Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 06/29 – Facebook Beats The Rap

Episode Date: June 29, 2021

A judge has completely thrown out the FTC’s antitrust lawsuit against Facebook and sent them back to the drawing board. Microsoft and OpenAI and Github have a tool that will suggest code to you as you code. And Sam Altman, as I understand this, wants to do Universal Basic Income on the blockchain. But first, he wants to scan your eyeball.  Sponsors: Cybereason.com AirMedCareNetwork.com/tech offer code TECH  Links: Judge dismisses FTC and state antitrust complaints against Facebook (CNBC) Microsoft Office is getting a new design and a native 64-bit Arm version for Windows 11 (The Verge) Microsoft and OpenAI have a new A.I. tool that will give coding suggestions to software developers (CNBC) YouTube TV Unveils Dolby Digital Support & Premium Add-on with 4K, Offline Downloads, and Unlimited Streams (The Streamable) Sam Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball in Exchange for Cryptocurrency (Bloomberg) 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, June 29th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. A judge has completely thrown out the FTC's antitrust lawsuit against Facebook and sent the FTC back to the drawing board. Microsoft and OpenAI and GitHub have a tool that will suggest code to you as you code.

And Sam Altman, as I understand this, wants to do universal basic income on the blockchain. But first, he wants to scan your eyeball. Here's what you missed today in the world. world of tech. The seeming inexorable march of antitrust action against major tech companies here in the U.S. has been thrown completely into disarray because yesterday a U.S. District Court straight up dismissed the FTC's antitrust complaint against Facebook, saying the FTC's definition of market dominance was insufficient. But, and big but here, the FTC is allowed to go back to the drawing board and refile a complaint, quoting CNBC. The court ruled Monday that the FTC failed to prove its main contention and the cornerstone of the case, that Facebook holds monopoly power in the U.S. personal

social networking market, quote, although the court does not agree with all of Facebook's contentions here, it ultimately concurs that the agency's complaint is legally insufficient and must therefore be dismissed, reads the filing from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, quote, the FTC has failed to plead a enough facts to plausibly establish a necessary element of all of its Section 2 claims, namely that Facebook has monopoly power in the market for personal social networking or PSN services, end quote. The court found the FTC did not provide enough detailed data to prove Facebook has market power in the loosely defined market for personal social networking services.

The complaint is undoubtedly light on specific factual allegations regarding consumer switching preferences, the court wrote. These allegations, which do not even provide an estimated actual figure or range for Facebook's market share at any point over the past 10 years, ultimately falls short of plausibly establishing that Facebook holds market power, end quote. Elsewhere, the filing notes that the FTC's complaint seemed to assume that the court would agree Facebook is a monopoly, quote, the FTC's complaint says almost nothing concrete on the key question of how much power Facebook actually had, and still has in a properly defined antitrust product market, the filing reads. It is almost as if the agency expects the court to simply nod to the conventional wisdom that Facebook is a monopolist, end quote.

The ruling is not necessarily the end of the case. The court acknowledged that the FTC may be able to cure the weaknesses in its argument, so it left open the possibility that it could file an amended complaint and continue the litigation. However, the court completely dismissed the parallel case from the state attorney, General saying that the long delay between the acquisitions in question, by that they mean Instagram and WhatsApp, and the 2020 case filing was unprecedented on a state level and that the state's argument about, quote, Facebook preventing interoperability with competing apps, fails to state a claim under current antitrust law, as there is nothing unlawful about having such a policy, end quote. So I'm going to keep my eyes peeled over the next couple days for some

smart analysis of all this. Was this just some sloppy drafting by the lawyers at the FTC? Some of the takes I've read so far are to the tune of, see, this proves that antitrust laws need updating, that suing 21st century companies with 20th century laws is a fool's errand. Some people think that in the end, this will actually lead to stricter antitrust laws, which in the end, tech companies will like even less. Still, it's hard to see this as anything but a big win for Facebook and frankly, all of the companies in the antitrust crosshairs. After the news broke yesterday, Facebook's stock rose 4.2% closing at $355.64, giving it a $1 trillion market cap for the first time, becoming the fifth U.S. company to hit that milestone. So, you know, there's that.

Microsoft has released the first Windows 11 preview available to insiders with all the major updates that Microsoft announced last week included, except for the actual headline items like Teams integration and Android app support. That's coming in later preview builds, Microsoft said. But let's not talk about that. Let's talk about Microsoft also announcing a major redesign for Office and word that the Windows 11 version of Office will have a native 64-bit arm version and support for 64-bit add-ins, quoting the verge. Microsoft hasn't shied away from talking about Arm with Windows 11. Its contentious list of supported CPUs includes a handful of Qualcomm chips, and it used the Arm-powered Surface Pro X to show off the tablet capabilities of its new OS.

