Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 09/03 - Foldable Phones Refuse To Die

Episode Date: September 3, 2019

Samsung is gonna take another crack at foldable phones with a different design, sleep tracking is coming to the Apple Watch, Firefox 69 locks down everything, and a deep dive into the whole Ring Doorbell and Neighborhood controversy. Sponsors: Joybird.com/ride Promocode: RIDE WeWorkRemotely.com Links: Samsung Is Secretly Working on a Foldable Phone That Collapses Into a Square (Bloomberg) Apple Watch sleep tracking revealed: sleep quality, battery management, more (9to5Mac) Firefox 69 arrives with third-party tracking cookies and cryptomining blocked by default (VentureBeat) Upcoming Firefox update will decrease power usage on macOS by up to three times (ZDNet) Ring Neighbors Is the Best and Worst Neighborhood Watch App (WireCutter) Founders of Successful Tech Companies Are Mostly Middle-Aged (NYTimes) The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson 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 Monday, September 3rd, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough today. Samsung is going to take another crack at foldable phones, this time with a different design.

Sleep tracking is coming to the Apple Watch, Firefox 69 locks down basically everything, and a deep dive into the whole ring, doorbell, and neighborhood app controversy. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. All right, so clearly it's turned out that 2019 was not the year of the foldable phone that it promised to be, even eight months ago. But apparently, the dream of a foldable phone will never die. Sources are telling, so he came at Bloomberg that next year Samsung plans to unveil a 6.7-inch phone, which will be able to shrink to a pocketable square when folded inward like a clamshell. The phone is being developed with designer Tom Brown to give it more luxury appeal.

Quote, the new foldable phone will have a hole punch selfie camera at the top of the inner display, just as on the recently released Samsung Galaxy Note 10, according to one person familiar with the device. On the outside, it will have two cameras that face the rear when the phone is open or the front when it's flipped closed. I'm intrigued to see if a manufacturer can deliver a clamshell design that takes the current smartphone footprint and lets you fold it in half like a wallet in a similar manner to mobile phones of yesterday, such as the iconic Motorola razor. Said Ben Wood, an analyst with CCS Insight. That's what the world is probably waiting for. for, end quote. Well, see, we kind of don't know that yet if the world is really waiting for

the return of the clamshell because foldable phones themselves haven't made it to market in enough volume yet to see if the very concept of folding is something people even want full stop. Even if it ever does sell well, the galaxy fold has been an unmitigated disaster as the first introduction of this technology. Might have even killed any ardor for the technology, but, But maybe lessons have been learned, quoting Bloomberg again. One key advantage that next year's 6.7 inch foldable will have over the fold is that its shape, when open, will be basically that of a smartphone. So it will run Android phone apps in their native state.

The galaxy fold opens into a squarer aspect ratio and a larger screen, so it demands that apps be customized or adapted to best make use of its full dimensions. Samsung is testing the use of ultrithing glass for the internet. display of its next foldable, which would measure in at only 3% the thickness of the glass conventionally used to protect smartphone displays. At the same time, the company will want to ensure the durability of its foldable devices and avoid any repeat of the Galaxy Fold debacle, end quote. This is sort of something you knew was coming. You might recall that Apple acquired Bedditt, the manufacturer of the Beddett's sleep monitor product, but it's a scoop nonetheless

from Guillermo, according to sources, the Apple Watch is going to get sleep tracking and sleep monitoring features. The new features apparently won't even require any extra hardware to work. And quote, the new feature could be announced as early as next week when the company is expected to announce the next generation iPhones and possibly a revised Apple Watch with titanium and ceramic options. The new feature, code named Burrito internally, and called Time in Bed Tracking, will allow users to choose to wear Apple Watch to bed. If the user has more than one Apple Watch, they can pick one to be their designated bedtime watch. While asleep, the Apple Watch will track the user's quality of sleep using its multiple sensors and inputs, including the person's movement, heart

rate, and noises. Data about the user's quality of sleep will be made available to the health app and a new sleep app for the Apple Watch. One of the issues with wearing an Apple Watch during sleep is that many users choose to charge their Apple Watch at night. Apple thought about this, and developed a feature that will remind users to charge their watch beforehand so they can get through the night, end quote. That sort of sounds like a Tesla-style smart charging system. And yeah, I know I heard that part about having multiple Apple watches too, but before you roll your eyes, you Apple haters, I do have to say the quick charging ability of the watch has greatly improved in recent generations.

