Tech Brew Ride Home - Thursday, June 14, 2018 - Save Metafilter!

Episode Date: June 14, 2018

Apple tries to lock down it’s phones again, Google makes ad targeting more transparent, Microsoft works to replace cashiers with robots… but the robots have already come for middle managers at Amazon, and a plea to help save Metafilter. Stories from: @spencersoper, @viticci, @CamiRusso Links:Shortcuts: A New Vision for Siri and iOS Automation (MacStories)Amazon’s Clever Machines Are Moving From the Warehouse to Headquarters (Bloomberg)Making a Killing in Virtual Real Estate (Bloomberg)The Million Dollar Homepage (Wikipedia)SAVE METAFILTER! 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 TechMame Ride Home for Thursday, June 14th, 2018. I'm your host, Brian McCullough. Today, Apple tries to lock down its phones again.

Google makes ad targeting more transparent. Microsoft works to replace cashiers with robots, but the robots have already come for middle managers at Amazon, and a plea to help save Metafilter. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. motherboard and a bunch of other places had been reporting on this, but the New York Times and Reuters actually got Apple to confirm that an upcoming software update will soon disable the iPhone's lightning port if it isn't used for longer than an hour. This will effectively close the technical loophole that had allowed law enforcement agencies to essentially brute force their way into phones and access the data of criminal suspects. We've spoken before about devices like Gray Key that law enforcement agencies have been purchasing to break into phones and defeat Apple's existing security features.

In the old and timey days, you could break into iPhones simply by trying every possible passcode, but Apple blocked that by disabling iPhones after a certain number of incorrect entries. Devices like the Gray Key could still break in by installing low-level software through the Lightning Port. Now, by automatically shutting down the ability of the lightning port to send data if it hasn't been unlocked in the past hour, this essentially shuts that door. Quote, we're consistently strengthening the security protections in every Apple product to help customers defend against hackers, identity fees, and intrusions into their personal data, said an Apple representative in a statement. we have the greatest respect for law enforcement and we don't design our security improvements to frustrate their efforts to do their jobs, end quote. But Chuck Cohen, who leads an Indiana state police task force on internet crimes against children, told the New York Times, quote, if we go back to the situation where we again don't have access, now we know directly all the evidence we've lost and all the kids we can't put into a position of safety. Facebook is not the only one that's trying to be more transparent about its advertising practices.

You know those little why this ad boxes that you see in the corner of ads sometimes online? That means that that particular ad was served to you by Google. And Google today announced it was refreshing the why this ad feature, as well as making changes to its ad settings tool generally to help users get control over the information that is used to target ads against them. You can now log into your Google account, click on add settings, and scroll through the list of data points the algorithm has on you. You can click to get more details and even remove certain categories if you want. I actually went in and did this this morning.

I noticed, for example, there was a golf category. When I clicked on it, a window popped up that said, Google estimates this interest based on your activity on non-Google websites and apps when you were signed in. So I don't play golf, but I did watch the Masters streamed on the web this year. So maybe that's how they decided to target me. I clicked to turn that category off, as well as the jazz category and the motorsports category. Did this actually accomplish anything other than actually helping Google by eliminating ad targeting that probably wouldn't have worked on me anyway?

Did I essentially just help Google target ads towards me better? Maybe, but it still felt good. like I had some level of control over things. As far as the why this ad tool, Google is simply rolling it out more so that you'll see it on more ads. In the blog post announcing the changes, Google wrote,

starting today, you'll see why this ad notices on all our services that show Google Ads, such as ads on YouTube, including the YouTube app on connected TVs, Google Play, Gmail, Maps, and Search. We've also expanded it to include almost all of the websites,

and apps that partner with us to show ads. I had lunch yesterday with a friend who's much more of a developer than I'll ever be, and I casually remarked to him about how little news seemed to come out of WWDC this year. He then proceeded to convince me that the new Siri Shortcuts feature that will be coming to iOS 12

was actually a much bigger deal than I had realized. If you are also looking to be convinced of this, I would point you to a rather lengthy piece in Mac stories from Federico Vitici that gives you a comprehensive overview of Siri shortcuts and especially the new shortcuts app. He makes a case that's similar to my friend, quote, the more I think about it, the more I see custom shortcut phrases as the next big step in making Siri a more personal assistant that is unique to each user. As what happened with an actual assistant, shortcut phrases allow users to form their own language over time,

