Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 06/21 – The Great Crypto Crash Of ‘22

Episode Date: June 21, 2022

Did something happen while I was away? Sort of like everything crashing in crypto? Apple wants to kill the CAPTCHA for you. The first Apple Store has unionized. Is it fair that G Suite is no longer free? And is the Microsoft Surface Duo 2 actually… good now? Sponsors: Zapier.com/ride Links: Crypto lender Babel Finance announces steps to improve its liquidity situation (The Block) New Solend vote invalidates governance decision to take over whale account (The Block) iOS 16 Will Let iPhone Users Bypass CAPTCHAs in Supported Apps and Websites (MacRumors) Apple Workers at Maryland Store Vote to Unionize, a First in the U.S. (NYTimes) Google Says It’s Time for Longtime Small-Business Users to Pay Up (NYTimes) MICROSOFT’S WEIRD SURFACE DUO 2 HAS SURPRISINGLY BECOME MY FAVORITE DEVICE OF THE YEAR (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 Monday, June 21st, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. Did something happen while I was away?

Sort of like everything crashing in crypto all at once. Apple wants to kill the CAPTCHA for you. The first Apple store has been unionized. Is it fair that G Suite is no longer free? And is the Microsoft Surface Duo 2 actually good now? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Well, look, the big story since I've been gone has been crypto. I'm actually not sure how to cover this exactly, because even though lots of folks spent the last

four days dancing on the grave of crypto and Web 3, I definitely don't think crypto is dead. Yes, Bitcoin fell to under $18,000 a coin on June 18th, below its $19,511 high back during its 2017 bull cycle, and ether dropped below $1,000. Both are down more than 70% since November. Yes, the total value. of all cryptocurrencies has gone down by roughly two trillion dollars or two-thirds since, you know, crypto hit its all-time highs. But this show has been around long enough that I'd humbly submit that just the amount of times we cover crypto is a decent barometer of the health of the crypto space. This show launched right after the crypto winter, following the ICO craze. If you go back in

the archive, there are entire weeks and months where we didn't mention a single crypto story at all. And I remember asking at the beginning of COVID, where was crypto? Shouldn't it have been, you know, in a perfect situation given that the world was blowing up? But then in late 2020, I did hear the first rumors of the NFT craze. We did the first segments on NFTs. And remember, we minted our own podcast, NFT. And there was this whole explosion of crypto stories, much to the chagrin of some of you. Anyway, I don't think crypto's dead by any stretch. But I wonder if we go into a period of crypto winter, like as after the ICO bubble popped, I wonder if we'll just have fewer crypto segments for a while, maybe through the end of the summer. And if so, then I guess the crypto winter really is here. Of course, if we continue to have crypto headlines, if they're headlines like this, it's not great Bob either. Babel Finance is another crypto financial services project. It suspended withdrawals on June 17th, but now says it has reached, quote, preliminary agreements on the repayment period of some debts, end quote, helping ease liquidity pressure, quoting the block.

Today's announcement doesn't mean withdrawals, which were suspended on Friday because it was facing unusual liquidity pressures, are resumed, however. The company said it has, quote, actively communicated with shareholders and potential investors and will continue to communicate and obtain liquidity support, end quote. Amid reports that Babel Finance has informed partners, it's insolvent. A company spokesperson told the block that, quote, no, we never told partners that, end quote. When asked whether Babel Finance is facing liquidity issues due to exposure to troubled crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, the spokesperson said, quote, Babel Finance has no business with

three arrow capital, end quote. Founded in 2018, Hong Kong-based Babel Finance provides lending and trading services to institutional investors. It claimed to have about 500 clients and 170 employees as of last month. Last month, Babel Finance entered the Unicorn Club after raising $80 million in a Series B funding round at a $2 billion valuation, end quote. I did want to add this bit of color, though. Solend Labs, a decentralized lending protocol on the Solana blockchain, overturned a controversial Dow vote to take over a whale's account. That whale had deposited around $5.7 million worth in Seoul,

and then they took it away, and then they're kind of giving it back, but not really let the block unpack all this forward. us quote. SoLend, a lending and borrowing protocol on Solana has reversed yesterday's controversial Dow decision to take control of its largest user account. A new governance vote has passed that invalidates yesterday's move with 99% of the votes supporting the new decision. This all started when on Sunday the Solend team put up a governance vote asking to take over a large user loan in order to prevent an on-chain liquidation event. The issue was that an unknown user held a 100,000 and $8 million stable coin loan collateralized by 5.7 million Solana tokens, around $170 million on Solend.

