Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 11/08 - Twitter Is Weirdly Awake All Of The Sudden

Episode Date: November 8, 2019

Disney Plus will be on Amazon’s Fire TV when it launches next week, Andreessen Horowitz launches a completely free crypto school, Twitter seems to have woken up all of the sudden, T-Mobile really wants that merger with Sprint to happen, and, of course, the Weekend Longreads Suggestions. Sponsors: Metalab.co Netgear.com/bestwifi SVB.com/next Links: Disney stock rises after beating on top and bottom lines (CNBC) Andreessen Horowitz launches free crypto startup school (TechCrunch) Twitter Is Trying To Fix The Dunk And Ratio (BuzzFeed) T-Mobile dangles $15 plan, 5G gains, big freebies to get Sprint deal done (CNET) Weekend Longreads Suggestions: Pessimists Archive Podcast The new dot com bubble is here: it’s called online advertising (The Correspondent) THE BIG BITCOIN HEIST (Vanity Fair) We are living in Hideo Kojima’s dystopian nightmare. Can he save us? (Washington Post) A critical analysis of scroll bars throughout history (The Verge) The Making of the World’s Greatest Investor (WSJ) How Cheap Robots Are Transforming Ocean Exploration (Outside) 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. The tech meme right home is sponsored by MetaLab. I think it's been a while since I told you about their work for Slack. Slack has taken off and it has become known for its gorgeous, bubbly interface with tons of delightful little interactions throughout the app.

MetaLab was there with Slack from the very beginning. Stuart Butterfield and his team came to MetaLab when Slack was a rough, unstyled prototype, and Meta Lab worked with them to design the app from the ground up. the brand, the web app, the mobile app, and even the marketing site, the whole works. All those fun little interactions, MetaLab worked hard to get those sprinkled throughout the entire product. The design and features Slack is now known for have propelled it to become the fastest growing business application ever at a current valuation of over $7 billion. MetaLab wants to bring that same level of delightfulness and hopefully success to your project.

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Disney Plus will be on Amazon's Fire TV when it launches next week. Andresen Horowitz launches a completely free crypto school. Twitter really seems to have woken up all of the sudden. Team Mobile really wants that merger with Sprint to happen, and of course the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Disney CEO Bob Eiger has revealed that Disney Plus will be available on Amazon's Fire TV when it launches on November 12th.

That's Tuesday, y'all. Iger made the announcement during Disney's earnings call, where Disney beat on numbers for its fourth quarter. quoting CNBC. In an interview with CNBC's Julia Borsden following the release, CEO Bob Iger said the platform is, quote, ready to go. Following a test in the Netherlands that he said was, quote, quite successful. Later on a call with investors, Iger said the demographics of those using the service, quote, were far broader than a lot of people expected them to be, end quote. Iger announced on CNBC that Disney Plus will be distributed on Amazon's Fire TV, as well as through Samsung and

LG Smart TVs. Amazon said in a release that Fire TV and Fire Tablet customers can get a free seven-day trial of Disney Plus through their devices starting November 12. Disney previously announced that Disney Plus will be available on Android, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and Roku devices. Beginning in March, Iger announced, FX will have, quote, a huge presence on Hulu, which Disney owns. FX on Hulu will include current and former FX. shows as well as original content produced exclusively for the platform. He emphasized the benefit Disney has in being able to create and own its own content, quote, and then capitalizing on consumption on new platforms like Hulu, end quote.

Actually, I should also clarify, Disney Plus is launching in the U.S. on Tuesday. It'll be coming to the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain on March 31st. Disney also revealed yesterday. Andresen Horowitz is really all in on crypto. Last month at TechCrunch Disrupt, Chris Dixon announced that A16Z was launching a completely free crypto startup school. And that crypto startup school launched today. Applications are now open and you have four weeks to get your application in, quoting TechCrunch. With this initiative, A16Z wants to democratize cryptocurrencies.

Dixon and the A16Z team has been involved in the cryptocurrency slash blockchain space for seven years, and the firm now wants to share some of its learnings with entrepreneurs. This way, it could give a boost to the crypto community, which could create investment opportunities for A16Z down the road. A16Z says clearly that participating in the crypto startup school doesn't mean you'll receive an investment from Andresen Horowitz. it also positions Andriesen Horowitz as a thoughtful investor when it comes to crypto startup investments, not just for participants of the crypto startup school, but for the crypto community at large. The A16Z crypto startup school will be a seven-week program that starts February 21st, 2020. The program is free, and A16Z doesn't take any equity. Lectures will take place in Menlo Park, so you have to be based in Silicon Valley or willing to spend a couple months there.

and because A16Z knows that it can be challenging to move to another country just to attend this program, the firm will also be recording all lectures. Anyone will be able to watch videos and download curriculum materials later, end quote. What has gotten into the water at Twitter lately? In two short weeks, I've gone from regularly dragging Twitter for never being able to make a decision, to suddenly, I mean, they're taking brave policy stands, they're actually shipping new features and products, and they're making moves to actually fix some of the glaring things that people have been complaining about for years.

