Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 07/16 – A VC VP Pick

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

JD Vance becomes the first Tech industry player, and especially Venture Capitalist, to ever be on a major presidential ticket. It’s never been easier for the cops to break into your phone. Why are the major record labels suing Verizon? And why an AI innovation around spreadsheets could be a big deal. Sponsors: Vanta.com/ride for $1000 off CleanMyMac X with promocode: techmeme Links: J.D. Vance Is Trump’s Pick for Vice President (Wired) It’s never been easier for the cops to break into your phone (The Verge) Microsoft Investigated by UK Over Ex-Inflection Staff Hires (Bloomberg) Record labels sue Verizon for not disconnecting pirates’ Internet service (ArsTechnica) Microsoft’s new AI system ‘SpreadsheetLLM’ unlocks insights from spreadsheets, boosting enterprise productivity (VentureBeat) Apple releases public betas for iOS 18, macOS, and more (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, July 16th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, J.D. Vance, becomes the first tech industry player and especially venture capitalist ever to be on a major presidential ticket. It's never been easier for the cops to break into your phone. Why are the major record labels suing Verizon,

and why an AI innovation around spreadsheets could be a big deal. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Okay, you all know that I tried to avoid politics on this show when and where I can. I'll show you some of my thinking about this right now. At the top of tech meme, there's a big story about how Elon Musk apparently plans to commit around $45 million per month to America PAC, a new pro-Trump super PAC. Other backers of that pack include 8VCs Joe Lonsdale and the Winklevoss twins. And the information this morning is reporting that Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz have told A16Z staffers in recent days that they plan to make large donations to packs supporting Donald Trump. Trump. Which, okay, those are big names in tech. And there's the crypto angle here, too. The crypto community seemingly believes Trump would be friendlier to their interests so people in the crypto world can look at this as a form of lobbying, I guess. And with Elon, an angle could be, you know, owners of major social media platforms at least try to appear a political, because if you become political, you risk angering what? At least 50% of your user base. But in the end,

on things like that, I come down on, this is a case of those people's personal political beliefs. So probably not worth adjudicating. It is a free country, have whatever political beliefs you want. But in the case of Donald Trump picking J.D. Vance as his vice presidential running mate, I think we have to talk about it. Why? Well, because Vance is a former venture capitalist. He comes from the tech industry. We've never had a Silicon Valley player on a major ticket before. I mean, you could argue Ross Perrault was a tech CEO, but seriously, this is pretty much a new thing. So, worth looking at Vance, I think, from that angle, because what would it mean for the tech industry if he was vice president of the United States? What are his viewpoints vis-a-vis tech? Again, not getting political, not endorsing, just informing.

Quoting Wired, Vance wasn't always a Trump supporter, but he has long had connections to Silicon Valley through his former life as a venture capitalist, including to longtime Trump supporter and investor Peter Thiel. Since winning his Senate race in 2022, Vance has come out as an ardent Trump supporter and a critic of big tech companies and could play a key role in shaping how Trump's administration would approach the industry. Vance is no stranger to the world of tech and venture capital and has long had connections in Silicon Valley in 2020. He started an Ohio-based venture capital fund, Naria Capital, billionaire and right-wing backer Peter Thiel, Mark Andresen, Eric Schmidt, and Scott Dorsey were all investors. He also worked for Teal's own fund,

Mithril Capital, and Teal also backed Vance's successful 2022 Senate run. In June, Vance attended a fundraising dinner for Trump hosted by tech investor David Sacks. Vance is an investor in Rumble, alongside Teal, a YouTube alternative favored by the right due to its lack of content moderation. The company's website describes the platform as, quote, immune to cancel culture and reported 67 million monthly active users at the end of 2023. Rumble has allegedly hosted Russian propaganda, and reporting from Wired earlier this year found that the company is being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. During his campaign, Vance advocated for the repeal of Section 230, the law that protects platforms from being legally responsible for content that users post,

but only for large platforms, saying that the law should protect smaller alternative platforms of which Rumble is one. Voters really want us to do something about the tech and he said in a 2022 time interview, end quote. One more quick thing, somewhat politically related. One thing the events of the last week have probably proven, as the Verge headlines this piece, it's never been easier for the cops to break into your phone. Quoting the Verge, just two days after the attempted assassination at former president Donald Trump's rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the FBI announced it, quote, gained access

to the shooter's phone. The Bureau has not disclosed how it broke into the phone. or what has been found on it, but the speed with which it did so is significant, and security experts say it points to the increased efficacy of phone hacking tools. In a call with reporters on Sunday, the Bureau said field agents in Pennsylvania had tried and failed to break into Thomas Matthew Crook's phone. The device was then sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia. Cooper Quentin, a security researcher and senior staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that law enforcement agencies have several tools at their disposal to extract data from phones. Almost every police

department in the nation has a device called the Selbright, which is a device built for extracting data from phones, and it also has some capability to unlock phones, Quentin said. Celebrate, which is based in Israel, is one of several companies that provides mobile device extraction tools, or MDTFs, to law enforcement. Third-party MDTFs vary in efficacy and costs, and it's likely the FBI has its own in-house tools as well. Last year, TechCrunch reported that Celebrite asked users to keep use of its technology, quote, hush-hush. It seems reasonable to me that the field office there in Pennsylvania wouldn't have some of the more advanced technologies for breaking into modern phones that they have at Quantico,

