Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 08/09 – WhatsApp Privacy Features

Episode Date: August 9, 2022

WhatsApp rolls out privacy features. The battery icon returns to the iPhone. China is growing restless over its silicon industry. HBOMax will stop getting Warner Movies automatically. The really rugged smartwatch from Garmin. And the real reason Amazon is buying One Medical and iRobot. Sponsors: Ramp.com/techmeme KeeperSecurity.com/techmeme Links: WhatsApp’s new update makes it easier to avoid your friends (The Verge) WhatsApp now lets users delete messages up to two days after they were sent (9to5Mac) iOS 16 beta 5 finally adds the battery percentage to the status bar (9to5Mac) China Graft Probes Stem From Anger Over Failed Chip Plans (Bloomberg) Warner Bros. Movies Are No Longer Guaranteed To Arrive On HBO Max After A 45-Day Theatrical Window: Source (Decider) Garmin adds another bright spot to its line of multisport watches (Android Authority) What Amazon's Roomba and One Medical Deals Have in Common (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, August 9th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. WhatsApp rolls out privacy features. The battery icon returns to the iPhone. China is growing restless over its Silicon industry. HBO Max will stop getting Warner Brothers movies automatically. The really rugged smartwatch from Garmin and the real reason Amazon is buying one medical and I-Robot. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. WhatsApp has rolled out privacy features to let users do things like leave groups silently, choose who can see you when you're online, and block screenshots of view once messages.

Quoting the verge. Last December, WhatsApp started hiding users' online status from strangers by default. While this was a step in the right direction, it still allows your entire list of contacts to see whether or not you're online. WhatsApp's upcoming update is supposed to fix that, though, as it will let you choose which contacts can see your status. So if you don't want someone to know that you're ignoring their message, toggle on the setting for that user, and they'll hopefully never know the difference. WhatsApp is also launching another handy feature that will let you silently leave groups. Right now, the app very obnoxiously notifies every user in the group of your departure, which could prompt some group members to message you privately to ask why you left. The new feature is the digital equivalent to the Irish goodbye, the act of leaving a party without telling anyone, and should help eliminate the awkwardness that comes along with exiting a chat.

WhatsApp says it'll start rolling out these two features this month, and that it's also working on a way to block users from taking screenshots of View Once messages. Unlike disappearing messages, View Once messages don't vanish after a specific time limit. They go away after the recipient has seen it once, sort of like a photo or video sent through Snapchat. Adding a way to block screenshots could help prevent users from saving or sharing sensitive information with others. This feature is still in testing, but WhatsApp says it'll start rolling it out to users soon, end quote. In addition to that, WhatsApp now lets users delete a private or group chat message up to two and a half days after sending it. Before, users had one hour, eight minutes, and 16 seconds to delete such messages, quoting 9 to 5 Mac.

In order to delete a message sent in WhatsApp, all you need to do is tap and hold on it for a few seconds, then tap the delete button. Interestingly, while WhatsApp is increasing the time users have to delete a message, Apple is going in the opposite direction with IMessage. In the first beta versions of iOS 16 users had 15 minutes to unsend a message. Now, with the latest betas, this limit has been reduced to only two minutes. The feature has been quite controversial, as some users believe that option to edit and unsend messages can be used for malicious purposes. This also led Apple to add a change history for edited messages and IMessage. Meanwhile, the popular WhatsApp and IMessage competitor Telegram lets users edit and delete

messages without any limits, end quote. Speaking of iOS, you might remember that after the iPhone 10's debut, Apple removed the option to show battery percentages in the status bar of some iPhones. Because of the notch. Natch. Well, iOS 16 Beta 5 brings back the battery icon, quoting 9 to 5 Mac again. In iOS 16 Beta 5, you can add the battery percentage back to the status bar. Simply go into settings, then choose battery, then toggle on the new battery percentage. option. It might even be enabled by default, but that only appears to be the case for some users.

When your iPhone is disconnected from power, you'll see the normal battery icon, but with the percentage number inside. If your iPhone is in low power mode, the battery icon turns yellow, but still shows the percentage. If you're charging, you'll see the percentage with a small charging icon next to it. The battery percentage was a staple of the status bar for iPhone models leading up to the iPhone 10. With the introduction of the notch and the limited space for status bar data, Apple dropped the percentage. Instead, you had to swipe down into control center to view the percentage. In iOS 16 Beta 5, the battery percentage option is not available on the iPhone 10R, iPhone 11, iPhone 12 Mini, and iPhone 13 Mini, end quote.

