Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 01/07 - CES Day 2

Episode Date: January 7, 2020

Sonos goes nuclear on Google, though it really has Amazon in mind also; Facebook bans deep fakes… in a way; a whole bunch of really interesting laptop stuff, Sony makes a car, and you make a fashion statement and protect yourself from air pollution at the same time… all the stuff from Day 2 at CES. Sponsors: Tiny Captial Capterra.com/ride Links: Sonos, Squeezed by the Tech Giants, Sues Google (NYTimes) Enforcing Against Manipulated Media (Facebook Newsroom) Facebook bans deepfakes, but new policy may not cover controversial Pelosi video (Washington Post) Sony surprises with an electric concept car called the Vision-S (The Verge) Mercedes-Benz unveils an Avatar-themed concept car with scales (The Verge) Lenovo's ThinkBook Plus Laptop Has a Second Screen on the Lid (TomsHardware) Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Fold is a $2,499 PC with a folding OLED screen (The Verge) Lenovo's Yoga 5G laptop packs nine antennas and Snapdragon power (Engadget) Ring adds privacy dashboard to app in response to security concerns (The Verge) Atmos Faceware makes clean air an expensive accessory (The Verge) 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 ride home for Tuesday. January 7th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. Sonos goes nuclear on Google, though it really has Amazon in mind also. Facebook bans deepfakes in a way. A whole bunch of really interesting laptop stuff. Sony makes a car and you can make a fashion statement and protect yourself from air pollution at the same time. Basically, a whole bunch of stuff from day two at CES. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Not everything is going to be CES derived. today, though this first story is consumer electronics related. Sonos is suing Google, seeking financial damages and a ban on the sale of Google speakers, laptops, and even smartphones in the

U.S. because Sonos claims Google infringed on five patents that it owns. Pretty nuclear option stuff here, quoting the New York Times. In 2013, Sonos scored a coup when Google agreed to design its music service to work easily with Sonos's home speakers. For the project, Sonos handed over the effective blueprints to its speakers. It felt like a harmless move. Sonos executives said, Google was an internet company and didn't make speakers. The executives now say they were naive. On Tuesday, Sonos sued Google in two federal court systems seeking financial damages and a ban on the sale of Google's speakers, smartphones, and laptops in the United States. Sonos accused Google of infringing on five of its patents, including technology that lets wireless speakers connect and synchronize with one another.

Google has been blatantly and knowingly copying our patent and technology, Patrick Spence, Sonos's chief executive said in a statement. Despite our repeated and extensive efforts over the last few years, Google has not shown any willingness to work with us on a mutually beneficial solution. We're left with no choice but to litigate, end quote. What about Alexa and Echo speakers, though? Well, Sonos apparently has a bone to pick with Amazon as well, but the company decided that it might be too big a task to go to legal war with two of the biggest companies on the planet Earth at the same time. So Google drew the short straw. Quoting once more from the Times, Joe Kestenda, a Google spokesman, said, Google and Sonos have discussed both companies' intellectual property for years, quote,

and we are disappointed that Sonos brought these lawsuits instead of continuing negotiations in good faith. We dispute these claims and will defend them vigorously, end quote. A spokeswoman for Amazon, Natalie Hereth, said the company did not infringe on Sonas's technology, quote, the Echo family of devices and our multi-room music technology were developed independently by Amazon, she said, end quote. And this tweet from Charlie Kindle was kind of of interesting, quote, if I recall correctly, Microsoft, CHBU, WebTV, Mirror, Media Center, filed equivalent patents on all this stuff back in 1997, 2000. I predict these will all get invalidated as prior art once Google reviews Microsoft's patent portfolio. If I remember correctly,

Google and Microsoft have a pretty robust cross-licensing agreement, end quote. Let me just read you the headline the editors of TechMeme wrote for this next story. Facebook says it is tightening its policies around manipulated media by banning videos that are either heavily edited or deepfakes, to which I'm going to add, kind of. This is Facebook's statement in a blog post, quote, going forward, we will remove misleading manipulated media if it meets the following criteria. It has been edited or synthesized beyond adjustments for clarity or quality in ways that aren't apparent to an average person and would likely mislead someone into thinking that a subject of the video said words that they did not actually say. And it is the product of artificial intelligence

or machine learning that merges, replaces, or superimposes content onto a video making it appear to be authentic. This policy does not extend to content that is parody or satire or video that has been edited solely to omit or change the order of words, end quote. Which is an interesting caveat, since quoting the Washington Post, the policy does not appear to cover the infamously altered drunk video of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi that was viewed millions of times on Facebook last year. Though her speech was slowed and distorted in the video to make her sound drunk, the effect was accomplished with relatively simple video editing software. To contrast with more sophisticated computer-generated deepfakes,

