Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 08/21 - Uber’s Former CSO Charged With Obstruction of Justice

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 21st, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. Uber's former CSO is charged with obstruction of justice, making him the first tech executive

Starting point is 00:00:44 ever charged for a security incident. A legend of the Amazon C-suite is leaving next year. Epic Games continues to gleefully poke Apple in the eye, how Apple is cutting 5G costs in the iPhone 12, and of course the weekend long-read suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. The former chief security officer for Uber, Joe Sullivan, has been charged with obstruction of justice for trying to conceal the 2016 data breach of millions of users and drivers from FTC officials. You might remember the breach in question when hackers broke into Uber's internal systems,

Starting point is 00:01:24 got their hands on user data, even on the license numbers of 600,000 Uber drivers. It was bad stuff. Well, quoting the New York Times, the criminal charges filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco against Joe Sullivan 52 are believed to be the first against an executive stemming from a company's response to a security incident. But the charges drew an important distinction between failing to protect Uber's computer network and failing to tell the authorities about it. Prosecutor said that Mr. Sullivan committed two felonies when he didn't disclose the 2016 incident to federal investigators

Starting point is 00:01:57 who were already investigating a similar data breach that had occurred two years earlier. quote, when a company like Uber gets hacked, we expect good corporate citizenship. We expect prompt disclosure to the employee and consumer victims in that hack. In this case, what we saw was the exact opposite of good corporate behavior, said David Anderson, the U.S. attorney in San Francisco, in an interview. If convicted on both charges, Mr. Sullivan could face up to eight years in prison. He is the second Uber employee to face federal charges related to his work at Uber, which for years cultivated a reputation for pushing legal boundaries, as a

Starting point is 00:02:32 it established itself as the leading ride-hailing company. Anthony Lewandoski, a former Uber engineer, was sentenced last month to 18 months in prison for stealing self-driving car trade secrets from Google. Mr. Sullivan became Uber's chief security officer in 2015 after leading cybersecurity efforts at Facebook. He led the ride-haling company's security work until he was fired in 2017 when his handling of the data breach was discovered by Uber's newly appointed chief executive, end quote. As David Sanger tweeted, quote, Big breakthrough here. Companies and executives have often lied to cover up hacks as if the data that was stolen belonged to them, not the people whose private info was compromised.

Starting point is 00:03:13 Criminal charges may make execs rethink the wisdom of not revealing hacks, end quote. Mr. Sullivan's current job, by the way, Chief Information Security Officer at Cloudflare. By the by, since we're on Uber, yes, the news cycle, sort of bit me in the butt yesterday, not long after I posted the show, noting that Uber and Lyft would shut down operations in California at midnight. An appeals court issued a stay, averting the shutdown, which was briefly announced, and which I almost didn't even cover, so sorry to give you the stale headlines yesterday. They were fresh headlines when I posted them. According from the New York Times, hours before the ride hailing blackout was set to begin,

Starting point is 00:03:59 an appeals court granted Uber and Lyft a temporary reprieve, allowing them to to continue operating while the court weighs their appeal. Oral arguments in the case are set for mid-October, end quote. Jeff Wilkie, Amazon's CEO of Worldwide Consumer, will retire from the company in 2021. Senior VP of Retail Operations Dave Clark will succeed him. I cannot express how fundamental and key Wilkie has been to building the modern Amazon e-commerce juggernaut. But Clark is no slouch either, quoting CNBC. Wilkie 53 has been with Amazon for over two decades, joining the company in 1999 to lead global operations. Since then, he's risen through the ranks and now oversees the company's core e-commerce and physical retail business. Wilkie is one of the closest executives to report to

Starting point is 00:04:51 Bezos and was widely considered to be a potential successor for Bezos should he ever step down. Clark also has a storied history at Amazon joining the company in 1999 as an operations manager. In 2013, Clark was tapped to become Amazon's global logistics chief, overseeing the company's growing network of warehouses, along with last-mile delivery operations spanning trucks, vans, and airplanes. Clark's attention to detail and tough management style has earned him the nickname the sniper, due to his tendency to spot and fireworkers slacking on the job in the name of ensuring fast delivery, end quote.

