Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 10/02 – Tesla Smashes Its Previous Delivery Record

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 Tech meme ride home for Friday, October 2, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. Tesla continues to smash records.

Starting point is 00:00:42 Facebook has announced big changes for groups, and folks are concerned it will smash the platform further. A new startup claims to have smashed quantum computing records, and of course we'll smash the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Smash. The hits truly keep on coming over at Tesla. The company announced this morning, it has delivered. 139,300 vehicles in the third quarter, which absolutely smashes its previous delivery record for a quarter of 112,000 cars. Quoting the verge. This was the third consecutive quarter of better than expected delivery numbers from Tesla.

Starting point is 00:01:23 The company delivered 88,400 vehicles in Q1 of 2020 down from the fourth quarter of 2019 when Tesla shipped around 112,000 vehicles. And it sent out 90,650 vehicles in Q2, despite its Fremont, California factory, being partially shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic. Tesla said it delivered 124,100 of its Model 3 and Y vehicles and 15,200 of its Model S and X vehicles. Tesla has said it expects to deliver 500,000 vehicles in 2020, or a 36% increase over 2019. But so far the company has only sent out 318,350 cars to customers, meaning it would need a blowout fourth quarter of 181,650 deliveries to meet that goal, end quote. But hey, the way things have been going over there, you might not put it past them. HP has debuted a 14-inch Spectra X-360 laptop with a 3-2 aspect ratio,

Starting point is 00:02:25 11th-gen-intel processors, Thunderbolt 4, and AI-based noise removal features, all starting at $1,1999. Quoting the verge. The Spectra X-360-14 convertible brings some notable improvements compared to its already impressive 13-inch predecessor, a 3-2 aspect ratio display, a 16% larger touchpad, quad speakers, and a Thunderbolt 4 port located in one of its diamond-shaped corners so you can plug in your all-in-one cable for charging data, external monitors, and peripherals, even if the backer sides of the machine are blocked. There's also a physical button you can press on the keyboard to block the webcam. The 3-pound HP Spectre X-36014 is equipped with Intel's latest 11th

Starting point is 00:03:10 gen Tiger Lake processors, specifically up to a quad-core 28-watt Intel Core I-7 with Intel's G-integrated graphics on board. Just one step below the chip that impressed us in a recent Tiger Lake test. HP says the new laptop should be up to 34% faster than last year's Spectre X3613 model. More impressively, it's the first Spectra to include a 3-2 aspect ratio display with 20% more vertical real estate than the 16 to 9 screens we've had before. And you can pay for an OLED version of the 13.5 inch 3,000 by 2,000 pixel screen, too, though we're not sure how much that costs. One of the biggest annoyances we had with its 13-inch predecessor was its 16 by 9 display, which my colleague Dan Seaford called cramped in his review. H.P also claims the new laptop is

Starting point is 00:04:01 its most intelligent PC ever, and while we'd have to put that to the test, the smart sound interesting. HP claims the spectra can detect when it's in a bag and use Intel's dynamic tuning to avoid the battery draining or overheating. The X-36014 also includes AI noise removal, which is supposed to eliminate background noise from communication apps like Microsoft Teams and Zoom, and there's an auto color feature that can automatically switch the screen's color space between DCIP3, Adobe RGB, and S-RGB to theoretically make sure you're looking at the most accurate colors. The company is claiming up to 17 hours of battery life, but as little as 10 on the I7 OLED model, end quote. Facebook has announced an interesting update for groups.

Starting point is 00:04:49 Groups are getting automated moderation, but also Facebook is turning up the dial saying that public group discussions will now surface more often in news feed and search results. Quoting the verge again, the most intriguing update is starting out as a test at first. Facebook says it'll start surfacing public group discussions in people's news feeds. These can show up if someone shares a link or reshairs a post. Beneath that link, people will be able to click to see relevant discussions that are taking place about that same poster link in public Facebook groups. The original poster can then join the discussion even without joining the group. Recommended groups will also show up in the group tab if Facebook deems them relevant to people's interests.

Starting point is 00:05:31 Additionally, public group posts will start showing up in search results outside of Facebook, effectively giving them more reach and a much larger audience. Taken altogether, these updates set public groups to grow fast, which could backfire if extremist groups or community spreading misinformation are promoted. Facebook says any posts marked false by a third-party fact-checker won't be eligible to be surfaced through those features, end quote. Uh-huh. So my immediate thought, when I heard this, was along the lines of this tweet from Tarek Crim.

Starting point is 00:06:02 quote, people are posting less on Facebook, so they need to fill our newsfeed with something, more toxic political conversations, what could go wrong, end quote. Indeed, count me as among the people who really never uses Facebook proper anymore because it's become too toxic and too filled with people and posts that I simply don't care about. Is this an attempt to surface things I might care about? Because it seems like what it'll just do is surface more garbage that I don't care about from groups that I don't even belong to. But then again, maybe doubling down on the garbage is the point. Quoting Deborah Brown on Twitter. Rolling out new policies and products when a major election is underway is high stakes.

