Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 10/27 – AMD Buys Xilinx for $35 Billion

Episode Date: October 27, 2020

AMD does indeed buy Xilinx for $35 billion dollars. The UK bans locked phones. Tinder rolls out video dating. Zoom finally rolls out encryption. A major breakthrough in OLED technology has major implications for VR and for porn. And why the no-code movement might actually usher in the true computing revolution we were promised all along.  Sponsors: MailmanHQ.com Monday.com/ride Links: AMD Acquiring Xilinx In Bold, $35B Semiconductor Mega-Deal (Forbes) UK announces ban on sale of network-locked phones (Android Authority) Face to Face, Tinder's opt-in video chat feature, is now rolling out globally (TechCrunch) Zoom’s end-to-end encryption has arrived (The Verge) Porn is about to get uncomfortably high-res thanks to new OLED tech (Input) The No-Code Generation is arriving (TechCrunch) 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 Tuesday, October 27th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. AMD does indeed buy Xilinks for $35 billion. The UK bans locked phones. Tinder rolls out video dating. Zoom finally rolls out encryption. A major breakthrough in OLED technology has major implications for VR and for porn. And why the no-code movement might actually usher in the true computing revolution we were promised all along. Here's what you missed today in the world. of tech. It was rumored and it has happened. The second seismic act of consolidation in the chip space in the last six months is here. AMD says it is buying rival chipmaker Xylinks for $35 billion in an

all-stock deal. Quoting semiconductor guru Patrick Moorhead in Forbes, quote, AMD and Xilinks have hugely different product portfolios and are focused on different markets with a few exceptions. This is a good thing when it comes to acquisitions, and I believe the two companies are complementary. AMD is focused on high-performance CPUs and GPUs for PCs and data center servers and systems on a chip for game consoles and notebooks. Xilinks is focused on high-performance FPGAs, systems on a chip for data centers, including smart NICs, communications, automotive, industrial, aerospace, and defense markets. Short term, I can see go-to-market synergies. So, imagine one company is strong in automotive and communications, but the other isn't, but is strong in

CPU and GPU, and that account and engineering team have a whole lot more to offer the customer. While that might not sound sexy to you, it is to the customer. The two product and market similarities that the companies are both focused on are the higher performance, higher power draw markets, and targeting the data center. This becomes important when you look at technology. While both companies are currently focused on different products and markets, both are on very synergistic advanced technologies. Think of TSM's leading edge chiplets, die stacking, interconnects, and HBM, where I expect the combined to do more with the same versus a significant cost-cutting

exercise. AMD did talk about $300 million in synergies, and I see those in overlapping operating expenses, finance, human resources, and operations, and potentially COGs for bleeding edge foundry and high-performance memory costs. AMD CEO Lisa Sue explained to me, quote, we're coming at from the point of strength. Both companies have very strong power portfolios today. As we bring the companies together, we'll be able to take advantage of a lot of technology synergy. There's actually a tremendous amount of technology synergy, so the products are different, but the baseline technology that we use is very similar, end quote. For the second day in a row, more tech regulation that I didn't see coming down the pike. UK regulators have banned mobile networks

from selling locked phones, starting in December of 2021. Quoting, Android Authority. Locked smartphones are one of the more annoying trends in the industry as operators bar consumers from using their phones on other networks. Now the UK's regulator has announced it is banning networks from selling locked devices. The change was announced by communications regulator Offcom and comes into effect from December 2021, the BBC reported. This new change will reportedly affect EEVodafone and Tesco Mobile. BBC adds that O2, Sky, 3, and Virgin all sell unlocked phones already. We know that lots of people can be put off from switching carriers because their handset is locked. So we're banning mobile companies from selling locked phones,

which will save people time, money, and effort, and help them unlock better deals. Offcom connectivity director, Selena Chata, was quoted as saying on the regulator's website. The operators apparently claimed in the past that locked phones deter theft and fraud, but it's tough not to see this as an attempt to simply make it harder for people to leave a network. Operators frequently subsidized the cost of devices on contract too, so locking the phone presumably gives the networks a chance to recoup that cash. Offcom notes that it typically costs around 10 pounds to unlock a phone, but added that half of all people who attempt to do so, nonetheless experience issues, end quote. So good new regulation there, right? Do telecoms companies even

count as tech? I suppose they do, even though we typically think of them as the anti-tech in a way. plus no one is more regulated already than telecoms companies. Still, this is long overdue. It's always been a bit absurd that you might have to ask for permission to unlock and use a device that you already ostensibly own. Back to the whole who is and who maybe isn't doing well in COVID times department. One of the things that you have to imagine has taken a serious hit over the last few months is the whole dating industrial complex. I keep wondering if we'll see some sort of inverse baby boom in demographics somewhere down the road merely because the normal opportunities for relationships to just start or serendipitously happen

