Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 06/30 – If Sam Bankman-Fried Is Afraid To Give You Money…

Episode Date: June 30, 2022

One good thing about the crypto crash is you can get affordable graphics cards again. Layoffs come to the Metaverse. Samsung is producing the first 3nm chips. Apple wants you to pay for your gas without getting out of your car. Though, you’d still have to get out to pump, I suppose. And, bit of a surprise, the Weekend Longreads Suggestions. Sponsors: Kolide.com/ride KeeperSecurity.com/techmeme Links: Genesis Faces ‘Hundreds of Millions’ in Losses as 3AC Exposure Swamps Crypto Lenders: Sources (CoinDesk) Nvidia Game Card Prices Fall Along With Crypto Mining Demand (Bloomberg) Sources: Unity Laying Off Hundreds Of Staffers [Update] (Kotaku) Samsung Electronics starts 3-nanometer chip production ahead of TSMC (TechCrunch) Fuel Purchases Directly Within Apple CarPlay to Be Available This Fall (MacRumors) Weekend Longreads Suggestions: Did Razzlekhan and Dutch Pull Off History’s Biggest Crypto Heist? (Bloomberg) Cyber Pirates Prowling Ship Controls Threaten Another Big Shock (Bloomberg) The Accidental Media Critics of YouTube (NYTimes Magazine) HOW ONE OF GAMING’S MOST INTIMIDATING GENRES SPAWNED A LEGION OF HITS (The Verge) 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 right home for Thursday, June 30th, 22. I'm Brian McCullough today. One good thing about the crypto crash is you can get affordable graphics cards again. Layoffs come to the Metaverse. Samsung is producing the first three nanometer chips.

Apple wants you to pay for your gas without getting out of your car, though you still have to get out to pump the gas, I suppose. And a bit of a surprise, but the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Groundhog Day. Sources are saying digital asset trading firm, Genesis, is potentially facing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, partly through its exposure to 3A and Babel Finance, quoting CoinDesk. The losses come as the collapse of Three Arrows Capital sends shockwaves across the crypto lending industry, with numerous firms facing substantial losses from their exposure to the fund.

The precise tally of Genesis' losses may not be known for some time because the company is seeking at least partial repayment from its counterparties, and some of the losses may have been offset by hedging, sources said. Amid such uncertainty, Genesis has been pulling credit lines from counterparties left and right, according to a fourth market source. A cascade of liquidations at many different crypto lending and trading platforms has followed the high-profile unraveling of crypto firms such as Terraform Labs, of Terra and Luna, infamy, Celsius, and Three Arrow's Capital,

aided by a plunge in the value of cryptocurrencies across the board. The impact from Three Arrow's Capital in particular has been felt widely. Crypto Brokerage Voyager saw its stock plunge and was forced to limit withdrawals as it declared the hedge fund in default on loans worth around $670 million. Others, including BlockFi, are believed to be facing similar challenges, end quote. Now, you might have heard Celsius mentioned in that litany of concern. A source is telling the block that Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX walked away from a deal with Celsius after finding the crypto lender has a $2 billion hole in its balance sheet, which considering

Bankman Freed is basically trying to be the J.P. Morgan in the 1907 stock market crash. But for this crypto crash, he's been running around offering investment in distress projects in order to keep them solvent. So if he won't give you his money to backstop you, that's probably not a good sign for Celsius. What else? OpenC is telling customers that an employee at email vendor customer.io downloaded and sent email details to an external party impacting almost all users. Follow up on something I mentioned yesterday. According to Elliptic, North Korea-backed hacking group Lazarus might be behind Harmonies $100 million alt-coin theft, the hack bore similarities to the $600 million Ronan bridge attack. So it seems the North Koreans are specializing in these bridge

attacks. And I did get another one of those notifications this morning that Bitcoin was down more than 5%. Bitcoin actually is on track for its worst quarter since Q3 2011, dropping 56% after falling as much as 4.4% to just above $19,000 this morning. But if you want a sort of bright side to all of this dark news, according to market site, as crypto tumbles, the average price of Nvidia's G-Force 3080 on eBay dropped from $1,140 on April 30th to $710 on June 27th, quoting Bloomberg. Long popular with computer gaming nerds, these cards enjoyed a second life during the crypto boom as an essential component of the systems that generate digital coins. Even as NVIDIA tried to limit its exposure to the industry,

