Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 08/27 - Anthony Levandowski Arrested

Starting point is 00:00:00 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, August 27th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough today. Anthony Lewandowski is arrested. Facebook is taking another run at Snapchat with something called threads. Yelp ads personalized results for the first time. The BBC wants in on the voice assistant craze.

Starting point is 00:00:51 The Irishman is coming to theaters after all and why people are standing in line inside World of Warcraft. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Ex-Google and ex-Uber engineer Anthony Lewandowski was arrested by the FBI today and charged with 33 counts of theft and attempted theft of Google Trade Secrets. Quoting Mike Isaac in the New York Times. It is not uncommon for tech companies which fiercely guard their intellectual property to sue former employees or the firms they join after they leave. But criminal charges of a senior executive for theft is unusual. According to the complaint, Mr. Levindoski, who worked on self-driving cars at Google, downloaded more than 14,000 files containing critical information about Google's autonomous vehicle research before leaving the company in 2016. He then made an unauthorized transfer of the files to his personal laptop, the complaint said.

Starting point is 00:01:51 Mr. Levindosky joined Uber later that year when the ride-hilling firm bought his new self-driving trucking startup, which was called auto. Some of the files that Mr. Lewandowski took from Google included private schematics for proprietary circuit boards and designs for light sensor technology known as LiDAR, which are used in self-driving cars, according to the complaint. If convicted, Mr. Levendosky could face a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each count and additional restitution, end quote. sources are telling Casey Newton that Facebook is testing threads, a messaging app for Instagram that lets users automatically share status, location, even battery life, basically anything you can think of to share, along with the usual texts, photos, and video messages. Think of this as automatic sharing. No need to think about it sharing. The app is also apparently designed for sharing with only your close friends, which is a direction we've seen Facebook as a company, moving towards recently. And as Casey points out, this is clearly taking another run at Snapchat. He notes that Instagram ceased work recently on another standalone app called Direct, because users were finding it frustrating. Quote, a messaging app built around your close friends might be more popular. That's what Snapchat already is today for a healthy portion of its users.

Starting point is 00:03:21 Reports have indicated that the average Snapchat user spends more time inside the app than the average Instagram user does. For Facebook and Instagram, which have long coveted Snapchat's strong engagement among younger users, threads could represent another effort to chip away at their rival's appeal. Screenshots reviewed by The Verge show an app that's designed to promote constant automatic sharing between users and the people on their close friends list on Instagram. Opt in to automatic sharing and threads will regularly update your status, giving your friends a real-time view of information about your location, speed, and more. At the moment, threads does not display your real-time location.

Starting point is 00:03:59 Instead, it might say something like a friend is on the move, according to sources familiar with the matter. You can also update your status manually with statuses appearing in the main feed along with messages. It's the latest effort to automate status sharing using mobile phone sensors and one-tap status sharing. An app called status tried something similar in 2014, and Danny Trin's free app took another approach in 2015, end quote. So another attempt to woo the kids from Snapchat, apparently, maybe. Owen Williams notes that this could also solve another problem for Facebook at the same time. With the debut of tighter location privacy controls in iOS 13 and Android 10,

Starting point is 00:04:42 Facebook stands to lose background location access for many of its apps, including Instagram, which is incredibly valuable data for its advertising network. an app that inherently needs background location data, however, solves that problem, while ostensibly seeming like it's about your friends. If it's useful and fun, are you really thinking about the fact that you're also sharing that information with Facebook? Not at all. That's likely why this is coming from the Instagram brand and not Facebook.

Starting point is 00:05:10 It's easy to forget that they're from the same company. Instagram is beloved and gives people warm, fuzzy feelings while Facebook asking for constant location access feels like your parents asking to track you all day. Today. Threads is an interesting evolution away from the news feed as an intentional status update into a world where ambient status sharing is a thing, encouraging people to share what they're up to in a zero-touch way. The benefit for Facebook, it knows what you're doing, too, end quote. Yelp has added personalized search results based on things like your dietary preferences, your lifestyle, accessibility, and other things. In short, after filling out a profile, you can now get custom recommendations from Yelp for the first time, quoting Nathan Ingram at Engadgett.

