Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 08/25 – Far Out

Episode Date: August 25, 2022

The Twitter Whistleblower is a big concern for Twitter, no matter what happens with the Elon stuff. Amazon zags slightly in its healthcare march. iPhone even official announcement. Ethereum merge dates officially solidified. Some new PCs from HP and what to expect from Nvidia’s next generation GPUs. Sponsors: Storyblok.com/ridehome Links: Twitter whistleblower to testify in Congress about security failures (Washington Post) Twitter executives face questions from employees after whistleblower claims (CNN Business) Internal memo: Amazon Care to shut down, ‘not a complete enough offering’ for corporate customers (GeekWire) What Apple's September Event Invite May Tell Us About the iPhone 14 (CNET) Ethereum Foundation confirms September dates for the Merge (The Block) Crypto’s massive marketing efforts have drawn few new investors (Washington Post) HP's new PCs include its first Dragonfly Folio and a 34-inch all-in-one (Engadget) Nvidia to announce next-gen GPU architecture in September amid RTX 4090 rumors (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 Tech meme right home for Thursday, August 25th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. The Twitter whistleblower is a big concern for Twitter no matter what happens with the Elon stuff.

Amazon zags slightly in its health care march, iPhone event official announcement, Ethereum merge dates officially solidified, some new PCs from HP and what to expect from Nvidia's next generation GPUs. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Twitter whistleblower Peter Zatko will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 13th to examine his allegations of widespread security failures at Twitter, I want to point out that while I've been thinking of this story largely in light of the Elon lawsuit, we shouldn't forget. This whole thing could have a serious impact on Twitter no

matter what happens with the acquisition, quoting the Washington Post. Mr. Zacko's allegations of widespread security failures and foreign state actor interference at Twitter raise serious concerns. If these claims are accurate, they may show dangerous data privacy and security risks for Twitter users around the world, said Senators Richard Durbin and Charles Grassley, the chair and top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The lawmakers said in a statement that, in addition to the hearing, they would, quote, take further steps as needed to get to the bottom of these alarming allegations, end quote. The hearing signals the mounting political and regulatory headwinds for the social network in the wake of Zatko's complaint, which has prompted by-partisan. partisan concerns about privacy and national security among lawmakers on Capitol Hill. The allegations became public as lawmakers have pledged to pass legislation to protect Americans' data privacy and hold powerful social media companies accountable.

Twitter declined to comment on the hearing. The company has pushed back on Zatko's allegations, company spokeswoman Rebecca Hahn, said that the company has long prioritized security and that Zatko's disclosures appeared to be, quote, riddled with inaccuracies, end quote. Twitter held a town hall Wednesday in which executives discussed the whistleblower complaint. Executives tried to make the case for how much the company had done for security and privacy and described the complaint as a false narrative without going into details, said a person who attended the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an internal company event.

Much of the employee Q&A was related to the company's hiring freeze, an attrition the company is facing, in light of the market downturn and the chaos caused by the Musk takeover bid, end quote. At that all hands, Twitter executives pushed back against Zacko's complaint, with CEO Paragagagal saying a false narrative had been created, quoting CNN. In the meeting Wednesday, Sean Eggett, Twitter's general counsel said the company reached out to regulators and various agencies around the world when the company learned about the allegations being made by Zatko. Senator Richard Blumenthal has called on the Federal Trade Commission to open an investigation into Zatko's allegations. Twitter's main regulator in Europe, the Irish data

Protection Commission said it was seeking information from the company in light of the allegations. Executives were asked if they were going to point by point publicly address the many allegations Zatko made about the company. Rebecca Hahn, the company's head of global communications, said in the meeting that there were a, quote, number of reasons why the company had not been able to do this yet in a possible allusion to the ongoing legal battle between Twitter and its potential future owner Elon Musk, end quote. According to an internal memo, Amazon will stop offering Amazon care at the end of 2022 after determining that it wasn't, quote, the right long-term solution for enterprise clients, quoting Geekwire. The surprise move Wednesday is a major course correction in Amazon's broader foray into health care. Amazon says the decision impacts only Amazon care and not its other health care initiatives. This decision wasn't made lightly and only became clear after many months of careful consideration, said Neil Lindsay, Amazon Health Services Senior Vice President in an email to Amazon Health Service employees. Although our enrolled members have loved many aspects of Amazon Care,

it is not a complete enough offering for the large enterprise customers we have been targeting and wasn't going to work long term, end quote. Amazon says company leaders determined that the Amazon Care business model wasn't working prior to and independent from, its agreement to acquire primary care company won medical for $3.9 billion, which was announced July 21st. That acquisition is still expected to move ahead pending regulatory approval. The company did not disclose the number of employees who will be impacted by its decision to shut down Amazon care. Many care employees will have an opportunity to join other parts of the Health Services Organization or other teams at Amazon, which will be discussing with many of you shortly,