disinformation researchers have referred to these kinds of videos as, cheap fakes or shallow fakes. Nor does the policy seem to restrain other simpler forms of video deception, such as mislabeling footage, splicing dialogue, or taking quotes out of context, as in a video last week in which a long response Joe Biden delivered to an audience in New Hampshire was heavily trimmed to make him sound racist, end quote. So in essence, Facebook is going to ban you from deceiving people by faking video if you get heavily, heavily technical about it, essentially only if you fake too hard. They want to stop people from lying to people via videos if they put a lot of effort into it,

but they are still perfectly fine letting people lie to others in myriad other ways, as Josh Topolsky tweeted. So you're going to do this, but let people still do the text version, end quote? I guess there's not a machine learning algorithm for lies in text, right? What was that thing that someone told us on a weekend bonus episode once? computers can't actually read, remember? Also, of course, Facebook will still allow you to pay them to run an ad that is an outright lie, but you have to be a politician to do so. So in a way, Facebook is taking away your right to lie, but protecting it for, I guess, the technical and

political one percenters. Sony has saved a surprise for CES by unveiling a car. The Vision S is an electric concept sedan that features Sony's new EV platform, developed in partnership with automotive supplier Magna, that Sony says can be a platform for other vehicles ranging from trucks to SUVs, quoting the verge. The outside of the vehicle has some strong Porsche vibes, especially around the headlights and in side profile. It somewhat resembles the Lucid Motors Air. Inside, the VisionS features a dashboard spanning screen, much like the one that Chinese EV startup Bighton is putting in its cars with screens for rear seat passengers in the headrests. Quote, this prototype embodies our contribution to the future of mobility, Sony's CEO

Kenichiro Yoshida said. The company announced the car at the tail end of its CES press conference where it also unveiled the logo for the upcoming PlayStation 5, end quote. No word on whether or not Sony intends to ever actually put this vehicle into production or not. NPS on something car-related that I mentioned in the CES preview show from last week, Mercedes-Benz had their mysterious keynote last night, and they unveiled an Avatar car. Yes, a car inspired by the movie Avatar. It features, well, it features scales. More on that in a second.

But also, James Cameron was himself on hand at the event last night, quoting from The Verge. The entire rear end of the AVTR. avatar, I guess, is covered in 33 discrete scales, or as Mercedes-Benz calls them bionic flaps, that the company says could be used to communicate with people outside the car. It also has special spherical wheels that Mercedes-Benz says were inspired by the seeds of the tree of souls from 2009's avatar. These wheels can rotate so that the avatar can move sideways or even diagonally, end quote. So there's that. Click through on the link for a video.

A whole bunch of laptop news here with a bunch of folks getting all experimental with form factors. Let's start with, well, let's talk a lot about Lenovo. Lenovo's Think Book Plus is a 13.3 inch laptop with a touch-sensitive e-ink display on the outside, on the lid of the laptop. What would you do with that? Well, frankly, this kind of sounds useful to me, though everyone online was super skeptical, quoting Tom's guide. The E-Inc screen can show email and calendar notifications from Microsoft Outlook. You can also use it to take notes with Lenovo's included stylus. The idea is you'll only do what you need to do on screen during meetings rather than being

engrossed entirely in your laptop. It will start at $1,199 when it goes on sale in March. Besides the second screen, there are a few other tricks up the thinkbook's sleeve. It has Amazon's Alexa assistant built in, which will also work when the laptop is closed. There are also hotkeys for Skype and a power button with an integrated fingerprint reader. With a stylus, you can use it to take notes and they will be saved to OneDrive. This lets you choose a level of activity in a meeting that you find suitable, but I'm not sure how much less distracting it is than using a laptop, end quote. One person's, I think that might be useful. Might be everyone else's gimmick that no one ends up using, I guess, sort of like the Apple

Smart Bar. But at least, as I said, it's something new. And if that's didn't float your boat, try this on. The ThinkPad X1 Fold is a $2,49 PC running Windows 10 Pro that has a folding 13.3-inch 4x3 aspect ratio OLED screen. It will be shipping in mid-2020. Now, yes, this is exactly what you're thinking it is. Imagine a tablet that you can fold up like a book, but also fold it halfway, you know, 90 degrees or so like a laptop, and you can use it like a laptop with the bottom half turning into a virtual keyboard, quoting the verge. In portrait mode, meanwhile, there's an additional option to bring up an on-screen keyboard at the bottom, which lets you fold the display up at an angle and type like you would on a laptop. The X1 fold also

comes with a Bluetooth keyboard that magnetically snaps onto the bottom half of the display if you're going to be doing a lot of typing. As you'd expect from Lenovo, it feels pretty good to type on. Another bonus is that the keyboard fills in the gap between the two halves of the screen, when the device is folded up. The main advantage of this design is, no pun intended, flexibility. A tiny laptop is cool, sure, but not something you'll want to use all the time. With the X1 fold, though, you can open up the screen to its full size, prop it up with the built-in kickstand, use the keyboard wirelessly, and get more or less the same experience that you would with a laptop. Actual lap usage accepted. There's even an easel-style stand that elevates the X-1 fold into what

