Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 10/12 – Nest’s New Smart Thermostat Ditches the Rotating Dial

Episode Date: October 12, 2020

Google’s Nest thermostat is ditching the iconic dial design. Will regulators first ask Google to divest itself of Chrome? A big takedown of a botnet that could have influenced the election. Update on Quibi’s shopping itself around. And why Covid has made Caterpillar hit the gas on robo-construction machines. Sponsors: Masterworks.io, select PODCAST, then promocode: RIDE ForHims.com/tech Links: Google’s Nest announces new smart thermostat with simpler design, lower price (The Verge) Feds may target Google’s Chrome browser for breakup (Politico) Microsoft and others orchestrate takedown of TrickBot botnet (ZDNet) Microsoft takes down massive hacking operation that could have affected the election (CNN Business) Katzenberg Strikes Out on Quibi Sale Efforts, So Far (The Information) Twilio confirms it is buying Segment for $3.2B in an all-stock deal (TechCrunch) On Facebook, Misinformation Is More Popular Now Than in 2016 (NYTimes) Caterpillar bets on self-driving machines impervious to pandemics (Reuters) 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, October 12th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. Google's Nest Thermostat is ditching the iconic dial design. Will regulators first ask Google to divest itself of Chrome? A big takedown of a botnet that could have influenced the election, update on Quibi's

shopping itself around, and why COVID has made Caterpillar hit the gas on robo construction machines. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Google launched new Nest thermostats today with a simpler design that includes ditching the iconic rotating dial, quoting the verge. Google's Nest Smart Home Division has a new smart thermostat available to order starting today. The new Nest Thermostat is a simpler model than the Nest Learning Thermostat or Nest Thermostat E and comes with a lower price, just $129.99. That's $40 less than the Nest E and $120 less than the top of the line, third generation Nest Learning Thermostat. It is a little bit of the last. It is a is available to pre-order starting today, and Google says it will be shipping in a few weeks.

Simpler is the theme with the new nest thermostat, and that starts with its design. Gone is the traditional rotating dial that's been on every nest thermostat for the past nine years. In its place is a touch-sensitive strip on the right side that is used to navigate the interface and make adjustments. Instead of turning a dial to adjust the temperature, you swipe up and down and tap on this touch strip. This design eliminates all of the moving parts and allowed Google to bring the price down. The front of the thermostat is a completely mirrored finish

with a display that shines through the mirror when the thermostat is being used. Google is using the same Sully technology that was in the Pixel 4 smartphone underneath the mirrored finish to automatically detect when you are standing in front of the thermostat and wake it up. The company says that the Sully tech allows the mirrored finish to be uninterrupted without an obvious window or cutout

for a traditional motion sensor as used on the other models. But that is the extent of the solely use in the nest thermostat. There are no gesture-based controls outside of the touch strip, end quote. Also, these new nests come in four different colors, mirroring that sort of muted Easter-looking color scheme that Google has used so much recently. I have to say, they look really good. It's always been amazing to me that Nest has this ability to design gadgets sexy enough

that I want one, even though they're just thermostats. But also, again, worth noting that these new nests lose the also iconic learning function that Ness have always had, that function where it tries to learn your living circumstances and adjust the environment accordingly throughout the day. That is gone now as well with these cheaper devices. One wonders if that is a sign of things to come in the future. The thermostat just runs on a timer that you program yourself. So, Nest is just just making normal thermostats now. That's it. Sexy-looking thermostats, as I just said, but at this point, the same thing that Honeywell does for me, basically, right? Sources are telling Politico that the antitrust action against Google continues to be nigh,

and that the Department of Justice and State Attorneys General are considering forcing Google to sell its Chrome browser, as well as part of its ads business. quote, in the advertising investigation, DOJ and state attorneys general have asked rivals and other third parties for their views on which businesses Google should have to sell. They have also asked whether any existing competitors should be off limits as potential buyers, the people said. The lawyers have also asked whether any of Google's properties outside of the advertising technology market should be targeted for a potential sale, leading some to single out Google's Chrome browser, they said. The browser which Google introduced in 2008 and has the largest market share in the U.S. has been at the center of rivals' accusations that the search giant uses its access to users' web histories to aid its advertising business.

