Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 02/15 – The Great Returning To The Office?

Episode Date: February 15, 2022

Is the great Returning To The Office beginning with the Tech Industry? Really cool new way to use your Android apps on your Windows or Chromebook devices. Instagram lets you send private likes. The tech cold war between India and China claims another victim. And what did the NYTimes do to Wordle this morning? Sponsors: do.co/ridehome2022 Links: Microsoft and Expedia announce next phases in office reopenings, finally emerging from pandemic (GeekWire) Exclusive: Pixel will be able to stream Android apps to your Chromebook/PC, here’s how it works [Video] (9to5Google) Intel to Buy Israel’s Tower Semiconductor for $5.4 Billion (Bloomberg) Instagram now lets you send private Story likes (Engadget) Sea’s $16 Billion Crash Signals Trouble Beyond India Shutout (Bloomberg) Texas Sues Meta Over Facebook’s Facial-Recognition Practices (WSJ) Google Messages, with RCS in tow, is now Samsung’s default messaging app in the US (9to5Google) The New York Times has changed Wordle’s solutions (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 Tech meme right home for Tuesday, February 15th, 2022. I'm Brian McCullough. Today is the great returning to the office beginning with the tech industry. Really cool new way to use your Android apps on your windows or Chromebook devices. Instagram lets you send private likes. The Tech Cold War

between India and China claims another victim. And what did the New York Times do to Whartle this morning? Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. I've made the point many times on the show that tech was the canary in the coal mine when it came to COVID times. If you go back and listen to episodes from exactly two years ago, we were first talking about Apple, being worried about factories getting shut down in China after Chinese cities were going into lockdown because of what we now know was COVID. Remember that sign that showed up on the doors of Andresen Horowitz, that outlawed handshakes. That was two years ago this week. The first companies to go remote were Silicon Valley companies. I think it was Twitter that was the first. Can't actually

remember. Anyway, the first hopeful sign that some sense of normalcy is returning, even if remote work will never really go away again. Microsoft is apparently telling employees it will fully reopen its facilities in Washington State, starting February 28th, citing high rates of COVID-19 vaccination in Kings County. Now, granted, there was some move to return to offices last year, only to have that delayed because of the Delta and then Omicron waves. But still, perhaps tech is leading the way again. Quoting Geekwire, one of the longest three weeks in history will soon come to an end. Nearly two years after asking its employees to work from home in what was hoped to be a temporary precaution, Microsoft is fully reopening its Washington state facilities, including its Redmond headquarters,

effective February 28th, the company told employees this morning. From this date, employees will have 30 days to make adjustments to their routines and adopt the working preferences they've agreed upon with their managers, wrote Chris Capicella, Microsoft's chief marketing officer in a post this morning announcing the news. He added, quote, reaching this stage allows us to fully open our facilities to employees, visitors, and guests. All campus services will return, including the connector ride share option for employees in the Puget Sound area, end quote. With the announcement, the company is moving into the sixth and final stage of its hybrid workplace policy. Capicella cited the high rates of COVID-19 vaccination in Kings County, plus declining

hospitalizations and deaths in the state, as well as available local testing capacity to comply with government guidelines. Also this morning, Seattle-based online travel giant Expedia said it will implement its hybrid work policy beginning April 4th. Currently, the company's offices are open to vaccinated employees on a volunteer basis. With the updated policy, Expedia says its expectation is that, quote, employees will spend at least 50% of the their time in the office working with their respective leaders on an appropriate schedule, end quote. Employees will still need to be vaccinated to work in the office, Expedia said, end quote. By the way, I'm also hearing that Microsoft offices in California might be opening by the end of

the month as well. The Android 13 developer preview apparently includes two cross-device service apps that will let users interact with Android apps from pixel phones on a Windows 11 PC or Chromebook, quoting 9 to 5 Google. Over the years, Google has created quite a few ways for Android phones, especially pixel phones, and desktops or laptops, especially Chromebooks, to be, quote, better together. The most recent example is Phone Hub, which offers easy access to your phone's notifications, quick settings, and more from the bottom corner of a Chromebook screen. At CES 2022, Google announced that later this year you will be able to access any chat app on your phone directly from your Chromebook, quote, without needing to install them again, end quote.

