Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 08/19 – FTC Files Its Facebook Mulligan

Episode Date: August 19, 2021

Headlines out of time: Amazon wants to do department stores. Google partners with GE Appliances. But Intel continues to look to the future with its new hybrid architecture chips. Facebook wants your next conference call to take place in VR. And has Robinhood put all its eggs in the Doge basket? Sponsors: Tovala.com/ride Canva.me/techmeme Links: Amazon Plans to Open Large Retail Locations Akin to Department Stores (WSJ) GE Appliances announces partnership with major cloud company to focus on data capabilities (Courier Journal) Intel previews its Alder Lake chip, promises hybrid CPUs for desktops and laptops (The Verge) FTC files renewed antitrust complaint against Facebook (CNBC) INSIDE FACEBOOK’S METAVERSE FOR WORK (The Verge) Facebook is sharing data to prove it’s not a political hellhole (Protocol) Robinhood says dogecoin accounted for 62% of crypto revenue in Q2 (CNBC) Venture Investment In Cryptosecurity Jumps 10x Over Last Year As Sector Hits Sweet Spot With Venture Capitalists (Crunchbase News) 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 Tech meme right home for Thursday, August 19th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. Headlines seemingly out of time. Amazon wants to bring back department stores. Google partners with GE appliances. But Intel continues to look to the future with its new hybrid architecture chips. Facebook wants your next conference call to take place in VR and has Robin Hood put all its eggs in the doge basket. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. The 20th century called and wanted to make some headlines this morning. So, two stories up top that seem like throwbacks to an earlier time. First, sources are telling the Wall Street Journal that Amazon plans to open several large physical stores, call them department stores

across the U.S., starting in Ohio and California, to extend its reach in clothing and other areas. The new retail spaces will be around 30,000 square feet, smaller than most department stores, which typically occupy about 100,000 square feet, and will offer items from top consumer brands. The Amazon stores will dwarf many of the company's other physical retail spaces and will have a footprint similar to scaled-down formats that Bloomingdale's Nordstrom and other department store chains have begun opening, the people said. It is unclear what brands Amazon will offer in the stores, although the company's private label goods are expected to feature prominently, the people said. Amazon sells scores of products, including clothes, furniture, batteries, and electronic devices through many of its own labels. The plans aren't yet final and could change, the people said. Amazon approached some U.S. apparel brands roughly two years ago with the idea of opening

large-scale stores that would showcase their products, a person familiar with the matter said. An expanded store footprint would enable Amazon to offer customers a bevy of items they could try out in person before deciding to buy. That would be particularly beneficial in apparel, which can often be a guessing game for customers shopping online because of size and fit concerns. It would also give customers even more instant gratification than the quick shipping offered by Amazon for online purchases, end quote. And this morning, a new partnership was announced between Google and GE. Maybe the first time I've ever mentioned GE on this show, but it's GE appliances, specifically,

and this is to build out smart appliance capabilities, so you can see how that would make sense, quoting the Louisville Courier Journal, which I believe is the first time I've ever quoted from them as well, quote. Continuing on the momentum of a recently launched new refrigeration line, Louisville-based GE Appliances is partnering with Google Cloud to focus on bolstering the manufacturer's smart appliances capabilities the two companies announced Thursday. The multi-year deal folds into the Louisville-based organization's multi-cloud strategy, said Viren Shah, chief digital officer of GE Appliances, a higher company. Cloud computing provides computer system resources like

processing and storage without direct active management by the user. Shaw said in an interview with the Courier Journal that GE Appliances currently works with Amazon Web Services, and Oracle Cloud infrastructure. The partnership with Google Cloud, he said, will leverage the California-based platform's data capabilities. Shaw said GE Appliances plans to be proactive with intelligence collected through Google Cloud, such as learning of potential issues with appliances, alerting, learning customers, and finding potential solutions. GE Appliances is constantly looking for ways to improve consumer experience, Shaw said, for example, he mentioned that through cloud computing, the company was able to roll out an update to remotely add air fryer capabilities

to 200,000 ovens and ranges just this past April, end quote. Intel this morning detailed its Alder Lake lineup coming this fall, which uses a 10 nanometer process and offers hybrid performance and efficiency X86 cores, quoting the verge. As the company has been teasing since last year's Architecture Day, Alder Lake will feature Intel's latest hybrid architecture. Instead of simply offering the next generation of powerful Intel CPU cores, it will offer a mix of both performance and efficiency X86 cores, both of which Intel previewed as part of its announcements.

