Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 06/30 – Apple $3T?

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

Second time the charm for Apple to close above $3 trillion? Google says it will remove news links in Canada. Meta will allow you to download apps directly from Ads. Self driving cars are giving cops more surveillance tape. And, of course, the Weekend Longreads Suggestions. Links: Apple’s market cap tops $3 trillion (CNBC) Canada’s ‘link tax’ law could break how the web works, says Google (Android Police) Meta is planning to let people in the EU download apps through Facebook (The Verge) Fidelity Joins Spot-Bitcoin ETF Race With Fresh SEC Filing (Bloomberg) Police Are Requesting Self-Driving Car Footage For Video Evidence (Bloomberg) Weekend Longreads Suggestions: When Will AI Generate a Hollywood Blockbuster? “Give It About Three Years.” (Inverse) These Tech Companies Think They Can ‘Solve’ the Wildfire Crisis (Motherboard) Who killed Google Reader? (The Verge) Mixtape Sites Like DatPiff Propelled Rap. Can They Be Preserved? (NYTimes) 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 Texas. me right home for Friday, June 30th, 2023. I'm Brian McCalla today.

Second time The Charm for Apple to close above $3 trillion. Google says it will remove news links in Canada. Meta will allow you to download apps directly from ads. Self-driving cars are giving cops more surveillance tape. And of course, the weekend long read suggestions.

Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. As ever, caveat, caveat, not sure what this really means in the grand scheme of things, but Apple has traded a of a $3 trillion market cap once again this morning as trading has opened on Wall Street, quoting CNBC. Apple was the first company to hit the $3 trillion market cap during intraday trading in January 2022, but it failed to close at that level. It has another shot to do that today.

This shows investors remain bullish on the stock and Apple's portfolio of products and services, despite the company's warning in May that its current quarter revenue is expected to fall about 3%. The Apple bears and skeptics continue to scratch their heads, as many have called for Apple's broken growth story this year in a tougher backdrop, to which we firmly believe the exact opposite has happened, with Cupertino heading into a massive renaissance of growth over the next 12 to 18 months, wed Bush's Dan Ives said in a note on Friday. In our opinion, the street has severely underestimated the massive installed base upgrade opportunity around iPhone 14 and now a mini-supercycle iPhone 15 ahead with roughly 25% of Apple's golden customer base not upgrading their iPhones in over four years,

he added. Shares of Apple are up about 47% year-to-date, end quote. Google has told Canada's government it will, in fact, remove Canadian news links from search, news, and discover, and close the Google News showcase when Bill C-18 takes effect in that country, quoting Android police. The company says it took this decision following the passing of Canada's Bill C-18, which imposes a link tax on Google and meta for all links to Canadian news publications. The law is set to come in effect by the end of the year, which is when Google also wants to start its new policy. At the same time, Canadians will be able to use all of Google's products to read international news publications, which aren't affected by the change. It will still be possible to access Canadian news via Chrome when you type in

the outlet's web address, or via other apps you can get from the Playstor. Over time, Google expects that its all-or-nothing approach will be refined as the government defines which news organizations are affected by the change and which aren't. Public safety alerts like SOS alerts are not affected by Google's decision and will continue to reach people. SOS alerts are meant to inform potentially affected people with timely information on floods, fires, earthquakes, and other big-scale emergencies. Google says that it faces uncertain financial liabilities if it were to continue linking to Canadian news. The unprecedented decision to put a price on links, a so-called link tax,

creates uncertainty for our products and exposes us to uncapped financial liability simply for facilitating Canadians' access to news from Canadian publishers, Google said. Google additionally makes a point that the change fundamentally breaks how the web works. For more than 30 years, the ability to link freely between websites has been fundamental to how the open web works. In fact, free linking, which lets you click on a link and immediately access the source of that information was the main innovation of the web, end quote. According to CBA, lawmakers went to address an imbalance between tech platforms and Canadian news publishers supporting the news industry. The government says that 470 outlets have closed since 2008 with many jobs

disappearing in the process. The new compensation is supposed to fund and protect the sustainability of Canadian news, end quote. Meta plans to let people in the European Union directly download apps through Facebook ads. A pilot is set to start with select Android app developers as soon as this year. Quoting the verge. Meta sees an opening to try this, thanks to new regulations in the EU called the Digital Markets Act or DMA, that is expected to go into effect next spring. It deems Apple and Google as gatekeepers and requires that they open up their mobile platforms to alternative methods of downloading apps. Android technically allows side-loading already, though Google makes it difficult by coupling its in-app billing and licensing with the Play Store, along with the scary warnings it shows when

someone tries to download an Android app from another source. Even still, Meta clearly thinks it's safer to try its test first on Android rather than Apple's iOS. Meta's pitched to developers participating in the pilot is that by hosting their Android apps and letting Facebook users download them directly without being kicked out to the Play Store, they'll see higher conversion rates for their app install ads. At least initially, Meta doesn't plan to take a cut of in-app revenue from participating apps, so developers in the pilot could still use whatever billing systems they want. Meta isn't alone in wanting to become a distributor of mobile apps when the EU's DMA goes into effect. In March, Microsoft said it hoped to launch an alternative app store for