Last week, Google publicly released the first Android 13 developer preview build for pixel phones, and in it, our two cross-device service apps. Each one appears to be dedicated to connecting your pixel to other devices. With these apps, our Dylan Russell was able to enable cross-device streaming between a pixel phone on Android 13 and a special web app. Despite our initial suspicion and Google's own announcement that this would be a Chrome OS exclusive feature, we were also able to get this web app up and running on a Windows 11 device. The experience, which features a gorgeous multicolored background,

is able to open an app on your phone and live stream it through your browser. Once opened, you can then interact with the app just as if it were natively open on your laptop or desktop, including clicking, tapping, and typing, perfect for using your favorite messaging apps. Another thing we didn't expect is exactly how this feature works. Your pixel generates an entirely separate virtual display, which is streamed to your laptop or desktop rather than simply mirroring your phone's portrait screen. The second display is where your messaging apps will appear. This means you can have an app open on your desktop or laptop without disrupting any apps running on your phone's main screen.

For ChromeOS, where Google has more control over the system, this cross-device streaming will be available from a built-in app, which is deeply connected to Phone Hub. For now, ChromeOS's version of the pixel cross-device app streaming seems to be a bit less fully featured, than the web-based version. We haven't yet found a way to launch a specific app from the phone, nor have we seen any options to change the display size. But overall, the deeper integration into ChromeOS makes this version a bit more exciting, end quote. The Intel Fightback continues apace. The company has announced that it plans to acquire Israeli chip company Tower Semiconductor

for around $5.4 billion or $53 per share. The deal is expected to close in 12 months. Quoting Bloomberg, Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger, who took the CEO job a year ago, is betting he can compete with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing in the chip foundry market, the contract manufacturing of semiconductors for other companies. His comeback plan for Intel involves modernizing its factories and building new ones aimed at restoring its leadership in chip technology. With Tower, Intel is acquiring customers and expertise.

The chip foundry industry requires experience in handling different types of chips and designs. Intel has previously had little success in that area because of a lack of commitment to it. Gelsinger has said, Intel's factories have historically produced only its own designs. Tower makes power management chips, image sensors, and a variety of other semiconductors. Its customers include analog devices and broadcom, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. What the move doesn't provide is scale. Tower had annual sales of about $1.3 billion last year a fraction of TSMC's $56 billion. analysts expect TSM's sales to grow about 27% in 2022.

TSM, which pioneered the market, accounts for more than 50% of industry revenue, and makes chips for many of Intel's key rivals, a list that includes advanced microdevices and invidia, end quote. Instagram now lets users send a private like in response to a story, expanding on direct messages or emoji reactions, quoting and gadget. Meta's Instagram is introducing a new way for people to interact with stories. Starting today, you can send a private like when someone shares an image or video that catches your eye. Previously, the only way to respond to a story was to either send the creator

a direct message or an emoji reaction. In either case, your response would show in their messages inbox, thereby cluttering the interface. Once you have access to the new feature, you'll have a new heart icon located between the send message pill and airplane icon. Should you decide to send someone a story like, it will show up in the viewer sheet, which you can access by viewing your own story again. People who publicly view your stories won't see a like count. The idea here is to make sure that people can express more support for each other, but also to clean up DMs a little bit, said Adam Maserri, the head of Instagram. Messaging is a key priority for us, and a big piece of that is focusing on DMs between you and the people that you care about, end quote.

Another big tech stock has had a bad day. After India banned C's lucrative free-fire game, the Singapore-based company lost more than $16 billion in market value, its largest ever daily drop. Quoting Bloomberg. Investors are growing concerned that the ban of the free-fire game may just be the start of the company's troubles. Singapore-based C went public in 2017 and quickly became the most valuable company in Southeast Asia, based on its potential to expand its offering of gaming, e-commerce, and financial services beyond its home turf. New Delhi's decision to ban Free Fire, a lucrative title for the company highlighted C's challenges from geopolitical tensions, as well as mounting competition from rivals like Alibaba. India has banned hundreds of Chinese apps over the past two years, but the expansion of that

policy to C took management and investors by surprise. The startup was founded by Forrest Lee, who was born in China but is now a Singaporean citizen. Its biggest shareholder is Tencent Holdings, the Chinese social media giant. India is seen as one of the next major growth drivers for C's e-commerce and gaming arm outside Southeast Asia, said Agnes McIntosh, founder of Cross Asian Research, which publishes reports on Smart Karma. With the free fire ban, there's a risk that the authorities would also turn on the Shopify app, and C could lose that upside for growth, end quote.

just worried that India could potentially also ban Shoppy, the second pillar of C's business, where it had about 300 employees and 20,000 local sellers as of December. On Monday, Lee reassured shareholders at its annual general meeting that the company had a grip on the situation. He didn't comment on the Free Fire ban in India. The Free Fire game was the highest-grossing mobile app game in India in the third quarter of 2021, according to industry tracker app Annie. J.P. Morgan analyst Ranjan Sharma slashed his price target by about 40 percent, to $250, citing heightened nervousness around C's gaming franchise, end quote. The state of Texas is suing meta over its use of facial recognition from 2010 to late

