Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 02/17 - HQ Trivia Into The Deadpool

Episode Date: February 17, 2020

The world’s most powerful climate supercomputer, HQ Trivia joins the Deadpool, Apple isn’t happy with Qualcomm’s chips again, foldable phones are having crease issues again, and a bit of an explainer about the Indian e-commerce gold rush. Sponsors: Metalab.co Wealthfront.com/techmeme Links: UK to spend $1.6 billion on the world's fastest weather supercomputer (Engadget) Game over for HQ Trivia (CNN Business) Exclusive: Apple is designing its own antenna for this year’s 5G iPhone (Fast Company) Our Motorola Razr's display is already breaking and peeling at the fold (Input) US Army testing all terrain electric scooter for tactical use (Electrek) In India, mom-and-pop stores are proving to be the holy grail for tech startups (KrASIA) 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 Monday, February 17th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, the world's most powerful climate supercomputer. HQ trivia joins the Deadpool. Apple isn't happy with call com's chips again. Foldable phones are having crease issues again and a bit of an explainer about the Indian

e-commerce gold rush. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. The UK's Met Office, which is Britain's weather service, said it will spend $1.2 billion. to acquire the world's most powerful climate supercomputer, capable of forecasting weather events to an area just a thousand meters across. I feel like we've done a couple of stories in this forecasting weather space recently. Who knew weather forecasting would be a hot tech space all a sudden, except, well, you know. Quote, the Mets said the computer will create a digital twin of our atmosphere with data like wind speeds, air temperatures, and pressure. and more. It will create forecasts down to an area just 1,000 meters or 0.62 miles across,

compared to 10 kilometers or 6.2 miles across currently. Around large airports, accuracy will focus down to just 300 meters or about 1,000 feet. Once in service, it will not only generate better forecasts, including rainfall predictions, but will help emergency workers deploy mobile flood barriers, balance the energy grid, and more. The Met also noted that it will also help services mitigate the effects of climate change, quote, and help support the transition to a low-carbon economy across the UK, said Anders B. The supercomputer will also be used by universities for drug design, AI, energy storage, and other types of research, end quote. The first stage of the installation will go into service in 2022 and will be at least six times as powerful as the system already in place. It is by far the largest investment in the Mets history. Another Deadpool entry, and this is one that coincided with the beginning of this podcast, so we covered it plenty at the very beginning.

HQ trivia, the company behind the once popular live mobile trivia game, is shutting down. 25 employees will lose their jobs, as reportedly the company's lead investors were no longer willing to fund the company's operations going forward. HQ had raised $15 million at a $100 million valuation in March of 2018, and had raised $8 million before that. In CNN business, Carrie Flynn reminds you of the HQ trivia story. When HQ trivia launched in 2017, its first game, HQ trivia quickly attracted millions of people across the world who stopped whatever they were doing twice a day to play the game on their smartphones. The company was profiled by the New York Times, and its original host Scott Raghalski,

became a household name, appearing on programs like NBC's Today Show. But over the next year, the game's popularity faded and its parent company was hit with a series of setbacks. The company grappled with internal turmoil, including the death of HQ co-founder Colin Kroll, who died in December 2018 from a drug overdose. In recent months, HQ tried to expand its audience by launching new products, including a photo challenge game in December called HQX, end quote. The thing about HQ trivia was, when it took off, a lot of us were like, of course, they've cracked it. Why does everything on the internet and on mobile have to be asynchronous?

Why couldn't live collective participatory events also be a thing? I mean, look at what Twitch and others are doing. But then again, fads are fads sometimes. And maybe this was just generational bias on the part of people like me. I grew up in a culture that had about 70 years of people all consuming the same content at the same time. Maybe that was the fad, or at least an accident of history. I don't know, though. I feel like there's something here, something to doing live participatory stuff. And Lord knows that quiz shows often lead the way in pioneering new mediums.

