Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 08/06 - The Apple Card is Here, And It's A... Credit Card...

Episode Date: August 6, 2019

The Apple Card is here (for some of you), industrial cyberattacks have doubled, are Yelp and Grubhub partnering to hurt restaurants, Amazon’s scoot robots come to Southern California, 5G comes to New York City and what to expect from tomorrow’s Samsung event. Sponsors: Mealime Joybird.com/ride Promocode: RIDE Links: The Apple Card starts rolling out today (TheVerge) Cyberattacks against industrial targets have doubled over the last 6 months (ZDNet) Microsoft: Russian state hackers are using IoT devices to breach enterprise networks (ZDNet) Microsoft launches Azure Security Lab, expands bug bounty rewards (ZDNet) Yelp is Screwing Over Restaurants By Quietly Replacing Their Phone Numbers (Motherboard) Amazon Squeezes Sellers That Offer Better Prices on Walmart (Bloomberg) Amazon’s Scout robots roll out in Southern California (Venture Beat) AT&T rolls out (limited) 5g in (parts of) New York City (TechCrunch) Note 10 Plus? Here’s what to expect from Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked on August 7 (Digital Trends) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the TechMeme ride home for Tuesday, August 6th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough today. The Apple card is here, for some of you at least. Industrial cyber attacks have doubled, are Yelp and Grubhub partnering to hurt restaurants. Amazon's scoot robots come to Southern California, 5G comes to New York City, and what to expect from tomorrow's Samsung event. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. I got to admit, I can never quite make up my mind on this, but this. The Apple card is here. The credit card that Apple is offering in conjunction with Goldman Sachs. It is here, sort of.

Today, some unknown number of folks who signed up to get notified about its arrival will see notifications today on their iPhones to sign up for the card. You got to be on iOS 12.4 and you've just got to enter your address, birthday, income level, and last four digits of your Social Security number. apparently it takes like a minute to sign up and if Goldman approves you, your card will show up in your Apple wallet immediately, ready for use. If you want that fancy physical titanium card, you have to request it when signing up and it'll be mailed to you later. Quoting Nilai Patel at the verge. I got to hold the card itself and it's very nice, although it is fairly thick and felt a little bit heavier than the typical metal credit card. You can use the card without your phone nearby like any other card, but it's very nice. doesn't support contactless payments. Apple obviously wants you to use your phone or watch for that.

Once you're set up, you will actually have three credit card numbers associated with your Apple card. The number assigned to your phone, the number assigned to the physical card, and a virtual number you can access in the app for online merchants that don't take Apple pay. You can request a new virtual number at any time. The card itself doesn't have an expiration date or security code, and it doesn't have a number printed on it, but you can lock the card if you misplace it or deactivate it entirely from the wallet app with a single tap, end quote. People are raving about the Apple card interface in the app, which creates fancy charts to help you manage and track your spending. But honestly, I couldn't remember what the other features were

that would maybe make me want this. So, if you're like me, here's a refresher. The Apple card has no late fees, no annual fees, no international fees. It also boasts some sort of fancy privacy interface so that Apple can't actually see your spending, though of course Goldman Sachs will. 3% cashback on any Apple transactions, 2% cashback on Apple pay transactions, and 1% on purchases made with the physical card. The neat thing about the cashback options is that that cash goes into your account every day so you can spend it right away. But, as has been much criticized, the APR for the Apple Card is a fairly standard range of 12.99% to 24.24%. So at the end of the day, this is a credit card, I guess.

You know this is a weird bugaboo of mine, but IBM's X-Force Iris Incident Response Team says that cyber attacks against industrial targets have doubled in the last six months. to the point where 50% of organizations it responds to suffering from cyber attacks are in the manufacturing sector, quoting CNET. Based on recent cyber attacks, they have been called in to assist with. The main trend the group is witnessing is the rise of destructive malware. These forms of malicious codes such as in Destroyer, Natya, and Stuxnet are designed to cause damage rather than purely for covert surveillance or data theft.

functions may include locking systems, crashing PCs, rendering services as inoperable, and the delet of files. Historically, destructive malware such as Stuxnet, Shammoon, and Dark Soul, was primarily used by nation-state actors, the researchers say. However, especially since late 2018, cybercriminals have been incorporating wiper elements into their attacks, such as with the new strains of ransomware like Lockargoga and Megacortex, end quote. per usual, the most common infection vector is the fishing email, followed by watering hole attacks, and then the compromising of third parties with a connection to the true target. On average, IBM says when an industrial company is hit by a cyber attack, around 12,000 workstations are damaged.

