Tech Brew Ride Home - Friday, Apr. 27, 2018 - DNA Site Cracks the Golden State Killer Case

Episode Date: April 27, 2018

The Price of Amazon Prime is going up, Apple's AirPort is going away, Square buys Weebly, A DNA site might have cracked the Golden State Killer case, will T-Mobile and Sprint finally tie the knot, is Apple working on an AR/VR headset, and the weekend longreads. Stories: @matthew_d_green, @reneritchie Tweets: @jrichlive, @mattmcgee Links:RIP AirPort Base Stations: Why Apple is exiting the Wi-Fi router business (iMore)Apple’s working on a powerful, wireless headset for both AR, VR (CNET)GEDmatch, a tiny DNA analysis firm, was key for Golden State Killer case (Ars Technica)A few thoughts on Ray Ozzie’s “Clear” Proposal (Matthew Green) Weekend Longreads:Inside Jeff Bezos’s DC Life (Washingtonian)Hulu Beyond 'Handmaid's Tale': Execs and Stars on a Promising Yet Uncertain Future (The Hollywood Reporter)Can Silicon Valley Get You Pregnant? (Fast Company)You could be flirting on dating apps with paid impersonators (Quartz) Credits: Produced by @brianmcc and the @techmeme editors Music by @jpschwinghamer 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 Meeting. ride home for Friday, April 27, 2018. Today, the price of Amazon Prime is going up.

Apple's airport is going away. Square buys Weebly. A DNA site might have cracked the Golden State Killer case. Will T-Mobile and Sprit finally tie the knot? Is Apple working on an AR-V-R headset? And the weekend long reads. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. So the shakeout from yesterday's earnings has not been super dramatic.

Amazon did well, Microsoft did well, Intel did well. All those stocks opened up this morning in trading. The most noteworthy story is Amazon, which is hitting new all-time highs. Amazon analyst Heath Terry wrote in a note to clients, quote, We are in the sweet spot between Amazon investment cycles where new fulfillment data centers are driving accelerating revenue growth, while incremental capacity utilization is driving. margin expansion. We still remain in the early stages in the shift of computing to the cloud and the transition of traditional retail online, and, in our opinion, the market is underestimating

the long-term financial benefit of both to Amazon, end quote. And that really is the story on all of these tech companies this week. They're sitting smack atop profound secular changes in their markets, and they are profiting accordingly. In the case of Facebook and Google, it's the fact that Our time and attention has moved online, and advertising is following. In the case of Amazon, e-commerce continues to take over, and in the case of Amazon and Microsoft and to a lesser extent, Google, as computing moves to the cloud, previous investments in these areas are paying off. Another Amazon analyst Justin Pope wrote to his clients,

quote, Amazon's share in its key markets continues to expand, supported by strong fulfillment infrastructure, and prime lock-in, while the earlier stage higher margins business of AWS and advertising are contributing to more meaningful profit growth, end quote. Well, speaking of that prime lock-in, it's about to be tested because the other big headlines Amazon made yesterday came from the fact that it is raising the price of its prime membership from $99 a year to $119 a year, at least in the U.S. This is the first time that Amazon has raised the price of Prime membership in four years. The new pricing will take effect for new Prime subscribers on May 11th, and for existing subscribers starting on June 16th. Way back in the day, Prime used to cost $79 a year.

And this is part of the reason that analysts are raising their price targets on Amazon stock today. Everyone believes Prime is so valuable to most people that they will pay the price increase without question. On Twitter, venture capitalist Jeff Richards joked, Imagine a whiteboard session at Amazon HQ. Anyone have any ideas on how to generate $2 billion in additional cash flow? But Matt McGee asked on Twitter, quote, I wonder what the tipping point is here. What price is too high?

No doubt Amazon has done loads of research and testing on this and is confident this won't push people away, end quote. One last story from Amazon. It was announced that the NFPA, was extending its partnership with Amazon Prime Video to stream Thursday night football again next year. Amazon will stream 11 games during both the 2018 and 2019 seasons. A few seasons ago, the NFL had allowed Twitter to stream games,

and so this announcement surprised a lot of industry watchers who assume the NFL might shop around the rights a little bit more, as YouTube was apparently very interested, and perhaps so was Facebook. Renee Ritchie sent shockwaves through the Apple world yesterday when he reported at I-More that Apple intends to stop production of its Airport Express, Airport Extreme, and Time Capsule Wi-Fi base stations. Apple told Richie in a statement, quote, we're discontinuing the Apple Airport Base Station products. They will be available through Apple.com, Apple's retail stores, and Apple authorized resellers, while supplies last, end quote. was originally launched all the way back in 1999, when Wi-Fi was still in its infancy in terms of consumer adoption. But the airport base station was last updated only in 2013,

and now we live in a world of ERO and Amplify and mesh networks and the like. It's hard to think of routers as sexy products, but they are vital products. And when they don't work, you definitely notice. As Richie wrote in his piece, quote, routers are different. They're infrastructure. They're behind televisions, underneath desks, and in closets. For some people, especially people who appreciate Apple's design and manufacturing and its unequivocal stance on security and privacy,

the loss of the airport line will still be a blow. At ZDNet, Adrian Kingsley Hughes bemoaned the loss of the airport and suggested it leaves the playing field clear for someone like Amazon with its Alexa ecosystem. Quote, combining the features of a time capsule airport router with that of the Apple TV and add in a sprinkling of HomePod, and Apple would have had the Swiss Army knife of home hubs, bringing together networking, backup, and home entertainment into a single device. This seems like a missed opportunity to me, and Apple has vacated a space that I now think that a company such as Amazon, a better fit for a product like this than Google for a number of reasons, should enter.