and will also support employees looking for roles outside the company, Lindsay wrote in the memo to employees. Amazon Care launched in 2019 as a pilot program for employees in the Seattle area where Amazon is headquartered. Last year, it expanded to non-Amazon employees across the nation. It's a hybrid of virtual in-home primary care and urgent care services without brick and mortar clinics or physical locations. Chrissy Farr, a health tech investor at Omer's Ventures, said there may have been potential overlap with one medical, quote, that may have been awkward to navigate, end quote. One medical also sells into employers and offers telemedicine services. It could be a signal of where Amazon plans to focus

its energies, Farr said, noting that she did not have firsthand knowledge of the reasons for the decision, end quote. P.S. Apple made it official yesterday and went and announced an event on September 7th at 10 a.m. Pacific Time 1 p.m. Eastern called Far out, where it is expected to announce the iPhone 14 lineup, watch series 8 and more. Quoting CNET. There's no way. There's no way to truly know whether Apple is hiding any hints in its invitation. Still, it's easy to imagine how the imagery could connect to rumors that have been circulating about the iPhone 14. At the center of the invite is an Apple logo that seemingly made up of a constellation of stars or specs of light. The phrase, far out, sits below it. Perhaps this is a reference to the camera improvements that

might be coming to the rumored iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max. These phones are expected to get a new 48 megapixel camera, which would be a step up from the iPhone 13 Pro's current 12 megapixel camera, according to Bloomberg's Mark German. There's a chance Apple could be testing the increased clarity that this new camera would bring to the iPhone 14 Pro line with the far-out tagline. But that's not the only possibility. Remember the rumor about satellite connectivity that made the rounds last year? If that feature does end up surfacing in the iPhone 14, a starry night sky would certainly be an interesting way to tease it. TF International Social Security analyst Ming Chi Quo reported last year that the iPhone 13 would support satellite

connectivity, enabling it to maintain a connection when typical cellular coverage isn't available as Mac rumors reported. However, that didn't end up being the case. Then there's the rumored processor upgrades. The iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max are expected to be the only ones in the lineup to get a bump in speed to what would presumably be the A16 bionic chip, according to Quo. If Apple is planning to make that processor a major focus of this year's iPhone announcement, it might be using the phrase far out to indirectly reference a jump in speed, end quote. And make note of this date becoming official. The Ethereum Foundation says it will begin the big Ethereum merge to proof of state consensus.

On September 6th, though, it's going to be split into two parts, the second running between September 10th and 20th. Quoting the block, the merge will be split into two upgrades called Belatrix and Paris. Belatrix is time to occur at 1134 AM UTC on September 6, and Paris will be triggered sometime between September 10th and September 20th, according to the blog post, which provided the image below. Proof of stake relies on validators instead of miners, instead of expending lots of computing power like proof of work miners do. Proof of stake validators lock up sums of money to prove their trustworthiness to the network. The switch has been a long-held goal for

Ethereum's developers. In the final testing step, the goarly test net successfully merged on August 10th. The new blog post also includes links to download the necessary upgrades for the various Ethereum clients. Operators will need to do this before the Bellatrix update occurs. Update your clients, tweeted Ethereum Foundation comms lead Joseph Schweitzer, end quote. Since we're talking about that, interesting data point about crypto, the Washington Post says that despite huge ad campaigns by crypto companies over the last year, a Pew survey of U.S. adults shows those trading crypto has stayed flat at around 16 percent, and that's covering a period from September of last year to July of this year.

Quote, industry leaders are warning that new pools of investors could be even harder to find in the coming months. On an earnings call this month, the publicly traded crypto exchange Coinbase, which ended 2021 with 11.4 million monthly active users said it expected to finish the year with between 7 million and 9 million monthly active users. Moeus said that even if retail investors drop off in the wake of the recent crash, the crypto markets could be fueled by institutional investors who are more likely to buy in after a crash. A Pew study also examined demographic data and found that it hadn't changed much over the past year either. As in September, adults over 50

were only about one-fourth as likely to invest in crypto as adults under 30, while men were 2.5 times more likely than women to put money in crypto. The study also found that all the marketing campaigns didn't do much to heighten general crypto awareness. Last September, the percentage of those who said they've heard nothing at all about cryptocurrency was at 14%. By this summer, after all the media attention, the ranks of the crypto ignorant had shrunk by just 1% to 13%. and quote. HP this morning announced two new PCs, the 13.5-inch Dragonfly Folio G3, starting at $2,379, and the 34-inch all-in-one desktop, starting at $2,119 alongside a webcam and a 4K display.