the crypto rally had helped send prices of the company's products soaring on secondary markets like eBay. Now that's changed. With the value of currencies plummeting, miners see less of a need for expensive computer hardware. Their interest is expected to dwindle further as the popular Ethereum blockchain network shifts to a new method called proof of stake that won't require the same heavy-duty. computer processing. By one estimate, more than a third of the consumer graphics cards market could vanish as crypto enthusiasts abandoned the technology, and the products are piling up on eBay's site and other marketplaces. Though Nvidia's suggested retail price for the cards hasn't changed,

they're selling for 50% less on secondary markets than they did in recent months, end quote. So in this case, crypto is a deflationary asset. Checking in on this, Waveshand situation. The big high-flying unicorns are now tightening their belts. Substack laid off 13 of its 90 employees as it tries to conserve cash during a funding crunch for startups. Sources say that the cuts hit in HR, writer support, and other roles. Sources also say that substack had been looking to raise a new round and got no takers. Neantik, the company behind Pokemon Go laid off 8% of its staff, around 85 to 90 people,

and canceled four internal projects. Niantic was valued at $9 billion in November 2021. Not sure what that would be now, but also in the Metaverse space, Unity, laid off over 200 people or 4% of its workforce two weeks after the CEO of Unity said at an all-hands meeting that there would not be any layoffs, quoting Kataku. Founded in the mid-2000s, Unity is used by thousands of developers.

You've almost certainly seen its logo pop up in the loading screens for some of your favorite or least favorite games. In 2004, former EA head, John Rissitello took over as CEO. In 2020, Rissettello reportedly saw his compensation jump by 160% to $22 million. The firm employed 3,300 people as of June 2020, according to its IPO filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, though the company's LinkedIn and Glass Store pages pegged that figure at north of 5,000. Those who lost their jobs this week were asked by their bosses to suddenly log into a video

call with no advance notice of what the call was about. But for some of these calls, a member of Unity's Human Resources Department also logged into the meeting. In those situations, it's usually pretty clear what that means. Unity has been a, quote, shit show lately. One person familiar with the situation said, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal. Attrition, mismanagement, strategic pivots at a rapid, unpredictable rate. Unity has also gone on a bit of an acquisition spree lately. Last year, Unity purchased the digital effects studio Weta, founded by film director Peter Jackson, and known for its work on The Avatar and Lord of the Rings films for $1.62 billion. In August, Unity acquired PARSEC, which leverages cloud tech to allow users to stream video games for $320 million.

Two weeks ago, during an all-hands in front of roughly 3,000 full-time Unity employees, Rissotielo assured staffers the company was not in any financial trouble and that Unity wouldn't be laying anyone off, according to sources who attended. representatives for Unity did not respond to multiple requests for comment, end quote. Since Unity is publicly traded, unlike Niantic, I can tell you this. From an all-time high of $200 a share back in November, Unity is currently trading this morning at $36 a share. Samsung has begun mass production of its new 3-nometer chips,

becoming the first manufacturer to actually begin production of this process, which promises a 45% reduction in power usage, a 16% smaller surface area and 23% better performance compared to 5 nanometer chips, quoting TechCrunch. The South Korean company also said in a statement that the second generation of the 3 nanometer process would allow 50% lower power consumption. The company is currently producing the first generation of 3 nanometer chips and plans to start the second generation of the 3 nanometer process production in 2023. A spokesperson at Samsung Electronics told TechCrunch, Samsung has been competing with Apple chip-making partner TSMC, which also said in June that it would begin mass production of three nanometer chip process to volume production in the second half of 2022.