It got a little bit lost in the earnings deluge yesterday, but Square announced it was purchasing website building company Weebley for $365 million in cash in stock. Square is, of course, the payment company that is run by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Yes, all of those swiping payment dongles and panels at your local coffee shop or flea market. That's Square. And Weebley is one of those easy-to-use website building companies like Squarespace. The obvious combo here is that Square can help all of its millions of small merchants create easy online presences. Weibley reportedly already has 625,000 paying subscribers and had raised $35.7 million in funding over the course of its life. Square CEO Dorsey said, quote,

Square and Webley share a passion for empowering and celebrating entrepreneurs. Square began its journey with in-person solutions while Weebley began its journey online. Since then, we've both been building services to bridge these channels, and we can go even further and faster together, end quote. A couple of funny tweets about this, both from Casey Newton. First, he pointed out that Square now has a product to help businesses create spaces online, so maybe the product should be renamed Squarespace. Second, he tweeted, quote, I honestly think Webley could have won the website builder game except for one thing. It failed to spend $948 billion on podcast advertising, end quote. Which is, of course, a nod to the nearly ubiquitous advertising Squarespace does on podcasts.

The podcast host pauses and blinks his eyes coquettishly at Squarespace. Quick trip to the rumor mill here. Reuters is reporting that it's hearing from sources that T-Mobile and Sprint have made progress in their rumored talks to do a merger. and that a completed deal might come as early as next week. If such a merger were to take place, the combined company would have more than 127 million customers. Now, I have to heavily emphasize that rumors about a merger have seemingly been going on forever. These two companies supposedly came close to merging last November before the talks broke down reportedly over valuation disagreements. And talks in 2014 broke down because the Obama administration expressed antitrust.

concerns about an American cellular market being reduced to essentially three major players. So maybe this is just another tease, but it might be worth watching this space next week. Sticking to the rumor tip for a second, C-Net is reporting this afternoon that Apple is working on a combo AR VR headset that is slated to debut, it says, in 2020. The headset would reportedly deliver 8K images to each eye, would be untethered from a computer or a smartphone and would use Apple's own in-house-made chips to run the device. The CNET report is sourced from a single source, who remains anonymous, and in the piece, C-Net itself says, quote, Apple still could change or scrap its plans, end quote.

But it should be noted that Tim Cook has been effusive in his praise of augmented reality tech recently, telling the independent in an interview in February that he thinks, thinks AR is the next big thing. Quote, I regard it as a big idea like the smartphone, Cook said in that interview. The smartphone is for everyone. We don't have to think the iPhone is about a certain demographic or country or vertical market. It's for everyone. I think AR is that big.

It's huge. I get excited because of the things that could be done that could improve a lot of lives. You may have heard the news that police recently made an arrest of a series. suspect in the decades-old unsolved Golden State Killer Serial Killer case. Several outlets have been reporting that a key breakthrough in the case came when police made use of an online DNA database. But they didn't use 23 or me or Ancestry.com. They turned instead to GED match, which is a free open source website run by two Florida

men. Police apparently matched DNA from the original crime scene with genetic data that had been uploaded to GED Match's database. Police then surveilled a suspect, Joseph James DeAngelo, then captured DNA off of an item DeAngelo had discarded, and the former police officer, DiAngelo, was arrested Tuesday in Sacramento. This morning, one of the operators of GED match emailed Ars Technica and said, quote, although we were not approached by law enforcement or anyone else about this case or about the DNA, it has always been GED Match's policy to inform users that the database could be used for other uses as set forth in the site policy. While the database

was created for genealogical research, it is important that GED match participants understand the possible uses of their DNA, including information of relatives that have committed crimes or were victims of crimes. If you are concerned about non-genialogical uses, of your DNA, you should not upload your DNA to the database, and or you should remove DNA that has already been uploaded, end quote. Although it seems unlikely, a wanted criminal would knowingly spread their DNA around publicly, that might not matter, as Ars points out, if your relatives share their DNA with a database, you might share enough DNA with your relative that your DNA could be inferred from theirs. Representatives from both 23 and me and Ancestry.com

told ours, however, that their companies have policies in place to protect user privacy and that both have a policy to resist law enforcement inquiries unless they are compelled to cooperate by, quote, valid legal process. On Wednesday, we featured Stephen Levy's wired piece about Ray Ozzy and his clear key escrow system that he hopes would allow law enforcement to access encrypted devices while still maintaining user privacy controls. So since we talked about that, I thought it was worth mentioning a direct counterpoint from Matthew Green, a well-respected cryptographer and professor at Johns Hopkins University.

