Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 04/04 - Amazon Joins The Internet Space Race

Episode Date: April 4, 2019

Facebook. Data. Exposure. Another one. Could Intel issues delay a 5G iPhone? Apple cuts the price of the HomePod, Amazon is going to launch Internet satellites, and the trouble with AI ethics boards. Sponsors: Imagekit.io/ride Metalab.co Links: Researchers find 540 million Facebook user records on exposed servers (TechCrunch) Inside Apple’s shaky plan to deliver a 5G iPhone in 2020 [Updated] (FastCompany) MIT suspends ties with China's Huawei and ZTE (CNN Business) Apple drops HomePod price down to $299 (TheVerge) Google launches Android Q Beta 2 with multitasking Bubbles, foldables emulator, and zoomable microphones (VentureBeat) Hundreds of thousands of ‘lost’ MySpace songs have been recovered (TheVerge) Amazon to offer broadband access from orbit with 3,236-satellite ‘Project Kuiper’ constellation (GeekWire) Google’s brand-new AI ethics board is already falling apart (Vox) THE PROBLEM WITH AI ETHICS (TheVerge) Electric car battery with 600 miles of range? This startup claims to have done it (TheVerge) Subscribe to the ad-free, listener-supported feed! 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 Thursday, April 4th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Facebook, data, exposure, another one. Could Intel issues delay a 5G iPhone? Apple cuts the price of the home pod. Amazon is going to launch internet satellites and the trouble with AI ethics boards. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. The podcast hosts sighs audibly, but then figures, I guess we got to. to do this again. Researchers have found more than 540 million records of Facebook user info exposed on an AWS storage server by a third-party Facebook app. The security firm UpGard found the

data and they notified Facebook and AWS about it in January. Apparently, however, the data was still online and exposed as recently as yesterday, quoting TechCrunch. In the researchers' write-up, Mexico-based digital media company Cultura Collective left more than 540 million records, including comments, likes, reactions, account names, and more stored on the Amazon S3 storage server without a password, allowing anyone to access the data. Another backup file on a separate storage server by defunct California-based app maker at the pool contained even more sensitive data, including scraped information on more than 22,000 users, such as a user's friends list, interests,

interests, photos, group memberships, and check-ins. According to Upgard, neither company responded to requests to have the data removed. Facebook contacted Amazon to pool the data offline, a Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch, end quote. There is no indication that the exposed data had been misused, and to be clear, this is a story about sloppiness on the part of a third party, not Facebook itself. but as UpGard itself notes in its post on the matter, that is kind of the point here. Quote, the data exposed in each of these sets would not exist without Facebook. Yet these data sets are no longer under Facebook's control. In each case, the Facebook platform facilitated the collection of data about individuals

and its transfer to third parties who became responsible for its security. The surface area for protecting the data of Facebook users is thus vast and heterogeneous. and the responsibility for securing it lies with millions of app developers who have built on its platform, end quote. Yesterday was a big step forward on the 5G front, as I told you. The first customers have access for the first time to 5G networks on 5G capable phones. But today, possibly a big step back for 5G rolling out wide, because Fast Company is reporting that Intel might have missed deadlines for the development of a 5G modem for the expected 2020 iPhones, the iPhones that are expected to be the first with 5G.

Internet responded to the story saying it announced in November that it would be shipping the 8160 5G modem in the second half of 2019, and it is standing by that statement. But Mark Sullivan at Fast Company says Apple is losing confidence in Intel, according to his sources, so much so that Apple has been rapidly recruiting RF engineers and has already hired 1,000 to 1,200 engineers, working on modems for future iPhones. But note that I said future. Apple still wants a 5G capable phone by 2020. And if it is losing confidence in Intel,

what can it do? Quoting the piece, for 2020, none of Apple's options look ideal. We do not believe Intel will be ready with a single-chip backward-compatible 5G modem, while others, like Samsung MediaTech, are unlikely solutions either technically, Media Tech or practically, Samsung.

So writes USB analyst Timothy R. Curry in a research note on Wednesday. As a matter of fact, Apple has recently held talks with both Samsung and Media Tech about supplying modem chips in the near term, our source says. Samsung wants to sell its 5G modem for use in non-Samsong phones. But our source agrees with Arcuri that neither Samsung nor Media Tech is likely to be in a position to supply the modems for a 5G iPhone in 2020. Which means that for the 2020 5G iPhone, at least it's likely Intel or bust for Apple, end quote. Well, Apple could go back to Qualcomm, the company that Intel originally wrestled Apple's business away from for these chips.