The Taiwanese company plans production of two nanometer chips by 2025, the smaller number of nanometers, which are hard to develop the more advanced chips, according to industry sources. The spokesperson explained that smaller nodes allow more transistors to be placed on a given area, which enables the chip to be more advanced and more power efficient, end quote. Apple's CarPlay Update, which was demoed at WWDC earlier, lets users navigate to a pump and buy gas from its newfangled dashboard, quoting Mac rumors. The feature first mentioned in a developer session at WWDC earlier this month will allow CarPlay users to use apps to navigate to a pump and pre-authorize a fuel purchase. Fuel companies will offer individual apps that users will need to install on their iPhone to be available in CarPlay.

entering payment credentials in the iPhone app ahead of time will allow users to activate a pump and quickly purchase fuel directly from the CarPlay UI. Gasoline firm HF. Finclair told Reuters that it plans to adopt the new CarPlay functionality, quote, we are excited by the idea that consumers could navigate to a Sinclair station and purchase fuel from their vehicle navigation screen. Jack Barger, the company's senior vice president of marketing said, likewise P97 Network's CEO Donald Freden told Reuters that he has taken calls from oil companies that want to make their apps available in CarPlay. Apple has opened up more app categories for CarPlay over time, such as parking, electric vehicle charging, and food ordering. Driving task apps for logging business trip

mileages will also become available alongside fuel apps later this year. Fuel purchase apps will be available in Apple CarPlay when iOS 16 officially launches in the fall, end quote. Ever since I bought a car again for the first time in a decade, a couple years ago now, I've been using the mobile mobile app, the mobile gasoline brand app to pay for gas at mobile gas stations using Apple Pay. You just roll up. Look at the number on the pump. And the gas station never sees my credit card because I pay via my phone, which I love. Because every single time my credit card has been ganked in the last few years, it's been because I used the card to pay at a gas pump.

So the utility of this is going to be evident again to me in about 24. hours. That's because we're driving to Michigan tomorrow. More on that at the end of the show, but since I'm taking tomorrow off, it's time for the week on long-rate suggestions. First up, if you can't get enough Razl-Con, remember her? Well, Bloomberg has a big piece up that they say outlines how Razel-Con and her compatriot allegedly did their dirt. Quote, The BitGo software was programmed to automatically approve transfers under a certain limit, so small withdrawals couldn't be delayed, but it required a BitFinex executive to manually sign off on large ones. This was supposed to mean that even if BitFinex got hacked, only a small number of BitFoines would be

stolen at most. But the system configuration was flawed. The limit could be changed with a computer command sent by someone with a BitFinex executive's electronic credentials. That's what the hackers did after first using a remote access Trojan to infiltrate the exchange, according to court documents. Such malware lets attackers gain full control of the target's computer. as if they were sitting at the keyboard. The hackers were only stopped when someone at Biffinex happened to check account balances and noticed something was off, end quote. Hackers are one thing, but what about pirates? Well, what this next piece presupposes is, what if there were cyber pirates, like the literal sailing, the ocean blue type of pirates,

but also hackers. Another thing to worry about, quoting Bloomberg. In February 2019, a large container ship sailing for New York identified a cyber intrusion on board that startled the U.S. Coast Guard. Though the malware attack never controlled the vessel's movement, authorities concluded that weak defenses exposed critical functions to, quote, significant vulnerabilities. A maritime disaster didn't happen that day, but a warning flare rose over an emerging threat to global trade. Cyber piracy able to penetrate on board technology that's replacing old ways of steering, propulsion, navigation, and other key ship operations. Such, leaps in hacking capabilities could do enormous economic damage, particularly now when supply chains

are already stressed from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, experts including a top Coast Guard officials said. We've been lucky so far, said Rick Tieni, Vice President with Mission Secure, a cybersecurity firm in Charlottesville, Virginia. More and more incidents are happening, and the hackers are getting a better understanding of what they can do once they've taken over an operational technology system. In the case of maritime, whether it be the ports or the vessels themselves, there is a tremendous amount that could be done to harm both the network and physical operations, end quote. Rear Admiral Wayne Arguin, the Coast Guard's assistant commandant for prevention policy, said shipping faces cyber risks similar to those in other industries. It's just