games on iOS and Android in Europe next year, end quote. According to a filing, Fidelity has refiled for a spot Bitcoin ETF with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, after similar applications recently from the likes of Black Rock, Invesco, Wisdom Tree, Valky, Bitwise, and others. Quoting Bloomberg. The Boston-based asset manager, which has about $11 trillion in assets under administration and has tens of millions of customers refiled for the Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust, according to a document submitted Thursday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Similar to previous U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF filings in the past few weeks, the updated application says that Fidelity expects to enter into a surveillance-sharing agreement,

with a U.S. cryptocurrency exchange. It's the latest high-profile traditional finance firm to join the race after BlackRock made a splash with its June 15th application for a spot ETF, which opened the floodgates for others to try their hand at it as well. For crypto fans, it's been a significant string of developments given BlackRock's reputation on Wall Street and the view by some market watchers that the asset manager wouldn't be making an attempt were it not confident it could get regulatory approval. There have been about 30 tries for a spot Bitcoin product, according to a tally from Bloomberg intelligence. But applications have faced opposition by regulators who have in the past cited market concerns and a lack of investor protections, among other things. Fidelity originally filed for the Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust in 2021, which was denied by the SEC in January 2022, according to a Fidelity spokesperson.

Even so, Black Rock's move spurred a number of similar filings from other issuers, including by Invesco, Wisdom Tree, Valkyrie, and Bitwise, Meanwhile, Kathy Woods' ARC investment management said that it believes it could be first in line to get any potential regulatory approval. Arc had in April, in conjunction with crypto issuer 21 shares, refiled its application for one, and quote. Indeed, the conspiracy theory I continue to hear for crypto folks is that regulators want to wipe out the existing players in the crypto space to turn the industry over to existing finance incumbents, who, this argument goes, regulators trusts to play better on regulatory regimes. But even if you don't buy into even a tacit collusion theory like that, I think it's reasonable to assume that these big financial players do see a window of opportunity to at least be some sort of white knight swooping in to legitimize at least Bitcoin. I guess I anticipated this

happening, but if you think ring doorbells have turned all our neighborhoods into surveillance panopticons, well, police in San Francisco and other cities are now obtaining warrants for way Waymo and Cruise driverless car camera footage to help solve murders and other crimes. Quoting Bloomberg. The footage presents new avenues for police to investigate serious crimes, as they did in the murder of the Uber driver Ahmed Yusufi, who was killed between shifts. Yet privacy advocates say it is crucial to consider the implications of handing police another tool for surveillance, especially as Waymo and Cruz accelerate expansion to more cities. In the Phoenix area, Waymo has a partnership with Uber for people to eventually request driverless rides

through that familiar app. It has also announced plans to test its service in Austin where Cruz already operates. While security cameras are commonplace in American cities, self-driving cars represent a new level of access for law enforcement and a new method for encroaching on privacy, advocates say, crisscrossing the city on their routes, self-driving cars capture a wider swath of footage, and it's easier for law enforcement to turn to one company with a large repository of videos and a dedicated response team than to reach out to all the businesses in a neighborhood with security systems, end quote. Time for the weekend long read suggestions.

First up, we're going to turn to Inverse, which asks, when will AI generate a Hollywood blockbuster? Actually, give it three years, some folks say. AI tools are already being used in Marvel's latest TV show, for example. Quote, Nathan Lanz, founder of Generative AI company LOR, tells Inverse it will be sooner than you think. He points out that generative AI was a sleeping technology with little major progress in the field until November 2022 and the release of OpenAI's ChatGBTGT. If these things have been developed for a year and they're going to keep dramatically improving, that's probably where you'll start to see things. That could go into films in two to three years, Land says.

Now, things are not an entire movie. Lanz is talking about using AI tools and special effects or to produce B-roll that's seen for a second or two between shots of the action hero. But to make that deadline, AI tools need to overcome a massive hurdle. They need to be able to sustain a narrative. The problem with generative AI tools today and with their human prompters, perhaps, is that giving them the right guidance to sustain a contained story arc and visuals through time is exponentially difficult. Stephen Parker should know he's part of a team at Waymark, a Detroit-based video company that made a 12-minute long film

created entirely using images generated by OpenAI's Imagemaking AI doll E2. This was not a short, small project, Parker tells Inverse. It took three and a half months and a team of seven plus contractors that hold time to make this 12-minute film, end quote. Next, given that here in New York City, we're under yet another air quality index warning today. This caught my eye. The tech startups who think they can solve the wildfire crisis, quoting motherboard. Gridware is part of a rapidly increasing segment of the tech industry specifically focused on wildfire. These companies come from traditional Silicon Valley backgrounds and often have origin stories that date to between 2017 to 2020 when the founders or their loved ones personally experienced the effects of wildfires. Gridware sells devices that attach to electrical utility boxes so that utility companies can tell what condition their wires, poles, and transformers are in. The idea is that with this information, utility companies can act proactively to prevent a fire from starting. Until last year, the company's slogan was creating a future where suburban wildfires are a thing of the

