminum, titanium, and stainless

Starting point is 00:05:00 the steel cases might be prone to damage. Apple is also working on new swim tracking features for Apple Watch. The company typically launches new models in September. Last year, it rolled out the lower-cost Apple Watch SE and added a faster processor and blood oxygen sensor with the Apple Watch Series 6, end quote. If you had a bingo card, it would be fun to see how this one segment might hit

Starting point is 00:05:28 like a lot of our recent hot button topics. Last night in Josh Constine's regular clubhouse room known as press club, Stuart Butterfield revealed that Slack will introduce audio messages and a clubhouse-like feature that will allow users to drop into rooms without an invitation, which makes a ton of sense to me, at least that last part. It's sort of like the virtual version of the in-real-life practice of grabbing a conference room and being like, hey, everyone jump in here real quick and let's hash this thing out. But also, wait for it, Slack is going to add stories, quoting protocol. Butterfield's

Starting point is 00:06:04 said that a feature for leaving audio messages similar to a function available in messaging apps like Telegram was available in a beta test. He also said that Slack would soon offer a feature akin to the audio chat app clubhouse, which allows users to drop into rooms for conversations without requiring scheduling a meeting or initiating a call. Butterfield also said Slack would soon get an ephemeral video message feature commonly known as stories, similar to a message format originated by Snapchat and imitated by many from Instagram to LinkedIn. Butterfield, indicated these features were on Slack's roadmap back in October. The new features come as Slack is making a push to turn its tool for internal company communications into a broader company-to-company

Starting point is 00:06:44 message service. The announcement appeared to catch Butterfield's soon-to-be boss, Salesforce C-OO Brett Taylor, by surprise. Apparently the way to find out about all the cool, unreleased Slack features is to invite Stewart to do a clubhouse, he tweeted. Salesforce's pending acquisition of Slack is getting scrutinized by the Department of Justice, but Salesforce said in a filing that it still expects the deal to close by the end of July, end quote. And WeWork is back, baby. In fact, it's maybe more back than it's ever been when you remember and consider that the thing that made the whole WeWork saga unravel in the first place was a failed attempt to push an IPO out the door. Sources are telling the Wall Street Journal that WeWork has agreed to merge with a SPAC in a deal that would take the startup public at a $9 billion valuation including debt. What was the valuation we work got in that last round from SoftBank in the before times and

Starting point is 00:07:47 really what seems like a whole other era back when Adam Newman was still this startup visionary? Let's fire up the old tech meme search. Ah yes, $47 billion. So this would be quite a come down from that. Quoting the Wall Street Journal. The planned merger with the Boe-Eymea. Acquisition Corp values WeWork at a $9 billion valuation including debt.

Starting point is 00:08:12 The companies announced Friday confirming an earlier Wall Street Journal report. As part of the deal, WeWork would raise $1.3 billion, including $800 million in what is called a private investment in public equity, or pipe from Insight Partners, funds managed by Starwood Capital Group, Fidelity Management, and others. Bo Capital Management, the SPAC sponsor, is run by Vivek Ronadivay, owner of the NBA's Sacramento Kings and founder of TIBCO software. The venture firm lists basketball great Shaquille O'Neill as an advisor. The SPAC raised $420 million last year as an empty shell and then set out to find a business to combine with, as these vehicles do. Its shares rose 3.7% to $10, 10 cents in

Starting point is 00:08:55 pre-market trading following announcement of the deal, end quote. Time for the weekend long-read suggestions. And this week there were so many that I wanted to include that I couldn't whittle the number down. So I'm just going to include the whole list, which is more than I normally include, and to make up, I'll just maybe not quote as extensively from each one. But links to all are, of course, in the show notes. First up, that strategic shift at Intel that was announced this week might prove to be the biggest news of the week if it ends up working out for them. I mentioned that Ben Thompson has been screaming at Intel to do something similar to what they announced for years, and in his free newsletter this week, Ben breaks down exactly why he feels this could be the thing that saves Intel.

