Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 03/08 - Galaxy S9 Reviews

Episode Date: March 8, 2018

Galaxy S9 reviews, Travis Kalanick's new fund, Google wants to AMP the web, most Netflix is watched on TVs, a Star Wars TV show, and yesterday's Alexa laughter led to a lot of Twitter jokes. Credits: Produced by @brianmcc and the @techmeme staff Music by @jpschwinghamer 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 tech meme ride home for Thursday, March 8th, 2018. Galaxy S9 reviews, Travis Kalanick's new fund, Google wants to amp the web,

most Netflix is actually watched on TV, a new Star Wars TV show, and yesterday's Alexa laughter sure did lead to a lot of Twitter jokes. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Samsung's new flagship, smartphones, the Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus, are here. And the reviews came out this morning. Here's a brief sampling of what the critics were saying. Over at the verge, Dan Seafurt headlined that the devices were predictably great, but predictably flawed. He predicted

that the S9 and S9 Plus would be the most popular Android smartphones release this year, without a doubt, and said that Samsung nailed the basics, but that there were zero surprises. He noted that the phones still maintain a standard headphone jack, which he was pleased to see included, so if lack of a headphone jack is a non-starter for you, there's still hope. He also noted that the fingerprint scanner was in an easier spot to reach and that there is a new combo face scanning slash iris scanning feature to unlock the phone. Seafurt said that the phones were quote, snappy and responsive, but he called the battery life merely average. He ended up giving it an overall score of 8.5 and concluded by saying owners of the S8 probably

don't need to upgrade this go-around. Over at Android Police, David Ruddock said that the S-9 and S-9-plus don't represent a sea change, but rather an affirmation of success. Everything that made the S-8 and S-8-plus great can be found in these new phones, Reddick reported. He raved about the new cameras, calling them undoubtedly the biggest upgrade Samsung has bestowed on the S-9 line. He also said that low-light performance got a massive boost, and he praised the pro-mode that Samsung has for the cameras, which allow you to take control of things like shutter speed, white balance, and even aperture setting.

He concluded by awarding the phone his site's most-wanted award. tech crunch, Brian Heeter was similarly positive, but he also concluded, you could hold off on upgrading if you're happy with your current S8. Almost all the reviews had mixed things to say about Bixby. Android Central's Andrew Martonic wondered if maybe we'd all be better served by just integrating the few pieces of Bixby that work in other areas of the phone and leaving the full-screen home experience to die, as most of it, quote, just isn't useful. But he noted that Bixby can be turned off if you don't want to use it

and ended by saying these are solid, beautiful, feature-packed phones that have fantastic cameras. Former Uber CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick announced late yesterday that he's launching a new investment fund that he's calling 10100. This has caused some confusion online because the name is spelled out in numbers, 1-1-0-0, so people were left wondering initially how. it was pronounced. But hey, the joys of an auto yo medium, it is pronounced 10100. Kalanick said the fund will allow him to focus on his, quote, passions, investments, ideas, and big bets.

The fund will focus on real estate, e-commerce, and have a bias towards what he called large-scale job creation. One theme will be looking for new innovations from countries like China and India, and it will also have a non-profit component that will, quote, focus on education and the future of cities. There was no announcement of fund size or how much of his own money Calanick would be contributing to the fund. And I won't sum up the back and forth of Travis Kalanick's life over the last year or so, as I assume you're familiar.

But as the Verge pointed out with the announcement of this new fund, quote, it seems in some ways to suggest an admission on the Uber-CoF founder's part, that his role as a mechavillian behind the scenes player at the ride hailing company may be coming to a close, end quote. But back to that name for a minute. On Twitter, a lot of people speculated that 10100 was a reference to a Google, which is 10 raised to a power of 100, and that was, of course, the inspiration for the naming of Google. A spokesman told Greg Bensinger at the Wall Street Journal that it was actually a reference to Travis Kalanick's childhood home address. However, a tweet from Alex Bowles at Alex QGB on Twitter

