Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 09/06 - More iPhone Event Rumor Bingo

Episode Date: September 6, 2018

The 2014 Sony hacker gets charged, Lyft beats Uber to the scooter punch, why Roblox is the biggest thing since Minecraft, Spotify plays chicken with the music industry, and let’s play another round of Apple event rumor bingo. Links:U.S. charges North Korean operative in conspiracy to hack Sony Pictures, banks (The Washington Post)Lyft rolls out its first electric scooters in Denver (The Verge)You Will Soon Be Able to Control Your Xbox With Alexa and Cortana (Thurrott)Walmart partners with delivery logistics platform Bringg on last-mile grocery delivery (TechCrunch)The new Roomba could be the end of vacuuming (Quartz)Kids' gaming platform Roblox raises $150M (TechCrunch)The video game turning teens into millionaires has raised a whopping $150 million, making it a $2.5 billion company (Business Insider)A New Spotify Initiative Makes the Big Record Labels Nervous (NYTimes)The Tension Is Building Between Spotify and the Music Industry (Bloomberg)‘iPhone Xs Max’ likely name for 6.5-inch OLED flagship, sources say (9to5Mac) 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 ride home for Thursday, September 6th, 2018. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, the 2014 Sony Hacker gets charged.

Lyft beats Uber to the scooter punch. Why Roblox is the biggest thing since Minecraft. Spotify plays chicken with the music industry, and let's play another round of Apple Event Rumor Bingo. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. A whole bunch of odds and ends today. First, remember that Sony hack? Back in 2014, Sony's computer systems were hacked.

Data was wiped. Confidential emails about movie and TV productions were made public. Executives were forced to resign in that Seth Rogen James Franco movie, which kind of really wasn't that funny, was pulled from theaters. Well, the Department of Justice today finally announced the first charges related to that incident, accusing Park Jim Joke of hacking on behalf of North Korea's reconnaissance general bureau. the military intelligence agency that is reportedly responsible for North Korea's cyber capabilities. The Treasury Department also imposed sanctions on Park, as well as the Chosun Expo Joint Venture,

a state-owned firm park was previously employed by. The sanctions will allow the U.S. to seize assets and prohibit Americans from transacting with this pair. This is actually the first time hacking charges have officially been brought against an accused North Korean spy. The scooter wars have officially been joined. Beating Uber to the punch, Lyft, launched a fully branded fleet of 350 official Lyft E-Scooters in Denver today. The scooters cost $1 to unlock and 15 cents per each minute of riding, though you will get a discount if you start or end your ride near public transit hubs. Notably, this won't be a 24-hour operation. The scooters will only be available to rent from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Lyft has coordinated fully with Denver's Public Works

Agency, which awarded permits to Lyft for both e-bikes and e-scooters, but it's only the scooters that are involved in this initial rollout. This is a crowded marketplace, of course, bird, lime, all the others we've spoken about many times before, but Lyft does have the distinction of deploying its own scooters before Uber, which is expected to launch its official Uber scooter program, in Santa Monica in a few weeks. Have you got an Xbox One and an Alexa? Guess what? Alexa's now got a new Xbox skill.

Microsoft has officially begun testing both Alexa and Cortana support for the Xbox One, letting users power the console on and off and start games just with voice commands. The testing is taking place only among U.S. Xbox users at the moment, but that should expand shortly.

Quoting from Therat.com, quote, you can, for example, tell your echo speaker to Alexa start Fortnite, and it will turn on your Xbox One, log you in, and launch Fortnite with just a single command. You can even use it to start and stop broadcasts, control media playback, capture screenshots, navigate around the Xbox One system, and more. There's a Ask Xbox What Can I Say command that will let you discover everything the skill can do. Walmart has announced a new last-mile grocery delivery pilot program called Spark Delivery, which it is launching in partnership with delivery logistics platform Bring. If you make a Walmart order totaling $30 or more and you live in Nashville or New Orleans for a flat $9.95 delivery fee, your stuff will be sent to your door.

Interestingly, the delivery network will be staffed by a quote, crowd-sourced workforce. That is, drivers will sign up for windows of time when they're available to deliver groceries and will then be provided with the order details and navigational assistance during their shift, end quote. Grocery delivery from Walmart is currently available in 50 markets, and Walmart seems to be doing a comprehensive bake-off of the partners it is employing to make this happen. In some cities, they have partnered with postmates, others Delive and DoorDash, and in the past, Uber and even Lyft. Walmart's stated goal is to have delivery in 100 markets by the end of this year, which Walmart says would cover 40% of U.S. households.