A bunch of news on the Silicon is the new oil front. Samsung reportedly plans to make an additional $3.3 billion investment in Vietnam in 2022 to produce semiconductor components by July of 2020, and open an R&D Center in Honoy. And Micron plans to spend $40 billion by 2030 to expand U.S. chip manufacturing capacity, aided by government grants and credits, and expects to begin production after 2025. Meanwhile, sources are telling Bloomberg that Beijing has grown frustrated with China's years-long failure to develop semiconductors that can replace U.S. chips. Quote, senior officials are angry at how tens of billions of dollars funneled into the industry

over the past decade, haven't produced the sorts of breakthroughs that emerged from previous national-level scientific endeavors, according to people familiar with top government officials thinking. Washington, which has steadily ratcheted up restraints on China, has been able to strong-arm Beijing and successfully contain its technological ambitions, they said, asking not to be identified, revealing sensitive deliberations. The investigations have sent shockwaves through a semiconductor industry long accustomed to top-level support. Xi Jinping's government had allocated more than $100 billion to build up a domestic semiconductor sector so the country could break its dependence on the West. A key area of scrutiny is the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund,

known within the industry as Big Fund, which has become Beijing's primary vehicle for doling out capital to the country's chipmakers. The nation's top anti-graft agency announced investigations into three more executives who helped manage the Big Fund's assets on Tuesday, adding it was dispatching a team to the Ministry of Industry and Infantry. information technology. The same regulator was already investigating the minister Zhao Yaqing, making him the most senior sitting cabinet member to face a disciplinary probe in almost four years. If you're going to be putting tens of billions of dollars in an industry, regardless of whether it's a high technology one or just like building trains and airports, you're going to have illicit

dealings going on, said Jordan Schneider, a senior analyst at Rodium Group and host of the China Talk podcast. The government is investigating the head of the big fund, Ding Wenwu, who had once warned it was unrealistic to cut corners in developing chip technologies. Founded in 2014, the fund drew about $45 billion in capital and backed scores of companies, including semiconductor manufacturing international and Yanksi memory technologies. The fund operated mostly behind the scenes and kept investment standards away from public view, which some analysts said undercut accountability. Beijing's frustration comes as Washington is slapping ever tighter restrictions on China, adding to potential vulnerability for the Communist Party.

The U.S. is increasingly limiting the kind of shipmaking equipment that American companies can export to Chinese customers while enlisting allied countries so that key suppliers like the Netherlands' ASML holding and Japan's Nikon Corp join its technology blockade, end quote. More news from Warner Brothers and whatever they're going to end up calling HBO going forward. Movies from Warner Brothers are no longer guaranteed to go to HBO, Max after 45 days in theaters. A source says streaming dates will be decided on a case-by-case basis. So there goes one of the biggest selling points that made HBO Max a surprising winner in the early part of the streaming wars, quoting Decider. It's not clear what the company's home

entertainment release strategy will be moving forward. The movie Elvis, which was scheduled to release on HBO Max next week per the 45-day window, will be available to buy and rent on digital platforms for a premium price on August 9th, but it will not be on HBO Max. Decider reached out to Warner Brothers Discovery, and a source confirmed that Elvis would eventually come to HBO Max, but that a release date could not yet be announced. Decider was further told that the HBO Max release of theatrical films moving forward would be determined on a case-by-case basis rather than the strict 45-day window. In the earnings call on Thursday, WBD CEO David Zazlov said, quote, this idea of expensive films

going direct to streaming. We cannot find an economic case for it. We're making a strategic shift. As part of that, we've been out in the town talking about our commitment to the theatrical exhibition and the theatrical window. A number of movies will be launched with shorter windows, end quote. Perhaps the studio will follow in the footsteps of Universal, which sends some films like the Northman to Peacock after 45 days, but keeps big office winners like Jurassic World Dominion in theaters and on PVOD for much longer, end quote. Interesting gadget alert. Ahead of Apple's supposedly introducing a rugged Apple Watch in a few weeks, I suppose.

Garmin has introduced the Enduro 2 aimed, as the name implies, at Endurance Athletes. Quoting Android Authority. Garmin's Enduro 2 features a lightweight titanium build, a touchscreen housed under a power sapphire lens, and a nylon band. Thanks to solar charging and SAT IQ technology, users can stretch the watchers' battery life to up to 150 hours in GPS mode. In smartwatch mode, it can last up to 46 days. But harnessing sunlight and sipping on the battery isn't the Enduro 2's only bright spot. It also offers a built-in LED flashlight, similar to that of the Fennox 7 series, but twice as bright.

