Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 03/14 – Foxconn Shutting Factories Cause Of Covid. Again.

Episode Date: March 14, 2022

Well, what can I tell you? Foxconn is shutting factories in China again cause of the new Omicron outbreak there. Will Apple only give new chips it its pro phones going forward? Why people are mad at Twitter now. How people actually watch Netflix. And… checks notes... A robot goat. Sponsors: shop.SiempreTequila.com Promo Code RIDE The Traceroute Podcast Links: Foxconn Halts iPhone Shenzhen Site Due to Covid Lockdown (Bloomberg) Kuo: Only iPhone 14 Pro Models to Get 'A16' Chip, Standard Models to Retain A15 (MacRumors) Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed (The Verge) Using a New Cyber Tool, Westerners Have Been Texting Russians About the War in Ukraine (WSJ) These are Netflix's Most Popular Shows (According to Netflix) (Bloomberg) APPLE’S NEW IPHONE SE IS A MODERN PHONE STUCK IN YESTERDAY’S DESIGN (The Verge) Kawasaki's Rideable Robotic Goat Is the Electric Car for Wandering Cowpokes (Gizmodo) 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 meme right home for Monday, March 14th, 2022. I'm Brian McCullough today. Well, what can I tell you? Foxcon is shuddering factories in China again because of the new Omicron outbreak there. Will Apple only give new chips to its pro phones going forward? Why people are mad at Twitter now, how people actually watch Netflix now, and Checks Notes, a robot goat. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Well, this feels like a ground. Hog Day story and not in a good way at all. Foxcon is halting operations at two of its Shenzhen sites, one of which produces iPhones after the Chinese government imposed a lockdown in

that city until March 20th, quoting Bloomberg. The Taiwanese company, also known as Hanai Precision Industry, has its China headquarters in the area and a key manufacturing site in Guanlan. It is suspending operations at the two campuses and has reallocated production to other sites to reduce impact from the disruption, the company said in a statement. Foxcon didn't specify the length of the suspension. The measures from the Chinese government call for non-essential businesses in Shenzhen to halt until March 20th. While the shutdown may affect production of many of the devices Foxcon makes for Apple and other brands, demand for electronics typically troughs in the first quarter of every year after the holiday

season peak. Hanai, the primary assembler of iPhones, closed 1% lower on Monday in Tai. It expects no, quote, major impact for now to its finances and business from the temporary shutdown, the company said in a stock exchange filing late Monday. China reported more than 3,300 COVID-19 infections on Saturday as the country faces its worst outbreak since the early days of the pandemic and official step-up lockdowns to stem the spread. Foxconn produces the majority of its iPhones at a plant in the central Chinese city of Zhangzhou, which has earned it the nickname of iPhone City. its Guanlan site is smaller in scale. The company was among the first to confront disruptions from the coronavirus outbreak two years ago when it asked staff to keep away from its Shenzhen

headquarters as a precautionary measure. China placed the 17.5 million residents of Shenzhen into lockdown for at least a week on Sunday seeking to halt a growing COVID-19 outbreak. The lockdown, which came after virus cases doubled nationwide to nearly 3,400, will be accompanied by three rounds of citywide mass testing, according to a government notice. The move followed earlier restrictions placed on Shenzhen's central business district, end quote. Ming Chi Kuo, this time he says that only the upcoming iPhone 14 Pro models will get the new A16 chip from Apple and 6 gigabytes of LPDDR5 RAM, while the standard iPhone 14 models will remain on the A-15 bionic chip and get 6 gigabytes of LPDR4X RAM.

Quoting Mac rumors. The two more affordable iPhone models retaining the same chip as the previous year could be a major new point of differentiation between the standard and pro iPhone models. Going forward, it seems plausible that Apple could only offer a new chip with the pro models before it subsequently trickles down to the two cheaper iPhone models the following year. currently the iPhone 13 Mini and iPhone 13 feature 4 gigabytes of memory, while the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max feature 6 gigabytes of memory. These amounts are unchanged from the iPhone 12 lineup. For the iPhone 14 lineup, Quo suggests that all models will feature 6 gigabytes of RAM but the iPhone 14

Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Maxes. LPDDR5 memory will be up to 1.5 times faster and up to 30% more power efficient. Quote's claim stands in contrast to a rumor from Hightong International Security's Jeff Poo, which suggested the iPhone 14 Pro models will feature 8 gigabytes of RAM, the same amount as the Samsung Galaxy S-22 models. That being said, Poo has a mixed track record with Apple rumors. For example, he accurately claimed that 16-inch MacBook Pro and iPad Pro models with many LED displays would launch in 2021, but he was incorrect about home pods with 3D sensing cameras. launching in 2019. This may bring the 8 gigabytes RAM rumor into question now that, Quo, a more established analyst in the Apple space with a better track record, is claiming otherwise,

end quote. And Twitter got a Twitter, by which I mean piss off its most valuable and most committed users. Twitter updated its iOS app recently to let users swipe between the algorithmic or home version of the feed and reverse chronological or latest timelines version of the feed, However, users cannot make latest, or the chronological version, the default version, and that's what's had everyone in an uproar over the weekend, quoting the verge. The design change, which lets you swipe between your home, algorithmically served, and latest, reverse chronological timelines, was announced Thursday. To set it up, you tap the sparkle icon in the top right corner,

and you'll see the option to pin your latest timeline, and if you select that, you'll see both home and latest tweets tabs at the top of the iOS app. If you use pinned lists on the iOS app, the layout might look familiar. The feature is available first on iOS, and it's coming soon to Android and the web, Twitter says. The company began testing the feature in October. To my great disappointment, however, I found that after testing the feature, now I can't make the chronological feed the default. Instead, I can only have home as my default or set up the two home and latest tweets tabs and swap between them as needed. It's not all bad when jumping between Twitter and other apps on my phone.

If latest tweets was the column I was looking at, it will be the focus when I returned to Twitter. But when I forced close and reopen the app when looking at the latest tweets column, the home feed is what Twitter shows me first. Twitter spokesperson Shauki Amdu said that the home feed will be pinned first by default for now and confirm there is no way to pin latest first by default. This feels like a big step backward to me. Now on iOS, anytime I want to scroll through a reverse-ordered feed like I always did before, I'll have to check first to see if I'm looking at the right feed. Fortunately, at least for now, latest can still be the default on the web for me, including on my iPhone's Safari, end quote.

So that led to everyone saying they're dumping the main Twitter iOS app for TwitterRIFIC or whatever people use these days. but what I've heard anecdotally is that Twitter testing has shown that they get so, so much more engagement from the algorithmic feed, like so much more that they really don't give an F. Like, Twitter's got to pay the bills, y'all. I am not in any way suggesting anyone should do this, but the Wall Street Journal over the weekend told me that people are sending news about the reality of the Ukraine war to everyday Russian citizens by using a website that randomly selects from a list of around 20 million phone numbers and around 140 million email addresses for folks in Russia.

Quote, the website was developed by a group of Polish programmers who obtained some 20 million cell phone numbers and close to 140 million email addresses owned by Russian individuals and companies. The site randomly generates numbers and addresses from those databases and allows anyone anywhere in the world to message them with the option of using a pre-drafted message in Russian

that calls on people to bypass President Vladimir Putin's censorship of the media. Since it was launched on March 6, thousands of people across the globe, including many in the U.S., have used the site to send millions of messages in Russian, footage from the war, or images of Western media coverage documenting Russia's assault on civilians, according to Squad 303, as the group that wrote the tool calls itself. Our aim was to break through Putin's digital wall of censorship and make sure that Russian people are not totally cut off from the world and the reality of what Russia is doing in Ukraine, a spokesman for Poland-based Squad 303 said, the spokesman, a programmer who asked not to be identified, liken the effort to such Coldware era projects as the U.S. funded Radio Free Europe, which beamed radio programs in several languages across the Iron Curtain. Nearly seven million text messages and two million emails have been sent using the website since it was created a week ago, he said. The name of the group derives from a British Air Force unit made up of Polish pilots famed for their contribution in the battle against Nazi Germany. The website they created 1920.I.N. is a reference to the Soviet

Polish War of 1920 in which outnumbered Polish forces fended off a Soviet invasion. The journal reviewed the website's code as published by the authors and tried several numbers served by the database which turned out to be in service. Whether the entire database is made up of existing numbers and email addresses couldn't be verified, end quote. I always love stories like this. An analysis of Netflix data reveals that TV shows account for 75% of viewing. The average hit on the Netflix platform disappears after about two weeks. weeks, and Asian hits have the least overlap with other markets, quoting Bloomberg. If you add up all the viewership across all four top ten lists every week, TV shows on Netflix

account for about 75% of viewing. TV shows are longer than movies, so the amount of time spent watching them should be greater. TV shows also tend to stay in the top ten a lot longer than movies. A show like Sex Life, number one on Netflix's first top ten list, stayed in the rankings for seven weeks. Fatherhood, the top movie in Netflix's first list, disappeared after just three weeks. The average Netflix top 10 show only stays there for a week or two. Less than one quarter of all shows stay in the top 10 for more than four weeks. It's important to keep in mind that Netflix drops most of its titles on Friday, so while they get a ton of viewership in those first few days, the total viewership tends to peak in week two. That also means the average

