Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 7/20 - New Tesla is a "Rainbow-Farting Space Ship"

Episode Date: July 20, 2018

WhatsApp limits forwards, Microsoft announces earnings, emergency alerts on Netflix, grocery chain Kroger throws shade at Amazon Prime Day, and the Weekend Longreads Suggestions. Links:WhatsApp will drastically limit forwarding across the globe to stop the spread of fake news, following violence in India and Myanmar (Recode)https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/18/senate-wants-emergency-alerts-to-go-out-through-netflix-spotify-etc/ (TechCrunch)First Test Drive of the Tesla Model 3 Performance: A Thrilling, Modern Marvel (WSJ) Weekend LongreadsHow ‘Small’ Security Errors Lead to a Security Breach (Alex DeFreese)Robots Are Ready to Shake (and Stir) Up Bars (WSJ)AI Could Make Detecting Autism Easier (The Atlantic)Best Buy Should Be Dead, But It’s Thriving in the Age of Amazon (Bloomberg Businessweek)When a DNA Test Shatters Your Identity (The Atlantic) 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 TechMeme ride home for Friday, July 20th, 2018. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, WhatsApp limits forwards.

Microsoft announces earnings. Emergency alerts on Netflix. Grocery chain Kroger throws shade at Amazon. And the weekend long reads suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. When I read that story yesterday about Facebook trying to limit the spread of fake stories that sometimes led to violent. acts, I mentioned that Facebook wasn't the only platform having this sort of problem. Indeed,

WhatsApp, which Facebook owns, of course, has been blamed for incendiary posts that have led to lynchings and mob attacks in India. So, WhatsApp has announced a pretty tangible step it is taking to try to keep this from happening. The messaging app is now limiting the amount of times a message can be forwarded to 20 times. And in India, the limit. on the number of forwards will be five. The previous limit was over 250, but WhatsApp wants to prevent incendiary posts from spreading like wildfire. And so now it's putting a hard limit on the virality of posts. A Facebook spokesperson told Recode, quote, we're horrified by the violence in India and we've announced a number of different product changes to help address these issues.

It's a challenge which requires an action by civil society, government, and tech companies, end quote. As Rita Pirata noted on Twitter, in 2011, Indian regulators put a daily limit on SMS messages in order to combat rampant SMS spamming. Ironically, that might have helped WhatsApp take off in India in the first place as users used it to go around that SMS daily limit. As Kara Swisher said on Twitter, though, Facebook chooses safety over growth. Finally. Microsoft reported earnings after the business. bell yesterday. Wall Street seemed to dig it. Microsoft's stock opened up around 3% this morning. For its Q4, the company reported $30.1 billion in revenue up 17% year over year. That puts Microsoft

at $100 billion in full year revenue. They beat estimates. Operating income was up 35% year over year to 10.4 billion. Intelligent cloud revenue was up 23% year over year to 9.6 billion and Azure revenue up 89% year over year. A few other interesting details to note. Surface revenue jumped 25% year over year in this quarter to 1.1 billion. Gaming revenue up 39% year over year with Xbox Software and Services revenue growth of 36%. Office 365 subscriptions have hit 31.5.com. million, LinkedIn revenue was up 37% to 1.4 billion. And even search revenue on Bing is up 17% on high search volume. So interesting that the surface is now a billion dollar a year business and that $26 billion acquisition of LinkedIn is paying off and that Bing is still quietly

quite a moneymaker. Senator Brian Shats of Hawaii wants to make sure that the emergency alert system can now send emergency alerts to services like Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, Apple Music, at all. Wait a minute. Wasn't it Hawaii that had that incident recently with the false alarm about a nuclear attack? Yes, it was. And after that happened, Hawaii looked into what went wrong and noticed that, hey, we can't reliably expect that everyone is glued to TV or radio at all times of the day anymore. That's been the basic assumption since the emergency alert system was set up during the Cold War. But the Internet has changed all that, and thus we have the, quote, reliable emergency alert distribution improvement act or ready with an eye.

