Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 09/18 - Alexa for Microwaves

Episode Date: September 18, 2018

A reported criminal investigation around Elon Musk’s tweets, Twitter brings back the chronological feed, Alexa for microwaves, and a wrap up of the iPhone XS and XS Max reviews. Links:Tesla Is Facing U.S. Criminal Probe Over Elon Musk Statements (Bloomberg)The Tweet that got Twitter to bring back the chrono-feed (@EmmaKinema)Amazon plans to release at least 8 new Alexa-powered devices, including a microwave, an amplifier, and an in-car gadget (CNBC)Trump Hits China With Tariffs on $200 Billion in Goods, Escalating Trade War (NYTimes)APPLE IPHONE XS AND XS MAX REVIEW: SMOOTHED OUT (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 TechMeme ride home for Tuesday, September 18th, 2018. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, a reported criminal investigation surrounding Elon Musk's tweets.

Twitter brings back the chronological feed, Alexa for microwaves, and a wrap-up of the iPhone 10S and 10-S-max reviews. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. According to Bloomberg, Tesla is under criminal. investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California over public statements made by Tesla, the company, and by CEO Elon Musk. This criminal probe is running concurrently with a previously reported civil inquiry by securities regulators. The criminal inquiry is in its early stages.

One of the people familiar with the matter said, Justice Department probes like the civil inquiries undertaken by the SEC can take. months. They sometimes end with prosecutors deciding against bringing any charges, end quote. Tesla's shares were down as much as 4.4% on the stock market today in a statement to the blog, Electric. A Tesla spokesperson had this to say, quote, last month following Elon's announcement that he was considering taking the company private, Tesla received a voluntary request for documents from the DOJ and has been cooperative in responding to it. We have not received a subpoena, a request for testimony or any other formal process.

We respect the DOJ's desire to get information about this and believe that the matter should be quickly resolved as they review the information they have received, end quote. Bloomberg, for its part, believes the investigation was open last month after that now-famous tweet where Musk said he was considering taking Tesla private and had the, quote, funding secured. That did not end up to be the case technically, as we've discussed at length. Elon hasn't commented on this latest news publicly, and I just quickly checked his Twitter feed. Just tweets about SpaceX today. Most recently, he tweeted, quote, moon mission will be live streamed in high-deaf VR.

So it'll feel like you're there in real time minus a few seconds for speed of light, end quote. Well, I guess we should check in on the Tesla Daily podcast tomorrow. What's up with Elon now, Rob? overnight CNBC was reporting that sources have told it that Amazon plans to release eight new Alexa powered devices made by Amazon itself, including an amplifier, a subwifor, a receiver, something for the car, those sources wouldn't detail what that was, and get this, a microwave, and all of these devices are due by the end of this year. So forget the connected home.

Does this point to a future Amazon push to have Alexa power your entire home? As Shira Oviday tweeted, What are the odds that Amazon looks at what Alexa powered partner devices are selling well and then makes its own version of those devices? End quote. Again, the power of knowing what people are buying. And notice this interesting quote from the CNBC piece, quote, Amazon is showing signs of accelerating partnerships with home builders.

Earlier this year, it partnered with home builder Lanar to include two echo speakers in certain new homes and provide visits by Amazon technicians. Amazon's former director of Alexis Smart Home, Charlie Kandel, meanwhile, joined Smart Home Service Provider Control 4 in August, end quote. So go with me for a second here, and I realize I'm probably being really hyperbolic, but why doesn't Amazon just buy a Lenar or a Pulte homes or any of the? the home builders, then they can build homes themselves that are fully tricked out with voice-enabled everything, from lights to speakers in every room to, well, now that I'm actually saying this out loud, is it really that crazy? Yeah, Alexa enabled refrigerators that have cameras inside them to reorder milk for delivery from Whole Foods when you need it. I mean, blink, and you kind of see the angle here, right? Why should Amazon just get you to trick out your home

the bespoke piece-by-piece way, when they could just build you the home with Alexa fully integrated into every system they have to keep your household restocked with whatever you need. Yeah, though, that still feels a little crazy, but, man, a voice-enabled microwave does make sense to me. Alexa, one minute high on the microwave, or as microwaves have gotten so much better

