Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 08/12 – How Do We Feel About Arresting Open-Source Developers?

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 TechMeme right home for Friday, August 12, 2022. I'm Brian McCullough today. Dutch authorities have arrested a developer related to tornado cash. But is there a gray area here that is a bit messy? LinkedIn seems ready to go all in on the crater and influencer economy. Apple seems to have confidence that there's not going to be a slowdown in iPhone sales. And of course, the weekend long-read suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Dutch authorities have arrested a suspected tornado cash developer in Amsterdam. Today, after the U.S. sanctioned the crypto mixing service, quoting the block. The FIOD arrested an unidentified 29-year-old man in Amsterdam, according to the statement. He is suspected of involvement in concealing

Starting point is 00:01:21 criminal financial flows and facilitating money laundering through the mixing service, tornado cash, which allows users to obscure blockchain-based transactions. A spokesperson for FIOD declined to comment on the suspect's identity when contacted by the block. These advanced technologies such as decentralized organizations that may facilitate money laundering are receiving extra attention from the FIOD, the agency said, adding that it may make further arrests. The agency also claimed that the people behind the organization, not specifying if that's the developers who coded it, or members of the Dow that runs it, made large-scale profits from these transactions, end quote. Now, people are upset about this because, quoting him Gajira, they arrested a guy for writing some code,

Starting point is 00:02:07 instead of going after those that used said code for illegal purposes. While they're at it, they better arrest Tim Berners-Lee for all the illegal activity happening on the web, end quote. Here's Mike Dutas from Twitter, quote, going to have to arrest the developers behind Swift, ACH, Visa, MasterCard, because my understanding is that fraudulent transactions and money laundering occur on global financial networks, end quote. Here's Washington Sanchez on Twitter. Privacy is not a crime.

Starting point is 00:02:33 Developing tools to maintain your privacy is not a crime, end quote. And other folks are like, this is just an open source developer. Is this kosher? To which Parker Thompson tweeted, quote, They were operating a for-profit business that ignored the laws of the jurisdictions in which they live and which everyone agrees facilitated money laundering. Open sourcing the code doesn't seem like it should be a get-out-of-jail-free card, end quote. LinkedIn is rolling out new features to court creators and influencers, including clickable links on images and videos, text, post,

Starting point is 00:03:11 templates and the option to mix images and videos, because what LinkedIn needs more of, clearly, is self-promotional posts. And if you can make it formulaic and wrote, all the better, right? Quoting TechCrunch. In the coming weeks, creators on LinkedIn will be able to add a clickable link directly onto their image and videos to drive traffic to their websites or other resources, regardless of whether they're on or off LinkedIn. For example, the company notes that creators can use the new feature to link to their most recent newsletters or their, their personal websites. You can add a clickable link by tapping the add a link icon after creating a new post on mobile with an image or video. The company is also launching a new templates feature

Starting point is 00:03:51 that is designed to help creators ensure that their text posts will stand out in users' feeds. The templates are designed to give text posts a pop of color to make them more visually pleasing and eye-catching for viewers. Creators will be able to access the new templates in the coming weeks by going on the sharebox or tapping post on mobile and then selecting use a template. From there, you can choose from numerous customizable backgrounds and fonts, add your own text, and hit share. You can even add a clickable link onto templates. In addition, LinkedIn has started rolling out carousels, which is a new content format that allows you to mix images and videos when presenting information to your followers in a swipable format. LinkedIn says users will start seeing carousels in their feed today.

Starting point is 00:04:32 The company plans to tweak the feature and release it more widely later this year. The launch of the new features comes as LinkedIn says it's seen a 20% increase year over year, people adding visual content in their posts, end quote. Indeed, this actually fits into a trend of companies hiring B2B influencers, mostly on LinkedIn, to pitch to other companies. LinkedIn says more than 11 million users have enabled their so-called creator mode as of July 2022, quoting Bloomberg. Marr is a part of a small but growing segment of the marketing world known as business-to-business influencing. Most people are familiar with the army of young influencers making viral videos on TikTok and Instagram for brands looking to reach consumers,

Starting point is 00:05:14 predominantly in beauty, fashion, travel, and food, but also in finance and pets. Now, enterprise businesses that sell to other companies are tapping into the trend by working with influencers like Marr. These conversations are happening anyways, right? Says Rahul Titus, Global Head of Influence at WPP Ogilv. You might not be starting or instigating these conversations, but your buyers are on Reddit and LinkedIn and all these social media platforms, end quote. quote. Ogilvy's public relations branch is building a B2B influence specialist team with the expectation that as much as one-fifth of its hundreds strong influence group could eventually

Starting point is 00:05:50 be focused on such work. B2B contracts can be 10 to 20 percent more expensive than a typical consumer brand influence deal, Titus says. The idea with B2B influencer marketing is not to generate immediate sales, he says, but to nudge the key executives who manage business spending in the direction of certain products because businesses are much less likely than individual consumer. to make impulse purchases. While channels for B2B marketing can include anything from in-person appearances at conferences to Twitter posts, the key forum is LinkedIn. The Microsoft-owned social network has attracted more creators by bolstering its staff who work with them, says Ben Jeffreys, chief executive officer of influencer, which links brands with online personalities.

