Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 10/11 - Gruber Says Tim Cook's Email "Doesn't Add Up"

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, October 11th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, more on Apple's China controversy. Hands on with Google's Pixelbook Go laptop. Twitter returns to the Mac. Africa's first homegrown smartphone, SpaceX and NASA Kiss and Makeup, and of course the weekend long read

Starting point is 00:00:53 suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Tim Cook has sent around an internal email at Apple, justifying the takedown of the HKMap Live app from the App Store. Quoting from the email, it is no secret that technology can be used for good or ill. This case is no different. The app in question allowed for the crowdsourced reporting and mapping of police checkpoints, protest hotspots, and other information. On its own, this information is benign. However, over the past several days, we received credible information

Starting point is 00:01:35 from the Hong Kong Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau, as well as from users in Hong Kong that the app was being used maliciously to target individual officers for violence and to victimize individuals and property where no police are present. This use put the app in violation of Hong Kong law. Similarly, widespread abuse clearly violates our app store guidelines barring personal harm, end quote. As I did yesterday, I'm going to lean on John Gruber's analysis here. In his headline, he says the memo, quote, doesn't add up. Quoting Gruber. So three questions, no answers. When was HK.K.Map Live, quote, used maliciously to target individual officers for violence, end quote. When was it used to, quote, victimize individuals and property where no police are present?

Starting point is 00:02:27 End quote. What local laws in Hong Kong does it violate? I can't recall an Apple memo or statement that crumbles so quickly under screw. For a company that usually measures umpteen times before cutting anything, it's both sad and startling, end quote. Last month, 9 to 5 Google leaked the details of Google's next laptop, the pixel book Go. And now that same outlet 9 to 5 Google actually got their hands on in actual factual pixel book Go itself. Quick reminder of what you'll get with one of these. You'll get storage ranging from 64 gigabytes to 256 gigabytes.

Starting point is 00:03:12 You'll get between 8 and 16 gigabytes of RAM and Intel Core M3, I5, or I7 configurations. The first thing that will strike you about the Pixelbook Go is its unique, grippy, ribbed back. As we mentioned in our report last month, our source told us it has a tactile feel. The Pixelbook Go has an interesting bottom case that makes it feel nice in the hands. hand. It also looks nice. It gives the Pixelbook Go a unique aesthetic that immediately feels at home with Google's other products. How does this bottom actually feel? Well, it's really weird for a laptop, but it's also good. You can probably get a sense of it by looking at the images, but it's a ribbed texture that feels somewhat similar to a washboard or the roof of a dog's mouth. The coral-esque

Starting point is 00:04:01 color fits in perfectly with the not pink aesthetic of the Pixel 3, and I have a feeling it will look right at home next to the oh-so orange pixel 4 as well. The next thing you'll note when you first get your hands on the pixel book Go is its smooth matte finish on top. This model, the not pink model that we told you about last month, has what appears to be a painted on coating similar to that of the pixel 2 and pixel 2x. It feels a bit smoother to the touch than that one did, almost as smooth as the matte glass finish on the back of the pixel 3 and 3xel. That's about the best I can describe it for now, end quote. Lots of photos to check out in the piece, if you click through on the show notes. And quick programming note, the Google Hardware event here in New York City will be on Tuesday, the 15th.

Starting point is 00:04:51 I'm going to be there next week. That event will largely be about the pixel fours, of course, but there's also a good chance we might see this unveiled as well. Twitter has come back to the Mac finally in an official ad. app capacity at least because that company has released a new Catalyst Twitter app for MacOS Catalina that is available right now in the Mac App Store. Quote, Twitter announced that it would support Catalyst at this year's WWDC in June, though other companies like Netflix have been less enthusiastic. Twitter is by far the most notable Catalyst app so far. In Twitter's case, it's not like the new Mac app is a straight port of the iPad app just running in a window. The UI is

Starting point is 00:05:40 mostly different overall, but it doesn't quite feel native to the Mac either. It looks pretty ridiculous in full screen, as it does on the iPad, to be fair, and the Mac style toolbar visually clashes with Twitter's own below it. Still, hey, new Twitter app for Mac, that's something, end quote. I'll be sticking with tweet deck, thank you very much. But then I'm not planning on upgrading to Catalina anytime soon, as I've heard just horror stories. especially for podcasters. The Mara Group is a company that is looking to turn the Central African country of Rwanda into a regional tech hub. And to that end, it has geared up what the company is calling the first high-tech smartphone factory in Africa.

