Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 05/16 - The Hammer Comes Down on Huawei

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, May 16th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough today. The hammer is coming down on Huawei. China blocks Wikipedia. Google clarifies the works with Nest shutdown, a 1 terabyte microSD, more 5G rollouts. What should we think of Quibi? And you didn't fall for that porn scam, did you? Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. President Trump has issued an executive order blocking U.S. companies from doing business with information and communications technology companies owned or controlled by a, quote, foreign adversary, quoting press secretary Sarah Sanders. This executive order declares a national emergency with respect

Starting point is 00:01:18 to the threats against information and communications technology and services in the United States and delegates authority to the Secretary of Commerce to prohibit transactions posing an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the security and safety of United States, end quote. So it's not made explicit there, but this is obviously laying the groundwork to ban Huawei. Indeed, immediately afterwards, quoting the Washington Post, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security said it was adding Huawei to its entity list, known to some as the, quote, death penalty. This listing makes it virtually impossible for companies to survive once U.S. firms are discouraged from doing business with them. The Commerce Department said it had reached

Starting point is 00:02:04 its decision because Huawei, quote, is engaged in activities that are contrary to U.S. national security or foreign policy interest, end quote. But as Bloomberg points out, if this situation fully escalates, this won't just hurt Huawei. American chip giants from Qualcomm to micron technologies will be affected as well. And frankly, the entire global rollout of 5G might be delayed. The reason being, as we've discussed recently at length, Huawei is kind of the best positioned to deliver 5G networks. But it can't do what it does without U.S. produced components. Quoting extensively from Bloomberg, as this is the best summary of this state of play at the moment,

Starting point is 00:02:47 quote. Huawei has said it devotes about a third of its budget, some $11 billion annually, to the acquisition of American components. It counts 33 U.S. companies among its top 92 suppliers. The negative impact on the global 5G market will be significant, says Charlie Dai, a Beijing-based analyst at Forrester Research, noting that Huawei is one of the market leaders globally. Nokia and Cisco could address the gap to some extent, but the overall adoption will be slowed down,

Starting point is 00:03:17 which eventually will be harmful to telco carriers and consumers around the world, end quote. If the U.S. handicaps Huawei by cutting off suppliers, countries and telecom carriers around the world that are already spending billions to build 5G networks may have to resort to price your equipment, from Nokia and Erickson. Tying up a chunk of the world's 5G gear supply would slow down the buildup of a technology that underpins future services from self-driving cars to smart homes and advanced medicine.

Starting point is 00:03:45 Huawei appears to have anticipated this possibility. It's been developing and designing its own chips for years, which it now uses in many of its own smartphones. It's reportedly even developing its own operating software to run phones and servers. For now, though, it remains heavily reliant on American technology. Huawei's base station, smartphone, server, and maritime cable business

Starting point is 00:04:05 simply cannot run without Qualcomm, broadband, and processor chips. There are alternatives, but from American peers such as Intel, micron, and broadcom. Huawei also depends on smaller American suppliers in key areas, Lumentum holdings for optical cable,

Starting point is 00:04:22 anthonyl for fiber optic connections, InFi for analog chips, Corvo, and analog devices for radio frequency semiconductors. The list goes on and on. I'm going to skip. quote, this could potentially lead to Huawei's destruction, said Scott Kennedy, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. You can't underestimate the significance. It's their most important company, and threatening it in this way will generate a massive public response as well as from the Chinese government. The bilateral trade talks were on thin ice, and this could derail them entirely, end quote. Instagram is shutting down Instagram Direct.

Starting point is 00:05:05 It's standalone direct messaging app that it has been testing for the last several years as a Snapchat rival. Quote, we're rolling back the test of the standalone direct app, a spokesperson said in a statement provided to TechCrunch. We're focused on continuing to make Instagram Direct the best place for fun conversations with your friends, end quote. This is obviously further sign that the strategic shift within Facebook to consider. consolidate apps and Unify its platform on the back end is continuing a pace. But it's also maybe a sign that Facebook thinks it's achieved all of the cloning of stories and other Snapchat features that it thinks it needs to achieve. The information has a lengthy piece up outlining Apple's, quote, long and painful divorce with Intel over 5G modems.

