Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 05/01 - Sometime Sanity Wins (ICANN Edition)

Episode Date: May 1, 2020

ICANN finally does the right thing on the whole .org mess. Earnings from Apple and Amazon. Could Amazon face actual perjury charges? Reddit walks back those chat rooms. And, of course, the weekend longreads suggestions. Sponsors: MintMobile.com/ride Links: A Private Equity Firm Is Blocked From Buying .Org (NYTimes) Amazon says it’ll spend $4 billion or more dealing with COVID-19 (The Verge) House lawmakers demand Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos testify in antitrust probe, threatening potential subpoena (Washington Post) Reddit removes chat room feature after one day due to site-wide bug (The Verge) Weekend Longreads Suggestions: Common Sense Comes Closer to Computers (Quanta) The challenges of developing autonomous vehicles during a pandemic (VentureBeat) This Should Be V.R.’s Moment. Why Is It Still So Niche? (NYTimes) Apple still depends on traditional American engineers, and is slowly losing them (Apple Insider) How Well Can Algorithms Recognize Your Masked Face? (Wired) Inside the MIT spinoff that’s making Inception-style dream manipulation possible (Digital Trends) You Have a TikTok Hit! Now, Quick — Change the Title (Rolling Stone) The "Farts and Procreation" Wiki page. Subscribe to the ad free podcast feed and support this show directly 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 right home for Friday, May 1st, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. Ican finally does the right thing on that whole dot-org mess,

earnings from Apple and Amazon. Could Amazon face actual perjury charges? Reddit walks back those chat rooms and, of course, the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. From the Sometimes You Win Some, Sometimes Good Sense actually prevails department. ICON has officially voted to reject the sale of the dot-org registry to that private equity firm.

We've covered this a couple times on the show. The shady way the dot-org registry mysteriously found itself on the auction block. Quoting from the New York Times, the board of the internet corporation for assigned names and numbers, which oversees the internet naming system, decided on Thursday night to veto the sale of the rights to the dot-org registry to ethos capital, which had offered more than one billion dollars for it. Martin Botterman, the chair of ICON, wrote in a blog post that after weighing all the considerations, rejecting Ethos's proposed bid was, quote, reasonable and the right thing to do, end quote.

A little bit of background in case you'd forgotten, quoting again, the Internet Society saw the sale to ethos capital as a way to gain an endowment to fund its operations and get out of the business of operating.org, which it wanted to do for some time. In an interview this week, Andrew Sullivan, chief executive of the Internet Society, said the ethos capital bid was one of several proposals it had received, and one that appeared to combine people who had Internet experience with the financial resources to help.org grow and prosper. We viewed it as a good transaction, and that would be good for everyone, Mr. Sullivan said, end quote. Well, yeah, a lot of people smelled something fishy going on here, and at the very least saw big money, swooping in to capture the value of what a lot of people had always considered to be a public good held in the public trust, sort of. As inventor of the web himself, Tim Berners-Lee tweeted,

Phew, that sale would have been a travesty of governance of public things, end quote. Let's wrap up tech earnings this week with Apple, reporting Q2 revenue of $58.3 billion, up 1% year over year, of which $44.9 billion came from products, and $13.35 billion came from services. Net income, by the way, came in at $11.25 billion. But back to that services number, because remember, in the before times, services was the big narrative that Apple's earnings were hinging on recently. Could Apple turn on the recurring revenue services tap to keep their bottom line growing? Well, that $13.35 billion number, which again is just for one quarter, is an all-time high for Apple services, up from $11.45 billion in Q2 of last year. Meanwhile, wearables, home, and accessories grew to $6.3 billion compared to $5.13 billion last year, which, again, that category should mostly be read as the Apple Watch.

apparently though 75% of Apple Watch buyers this quarter were new to the product but of course Apple numbers are largely iPhone numbers and of those Apple reported iPhone sales of 28.9 billion down from 31 billion dollars in Q2 of 2019 and greater China sales of iPhones were 9.8 billion down from 10.2 billion dollars year over year. P.S. Apple authorized an additional 50 billion dollars in share buybacks and increased. its dividend. But we're here for the takeaways in the coronavirus context, right? Apple's sales increased this quarter, despite the fact that Apple stores were closed. So that's really something. And echoing what other tech behemoths have said in the earnings called Tim Cook said that