And Microsoft says that just this past April, it blocked the Russia-linked hacking group Fancy Bear from using compromised Internet of Things devices to break into large-scale enterprise networks, quoting ZDNet. The hacker group tried to exploit a voice over IP phone, an office printer, and a video decoder, Microsoft said. Quote, the investigation uncovered that an actor had used these devices to gain initial access to corporate networks, the Redmond base company said. In two of the cases, the passwords for the devices were deployed without changing the default manufacturer's passwords, and in the third instance, the latest security update had not been applied to the device, end quote. Microsoft said hackers used the compromised IOT devices as an

entry point into their targets' internal networks, where they'd scan for other vulnerable systems to expand this initial foothold, end quote. And related, Microsoft has debuted Azure Security Lab to let researchers test Azure infrastructures in a contained environment. And guess what? You can now earn up to $40,000 for reporting Azure vulnerabilities. At the opening of the Black Hat USA conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft said that Azure Security Lab, this new set of dedicated cloud hosts, will be made available to all to, quote, come and do their worst. Quoting again, the isolation of the Azure Security Lab allows us to offer something new. Researchers can not only research vulnerabilities in Azure, they can attempt to exploit them, Microsoft said. Accepted applicants will

have access to quarterly campaigns for targeted scenarios. with added incentives as well as regular recognition and exclusive swag, end quote. Microsoft also announced it has awarded over 4.4 million in bug and hacker bounty rewards over the past 12 months up from $2 million just the year before. Vice is reporting that as their headline reads, Yelp is screwing over restaurants by quietly replacing their phone numbers to Grubhub numbers so that Grubhub can take a cut of any restaurant orders.

According to Adrian Jeffries, when you use the Yelp app to search for a restaurant's phone number and then tap to call through, you get a dialog box that pops up two different options. One option reads, delivery or takeout,

and the other says, general questions. Quoting Jeffries, when a user clicks on the call button labeled delivery or takeout, they are taken to a different number which is owned by Grubhub. The call button next to general questions

leads to the restaurant's real number. Even though restaurants are capable of taking orders directly, after all, both numbers are routed to the same place, Yelp is pushing customers to Grubhub-owned phone numbers in order to facilitate what Grubhub calls a referral fee of between 15 and 20% of the order total, end quote. Grubhub and Yelp apparently announced a long-term partnership just this past October, whereafter, Yelp apparently began pushing customers to Grubhub-Hub-owned numbers, something that in Jeffreys' reporting, a lot of restaurants seem to be unaware of. This comes after a June report in the new food economy that Grubhub was creating

thousands of websites using real restaurant names, often supplanting the actual restaurant's own websites in search engine visibility, again, all to drive more online orders. On the antitrust watch, Bloomberg has taken a look at Amazon's practice of making items harder to find if they're lower priced on other platforms. Something that could certainly draw scrutiny, experts say. Quote, Amazon constantly scans rivals prices to see if they're lower. When it discovers a product is cheaper on, say, Walmart.com, Amazon alerts the company selling the item and then makes the product harder to find and buy on its own marketplace, effectively penalizing the merchant. In many cases, the merchant opts to raise the price on the rival

site rather than risk losing sales on Amazon. Pricing alerts reviewed by Bloomberg show Amazon doesn't explicitly tell sellers to raise the prices on other sites, and the goal may be to push them to lower their prices on Amazon. But in interviews, merchants say they're so hemmed in by rising costs levied by Amazon and reliant on sales on its marketplace that they're more likely to raise their prices elsewhere. Antitrust experts say the Amazon policy is likely to attract scrutiny from Congress and the Federal Trade Commission, which recently took over jurisdiction of the Seattle-based company. So far, criticism of Amazon's market power has centered on whether it mines merchants' sales data to launch competing products and then uses its dominance to make the original product harder to find on the marketplace.

Harming consumers by prompting merchants to raise prices on other sites more neatly fits the traditional definition of antitrust behavior in the U.S. Quote, monopolization charges are always about business conduct that causes harm in a market, said Jennifer. for Ree, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence who specializes in antitrust litigation. Quote, it could end up being considered illegal conduct because people who prefer to shop on Walmart end up having to pay a higher price, end quote. Amazon's thigh-high, six-wheeled, scout delivery robots are officially rolling out on real roads and sidewalks to ferry packages directly to select consumer doorsteps in portions of

Irvine, California this week, quoting Venture Beat. Initially, a small number of Scout devices will transport packages Monday through Friday during daylight hours, according to Amazon. Shoppers can order as they normally would with delivery options including same day, one day, and two-day shipping for Prime members, and their packages will be delivered either by one of Amazon's carrier partners or by a scoot robot accompanied by a human minder. For the uninitiated, Scout is a watertight, six-wheeled, cooler-sized drone that was developed, built, and assembled, and programmed in-house by Amazon engineers. It's designed to be robust, with wheels that are made of material firm enough to survive the rigors of daily sidewalk driving, and it packs cameras, ultrasonic sensors and other sensors that enable it to detect and maneuver around obstacles in real time.

