Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 08/12 - Your 108 Megapixel Smartphone Camera

Episode Date: August 12, 2019

Would you want (or need) a 108MP smartphone camera? The “Ninja” Blevins/Twitch breakup explained. The cat-and-mouse between Chrome and paywalls explained. Credit where due for Apple on wearables, and why touchscreens might not be a user interface panacea. Sponsors: Metalab.co Legacybox.com/ride Links: Samsung's 108-megapixel mobile sensor closes in on mirrorless cameras (Engadget) Ninja calls out Twitch after his dormant channel highlights porn (updated) (Engadget) The New York Times is still detecting Chrome Incognito Mode after Google’s fix (9to5Google) Apple Deserves More Credit for Wearables (Above Avalon) How Facebook Is Changing to Deal With Scrutiny of Its Power (NYTimes) Navy Reverting DDGs Back to Physical Throttles, After Fleet Rejects Touchscreen Controls (USNI News) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the TechMeme Right Home for Monday, August 12, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough today. Would you want, or even need, a 100-machyixel smartphone camera? The Ninja Blevins versus Twitch breakup explained. The cat and mouse between Chrome and paywalls explained. Credit where do for Apple on wearables and why touchscreens might not be a user interface panacea. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. We've been readying for announcements of smartphone cameras capable of undergoing generational changes for the better, and we got one today when Samsung unveiled its ISOcell Bright HMX, a 108 megapixel smartphone camera sensor developed in collaboration with Jiami. This thing is all about ginormous. Not only the ginormity of the image you can capture, again 108 megapixels, But also, this thing can record 6K video at 30 frames per second. It's literally large.

The actual physical sensor measures 1 inch by 1.33 inches. But, quoting and gadget, even at that size, a 108 megapixel sensor will have ridiculously small pixels. By default, though, Samsung's Tetrisel tech will gather the light from four pixels, transforming it into a 27 megapixel sensor. You'll still be able to snap 108 megapixel photos if you want, but that will likely require brightly lit shooting situations. Samsung's smart ISO mechanism will automatically select lower ISOs in brighter light and high ISOs in dim shooting conditions.

Hopefully, Zhaomi will give users manual control over those settings as well, end quote. No word on when these sensors might come to market, and with Xiaomi on board as a partner, maybe Samsung will let them take the first crack at giving this to consumers. But production is supposed to begin later this month, so it is possible that we could see these sensors on some handset or other by the end of the year. I didn't cover this initially because I deemed it too in the weeds of the video game industry for this podcast. But let me catch you up. Tyler Ninja Blevins, is one of the biggest names in Fortnite

and also one of the biggest names in online video game streaming full stop. At the beginning of the months, Blevins made headlines by leaving the Twitch video game streaming platform for Microsoft's Mixer, which is a Twitch competitor. Just five days after leaving Twitch for Mixer,

Blevins hit 1 million active subscribers on the new service. So, okay, Mixer poaches a big name to try to build awareness, among video gamers and streamers. One would have to imagine that Blevins was paid well for this move, and seemingly his fans are following him. So far so good, right?

Well, quoting Engadgett, the well-known streamer has posted a video chastising Twitch for not only using his dormant channel to promote other streamers, but to let porn find its way onto those recommendations. As e-sports consultant Rod Breslew observed, the number one stream on Twitch the morning of August 11th was a bootleg porn podcast that lasted for more than two hours. Imagine someone looking for Fortnite gameplay

only to find X-rated material, end quote. So, the story has evolved into Blevins left Twitch, but Twitch didn't shut down the account and, in fact, was using Blevins' dormant account to promote other streamers. but commenters and others hijacked that account and, well, one has to suspect that maybe this was all some form of payback from a jealous Twitch. Not that I'm suggesting that Twitch was responsible for the hijacking and the porn, but by not taking down the dormant account and in fact trying to use it to promote other streamers, something that Blevins says doesn't happen to any other Twitch channels. doesn't it kind of feel like this is a spurned lover that is jealous that their lover left?

Twitch last night changed Blevins's old page to an offline screen, and Twitch CEO Emmett Shear apologized and suspended recommendations on that account. Quote, I apologize and went to apologize directly to At Ninja that this happened. It wasn't our intent, but it should not have happened. no excuses, end quote. This also fell through our cracks just a bit, but there's been something of a cat and mouse game going on between web browsers and digital publishers

that kind of falls into what we've recently been talking about vis-a-vis publishers and paywalls. Recent versions of the Chrome web browser have included updates to the incognito setting that prevents paywalls from detecting you in a way that locks you out of content. In other words, if you're incognito, the publisher website can't detect that. Google keeps releasing new versions that help people get past the paywalls in this manner,