Quentin told the Verge hours before the FBI announced it had successfully gained access to Crook's phone. I have little doubt that Quantico will be able to break into this phone, whether that's in-house or whether that's through using outside help, like from Celebrate, for example, a 2020 investigation by the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization Upturn found that more than 2,000 law enforcement agencies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia had access to MDTFs. Graykey, among the most expensive and advanced of these tools, cost between $15,000 and $30,000, according to Upturn's report. Gray Shift, the company behind Gray Key, announced in March that its magnet-Gray key device has, quote, full support for Apple iOS 17, Samsung Galaxy S-24 devices, and Pixel 6 and 7 devices.

For law enforcement, third-party MDTFs are an effective way to get around tech companies' hesitants to help break into customers' phones. In previous instances of mass shootings or domestic terrorism, the FBI has spent weeks or months trying to break into suspect's phones. The Bureau famously butted heads with Apple in late 2015 after the company refused to help law enforcement get around the encryption on the San Bernardino-California shooter's iPhone. Early in the following year, Apple refused a federal court order to help the FBI access the shooter's phone, which the company said would effectively require it to be. build a backdoor for the iPhone's encryption software. Rihanna Pfeffercorn, a research scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory said vendors and law enforcement agencies often gain access to phones by exploiting, quote, a vulnerability in the software that's running on the phone or by guessing the password through brute force. It takes a matter of minutes to brute force a four-digit passcode and a

matter of hours for a six-digit one, Pfeffercorn said. In addition to the FBI's own in-house tools, there are tools available from third-party vendors, as with the San Bernardito Shooters phone, some of which are more scrupulous than others about who their customers are. There are serious human rights risks when technology for breaking into people's phones gets leveraged by undemocratic governments, yet those tools are widely available for the right price, end quote. The UK's CMA has opened a formal investigation into Microsoft's inflection AI investment and set a September 11th deadline on opening an in-depth investigation. Quoting Bloomberg,

Microsoft's Inflection deal was what some have characterized as an aqua-hire without the acquisition part. Microsoft agreed to pay inflection's $650 million largely to license its AI software alongside the move to hire much of the startup staff, a person familiar with the arrangement set at the time. Microsoft hired Mustafa Suleiman, as well as Inflexion's chief scientist and co-founder Karen Simonian, along with most of the startup's employees earlier this year. Inflection, which had raised more than $1.5 billion and debuted a chatbot named Pi, still struggled to find an effective business model Suleiman had said after the launch. We are confident that the hiring of talent promotes competition and should not be treated as a merger,

Microsoft said. We will provide the UK CMA with the information it needs to complete its inquiries expeditiously, end quote. Microsoft isn't the only big tech company that has been heavily recruiting the staff of AI startups. Amazon recently hired top executives and other employees from startup adept AI labs, including its co-founder and former chief executive officer, according to an internal memo Amazon provided to Bloomberg, end quote. UMG, Sony, and other record labels are suing Verizon for more than $2.6 billion over allegations of violating copyright law by continuing to serve customers accused of pirating music. Quoting Ars Technica, Verizon, quote, knowingly provides its high-speed service to a massive

community of online pirates, said the complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Universal, Sony, and Warner say they have sent over 340,000 copyright infringement notices to Verizon since early 2020. Quote, those notices identify specific subscribers on Verizon's network stealing plaintiffs' sound recordings through peer-to-peer file-sharing networks that are notorious hotbeds for copyright infringement, the lawsuit said. Record labels allege that, quote, Verizon ignored plaintiff's notices and buried its head in the sand by continuing to provide its high-speed service to thousands of known repeat infringers, so it could continue to collect millions of dollars from them.

that, quote, Verizon has knowingly contributed to and reached substantial profits from massive copyright infringement committed by tens of thousands of its subscribers, end quote. The firms allege that Verizon is guilty of contributory and vicarious copyright infringement and should have to pay damages of up to $150,000 for each work infringed. Plaintiffs filed what they called a non-exhaustive list of infringed works that includes 17,335 titles. That would imply requested damages of over $2.6 billion. Record labels and movie studios have filed numerous copyright suits against internet providers, perhaps the most significant ongoing case involved Cox Communications, which has been fighting a

$1 billion jury verdict since 2019. In the Verizon case, record labels claim that thousands of Verizon subscribers, quote, were the subject of 20 or more notices from plaintiffs, and more than 500 subscribers were the subject of 100 or more notices. One particularly egregious Verizon subscriber was single-handedly the subject of 4,450 infringement notices from plaintiffs alone. end quote. That Verizon's subscriber's IP address was identified in 4,450 infringement notices between March 2021 and August 2023, the lawsuit said, two other subscribers were allegedly the subject of 2,703 and 2068 infringement notices respectively. Verizon acknowledged that it received these notices of infringements sent by plaintiff's representatives, the lawsuit said. Yet rather than

taking any steps to address its customer's illegal use of its network, Verizon deliberately chose to ignore plaintiff's notices, willfully blinding itself to that information and prioritizing its own profits over its legal obligations, end quote. The plaintiffs claim that, quote, Verizon has gone out of its way not to take action against subscribers engaging in repeated copyright infringement and failed to terminate or otherwise take any meaningful action against the accounts of repeat infringers of which it was aware. It is well-established law that if a party materially assists someone it knows is engaging in copyright infringement, that party is fully liable for the infringement as if it had infringed directly, the lawsuit said, end quote.