Starting point is 00:05:58 Quote, Apple expressed early skepticism about Intel's reassurances that it could deliver the 5G modems on time because of past problems, said one of the people. Apple also didn't see Intel's 5G modem architecture and software algorithms as ready, the person said. Eventually, Intel produced a working prototype of a 5G modem, but the chip's design was big, making it expensive to produce. When Intel announced the 8060 in November 2017, Intel said it would be ready by mid-2019. But a year later, Intel announced it was canceling the chip and shifting its efforts to the development of another 5G modem the 8160. Fast Company reported earlier this year that Intel continued to suffer technical issues and internal delays on the development of the 8160 modem. Intel underestimated what it took to be

Starting point is 00:06:46 competitive in modems, says Jim McGregor, principal analyst and partner at Turyas Research, which conducts research on the semiconductor industry, quote, it gets exponentially more difficult to do the next generation of wireless technology, end quote. One detail from the this piece, which is from the information that is interesting, is that those custom 5G modems that Apple is scrambling to make in-house won't be ready. This is the first time that's been confirmed until 2025 at the earliest. So again, confirmation that this is why Apple backed down and settled with Qualcomm. Jumping ship from Intel was necessary and making nice with Qualcomm was their only option. Google has clarified the situation around that whole works with Nest shutdown thingy

Starting point is 00:07:44 a bit, saying that connections will continue to work beyond August 31st until they are replicated in the new works with assistant program. Google is, quote, working with Amazon to migrate the nest skill that lets you control your Nest thermostat and view your Nest live stream via Amazon Alexa, but, quoting the verge, companies that are using the works with Ness program for more extensive customizations than allowed by Google Assistant will be required to go through special security audits from Google and allow more granular control over which devices have access to a customer's NASA data and devices. Tellingly omitted from the blog post is any mention of IFTTTT support, which is likely to remain

Starting point is 00:08:29 one of the things that will no longer work once works with NessDTTT, Nest is fully closed down. Google's end goal is to have all of the works with Nest functionality replicated in the new Works with Google Assistant Program, which provides a more central point of control for customers and greater privacy protections than the Works with Nest program allowed. But the company runs the risk of walling off much of the rest of the smart home ecosystem from the Nest ecosystem, providing customers with fewer choices in their smart home setups than before. Today's clarification and update on the transition is encouraging, but we'll have to see how well Google executes on its plan. Otherwise, this transition could turn out to be a mess

Starting point is 00:09:07 and a headache for many smart home owners, end quote. China has blocked all versions of Wikipedia in all languages. The Chinese version of Wikipedia has been blocked in China since 2015, but now all versions are verboten. Quote, in late April, the Wikimedia Foundation determined that Wikipedia was no longer accessible in China. After closely analyzing our internal traffic reports, we can confirm that Wikipedia is currently blocked across all language versions, wiki media said in a statement. I guess the biggest story to me here is given that Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have all been blocked in China for years, how is it that, say, the English language version

Starting point is 00:09:58 of Wikipedia was still available in China until at least last month? Doesn't that seem like an odd oversight to you when it comes to the so-called great firewall of China. Grab bag segment here. First, Sandisk has officially introduced the first one terabyte micro-sd card, which will be available starting today for $450. So your dreams of a terabyte smartphone can become reality. It's also U3 rated, so it can handle 4K video if you so desire.