HQ trivia might have gotten it right and then gotten it wrong, but there were always plenty of signs that this was the wrong company. to prove as a litmus test, disproving or proving whether or not this sort of thing could even work in the first place. Sources are telling Fast Company that Apple is not happy with the QTM 525 millimeter wave antenna module that Qualcomm is offering for this year's upcoming 5G iPhones. As ever, there are signs that Apple will try its hand at designing its own antenna, which would actually be a major risk. Quote,

Apple balked at the QTM 525 millimeter wave antenna module offered to it by Qualcomm because it doesn't fit into the sleek industrial design Apple wants for the new iPhone, a source with knowledge of Apple's plans, told Fast Company. Qualcomm will provide the 5G modem chip, its Snapdragon X-55,

also used in Samsung's new Galaxy S20 phones, for the newest iPhone, which will likely be announced in the fall. However, Apple typically designs on several tracks and it's concurrently working on another design that uses both the Qualcomm modem and the antenna. It could default to this option later this year, our sources said, but that would require Apple to settle for a slightly thicker iPhone than it wants. Qualcomm has said that its QTM 525 antenna module will, quote,

support 5G smartphone designs sleeker than 8 millimeters thick. The antennas required for a millimeter wave 5G devices are harder to design than other kinds of antennas. Because these antennas send and receive higher frequency signals than earlier generations, our source said, there's less room for error in their design and manufacture. A slight imperfection in an antenna coming off the production line might lead to connection problems later on. The 5G iPhone will use a phased array antenna with two parts that work together to form a beam of radio signal. The beam can be electronically steered in different directions without the antenna moving. The modem chip and the antenna module work closely.

together to make this work properly, our source said. Having the two parts made by different companies may introduce some uncertainty and bump up the difficulty level of the overall design, end quote. As I said, that would be super risky, because as we speculated on this past weekend's bonus episode, I'm not sure that consumers know much or care much about 5G other than that they've heard a ton about it, and they want it. They think 5G, faster, better, right? Well, given that consumer anticipation, remember antenna gate? Remember you're holding it wrong? It would actually be a huge blow for Apple if in the midst of potentially the biggest upgrade cycle in smartphones in half a decade, everyone else's 5G iPhones just worked, and Apple's had issues.

Speaking of risky bets, quick follow up here, and as always, I'm not piling on, but the consensus seems to be developing that Motorola's razor is a bit of a disaster. The reviews have all been basically bad. The early word on the seven flip, conversely, has been so good that maybe the Razor's timing is also a disaster. And now, we're starting to get whispers that the Razors' display is having the same screen issues that everyone was worried about. Raymond Wong at Input magazine says his razor display is already beginning to peel around the fold. Check the link to the piece in the show notes to see the photos. Pretty not good. Quote, sometime during my 45-minute train ride from Queens to Manhattan, that left at 308 p.m. Eastern time, the razors display peeled

apart at the fold. I have no idea how it happened, but I can promise you it wasn't from impact. The phone was closed in my front jeans pocket the entire ride, and there's no visible damage anywhere on the device. And no, my jeans aren't super tight either. When I took out the phone at around 3.45 p.m. Eastern Time to snap a few selfie comparison photos, I noticed the air gap. The screen was completely warped from hinge to hinge with the top layer raised like a poorly applied screen protector. I'm too scared to even fold up the phone now because the more I close it, the wider the spread gets. There's a long streak across the top of the bubble and at first glance you might mistake it for a scratch. It's not a scratch. There's no physical damage on the surface of the lamination.

It's literally the pixels splitting from the two layers, end quote. Again, we heard for years that people thought that foldable phones could only become a thing when they got proper foldable glass, not plastic or laminate. But companies felt the need to rush to market, and this increasingly looks like a super expensive bet that hasn't paid off. The U.S. Army is testing an all-terrain electric scooter for tactical use. This is another story where it would be useful to click through on the link to check out the pictures. Quoting from Electrek, the Easy Raider is unique in the electric mobility space, combining the riding position of a jet ski with the stability of an all-terrain vehicle.

It features patent-pending long travel suspension that allows each wheel to move in independently, both vertically and horizontally. The device's tall handlebars provide extra stability, while its off-road tires offer traction in varied terrain. The electric drive allows it to operate much quieter than gas-powered ATVs, which can be a significant advantage for tactical situations. The Easy Rader is available in a large number of variations with power ranging from 2.4 kilowatts to up to 18 kilowatts. The battery capacity ranging from 1.7 to 3 kilowatt hours. Options are available for either rear wheel drive or all-wheel drive. The Easy Rader is designed to carry up to 200 kilograms around 440 pounds in its most rugged model.

