Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 03/30 – HQ Trivia Back From The Dead!

Episode Date: March 30, 2020

HQ Trivia resurrects itself thanks to an anonymous investor. Facebook tries to squeeze Apple out of the AR screen market. Some crowdsourced data reveals who where layoffs are happening in tech but also which companies are still hiring. And a major hack takes down a big chunk of the dark web. Sponsors: TinyCapital.com Feals.com/techmeme Links: HQ Trivia Returns Thanks to Anonymous Investor (WSJ) Facebook Strikes Deal for AR Displays, Squeezing Out Apple (The Information) Government Tracking How People Move Around in Coronavirus Pandemic (WSJ) Coronavirus has led to a 775 percent increase in usage of Microsoft Azure cloud services (BetaNews) Apple's factories are running, but suppliers wary about iPhone demand (Reuters) Candor: 267 companies have frozen hiring, 44 had layoffs, 36 rescinded offers, 111 are hiring (VentureBeat) OneWeb files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy (Space News) Airbnb to Halt All Marketing, Most Hiring as Losses Mount (The Information) Lyft Tells Drivers to Work for Amazon After Ridership Plummets (Bloomberg) Bird lays off about 30% of workforce amid COVID-19 pandemic (TechCrunch) Hack Attack Takes Down Dark Web Host: 7,595 Websites Confirmed Deleted (Forbes) 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 30th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, HQ trivia resurrects itself thanks to an anonymous investor. Facebook tries to squeeze Apple out of the AR screen market. Some crowdsource data reveals where layoffs are happening in tech, but also

which companies are still hiring, and a major hack takes down a big chunk of the dark web. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. HQ trivia is back. And maybe the coronavirus moment is why. Thanks to an anonymous investor, the mobile quiz app returned Sunday night with host Matt Richards. Richards told the Wall Street Journal, quote, I just hope I can make people smile because things have been pretty sucky lately, end quote. And quoting from the journal piece. People have remarked on how HQ trivia's revival would be ideal now, given that so many people are staying home to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. On March 11th, one person tweeted, quote,

quarantine seems like a really good time to play a live mobile game show where you answer trivia questions on your phone to win cash somebody should make that end quote with the show's return sunday night hq trivia offered players a thousand dollar prize pool more than a hundred thousand people logged in at the start end quote no word though on who the anonymous investor who provided the funding needed to resume operations is this was the first game of trivia since hq trivia shut down in February. The information is reporting that Facebook is not standing by as Apple seemingly moves aggressively to launch an augmented reality, something or other, quoting the information. Facebook has struck a deal to buy all of the augmented reality displays made by British firm Plessy, as the social network looks to build AR glasses capable of overlaying virtual objects onto the real world. The deal could give Facebook an edge over Apple, which recently looked at buying Plessy, one of the few makers of AR displays, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Instead, Plessy will license its technology to Facebook and dedicate its UK-based factory to supplying Facebook over several years, both companies confirmed. Facebook could have tried to buy Plessy to gain access to its AR displays, but that would likely have brought intense regulatory scrutiny. Striking an exclusive supply deal speeds up the works and gives Facebook the benefits of an acquisition without a lengthy regulatory review, end quote. Plessy had previously claimed to have developed micro-l-D displays that have good color and contrast while also being incredibly low-powered, something that is key for AR headsets to break through in the real world because you're going to need headsets with an all-day battery

life if people are expected to use them all day. There has been widespread discussion about maybe doing this, but sources are telling the Wall Street Journal that the CDC, state, and even local authorities in the U.S. have already started using anonymized location data from mobile phones in the U.S. to help plan their responses to the coronavirus pandemic. But here's an interesting wrinkle. They're actually using the location data from mobile ads to do this. Quote, in the U.S. so far, the data being used has largely been drawn from the advertising industry. The mobile marketing industry has billions of geographic data points on hundreds of millions of U.S. cell phone devices, mostly drawn from applications that users have installed on their phones and allowed to track their location. Huge troves of this advertising data are available for sale. The industry is largely unregulated under existing privacy laws because consumers have opted in to tracking and because the data doesn't contain names or addresses. Each consumer is represented by an alpha-numeric string.

Cell phone carriers also have access to massive amounts of geolocation data, which is granted much stricter privacy protection under U.S. law than in most other countries. The largest U.S. carriers, including AT&T and Verizon, say they have not been approached by the government to provide location data according to spokespeople. There have been discussions about trying to obtain U.S. telecom data for this purpose. However, the legality of such a move isn't clear, end quote. Microsoft says it has seen a 775% increase in the use of its cloud services worldwide in regions that have enforced social distancing or shelter-in-place orders, quoting beta news. Microsoft says there has been a three-fold increase in the use of Windows virtual desktop, presumably as more people are now working from home.

