Tech Brew Ride Home - Fri. 8/31 - Is This How The iPhone Leak Happened?

Episode Date: August 31, 2018

How those iPhone leaks happened (maybe), the scooter permits happened and some big names got snubbed, Google’s secret deal with MasterCard, and the weekend long reads suggestions.  Links:Exclusive: This is ‘iPhone XS’ — design, larger version, and gold colors confirmed (9to5Mac)Exclusive: Apple Watch Series 4 revealed — massive display, dense watch face, more (9to5Mac)Huawei’s AI Cube is a 4G router and Alexa speaker, not a cube (The Verge)Huawei's Google Home clone has Alexa inside (Engadget)Scooters will return to San Francisco, but Bird and Lime aren’t invited (The Verge)Mozilla announces Firefox will block trackers by default (Venture Beat)Google and Mastercard Cut a Secret Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales (Bloomberg) The Betterment Weekend Longreads:Franken-algorithms: the deadly consequences of unpredictable code (The Guardian)Logged off: meet the teens who refuse to use social media (The Guardian)How Big Tech Swallowed Seattle (Bloomberg Businessweek)The Mystery of People Who Speak Dozens of Languages (The New Yorker) 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, August 31st, 2018. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, how those iPhone leaks happened, maybe.

The scooter permits happened and some big names got snubbed. Google's secret deal with MasterCard and the weekend long reads suggestions, Labor Day weekend edition. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Yesterday, Apple Rumor's Site 9 to 5 Mac had the scoop of the week when it published Those images you probably saw of Apple's upcoming iPhone 10S in two sizes, plus an image of a new Apple Watch. The images confirmed some important rumors. On the iPhone side, 9-to-5 Mac confirms two sizes of the iPhone 10-style phone, a gold color option, and, of course, the name iPhone 10S. For the watch, a larger edge-to-edge screen is confirmed.

A new hole in the right side of the watch, possibly a microphone is clear. And at least one new watch face shows as many as eight complications. What's just as interesting, though, as the leaks themselves is maybe how they happened. After these popped up yesterday, friend of the show, Christina Warren tweeted, How in the hell did this leak? Like, I'm genuinely shocked. Icons and OS code is one thing, and really dumb, as is early releases of software, but a press photo? How did this happen?

End quote. Well, we think we have an educated guess. First, let's rewind to September 5th, 2017, when 9 to 5 Mac contributor, Guillermo Rambo tweeted, a link to an Apple event video stream a week before the event went live. He wrote, quote, this is the direct stream URL for next week's event, streaming test going on now, end quote. Rambo somehow figured out Apple's video stream URL before the event happened, perhaps by examining the Akamai Content Delivery Network used to stream the video, that 2017 stream test didn't reveal any leaks, as Apple apparently just streamed stuff from previous events.

But yesterday, Rambo tweeted at 9.46 a.m., quote, streaming tests started early this year and with some very good testing material, end quote. He showed a screenshot of last year's Apple Air Power promo video overlaid with what looks like video timecode and closed captioning tracks. And an hour later at 1047 a.m., he tweeted simply, OMG. One minute later he tweeted, it's beautiful and I want the big one. During the very same minute 9 to 5 Mac writer Benjamin Mayo tweeted, holy cheeseballs. Then Rambo retweeted 9 to 5 editor, Zach Hall's tweet from just four minutes prior, which was seven exclamation marks. Half an hour later, Rambo and Hall published the iPhone and Apple Watch leak stories to 9 to 5 Mac. Each story featured a single image cheekily labeled not a

mock-up. At about that same time, developer Steve Troughton-Smith noticed what was happening over at 9-5 Mac, tweeting, I'm guessing Apple just streamed some marketing videos for unreleased products on a testing field that they thought nobody was watching. Oops. Putting this all together, then, we speculate that 9-5 Mac's images are cleaned-up, screen captures from an Apple streaming video test. They line up with the size we would expect from a 1080P video stream, and detailed examination of the images shows minor compression artifacts. consistent with video. The way the tweets unfolded, it sure looks like the multiple 9 to 5 Mac staffers were watching. Apple's test stream independently when, for some unknowable reason,