with those sensor reheat settings, what if you could say, Alexa, reheat what's in the microwave. It's day-old pasta. And it would have those special settings for different foods. Or, and I just thought of this, I love taking baths at night with a good book before bed. So instead of having to sit up or trying to finagle the faucet knobs with my toes, I could just be like, Alexa, hotter. Alexa, hotter. Alexa, hotter. Alexa, hotter. The big news in the financial world lately has been the fact that the trade war with China has well and truly been joined. The Trump administration has officially announced $200 billion in additional tariffs on Chinese-made products, affecting roughly 300 types of goods. Since the U.S. imported $505 billion from China last year, this $200 billion of new tariffs means that there are now tariffs on approximately half of all China. Chinese goods imported to this country. And this morning, China hit back with fresh tariffs on $60 billion of U.S. goods imported to China,

with 5,207 individual goods impacted. But, and yes, there's a tech angle here. Interestingly, the Trump administration did specifically remove 300 items from its initial tariff list. Quoting from the New York Times, among the items dropped are smartwatches, Bluetooth devices, bike helmets, plastic gloves, high chairs, play pens, and certain chemicals. But in some cases, partial product lines will be taxed

while other parts are not. For example, high-tech network routers and smart watches share a product line, but under the United States trade representative plan, the routers would be subject to tariffs while watches are not, end quote. So a lot of people are tweeting about this saying, yeah, Apple got an exemption here, didn't they? Well, maybe or maybe not, though, could it really be a coincidence that just two weeks ago

Apple did send a public letter to the U.S. government outlining a detailed list of products that would be adversely affected by the originally proposed tariffs? Surely, it's a coincidence that a lot of those same items got left off the final list. Surely, right? Parker Thompson tweeted, not surprising to see the administration try to hide new taxes from consumers. It will be interesting to see what companies that are hard hit do. If Silicon Valley really were the resistance of conspiracy theories, Apple would have let this happen and made the tariff a line item on every receipt, end quote.

To which Eric Weisen responded wondering, whatever happened to the notion that we didn't want the government to pick winners and losers in the marketplace? Ever since Twitter killed our beloved third-party apps recently, a lot of us have been making our piece with the stock Twitter app. Problem is, that app doesn't give you the straight chronological feed. There's a bunch of stuff you missed, which some people like, but also a lot of 20 people like this garbage. For those of us who use Twitter as a fire hose, it's been problematic.

Yes, Twitter, I want to dip in and find out what is happening right now. Yes, that thing from 10 hours ago is cool, but I want to see what happened 10 seconds ago more. Well, guess what? Twitter is apparently giving those of us that want it. Our chronological timelines back. The other day, a tweet went viral from user M. Kinema. She noticed that if you go into Twitter's muting function and mute the words suggest underscore recycled, underscore tweet, underscore inline, as well as suggest underscore activity underscore tweet,

boom, you get your chronological feedback. Em says she was genuinely surprised that her little hack actually worked. As I said, M's tweet went viral, Twitter noticed it, and surprise. Suddenly they're claiming they were planning on giving us back our chronological feed all along. In a statement, Twitter said, quote, we've learned that when showing the best tweets first, people find Twitter more relevant and useful. However, we've heard feedback from people who at times prefer to see the most recent tweets. Our goal with the timeline is to balance showing you the most recent tweets with the best tweets you are likely to care about, but we don't always get this balance right, end quote.

Twitter now says it will soon be providing, quote, an easily accessible way to switch between a timeline of tweets that are most relevant for you and a timeline of the latest tweets, end quote. Twitter says this should be coming in the next few weeks. Also, apparently, as of today, if you go into settings and turn the show the best tweets first setting off, you'll only see tweets from people you follow in reverse chronological order. As of recently, or at least the last time I tried to reconfigure this, if you turned show best tweets off, it basically didn't even matter. You'd still see that. You'd still see the last time I tried to reconfigure this. I'm the in case you missed it and recommended tweets, even from people you didn't follow. So, good. I'm glad we're getting chronology back, but this is classic Twitter, isn't it?