If I forget to charge my watch overnight, a quick 20 minutes on the charger while I shower and dress is usually more than enough to top up for a day of use. And I also do like this bit. If you do wear the watch overnight, if you wake up and start your day before the alarm is scheduled to go off, it will automatically turn off the alarm. Also something that I use, alarms only on the watch with the phone only has an alarm backup. No word on if this will be a whole new model of the Apple Watch, or if these features will just be a software update sort of thing. But earlier in the piece, the sources suggested that, again, there would be no new hardware required to make this happen. Firefox 69 has arrived along with the promise features for the web browser that will block third-party tracking cookies, identity fingerprinting, and crypto mining, all by default.

Quoting Venture Beat. Enhanced tracking protection shows up as a shield icon in the address bar. Click on it. open the content blocking section and then hit cookies. The blocking tracking cookies section shows the company's Firefox has blocked and lets you turn off blocking for a specific site. The feature focuses on third-party trackers, the ad industry, while allowing first-party cookies, logins, where you last left off, and so on. As a part of its crackdown, Mozilla also wanted to tackle crypto mining, which uses your CPU to generate cryptocurrency for someone else, and fingerprinting, which builds a digital fingerprint that tracks you across. the web. The company started to test blocking crypto mining and fingerprinting in April. Then the options

to block each one arrived with Firefox 67 in May. Firefox users can access these options by either clicking on the small eye icon in the address bar and clicking on the gear on the right side under content blocking or by going to preferences, privacy, and security, and then content blocking. From there, select custom and check crypto miners and or fingerprinters. Both were off by default. With Firefox 69 crypto mining is now blocked by default as part of the standard setting. Firefox 69 also blocks fingerprinting as a part of the strict setting, and Mozilla plans to turn it on by default in a later release, end quote. So good news, but Mac users, you've been complaining for a while now that Firefox has been a power hog, straining resources and draining batteries. Well,

potential good news there too, assuming you can wait until Firefox 70, quoting ZDNet. According to Mozilla engineer, Henrik Scoopin. Firefox devs have finally made a breakthrough and believe they fixed Firefox's power consumption on MacOS. Scoopin said that a current fix for the battery drain issue has been deployed on Firefox nightly, where it managed to reduce power usage by three times. According to Firefox statistics, nearly 7% of Firefox's 100 million monthly active users are running a MacOS version. Not all may be running on MacBooks, but those who are will most likely be interested in giving Firefox another go in the coming months, knowing the browser won't eat away at their battery at a much faster pace than Chrome or Safari, end quote.

We've mentioned it a couple of times, but Amazon's Ring video doorbell product is controversial. Civil libertarians are concerned about Ring's tight partnership with local law enforcement. Security watchdogs caught Ring storing video data unencrypted. And I'm not the only one that finds Ring's marketing practice. This is gross. In short, they buy geographically targeted posts on social media, using imagery from nearby rings to drum up concerns about crime in your neighborhood. Basically, ring seems to be dealing in fear and paranoia with the ring doorbell as the obvious solution. Call it paranoia as a service. So what is the fine-grained truth about what is going on with Ring? Well,

the wirecutter has a review up about the accompanying neighbors app, Ring's neighborhood watch feature that serves as kind of a shorthand for assessing the pluses and minuses of Ring and Neighbors. In short, according to Wirecutter using Neighbors is great if you're concerned about crime in your locality. But what maybe you should be worried about more is Neighbors' privacy policy. Their headline is literally Ring Neighbors is the best and worst neighborhood watch app. In short, Neighbors is an app that alerts you to crime in a radius of five miles around your home once you have ring installed. You can use neighbors with the ring doorbells, cameras, alarm system, even smart lights. Post that you make to the neighbors app remain

anonymous, and the idea is only to post about crimes, safety, suspicious activity, lost pets, that sort of thing. But, quoting from wirecutter, even though Ring claims that neighbors is an opt-in program, in reality you automatically enroll when you use the Ring app and you have to use the app to install or use a ring device such as a doorbell camera, a security system, or even a pathway light. And although you could simply refrain from posting to neighbors and turn off all of its notifications, you still have no way to completely separate yourself from it. You can't delete it from the app or hide the icon on the app's homepage. Another concern is that Amazon is a private company leveraging the influence of municipal authorities to market its

products. As several outlets have reported, Amazon has supplied a number of police departments around the country with free ring cameras, with the intent that police would distribute them to local residents and presumably with the hope that those residents would buy more ring devices or that their neighbors would. While some police departments have opted not to partake in this scheme, others have hosted ring giveaways, some of which mandate downloading the neighbor's app in order to participate, end quote. Wirecutter does say that no one, not ring, or any police Department is allowed to access your ring videos or personal information unless you choose to share them. The police, however, can request your identity and videos via the neighbor's app, which identifies

