Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 11/05 – Meta To Open Metaverse Retail Stores?

Episode Date: November 5, 2021

Is Meta going to open actual physical retail stores to try to sell folks on the promise of the Metaverse? More tangible signs Apple’s silicon is leaving everyone, but especially Intel in the dust. The new Mavic 3 drone from DJI. And of course, the weekend longreads suggestions. Sponsors: GoTeleport.com/techmeme Links: To Build the Metaverse, Meta First Wants to Build Stores (NYTimes) Apple’s Road Map for Mac Chips Shows Likely Advantage Over Intel (The Information) DJI Launches New Mavic 3 Drone With Longer Flight Time, Improved Cameras and New Safety Features (MacRumors) Weekend Longreads Suggestions: Hackers are stealing data today so quantum computers can crack it in a decade (TechnologyReview.com) The Booming Underground Market for Bots That Steal Your 2FA Codes (Motherboard) Farewell Offshoring, Outsourcing. Pandemic Rewrites CEO Playbook. (WSJ) Silicon Valley wants to power the U.S. war machine (Fast Company) The Metaverse Takes Manhattan (NYTimes) 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, November 5th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, is meta going to open actual physical retail stores to try to sell everybody on the promise of the metaverse? More tangible signs. Apple's Silicon is leaving everyone, but especially Intel in the dust, the new Mavik 3 drone from DJI, and of course, the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. So if you want to try to sell people on the metaverse, might you try to try to? to convince them that it's the future by reaching out to them in the meat space. That seems to be the thinking over at Meta, where sources are telling the New York Times,

discussions are happening about potentially opening retail stores worldwide to showcase its VR and AR devices. Quote, the aim of the stores is to make the world more open and connected, according to the company documents viewed by the Times. They are also intended to spark emotions like curiosity, closeness, as well as a sense of of feeling welcomed while experimenting with headsets in a, quote, judgment-free journey, according to the documents. Discussions about physical stores predated Facebook's rebranding by many months, with serious work on the initiative having started last year, the people said. And the project, which is still in development, may not proceed, they said. But if meta moves forward with stores, it would be a first for a tech giant that has existed

largely digitally, with more than three and a half billion people using its apps such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. Technology companies opening their own stores is not new. Gateway, a personal computer maker had its own stores in the 1990s. Apple has retail stores so people can test out devices and get their questions answered. Microsoft, Amazon, and others have followed with their own stores as well. In recent years, Meta had experimented with some physical retail efforts. It opened pop-up kiosks at airports and a pop-up store in Manhattan-Soho district to show its Oculus hardware products.

It also had a pop-up location with Macy's in 2018 with the aim of bringing more small businesses onto the platform, end quote. The information is reporting that Apple and TSM plan to produce three nanometer chips for Macs, as soon as 2023, with as many as four dyes and up to 40 CPU cores in total per chip. quote, last month Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger declared that winning back Apple's business was one of his top priorities, a move that would ease the shame of Apple having dropped Intel processors from its Mac line of computers in favor of its own designs. It looks like Gelsinger has his work cut out for him. That's because Apple's plans for its future Mac processors suggest those new chips are likely to easily outperform Intel's future processors for consumer PCs, previously unreported details about Apple's roadmap show. Apple has already begun working on the next two generations of Mac chips, which are expected to succeed the M1, the first Mac processor Apple designed in-house, as it began to move away from Intel, according to three people with direct knowledge of the plans.

Apple's third generation of Mac processors, which go by the code names Ibiza, Lobos, and Palma, according to three people with direct knowledge of the projects, look to be an especially big step up from the processors. Intel is expected to begin shipping around that time. analysts told the information. Apple's first generation of Mac processors, the M1, M1 Pro and M1Mex, each has one dye and is manufactured using a 5-nanometer process. But Apple's roadmap calls for steady improvements on those features. For its second-generation processors, Apple plans to manufacture them using an upgraded version of the 5-nanometer process, two people with knowledge of the plan said. One of the people said the chips will contain two dyes. But Apple plans to take a much bigger leap with its third-generation processors, some of which will have four dyes made using a three-nanometer process, that person said. Apple's fastest processors currently contain 10 compute

