Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 05/26 – What Does A 3-Day Weekend Even Mean Anymore?

Episode Date: May 26, 2020

The ARM chips for the next several years are here. End-to-end encryption might be coming to RCS. Jailbreaking might be returning to iPhones. JioMart’s big play arrives and more on the remote work conversation. Sponsor: Tovala.com/ride Links: ARM’s Cortex-A78 CPU and Mali-G78 GPU will power 2021’s best Android phones (The Verge) Google Messages preparing end-to-end encryption for RCS messages (9to5Google) There's a Jailbreak Out for the Current Version of iOS (Wired) JioMart, the e-commerce venture from India's richest man, launches in 200 cities and towns (TechCrunch) Run The World raises $10.8 million to bring live events online (VentureBeat) Why Facebook’s Plan to Tie Remote Pay to Location Will Probably Fail (Intelligencer) https://www.youtube.com/techmemepodcast 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. After a long weekend, I'm Brian McCullough today. The arm chips for the next several years are here. End-to-end encryption might be coming to RCS. Jailbreaking might be returning to iPhones. Geo Mart's Big Play arrives and more on the whole remote work conversation. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Arm has announced its latest and greatest high-end mobile chip designs.

Let me introduce you to the Cortex A78 CPU and the Mali G78 GPU, both of which will be powering flagship Android smartphones through 2021 and beyond. What can you expect from these new chips? Well, better performance and efficiency, Natch, quoting the verge. The Cortex A78 CPU core design is unquestionably our most efficient Cortex A CPU ever designed for mobile. according to Arm. It features a 20% increase in sustained performance compared to last year's Cortex A77 design while staying within a one-watt power budget. Arm says that the performance should enable better efficiency for demanding 5G battery drains. It also says the new CPU design should be particularly suited to computationally hungry, foldable devices with multiple and

larger screens. Arm is also introducing a new Cortex X custom program for its partners to create their own specialized Cortex CPU in conjunction with Arm for their specific purposes beyond the stock Cortex A78. The first of those chips is the Arm Cortex X1, which Arm says will offer up to a 30% peak performance improvement over the Cortex A77. There's also a pair of new mobile GPUs, the top of the line Molly G78, supports up to 24 cores, which Arm promises will allow it to offer a 25% increase in graphics performance, compared to last year's Mali G77.

There's also the first GPU in a new mid-range tier, the Mali G-68, which is meant to help deliver some of the performance and improvements of the Mali G78 in a more affordable package. Lastly, Arm is also introducing a new ethos N78 neural processing unit, promising up to 25% improved performance over the ethos N77, which should translate to better machine learning performance for mobile devices, end quote. So in the coming years, even when you hear names like Snapdragon or cryo or Xenios, understand that all those guys will just be customized versions of the Cortex A78 and Mali G78. The more you know. Over the weekend, an internal build of Google Messages

6.2 showed up and showed up with suggestions that end-to-end encryption could be coming to RCS messages. APK Mirror got a hold of an internal dog-fooding build of Google's messages program, and they found 12 new strings in the app that make reference to encryption. Quoting 9 to 5 Google. For years now, folks have been excited about RCS messaging as being the true successor to SMS and MMS messages and an open competitor to Apple's IMessage. However, one thing that IMessage has long offered that RCS could not is the ability to know your messages are secure thanks to end-to-end encryption. For an oversimplified explanation of end-to-end encryption, your message is encrypted on your device in such a way that it can only be decrypted and read on the recipient's device,

meaning no one should be able to snoop on your conversation. For now, there aren't enough details to know for sure what the exact requirements are for using this new end-to-end encryption if it does show up. It's possible that both parties will need to be using the Google Messages app, though this could change once more apps gain support. What we do know for certain is that both the sender and recipient will need to have a good internet connection simultaneously for these end-to-end encrypted RCS messages to go through. If either of you has a poor connection, Google Messages will offer to send your message through good old SMS or MMS as a fallback method. Before sending in this way, though, the app will remind you that SMS and MMS are not

