Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 06/28 – Elon Could Let Me Do This Show From A Campsite

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

Why there’s a HUGE tech angle to the whole Roe V. Wade controversy. Google’s shutting down one of their chat apps, but even I can’t be bothered to figure out which one or why. Airbnb is permanently putting the kibosh on parties. And will StarlinkRV allow all of us to take off into the wild and still do our work? Sponsors: ZocDoc.com/techmeme Links: Without Roe, data will become a company headache and a user nightmare (Axios) Period tracker Stardust surges following Roe reversal, but its privacy claims aren’t airtight (TechCrunch) Google Hangouts is shutting down in November (The Verge) Elon Musk Has Twitter’s Data, but Getting Answers on Spam Accounts May Be Tougher (WSJ) Amazon plans two Prime shopping events this year, with second one in Q4 (CNBC) Airbnb’s party ban is now permanent (The Verge) STARLINK RV REVIEW: THE DAWN OF SPACE INTERNET TO GO (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, June 28th, 2022. I'm Brian McCullough today. Why there's a huge tech angle to the whole Roe v. Wade controversy. Google's shutting down one of their chat apps, but even I can't be bothered to figure out which one or why. Airbnb is permanently putting the kibosh on parties and will Starlink RV allow all of us to take off into the wild and still do our work? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. So you know, I try to avoid politics on the show when I came. but when there's a huge tech angle to something, I really can't avoid it. The Supreme Court's recent overturning of Roe v. Wade has lots of folks worried that that decision could be used to curb

online freedoms and surveil vulnerable populations. A big concern is basically the whole modern tech surveillance machine, which could be used to do things like alert authorities of likely pregnancies. There's also, you know, user location, the searches you make, and the data collected by tech companies that could be used in abortion-related criminal prosecutions. There already have been stories of third-party data brokers that were selling the location data of visitors to plan parenthood clinics, for example. Quoting Axios, while tech companies were loathed to talk on the record about how they might address such legal requests in a post-Roe v. Wade abortion case, lawyers and other executives at several companies are definitely having these discussions.

Law enforcement requests could come in the form of seeking data for a specific person or seeking, say, all people who were near a particular clinic, or maybe all out-of-state residents near a particular clinic, in addition to non-medical information such as location, shopping, and search data, medical records themselves could be targeted, and those records are far more digitized than they were in the pre-Roe era. While HIPAA restricts how providers share information, it doesn't prevent them from sharing it with law enforcement. I don't think people can rely on HIPA as being a defense in these cases if there were a criminal prosecution. a lawyer said. It's not just people who have abortions who may find themselves the subject of investigations.

Anyone who is pregnant and has a miscarriage, for example, might find prosecutors seeking their internet search or other data to determine whether a provider delivered illegal services. Likewise, as states have sought to criminalize gender-affirming health care, data requests could be used, for example, against parents researching health options for their kids, end quote. I guess we're entering a stage where using VPNs might become a lot more commonplace, just to hide your simple Googles. But not only that, take the example of the period tracking app Stardust. After making public statements that its app would add end-to-end encryption so that no data

could be shared with law enforcement, it rocketed to the very top of the app store. Except it has come out that because of existing third-party data APIs and other things, the app has been sharing its user's phone numbers with an analytics company all along, Quoting TechCrunch. Mix panel is an analytic service that's used widely by app developers to track their apps usage and help identify errors or other ways to improve the app. It does this by tracking how someone uses the app and sending the data to MixPanel servers. Stardust also shared with MixPanel details about the phone that the app was installed on,

which iPhone model and software version was used, which cell carrier the phone was connected to, etc. During the network traffic analysis, TechCrunt saw no health data shared with MixPanel, but sharing a phone number that's tied to a specific user of a period tracking app with a third-party like MixPanel could allow prosecutors to compel MixPanel to turn over their data even if Stardust claims it can't. Stardust founder Rachel Moranis told TechCrunch, quote, The current old version of Stardust leverages several data collection mechanisms of Mix Panel that we have disabled slash removed in the new version. In addition to not sending personally identifiable information to MixPanel, we have also disabled IP tracking for our users to protect from that metadata being used to identify

our users, end quote. In a tweet, Stardust said it was, quote, working on a way to allow users to sign in anonymously, end quote. I'm not going to bother to write the joke right now. You know the joke. So in all of your heads, just insert the joke that you know that I want to make right about here. Google says Hangouts will shut down in November as it begins prompting mobile hangouts users to move to chat. Quoting the verge. In an announcement posted to its blog, Google says people who still use the hangouts mobile app will see a prompt to move to chat.

