Tech Brew Ride Home - Thursday, May 31, 2018 - Self Driving Cars 4 Realz

Episode Date: May 31, 2018

A bunch of self driving car news, a bunch of headline making quotes from the Code Conference, a couple new flagship smartphones, and a new Atari gaming console that nobody is quite sure the purpose of. Stories: @Charlie_L_Hall, @richardlai Tweets: @ChengmingAlpert, @dcseifert Links:Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi says he’s trying to convince Alphabet to put Waymo self-driving cars on the company’s network (Recode)Xiaomi's transparent Mi 8 also does 3D face unlock (Engadget)Atari is crowdfunding a new console, but who is this device actually for? (Polygon) 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 Ride Home for Thursday, May 31st, 2018. Today, a whole bunch of self-driving car news. A bunch of headline making quotes from the Code Conference,

a couple new flagship smartphones, and a new Atari gaming console that nobody is quite sure the purpose of. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. The Code Conference continues, and seemingly every major CEO and founder in the tech industry is stepping up to make headlines with Caraswisher. Last night it was Darakoshajee's turn, and the Uber CEO raised some eyebrows by claiming that his company is in talks with Waymo to add Waymo's self-driving cars to its network. This is surprising for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that Uber, of course, has its own self-driving initiative.

But also, there was that little detail of the incredibly bitter lawsuit battle that Uber and Waymo settled only a few months ago. As the Verges Dieter-Bone tweeted, was not expected. Uber and Waymo to be making nice with each other so quickly after that very vicious lawsuit. Our relationship is getting better, Koswashi told Swisher, referring to Uber's relationship with Waymo. Quote, you build relationships slowly but surely. I have a long relationship with Google and we have a trust level. We're having discussions with Waymo. If something happens, great. They're an incredible technology provider. They're serious about autonomous. To the extent that that technology could show up on the Uber network, I think it could be a good thing. It's up to them

whether they want to do it or not, end quote. But this in no way means that Uber is abandoning its own self-driving vehicle efforts. Uber, of course, has suspended its self-driving tests after the fatal pedestrian accident in March. But Kosso-Shahi said Uber intends to get back on the roads with its autonomous tests this summer and doing so, quote, in as safe a manner as possible. Kosho Shahi said that the future of autonomy is, quote, horizontal technology that should be available to everybody, and Uber would be open to licensing whatever tech it develops to other companies. Quote, ultimately, I think that we're not going to look to own the tech ourselves. We'll license to third parties, end quote. That's a far cry from his predecessor, Travis Kalanick, who once called autonomous tech an existential threat to Uber.

Koswar Shahi also made headlines earlier yesterday when he told CNBC that Uber was, quote, on track in 2019 for an IPO. Lots of things can happen in the world, but we have a reasonable buffer as well, so I think we're in a pretty good spot, end quote. Of course, everyone knows Uber is preparing for an IPO, but what nobody knew is that Warren Buffett apparently offered to invest $3 billion in Uber earlier this year. Quote, we did have discussions, Kosra Shahi told CNBC. One of my business goals in life has been to get Warren Buffett to invest in something that I'm involved in, and so far, I failed. Masayoshi Son strikes again. This morning, General Motors announced that SoftBanks Vision Fund, that $100 billion investment fund directed by Son, will invest $2.25 billion in GM's cruise self-driving car program, valuing the business at $11.5 billion. $1. GM bought Cruise in 2016 for only around a billion dollars. As a part of the SoftBank deal, GM itself is committing to investing a further $1.1 billion into Cruise. Once the deal closes, SoftBank will hold a 19.6% stake in Cruise, which has more than 800 employees and is currently testing about 180 autonomous Chevrolet Bolt cars in its hometown of San Francisco, as well as the Phoenix and Detroit areas.

GM is prepping a factory in suburban Detroit to begin production of autonomous Chevy volts, and news of the deal caused GM shares to surge 11% in early morning stock market trading. Our crews and GM teams together have made tremendous progress over the last two years, so said GM chairman and CEO Mary Barra. Quote, teaming up with SoftBank adds an additional strong partner as we pursue our vision of zero crashes, zero emissions, and zero congestion. end quote. SoftBank and GM said around the announcement that they hope to have commercial vehicles ready to come to market as soon as next year. According to Axios, SoftBank considered investing in other autonomous OEMs, but came to the conclusion that GM offered superior scale and speed to market.

