Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 03/27 - Apple's Covid-19 App

Episode Date: March 27, 2020

Apple has released an official Covid-19 App. Kuo says Arm-based Macbooks are coming next year. Sony is spinning off a lot of the parts of itself that make it a tech company. Instacart workers are planning a nationwide strike on Monday. And, of course, the weekend longreads suggestions. Sponsors: Metalab.co Kiwico.com/ride Links: Apple releases new COVID-19 app and website based on CDC guidance (Apple Newsroom) Kuo: Apple to Launch Several Macs With Arm-Based Processors in 2021, USB4 Support Coming to Macs in 2022 (MacRumors) Sony Spins Off Camera Business Into Separate Company (PetaPixel) Instacart’s Gig Workers Are Planning a Massive, Nationwide Strike (Motherboard) Weekend Longreads Suggestions: Everything Is So Fucked, You Might As Well Get A Facebook Portal (Buzzfeed News) We Need A Massive Surveillance Program (IdleWords.com) Bosses Panic-Buy Spy Software to Keep Tabs on Remote Workers (Bloomberg) Why Don’t We Just Ban Targeted Advertising? (Wired) DJI Won the Drone Wars, and Now It’s Paying the Price (BusinessWeek) We visited a small Virginia town where drone deliveries have begun for real (Input Magazine) 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, March 27th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. Apple has released an official COVID-19 app.

Ming Chi Kuo says arm-based MacBooks are coming next year. Sony is spinning off a lot of the parts of itself that make it a tech company. Instacart workers are planning on a nationwide strike on Monday. And of course, the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Just a few minutes ago, Apple launched a new COVID-19. app and website that is based on CDC guidance, quoting the post in Apple's newsroom that just announced all this. The new COVID-19 website and COVID-19 app available on the app store were created in

partnership with the CDC, the coronavirus task force, and FEMA to make it easy for people across the country to get trusted information and guidance at a time when the U.S. is feeling the heavy burden of COVID-19. The COVID-19 app and website allow users to answer a series of questions around risk factors, recent exposure and symptoms for themselves or a loved one. In turn, they will receive CDC recommendations on next steps, including guidance on social distancing and self-isolation, how to closely monitor symptoms, whether or not a test is recommended at this time, and when to contact a medical provider. This new screening tool is designed to be a resource for individuals and does not replace

instructions from a health care provider or guidance from state and local health authorities. The app and website also offer access to resources to help people stay informed and get the support they need. Users will receive answers to frequently ask questions about COVID-19, including who is most at risk and how to recognize symptoms. In addition, they will learn the most up-to-date information from the CDC like best practices for washing hands, disinfecting surfaces, and monitoring symptoms, end quote. Again, our buddy Minchi Quo is absolutely on fire with Apple Rumors this month. Today, Quo asserts that Apple will, in fact, launch several Mac notebooks and desktop computers, utilizing its own arm-based chips sometime in the first quarter of 2021.

Also, support for USB 4 will be coming to Macs in 2022, quoting from Mac rumors. USB 4 converges the Thunderbolt and USB protocols as part of Intel's goal to make Thunderbolt available on a royalty-free basis, which should result in wider and cheaper, availability of Thunderbolt accessories like Docs and EGPUs. As USB4 is based on Thunderbolt 3, it offers data transfer speeds up to 40 GbPS, which is twice as fast as the bandwidth of the latest USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 specification. USB 4's underlying Thunderbolt 3 protocol also means the specification supports up to 2 4K displays or 1 5K display over a single cable. The simplest way to view USB4 is as a Thunderbolt 3, but royalty-free for manufacturers. Intel will continue to offer Thunderbolt

3 on a standalone basis with a few advantages over USB 4, including more support with reference designs and technical issues for manufacturers, end quote. Sony today announced that it is planning to take its consumer electronics, imaging, and mobile businesses, basically a lot of the stuff that makes Sony a tech company, and spin them out into a separate holding company that will be called Sony Electronics Corporation. This is scheduled to happen on April 1st, and no, I do not believe that this is an April Fool's joke, quoting from Petapixel. The news comes less than 24 hours after reports that activist investor Daniel Loeb was increasing his substantial stake in Sony in order to, quote, push for changes that include shedding some businesses, end quote. We can't know,

if this move is related to Loeb's repeated requests, but he's been pushing to break Sony apart into separate companies for some time. In 2013, he suggested funneling cash from the camera division into Sony Entertainment, and last year, he demanded that Sony split off its image sensor business. Up until now, Sony has resisted those demands going so far as to publish an eight-page letter explaining why it's better for technology and entertainment to exist under one roof. This move seems to indicate a change of heart, end quote. Instacart workers say they are planning a nationwide strike on Monday after they claim Instacart failed to offer protections for workers such as hazard pay, hand sanitizer, and paid leave.