In a blog post, which I've linked to in the show notes, Green essentially writes that making a scheme like Ozzy's work would be difficult. His main bone of contention revolves around the ultra-secure key vault that Ozzie proposes manufacturers like Apple would have to maintain and guard. Green writes, quote, centralized key repositories that can decrypt every phone in the world are basically a magnet for the sort of attackers you absolutely don't want to be forced to defend yourself against.

Later in the piece, Green continues, if ever a single hacker gains access to that vault and is able to extract at most a few gigabytes of data around the size of an iTunes movie, then the attackers would gain unencrypted access to every device in the world. Even better if the attackers can do this surreptitiously, you'll never even know they did it, end quote. So in essence, Green is pointing out that it's dangerous to put all of your eggs, or in this case, keys, in one basket.

As the system exists now, device manufacturers like Apple have completely taken themselves out of the securing data game and left it in each user's hands for this very reason. A company like Apple doesn't want the potential security headache that Green is describing. But also the current state of affairs is actually more secure in the aggregate. It's a well-reasoned piece and it's not a takedown of Ozzy's ideas because Green is willing to consider such schemes but simply remain skeptical. If you're interested in this story and actually if you want a pretty layman-friendly explanation for the current state of security on smartphones, This piece is well worth a read. The title is A Few Thoughts on Ray Ozzy's Clear Proposal.

Guess that means it's time for the weekend long reads suggestions. Let's start with Jeff Bezos. You know he bought the Washington Post, but did you also know that he owns a house in D.C.? Actually, the largest house in D.C., in fact, and he spends more time in Washington than any other city outside of Seattle. The Washingtonian has a piece-up. profiling Bezos as he increasingly becomes a fixture in Washington's society. You know, I have a penchant for tech history, so this section of the piece stuck out to me. Before he started, Amazon Bezos was working on Wall Street.

He was at a quant firm called D.E. Shaw. D.E. Shaw's biggest competitor at the time was another quant hedge fund run by none other than Bernie Madoff. The piece in the Washingtonian interviews form. AOL executive and thus longtime Washington area resident Ted Leonsis, who relates this interesting anecdote, quoting, Leonis would go on to become a sounding board for Bezos, who later relayed one of the reasons he left Wall Street. He said, I had a competitor who was kicking my ass, Leonsis remembers. The prodigious rival, Bernie Madoff. So, Bezos cracked to Leonsis,

no Bernie Madoff, no Amazon. The Hollywood Reporter has a fascinating piece up timed to coincide with the new season of Handmaid's Tale on Hulu, and the piece looks at the strategic position Hulu is in, as the streaming wars seem to be ramping up to the main event in the next year or so. The piece claims Hulu is nearing 20 million subscribers and Hulu's CEO, Randy Freer, got very candid about competing not just with Jeff Bezos, but with Netflix's

Reed Hastings as well. We can't predict what may or may not happen, Frier says in the piece, but if and when something happens, you're going to look up and go, holy crap, Hulu has how many subscribers? The piece is full of some spectacular numbers

and charts that break down the state of the market for digital streamers, so definitely check that one out. Fast Company has a piece up that Pithily asks, Can Silicon Valley get you pregnant? By that they mean all of the startups that are springing up around fertility. A lot of them coming from female founders. The piece says that the global fertility services market is expected to grow to $21 billion by 2020. The piece paints the picture of a market that female

entrepreneurs are perhaps more clued into. The piece quotes Halle Teco, the founder of Rock Health, a seed fund that invest in digital health startups. Quote, I've heard the same story over and over of male investors who did not really understand the problem well enough to get excited about a company, and the few women and doctors that are in the sector are spread so thin because they're overwhelmed with the amount of opportunity, end quote. Finally, Quartz has a piece up that describes the job of a so-called closer. What is a closer. Let me just quote from the very first paragraph of the piece. Every morning I wake up to the same routine. I log into the Tinder account of a 45-year-old man from Texas, a client.

I flirt with every woman in his queue for 10 minutes, sending their photos and locations to a central database of potential opportunities. For every phone number I get, I make $1.75, end quote. That's right, There are now essentially ghostwriters who are paid to do the chatting up on online dating services, either because clients are too busy to do it themselves, or too miserable at flirting to be successful and so hire modern-day Cyrano de Bergeracs to help them out. The piece is simultaneously depressing, but also weirdly humanizing and also completely fascinating. All of the pieces I've just mentioned are linked with their titles and the show notes, so check them out. Hey, it's Avengers Infinity War weekend, everybody.

The most ambitious crossover event in the history of weekends. Hope you all enjoy it, or else the internet will probably break down under the weight of the disappointed hot takes coming in next week. I've been your host today, Brian McCullough. Follow me on Twitter at Brian MCC. Yes, I saw all your tweets and shares from Overcast last night. Thank you very much. I tried to fave each and every last one of them.

Thank you for listening to this. tech meme ride home and sharing the love. Talk to you next week.