Apple saw an slight pickup in sales during the second half of the quarter, although in Apple's case, they did release new products recently. And Cook spoke. directly to the chorus of people saying that Apple maybe needed to diversify its supply chain away from China. This is a direct quote from Cook. I conclude that if you look at the shock to the supply chain that took place this quarter, for it to come back so quickly really demonstrates that it's durable and resilient. And so I feel good about where we are, end quote. And Amazon earnings. Amazon's actually an interesting case right now. Amazon reported Q1 revenue of of $75.5 billion, up 26% year over year, net income of $2.5 billion down from $3.6 billion

in the same quarter last year. AWS revenue was $10.2 billion up from $7.7 billion last year. So sort of mixed, but why is the stock down 7% at the time of this writing when basically all the other tech companies were up this week after reporting earnings? I think it's because Amazon said it's going to reinvest all of its expected profits next quarter for the realities of the current COVID world. This is quoting The Verge. Amazon expects to spend $4 billion or more the predicted operating profit for the company's entire coming quarter just on COVID-19 related expenses.

In a quarterly earnings release yesterday, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said the expenses will come from spending on personal protective equipment or PPE, cleaning for facilities, higher wages for hourly teams, and expanding its own COVID-19 testing capabilities. Many of the changes have been put in place already and came in response to pressure over treatment of workers during the pandemic. Amazon is under fire for its handling of employees who have publicly criticized working conditions. It fired six tech employees who took a sick day in protest of Amazon's treatment of workers,

and there has been backlash against the company for reportedly using. a heat map to track Whole Foods stores that are at risk of unionizing. Bezos's note tries to make Amazon sound serious about keeping employees safe, telling shareholders to take a seat while the company ramps up the spending. Quote, the best investment we can make is in the safety and well-being of our hundreds of thousands of employees, Bezos writes, end quote. Don't know why investors would be concerned about Amazon reinvesting profits, just in this case, seeing as how that's never been an issue before,

especially as it would seem to be necessary in order to adapt to the current environment. P.S., also, Amazon's other category, which mostly covers its ad business, came in at $3.9 billion, up 44% year-over-year, and subscription services revenue came in at $5.56 billion, up 28% year-over-year. And real quick, since it's Amazon-related, it just came out that the House Judiciary Committee is demanding Jeff Bezos testify at an upcoming hearing on Amazon's alleged misuse of third-party seller data, or else face a subpoena. A little bit of background here because I don't think we've talked about this particular wrinkle. Quoting from the Washington Post, the dramatic escalation between members of Congress and the e-commerce giant follows reports that Amazon employees

tapped data from third-party sellers in its marketplace to make decisions about launching its own competing products, perhaps giving the company a market advantage over smaller rivals. Democrats and Republicans on the House's top competition focus panel said Amazon repeatedly had misrepresented its practices, including at a congressional hearing last year, raising the potential that company witnesses might have committed perjury. Last July, a top Amazon official explicitly told Congress that, quote, we do not use any seller data to compete with them, according to lawmakers, end quote. Yeah, that's the part that we didn't get a chance to talk about. Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon, according to insiders, used data from

specific product sales from third-party sellers to determine pricing and various strategic decisions like creating its own private label products. Here's the problem. That is something that, again, Amazon's lawyer specifically and explicitly testified under oath at previous hearings before Congress that the company did not do. And in the... subsequent statements, Amazon said it does not use sellers individual data when we're making decisions to launch private brands, end quote. So you see how this could suddenly get serious? Let me quote from the post again. In light of our ongoing investigation, recent public reporting and Amazon's prior testimony before the committee, we expect you as chief executive officer of

Amazon to testify before the committee, said Representative David Sikiline, the chairman of the antitrust committee. He was joined by representatives Jerry Nadler and Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, the Democratic chairman and the top Republican on the full House Judiciary Committee, along with other lawmakers on both parties, a sign of the potency of the threat. Although we expect that you will testify on a voluntary basis, lawmakers continued, we reserve the right to resort to compulsory process if necessary, end quote. In a tweet, Siklijn later added, he is, quote, considering whether a perjury referral is warranted, citing federal law that makes it illegal to knowingly falsify evidence to Congress.