promo videos for the unreleased iPhone and Apple Watch appeared. Oops, indeed. At IFA today, Huawei announced the Huawei AI Cube, an Alexa-enabled smart speaker and Wi-Fi router. Despite its name, it's not shaped like a cube. It's a tapered cylinder that looks a lot like a Google home. Scheduled to ship in Europe this Christmas, the AI cube is a smart speaker, but with a twist, you can pop in a 4G SIM card or connect its Ethernet port to your home broadband service to turn the device into a Wi-Fi router. This neatly combines two gadgets in one, though there are still some unanswered questions, one of them being when or if it'll come to the U.S., China, or other markets outside Europe.

Early reports on the device from the Verge and Engadget described it as having good sound quality and the expected Alexa integration along with a microphone mute button and volume buttons on top. If you're in Europe and you want Wi-Fi from your smart speaker, ask Santa for a Huawei non-cubical AI cube. The Verge reports that San Francisco has finally awarded scooter contracts, and the winners are scoot and skip. That means that the major scooter players, including Uber, lift, bird, spin, and lime will have to keep their scooters off the city streets. So score one for the little guys. Quoting from The Verge, according to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, both companies will be allowed to operate a maximum of 625 scooters each for six months starting in October. After that, scoot and skip may be allowed to increase that number to 12.

2,500 scooters each, end quote. It seems that San Francisco awarding permits to the smaller companies is a rebuke to bird, lime, and spin, all of which deployed their scooters on streets without permission and hoped the city would like it. Apparently it did not. The municipal transportation agency said it chose scoot and skip, in part because the startups have, quote, a high level of capability to operate a safe, equitable, and accountable scooter share service, end quote.

Translation, these companies asked first rather than begging for forgiveness. Venture Beat says that Firefox will soon block web traffickers by default and will add new settings to help users control the information they share with websites. Web trackers are used by advertisers and other data collection companies to keep track of who looks at what. Not only are they tiny invasions of privacy, they slow down web page loading. Mozilla will build three new tracker blocking features into Firefox. One, trackers that slow down page loading will be blocked by default. This feature will ship in Firefox 63, scheduled for October 2018.

Two, cross-site trackers that follow users across multiple websites will be blocked by default. This feature goes into beta in September and ships in Firefox 65, scheduled for January of 2019. Three, fingerprinting trackers and crypto mining scripts will be blocked. by default. Fingerprinting is when a tracker uses your device configuration like the fonts you have installed to identify you. I think we did a story about that recently where banks were using that to verify the identity of people using various accounts. And crypto mining is when your device is hijacked to mine for cryptocurrencies. Both of these will be blocked by default, but no date has been announced. You'll notice I said by default a bunch of times. Some of these features have

already been available for some time in some form, but they have not been turned on as defaults for all users yet. The big change here is that the default behavior of the browser will be both faster and more private than ever going forward. These changes mean that Firefox will join Safari as a highly privacy-conscious browser, preventing some of the most pernicious user tracking automatically and getting a performance boost as a side effect. Even Chrome blocks some ads by default and supports content blocking through extensions. Mozilla sees these new features as a modern version of its classic pop-up ad blocking feature. Remember pop-up ads? If you don't, that's because you're young, you whippersnapper you, and because Firefox killed them by disabling them by

default a decade and a half ago. According to sources, Bloomberg has spoken to Google recently struck a secret partnership deal with MasterCard, wherein Google gets data about consumer participants. purchases made with MasterCards that lets Google match sales used by those cards in brick and mortar stores to clicks from online ads. Google swears that the reported sales data sits behind double-blind encryption technology, and people can opt out of ad tracking using Google's web and app activity console. But as Bloomberg points out, neither Google nor MasterCard made this partnership public, raising the hackles of privacy advocates. In a way, this has always been the holy grail for Google.

