Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 12/02 - When An E-Sports Team IPO's

Episode Date: December 2, 2019

Interesting Galaxy S11 leaks, T-Mobile flips the switch on its 5G network, might different models of next year’s iPhone have different versions of 5G, the rundown of Black Friday/Cyber Monday and why an e-sports team is IPO-ing. Sponsors: Legacybox.com/ride Sofi.com/ride Links: Samsung Suddenly Exposes Radical New Galaxy Smartphone [Updated] (Forbes) T-Mobile launches 600MHz 5G across the US, but no one can use it until December 6th (The Verge) 4 new iPhones could have 5G in 2020, but not the same kind of 5G (Mashable) Google and Facebook run into more trouble over data in Europe (CNN Business) Driving Innovation in Data Portability with a New Photo Transfer Tool (Facebook Newsroom) Black Friday sees record $7.4B in online sales, $2.9B spent using smartphones (TechCrunch) Now even the FBI is warning about your smart TV's security (TechCrunch) Amazon debuts automatic speech recognition service, Amazon Transcribe Medical (TechCrunch) Amazon’s kooky new keyboard lets humans and AI write music together (Fast Company) Counter-Strike World Champions Aim for First Esport Team IPO (Bloomberg) 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 from Monday, December 2nd, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough today. Interesting Galaxy S11 leaks. T-Mobile flips the switch on its 5G network. Might different models of next year's iPhone have different versions of 5G, the rundown of Black Friday slash Cyber Monday, and why an esports team is IPOing? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Some photos of the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S-11 have been leaking, but overnight Samsung confirmed that some of the leaks were real with some caveats.

Click through on the link from Forbes to see the pictures. It's a really sexy-looking, basically bezel-less device with a rumored 120-hertz display. And on the back, you can see a quintuple rear camera array with what tipsters say includes a 108 megapixel main camera, code named Hubble, with 5x optical zoom, capable of 8K video recording. There's also an ultra wide angle lens, apparently, telephoto lenses, and what that fifth lens does is currently unknown, quoting Forbes. Samsung confirms the Galaxy S11, listed as SM-G986, will come with 5G. This should set the bar for 2020 smartphones with almost all rivals upgrading their flagships to 5G tech, including the wideband support from Apple. The second disclosure is less positive.

Samsung reveals that the Galaxy S11 will only have support for a maximum charging speed of 25 watts. Granted, this is a step up from the aging 15 watts standard of the Galaxy S10, but the Note 10 plus introduced 45 watt charging, so it's going to raise eyebrows that Samsung has taken a step down from this, end quote. T-Mobile has turned on its 5G network officially today, flipping the switch to make it live over sections of the U.S. that it claims will cover 200 million people. But no one can actually make use of this new 5G capability until this Friday when the first two phones to support 5G on T-Mobile's network go on sale, quoting the verge. The nationwide 5G deployment relies.

on a slower form of 5G using T-Mobile's 600 megahertz spectrum. This low-band 5G essentially takes airwaves like the ones used for LTE and bundles them together with some new technology to deliver faster speeds, although T-Mobile doesn't actually appear to state anywhere what kind of speeds people should expect at launch. Because T-Mobile is relying on LTE-like spectrum, which travels relatively far, the carrier is able to deploy it over a wide swath of the country. It's the first major wireless carrier to claim nationwide 5G coverage. What T-Mobile isn't claiming are nationwide offerings for the fastest form of 5G,

millimeter wave or MMWave. MMWave relies on much faster airwaves to deliver much faster speeds, but the signal doesn't travel very far and is easily blocked by almost anything in its path. T-Mobile has already started to deploy MMWave in a few cities, but there's no word today on whether that's expanded. MM-wave deployments are likely to stay confined to densely populated areas like cities and sports stadiums because of its physical limitations, end quote. The first two phones, by the way, capable of 5G on T-Mobile going on sale this Friday,

are the $8991 plus 7T Pro 5G McLaren Edition and the $1,2190. Galaxy Note 10 plus 5G. That last segment pointed out the big difference in coming 5G technology that millimeter wave represents. We know that 2020 is going to be the big year for 5G, as the big carriers here in the U.S. at least turn on their mostly built-out 5G networks in anticipation of every new phone release touting 5G capabilities next year. None more so, of course, than the iPhone. And we've already heard rumors about how there will be pro versions of next year's iPhones,

again, with the usual better display, better camera, etc. But next year, could pro also mean better 5G? Also, could we get four versions of the 2020 iPhone, not three, quoting Apple Insider. One 6.1 inch and the 6.7 inch models will be the higher-end pairing, which will include a rear triple camera setup and world-facing 3D sensing. This is likely to be offered using VCSELs, as brought up in earlier speculation about the models. The other two, consisting of the 5.4-inch model and the other 6.1-inch variant, will have dual cameras on the rear and no 3D sensing. While all will include 5G connectivity, the tiering of the devices will also introduce variations on this feature, as only the higher tier pair will include support for MMWave, allowing them to connect at very high speeds in cities and built-up areas where MMWave 5G is offered. All models, however, will support the sub-6 gigahertz 5G spectrum, which is to be more widespread and robust than MM-Wave, albeit with far slower speeds.