Except that there is that little matter of the bruising legal dispute between those two companies that is still ongoing. So maybe not. MIT has cut research ties with embattled Chinese tech companies, Huawei, and ZTE, and more severed relationships might be coming down the pike. Quoting CNN, MIT is not accepting new engagements or renewing existing ones with Huawei and ZTE or their respective subsidiaries due to federal investigations regarding violations of sanction restrictions. Maria Zuber and Richard Lester, the university's vice president for research and associate provost, respectively, said in a letter to the school community on Wednesday.

The administrators also said that the university had determined that working with certain countries, particularly China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, quote, merit additional faculty and administrative review beyond the usual evaluations, end quote. Apple has slashed the price of the home pod smart speaker worldwide, dropping from $349 to $299 in the U.S. Apple store. That represents a 15% drop, and this is on the base price. This is not a one-time promotion. And the cut seems to be in effect globally. The problem is, even coming in under the $300 price point for the first time, might not do much to change the notion that the HomePod is at the high end of the smart speaker market, perhaps too far at the high end.

Quoting from The Verge, the updated price still underlines the fact. that Apple doesn't have any budget options for integrating Siri into a smart home like Amazon and Google do with the Echo Dot and Home Mini products, respectively, end quote. Yeah, at the time of this recording, you can get an Echo Dot on Amazon right now for $39.99. Google Home Mini, $39. As M.G. Siegler snarked, quote, only four more cuts to go until we have something interesting. And Mark German tweeted, quote, these things still aren't selling too well, end quote. Google has launched the second beta of Android Q.

So if you're a developer, head over to developer. com forward slash preview and begin testing your apps on this new release because there's a lot of new bells and whistles in the release, including an emulator for foldable phones, a new multitasking overlay called Bubbles. a zoomable microphone API that allows you to specify a preferred direction for the microphone when doing recordings, and something called scoped storage, which gives users more control over access to shared files for new app installs. Hundreds of thousands of those MySpace songs that people feared might have been lost might have been recovered.

The Internet Archive has published a catalog of 490,000 songs uploaded to MySpace songs, MySpace between 2008 and 2010. Quoting the Verge, The Source of the Saved Tracks is an anonymous academic group that was studying music networks while MySpace was still active. As part of their research, it downloaded 1.3 terabytes of music from the service. Later, when the news of the data loss emerged, it contacted the Internet Archive and offered to send it the files, end quote. So, excellent news, right? with one small tiny caveat.

Those 490,000 songs represent less than 1% of the estimated 50 million tracks uploaded to MySpace between 2003 and 2005, which at this point are seemingly still unrecoverable. Space Tech. Amazon is joining the race to provide broadband internet service via a constellation of low-Earth orbit satellite. to provide internet connectivity around the globe. Quoting Geekwire, the effort, codenamed Project Kuiper, follows up on last September's mysterious reports

that Amazon was planning a, quote, big audacious space project, end quote, involving satellites and space-based systems. The Seattle-based company is likely to spend billions of dollars on the project and could conceivably reap billions of dollars in revenue once the satellites go into commercial service. It'll take years to bring the big audacious. Project to Ferovision, however, and Amazon could face fierce competition from SpaceX,

One Web, and other high-profile players. Project Kauper's first public step took the form of three sets of filings made with the International Telecommunications Union last month by the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of Washington, D.C.-based Kuiper Systems LLC. The ITU oversees global telecom satellite operations and eventually will have to sign off on Kuiper's constellation, end quote. The filings outline Amazon's intention to put 3,236 satellites into low Earth orbit to provide coverage to every spot on the planet ranging in latitude from 56 degrees north to 56 degrees

south. It just so happens that 95% of the world's population lives between those two latitudes. In an email confirming the existence of Project Kuiper, an Amazon spokesperson wrote, Quaper will, quote, provide low-latency, high-speed broadband connectivity to unserved and underserved communities around the world. This is a long-term project that envisions serving tens of millions of people who lack basic access to broadband internet. We look forward to partnering on this initiative with companies that share this common vision, end quote. Quick summary of the state of play in the race to deliver internet from space. SpaceX has its planned Starlink broadband data constellation.

