Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 08/24 – Cybersecurity Meetup At The White House

Episode Date: August 24, 2021

President Biden is gathering the tech five families to discuss cybersecurity. Instagram is retiring swipe up. Facebook is testing a rebundle of Messenger. Airbnb will house Afghan refugees. SpaceX hits some milestones and a Samsung review roundup. Sponsors: Voices.com Quantummetric.com/podoffer offer code Podcastcode Links: Apple’s Tim Cook, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella Plan to Visit White House (Bloomberg) Instagram is retiring the swipe up (The Verge) Facebook Retools Messaging Again by Adding Calling to Main App (Bloomberg) Airbnb says it will host 20,000 Afghan refugees (CNN Business) SpaceX ships 100,000 Starlink terminals to customers, eyes future launches using Starship (TechCrunch) Poly Network says it has recovered all $610 million it lost in cryptocurrency heist (Engadget) SAMSUNG GALAXY Z FOLD 3 REVIEW: NEARLY NORMAL (The Verge) SAMSUNG’S GALAXY Z FLIP 3 IS THE FIRST FOLDING PHONE FOR NORMAL PEOPLE (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 Texas. meme right home for Tuesday, August 24th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. President Biden is gathering the Tech Five families to discuss cybersecurity. Instagram is retiring swipe up. Facebook is testing

a rebuttal of messenger. Airbnb will house Afghan refugees. SpaceX hits some milestones and a Samsung review roundup. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. I hope this is more of a setting the stage for a major Marshall Plan like Plan of Action, rather than that you're than just a photo op. But apparently, Tim Cook, Sachinadella, and Andy Jassy are among the tech executives attending a meeting at the White House with Joe Biden today to discuss efforts to improve cybersecurity, quoting Bloomberg. The executives could discuss efforts undertaken by critical infrastructure entities, including those in the banking, energy, and water utility sectors to improve cybersecurity and collaborations with the government. The tech executives are likely to

discuss how software can drive better security in the supply chain. according to a senior official familiar with the event. The chief executives of companies including Alphabet's Google, international business machines, Southern Company, and J.P. Morgan Chase and Company have also been invited, the senior official said, end quote. I say I hope this is substance over optics because we need true collaboration on this, public and private sector.

Yes, tech is the vector of a tech, so the tech companies need to play their part, but especially with the nation-state sponsored activity that we've seen, this is largely a geopolitical situation, so the government needs to give direction here. Instagram says it is retiring the swipe-up link feature, which lets users visit external links by swiping up in favor of tapable stickers starting on August 30th, quoting the verge. Instead of the swipe-up link, Instagram says people will be able to use link stickers, which are exactly as they sound,

tapable stickers in stories that take people to external websites. The company says it's retiring the swipe-up, a feature that's spawned its own category of gifts, and a phrase that's now part of the lexicon, to, quote, streamline the stories' creation experience and offer more creative control, given that users can format the look of stickers

and not the swipe-up. This update builds on a test the company began earlier this summer. In June, Instagram started testing these stickers for various users, not just people who already had swipe-up privileges. Users have to be verified, or at least have 10,000 followers to gain access to swipe up. At the time of the test, Vichal Shah, Instagram's former head of product, told the Verge,

the stickers fit more with the way people currently use the platform. He also said the goal was to more widely roll out the stickers. The key difference between the two features, apart from the obvious gesture difference, is viewers can respond to stories that have a link sticker, but cannot respond to swipe up stories, end quote. Facebook is testing, bringing voice and video calling back to the main Facebook app in the U.S., reducing the need to jump between Facebook and Messenger, quoting Bloomberg. Some users, including those in the U.S., will be able to place voice or video calls

from the Facebook app beginning Monday. The new feature is just a test, but it's meant to reduce the need to jump back and forth between Facebook's main app and its messenger service, said Connor Hayes, director of product management at Messenger. Facebook also started testing a limited version of Messenger's inbox in the core Facebook app last fall. Messenger was once built into Facebook's app, but the company spun it out seven years ago, forcing users to download a separate app in order to send private messages from a mobile phone. Monday's test is the latest in what has been a slow but consistent effort internally to integrate all of Facebook's apps and services. Facebook is starting to think of

Messenger as a service rather than just a standalone app, Hayes says. That means people, will use the technology alongside other things, say, relying on Messenger to video chat while watching videos or playing games on Facebook. Voice and video calls that use Messenger technology are available on other Facebook platforms, including Instagram, Oculus, and portal devices. You're going to start to see quite a bit more of this over time, Hayes said. He describes Messenger as the connective tissue for people to be together when apart, regardless of which service they're choosing to use. Facebook first enabled messaging between its Instagram app and Messenger last September, and there are plans to bring the capability to its