Short of demanding that Google sell the browser, prosecutors could also consider asking a court to limit how Google uses the data derived from Chrome to aid its other products. One of the individuals and a fourth person involved in the ad technology market said, end quote. The article does go on to say that unwinding some acquisitions, that make up part of Google's advertising business is also being considered, which that's what I find interesting. If the lead of the story was that instead of selling Chrome, they were focusing on things like the ad business, I'd be a little more concerned if I were Google. I mean, Chrome is a nice to have from Google's perspective, but it's not like without Chrome, they can't

continue as a company. Also, I mean, if you understand how it works, you would also want them to spin off things like Google Analytics, right? I mean, they get more information. from analytics than they do from anyone's browser history in Chrome. And also there's this angle, as Darya Obisancho tweeted, since every non-microsoft browser is subsidized by Google's search, what does it even mean to sell it? Estimates are that Google pays Apple $7 billion a year to be the default in Safari and $500 million a year to Firefox. Will the spinoff be forced not to take Google's money? If not, what's the point? End quote. As John Niolo tweeted, this won't solve the problem. Google's dominance is not because of the browser. It's their search algorithms and

analytical tracking platforms, end quote. Yeah, I know this is reading T-leaves here, but if this is how the antitrust thrust is going to go, i.e., if the feds and attorneys general are looking for anything to drag Google with and they just grab the lowest-hanging fruit, like I know, they've got dominant market share and web browsers. Let's target that, as at C. Glodhah said on Twitter, ah yes, if we apply the policies we applied to railroads 100 years ago to a free product that people love, that will solve all our problems, end quote. The point I'm trying to make is, if the antitrust forces are going to be this unsophisticated in their efforts, then if I were the big tech companies, I'd be letting out a sigh of relief,

because this indicates that the regulators continue to fundamentally not understand what the shot is. A coalition of tech companies, including Microsoft and Symantec, orchestrated a take-down of the Trickbot Malware Botnet, which had infected more than 1 million devices, quoting ZDNet. Microsoft, ESET, Semantec, and Partners spent months collecting more than 125,000 trickbot malware samples, analyzing their content and extracting and mapping information about the malware's inner workings, including all the servers the botnet used to control infected computers and serve additional modules. With this information in hand, Microsoft went to court this month and asked the judge to grant control over Trickbot servers. Quote, with this evidence, the court granted approval for Microsoft

and our partners to disable the IP addresses, render the content stored on the command and control servers, and accessible, suspend all services to the botnet operators and block any effort by the Trickbot operators to purchase or lease additional servers, Microsoft said, in a press release today, end quote. But hey, Brian, this sort of thing happens all the time, right? Well, yes, but this particular botnet takedown is getting a bit of notice because this particular hack might have affected the upcoming U.S. election, quoting CNN. Trickbot allowed hackers to sell what Microsoft said was a service to other hackers, offering them the ability to inject vulnerable computers, routers, and other devices with other malware.

That includes ransomware. Which Microsoft and U.S. officials have worn could pose a risk to websites that display election information or to third-party software vendors that provide services to election officials. Quote, adversaries can use ransomware to infect a computer system used to maintain voter rolls or report on election night results, seizing those systems at a prescribed hour optimized to sow chaos and distress, Microsoft VP of Security Tom Burt wrote in a blog post. He added, we have now cut off key infrastructure so those operating Trickbot will no longer be able to initiate new infections or activate ransomware already dropped into computer systems, end quote. A separate technical report by Microsoft on Monday said Trickbot has been used to

spread RYAC ransomware. Actually, I don't know how to pronounce that. RY. UK. Security experts say Riyuk has been attacking 20 organizations per week and was reportedly the ransomware that universal health services, one of the nation's largest hospital companies, was hit with. But TrickBot has also been used to spread false and malicious emails containing malware that tried to lure victims in with messaging surrounding Black Lives Matter and COVID-19, Microsoft said, end quote. Quibby Watch, is it too soon to start calling it a death watch? are telling the information that Jeffrey Katzenberg has been shopping Quibi around. He's pitched Apple. He's pitched Warner Media. He's pitched Facebook. All about potentially acquiring Quibi. And so far,

let's just say the reaction has been muted. Quote, over the past few weeks, Katzenberg has pitched several tech and entertainment executives about buying Quibi, only to be turned down. Among those he approached was Eddie Q, Apple's senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. At WarnerMedia CEO, Jason Kalar, according to people familiar with the situation. He and his partner in Quibi, former HP CEO Meg Whitman, also made formal presentations to executives at other tech companies, including Fidji Simo, head of the Facebook app, only to get rejected there as well, the people said. Quibi's subscriber base has fallen well short of expectations. Quibi has between 400 and 500,000 paying subscribers, said a person with knowledge of the figures, including

those getting a year free through a deal Quibi struck with T-Mobile. Quibi had projected reaching 7.4 million subscribers after the first. first year. Katsenberg pitched potential buyers on what he called a strategic partnership, said one of the people. He was proposing to stay with the company after any deal. His argument was that Quibi had developed the content and has a connection to the industry's top talent, but it needs to find a way to reach more people by partnering with a company that has a better developed platform. Having been rebuffed, Katsenberg is now looking at other options, said one person familiar with the situation. Quibi has a little time. It has more than

