Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 11/05 - Is All Well With Softbank?

Episode Date: November 5, 2019

How are things in Masa Son’s world post-WeWork? How long until Uber will be profitable? How is the new Surface Pro X to use? Why is iOS aggressively quitting background apps? And why data scoring companies are maybe worse than credit score companies. Sponsors: SVB.com/next Metalab.co Links: SoftBank imposes new standards to rein in start-up founders (Financial Times) WeWork Isn’t the Only Stumble for SoftBank’s Vision Fund (WSJ) Uber Books Another Quarterly Loss as Revenue Climbs (WSJ) MICROSOFT SURFACE PRO X REVIEW: HEARTBREAKER (The Verge) Xiaomi unveils its 108-megapixel smartphone (Engadget) Actively exploited bug in fully updated Firefox is sending users into a tizzy (ArsTechnica) IOS 13.2 IS OVERZEALOUSLY KILLING APPS IN THE BACKGROUND (Daring Fireball) I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score. Now You Can Get Yours, Too. (NYTimes) 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 ride home for Tuesday, November 5th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough today. How are things in Mossa Sons world post-WeWork? How long until Uber will be profitable? How is the new Surface Pro X to use? Why is iOS aggressively quitting background apps and why

data scoring companies are maybe worse than credit score companies? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Part of the fascination with the WeWork saga also involves fascination with the Vision Fund, SoftBank and Masa San. In short, Adam Newman couldn't have done what he did if he weren't at least to some degree, enabled by money folk who should have known better. Two separate stories today about what's going on in Masa land after the WeWork debacle. First, the Financial Times is reporting that going forward, in order to prevent other Adam Newmans from blowing up their investments, SoftBank is adding new governance standards for companies it backs to limit the outsized control of founders. From now on, SoftBank will look to have

at least one board seat, require one independent director on the board, ban directors from owning supervoting shares themselves, and limit founders to less than half of the seats on the board. Quote, the attention on governance standards marks a shift for SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son, known as a risk-addicted dealmaker who claims to be guided by a gut feeling that lets him, quote, feel the force. His quick decision-making and belief in his own ability to pick winners in the technology industry has come into question following the poor performance of a number of high-profile bets, such as car booking app Uber. The broad autonomy typically afforded to the creators of Silicon Valley companies has caused disquiet within private markets for years,

but concerns have grown that the Vision Funds, Investment Spree, which has pumped $75 billion into 88 companies has further enabled bad behavior among tech founders, end quote. As Paul Kedruski snarked on Twitter, stand back people, there is prudent investing going on here, end quote. And the Wall Street Journal says that we work is not alone in terms of companies inside the Vision Fund's portfolio, which might be struggling. Quote, soft banks nearly $100 billion vision fund gave companies like Dog Walking App Wag and Indoor Farm Plenty, more cash. than they wanted, but the investments failed to ignite growth. After a sizable bet on online car lesser fare, that company is struggling to stay afloat. Wag is for sale, people with the

knowledge of the company say dozens of other firms, such as Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuk Singh and South Korean e-commerce company Kupang are in industries known for burning cash and with uncertain paths to profitability. The Wall Street Journal reported that D.D., the Vision Fund's biggest investment at $11.8 billion was seeking more cash this summer months after a company executive said it was losing money on every fair booked. Kupang, in which the Vision Fund has invested $2.7 billion, said that last year its operating loss grew faster than its revenue, end quote. Please understand that I mean nothing disparaging by using this as a segue.

But Uber is a company that also got a huge investment from SoftBank, slash, Vision Fund. And it's another investment that is probably at the moment underwater for Massasan. Uber reported Q3 revenue last night of $3.8 billion, which is up year over year by 30%. Gross bookings came in at $16.5 billion up $29. But Uber also reported a net loss of $1.2 billion, which was better than analysts were expecting, but still represents the third largest quarterly loss since the company started reporting earnings. a few years ago. Uber's stock is down more than 31% from its IPO earlier this year. Bright signs, though, for the company, Uber Eats revenue is up 64%.

