Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 04/27 – It’s Always A Good Day When Your Starship Doesn’t Explode

Episode Date: April 27, 2020

iPhone production might be delayed, but the launch might not be, and actually, that might bounce in Apple’s favor. Autocomplete for coding. A little more background on John Stankey. Progress on my robot burrito delivery. And a crucial SpaceX rocket passes a key test by finally not blowing up. Sponsors: Sanebox.com/techmeme F5.com/ride Links: Apple Delays Mass Production of 2020 Flagship iPhones (WSJ) Two Million Australians Download Coronavirus Contact-Tracing App (Bloomberg) Germany flips to Apple-Google approach on smartphone contact tracing (Reuters) Codota picks up $12M for an AI platform that auto-completes developers' code (TechCrunch) Blunt New CEO Inherits Challenge of Turning AT&T Into Media Star (Bloomberg) John Stankey’s challenge: Making AT&T’s $100 billion bet on Time Warner pay off (CNBC) The pandemic is bringing us closer to our robot takeout future (Ars Technica) SpaceX’s future deep-space rocket passes key test, paving the way for short flight (The Verge) 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, April 27th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. iPhone production might be delayed, but the launch might not be, and actually that might bounce in Apple's favor. Auto-complete for coding, a little more background on John Stanky, progress on my robot burrito delivery bet, and a crucial SpaceX rocket passes a key test by not blowing up. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. sources are telling the Wall Street Journal that Apple has been forced to push back the production of its flagship iPhones due later this year. Production has been delayed by about a month, the sources say. But that doesn't mean that the phones won't still launch in September as usual, quoting the journal.

Apple usually unveils new iPhone models in mid-September and begins selling them before the end of the month. To do so, it usually ramps up mass production in the early summer, building up inventory around August. This year, while Apple would still be building some of the new phones in the July to September period, the mass production ramp up will slide back by about a month, the people said. Apple is slashing the number of handsets that it plans to make in the second half of this year by as much as 20%. One of the people said. It isn't clear whether the slashed amount for 2020 would be pushed back into 2021 for manufacturing. Bernstein analyst Tony Sakhanagi said in a recent report that investors shouldn't worry about the delay unless

Apple fails to ship the iPhone before the 2020 holiday season, its biggest sales period, end quote. Indeed, I'm not suggesting that Apple doesn't want to produce and sell as many iPhones as it possibly can, but given the current economic situation, this might be a bit of a blessing for Apple. Apple has already braced for the fact that a $1,200 smartphone might not fly off the shelves in this current economic environment. so a disruption to manufacturing might just easily coincide with Apple's not needing as many handsets produced. Following up on the whole story about tech providing the tools for digital tracing of the coronavirus, Australia just launched a contact tracing app that records digital handshakes

between smartphones via Bluetooth, and that app saw 1.1 million signups within just a few hours of the app going live. In fact, two million Australians have signed up for the app at the time of this recording, quoting Bloomberg. The COVID-safe app records digital handshakes between smartphones via Bluetooth, and if someone catches the virus, health authorities can track who has been within one and a half meters of the person for 15 minutes or more. Prime Minister Scott Morrison says broader testing and contact tracking are prerequisites for Australia to broadly ease social distancing restrictions after Queensland and Western Australian states announced the lifting of some controls on Sunday. The government needs to overcome privacy concerns to convince people to use the app and says

at least 40% of the 26 million strong population must do so for it to be successful. Quote, the more people who download this important public health app, the safer they and their families will be, the safer their community will be, and the sooner we can safely lift restrictions, Morrison said on Sunday. A similar app in India became the fast. ever to reach 50 million users despite being dogged by privacy concerns. Countries including Singapore, where similar technology is in use, say contact tracing is strictly for disease control and is not to be used to enforce lockdowns or quarantines. An Australian Institute's survey of about 1,000 people showed 45% of respondents were willing to use the contact tracing

app in that country, while 28% said they wouldn't, end quote. Meanwhile, Germany says that it will adopt a decentralized approach to digital contact tracing in that country, just as Apple had been fighting for, and in fact, choosing to embrace the Apple slash Google effort, unlike, say, France. In fact, Germany is abandoning the development of its own homegrown alternatives to the Google Apple idea, quoting Reuters. Germany, as recently as Friday, backed a centralized standard called Pan-European Privacy Preserving Proximity Tracing, or PEPPT. which would have needed Apple in particular to change the settings on its iPhones. When Apple refused to budge, there was no alternative but to change course, said a senior government source.