I had one of the earliest Roombas back in the early 2000s, and it was a cool toy, but it was a toy. It was not exactly the work-saving miracle that was promised. Now, I know they've gotten considerably better over subsequent years. They have had their own docking stations now, so they can be set to go off. and do their thing and then return to the mothership to recharge without you having to do anything. But you still had to remember to empty the dirt and dust reservoir, and it just, it was basically a toy. Well, reading this review from Mike Murphy and Quartz about the latest Rumba, the I7 Plus, I think it's probably time for me to reassess and reconsider investing in one because this baby sounds like

exactly the robot vacuum I was always imagining. The I7 Plus has a larger charging base station that automates. sucks the debris in the Roomba reservoir to an attached bag. The bag apparently has enough capacity to hold dirt from 30 cleanings. So, in theory, you could set the Rumba to give the floors a going over every day for a whole month and only have to remember to clean the bag once in that period. The robots can now map your floor plan on their own so you can set individual zones or rooms in the app and wait for it.

There's Alexa integration. So you can say, Alexa, clean the kitchen. The new Rumba I-7 Plus is on sale from the I-Robot website starting today for $949. And shipments could begin next week. They're also selling the robot itself without the self-cleaning base station, though that's kind of the main selling point if you ask me, for $699. This has not, repeat, not been a sponsored read. just me genuinely being like maybe it's time to think about a Roomba again. And let's check in real fast with Spotify and its efforts to disrupt not just the consumption of music,

but the actual structure of the music industry itself. Two pieces, the first from the New York Times. Yes, Spotify is beginning to quietly strike direct licensing deals with a small number of independent music artists. Small number, but also small deals apparently in the tens or hundreds of thousands of, of dollars, but this is what the record companies fear, being cut out of the equation entirely. For the first time that I've seen at least, the Times piece gets into the specifics, the actual dollars and cents, quote, Spotify is offering artists two advantages, a bigger financial cut and ownership of their recordings. The deals, furthermore, are not exclusive,

leaving the artists free to license their songs to other streaming companies like Apple Music and Amazon. Spotify typically pays a record-level record. label around 52% of the revenue generated by each stream or play of a given song. The label, in turn, pays the artist a royalty of anywhere from 15% to in some cases 50% of its cut. By agreeing to direct licensing deals with Spotify artists and their representatives are able to keep the whole payout, end quote. So yeah, that's making record companies nervous. And guess what? Spotify's contracts with all three major record companies are almost up. The company is scheduled to enter talks with all of them soon to continue to be able to stream their music catalogs. Spotify, for its part, wants a

better deal. Spotify pays out most of its revenue in royalties. It is expected to lose almost $600 million in its operations this year. But the record companies are griping about Spotify not paying up for music videos that it has been experimenting, streaming on its platform, and Well, there's this very real fear of being made redundant if Spotify signs artists itself, and that's hovering in the background of all these negotiations. The Bloomberg piece describes this as a game of chicken. Record companies know Spotify can't cut them off completely. The record companies have too much back catalog that people would want to listen to

for Spotify to suddenly just pull a Netflix and go with all original content. And yet the music industry is only now. thriving again, nearly 20 years after the whole Napster debacle. So how much do they want to rock the boat, right when things have settled down again? Quoting from the Bloomberg piece, It's a strange relationship because the record labels want Spotify to succeed, but not too much, said Amy Young, a Macquarie analyst. It gives them too much leverage, end quote.

I remember the same thing being said when iTunes was in its pomp, but then streaming and Spotify came around to change the whole equation. I don't think there's any similar paradigm shift on the horizon, so somebody is going to have to play ball here. Have you heard of Roblox? Parents out there are screaming at me right now. Yes, we know all about Roblox. Roblox is a massively popular video game among kids with 70 million active players.

