Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 12/08 – Explaining Those Lensa Magic Avatars

Episode Date: December 8, 2022

Apple is going back all in on privacy in a big way with Advanced Data Protection. I’ll explain. Did Sam Bankman-Fried also kill Terra and Luna? A look at those magic avatars from Lensa that everyone is using for their profile picture all of the sudden. And the winner for the most post-pandemic product goes to Dyson. Sponsors: Cyborg.co/ride Get 90% off RexMD with our exclusive link -> RexMD.com/ride Links: Apple Plans New Encryption System to Ward Off Hackers and Protect iCloud Data (WSJ) @matthew_d_green's twitter thread on Apple's new encryption push FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Is Said to Face Market Manipulation Inquiry (NYTimes) Coinbase CEO Sees Revenue Falling 50% or More on Crypto Rout (Bloomberg) AI selfies — and their critics — are taking the internet by storm (Washington Post) Ask these questions before you make your Lensa Magic Avatars (TechRadar) Dyson's Air Purifying Headphones Will Cost $949 (Gizmodo) 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, December 8th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. Apple is back all in on privacy in a big way with advanced data protection.

I'll explain. Did Sam Bankman Freed also kill Tara and Luna? A look at those magic avatars from Lenza that everyone is using for their profile pictures all of a sudden. And the winner for the most post-pandemic product ever goes to Dyson. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. This is a pretty big deal. Apple plans to launch advanced data protection, which will offer end-to-end encryption on iCloud backups, notes, photos, and more. It's going to launch in the U.S. in 2022 and globally,

including China, in 2023, quoting the Wall Street Journal. The expanded end-to-end encryption system, an optional feature called advanced data protection, would keep most data secure that is stored in iCloud, and Apple service used by many of its users to store photos, backup their iPhones, or save specific device data such as notes and messages. The data would be protected in the event that Apple is hacked, and it also wouldn't be accessible to law enforcement, even with a warrant. While Apple has drawn attention in the past for being unable to help agencies such as the FBI access data on its encrypted iPhones, it has been able to provide much of the data

stored in iCloud backups upon a valid legal request. Last year, it responded to thousands of such requests in the U.S., according to the company. With these new security enhancements, Apple would no longer have the technical ability to comply with certain law enforcement requests, such as for iCloud backups, which could include iMessage chat logs and attachments and have been used in many investigations. The FBI said it was, quote, deeply concerned with the threat end-to-end and user-only access encryption pose, end quote, according to a statement provided by an agency spokeswoman. This hinders our ability to protect the American people from criminal acts ranging from cyber attacks and violence against children to drug trafficking,

organized crime and terrorism, the statement said. The FBI and law enforcement agencies need, quote, lawful access by design, it said. Former Western law enforcement and intelligence officials said they were surprised by Apple's decision, in part because the company had refrained in the past from rolling out such encryption settings for ICloud. The official said Apple would sometimes point authorities to the ICloud as a possible means of collecting information that could be useful for criminal investigations. Last year, Apple proposed software for the iPhone that would identify child sexual abuse material on the iPhone. Apple now says it has stopped development of that system following criticism from privacy and security researchers who worried that

the software could be misused by governments or hackers to gain access to sensitive information on the phone, end quote. Yeah, this is an interesting about face here. Why go all in on even the bits of privacy Apple used to shy away from, and why now? Well, let me share this thread speculating from Matthew Green on Twitter. Quote, first, Apple has spent years building the infrastructure to build end-to-end backup for ICloud. This means backup where only you and not Apple, hackers, or the government can access your own data. However, despite deploying the infrastructure to do this as far back as 2016, Apple limited the set of end-to-end encrypted data to things like passwords and your web history. Your text messages, photos, notes, etc., were all accessible to someone who could get into iCloud.

There was a speculation about why this was. Many people argued that there was a risk that some users might lose their data. Forget their password. And for a company as big as Apple, this would be a huge number of complaints. But Apple wouldn't even let power users opt in. Reporting from Reuters claim that the FBI had leaned on Apple not to enable this feature, which also makes a lot of sense. Note that both explanations can be partially true. I can't tell what's going on in terms of internally, but it looks like Apple has gotten over these concerns sufficiently to soon enable full encryption for iCloud backups. This will require users to opt-in, and it will include a social backup feature in case you lose your passcode. Why is this a big deal? Because Apple sets the

standard on what secure consumer cloud backup looks like. Even as an opt-in feature, this move will have repercussions all over the industry as competitors chase them. I want to give credit to Google and WhatsApp as well for deploying some of this end-to-end backup tech on their own. I think the dynamic here is like a ratchet. Companies are all competing to offer better privacy features, and this makes it very hard for anyone to stop. This is a big deal. Maybe you don't obsessively follow and tweet about what Apple does all day like I do, but for people who watch Apple as a leader in the security space, the feeling I get is that something important has happened in Cupertino. Where Apple was hesitant about deploying encryption features last year, maybe even backsliding a bit