WhatsApp messaging service as well. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has argued that integrating the company's messaging services is a benefit to users, letting them reach more people and reducing the need to download or jump between separate apps, end quote. Or this is another way to tie all of Facebook's apps so tightly together that they're harder to break up. Or this is, you know, Circle of Life stuff. What is it that they say? Every industry, Every product is just a cycle of bundling, then unbundling, bundling, then unbundling, bundling, then unbundling, then unbundling, then unbundling, then unbundling, then unbundling, CEO Brian Chesky has announced that Airbnb will provide free housing for 20,000 Afghan refugees, though he did not specify for how long they could stay, quoting CNN business.

Chesky said Tuesday that the program would begin immediately and that Airbnb would pay for the stays. The displacement and resettlement of Afghan refugees in the U.S. and elsewhere is one of the biggest humanitarian crises of our time. We feel a responsibility to step up. Chesky said in a series of posts on Twitter, Chesky said the company would work closely with NGOs and its non-profit arm, Airbnb.org, which provides housing to people in need following natural disasters and other crises. Jesky did not say for how long refugees would be housed or how long the company would fund their stays. The company did not immediately respond to a request. from CNN business for further information. I hope this inspires other business leaders to do the same.

There's no time to waste, Chesky said on Tuesday, end quote. Big milestones from SpaceX. The company says it has now shipped 100,000 Starlink terminals to customers and has launched more than 1,700 satellites since the first satellite launch back only in November of 2019, quoting TechCrunch. It's a jaw-dropping pace for the capital intensive service. In some ways, it's no surprise that SpaceX has managed to accelerate its Starlink service so quickly, as the company launches the satellites itself on the Falcon 9 rocket. Such vertical integration is a key strategy of the space company, now the highest valued in the world. Many of Starlink's beta customers live in remote or rural areas where access to conventional broadband is limited or non-existent.

Customers pay a $499 up-front cost for the service, which covers a starter kit to get them off the ground, a user terminal, which SpaceX lovingly refers to as Dishy McFlatface, Wi-Fi router, power supply cables, and a mounting tripod. But while Starlink's rapid growth reflects an aggressive strategy, it's just the beginning for the project, if SpaceX has anything to say about it. The company ultimately wants to launch around 30,000 Starlink satellites into orbit and expand its user pool to millions of customers. In an application for the Next Generation Starlink system,

submitted to the Federal Communications Commission on August 18, SpaceX proposed two separate configurations for the constellation, one of which would use its next-gen Starship Heavy Lift rocket. That constellation would top out at 29,988 satellites in total. SpaceX also proposed an alternative configuration using its Falcon 9 rocket, but the obvious advantage of Starship is in its massive size payload capacity, end quote. So once again, I feel like there might be more to this story than we're being told, but Poly Network says it has now recovered all of the $610 million in cryptocurrencies that it lost to a hacker and is in the process of returning them to the rightful owners.

Quoting and Gadgett. At this point, all the user assets that were transferred during the incident have been fully recovered, the company said in a medium post. At this point, all the user assets that were transferred during the incident have been fully recovered, the company said in a medium post. Poly Network is now working to return control of those digital currency. to their rightful owners, a process the company says it hopes to complete as soon as possible. The Poly Network hack took one strange turn after another. Less than a day after stealing the digital

currencies, the hacker started returning millions and sent a token indicating they were ready to surrender. Everything was going smoothly until they locked more than $200 million worth of assets in an account that required passwords from both them and Poly Network. They said they would only provide their password once everyone was ready. At that point, Poly Network offered the hacker a $50,000 reward. It's unclear why the perpetrator had a change of heart, though some experts believe they may have found it difficult to launder and cash out the money they had on their hands. All we have to go on from the hacker is that they were trying to help in their own way. Quote, my actions, which may be considered weird, are my efforts to contribute to the

security of the Polly Project in my personal style. The hacker said in a message they included with the final transaction, according to CNBC. Quote, the consensus was reached in a painful and obscure way, but it works, the hacker said, and quote. Finally today, a review roundup of some of the phones that were announced at that last Samsung event. As per usual, I'm going to turn to The Verge, because I think they do the best gadget reviews in the business. First, Deeter Bone says, of the Samsung Galaxy Z-Fold 3, he likes the addition of water resistance with an improved screen feel and multitasking, but the underscreen camera is terrible. The phone is expensive and also it is heavy. Quote, although the Z-Fold 3 feels like a refined, established product, it's still not really normal.