In their joint statement, Brown and Spahn said Germany would now adopt a strongly decentralized approach. Quote, this app should be voluntary, meet data protection standards, and guarantee a high level of IT security, they said. The main epidemiological goal is to recognize and break chains of infection as soon as possible, end quote. Here's an interesting raise for a Monday. Codata is an AI tool for developers that allows developers to auto-complete strings of code. Codata has raised a $12 million series A led by E-Ventures, bringing its total raised to $16 million. According to TechCrunch, Codata claims to boost productivity by 25%. And it does so all the while making sure that it's using the right syntax and spelled correctly,

spelled being in quotes, of course, since we're talking about code, quoting from TechCrunch. The funding comes on the heels of Kodata acquiring one of its bigger competitors, tab 9 out of Canada late last year, announced only in March, however, to expand the number of languages that it can support. It now says it supports all major languages, including Python, JavaScript, Java, C, and HTML, and it operates across all major integrated development environments, including VS code, Eclipse, and IntelliJ. The funding will be used to expand its reach into that existing range further, as well as to bring on more customers. Today, the list of those that are already using Kodata's tools is impressive. It includes developers from companies like Google and Amazon, as well as Netflix, Alibaba, Airbnb, and Atlassian, among many others.

It says its user base has grown more than 1,000% in the last year, numbering over 1 million developers using it monthly. The funding news coincides with Kodata launching a new version of its auto-completion for JavaScript that merges Kodata's semantic technology with Tab 9's Textual Tech, end quote. A few people got in touch over the weekend to ask after my unusual reaction to AT&T's announcement of John Stanky as AT&T's new CEO. So as a bit of background for you, since I don't know that we've ever talked at length about Stanky before, let me just share this short profile of the man from Bloomberg. quote, when pitching AT&T's new HBO Max streaming platform, Stanky told an audience that anyone

unwilling to pay $15 a month for the service had a low IQ. At a town hall with HBO employees last year, Stanky said the network had to dramatically increase its programming output, comparing the work ahead to childbirth. Once, when a Time Warner veteran criticized an idea during a meeting, Stanky replied, quote, I know more about television than anybody, end quote. just this week, the 57-year-old jolted Hollywood by saying he was, quote, rethinking the theatrical model because of the coronavirus pandemic. AT&T's Warner Brothers and other studios have already been skipping theatrical releases of movies like Scoob because cinemas are shut down, but most executives are careful to avoid implying that it's

anything other than temporary. Stanky doesn't dance around issues like this. He barrels right through them. Quote, he's no shrinking violet, said Jennifer Fitch. analyst at Wells Fargo. Stanky is direct, and that might be exactly what we need right now, end quote. My own personal beef with Stanky was his clearing house of the executive talent that had long been at HBO, which is sort of like management dismantling the late 1990s Chicago Bulls, if I'm going to use a timely analogy. The quality of HBO content over the last 20 years is

something that I think we'll look back on as miraculous, a golden age that, that will regret we took for granted at the time. This is not to say that Stanky's not correct in his assessment that HBO and AT&T at large had to change to serve the new realities of media in this day and age, but it's also Stanky who pushed AT&T to inject all of this media into its bloodstream in the first place, and he'll own that now, whatever happens, quoting CNBC. Failing could be catastrophic. AT&T's debt load is nearly $200 billion, making it the largest corporate debt issuer in the world.

Veteran telecommunications analyst Craig Moffitt calls that amount, quote, terrifying. Media has moved into an environment where scale is essential, Stanky said, citing Disney's $71.9 billion deal for Fox's assets and divestager of Sky to Comcast, and CBS's likely upcoming merger with Viacom, as other examples of media companies seeking bigger balance sheets with more assets. it's under management. Somebody in the legacy media space will build a platform of scale and get to 70 to 80 million subscribers. We'd like that to be us. If you keep the culture separate, you'll never get the benefits. The three together bring, end quote. The Bloomberg piece on Stanky ends this way, quote, AT&T is so big and sprawling now, it's hard to tell if anyone can run it effectively, even someone like Stanky who's worked in all different parts of the business. Quote, it's an incredibly

complex company, Recon's Enter said. He'll be seen as a genius if it works out, end quote. But left unsaid is what everyone will think of stanky if it doesn't work out. Now, see, this is the sort of story I've been waiting for. Ars Technica says that the COVID-19 outbreak is, in fact, accelerating the adoption of autonomous delivery robots in the U.S. as startups like Starship and KiwiBot scramble to meet demand for things like delivering a burrito to you via a small knee-high-sized robot traveling across city streets, quoting friend of the show Timothy B. Lee. In recent weeks, I've talked to executives from two different sidewalk robot startups, Starship and Kiwibot. Both say they're scrambling to build new robots and rollout service to new areas in the face of unprecedented interest. robot deliveries remain rare enough that it's easy to dismiss them as curiosities, but that's a mistake.

The technology works now. Starship already has hundreds of robots in service delivering food to real customers, spurred by demand from lockdown customers. That number should soon soar to the thousands and eventually into the millions. With lower costs and no need to tip, robots could make takeout more popular than ever as it gradually displaces human-driven food deliveries. We saw business double overnight as a result of lockdown. Starship's executive Ryan Toey told ours, Starship is currently working with local partners Tesco and co-op to further expand service in Great Britain. And Starship just launched new delivery services in Virginia and Arizona, as well as in downtown Mountain View, California. Starship has been expanding rapidly, getting buy-in from city

officials, and suddenly from eager local restaurants that until now might have been cautious about testing out things like robot delivery. Here's Lee's description of actually using Starship's service. Quote, when I got to the nearly empty George Mason University's campus last month, I launched the Starship app and saw the company was only offering food from two restaurants, Starbucks and the Wing Zone. I sat at a table outside the Starbucks and opened the Starship app. I set the delivery pin near the coffee shop and ordered a burger and a pop from the Wing Zone. The Starship app said my food would arrive in 33 minutes. Plenty of time for me to amble over to the wing zone and see the loading process firsthand.