For example, Twitter now says it will begin a series of experiments within the next two weeks to tweak functions like the retweet and reply buttons to promote healthier conversations on its platform, quoting Alex Kentrowitz and BuzzFeed, quote, In a meeting at its San Francisco headquarters in late October, David Gaska, a scene Director of Product Management at Twitter and Suzanne Z. Director of Product Management at Twitter showed off two experiments among several that will go live in the coming weeks. In the first, Twitter will add an emoji to a retweet, giving people a chance to quote

tweet without getting into the composed field. Gaska and Z want to find out if this feature might encourage people to express more nuanced emotions, putting a damper on dunking and mindless retweeting. In the second experiment, Twitter will automatically suggest people you use. an emoji in their replies. If you like something, you could use the heart eyes emoji. If you don't, you could use the red circle with a line going through it. But if you pick a negative emoji, Twitter will ask, why do you disagree? Which it hopes will prompt a more thoughtful reply rather than a flame war. Twitter's experiments may seem small, but they could add up to big

changes by the time the company is done with them, likely sometime in 2020. Quote, we have big ambitions here. We're definitely serious about changing how conversations, happen on Twitter, Gaska said. End quote. I actually had lunch this week with someone who interacts with Jack Dorsey regularly. And I said, you know, again, what has happened to Jack? Suddenly making decisions, shipping products, taking stands, trolling Zuckerberg. And this person said, I know you're joking, but it is funny. Jack has seemed different lately. Happier maybe? Definitely more present was the exact quote. whole sprint T-Mobile merger, it's kind of sort of done, kind of going to happen, but not

officially officially done. The Department of Justice has signed off, the FCC has signed off, but 16 attorneys general are still opposing the merger with a trial about that set to begin December 9. So in aid of still trying to sweeten the potential of the deal, T-Mobile announced yesterday that it will offer free 5G to first responders for a decade, as well as offering free broadband to 10 million households that contain children, but only if they get what they want. Quote, in addition to announcing that its new 5G network will cover 200 million people nationwide from December 6, the carrier unveiled three new programs as part of its new T-Mobile Uncarrier 1.0 event that will take advantage of the increased capacity created by the combination of

T-Mobile and Sprint's networks. The first is a $15 a month phone. phone plan. The second, a pledge to offer free 5G service to police, firefighters, and emergency medical technicians for the next decade, and finally, a program to offer home broadband access and a mobile hotspot for free to 10 million low-income households with children. But there's the catch. The company says that none of the programs will happen without T-Mobile and Sprint getting together. T-Mobile said, this only works thanks to the extra capacity provided by Sprint. quote, everything we announced today is dependent on the massive capacity expansion that comes from the new T-Mobile. Team Mobile Chief Operating Officer Mike Sievert said in a call with reporters, he noted that the company has offerings similar to what it announced Thursday, already in the market, but it needs the merger to take this next step.

They're nothing compared to what we can do at a greater scale once we have these synergies and the combined network capacity of this new company, Sievert said, end quote. Time for the weekend long read. suggestions. And this week, I want to bring back briefly that practice from earlier in the year of recommending a podcast here at the top. It's actually a podcast I've told you about already because, yes, occasionally the ads that I read on this show actually turn me on to something that I wasn't aware of. And last week, I did that ad for the Pessimus Archive podcast. That got me to give that show a try. And I love it. It's technology history in the way that, you know, I love it. I love so much. Just listen to, for example, their most recent episode on the backlash against

mirrors. Yes, mirrors. It reminded me of reading that I did recently about when cameras were invented, about how everyone had this clutching pearls moment about vanity. Everyone was convinced, like cameras, that mirrors were unleashing a scourge of vanity. There are parallels to how often technology is vilified, especially when women adopt tech. And then there are, of course, the parallels to the modern tisking about selfies. I love that episode. I've also listened to, I guess, three or four others now, the telegraph one, the one about the novel, the one about the subways. Anyway, pessimist archive.