the request as coming from law enforcement. So Wirecutter is attempting to tamp down on some of the more out there rumors that police can just access your ring feed at any time. They apparently still cannot without a warrant. But the review does conclude this way, quote, Although Ring currently doesn't offer facial recognition technology, there's been buzz indicating that it's in the works, and it's clearly mentioned in the Ring privacy policy, and Amazon filed a patent, noting that this tech could serve, quote, to determine whether the video contains a known criminal, convicted felons, sex offender, person on the most wanted list, etc., or a suspicious person, end quote, and that the information could go directly to police. Notably, some Nest cameras already offer facial recognition, end quote. So, you know, you've got a choice to make is helping to build the Panopticon worth it if you're gambling that the Panopticon will always only benefit you. Finally, today, I was 21 when I founded my first company, still in college. Today I'm 41, and as I've told you, I'm going to try my luck at the rodeo for the

fourth time in my life with Ride Home Media. So, I like this sort of data. It's right up my alley. A study of the fastest growing startups established from 2007 to 2014 finds that middle age is, in fact, the typical starting point for the founders of the most successful tech companies. Quote, the researchers looked at startups established between 2007 and 2014 and analyzed the top 0.1 percent, defined as those with the fastest growth in employment and sales. The average age of those companies' founders was 45. Previous studies had documented that owners of small businesses tended to be in their late 30s and 40s, but most small businesses stay fairly small. Restaurants, dry cleaners, retail stores, and the like. They are important, but they aren't

central to innovation in the economy. The new study was able to zero in on high-flying startups by bringing together anonymized data collected by different agencies within the federal government. The government matched sales and employment data for startups collected by the Census Bureau with information on the founders extracted from Internal Revenue Service filings. After stripping identifying information, the government provided the researchers with a data set including 2.7 million business founders. The researchers calculated that the founder's average age was 42. And for the founders of the 0.1% fastest growing firms, the average age, the average age was 45. Firms that were successful enough to have an initial public offering or be acquired by a

larger company showed the same pattern. Their founders were generally middle-aged, end quote. The study says that while young people are often more apt to be risk-taking, thus more likely to create breakthrough or disruptive ideas, the study did mirror findings in other fields. Yes, Albert Einstein did his breakthrough work at age 26, but a study of Nobel laureates in physics found that the average age of the physicists when they did the work that would eventually win them their Nobel prizes was actually 37. Nobel breakthroughs in medicine arrive on average at age 40. The piece ends this way, quote, A lot of innovation in business benefits from experience.

Youth has its triumphs, but some roads to success are lengthy. They require age and staying power, end quote. Long holiday weekend reading report. Yes, I've plunged headlong into yet another fantasy series. Not sure why I'm on this fantasy jag lately, because I literally have only read history for the last five years or so. And I've never actually been a huge fantasy guy before, beyond the obvious Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones and Dune stuff. Although actually, I kind of do know what it was that tipped me over the edge. About a year ago, I devoured N.K. Jeminson's Broken Earth series, and I was like, oh, yeah,

Yeah, fantasy can be amazing when it's done well. So, this weekend I was this close to giving the Wheel of Time series a try, but the Wheel of Time series seems so intimidating, like you have to be willing to give up years of your life if you're going to do that series. Plus, it seems like the height of nerdiness, maybe beyond where I'm willing to go nerd-wise. But reading up on The Wheel of Time, I learned that after Robert Jordan died,

the series was finished by Brandon Sanders. And that led me to learn more about him. And so, yes, I am now currently halfway through the first book of the Stormlight Archive series. I will admit that there is way, way more magic than I've ever been comfortable with. I like just a sprinkle of magic in my fantasy, not a whole complicated system of magic. And here there are shard-bearers, surge binders, magic stones and amulets, and mystic visions in the whole nine yards. but the world is so fascinating, the character's so good, the story, at least so far, so compelling, that I can forgive all the magic mumbo-jumbo. I think when I get done with these books, I'm going to try to find a sci-fi series I can delve into to cleanse my palate.

Yes, I've read the expanse. Yes, I've read the culture books. Yes, I've read the three-body problem books. But anyway, before then, if you're in the mood to delve into a modern, well-written fantasy series, I think you could do worse than giving the first book The Way of Kings a Try by Brandon Sanderson. Link at the bottom of the show notes. Talk to you tomorrow.