tipped me off to the idea that, quote, in CB radio parlance, 10-100 means you're in the, and he used toilet emoji, so this is either hilariously self-aware or still blind to existing systems, unquote. Welp, I looked this up and confirmed on, on two different sites, the Truckersplace.com and Truckroadservis.com that indeed, in Trucker Lingo, a 10100 means a bathroom break. Over at the verge, Dieter Bone has a really interesting

write-up of a recent Google announcement that it will be trying to convince the various interest groups involved in web standards to apply some of the lessons learned from its AMP framework to web standards overall. AMP, Google's accelerated mobile pages, was a framework that Google developed to load pages faster over the mobile web, and Google believes that if its best practices are applied more broadly,

near instantaneous page loading is possible even on non-AMP pages. Publishers, of course, were already wary of seating control of delivery mechanisms to Google, and developers were already nervous about Google having undue influence over the open web overall, as Bone puts it in the piece, quote, all of the above are worried that Google is not so much a steward of the web, but rather its nefarious puppet master. But far from trying to exert more control over the web, Google insists that its motives are entirely pure.

David Besprey, Google's VP of Search Engineering, told Bone, quote, this is honestly a fairly altruistic project from our perspective. In the piece, Bone outlines the ways that AMP is actually a clever solution to speed mobile page loads in ways that avoid the Kluji solutions of the past by actually preloading pages in the browser while still working well with existing publisher analytics. Google insists that AMP is not a Google solution, as AMP pages. can be published and distributed completely independently of Google. Their goal now is to convince skeptical standards committees and crucially

developers of this fact. Our intention has always been to take AMP, get the good bits and the lessons that we've learned from building AMP into the standards track, Bestbrey said. It's really an interesting piece. Inside Google's plan to make the whole web as fast as AMP. Netflix held a briefing for reporters late yesterday in Los Gatos, and I saw a bunch of people tweeting out some really interesting slides from the talk last night and this morning. So I'm really glad that Peter Cockver wrote up a summary at Recode.

The really interesting data point is that even though most people sign up for Netflix on computers or mobile devices, and even though they start out watching streams largely on the devices they sign up with, that viewing pattern tends to evolve over time and does so greatly in the favor of TV screens. For example, at signup roughly 70% of users are on computers or mobile devices, and initial viewing happens on those screens by and large. But after only a month or so, about 45% to 50% of viewing has shifted to TV-sized screens, and by six months, 70% of viewing is on larger screens.

Only 15% remains on computer screens and 15% is on smartphones or tablet. These numbers seem to hold globally and across most demographics. For example, according to Netflix's own data, less than 25% of kids programming is viewed on handheld devices or computers. More than 75% of kids programming is consumed on a big screen. So this kind of flies in the face of the blithe assumption that we've all been making, that the kids today are just watching everything on their phones. TV watching is not dead yet.

In fact, it might only be a flesh wound. Speaking of Netflix, a lot of people said that if anybody could build an over-the-top streaming service that had a chance of competing with Netflix, it was probably Disney because Disney has such a deep wealth of IP to draw from, Pixar movies, Marvel characters, and, you know, Star Wars. So it probably comes as,

a surprise to nobody that Lucas film today announced that actor-director John Favreau had signed on to write a live-action Star Wars series for Disney's upcoming OTT service. Favro is, of course, to some degree responsible for helping to give Disney some of that deep content bench. As the director of the original Iron Man film, he arguably helped launch the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know it today. No details were released today in terms of the plot of the new series, characters, number of episodes, or release date, though Disney's streaming service is slated to launch in the fall of 2019, and one might think that having Star Wars as a draw at launch could be a pretty major selling point.