cores on a single die, which could translate into as many as 40 compute cores for a chip with four die. Meanwhile, Apple's chips are extremely power-efficient, and some analysts believe this gives the company a lot more headroom than Intel has to increase the frequency of its chips in the future. With the increased core count and frequency upgrades, Apple has a good chance to overtake Intel in the PC space, said Akash Jani, senior analyst at chip research firm, the Linley Group, end quote. DJI has officially launched the Mavik 3 drone featuring a dual camera system, redesigned batteries offering up to 46 minutes of flight time, improved tracking and safety, and much more, quoting Mac rumors. A foldable drone, like its predecessor, the Mavc 3 features a dual camera system. with a 28X hybrid zoom lens and a 24-millimeter Hasselblad lens with a 4x3 sensor. The Hasselblad lens can capture 20 megapixel still images and 5.1K video at 50 frames per second

or 4K video at 120 frames per second for slow motion footage. The improved image sensors offers higher video resolution and cuts down on noise in low-light environments and it has an adjustable aperture of F2.8 to F4.4.4.5. 11. The secondary camera has a 162 millimeter telephoto lens with an F4.4.4 aperture for zoomed-in shots. The Mavik 3 Sinha, a version of the Mavic 3 with Apple ProRes 422 HQ encoding, is designed to meet post-production needs, and it comes equipped with a 1-terabyte SSD hard drive. There are omnidirectional obstacle sensors with a 200-meter range available on the Mavik 3, that includes six fish eye sensors and two wide-angle sensors to avoid objects even in complicated

environments. There's an upgraded active track, 5.0 feature for improved tracking, and the Mavik 3 uses a positioning algorithm that incorporates signals from GPS, glonas, and by-dow satellites. An integrated air-sense system warns drone pilots about nearby planes and helicopters, and there are geof-fencing alerts when near-sensitive locations. Redesigned batteries offer up to 46 minutes of flight time in ideal conditions before a recharge is required thanks to more efficient motors and propellers. The Mavic 3 also produces 35% less drag than prior models for faster top speeds. Other new features include a more advanced return to home system and an upgraded transmission system for clearer video transmission even in challenging conditions, end

quote. All of this is available on the DJI website starting today. The standard version is $2,199, but you can soup this baby up with things like that one terabyte hard drive and pro-res video recording for as much as $4,99. Time for the weekend long read suggestions. And first up, something I've been wondering about quite a bit myself. If quantum computing ever actually bears fruit, have to assume it will at some point and probably some point soon. One of the promises of quantum computing is that it would be able to break encryption as we know it. I assume people are thinking about this and preparing for it. Well, according to MIT Technology Review, some people are preparing for this eventuality, the bad guys. The first link in the Long Reeds posits posits the idea that a lot of

the hacking we've been seeing right now involves hackers stealing data today so that they can save it and crack it sometime in the near future. Quote, the threat of a nation-state adversary getting a large quantum computer and being able to access your information is real, says Dustin Moody, a mathematician at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The threat is that they copy down your encrypted data and hold on to it until they have a quantum computer, end quote. Faced with this, harvest now and decrypt later strategy, officials are trying to develop and deploy new encryption algorithms to protect secrets against an emerging class of powerful machines. That includes the Department of Homeland Security,

which says it is leading a long and difficult transition to what is known as post-quantum cryptography. We don't want to end up in a situation where we wake up one morning, and there's been a technological breakthrough, and then we have to do the work of three or four years within a few months, all with the additional risks associated with that, says Tim Maurer, who advises the Secretary of Homeland Security on cybersecurity and emerging technology, end quote. somewhat related, but something that I wasn't aware of, the currently booming underground market for bots which are capable of breaking two-factor authentication. It works like this, according to Motherboard, quote, either on Telegram or Discord, a hacker enters their

