Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 03/17 - Microsoft Wants To Own The Dev Stack

Episode Date: March 17, 2020

Big acquisition for GitHub... which really means: big acquisition for Microsoft as it continues to gobble up the entire developer stack. The iPhone 9 chips will not be underpowered at all. How Amazon is, in fact, trying to cope with the Corona-surge. And is this crisis the tipping point for streaming media? Sponsors: Tinycapital.com TryExpressVPN.com/ride Links: Microsoft's GitHub acquires npm to help JavaScript developers (WindowsCentral) iOS 14 code confirms Apple planning ‘iPhone 9 Plus’ with A13 as larger version of rumored entry-level model (9to5Mac) Amazon ramps hiring, opening 100,000 new roles to support people relying on Amazon’s service in this stressful time (Amazon Day One Blog) Uber, Lyft suspend pooled rides in U.S., Canada to limit spread of coronavirus (Reuters) Phones Could Track the Spread of Covid-19. Is It a Good Idea? (Wired) To Track Coronavirus, Israel Moves to Tap Secret Trove of Cellphone Data (NYTimes) With Movie Theater Shutdown, Universal Pictures to Stream New Release Films on Prime Video, iTunes, & More (The Streamable) Movie Crowds Stay Away. Theaters Hope It’s Not for Good. (NYTimes) 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 right home for Tuesday, March 17th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. Big acquisition for GitHub, which really means big acquisition from Microsoft as it continues to gobble up basically the entire developer stack. The iPhone 9 chips will not be underpowered at all. How Amazon is, in fact, trying to cope with the corona surge. And is this crisis the tipping point for streaming media? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Pretty big news that I missed yesterday because it broke while I was recording. GitHub announced it has signed an agreement to acquire NPM, which is home to more than 1.3 million

JavaScript packages with 75 billion downloads per month, quoting Windows Central. For developers that currently use the registry, the most important takeaway is that it will remain free. NPM's blog post states that its registry of packages will remain public, free, and as available as ever. GitHub's Friedman states that, quote, the public NPM registry will always be available and always be free, end quote. Paying customers that use NPM Pro, teams, and enterprise to host private registries will still be able to do so. Friedman explains that the focus of this deal is to invest in infrastructure and platform, improve the core experience, and engage with the community. In the future, GitHub will integrate with NPM, allowing developers to trace a change from a GitHub pool request all the way to an NPM package. version. NPM's story began in 2009 when its founder created a package manager for sharing modules

and a tiny group of nerdy weirdos who decided to write web servers in JavaScript, end quote. In 2014, NPM transitioned into a business, growing into a major player in the JavaScript development space. Friedman states that, quote, the work of the NPM team over the last 10 years and the contributions of hundreds of thousands of open source developers and maintainers have made NPM home to over 1.3 million packages with 75 billion downloads a month. Together, they've helped JavaScript become the largest developer ecosystem in the world, end quote. As Jerome Dada tweeted, Microsoft basically owns JavaScript now, quote, hosts the entire open source ecosystem via GitHub, host the entire JavaScript ecosystem via NPM,

has a presence on a huge portion of developer machines via Visual Studio code, and is changing how we develop with JavaScript via TypeScript, end quote. And as Ahmed Awice tweeted, Interesting, Microsoft now owns my entire dev stack, especially for writing JavaScript. I hope NPM improves even further as GitHub did. Free pro accounts, end quote. 9 to 5 Mac is reporting that iPhone 9s and iPhones 9 pluses

will be coming with an A13 bionic chip. the same processor currently used in the iPhone 11 and iPhone's 11 Pro. Quote, we already knew some details about iPhone 9, Apple's alleged new entry-level smartphone, including the fact that it will have a 4.7-inch LCD display and a home button with touch ID built in. Now, thanks to the iOS 14 code snippets, we have learned more information about this new iPhone. First of all, it seems that Apple is also working on a larger version of the iPhone 9, which may be named iPhone 9+, or at least the plus moniker, of whatever Apple dubs this line. That would make sense considering that these iPhones should replace

the iPhone 8 lineup, which features the 4.7 and 5.5 inch versions. Evidence indicates that both will run with the A13 bionic chip, the same processor used in the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro. This should make the iPhone 9 more attractive for those who still use older models such as the iPhone 6 and iPhone 7, since some people prefer not to spend money on high-end smartphones, end quote. And as mentioned above, they also confirm the nines will still feature a solid state home button and will still rely on touch ID in lieu of face ID. But the nines will be gaining the ability to scan NFC tags in the background, something that previous entry-level iPhones have been unable to do. Corona news of the day, Amazon is hiring 100,000 more warehouse and delivery workers

