Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 05/27 – Upgraded Nintendo Switch Imminent

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 Techmeme ride home for Thursday, May 27th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. An upgraded Nintendo Switch is maybe days away from being announced. Twitter spaces can now happen on the desktop. The behind-the-scenes details of the MGM by Snowflake has left Silicon Valley for checking notes, Montana. And Clubhouse makes a high profile higher that shows they're still full steam ahead. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. sources are telling Bloomberg that Nintendo plans to announce an upgraded switch console ahead of the June E3 conference, which is mere weeks away.

Starting point is 00:01:13 It won't get released until September or October, and given the global supply chain issues we've been having, maybe we'll actually be able to get one in our hands by the end of the decade, quoting Bloomberg. The new console, likely to be priced higher than the $299 original, may be announced ahead of the E3 conference starting June 12 to allow publishers to showcase their full range of Switch games at the global event. The people said, asking not to be named because the plans are not yet public. It will be sold alongside the $199 Switch Light, with the standard switch phased out over time.

Starting point is 00:01:52 Assemblers will start shipping the new model whose commercial name is known only to a handful of people within the Kyoto-based company. as early as July, and production is planned to ramp up to a peak in the October through December quarter. This is despite widespread semiconductor shortages that have affected the supply of everything from automobiles to TVs, headphones and game consoles, including the Switch itself. Pricier components and rising labor costs in China are likely to push the new Switch's price up from the $299 that the console has been at since its launch in March of 2017. Though the final retail price is not yet known, suppliers expect their per-unit revenue from business with Nintendo to increase. Suppliers are confident they can fulfill Nintendo's orders despite the ongoing chip shortages.

Starting point is 00:02:40 Its production lines are better prepared for the potential component shakeup, and the parts Nintendo is using, are subject to less competition than those in its rival's more powerful consoles. Still, the company's ability to meet consumer demand won't be guaranteed as a dearth of display driver I sees, and Bluetooth chips have led to production of the incumbent switch stopping and starting several times, the people said. Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa said at its earnings press conference earlier this month that demand for the switch remains high and the company wasn't able to produce as many units as it wanted, end quote. No kidding.

Starting point is 00:03:17 And again, if they don't launch this thing with a Breath of the Wild too, I say we riot. Twitter says users can now join spaces via desktop and mobile web browsers, but can't host rooms on the web just yet. Quoting the Verge, you can get a look at what spaces look like on the web in screenshots below from Twitter. The image on the left shows what you'll see before joining a space. The one on the right shows a space off to the side so you can continue scrolling through Twitter while you listen. Spaces on the web have a big caveat, though. you can join spaces, but you can't host them yourself just yet, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed to the verge. Twitter has been quickly opening up spaces and adding features over the past several

Starting point is 00:04:05 months to compete with the dedicated social audio app clubhouse and similar features from companies like Discord and Facebook. Earlier in May, Twitter began rolling out the ability to host spaces on mobile to anyone with 600 or more followers, end quote. By the way, hope you enjoyed last night's Twitter space, where we talked to All Things Streaming Wars and All Things Tesla. More on how you can listen to that space tomorrow. As I say, we discussed some of this at length in the Twitter space last night, but the New York Times has the behind-the-scenes details of that whole Amazon MGM deal, saying that Amazon actually paid a premium over other potential MGM buyers,

Starting point is 00:04:49 including Apple and Comcast. Quote, in buying MGM, Amazon is bolstering Prime Video at a time when the biggest old-line studios are becoming less willing to like, their libraries to outside streaming services. Warner Brothers, Walt Disney Studios, and Paramount Pictures must now supply corporate siblings like HBO Max, Disney Plus, and Paramount Plus. That shift has made independent film libraries more valuable. In recent weeks, Sony Pictures licensed its old films and TV shows to Netflix, and Disney in deals valued at more than $3 billion, a sharp increase from the expiring licensing agreements. Sony does not have a streaming service