feels like the world's smallest all-in-one PC. In theory, this is a lot of capability for something that would take up about as much room in your bag as a reasonably short hardcover novel, end quote. And look, let's give it to Lenovo for bringing the heat, because rounding off their laptop lineup unveilings is a 5G laptop, just like everybody else's. Lenovo's is called the Yoga 5G, and it's a $1,4992-in-1 laptop that includes a Snapdragon 8cx chip set and a claimed 24 hours of battery life. Given how much we've spoken about them recently, I thought we should note that Ring has added a privacy dashboard to its app, which will let owners manage things like logged in users, third-party services, and whether or not local police can make requests to access videos from users' cameras.

which they didn't already have that. Quote, in a phone interview ahead of today's announcement, Ring founder Jamie Siminoff says the new control center takes a lot of the things that Ring is already doing around security and privacy and puts them in a single location for customers to manage, while also adding a few new features on top. One of those new features is the ability to see who is currently logged into the account and log them out right from the app.

Other features include the ability to set up two-factor authentication. which Ring has had for some time from the dashboard. Siminoff says that Ring is continuing to inform its customers of the importance of two-factor authentication on their accounts and will be making it an opt-out thing for new account setups, as opposed to the opt-in setup it currently is. But existing customers will not be forced to adopt Two-Factor on their existing accounts. Siminoff says doing this would require Ring to log everyone out of the system, and it would prevent access to ring alarm systems and cameras until the customer

opens the app, sets up two-factor and logs back in. Ring currently only supports two-factor authentication through SMS, but Siminoff says the company will be adding other options in the future, end quote. You know, the weirdest thing to me about this whole Ring saga is that for a company that busted its butt to market itself as a security product, they sure do seem to have been caught completely flat-footed about how users, you know, might want to be proactive about controlling and managing their own security and privacy. It's almost like Ring, as I said, thought of things like security only as a marketing tool and didn't actually take security as a function seriously itself until now. Finally today, a quick roundup of some odds and ends.

Interesting CES stuff from today. Atmos facewear has a high-tech $350 sort of cool-looking blade runner-like plastic mask that will help you combat and avoid the increasing level of air pollution in the world. Quoting the verge, unlike most face masks and other respirators, the Atmos facewear does not require an airtight seal to be effective, according to the company press release. Facial hair, sweat, and other factors that can normally disrupt a seal. Don't hinder facewear's function, the company says. Wearing Atmos facewear is also being pushed as a design choice, as well as a health one. Quote, our transparent design rests on the bridge of your nose, allowing others to see your face, including your smile, wrote A.O. Air in their press release, end quote. And I did not know this, but there's actually a better way of doing headphones.

Quoting Wired. Electrostatic headphones use the same static charge that annoys you when you grab a door handle, only they employ it to move a very thin diaphragm and create sound. Any audiophile will tell you that electrostatic headphones are generally better than traditional magnet-driven headphones, but they require a lot of power, and they are thus tough to squeeze into small enclosures. Somehow the magicians at Helm Audio have managed to zap this advanced audio tech with a shrink ray, putting electrostatic drivers inside wire-free headphones for the first time.

They're teeny tiny, and they sounded pretty amazing in the same. my short demo, end quote. And Veyar has a home security system that unlike most chooses not to use cameras and instead employs radio waves to detect motion. You know, someone entering your home or something like that, they will even let you self-host the system in case you don't want to send your data to the cloud. But remember, they're not using cameras, so no pictures or video, so maybe you wouldn't worry so much about that. By the way, I also heard about a drone startup for people living on large amounts of land. It's a security system that you set up on your acreage. And if the perimeter sensor is tripped, instead of dogs, the drones are launched

to immediately fly out to where the intruder is so you can surveil them and identify the threat before it even gets close to your estate. Sadly, I lost the link to that story, though I have to assume the company involved has some relation or other to the enterprises of one C-E- Montgomery Burns. I joke, of course. This is a real product. And actually, a logical one, if you think about it. As soon as I get done editing all this, I'm hitting the monorail over to the convention center, so hopefully I can tell you about some of this CES stuff firsthand tomorrow. Also about that podcast meetup. It is going to be tomorrow night. I'm being lazy. I think the plan is to just meet at the Indigo Lounge inside Bally's at 7 p.m. tomorrow night. Indigo Lounge is at

the back of the main gaming floor, right smack in the middle of Bally's. So walk right in the main entrance, head straight back, look for Indigo Lounge. I'll be wearing a dark navy blue shirt with jeans, and I've got a beard, and I will have my CES badge on, so hopefully I'll see you then.