Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 09/14 - More Drama Inside Google

Episode Date: September 14, 2018

More signs of drama inside Google, how Apple cleared the new Apple Watches through the FDA, how the Weather Channel made that insane flooding video, and the weekend longreads suggestions. Links:Google Employees Are Quitting Over The Company’s Secretive China Search Project (Buzzfeed News)Google’s internal political battles keep spilling out into the public (The Verge)The new heart-monitoring capabilities on the Apple Watch aren’t all that impressive (Quartz)iPhone XS Max and Apple Watch Series 4 shipping dates now slipping into October (9to5Mac)Apple Is Deleting Bought Films From iTunes Accounts - And Don't Expect A Refund (Forbes)Yes, You Can Name A Website “F***nazis.us”HOW THE WEATHER CHANNEL MADE THAT INSANE STORM SURGE ANIMATION (Wired) The Betterment Weekend Longreads:Android 9 Pie, thoroughly reviewed (Ars Technica)Why a Leading Venture Capitalist Is Betting on a Decentralized Internet (Breaker)Olaf Carlson-Wee Rode the Bitcoin Boom to Silicon Valley Riches. Can He Survive the Crash? (WSJ)Memo to the Silicon Valley boys’ club: Arlan Hamilton has no time for your BS (Fast Company)Driverless Hype Collides With Merciless Reality (WSJ) 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, September 14th, 2018. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, more signs of drama inside of Google.

How Apple cleared the new Apple watches with the FDA. How the Weather Channel made that insane flooding video that's been going around. And, of course, the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. We read the tea leaves at Google yesterday with that Larry Page profile we ended with. But more signs there are significant behind-the-scenes frictions inside Google. You might be aware that right-wing outlets are up in arms about a leaked video of a Google All-Hands meeting, the week of the 2016 presidential election.

Seemingly crestfallen executives appear in the video to be consoling employees upset that President Trump won the election. Quote, most people here are pretty upset and pretty sad, Google co-founder. Sergei Bryn even says in the video, I find this election deeply offensive, and I know many of you do too. It's a stressful time, and it conflicts with many of our values, end quote. Over at the verge, Casey Newton notes that the video was leaked by someone inside Google, and given the James Damore Bruhaha last year,

says this is an indication that some conservatives inside Google are still agitated and unhappy. The video is no smoking gun of liberal, bias, Newton argues. Quote, if anything, the video captures a time that Googlers were more unified, that one of them leaked it to Breitbart, surely knowing full well what would follow, offers yet more evidence that that time has passed, end quote. In a similar hint of Discord, BuzzFeed News is reporting on a list that is supposedly circulating at Google, a list of seven employees who have already quit after learning the existence of

the so-called Project Dragonfly, that censored search app that Google is reportedly developing for the Chinese market. Quote, while current employees declined to provide the list itself or to specify most of the names on it, three sources familiar with the matter confirmed the existence of the list, which is made up largely of software engineers whose experience at Google ranges from between one and 11 years. Google declined to comment on the list, end quote. So, yeah, in that profile yesterday, when people were calling for Larry Page to step up

and give the company more guidance and direction on difficult issues, I think these are the sorts of things that they were talking about. As the days move on, there are still trickles of details coming out from this week's Apple event. Quartz did some digging around the Apple Watch Series 4 and its much-Ballyhooed heart monitoring abilities. As I said on the day, Apple is not the first kind of. company to be cleared by the FDA to sell an electrocardiogram monitor. That was actually a live core, which used a smartphone app and a small monitor, and even made an Apple Watch wristband with the same ECG functionality.

Apple got cleared for the Apple Watch by the FDA for this new feature by presenting data from studies on the feature's efficacy that were actually produced by Apple itself. quote, Apple got two FDA clearances through a de novo pathway, meaning it had to use data to show that its device worked and that it was safe. For the ECG clearance, the FDA reviewed a study conducted by Apple and Stanford University in California. This study called the Apple Heart Study included 588 individuals, half of whom had AFIB and the other half of whom were healthy. The app was able to identify over 98% of the patients who had AFIF. and over 99% of patients that had healthy heart rates. Cardiologists were able to read 90% of the total readings,

although about 10% of them were unreadable, end quote. Courts notes that the FDA cleared the Apple Watch as a Class 2 device when it comes to health regulations. For comparison, a simple tongue depressor is considered a Class 1 device. A Class 3 device is something like a pacemaker. In its approval of the Apple Watch, and its health features, the FDA mandated Apple be explicit in warning users of the risk of inaccurate readings and stress that the device is not a substitute for actual medical care.

I point this out not to drag the Apple Watch. I just found it interesting how Apple is methodically and quite deliberately easing its way into this medical space from the regulatory standpoint. If you didn't stay up last night to pre-order your new watch, You might be a bit behind the eight ball. Nine to five Mac was reporting this morning that quoted shipping dates for all models of the new watches are now showing delivery estimates of mid-October.