Finally today, if you'll remember, yesterday we ended with the story of Amazon users reporting that their echoes and Alexa enabled devices were laughing at them for no apparent reason. Last night, Amazon PR told Bloomberg's Mark Gurman that they have indeed identified the problem. Alexa was already programmed to answer the phrase Alexa laugh with laughter. Somehow, Alexa was hearing that trigger phrase ambiently, and that was what was causing the problem. Apparently, like yesterday, Amazon issued an update to fix. this and now the trigger phrase will be Alexa can you laugh which is hopefully less likely to have false positives well that story was breaking just as I

was recording yesterday so I couldn't really give it its due and frankly you guys were really going to town on Twitter so without further ado here are just some of the funny tweets that I collected about this story over the last 24 hours Alexander Petrie tweeted, Ah, nothing like the soothing laughter of the all-hearing machine I have willingly installed in my home. Tom Gara imagined Amazon PR's possible press release, quote,

We're trying to make the listening machine stop randomly laughing at its human hosts. We'll keep you updated on progress. BuzzFeed's Charlie Worsal was miffed for a slightly unusual reason, tweeting, It's been 20 minutes and nobody has leaked me in Angry Bezos email about the laughing Alexis. Do better. Ashley Mayer tweeted, I love how the humans just assume it's quote random laughter. And a lot of people picked up on this theme. User Casey Narley said, can confirm. Happened to me when I asked the balance of my bank

account. Jake Chapman tweeted, on the other hand, this is an improvement over Alexa silently judging me. User Christopher A, whose handle is at Death by Meatball, tweeted, The real question is, How long has Alexa been holding back from laughing at all of our dumb questions? User L. Graham tweeted, I'm worried our Alexa is depressed, which, yeah, what's wrong with your Alexa if she doesn't see the humor in life? Jack Ganatella went for Adam Sandler, tweeting,

They're all going to laugh at you. And a theme developed along these lines. User J.C.F. 527 tweeted that the laughter was on account of, quote, Bezos looking at his bank account. Tobias Zimmerman tweeted this has nothing to do with Jeff Bezos being named the richest man in the world and first individual to top $100 billion. Nope, nothing at all. And a lot of people went with this angle.

User Chaka Fawn at OG underscore ante tweeted, Alexa is laughing at all the goofy MFers who willingly let a corporate spy tool into their homes. User Centurion 480 went for police lyrics. Every keystroke you make, every laugh you fake, every breath you take, Alexa will be watching you. And of course, a lot of people saw the dystopian angle of all of this. Michael Ayers tweeted, This is the little touch that Fahrenheit 451 was missing. David Speed tweeted,

I'm sorry, Dave. This mission is too important to allow you to jeopardize it. Grant Winnie tweeted, Amazon confirms Alexa is laughing at us and says it's in negotiations with her. They remain hopeful that most of us won't have to be integrated into their power farm. User Randolph underscore Noiwu tweeted, and so it begins. Elon Musk, please, when are we going to Mars? Earth is doomed.

User Wild Goose at True Sinews tweeted, laughing that we still have not worked out that her last name is Skynet. And several people referenced the Black Mirror parallels, so sure enough, the official Black Mirror Twitter, tweeted, Alexa needs a hug. User Pascal Bouvier wins the award for the most erudite tweet. Quote, in a direct refutation of Henri Bergson's treatise on laughter, Alexa attempts to demonstrate laughter is not purely a human phenomenon

and can be devoid of both imagination and intelligence. Parker at PT said, I'm losing the argument with my spouse that Alexa is totally not creepy. User John Camo tweeted, How am I funny? Alexa? I mean, funny like a clown? I amuse you.

And finally, Glenn Fleischman tweeted, I hear creepy laughing in the house too, but I don't own an echo. Amazon PR, Jeff Bezos. If you're listening, if you have a joke that you'd like to add to this cavalcade, get in touch at podcast at techmeme.com. And I'll send you a phone number that you can call into and leave a humorous message that I'll post on the next episode. That would be the tech meme ride home for today, everybody. I've been your host, Brian McCullough. Follow me on Twitter at Brian MCC.

And someone pointed out that I haven't asked for ratings and reviews yet. The reason that podcasters do that is because ratings and reviews really affect our rankings in places like Apple Podcasts. So if you wanted to rate and review us, wherever you found our podcasts, that would be great. Five stars would be great. And if you took the time to write a review, that's even better. All that helps us get discovered because we're trying to build an audience right now. The Techmeme Right Home has been produced by myself and all of the editors at Techmeme.com. We hope to speak at you tomorrow.