Search for it in your podcast app of choice. Excellent podcast. Very well done. For the first long read, the correspondent had one of the, best pieces I've read in months. You know that old saw about how half of all the money spent on advertising is wasted, but the problem is figuring out which half? Well, digital advertising was supposed to solve all of that, right? Except what if it hasn't solved anything? Ever wonder why you buy, say, a pair of jeans online and then ads for those same jeans follow you around

for weeks afterwards, but you've already bought? So the advertisers clearly wasting money, right? the authors of this piece make a compelling argument that the entire online advertising edifice is built on a similarly flawed house of cards. I had never really thought about this. Algorithmic targeting may be technically ingenious, but if you're targeting the wrong thing, then it's of no use to advertisers. Most advertising platforms can't tell clients whether their algorithms are just putting fully automated teenagers in the waiting area, increasing the selection effect, or whether they're bringing in people who wouldn't have come in otherwise, increasing the advertising effect. Quote, we are setting ourselves up for failure, Lewis explained, because we are optimizing for the wrong thing, end quote. Vanity Fair has a great piece up of a major Bitcoin heist, but not the kind of heist that you might be imagining.

Instead of trying to hack someone's wallet, thieves in Iceland decided to try to boost the actual mining rigs themselves. Quote, the true value of the computers was far greater. If the thieves knew how to operate them, the machines could be used to mine Bitcoins, an operation that would churn out a continuous stream of virtual money for the burglars, all of it encrypted and completely untraceable. The criminals weren't robbing banks or even Fort Knox. they were stealing the digital presses used to print money in the age of cryptocurrency, end quote. Next, in honor of the release of Death Stranding, the Washington Post profiles, Hideo Kojima,

whose games, especially Metal Gear Salah two, a lot of people credit with anticipating the dystopia that we seem to be increasingly living through, quote, the question posed by the post to Kojima during an interview in New York, are we creating connections through separate online personas with masks rather than our actualized selves? Kojima smiled and said yes, exactly. Quote, it was a metaphor of what you just said, Kojima said through an interpreter, admitting that his predictions 20 years ago were made when the Internet was still in its early stages. Quote, today we're so close together, 24 hours a day on social media.

Real time, Kojima said. Quote, everyone is saying what they want, saying bad things to each other with a mask on their faces, end quote. Next, this is obviously one you're going to have to check out with your own eyes, or you'll completely miss the point of the recommendation. But The Verge has a critical analysis of 30 years of scrollbar design. It also points to the excellent interactive history of scroll bars maintained by Sebastian Metos. If you're at all into UI design, graphic design, design, design, don't miss this piece. And next, the book that I started reading this week is about the greatest investor of the last 50 years. It is not Warren Buffett.

Berkshire Hathaway has only managed 21% average annual returns over that period. It's not Steve Cohen, 30% average annual returns. It's not George Soros, 32%. It's Jim Simons. The Godfather of the Quants, whose medallion fund has generated average annual returns of 66%, 39% after fees. Quantitative investors now rule Wall Street, controlling 31% of all stock trading. But Jim Simons was the first, and quoting this Wall Street journal excerpt from the book about Simons, the man who solved the market, quote, Here's what's most confounding about Mr. Simons's success. He and his team shouldn't have been the ones to master the market. Mr. Simons had only dabbled in trading before reaching middle age and didn't care much for business. He didn't even do applied mathematics. He studied theoretical math, the most impractical kind. Most of the mathematicians and scientists he hired knew nothing about investing. Some were outright suspicious of capitalism. It is as if a group of tourists on their first trip to South America with a few odd.

looking tools and meager provisions, discovered El Dorado and proceeded to plunder the Golden City as hardened explorers looked on in frustration. Just as surprising are the hurdles Mr. Simons and his team overcame and how close he was to failing in his quest, end quote. And finally, we've discussed how small sats and generally small technology is beginning to start a revolution in space. But what about the inverse? There's apparently a revolution taking place down below. in the oceans, in ocean exploration as well. And you guessed it, it's cheap, small robots that are making this possible as well. Quote, though unmanned submarines have powered monumental finds, deep sea hydrothermal vents in the 1970s, the discovery of Titanic's remains in 1985,

they can cost millions to build and tens of thousands per day to operate since they require the support of large ships. Simpler models with lesser capabilities, least have been around for a couple decades, but even those run $50,000 and up. Stackpole and Lang had something different in mind in every man's ROV. The size of a toaster and operated by laptop, it would be an aquatic version of the aerial drones that want to be action sports filmmakers get for Christmas. Like almost all ROVs, it would be tethered to a surface controller, but operators could send it a few hundred feet below the waves.

It would sell for around $1,000, end quote. actually, maybe the analogy here is not to small sats, but to DJI-like drones. But again, for down below. That's all for today and for this week, though there is one weekend bonus episode coming at you tomorrow, Saturday. It's our third ever Jay and Farhad Show reunion, which are always the most fun episodes for me to do. Talk to y'all on Monday.