has been severely hampered recently. But then again, like everything else, hasn't dating gone online? To that end, Tinder is rolling out face-to-face. It's opt-in video chat feature globally. Yeah, being able to at least video chat when you can't mingle at a bar or have a romantic romantic restaurant dinner would seem to be an important thing for a dating app these days. Quoting TechCrunch, face-to-face, an opt-in-only feature that Tinder launched earlier this year that lets users video chat with each other without exchanging personal information, and only when they're facing the camera is now expanding globally, perhaps a timely move in a moment when many people are not meeting in person. Tinder is well aware of the creepy aspects of dating

services, and so tellingly it is touted how it's not the company's video team, but its trust and safety team that built this one. Quote, we're excited to share that our face-to-face feature is rolling out to our global community after receiving positive feedback from our members who have had early access to it, said Rory Kozole, head of trust and safety product at Tinder. This adds to our growing list of features built focused on member safety throughout their entire dating journey, like photo verification, safety center, and our offensive message detection technology, end quote.

Dating apps might seem like a strange category to thrive in a period where many are focusing, either because of government rules or on recommendations from health experts or both, on social distancing and congregating in small, known regular bubbles. But in fact, there seems to be an opportunity here. Dating apps have become a way for people to connect and get to meet each other at a time when many bars and other traditional meeting spots are closed down, or at least finding their normal operations very limited. As a case in point, Tinder, according to stats from App Annie, has continued to linger in the top rankings of downloads of lifestyle apps this year. It's currently number three in iOS in the U.S.

And the video chat feature only accentuates the idea of using the app not just to see who is out there and who you might match with, but to communicate with those people. Another plus here is that it is not a complete free-for-all spam fest of unwanted people approaching you as they might in a bar, end quote. So maybe the verdict is, Tinder is firmly in the doing well in COVID-Times category. And of course, we know that the king of COVID-Times, Zoom, has been doing very, very well. But if you'll recall the beginning of COVID times, there was this whole controversy about how insecure Zoom actually was. Zoom scrambled to add end-to-end encryption,

after first shying away from even attempting to do so. And today, that encryption has finally rolled out for both free and paid users. But note to Zoom user. If you opt for encryption, you're going to have to eschew some key Zoom features, such as cloud recording, telephone, dial-in and one-to-one private chat. Quoting the verge. Zoom says end-to-end encryption is supported across its Mac, PC, iOS, and Android apps, as well as Zoom rooms, but not its web client or third-party clients that use the Zoom SDK.

End-to-end encryption has launched in technical preview, which means Zoom is asking for feedback on the feature for 30 days. However, the company says that E2E will continue to be available after this period. Instructions on how to enable it can be found in Zoom. Zoom's help center. Zoom has previously offered encryption for its calls, but the data was only encrypted between each meeting participant and Zoom servers rather than being end-to-end encrypted between participants. Once end-to-end encryption is enabled, you can check Zoom is using the more secure kind of encryption using the green shield at the top left of a meeting window.

The shield will show a padlock rather than a checkmark if the meeting is encrypted end-to-end, end-quote. Pretty big breakthrough in OLED technology. Researchers from San Francisco, Samsung and Stanford University have apparently created a new OLED display with resolution greater than 10,000 pixels per inch. That's pretty amazing, considering the top of the line iPhone 12 has a resolution of a mere 460 pPI. So, I mean, this is clearly one step closer to TVs with resolutions that are so good. You'll basically be looking out the window. But as Steve Jobs pointed out once, Once you get resolution down small enough, it sort of doesn't matter because your eye can't see it. So what is this good for? Well, think about a use case where your eye actually is right up against those pixels.

Yes, this could be a big deal in VR headsets, quoting Input Magazine. One of the biggest issues facing VR is that it hasn't been as immersive as it could be because of low-screen resolutions. Inside the industry, the screen door effect is a term used to refer to the fact that the wearer, of a headset can see individual pixels when the screen is so close to their face, making it look like a mesh on a screen door. But at 10,000 pPI, the pixels are so densely packed you probably wouldn't be able to make out the shape of them individually, even with them right up to your eyes. The display that researchers created has two reflective layers, a silver film and a meta-surface film, or a forest of microscopic silver pillars, space less than a wavelength of light apart.

Clusters of these pillars serve as pixels, with each pixel divided in a four. four sub-pixels that can manipulate white light falling on them. Oled film between the layers emits light and can specify which sub-pixel it illuminates. In each pixel, the four sub-pixels yield different colors based on their density. Worth noting is that outside of VR, there hasn't been a big push for higher resolutions in small displays. 4K hasn't caught on in smartphones because the improvements are hard to see with the phone further from your face.

Considering that the VR market is still so small, it might be sometime before a 10,000 PPI display is introduced into headsets. On large screens, we've seen an onslaught of TV manufacturers begin to roll out 8K TV sets, even though most people haven't even upgraded to 4K yet. Experts say that your eyes won't be able to tell the difference unless maybe you get a massive 70-inch or 100-inch set, but barely anyone gets those. The biggest improvements to TV in the near future concern dynamic range or the ability to create greater contrast in the dark and bright parts of an image. Many TVs now offer high dynamic range or HDR functionality, end quote. Of course, the old saw is that often with technology, especially visual technology, porn tends to lead the way.