More autonomous car news. Waymo this afternoon announced a deal with Fiat Chrysler to add 62,000 minivans to its upcoming Robo Taxi Service. And according to various reports, the two companies are in discussion about how to eventually partner to sell self-driving cars directly to consumers. This is pretty big news. In order like that makes the concept of these cars being on the road in the near future that much more real. Waymo currently has 600 Chrysler Pacifica minivans in its test fleet of autonomous vehicles. And Waymo intends to launch a fully driverless commercial taxi service in Arizona later this. year. Given that a 2018 Chrysler Pacifica hybrid

minivan retails for around $40,000, this deal could be worth around $1 billion. Again, I don't know what else to say about this story other than to underline that this is the first tangible headline, especially coupled with the previous story,

that really makes me feel like the self-driving vehicle future that we've all been promised might finally be truly right around the corner. Events and concert ticket company Ticketfly went offline this afternoon after it was apparently compromised by a hacker who defaced the site and boasted of getting access to Ticketfly's customer and employee data. Ticketfly left the following announcement on its website, quote, following recent site issues, we determined that Ticketfly has been the target of a cyber incident. To protect our clients and fans and to secure the website and related data, we have temporarily taken all Ticketfly systems offline. Motherboard is reporting that it has had an email conversation with the hacker in question,

who replaced the Ticketfly homepage with a picture of the Guy Fawkes character from V for Vendetta, who claimed to have asked for one Bitcoin from Ticketfly in exchange for warning the company about its security vulnerabilities. A Ticketfly spokesperson declined to comment as to whether or not they had indeed been in contact with the hacker. At the time of this writing, the Ticketfly website is still down. Mark German Scoop Thursday, sources are telling German that Google Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL phones are on tap to be released this fall. The phones will feature an edge-to-edge screen with a prominent so-called chin at the bottom, and the phones will keep a single rear camera, but the Pixel 3xel will reportedly have two front cameras, and thus, wait for it, a non. notch. As Dan Seafert said on Twitter,

can't wait for all the militant tribalist Android fanboy notch haters to suddenly find notches acceptable when the Pixel 3 comes out. Newsflash, a notch gives you more usable screen real estate with no meaningful hit to functionality, end quote. Quoting from German's piece, Google Pixel smartphones are widely regarded as some of the best Android-based devices, but they continue to lag far behind Apple's iPhone and products from Samsung Electronics in sales and market share.

Google shipped fewer than 4 million units in 2017, according to data from analytics company IDC. That compares with 216 million iPhones shipped in the same period. Google intends to keep updating its pixel line annually as it sees the hardware division as important to the company's long-term future, end quote. German speculates that the new pixel phones will come out in October as they have done each of the past two years. Speaking of flagship phones, Zhaummi has announced its latest flagship device, the 6.21-inch Me8 Explorer Edition, stocked with a Snapdragon 845 processor,

6 gigabytes of RAM, a 3D face scanner, a so-called transparent back, more on that in a second, and dual-frequency GPS, all for around $577 US. And yes, the Explorer Edition also has a notch. Notably, for the first time ever in a shipping consumer phone, the Explorer Edition has an in-display fingerprint sensor that uses pressure sensitivity. There will also be a smaller, slower, cheaper version of the phone called the Mi 8-S-E. The phones will come out in China in June and July, but no word on availability yet for other markets. Now about that back of the

phone, Zhaalmi claims that the rear panel of the phone is transparent, a la the original original iMac, allowing you to see the phone's internals. On Twitter, however, Chenming Alpert claimed that instead of a transparent back, Xiaomi is likely using a sticker to represent the internals. Alpert tweeted, good luck to people who believe hashtag XiaomiMe8 Explore Edition has a transparent back. Truth, it's a sticker. The reason for that, the S845 can't be in that position.

All the components around is too far away. from each other, no graphite or other pipe wire cable for thermal. Let's take a look at the product description from Xiaomi. Red underlined text says, Zermy, Me 8, Explorer Transparent Edition, shows some components, but they won't match as the real components. To prevent some misleading information, you may not be able to say it's a cheat.