That has been introduced to the Senate. Senator Thune from South Dakota is the co-sponsor. Not only would this legislation add emergency alerts to things like Netflix, but it would also prevent users from disabling, federal alerts on their phones, which sounds like a good idea, assuming they can also reliably set up a system that won't send out false alarms, or doesn't send an alarm about flash flooding to my phone every single time we have a tiny little rainstorm. So the health insurance industry has noticed something that marketers and hackers have known

for a while now. There's an awful lot that can be learned about each and every one of us based on the reams of data that we now spew out every single day. According to a piece in ProPublica, health insurers are beginning to work with data brokers to collect lifestyle details on hundreds of millions of Americans to help them better predict health care risks and costs. This could lead to, as ProPublica puts it, a future in which everything you do, the things you buy, the food you eat, the time you spend watching TV, may help determine how much you pay for health insurance. As the piece points out, there's all sorts of things brokers already have on you. from your TV habits to your social media posts, your credit score. In the same way that Cambridge Analytica proposed to slice and dice all of these data points to predict voting behaviors and target ads accordingly,

insurers can now do the same thing to create categories or health care pools. Quoting from the piece, Are you a woman who recently changed your name? You could be newly married and have a pricey pregnancy pending. Or maybe you're stressed out and anxious from a recent person. and divorce. That, too, the computer model predicts, may run up your medical bills. Are you a woman who's purchased plus-sized clothing? You're considered at risk for depression. Mental health care can be expensive. Low income and a minority, that means the data brokers say you are more likely to live

in a dilapidated and dangerous neighborhood, therefore increasing your health risks. We sit on oceans of data, said Eric McCulley, Director of Strategic Solutions for Lexus Nexus risk solutions during a conversation at the data firm's booth, and he isn't apologetic about using it. The fact is, our data is in the public domain, he said. We didn't put it there, end quote. In the modern era of big data, everything that can be known is a treasure trove of data just waiting to be mined and sold. Insurers contend this can all be used for good to spot issues and flag you so you know to go to the doctor, but it could also be used to set prices for health insurance if a pool of high-risk people can be identified.

And all of that health data that might soon be recorded on your Apple Watch could obviously be great for keeping you healthy and alive longer, but how great would you really think it was if the insurance company also used that data to suddenly jack up your health insurance rates? As one anonymous research scientist is quoted as saying in the piece, I can't say it hasn't happened. By all accounts, Amazon had a banner Prime Day this year.

Analyst estimate consumers spent $4.2 billion chasing Prime Day deals. And though Amazon doesn't break out revenue numbers for Prime Day, it did say that it shipped more than 100 million products in the first 24 hours. So I found it amusing that grocery chain Kroger threw some shade at all of that. In a snarky press release, Kroger pointed out that it sells about 110 million items and pulls in about 340 million in revenue every single day, 365 days a year on average. Quote, it's easy to take for granted the scale of a company like Kroger, the statement read. But hey, that's why Jeff Bezos wants to get into groceries, right? A ton of revenue in that market.

You car nuts out there might be aware that the new Tesla Model 3 performance edition is out. It's supposedly much quicker. And as the haters would point out, much more expensive than the run-of-the-mill model 3s. As one auto industry insider described it to me, nearly pure margin for Tesla, very minor upgrades in terms of content, but much, much costlier. Well, back off haters. In the Wall Street Journal, Dan Neal got to drive. a Model 3 performance, and his review is in.

Quote, I'm no financial analysts, but I do know cars. If you were hoping Tesla would fail on account of the Model 3, I've got bad news. This thing is magnificent. A little rainbow farting spaceship, so obviously representative of the next step in the history of autos. I know there are a lot of Tesla bears, haters and cynics out there. Tesla boss Elon Musk makes it easy. But in the spirit of charity, I think we can all agree many brilliant. people are putzes. But the car is a star, Neil says. Quote,

doubters will have to bring it. The Model 3 is more than futuristic. It's optimistic. This is what ordinary cars should be, which is to say better than they are, end quote. Did I just suggest you check out his review merely so I could point out that for the first time in its history, the Wall Street Journal published the words rainbow farting? I'll let you be the judge, dear listener. All right, on that note, let's do the weekend long read suggestions. So this one might be legit a bit of PR that I am just picking up and spreading around as it was designed, but hey, it also had some actually useful tips in it.

Security expert Alex DeFries outlines the small security errors that can lead to a security breach and the simple things that you and I and everyone can do to prevent them. Next, from the robots are coming for our jobs beat. The Wall Street Journal has a piece about, yes, robotic bartenders, quoting from the piece, there's no need to tip the mixologist at the tipsy robot, a glittering bar in Las Vegas, where automated arms handle all the shaking, stirring, muddling, and garnishing, making up to 120 cocktails an hour. The silver and turquoise lounge in the Miracle Miles Shop's Mall on the strip has 28-counters

style seats, each equipped with a tablet, facing a bar countertopped with two industrial-grade robotic arms. Patrons can order signature and classic cocktails or fill a virtual cup with up to 14 ingredients of their choosing. Then the robotic arms go to work, gathering ingredients from a kind of futuristic backbar automat, reaching up to a lattice of 120 liquor bottles. Today you'll find the robot bartenders mostly in touristy, high-traffic watering holes, but as companies introduce smaller and less expensive models, these automated mixologists are poised to become more widespread. Your local pub, your local bartender is not in any jeopardy,

said Stephen Mornett, president of robotic innovations, tipsy robots parent company. Quote, but in the future, absolutely. Okay, here's a story from the flip side of that. The Atlantic has a piece up about how AI could make detecting autism easier because machine learning can speed up screening. As the piece notes, although an accurate diagnosis can be made as early as two years of age, the average age of diagnosis in the United States is four.