Starting point is 00:06:33 Now, there are smartphone assembly factories in other African countries like Egypt, Algeria, and South Africa, but that's largely sort of outsourced assembly work. The Mara Group this week, however, unveiled what it says is the first smartphone made entirely in Africa in its new factories. Actually, it's two smartphones. The Mara X and Mara Z assembled entirely in Rwanda. And I mean entirely, everything from the motherboards to the packaging. Here are the details from Fast Company, quote, The Mara X model will get you 16 gigabytes of storage.

Starting point is 00:07:10 We'll retail for 120,250 Rwandan francs, which equates to $130. And the Mara Z model gets you 32 gigabytes of storage, retailing for 175,750 Rwandan francs, or $190. Both run on Google's Android operating system, while the company admits they are a little more expensive than other options like the popular techno brand phones made by a Chinese-owned. company. They hope customers are willing to pay a bit more for quality and made in Africa pride, end quote. Quick check in on SpaceX news. Last night, NASA head Jim Brightenstein announced that NASA is tentatively aiming for the first manned mission for SpaceX's crew dragon capsule in the first quarter of next year, first quarter 2020. Quoting Reuters, the pronouncement of a revised time frame signaled NASA believes SpaceX is getting the Crew Dragon project back on track

Starting point is 00:08:17 following an explosion during a ground test in April and technical challenges with its re-entry parachute system. Brydenstein said successful development of the capsule was key to achieving NASA's top priority, the resumed launching of American astronauts on American rockets from American soil for the first time since the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011. The NASA administrator spoke to reporters at the end of a visit to the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, just outside Los Angeles, where Chief Executive Elon Musk led him on a tour of the sprawling manufacturing plant. Their joint appearance by a giant glass-enclosed clean room, where engineers were working on a crew dragon marked a show of unity following a rare public spat over delays in the project, end quote. Yes, the plan was originally to launch a test flight of the crew dragon that would take two astronauts to the International Space Station in 2019.

Starting point is 00:09:15 But then there were the snafus mentioned, and as we have spoken about on this show, you might recall that there seemed to be a bit of tension between NASA and Musk after Bridenstein sub-tweeted Musk on Twitter about celebrating other SpaceX milestones while the Crew Dragon Project underwent these delays. So seemingly both sides have kissed and made up at this point. The launch of Apple TV Plus is merely weeks away, and in aid of churning out enough interesting content to get you to subscribe, Apple has launched its own internal production studio that it is calling Masters. At least, that's what Variety says. Other people are claiming that the internal Apple studio does not have a name yet. I'm going to go with Variety's reporting on this.

Starting point is 00:10:05 Why would it be called Masters? well, maybe because the first show to be produced by this internal Apple production studio will be Masters of the Air, a follow-up to Band of Brothers and the Pacific, those HBO series that were executive produced by Tom Hanks and Stephen Spielberg, quoting the Hollywood Reporter. Sources say HBO released the series, by release they mean let go the series, focused on historian Donald L. Miller's nonfiction book, Masters of the Air, America's bomber boys who fought the air war against Nazi Germany ages ago and before WarnerMedia

Starting point is 00:10:42 became its new corporate parent. The decision, sources say, was based on the price tag for the series, which is said to clock in at an estimated $250 million. Also a factor was the fact that DVD sales were largely responsible for turning pricey awards winners, the Pacific and brothers, into financial hits. With the DVD market imploding amid the explosion of streaming, sources say HBO opted to dedicate those resources elsewhere. The cabler has continued to be an aggressive buyer amid the arms race for top talent, stars, and packages. Masters focuses on the WW2 aerial wars through the eyes of enlisted men in the 8th Air Force, known as the men of the Mighty 8, who brought the war to Hitler's doorstep. The drama arrives two decades after HBO won six Emmys, out of a whopping 19

Starting point is 00:11:29 nominations for Band of Brothers, and its 2010 sequel to Pacific, which scored 24 noms, and a leading eight wins. All of the producers behind both Brothers and Pacific are slated to return for the new installment. Tom Hanks, Gary Getsman, and Steven Spielberg will exec produce for Hanks and Getsman's playtone and the latter's Amblin television, respectively, end quote. I didn't get a chance to mention this, but yesterday Apple also announced an overall TV deal with the director Alfonso Ciron, which is an interesting get for Apple considering the work that Curan did with Netflix. for his movie Roma. Time for the weekend long read suggestions.

Starting point is 00:12:13 There's a big piece in the New Yorker and the Atlantic that are both getting a lot of chatter because they are both 300,000-foot views of Amazon at this moment in time. There's not exactly new details in either piece, at least if you listen to the show, but it is worth taking a step back to think about how we see Amazon at this moment in time and, crucially, how it sees itself. Here are a couple of choice quotes from the Atlantic piece. Rockefeller largely contented himself with oil wells, pump stations, and rail cars. Gates's fortune dependent on an operating system.