And Uber says it expects to turn a profit in 2021, quoting the Wall Street Journal. Chief Executive Daracoshajee provided the timeline on Monday after the ride-hailing company announced third quarter earnings, saying Uber projected a full-year profit for 2021 on an adjusted basis, including interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. It was a bid to offer investors long-awaited assurance that the company has a road to profitability despite quarterly losses that have ballooned above $1 billion. We think we've answered a very big question that investors had, Mr. Koswashahi said on a press call Monday. That's two years of growth for our rides business, end quote. Uber also expects pricing in food delivery. It's second bigot's business after

ride hailing will become more reasonable, and the discounts and promotions will begin to fade, which, quote, is a good thing for us and for the industry as well, Kosoashahi said. Uber is already starting to keep more money from each meal delivery transaction, end quote. The real flagship device from that Microsoft event a month ago was the Surface Pro X. Well, the review embargo has been lifted, so let's do a quick whip around to see what people think of the Surface Prox. X. Summary of people's impressions. It's got a beautiful design, beautiful display, but also slow performance for the price, an unimpressive battery, and weirdly, a lot of app compatibility issues. Like, for example, Fortnite, Xbox GamePass, neither will work on this machine. Things like Chrome and Photoshop run super slow, and even some apps in Microsoft's own App Store won't run on it. Dieter at the Verge gave the Surface ProX a 6.5 out of 10, saying, quote, For the near $1,800 you'd have to spend to get the ProX model I reviewed,

you would be able to buy a Surface Pro 7 kit it out with equivalent RAM, storage, keyboard, stylus, and an Intel Core I7 processor that would be loads faster and also be compatible with all Windows apps. Is getting a thinner device with LTE, a bigger screen, and the happy feeling you're living slightly further in the future, worth the app trade-off? Maybe for a sliver of people who can afford to buy very nice things to do office, email, and browsing tasks.

This is a CEO's computer, not an engineer's computer, and certainly not a computer for the rest of us. The Surface ProX is the best-looking computer I've used all year, but we don't need to look at computers. We need to use them, end quote. Sherilyn Lowe in Engadgett agrees that Microsoft still hasn't perfected the whole Windows on an arm chip thing. She gave the Surface Pro X a 73 out of 100.

Quote, asking people to pay $1,140, including the keyboard case, for something that might not run all the apps they need is outrageous, especially since Chromebooks are just as good at handling browser-based applications and generally cost $500 or less. If you're in the sliver of the population that needs access to a small handful of Windows apps, then maybe the ProX is sufficient. But bear in mind, you'll be paying a hefty premium for Windows, an LTE connection, and gorgeous hardware, end quote. And finally here is Dan Ackerman at CNET, quote,

There's so much I really like about the bold new Surface Pro direction, the slimmer design, better display and bezel, great stylus implementation, decent battery life, and excellent keyboard experience. But the relatively high price, especially considering the cost of accessories, the software compatibility issues, and tough spec comparisons with the mature Surface Pro 7 makes this ideal for only a small subset of the tablet toting population, end quote. I guess very few of us will ever be able to get our hands on this

in the United States mainly, but Zhaumie has officially unveiled its smartphone with a 108 megapixel camera. The CC9 Pro has that 108 megapixel wide angle camera plus four more. A 5 megapixel 5x telephoto, a 12 megapixel 2x telephoto, a 20 megapixel ultra wide angle lens, and a 2 megapixel macro camera. Click the Engadget link for the hands-on photos. Quoting Engadgett, the gigantic 526 MAHB battery should give it impressive endurance. Other features include an edge-to-edge 6.47-inch curved FHD Plus ammo-led display and Snapdragon 730G mobile platform. The Xiaomi Mi CC9 Pro will go on sale tomorrow in China for $2,799 yuan or about $400, with 6 gigabytes of RAM, with 128 gigabyte storage and $3,099 yuan or $440, $8 gigabytes of RAM. There's also the more expensive

CC9 Pro Premium Edition going for $3,499 yuan or $500, which comes with 8 gigabytes of RAM and 250 gigabytes of storage, along with an 8P lens system for the 108 megapixel camera. This supposedly takes better photos than the 7P system on the regular version. Jaume has hinted at Global availability, so stay tuned, end quote. A bunch of items falling into the news you can use category. I haven't made my personal switch to Firefox just yet, but considering doing so has put them on my radar, so I notice that Mozilla is currently racing to fix a Firefox bug that is currently actively being exploited by scammers.