According to J.P. Morgan, all four will be, quote, driving potential acceleration in replacement cycles. The four will also be offered in the same year as an anticipated release of the second-generation iPhone SE, which is expected to ship with a 4.7-inch LCD display in the first half of 2020. End quote. The EU's antitrust regulator has officially launched its preliminary investigation into how Google and Facebook gather, process, use, and monetize data for advertising purposes. Quoting CNN business. Reuters, which first reported the new EU investigation into Google, said that documents show the focus is on data related to the company's local search services, online advertising, online ad targeting services, services and web browsers. A spokesperson for Google said the company uses, quote, data to make our services more useful and to show relevant advertising, and we give people the controls to manage, delete, or transfer their data, end quote. We will continue to engage with the commission and

others on this important discussion for our industry, the spokesperson added. Facebook did not respond to a request for comment on Monday. National regulators are also scrutinizing Google. Britain's Competition Watchdog announced Monday that it's investigating the company's planned $2.6 billion acquisition of Looker Data Sciences, a leading U.S. analytics firm focused on data. The Competition and Markets Authority said it would examine whether the merger would reduce competition in Britain. The regulator can examine mergers when the firms have significant sales or market share in the country, end quote. Facebook has unveiled a photo transfer tool which lets users transfer their photos and videos from inside their Facebook accounts to other services, starting with Google Photos, quoting Facebook itself. For almost a decade, we've enabled people to download their information

from Facebook. The photo transfer tool we're starting to roll out today is based on code developed through our participation in the open source data transfer project and will first be available to people in Ireland. With worldwide availability planned for the first half of 2020. People can access this new tool in Facebook settings within your Facebook information, the same place where you can download your information. We've kept privacy and security as top priorities, so all data transferred will be encrypted and people will be asked to enter their password before a transfer is initiated, end quote. Quoting Josh Konstine on Twitter, Facebook's photo transfer is a good start, but we need social graph portability.

Let us switch living rooms, not just closets, end quote. Cyber Monday is going on even as I write these words. Search around for the best deals if you're so inclined. Quoting TechCrunch. According to analytics from Adobe, consumers spent $7.4 billion online on Black Friday, buying goods via computers, tablets, and smartphones. Those figures were up by $1.2 billion.

on Black Friday 2018, but they actually fell short of Adobe's prediction for the day, which was $7.5 billion. Salesforce, meanwhile, said that its checks revealed $7.2 billion in sales even further off the forecast. Popular products over Black Friday included toys on the themes of Frozen 2, LOL surprise, and Paw Patrol. Best-selling video games included FIFA 20, Madden 20, and Nintendo Switch. And top electronics, meanwhile, included Apple laptops, AirPods, AirPods, and Samsung TVs, end quote. Apparently, $2.9 billion in Black Friday sales happened on smartphones. Cyber Monday sales today are expected to reach $9.4 billion up 18.9% year over year.

If you took advantage of Black Friday or Cyber Monday to buy a new smart TV, guess what? Now even the FBI is warning you to be wary of that smart machine that you're bringing into your living room. On its website, the FBI's Portland, Oregon field office took advantage of the key shopping days on the calendar to warn of the dangers of smart TVs, quoting TechCrunch. Beyond the risk that your TV manufacturer and app developers may be listening and watching you, that television can also be a gateway for hackers to come into your home. A bad cyber actor may not be able to access your locked-down computer directly, but it's possible that your unsecured TV can give him or her an easy way in the back door through your router. the FBI. The FBI warned that hackers can take control of your unsecured smart TV and in worst cases take control of the camera and microphone to watch and listen in. Active attacks and exploits against smart TVs are rare, but not unheard of because every smart TV comes with

their manufacturer's own software and are at the mercy of their often unreliable and irregular security patching schedule. Some devices are more vulnerable than others. Earlier this year, hackers showed it was possible to hijack Google's Chromecast streaming stick and broadcast random videos to thousands of victims. In fact, some of the biggest exploits targeting smart TVs in recent years were developed by the Central Intelligence Agency, but were stolen. The files were later published online by WikiLeaks, end quote. And again, that's largely taking into account criminal hacking of your TV. Don't even get started on how much tracking data is collected by these smart TVs, the services that run off them, and the third-party advertising companies

that they want to sell your data to. Amazon has debuted a medical speech transcription tool that works without any human intervention and does not even require explicit punctuation by users, things like saying comma, period, etc. This new machine learning powered service is being called Amazon transcribe medical and will allow doctors to quickly dictate their clinical notes in real time, quoting TechCrunch.