And the piece goes on to point out that this could, in fact, lead to hyper-realistic HD-VR porn. But then the piece also goes on to point out what occurred to me when I heard about that, like, how realistic do you really want your porn to be? Like, how close up and how, you know, detailed and photorealistic, do you want it before it tips over the uncanny porn valley into just gross. Speaking of technology history, finally today, if you know your computer history, before the graphical user interface, computers weren't used by normal people very often because they were too complicated for normal people to use. For a long time, there was this whole priesthood of computer operators. You would send them problems to feed into the computer on your behalf. They

did the computing and sent you the results. The whole story of personal computing and the GUI interface and Macs and Windows all the way up to smartphones today has been the defenestration of that priesthood. Computers are for everyday people for everyday use now. But that doesn't mean that the priesthood is gone completely because most everyday people are computer users. They are not computer programmers. The priesthood has lived on in the case of people who know how to code. Well, in an amazing essay, Danny Crichton at TechCrunch looks at how the rise of so-called no-code platforms is helping usher in a new generation of computer users that is fluent not

just in using computers and mobile devices, but also in programming them, getting them to do what they really want as opposed to just passively using them, getting them to really sing. If you thought the computer revolution was over, wait until the no-code kids get here, quote, Over the past two or so years, we've seen the rise of a whole class of software that has been broadly, and quite inaccurately dubbed no-code platforms. These tools are designed to make it much easier for users to harness the power of computing in their daily work. That could be everything from calculating the most successful digital ad campaigns given some sort of objective function, or perhaps integrating a computer vision library into a workflow that calculates the number of people entering or exiting a building.

The success and notoriety of these tools comes from the feeling that they grant superpowers to their users. Projects that once took a team of engineers some hours to build can now be stitched together in a couple of clicks through a user interface. That's why young startups like Retool can raise at nearly a $1 billion valuation and Airtable at $2.6 billion, while others like Builder, Shogun, Bubble, Stacker, and dozens more are getting traction among users. The key here is that no code tools aren't successful just because they are. are easier to use. They are successful because they are connecting with a new generation that understands precisely the sort of logic required by these platforms to function. Today's students don't just see their computers and mobile devices as consumption screens and have the ability

to turn them on. They are widely using them as tools of self-expression, research, and analysis. Take the popularity of platforms like Roblox and Minecraft. Easily derided as just a generation's obsession with gaming, both platforms teach kids how to build entire worlds using their devices. Even better, as kids push the frontiers of the tool sets offered by these games, they are inspired to build their own tools. There has been a proliferation of guides and online communities to teach kids how to build their own games and plugins for these platforms. These aren't tiny changes. 150 million play Roblox games across 40 million user-created experiences, and the platform has nearly 350,000 developers. Minecraft, for its part, has more than 130 million active users.

These are generation-defining experiences for young people today. The specialized, almost arcane knowledge of data analysis and engineering is being widely democratized for this new generation, and that's precisely where a new digital divide is emerging. In business today, it's not enough to just open a spreadsheet and make some casual observations anymore. Today's new workers know how to dive into systems, pipe different programs together using no-code platforms, and answer problems with much more comprehensive and real-time answers. It's honestly striking to see the difference. Whereas just a few years ago, a store manager might, and strong emphasis on might, put their

sales data into Excel and then let it linger there for the occasional perusal, this new generation is prepared to connect multiple online tools to build an online storefront, through no-code tools like Shopify or Squarespace, calculate basic LTV scores using a no-code data platform, and prioritize their best customers with marketing outreach through basic email delivery services, and it's all reproducible, as it is in technology and code, and not produce by hand, end quote. The piece goes on to go further into the whole concept of, will this create a new digital divide between generations, similar to maybe the one we're familiar with, the divide between digital native Gen Xers and millennials and their baby boomer parents, but the piece does end on a

hopeful note, quote, progress in many ways is about raising the bar. This generation is raising the bar on how data is used in the workplace, in business, and in entrepreneurship. They are better than ever at bringing together various individual services and cohering them into effective experiences for their customers, readers, and users. The No-Code Generation has the potential to finally fill that missing productivity gap in the global economy, making our lives better while saving time for everyone, end quote. Indeed, and take this in the spirit it's intended, will always have need for software engineers, at least at the highest levels for some things, but the true computer revolution will come when most people won't need to know how to code to do most things they want a computer to do.

The real computer revolution happens when you never need to program a computer, when you don't need to learn how to make it even work. Instead, it just does. I thought I was one of those people who got one of those misprinted mailing ballots here in Brooklyn that you might have heard about on the news. Turns out I did not. Once I actually opened up the ballot, it was printed correctly. So, filled it out and mailed in my ballot yesterday, which is good because, wow, happened to walk by the Park Slope Armory yesterday, which would be my in-person vote early place. And man, the line was wrapped around two entire blocks, a good, I don't know, five, 600 people in line. Glad I avoided that. Not that you need to hear it from me, but go vote, folks. Tis the season. Talk to you tomorrow.