Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 02/01 – Google Deadpools The Pixel Slate

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

It’s a day ending in -a-y, so that must mean Google discontinued another flagship product. Microsoft reports that its next growth industry is cybersecurity. Ring has basically doubled the amount of police and fire departments that can request access your doorbell videos. And what happened when Elon Musk showed up in Clubhouse last night. Sponsors: SmartAsset.com/techmeme Metalab.co Links: [Update: Final] Pixel Slate discontinued and removed from Google Store (9to5Google) Apple’s iCloud Passwords extension for Chrome on Windows is now available (9to5Google) Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella: There is ‘a big crisis right now’ for cybersecurity (Yahoo Finance) Facebook Knew Calls for Violence Plagued ‘Groups,’ Now Plans Overhaul (WSJ) US police and fire departments partnering with Amazon’s Ring passes 2,000 (Financial Times) New Linux SUDO flaw lets local users gain root privileges (Bleeping Computer) Augmented Reality Gets Pandemic Boost (WSJ) Elon Musk busts Clubhouse limit (TechCrunch) Recording of Musk on Clubhouse (Final Stand/YouTube) RideHome+ Feed Signup: tech.supercast.tech 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 right home for February 1st, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, it's a day ending in A-Y, so that must mean Google discontinued another flagship product. Microsoft reports that its next growth industry is cybersecurity. Ring has basically doubled the amount of police and fire departments that can request access to your doorbell videos, and what happened when Elon Musk showed up on Clubhouse last night. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Google has discontinued the pixel slate, which was its first flagship tablet announced all the way back in October 2018. Apparently, now the game plan is to focus on laptops like the pixel book Go.

That's the plan now. But, hey, in six months, I might be reporting how they're discontinuing all pixel books. You never know, quoting 9 to 5 Google. At the start of last month, we reported on how the pixel slate was out of stock in the U.S., Canada, and UK. inventory did not return in the intervening weeks, and the Google store today removed the product listing entirely. It's also no longer shown under the main pixel book tab. The pixel book pen was also taken down, though replacement tips remain available. Google pushed both entertainment and productivity use cases for its tablet. The latter was aided by an official keyboard case that connected via pins

and had round chicklet keys. The USBC ports supported 4K display output for a docked configuration. Design-wise, all units were available in Midnight Blue, and the device weighed 1.6 pounds for a svelte 7mm thickness. Overall, standalone Chromebook tablets versus convertible 2&1s have yet to take off as a form factor. Android apps were the primary appeal, but the experience was lacking,

and more optimized experiences were found on the web. Chrome OS tablets will likely have more luck on the low end. Around eight months after the pixel slate was announced, Google confirmed that it was moving away from first-party tablets and focusing on laptops as seen by the Pixelbook Go. The pixel slate no longer being available for sale comes as the original pixel book met a similar status back in September, end quote. Yeah, you know what I'm going to say here, don't you?

Something, something never trust Google to, well, just let at Red Letter Dave say it for me for the 20th time, quote, you can't get too attached to any Google product, with the exception of Gmail Maps, maybe. Every other Google products might be on the chopping block at any given time. Google tends to kill just as many products as it unveils, end quote. From the category of they didn't already have this, although I guess not because Mac versus PC, right? But still, how many iPhone users use a PC? Apple has released an I-Cloud passwords browser, extension for Chrome on Windows. Quoting 9 to 5 Google again. Besides iTunes, Apple's biggest offering on Microsoft's operating system is the ICloud sync client for files, photos, and mail.

Apple is now extending its presence on Windows with an ICloud passwords Chrome extension. After updating ICloud for Windows to version 12, which teased the extension's existence earlier this week, you'll see a new passwords section in the list of available services. Tapping Apply to proceed at the bottom, opens a dialog box to download the tool inside Chrome. It provides access to the passwords that you've created, had automatically generated, or saved in Safari for iOS and MacOS while using Chrome. The sync is bidirectional, with new credentials you store in Google's browser saved to the ICloud keychain so that it's accessible on iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices, end quote. A bunch of trend stories all in a row here. First up, we know that Microsoft has been

killing it. As we said, all the big platforms slash oligarchs seem to be killing it these days, with the possible exception of Google, which we'll see tomorrow after the bell when they release their earnings along with Amazon. But it's not just cloud computing that has Microsoft's revenue and profit numbers soaring, apparently. Get this. For Microsoft, at least, Opsack is a growing industry. Microsoft has revealed that its various cybersecurity offerings crossed $10 billion in revenue over the last 12 months, up 40% year over year. And actually, that revenue now accounts for around 7% of Microsoft's total revenue for the last fiscal year, quoting Yahoo Finance.