that the stakes are so much higher given that almost 80% of global trade moves on the sea. While Argyan declined to put a number on the frequency of attempted break-ins, he said, quote, I feel very confident that everyday networks are being tested, which really reinforces the need to have a plan, end quote. Then I was vaguely aware of this, but from the New York Times magazine, you know what one of the most popular genres of online videos is right now? Online videos doing criticism of other online videos, quote, over the past few years, this type of commentary, internet video figures dissecting the output of other more popular internet video figures, has become its own small ecosystem. The people doing the commentating often appear on one

another's channels where they discuss the absurdities of influencers and social media culture. Their level of earnestness varies, but they are generally trying to be funny. Even withering takedowns like Taylor's are laced with quips. Their commentary has become one of YouTube's more popular genres, appearing among trending videos like Jimmy Fallon clips and James Corden's carpool karaoke. There is perhaps a heartening inevitability to all of this. Even in a world with no gatekeepers and limited moderation, a certain savvy will assert itself. YouTube even has its equivalence of tabloids and trade publications covering salacious online drama or niche interests.

But it's the commentary YouTubers in particular who have become in some cases as popular as the stars they react to, leading to strange conflicts between fame and critical integrity, plus literal run-ins in the influencer infested studios of Los Angeles. In 2019, the loudish influencer Jake Paul posted a video titled Confronting Internet Bullie Cody Coe, in which he tracked down Cody Kolojevsky, a commentary YouTuber who often discusses his work, visibly enraged and complaining that anyone could be so full of hatred instead of spreading positivity, Paul recorded himself ambushing his critic in a video he would monetize for income, end quote. And finally, I was vaguely aware of this as well, from my recent fishing in steam waters, searching for new games to play.

Want to know what one of the hottest sectors of gaming is right now? Quoting The Verge. For the uninitiated, the rogue-like deck builder can be an intimidating prospect. It's the love child of two famously hardcore archetypes, the deck builder in which you gradually compile a deck of cards, and the rogue-like in which you move across a procedurally generated map rendered anew every time you die. Strategy and challenge combine in a manner that is more cerebral than the most popular roguelikes, such as the hack and slash Hades, but faster-paced than classic deck builders

like Magic the Gathering. As a result, you might think the hybrid genre's audience would be limited. On the contrary, it's exploded in recent years with the likes of Slay the Spire and Monster Train popularizing the seemingly niche form. Bending a card game around combat, the verbs of most rogue-like deck builders, are the same as many other games. Attack, defend, unleash a special ability, that kind of thing. But rather than demanding the player lean on twitchy reflexes or gratuitous amounts of free time to grind their way to progression, the genre asks players to simply slow down and take a moment to think. In this way, the genre resonates with a broader turn to mechanical complexity in recent years.

The renewed popularity of JRP's games with deep turn-based combat is perhaps indicative of such shifting tastes. The magic of any rogue-like deck builder worth its salt is found in the complex interplay between cards. On any given run, you'll likely have a good idea of what you'll draw, if not the order, and so these games quickly become about synergy and probability, risk and reward. The mind flutters with the possibilities of the virtual on-screen deck, end quote. All right, a metric ton of housekeeping for you right now. First, we're going to do a Twitter space tonight at the usual time, 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific. We're going to talk to one of the co-founders of Anchor, which was acquired to great fanfare by Spotify a few years ago.

So if you want to hear some podcast industry talk, here you go. We'll also probably have another guest, TBD. but also, as I mentioned, going to take tomorrow off and Monday off, all because of the big 4th of July weekend here in the States. But don't worry, I've got a ton of content for you. Tomorrow I'm going to post a talk I gave at Google a few years ago. If you want my entire thesis of the history of the tech industry

for the last 25 years in under an hour, here you go. Then, since I recently re-upped my point that eBay is actually the most underappreciated, arguably most important startup of the web 1.0 era, I'm going to repost my original eBay episodes of the Internet History podcast starting Monday. In between that, you'll get the Twitter space, as per usual on Saturday, so enjoy everything. Enjoy your weekend. If you've got a long one, talk to you on Tuesday from Northern Michigan.