Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 04/05 - Alexa is Coming for AirPods

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, April 5th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Google scraps the AI ethics board. Alexa is coming for AirPods. The Bezosus divorce is settled. Snap reminds everyone they're pretty darn good at inventing weird stuff and the weekend Longreads suggestions. Here's what you

Starting point is 00:00:54 missed today in the world of tech. Well, if it was a thinly disguised and poorly conceived PR stunt, as those critics I told you about yesterday had alleged, then it was also a brief and disastrous one. Google says it is dissolving its week-old AI ethics board following the controversy I told you about yesterday surrounding several members of that board. Vox's Kelsey Piper has been all over this story, and she wrote today, quote,

Starting point is 00:01:26 Thursday afternoon, a Google spokesperson told Vox that the company has decided to dissolve the panel called the Advanced Technology External Advisory Council or ATAC entirely. Here's the company's statement in full, quote. It's become clear that in the current environment, ATEAC can't function as we wanted. So we're ending the council and going back to the drawing board. We'll continue to be responsible in our work on the important issues

Starting point is 00:01:53 that AI raises and will find different ways of getting outside opinions on those topics, end quote. sources are telling Mark German that Amazon is readying AirPod-like wireless earbuds with Alexa built-in for release as early as the second half of this year. The product is coming out of Amazon's Lab 126 hardware division which apparently has also been working on a home robot powered by Alexa codenamed Vest.

Starting point is 00:02:27 Quoting from German, the headphones will let people use their voice to order goods, access music, weather, and other information on the go. The Amazon Digital Assistant will be summoned by saying, A-L-E-X-A, there will be physical gesture controls, such as tapping to pick up and end calls, and switch between songs, the people said. Amazon declined to comment, end quote.

Starting point is 00:02:50 A couple of interesting vectors to consider in this story, as German notes in the piece, one of Amazon's biggest problems strategically has been that it lacks a mobile platform, which competitors like Google and Apple have, of course. Remember that failed fire phone? As time goes on, it's becoming increasingly clear how monumental that failure was in terms of the course of tech platforms and tech history. But funny enough, that failure did push Amazon into the Home Voice Assistant market, where they have had surprising success. Meanwhile, arguably Apple's most successful product launch of recent years has been their earbuds,

Starting point is 00:03:35 and people have been following all over themselves to point out how they can represent a new wearable computing platform. But also, meanwhile, as we spoke about yesterday, Apple's attempts at the home speaker slash digital assistant market seem to have stalled out. So I think you can all see the asymmetric warfare implications involved in all of this. I'm not sure why I'm always so squeamish about reporting on this story, but in the end, I just keep coming back to the idea that this represents ownership and control of one of the biggest, most important companies in the world. So in the end, I come down on the side of believing that it's worth knowing that Jeff Bezos and his ex-wife, Mackenzie Bezos, have announced a divorce settlement that will leave Jeff with 75% of the couple's communal Amazon stock

Starting point is 00:04:30 and all of the voting power that stock represents, quoting the Washington Post. The record divorce settlement, which also awards Jeff Bezos, all of the couple's joint holdings in the Washington Post, and a space flight company, Blue Origin, is likely to remove uncertainty around the extent of his continued control over Amazon, a company he founded in 1994 and for which he remains chief executive and its largest shareholder. He will have sole voting power over the shares the two once jointly controlled, which together amount to 16% of Amazon's total shares, end quote. McKenzie Bezos will retain 4% ownership of Amazon, a stake worth roughly $36 billion,

Starting point is 00:05:12 and Jeff Bezos will retain 12% worth at least $107 billion. Snap held its first ever press event last night, the Snap Partner Summit in Los Angeles, and there it announced a slew of new products and initiatives, including a Snap Games platform that allows users to play real-time multiplayer games, an augmented reality platform called Scan, and a straight-up platform play called App Stories, which will let developers insert stories into third-party apps, and Snap Audience Network, which will also extend Snap's advertising platform to those other apps.

Starting point is 00:05:56 There were several smart takes on this event, so I'm just going to do an around-the-horn of newsletter reactions from this morning. Owen Williams pointed out that quietly Snap's numbers while stagnating from a Wall Street perspective are actually still good from other perspectives. Snap reaches 75% of 13 to 34 year olds and 90% of 13 to 24 year olds according to numbers Evan Spiegel shared from stage. Quoting Owen in his charged newsletter, quote, What Snap is good at is incubating weird original ideas that push the boundaries of social media as we know it today. Spiegel showed off a slide that demonstrated how many modern features were invented by the company over the years. There's ephemeral content, the stories format, vertical first videos prominence, lenses, and so on.