worldwide and will raise their pay by around $2 an hour in some countries, quoting Amazon itself. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, Amazon and our network of partners are helping communities around the world in a way that few can, delivering critical supplies directly to the doorsteps of people who need them, writes Dave Clark, Amazon's senior VP of Worldwide Operations. Quote, getting a priority item to your doorstep is vital as communities practice social distancing, particularly for the elderly and others with underlying health issues. We are seeing a significant increase in demand, which means our labor needs are unprecedented for this time of year, end quote. Indeed, on that tip of getting priority items to your doorstep, Amazon says it is

limiting shipments to certain types of products, basically prioritizing shipments of household staples and other high demand products over everything else. But in what is perhaps the biggest news, Amazon is also partially suspending its fulfillment by Amazon program, through at least April 5th, quoting TechCrunch. Amazon's fulfillment by Amazon or FBA program through which it provides warehousing and shipment services for products from third-party sellers, as well as its larger vendor shipment services, are being partially suspended through April 5th due to the global coronavirus outbreak.

This suspension will allow Amazon to prioritize shipments of household staples, medical supplies, and other high-demand products, the company said in a support document on its website and confirmed to TechCrunch and an email. Any existing shipments created prior to today are still going to be processed at Amazon's fulfillment centers, as usual, the company says, but otherwise new orders won't be processed until such time as Amazon alerts sellers that things are back to normal. The tentative date for the program to resume in full is April 5th, as mentioned, but it sounds like Amazon could extend these limitations depending on how the pandemic progresses.

Amazon is prioritizing goods in baby, health, and household, beauty. and personal care, grocery, industrial, and scientific, and pet supplies categories, the company says in a support document explaining the new limitations. Products outside of these categories that are already in Amazon's fulfillment centers, or that are on their way to those facilities ahead of March 17th, can still be sold through the platform. This also doesn't block sellers from selling their products on the platform and fulfilling the shipments themselves, the help document notes. That might be the only option available to sellers and retailers who want to continue offering their non-priority. goods to Amazon buyers through at least the next few weeks, end quote.

At the same time, some outlets are reporting that warehouse workers inside Amazon are saying that Amazon isn't doing enough to limit the spread of COVID-19 inside fulfillment centers and are demanding additional protections. Amazon has confirmed that at least five workers at its warehouses in Spain and Italy have tested positive for coronavirus, but it is keeping those facilities open nonetheless. Worth noting that on the Corona Pod yesterday, I reported that a scientific paper recently suggested that COVID-19 can remain on surfaces for a long time, including up to 24 hours on cardboard. So if you think this is just about concern for workers being exposed. Also, Uber has suspended pooled rides in the U.S. and Canada, because, you know,

social distancing. Quoting Reuters, our goal is, to help flatten the curve on community spread in the cities we serve, senior vice president Uber rides and platform Andrew McDonald said in a statement. A spokesman said similar steps outside the U.S. and Canada would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Regular rides and the company's food delivery platform Uber Eats remain available, but Uber said it was in contact with local authorities to adjust operations as needed, end quote. Another tech angle to all of this. In China and South Korea, governments there have been using smartphones to track people who have come down with COVID-19. Should other governments follow suit?

Researchers are already testing apps to monitor contact among people, but of course that is maybe a Pandora's box we might not want to open, quoting Wired. An open source project called Co-Epie sprang up in February to develop an app with similar functionality to Flu Phone. A professor at the MIT Media Lab and colleagues are developing an app that would let people log their movements and compare them with those of known coronavirus patients using redacted data supplied by the state or national public health departments. Over time, users would be asked whether they are infected themselves, providing a way to identify potential transmissions in a similar way to flu phone. The team released a prototype for testing on Friday. Raskar has been rallying other researchers and

tech executives to the effort, and he has been in contact with the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human services. They are giving us guidance on what will work, he says, although none has yet endorsed the idea. Stefan Germann, CEO of Botnard Foundation, a Swiss organization focused on health and child welfare, has been advising Raskar. He says the proposed app has strong potential but should be tested in a single sandbox city first. It is important to respond fast, but not to rush efforts, he says. Others suggest similar technology be added to smartphones by default. An open letter signed by several dozen prominent technologists, executives, and clinicians posted on Tuesday, called on the tech industry to do more to combat the virus.