It is transparent, sort of, but it does not show the real components inside. For most people, transparent back equals seeing real internal components. But Mi 8 is like plastic goldfish in a fish tank, end quote. But in a statement to the verge, Xiaomi shot back, quote, the transparent back on the Me 8 Explorer Edition is indeed made of transparent glass, and there isn't a sticker with a picture on it.

The parts that you see on the back upper half, for example, are parts of the actual main board, end quote. I guess we'll have to wait for a tear down to get to the bottom of this one. More quotes from the Code Conference. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky spoke about his vision for a global travel community with lines of business beyond merely renting your home out. I think the key that makes Airbnb is the fact that we're a community, not just a series of commodities, Chesky said. And so the people who misunderstand Airbnb, they tend to just see a bunch of real estate. But of course, if you look a little deeper, what you're going to see are 3 million people, our hosts.

and that's in many ways really what you're buying, end quote. Chesky also said that the so-called experience economy is a, quote, massive business that Airbnb is uniquely positioned to deliver to consumers. And no surprise, Chesky said Airbnb is ready to go public as well in the next year or so, and he says he's even had a conversation recently with Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg about the whole IPO process. More code conference chatter. Spotify CEO Daniel Eck spoke about his company's recent

direct listening IPO as well as the recent controversy surrounding Spotify's content policies which saw songs from R. Kelly, among other artists, taken down from the platform. Spotify recently banned artists from playlists if it determined that they had, quote, hateful content. Some artists were later reinstated

after briefly being banned while others, like R. Kelly, are still in limbo. We rolled this out wrong and could have done a much better job, X said. The whole goal with this was to make sure that we didn't have hate speech. It was never about punishing one individual artist or even naming one individual artist, end quote. Speaking about Spotify's decision to do a direct listening IPO as opposed to the traditional Wall Street song and dance, X said it was all about transparency and fairness. One thing about the traditional process, which was done in the 1970s,

is obviously the world has changed a lot. It just didn't sit well with me to put out this document in this day and era when information is like this, and you can't comment on it. You can't say anything about it until the moment where you ring the bell and go public. I wanted to see if there was a way to push more transparency so that we could actually be open and could tell the story much differently. This is not from the Code Conference, but it's notable nonetheless. Hulu's CEO Randy Freer told us. CNBC that Hulu with live TV, the company's $40 per month live TV subscription streaming service, has 800,000 subscribers.

This is the first time that Hulu has disclosed user numbers for its so-called Skinny Bundle, which launched just last year. This is a fairly strong showing for a new service, of course, but Hulu does still lag behind its competitors in what variety calls the virtual pay TV space. Dish Network's Sling TV has 2.3 million. subscribers, AT&T's direct TV has 1.46 million subscribers, and of course, Google's YouTube TV has just arrived on the scene. Frere said that on average, Hulu with live TV viewers watch more than 100 hours of television per month, but on the larger overall Hulu service, users average 108 hours of

television watched per subscriber per month, which is less than the 116 hours per month, the average American watches across live TV, VOD, and DVR, according to Nielsen. Finally, today, were you aware that a new Atari gaming console went on sale yesterday? You can pre-order the Atari VCS by going over to the crowdfunding site Indiegogo. Over at Polygon, they ask the relevant questions, who is this device for and why is it being crowdfunded? The device promised looks like a vintage Atari console on the outside, but on the inside it's a Linux-based PC with a custom-built AMD processor that reportedly will be capable of running modern PC games in 4K resolution. You can still get the classic joystick controller,

but also a modern game pad. Do you really need all of this if you just want to play good old missile command? Indeed, Atari promises what it calls the Atari Vault, which will include 100 classic games. Games, which Polygon notes, you can already. buy right now on Steam for about $99. On Indiegogo, the Atari VCS pre-orders for $199. So who needs this exactly? Quoting from Polygon, So does the average consumer actually need an Atari VCS?

Probably not. But Atari can't be sure until it tries to sell them. So why not toss them up on a crowdfunding website and see what happens? End quote. So if you want to be a part of a gaming experiment, head over to Indiegogo. At the very least, the classic Atari design will make for a rather handsome piece of TV console furniture. Whether or not it will have games worth playing remains to be seen. That's all for today. I've been your host, Brian McCullough.

You can follow me on Twitter at Brian MCC. Thanks as always to the excellent TechMeme editors, and check out TechMeme.com's new daily newsletter. Thanks for listening.