As for users who use hangouts in Gmail on the web, Google says it won't start prompting users to make the switch to chat until July. Hangouts will remain usable on its desktop site until November, and Google says it will warn users at least one month in advance before it starts pointing the hangouts site to chat. confusingly, Google Chat isn't the same thing as G-Chat, or Google Talk, for that matter, which Google discontinued for good earlier this month. Hangouts was originally supposed to be the successor to G-Chat, but here we are. The company first hinted at its plans to transition users from Hangouts to chat in 2018 and

made the feature free for all users in 2020. If you're still using Hangouts, Google should automatically transfer your existing conversations to chat. The company also gives you the option of using its takeout service to download a copy of Hangouts data before it's officially discontinued come November. To entice users into making the switch to chat, Google says it's rolling out a few new features, including the ability to make direct calls, create inline threads in spaces, the rebrand of rooms, as well as share and view multiple images, end quote. Quick update on the whole Elon Twitter thing. Twitter gave Elon Musk access to its

data fire hose. And then Elon said that wasn't enough data, asked for more data, like historical tweet data, and they gave it to him. And so far, nothing. Crickets, quoting the Wall Street Journal. The nature of the fire hose data, both its volume and its limitations, make it hard for Mr. Musk or anyone to come up with clear findings in a short period that would prove whether or not Twitter's own estimates of fake and spam accounts are accurate, data analysts and social media specialists say. And any estimates could be hard to compare to those Twitter has made public, they say, because Twitter has a unique protocol for how it determines such accounts. Twitter's fire hose is, quote, just a public tweet string that contains such a vast amount of

finite data that it isn't practical to analyze it for spam, said Micah Schaefer, a consultant for social media companies on trust and safety issues who previously worked at YouTube and Snap. Making it available to Mr. Musk is, quote, more of a shut up and go away kind of thing than a major concession, he says. Twitter has walked Mr. Musk through its process for calculating daily monetizable users, one of the people familiar with the matter said. People who have studied Twitter's data, though, said digesting it in a timely manner is challenging because of the volume of data received

and the amount of resources needed to analyze it, namely computational power, infrastructure, and expertise. Around a dozen companies have paid for access to the firehose over the years, a person familiar with the matter said. The average company would be drowning in the data, said Rahul Talang, a professor of information systems at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College. Mr. Musk hasn't said how he will carry out his analysis, though, as the world's richest person, he has the resources to hire enough data analysts to get the job done within about a month's time, he said, end quote. For the first time ever, Amazon plans to host two prime shopping events this year.

Two prime days. Actually, this looks like several prime days. The first is coming in mere weeks. It'll be July 12th and 13th. And the second one is set for some time in Q4, according to a note. sent to third-party merchants, quoting CNBC. The company recently began notifying select third-party merchants of a prime fall deal event via its internal seller portal called Cellar Central. The notice doesn't announce any dates but instructs sellers to submit limited time lightning deals by July 22nd

well in advance of the fourth quarter event. The prime fall deal event is a prime exclusive shopping event coming in Q4. The notice states, submit recommended lightning deals for this event for a chance to have your deal selected, end quote. The fall event could help. drum up additional sales for Amazon, which announced in April that it had booked the slowest quarterly revenue growth since the dot-com bust in 2001. It could also help retailers clear out some of the extra inventory they've accumulated as inflation squeezes shoppers, and they shift their spending to areas like travel and entertainment. Analysts have voiced concerns that Prime Day has lost some of the momentum it once had, pointing to slowing sales growth, smaller order sizes,

and more muted promotion on Amazon's website. Jeffrey's analysts on Monday predicted Prime Day will contribute $8.1 billion in gross merchandise volume this year, which is, quote, consistent with the summer event last year, end quote. Airbnb has announced it is making its ban on parties at rented Airbnb properties introduced back in 2020, permanent, saying that the ban became much more than a public health measure, quoting the verge. In 2020, Airbnb introduced a temporary ban on house parties and events to better follow social distancing restrictions with the pandemic. Now the company says it's been so pleased by the outcome of the ban

that it's making it permanent and codifying its rules. Over time, the party ban became much more than a public health measure, said the company in a blog post. It developed into a bedrock community policy to support our hosts and their neighbors, end quote. The ban prohibits all disruptive parties and events with a particular focus on open invite gatherings, those advertised on social media and party house properties. Disruptive parties and events are essentially defined as those that attract complaints from neighbors. Airbnb says it suspended the accounts of some 6,600 guests for violating the party ban in 2021, though that is a tiny figure, considering that the company has more than 150 million users, whether this is due to lax enforcement or in frequent violations who can say. In addition to making

the party ban permanent, Airbnb is lifting a 16-person occupancy limit. It also introduced in 2020. The company says this is because there are plenty of properties that can comfortably host more than 16 people and that many of these are used for multi-generational family trips and larger groups. This particular policy change will take effect in the coming months, says Airbnb, end quote. Finally today, how about a product review? I'm going to be doing this show next week from an Airbnb in northern Michigan, but what if I could do it further afield, if you will? That new Starlink RV Internet service is now available, and people have been testing it out

out in the boonies. According to Thomas Ricker at the verge, the Starlink RV service works well in remote locations and power consumption beats his expectations, but it can't be used on a moving vehicle, and storms and things do degrade performance. Quote, SpaceX launched its internet from space service in public beta in October 2020. The service has steadily improved ever since we tested it in May 2021, when we found it to be unreliable, inconsistent, and foiled by even the merest suggestion of trees. The latest advancements include the release of a smaller rectangular dish and sanctioned support for portability, most expressly with the launch of the Starlink RV service. Starlink RV allows owners to take their $599 or