Unlike some services, the physician, won't have to say things like comma or full stop, but can speak normally during the dictation process. The text can then be fed to downstream systems, including ER systems or AWS language services like Amazon comprehend medical for entity extraction. The service is also HIPAA-H-H-H-I-P-A-HIPAA compliant and scales with users' needs, meaning you'll only pay for what you actually use and without upfront fees, notes Amazon, end quote. Back in 2017, Amazon debut. Amazon Transcribe. So Transcribe Medical is obviously building off of that and shows Amazon's continued move into the medical space. Remember, they acquired pill pack, they acquired Health

Navigator, they've been piloting using Alexa in hospital settings, and just last week launched a medication management service on Alexa that allows you to make refill requests and medication reminders just with your voice. Amazon has also unveiled a keyboard. And by By keyboard, you should be thinking Cassio, like a musician's keyboard. But this keyboard is still for developers. It's intended to let developers use AI to compose music based on genre-specific models, a short initial tune, and other parameters. I'm going to let Fast Company explain, quote, at its AWS re-invent event in Las Vegas on Sunday night, the company unveiled a new music keyboard called Deep Composer, which developers can use to compose music in collaboration with

Amazon Generative AI models running in the cloud. The keyboard plugs into a PC where the human can use a control panel to communicate and collaborate with the AI models. Amazon calls Deep Composer, quote, the world's first machine learning enabled musical keyboard, end quote. Generative AI creates art, text, music, or other content based on examples fed to it via machine learning models. In this case, the AWS models can create a four-part accompaniment around a simple melody or chord progression a developer might play on the keyboard. The accompaniment can be in one of four genre styles, rock, pop, jazz, or classical. But the point is not making great music. It doesn't exactly do that, but rather to get familiar with AI models that create

the tunes. Quote, this whole system, Deep Composer, is designed for giving developers a hands-on opportunity to learn about this new technology while at the same time having fun with music, said AWS engineer Mike Miller, who moved from Amazon's Consumer Electronics Design Group at Lab 126 to AWS in order to create the generative AI models for music creation, end quote. The whole system uses something called a GAN, a generational adversarial neural neural network. If you click through to the story, you can actually hear tunes that Mark Sullivan of Fast Company used Deep Composer to create. And finally today, interesting IPO alert. Astralis is a Denmark-based company, which is, in actuality, the world's top-ranked Counter-strike Global Offensive Team.

Counter-strike, in case you don't know, is a popular first-person shooter video game. The company, or again, really, team, has filed for a December 9th IPO on NASDAQ Nordic's Copenhagen stock exchange for small and medium businesses, quoting Bloomberg. According to its prospectus, Astralis plans to raise 125 to 150 million kroner, around $18 to $22 million, with shares priced at $8.95 kroner. We believe that the foundation of some of the most valuable and iconic brands in 10 years' time is being set today, said Astralis Group chief executive officer Nikolai Nyholm. Nyholm says he's confident that the IPO will succeed and cites pre-commitments worth

around $8 million, quote, from a range of European and Asian investors, end quote. The subscription period ran out on Friday. A successful IPO would provide a yardstick for other esports valuations. But the CEO who has a background as a venture capitalist says he understands why some might be hesitant to invest in a new area with only limited historical data to draw on, end quote. And quoting from Dan Premax ProRata newsletter this morning, this would be the first ever public listing of an esports group, possibly priming investors for future floats from larger organizations. Canada's overactive media, for example, has been weighing an IPO, and NRG sports's Andy Miller tells Axios that he's been approached by Canadian banks about a Toronto listing. We felt it was too early, end quote.

Astralis intends to use the proceeds to continue to expand fielding new teams in other competitive games, including League of Legends and EA's FIFA. So it's official I made the switch to the Brave browser. In the end, I decided to stick to the WebKit world, and I also like the idea of having one password support faked into the browser. So far so good. using it every day. I literally cannot tell the difference between using the Chrome browser and using Brave, except Brave keeps track of all of the trackers and stuff that it blocks on my behalf. In the interest of trying to partially wean myself off of Google's snooping as much as I can,

I also set Duck, Duck, Go as my default search service. And that's been okay. I'd say Duck, Duck Go is maybe 60% as good as Google Search. But you end up having to go to Google for specific things a lot, like maps and images and such, which is fine. I'd rather Google not know my more casual searching profile. But I don't know. Not sure how long I'll last with Duck, Duck Go, as much as I want to stick with it. So anyway, here's my overall report.

Brave browser, awesome, flawless transition so far, not a single hiccup in replacing Chrome. Duck, Duck, Go, a passable replacement for Google search. but not quite there yet. Jury's still out. Keep you informed. Talk to you tomorrow.