creating a personalized set of instructions that only their assistant can interpret and act upon. It's the equivalent of jargon in a group of friends, but applied to Siri and app actions. The potential accessibility perks are tremendous too. Apple now enables everyone to create custom Siri phrases that can be however long or short they want. This removes the need to find actions nested in apps, multiple levels deep into their navigation stack. Batichu concludes by saying, quote, shortcuts and custom phrases feel like the future of Siri and apps. They're supported in every permutation of Siri and, most importantly, they let users develop

their own language to access commonly used actions instead of forcing them to remember a syntax made of app names and verbs. Shortcuts, phrases, and custom intents feel like an app and user-centric response to Alexa skills that Apple is uniquely positioned to build. Reuters is reporting a exclusive. exclusively that sources have told it that Microsoft is working on new technologies that would eliminate cashiers and checkout lines in retail stores and has held talks with Walmart about a potential collaboration around this technology. This is obviously in competition with Amazon Go, those recently rolled out pilot stores that Amazon is trialing around the country. But the interesting twist is that this could be a Microsoft and Walmart joint effort to keep an eye on Amazon.

as Shura Ovita tweeted, quote, there were theories that Amazon would sell the tech behind its go store to other companies, but Microsoft is way less threatening to retailers, end quote. So if Microsoft could prove this technology, your average retailer would probably rather do business with them, rather than with the company that is threatening to end all of physical retail as we know it. According to Reuters, Microsoft apparently has an internal team of 10 to 15 working on retail store technologies within its business AI group,

including a computer vision specialist hired from Amazon Go. Among the experiments are things like attaching cameras to shopping carts and using smartphones to pay while walking out the door. Interestingly, though, earlier this year, Walmart rolled back a previous automated checkout initiative that it said led to a drop in per store satisfaction levels and actually didn't make a meaningful dent in operating margins. Speaking of robots replacing humans and speaking of Amazon, Bloomberg has an interesting story up about how algorithms are apparently replacing middle managers at Amazon.

If you think about it, Amazon is an ultra-complicated business. Lord knows how many people are employed doing things like managing inventories, negotiating retail rates with brands, etc., etc. Apparently, though, in recent months, a lot of these veteran managers who handle these things at Amazon, probably bringing down six-figure. your salaries to do so, have either left for other jobs and other companies or have been reassigned internally. Why? Well, it turns out that the algorithms have gotten better at doing their jobs than the humans themselves can do. Quoting from the piece, Amazon began automating retail team jobs several years ago under an initiative called Hands Off the Wheel. The company shifted tasks like forecasting demand, ordering inventory and negotiating prices

to algorithms, people familiar with the matter say. At first, humans could easily override the machine's decisions. For instance, if a brand notified Amazon about an upcoming marketing blitz for a product, an Amazon manager could increase the order in anticipation of demand that the algorithm didn't expect. But such tinkering was increasingly discouraged as the machines proved their precision, the people say. Anyone overriding the machines had to justify their decision and the push to automate made them reluctant. Later on in the piece, quote, about two years ago, the retail team lost another key task, negotiating with major brands and manufacturers the terms of popular sales on the site called Lightning Deals.

Common during the holidays as well as Mother's Day and Father's Day, they help move lots of inventory in a short period. Now, instead of calling their vendor manager at Amazon, the makers of handbags, smartphone accessories, and other products, simply log in to an Amazon portal that will determine if Amazon likes the deal being offered and the quantity it is willing to buy. No small talk, no give and take. Thousands of Amazon man hours spent forecasting demand, planning, marketing strategies, and negotiating deals is now handled by software. A major leap in efficiency. I mentioned second life recently, I think in last week's Long Reads Suggestions segment. Also in Bloomberg, there's a piece up about Genesis City, which I can only describe as a second life-like virtual world, but built as a part of the Ethereum blockchain-based Decentraland virtual world.

See if this sounds familiar to you. In December, Kundsman paid $15,000 for 62 plots of about 1,100 square feet apiece, and he recouped his investment three months later by reselling a mere eight of them. Today, resellers can reliably get as much as $30,000 for a Genesis City plot. Credit network ripio.com paid almost $150,000 for a spot next to the main square where visitors appear when they enter the city. The record is $200,000 sold by a user who recently bought the same plot for $13,000. Scarcity is driving the speculation. Unlike Second Life or games such as SimCity, Genesis has fixed virtual dimensions, some 90,000 plots that make it about the size. of a digital Washington, D.C., end quote.