Quote, powerful companies are not above the law, he said, end quote. And this escalated quickly. Reddit has disabled that chat room feature, start chatting, that I told you about just yesterday, after seeing, quote, several errors in the product rollout and also moderators concern over lack of control of the product, quoting the verge. Alex Lee, Reddit's vice president of product and community said on Thursday in multiple comments that the feature has been rolled back 100%. Lee said that the platform made several errors in the process of releasing the function called Start Chatting and apologize for the confusion the rollout caused.

One bug in particular caused the button to appear on all subreddits, even in the event it didn't do anything when clicked or tapped. If you dismiss the banner in three communities where the feature is active on desktop web or Android, then the small button you're seeing appears on all communities. But importantly, for all support communities, the button does nothing. Your users could never enter chats for this feature, even in the rare case. They saw the button, Lee wrote. We are actively fixing this now. The feature is being rolled back in a manner of a few hours, and the button will be removed, end quote. The announcement comes after a slew of Redditors protested the introduction of the start chatting button to their communities. Reddit initially said that the feature would

roll out to around 50% of subreddits to start and that companies particularly vulnerable to abuse would not be included. However, subreddit moderators were not given the opportunity to opt out and did not have oversight to run the chat rooms according to their community rules with the responsibility going to Reddit's own administrators instead. A number of moderators protested Reddit's approach and criticized it for putting subredits, especially those that give voices to victims of sexual assault and other vulnerable communities. at risk by potentially opening up chat features to trolls and those eager to commit fraud or abuse, end quote.

Time for the weekend long read suggestions. We've spoken a number of times before about how AI is great for a lot of things, but it can't do the simple things. It has no common sense. Well, Kwanam magazine takes a look at efforts to remedy that, borrowing from two separate lines of thinking. The piece talks about the work of and talks to. Gary Marcus, who we've had on a weekend bonus episode some time ago. It combines deep learning with neural networks for a solution for, quote, comet, short for common sense transformers, extending good old-fashioned artificial intelligence style symbolic reasoning with the latest

advances in neural language modeling, a kind of deep learning that aims to imbue computers with a statistical understanding of written language. Comet works by reimagining common sense reasoning as a process of generating plausible, if not imperfect responses to novel input, rather than making airtight deductions by consulting a vast encyclopedia-like database, end quote. Next, I mentioned reading a piece about how a lot of real-world testing of autonomous driving has been put on pause because of COVID-19. So here is that piece that I told you about for more details, and also why, quote, The interruptions present a mammoth engineering challenge, how to replicate the data collected by real-world cars, while the fleets remain grounded for months or longer.

This problem has never been tackled before, and some experts believe it's insurmountable. Even Waymo CEO John Crack has said that real-world experience is unavoidable in driverless car development, but some of the industry's biggest players, including Waymo, are trying anyway, end quote. Something else I've mused about recently. why isn't the COVID moment the moment that VR could break through to the mainstream? Well, Kevin Ruse takes a look at why. Even now, VR seems to be so niche. Quote, part of the problem for virtual reality enthusiasts is that much of what a VR headset offers can be found in other places. Fortnite, for example, has become a venue for concerts and other large virtual gatherings. And Animal Crossing, a whimsical Nintendo Switch game, has become a surprise quarantine hit.