2021 in that state. A source says that Texas is seeking hundreds of billions of dollars in penalties, which, you know, they can seek that, but something tells me any penalties if they come will likely be more in the nine-figure range and maybe even less than that. And that's assuming penalties ever happen. Quoting the journal. In a statement, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the company's capture of facial geometry and photographs that users uploaded from 2010 to late last year resulted in tens of millions of violations of Texas law, quote, Facebook has been secretly harvesting Texan's most personal information, photos and videos for its own corporate profit. Mr. Paxton said, Texas law has prohibited such harvesting without informed consent for over 20 years,

While ordinary Texans have been using Facebook to innocently share photos of loved ones with friends and family, we now know that Facebook has been brazenly ignoring Texas law for the last decade, end quote. In a statement, Meta said that the claims against Facebook, quote, are without merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously, end quote. Meta says that before it decided to shut down its facial recognition system, users were always provided with notice and an opportunity to consent when they used those services. Facebook previously settled another lawsuit over its facial recognition practices for about $650 million. That class action suit filed in 2015 was brought under Illinois' biometric privacy law, which is similar in some respects to the Texas law. Both laws require individuals consent before their biometric identifiers can be captured. In the class action case, Facebook's lawyers said that the Illinois law didn't apply to its methods for identifying users in photos.

The company also said it had given users the ability to opt out of the feature. Facebook's efforts to dismiss the class action case were unsuccessful, and the company settled the case in 2020, end quote. Big win for Google's Messages initiative. Samsung has apparently adopted Google Messages as its default messaging app in the U.S. Starting with the new Galaxy S-22 series, quoting 9 to 5 Google. Messaging on Android has been a mess for years, but the tide is finally changing, with Google messages bringing enhanced RCS messaging to virtually any Android user that

wants it, there's finally a default. Now RCS is getting a big boost as Samsung has finally adopted Google Messages as its default app in the United States. Google Messages has always been available to Samsung owners, but the app was not pre-installed. Rather, Samsung Messages app to handle SMS, MMS, and RCS in some limited cases. That started to change last year as the Galaxy S-21 series and later Galaxy Z-Flip 3 and Fold 3 shipped with Google messages as the default messaging app in Europe and other regions. Now Google Messages is the default messaging app on Samsung Galaxy smartphones in the United States, starting on the Galaxy S-22 series. Friend of the site, Zachary Q. Dennis, highlighted a segment from MKBHD's Waveform podcast that this might

be the case on U.S. variants of the Galaxy S-22 series, and we've since confirmed as much on a U.S. review unit of the Galaxy S-22 plus. Setting up the phone from scratch without restoring a backup, Google Messages is indeed the default SMS MMS app on the Galaxy S-22, even taking up the home screen slot for a messaging app in Samsung's default layout. Samsung Messages is still installed on the phone by default, but users have to actively choose to switch to that app, end quote. Finally today, what some had feared might actually be happening seems to be happening. Yes, the New York Times wordle and the OG wordle are not the same wordle anymore. Quoting the verge.

Wordle's acquisition by the New York Times has already stirred up controversy from broken streaks to accusations the game has become harder. But there's a big change the New York Times isn't shouting about. It's altered Wordle's solutions. As of today, February 15th, game number 241, the New York Times version of Wordle and the original version hosted at powerlanguage.co.uk.ukes slash wordel have diverged and will now continue forever out of step. Changes to WordList by the New York Times.

were spotted last week by a number of sources, including Boing Boing. Although some thought these changes only applied to the words you could guess, it turns out the Times also altered the list of possible solutions. The Verge made this mistake as well. We regret the error. This confusion wasn't helped by the fact that the Times itself was running around telling publications that everything was the same in Wordoland. As New York Times, Com's director Jordan Cohen, told The Guardian, nothing has changed about the gameplay, and quote, which is really not true. Sure, the game plays the same, but the Times has not only removed rude words and curse words from possible guesses, it's also changed the game's future solutions. And surely for a game all about guessing words, this counts as a change to gameplay.

Does all this matter? Well, yes, a little, because if you're still playing the original version of Wordle, either because you downloaded the game or you haven't refreshed your browser since loading the original power language.co.com. dot UK slash rural URL, then you will be out of step with other players. And given so much of the game's pleasure is social, based on sharing those little emoji solutions, this can be frustrating, end quote. That's all for today.

Talk to you tomorrow.