Starting point is 00:10:37 And Amazon has upgraded its $50, $50, Fire7. tablet with a faster processor, doubled storage, and added hands-free voice invocation of Alexa. The Fire 7 tablet is available for pre-order now and ships June 6. By doubled storage, the base storage unit tier is now 16 gigabytes instead of 8. And Sprint says it will turn on 5G services in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and Kansas City on May 31st. But what good is 5G if you don't have a device to make use of it. Well, you're in luck because starting today you can pre-order LG's V50 thing Q or think, I can never remember how to pronounce that, 5G smartphone as well as HTC's 5G hub. Sprint is asking $1,100 for the phone and the so-called

Starting point is 00:11:32 5G unlimited premium plan is $80 a month, quoting Ventra Beat. To sweeten the $80 deal, Sprint says that its unlimited 5G plan will include Hulu, Amazon Prime, Twitch Prime, Title HighFi, and 100 gigabytes of LTE hotspot access for one user. A second user can add a line for $60 more. In small print, Sprint notes that the hotspot access will drop to 3G speeds after 100 gigabytes of usage. Somewhat confusingly, Sprint is also offering HTC 5G hub users a less expensive data plan that's limited in monthly usage. Sprint says it will sell 100,000. of high-speed data for $60 per month, cutting mobile hotspot performance to 2G, not a typo, speeds after 100 gigabytes of usage. That's $10 less than AT&T is charging for a much smaller

Starting point is 00:12:23 quantity of 5G data, end quote. There's one notable dark horse in the streaming video wars called Quibi, which is the mobile streaming service startup led by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman. Quibi, if you'll remember, wants to produce Hollywood quality video, but in bite-sized short form pieces of like 5 to 10 to 30-minute episodes. And Quibi wants you to consume it in your smartphone, not a play for your living room a la Netflix or Disney Plus. Why this is a good idea is a mystery, but I guess we're going to find out if it's a good idea or not because Quibi, which already raised $1 billion in financing before it even announced itself to the world, has even more money, quoting the information.

Starting point is 00:13:16 The company is currently planning to raise up to an additional $1 billion to help fund the streaming service, according to four people familiar with the matter. Mr. Katzenberg has said he expects the service to launch next year. Quibi, in its initial financing, raised money from a variety of investors, including film studios such as Warner Brothers, tech companies like Alibaba and Silicon Valley firms, including Madrone Capital Partners, end quote. finally today I've gotten the emails

Starting point is 00:13:48 no doubt you have too we've seen what you've been doing on your computer is this your password yeah you're poned send us bitcoin or we're gonna email everyone in your address book the sites you've been visiting

Starting point is 00:14:02 and maybe some select screenshots from your webcam I started getting those emails like literally the day after I read the news of those huge caches of user credentials making their way to the dark web. So, yeah, they mentioned old passwords from years ago, and I, like, I hope you, ignored them, of course. But apparently not everyone has, quoting Forbes.

Starting point is 00:14:28 Unfortunately, the blackmail scheme has become the latest example that crime sometimes pays. According to an investigation by Area 1, the scammers have sent millions of emails and earned $949,000 from the racket. The average payout is $593. or 0.073 Bitcoin at today's rate. Area 1 came up with the figure by examining the Bitcoin blockchain, which contains a permanent record of all transactions, including those associated with a digital wallet address tied to the crooks, end quote. Again, the scam seems to work on people because the email usually contains a password you've used in the past and recognize, and if you're

Starting point is 00:15:10 not smart, are maybe still using all the time. But there's more. quote, the current porn email scam, which one expert suggests is tied to a Moroccan marketing company, has also been successful because the blackmailers are good at evading spam filters set up by Microsoft and Google. According to Area 1's report, one tactic they use to avoid detection is to paste lines from Shakespeare or Jane Austen in invisible text in the email, a signal to the filters that there is mostly good language in the email, helping it land in recipients' inboxes rather than being blocked, end quote. So yeah, ignore these emails. They're using one vector of a password that you'll recognize, and I know that's powerful, but ignore it. And also don't give away your Bitcoin. Haven't you heard?

Starting point is 00:16:00 It's worth real money again. That's all for today. I'm Brian McCullough. Follow me on Twitter at Brian MCC. The show Subreddit is our slash right home. And if you want to support the show directly, the link to the ad-free podcast feed is the last link in the show notes. Talk to you tomorrow.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 05/16 - The Hammer Comes Down on Huawei

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