Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 12/08 – Apple’s $549 AirPods Max

Episode Date: December 8, 2020

Say hello to AirPods Max. Cloudflare and Apple have developed a new internet privacy protocol. Google’s Stadia is finally flipping the switch on one of its biggest selling points. Uber is exiting the self-driving sweepstakes, but what does that mean for its future? And more fallout from that Warner Media streaming decision. Sponsors: Amazon.com/ridehome Wipers123.com promocode: ride Links: Apple introduces AirPods Max, the magic of AirPods in a stunning over-ear design (Apple Newsroom) Cloudflare and Apple design a new privacy-friendly internet protocol (TechCrunch) Google Stadia will let all users livestream games directly to YouTube tomorrow (The Verge) Samsung’s SmartThings can finally control your Google Nest devices (The Verge) SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network wins $885M in federal aid for rural broadband (GeekWire) Uber sells its self-driving unit to Aurora (CNBC) Christopher Nolan Rips HBO Max as "Worst Streaming Service," Denounces Warner Bros.' Plan (The Hollywood Reporter) ‘Dune’ Producer Legendary Entertainment May Sue Warner Bros. Over HBO Max Deal (Variety) 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, December 8th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. Say hello to AirPods Max. Cloudflare and Apple have developed a new internet privacy protocol.

Google Stadia is finally flipping the switch on one of its biggest selling points. Uber is exiting the self-driving sweepstakes, but what does that mean for its future? And more fallout from that Warner Media streaming decision. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Apple has unveiled AirPods Max over the ear. headphones with noise cancellation available from December 15th for $549, which seems pretty expensive for headphones unless these are like the highest end headphones one could even imagine. They do come in five colors, though, and the design is pretty spiffy looking.

Quoting from Apple's press release, AirPods Macs combine a custom acoustic design, H-1 chips, and advanced software to power computational audio for a breakthrough listening experience with adaptive EQ, active noise cancellation, transparency mode, and spatial audio. Each ear cup attaches to the headband through a revolutionary mechanism that balances and distributes ear cup pressure and allows it to independently pivot and rotate to fit the unique contours of a user's head. Each ear cushion uses acoustically engineered memory foam to create an effective seal, a critical factor in delivering immersive sound. The digital crown, inspired by Apple Watch, offers precise volume control and the ability to play or pause

audio, skip tracks, answer or end phone calls, and activate Siri. AirPods Max feature a 40-millimeter Apple design dynamic driver that provides rich, deep bass, accurate mid-ranges, and crisp, clean, high-frequency extension so every note can be heard. A unique dual neodymium ring magnet motor allows AirPods Max to maintain total harmonic distortion of less than 1% across the entire audible range, even at maximum volume. Equipped with an Apple designed H1 chip in each ear cup, a custom acoustic design, and advanced software, AirPods Max, use computational audio to deliver the highest quality listening experience possible.

Utilizing each of the chip's 10 audio cores, capable of 9 billion operations per second, computational audio powers a breakthrough listening experience, end quote. So again, adaptive EQ, active noise cancellation, transparency mode. so when you want to hear what's going on around you, you can, and spatial audio. Also, apparently 20 hours of battery life. It also ships with a smart case that looks kind of like a purse that allows the AirPods Macs to go into a low power state. But you still got to charge over a wired lightning connector, and given all those features,

there's really nothing here that no one else has. So again, seems pretty expensive for Checks Notes earphones, as Eric Adelson tweeted, I'd sooner spend $549 on a private detective to find the three sets of regular headphones. I lost, end quote. This is interesting, sticking on the Apple front, Cloudflare and Apple say they have teamed up to develop a new privacy-friendly internet protocol called Oblivious DNS over HTPS, which decouples DNS queries from internet users for more privacy, quoting TechCrunch. Here's how it works.

Oblivious DNS over HTPPS or ODOH wraps a layer of encryption around the DNS query and passes it through a proxy server which acts as a go-between the internet user and the website they want to visit. Because the DNS query is encrypted, the proxy can't see what's inside but acts as a shield to prevent the DNS resolver from seeing who sent the query to begin with. What ODOH is meant to do is separate the information about who is making the query and what the query is, said Nick Sullivan, Cloudflare's head of research. In other words, ODOH ensures that only the proxy knows the identity of the internet user and that the DNS Resolver only knows the website being requested. Sullivan said that page loading times on ODOH are, quote, practically indistinguishable from regular DNS over HTPS and shouldn't cause any significant changes to browsing speed. end quote. Of course, DNS is operated by your ISP, sort of by default, which means your ISP knows who you are and which websites you visit. Some ISPs sell that data to advertisers. So basically, this would prevent your ISP from seeing where you go on the web without the need for a VPN.

