Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 05/13 - The App Store Has A Supreme Court Problem

Episode Date: May 13, 2019

A Supreme Court ruling might spell trouble for Apple and others, Amazon is automating the boxers out of a job, Discord is doing some serious MAU’s, what the death of Nest means for IOT, and a LITERAL Bitcoin treasure hunt. Sponsors: WeWorkRemotely.com Sonic.com/ride Links: Supreme Court deals Apple major setback in App Store antitrust case (CNBC) Exclusive: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs (Reuters) Amazon Offers to Pay Employees $10,000 to Quit Their Jobs and Deliver Packages Instead (Time.com) Slack says it’s going to replace email and is as necessary as electricity in its pitch to investors (CNBC) Discord, Slack for gamers, tops 250 million registered users (CNET) FDA clears first 6-lead consumer ECG, AliveCor’s $150 KardiaMobile 6L (VentureBeat) Google Just Handed Amazon A Massive Advantage In Smart Home Tech (Forbes) Nest, the company, died at Google I/O 2019 (ArsTechnica) ‘Satoshi’s Treasure’ Is a Global Puzzle With a $1 Million Bitcoin Prize (CoinDesk) 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 ride home for Monday, May 13th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough today. A Supreme Court ruling might spell trouble for Apple and others.

Amazon is automating the boxers out of a job. Discord is doing some serious mouths, what the death of Nest means for Internet of Things, and a literal Bitcoin treasure hunt. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. The United States Supreme Court has ruled against Apple, allowing iPhone users to sue the company for alleged App Store monopolization. Apple stock is down more than 5% on the news, though, to be honest, there's a bit of carnage in the stock market overall at the time of this writing. So it's hard to tell how much of Apple's stock issues are related to this news or not.

The case of Apple versus Pepper was decided 5 to 4 with Justice Brett Kavanaugh, citing with the four liberal judges and authoring the opinion in the case. The plaintiffs in the case argued that Apple's 30% commission on sales made via the app store represented an unfair use of monopoly power on Apple's part, resulting in higher prices for consumers. Apple, in turn, said that only app developers had standing to make such a claim and sue over it. But Justice Kavanaugh wrote, quote, Apple's line drawing does not make a lot of sense other than as a way to gerrymander Apple out of this and similar lawsuits, end quote.

With the case now proceeding, Apple might be on the line for hundreds of millions of dollars and penalties, though anyone that runs a similar platform from Facebook to Google to even Amazon might want to start girding for similar lawsuits now. So forget legislation or EU regulation. Maybe the big tech oligarchs are in. for some forced behavioral changes from the courts. Marco Arment kicked off an interesting thread about this on Twitter,

so let me just read you some of these takes. Marco wrote first, quote, I'm no lawyer, but two things have been obvious to me. Customers absolutely buy apps from Apple, not developers, and Apple's requirement that all in-app transactions go through their system, which takes 30% is anti-competitive and should absolutely be challenged by regulators. Add this to the pile of significant legal anti-competitive challenges that Apple faces by their in-app purchase rules. They'll never allow side-loading or reduce the 30%, but I expect

all of this to result in a relaxing of the can't even mention other payment methods rule, end quote. To which Michael Love responded, could be forced to do a lot more. Microsoft having to unbundle Internet Explorer, Apple could be compelled. to not only allow other app stores, but actually provide a startup alert to invite you to pick an alternate one, end quote. To which Marco responded, that's why I see them relaxing the can't mention other payment methods rule. Instead, if it looks like regulators slash DOJ slash EU are about to intervene in bigger ways, they'll likely make that smaller change to fix the problem and avoid heavier-handed changes to the app store, end quote. John S. Wilson then tweeted, if Apple didn't take a

cut of in-app purchases. Wouldn't developers just make their apps free and run all payments through in-app frameworks? Apple would receive nothing, correct? If so, should Apple be expected to host an entire store for free? End quote, to which Marco responded, they could actually compete. Apple's in-app payment system would still be the easiest for most users, and easy payments equal more purchases. They'd have to earn their 30% on the merits, or reduce it to percentage that's more commensurate with the value they're providing, end quote. Reuters is reporting that Amazon is beginning to roll out machines in its fulfillment centers that automate the process of boxing up customer orders.