If you're still out on the road after dark, you can change the flashlight to a red safety light setting or a cadence-matching strobe mode. For the big race day, the Garmin Enduro 2 features pre-loaded Topo-Eight. active maps plus tools such as Next Fork, a visual race predictor, and a grade-adjusted pace feature to help athletes adapt to different routes. It will even automatically record rest station breaks so you don't have to pause your run mid-race. These tools are in addition to Garmin's full suite of health and fitness features, including heart rate, stress, blood oxygen, and sleep monitoring, plus health snapshot, body battery, and fitness age. On the smartwatch front, the Enduro 2 still offers Garmin pay and incident detection, but now also adds music storage.

The Garmin Induro 2 is not cheap. To strap the above features onto your wrist will cost about $1,100. If that's in the budget, shop for one today at garmin.com, and quote. And finally today, Brad Stone, biographer of Jeff Bezos and Amazon as a company, says that Amazon's planned acquisitions of iRobot and one medical are emblematic of Andy Jassy's hunt for so-called fourth pillars beyond AWS, Prime, and Marketplace. So it's not so much about these acquisitions working in tandem, though they might. It's more that they're about Amazon finding a big new thing. Quote, on Friday, Amazon snapped up I-Robot, the 30-year-old maker of the iconic Rumba vacuum for $1.65 billion. The deal comes three weeks after Amazon said it would

acquire another company, One Life Health Care, which operates the subscription health service one medical for $3.49 billion. These are very different deals in totally different markets, but they share some interesting characteristics. Jassy and his colleagues are going bargain hunting, just as Amazon did more than a decade ago when it bought distressed internet retailers Zappos, and Quidsey, better known as diapers.com, to round out its digital mall. Amazon agreed to acquire one life at $18 a share or 31% of one life's market high. It will pay $61 a share or 38% of the market high for iRobot. The deals are also emblematic of Jassy's hunt for a so-called fourth pillar beyond AWS Prime and the Amazon marketplace. Jeff Bezos described the features of such a business

in his shareholder letter in 2014. Quote, customers love it. It can grow to very large size. It has strong returns on capital, and it's durable in time with the potential to endure for decades, end quote. Eight years later, Amazon's pursuit of this coveted fourth leg of the stool has been largely fruitless. Video has been an important part of Prime, but is free for members and generates a nebulous return on capital. Advertising spews cash for Amazon, $8.76 billion in the last quarter alone, but is tolerated, not embraced by consumers. In his public speeches and private talks to Amazon employees, Jassy seems most excited about health care, a massive, fragmented, largely consumer, hostile, and tech-averse industry. Over the past few years, Amazon has acquired

an online pharmacy, Pillpack, developed a telehealth service called Amazon Care, along with a network of walking clinics, and dabbled in wearables like the Halo Band. One medical gives Amazon a network of 204 primary care clinics along with thousands of caregivers and will allow them to extend all these services to its 150 million U.S. Prime members. Health care is a promising candidate for fourth pillar status. Unfortunately, it's also ridiculously complex, encrusted in regulation and resistant to anything resembling rapid change. In that sense, home automation is probably a less risky bet. Here, too, Amazon has tried for years with modest success.

It has Alexa, the Ring security system, and Ero Wi-Fi routers. But recent Echo devices, remember the Alexa microwave, haven't exactly set the world on fire. And Ring products may be known as much for their associated privacy concerns as for foiling burglars. This is where I-Robot comes in. Its co-founder and CEO Colin Engel attended Amazon's first Remars conference in Las Vegas. Vegas in 2019. Wearing a very Amazonian powered by optimism t-shirt, he talked about making autonomous robots that implicitly understood their environment and could respond to queries and anticipate the needs of their owners. The goal is to, quote, turn the house into a robot, he said,

giving it sensors, giving it actuators, giving it the ability to take care of the people who live in the house. And with an appropriate combination of AI, voice understanding, and spatial understanding, we create a home where you live your life and it just does the right thing, end quote. Amazon has the same general vision, but I-Robot is arguably much further along. If Amazon can substitute practical robots like the Rumba for the absent Astro, it may finally have a set of lucrative products for the home that customers love instead of merely tolerate. In the meantime, Amazon will almost certainly find uses for iRobots AI and machine vision prowess in its warehouses, drone, and automation driving divisions.

By the way, I think the idea that Amazon wants Rumba's help mapping the inside of your house is absurd. Amazon does not care where you've placed your sofa, end quote. The next time Chris and I do a space, remind him to remind me to talk about my impressions of my new MacBook air. Spoiler, I actually think it's the real revolution in my workflow, not the Mac studio. Talk to you tomorrow.