Quoting a gadget. To start, HP has introduced the first folio hybrid in its Dragonfly line, the Dragonfly folio G3. As with earlier folios, you can pull the 13-inch screen forward to convert the machine from a laptop to a presentation device or tablet. Don't expect the Snapdragon chip from the elite folio, though. This is a conventionally powered PC with a 12th-gen-intel core I-5 or I-7, up to 32 gigabytes of RAM, and a new cooling system that promises to maximize performance without extra bulk. The 3.1-pound design is also thoroughly up to date. You can choose between either a 1920 by 1280 LCD or a 3000-by-2,000-O-led panel. There's no slot for the stylus, alas, but you can

magnetically attach and charge the pen on the side like you can with some recent iPads. You'll find a pair of Thunderbolt 4 USB-4 ports, plus the usual audio jack and optional 5G can keep you online away from Wi-Fi. Storage starts with a 256-gigabyte SSD and skills up to 2 terabytes. The Dragonfly Folio G3 is already available with a $2,379 starting price. That's far from modest, but it's better than the $2,642 Elite Folio HP was selling as of this writing while offering better performance. Desktop-bound remote workers are well accounted for. HP has unveiled a 34-inch all-in-one, that's the actual name, whose centerpiece, beyond the 5K ultra-wide display, is its webcam system. You can move the magnetically attached 16 megapixel camera to multiple places on the top bezel

and point it towards the desk for sharing documents. You can even add a second camera to share your notes while you stay on screen. You have the choice of 12th-gen, Core I5, I7, or I-9 processors, and you'll have G4-R-TX-R-TX-50 or 3060 dedicated graphics. Expansion shouldn't be much of an issue with up to 128 gigabytes of RAM, 4 terabytes of SSD storage, 2 Thunderbolt 4 ports, 4 USBA ports, Ethernet, HDIMI 2.1 output, an audio jack, and an SD card reader. The 34-inch all-in-one arrives in September with a base price of $2,1119. There are a pair of accessories that might prove appealing whether or not you care for HP's computers.

The 32-inch Z-32KG3 is billed as the first monitor to combine LG's IPS Black Tech, higher contrast ratios, Thunderbolt 4. You can plug in and charge many recent laptops up to 100 watts, daisy chain another 4K screen, and otherwise minimize the need for cables and docks. It's not the brightest display at 400 nits, but the 98% DCIP3 color coverage, pivoting and tilting, will make it useful for creatives. It doesn't ship until November and has yet to receive a price. There's also an add-on webcam, the HP 965 touts a 4K resolution, AI-guided framing, and auto-focusing, and a low-light-friendly, 18mm F2.0 lens, you can buy it today for $199, end quote. And since we're talking about GPUs briefly, and we're in the fall announced season for

new hardware, I wanted to make note that Nvidia is set to announce its next generation of GPU architecture next month, September. If it's graphics firepower that floats your boat, here's what Tom Warren says to expect, quote, NVIDIA is getting ready to announce its next-gen GPU architecture, code-named Lovelace. Ampere is the current GPU architecture that powers NVIDIA's RTX-30 series GPUs, after Turing debuted with the first RTX cards in 2018. InVIDIA is now expected to detail its Lovelace GPU architecture at GTC 2020 in September, with CEO Jensen Huang hinting at an announced during the company's recent earnings call.

A new GPU architecture announced doesn't mean we'll see RTX 40 series GPUs immediately, though. Invidia first unveiled its Amper architecture for data centers before launching its RTF 30 series cards for consumers months later. There's always a slight delay between an architecture announced and consumer GPU launch with the RTF20 series. That was just a week, so it doesn't necessarily mean we'll be waiting months. Either way, rumors continue to suggest Nvidia is working on RTX4080 and RTX4090 GPUs.

The Monster RtX4090 was originally rumored as a July release, and it could offer a big performance boost over existing RTX 3090 and even RTX 3090 TI cards, or isn't that T? I can't remember. Wong also hinted that current gen RTX 30 series GPUs will live alongside next gen ones. The reason RTX 30 series and 40 series will likely coexist is because NVIDIA has built too many GPUs. It's currently being forced to adjust retail pricing due to excess inventory, and we've seen RTX30 series cards appearing at MSRP recently. Following years, of prices being hiked 2 to 3x by resellers. The crypto crash has affected GPU demand,

and the excess inventory makes it more difficult to predict when Nvidia is likely to actually put its RTX-40 series cards on shelves. Nvidia's GTC-2020 conference will run September 19th to 22nd, with Jensen Huang's keynote set for September 20th at 8 a.m. Pacific time, 11 a.m. Eastern, end quote. All right, tonight, 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific, the usual time, our usual Twitter space. We're going to kick around this whole Twitter whistleblower thing, but also some new cutting-edge AI stuff that we're going to turn you on to.

But this afternoon, if you see me pop into a space, that's me testing my setup, so either ignore it because it's nothing, or come help me figure out why I can't hear anyone in spaces all the sudden. Talk to you then, or tomorrow, or whenever.