Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 03/12 - Bye, Bye, Butterfly

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 Right Home for Thursday, March 12th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough. Today are the factories coming back online in China. Is G Suite quietly one of the biggest platforms out there? Why is Vagic Leap exploring options? And why does it want everyone to know that? An interesting raise. And I really didn't mean to crash the crypto markets with my comments yesterday. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Today in coronavirus news that is tech related, they started out suggesting. suggesting all workers stay home, but now Twitter has made it mandatory for all of its employees around the world to work from home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, quoting TechCrunch. The company said it will help all employees, including hourly workers and contractors cover expenses for setting up home offices.

Starting point is 00:01:24 Contractors, vendors, and hourly workers who cannot work from home will continue to be paid for their standard working hours while the work from home policy is in effect. Twitter also said it will cover additional daycare expenses parents may have if their usual daycares closed due to COVID-19, end quote. And Apple has closed all 17 retail stores in Italy, quoting Bloomberg. The Cupertino-based California company previously shuttered all 42 stores in mainland China, but it has since reopened most of them. Apple didn't say when Italian stores will reopen, but it will closely monitor the situation and keep its online and phone support open. as we support the work to contain and manage the spread of COVID-19, our priority remains the health and safety of everyone in the communities we serve, Apple said in a statement on Wednesday, end quote.

Starting point is 00:02:16 Speaking of things may be coming back to life in China, Terry Gao, founder of Foxcon, said that the resumption of production at Foxcon factories in China had, quote, exceeded expectations after the long halt due to coronavirus. Ironically, if that is even remotely the right word, Gow is now concerned about supply chains in the opposite direction, quoting Reuters. Gao, however, warned about weak consumer demand as a result of the coronavirus epidemic, which the World Health Organization has now declared a pandemic, and said the U.S. market was of particular concern.

Starting point is 00:02:51 In the United States, what we are worried about is the market. If production was resumed quickly but consumers stopped spending, that would be key to the economic recovery, he said. Apple, Foxcon's top client rescinded its March quarter sales guidance, citing a slower ramp-up of manufacturing in China after travel restrictions and an extended lunar New Year break. Gao also said he has concerns over the electronics supply chain in Japan and South Korea, which are grappling with their own serious outbreaks of the virus, and he cited rising prices for DRAM memory and supply issues with display panels. He did not elaborate, end quote. Yes, there are encouraging signs. that China is recovering from the COVID-19 situation. Number of cases down, number of deaths down, emergency hospitals closing down, et cetera.

Starting point is 00:03:40 But that's more for the other show, the coronavirus show. If you've not checked that one out, it's at the very bottom link in the show notes. When we throw around those numbers about platforms with billions of users, how huge they are, I think folks have been overlooking G-suite, it turns out. sure, we all knew that people use G Suite, but it's no real competitor to Microsoft Office, right? Well, Axios says Google's G Suite has more than 2 billion monthly active users. This was revealed by Javier Soltero, who heads G Suite for Google and spoke with Axios on Wednesday. Quote, that's a staggering number, Soltero said.

Starting point is 00:04:26 These products have incredible reach. Changing the way people work is something we are uniquely positioned to do. And quoting Axios, Sotero declined to offer a breakdown of how many of those two billion users are for products beyond Gmail, or how many are paid versus free. The presence of so many startups out there shows there is more work to be done, Soltaro said. Quote, this is not a solved problem. Nobody has run the table on communication and collaboration, end quote. As for what distinguishes Google from Microsoft, Soltaro pointed to its Silicon Valley culture, quote, I don't feel the need to be quite as outspoken here, Sultaro said. People do a lot more self-examination here, which is great, end quote.

Starting point is 00:05:09 Soltero also hinted at some sort of unification or at least a greater integration between the various G-suite apps, which you'll recall is a strategy that Microsoft Office itself has been pursuing lately. Ming Chi Kuo says that our long computing nightmare might finally be coming to an end. Quo says that both MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models with scissor keyboards will be coming in the second quarter of this year. Goodbye Butterfly Keys, quoting Mac Rumors. Quo did not comment on the size of the new MacBook Pro, but he is possibly referring to the 14-inch model that he has previously mentioned, given that the 16-inch MacBook Pro was only released four months ago. The new 14-inch model would likely replace the 13-inch MacBook Pro, which would be discontinued.