Additionally, Alder Lake will be the first chip released on Intel's newly renamed Intel 7 technology node, not to be confused with Intel 4, which was previously known as Intel's delayed 7 nanometer node, and will be available to consumers sometime in 2023 under the code name Meteor Lake. Intel 7 still uses similar technology to the company's current 10 nanometer tech, instead of the bigger leap in manufacturing process plan for Intel 4. The new X-86 Performance Corps codenamed Golden Cove is the successor to the Willow Cove Cores that are currently found in the company's 11th-gen-Tiger Lake processors. Intel claims that it's the most powerful CPU core it's ever built,

but the company only offered a comparison to its Cypress Cove cores, the version of its 10-nometer architecture that Intel ported to its 14-nanometer process. Not the more advanced Willow-Cove cores. Meanwhile, the company's new X-86 Efficient Core, codenamed Graysmont, aims to be the world's most efficient X-86 CPU core while still offering higher IPC than the company's Skylake chips. Intel claims that for single-thread cores, one of its new efficient cores hits 40% more performance at the same power, or similar performance while using 40% of the power of a Skylake core, improvements that double when comparing four efficient cores running four threads to two Skylake cores running four threads.

broadly speaking, the performance cores are the ones that have featured in Intel's beefier core class processors, while the efficiency cores resemble the atom class processors in lower power devices. And each of these new architectures would be interesting on their own, but Intel plans to combine the two in a hybrid architecture as a core product to its lineup, starting with its upcoming Alder Lake chips this fall, that makes them far more notable, end quote. Mark Zuckerberg was on my TV this morning, making what he said would be. be a major new announcement, and that was Horizon Workrooms, a virtual meeting space with

avatars, spatial audio, whiteboards, and more in beta on the Oculus Quest 2 platform, quoting The Verge. Up to 16 people in VR can be in a workroom together, while an additional 34 people can join over video call without wearing a headset. A companion desktop app lets you beam a live feed of your computer screen over to your virtual table space. Thanks to the Quest's hand-tracking and front-facing cameras, a virtual representation of your physical keyboard, sits underneath your screen for typing into a bare-bones web app Facebook built for note-taking and managing calendars. I think it may be the most intense VR application that exists in terms of how much we're trying to put every bell and whistle from the headset into the experience you're using.

Facebook's top AR VR-VR executive Andrew Bosworth told us during the briefing, which was the first of its kind I've experienced entirely in VR. For now, the process of getting into workrooms initially is quite clunky. It oddly requires creating a separate workrooms account through the web, downloading workrooms in Oculus, and then pairing your headset to your workrooms account by entering a code shown in the headset on your computer's web browser. Some features in workrooms, like a personal drawing pad and a giant whiteboard that anyone can go up to and use, feel more gimmicky than useful. There were multiple times when the audio cut out or became garbled, and the Quest's hand-tracking isn't perfect. At one point, Zuckerberg had to leave the room and

rejoin the room because his avatar's mouth wasn't moving at all when he spoke. The desktop companion app isn't yet compatible with Apple's M-1 processor, so I wasn't able to try it on my 2020 MacBook Air. A Facebook rep told me support is coming soon for Apple M-1 computers. Even with the bugs and relatively scaled-back graphics of the Quest compared to my MacBook screen, I still felt more present in workrooms than I normally do in a traditional video conferencing setup like Zoom. Native arm and hand tracking down to the movements of individual fingers certainly helped. A larger factor is the Quest's spatial audio. When someone talked in one corner of the room, it sounded like their voice was coming from that direction. At one point, the seating chart was

changed, and I felt as if someone sitting behind me in VR was actually speaking from behind my head. Facebook has been using workrooms internally for meetings for about six months, according to Zuckerberg. These kinds of experiences where you can actually feel present with other people are I think a much richer way to interact with the types of social apps we've been able to build on phones or computers, he said, end quote. Quoting John Nixon on Twitter. So if I understand this, I can now attend meetings with my colleagues virtually, because Zoom wasn't good enough, but am now unable to take notes or look at my computer.

Perhaps run this by the sharks on Shark Tank because they will be more brutal than what we can do, and quote. As I was in the booth recording, word came down that the FTC has filed a new antitrust complaint against Facebook after a judge dismissed the first complaint back in June. Facebook has until October 4th to respond, quoting CNBC. U.S. District Judge James Boseberg gave the FTC a second chance to bring its claims that Facebook has illegally maintained a monopoly after dismissing its first complaint in June. Bostberg wrote that the FTC failed to define a plausible market that Facebook monopolized and suggested too loose of a percentage of market share it owned. Plus, he wrote, the FTC lacked authority under its chosen statute to bring charges against Facebook for how it

implemented an old policy preventing rivals from accessing its platform seven years ago. Bozberg said, in order to receive an injunction under that statute, it must be clear that a violation is in progress or about to occur. The new complaint is longer than the original clock. in at 80 pages compared to 53," end quote. Also, Facebook, for the first time, shared a report on the most widely viewed domains, links, posts, and pages on Facebook in the U.S. during Q2 of this year, quoting protocol. Facebook framed the report as an extension of its ongoing transparency efforts, but the information contained in it also serves another purpose, countering the idea that far-right pages

and accounts dominate the site in the U.S. According to the report, some 87% of content on newsfeed doesn't include a link, meaning it wouldn't be represented in the Facebook top 10 list. Even the most viewed posts that Facebook is now sharing also only accounted for 0.1% of all posts viewed in people's news feeds in the U.S. last quarter. That's because Facebook wrote, quote, most of what people see on Facebook is personalized for them specifically, end quote, and wouldn't likely be viewed by many other users.