fast, but Barat says they changed it after expanding into markets where wildfires aren't a concern. Companies like Gridwire are making the argument they can reduce the number of catastrophic wildfires through technology, products or services they can sell to utilities, insurance companies or large landowners like governments or forestry companies that use internet-connected devices, supply chain management, and artificial intelligence to detect wildfires before they burn out of control. What I discovered is a lot of focus on wildfire being a problem. I think that is a mistake because I don't think wildfire is the problem. said, I think it's a symptom or an outcome of core problems, and it spans many, many different

things, end quote. Then, you know, I like tech anniversaries, so I loved David Pierce's piece taking on an old hobby horse, the 10-year anniversary of the death of Google Reader, the event that some credit with killing blogging, but also the first time we realized Google had a tendency towards fill aside, quoting the verge. At its peak, Reader had just north of 30 million users, many of them using it every day. That's a big number by almost any scale other than Google's. Google scale projects are about hundreds of millions and billions of users, and executives always seem to regard Reader as a rounding error. Internally, lots of workers used and loved it, but the company's leadership began to wonder whether Reader was ever going to hit Google

scale. Almost nothing ever hits Google Scale, which is why Google kills almost everything. It's been a decade since Reader went offline, and a number of the folks who helped build it still asked themselves questions about it. What if they'd focused on growth or revenue and really tried to get to Google scale? What if they pushed harder to support more media types? So it had more quickly become the reader slash photo viewer slash YouTube portal slash podcast app they'd imagined. What if they'd convinced Marissa Mayer and the other executives that Reader wasn't a threat to Google's social plans, but actually could be Google's social plans? What if it hadn't been called Reader and hadn't been pitched as a power user RSS feed aggregator? And of course, there's the

biggest question, what if they'd tried to build reader outside of Google? It had millions of devoted users, a top-notch team, and big plans. At that time, outside of Google, VCs would have been throwing money at us left and right, whether else says, inside Google it could never compete. Outside Google, there would have been no politics, no crushing weight of constant impending doom. If Google had been driven by anything other than sheer scale, reader might have gotten to Google scale after all, end quote. And finally today, another tech historical piece. This one from the New York Times, 15 to 20 years ago, mixtape sites democratized releasing music in the CD era. But with the rise of streaming, these sites now face the challenge of archiving music that isn't necessarily legal. Quote,

mixtape sites lost steam as hip-hop artists started to take advantage of another innovation. As streaming platforms began to serve up an unlimited buffet of songs, there were fewer incentives, especially for established artists to release music on mixtape sites. Dat Piff said on Twitter in 2018 that two of Wiz Khalifa's mixtapes, Taylor Alderdice and Cabin Fever 2, were among the most downloaded in its history. Both are available on title, Apple Music, and Spotify, where they are more accessible to listeners and allow Wiz Khalifa to monetize his work. But not every release can or did make it to legal streaming services. Fan favorite mixtapes from Chance the Rapper and Mac Miller eventually arrived on the platforms

altered because of clearance issues. E. Dan, a producer and mixer who frequently collaborated with Miller before his 2018 death, recalled some disappointment from fans when Miller's faces made its way to the major services without a few samples in 2021, seven years after its initial release. You want this stuff to be accessible and media changes in our consumption of media changes and the way that we access music changes, the producer said in a phone interview. If you want the music to live on, then you need to adapt to those changes and make sure that the music is accessible, end quote. Yes, one of my favorite albums of all time, Illinois's, by Tor and Sufjohn Stevens lives on a hard drive that I live in fear of losing someday.

If you can find the Grand Puba rap on the Tallest Man, I Like It, Mashup song, you really owe it to yourself to give it a listen. All right, once again, it'll be Fourth of July weekend-ish here in the U.S., so I am taking Monday and Tuesday of next week off. First regularly scheduled news show will drop on Wednesday, July, 5th, and that also might drop a little later in the afternoon than usual. So on Monday and Tuesday, while I'm gone, I will give you two more Internet History Podcast bonus episodes since we had Shell Caffin and Eugene Way on recently talking about Amazon. I thought I'd give you my two-part

history of Amazon's founding episodes. People have asked me why I've been dropping so many extra episodes recently, especially when I take days off. It's because whenever I take days off, we lose listeners. We lost a couple thousand listeners that week I was in Ireland. My theory is that this show is such a habit for people. A lot of people tend to listen to the same time every day, doing the same things every day, that if I give some folks an opportunity to break that habit, some people forget to come back. So I try to give you something even when I'm not here in order to flex that muscle. Obviously, you can just ignore the bonus episodes if all you want is the news,

but if you need to scratch that daily tech itch, I've got you covered on Monday and Tuesday at least. Talk to you again on Wednesday.