Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 07/25 - The Galaxy Fold Lives!

Episode Date: July 25, 2019

Samsung says we will finally see the Galaxy Fold in September, Tesla has a bad earnings miss, Deep Mind and Waymo partner to hopefully speed up AV development, AT&T can’t stop dialing up new streaming services and a gadget, game and documentary review trifecta. Sponsors: PixelUnion.net SVB.com/next Links: Samsung says it has fixed the Galaxy Fold and will release it in September (The Verge) Apple Suppliers See Demand for New IPhones Stabilizing This Year (Bloomberg) Telsa reports larger-than-expected losses of $408 million in second quarter (TechCrunch) Facebook warns of costly privacy changes, discloses another U.S. probe (Reuters) DeepMind and Waymo collaborate to improve AI accuracy and speed up model training (Venture Beat) AT&T is launching another new streaming service this fall called AT&T TV (CNET) AT&T Chief: HBO Max Will ‘Ultimately’ Offer Live News, Sports (Variety) IKEA SYMFONISK review: Sonos speakers at IKEA prices (Gizmodo) Wolfenstein: Youngblood Review (IGN) NETFLIX'S THE GREAT HACK BRINGS OUR DATA NIGHTMARE TO LIFE (Wired) The Ad-Free Feed Is HERE! Get Your Classified Ad-Read HERE! 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, July 25th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough today. Samsung says we'll finally see the Galaxy Fold in September. Tesla has a bad earnings miss, deep mind and Waymo partner to hopefully speed up AV development.

AT&T can't stop dialing up new streaming services and a gadget, game, and documentary review trifecta. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. It's back from the dead, y'all. maybe we will see a foldable phone this year after all because Samsung says it has made improvements to the Galaxy Folds screen that will allow it to release that phone in September. You might remember that review units of the Galaxy Fold tended to break, and thus the phone was not launched in April as Samsung had originally planned. Here is what Samsung says it has done.

The top protective layer of the Infinity Flex display has. been extended beyond the bezel, making it apparent that it is an integral part of the display structure and not meant to be removed. Galaxy Fold features additional reinforcements to better protect the device from external particles while maintaining its signature foldable experience. The top and bottom of the hinge area have been strengthened with newly added protection caps. Additional metal layers underneath the Infinity Flex display have been included to reinforce the protection of the display. The space between the hinge and the body of the Galaxy Fold has been reduced, end quote.

Quoting Dieter Bone at the verge. Extending the protective layer is maybe the most important thing Samsung could have done, as many reviewers thought it was a screen protector and tried to peel it off, damaging the screen. The additional reinforcements to protect against external particles is likely to prevent the issue we experienced on our own review unit. We suspect debris got in through the hinge and damaged the screen from behind. The same may go for the reduction of the space between the hinge and the body, end quote. The verge piece has pictures of the new design features if you're interested.

The exact release date of the phone in September was not specified. And yes, the price is still $1980. So if this does come to market, it's something of a save for Samsung, but it's still not great from a PR and reputational perspective. And reputational cost can be a very real thing. apparently T-Mobile won't be selling the Galaxy Fold whenever it is finally released. The phone will still work on T-Mobile's network, but maybe reading between the lines here, T-Mobile at least got burned by any pre-orders or promotional money that it's spent on a phone that for a time period at least ended up being a ghost device.

And on top of that, as Mark German pointed out on Twitter, quote, relaunching the Galaxy Fold in September means that Samsung will be overshadowed by Apple. Typically, Samsung's major phones get the full spotlight in February and August. Now they'll be up against the iPhone 11 for better or for worse with this particular model, end quote. Speaking of Apple rumor man Mark Gurman back again this time reporting that Apple's suppliers are ramping up to produce components for up to 75 million new iPhones in the second half of 2019. which is roughly the same number produced last year. Three new models of iPhones are being produced, and reading the tea leaves for production like this

is increasingly necessary because, of course, Apple has stopped reporting iPhone shipment numbers. Quoting German, the major attraction in this year's models lies in enhanced cameras. The two high-end models, to replace the iPhone 10S and iPhone 10S Max, will include three back cameras up from two

and a successor to the iPhone 10R will include a second back camera. The third camera will serve as an additional ultra-wide lens, Bloomberg News reported in January, allowing the phone to automatically repair parts of an image that may be initially chopped out of a frame. It will also enable a wider range of zoom. All three new models will also include faster A-13 processors built by TSMC, Bloomberg News reported in May.

Beyond the additional rear cameras, the new iPhone models will look similar to the 2018 versions, which look like the, the 2017 iPhone 10, end quote. Bad earnings surprise from Tesla. At the time of this writing, Tesla shares are down 13%, and they were down more than that earlier, because last night Tesla reported larger than expected losses of $408 million in its second quarter. That works out to losses of $2.31 per share when Wall Street analysts were only expecting an adjusted loss of $35 a share.