with CSAM scanning proposals, it now feels like they've decided to put the gas pedal down. I don't know what's changed. I'm sure Apple Insiders will tell you nothing changed, and this was the plan all along. Whatever it is, it sure is nice to see, end quote. What if Sam Bankman-Fried was not just responsible for his own implosion for the blow-up of FTX and Alameda, but also for a lot of other explosions, blow-ups? That is what U.S. prosecutors are wondering. as sources say they are investigating whether or not SBF manipulated Terra USA and Luna markets, thereby triggering the big cryptocurrency collapses back in May, quoting the New York Times. The focus on possible market manipulation adds to the legal storm brewing around Mr. Bankman-Fried.

It is illegal for an individual to knowingly stage market activity designed to move the price of an asset up or down. In May, major cryptocurrency market makers, exchanges or individuals who arrange for buyers and sellers to be matched, noticed a flood of sell orders coming in for Terry U.S.D, said one person with knowledge of the market activity. The orders were in small denominations, but they were placed very quickly, the person said. The sudden jump in cell orders for Terry U.S.D overwhelmed the system, making it hard to find matching buy orders for them. Under normal conditions, any sell orders that remain unfulfilled for too long would be matched with buy orders at a lower price. The longer the orders lingered without being matched, the more they forced down the price of Terry U.S.D and caused a corresponding drop in

Luna prices because of the way the two coins were linked. The exact causes of the collapse of the two cryptocurrencies remain unclear. However, the bulk of the sell orders for TerraUSD appeared to be coming from one place. Sam Bankman-Freed's cryptocurrency trading firm, which also placed a big bet on the price of Luna falling, according to a person with knowledge of the market activity. Had the trade gone as expected, the price declines in Luna could have yielded a fat profit. Instead, the bottom fell out of the entire TerraUSD Luna ecosystem. The collapse caused more trouble in the cryptocurrency industry, sending several prominent companies into bankruptcy, and raising about $1 trillion in value from the crypto market. The ripple effects from the Luna

crash ultimately contributed to the collapse of Mr. Bankman-Fries business empire as well, end quote. The whole crypto ecosystem remains troubled. We know that. Further proof comes from Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, who said he expects the exchange's 2022 revenue to be roughly half that or less than the $7 billion generated in 2021. Quoting Bloomberg. The rapid downfall of FTX capped what was already a brutal year for the cryptocurrency industry with speculators in retreat as prices of some of the most frequently traded tokens tumbled. Coinbase's shares have fallen more than 80% in 2022 and the company's third quarter revenue was about one-fourth of what it was during the last three months of 2021 when the price of Bitcoin peaked. Last year in 2021, we did about

$7 billion of revenue and about $4 billion of positive EBITDA. And this year, with everything coming down, it's looking, you know, about roughly half that or less. Armstrong said in a wide-ranging interview on Bloomberg's David Rubinstein show, peer-to-peer conversations, when asked about the company's revenue. In additional comments provided after the interview, a Coinbase spokesperson further clarified that they expect 2022 revenue to be less than half of 2021 revenue. Coinbase has previously indicated it may see a 2022 loss of no more than $500 million based on adjusted EBITDA, a measure of earnings that excludes certain costs like interest and depreciation. The company didn't previously provide a full-year outlook for overall revenue, but Armstrong's estimate is in line with the

approximately $3.2 billion expected by analysts, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, end quote. Have you seen those so-called magic avatars proliferating all around social media? Well, let me give you the background on Prisma Labs, who is the company behind that stable diffusion-based image generation app Lenza. First, quoting the Washington Post. Lenza, a photo and video editing app from Prisma Labs, has been around since 2018, but its worldwide downloads skyrocketed after the launch of its Magic Avatar's feature in late November, according to analytics firm Censor Tower.

The app saw 4 million installs in the first five days of December compared to 2 million in all of November, shooting to the top of the charts in the Apple and Google App Stores. Consumers spent $8.2 million in the app during that five-day period, Censor Tower reports. The app is subscription-based and costs $35.99 a year with an extra charge of $3 to $12 for packs of avatars. Upload 8 to 10 photos of yourself with your face filling most of the frame and no one else in the shot, and Lenza will use the photos to train a machine learning model. Then the model generates images based on your face in different artistic styles like anime or fairy princess, end quote. Now quoting from TechRadar. The app is freely

available on iOS and Android. Opening it presents you with a 4999 subscription offer that you can cancel any time. I personally hate apps like this, ones that tease you with an incredibly cool feature, but demand exorbitant cash payments up front. And like many other apps, the subscription offer is kind of a front. If you ignore it, the app immediately dumps you into the pay-per-play section, where you can buy anywhere from 50 to 100 AI-generated magic avatars for 799 to 1499 without subscribing to anything. What's shocking to me is just the sheer number of people that are paying to have their images digested and then spit out as striking AI artworks. The FOMO is so strong here that everyone, even this now embarrassed reporter, is succumbing. My adult son spent almost $15 for a batch of images of his girlfriend.