$639-0. Dishy McFlatface anywhere on the same continent, at least. there's coverage, which now means large swaths of North America and nearly all of Western Europe. You can even pause and unpause the $135 or $124 euro per month service so that you're only paying for the months you need. Importantly, Starlink RV targets people on the go, be it weekend campers, overlanders, and van lifers who live and work in their rigs year-round or retirees with an RV or vacation home where they reside for months at a time. As such, Starlink RV is competing against pricey unlimited mobile data plans and signal boosters that attempt to fill holes in coverage, not home internet services. Unlike the fixed Starlink residential service, which requires a perfect

line of sight to the sky to be useful, subscribers to Starlink RV can move their dishy at will and likely be much more forgiving when the choice is between degraded service and no service at all. I've been testing Starlink RV for the last two weeks in a variety of locations from atop a T5 camper van parked in a German forest where tall trees block satellite visibility at a crowded festival in Bavaria with overloaded cell towers, at a Dutch beach where the prospects of mobile data are bleak, and in a severe thunderstorm at my home in central Amsterdam. For me, Starlink RV's performance was an epiphany and caused to get serious about leaving the shackles of my urban existence behind. SpaceX currently offers two flavors of Starlink services, residential Starlink and Starlink RV.

There's also the Residential Starlink Plus portability option. which is a jumbled hybrid of the two. Each service starts with the same dish and Wi-Fi router kit, which, again, is $599, but differs in terms of expected speeds, monthly fees, the ability to use the service when traveling, and the option to easily pause the service. Starlink RV is SpaceX's most flexible offering. The Starlink RV monthly subscription costs $135 compared to $110 per month for the residential service, adding portability costs an additional $25 each month.

Each service comes with heavily caveated performance goals of 50 to 250 MbPS downloads and 10 to 20 mbPS uploads with 20 to 40 MS of expected latency and no data caps, although it does warn against misuse and abuse. One big advantage of Starlink RV is the ability to pause the service and fees at any time and then resume it at a later date when you need it again. That can save subscribers a bundle of money if they're only traveling a few months each year. The big disadvantage is that Starlink RV users are always deprioritized compared to residential subscribers. According to SpaceX, that could result in speeds closer to 5 to 100 mbPS down and 1 to 10 up

when used in congested areas or during times of high usage. Setting up the Starlink RV hardware takes only a few minutes after you're parked. I usually place the dish on the ground or on top of my camper and then ran its 75-foot cable back to the Wi-Fi router where it attaches via a fiddily micro-usb connector that rarely lines up properly. Then you plug the router into your camper's AC port, shore power or big portable battery with a built-in inverter, and watch Dishy rotate to life before turning to lock onto a satellite overhead. It would often take as long as 15 minutes before rolling into a new location before I had functioning Starlink internet, enough time to appreciate the space age tech

as I struggled with slow to non-existent mobile networks. When operating in an open field or at the beach, For example, Starlink's perfect line of sight connectivity worked for hours on end without any network drops at all, allowing me to attend video conferences, make calls over Wi-Fi, watch TikTok videos, and stream Netflix and YouTube videos without issue. End quote. Read the entire thing to get a comprehensive look at this service, especially if, like me, you have vague daydreams about running, I don't know, your podcast from, say, a remote lighthouse in Nova Scotia or something like that. He concludes by saying this, quote, to be frank, I'm kind of blizzard. blown away by the transformative experience of using Starlink RV over the last few weeks. I've been a budding van lifer for years, scouring Instagram on the regs for Sprinter 4x 4 porn.

Sitting in a remote field and watching Dishy lock on to one of the thousands of SpaceX satellites orbiting overhead reminded me of the first time I use GPS to magically navigate myself home. With Starlink RV, the magic is realizing that I can now take my home on the road and navigate the next chapter of my career. Hey, Nilai, let's talk, end quote. If you combine that with my new jacquerie solar battery and generator kit that I bought earlier this month, then I could really live the hashtag Prepper Dad lifestyle. You get enough jackeries, you daisy chain enough solar panels, and I could do this show on a camping trip in the Dakotas.

Custer State Park in South Dakota, one of the most underrated attractions in this country. it, Custer State Park. Maybe I could do a week of shows from the banks of those creeks that we camped on when I was a kid. Talk to you tomorrow.