And it's true, these datasets tell a much different story than the one that comes through looking at engagement data. Instead of links from Newsmax and Fox News, the top 20 list of most viewed links includes mostly benign and at times obscure links, a YouTube channel on building outdoor aquariums and a CBD shop among them. Far from Barnburners, the most viewed posts on Facebook shared from last quarter, are similarly adenine. The most viewed of all was a word scramble that predicts, quote, The first three words you see are your reality, end quote. Another top-viewed post asks, please settle this debate.

Does sugar go in spaghetti? Only two of the top 20 posts could be considered remotely political, one from Joe Biden boasts only 100 days in and America is getting back on track. The other asks whether Facebook users are, quote, ditching the mask based on CDC guidance, end quote. Robin Hood, reported earnings yesterday for the first time as a public company. revenue was up 131% year over year, and crypto accounted for 233 million of that, and that's what I wanted to talk about. In total, Robin Hood says crypto accounted for around 52% of all transaction-based

revenue in Q2, but, and here's the thing, 62% of its crypto revenue came from Dogecoin, one single coin. So yes, crypto trading still prints money for a lot of platforms like Robin Hood, but maybe you should worry if most of that involves trading of a coin that is widely acknowledged just to be a joke, quoting CNBC. The company also noted that more than 60% of cumulative net-funded accounts traded crypto in the quarter. The three months ended June 30th, 2021 is the first quarter where a larger share of new customers placed their first trade in crypto rather than equities, Robin Hood said in the earning statement. Cryptocurrencies had a particularly volatile second quarter. The price of Bitcoin plunged more than 40% after a huge rally in

2020, though it has since recouped much of that value. Ethereum, meanwhile, rose by about 18%, and Dogecoin more than quadrupled in value, end quote. I think that's the wider question that we keep coming back to about Robin Hood. It has made it easy for folks to dip their toes in lots of waters, trading regular stocks, trading options, and now trading crypto, often for the first time. question is, does dipping your toe in something lead to folks sticking around and making it a habit for the long term? Finally today, another trend analysis of what's hot in VC's minds at the moment. Analysis from Crunchbase reveals that VCs have invested more than a billion dollars in crypto security so far this year, 2021, up 10x year over year, as technologies for securing crypto wallets and transactions are becoming increasing.

more popular. Quoting Crunchbase. Crypto security, a sector involving technologies that help secure digital wallets and transactions involving cryptocurrency, has already seen more money invested in it in 2021 than all earlier years combined, according to CrunchBase data. While last year saw less than $100 million invested in the sector, investors have started to eye security and compliance features as the crypto market has taken off. Fireblocks is the biggest contributor to this year's high funding number, the company which often describes itself as the Shopify for crypto, since it helps with a variety of business issues around digital assets, from security to compliance to governance, raised a $310 million Series D from Sequoia Capital, Stripes, and Spark Capital

in July at a $2.2 billion valuation. That was a 3x plus increase in valuation from February when the company raised a $133 million Series C. However, those are far from the only large rounds this year. France-based security and infrastructure solutions provider ledger raised a $380 million series C in June. Oakland-based PolySign, which develops secure infrastructure for financial institutions to handle digital assets, raised its $53 million series B in May. New York-based Serticay, San Francisco based Allio, and Menlo, California-based Cipher Trace also have seen rounds in excess of $25 million this year, end quote. Indeed, if you've been lurking around, platforms like Angelist, Republic, or Our Crowd, recently you've seen various wallet and investment projects

seemingly pop up every week. Things are on a tear right now, said Dave Jevons, CEO at Cypher Trace, which helps crypto exchanges, banks, and even the government with security and compliance issues and raise more than $27 million in May. We get interests all the time from investors, including growth equity. The regulation market is just growing, and there's a need for technology to help companies with requirements and compliance, he said. Still, the larger aspect that is driving the market is just the legitimization of crypto and the fact that every big bank now wants in, Jevin said. Large financial institutions and big banks are getting pressure from customers to buy digital assets, said Jevins. Adding banks want to know assets and transactions can be secured, end quote.

Talk to you tomorrow.