Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 8/30 - iGlasses? (Pun Not Intended)

Episode Date: August 30, 2018

An Apple acquisition suggests they’re serious about AR, Uber is serious about escooters, Google lets Kubernetes leave the nest, your IP address is not enough to finger you for a crime, and a fully functional Bugatti made out of Legos. Links:Apple buys startup focused on lenses for AR glasses (Reuters)Apple’s AR lenses purchase also sees future mobile storage (ComputerWorld)Google takes a step back from running the Kubernetes development infrastructure (TechCrunch)Uber Is Building Its Own Scooter to Compete in Frenzy (Bloomberg)Microsoft Requires Paid Parental Leave for Subcontractors (Bloomberg)Important Appeals Court Ruling States Clearly That Merely Having An IP Address Is Insufficient For Infringement Claims (TechDirt)FIRST EVER LIFE-SIZE AND DRIVABLE LEGO® TECHNIC BUGATTI CHIRON IS A PIONEERING PIECE OF ENGINEERING AND DESIGN (Lego) 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 30th, 2018. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, an Apple acquisition suggests they're serious about AR. Uber is serious about e-scooters. Google lets Kubernetes leave the nest. Your IP address is no longer enough to finger you for a crime.

And a fully functional Bugatti made out of Legos. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Reuters reports that Apple has acquired Aconia Holographics, a Colorado-based company that makes hollow mirror lenses for augmented reality glasses and owns a pile of patents in the space. Last year, Bloomberg reported that Apple is developing AR glasses that might ship as early as 2020, so one would assume that this is related to that. Using its traditional no-comit-style response, though, Apple said, quote, Apple buys smaller companies from time to time, and we generally don't discuss our purpose or plans, end quote. Well, even if Apple won't talk about it, everybody else is trying to read the

tea leaves. Reuters says that Aconia's hollow mirror technology would allow for, quote, thin, transparent smart glass lenses that display vibrant full color, wide field of view images, end quote. Aconia's technology is different from current AR headsets on the market from Magic Leap and Microsoft, which use darkened lenses designed for indoor use only. Quoting again from Reuters, the Aconia acquisition is the first clear indication of how Apple might handle one of the most daunting challenges in augmented reality hardware, producing crystal clear optical displays thin and light enough to fit into glasses similar to everyday frames with images bright enough for outdoor use and suited to mass manufacturing at a relatively low price, end quote. But there may be even more

to this story. At Computer World, Johnny Evans reports that Aconia holographics was originally founded to create holographic storage devices, and the pivot to lenses happened later. In April of 2015, the company tweeted that its storage technology could hold 772 gigabytes per cubic inch on what it called holographic cards. Oconia also suggested there was room to grow to eventually 12.4 terabytes per cubic inch.

By comparison, SSD storage at the time ran about 246 gigabytes per cubic inch. In theory, this ultra-high capacity holographic storage could be used in any Apple product, obviously, though it would obviously be most important in the smaller products, like, I don't know, maybe glasses you'd put on your face. Apple has recently pushed its AR-Kit developer framework for iPhone and iPad. The problem with that tech is you have to hold a device up in front of you. With hardware from Aconia, it's maybe only a matter of time before the device is built into your glasses. Oh, and by the way, Apple today announced the date officially for its iPhone announcement event. It'll be Wednesday, September 12th.

The press invitations say gather round and show a circular design that looks a lot like the main building at Apple Park. The event will take place at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino. For all you Kremlinologists out there that try to parse the meaning of Apple's cryptic announcement graphics, Matt Honan's got you covered. quote, I've been going to Apple events since 2001 and have gotten really good in interpreting these invitations. Based on history and the design here, this event will be about consumer electronics with computational stuff and things made available to the public for purchase at some point, end quote. Google has announced that it is effectively handing over control of the Kubernetes project to the Kubernetes community. Kubernetes is an open source container orchestration system that was originally designed by Google to,

work with a range of container tools. If you don't know what that means, here's the basics. If you're writing an application to run on cloud servers, traditionally you would make what's called a virtual machine. That's a server with all the pieces of your app running together on a single virtual computer that you'd run in the cloud. With containers, you break up your app into a bunch of microservers or containers that can all run together on the same cloud computer or different ones. The benefit of containers is that each piece is separate. If one crashes or has a security hole, it doesn't compromise the entire system. There endeth the explainer.