As Owen Williams said in his overnight newsletter, quote, What's strange about the shift is Twitter is essentially going around in circles here, recreating the same functionality yet again rather than shipping new features, end quote. As I said, classic Twitter. No one ever accused them of being able to definitively make up their mind on something. What do you think the over-under is on when they reverse course and take this away from us again? Finally today, the iPhone 10S and 10S Max reviews are out. Notice the 10Rs are not yet out because, remember, the release of those was delayed to October.

But the reviews of the 10S and the 10S max are generally positive, although there's a surprising amount of tepid responses as well. The consensus seems to be terrific display. The new speakers are an impressive addition, long battery life, but yeah, man, expensive. Good camera, but not quite as great as some Android phones, and the portrait mode thing can be hit or miss. Quick roundup of what folks are saying, Wired's Lauren Good said, quote, this year's phones don't spark strong feelings, except maybe chagrin that they cost so much, end quote. In the Wall Street Journal, Joanna Stern says the Macs just feels like a blown-up iPhone, when it could be a new sort of computer.

And mimicking complaints from my wife and a lot of other people, quote, one-handed use is a struggle at times with smaller hands, especially typing, end quote. In the New York Times, Brian X-C-Cen went there and actually recommended which model you should probably go for between the two. Quote, by eliminating the bezels, which are the screens borders, Apple did a terrific job. of increasing screen size without adding bulk or compromising the ability of the 10S max. I still think the smaller 10S is a better fit for most people, end quote. In TechCrunch, Matthew Panzerino had an interesting take saying that if you've already got a 10, then there's probably not enough here for you to upgrade.

But if you haven't yet got on the bandwagon of an iPhone with gesture first controls and face ID, maybe now is a fine time to jump on board. Although maybe not, given Apple's, quote, fairly bold talk about making sure that iPhones last as long as they can, I think that it is well into the era where it is planning on having a massive installed user base that rents iPhones from it on a monthly or yearly or biannial period. And it doesn't care whether those phones are on their first, second, or third owner

because that user base will need for pay services that Apple can provide. And it seems to be moving in that direction already, with phones as old as the 5-year-old iPhone 5S still getting iOS updates. With the iPhone 10S, we might just be seeing the true beginning of the iPhone as a service era, end quote. And finally, in Nilai Patel's typically thoughtful review, he gave a score of 8.5 to both the 10S and the 10S max. For the 10S max, he says, quote, yes, if you want a huge screen, get a 10S max. It's a gigantic, beautiful screen, and I have enjoyed looking at it a lot. But nothing about it is easier to handle than the old plus phones, and in some cases it's harder, end quote. As for the 10S, he says, quote, I would not rush out to spend another $999 on the 10S if you already have a 10.

But if you're already deep into a pre-order, don't worry, you will love the iPhone 10S. It is indeed more iPhone, and it will probably hold up for years to come. I definitely prefer the Pixel 2's camera, but the iPhone 10S isn't that far behind, and it's still a significant improvement over previous iPhones. For everyone else, I think it's worth waiting to see how the iPhone 10R turns out before rushing in. It has the same processor and the same main camera for $750.50. The only major question is how good its 6.1-inch LCD screen will look in comparison to the OLED on the 10S. But for that, we'll just have to wait and see next month.

That is all for today, everybody. But hey, everybody, the new version of the Overcast podcast app is out, and it looks great, Marco. Though so far getting podcasts on the watch has yet to work for me, so I can't wait for the 5.0.1 update coming soon. I just check the stats and exactly 31.26% of you listening to me right now are listening on Overcast. Hey, remember that time you guys all recommended the pod using that share episode icon

in the top right hand corner of the Overcast playing now screen? And we ended up becoming a recommended podcast in Marco's technology category. Hey, if you're listening to me right now, maybe do that again. And there's also that little star icon down at the bottom that I don't know if it does anything, but it couldn't hurt to hit that too. Thanks, guys, and thanks Marco for the best podcast app in the business.

Talk to you all tomorrow.