It launched the first two prototype satellites for that last year. The plan is to eventually have more than 12,000 low-orbit satellites for the Starlink system. One Web put its first six broadband satellites in orbit in February, and it just got $1.25 billion in funding last month from, guess who? SoftBank. A company called Telestat also has a prototype broadband satellite in low orbit and plans to launch hundreds more over the coming years with plans to begin providing internet service as early as the early 2020s. Facebook, Boeing, and another company called Leosat have all announced various other similar plans for satellite internet service.

And by the way, internet access is already available via satellite, via Hughes Network Systems and a company called Viasat. But those two systems use satellites in geosynchronous orbits. The advantage of these new low orbit constellations is the promise of lower latency and lower cost. Two related items here. Google's AI Ethics Board, which it announced to great fanfare last week, is only a week old. And yet, nearly half of Google's AI board has already resigned from the board or is under fire and criticism and pressure asking them to resign. Quoting from Vox, of the eight people listed in Google's initial announcement, one, privacy researcher Alessandro Acquisiti, has announced on Twitter that he won't serve.

And two others are the subject of petitions calling for their removal, K. Coles James, president of the Conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, and Diane Gibbons, CEO of drone company Trumbull Unmanned. Thousands of Google employees have signed on to the petition calling for James's removal. James and Gibbons are two of the three. women on the board. The third, Joanna Bryson, was asked if she was comfortable serving on a board with James and answered, believe it or not, I know worse about one of the other people, end quote. Altogether, it's not the most promising start for the board, end quote.

In a Vox piece about this, Kelsey Piper suggests that there's a deeper problem with Google's AI ethics board beyond just maybe selecting different people to sit on it. Google said the board was founded to guide, quote, responsible development of AI and to, quote, be convincing to society broadly. But if that is the goal, Piper writes, then why are the positions on the panel unpaid and why has Google not made any commitment to abide by the conclusions the panel comes to? In short, the panel has no authority. And that makes it, quoting Piper, quote, not really AI ethics. It's AI marketing, end quote. The Verge concurs with this in a related piece writing, quote, academic Ben Wagner says tech's enthusiasm for ethics paraphernalia is just ethics washing, a strategy to avoid government regulation.

When researchers uncover new ways for technology to harm marginalized groups or infringe on civil liberties, tech companies can point to their boards and charters and say, look, we're doing something. It deflects criticism, and because the boards lack any power, it means the companies don't change. quote, most of the ethics principles developed now lack any institutional framework. Wagner tells the verge they're non-binding. This makes it very easy for companies to look at ethical issues and go, that's important, but continue with whatever it is they were doing beforehand, end quote.

To be clear, the criticism in these two pieces surrounding these types of ethics boards is being leveled not just at Google, but at all the companies working. on AI, which have enpaneled such ethics committees, including Deep Mind, Amazon, IBM, and more. Finally today, just like yesterday, possibly big news, if true, this time on the EV front. Electric carmakers have long wanted to extend the range of battery-powered vehicles, and Swiss startup Inoleth says it has done just that by creating an electric car battery with 1,000 kilometers or 621 miles of range on a single charge. Quoting the verge, the company claims to have made the world's first 1,000 watt hours per kilogram rechargeable battery.

Watt hours per kilogram is the unit of measurement commonly used to describe the density of energy in batteries. By comparison, the batteries that Tesla uses in its Model 3, the so-called 2170 cells, are an estimated 250 watt hours per kilogram. The company plans to eventually push that to 330 watt hours per kilogram. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Energy is funding a program to create 500 watt hours per kilogram battery cells. If Inelith's claims turn out to be true, its high-density battery may have just leapfrogged over those targets. Quote, it's a big jump, Inelith Chairman Alan Greenshields said in an interview with The Verge. It's basically, in rough numbers, four times the current state-of-the-art for lithium ion. roughly three times what is generally accepted as being the next improvement in lithium.

And it's two times the energy density target that organizations like the U.S. Department of Energy have set. So this is a big deal, end quote. And it would be, again, huge if true. That's all for today. I've been your host, Brian McCullough. Follow me on Twitter at Brian MCC. Our show's subreddit is at R slash ride home. If you feel like supporting the show directly and saving some time while you do it,

you can subscribe to the ad-free version of the show directly from your podcast app by tapping on the link at the very bottom of the show notes. Talk to you tomorrow.