These new robots can pack around 700 boxes per hour, which is four to five times the rate of a human worker. Quote, the company started adding technology to a handful of warehouses in recent years, which scans goods coming down a conveyor belt and envelopes them seconds later in boxes custom built for each item, two people who worked on the project told Reuters. Amazon has considered installing two machines at dozens more warehouses, removing at least 24 rolls at each one, these people said. These facilities typically employ more than 2,000 people. That would amount to more than 1,300 cuts across 55 U.S. fulfillment centers for standard-sized inventory. Amazon would expect to recover the

costs in under two years at $1 million per machine plus operational expenses, they said, end quote. The new machines which go by the name of carton wrap come from an Italian company, CMC. As friend of the show, Chris Mims pointed out on Twitter, this is not some Amazon innovation. In fact, Amazon is somewhat behind others in automation tech like this. This technology to automate the box packing process has long been anticipated and is expected to be implemented in the coming years by just about anyone in the commerce space. In fact, one has to imagine that that's part of, say, the 10-year P&L planning for Amazon as they roll out new fulfillment centers at this point. Oh, yeah, new center X will require 2,000 warehouse workers now,

but by 2030, we can have that down to 50. And that's part of what caused this story to get so much chatter this morning. Amazon's total workforce is now over 600,000. You know how I talk about how Amazon only got gargantuan recently? Ten years ago, Amazon had less than 50,000 employees. And while some of the jump in that number came because of the Whole Foods acquisition, the vast majority of Amazon's workers are in Amazon's warehouse and logistics operations. So, yes, automation seems to be coming for the jobs at Amazon that have exploded in numbers in recent years, the jobs that earn that vaunted $15 an hour minimum wage hike. As L. Drogan tweeted, quote, good luck with your unionization or wage strikes. And as Irenist tweeted, quote, so we're about 30 to 50 years out from takes about

how great Amazon warehouse jobs were and how the loss of those jobs destroyed the American family. good to know, end quote. To which user Kip on Microsoft tweeted, 30 to 50, 3 to 5 more like, end quote. I mentioned this briefly last week, but at I.O., Google effectively killed off the Nest platform and brand, shattering, well, the privacy firewall that seemingly existed between Google and Nest. But more on that in a second. and it also discontinued the Works with Nest program that allowed third-party manufacturers

to integrate with the Nest ecosystem. Going forward, Google wants companies to work with the Works with Google Assistant program. This has caused an earthquake in the Internet of Things universe. On the one hand, this means a whole ecosystem of dead-end products. And they're not insignificant names.

No more interoperability with Alexa. Phillips Hugh is affected. If this, then that. Logitech Harmony, August home, a lot more. Quoting Ars Technica, works with Nest users will be facing a broken smart home and will have to pick up the scraps of their smart home ecosystem and McGiver together another solution out of the pieces. The somewhat good news is that most smart home products are compatible with multiple smart home systems, so it should be rare for something to turn into a

complete brick. You'll just have to switch to a new ecosystem, go through a ton of setup, and be ready to deal with all of the things that won't work the same way. They worked before. theoretically some of those services could continue to talk to Nest by supporting the Google Assistant system instead, end quote. They go on to say that works with Google Assistant is perhaps a better program overall, but still, hope you didn't drop a couple thousand automating your whole house only to face a complete reassessment realignment. But also, basically, this change means that if you use any Nest products, you will be forced to migrate. to a Google account and thus anything nest that you have integrated in your home will now serve as grist for the mill that is Google, quote, personalizing your experience across everything you do,

and also, you know, to serve you relevant ads across everything you do. So if you're not cool with that, in Forbes, John Kotizer says, this is a big win for Amazon, quote, this is a step towards more control of the data that a smart home constantly generates. There's a good side to that, less risk of breach, but it also means more centralization around Google's long-term solution for managing smart homes. The short-term result is that to those in the know, Amazon becomes a more attractive option. It's more open, easier to connect to, and already ubiquitous. The long-term result that Google hopes for is a less open but more lucrative and vertically integrated smart home. end quote.

Pau-Peree segment here once again. As part of its pitch to investors ahead of its upcoming direct listing IPO, Slack has updated its financials and revealed estimated revenue of $133 to $134 million in revenue for the quarter ending April 30th, up from 80.9 million year over year, but also a net loss of $39 million, up from a net loss of $26.3 million year over year. Slack had 10 million users this past January. Speaking of users, Discord, the chat app that has been called the Slack for gamers, says it now has 250 million registered users and 56 million monthly active users.