Starting point is 00:09:45 Also, I mentioned this week that Medium has this long tortured history of pivoting and pivoting and pivoting and pivoting and again, and leaving a trail of unemployed journalists in their wake. If you want the literal TikTok of Medium's evolutions, Neiman Lab has a piece that outlines it all meticulously over the last. last decade. Next is Microsoft really taking a run at Discord, as has been rumored. There's actually more reporting today that suggests they really are. And this piece from Bloomberg attempts to suss out exactly why. Like, what is Microsoft's strategy here? Quote, the answer in Chief Executive Officer Sachin Nadella's mind is clear, quote, creation, creation, creation. The next 10 years is going to be

Starting point is 00:10:32 as much about creation as it is about consumption and about the community around it. So it's not creating alone, Nadella said in an interview last month. If the last 10 years has been about consumption, we're shopping more, we're browsing more, we're binge watching more, there is creation behind every one of those, but I see that phenomenon being much more democratized, end quote. For Nadella, the next decade of growth in cloud computing and internet use will be defined not by people watching and buying, but by those who are generating and exchanging their own content in different thriving groups, though he wasn't referring specifically to acquisition strategies. His past purchases and current wishlist illustrate that Nadella is eager to

Starting point is 00:11:13 control some of the means of production, end quote. Next, I haven't covered it, but did you hear about BitClout this week? It's a blockchain thing. It's a vaguely NFT-like thing. And it's also a social thing in the sense that it's trying to harness fame and the power of creators. And, well, actually, that's kind of the point. If you've been hearing about people tweet about this all week, I've got two explainers for you, one from Axios and one from TechCrunch. Let me quote from the Axios one, quote. BitCloud has divided even the industry's top investors with some openly backing it in hopes it's the next social media on the blockchain success, while others are staying far away. The cap table includes some of the biggest names like Sequoia, andresen Horowitz, Coinbase Ventures,

Starting point is 00:11:55 WinkleVos Capital, and a host of celebrities. Still, some are wary. You can currently put Bitcoin into the site, but you can't withdraw it. The project's lead founder, says his well-connected backers might help exchange listings materialize soon. Here's how it works. BitCloud takes the profiles of popular Twitter personalities and ascribes a dollar value to their output. Participants can then buy and sell various creator coins with Bitcoin and ideally profit. At the top of the pack is Elon Musk, whose unclaimed profile on the site is commanding $7,825 per token. A run-of-the-mill crypto influencer is fetching around 500. Chamath Polyapitia, who briefly flirted with running for California's

Starting point is 00:12:36 governorship, appears to be the priciest claimed account at $42,820 per token. Yes, but no one gave permission for their Twitter brands to be monetized. While BitClout's pseudonymous founder Diamond Hands told CoinDesks Brady Dale that the site, quote, creates innovative ways for creators to monetize and provides a new business model that's not ad-driven anymore, this argument has been unpersuasive to many prominent members of the crypto industry who are generally salty about their Twitter profiles being scraped and monetized without their consent. At least one unhappy technologist whose profiles showed up on BitClout without his permission sent the company's alleged real-life leader a cease-end-diss letter on Tuesday, end quote. And I'm still keeping an eye on this

Starting point is 00:13:23 because I think this is a big, big deal. Reuters takes a look at how suddenly every country feels like it needs a homegrown semiconductor industry in sort of the same way that every country has always strategically needed its own access to energy sources. Quote, governments around the world are subsidizing the construction of semiconductor factories as a chip shortage hobbles the auto and electronics industries and highlights the world's singular dependence on Taiwan for vital supplies. But beyond a consensus that something must be done to diversify supplies, divisions over strategy are emerging along with concerns that free-spending governments could spur overbuilding in an industry that has historically been

Starting point is 00:14:03 highly cyclical. Governments in the United States, the European Union, and Japan are contemplating spending tens of billions of dollars on cutting-edge fabs or chip fabrication plants, as unease grows that more than two-thirds of advanced computing chips are manufactured in Taiwan. Earlier this week, a top U.S. military commander told U.S. lawmakers that a Chinese takeover of the island was the military's foremost concern in the Pacific. China has also offered a myriad of subsidies to the chip industry as it tries to reduce its dependence on Western technology, including setting up a $29 billion investment fund in 2019, helping feed arguments that Western governments need to step up.

Starting point is 00:14:43 The need for chip plants outside Asia has helped prompt Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company or TSM, and Samsung Electronics, the only two chip contract manufacturers capable of making the most advanced computing chips, to draw up plans for new factories in the United States and vie for what could be $30 billion or more in U.S. subsidies, end quote. Then, this is sort of beyond my ken, but developers, this is for you. Ars Technica has what looks like a super interesting piece looking at what it calls FreeBSD 13's Close Call, how 40,000 lines of flawed code almost made it into FreeBSD's

Starting point is 00:15:21 kernel. The Wall Street Journal has a look at how, as VC firms have long-backed startups using AI for business, VCs themselves are beginning to adopt AI to make their investment decisions. Quote, AI's ability to recognize patterns in data and predict likely outcomes has raised hopes that it can play a bigger role in decision-making in fields such as finance and health care. Now, similar bets are being placed in venture capital. Finally, we're at the tipping point where that gut feel is going to be transformed using artificial intelligence, says Gartner analyst Alistair Woodcock.