Millions of people are using Zoom and other video chat apps to hold virtual game nights, cocktail parties, and yoga classes on their laptops and phones without the need for special hardware. These experiences aren't fully immersive in the same way that virtual reality is, but they may not need to be. After all, the breakout moment for augmented reality, VR's chiller, more pragmatic cousin, which involves projecting digital objects onto physical spaces, wasn't fancy magic leap goggles or HoloLens gadgets, but a Snapchat filter that let you turn yourself into a

dancing hot dog, end quote. Apple Insider says that Apple, the company, still depends on traditional American engineers, but it is slowly losing them to generational attrition and no one is training a new cohort. This is actually a point made in a big piece from the information, but since that's behind a paywall, I'm pointing you to the summary from Apple Insider, quote, according to the information, Apple has also been repeatedly rehiring one engineer, Mike Janicek, because they simply cannot find new recruits to do what they need. This is a problem industry-wide, not just for Apple, Janicek told the information. There aren't that many really experienced

manufacturing engineers in the U.S. Kids don't grow up working on cars or fixing stuff anymore, he continued. Instead, if they need an answer, they'll look it up on Google, end quote. Janicek, now 61, was originally a contractor working at Apple keyboard and mouse factory in 1984. Then he was brought back from 2002 to 2009 to supervise the manufacturer of connectors and cases. And then he was hired yet again in 2014 because there were problems with the Apple Watch, which was then in development, end quote. Reportedly, by the way, the next version of iOS is getting tweaks that will allow face ID to unlock your phone better, even if you have a face mask on.

And Wired Magazine has a piece looking at how that works, how the algorithms recognize masked faces. It turns out that governments and companies from other countries that don't care so much about personal liberties have made great strides in this area in recent years. And could inception-style dream manipulation actually be possible? Digital Trends says yes, and well just read it. Prepare for your mind to be blown. Quote, in a study of 50 people which became Har Horowitz's thesis, Dormio was used to incubate dreams relating to a tree. in snoozing test subjects. Others slept without incubation or stayed awake. Afterward, the participants were tested on a range of tree-themed creativity test, such as quickly thinking up creative uses for timber.

The results suggest that Dormio can help guide dreams and augment waking creativity since participants who received sleeping incubation from Dormio experienced significantly higher tree-related dreams than other sleepers. They also performed better on the creativity test than other study groups, end quote. So take those two together and yeah, a lot of dystopian tech future ideas coming our way, I guess. And finally, how about SEO but SEO for music streaming? Not SEO exactly, but in this age of TikTok where snippets of songs are becoming popular faster than the songs themselves, something quite like it. Music labels are tailoring song titles to make searches on streaming platforms more effective, quoting Rolling Stone.

Users are gravitating towards a certain phrase, a certain lyric, Andrews explains. We don't want people looking on their phones and then going to Spotify or Amazon and saying they want that phrase but not finding that song, end quote. To some degree, this inverts the typical power structure of the music industry. Historically, labels launch marketing campaigns to create demand for songs. Now songs can be tailored to meet overnight waves of demand that arose mostly independently. quote, instead of a top-down situation where an artist promotes a record and people create content around that, it's fans connecting to a song and whatever part of that song resonates with the viral movement.

That has to translate back into discovery on other platforms, explains De Bogan, a music licensing expert who founded Tune Registry, a management platform that deals with song metadata, end quote. No weekend bonus episode this weekend, everybody, but last night I saw a thread on Twitter talking about people's favorite all-time podcast episodes. So let me offer you hands down, no questions asked, the greatest podcast episode I've ever listened to. It's the very first Farts and Procreation episode from Comedy Bang Bang. Yes, Farts and Procreation from the Comedy Bang Bang podcast.

If all of those titles make no sense to you, then check, out the link to the wiki about this particular episode. It's the very last link in the show notes today. I've listened to Farts and Procrations won maybe a dozen times in my life. There were three episodes or maybe four from this series, I think. But the first one is the best. It's hands down one of the funniest things I've ever encountered in my entire life. If you've never listened to Comedy Bang Bang the podcast before, give this a try. It features Chelsea Peretti from Brooklyn 9-9. It features Adam Scott from every TV show and movie that you've seen over the last 10 years. And it also features the late great Harris Whittles

at his finest. Miss you, Harris, old buddy. Wherever you are, talk to you all on Monday.