The March 30th walkout will build on a wave of Wildcat strikes sweeping across the country. In recent days, Amazon warehouse workers in Queens, New York, sanitation workers in Pittsburgh, and poultry plant workers at Purdue farms in Georgia have all walked off the job, demanding greater protections from coronavirus and leading to calls for a general strike or mass strike action across the country. Meanwhile, the upcoming Instacart strike will mark the first time gig workers in the United States, who face the double bind of working on the front lines of the virus and lacking basic labor protections like health care and paid sick days, have walked off the job in response to coronavirus. Quote, while Instacart's corporate employees are working from home,

Instacart's gig workers are working on the front lines in the capacity of first responders, said Vanessa Bain, a lead organizer of the upcoming Instacart walkout and an Instacart gig worker in Menlo Park, California. Quote, Instacart's corporate employees are provided with health insurance, life insurance, and paid time off, and are also eligible for sick pay and paid family leave. By contrast, it's gig workers who are putting their lives on the line to maintain daily operations, are afforded none of these protections. Without us, Instacart will grind to a halt.

We deserve and demand better, end quote. To date, Instacart, like its Silicon Valley Peers at Uber, Lyft, Postmates, and DoorDash, has offered up to two weeks of paid sick leave to gig workers only if they test positive for COVID-19 at a time when tests are in short supply. That offer only lasts until April 8th before the worst of the pandemic is set to hit. For many gig workers who live paycheck to paycheck, this means there's no other option but to work while sick. And for others with increased risk for contracting the virus, it means going without pay, end quote. Meta Lab is one of the few design agencies in the world that can take a product idea from end to end, from napkin sketch to real shipped product.

Let's talk about MetaLab's work for Coinbase. Coinbase approached MetaLab because they wanted content that would provide a clear and engaging introduction to both crypto and Coinbase. itself. MetaLab had to explain a new technology in a way that was universally understandable. That meant out with technical jargon that scares away normal folks. That meant a simple and striking website that made the mysterious world of crypto clear and accessible. Here's a direct quote from Coinbase's Brian Armstrong. MetaLab has one of the best interface design teams in the world. Their work has the power to change your business. High praise indeed and MetaLab wants to do for you what they did for Coinbase and so many others.

They want to bring that same creativity and clarity to your project. Check them out at Metalab.co. That's Metalab.com. And when you get in touch, tell them Brian sent you. Time for the weekend Longreed suggestions. Still very coronavirus heavy this week, but I'll try harder to get a greater number of non-corona long reads next week, I promise. first up, and this is surprising to me, as anyone, but Katie Natopoulos at BuzzFeed makes what I have to say is a compelling case that Facebook's portal device is now maybe the right device for our times. Quote, now is the time for video chatting. Of course, there are plenty of options. Zoom has emerged as a top choice, but it has a limitation, a 40-minute cap on free chats. Of course, there's FaceTime, but that only works if you both have iPhones. There are.

are Skype, Google Hangouts, and WhatsApp, and I don't know, a bunch of other less popular things like software designed for businesses to do conference calls like blue jeans or go-to-meeting. Those are fine, I guess, but no one likes them. The Facebook portal, however, sparks joy. The smart camera is capable of following you around the room. You say creepy, I say clever, which is great for small children who don't want to calmly sit for a video conference like a Victorian lady posing for a camera for minutes and minutes. Most importantly, it can capture a very wide,

angle, which means it's extremely good at fitting two or more people into frame without them having to awkwardly squish their heads together. On a recent visit, I set up a Facebook portal in my parents' kitchen. I have the portal TV hooked up to my big television at home, and for the first time last week, video chatting with them was an actual delight. I could see them, and they could see me and my small child who also loved the experience. We watched my father blow out birthday candles on a cake and sang, truly a hallmark moment, thanks to Big Zuckerberg, end quote. I'm not joking. This piece has kind of convinced me. I'm really considering picking one of these up in the near future. Next, another compelling argument, this time from a blog I've followed for years,

from a longtime web developer whose name I've never been able to pronounce and I won't even try to do so now. But at idlewords.com, this blogger makes what I have to say is another compelling case. given Corona, might it be time for a mass surveillance program, the likes of which, the likes of me, would never have even been willing to countenance before now? Quote, every one of us now carries a mobile tracking device that leaves a permanent trail of location data. This data is individually identifiable, precise to within a few meters, and is harvested by a remarkable variety of devices and corporations, including the large tech companies, internet service providers, hand-set manufacturers, mobile, companies retail stores and in one infamous case, public trash cans on a London street. Anyone who has this data can retroactively construct the movements of a person of interest and track who they have been in proximity to over the past several days. Such a data set combined with aggressive