Starting point is 00:06:05 Quote, it's rather surprising that Yelp's results weren't more customized yet, but now the company says two users in the same location conducting the same search will see different results for the first time. Recommendations that pop on the home screen will also reflect your personal preferences as well. In the first part of the personalization setup, you'll be prompted to choose some dietary lifestyle and accessibility preferences. This isn't the same as getting in deep and telling the app you love Korean food or cocktail bars, though.

Starting point is 00:06:31 It gives some high-level option to tell the app that you prefer gluten-free, kosher, vegetarian or vegan restaurants, for example. Yelp will then take these preferences into account across the service. highlighting restaurants that it knows have a good amount of vegan options if that's what you need. Lifestyle lets you tell the app whether you're a homeowner, auto owner, parent, or pet owner. This would be used to highlight locations that are pet-friendly if you want a restaurant that lets you bring your dog. Finally, accessibility encompasses places that are wheelchair friendly, as well as spots that offer gender-neutral restrooms, end quote. Then you get to pick your favorite foods and favorite things to do, as you would expect,

Starting point is 00:07:11 picking from various activities, then presto your homepage when you open Yelp is finally tuned just for you. Yelp says that it's rolling this out today to about 60% of iOS users, and it will come to everyone in the fall. Android users will only get some subset of these features now with the full personalization options rolling out to them next year. The BBC wants to get into the voice assistant game. to launch Beebe, their own voice assistant later this year. Bebe will be built into the BBC's website, as well as its iPlayer app on smart TVs. And the corporation promises it will work with British accents, because apparently that's been a problem. Quoting the Guardian, while some U.S. developed products have struggled to understand strong regional accents,

Starting point is 00:08:08 the BBC will this week ask staff in offices around the UK to record their voices and make sure the software understands them. The BBC currently has no plans to launch a standalone physical products such as Amazon's Echo Speaker or a Google Home device. The voice assistant will be woken by saying the word bebe, although it will not attempt to replicate the full set of functions provided by major commercial rivals, partly because the BBC product has been developed by a much smaller team without the resources of major global technology companies. Instead, it will enable people to use their voices to engage with existing BBC content and develop new forms of interactive programming, end quote.

Starting point is 00:08:50 Sort of a popery catch-all segment now. Sprint has launched 5G coverage in New York City, Phoenix, and Washington, D.C. Today, August 27th, and 5G will be turned on in Los Angeles tomorrow. These cities will join Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, and Kansas City as the places where you can 5G your Sprint connection on one of three supported devices, the Samsung Galaxy S105G, the LGV-50, Thin, Kahn, Q and the HTC 5G Hub hotspot. Microsoft has announced a surface event scheduled for October 2nd here in New York City,

Starting point is 00:09:27 where one would expect updated surface hardware, of course, but also possibly that rumored dual-screen device codenamed Centaurus, which Microsoft has apparently been working on for two years. Quoting The Verge, Microsoft demonstrated this new device during an internal meeting earlier this year, signaling that work on the prototype has progressed to the point where it's nearing release. Still, it's not certain that Microsoft will show off this new hardware in October or even launch it. Microsoft's CEO Satcha Nadella famously killed off the Surface Mini just weeks before it's scheduled unveiling.

Starting point is 00:10:03 If Microsoft does plan to show this dual-screen surface device, then it won't be ready to ship immediately. Sources familiar with Microsoft's plans tell the verge that the company is currently targeting a 2020 release date for its dual-screen service. surface, end quote. And Google Maps is rolling out the ability for users to combine different transit modes, like biking, public transit, and ride sharing into their directions, quoting the verge again. Both features work by inputting your destination and then tapping the transit tab in the app. If you're interested in taking a ride sharing vehicle, you'll see information about each leg of your trip, including how much your ride will cost, how long the weight is. If there's traffic on your ride and when your bus are trained departs.

Starting point is 00:10:48 If biking suits your fancy, you'll see routes tailored for cyclists, along with everything you need to know about the transit portion of your journey, end quote. The new transit options are starting to roll out today on iOS. If you're on Android, today you get transit plus ride sharing, but you'll have to wait a bit longer to add biking into the mix. Quick follow up to something we spoke about recently. Yes, the Scorsese crime drama, the Irishman, will get a theatrical release after all.