The way the scam works is a warning message pops up on your Firefox browser, which causes your browser to lock up, displaying a message saying you are running a pirated version of Windows. You can't do anything with your browser, and it then subsequently asks you to call a toll-free number in the next five minutes, or your computer will be disabled. You don't even have to interact with an infected website to have this happen to you, quoting Ars Technica. The attack works on both Windows and Mac versions of the open source-source browser. The only way to close the window is to force-close the entire browser using either the Windows Task Manager or the force-close functions in MacOS. Even then, Firefox will reopen, previously open tabs, resulting in an endless loop.

Although, as commenters have pointed out, restore tabs is turned off by default. To resolve the problem, users must force-close Firefox and then immediately upon restarting it, quickly close the tab of the scammer site before it has time to load, end quote. And users are reporting that on iOS 13.2 and iPadOS 13.2, apps seem to terminate in the background far more aggressively than they used to, thereby hampering the multitasking experience. Also, background downloads are hanging forever. Apparently, this is happening especially aggressively on the iPad. Obviously, this is about RAM management, but still, it seems the dial has been turned way beyond balancing that need with the needs of user experience. Nothing can probably be done until Apple fixes

this in a future software update, quoting John Gruber. This bug where apps are getting killed soon after they're backgrounded is driving me nuts. Start a YouTube video and Safari, switch to another app, go back to Safari, and the video loads from scratch and starts from the beginning. If I could downgrade to 13.1.3, I probably would, even though it would mean losing AirPods Pro support until 13.2.1 comes out, which perhaps erroneously presumes that this overzealous process reaping is a bug and not a feature, end quote. Finally today, maybe you don't like Facebook and Google hoovering up everything they can learn about you and selling your data to marketers. Maybe you don't like credit score companies determining what you can and can't do economically.

Well, listen up because there's a new generation of data. data brokers out there, companies like SIFT and customer with a K, which share your estimated lifetime value as a customer with various companies. This new breed is basically data scorers. They assign each of us a secret score, hidden ratings that determine things like what sort of service will receive, how long we'll wait on hold on the phone, whether or not we can even return items at a store, that sort of thing. Every, action slash interaction with a company is rated and scored by these new companies. In other words, if your rating says that over the course of your lifetime, a company can expect you to make them a lot of

money or if you're likely not to be a pain in their butt, then they'll treat you better. And if they don't, you don't. As Craig Maud tweeted, quote, it's interesting that we get upset about China openly creating a social score for its citizens. And yet we don't pass national laws to keep U.S. companies from secretly creating the same social scores, end quote. Quoting from the New York Times piece about all this, Sift has a file on you, which it can produce upon request. I got mine, and I found it shocking. More than 400 pages long, it contained all the messages I'd ever sent to hosts on Airbnb, years of Yelp delivery orders, a log of every time I'd open the Coinbase app on my iPhone. Many entries included detail.

information about the device I used to do those things, including my IP address at the time. Sift knew, for example, that I'd used my iPhone to order chicken tika masala, vegetable samosas, and garlic gnawn on a Saturday night in April three years ago. It knew I used my Apple laptop to sign in the Coinbase in January 2017 to change my password. Sift knew about a nightmare Thanksgiving I had in California's wine country as captured in my messages to the Airbnb host of a rental called Cloud 9, end quote. The companies that pay for this social scoring data, especially Airbnb, Yelp, and Coinbase, at least according to this piece, claim that this data is valuable to them for preventing

fraud and increasing revenues. But if you don't like the whole idea of this, thanks to the California Consumer Privacy Act, that new California data privacy law, basically California's version of GDPR, you can now request to see your file from any of these companies. companies. Check the piece for step-by-step instructions to request your data from the likes of SIFT, Zeta Global, Retail Equation, Riskified, and Customer. Thank you, California. That is all for today. Don't forget to check out the show's subreddit at R-slash Ride Home. I actually picked up two stories from readers that posted there today that I will probably be using this week.

so check out the subreddit where you can tip me stories, but also commiserate with your fellow listeners, debate and discuss. Talk to you tomorrow.