And if you were interested in an iPhone 10S in the 256-gigabyte or 512-gigabyte configurations, those are showing shipping estimates of September 28th to October 5th and October 5th to the 12th. Probably by the time you're hearing this, other devices will have sold through. that very first allotment as well. And one more stray Apple story that I'll just shove in here.

Forbes is noting that customers are complaining that Apple is deleting films from their iTunes accounts, films that the customers actually bought, not just rented. Quote, and when people complain about this, they're receiving an astonishing message from Apple, telling them that iTunes is just a storefront. And so Apple isn't to blame if a film studio decides it notes. longer wants to make its titles available on iTunes. Even worse, it seems that if bought film titles are removed from your account, you may not even be entitled to get a refund for them. When an iTunes user in Canada complained to Apple that their initial offer of a free $5.99 rental hardly seemed

suitable recompense for him having three bought films summarily removed from his account, Apple replied that, quote, our ability to offer refunds diminishes over time. Hence, your purchases don't meet the conditions for a refund, end quote. Well, if you'll remember, I've noted this before in regards to that Kindle book that I bought, which Amazon took back from me digitally, but it's worth saying again, with digital goods, you don't really own anything. You only own a license to have a thing on a thing for a given period of time. Or as in this case, if the copyright owner in question no longer does business with whatever

portal you got your entertainment from, or the device maker or what have you, then you're just out of luck, mate. Now, I'm not a prude by any stretch of the imagination in my day-to-day life. I curse like a sailor, but at least thus far on this podcast, I have never cussed, not even once. And so just in the interest of keeping a streak alive, you'll forgive me if I dance around into this next story a little bit. Up until now, if you wanted to do. register a dot U.S. domain name, which is managed by the U.S. Department of Commerce, you couldn't register a domain name with a filthy word in it. But the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Cooper Law Clinic at Harvard Law School

combined forces to help eliminate the so-called seven dirty words restriction. They helped a dude named Jeremy Rubin who wanted to register the domain F-Nazis. but of course I'm saying F, the domain actually contained that four-letter word. In its challenge, the EFF cited the famous case of the public broadcaster that aired George Carlin's seven dirty words monologue. The Supreme Court later ruled that such a decency standard was only applicable to over-the-air broadcasts that use spectrum technically owned by U.S. citizens. It does not apply to the Internet, and the Department of Commerce was forced to, agree with that ruling. As the EFF says, quote, thanks to the First Amendment, the dot-us domain, advertised as America's address is a place where one can say eff Nazis without censorship,

unquote. Of course, if you do want to register a dirty domain name on other top-level domains, even dot com, go to effing town because it's perfectly legal. So obviously, my thoughts and prayers go out to anyone in the Carolina is dealing with Hurricane Florence at this moment. Stay safe, be well, as a native Floridian. I know what you're going through. Now, you might have seen this viral video that's been going around the last couple of days from the weather channel where meteorologist Erica Navarro is standing in front of a map showing areas that might be affected by storm surges of as much as nine feet. But then, about 40 seconds into the video, the map disappears and it looks like Navarro is

standing in a typical suburban neighborhood. There are streets and houses behind her, a stop sign. It looks like she's just standing on a regular street corner. And then suddenly floodwaters rise all around her. First up to three feet, then six feet. You see the water rising to windows on the houses. Above six feet, a car behind her starts to float away. Eventually, the water is completely over her head.

It's pretty frightening. You might want to check the link in the show notes if you haven't seen the video. People have apparently watched it five and a half million times already. So how did they do that? Well, actually, once you learn this, it makes sense. They used the Unreal Engine. Yep, that same thing your favorite role-playing game is built off of. The Weather Channel partnered with the Future Group,

a company that specializes in what is known as interactive mixed media. They jinned up several different weather scenarios that they could replicate on screen, to show people the seriousness of potential weather incidents. And they built a special studio outfitted with Mosis cameras, tracking systems, and special virtual studio equipment. While only one studio at the Weather Channel supports the full suite of technology needed to create an animated storm surge, the company hopes to build out more. You can expect to see more demonstrations like this one, says Michael Potts,

the Weather Channel's vice president of design, as well as new animations for things. like wildfires and other extreme weather events. We've talked about transforming the way we present weather, evolving it into something that's a visceral kind of experience where you just want to watch the presentation because it's amazing, because it's beautiful, says Potts. Because you're learning something,

and you may not even know you're learning something, end quote. Now it's time for the weekend long reads brought to you by Betterment. Some settle for average investing. others, like TechMeme right home listeners, demand better. Check out Betterment to see what the new modern way to invest is all about. So, first up, if you know Ars Technica, you know they're famous for one thing, the most detailed, in-depth, super thorough reviews of products, software, and whatnot. They're the very definition of long reads, exhaustive examinations.