Among other things, the group recommended that Apple and Google update their smartphone software to make it possible to track contact between people providing users grant permission. Apple and Google did not return requests for comment, end quote. I would imagine that the privacy concerns here are obvious, sort of just writing themselves in your head. in Israel, the government has authorized the use of a previously undisclosed trove of cell phone data used to fight terrorism to now help fight the viruses spread. The data would track the movement of people known to be carriers of the disease as well as identify people they may have come in contact with, quoting the New York Times. The existence of the data trove and the legislative framework under which it is amassed and used have not been previously reported. The plan to apply it to fighting the virus alluded to only vaguely. by Mr. Netanyahu, the country's prime minister, has not yet been debated by lawmakers or

revealed to the public. The idea is to sift through geolocation data routinely collected from Israeli cell phone providers about millions of their customers in Israel and the West Bank, finding people who came into close contact with known virus carriers and sending them text messages directing them to isolate themselves immediately. Disclosure of the plan raised alarms among privacy advocates and among critics of Mr. Netanyahu, who is simultaneously battling to retain power after those seeking his ouster won a majority in elections March 2nd and imposing increasingly authoritarian measures in response to the crisis. His justice minister on Sunday severely curtailed the courts, a move that was followed hours later by the postponement

of Mr. Netanyahu's criminal trial on bribery and corruption charges, which had been scheduled to begin on Tuesday, end quote. I want to end today by talking about streaming again, because there have been a ton of stories and trend pieces written over the last few days, talking about how this might be the tipping point. This might be the moment in time that streaming becomes the dominant form of media consumption. For example, Universal Pictures has announced it will begin offering $19.99 rentals of some of its newest movies. These are movies that are either already in theaters or slated to be in theaters. But since you can't go out, you can now just pay 20 bucks and watch at home in the exact same window that you could have gone to the theaters.

The rentals will be available for 48 hours once you start the film, and yes, the price is more than you're used to paying for rentals, but this is the first step in potentially blowing up that four to five-month windowing that studios usually observed before making movies available for home viewing. Might we be seeing the first steps toward the death of the theater? Quoting the streamable, starting on March 20th, some titles currently in theaters will be available for rent. Some of those include The Hunt, released March 13th, The Invisible Man, released February 28th, and Emma released February 20th. However, the biggest news is that they will release DreamWorks Animation's Trolls World Tour on demand the same day it is released in

theaters, April 10th. This past weekend saw the lowest box office gross in movie theaters in over 20 years, while Universal hasn't committed to releasing titles the same day as they are theatrically, for the rest of the year, it will be interesting to see if other studios follow suit. Some have already delayed releasing titles like Disney's Mulan and Universal's Blockbuster flick Fast and the Furious Nine. Quote, given the rapidly evolving and unprecedented changes to consumers' daily lives during this difficult time, the company felt that now was the right time to provide this option in the home, as well as in theaters. NBC Universal will continue to evaluate the environment as conditions evolve and will determine the best distribution strategy in each market when the

current unique situation changes, said the company, end quote. In a separate New York Times piece, they say yes, this crisis might simply accelerate the ascendancy of streaming. They note that the number of movie tickets sold in North America peaked in 2002, almost 20 years ago, when 1.6 billion tickets were sold. 2019, as a comparison, saw 1.2 billion tickets sold a drop of 25%. The only reasons cinemas have survived this long is that they have continued to raise prices. quote, the behavior was already shifting, but this hits the accelerator pedal. Rich Greenfield, a founder of the Lightshed Partners Media Research firm, said, I think most of the global exhibition business will be in bankruptcy by the end of the year, end

quote. He added, Now studios are going to think more and more about why they are relying on third parties to distribute their content, end quote. Cinemas will soon run out of high-profile new films to show. Studios like Disney, Universal, Sony, and Paramount, all postponed films scheduled for release this spring, including the new mutants, Peter Rabbit 2, The Runaway, and F9, the ninth chapter in the Fast and Furious series, reached by phone in Budapest on Friday.

Moments after the announcement that the World War II drama, The Nightingale, was being shut down because of fears of the coronavirus and the European travel ban put into place by President Trump. Its producer, Elizabeth Kentilion said she was heartbroken, quote, if you can't produce content, then I don't know what to say, she said. Movie theaters, television networks, Netflix, they all need content. all of the time. If we can't produce it because we can't be next to each other, what happens? It's just going to be a lot of YouTube videos of people in their bedrooms, end quote.

Do you know that I can already see the disruption to all your all daily routines in our podcast download numbers? Episode downloads are off 15% week over week. I mean, surely people have other things to think about than tech news at the moment, so that makes sense. But also, So, no rides home at the moment for a lot of you, right? Your normal daily routines are off, and I can already see that in the analytics. Even the hours downloads are happening are all over the place all of a sudden. Interesting times, people. Talk to you tomorrow.