It can track sales from clicks online with near-perfect accuracy as long as the sale also happens online. But the disconnect between online and off has made it difficult to give advertisers the sort of total results accuracy that would perfectly square the circle. Apparently, this deal took four years to hammer out between Google and MasterCard, and it was controversial within Google. There are, obviously, privacy implications here, and as many people have said a lot recently, even though Facebook has gotten all the headlines because of Cambridge Analytica, nobody knows more about you, potentially, than Google does, but I want to use this story to again explore something that we've already spoken about a couple times this week. As Bloomberg says in the piece, quote,

The Alliance gave Google an unprecedented asset for measuring retail spending, part of the search giant's strategy to fortify its primary business against onslaughts from Amazon and others, end quote. If you're an advertiser, your perfect world scenario is to someday be able to influence consumers right when they're at the point of considering a purchase, and if you know their preferences based on past behavior, then even better. Google built its advertising machine based on being right there at the point of intention. If you do a search for hotels in Marietta, Georgia, say there's a high likelihood

you're heading to Georgia sometime soon. and so advertisers want to show you ads for flights or car rentals or obviously double tree hotels. Facebook built its advertising business by revealing our affinities. Starbucks knows you're a fan because you literally told them. I don't know if you've ever bought an ad on Facebook, but you can buy ads that target people who have liked certain brands. And obviously, both companies have extended this

by using tracking codes that follow you around the web, serving you ads but also tracking what you do as a way of refurb. finding that two-pronged point of intention and affinity marketing strategy. But there's one more potential piece of this puzzle. And I'll explain it by way of example. My family is a Skippy Peanut Butter family. That's just what we tend to buy over and over. Skippy Peanut Butter.

Skippy, of course, would like to know that, certainly. But GIF Peanut Butter would probably like to know that also. You know who does know that? Amazon. As I said earlier this week, when the news about Amazon turning on the advertising tap first percolated, I figured they could potentially carve out a niche online between the Facebook and Google advertising duopoly. But now the scales have fallen from my eyes and I can see the real potential here. If Amazon goes all the way with this, they could potentially create an advertising business

that could be as powerful as those other two and possibly even more so. Now, I'm not naive here. Marketers have been trying to make use of consumer spending habits for a long time. Those grocery store loyalty cards aren't given to you out of the goodness of their hearts. They're given to you as a way to track and quantify your buying behavior. And we spoke about direct-to-consumer startups yesterday. Investors love those plays because they're brands that directly own the relationship with their consumers without any middlemen. In fact, they can become the middlemen.

Harry's sends you your razors every month like clockwork, but they can also upsell you all the shaving accoutrements and maybe some bath and beauty products as well. But imagine the scale at which Amazon could potentially do this. I know it's somewhat cliche to say this, but for how much the Internet has completely transformed our society, it's sometimes startling to step back and remember that, I don't know, 90% of what's been done on the Internet

has been done in aid of serving you ads in a better way. I think that's why Larry and Sergey do moonshots. I think that's why Chimath does a fund like social capital to invest in other areas like medicine and education. A lot of people have gotten very rich by making their money as attention merchants, as Tim Wu terms it. And they're maybe a little ashamed by that. They want the peace of mind to know that they really did change the world

in some meaningful way other than at the end of the day, just engineering a better way to market laundry detergent to people. Maybe this sounds a little overly cynical. I mean, the great television of the last 20 years. Real impactful art with a capital A. I mean, all that was created in aid of selling you stuff also. I get it, let's be real, but keep an eye on this seemingly imminent move to finally give the advertisers that third leg of the stool,

their ultimate dream. What's the ultimate dream? when my last jar of peanut butter is almost empty, I can already auto-reorder with Amazon Dash button. But wouldn't some peanut butter brand love to quickly get my attention and suggest I try their new organic peanut butter instead? Or think about the Internet of Things, the connected home, seems like a G-Wiz Jetson's future where lights turn on

when you walk into the room and you can tell your house to turn down the temperature a scoge, right? But it's also potentially just another way for advertisers to have a peek inside your home to sell you any hour of the day. And to me, it would be sad if that's all it ends up being. Want some extra peace of mind this weekend? After you knock out these weekend Longreeds, check out Betterment and how they can help you set and achieve financial goals for your future.

