Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 10/10 - Apple Removed the App Again...

Episode Date: October 10, 2019

Apple takes down the Hong Kong app that it reinstated after taking it down in the first place, Waymo will soon let real people into driverless cars, Grammarly is the newest unicorn, and why, if you live in the Bay Area, your house might be without power… but your work probably won’t be. Sponsors: Castro Legacybox.com/ride Links: Apple Removes App That Helps Hong Kong Protesters Track the Police (NYTimes) APPLE REMOVES HKMAP.LIVE FROM APP STORE (Daring Fireball) Apple, Google Pull Hong Kong Protest Apps After China Uproar (WSJ) Tweetstorm (@Grummz) Grammarly raises $90M at over $1B+ valuation for its AI-based grammar and writing tools (TechCrunch) Splinter Shutting Down (Daily Beast) Why the PG&E Blackouts Spared California's Big Tech HQs (Wired) What Happens When Your Tweet Becomes a Subway Ad (One Zero) 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, October 10th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough today. Apple takes down the Hong Kong app that it reinstated after taking it down in the first place. Waymo will soon let real people into its driverless cabs. Grammarly is the newest unicorn. And why, if you live in the Bay Area, your house might be without power, but your work probably won't be. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Previously on this story, HKMap Live was an app that allowed users in Hong Kong to track police and protest activity. It was originally taken down from the app store by Apple.

Lots of people criticized Apple for doing that, and so Apple put it back up. And then government media in China criticized Apple for putting it back up. So late last night, Apple took the app back down again, quoting the New York Times. In a statement on Wednesday, Apple said, quote, the app displays police locations, and we have verified with the Hong Kong Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau, that the app has been used to target and ambush police, threaten public safety,

and criminals have used it to victimize residents in areas where they know there is no law enforcement. This app violates our guidelines and local laws, end quote. Well, I'm going to quote from Gruber here, quote, I still haven't seen which local law it violates, other than the unwritten law of pissing off Beijing. This is a bad look for Apple, if you think capitulation is a bad look. HKMap remains available on the web and on the Google Play Store, end quote. As I was writing this segment, a story popped up on TechMeme,

that Google has removed a game from the Google Play Store that allowed players to roleplay as Hong Kong protesters saying the game violated rules related to, quote, sensitive events. quoting the Wall Street Journal. A Google spokesman said that the company has a policy that prohibits developers from, quote, capitalizing on sensitive events, such as attempting to make money from serious ongoing conflicts or tragedies through a game, end quote, and that it found the app to be in violation of this policy, end quote. I think this tweet storm from Francisco

Tomaski was worth quoting here, quote, this was the predictable result for app stores and why storeless, i.e. the web, is better for developers. What matters is for everyone to have a voice, which is the default of the web, and antithetical to a review process. The point of review is to filter, and you're not in control of the filter. Apple and every other app store owner invited this dilemma. They declared themselves the arbiter and took on this responsibility. They didn't even allow a side load escape hatch. Now they have to themselves take an explicit stance as opposed to being a neutral platform. First, they came for the unapproved language apps. I didn't speak out because my app was objective C. Then they came for the duplicated functionality apps. And I didn't speak out because my

app was a game. Then they came for the political apps, but by then I was locked into the platform, end quote. And actually, I also want to quote, one more tweetstorm. in its entirety. Remember yesterday I mentioned that even a developer of World of Warcraft tweeted that he was boycotting Blizzard because of the whole hearth stone gaming competition controversy. This person actually had a lot to say and I think it's worth hearing him out. This is Mark Kern at Grum's on Twitter on October 8th. Quote, This hurts. But until Blizzard reverses their decision on at Blitzchung, H.S, I am giving up playing classic World of Warcraft, which I helped make and helped convince Blizzard to relaunch.

There will be no Mark of Kern Guild after all. Let me explain why I am hashtag boycott Blizzard. I am ethnically Chinese. I was born in Taiwan and I lived in Hong Kong for a time. I have done business with China for many years with several gaming companies. there. So I think I have a valid perspective here, having been a team lead at Blizzard and having grown up in Asia, I have watched China slowly take over as the dominant investing force in gaming and movies over the years. It's a shame U.S. companies never believed as strongly as China and Asia in investing in games, but this allowed China to have unprecedented influence over our media. Chinese game companies have grown huge, not just because of market size, but because the government

subsidizes them. They get free land, free offices, and huge infusions of cash. This cash was and is used to expand and buy up stakes in U.S. gaming companies. I've seen firsthand the corruption of Chinese gaming companies, and I was removed from a company I founded, after Blizzard, for refusing to take a $2 million kickback bribe to take an investment from China. This is the first time I've ever spoken publicly about it. I've also seen how American company reps in China have been offered similar bribes to get licenses for large AAA titles. Not everyone refused like I did. Chinese companies tried to ruin my career with planted press stories. Money is often paid for favorable press in China and some of that money flows here to the U.S. as well.