The $10 billion figure comes from the security-related revenue generated by services, including Microsoft's Azure Active Directory, In-Tune, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Office 365, Microsoft Cloud App Security, Microsoft Information and Governance, Azure Sentinel, Azure Monitoring, and Azure Information Protection. Each of those makes up what Microsoft calls its intelligent cloud and productivity and business processes segments. Those overarching segments generated $14.6 billion and $13.4 billion in revenue, respectively in the company's fiscal Q2 2021. Quote, what we have built is very helpful in times of crisis, and there is a big crisis right now, Microsoft's CEO Satcha Nadella told Yahoo Finance in an interview on Wednesday,

but you need to sort of obviously build all of this over a period of years, if not decades, and then sustain it through not just product innovation, but also I would say practice every day, end quote. The announcement follows Microsoft's involvement in uncovering the breadth of the massive solar winds cyber attack in December, which hit private companies like cybersecurity firm Fire Eye and government agencies, including the Treasury, Commerce, and State Departments, as well as the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security. I was most proud that we became the first responders for this attack. Vasu Jekal, Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Security Compliance and Identity Marketing told Yahoo Finance,

quote, we were the defenders that other defenders were turning to. We were working with Fire Eye and across the public sector and private sector coming together, saying, What should we do and how should we protect our world against it, she said, end quote. We've been hearing for a while now that Facebook groups is almost single-handedly keeping the legacy Facebook app alive among certain demographics, folks who otherwise have abandoned using Facebook for various reasons. I mean, just anecdotally, I know my own mother won't give up Facebook because there's a quilting group that she can't live without. but according to the Wall Street Journal, internal research at Facebook itself showed that not only are groups filled with just the sort of stuff that has driven a lot of people away from using Facebook, in fact, groups might be the worst filled with this sort of garbage the most, quoting

the journal. The company's data scientists had warned Facebook executives in August that what they called blatant misinformation and calls to violence were filling the majority of the platform's top civic groups, according to documents the Wall Street Journal reviewed. Those groups are generally dedicated to politics and related issues and collectively reach hundreds of millions of users. The researchers told executives that, quote, enthusiastic calls for violence every day, and quote, filled one 58,000 member group, according to an internal presentation. Another top group claimed it was set up by fans of Donald Trump, but it was actually run by, quote, financially motivated.

Albanians, end quote, directing a million views daily to fake news stories and other provocative content. Roughly, quote, 70% of the top 100 most active U.S. civic groups are considered non-recommendable for issues such as hate, misinformation, bullying, and harassment, the presentation concluded, quote, we need to do something to stop these conversations from happening and growing as quickly as they do, the researchers wrote, suggesting measures to slow the growth of groups, at least long enough to give Facebook. staffers time to address violations. Our existing integrity systems they wrote aren't addressing these issues, end quote. In response, Facebook ahead of the election banned some of the most prominent problem groups

and took steps to reduce the growth of others, according to documents and people familiar with its decisions. Still, Facebook viewed the restrictions as temporary and stopped short of imposing measures some of its own researchers had called for, these people said, end quote. As at Era Inert said on Twitter, quote, For some reason, everything they focus on ends up amplifying the worst in humanity. First news feed, then groups. What should we focus on and probably ruin next? VR, end quote.

And as the great John Battelle tweeted, quote, move fast, break things, apologize with a side of weak sauce. Move fast and break more things. Repeat, end quote. And continuing to keep our eye on how Amazon is creating a friendly neighborhood panopticon with its ring product, the Financial Times says more than 2,000 police and fire departments in the U.S. have now partnered with Amazon's ring with 1,189 new departments added over the past year. So basically doubling their partnership numbers. Quote, all but two of the 50 U.S. states, Montana and

and Wyoming now have departments involved with the Ring program, which allows officials to contact users in a particular area and ask them to provide captured footage via Rings app to assist investigations. In 2020, the department's collectively requested videos related to more than 22,335 incidents. Amazon would not provide a comparative number for 2019, but the data set does show the number of forces working with the Ring platform has jumped since 2018 when just 60 forces were signed up and since 2019 when there were 703 onboarded. Among the most active forces in the country was Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which made 431 requests in the second half of 2020,

more than any other force in the country. Public Information Officer Sergeant Efran Conejo noted the high number of homicides in the city and hundreds of shootings. For a lot of those types of incidents, we are canvassing for video surveillance, he said, end quote. Here's the thing. want a ring doorbell in my life because I don't want Amazon or the police in my house. Fine. But as I walk down my block here in Brooklyn, you can see tons of brownstones, tons of my neighbors with