The company also points out that government use of public power BI to share COVID-19. dashboards with citizens has surged by 42% in just a week. Microsoft has increased the monitoring of services for certain key users, saying, our top priority remains support for critical health and safety organizations and ensuring remote workers stay up and running with the core functionality of Teams. Budding in here to remind you that Microsoft Teams is reporting 44 million daily active users at this point. Quoting again, Microsoft also says it is monitoring the impact Xbox Live has on Azure

capacity, having already asked developers to push out game updates at off-peak times. The company also points out that it has been working with ISPs and steps have been taken to reduce bandwidth consumption by video services, end quote. Real quick, more rumors about iPhone production. Sources are telling Reuters that the ramp-up for 5G iPhones at some of Apple's suppliers has been postponed. But, again, the reasons now might have to do with expected demand problems, not just supply chain problems. Quote, a senior official at one of Apple's major contract assemblers said

Apple's orders for the quarter ending in March are likely to drop 18% compared with the previous year. The production ramp up for new phones that work with next generation 5G networks has been postponed, this person said, though it is still possible the 5G phones could launch as scheduled in the fall. Quote, no one is talking about manpower or material shortage in China anymore. Now everyone is looking at whether demand from the U.S. and Europe, could keep up, said the person who has direct knowledge of the matter. The focus now is the demand from consumers in the U.S. and Europe, end quote. One of Apple's key display suppliers is preparing for a similar level of contraction, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company had

anticipated shipping 70 million iPhone displays this year, but is now considering lowering that target by more than 17% to only 58 million units, end quote. Look, this is not going to be fun, but the job of this podcast is to keep track on the tech industry broadly. So if this current crisis is going to reshape the tech industry in meaningful ways, we need to discuss the contours of that. So crowdsource data from Kandor shows that 267 tech companies, or 60% of the companies they were tracking, have frozen hiring. 44 companies have had layoffs, 36 have rescinded offers, while 111 are still hiring, quoting Venture Beat. It's no surprise that Zoom, the video conferencing company, is hiring people. Twitch, Twitter, Twilio, Roblox, TikTok, Qualcomm, PUBG, PayPal, Palantir, Nvidia, Northrop Grumman, Medtronic, Lockheed Martin, eBay, DoorDash, DocuSign, and Amazon are also among those hiring.

Kandor is crowdsourcing this list directly from employees at the businesses in question, and wherever possible confirming reports or adjusting them after talking with company representatives. The firm is reviewing submissions from intercom, airtable, and email prompted by contacts via its live chart. In some ways, this is more accurate as many companies aren't announcing their moves, end quote. And one really big casualty already in the space space, the deliver internet via, a satellite space that we've been covering. One Web has filed for bankruptcy after failing to secure new funding amid the COVID-19 crisis. One Web had reportedly been in talks to raise around $2 billion from SoftBank before the crisis hit, quoting Space News. It is with a very heavy heart

that we have been forced to reduce our workforce and enter the Chapter 11 process while the company's remaining employees are focused on responsibly managing our nascent constellation and working with the court and investors. OneWeb CEO, Adrian Steckle said in a news release issued late Friday night. OneWeb filed for Chapter 11 protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. The company said it laid off about 85% of its 531 employees prior to filing for bankruptcy. SoftBank, having already invested roughly $2 billion in OneWeb, decided it was, quote, the responsible decision not to invest further, given the startup's high cash needs, compounded by the global financial instability caused by the coronavirus, one source said.

OneWeb in its March 27th news release blamed the coronavirus pandemic for its inability to raise the money it needed to avoid bankruptcy, end quote. OneWeb had been hoping to launch a total of 648 satellites to beam broadband internet back down to Earth and already has 74 satellites in orbit, including, in fact, 34 satellites launched into orbit just this past March 21st. but the company which had raised a total of $3.4 billion in funding lifetime still needed as much as $7.5 billion to complete its planned network, according to analysts. Also over the weekend, the information was reporting that Airbnb will halt all marketing, most hiring, and will likely withhold company bonuses, according to people who heard an internal conference call with CEO Brian Chesky on Thursday.

Some layoffs are also possible. quote, the steps are the first indication of how the company is planning to reduce costs to blunt the damage of the coronavirus pandemic. Airbnb's losses have already stretched into the hundreds of millions of dollars, according to people close to the company. It wasn't clear if the company, which has more than 7,000 employees worldwide, also intends to layoff staff. When asked about layoffs, Chesky told employees that nothing is off the table, another person familiar with the matter said. Chesky said the company's three co-founders wouldn't take a salary this year and that the pay of other. other executives would be cut by 50%. He estimated the cuts to the marketing budget would save $800 million this year alone. The company would continue hiring for some key roles, Chesky said.