target's phone number and the platform the hacker wants to break into. In the background, the bot then places the automated call to the target. Kennecki told Motherboard that the bots use sites similar to Twilio, a communications company for businesses, that lets customers send messages and make calls, although Kineki said not all of the bots use Twilio specifically. When the bot places the automated call and asks the victim to enter a code they just received, the hacker will simultaneously trigger a legitimate code to be sent from the targeted platform to the victim's phone. They may do this by entering the victim's username and password on the site so the victim receives a login or authorization code. Although the script and the call may tell the victim that the code is for one purpose,

perhaps blocking a cash transfer or protecting their account from unauthorized entry. In reality, the hacker is using the code to enter the account themselves. The bot then takes the victim's inputted code, feeds it back to the bot's interface, and the hacker can then use the code to log in, and quote. We've spoken recently about people rethinking the fragility of supply chains around the world, the very supply chains that have made our world modern thus far in the 21st century. To that end, this piece from the Wall Street Journal looks at that reassessment that is going on right now. Quote, Ms. Coleman, who is also a director at Goldman Sachs Group and Dell Technologies, said some of her customers in automotive medical and consumer durable

goods, industries that rely on manufacturing facilities in Europe and Asia, increasingly want a presence in the Americas. They're realizing right now they're losing business because they're kind of stuck with a very long, very efficient but very inflexible supply chain, Ms. Coleman said. There are some people who are saying, look, what I need is sure. short term because this is never going to happen again, she said. Then there are other people who are saying, this is going to happen more often than we think. The world is a very different place, and it's not just the pandemic, it's natural disasters, it's the floods down in the south, it's tornadoes, it's hurricanes, end quote. Majestic Steel, USA, which processes and distributes flat-rolled steel

for a number of industries, has used acquisitions to broaden its footprint to the West Coast, adding to locations in Ohio, Nevada, Florida, and Texas. We want to be closer to our customers, because of trucking capacity or just the pure challenges and impediments in the supply chain, said Dave Kippey, Majestic's chief operating officer, end quote. So here's an analogy that this makes me think of. You know how tech companies use content delivery networks and local data centers to be ever so closer to your computer or your device so they can make loading a web page or an app ever so much faster, even if it's just by milliseconds?

Well, what if we need the equivalent of distributed data centers and CDNs? but for the supply chain. This next one is the piece that I promised or hinted at yesterday. The U.S. has been the world's sole superpower for 30 years now because, well, to a degree, because it has always had better technology than any adversary. Satellites, smart bombs, drones, the list goes on and on, technology that other countries simply didn't have access to. But you will notice that a lot of adversaries have caught up on those things.

No worries, though, right? because the U.S. has Silicon Valley, the locus of technology advancement. Yeah, but on the one hand, despite being conceived in a milieu of defense contracts, modern Silicon Valley has increasingly shied away from the military industrial complex, as we've discussed. And at the same time, the military industrial complex itself, the actual Pentagon, they're not exactly on the cutting edge, as we've also discussed on more than one occasion. We still hear stories about nuclear missile silos being run using floppy disks, which can be a good thing, but that's a whole other story. Anyway, from Fast Company, a very long

piece about how amid rising tensions, a cadre of defense insiders and tech players want to remake the Pentagon and Silicon Valley's image, quote, today the technology that will likely decide 21st century warfare will be based on artificial intelligence, autonomy, quantum computing, space, cybersecurity, and biotech. In other words, sectors in which Silicon Valley has already invested heavily to serve businesses and consumers. These technologies are being developed at a much faster pace and with a much faster delivery than anything the Primes or Department of Defense is working on, says Steve Blank, an entrepreneur and Stanford professor, who authored The Secret History of Silicon Valley, a series about the military ties that created the region. Quote, the Defense Department

is realizing that we've got to have access to leading technology, Brown tells me. Remaking the Pentagon in Silicon Valley's image will be far more difficult, a public-private challenge, then say, Uber and Lyft steamrolling municipal taxi commissions. You have to think about the military as a large bureaucracy that has existing relationships with primes, and they all live in a symbiosis that makes sense to them, says Eric Schmidt, the former chairman and CEO of Google, who has backed several defense startups and chaired the National Security Commission on artificial intelligence. Those major contractors have entrenched themselves by influencing contracting rules, spending heavily on lobbying, and sprinkling stable jobs across congressional districts.