ring doorbells installed. So I don't know if the NYPD has partnered with ring or not, but I'm assuming that I'm being videotaped by my neighbors every time I walk down the street. How do I opt out of that? And I think we've hinted at or talked about in passing a couple of times before that one of the things the pandemic has accelerated is the adoption of augmented reality in automotive and other manufacturing industries where it is increasingly being used to provide remote assistance to employees in real time, quoting the Wall Street Journal. Augmented reality, which superimposes digital content onto a user's view of the real world, became more valuable. for some companies such as Mercedes-Benz and L'Oreal last year amid social distancing requirements and lockdowns. The companies are using the technology to provide assistance for employees and consumers in real time without needing to be physically present. Last summer, L'Oreal began using Microsoft's HoloLens 2 headset to help employees install

and troubleshoot manufacturing equipment with assistance from experts in different parts of the world. While wearing the HoloLens 2 headset, users can see data instructions and 3D visual images in their real-world view. They can manipulate digital objects by using their fingers to grab the corners of the object and drag it over to one side, among other gestures. With remote assistance software, a user wearing a headset can share their real-time view with others who are using a desktop or mobile device. The worldwide total market value for augmented reality is expected to grow to $140 billion by 2025 up from about $10 billion last year. according to a report this month from tech market advisory firm Allied Business Intelligence.

Those figures include hardware, software, and content, AR advertising, platforms, and licensing, connectivity, and much more, end quote. Which, that's some serious growth, serious market expansion that is happening right now. So apparently for 10 years, there was a bug in pseudo, which is used in several versions of Linux, that allowed any local user to gain root access to a Linux system. The bug has now been fixed, but quoting bleeping computer. Sudo is a Unix program that enables system admins to provide limited root privileges to normal users listed in the Sudoers file, while at the same time keeping a log of their activity. It works on the principle of least privilege, where the program gives people

just enough permissions to get their work done without compromising the system's overall security. When executing commands on a Unix-like OS, unprivileged users can use the pseudo-superuser-do command to execute commands as root if they have permission or know the root user's password. Root is the system super user, a special system administration account. The pseudo-privilege escalation vulnerability tracked as CVE 2021-356 was discovered by security researchers from Qualis, who disclosed it on January 13th, and made sure that patches were available before going public with their findings. According to researchers, the issue is a heap-based buffer overflow, exploitable by any local user, normal users and system users listed

in the Sudoas file or not, with attackers not being required to know the user's password to successfully exploit the flaw. The buffer overflow allowing any local user to obtain root privileges is triggered by pseudo-incorrectly unescaping backslashes in the arguments, end quote. And finally today, in case you missed it, Elon Musk was on Clubhouse last night, an event that broke records for the new social network, and also sort of broke it full stop. If you joined late, you couldn't get in. I guess they had to cap the number of people in the room or something. Elon mostly talked about things like space travel, going to Mars, crypto, AI,

COVID vaccines and the like. Although near the end, Vlad Tenev, CEO of Robin Hood, came into the room. Quote, did you sell your clients down the river or did you have no choice, end quote. That's my very in the moment paraphrasing slash quoting of what Musk asked Tenev, to which Tenev's reply was basically that, again, I'm paraphrasing here. Robin Hood needed to come up with $3 billion in collateral last week, but after they froze. some of those volatile stocks, they only had to come up with $700 million in collateral. So, you know, they had to move quickly, did what they had to do. But also, you know, they could have just said that last week. Why they didn't do that? And instead chose to really damage their brand.

I don't know. Maybe they were afraid that revealing what was really going on would cause a bank run or something. As the great Peter Kafka tweeted, I don't think good PR solves a company's problems because you can't explain slash spin away your problems. But man, does Robin Hood need PR help? Transparency slash context is what you're supposed to provide on day one of your crisis, not days later to Elon Musk in a semi-private chat room, end quote. Anyway, a bunch of people live streamed the conversation on YouTube. If you're interested, I chose one of those at random as the final link in the show notes in case you want to hear how it all went down. By the way, someone who was on stage last night with Elon on Clubhouse was Gary Tan, who often hosts regular

clubhouse events with the likes of Steven Sinovsky and Mark Andresen. But if you want access to a very intimate and personal conversation with Gary Tan, where we find out how he works and how he sees the world, you're going to want to sign up for Ride Home Plus so you can hear the next Office Hours episode with Gary Tan, which comes out this Friday. Of course, you can sign up at tech.supercast.com. Tech. Link at the bottom of the show notes. Weather report, it is snowing to beat the band here in Brooklyn right now. If I can get this out the door soon,

going to take the kids to the big sledding hill and Prospect Park. Be on the lookout for some videos posted to Twitter if we're successful. At Brian MCC, if you're interested, talk to you tomorrow.