Google says Stadia users will be able to live stream their games directly to YouTube starting today, quoting the verge. From the very beginning, Google Stadia and YouTube were supposed to work together. Thanks to the magic of cloud computing, you'd be able to click a YouTube ad to instantly begin playing a game. YouTubers would be able to invite their viewers to instantly join their game. And perhaps most importantly, creators would be able to instantly, effortlessly be able to live stream their Stadia games to YouTube just by pressing a button on the controller.

None of those things happened at Stadia's launch last November, but the biggest one is apparently arriving now. Every Stadia user will be able to live stream directly to YouTube starting today, a representative definitive confirms to the verge. According to 9 to 5, Google, you'll still have to give your stream a title and tweak a few settings like whether your stream is appropriate for kids to comply with children's protection rules. It's also not clear whether you'll be able to stream in 4K quite yet as Stadia originally promised.

You'd also likely need a $9.99 a month Stadia Pro subscription for that, like you do for 4K gameplay. The feature couldn't come at a more important time for Stadia, the service's most important game yet, cyberpunk 27 is arriving this week, end quote. Samsung's Smart Things platform will support Google Nest devices beginning next month, quoting the verge. Prior to this, owners of devices that qualified for the works with Smart Things, WWST certification, had to use separate software to manage any Google Nest products they owned.

Following the launch of the integration next month, all Nest products will be compatible with the Smart Things platform and will qualify as WWST devices. The partnership further bolster Samsung's smart home platform, which is one of the leading hub makers for managing smart home devices on the same network. Samsung purchased Smart Things in 2014 for $200 million due to the company's proficiency at helping smart home products communicate across various protocol standards. Since then, Smart Things has grown to support thousands of products as Samsung has pushed

to integrate the platform with virtually every smart home brand on the market, with Google remaining a notable exception until today. Samsung says its platform now has more than 120 certified brands and more than 63 million active users, end quote. SpaceX's Starlink satellite network has won $885 million in federal aid for rural broadband, part of a $9.2 billion allocation by the FCC to be paid across 180 auction bidders, quoting Geekwire. In all 180 bidders won subsidies that are to be paid out over the next 10 years. Only one other satellite broadband provider is on the FCC. list, Hughes Network Systems, which will receive $1.3 million to serve rural sites in Rhode Island. The FCC said the RDOF program will provide $22.8 million to support broadband service to

rural communities in Washington State. SpaceX is due to get the biggest share of those subsidies in its home state amounting to $80.4 million. Washington also leads the state-by-state list for SpaceX subsidies. More than 5.2 million homes and businesses are expected to benefit from the program in which funds were allocated through a reverse auction, end quote. Perhaps the biggest news is the news that Uber is getting out of the self-driving car game. Uber is selling its self-driving unit, Advanced Technologies Group, to Self-Driving Startup Aurora Innovation and a deal valuing the Advanced Technologies Group at $4 billion. With this tie-up, Uber CEO Darakoshajee is joining Aurora's board.

Uber is investing $400 million in Aurora, and Aurora is now valued at $10 billion, quoting CNBC. Overall, Uber and ATG investors and employees are expected to own a 40% stake in Aurora, according to a regulatory filing accompanying the deal. Uber alone will hold a 26% stake. The startup is being valued at $10 billion in the transaction, according to a person familiar with the terms of the deal. Aurora is backed by Hyundai, Amazon, and major venture firms, including Greylock and Sequoia. TechCrunch first reported in November that the two companies were

in talks for ATG. Uber's co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick had viewed self-driving as an essential investment, saying in 2016 he believed the world would shift to autonomous vehicles. ATG had been a long-term play for Uber, but the unit brought high costs and safety challenges. Throughout the course of a pandemic-stricken year, Uber has made efforts to stem losses in its ride-hailing business, control business costs, including with major layoffs in the spring, and to grow its delivery business, end quote. Yeah, so about that, it wasn't that long ago that self-driving was called an existential issue for Uber. Was it?

How many billions of dollars of VC money was burned by Uber going for the brass ring in self-driving? On the one hand, you could say that it's surprising Uber tried to keep the self-driving race going this long. But on the other hand, if you're a longtime Uber bull, it was probably because, Travis Kalenick sold you on a vision of Uber One Day being the one brand, the one app for everyone for transportation. Uber was going to go for monopoly market control. It would muscle out everyone else around the world and thus garner monopoly pricing power. And on top of that, ideally synchronized to that when people stopped needing to own their own cars themselves because self-driving was ubiquitous, Uber would be the brand everyone would pay for their monthly transportation subscription.