Back to the story. Until now, Google has hosted most of the resources that supported Kubernetes on its own cloud, but now the company is seating the Cloud Native Computing Foundation with $9 million in Google Cloud credits to let the Kubernetes community take the assets and take it from here. Quoting from TechCrunch, between the testing infrastructure, and hosting container downloads, the Kubernetes project regularly runs more than 150,000 containers on 5,000 virtual machines, so the cost of running these systems quickly adds up. The Kubernetes container registry has served almost 130 million downloads since the launch of the project. It's

also worth noting that the CNCF now includes a wide range of members that typically compete with each other. We're talking about Alibaba Cloud, AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, Oracle, SAP and VMware, for example. All of these profit from the work of the CNCF and the Kubernetes community. Google doesn't say so outright, but it's fair to assume that it wants others to shoulder some of the burden of running the Kubernetes infrastructure too, end quote. As a testament to Kubernetes maturity, we're excited to take the next step and are opening the Kubernetes Project Cloud Resources up to contributors, Google said in its announcement. We believe that all aspects of a mature open source project, including its testing and release infrastructure, should be maintained by the people

developing it, end quote. In other words, you're all grown up, you little open source baby you. Again, it seems Uber is totally serious about tackling that last mile problem, those short trips that maybe cars aren't necessary for. They've already embraced bikes, and it looks like they're getting ready to join the e-scooter fray in a bigger way. Bloomberg is reporting that Uber has quietly began engineering its own scooter. The SkunkWorks project is being overseen by the Jump Bikes Team, which Uber acquired in April for more than $100 million. All of these scooter startups like Lyme and Bird source their bikes from Asian manufacturers. Some design them to their own specifications, but others just order off the shelf. Looks like Uber is going to go for more

of the whole widget route, which would be useful, as we've discussed previously, for unit economics, as we've talked about before. If you can engineer a way to get more range and thus more usage per scooter, potentially your margins can be way bigger. Quote, the scooter project is in early stages. Nick Foley jumps head of product declined to confirm it existed, as did an Uber spokeswoman, but fully agreed to discuss the design challenges that scooters present. They mostly relate to people who want to do these vehicles harm. Fully talked about hiding brake cables, mandals can't cut them and about ways to make scooters harder to snap in half. A fate some have suffered in San Francisco and elsewhere.

The way these scooters are failing is a predictable result of the design and engineering process, Foley says. For the time being, Uber will brand electric scooters it buys from Chinese manufacturers with Jumps logo. It has applied to operate scooter sharing services in Santa Monica and San Francisco, each of which planned to grant permits to several companies before the end of August, end quote. Bloomberg's sources speculate that long-term, Jump can make a better scooter than the outsourcers, as I was saying. And it's funny how this quote keeps popping up in everyone's mouth lately. Ryan Rispecky is Jump's founder and CEO.

At the end of the Bloomberg piece, he says, quote, there's going to be a lot of innovation in terms of what types of light electric vehicles are out there. It's clear that to go a couple miles, you don't need a 2,000 pound lump of steel, end quote. I think that's the third time I've read someone say words to that effect just this week. Microsoft announced today that it will require subcontractors, like those staffing Microsoft's cafeterias say, their facilities, other positions,

to offer their workers at least 12 weeks of paid parental leave. This applies to the birth or adoption of a child into that worker's family. The move would bring subcontractors up to the same. same standard Microsoft sets for its own employees, at least since 2015. It offers birth parents 22 weeks and all parents 12 weeks of parental leave. Microsoft is near the top of the tech industry in terms of family leave policies, though the big outlier, the head of the pack, is Netflix, which offers a full year of paid leave to parents.

But Microsoft's moved to 12 weeks paid leave, both for employees and now sub-conciliation. contractors could begin to set a standard for parental benefits in the tech industry. Microsoft says the new policy applies to companies with 50 or more workers that perform, quote, substantial work for Microsoft. The change will roll out over the next 12 months and will affect thousands of workers. Over at Business Insider, Josh Barrow tweeted, this is a big deal if other companies make similar moves since contracting out of non-core functions has been one of the factors driving the rising wage and benefits gap in the U.S. economy, end quote. Though it is worth noting as well that the reason tech companies love to contract out for this sort of thing

is that they don't want expenses like generous employee benefits on their books. Hertz margins, don't you know? So in theory, Microsoft could achieve the same end by, you know, actually hiring their own janitors in-house and offering them the standard Microsoft benefits package. that way? Still, I don't want to be too snarky. This is clearly a humane, family-friendly move by Microsoft that should be applauded. Bloomberg reports that this move, quote, makes Microsoft the first company to require their vendors to provide parental leave according to family values at work, an advocacy group that promotes paid leave. Until recently, most companies didn't think much about the treatment