$800 million in cash left of what it raised. according to two of the people, end quote. Didn't I once read a story on here about how Katzenberg was once involved in a takeover of one of his previous companies? Maybe it was DreamWorks, and the quote was something along the lines of, the acquirer only wanted to do the deal if Katzenberg was no longer involved in the company at all. Twilio confirms it is acquiring customer data infrastructure company segment for $3.2 billion in an all-stock deal, quoting TechCrunch. is paying $3.2 billion to acquire segment, a technology startup that lets organizations pull in customer

data from one app into another by way of APIs and use its platform to better control the movement of that customer data used for marketing and other applications that benefit from customer identification and segmentation. The deal underscores how Twilio is moving deeper into customer engagement services, both for marketing data and other purposes, putting it in closer competition with the likes of Adobe. This is Twilio's biggest acquisition. since it picked up SendGrid for $2 billion to add email to its range of communications tools back in 2018. Segment was last valued at $1.5 billion at its last raise. Acquiring segment is a natural progression of how Twilio has evolved over the last decade. Tullio first made its name as a startup in 2008

by providing an easy way for companies to integrate text and voice services into their apps. Using APIs and a few lines of code, companies could tap into the fast-growing world of smartphone and app usage by putting the tools to communicate with their users directly into their apps. Over time, those basic tools have taken more shape with a wider range of communication sources, such as email and chatbots, and with a more focused set of applications aimed at different verticals using them, and more tools to enable and better manage customer relations, and also tools to better identify segment and work with those customers, end quote. According to new research from the German Marshall Fund Digital, in spite of all the efforts and

public pronouncements otherwise, misinformation on Facebook continues to rise. In fact, by this yardstick, engagement with misinformation has roughly tripled on Facebook since 2016. And if you look at the chart accompanying this piece, misinfo has really spiked in just the last 12 months or so. To be clear, we're talking about likes, comments, and shares. on Facebook of news sources that are considered to routinely publish misinformation, quoting the New York Times. People are engaging more on Facebook today with news outlets that routinely publish misinformation than they did before the 2016 election, according to new research from the German Marshall Fund Digital, the digital arm of the public policy think tank. The organization, which has

a data partnership with the startup NewsGuard and the social media analytics firm NewsWIP, published its findings on Monday. About two-thirds of those. those likes and comments were of articles published by 10 outlets which the researchers categorized as false content producers or manipulators. The group used ratings from NewsGuard, which ranks news sites based on how they uphold nine journalistic principles, to sort them into false content producers, which repeatedly publish provably false content and manipulators, which regularly present unsubstantiated claims or that distort information to make an argument, end quote. According to the report, interactions with these outlets so categorized have reached 1.8 billion per quarter.

Finally today, another suggestion that COVID times might actually accelerate the move towards autonomy, specifically at Caterpillar, which is betting on self-driving machines that would be impervious to pandemics, quote, sales of Caterpillar's autonomous technology for mining operations have been growing at a double-digit percentage clip, this year compared with 2019, according to previously unreported internal company data shared with Reuters. By contrast, sales of its yellow bulldozers, mining trucks, and other equipment have been falling for the past nine months, a trend that's also hit its main rivals, including Japan's Komatsu and American player deer. Fred Rio, worldwide product manager at Caterpillar's Construction, Digital, and Technology Division, told Reuters that a remote control technology,

which allows users to operate machines from several miles away would be available for construction sites in January. The company is also working with space agencies to use satellite technology to allow an operator sitting in the United States to remotely communicate with machines on job sites and say Africa or elsewhere in the world, he said, end quote. So I would quibble with that because by definition that does not sound like autonomy to me at all, more remote operation. Still, interesting piece to dive into the details if interested, as I've said before, bringing tech to construction sites to me is huge low-hanging fruit at the moment. Bit of a slow news day today, thus ending with a bit of a long read there.

It is something of a holiday here in the U.S., and also, as you know, Apple event tomorrow, so the decks tend to clear out in the tech circles to make way for iPhone to suck all of the oxygen out of the room tomorrow. So yeah, normal reminder that tomorrow's show could be a bit late, but I always say. say that, and then I always seem to get the shows out earlier than I ever imagined. So, maybe I've finally gotten this down to a bit of a science. We'll talk to you tomorrow about new iPhones.