Unfortunately, money talks. China has succeeded in infiltrating all levels of tech, gaming, and more. Unfortunately, U.S. and European companies are loath to take risks and invest in game companies legally as much as China was. China remained one of the few places mid-tier studios could get funding. So again, China's influence grew. I'm sure this is the same for movies as well. But now we are in a situation where unlimited communist money dictates our American values. We censor our games for China. We censor our movies for China. Now game companies are silencing voices for freedom and democracy. China is dictating that the world be authoritarian. Of all the companies in the world, Blizzard is the last I ever expected to give in to China's demands. Blizzard was always about gamer first and don't be greedy.

At least it was when I was there. It's one thing to keep politics out of games, which I am still a proponent of doing. It's another to unfairly and harshly punish voices that speak out against corruption, against abuses of human rights, and freedom. I take a huge risk by saying this. China monitors all social media, and I know this means that we will probably never get an investment from China for my new MMO, and probably never get a license to operate there. But enough is enough. I stand with Hong Kong and I oppose Blizzard's obvious and laughably transparent fear of China. It's time for Blizzard to grow the spine it used to have

and to do what's right for gamers once again. Gamers Rise Up, end quote. Big news on my self-driving cars by 2020 Wager. Waymo has apparently started sending emails out to members of its early writer program in Arizona. saying that they could be matched soon with a fully driverless car. And if they are matched with a driverless car, Waymo will notify them ahead of time. TechCrunch noticed that a user had posted a full copy of said email to Reddit. The email entitled,

Completely Driverless Waymo Cars are on the way, was sent to customers that use its ride-hailing app in the suburbs of Phoenix. Both the early rider program and Waymo One service use self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans to shuttle Phoenix residents in a geo-fenced area that covers several suburbs, including Chandler and Tempe. All of these self-driving rides have a human safety driver behind the wheel. A driverless ride is what it sounds like. No safety driver behind the wheel, although a Waymo employee would likely be present in the vehicle initially, end quote.

No word on the number of driverless vehicles that will soon be in circulation, nor any hard and fast date beyond merely soon. but if it is soon, one would have to assume that this would be before the end of 2020. Hat tip to Chris Messina, I know you're listening, who it seems has decided to monitor the self-driving by 2020 wager on behalf of this podcast and keep me honest. Didn't have to dig around for an interesting raise Thursday item. This is an interesting raise from a company you probably already know. Grammarly provides AI-based grammar and spell checking tools, and it has raised

raised a $90 million round of funding led by General Catalyst, at a valuation over $1 billion, and bringing its total raised lifetime to $200 million. Quoting Ingrid London in TechCrunch. Today, Gramerly can be used across a number of browsers via browser extensions as a web app through mobile and on desktop apps and through specific apps such as Microsoft Office. But the area where we communicate via the written word is expanding all the time. consider, for example, how much we use chat and texting apps for leisure and for work, so expect that list to continue growing.

Quote, the mountain of digital communication is increasing and in the workplace we have more distributed teams, Brad Hoover, the company's CEO said, pointing to the importance of people presenting themselves in consistent and compelling ways, end quote. Grammarly today operates on a freemium model where paid tiers give users more tools beyond grammar checks and conciseness to include things like readability, detection, alternative vocabulary, and tone suggestions, not to be confused with tone policing, and plagiarism checks in tiers that are priced at $11.66, $19.98, and $295 per month. Hoover would not say how many of its users are taking paid tiers or how much the company makes from that, but he did confirm

that, like others offering freemium, the majority of users are free ones. And like other free users, they are subject to cookies and the rest, but the company confirms to me that it doesn't make any money from that and only from its subscription revenues. We don't sell or rent user data to third parties for any reason, including for them to deliver their ads, period. Our business model is a premium model in which we offer a free version of our product as well as Gramerly Premium and Gramerly Business, which are paid upgrades, a spokesperson said. The only way Gramerly makes money is through its subscriptions, end quote. The website Splinter is shutting down due to insufficient traffic. So in a way, today marks the final death rattle of Gawker. I'll let the Daily Beast explain, quote,

Paul Maidment, the editorial director of Splinter's parent company, G.O. Media, claimed there would be, quote, no reduction of GOMedia's editorial workforce as a result of this decision, end quote, and Splinter's headcount would be, quote, reallocated across other sites at G.O. the network of former Gizmodo media group sites, including Deadspin, Jezabelle Gizmodo, and Jalapnik, among others. Quote, our goal, wherever possible, will be to retain current Splinter staff members in open positions at other Geo Media sites, end quote. Some Splinter staffers, however, said they'd been laid off. Deputy editor Jack Mirkinson tweeted, quote, Splinter is shutting down and we're all being laid off. And staff writer Sam Grasso wrote, quote, I'm getting laid off, end quote.