Starting point is 00:06:44 Testing a new recommendation feature that could expose people to new Facebook groups and disinformation right now seems downright irresponsible, end quote. And this is a thread from Renee DeResta. Quote, since people are speculating about the disinformation dynamics of this policy change, here's mine. Many public groups where disinfo percolates, Q, conspiracy, hyperpartisan, are currently high-volume spam-fests where people mass blast posts to dozens at a time. I don't see that changing much for the better when public group posts are pushed out to even more people. Ultimately here, as with nearly every facet of information on social platforms, what will matter is curation. What groups or posts get this new broader dissemination? It seems likely that if it's political public groups, it'll just devour. into trolling, not nice, pleasant conversations between people with differences.

Starting point is 00:07:36 Wonder how many mods are rethinking the decision to be public, end quote. Startup IonQ, I-O-N-Q, so I'm guessing they want me to pronounce that as ionic, has unveiled its next-gen quantum computing system, which it is calling the world's most powerful, claiming to have set a new record by bursting through the 4 million quantum volume barrier. quoting Forbes. On a machine featuring 32 cubits, the quantum equivalent of classical computing's bits, Ionic says it has achieved an expected quantum volume greater than 4 million. The figure volts ahead of the previous record, a quantum volume of 128, announced one day prior by Honeywell, the industrial conglomerate. Peter Chapman, Ionic's chief executive, said that as the company releases

Starting point is 00:08:29 newer iterations of its machines in the years ahead, updated measures will be required. The number will become so large we'll have to leave quantum volume behind, he said. Quantum volume attempts to grade quantum computers on a combination of metrics, including a machine's number of cubits, their connectivity, and error rates. IBM, a rival quantum computing pioneer, introduced the yardstick three years ago in an effort to create a more holistic ranking system for quantum computing engineers. Cubits tend to be unstable, but in an ideal world, each additional one adds exponential power to a quantum machine.

Starting point is 00:09:01 Because of Ionic's unique hardware design, it says it is able to be unstable. to tap into those exponential increases, helping push its machine far ahead of the pack, at least according to quantum volume. Ionic is tilting against tech giants many times the company's size, such as IBM, Google, Honeywell, Intel, and Microsoft. The five-year-old startup based in College Park, Maryland, is racing, like the others, to give businesses a computing edge in domains such as chemistry, financial modeling, medicine, and artificial intelligence, end quote. Time for the weekend long reads suggestions. Given the spate of recent tech IPOs, I found this piece from the information interesting. Back when companies like Spotify and Slack were going public with private listings, there was a large gap between what private market valuations were for tech companies and what the public investors eventually were willing to value those companies at once the companies were on public markets.

Starting point is 00:10:00 It was actually the case a few times in a row that the public markets were willing to pay more than private markets were, but the recent direct listings of Palantir and Asana were basically spot on, quote, The secondary market for private tech stocks is becoming a better indicator of how the public market will value those stocks, Wall Street executives say. Wednesday's public debuts of Asana and Palantir seemed to bear that out. The stocks of both companies which went public via direct listings opened at about the same level as their recent highs on the secondary market. This shift is significant, particularly for private tech company, employees and investors, as it should make them more willing to sell on the private market rather than wait for a public listing, end quote. And speaking of Palantir, I mentioned that their public listing was a bit

Starting point is 00:10:45 ho-hum this week, not a failure by any stretch of the imagination. But there have been whispers that now that we have a better sense of what Palantir's business is, people don't see a lot of their there. Glorified consultancy is the term that I've heard. This piece from the intelligents or looks into that quote. Palantir's public offering is founded on the company's sales pitch that its software represents the ultimate tool of surveillance. Named after the seeing stones in the Lord of the Rings, Palantir is designed to ingest the mountains of data collected by soldiers and spies and police, fingerprints, signals intelligence,

Starting point is 00:11:19 bank records, tips from confidential informants, and enable users to spot hidden relationships, uncover criminal and terrorist networks, and even anticipate future attacks. Teal and Carp have effectively positioned Palantir as a pro-military arm of Silicon Valley, a culture dominated by tech gurus who view their work as paving the way for a global utopia. But as Palantir seeks to sell its stock on Wall Street, even some of its initial admirers are warning that the company's software may not live up to its hype. More than a dozen former military and intelligence officials I interviewed, some of whom were instrumental in persuading government agencies to work with Palantir in the first place,

Starting point is 00:11:54 express concerns about the firm's pension for exaggeration. It's apparent flouting of federal rules designed to ensure fair competition and its true worth. The company has largely succeeded, they say, not because of its technological wizardry, but because its interface is slicker and more user-friendly than the alternatives created by defense contractors, end quote. Hey, no one says you can't build a good business by simply finding and filling and exploiting a market niche through good old-fashioned branding and UI-U-X design, you know. Next, Ars Technica says that devs are managing 100 times more code today than they did 10 years ago. You all manage more code in more languages for more platforms than ever. Does that seem accurate to you?