Starting point is 00:06:03 Quo offered praise for the 16-inch MacBook Pro, noting that customer response to the notebook has been better than expected, end quote. And a source is telling Fast Company that at least one of this year's iPhones could have a 3D depth camera on its back, which would enable new photos and video effects as well as better AR experiences. Apparently Apple has been working on this particular tech for at least two years, though it has never made the grade for new features up until now. and, though Fast Company cautions it might get delayed again this year too. Nonetheless, quote, the core technology behind depth camera systems is a rear-facing vertical cavity surface-emitting laser, or V-C-S-E-L, that sends out light waves at a consistent rate than measures the time each takes to bounce off objects in the environment and return to a sensor.

Starting point is 00:06:57 Light that returns from objects near the phone has a shorter time of flight, while light returning from objects further away has a greater time of flight, light. The light emitted by the iPhone's front-facing depth camera travels only a few feet, which is fine for locating the person holding the phone, but the lumentum laser used in the rear-facing system will have a much longer range. In Samsung phones, the 3D camera is the technology behind two features. Live focus allows users to blur out the background in still images and video to put added emphasis on the person or pet in the foreground. Quick measure lets you estimate the width, height, area, and volume of an object within the camera frame.

Starting point is 00:07:35 Apple may take a similar approach and highlight two or three marquee features such as the AR functionality reported by 9 to 5 Mac that are enabled by the rear-facing 3D camera, end quote. What beyond that would this allow you to do exactly well? Again, better augmented reality apps or imagine a video where someone jumps in the air and then you get that sort of spinny or bullet time effect where the subject is disconnected from the background or suddenly pops out in 3D. and quoting again, when you use AR apps without depth information, it's a bit glitchy and not as powerful as it ultimately could be, says Andre Wong, Lumentum's VP of 3D sensing. Now that AR Kit and Google's AR core have both been out for some time,

Starting point is 00:08:18 you'll see new AR apps coming out that are more accurate in the way they place objects within a space, end quote. Wong believes that rear-facing 3D cameras could enable users to create digital content that lends itself well to social media sharing. For instance, people might like to share images of themselves interacting with holographic images of animals or celebrities in their own living rooms. This is similar to what the Holo app by developer 8i does, but with the depth data, that sort of experience might be greatly improved, end quote. Potentially disappointing denouement alert.

Starting point is 00:08:58 Sources are telling Bloomberg that once high-flying, highly valued, augmented reality startup, Magic Leap is, to use a euphemism, exploring its options, options which include everything from partnerships to an outright sale to even a possible public listing of some kind. This comes after apparently talks with Facebook never progressed to the deal stage, quoting Bloomberg. Magic Leap, the startup that raised more than $2 billion to build an augmented reality device, is exploring options including a sale, according to people familiar with the matter. The Plantation, Florida-based company is working.

Starting point is 00:09:33 with an advisor to consider strategic options that could also include forming a partnership or selling a significant stake ahead of a potential listing, said the people. Magic Leap could fetch more than $10 billion if it pursues a sale, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private, end quote. First of all, I don't think so. Magic Leap is not going to fetch $10 billion. I'm willing to go out on a limb and promise you that. As Turner Novak tweeted, Magic Leap has sold 6,000 AR headsets and wants to fetch a $10 billion plus valuation. Snap has disclosed 70% of its 218 million daily active users interact with AR daily, an average of 30 times spanning over three minutes or 458 million total minutes per day.

Starting point is 00:10:20 It's currently valued at $14 billion, to which I'd add also. They think they can get that kind of valuation in this market, to which I'd also add. everyone says AR is the next big thing, but it still hasn't happened in a major way yet. So this isn't going to be one of those cases where players in a space need to acquire a utility belt to catch up with competitors who have raced ahead of them in the market. And second, this just really reeks of Magic Leap itself leaking the story to drum up interest, which also smells a little bit of desperation. Alex Cantorwitz tweeted, quote, you have to imagine Magic Leap is not getting much interest. so now it's letting it be known. A magic leak, if you will, end quote.

Starting point is 00:11:05 And quoting from the original piece again, Omar Khan Magic Leap's chief product officer said in an interview earlier that the company's Magic Leap 2 product will be released next year and will help it build a consumer presence. He said he expects the company to develop a disproportionate share of the market, which he said will top $100 billion within a few years, end quote. So if that were true and you believed it to be true, why then would you be exploring your options?