Starting point is 00:05:24 Wilkie's departure is either worthy of reading the tea leaves on, or it's not. I mean, it will be the e-commerce. side of Amazon, the marketplace, especially the third-party marketplace. That is clearly coming in for regulatory scrutiny in these next few years. So if you're Wilkie, you know, maybe why stick around to potentially have to oversee some of that getting dismantled? But also, you know, this could just be a case of a guy achieving great legendary things and just wanting to write off into the sunset on a high. Worth noting that this reshuffling would now leave AWS head Andy Jassy as the longest serving high-level lieutenant to Jeff Bezos. So maybe put Jassy on the shortlist for

Starting point is 00:06:04 someday being a Bezos replacement, though he probably already was, and though he's really only a couple years younger than Bezos. And honestly, if Jesse ever wears the top title somewhere, might it be as the head of a spun-out independent AWS someday? Epic Games does not appear to be backing down on its PR battle against Apple in any way, shape, or form. In fact, they've announced a Fortnite tournament for this weekend, August 23rd, where players can win anti-Apple swag, quoting the verge. Players who compete in the tournament have the opportunity to win an in-game skin of the evil-looking Apple featured in Epic's 1980 Fortnite video, cheekily dubbed the Tart Tycoon,

Starting point is 00:06:52 a free Fortnite hat, and even non-IOS gaming hardware, including an alienware laptop, a Galaxy Tab S7, a One Plus 8 phone, a PlayStation 4 Pro, an Xbox 1X or a Nintendo Switch. In its blog about the tournament, Epic also reminded iOS players that they won't be able to play the next season of Fortnite, which is scheduled to begin on August 27th and will likely add significant updates to the game. This isn't a new refrain. The studio used similar messaging last week.

Starting point is 00:07:22 Epic suggested iOS players consider migrating to other platforms where Fortnite is available before the next season begins, which includes the PlayStation 4, Xbox 1, Nintendo Switch, PC, Mac and Android, and voicing their displeasure by tweeting directly at Apple with the hashtag free Fortnite hashtag, end quote. And a couple of Apple tidbits once again. First up, sources are reporting that Apple quietly acquired Israeli AR and computer vision startup, Khmer AI, over a year ago, for something in the several tens of millions of dollars range, quoting Cal Calis Tech. Camer AI's technology became a significant part of every Apple camera with a emphasis on augmented reality and video technology capabilities. Its founders kept the company in stealth

Starting point is 00:08:12 mode throughout its years of existence, and even after the acquisition kept media silence and never spoke about the sale or the fact that they now work under Apple. Camara AI's platform allowed app and software developers to create augmented reality and image processing graphics without the need for technical knowledge or writing code. After being integrated into Apple's cameras, it made life easier for developers who wanted to include AR capabilities in their various apps, end quote. And our good buddy Minchi Quo says that Apple is looking to offset the increased costs of new 5G tech coming to the iPhone 12 by using a simpler battery board design that will be 40 to 50% cheaper than the one used in the iPhone 11, quoting Mac rumors. Quo says adoption of sub-6 gigahertz 5G technology

Starting point is 00:08:57 will increase Apple's costs by $75 to $85, while millimeter wave technology will incur a 125 to $135 cost for Apple, so the company is cutting costs on other components wherever it can. While Apple has broadly been putting higher bargaining pressure on its suppliers, the battery board is one area where Quo believes suppliers will see the biggest cost trimming, with Apple reportedly moving to a simpler and smaller design with fewer layers. The hybrid hard and soft battery board for the iPhone 12 will reportedly be 40 to 50% cheaper than the equivalent part in the iPhone 11 series, although this component is likely a small contributor to Apple's overall costs. Looking out further into the future, Quote says Apple will push the envelope

Starting point is 00:09:38 even more with the iPhone 12S lineup in 2021, adopting a purely soft board design that will shave off an additional 30 to 40 percent compared to the iPhone 12 board price, end quote. Time for the weekend long read suggestions. And first up, The Verge has a piece looking at how Tulsa, Oklahoma fought hard to win the Tesla Gigafactory that ended up going to Austin, Texas. They used memes. They used an Elon Musk statue and quote, it was very compelling. We literally threw everything on the table. We had tribes participating. We had the city participating. The state, local foundations participating. Sean Copeland, Oklahoma's Secretary of Commerce and Workforce Development said, we knew what the competing package was and we were trying to create a package comparable to that.

Starting point is 00:10:31 And we did, end quote. And here's an odd bit of Apple history for you. Back in 2005, did Apple gin up a top secret iPod for the U.S. Department of Energy that was designed to hide a stealth Geiger counter? Quote, only four people at Apple knew about this secret project. Me, the director of iPod software, the vice president of the iPod Division, and the senior vice president of hardware. None of us still work at Apple. There was no paper trail. All communication was in person. If you asked Apple about the custom iPod project and got past the stock no comment, the PR people would tell you honestly that Apple has no record of any such project. but now you know, end quote.