Amazon has been piloting a fleet of six scouts for the better part of six months just outside of its headquarters in Washington State, transporting them in a van to which they return after they've dropped off a customer's package. The company says the rovers have completed thousands of deliveries to customers to date while navigating obstacles like trash can, skateboards, and lawn chairs, end quote. So, countdown to my burrito delivery. And on the 5G watch, AT&T has officially begun rollout of 5G here in New York City, kind of. Quoting TechCrunch, the service will be limited to business users at launch and only available in a solar. select number of areas. In other words, don't go running out and buying a 5G phone just yet if you're an AT&T customer in the five boroughs. On the plus side, 5G plus is the real deal, unlike the

deceptively named 5GE that came before it, and AT&T is being reasonably transparent about the limited nature of the rollout, end quote. Apparently, the rollout is limited to sections of the East Village, Greenwich Village, and Gramercy Park, and you can only access it by using a Galaxy S10-5G on AT&T's Business Unlimited Preferred Plan. So just to put this on your radar, even though we won't be able to talk about it until Thursday's episode, tomorrow at 4 p.m. Eastern at the Barclays Center here in Brooklyn, Samsung will be holding its Galaxy Unpacked event. There will be live streaming and live blogging available to you.

And yes, this humble podcaster will be in attendance. I'm not sure what sort of audio will be interesting to grab. from this, but I'm taking a mic, and I'm going to go to there. And if there is anything half interesting, maybe we'll throw it up as an abbreviated weekend episode. What are we expecting from the event? Well, the big unveiling of the Galaxy Note 10, of course, but there could be more, quoting digital trends. For the first time ever, Samsung is looking to create a note range. According to various rumors and leaks, August 7th, will see the launch of the standard Galaxy Note 10, and a larger version, either called the Galaxy Note 10.

Pro or the Galaxy Note 10 plus. The Galaxy Note 10 is expected to have a 6.3 inch Amillet display, while the Galaxy Note 10 plus slash pro may well have an enormous 6.8 inch ammo lead screen. Both are expected to have a similar hole punch display as seen on the Galaxy S10 range, but this time with a centrally placed selfie camera lens. There's also talk. The new Note range will follow Apple, Motorola, and others in ditching the headphone jack, end quote. Also, I guess the biggest question that a lot of people will be asking will be whether

this flagship phone will have 5G or not. And as we discussed yesterday, the watch Active 2 was already announced, as was the Galaxy Tab 6. So either those will only get a brief mench on stage tomorrow or else by kicking those out the door early, Samsung is clearing the decks for something else. could it be the sort of re-debut of the redesigned galaxy fold? Also, whatever happened to the Galaxy Home, Samsung's entry into the smart speaker field. In a related note, forgive the pun, over at the verge, Hyam Gartenberg asks, with the S-line, with the fold, with the note, and possibly a note plus or pro, does Samsung have too many, quote-unquote, flagship phones at this point?

Quote, the note lineup is supposed to be Samsung's aspirational phone. The S models were always the best Android phones available, but the note looked toward the future, promising bizarre experiments in both hardware and software that may or may not be the next big thing. But in a world where Samsung sells phones that are just as fast, just as big, and just as good, it needs to make a case for what makes the Note 10 special. We'll soon find out if it can, end quote. Hey, real quick, I did have an advertiser drop out on me for this Friday's episode, so the standard offer goes out.

If you want to do a quick podcast ad for essentially half of our going rate, to help me out on short notice, get in touch at podcast at Techmeme.com, and have your ad air on Friday's episode. And finally, I've got a treat for you today. L.J. Irwin is a former partner at Andresen Horowitz. He's now leading West Coast partnerships for the Google Cloud for Startups program. And, well, you've heard of the song Old Town Road, right? Courtesy of LJ. Follow him on Twitter for more startup insights and events at I Am Larry James. I saw this on Twitter earlier today.

Courtesy of LJ, I give you Sand Hill Road. Enjoy. I'm going to take my startup down to Sand Hill Road. I'm gonna raise till like ain't no mo I'm gonna take my startup down the sandhill road I'm gonna raise till like ain't no mo I got the laptop in the back Herschel on the tax

I watch mad at black got the jam mix with crypto VCs gotta have a keto diet's house in sweet greens Call me queen a dragon spitting fire on these VCs Got no stress I pitch back to back I cook clouds in the kitchen like cat