encrypted and ask for your consent, end quote. Also from the long weekend, might jailbreaking live again? The jailbreaking team, Uncover, has released a tool that can seemingly jailbreak most versions of iOS from 11 through 13.5 because the tool is able to make use of a zero-day flaw in the iOS kernel, quoting Wired. Uncover says that it's jailbreak, which you can install using the longtime jailbreaking platforms Alt Store and Sidia, but maybe don't. unless you're absolutely sure you know what you're doing, is stable and doesn't drain battery life

or prevent use of Apple services like ICloud, Apple Pay, or IMessage. And the group claims that it preserves Apple's user data protections and doesn't undermine iOS's sandbox security, which keeps programs running separately so they can't access data they shouldn't. This jailbreak basically just adds exceptions to the existing rules, uncovers lead developer who goes by Pone to owned, told Wired, it only enables reading new jailbreak files and parts of the file system that contain no user data, end quote. Early public reactions to the jailbreak, including from researchers who tested it before its release, indicate that it works as intended. But the community hasn't yet had time to fully assess the jailbreak or uncover's claims about its security protections. And the tool is an open source, which means it will be more difficult to analyze, end quote.

follow up to that big story from India that just keeps getting bigger and bigger every single week. Geo Mart has officially rolled out one of the key components of a strategy that as we've covered has led everyone in their mother, including Facebook, to invest in the company over the last month. The component in question is an online grocery delivery service in India that includes directly sourced farm produce in dozens of cities in that country. Quoting TechCrunch. An e-commerce venture between the nation's top telecom operator, geo-platforms, and top retail chain geo-retail, GeoMart just launched its new website and started accepting orders in dozens of Metro, Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities.

A Reliance executive said GeoMart is live and delivering across 200 cities and towns across India. Before the expansion of service on Saturday, the service was available in three suburbs of Mumbai. The service now includes perishables such as fruits and vegetables and dairy items, in addition to staples and other grocery products, as it makes its pitch to Indian households across the country. Reliance Geo Platforms, which has raised more than $10 billion in the last month alone by selling a roughly 17% stake, has amassed over 388 million subscribers,

more than any other telecom operator in the country. The money comes as geo-platforms, various companies begin entering a market already teeming with fierce competitors like Amazon, Walmart's Flipkart, Big Basket, Milk Basket, basket and grofers, end quote. And here's another interesting raise that certainly seems to speak to this moment in time. Run the World, which helps clients organize and host virtual conferences and events has raised a $10.8 million series A led by Andresen Horowitz and founders fund, quoting Venture Beat. The Mountain View, California-based startup has built a platform designed

to host all manner of events from panels, summits, and conferences to fundraisers, team training sessions and musicians slash fan meetups. The company offers a range of plug-and-play templates to tailor their events specifically for their audience and supports ticketing, registration, networking, and of course video conferencing. With a fresh trunch of money in the bank, Run the World said that it will use the investment to scale its platform and build on existing features such as cocktail party, a socializing tool designed to help people build relationships once the main event has ended. More on that in a second. Founded in 2019, Run the World launched back in February with $4.3 million in seed funding from Andresen Horowitz,

among other investors. The timing of its launch could hardly have been more apt as it was that very month when Myriad conferences around the world first started to cancel en masse due to the impending pandemic. Although the assumption initially for many was that this was a temporary hiccup, it is become increasingly clear that live events won't continue in their traditional form for the foreseeable future. This puts companies such as Run the World in a strong position moving forward and it's not alone. Earlier this week, events software company bevy.com raised $15 million to help it transition to virtual events, while a few months back, London-based Hopin raised $6.5 million to expand its online events platform, end quote.

Yeah, as I told you, I moderated several panels for my first ever virtual conference last week, though the sessions won't be viewable until the conference actually happens next month. And though the recording remotely went fairly flawlessly and the conversations were as good as anything you'd experience from a bunch of folks up on stage talking about whatever, a key component of every conference that I've ever been to has been the networking, right? The running into someone you've never actually met in person or rubbing shoulders with some celebrity in line for coffee or something like that, it does remain to be seen if that sort of serendipity can be effectively replicated virtually.