Well, ours has a 19,000. and word review up that pretty much comprehensively dissects the entire latest version of Android, Android 9 Pi. Given all the iPhone attention this week, I thought I'd give you droid heads out there a little bit of love. If you want to know what you're in for when you finally get Pi on your device, hit up the first link in the Longread section. A couple of Longreads next about crypto. Breaker has a really in-depth interview with venture capitalist Chris Dixon, who is a noted crypto. maximalist and who is spearheading Andresen Horowitz's crypto and blockchain investments. The interview is a little bit about Chris, of course, and Chris has a lot to say about the

current state of the internet. I like this quote. Today the internet is much more like Disneyland. If I'm building a restaurant in Disneyland and Disneyland thinks I'm making too much money, they may raise the rent or change the rules. That's what building on Facebook or Google or Apple is right now. We live in this sort of Disneyland internet, and I don't think that's good for a whole bunch of reasons, end quote. Dixon says he calls the era of the web before the big platforms took over as the web one era. But the piece is also a lot about crypto and why Chris believes in it. He says he keeps a copy of Satoshi's original Bitcoin white paper on his wall.

For me, the most interesting part of blockchain technology is that you can provide much richer and more advanced protocols. They have the best features of Web 1 in that they're governed in a decentralized way and in a way that the rules are fixed and people can build on them and invest in them and know that the rules won't change. But they have more advanced functionality than the protocols of the Web 1 era, end quote. The next one is also crypto-related pretty much universally. The guys that got into crypto and especially Bitcoin super early are, let's just say, a real interesting bunch.

Eccentric and unusual or other words I could use. The Wall Street Journal has a piece up about Olaf Carlson Wee. He's 29 years old and he runs the largest crypto fund in the world. Among the Silicon Valley heavyweights

who have invested in his fund, which is called Polychain Capital R. Andresen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures. Polychain Capital has a secret address. It operates out of a series of secret warehouses in San Francisco because Mr. Carlson-Wee, like many people who got rich early on in Bitcoin, is wary of kidnappers. Mr. Carlson-Wee got into Bitcoin in college. He was the

very first employee at Coinbase. His fund, Polychain, invests in actual cryptocurrencies themselves, but has recently diversified into investing in companies building off the blockchain as well. Last year, Polychain had investment returns of 2,303%. You heard that right. 2,303% returned after fees. One tiny problem. The fund is now down about 31% year-to-date amidst the bloodbath in crypto. Read this profile.

It's a fascinating story of a crypto-true believer who is trying desperately to keep the faith. Next, we have a profile of Arlen Hamilton, who is the founder of a more traditional fund, a VC fund called Backstage Capital. But the fund is very non-traditional in other ways. Arlen Hamilton is 34 and she's a female African American. And backstage is launching a $36 million fund exclusively for black women founders. How's this for a story pitch? Quoting from the article, three years ago, Hamilton arrived in Silicon Valley with no college degree. no network, no money, and a singular focus to invest in underrepresented founders by becoming a venture capitalist.

The story of how the former music tour manager studied up on investing from her home in Paraland, Texas, and pushed her way into the rarefied world of venture capital, scoring investments from the likes of Mark Andreessen and Chris Saka, has become legendary in the industry. After making contact with Y Combinator President Sam Altman, she bought a one-way ticket to San Francisco. For months, she stalked investors by day and slept on the floor of the San Francisco airport at night. She was broke.

Finally, in September 2015, she got her first check for $25,000 from Bay Area Angel investor Susan Kimberlin, who believed in Hamilton's vision that the Valley's lack of diversity wasn't a talent pipeline problem as much as a resources problem. Diverse entrepreneurs needed money, end quote. Finally today, I swear this is not. and I told you so thing, but Chris Mims in the Wall Street Journal has a piece up that says that players in the autonomous vehicle space are collectively coming to the conclusion that self-driving cars, in a meaningful sense, might still be a little while off. Quote, there are many reasons the self-driving technology industry has suddenly found itself in this trough of disillusionment, and chief among them is the technology. We don't yet know how to pull off a computer driver that can perform as well or better than a human under all conditions. It turns out that the human ability to build mental models isn't something that current AI can just learn no matter how much data it's fed.

And even once we have the technology, we'll still have to deal with all those unpredictable humans in cars, on bikes, on scooters, and on foot. The more self-driving vehicles hit the road, the more pressing the safety concerns and legal and regulatory issues, will become, end quote. The piece is essentially exactly what I've been saying. The technology is not quite there yet, and even when it does get there, as the piece also details basically none of the regulatory or legal or even political issues have been ironed out yet. And no one knows how long that will take. I take no pleasure in pointing that out, but it's not going to happen by 2020. Happy to be proven wrong. That's all for the long reads brought to you by betterment. investment involves risk, of course, but tech meme ride home listeners can get up to one year of their investment money managed for free.

Just go to betterment.com slash ride. That's betterment.com slash ride. Betterment. Outsmart average. That is it for quite a busy week, everybody. My thanks again to Chris Higgins for helping me out this week. Hope you all have a restful couple of days. A little heads up. You might want to refresh the podcast feed over the weekend. might find a little surprise in there sometime around Saturday evening. Until then, talk to you on Monday.