First up for the Longreeds, great long piece from The Guardian, looking at what it calls Franken Algorithms. As technologies develop, code builds on code, code piles on code, and at some point, no one is entirely sure what's underneath all the layers. This has always been true to some extent. The underlying code that is delivering my words to your ears is at least partially based on, I don't know, some Unix code going back to the 70s. But in the age of machine learning and all the other buzzwords, it's potentially creating a scenario where, well, let me quote from someone quoted in this piece, in some ways we've lost agency.

When programs pass into code and code passes into algorithms and then algorithms start to create new algorithms, it gets further and further away from human agency. Software is released into a code universe which no one can fully understand, end quote. Also from The Guardian, a look at teens who purposely and proudly avoid social media. In my opinion, you should always take trend pieces like these

with a grain of salt because it's sort of like those New York Times trend pieces where they interview three random idiots and then declare, I don't know, that Z. Cavarici-style hammer pants are back in style for the fall. But don't you have the instinctual sense that a teen backlash to social media is at least possible? Maybe not now, but someday. Teens are going to be teens, and if your parents love it, you got to hate it, right? Next, Bloomberg has a piece up titled How Big Tech Swallowed Seattle. It's a look at how Amazon and Microsoft have transformed the very geography and real estate of that town over the last 25 years or so. I always find these sorts of think pieces fascinating, how industry shapes a city.

You know, I live in New York. If you've been here, then maybe you've visited the Soho neighborhood. So beautiful, those big cast iron buildings with the enormous windows and open floor plans. Well, guess what? That's because garment manufacturing was once one of the dominant industries in the city, and those buildings were all factories. You have a whole neighborhood that is charming now and maybe a little kitschy, but it got that way because before electrification,

those factories needed big open floor spaces with lots of natural light. So, this piece about Seattle is another look at how the needs of modern tech offices have shaped the geography of a modern tech hub for good, bad, and otherwise. And finally, this is just a cool, bake-your-noodle piece

because it's taking a look inside our noodles and how they function. The New Yorker has a piece on hyper polyglots, which are people who speak dozens of languages. They're rare, but they've existed throughout history. What is it about their brains that allows them to do with such ease what most of us find so difficult? That is, learn a second language or even a twelfth or 20th. Or, and this is the angle that I found interesting,

maybe that's the wrong way to look at it. quote, people who live at a crossroads of cultures, Melanesians, South Asians, Latin Americans, Central Europeans, sub-Saharan Africans, plus millions of others, including the Maltese and the Shawi, acquire languages without considering it a noteworthy achievement, end quote. Language has always seemed to be a key to unlocking the secrets of cognition, as Nome Chomsky and a lot of others have long-intuitive.

There's so many angles to the story that are amazing. From the big picture of, what are the genetics behind innate talent and how can we study it to the more specific issue of what is the cutoff point in age, not just for learning languages easily, but for being able to speak without an accent? Or what about drugs that could change how the brain learns, quoting from the piece? Takau Hench at Harvard has discovered that Valprote, a drug used to treat epilepsy, migraines, and bipolar disorder can reopen the critical period for visual development in mice. Might it work for speech? Neurogeneticist Simon Fisher said, we don't know yet. You got to love a great long New Yorker piece that really bakes your noodle.

That's been the weekend long reads brought to you by Betterment. Investment involves risk, but TechMeme ride home listeners can get up to one year managed for free. For more information, visit betterment.com slash ride. That's betterment.com slash ride. Betterment, outsmart average. That's all for today. I want to totally credit Chris Higgins for sleuthing down all the speculation

about how those iPhone and Apple Watch leaks may have occurred. Chris helped me write the show again today, and Chris is a smart dude. Remember, you can follow him on Twitter at Chris Higgins. Holiday weekend here in the U.S., everybody, so quick note that there will be no show on Monday, but we'll be back to you again on Tuesday. If you're lucky enough to have a long weekend this weekend,

enjoy it. Talk to you next week. I'd ask you to sit down, but you're not going to do anyway. And don't worry about the vase. What ways? I'm sorry. I said don't worry about it. I'll get one of my kids to fix it. How did you know? Oh, what's really going to bake your noodle later on is,

would you still have broken it if I hadn't said anything?