Starting point is 00:06:49 The company has had many flops along the way, yes, but it's incredibly good at getting weird new ideas out the door that eventually redefined the industry. and this was another demonstration that it hasn't lost that ability. SNAP is well positioned in the current state of social media for a renaissance, as Facebook struggles with a societal shift to private-by-default messaging platforms, reinventing itself along the way and grappling with antitrust investigations at the same time, end quote. In Casey Newton's newsletter, he tried to get a sense if people at the event cared about SNAP's new initiatives. quote, on the whole, everyone I spoke to seemed intrigued by Snap's announcements, if relatively non-committal. A woman who works in augmented reality told me that Snap's tools are good, but that

Starting point is 00:07:35 every AR platform is basically the same, and where you decide to build your filters is largely a matter of personal preference. Two founders I spoke with who built stickers to let their users share content back to Snap were hopeful it would help them build a younger audience. A Snap employee told me about his work with pride, then approached a VIII. venture capitalist I know and mentioned he might be looking for a new job a few months from now, end quote. And Dan Fromer, in his excellent new newsletter, the new consumer, wrote that he felt like Snap seemed to be leveling up at a crucial time. Quote, the point of all this and the new Snap Games platform is to make the case that Snapchat has figured out how to keep young people using

Starting point is 00:08:19 its app for longer each day. There is a fine line between engagement and addiction, but if Snap can make things that people actually love using, Snapchat's user base might even start growing again. And as people continue to spend more time on their phones and less with more traditional TV formats, that's how Snap might be able to keep growing the market for its short video ads, and eventually across a wider audience with its new ad network, end quote.

Starting point is 00:08:46 A billion users isn't cool anymore. You know what is cool? 180 or 190 or so million users, give or take, increasing their time spent per day on your platform. Maybe. Time for the weekend Long Read suggestions, starting off with a podcast suggestion. I've been hunting around for a podcast to keep me up on gaming, on the gaming community and the industry in general. And one that I've really liked so far is the Talking Reckless podcast.

Starting point is 00:09:23 Talking Reckless is a podcast about video games hosted by two X-Bes. BioWare employees. BioWare, of course, most famously brought you Mass Effect. They talk about new games and gaming news every week, but they also have a tendency to dive into adjacent stuff too, like RPG and Dungeons and Dragons stuff. It's a nice, friendly roundtable discussion from lifelong gamers and industry vets. So search your podcast app for Talking Reckless.

Starting point is 00:09:51 That's Reckless RECK-L-L-S, Talking Reckless, or go to talking reckless.com. First up, I have a tendency to really listen to Benedict Evans from Andresen Horowitz when he talks about smart home and internet of things stuff. He's shaped a lot of my thinking about that space. So I want to point you to a recent blog post of his titled Smart Home, Machine Learning and Discovery. Benedict brings back an analogy that he's used before that I think is really powerful. When our homes got electrified and got filled with appliances, some things made sense to be electrified and some didn't.

Starting point is 00:10:37 We just needed time to figure out which ones did and which ones didn't. Quote, people proposed all sorts of electric devices for the home, and we collectively worked out which made sense and where. Everyone in Britain has an electric kettle. Most people in America have an electric blender and no one has an electric can opener. The same thing is happening with smart home now. Lots of ideas for products are being tried. Some will be the kettles and some will be the can openers. And it will only be obvious which in hindsight, end quote.

Starting point is 00:11:11 He then goes on to propose that a similar process is happening right now with machine learning and what consumer products that makes sense for and which it perhaps doesn't. It's a really interesting, interesting piece. Next, a lot of you might have already read this, but Linux Journal celebrated its 25th anniversary by restaging an interview between Linus Torvalds and Robert Young that they did back in 1994 in Linux Journal's first ever issue. Linus Torvalds is, of course, Linus Torvalds, but Robert Young was the first publisher of Linux Journal before going on to co-found Red Hat, among other things. So catch up on Linux history and Linux present, if that's your bag. You know that tech history is my bag, which is why I, of course, can't resist recommending one zero's oral history of the TiVo. Tevo as a company was never the raging success it could have been.

Starting point is 00:12:09 There's a whole separate story about why that is, about controlling means of distribution and what happens when your breakthrough product innovations quickly become commoditized. But it's worth looking back at how truly revolutionary TiVo was to media and how we now routinely consume it. So to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first TiVo shipment, check out the piece, They Thought It Was Black Magic, an oral history of TiVo, how the original DVR paved the way for Netflix and the cord-cutter movement. Indeed, the argument can be made that TiVo trained people to want to take control of their video consumption for the very first time. Next, we've spoken a lot recently about the super apps

Starting point is 00:12:53 that are rising up in Asia. They're not just, ride-hailing apps. They're not just delivery apps. They're not just commerce apps. They're not just social networks or messaging apps. But all of those things, all at the same time. Bloomberg has a fascinating look at two of the most prominent of these in China. Maituan and Alibaba. Quote, across the country, millions of people like Lynn are ordering in two or three meals a day, as well as groceries, office supplies, haircuts, massages, and whatever else they might want. Behind this $35 billion delivery market isn't exactly efficiency, though. It's a fight between Maituan and Alibaba Group Holding, China's most valuable company.