Splinter was launched in 2017 after, Univision acquired most of the old Gawker media assets following Gawker's high-profile legal dispute with wrestler Hulk Hogan and conservative tech billionaire Peter Thiel. Splinter, largely focused on political and media news, often throwing elbows and offering a criticism of mainstream news organizations from the political left, end quote. In a way, you could argue that this is not the biggest news, a site that apparently not a lot of people were reading is shutting down, but it's impossible to overstate the historical import that Gawker had in creating the modern digital media landscape. So I do think the final fate of Gawker,

or at least its descendant, is worth making note of. Silicon Valley listeners, are you wondering why it is that you might have lost power at your house due to the blackouts? But when you got to work, if you can make it in, the lights are still on there? Well, Wired has an explainer for you about why it is exactly the PG&E blackouts have spared big tech campuses. Quote, what PG&E is doing is blacking out the kind of low voltage wires that deliver power to homes, says Michael Wara, head of climate and energy policy program at Stanford University's Woods Institute. But typically big commercial customers like a tech headquarters tend to be located closer to the bulk transmission system and the high voltage lines which are much less impacted by this outage,

end quote. The types of power lines traditionally seen dangling overhead in residential areas and neighborhoods are considered more of a wildfire risk because of their proximity to the ground and increased likelihood of being surrounded by trees and other forms of vegetation, he explained. Bulky high voltage transmission lines, which are designed to carry large amounts of energy to large industrial users and local distributors, just aren't vulnerable in the same way. Wara says they tend to be built to higher standards, making them less prone to wind damage. Quote, the lines in the South Bay, where the tech headquarters are, like in Mountain View and Santa Clara County, are surrounded by wide open space.

There's basically no vegetation. It's flat, which makes it an even lower fire risk, Wara explained. The mountains in between Silicon Valley and the ocean, however, are covered in forests, extremely high risk and covered in very valuable real estate, end quote. hence the blackouts, end quote. Click through to the story link for a picture of an actual blackout map that shows that the blackouts creep literally right up to the boundary line of Tesla HQ property, for example. But Tesla HQ remains powered. And I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that.

I just found it interesting to learn why that is the way it is. And finally today, here's something that I'm. I've also been wondering for a while, a question that is literally asked in the headline of this one zero piece. What happens when your tweet becomes a subway ad? Maybe you've seen them, those ads for Twitter that are literally just screencaps of people's actual tweets. They're on subways, billboards, even the entire sides of buildings in Manhattan. Now, we all know, or you should know, that Twitter's terms of service allow for this. In fact, quoting the piece, quote, indeed, Twitter maintains the wrong.

right to sub-license, broadcast, and display tweets as advertising and share them with an ecosystem of partners. Twitter's terms of service state that, quote, what's yours is yours, end quote, but by posting, you grant the company a worldwide non-exclusive and royalty-free license to use your content, end quote. Okay, so then if your tweet does get picked by Twitter to become an ad for Twitter, well, I guess it turns out that Twitter is super polite about it, quoting the piece again. according to several people whose tweets were featured in Twitter's ad campaign, the experience was quite positive. In most cases, Twitter contacted them in a tweet or DM from its Twitter Notify account, which alerts people when their tweets have been used in promotional material.

We love your tweet and may want to use it for promotional materials and signage. The account tweeted at users for this particular campaign. Let us know ASAP if you have any objections. Thanks. Quote, I wasn't upset or anything like that. Twitter user Steve Bensner told 1.0 about his tweet. If Twitter is a snack, what is it? Maybe Flaming Hot Cheetos. Being prominently displayed by the turnstiles at the PAL Street Station. Quote, it's a tweet about Cheetos. So it's not anything profound, he added.

Twitter user GM Palmer recalled, they messaged me a while ago to say they wanted to use my tweet in an ad campaign, and did I mind? I said I didn't, and also that it was nice of them to ask since the end user license agreement says they don't have to, end quote. Twitter also apparently mails you a care package of Twitter stickers, t-shirts, a water bottle, and a framed printout of your tweet. So, yeah, all in all, that's nice. By the way, I forgot to say thank you for all of those reviews on Apple Podcasts and other places, too. Aside from helping other people discover this show, it's also fun for me to just, you know, see the reviews and see the nice things that you focus. have to say. I'm super glad that this show is apparently a legit, valuable resource for a lot of you out there. I appreciate all of you listening to my rambles every single day. And I'll be back

again to do it all tomorrow. Talk to you then.