I don't know, maybe throw people into random house party rooms or clubhouse voice chat rooms. Quick follow up on what I said was my 180 on Silicon Valley getting remote work religion last week. As I said to some folks on Twitter this weekend, it's not like I've done a 180 and I now expect everyone to work remotely. I'm not saying I definitely expect this will happen. I'm just saying that when presented with the economic incentive to try this out, as we discussed last week, I can definitely see a bunch of companies will definitely give this a go. I have no opinion on if it will actually work, but I can see that a lot of energy will be expended on trying to make it work, which you might say, duh, Brian.

People were going to try to do something like this after the COVID-19 moment, but I'm saying that I was assuming all of long that companies wouldn't want to do this other than as some sort of recruiting gimmick, and that's what I've changed my mind on. Well, now that I can see that it will likely be more than that, there's still plenty of reason to be skeptical that this will all work out in practice. To that end, I point you to Josh Barrow in New York Magazine's Intelligencer, who straight up says that Facebook, for example, Facebook's plans to tie remote pay to location will probably fail. And Josh is an economics writer with greater bona fides in this area than certainly me. Quote, if Facebook really believes location doesn't matter much anymore, it shouldn't

just be allowing its workers to move away from Silicon Valley. It should be actively shifting its employment footprint away from Silicon Valley towards places where skilled workers are willing to accept lower salaries. And in this scenario, I don't think Facebook would have a lot of success benchmarking those remote workers' salaries to their specific locations. After all, suppose one Facebook worker decides to work from home in San Diego and another equivalent worker moves to Boise. How will Facebook be able to hold down the salary of the Boise worker when both workers add the same value? Previously, you might have said it was because the Boise worker would have a harder time finding a more lucrative job offer in Boise, so he'd be less likely to quit over.

low pay. But now, why wouldn't one of Facebook's competitors, having similarly discovered that remote work is just fine, hire away the low-paid Facebook workers in the low-cost markets, end quote. And Josh has one more implication that I hadn't thought through, even after thinking it through, last week. Think about offshoring, quoting again. Instead of competing mostly against workers in their local area, workers will compete for jobs with workers all over the country. It is also possible American workers could face more competition from foreign workers. If a job doesn't need to be done in the U.S., it usually doesn't need to be done by someone with authorization to work in the U.S. Though sending jobs abroad adds logistical, cultural, and tax implications not associated with increased geographic diversity within one country.

In particular, virtual simulations of in-person interactions such as Zoom meetings are much more viable when employees are all in the same or similar time zones, for example. My best guess is the Silicon Valley pay premium will be maintained because post-pandemic, companies will realize they were getting significant benefits from both regional agglomeration and face-to-face office interaction, and that a better-than-expected experience with temporary remote work does not mean it should be adopted as a permanent model. Stevenson, the labor economist, notes in particular that remote working seems to work better for employees who have already had extensive in-person interactions with members of the

organization where they work. It is harder to integrate a new hire into an organization of people he or she has barely met. So as companies begin hiring again, they may rediscover some of the lost virtues of the office. As such, I would take the under on Zuckerberg's projection that half the company's workforce will be remote by 2030, end quote. Thank you to everyone who has subscribed to our new YouTube channel. Because you did so, I can now point you to the official channel at YouTube.com slash tech meme podcast. If you haven't subscribed again, go ahead and do that. Help us out a bit.

Thanks for answering the bat signal, everyone that's done so. And a little PS in prep for tomorrow. If you're looking to watch that crude SpaceX launch that I told you about last week, friendly reminder that it is scheduled for 4.33 p.m. Eastern Standard Time tomorrow, Wednesday. It's apparently an instantaneous launch window, so if they can't launch exactly on time, they will just go another day. You'll be able to watch the whole thing live on NASA's website, or on Space X's website. Again, 4.33 p.m. Eastern time tomorrow. And apparently live updates will continue until the two astronauts dock with the space station later that night. I guess we'll

all be watching along tomorrow. Talk to you then.