Starting point is 00:06:31 You've got creatives taking LinkedIn more seriously, Jeffrey says. B2B influence has taken off in the past year, he says, estimating it has roughly tripled as a proportion of brand spending on influencers. LinkedIn says it had more than 144,000 members with Creator in their job title as of December 2021, up 16% from the previous year. It's been focused on helping creators share stories and engage with audiences, and as of July, more than 11 million members had turned on creator mode, a program the company started offering in March 2021 that allows a member to be identified as a content-producing authority with particular expertise. LinkedIn is also encouraging influence work by enabling newsletters and now has more than 18,000.

Starting point is 00:07:10 people regularly publishing on the platform, including prominent business people, Melinda Gates, Ariana Huffington, and Richard Branson, end quote. What, Tim Cook worry? Apple has told its assemblers to make 90 million units of the newest iPhones on par with the volume of production that it ordered last year in 2021, despite deteriorating projections for the overall smartphone market. The Cupertino, California-based company still expects to assemble roughly 220, million iPhones in total for 2022. Also about level with last year, according to one of the people.

Starting point is 00:07:51 Apple's projections, a closely guarded secret, suggests it's confident about weathering a slump in spending on smartphones and other devices. Mobile device makers have begun freezing orders. China's largest chip maker warned on Friday. The global handset market, which slid 9% in the June quarter, is expected to shrink 3.5% in 2022. IDC has forecast. Han High Precision Industry, which puts together most of the world's iPhones hinted at Apple's resilience when it said this week that sales of its smart consumer electronics products should be little changed in 2022, a representative for Apple declined to comment, end quote. Time for the weekend long read suggestions.

Starting point is 00:08:34 First up from Billboard, how did two folks make $23 million from YouTube? Well, quote, according to documents filed in Arizona federal court over about a four-year period, Taran and Batista, along with a number of alleged conspirators, devised the company they called Media Mai to siphon off $23 million in master and publishing royalties for Latin music copyrights. They did not control. Much of these royalties were claimed through the Popular Rights Management Company, Adrev, which is owned by Downtown Music Holdings. Taran, whose attorney did not respond to request for comment, pleaded not guilty and awaits trial in November. Batista, on the other hand, took a plea deal on April 21st, admitting guilt to one count of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy. As part of the plea agreement,

Starting point is 00:09:20 he revealed key insights to the court about how the Media Mai scam was committed. Batista's attorney and an IRS representative declined to comment on the story because the case is still ongoing. The indictments and Batista's plea deal took some in the Latin music industry by surprise. A representative from Puerto Rican rapper singer, annual AA's camp had not even been aware that Media Mai had stolen tens of thousands of dollars of royalties for the artist's music until Billboard and inquired with NLAA's team about the case, though Adrev and YouTube have not been accused of any wrongdoing. Sources in the rights management business who were interviewed for this story expressed incredulity that theft of this magnitude happened on AdRev's watch, end quote.

Starting point is 00:10:01 Then, since the whole tornado crackdown is in the news, even today, a look from the Wall Street Journal about how maybe tornado is actually the original promise of crypto made real, i.e., actually decentralized so that it's hard for the authorities to shut down. Quote, it is difficult, if not impossible, to shut down Tornado Cash entirely, said Tom Robinson, co-founder of Risk Management Company, Elliptic Enterprises, which analyzes illicit use of crypto services. Tornado Cash's developers designed the service to enable users to exchange cryptocurrency with little or no information about the parties, a contrast to traditional financial institutions that are typically required to collect details about their account

Starting point is 00:10:38 holders. That appeals to users drawn to crypto for privacy and security. Some Twitter user said this week they used Tornado Cash to send cash to support Ukrainians suffering from Russia's invasion. But the lack of disclosure also creates opportunities for illicit transactions, Mr. Robinson said. Tornado Cash's code isn't hosted by an individual or company but lives on the Ethereum blockchain, a decentralized global network of computers, where it automatically fulfills trades. As a result, the U.S. and other governments have no individual or entity they can force to halt Tornado Cash's operations. Even when Microsoft's GitHub removed the latest copy of the platforms code from its website after the sanctions announcement Monday, some users had already copied

Starting point is 00:11:17 the files, end quote. From Ars Technica, the inspirational story of a man who refused to pay a $50,000 bill just to get Comcast to give him internet, and instead launched his own ISP in rural Michigan, quote, the U.S. government allocated Washinac County $71 million for a variety of infrastructure projects and the county devoted a portion to broadband. The county conducted a broadband study before the pandemic to identify underserved locations. Mouch said when the federal government money became available, the county issued a request for proposal seeking contractors to wire up addresses, quote, that were known to be underserved or underserved based on the existing survey, he said. They had this gap-filling RFP and in my own wild stupidity or brilliance, I'm not sure which yet,