It's a marvel of material science that's by turns wonderful and awkward, and its price is also still far from normal too. Even after a price drop, it starts at $1,799.99. If you like the basic idea of the Z-Fold but have been waiting for Samsung to fix its biggest issues, The steady and relentless refinement on display here is worth a look. If you think the whole thing is an extravagant and silly technical flex, none of these changes will change your mind. Samsung opted for an under-display camera, one of the first to ship in the U.S.

The camera itself is terrible. Only four megapixels, and even those few are compromised by taking in light through a screen. Camera quality isn't the problem, though. If I want to take a selfie, there are literally four other cameras I can use that are better. Think of it as a webcam for video calls. Instead, the problem is how the screen looks when the camera is off. When there's a brighter background over it or text, it has a screen door look that is both ugly and distracting. If I shift my head or the phone even a little, there's an effect that

instantly draws my eye. Even after a week of use, it's still happening. Samsung wants the Z-fold 3 to be a showcase of its technical prowess, but that desire has led it into putting a two-expermental feature on a premium device. The under-display camera literally mars the experience. Samsung needs to put a setting in to turn the screen over the camera off entirely and just revert this thing back to a hole punch. Surprisingly, that's my only real complaint with the interior screen, which is saying something since it's a giant 7.6 inch display that folds in half. Samsung put a lot of emphasis on how it's made this screen stronger, thanks to how it relared the different internal components from the screen. The Galaxy Z-Fold 3 is as good as it gets when it comes to a phone that

unfolds into a tablet, until there's another technological breakthrough that can change the flexibility of glass or the size of the batteries, I don't see anything fundamentally better than this coming along for some time. However, it's still an awkward thing to carry around and use one-handed, and it's still super expensive. The trade-offs just don't seem worth it. Then again, once upon a time, we all said the same thing about the trade-offs for big screen phones like The Note. For a small sliver of tech-savvy people who know what they're getting into, I could actually recommend the Z-Fold 3. But for most people, as good as it gets, is still not good enough, end quote. then of the Galaxy Z Flip, the clamshell one, Dan Seifert, says, good inside screen and water

resistance, but long-term durability is unknown, cover screen is too small, and it's hard to use one-handed, quote, the Galaxy Z-Flip starting price is $1,000, $450 less than the launch price of the Z-Flip 5G. It replaces. That puts the Flip 3 on the same price level as many high-end non-folding phones. The Flip 3 isn't necessarily a sure bet, though. There are things it's not as good at as other standard phones. Using a folding phone like this is a different experience than many of us are used to, but increasingly those differences boil down to personal preferences and choices, not compromises.

And that means this is the first folding phone that can appeal to mainstream phone buyers, not just early adopters. You can still feel the crease in the center of the screen, and if you look at the phone from an oblique angle, you can absolutely see it. but it never got in the way of actually using the phone, and after a day or two, I just forgot about it. Despite Samsung's claims of improved durability with last year's flip phones, a disconcertingly large number of them still cracked right at the crease, even if they weren't dropped or damaged.

Samsung is putting a lot of weight on how it rearranged the screen's layers to make them more durable this time around, and claims the new screen protector makes the screen 80% stronger than before. The company is also giving away a year of its $12.99 per month extended warranty to those who pre-order the flip three, which lets you get the screen fixed for a $249 fee. But I can understand why you might want to wait a few months and see how things shake out with the flip three's screen durability before taking the plunge. I don't think the flip three is for everyone. There are still people out there who want the absolute best camera or aren't intrigued by

the idea of what the flip offers, and how well its improved durability holds up over the long term is still an open question. But it's the first folding phone where I can see a lot of people choosing it, particularly when it's the same cost as a phone that looks the same as what they've been using for years. Just a few years ago, it seemed like folding phones were just a futuristic experiment. With the Z-Flip 3, the second phase of the experiment begins, the one where we find out if folding phones can appeal to more than just early adopters. It's an important proving ground for the concept, and fortunately, the Z-Flip 3 appears up to

the task, end quote. I've been testing out that new 4X civilization clone game called Humankind, and since the The Mac version isn't available on Steam yet, and that Samsung laptop I got isn't exactly a gaming device. I've taken this opportunity to test out Stadia for the first time using my month trial. Works pretty well, especially for a turn-based game like humankind. No complaints so far, though. I don't have a controller, so I've not tested anything like shooters or the like or anything

really graphics intensive. Anyway, talk to you tomorrow.