The proposal to, quote, mitigate risk from the whale and, quote, noted that the user in question had 95% of the Sol deposits in Solent's main pool. The main problem was that if the price of sole dropped to $22.30, the Whale's account would be liquidated. In its proposal, the Solent team claimed that a liquidation of this size on chain was risky due to thin liquidity on the lending protocol. The team further made the case that if the on-chain liquidation went through, Solon would be at risk for accruing bad debt due to a cascading drop in Sol's value. The team suggested that rather than a protocol liquidation, the loan should be wound up via an over-the-counter or OTC deal. The Solon governance system then hurriedly passed a vote that gave the team full power

to confiscate the user's position. In this vote, 88% of the voting power came from a single address. Later on social media, the governance decision received a lot of criticism from many commentators who berated the team for undermining the ethos of decentralization. In response, the team today said it took note of the criticism and put up a second proposal seeking to invalidate yesterday's decision. The Dow voted today with 99% of votes in favor of invalidating the last proposal, end quote. So, the Dow voted to literally confiscate property of a major shareholder or stakeholder, or owner or user or something, as Lori Voss tweeted, quote, so in a Dow, can the poorest 51% vote to take over the money from the richest, 49% because that would be amazing to watch. In their speed run of financial

history, they have finally run into Marxism, end quote. Except 98% of the original votes from that first vote came from one unidentified other whale wallet, which I'm assuming is probably the So-Lend team or their investors or something like that. And then after the property appropriation was approved, that second vote came in and voided that confiscation? Remind me, what about Dow's in practice, not in theory, in practice is actually decentralized? iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and MacOS Ventura have added an automatic verification option, which lets users bypass CAPTCHAs on websites and in apps that support the feed. feature. Now this is something I can get on board with, quoting Mac rumors. Tapping on images of

traffic lights or deciphering squiggly text to prove you are human will soon be a much less common nuisance for iPhone users as iOS 16 introduces support for bypassing CAPTCHAs in supported apps and websites. The handy new feature can be found in the Settings app under Apple ID, password and security, and then automatic verification. When enabled, Apple says ICloud will automatically and privately verify your device and Apple ID account in the background, eliminating the need for apps and websites to present you with a Captcha verification prompt. Apple recently shared a video with technical details about how the feature works, but simply put, Apple's system verifies that the device and Apple ID account are in good standing

and presents what is called a private access token to the app or website. This new system will offer a better user experience for tasks such as signing in or creating an account with improved user privacy and accessibility, compared to CAPTCHAs. Cloudflare and Fasley have already announced support for private access tokens, meaning that the ability to bypass CAPTCHAs could be coming to millions of apps and websites powered by those platforms, and the feature will roll out more widely over time. In the first betas of iOS 16 and iPadOS 16, automatic verification is enabled by default. Apple said the feature is also supported on MacOS Ventura. All of the software updates are currently in beta and will be

released later this year, end quote. Other things since I've been gone, Apple employees at a store in Townsend, Maryland voted 65 to 33 to unionize, making it the company's first U.S. store where employees voted in favor of unionization, quoting the New York Times. The result announced on Saturday by the National Labor Relations Board provides a foothold for a budding movement among Apple retail employees who want a greater voice over wages and COVID-19 policies. employees of more than two dozen Apple stores have expressed interest in unionizing in recent months. Union leaders say, in the election, 65 employees at Apple Store in Townsend, Maryland, voted in favor of being represented by the union known as the Apple Coalition of Organized Retail employees, while 33 voted against. It will be part of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in Industrial Trade Union that represents over 300,000 employees.

Tyra Reader, a technical specialist who has worked at the Townsend store a little over six months, said that she was elated with the outcome and that she hoped a union would help increase workers' compensation, stabilize the store's scheduling, which has been strained by recent COVID-19 cases, and make it easier for workers to advance within the company. We love our jobs. We just want to see them do better, Ms. Reader said. The outcome is a blow to Apple's campaign to blunt union drives by arguing that it pays more than many retailers and provides an array of benefits, including health care and stock grants. Last month, it increased starting wages for retail employees to $22 an hour from 20,

and released a video of Deidre O'Brien, who leads Apple retail, cautioning employees that joining a union could hurt the company's business, end quote. Google is ending its G Suite Legacy Free Edition. After more than a decade, it's going to end on August 1st, and a bunch of small businesses are pissed about this, arguing that Google lured them with a free service that then they rugpooled, quoting the New York Times. They're basically strong-arming us to switch to something paid after they got us hooked on this free service, said Mr. Dalton, who first set up a Google work email for his business, Your Score Booster in 2008. Google said the longtime users of what it calls its G-suite legacy free edition, which includes email and apps like Docs and calendar, had to start paying a monthly charge, usually around $6 for each business email address. Businesses that do not voluntarily switch to a paid service by June 27th will be automatically moved to one if they don't pay by August.

first, their accounts will be suspended. While the cost of the paid service is more of an annoyance than a hard financial hit, small business owners affected by the change say they have been disappointed by the ham-handed way that Google has dealt with the process. They can't help but feel that a giant company with billions of dollars in profits is squeezing little guys, some of the first businesses to use Google's apps for work, for just a bit of money. It struck me as needlessly petty, said Patrick Gant, the owner of Think It Creative, a marketing consultancy in Ottawa. It's hard to feel sorry for someone who received something for free for a long time and now are being told that they need to pay for it. But there was a promise that was made. That's what compelled me to make