Starting point is 00:05:26 unless you count the game-oriented PlayStation Network. Sony has repeatedly insisted that its movie and television studio valued at roughly $30 billion is not for sale. Other big film libraries are owned by NBC Universal, which is part of Comcast and Viacom CBS. The acquisition thesis here is very simple, Mr. Bezos said during Amazon's annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday. He said MGM had a, quote,

Starting point is 00:05:49 vast, deep catalog of much-beloved movies and shows. We can reimagine and redevelop that IP for the 21st century, end quote. He said that work would be fun and people who love stories will be the big beneficiaries, end quote. Though its library is diminished, MGM still owns 4,000 older movies, including pre-1986 films that come from two MGM divisions, United Artists, and Orion. Those movies include Rocky Robocop, the Pink Panther, the Silence of the Lambs, and the James Bond catalog. Other titles include Legally Blonde, Moonstruck, Basic Instinct, the Thomas Crown Affair, and Tomb Raider.

Starting point is 00:06:26 In fact, in true Hollywood fashion, MGM's Roaring Lion mascot is lip-sinking. A cranky tiger sounded more ferocious, end quote. Facebook says it will limit the distribution of all posts from personal accounts that routinely spread misinformation. So shadow banning at scale, I guess, quoting Bloomberg. Under the new system, Facebook will, quote, reduce the distribution of all posts from people who routinely share misinformation, making it harder for their content to be seen by others on the service. The company already does this for pages and groups that post misinformation, but it hadn't previously extended the same policy to individual users.

Starting point is 00:07:15 Facebook does limit the reach of posts that have been flagged by fact checkers, but there wasn't a broader penalty for account holders who share misinformation. Facebook declined to specify how many times a user's posts have to be flagged before the new punishment kicks in. The Menlo Park, California-based company will also start showing users a pop-up message if they click to like a page that routinely shares misinformation, alerting them that fact-checkers have previously flagged that page's posts. This will help people make an informed decision about whether they want to follow the page the company wrote in a blog post, end quote.

Starting point is 00:07:55 PayPal is adding third-party wallet transfer support, which will allow users to send Bitcoin to PayPal and Venmo users, as well as to Coinbase and other outside crypto wallets. Quoting to Crypt. PayPal created a stir in the crypto markets last year when it announced its millions of users could buy and sell Bitcoin. The news, along with the company's recent decision to add Bitcoin buying to its Venmo service, has been seen as a major step in crypto going mainstream, but the offerings also drew criticism.

Starting point is 00:08:28 Namely, skeptics said this wasn't real Bitcoin because PayPal users could only buy or sell it and not send it to others. Now PayPal appears set to address the issue. Speaking at Consensus on Wednesday afternoon, PayPal's head of blockchain and crypto, Jose Fernandez DePonte, said the company will be adding support for third-party wallet transfers, meaning that PayPal and Venmo users will be able to send Bitcoin not only to others on those platforms, but to services like Coinbase and to outside crypto wallets as well. We want to make it as open as possible, said Fernandez Deponte, and we want to give choice to our consumers. He added that PayPal wants its customers to, quote, bring their crypto to us so they can use it in commerce, and we want them

Starting point is 00:09:10 to be able to take the crypto they have bought with us and take it to the destination of their choice. We understand there is more utility to those tokens if you can move them around, so we are definitely exploring how we can let people transfer crypto to and from their PayPal addresses, Fernandez Deponte said. Currently, PayPal is relying on blockchain infrastructure. provider Paxos to handle its Bitcoin operations and, more broadly, relies on a variety of other partners to help power its global financial operations. This suggests that the company may also rely on Paxos or another crypto company to handle integrations with third-party wallets, but it could also build the infrastructure itself with the help of Curve, a crypto security