Super interesting. Discord has grown its user base by 120 million people in just the last year. Discord is marking the fourth anniversary of its founding just today. And the first six-lead ECG device that can work with a smartphone app has received FDA clearance and will be available in June for $150. Wait, what about the Apple Watch? Well, this is different. There's a reason why the ECG Apple Watch features are underlined as not being a replacement for the clinical grade accuracy of actual diagnostic tools. The Cardia Mobile 6L is made by a live core, and here's what makes it different, according to Venture Beat.

Quote, until now a smartwatch or smartphone user effectively traded the simultaneous dozen signal, 12-lead, monitoring of a medical-grade ECG for the convenience of a one-signal, single-lead device that could be carried anywhere. While 12-lead ECG machines are wheeled around on carts, requiring octopus-like wires and conductive gels to measure a heart's electrical signals from various points across your body. A single lead device places two electrodes on two body points, a wrist and a finger or two fingers, to make a simpler, less thorough measurement. Cardiomobile 6L uses a form factor similar to the prior two electrode cardio cardio accessory, but instead of a three electrode device with twin steel pads on its top and a third on its bottom, once again, the palm-sized device is roughly the same size as a thin, small TV remote control. And it fits easily into a pocket or purse so you can

carry it anywhere. Scans are conducted via an accompanying smartphone app. But there's a vast difference in the amount of information Cardiomobile 6L gathers across multiple scans. Fingers plus ankle, plus fingers plus left knee. The user forms Einthoven triangles that allow Cardiomobile 6L to gather as much information as a six-lead machine. three bipolar limb leads and three unipolar limb leads. That leaves only six unipolar chess leads for separate monitoring in a hospital or clinic, end quote. Finally today, this is such a genius combination of the thirsts that drive these spaces. I actually can't believe that this sort of thing took this long to happen.

Satoshi's Treasure is a mixed reality game founded by Eric Meltzer. The keys to a Bitcoin wallet containing $1 million worth of Bitcoin were divided into 1,000 fragments and hidden around the globe. There are no rules to the game, Satoshi's treasure. But to win, you would need a minimum of 400 key fragments to unlock the wallet and get your share of the loot. Players can collect clues however they want. They can even sell leads and clues and solutions if they want, quoting CoinDesk. Meltzer enlisted the help of Zcash co-creator Ian Myers and 18 other contributors so that no single person knows the schedule or location of all the clues or keys. The logic puzzles are sprinkled across the internet and sometimes printed and pasted in the real world as well.

There are some clues that are very scavenger-hunting and clues where it's purely logic puzzles or math problems, Meltzer said, adding that the end result will numerically yield a key fragment. The first clue released last month seemed to point. users in the direction of the Blockstream satellite, which broadcast data related to Bitcoin, end quote. Well, in the intervening weeks, around 60,000 people have signed up for notifications related to the Satoshi's Treasure Quest. Apparently, a group of crypto investors have pledged an undisclosed amount to fund other games like this one, quoting Coin Desk again. Meanwhile, many have formed online teams to collect the 400 key fragments required to move the puzzle from the game's Bitcoin wallet, Meltzer said. Yet even the dynamics of these teams highlight how Bitcoiners are unique

compared to other online gaming communities. For example, software engineer John Cantrell cracked the code for one of the first key fragments, then promptly detailed on both Twitter and GitHub how he managed to do it. For me, it's really all about education, Cantrell told CoinDesk. Since then, Cantrell also joined several teams and created a free tool called Ordo to help teams organized clues and fairly credit contributions to the hunt, which will come in handy for any winning team looking to divvy up the loot. Cantrell said so far the largest team using Ordo appears to have 600 members. Another large team called the Magellan clan told CoinDesk via email it has 100 members from 30 countries. It made a unique token to reward people beyond the team who provide

tips. With so many players flocking to Satoshi's treasure, Cantrell isn't the only one making tools and services for other players. The 18-person Toshi Seifers clan, for example, has launched a merchandise store for teams looking to make shirts and other swag. Toshi Seifers clan member Devon Kramer told CoinDesk, they've had four orders for custom shirts so far, end quote. You know what they say. In a gold rush, you either get rich by striking the mother load yourself or by supplying the

pickaxes and shovels. Somebody said on Twitter this morning, I'm sorry, I can't remember her. who it was, and Twitter search did not help me out with that. But Game of Thrones and the aftermath, it reminds me of being a sports fan. And suddenly everyone is a Monday morning quarterback, and everyone is a general manager, and everyone is second-guessing every play call, and off-season signing. How come suddenly the dragons are unstoppable when not too long ago a dude could take them down with a friggin spear? We're all script doctors. Now, this is what the nerdification of popular culture has done to us, I guess.

Talk to you tomorrow.