Three Starship robots were parked outside the vacant looking restaurant. A few minutes later, a wing zone worker came out and loaded bags into two different robots. Starship's towe says restaurant workers don't know where any particular order is going. I planned to follow my robot back to the delivery point, but the two robots took off simultaneously and in opposite directions, neither of which appeared to be toward my drop-off point. I wasn't sure which one was mine and had to guess, but by the time I realized I'd gotten it wrong, my robot was out of sight. I hustled back to Starbucks, figuring I'd be okay. After all, the most direct route, a seven-minute walk, required going up a stairway and going near a construction zone. My robot instead opted to drive to the nearest main road, which almost doubled the travel distance.

So after I got to Starbucks, I guessed where the robot was going and tried to follow its route in reverse. Again, I guessed wrong and had to hustle to catch up. This is all to say, Starships robots travel faster than I expected, and I'm a pretty fast walker, but I couldn't catch my robot at walking speed. I had to speed up to a jog. Still, that's slower than many other robots on the market. Towie says Starships robots have a top speed of four miles per hour, or 6.4 kilometers per hour, making it less likely to cause damage if it runs into something.

Low speeds also greatly simplify the computational problems involved in autonomous operation, end quote. Speaking of running into something, Lee went ahead and tested the robot's ability to deal with human interaction, jumping in front of the robot once he found it, and the robot actually successfully dealt with his attempts at harassment, quoting again, when I stopped getting in my robot's way, it merrily continued on to our rendezvous point near the Starbucks without a hitch. I opened the lid of the robot and took out a bag containing a burger and a bottle of Mr. Pibb. I left the lid open for a minute to see if the bot would either close the lid automatically or drive away. It did neither. It just sat there patiently until I finally closed the lid. The burger was still

warm and it was delicious. After lunch, I went into the Starbucks to buy a cookie. The store had been converted to takeout only and was deserted aside from two guys behind the counter. The man who took my order said that robot delivery volume was about the same as it had been before the campus shut down. There were fewer people on campus than before, but that was offset by greater robo delivery interest among the people who were left. It's giving us hours, he said of the robots. I'm grateful for that, end quote. And finally today, speaking of starships, but of a literal different kind, SpaceX's deep space rocket prototype known as Starship, finally passed a key test on Sunday night undergoing a super cold pressure test and managed to

remain intact on the test stand, which is an improvement. As Ars Technica put it, the Starship pressurized, but for the first time the Starship didn't explode. And that's always a positive thing. Quoting from the verge first, actually, though. Passing this test is a major step for SpaceX since the same test has destroyed other Starship prototypes in the past, known as a cryogenic proof test. It entails filling the vehicle with incredibly cold liquid nitrogen to see if the vehicle can handle the same types of temperatures and pressure it would have to deal with when it's

filled with super cold propellants for launches. SpaceX lost three previous vehicles during these cold pressure tests. The prototypes either burst apart or imploded while on the test stand at SpaceX's facility in Boca Chica, Texas. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said that this test was a bit of a softball pressure test, but it was enough to proceed with flight tests, end quote. The vehicle, in this case called serial number four, was pressurized to 4.9 bar or 4.9 times the atmospheric pressure at the surface of the Earth, which is just good enough for basic flight. SN4 is just the latest prototype of the starship vehicle, which is the thing that SpaceX hopes one day to use to send people and cargo to the moon or to Mars, quoting Ars Technica. Now, Musk said, SpaceX engineers will attach a single Raptor engine to this vehicle and conduct a static fire test. The company hopes to move forward with this test later in the week.

Should the static fire test be successful, Musk has said the SN4 vehicle will make a 150-meter hop test, much as the Star Hop test. much as the Star Hopper prototype performed in August 2019. The company has yet to receive regulatory approval for this test, so it may not happen for several weeks. SpaceX already has fabricated most of the parts for its SN5 vehicle, which may be the first prototype to attempt a higher flight. Musk said, if all goes well with SN4, the plan is to attach three Raptors to SN5 for a higher flight test later this spring. All part of Elon Musk's plan to build one Starship vehicle a week,

and eventually settle Mars, Starship is the upper stage of a two-part, fully reusable launch system that SpaceX is developing. The company's goal is for the super heavy rocket to boost Starship into orbit, where this vehicle can either carry cargo to some destination or carry dozens of passengers, end quote. That's all for today. I've actually got some product feedback for you coming later this week. I've got to tell you about how my family has actually fallen in love with Facebook's portal and also after 15 years, I finally invested in a new Roomba. It just got delivered as I was recording this, so I got to go unbox, check it out. More on all of that later this week. Talk to you tomorrow.