Starting point is 00:15:54 These are nascent efforts, but one forecast suggests. adoption is about to pick up. AI will be involved in 75% of venture capital investment decisions by 2025 up from less than 5% today, according to a recent Gartner forecast, end quote. And we've obviously been obliquely mentioning the concerns about the carbon footprint the crypto world has in our real world. And I've been looking around for a balanced explainer of this issue. So I want to point you to the article I found from decrypt, since decrypt is of the crypto industry themselves. I was hoping they would be the most balanced about it. Quote, Bitcoin is at a crossroads. On one hand, Bitcoin holders can point to its recent price

Starting point is 00:16:37 surge as a sign of its sustainable appeal for retail and institutional investors. But its underlying system is more energy inefficient than anything the financial world has ever seen. Supporters can dismiss these issues or approach them as a joke, or they can retort that its carbon footprint is only a fraction of the world's total carbon emissions. But the argument is completely context-dependent. When compared to Visa transactions or smartphone charging, Bitcoin looks anything but green, end quote. And finally, this week, I can't resist putting on the old history hat, Mac OS10 is turning 20. PC magazine takes a look back at the operating system that helped save Apple, quote.

Starting point is 00:17:17 The arrival of OS10 was itself, perhaps the most significant turning point in the history of the Mac. It was a result of Steve Jobs coming back to Apple in 1997, along with his next company's operating system software, on which OS10 was partly based. It may be hard to believe today, with Apple now a trillion-dollar company, but prior to that triumphant return, Apple's computers were in a perilous position, with some even thinking the brand might not survive. PCMag's first appraisal of the new OS10 was not encouraging. It begins, Mac users, you're not going to like this. Not at first, anyway, and maybe not even for a day or two. An operating system upgrade is supposed to make your life easier, not force you to spend

Starting point is 00:17:56 hours figuring out how to perform everyday tasks, end quote. The piece then goes on to outline everything that OS10 begat, including iTunes and the iPod, the original switch to Intel chips, and the idea of free. Remember how that was radical at the time, free software updates to your OS. That's all for this week, though I do have a whole bunch of notes for you. First, ride home plus subscribers, about an hour or two, you should see the office hours episode with VC legend Chris Frailich of first round capital. Chris is a bit of a friend, as I mentioned before. So this is one of the more personal office hours that we've done so far. It was also, personally, one of the more fun interviews I've done in quite a while. And then everyone tonight on, I believe, Clubhouse, but it

Starting point is 00:18:56 might end up being spaces. Chris and I are doing another roundtable room tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern 6 p.m. Pacific. At least, as I said, I think it's Clubhouse. If you don't see us on Clubhouse, maybe swing by Twitter and see if we did a space. And having said that, look for a weekend bonus episode that constitutes the audio from these experiments this week. We have the full ability to record all of the audio from all of our rooms and spaces now. So as a bonus episode this weekend, I'm going to edit together and put out tomorrow the majority of the recording of both rooms we did this week. The one on Monday was about two hours long.

Starting point is 00:19:33 Tonight's is probably going to go just as long, so I don't think I'll give you the full four hours. I'll edit together, maybe the best from both sessions, but I will give you something that will be at least two hours, maybe even three. What is the point of all of this? Well, I'm not sure yet, but let me give you my existing thoughts here. radio, traditional non-music radio, has functioned well in two ways.

Starting point is 00:19:59 Either you've got your news programs like NPR or you've got your talk radio like Rush Limbaugh or Howard Stern or the universe of sports talk radio. In other words, you can have brief sort of tune in to get the news sort of programming, get what you missed, get in, get out, and we've got that covered with this show, right? But also with talk radio, you have hours-long shows where people sit and marry, in the news, kick ideas around, and as an audience you can either leave it on in the background as you're doing other things, or, you know, just lean back and marinate in it. So what if eventually we can have both sides of the coin? What if we keep doing the daily podcast every day, of course,

Starting point is 00:20:40 but then also gave you, on some regular schedule, hours long lean back listening as we delve into the issues of a given day or week? Maybe we would do this as regular weekend bonus episodes inside your existing podcast feeds, or maybe we break it out as a completely separate podcast with its own feed. So then, however you chose to consume it, you could get your usual quick 20-minute hit of news that you get here every day, but also hours of lean back and listen and marinate in the issues, sort of listening, sort of like what Leo Leport has done for 20 years. News bulletins, regular rides home, and talk radio in some form. As I say, we're still experimenting, Right now, that's where I think we're headed.

Starting point is 00:21:25 Take a listen to the bonus episode this weekend, and you'll see what we're kind of groping towards. Talk to you on Monday.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 03/26 – The House Tech Hearings Were… Whatever…

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.