For those with Arm machines, it's probably a good sign. Having native apps is likely going to be more efficient than emulation and provide better performance. It is, however, perhaps a little awkward that it took so long for a 64-bit Arm version of Office to come to Windows. M1 Max, got a native version late last year. There are also a few features that Microsoft mentions haven't come to the Arm version of Office yet, though that's to be expected, giving that it's currently in beta. In addition to being in the Office Insider program, those who want to test out 64-bit Office on their Arm Windows machines will also have to be running the Windows Preview. They'll also have to uninstall any 32-bit versions of Office they may have

installed before reinstalling Office and updating to the beta version. If you're running the Office beta on either Windows 10 or 11, you should be able to turn the redesign on from the coming soon pane in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or OneNote, end quote. And Microsoft has officially rolled out its Xbox cloud gaming service via browser to PCs, iPhones, iPhones, and iPads across 22 countries for Xbox GamePass Ultimate Members. Quoting the Verde, one more time. Microsoft says that on PC's XCloud can be accessed through the Edge browser and Google Chrome. We've gotten it to work within MacOS on Microsoft Edge and Safari. More than 100 games are available, and the service is compatible with Bluetooth controllers or once connected via USB. On iOS, it'll work as a web-based app via Safari,

and you'll have a choice between a controller or touch controls for certain games. Microsoft also shared in its blog post that XCloud is now powered by Xbox Series X consoles, setting the streaming at 1080p at up to 60 frames per second with a fast enough internet connection, end quote. Hopefully, this all works better than the video live stream of their Windows event last week. It's been a bit Microsoft heavy in the news lately, hasn't it? Microsoft has also announced that in partnership with OpenAI,

they've built GitHub Copilot, an AI-based tool to recommend code two-soreau. software developers as they write their code in almost any programming language. Quoting CNBC. Microsoft is looking to simplify the process of programming, the area where the company got its start in 1975. That could keep programmers who already use the company's tools satisfied and also attract new ones.

The system called GitHub Copilot draws on source code uploaded to Code Sharing Service GitHub, which Microsoft acquired in 2018, as well as other websites. Microsoft and GitHub developed it with. help from OpenA.I. An AI research startup that Microsoft backed in 2019. Researchers at Microsoft and other institutions have been trying to teach computers to write code for decades. The concept has yet to go mainstream at times because programs to write programs have not been versatile enough. The GitHub co-pilot effort is a notable attempt in the field relying as it does on a large volume of code in many programming languages and vast Azure cloud computing power.

Nat Friedman, CEO of GitHub, describes GitHub co-pilot as a virtual version of what software creators call a pair programmer. That's when two developers work side by side collaboratively on the same project. The tool looks at existing code and comments in the current file and the location of the cursor, and it offers up one or more lines to add. As programmers accept or reject suggestions, the model learns and becomes more sophisticated over time. The new software makes coding faster, Friedman said in an interview last week. Hundreds of developers at GitHub have been using the co-pilot feature all day while coding, and the majority of them are accepting suggestions and not turning the feature off, Friedman said.

Programming involves coming up with an idea about how to do something and then implementing it, and GitHub copilot is good at the second part, said Greg Brockman, a co-founder of OpenAI, and its chief technology officer, quote, You don't want to go read Twilio's API documentation. It knows all that stuff. It's actually quite reliable at it, he said. Brockman calls this work last-mile programming, and he said that having computers take care of it leads to speed improvements. Microsoft's chief technology officer Kevin Scott has seen that happen firsthand. It can save me from having to dive through a whole bunch of documentation to get a tool to do a thing that I know it's capable of doing,

and that is so good for productivity, he said. I can't even tell you the number of hours I've wasted trying to figure out the right way to do a relatively prosaic thing, just navigating the complexity of these tools, end quote. GitHub co-pilot isn't just for software veterans like him, though, quote. It may very well be one of those things that makes programming itself more approachable, Scott said. It supports almost every programming language, but it's been designed to work best with JavaScript, Python, and TypeScript, Friedman said. GitHub Copilot will first appear in Microsoft's Visual Studio Code, a free open source product,

and Microsoft plans to incorporate it into the commercial Visual Studio. product in the future, end quote. This is all based apparently on a lineal descendant of GPT3 called Codex. They basically fed Codex terabytes of public source code, and now it can do this. So, remember when GPT3 came out and some folks used it to write poems, but other folks said this could, if not replace programmers, at least mitigate the heavy lifting of coding and programming. OpenAI is apparently going to release the Codex model this summer for third-party developers to use in their own applications. So devs, I leave it to you to test this out and let me know if this is a breakthrough or not. YouTube TV has gotten a 4K plus add-on package that includes the ability to download 4K videos and unlimited streams for $20 more per month.