but publishers keep finding ways to detect the incognito mode, thus neutering the feature. Even after new incognito protections were included in Chrome 76, as of this morning, the New York Times website, for example, has already been able to reenable detection of the Chrome Incognito mode. If you try to go incognito on the Times website, you get that warning, pop-up that asks you to either sign in or create an account. Quoting 9 to 5 Google. What's interesting is that the page's code doesn't seem to feature either of the currently known solutions for spotting an incognito window. All of the code that the Times used to

detect private browsing in other browsers and older versions of Chrome is still firmly in place, but does not appear to feature any new solutions specific to Chrome 76. With a major player like The New York Times going back to business as usual with detecting incognito mode, it's only a matter of time before other publishers follow suit, making Google's most recent effort and exercise in futility. However, if their new method still relies in any way on the file system API that the original detection method used, there's a glimmer of hope. In the original plan for putting an end to incognito detection, Google explained that they would like to, quote, deprecate and remove the file system API altogether, assuming usage statistics show that

few enough sites use it for legitimate reasons. Unfortunately, there's no way to know how quickly Google would be able to make such a move, meaning paywells will continue to reign for the foreseeable future, end quote. Apple Watcher extraordinaire Neil Seibart argues in his above Avalon website that Apple deserves more credit for the surge in revenue delivered by its wearable products in recent earnings reports. You may recall that based on recent reports, Apple's wearable business lines are now at a $16 billion annual run rate, and they're growing at a 50 to 60% year-over-year clip, which means they will likely soon surpass the iPad and Mac to become Apple's third largest product category.

One out of five devices Apple's sells is now a wearable gadget. Again, iPhones not seeing growth anymore. That's okay because the iPhones are just a platform for these wearables. to grow, quote, Apple is leveraging its ecosystem of users and devices to give its wearables business an ideal launching pad for success. While there are a handful of companies with more than a billion users, no other company has an ecosystem of a billion users and nearly 1.5 billion devices, nearly 90% of which are running the latest software. The lack of a self-sustaining ecosystem is one of the primary factors driving Fitbit's gradual fade into irrelevancy. This limitation

manifests itself in new products like the Fitbit Versa smartwatch failing to catch the needed traction. In assessing why Apple's wearables business has received so little attention to date, one doesn't have to look much further than the iPhone. Preoccupation with trying to find a singular product capable of replacing the iPhone made it difficult for many to see how a platform of wearable devices is the answer for what can eventually serve as a viable iPhone alternative. It doesn't help that new Apple products are also graded on a curve next to the iPhone. If a new product is unable to move Apple's financial meter out of the gate, the product is looked at as a flop, toy, or mere iPhone accessory, end quote. But maybe what people are suddenly cluing into

is that another analogy for mothership device and accessory device is platform and application. And Apple owns both. In the New York Times, Mike Isaac dives into the question of of, to what degree, all of the consolidation of messaging platforms, consolidation of advertising systems, even as we mentioned last week, the rebranding potentially of apps to include the Facebook name is all some sort of mad attempt by Facebook to stave off the sort of regulatory intervention that might entail breaking up the company into constituent parts. And, by reporting this out, Isaac delivered two new interesting anecdotes. First, apparently, Fear of the Regulatory Reaper has already scuppered one potential acquisition by Facebook, and second, more color on this whole rebranding effort, because it seems to be real.

Quoting two sections here beginning with last December, Facebook executives were in advanced discussions to buy House Party, a social networking app that lets multiple people video chat on their mobile phones at once, said to people with knowledge of the talks. House Party, founded in 2016, by a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Ben Rubin, was especially popular with audiences under the age of 24. Facebook, whose members are getting older, has coveted younger users. But weeks into the discussions, Facebook's corporate development team killed the talks with House Party, the people said. House Party's executives were told that a deal would draw unwelcome federal government scrutiny to Facebook, they said. House Party was later purchased by Epic Games, the makers of the video game Fortnite, end quote. which again, this is where regulation can help competition in a marketplace, right? House Party could have been just another defensive acquisition on Facebook's part that added

yet another up-and-coming social platform to its utility belt but would also have knee-capped an up-and-coming potential rival. Facebook had to shy away just because of the fear of regulatory action. Instead, House Party is now a part of Epic Games. which can maybe add it to its own utility belt to maybe become a meaningful Facebook rival. That is healthy in a market. Second, quote, more confirmation that this Instagram from Facebook idea might be for reals. Last year, Facebook also began a rebranding project tapping at least one outside agency for help,

said three people familiar with the initiative. The agency, profit brand strategy, was asked to make Facebook into a, quote, branded house, where Facebook's moniker always preceded the name of WhatsApp and Instagram, they said. The rebranding mandate came from Mr. Zuckerberg in Antonio Lukio, Facebook's chief marketing officer, they said, end quote. Finally today, the U.S. Navy has reportedly begun reverting to physical throttles and other sorts of helm controls on its warships after it determined that a touchscreen interface contributed to a deadly collision on board the USS John S. McCain.