It allows kids to build 3D worlds, kind of like Minecraft does. And since Roblox just announced, it raised a $150 million, Series F round at a $2.5 billion valuation. The comparisons to Minecraft will only continue because $2.5 billion is the exact amount of money that Microsoft paid to purchase Minecraft in 2014. But Roblox is significantly different. Think of it more as an MMO. And sort of like a marketplace in a way, Roblox itself is not even the one making the games. It provides a platform for users to make their own games. Users and developers can create mini-games or adventures or just experiences inside the game itself. There are apparently 4 million creators who have made more

than 40 million experiences inside Roblox. Here's how Business Insider describes it. Quote, all 40 million Roblox games, including popular ones like Meep City and Jailbreak, were made by its base of mostly younger independent developers. If a player chooses to spend the premium virtual Robux currency, which costs real money. In a game, the developer gets a cut, and business appears to be booming. Roblox is on track to pay out 70 million to developers this year, with several making their livings from the game and a few even becoming millionaires in their own right, end quote. Apparently, one of these successful Roblox developers is 23-year-old Alex Benello, who created the popular Meep City with 15 million active players. It's a role-playing game where you can drive

cars, decorate player homes, etc. Benelo joined Roblox in 2007 when he was only 12 years old. Other games people created are everything from soccer games or first-person shooters, etc. So there's a whole ecosystem of games inside Roblox. So Roblox is not a game so much as it's a game creation platform, or maybe a gaming platform mixed with a social network and an internal marketplace. Or think of it this way. It's a game studio that can potentially create hit titles by letting the users themselves create them. Benedict Evans called it Minecraft with an app store. And Hunter Walk tweeted, quote,

Turns out Second Life for Kids is a multi-company, multi-billion dollar vertical, end quote. In case you weren't aware, Hunter used to work at Second Life. Roblox is apparently cash flow positive, but the company says it will use the money it's just raised for technological infrastructure investments and international expansion. In a post discussing his firm's investment in Roblox, Graylocks David Sees says, Think of Roblox like a YouTube for gaming.

It's all about the long tail of gaming, but with an eye towards surfacing the next big hit. I'd be surprised if there aren't some huge high-quality games that are originated on Roblox in the next three to five years, he told TechCrunch. Finally today, are you all hyped about next week's Apple event? No? well then let's play some more Apple rumor bingo

I should probably print up some bingo cards or something for next week one of the biggest mysteries to clear up next week will be the official names of all the new devices especially the phones we expect some of them to be iPhone 10 somethings and at 9 to 5 Mac is floating the name iPhone 10 S Max for the 6.5 inch version of the device that would probably be paired with an iPhone 10S, of course. As you know, ever since the iPhone 3GS,

in years where there aren't huge changes to the iPhone design, Apple sometimes likes to append the S moniker. And lately, their larger model phones have usually been called pluses, though to give them hedging room here, 9 to 5 Mac says, it is a name that Apple has considered. I hope so. A lot of people still call it the iPhone X. So sound that one out.

If it really is the iPhone 10S Max, some people would be calling it the iPhone XS Max, like the word XS. Oh, and Max, of course. Also, what does that mean for the LCD iPhone model? What will that thing be called? The iPhone 10R for regular, as some people are guessing. Free unsolicited advice, guys.

Automakers figured this out a century ago. Yeah, they started out with calling things Model A's, I'll tease, things like that. But after years and years and years, so many different names float around that it just becomes muddled. So they settled on just calling it the 2018 Honda Civic. Just add the year to the name. Although phone makers do like to release new models in the fall, so maybe that wouldn't work. But, I mean, what if it was the 2019 iPhone next week?

2019 iPhone Plus 2019 iPhone Double Plus good or something I don't know Anyway other rumors surfaced by 9 to 5 Mac

Both the 10S and 10S max models If that is their real names We'll have 4 gigabytes of RAM Which is up from 3 gigabytes And 9 to 5 Mac

Also says that information in the latest Watch OS5 beta suggests the 42 millimeter Apple Watch Series 4 we'll be sporting a 384 by 480 screen resolution up from the 312 by 390 resolution of current models. Will any of this pan out?

Will anybody hit bingo? Tune in next week, Mousketeers, when we'll find out. So there were some pretty cool anniversaries, birthdays this week, Google, Chrome. But today, this podcast just happens to be six months old. So I wanted to take the time to acknowledge that real quick. And thank you all for listening. It's truly amazing to me that tens of thousands of you have made this a regular daily routine. Nay, a daily habit.

Thank you so much for letting me shout into your heads every day. And don't be shy about evangelizing the pod the next time someone talks about any good podcasts I should try. You should jump across the table, grab them by the lapels and be like, TechMame right home, you fool. Seriously, the word of mouth helps us grow the audience. and keeps the lights on for another six months and another and another. And any journalists out there that listen every single day, I know you're out there, you've told me. A nice friendly profile of the pod in your publication would always be welcome.

Anyway, thanks, thanks, thanks, and let's just do it all again tomorrow.