And that, despite the fact that Tesla made record deliveries in Q2 of 95,356 vehicles up from 63,000 vehicles delivered in Q1. Quoting TechCrunch, while earnings missed Wall Street expectations, Tesla has recovered since the first quarter of the year when it posted a loss of $702 million or $4.10 a share after disappointing delivery numbers, costs, and pricing adjustments to its vehicles cut into profits. When adjusted for one-time losses, Tesla lost $400,000. $194 million or $2.90 a share in the first quarter. Revenue has also jumped 40% from $4.5 billion in the first quarter to $6.3 billion in the second period, thanks again to the increase in sales, particularly for the Model 3.

The company is also sitting on substantially more capital. Tesla ended the quarter with $5 billion in cash and cash equivalents, the highest level in Tesla history, a figure that was boosted by a public offering of equity and convertible bonds, which netted $2.4 billion. dollars. Tesla generated free cash flow, operating cash flow less capital expenditures of $614 million in the second quarter compared to a loss of $920 million in the first quarter, end quote. And real quick, Facebook's earnings were announced yesterday as well, and I guess just things continue to churn along fine for the company, despite that FTC fine. Facebook had Q2 revenues of $16.9 billion, which was up 28% year over year.

as ad revenue rose 28% year over year to $16.6 billion, Mao's rose 8% to 2.41 billion accounts, and Dow's also rose 8% year over year to 1.59 billion folks. But, and even I'm having trouble keeping track of this stuff at this point, Facebook also disclosed yesterday that the FTC has opened a completely new investigation into the company, this time focusing on antitrust issues. So that's right. Remember that $5 billion FTC fine just from yesterday. That was something entirely different. Now this is something completely new, a whole new investigation into market power abuses that the FTC informed Facebook of last month. And of course, Facebook also disclosed to investors that the Justice Department might open a separate new probe as well. So insert that always sunny in Philadelphia jiff of Charlie in front of the bulletin board with pieces of string pointing to all the various threads here because, I don't know. That's how I feel trying to keep track of all this at this point.

Remember how I talked yesterday about how Cruise was having to walk back its robotaxy service because the technology just wasn't there yet. They yada yotted the delay by saying that they were taking this opportunity to deploy more real-world learnings and algorithm training for their autonomous systems. And as we've discussed before, that's all there is to this sort of stuff. To get an autonomous vehicle going, you just need to feed the system. You just need to feed the systems, enough data, enough experiences to hopefully prepare the systems for 99.9% of the experiences they would have in real world situations. And until now, there's just no shortcut to this. You just need to drive the cars enough until the system learns enough. Well, Waymo says that it

has partnered with a deep mind to hopefully improve on this, to improve and speed up model training, to hopefully develop better self-driving AI algorithms using techniques inspired by evolutionary biology. Instead of just brute forcing it, like I just described, instead of just racking up miles driven and enough trial and error scenarios, DeepMind uses an approach called population-based training, or PBT, which develops multiple machine learning models and then lets them compete with each other so that so-called offspring of successful models win out over time, sort of how the fittest and strongest win out in evolution over time. Coding Venturebeat, in several recent studies, mind in Waymo applied PBT to pedestrian, bicyclist, and motorcyclist recognition tasks with the goal

of investigating whether it could improve recall, the fraction of obstacles identified over the total number of in-scene obstacles, and precision, the fraction of detected obstacles that are actually obstacles and not false positives. Ultimately, the company sought to train a single AI model to maintain recall of over 99% while reducing false positives. Waymo reports that these experiments informed a realistic framework for evaluating real-world model robustness, which in turn informed PBT's algorithm-selecting competition. They also say the experiments revealed the need for fast evaluation to support evolutionary competition. PBT models are evaluated every 15 minutes. Deep Mind said it employed paralyization across hundreds of distributed machines in Google's data centers

to achieve this. The results are impressive. PBT algorithms managed to achieve higher precision, reducing false positives by 24% compared to their hand-tuned equivalents, while maintaining a high recall rate, Waymo claims. The hyperparameter schedule discovered with PBT-trained algorithms took half the training time and resources and used half the computational resources, end quote. So it seems like AT&T is not content, just launching the forthcoming HBO Max. No, they want to launch yet another streaming services fall called AT&T TV to do, well, we don't know what yet.

