Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 03/30 – Spotify To Spin Up Clubhouse Competitor

Starting point is 00:00:00 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. again, if you're not listening to our sister podcast, the Kotki Ride Home, here's what you're missing out on today. Jack's got a brief history of a super popular medieval fruit that had to be eaten rotten and then just suddenly disappeared from history. The newly discovered zombie brain cells that stay active for hours after you

Starting point is 00:00:48 die, one of Twitch's most popular streams right now is a live feed of a stop sign that no one stops at. Again, our sister show, the Kotkei Ride Home, is just like this show, but it's all the cool stuff you miss today, not just in the world of tech. Kotki, K-O-T-T-K-E ride home, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the TechMeme Ride Home for Tuesday, March 30th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. It's actually a nuts-o-but-so newsday. Spotify is launching a clubhouse competitor.

Starting point is 00:01:22 Amazon is spinning up a new line of custom silicon. Big updates to Google Maps. We know the dates for WWDC. Amazon seems to be doing some Twitter sock puppetry, a whole bunch of new phones from Jaume. Substack is raising another big round, and that's not all. There's just so much happening today in the world of tech that I can't even promo it. So let's just get to it.

Starting point is 00:01:46 Spotify is probably launching its own clubhouse competitor Toot Suite. Spotify has acquired app developer Betty Labs, creator of Locker Room, a live social audio app where fans can talk about sports. Quoting Axios. Spotify said in a statement that in coming months, It will, quote, evolve and expand locker room into an enhanced live audio experience for a wider range of creators and fans, including in genres like music and cultural programming. The acquisition will allow creators of all kinds to host anything from debates to live concerts,

Starting point is 00:02:18 end quote. And quoting The Verge. Gustav Saldestrom, chief R&D officer at Spotify, tells the Verge that Spotify will let anyone host conversations, not just approved creators, meaning its app will directly compete with all of the various live audio apps currently on the market, including Twitter spaces, Clubhouse, and Discord. Although he says Spotify employed creators won't be required to go live only on Spotify's app, he thinks it'll be a, quote, great compliment to their existing Spotify audiences.

Starting point is 00:02:47 Still, the two apps will remain separate. Quote, but who knows, maybe we'll integrate some of these features or all of these features in the future, Sodorstrom says. Spotify will also experiment with different monetization features, he said. Some chats might be free. to tune into, for example, while others might be paid. Of course, live audio from the app will then become a direct funnel to Spotify's podcasting ecosystem. Sodorstrom says people already record their spaces and clubhouse chats and upload them as MP3 files to anchor. Spotify's podcast creation

Starting point is 00:03:18 and hosting software, quote, we might want to make that more seamless, he says. It's easy to imagine the company allowing people to natively record their chats and tap a button to distribute them directly to Spotify, end quote. Everybody seems to want live audio rooms these days, and everybody seems to want their own silicon as well. The information is reporting that Amazon is stepping up its Silicon ambitions with a new networking chip, quote, Amazon is developing a chip to power the hardware switches that shuttle data around networks the information has learned.

Starting point is 00:03:55 The new chip effort, which hasn't been previously reported, is the work of a team that Amazon inherited with its $350 million acquisition of chipmaker Anna Perna Labs in 2015, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter and another person who was briefed on the project. Developing its own networking chip could help Amazon Web Services get better performance out of its switches. It could also reduce Amazon's reliance on Broadcom, a chipmaker with which Amazon has a frosty relationship, according to the two people and others who do business with Amazon. The switch chip is part of a broader AWS effort to make the performance of its cloud servers

Starting point is 00:04:29 indistinguishable from the servers companies operate in private data centers. Network latency is one of the last remaining challenges to doing so, but the existing networking hardware and components from third-party suppliers don't afford AWS the flexibility it wants to solve the problem. As a result, AWS plans to also design an array of networking hardware components and software for moving data quickly within or between servers, one of these people said. Meanwhile, Microsoft and Google are working on their own chip designs to improve their cloud computing services and other products. Google, which has been developing custom chips for AI projects for years,