And yet the earlier the diagnosis, the better the outcome, end quote. Bloomberg has a great piece up about something that I've been wondering about myself. The title says it all. Best Buy should be dead, but it's thriving in the age of Amazon. The secret? Best Buy is using its more than 1,000 big box retail locations to its advantage. Best Buy has made itself into a neutral ground, essentially renting out its showroom space to every single brand imaginable. Apple has mini boutiques inside of Best Buy's, so does Samsung and Microsoft and Sony and even Amazon and Google. Oh, and Best Buy is turning itself into every family's own personal IT consultant.

by taking the Geek Squad strategy and putting it on steroids. And if you think about it, if the Internet of Things really is coming, if our whole houses are going to become connected homes, then helping to make that a reality really could be a growth market. Here's a scene of a training session for the new army of Best Buy people that they want to send to your house. Quote, be a consultant, not a salesperson, Bucknell says. Use phrases like, how would you like it if?

Do you think it would help you if you could? Have you ever thought about? They're supposed to establish long-term relationships with their customers rather than chase one-time transactions. They won't need to anxiously track weekly metrics, and unlike the Geek Squad and blue shirts working in stores, they'll be paid an annual salary instead of an hourly wage. Their house calls are free and can last as long as 90 minutes.

That lets you have a real conversation. You can talk about what's possible, be human, make it real. They'll encounter these slogans again and again throughout headquarters. We get 26% of our customers' electronic spending. That's embarrassing, he says. If we get a third, that would still be embarrassing, but the growth for the company would be tremendous. This is a great way to make a sale,

but it's also the beginning of a beautiful friendship, to quote Casablanca. Does anybody know Casablanca, end quote. It's actually really one of the most interesting business profile slash turnaround stories I've read in a real long time. And finally, the Atlantic has a story about identity that probably should be a new magazine, if I'm being honest. As home DNA testing becomes more common, scenes like the following are happening over and over again. And not only do the companies have to cope with this, but actual families do as well. Quote, it was Ancestry DNA's customer service rep who had to break the news to Catherine St. Clair.

For her part, St. Clair thought she was inquiring about a technical glitch. Her brother, the brother who, along with three other siblings, had gifted her the DNA test for her birthday, wasn't showing up right in her family tree. It was not a glitch, the woman on the line had to explain gently, if this news can ever land gently. The man St. Clair thought of as her brother only shared enough DNA with her to be a half-siblings. In fact, she didn't match any family members on her father's side. Her biological father must be someone else. I looked into a mirror and started crying, says St. Clair, now 56. I've taken for granted my whole life that what I was looking at in the mirror was part of my mother and part of my dad.

And now that half of that person I was looking at in the mirror, I didn't know who that was, end quote. I also found this from later in the piece really fascinating. This generation right now and maybe the next 15 years or so, there's going to be a lot of shocking results coming out. I'd say in 20 years time, it's going to dissipate, she predicted. But then our expectations of privacy will have caught up with the new reality created by the rise of consumer DNA tests, end quote. The piece I just read from is called When a DNA Test Shatters Your Identity. Links, as always, are in the show notes. So with that Microsoft earnings report, tech earnings season is on us once again. You'll

You'll note that I waited until today to talk about Microsoft's earnings because last earnings season, a lot of you told me that it wasn't actually useful for me to report the earnings results same day since they're only released after the bell and this show posts at five, so I really only have the time to see the top line numbers and I can't do any lengthy analysis. And that makes sense. If download numbers are to be believed, only a sliver of you listen to the show within the first hour I posted anyway. So going forward, I think we'll do it like this. When high-profile earnings come out, I'll just wait until the next day so I can get a sense of the reaction and the

analysis. Though I do reserve the right to make exceptions for truly breaking news, like if Apple were to report a loss or something. And if you don't like this arrangement, feel free to let me know on Twitter or wherever. Anyway, have a great weekend, everybody. Don't do anything I wouldn't do.