of the employees by vendors or companies they subcontract with, said Ellen Bravo, co-executive director of the group. That's a problem, particularly when a company subcontracts vital parts of their work, end quote. From the legal department, here's a ruling that will please both pirates and legitimate business owners, tired of fighting copyright trolls. Earlier this week, the U.S. Court of Appeals in the Ninth Circuit issued a ruling in the case of Cobbler, Nevada, LLC, versus Thomas Gonzalez. The case alleged that someone in Portland, Oregon had used BitTorrent to pirate a 2014 Adam Sandler movie called The Cobbler. The owners of the movie, a company called Cobbler Nevada LLC,

found the IP address of an active BitTorrent client distributing the movie and used that IP address to file a suit against the unknown user who had broadband service at that address. Cobbler LLC subpoenaed the name of the user from Comcast. It was Thomas Gonzalez, Portland resident, but here's where things get interesting. Gonzalez's Comcast service was accessible, quote, both to residents and visitors at an adult care home, end quote.

In other words, lots of people were sharing one IP address, and there was no evidence that Gonzalez himself was the one who had pirated the movie. When notified of the alleged piracy, Gonzalez tried to figure out who did it and told people in the retirement home to knock it off. He didn't find the culprit, but he also refused to give up the names of employees and residents at the home. And it also turns out Gonzalez doesn't actually live at the home. home. Similar to many business owners, like, say, coffee shop owners, he pays for broadband services at his place of business. Despite all this, Cobbler Nevada LLC sued Gonzalez anyway, alleging he had,

quote, copied and distributed the cobbler or facilitated and promoted the use of the internet, end quote, to pirate the movie. The court found in its ruling that the only evidence tying Gonzalez to the alleged piracy was his Comcast subscription at a specific IP address. And they declared that that wasn't enough to bring a suit. The court dismissed Cobler-Novada LLC's suit, writing that, quote, liability arises by actively encouraging infringement through specific acts and not by mere failure to take steps to prevent infringement, end quote. This is big news for business owners who can't necessarily police everything that happens on their networks, but also potentially for everyone, full stop, because it essentially sets the precedent that IP address by itself is not enough,

evidence to prove the identity of someone behind an online crime. Finally today, here's a fun story that will pretty much require you to check the link so that you can see a photo of what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about a working car made almost entirely from Lego parts. At today's Grand Prix Formula One event in Manza, Italy, builders unveiled a freaking Lego car modeled after the Bugatti Shiran. The car is built from over 1 million Lego Technic pieces, including 2,304 motors. While it does have a few non-Lago parts like a steel frame and Bugatti wheels, the vast majority of this thing is made from Lego Technic pieces.

It seats two people and produces 5.3 horsepower. You might ask, how is this possible just with Lego bricks? Well, the car is made from Lego Technic, technically. Technic is a system first introduced in 1977 by Lego and has been evolving ever since. It's a step up from the usual bricks that you're familiar with, offering pieces like roads, gears, axles, and motors. Lego Technic is what's behind those Lego Mindstorms robots. Anyway, back to the car. It's designed to look like a blue Bugatti charon, and it's assembled with no glue.

Every part of the interior and exterior, including the removable steering wheel and functional speedometer, is made from Lego Technic Elements. The car's top speed is just over 12 miles per hour, and the whole thing weighs about 3,300 pounds. Race car driver Andy Wallace, who test drove the car at a German proving ground, said, quote, from about 20 meters away, it's not obvious that you're looking at a Lego car. I can only imagine how much time and effort went into making this model, end quote. imagination is not required according to the Lego PR it took 13,438 person hours

to create this car and you thought your Lego projects were time consuming and that's all for today as always I've been your host Brian McCullough but today I was joined by Chris Higgins who helped out with the writing

of today's episode if you don't know Chris you've probably read his stuff believe me he's written all over the web for years now. He's also a filmmaker, radio producer, Jack of All Trades, and a big-time tech nerd from Portland, Oregon. Chris will be helping me out now and then, possibly a lot more in October when my book is coming out. You can find Chris's writing and filmwork online at chrishiggins.com or follow him on Twitter at Chris Higgins. Thank you, Chris. Welcome to the

team. Talk to y'all tomorrow.