Starting point is 00:13:37 Alibaba and its various subsidiaries dominate the country's online retail market for physical goods, but Maitwan is leading the way in services. Its namesake app, a sort of mashup of Grubhub, Expedia, MovieTickets.com, Groupon, and Yelp, has 600,000 delivery people serving 400 million customers a year in 2,800 cities. Alibaba is betting it can undercut Metsuan to death. Both companies are spending billions in an escalating war of subsidies that might persuade even Jeff Bezos to cut his losses, end quote.

Starting point is 00:14:11 It's a fascinating look at a super interesting business rivalry, but also a look at how these sorts of modern apps, these modern technology companies, are transforming the basic rhythms of modern life. And BuzzFeed has an interesting piece up that has gotten a lot of play this week. We hear all the time about managing or even limiting screen and internet time for young kids because it might warp them. But Craig Silverman says we should also be worried about the old folks. Quote, older people play an outsized role in civic life. They also are more likely to be online targets of misinformation and hyperpartisan rhetoric, end quote.

Starting point is 00:14:52 from later in the piece, quote, four recent studies found that older Americans are more likely to consume and share false online news than those in other age groups, even when controlling for factors such as partisanship. Other research has found that older Americans have a poor or inaccurate grasp of how algorithms play a role in selecting what information is shown to them on social media, are worse than younger people at differentiating between reported news and opinion, and are less likely to register the brand of a news site they consume information from. end quote. Problem here is older folk vote. Older folk set political and legislative agendas out of all proportion to their numbers, and their numbers actually are quite large, and will remain that way for a while. It's a problem for democracy and society at large. As one political scientist is quoted as saying in the piece, quote, they're alone, relatively wealthy, alienated and stuck in places where they don't know anybody and feel angry, and they have access to the internet, end quote. And finally, not really a long read, but something to get on our radar for next week, maybe, hopefully something cool. We may be about to see the first ever photo of a black hole, quoting CNET. Astronomers working across a worldwide network of cosmic observatories are set to make a, quote,

Starting point is 00:16:15 groundbreaking announcement on April 10th, according to the European Southern Observatory. considering that the Event Horizon Telescope is on a mission to capture the very first image of a black hole, this could be one of the biggest science discoveries of the year. Humans for the first time may be able to see the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy or the one over at our close cosmic neighbor, the elliptical galaxy Messier 87, end quote. Of course, black holes are by definition invisible, but there is that thing called the event horizon where material around the very edge of a black hole's immense gravity starts speeding up and spinning around it, and that thus begins to emit high energy radiation, which we can see.

Starting point is 00:16:59 Telescopes around the world have been recording radio signals emitted by event horizons for many years. The last data collection ended in April of 2017, and astronomers have been stitching together the data since that time. CNET says there is no certainty that will see a black hole for the first time next week, but, quote, given that the media advisory suggests a groundbreaking result that will be simultaneously streamed in six different locations and four different languages around the world, there's a reason to be excited. The official announcement will begin at 6 a.m. Pacific Time on April 10th, end quote.

Starting point is 00:17:34 Hey, everybody. I'm going to take a break from doing the weekend bonus episodes just for this weekend, partially a breather for me, partially because we have a new project coming that hopefully we'll be able to tell you about next week. And partially because, well, yeah, just a breather for me. Three months into the bonus episodes, I still aspire to a 365 day a year podcast. But as I'm still running this whole show as a one-man band, honestly, it's not easy to do the regular shows and schedule and record and all the stuff involved in doing the bonus shows all at the same time. So I'm not stopping from doing them, just pausing for this weekend. In fact, I promise to have two bonus weekend

Starting point is 00:18:18 episodes for you next weekend. But going forward, I might pepper in a breather for myself now and again, a weekend here or there where I maybe only do one bonus episode or none like this weekend, but not too often. Looking at my interview booking calendar, I know for a fact of four bonus episodes coming down the pike still this month and two more are being held open for a timely or breaking news segment. Anyway, You get a breather from me this weekend as well, or maybe you can use this time to catch up on all the bonus episodes we've done so far if you haven't already done so. As hopefully you've seen and agree, they really are an interesting way to round out some of the topics we discuss every week in greater depth and hopefully nuance. Talk to you on Monday.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 04/05 - Alexa is Coming for AirPods

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