It can also pull a specially designed trailer for casualty or equipment transport, according to Army Times. The Easy Rader has previously been purchased for use by other militaries and police units around the world, including the U.S. Special Forces, the Dutch Armored Forces, and Israeli Police, and Border Guard, among others. Civilian models are also available and have been used by adventure companies and for group tours to provide a unique experience unlike that of traditional Segway or e-bike tours, end quote. So yeah, these things look like a super versatile one-person Humvee, if you were to put armor and stuff around it. They're currently testing the vehicles at the annual Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiments taking place in Fort Benning, Georgia. Finally, today, we've spoken a lot about the so-called super apps in China and how they leapfrogged an entire generation of consumers directly into

mobile and digital commerce, while at the same time mobile and digital adoption was first occurring without any intermediate stages. Well, a similar thing is going on in India, except there's a flip side to the coin here in terms of the revolution that's going on. On the subcontinent, there are 15 million basically mom-and-pop retailers, locally known as Karana stores. They're the backbone of India's grocery supply. I suppose the analogy would be to bodegas here in New York City, or basically corner stores anywhere. Given the sheer number of these corona stores and given how interwoven they are into the local society and culture down to the block-by-block level, they're basically the key to cracking commerce in India full stop, much less cracking it at scale. So now we know why Jeff Bezos has been spending so much time and money in India.

Quoting K.R. Asia. Piyush Karbanda, partner at Vertex Ventures, said that this is the third phase of companies trying to leverage on the huge network of neighborhood stores. In the first two phases, Carbonda said companies tried to provide them with automation tools to increase their efficiency, give them digital payments tools, and sell products to them. Quote, one of the most well-funded models is the B-to-B company that provides products to Kouranas. Then there are companies that are enabling them with B-to-B payment models, as well as assisting them by lending working capital, Carbana told K.R. Asia. Bengaluru-based Jumbo Tail is one such company. It works with neighborhood stores to maintain their inventory and provide them products directly from brands. Quote, we have created an entire ecosystem of services to improve their livelihood.

The primary business is to provide an e-commerce marketplace to provide them with the supplies that they want to sell in their store. We manage the supply chain and payments for that process. We have our own private brands, and we also work with top FMCG companies and different millers, said Ashish Jena, co-founder of JumboTale. While companies like JumboTail work with KORANA stores to provide them services directly related to their core business, A number of companies are trying to leverage the network of Khoranis to help push their own business or create a new demand. Quote, the level of intimacy with customers is unparalleled. This is why so many tech companies are trying to find ways to work with them and leverage their network, Gina said, end quote. Thus, the gold rush, as everyone from Flipkart to Amazon India, to phone pay, to pay TM, all try to become the underlying layer to Karana Commerce.

It's an interesting piece that I'd usually save for the long reads, but it's more about a larger trend that is currently sucking billions of dollars in investment capital right now. So why not get in the no right now? Last link in the show notes. Once again, can anyone explain to me if President's Day is a real holiday or not? I think we asked this last year. It certainly was a bit of a slow day in terms of tech news today, and my wife had the day off, My kids have the day off.

The banks are closed. But I don't know. This still never feels like a real holiday to me. FYI, there's a classified ad coming up right now after I finish speaking. It's from a listener, of course. And I'm speaking, actually, specifically those of you on the ad-free feed. I am going to play this classified for you just this once because this is exactly the sort of thing that I design the classified ads for. He's a startup founder.

He's looking for a technical co-founder, and he's reaching out to you fellow listeners to find the ideal candidate. So normally, I know no ads in the ad free feed, that's the rule. But I'm going to make an exception just this once because it's at the end of the show. And also because it's listeners helping fellow listeners. Talk to you tomorrow. The founder of a wellness startup in stealth mode, which is on a mission to eradicate the obesity epidemic and reduce the insane sugar consumption in the U.S. is looking for a visionary data scientist to join as a co-founder. Ideally, you would be a nutrition and health-conscious person,

aghast at the way Americans consume unhealthy food, have at least 10 years of experience in data science at either an e-commerce, food, or retail company, are familiar with fuzzy logic, deployed services and apps on the cloud, and have an advanced degree in mathematics, statistics, or a similar field. You would lead the development of proprietary machine learning, optimization algorithms, natural language processing, and elastic search, and build a scalable and modern database with as many as half a billion. That's billion with a B data points.

Moreover, you would help bootstrap this company, develop a POC and raise capital to take it to the next level. As the co-founder, you would receive substantial equity in the company, rather than hired on as a regular employee on payroll. Your hands are probably full with your full-time job right now, just like the person behind this classified ad is. But this is a revolutionary idea for a true visionary, an individual who dreams about making a big-time social impact. If you think you are this person, email co-founders at iCloud.com. That's C-O-F-O-U-N-D-E-R-S at iCloud.com.