Starting point is 00:05:09 earlier this month hired Yuri Frank, a veteran chip executive from Intel to lead an Israel-based chip design team. And Microsoft is reportedly designing its own chips for servers and surface computers to lessen its reliance on Intel. Like other big tech companies, Amazon will need to hire a chip manufacturing firm to build the chips it designs, end quote. Google has announced major new upgrades to maps, including AR directions, a new directions interface with eco-friendly driving routes and new weather map layers, quoting the verge. One of the biggest announcements is that Google is bringing its live view augmented reality directions to airports, transit stations, and malls. Live view directions let you hold your

Starting point is 00:05:55 phone up, point your camera at the world around you, and see arrows and icons point. pointing you where you need to go, and previously, they only worked outdoors. Disappointingly, though, these indoor AR directions aren't being rolled out very widely yet. They're only available in some malls in Chicago, Long Island, Los Angeles, Newark, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle right now. Google will launch indoor live-view directions in select transit stations, airports, and malls in Tokyo and Zurich in the coming months, however, and more cities are, quote, on the way, the company says.

Starting point is 00:06:27 Google is also planning to revamp the interface for picking your mode of transportation for directions on Android and iOS. Right now, you have to toggle through different tabs to see more detail about different transportation options. But with this new interface, you'll just scroll through a list. The company says Maps will even be able to prioritize the modes you prefer and put those that are popular in certain cities, the subway in New York City, for example, higher up the list. This new interface is set to roll out globally in the coming months. In addition to the directions interface, Google, is adding a new type of driving route that's optimized for lower fuel consumption.

Starting point is 00:07:05 If the eco-friendly route has about the same ETA as the fastest route to a location, Google Maps will default to the fuel-efficient route, though you can change this in settings if you'd like. Google plans to make these new fuel-efficient routes available on Android and iOS in the U.S. later this year, and globally add an unspecified time in the future, end quote. Mark your calendars. Apple has announced that WWDC 2021 will be held June 7 through June 11, and as with last year, it will be a fully virtual event, quoting 9 to 5 Mac. This marks the second year in a row that Apple will hold a virtual worldwide developers conference due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The event will be free to all developers. Last year, the all-virtual WWDC was widely praised for help. helping make the conference more inclusive for everyone, especially given the cost that is normally

Starting point is 00:08:06 associated with traveling to San Jose, California for the conference. Tim Cook touted that WWDC 2020 drew 22 million viewers across all of Apple's streams. Apple was able to put together 72 hours of video content for developers and hold 4,500 person-to-person labs. Apple says that WWDC 2021 will include keynote and state-of-the-union events, online sessions, one-on-one labs for developers and new ways for developers to interact with Apple engineers and designers. Apple also says that even though WWDC will take place virtually this year, it is committing $1 million to SJ Aspires, an education and equity initiative launched by the city of San Jose. As usual, we expect Apple to focus heavily on its software platforms at WWDC this year.

Starting point is 00:08:55 This will likely include the announcement of iOS 15, iPadOS 15, watchOS 8, macOS 12 and tbOS 15. The company will also likely release developer betas of these new operating systems then as well, end quote. I told you yesterday, I really hadn't had my eye on that whole union thing in Alabama with Amazon because I feel like there are always Amazon labor stories, but we definitely have another sign that things might be coming to a head in a meaningful way at the moment because because Amazon continues to do weird stuff, which I guess is an indication of their concern. A whole bunch of newly created Twitter accounts labeled as Amazon employees have suddenly popped up defending the company against the unionization drive. In other words, it certainly looks like for its

Starting point is 00:09:53 next bizarre PR act, Amazon has decided to go full on sock puppetry. Quoting Business Insider. Hey, everyone, this is Yola from Oak, for an account tied to an employee named Yola said last week, I just joined a program where I am able to answer any questions, comments, or concerns you may have about Amazon. I can't wait to share what my experience working here has been like for me, and quote, the account like several others reviewed by Insider was started in March 2021. Rather than posting, the accounts focus on responding to people tweeting about the company.