Starting point is 00:11:31 Tons of snark on Twitter about this, sharing my skepticism, but I'll just pick one. Brad Sam's quote, But every VC who used it said it was amazing and Jesus technology. Were they all wrong? End quote. Interesting Ray's Thursday. Deep North is a retail analytics platform that uses video from CCTV

Starting point is 00:11:56 to measure parameters inside stores like daily entries, exits from stores, occupancy inside stores, wait times and lines, queue times, if you will, conversions and heat maps, a whole bunch of stuff. Imagine sales analytics, but for real world brick and mortar retail. Deep North has raised a $25.7 million series A, quoting TechCrunch. Deep North quote says that using cameras to build its insights is more accurate and scalable than current solutions that include devices like beacons, RFID tags, mobile networks, smartphone tracking, and shopping data. A typical installation takes a weekend to do.

Starting point is 00:12:38 Previously known as VMAX, the Bay Area-based startup, according to CEO and co-founder Rohan Senil, currently is in use by customers in the U.S. and Europe. It does not disclose those retail customer names, but Sanil said the list includes shopping centers, retailers, commercial real estate businesses, and transportation hubs. There are a number of retail analytics plays on the market today, but up to now, the vast majority of them have been based on using other kinds of non-visual and non-video data to build their pictures of how a business is working, including logs of sales, card payments, in-store beacons, in-store Wi-Fi, and smartphone usage, end quote.

Starting point is 00:13:19 Yeah, so when I asked those questions about crypto yesterday, I really didn't think that I would crash the market more than it already was. I'm kidding, of course, but Bitcoin today fell as low as $5,678. It's lowest level since May of 2019, down 25% over the last 24 hours. It's since bounced back a bit, bounced around a bit, hovering near $6,000, but it's not alone. Just look at the tape. Bitcoin Cash, down 27% at the time of this writing. Ethereum down 22.6%, light coin down 21%. Manero, down 20%.

Starting point is 00:13:57 It's all red almost all across the board. According to Crypto-Watchers, the problem bedeviling the digital markets are the same ones bedeviling Wall Street's markets. People are simply rushing to cash. They're hungry to be liquid at this moment of uncertainty. Quoting Coin Desk, how did Bitcoin go from being a hedge against bad stuff to getting washed out and trading like a risk asset? When things go from bad to very, very bad like they did last week, investors take leverage down as fast as, they can. They book profits to make up for other losses. Billionaire investor and CEO of Galaxy Digital Michael Novagrats tweeted earlier this week as an explanation for Bitcoin's 13%

Starting point is 00:14:39 slide in late February. The S&P 500 had suffered a double-digit drop during the same week. Bitcoin's futures market data validates Novagratt's claim to some extent. The global open interest or total number of outstanding futures contracts have dropped sharply over the last few weeks, signaling a slowdown in institutional activity. Meanwhile, both the open interest and trading volumes and futures listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, one of the most liquid futures markets, have also dropped sharply over the last couple of weeks. Open interest fell to $171 million on Wednesday the lowest level since January 6, having hit a high of $338 million on February 14th. Trading volume also hit a three-month low of $88 million on March 6 before witnessing a brief spike

Starting point is 00:15:23 on March 9. Quote, it looks like institutional investors are taking a break from Bitcoin in this unstable period

Starting point is 00:15:31 with growing fear related to the coronavirus, according to an arcane research tweet, end quote. Chris Messina, whom you all

Starting point is 00:15:43 are probably familiar with at Chris Messina on Twitter, helped me out with a bit of research on today's show,

Starting point is 00:15:50 and he said he's always wanted a shout-out on this show. So, here you go, Chris. As I promised, an almost literal audio version of an animated jiff.

Starting point is 00:16:01 As thanks. Talk to you tomorrow. Shout out to the money love the drugs. Shout out to the money from the drugs. It's just a drug show I'm money love. Shout out to the money from the drugs. Shout out to the money, love the drugs. Shout out to the money from the drugs.

Starting point is 00:16:22 Shout out to the money, love the drugs. I need some money. I call my blood. Yo, she always showing me extra love. She always throwing me extra drugs

Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 03/12 - Bye, Bye, Butterfly

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