Chesky tried to strike an upbeat tone about the future of the travel industry while recognizing the short-term hit the company would take, according to a person familiar with the meeting. The company has told bankers that it expects its average daily bookings volume to return to 2019 levels by early 2021. This may change some habits. This may change business travel. This may change a little bit how people work, but it isn't going to change human nature. Human nature has existed long before Zoom and long before the coronavirus, Chesky said, according to one of the people, end quote. And in response to plummeting demand there, Lyft has suggested that drivers find additional income by becoming Amazon grocery shoppers, warehouse workers, and or delivery drivers, quoting Bloomberg.

In an email to Lyft drivers Friday, the company referred them to work opportunities at Amazon, quote, as a way to earn additional income right now, end quote. While Amazon and Lyft have competed for workers in the past, the surge in grocery and package deliveries has reset that dynamic. Amazon said last week it plans to hire 100,000 people and give U.S. workers a temporary $2 an hour raise in an effort to meet the crushing demand. demand. However, Amazon is under fire for not doing enough to protect its workers, some of whom have tested positive for the coronavirus. The company said it has stepped up cleaning in its warehouses and is giving guidance to workers about maintaining safe distances. Declines in the ride hailing business are sharp.

Recent estimates put a drop in fair prices at as much as 11 percent, and a drop in demand at about 20%. Uber, the largest ride-hailing operator, can partially offset the shortfall with its restaurant delivery business, which is seeing an uptick. Lift doesn't deliver food, end quote. And also from late Friday, quoting TechCrunch today, Bird laid off about 30% of its employees amid the uncertainty caused by the coronavirus, TechCrunch has learned. This came out to 406 people laid off of 1,387 employees prior to the layoffs, Bird confirmed. Quote, the unprecedented COVID-19 crisis has forced our leadership team and the Board of Directors to make many extremely difficult and painful decisions relating to some of your teammates.

Bird CEO Travis Vander Zandin wrote to staffers in a memo obtained by TechCrunch today. As you know, we've had to pause many markets around the world and drastically cut spending. Due to the financial and operational impact of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, we are saying goodbye to about 30% of our team, end quote. Bird has confirmed the layoffs and says it is providing four weeks of pay, three months of health coverage, and an extended time frame of 12 months to exercise their stock options. According to a source, Byrd's balance sheet is strong, but it needed to reduce burn in order to extend its runway into 2021, end quote. You'll recall that I told you last week that Lyme, Bird's main e-scooter competitor, was seeking emergency funding at a cut rate $400 million value. And finally today, there are early reports that a huge provider of free websites on the dark web

has been taken down by hackers and around 7,500 dark web websites have been deleted, quoting Forbes. The operator of the biggest free host for dark web sites, Daniel's hosting, has confirmed that the service has been shut down following a hack attack that deleted all 7,595 site databases. According to German software developer and Daniel's hosting owner, Daniel Winsen, the hosting database server was attacked on March 10th and all the databases related to hosting were deleted by the hackers. In a now unavailable statement posted to the site, unavailable because the site itself has been closed, but seen by myself beforehand, Winsen confirmed that a new database user

with full admin permissions had been created. Still, he was unable to associate this with any account to dig deeper into how, the hack happened. As reported by ZDNet, what Winsen was clear about, however, is that 7,595 user accounts relating to dark web sites were affected. Winsen said that anyone who was operating a dark web site hosted with him should, quote, treat all data as leaked and change passwords at any other websites they might have if they use the same credentials, end quote. And again, apparently there are no backups for these sites, quoting again. Frustratingly, but by design, this service does not keep backups, which could be disconcerting for those without a local backup.

Jake Moore, a cybersecurity specialist at ESET says, quote, It goes without saying that those affected admins need to make sure their passwords were not being used for any other accounts as well. Moore concludes. This wasn't the first time that Daniel's hosting has been targeted successfully by hackers. It was widely reported in November 2018 that the service had been hacked, and at that time, some 6,500 sites were taken down. the modus operandi would appear to be strikingly similar with the hosting backend breached and hosting databases deleted, end quote.

I did a dumb thing recently, and instead of joining a conference call on my phone, I stupidly tried to log in on my computer via Google Hangouts. Now it's screwed up my various Google and Gmail accounts, because it used to be, I could just switch Gmail accounts by hitting the links in my favorites and then opening up a different. window. Now, suddenly, any time I go to a Google site, it just always defaults to the account that I used during that Google Hangouts or whatever it was. Does anyone know how to fix that? Like, I just want to go back to switching between Gmail accounts without having to manually switch accounts every single stinking time. Does that make sense? Any advice? Please hit me up on Twitter. Thanks. Talk to you tomorrow.