Microsoft researchers have detailed spreadsheet LLM, an encoding method designed to enable LLMs to efficiently and effectively understand and analyze complex spreadsheet data, which sounds boring, but it could be a big deal. Tons of data that could be used by AI is currently sitting in databases and spreadsheets by the metric ton, making it easier to get at that data at scale might be transformative. Quoting Venture Beat. Spreadsheet LLM combines the power of large language models with the structured data found in spreadsheets. Spreadsheet LLM is an approach for encoding spreadsheet contents into a format that can be used with large language models and allows these models to reason over spreadsheet contents.

The researchers note highlighting the critical need for improved AI tools in this area. The researchers emphasize the ubiquity and importance of spreadsheets in the business world, noting that they are used for a wide range of tasks, from simple data entry and analysis to complex financial modeling and decision-making. However, they point out that, quote, existing large language models struggle to understand and reason over spreadsheet contents due to the structured nature of the data and the presence of formulas and references, end quote. Spreadsheet LLM bridges this gap by encoding spreadsheet data in a way that LLMs can understand and work with. The model uses a novel encoding scheme that preserves the structure and relationships within the spreadsheet while

making it accessible to language models. The potential applications of spreadsheet LLM are vast, ranging from automating routine data analysis tasks to providing intelligent insights and recommendations based on spreadsheet data. By enabling LLMs to reason over spreadsheet contents, answer questions about the data, and even generate new spreadsheets based on natural language prompts,

spreadsheet LLM opens up exciting possibilities for AI-assisted data analysis and decision-making in the enterprise. One of the key advantages of spreadsheet LLM is its ability to make spreadsheet data more accessible and understandable to a wide range of users. With the power of natural language processing, users could potentially query and manipulate spreadsheet data using plain English rather than complex formulas or programming languages. This could democratize access to data insights and empower more individuals within an organization to make data-driven decisions. Furthermore, spreadsheet LLM

could help automate many of the tedious and time-consuming tasks associated with spreadsheet data analysis, such as data cleaning, formatting, and aggregation. By leveraging the power of AI, businesses could potentially save countless hours and resources, allowing employees to focus on higher value activities that require human judgment and creativity, end quote. Finally today, note that the public betas for iOS 18, iPad OS 18, MacOS Sequoia, TVOS 18, and WatchOS 11 are live. I'll be it without any Apple intelligence features. Those are coming later.

But I know I'll be updating my stuff as soon as the show is done today to get some of those cool new features like mirroring my phone on my Mac from The Verge, a reminder of what those features are, quote. The public iOS beta will bring with it key updates to the way the iPhone software works, including support for RCS messaging and new customization options that let users put apps wherever they want on the home screen, finally, or apply a tint to the icons and widgets. It also comes with a new layout for the Photos app, a redesign more customizable control center, and dark mode icons. Similar updates are in the iPad OS18 public beta, which also brings a native calculator app to the iPad for the first time. The new watchOS 11 public beta introduces features

like rest days and Apple's vitals app for glantzable details on your overnight health metrics. For Max, the Sequoia public beta enables the ability to mirror your iPhone on your screen, among other features. And the TVOS 18 beta includes the Amazon X-ray-like Insight feature for Apple TV Plus content. One more thing to keep in mind, while you can roll back most of these devices to a stable current version of their operating system, you can't roll back the Apple Watch. You'll have to wait for the stable version in the fall, so keep that in mind before you apply the beta to your Apple Watch. You can try out the public betas for iOS 18, iPad OS18, and others by enrolling in the Apple Beta program. Check Apple's website for each device's installation instructions, end quote.

You all know I was traveling earlier this month. A couple of quick sort of jack-handy stuff. deep thoughts that occurred to me on our long road trip. You know two innovations that only happened in my lifetime, specifically in my childhood in the 1980s? Roller wheels on suitcases and cup holders in cars. It's true. Look at any luggage from before, say, 1984, not a roller to be found. And I remember getting a car with cup holders in it for the first time in like 1988,

but not in the back passenger seats for a long time after that. Think about it. You'd never get a big suitcase without rollers on it today, unless you were some kind of masochist. And yet that seemingly never occurred to anybody for decades. And I mean, we had drive-through fast food for decades, but nobody thought, you know what would be cool not having to put your coffee or your soda between your legs as you drive. This is all neither here nor there, but quick reminder that sometimes blindingly obvious in retrospect, innovations sometimes take a long time to become reality. I wonder what the equivalent is today. What is the thing that 30 years from now, people will be gobsmacked? It didn't occur to us to do. Talk to you tomorrow.