Starting point is 00:12:04 I bid on the whole project in my area and managed to win through that competitive bidding process, he said. Mouch's network currently has about 14 miles of fiber and he'll build another 38 miles to complete the government-funded project, he said, in this sparsely populated rural area. I have at least two homes where I have to build a half mile to get to one house, Mouch said, noting that it will cost over $30,000 for each of those homes to get served, end quote. Or if that isn't your cup of tea, how about starting your own 5G network, maybe as a weekend project. If I'm reading this correctly, you can do that with AWS. Quote, today I would like to introduce you to AWS Private 5G, the modern corporate

Starting point is 00:12:48 version of that very powerful box of hardware and software. This cool new service lets you design and deploy your own private mobile network in a matter of days. It is easy to install, operate, and scale, and does not require any specialized expertise. You can use the network to communicate with the sensors and actuators in your smart factory or to provide better connectivity for handheld devices, scanners, and tablets for process automation. The private mobile network makes use of CBRS spectrum. It supports 4GLTE today and will support 5G in the future, both of which give you a consistent, predictable level of throughput with ultra-low latency. You get long-range coverage, indoors and out and fine-grained access control. AWS private 5G runs on AWS managed

Starting point is 00:13:29 infrastructure. It is self-service and API driven and can scale with respect to geographic coverage, device count, and overall throughput. It also works nicely with other parts of AWS and lets you use AWS identity and access management to control access to both devices and applications, end quote. Wired takes a look at the race to engineer new psychedelic drugs, quote, we are, as you have probably read, in the throes of a psychedelic renaissance. Compelling clinical work conducted at New York University, Imperial College, Johns Hopkins, and elsewhere, showed that long outlawed drugs such as DMT, LSD, and psilocybin have terrific potential for treating everything from addiction to Alzheimer's to end-of-life anxiety. Pharmaceutical companies have taken note. In 2020,

Starting point is 00:14:13 the fledgling psychedelic industry was predicted to balloon to $6.9 billion by 2027. A year later, that estimate increased over $10 billion. In September 2020, Compass became the first company of its kind to trade on a major stock exchange, debuting on the NASDAQ at an estimated value of more than $1 billion. So far, none of these companies has brought a psychedelic drug to market, but the thinking is that through what the clinical literature calls a mystical type experience, a psychedelic trip that produces feelings of joy, peace, interconnectedness, and transcendence, patients can confront the root causes of various mental maladies. I don't want to use the word cure, but psychedelics can offer long-term healing, says Florian Brand, the co-founder and CEO of a Berlin-based biotech incubator called a Thai life

Starting point is 00:14:57 sciences, which invested in compass pathways. We have put a lot of money into actually exploring this hypothesis, end quote. And finally, from the Atlantic, are we about to witness the death of the manual transmission? Quote, when it comes time to replace my current car, I probably won't be able to get another like it. In 2000, more than 15% of new and used cars sold by the auto retailer car max came with stick shifts. By 2020, that figure had dropped to 2.4%. Among the hundreds of new car models for sale in the United States this year, only about 30 can be purchased with manual transmissions. Electric cars, which now account for more than 5% of car sales don't even have gearboxes. There are rumors that Mercedes-Benz plans to retire manuals entirely by the end of next year

Starting point is 00:15:38 all around the world, and a decision driven partly by electrification. Volkswagen is said to be dropping its own by 2030 and other brands are sure to follow. Stick shifts have long been a niche market in the U.S. soon. They'll be extinct. The decoupling of humans from the driving machines will accelerate in years to come. If the automatic transmission made the stick shift a monument to loss control, the autonomous self-driving vehicle aims to do the same for steering wheels. At that point, the loss will be so complete that it may not feel so alienating. Any pretense that the automobile is a prosthetic will be eliminated so car passengers can move on to other things, like people on a train, they might settle into a book, or take a nap, or open an Excel spreadsheet,

Starting point is 00:16:20 and quote. For this weekend's bonus episode, we're going to feature the Twitter space that Chris and I did with Bloomberg's Noah Smith last night. Are we in a recession? Are we in store for an actual shooting war with China? Is Bitcoin due for one more big pump? Come for all of that and stick around for Chris and I to hit some stories that fell through the cracks this week, like Google's ad campaign against IMessage of all things. And then on Sunday, a portfolio profile episode of ride home fund's first investment in the crypto and web three space. What sort of a crypto company would I be confident of investing in? If you're a listener, I think you can guess. Picks and shovels, hint, hint. Enjoy that. Talk to you on Monday. But wait, quick, classified for you,

Starting point is 00:17:14 job openings.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 08/12 – How Do We Feel About Arresting Open-Source Developers?

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