5.1 Dolby Surround Sound is coming later to all YouTube TV subscribers for free, quoting the streamable. The new add-on costs $19.99 a month, but will be discounted to $9.99 a month for your first year after a 30-day free trial. At the outset, with 4K plus, you'll have access to some major sports from networks like NBC and ESPN, like college football, and basketball later this year, and on-demand content from FX, Discovery Network's, Taste Made, and more. YouTube TV joins Fubo TV as the only live TV streaming services that offers 4K streaming as part of their service. It has generally been limited to events on Fox, FS1, and BTN, along with select nature and documentary on-demand content. YouTube TV is the first of the live TV streaming services to allow users to download content for offline viewing.

With the feature, you can download shows from your DVR to your mobile device. Just like when you watch online, you'll be able to fast-form. forward through commercials. This is similar to the feature available to Xfinity X1 subscribers through their Xfinity stream app, but other live TV streaming services like Fubo TV, Hulu Live TV, Sling TV, and AT&T TV, don't offer this functionality. Tivo first offered functionality similar to this as early as 2012. YouTube TV joins a growing trend of live TV streaming services offering more streaming inside the home by allowing unlimited streams at home with the 4K plus add-on, end quote. So everyone has been snarking on this, or at least commenting on this all morning, calling it something out of that Dave Eggers book, The Circle. I don't have an opinion, and I'll leave it to you to decide what to make of this, but I kind of don't know what to make of this. Worldcoin, a cryptocurrency co-founded by Sam Altman, has come out of stealth with a $25 million investment from A16Z and others. And here's the interesting part.

plans to develop an orb-shaped device to scan human eyeballs as well, or something. What's this now? Quoting Bloomberg. Altman, the former head of the Silicon Valley Business Incubator, Y Combinator, said in an interview that he conceived the idea in late 2019. The intention was to use cryptocurrency to spread money around equitably, inspired by the trendy economic theory known as universal basic income. Altman was the first investor in WorldCoin, but said he has no way.

role in day-to-day operations and mainly serves as an advisor to the company when needed. Quote, I've been very interested in things like universal basic income and what's going to happen to global wealth redistribution and how we can do that better, Altman said. Is there a way we can use technology to do that at global scale? End quote. The head of the venture is Alexander Blania, 27, a former student of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology and the Max Planck Society. He co-founded WorldCoin with Altman and Max Novenstern, who previously worked at Ray Dalio's investment firm,

Bridgewater Associates, and at Money Transfer Startup Wave. With WorldCoin, the startup promises, quote, a new global digital currency that will launch by giving a share to every single person on earth, according to an online job description. The company aims to help economies transition to cryptocurrencies, quote, through a novel approach, a dedicated hardware device ensuring both humaneness and uniqueness of everybody signing up while maintaining their privacy and the overall transparency of a permissionless blockchain, end quote. The device in question is a silver-colored spherical gizma the size of a basketball that can be carried around and used to scan people's irises in order to ascertain their

unique identities, Blania said. WorldCoin has already started testing the ore, on a small scale in various cities, he said. The World Coin currency itself is not yet ready for distribution, so the company is currently offering volunteers other types of digital coins, mostly Bitcoin in exchange for scanning their eyes and giving feedback on the process. The company has fewer than 20 prototypes in circulation around the world, Blania says. A prototype orb costs about $5,000 to make,

but the price will decline steeply as the company refines the process, he said. Worldcoin will eventually be headquartered in San Francisco, though its employees are currently scattered because of the coronavirus pandemic. According to Blania, iris scanning is an essential part of the plan because it can prevent people from trying to register multiple times to defraud the system. He's also aware of the privacy implications of handing over biometric information to a tiny startup and said, WorldCoin will make the process as transparent as possible so users can see how the data is used. He said the iris scan will produce a unique numerical code for each person and that the image is then

deleted and never stored, end quote. You ever read something to try to make it clearer in your mind and somehow it becomes less clear after having done so? Like, with all due respect to all involved, this feels weirdly hand wavy and like underpants gnome stuff. Like, okay, crypto for UBI, I got you. Though even there, I need some more specifics on how that all works. But then why do you need this iris-scanning biometric orb again? Do not get it. If you missed it, yesterday was arguably the most amazing day of tournament football of all time. It wasn't just that there were 14 goals across just two games.

It wasn't just that there was extra time in both games and penalties in one of them. It wasn't just that there were two or three of the best goals of the tournament in these games. it wasn't just that underdogs challenged powerhouses and had unlikely comebacks and won powerhouse scalping. It was also that both games were just so completely back and forth. It was amazing. England v. Germany will be wrapping up when this episode goes live. I'd love the same sort of excitement today with the one caveat being that England wins, of course. But the way this tournament is going, it's probably the Sweden-Ukraine game that'll end up being the real thriller.

Anyway, talk to you tomorrow. Come on, Ingerland.