But what happens to the images we so willingly supply to it? How do we know, for example, that images we upload are not being used to further train the AI? I see no way to opt out of that possibility. I do have some good news, though, even though Prisma Labs doesn't include a lot of what I consider necessary information in its app, and didn't answer my questions directly, it did point me to a voluminous FAQ that does address some of these concerns. On the question of what Lenza does with our images, Prisma Labs writes that they're deleted from Prisma Labs servers once processing is complete. However, the FAQ also contains this language, quote, We store avatars for as long as it takes to provide our users with the service.

Please note, a new feature which would allow users to permanently delete their avatars from our servers, is currently underway, end quote. Put another way, your original photos are gone, but those images that Lenza created, Prisma Labs still has them. There's no mention of data encryption, by the way, end quote. Finally today, would you wear this? you should probably click through to the link to this Engadgett story to understand what we're going to talk about. But Dyson, makers of the Dyson vacuums, of course, officially announced the long-rumored $949 Dyson zone noise-canceling headphones,

which also double as filters to block unwanted air particles. It's available for pre-order in March 2023. So imagine almost a halo-looking mask combined with headphones. that have air filtration inside the mask? Quoting Gizmodo. The Dyson Zone headphones fall into that category of Dyson design with an unorthodox look that integrates the smallest 10,000 RPM electric motors the company has ever developed into each ear cup,

letting the purifier on the front draw air through dual-layer filters to remove particles like pollen, bacteria, and dust, plus gases like nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and ozone. However, as Dyson has pointed out before, the zone headphones don't create a perfect seal and are not a solution for minimizing the risk of COVID-19 exposure. The clean air is then directed to the wearer's mouth and nose through a magnetically attached mask that's also designed to block wind. It's a personal air filtration system designed for situations when a standing air filtering fan is useless, like a daily commute

through a car-clogged city. According to Dyson, those filters will need to be replaced roughly every 12 months with an accompanying app providing reminders when a swapout is needed. Active noise cancellation almost seems to have replaced sound quality when it comes to what premium headphone makers focus on these days, but the Dyson Zone has a unique challenge, with electric motors and fans sitting right next to a user's ears. Both Apple's AirPods Max and Sony's WH-1000 XM-5 use eight microphones to capture and eliminate environmental noises, and the Dyson zone does the same, relying on eight mics to reduce ambient sounds by up to 38 decibels.

However, it also includes two additional microphones to deal with sounds from the air-filter system plus one for picking up the user's voice for phone calls. The Dyson Zone's 40-millimeter neodymium drivers are promised to reproduce frequencies from 6 Hertz to 21 kilohertz, while a 2,600 mill-amp hour battery that can be fully recharge in about three hours offers up to 50 hours of audio enjoyment, even with ANC turned on. However, the Dyson Zone's battery life takes quite a hit with the air filtration system activated. With the purifier on its lowest setting, the Dyson's battery life reaches just four hours but drops to two and a half hours on the medium setting and a mere one and a half hours with the air filtration system working as hard as it can.

That's more than enough for the average daily commute, but not really long enough to provide fresh air on most domestic or international flights, at least without an external power source, end quote. Also note the $1,000 price tag. Remember when we would watch sci-fi movies like Blade Runner or Mad Max and we wondered what had happened to society to make people all the sudden wear these weird masks and prosthetics every day. Yeah, well, I guess we're officially in that world because even though, especially because of the price tag, I have no intention of buying this, I got to admit, I did have a few seconds of thinking, well, you know, maybe this is not entirely a bad idea.

Chris and I are going to do our Twitter space this afternoon, a few hours after this episode drops. Sorry for the short notice, but it works better. for our schedule this week. And who knows, maybe people who don't usually get to jump into these can jump in because of time zones, you know. Gonna talk about the biggest stories of 2022 and we'll take some suggestions from the audience for what those are. Also, we'll prognosticate and make predictions about what we think we'll see in tech

in 2023. Quick update on my TikTok experiment. The first video did well, 903 views, and I thought, okay, we're off to the races. Then the next video did 413. views and yesterday's is stuck at 98 views. Actually having better luck with YouTube shorts, yesterday's video there got 806 views. Isn't YouTube more susceptible to keyword optimization? Anyway, maybe it's just like all social media. It's a crapshoot. I was checking out Turner Novak's TikToks and some of them get a couple hundred views, some of them a couple thousand,

and then one out of the blue will get like 41,000. I'd like one of those, please. Talk to you in a few hours on the Twitter space and then tomorrow.