Quoting CNet, it is currently unknown what will be different about AT&T TV, particularly compared to AT&T's other streaming options such as DirecTV now, or its mobile watch TV, which is bundled with certain unlimited wireless plans and offers over 35 live channels including AT&T-owned TBS, TNT and CNN. Watch TV is also available as a standalone option for $15 per month. HBO Max, AT&T's forthcoming Netflix rival that will host programming for, from the company's Warner Media Group will also offer live programming in addition to HBO, Time Warner, and Warner Brothers films and TV shows. As details are sparse, pricing is similarly not yet known

for the new service. In an interview at the Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Telecom, and Media Conference last month, AT&T Mobility and Entertainment President David Christopher said the new service, which will have an Android TV box, will be able to be self-installed by consumers potentially leading to cheaper prices, end quote. And speaking of, HBO, Macs and live programming. AT&T CEO Randall Stevenson told investors yesterday that HBO Max will eventually include, as we just said, live sports and news programming. Quoting variety, you should assume that ultimately HBO Max will have live elements. Unique live sports and premium sports, Stevenson said. Those are going to be really, really important elements for HBO Max,

the same with news, end quote. Stevenson cited WarnerMedia's existing relationships with Major League baseball, the NBA, and NCAA men's basketball tournament, but it was unclear if he was indicating that HBO Max would seek to acquire streaming rights from those leagues. Quote, there's a lot of opportunity to take advantage of the unique content deals that we have within Warner Media, he said, end quote. Let's wrap up today with a sort of review wrap-up and reviews of several different things, actually. First up, the IKEA Symphonisk is a connected speaker from IKEA that was designed and produced

in partnership with Sonos. In Engadget, Nicole Lee is fairly bullish on the device, saying that it is what you would expect from IKEA. It's affordable, but surprisingly, cheap doesn't necessarily mean cheap. It has decent quality for the price. She rated it 86 out of 100. The new line of Sonos-powered speakers is called Symphonisk, apparently Swedish for Symphonics,

and will feature two debut models, a bookshelf speaker and a two-in-one lamp speaker combo. At just $99 and $179, respectively, the idea here is that they're able to offer Sonos-level quality without the Sonos-level price. Design-wise, you would never confuse a symphonisk with a regular Sonos product. While Sonos speakers generally have a sophisticated sleek look, the IKEA models appear a little homeier. The lamp is clad in a fabric shell that reminds me of Nike fly-knit material, while the bookshelf speakers are decidedly blocky with squared-off edges. Yet that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I think the lamp has a soft and cozy appeal with a bit of a mid-century modern vibe. Its rounded curve shape helps mask the fact that it's a speaker as well as a lamp. The bookshelf version's shape, on the other hand, allows it to fit both vertically and horizontally on most shelves, whether or not they're from IKEA. That said, the spokesperson did tell me that they were specifically built to fit most IKEA shelves and come in IKEA white and IKEA black in order to blend in seamlessly with your decor. The lamp comes in white or black as well, end quote. And the new Wolfenstein game is out.

It's called Wolfenstein Youngblood. And in IGN, Dan Stapleton is all, meh, quote, Nearly everything about Youngblood feels like a step down from Wolfenstein 2's distinctively zany plot and satisfyingly energetic Nazi slaughter action. Outside of a single reveal, this story, the daughter's search for an MIA BJ in Paris, which is still lousy with Nazis about 20 years later, has nothing surprising up its sleeve to add to the Machine Games Wolfenstein reboot series' collection of WTF moments.

That's partially due to the minimal number of story cutscenes within the main missions, but really it's because of a stark lack of interesting characters to fill the shoes of insane companions like Superspeche or Set, to name a few. Abby, the daughter of Wolfenstein 2's Grace Walker, is about as bland a hacker helper character as you'll ever find and the monotonously cackling villain isn't fit to shine Irene Engel's jackboots. Admittedly, Wolfensstein, too, is a tougher act to follow in those departments, but Youngblood barely seems to try, end quote.

And finally, there's a new documentary on Netflix right now called The Great Hack, and it's about the whole Cambridge Analytica scandal from last year, quoting Wired, even if you know that sorted tale already, the film is worth a look. It masterfully uses the scandal to illustrate the data mining structures and, algorithms that are undermining individual liberty and democratic society, one Facebook like and one meme share at a time. After watching The Great Hack, you'll have a much better understanding of what data tracking, harvesting, and selling looks like and how it can be used against individuals, communities, and nations. In that way, the Great Hack is a modern horror story. The villain is Cambridge Analytica, yes, but also Facebook, and all the systems that

enable people to be secretly manipulated by the digital psychological cues, they leave through their lives. It's terrifying because it's true, end quote. That is all for today. As always, I'm Brian McCullough. Follow me on Twitter at Brian MCC. The show subreddit is R-slash ride home, where you can tip me stories to cover on the show and also to chat amongst yourselves. The last two links in the show notes are for the ad-free feed, which you can subscribe to write in your podcast app itself. And also, if you want me to read a classified ad for you or your project, you can get a on that there as well. Talk to you tomorrow.