Starting point is 00:11:12 Robin Hood is another major tech startup of the last decade or so that we are waiting for an IPO from. So if you want to know the whole inside story of how Robin Hood got where it is, Forbes has got you covered with a deep dive, quote. At the same time, Tenev and Bott were getting an insider's education on how high-frequency traders operate in profit. The outside world was in turmoil, recovering from the battering of the 2008-2009 financial crisis. It all played into the official Robin Hood creation story. When the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement materialized as a protest of bailouts on Wall Street and foreclosures on Main Street, one of Tenev and Bot's friends accused them of profiteering from an unequal system. Soulsearching led the pair in 2012 to conceive Robin Hood,

Starting point is 00:11:55 a trading app with a name that was an explicit reference to leveling the playing field. The most obvious and disruptive innovation, no commissions and no minimum balances, at a time when even low-cost rivals like E-Trade and TD Ameritrade made billions on such fees, end quote. And Roblox is a company that we're watching closely as a potential next huge thing in tech. However, it turns out that like the incumbent huge platforms, it seems that Roblox has some content issues. Fast Company has a piece up looking at Roblox's War on Porn, quote, new players started this Roblox game with a choice, boy, girl, or other, selecting one of the first two options immediately stripped your clothes and transported you poolside.

Starting point is 00:12:38 Clicking Other placed you, clothed, in the room with sex toys. Avatars could choose from more than 25 different body positions and movements, most of them simulating sex acts. Males could also incongruously choose push-ups. Beer and boomboxes were available, too, end quote. Ars Technica makes the strong case that the Facebooking of Oculus VR that we mentioned earlier this week is indeed bad for users, bad for developers, and actually bad for competition overall. quote, Facebook is taking what many users will argue is on its face a dumb system, the equivalent

Starting point is 00:13:13 of a computer monitor combined with a microphone and a mouse-like controller, and leveraging its competitive advantage to install terms of service and data collecting priorities onto an attached hard drive. And regulators should begin to understand exactly what Facebook is doing and how comparable it is to existing technologies and business initiatives, as opposed to some mystifying unique VR consideration, so they can reject the whole thing. Oculus already offers ties to Facebook features, which is well within its purview, but users currently have a choice. Facebook wants to take that choice away.

Starting point is 00:13:46 For these reasons, simply advocating that people not buy Oculus products isn't good enough. Mandated Facebook accounts on any computer device, VR, or otherwise, have got to go, end quote. And finally, a weekend project for you, if you will. The new Microsoft Flight Simulator is out, and it's supposed to be amazing. I've got a link to the Polygon Review in the Longreeds links, but also check out this protocol piece, also linked in the same place, that says that Microsoft's new flight simulator should make Google and Amazon nervous. Quote, what makes the new flight so revolutionary is that it's simply the most detailed

Starting point is 00:14:23 and realistic model of Earth yet created. Call it a digital twin. In flight, being released initially for powerful Windows PCs, you can go anywhere on the planet almost instantaneously, and it looks like that place on the planet, with the general exception of restricted military areas. The buildings, the hills, the vegetation, the water, the sky, the clouds. It's all there, everywhere. The degree of freedom produces an intellectual effect that is at first a bit disorienting, perhaps akin to the first time you realize you could just type a question into Google and get an answer. With flight, it is superficially

Starting point is 00:14:58 easy to focus merely on the graphics, which are amazing in the sense that they are realistic. But the real leap forward, what makes flight so powerful for Microsoft and so potentially concerning for its big tech brethren, is how adroitly the company has integrated many different layers of advanced technology to create a fresh, easy-to-use consumer experience that truly has no competition, end quote. That's all for today and for this week. No weekend bonus episode this weekend as I'm taking one more lazy summer weekend for all it's worth.

Starting point is 00:15:32 But I do have a classified ad from a fellow listener to leave you with. So please do listen to this. Do you want to learn about the latest and greatest marketing tools each week and how to leverage them in your own marketing campaigns? Then subscribe to Growth Marketing Toolbox, a weekly podcast exploring the best growth marketing tools and technology. You'll hear candid interviews with founders and marketing professionals and you'll walk away with actionable marketing tips you can start using right now. Check out the latest episodes and subscribe at growthmarketing toolbox.com or in your favorite podcast. app. Just search for Growth Marketing Toolbox or visit growthmarketing toolbox.com.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 08/21 - Uber’s Former CSO Charged With Obstruction of Justice

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