Quoting USNI News. The investigation into the collision showed that a touchscreen system that was complex and that sailors had been poorly trained to use contributed to a loss of control of the ship just before it crossed paths with a merchant ship in the Singapore Strait. After the Navy released a comprehensive review related to the McCain and the USS Fitzgerald collisions, Naval Sea Systems Command conducted fleet surveys regarding some of the engineering recommendations,

program executive officer for ships, rear admiral Bill Gallinus said, quote, when we started getting the feedback from the fleet, from the comprehensive review effort, it was SEA 21, NavC's Surface Ship Lifecycle Management Organization, that kind of took the lead on doing some of the fleet surveys and whatnot. It was really eye-opening. and it goes into the, in my mind, just because you can doesn't mean you should category. We really made the helm control system, specifically on the DDG 51 class, just overly complex, with the touchscreens under glass and all this kind of stuff,

Gallinist said during a keynote speech at the American Society of Naval Engineers' annual fleet maintenance and modernization symposium, end quote. So, pausing to acknowledge, of course, the seriousness of the tragedy of the collisions, but I chose this story to make a couple of perhaps not as serious points. Remember that Benedict Evans essay about how when electrification happened, people tried to initially put electricity into every consumer appliance, and it turned out that not everything needed electricity, so now some things are electrified and some things aren't. Evans was making the point about specifically IoT devices, how maybe not everything needs

to be smart, even though we're trying to put smarts into everything at the moment. Maybe a washing machine really doesn't have to have an internet connection in the end. Well, the same can be true for user interfaces. Like, just because touchscreens work well for some of the latest and the greatest doesn't mean they work well for everything. Like physical knobs and switches and throttles and steering wheels and the like, just because they're useful for smartphones or even navigating drones and stuff, doesn't mean they're great for everything. I'm thinking of the touchscreens on Teslas. Honestly, just give us back an actual dial or knob for volume control or even adjusting the temperature on the AC, right? I don't have to look to know that I've done something if I

turn a knob. Tactile feedback is still important in a lot of use cases. Maybe there are physical tactile things that will never go away because they never should. Maybe a VATTAL. Maybe a VATILEB. Maybe a vehicle that a human is operating will never lose the physical feedback instruments like a wheel or a throttle because even if they're only mimicking actual mechanical or muscle power control, it still gives a human brain the sense of fine-grained control that maybe is necessary. Heck, when I bought my electric scooter two years ago, I made sure to get one with a physical old-style handlebar brake like you have on a bicycle because I just don't trust the ones that have electronic button-breaking systems. But this also made me think of sci-fi. You know how people

laugh at how the original Star Trek series had buttons and switches and stuff, but then by next generation and other Star Trek series, Worf and Jordy and all them were using touchscreens, and so ha-ha-ha-ha, they got that wrong because in the 1960s, they couldn't imagine such a thing as touchscreens. But what if it turned out they actually got it right in the 60s? What if the operation of a ship, Starship or otherwise will always have physical controls, at least if they have humans physically behind those controls. Buttons and switches and an actual helm control that involves tactile motor feedback. Maybe some sort of minority report style abstracted control system is just something that will

never make practical sense in that use case. Then again, if the AI stands are right, then we're on the cusp of a reality where humans will never have to control or steer or direct the vehicle themselves ever again because the AIs will do it. So either a real-world version of the Millennium Falcon would always have buttons and switches or else it wouldn't even have a cockpit because the humans would never be driving the Millennium Falcon because the computer would always be doing everything. And so just as we imagine cars of the future might not have steering wheels and we'll all just be sitting facing inward or reading books, maybe Han and Luke and Chewy should have just spent their entire time in the back of the Falcon, playing Dejarek hollow chess, back in the bowels of the ship. So this is totally, totally random, but I need to engage the hive mind for a second. You know those t-shirts and posters and whatever that,

do nothing but just list name and name and name and name. So like, if it was a friend's t-shirt, it would say, Ross and Rachel and Phoebe and Chandler and Monica. You see them everywhere for the last couple years or so, for all sorts of different things. They all kind of use the same font. So can someone explain what the joke is? Because it's a weird thing, but I've seen them everywhere for years now

and somehow I missed the cultural reference. Where does this real-world meme come from? And again, what is the joke? I assumed it was some sort of riff on, like, you know, law firms and their naming conventions or any sort of partnership company naming conventions, like Sterling Cooper, Draper Price, or how Kleiner Perkins is in reality, Kleiner Perkins, Caulfield, and buyers. But damned, if Googling around got me nowhere this weekend,

Do a search for where do those name joke shirts come from and you'll get nowhere. So, hive mind. If anyone can explain this meme to me, hit me up on Twitter or the subreddit, like a song that's stuck in your head, but you can't find out who did it because there's no way to hum a tune into a search bar, at least yet. This has been driving me crazy all weekend, so thanks in advance.