Starting point is 00:10:28 Back in 2018, Amazon admitted to paying a small army of employees to tweet positive things about the company. The move was in response to the first revelations that some Amazon warehouse and delivery staff were peeing in bottles to save time due to the demands of their job. The employees paid by Amazon were easy to identify, as they all shared the same Amazon FC naming convention on their profiles. FC stands for Fulfillment Center, the name of Amazon's shipping warehouses. Quote, My fulfillment center lets me take two 20-minute breaks and one 30-minute lunch. On overtime days, we get three 20-minute breaks, which is also pretty nice as well. One such response from an employee identified as Gary reads,

Starting point is 00:11:07 Before the pandemic, our breaks used to be only 15 minutes. Being an essential worker is dignifying for me, end quote. So yeah, seems on the up and upright. Here's more deets from Gizmodo. The Amazon employee in question known as Darla joined Twitter this month to tell us about how great Amazon is as a company and how unions aren't really needed at Amazon because employees are treated so well. quote, Amazon is not anti-union. Unions are valuable tools at companies that don't provide good

Starting point is 00:11:38 pay and benefits like Amazon does. We simply don't need them here. Darla tweeted on Sunday. Darla has just 24 followers and is only following three people, but aside from that, her photo appears like a real person at first glance. But is Darla real? Her photo was almost certainly created using the website generated photos. Gizmodo was unable to reproduce Darla's photo exactly, but we got pretty close by simply checking various boxes for the kind of hair and eyes we wanted from generated photos. The description for Darla, or her facial type, appears to utilize joyful, white, young adult female with medium brown hair and brown eyes, as you can see in the bottom right of our screenshot from the site. Just take a look at the ears and the way the hair falls

Starting point is 00:12:22 if you need any evidence that the photo of Darla is computer generated. But photos aside, is Darla possibly real in other ways? Frankly, it's hard to tell. Some of the tweets almost seem purposely obtuse in the way that a troll might tweet, quote, Amazon is not union busting. I cannot stress that enough, exclamation point. Amazon is just trying to prevent employees from fraternizing or organizing outside of company-approved channels. Darla tweeted over the weekend, end quote, because if you're a normal person, that's what you do. That's how you spend your weekend, defending your employer against people attempting to organize outside of company-approved channels, right? Checks out, totally checks out, nothing to see here. My favorite one that I saw last night but forgot

Starting point is 00:13:09 to Fave was a screed about how the person in question didn't want a union and then ended by assuring people that she was not a bot. And look, again, that makes total sense, right? Because, you know that old trick from the movies where if you ask someone, if they're a cop, they have to tell you, right? Yeah, Asimov's little-known fourth law of robotics is that if you ask a bot if it's a bot, it has to tell you if it is, in fact, a bot. God, it's been such a heavy newsday. Every time I've looked up, there's been something else that I feel like I have to tell you about. So let me see what I can squeeze into segments, multiple things to try to get everything in here. Sources are telling Axios that A16Z is doubling down on substack, leading a new financing

Starting point is 00:14:00 round that we'll see Substack raise $65 million at a $650 million valuation. And the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Barron app, creator of Cameo, is raising $100 million for Masasan's Vision Fund 2 and others at a greater than $1 billion valuation up from its last valuation of $300 million in 2019. Camio launched four years ago and it enables celebrities to sell personalized videos and messages to fans. The platform has attracted those not currently in the limelight, like Brian Baumgartner of NBC's The Office and octogenarian pop singer Neil Sedaka, as well as a range of others from Olympic gymnast Gabby Douglas, and former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer to rock legend

Starting point is 00:14:46 Melissa Etheridge and famous animals such as Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens Hippo Fiona. Top earning celebrities like Mr. Baumgartner, Kevin Malone from the office, can gross more than $1 million annually through the platform, the company said. British actor James Buckley was the service's most prolific creator last year with about 10,000 cameos. Camio generated $100 million in sales in 2020, a more than fourfold increase from 2019. The total sales figure comes before Barron app pays its creators their 75% cut. The company attributed the outsized growth to the pandemic, but said the platform was growing before that. Still, Barron app isn't profitable, end quote.