Starting point is 00:11:22 The premiere of the movie will be September 27th at the New York Film Festival. Then it will hit theaters for a limited release beginning November 1st. Then it will hit your Netflix screen on November 27th. Remember, theater owners were putting their foot down about not having a longer window of exclusivity to screen the Irishman. And Netflix was making moves to possibly put their foot down, suggesting that it didn't need much of a theatrical run at all, other than to qualify for awards consideration. And poor Marty just wanted people to at least have the chance to see his movie on the big screen if they wanted to. It's unclear who blinked here, but then it's also unclear which theater chains are going to run the

Starting point is 00:12:05 movie, quoting from Variety. Privately, theater owners had said they were eager to screen the Irishman, noting the history-making collaboration between Scorsese, De Niro, Pesci, and Pacino, named synonymous with the greatest in gangster cinema. It's unclear what kind of discussions took place, but sources close to the exhibition side at one point suggested that theater owners might be willing to show the movie if it appeared exclusively in theaters for roughly 70 days. As it stands, the exclusive theatrical window for the film

Starting point is 00:12:33 will consist of 26 days. Insiders believe that the Irishman will ultimately have a theatrical footprint similar to that of Roma, which screened in roughly 250 theaters in the U.S. and approximately 1,600 venues overseas. The interchains such as IPEC, Alamo Draft House, and Landmark have been willing to exhibit Netflix releases in the past and are expected to show the Irishman, end quote.

Starting point is 00:13:03 I'm going to say that this story comes from my file, things I didn't know to worry about, but now I'm completely worried about it. Amid the recent ransomware attacks against local governments, U.S. officials are beginning to fear similar attacks on election databases. These systems, which are widely used to validate the eligibility of voters before they cast ballots, were compromised in 2016 by Russian hackers seeking to collect information. Intelligence officials are concerned that foreign hackers in 2020 not only will target the databases, but attempt to manipulate, disrupt, or destroy the data, according to current

Starting point is 00:13:41 and former U.S. officials. We assess these systems as high risk, a senior system. near U.S. official said because they are one of the few pieces of election technology regularly connected to the internet. The cybersecurity infrastructure security agency, or CISA, a division of the Homeland Security Department, fears the databases could be targeted by ransomware, a type of virus that has crippled city computer networks across the United States, including recently in Texas, Baltimore, and Atlanta, end quote. Right. Because these databases are largely maintained by state and county governments, which, as we've seen, don't have the resources often to fend off attacks like

Starting point is 00:14:22 this or the sophistication. So, CISA is reaching out to local election officials to educate, provide penetration testing, and vulnerability scans. But yeah, forget about manipulating our democracy, the fundamental tenet of our system of government. Imagine a malicious actor holding democracy hostage, or worse, simply deleting it. Quoting one more time from Reuters, The databases are particularly susceptible to this kind of attack because local jurisdictions and states actively add, remove and change the data year round, said Maurice Turner, a senior technologist with the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Starting point is 00:15:01 If the malicious actor doesn't provide the key, the data is lost forever, unless the victim has a recent backup, end quote. Finally today, the much-anticipated release of World of Warcraft Classic, a faithful recreation of the iconic MMO came out yesterday. Apparently, the launch has been so successful, people are standing in line. By that I mean literally standing in line, or not literally, because they're doing it in game. In short, the servers are so highly populated right now that completing simple starting quests requires standing in line. On social media, many classic aficionados are sharing images of long lines that look like something out of

Starting point is 00:15:47 an amusement park, not a video game. Some lines are short while others appear to have dozens upon dozens of patient gamers, end quote. Again, these are not lines at the store. These are lines in the game to queue up to just play the game. Cool that people are being civil about it, though, as expected, there are some who are tempted to get all Leroy Jenkins on it and cut the lines. However, quoting Reddit user Smishery, we cheered on the person next in line each time. And if someone skipped, we all yelled, shame. It was all harmless fun. I spent about an hour just chilling and laughing with randoms, something that I haven't done in World of Warcraft for years, end quote.

Starting point is 00:16:31 Click through on the last link in the shownuts for really funny picks. That is all for today. I'm Brian McCullough, as I always am. follow me on Twitter at Brian MCC and I will talk to you tomorrow.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 08/27 - Anthony Levandowski Arrested

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