Starting point is 00:12:49 The scope of the empire Bezos has built is wider without precedent in American capitalism, end quote. And quote, if Marxist revolutionaries ever seethed power in the United States, they could nationalize Amazon and call it a day, end quote. And then this from the New Yorker piece, quote, Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia, said, quote, Amazon is a microeconomist's wet dream. If you're a consumer, it's perfect for maximizing the efficiency of finding what you want and getting it as cheap and fast as possible. But the thing is, most of us aren't just consumers. We're also producers or manufacturers or employees, or we live in cities where retailers have gone out of business because they can't compete with Amazon. And so Amazon kind of pits us against ourselves, end quote.

Starting point is 00:13:35 Also from the Atlantic, a deep dive into the messy reality of how GoFundMe campaigns actually work and what happens when they go wrong. Quote, these spectacularly fruitful go fund mes are the ones that make the news. $24 million for times up, Hollywood's legal defense fund to fight sexual harassment, $7.8 million for the victims of the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando. But most efforts fizzle without coming close to their financial. goals. Comparing the hits and misses reveals a lot about what matters most to us, our divisions, and our connections, our generosity, and our pettiness. And even the blockbuster successes, the stories that make the valedictory lap, that is GoFundMe's homepage, are much more complicated than any viral marketer would care to admit. And also from the New Yorker, a piece that I can't

Starting point is 00:14:31 really quote a lot from, because to get the impact or the point of it, you can't. kind of have to read it and actually ingest the gimmick inherent in the piece. In essence, John Seabrook takes a look at AI and machine learning and especially predictive text. But then the gimmick is he also fed his own piece into a predictive text AI. And so at various points in the piece, he stops writing and you can click a link to see what the AI predicted the next paragraphs he would write would be. It's sort of an uncanny Valley experience. Did the bot get the tone right or not? You decide. And speaking of, Wired has a piece looking at why astrophysicists are increasingly abandoning their field, searching the stars, to instead work on

Starting point is 00:15:21 machine learning projects for the likes of Netflix, Spotify, and even Stitch Fix. Why? Quote, To understand what's driving astrophysicists into consumer product startups, consider the recent explosion of machine learning. Astrophysicists who wrangle massive amounts of data collected from high-powered telescopes that survey the sky have long used machine learning models which train computers to perform tasks based on examples. Telecomputer what to recognize in one intergalactic snapshot and it can do the same for 30 million more and start to make predictions. But machine learning can also be used to make predictions about consumers. And around 2012, corporations started to staff up with people who knew how to deploy it, end quote.

Starting point is 00:16:04 And look, I guess without intending to, this has been a really AI and machine learning heavy long reads week. So let me put the cherry on top. If you're in this field, if you do machine learning every day, then check out the gradients really detailed side-by-side comparison of the major machine learning frameworks, Pi Torch and TensorFlow. This is out of my depth, but it did seem interesting to me to get a base-level comparison of what is most popular and what is working. And then to give you one more thing to mix it up and not make it all AI this week, check out the profile of Barry Diller and how he built IAC slash Interactive Corp into a $20 billion powerhouse

Starting point is 00:16:47 out of what a lot of people considered to be underdog or underwhelming internet assets. At IAC, he has built and spun off 10 publicly traded companies including Ticketmaster, Travel Giant Expedia and Match Group, Tinder's parent company, worth a combined $70 billion at an estimated cost of $12 billion. Quote, $70 billion from nothing is a lot, but it isn't $700 billion, Diller concedes. It would be so absurd and almost revolting for me to feel bad about that disparity. I wasn't a founder of a single company. We were opportunists and I think pretty good managers.

Starting point is 00:17:24 I wish we had invented a single company, but I also wish I could dance like Fred Astaire and sing like Adele, end quote. No weekend bonus episodes this week, but I am working on a blockbuster interview if I can finally nail down the booking. More on that when I can make it happen. As always, you can follow me on Twitter at Brian MCC. The show subreddit is R slash ride home,

Starting point is 00:17:51 where you can tip me stories and also discuss stories with fellow listeners. The bottom link in the show notes allows you to sign up for an ad-free version of the show write in your podcast app, the same one you're listening to me right now in. And if you want to buy a podcast classifieds ad to tell your fellow listeners about something, hit up ridehome.com. Forward slash classifieds.

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Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 10/11 - Gruber Says Tim Cook's Email "Doesn't Add Up"

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