So essentially this is a virtual world where there is a virtual land rush and land speculation going on. If you weren't around, there was a virtual land grab and rampant speculation in Second Life at one time as well. And if that analogy is not perfect,

may I recommend you do a Wikipedia search for something called the million dollar homepage? There's a link in the show notes. So I can't shake the sense that with crypto, we're basically going to go through every permutation of the web from the last 25 years, but this time on the blockchain, of course, and possibly this time without that part where we somehow hit on something that has undeniable utility or stands a chance of being adopted by the mainstream. Please don't at me, crypto fans. I love crypto, but crypto maximalists keep swearing to me that this will be a revolution that will rival the impact of the Internet on society. And so far, all I'm seeing is basically every trend and fad from the Internet era repeated.

You know what Karl Marx said, of course. History repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce. This happened late yesterday, so I missed covering it, but I wanted to note it nonetheless. less. When the AT&T Time Warner merger was approved by the judge, Market Watchers said this would open the floodgates to more consolidation in the media space. And yesterday, the first shoe dropped when Comcast offered $65 billion all in cash for most of 21st century Fox. That would be a 19% premium on Disney's offer. So clearly this is an attempt by Comcast to block Disney from grabbing this valuable IP library.

No need to really go into the details at the moment, but most people are obviously expecting a bidding war to break out now. Disney needs all the content it can get to make its presumed streaming video service attractive to consumers. At the risk of flogging this point to death, the next 18 months to three years, this will be the huge story. Will a non-tech media company be able to cobble together

enough of an arsenal to compete with the likes of Netflix, Amazon, Apple, at all? Or will we wake up five years from now and realize that basically the entire entertainment industry is merely a grouping of tiny loss-leading divisions inside the org structures of the largest tech companies? This is what Ben Thompson talks about when he says,

everyone is racing to be the one app that you use to do a thing. The one app you use to get somewhere, the one app you use to get something to eat. Who will be the one app you turn to? when you want to be entertained. This is probably going to be wild. Insert Michael Jackson eating popcorn from the thriller music video, GIF here. Speaking of the new media landscape, quick check-in with Movie Pass.

They're still alive. In fact, on Wednesday, Movie Pass announced it that it's surpassed 3 million paid subscribers for the first time. They're projecting that they will top 5 million subscribers by the end of this year. Problem is, when you plot that out on a graph, that shows. shows that MoviePass's growth is actually slowing significantly. Given that the financial model for MoviePass hasn't made sense to anyone for basically its entire existence, it's unclear which news is more important ultimately. The impressive subscriber milestone or that the once hockey puck growth chart is leveling off.

At the time of this recording, shares of Helios and Matheson Analytics, the parent company of MoviePass, were trading at 37 cents. Let's end today with a call to arms. Metafilter is one of the oldest general interest community weblogs in the world. Founded in 1999 around the same time as Slashdot, but way before there was a Reddit, before there was a dig or any kind of social media, there was Metafilter. Well, Metafilter is in trouble, y'all. Like other non-Mega media silos, like other independent websites,

the ads aren't paying the bills at Metafilter anymore. Josh Millard, who's been running the site since 2017, posted on Metafilter today that, quote, the ad revenue we have historically depended on to help fund our round-the-clock moderation team has dropped significantly this year, and as of June 2018, we are operating at an $8,000 a month shortfall. We don't have the resources to sustain such a loss for long, end quote. Metafilter currently employs six full and part-time moderators and a dedicated tech person to keep the posts and community functioning, all operating on a budget of around $38,000 a month. And quote, at the start of 2018, we were breaking even, but there's been a significant decline in AdSense revenue the last few months. We've also been affected by Amazon's reduction in affiliate program payouts starting around the middle of last year.

At our current rate of loss, we have enough in savings to bear us through the next four months or so with no change in spending, end quote. As Millard notes in the post, Metafilter has been focused for almost 20 years on fulfilling the web's potential to bring people together and create genuine, vibrant, good-hearted community spaces. So don't let Metafilter die. If sites like Metafilter can't make it, that's precisely why we can't have nice things on the Internet. If you'd be willing to kick in to help Metafilter out, I have a link in the show notes so that you can send them a couple of shekels. So thanks for all the responses to the Twitter poll last night. As I said, nothing is going to change in the links or the show notes, especially not for the long read segments on Friday. Don't worry.

That's the whole point of the long reads, of course. But it was super useful to understand how you guys use the show, what the use case is, and what the value proposition is for most of you. I think some of you know I'm a web guy. I used to detail the granular analytics and immediate feedback. So some days it sort of feels like I'm just sending the pod out into the void. So it's gratifying to learn how quickly this has become a valuable resource for a lot of you. Thank you for the feedback and thanks for listening.