Starting point is 00:09:50 firm it acquired earlier this year, end quote. Apple has removed an app discovered by a developer that required at least a three-star review before you could even use it, quoting Mac rumors. OS developer Costa Eleatheru discovered that the UPNP Extreme app, which claimed to let users stream video to a TV, presented the system's App Store rating box as soon as it opened. The rating box could not be escaped from, and it was not possible to tap the one or two-star ratings for most users,

Starting point is 00:10:30 according to El Thiru. One of Apple's best practices documents states that developers should, quote, avoid showing a request for a review immediately when a user launches your app, end quote. UPNP Extreme sought good reviews to rise up the app store's rankings using exploitative tactics to become more visible than legitimate developers' apps, but also drive more users to engage with the scam. The app now appears to have been removed from the app store, end quote. Newly public company Snowflake reported earnings yesterday, which we don't need to get into here, but there was an interesting little tidbit worth mentioning.

Starting point is 00:11:09 Snowflake says it no longer has a headquarters proper. Instead, it has designated Bozeman Montana, where its CEO and CFO both live, as its executive office, but only because it was required to do so by the SEC, quoting CNBC. In its earnings press release on Wednesday, Snowflake's date line showed up as no headquarters slash Bozeman Montana, as recently as May 3rd, when the company announced the date of its first quarter earnings report. That same line said San Mateo, California. Snowflakes SEC filing on Wednesday showed an address in Bozeman for its executive office. The company explained why in a footnote. We are a Delaware corporation with a globally distributed workforce and no corporate headquarters. Under the Securities and Exchange Commission's rules, we are required to designate a principal

Starting point is 00:12:01 executive office. For purposes of this report, we have designated our office in Bozeman, in Montana as our principal executive office, as that is where our chief executive officer and chief financial officer are based, end quote. Snowflake will still have a large operation in Silicon Valley and even went through a recent massive redesign of its San Mateo office to prepare for the eventual return of employees. While San Mateo continues to remain an important location for us, we do not have a single office that is at the center of Snowflake's operations, a spokesperson said in an email, end quote. Talk about taking this whole distributed workforce. thing to its logical conclusion, I guess.

Starting point is 00:12:44 People keep wanting to write their obituary, but the folks over at Clubhouse are just keeping their heads down and plugging away. The latest sign that things are still full speed ahead over there is the news that Clubhouse has hired Justin Uberti, a Google engineer who created the WebRTC standard, Google Duo, and lead engineering for Stadia. He will be Clubhouse's new head of streaming technology, quoting the verge. Justin is a phenomenal engineering leader. one of the original inventors of WebRTC on top of which Clubhouse is built.

Starting point is 00:13:16 Clubhouse co-founder and CTO Rowan Seth said in a statement, there's so much that goes into crafting a fantastic audio experience, the quality, the latency, the ability to use spatial distance when multiple speakers are talking. This will be a critical area of investment for us as we open Clubhouse to the whole world, and among other things, Justin will be helping lead that effort, end quote. I'm really optimistic about the potential of Clubhouse. Everyone in the world knows how to use voice. It's such an expressive medium compared to text, and advancements like AirPods are making it easier to consume audio, Uberti said at the end of a Twitter thread,

Starting point is 00:13:51 discussing the move, end quote. Since we're talking about personnel, personnel changes, personnel moves, let's end today with this little bit of HR admin. Amazon says Andy Jassy will officially become CEO of the company on July 5th. Why then? Well, it turns out that That marks 27 years to the day that Amazon was incorporated. Quoting the verge. Amazon announced that Jassy, who is the current CEO of Amazon Web Services, would replace Bezos as CEO of the company in February. Bezos will become executive chair of Amazon's board.

Starting point is 00:14:31 As exec chair, I will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives, but also have the time and energy I need to focus on the day one fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, the Washington Post and my other passions, Bezos said in a statement back in February, I've never had more energy, and this isn't about retiring. I'm super passionate about the impact I think these organizations can have, end quote. Beginning? The day after July 4th.

Starting point is 00:15:04 Nothing for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 05/27 – Upgraded Nintendo Switch Imminent

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