Silicon Valley unseat legacy defense companies, this transformation will come with its own risks. Autonomous weapons remove military personnel from harm, but they also inoculate human operators from the suffering they inflict. Even artificial intelligence proponents expressed concern that it could advance at a pace leading to a fully automated war taking place between algorithms. Two generations ago, the microchips developed in the valley were used in the nuclear missiles that very nearly ended life as we knew it. In exchange for that military buildup, society received, middle-class jobs and eventually the commercial internet. Today, a software-focused defense industry may not yield the same civic benefits. General Dynamics, for example, has 84,000 full-time

U.S. employees located in all 50 states. And Drill has approximately 700 employees, mostly in Irvine, California. Silicon Valley startups have targeted and engulfed several large economic sectors over the past decade from education to finance. Defense is the final frontier. quote, we've affected probably one to two percent of DoD procurement at this point, Brown says. Dollar-wise, I'm not expecting it to be more than 50 percent, but it sure as heck needs to be more than one, end quote. Finally, you might have heard that there was a big NFT gathering here in New York City this week. I was invited to a couple of events but did not attend. Kevin Roos went for me, and if you want a flavor of the action here this week, try this piece from the New York Times,

quote. Officially they were here for nfti.n.com, a conference devoted to the non-fungible token or NFT, the blockchain-based collectible that has upended the cryptocurrency and art worlds this year. The conference, now in its third year, attracted a record crowd of 5,000 plus a 3,000-person waitlist, organizers said. By day, they went to panels with titles like mainstreaming blockchain games and fintech and NFTs risk and regulation, but the real action happened at night on the unofficial party circuit,

a week-long orgy of boom-time exuberance that some attendees jokingly referred to as Crypto-Cochella. It was a coming-out party of sorts for the NFT community, which was born online, and has only recently started to experiment with offline fun. On Sunday, the Bored Ape Yacht Club, an elite NFT clique whose members own a series of extremely expensive monkey cartoons, through a rager on an actual yacht on the Hudson River. On Monday, partiers packed into VR World in Midtown for a party DJed by an NFT collector named Seed Frays, who appeared on stage in a light-up crypto-punk helmet. And on Tuesday, entrepreneurs rubbed elbows with drag queens at a downtown party hosted by Playboy

to promote the magazine's new RabbitR's NFT collection. It was a more diverse group than one might think due primarily to the presence of plenty of artists and musicians among the crypto diehards. FOMO-stricken investors and corporate suits also showed up. Many NFT collectors know each other only from Twitter threads and Discord chats, and few use their real names or photos online, instead opting for pseudonyms and cartoon avatars. At first, they spent a lot of time figuring out who they might know as Cool Cat 43 or 8chad 690, and whether the guy who came dressed as Cryptopunk No. 3706 actually owned Cryptopunk No. 3706.

It turns out he did. They also found that not all of the customs of the online NFT world translate well to meet space. T-shirts emblazoned with rallying cries like, Wag me, we're all going to make it, drew some confused stares from passers-by. One morning, a group of NFT fans in Times Square struggled to start the chant of GM, New York, GM being the traditional Twitter greeting

of the crypto-converted, meaning good morning. By the end, even Elmo looked embarrassed, end quote. Reminds me of that doge coin event. I told you about attending back in 2014 or whenever it was, when we put a doge mask over the bull statue down behind Wall Street. As I say on the weekend bonus episode with Chris this weekend, this is where the real energy for the metaverse is happening,

not in Zuck's virtual office meetings. Even if the energy is a bit silly at times, this is where the energy really is at right now. Yes, speaking of the bonus episode, a conversation between Chris and I, where I let my skeptic flag fly about Zuckerberg, and Microsoft's version of the Metaverse is coming at you tomorrow, Saturday. Also, there's a long in-depth.

Also, at times, skeptical conversation we have about the whole creator economy. Are people actually making money there? And by people, I mean creators at large, but also the platforms themselves, who are obviously hoping this is the next big thing. So enjoy that and talk to you on Monday.