Starting point is 00:15:32 Volvo and Aurora have announced a partnership to develop fully autonomous semi-trucks for North America to be deployed on highly frequented hub-to-hub routes, quoting the verge. Aurora has been testing its Aurora driver hardware and software stack in its test fleet of minivans and class eight trucks in the Dallas-Fort Worth area since last year. Unlike its rivals, which are largely focused on Robotaxi applications, the company has said that its first commercial service will be in trucking, quote, where the market is largest today, the unit economics are best, and the level of service requirements is most accommodating, end quote. The deal between Volvo Autonomous Solutions and Aurora, which was founded by

Starting point is 00:16:14 former executives from Google, Tesla, and Uber, is a, quote, long-term partnership spanning several years, the company said, end quote. And finally today, a bunch of announcements from Xiaomi. They unveiled the $1,200-Euro Ultra smartphone with a rear-facing 1.1-inch ammo-led screen. Also, the Mi-11 I, Mi-11 Light, Mi-Band-6, and an air-powered-like charging pad. So a whole suite of sleek-looking phones and wearables that will never be able to get our hands on here in the U.S. But also, Jaume announced their first ever foldable phone, the Mi-mix fold. quoting the verge. The Me Mix Fold is a pretty conventional folding phone that uses a big screen on the inside, small screen on the outside design similar to Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold series and Huawei's

Starting point is 00:17:13 new MateX2. The inner screen is an 8.01 inch 4x3 OLED panel with 2480 by 1860 resolution, a standard display brightness of 60 nits, and support for Dolby Vision HDR. Xiaomi says the display is able to withstand being folded 200,000 times. The outer screen is 6.52 inches with a 90 hertz refresh rate. Xiaomi is making big claims about the Mi Mix Folds audio capabilities with four Harmon Cardin-tuned speakers and what the company describes as 3D panoramic sound. People in China are able to pre-order the Mi-Mix fold today, and it'll ship on April 16th. Prices start at 9,999 yuan, around $1,500 for a model with 12 gigabytes of RAM and 256 gigabytes of storage,

Starting point is 00:18:02 going all the way up to $12,999 yuan or around $2,000 for a 16-gabyte, 512-gigabyte ceramic special edition. There's no word yet on a release outside of China, end quote. So I feel bad. I kind of feel like I maybe misled you yesterday. Yesterday I wrote the script for the show right before lunch, and I was feeling fine, and then I went down and had my daily tovala, and as I was coming back up to start to edit the show, I was starting to feel not so fine, and during the course of the two hours of editing, I started to feel worse and worse, not terrible, but I felt like, you know how when you get a fever

Starting point is 00:18:46 and your joints ache a bit and you get the chills and you just want to jump in a warm bath, yeah, it was kind of like that. So I probably should have re-recorded that outro to reflect that, but frankly, by the time I was done editing, I kind of just wanted to take a nap. So I saved telling you all this for today. Yes, I did, in fact, feel an impact from my second vaccine jab after all, though once again, by 11.03 a.m. today, as I'm writing these words,

Starting point is 00:19:17 I feel right as rain again. And frankly, in a way, I'm kind of glad. I had some sort of side effect because at least I now know that it worked. Now I know my body recognized something foreign inside it and went to work as it should have because of the vaccine. If I had never had any side effects and symptoms, maybe I'd just be left wondering, did the shot not work on me? Well, I can tell you it did. My body definitely knew something was up. But again, it wasn't that bad. So again, vaccines would recommend. Hope you all get one soon. tomorrow.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 03/30 – Spotify To Spin Up Clubhouse Competitor

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.