show is out of the top 10 within 10 days. And people actually spend more time watching. And people actually spend more time watching foreign language TV in the top 10 than shows in English. Now, it's worth noting that this data only covers the last eight months and is thus skewed by Squid Game, the most popular show in Netflix history. Netflix tells me that shows in English are still more popular than shows in foreign languages, but Netflix is clearly entering a world where shows in other languages outdraw shows in English. The majority of its customers live outside the English-speaking world. For all of Netflix's success, making the world watch TV in a foreign language, it hasn't had much success on the film side, however. It released only one or two foreign language original movies that

garnered a big audience in the last eight months. Blood Red Sky was the biggest hit, but it's still small compared to Netflix's bigger English language titles. It's not just original movies either. No movie in a foreign language has become a global hit on Netflix. English language movies account for about 80% of the most popular movies on Netflix, end quote. Let's end today with a quick review from the iPhone SE 2022 edition. Allison Johnson at the Verge says the new SE will give you great performance. It's well priced. It's got 5G. But it is also a very tired design at this point. It's got a tiny 4.7 inch display, as you know, and no camera night mode. Also, only 64 gigabytes of base storage. Let me just jump straight to the conclusion because let's be honest, you kind of know what

you're getting here, quote, if you know in your heart of hearts, you won't mind a small screen for at least the next few years, and you just want a reasonably priced device that gets you through the day without any trouble, then this is the iPhone for you. It's fast, has all the 5G bands that matter, and will most certainly get you through the foreseeable future without having to suffer the pain of making another phone purchase. For everyone else, I think a bigger screen is a necessity. If you can consider a switch to Android and the green bubble life, the Google Pixel 5A is a fantastic option that's right around the same price. It includes an ultra-wide camera, a great night mode, and crucially, a much bigger 6.34-inch OLED screen. It's only guaranteed updates for three years, though.

I have to imagine that the 22 SE is the last time we'll see this particular design appear in a new phone from Apple. If you're a fan of this form factor and touch ID and you don't want to let them go, then this is probably your last chance to hang on to them. If we see another SE device in two years, it will likely do away with the big bezels and the home button because life moves fast. Until then, the SE remains a powerful little phone with a retro design that's just a bit too vintage for most of us, and quote. Ah, screw it. One more.

Kawasaki has demoed a writable robotic goat. That's it. That's the story. Click through for the video in the piece, but quoting Gizmodo, we're more or less still at the point of robotics where engineers are throwing anything at the wall and hoping to find a design that sticks, or at least that seems to be the best explanation for why Kawasaki created a four-legged walking ibex, a species of wild goat that can haul cargo or passengers, assuming neither are in much of a hurry. Officially revealed at the 2022 International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo this past week, Bex is an offshoot. of Kawasaki's Kalido program, which since 2015 has been working on developing bipedal humanoid robots. As is obvious, while watching every single blooper reel that Boston Dynamics has shared of its multi-million dollar Atlas robot, slipping and falling, developing a bipedal robot that's as agile and stable on two feet as a real human is no easy task. And that's what led to the creation of

Bex. The robotics engineers at Kawasaki were looking for a happy medium between the dexterity of a bipedal robot that can traverse uneven terrains with the reliability of a wheeled robot that avoids issues with balancing by keeping all of its wheels on the ground at all times. For those times when speed is a priority and route planning can take advantage of smooth paced surfaces, the Bex robot is able to lower its body and kneel on four pairs of wheels located on each knee, turning it into an electric scooter of sorts. But when terrain starts to get uneven, the Bex can stand and maneuver on four highly articulated legs using a gate that ensures at least half of them are touching the ground at any given time, greatly reducing the bouncing act it needs to perform. The Bex's cargo capacity is rated at around

220 pounds, so in addition to hauling heavy materials, it can carry human passengers who steer the quadrupedad using a traditional pair of handlebars, end quote. Well, I did it. I pulled the trigger and ordered a souped-up Mac studio to replace this creaking iMac that's in front of me right now. And yes, the studio display as well. But according to my receipt, the Mac itself isn't shipping until early June. So, you know, don't expect a review from me anytime soon, though I do expect the various outlets to have their reviews of the studio later this week. Now I have a vested interest in seeing what they have to say about that. Talk to you tomorrow.