Starting point is 00:12:39 Quote, source graph, a company specializing in universal code search, pulled more than 500 North American software developers to identify issues in code complexity and management. Its general findings are probably no surprise to most Ars readers. Software has gotten bigger, more complex, and much. more important in the past 10 years, but the sheer scope can be surprising. It's no surprise that the volume of code, a typical organization or developer managers, has grown in the last 10 years, but many people outside the industry might not realize just how much. More than half of the developers surveyed report a growth, as measured in mebibytes, of more than a hundredfold. Some of this code growth can be explained by increasingly complex code, but much of it comes from an increase in the diversity of platforms and tools used. Modern development, particularly

Starting point is 00:13:24 web development generally means amalgams of many different platforms, libraries, and dependencies. The developers surveyed reported increases in the number of supported architectures, devices, languages, repositories, and more, end quote. Then on its 20th anniversary, Mashable looks back on the website Hot or Not and makes the case that it was actually way more influential than you probably remember, quote. It was the genesis for revolutionary concepts like the public profile at a time when uploading pictures of yourself was seen as an oddity or risk when Facebook wasn't even a twinkle in Mark Zuckerberg's eye. Sure, we may have gotten rid of the 1 to 10 rating scale, but likes on Instagram selfies still

Starting point is 00:14:04 essentially serve as an implied aggregated score of exactly how hot or not the internet thinks you are. Soon after finding instant meteoric success, hot or not then invented the most foundational concept of online speed dating through the Meet Me feature, a proto-Tinder over a decade ahead of its time. dating sites like Match.com already existed, but back then they were seen as options for an older or desperate crowd. Hot or Not's Meet Me helped make casual online mingling for younger folks mainstream, originating double-match opt-in communication that requires users to express mutual interest before being able to message each other. Instead of extensive bios and questionnaires geared toward long-term commitment, hot or not limited you to a picture, short bio, and keyword tags

Starting point is 00:14:47 that reflected your interests. The rating scale of the main website functioned similarly to the dating app swipe back when ubiquitous smartphones with touch controls sounded like sci-fi, end quote. And let's get back to it, of course, right before Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg himself got his start and his first, I'm sorry, I know we'll have to do better incident with a straight up hot or not clone. Speaking of Facebook, Harry McCracken and Fast Company takes a deep look into how Facebook is, as we've discussed, weaving together the back ends and the front ends and everything involved with Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp into one unified platform, quote. The trickiest part of Zuckerberg's plan is the intensified emphasis on private messaging.

Starting point is 00:15:30 Without setting a deadline, he said in his 2019 post that users of Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram's messaging feature, each historically a walled garden, would be able to communicate securely across all three services and a project referred to within the company as interop. The first tangible result is the new version of Messenger. It remains a standalone app, but the same features appear within Instagram to replicate its existing messaging capabilities, which have been known as Instagram direct since their 2013 debut. The update is going live in a few countries now with a global rollout, including in the U.S. planned for later in 2020, end quote.

Starting point is 00:16:02 And finally, one piece that I admit I haven't had the time to read yet, but I'm including because it looks super interesting. It's from The Verge. When Chinese Bitcoin millionaire Justin's son acquired BitTorrent, was he trying to skirt the trade war he saw coming or fly in the face of it no matter what the call? cost. Quote, soon it emerged, the BitTorrent acquisition rumors were true. The man buying the company was a young Chinese Uber millionaire named Justin Sun.

Starting point is 00:16:29 It seemed like a fit. Sun ran a cryptocurrency company in Beijing called Tron. And like BitTorrent, Crypto's whole philosophy was built on decentralization. Some employees were excited. One told me their initial reaction was, oh, cool, crypto, that's a neat space that I've wanted to get into. Sun was undeterred by BitTorrent's associations with piracy. Later, employees would discover he was more than willing to actually embrace it as well, end quote.

Starting point is 00:16:55 That is all for this week. We have a weekend bonus episode coming at you tomorrow, I think. This is another one of those times where I've not recorded the episode yet. Not even scheduled to record it until 5 p.m. today. So if something happens and the recording doesn't happen, then it will be too late to do anything about it. But nonetheless, assume you'll be getting a bonus episode about the content. creator industry. But first, listen to this message that I'm sure a lot of you will find very interesting.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 10/02 – Tesla Smashes Its Previous Delivery Record

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