the decision to go with Google versus other alternatives, end quote. So this is a corollary to our podcast maxim of never rely on a Google service or build your business on one because they might get bored and just take it away someday. Or the corollary is, I guess, never expect a Google service to be free forever either, which is kind of. of a form of taking it away, though taking it away is always worse. Aside from Gmail and the G Suite that Ride Home Media pays for, the one Google service I'm left depending on that I can't live without is Google Authenticator, their free two-factor authentication app. Don't think they'll shut that down someday or charge for it. As a podcaster, let me tell you a little story about a thing called Feed Burner. Even if Google never

charges, even if they take years before they shut it down, Google can lose interest in any product and let it wither on the vine long before it's ever in danger of going away. Finally today, a provocative piece from Dan Sefer at the Verge. He says that Microsoft's Surface Duo 2 is finally a compelling dual-screen device, but only after at least nine software updates and a $500 price cut got it there. In other words, after long saying that the Duo 2 isn't quite there yet, after again software updates not a new hardware refresh, he says that he finally loves the Duo2. It's exceedingly rare that a product actually gets better months after it was released,

but Microsoft's off-forgotten Surface Duo2, which launched back in October 2021 with a steep price tag and a laundry list of bugs and issues that made it very frustrating to use, has bucked that trend. In fact, the Duo 2 has improved so much that it's now one of my favorite mobile devices, even if it's still weird and unique enough that I can't exactly recommend it to most people. In case you've forgotten, the Surface Duo 2 is a folding phone with two big screens joined by a hinge. Unlike Samsung's Galaxy Z-Fold, which takes a single tablet-sized display and folds it in half, to fit in your pocket, the Duo 2's two screens, make it feel more like two large phones attached together and running the same software. You can easily run two apps side by side, as if you were holding two phones at the same time,

or you can span a single app across both screens to mimic a small tablet. Both halves of the phone are thin enough that it can fold together like a book and fit into a pocket with relative ease. Pair it with Microsoft's Surface Slim Pen, too, and you have a portable digital notebook that can work just as well for note-taking, reading an e-book, or drafting an email. When I received the Surface Duo 2 last year, none of its clever design or book-like features mattered. The device was effectively broken, held back by software bugs that made it infuriating to type on, frustrating to use and ultimately disappointing. It was a $1,500 novelty that could only appeal to the most die-hard Microsoft brand stooges, willing to put up with its many faults so they could have the never-launched courier device they dreamed about over a decade ago. But remarkably, Microsoft has not given up on the Duo 2. In fact, the company has consistently issued software updates on a monthly basis to address the many problems the Duo 2 had at launch. Some of these updates consisted of simple security patches and small bug fixes, while others, like the recent June update, included more significant corrections and added new features.

Crucially, Microsoft has addressed the touchy latency problems that were prevalent at launch and made it very difficult to type on the Duo 2's virtual keyboard or even navigate the interface. Reader, I can finally say I get it. The Duo 2 is the most unique mobile device I've used, allowing me to do things I can't do with a traditional smartphone. It also does certain things such as multitasking and reading e-books better than the Z-Fold 3's single large screen. In the past month plus, I've used the duo two for reading lots of books in the Kindle app, which takes advantage of the dual screen to provide a more book-like experience than any other device. I've managed my inbox and calendar at the same time. I've edited Google Docs while keeping up with a Slack conversation. I've used the Slim Pen 2 to take handwritten notes in one note.

I've read countless articles in my pocket queue with the app stretched across both screens and the Duo 2 turned into a portrait orientation. I've watched so much video span across both screens that I don't even notice the slight gap anymore. There's something undeniably satisfying about completing a task on the Duo 2 and then folding it closed like a book and slipping it in my pocket. The Duo 2 has not replaced my primary smartphone because I use them for different tasks. Messaging, calls, photos, smart home control, music and mobile payments on my iPhone. reading, multitasking, note-taking, and YouTube on the Duo 2. I've yet to actually take a call

on the Duo 2 because unless you use wireless earbuds, it's horribly awkward to do so. Mostly, I've used the Duo 2 exactly how I might use an iPad Mini, except it folds in half and fits in my pocket. It's not even accurate to call this device a phone based on how I use it. Microsoft attempted to position the original Surface Duo as something other than a phone at its launch, but moved away from that marketing with the Duo 2. Rumors have it that Microsoft won't be launching, a Duo 3 this year, instead holding it for 2023. That would give it more time to iron out issues and avoid the bug-filled launches that plagued both the original duo and the Duo 2. Microsoft could also address the aspects of the Duo design that make it difficult to use as a primary phone.

A touchscreen on the outside would go a long way here. Perhaps it can figure out a way to attach and charge the pen without resorting to a goofy and expensive add-on case. A recent patent filing from the company imagines a duo-like device that utilizes a single panel that can fold 360 degrees instead of two discrete screens attached to a hinge. I'm not sure what problem that would solve other than eliminating the gap between the screens when you're watching video, but it would definitely look cool. Either way, if Microsoft remains committed to the duo form factor and continues to iterate on it, I'll be watching. The Duo 2 has gone from one of the most problematic devices I've reviewed to one of my favorites, and I'm curious to see where Microsoft takes it next.

In the meantime, I've got another book to finish reading, end quote. Nothing for you today. Recovering from the nice long weekend. Talk to you tomorrow.