testing offers the potential to trace entire chains of transmission in real time and give early warning to those at highest risk. This surveillance sounds like a dystopian fantasy, but it exists today, ready for use. All of the necessary data is being collected and stored already. The only thing missing is a collective effort to pool it and make it available to public health authorities, along with a mechanism to bypass the few federal privacy laws that prevent the government from looking at the kind of data the private sector can collect without restraint, end quote. And staying on that surveillance tip, forget toilet paper. Bloomberg reports on how your boss has probably recently panic-bought spy software in order to keep track of all of us

remote workers. Along with InnerGuard, software makers include Time Doctor, Teramind, Veraclock, Interactive, Active Track, and Hubstaff. All provide a combination of screen monitoring and productivity metrics, such as a number of emails sent, to reassure managers that their charges are doing their jobs. ActiveTrack's inbound request have tripled in recent weeks, according to CEO. Rita Salvagi. Teramind has seen a similar increase, said Ellie Sutton, Vice President of Global Operations, and Jim Mazotas, Interactive's founder, said phones have been ringing off the hook.

Managers using InterGuard software can be notified if an employee does a combination of worrisome behaviors, such as printing both a confidential client list and a resume, an indication that someone is quitting and taking their book of business with them. It's not because of lack of trust, Miller said, who compared the software to banks using security cameras. it's because it's imprudent not to do it, end quote. Moving off of coronavirus stories finally, Wired makes an interesting point. Forget about fighting with Facebook or YouTube or whomever

about their various content and ad policies. They all have different policies, of course, but they all do the same underlying thing, targeted ads. So instead of arguing all the fine points, why not just ban the practice of targeted advertising full stop if you really feel like social media and digital platform ads are so harmful. Quote, the solution to our privacy problems, suggested Hansen, was actually quite simple. If companies couldn't use our data to target ads, they would have no reason to gobble it up

in the first place, and no opportunity to do mischief with it later. From that fact, flowed a straightforward fix, ban the right of companies to use personal data for advertising targeting, end quote. if Hanson's proffer, that targeted advertising is at the heart of everything wrong with the internet and should be outlawed sounds radical, that's because it is. It cuts to the core of how some of the most profitable companies in the world make their money. The journalist David Dayan argued a similar case in 2018 for the New Republic, and since then the idea has quietly been gaining adherence. Now it's taken hold in certain parts of academia, think tank world, and Silicon Valley, end quote. and Businessweek looks at drone maker DJI and says that DJI has basically won the drone wars. DJI has 77% of the drone market. So why is the company suddenly finding itself in such uncertain times? I don't know. Trade wars, coronavirus, a fraud scandal.

DJI kind of seems to be in the apex of everything that's going on right now. That's worrisome at the moment. quote, the company's future suddenly seems uncertain. Talk of an initial public offering, which never came to pass, has been replaced by headlines documenting an internal fraud scandal that cost DJI $150 million. The trade war between China and the U.S. hasn't helped, nor has the outbreak of novel coronavirus, COVID-19, which shut down the Chinese economy in January and is now threatening the company's biggest market, the U.S. Some of these problems stemmed from DJI's total dominance of the drone business. American anxiety is about.

China's influence, especially anything involving computers, extend naturally to the steady supply of robots buzzing overhead. And within the industry itself, the company's tireless drive to improve its products and lower prices has sucked so much of the profit out of the market for consumer and corporate drones that even Wang has little choice but to fund expansions into cameras, robotics, and most controversially, drones sometimes used for surveillance by big companies and government bodies. As one former employee puts it, Frank has created a race to the bottom and now he's competing against himself, end quote. And finally, just to pair that with a similar story, Input Magazine has a look at a town in Virginia where medical supplies are already today being delivered via drone. Wing is currently looking at other sites across the U.S. and future partnerships may lead to coffee and restaurant deliveries, which are already happening in Australia.

according to Alex Dennett, head of marketing and communications for Wing. The future could also lead to home services outside of the realm of retail. Quote, let's say you left your sweater at a friend's house, Dennett says. You won't have to hop in your car, pick up the sweater, and go back home again. You could send a drone instead, end quote. That is all for today. No weekend bonus episodes this weekend, because I need like 24 hours of just, you know, checking nothing. No news for 24 hours.

Please don't let anything happen for at least a day. Thank you very much. Talk to you all on Monday. Penny, would you like to say anything? You heard of Papa saying that I was playing Zelda with him. Now here my brother comes in, and now we have so much fun. We complete the first Divine Beast, but it's the last one we had to do. And it was easy, peasy, lemon squeezy.

One part, we didn't have to unfollow the internet. So bye. See you on Monday, everybody.