And Uber's costs would go to the basement because they wouldn't have labor costs anymore because there wouldn't be drivers. Not sure how well that ever gelled with the original Uber vision of not owning anything tangible, merely being a platform, but never mind. So in the last few years, Uber has exited a ton of overseas markets, indicating they're not going for global monopolies anymore. In the markets, it still remains in. It is still fighting tooth and nail with rivals. It has never managed to slay. and now the promised margin expanding future of no longer needing drivers is, well, it's not going away necessarily, but it's not going to be wholly owned by Uber either. So what business is Uber now? It's not the promised business Travis Kalanick sold Uber Bulls-on. It's pretty much, at least from what we can see, the business Uber is in now, which continues to not be profitable.

or else they're just trying to pivot more and more into the food delivery space, which, again, kind of DoorDash is the leader there. So is there a path to profitability for Uber now that plans A and B are no more? As Lee Drogan tweeted, quote, Uber exiting driverless certainly isn't something anyone saw coming a few years ago. Wow, how the scope of that business has narrowed, end quote. Again, I just find this whole story fascinating. According to, the Hollywood reporter, Warner Media's decision to debut its slate of 2021 films on HBO Max has blindsided creatives and their representatives, basically everyone in Hollywood, and they are not pleased. For example, quote, some of our industry's biggest filmmakers and most

important movie stars went to bed the night before, thinking they were working for the greatest movie studio and woke up to find out they were working for the worst streaming service. Filmmaker Christopher Nolan, whose relationship with Werner's dates back to insomnia in 2002, said in a statement to the Hollywood reporter, added Nolan, quote, Warner Brothers had an incredible machine for getting a filmmaker's work out everywhere, both in theaters and in the home, and they are dismantling it as we speak. They don't even understand what they're losing. Their decision makes no economic sense, and even the most casual Wall Street investor can see the difference between disruption and dysfunction, end quote. Quoting more from the Hollywood report.

Surprisingly, to some in the industry, sources say the idea was the brainchild of Warner Brothers C-O, Carolyn Blackwood, who, looking at a relatively weak 2021 movie slate, saw an opportunity to avoid the humiliation of potentially bad grosses while currying favor with streamer-obsessed higher-ups. The instant response in Hollywood was outrage and a massive girding for battle. Quote, Warner's has made a grave mistake, says one top talent agent, never have this many people been this upset with one entity, end quote. Like others, he had spent much of the day dealing with calls from stunned and angry clients. And that swooshing sound you hear, it's the lawyers, strapping their blades as they prepare for battle. That Warner's was self-dealing in shifting these movies to its own

streamer, perhaps, or that the company acted in bad faith. Some talent reps say the decision affects not only profit participants, but others who have worked on films as the move might affect residual payments. They expect and hope that the guilds will get involved. The Writers Guild of America declined to comment. The Warner's move poses big, maybe even existential questions. How do theaters survive this supposedly one-time excused by the pandemic move? Genies are hard to put back in the bottle, and no one believes Warners intended this to be temporary anyway. What damage will be done to exhibitors by training customers that if they sit on their sofas, the biggest movies will come? And will Warner's face serious backlash from important producers, filmmakers, guilds, and on-screen

talent, quote, Warner's was the quintessentially talent-friendly, filmmaker-friendly studio, says one agent. Now Warner's isn't the first place, second place, or third place you want to go, end quote. Many in Hollywood think WarnerMedia opted for this drastic move to play to streaming infatuated Wall Street and redo the botched launch of HBO Max, which has netted a dismal 8.6 million activated subscribers so far. But one prominent agent notes that the top executives at WarnerMedia and its parent AT&T, CEO John Stanky, WarnerMedia, CEO Jason Killar, and of course, Sarnoff, quote, don't understand the movie business and they don't understand talent relations, end quote. While Killar pays what is seen as lip service to movies, industry veterans say Werners is

sacrificing the huge profit that comes from selling movies in multiple formats and on multiple platforms around the world, end quote. Variety is also reporting that legendary, that production company which has been behind most of Nolan's films and which co-financed the upcoming Dune among others is considering suing Warner Brothers. Quote, part of Legendary's frustration is that despite largely bankrolling Dune and Godzilla versus Kong, the production company didn't have much of a say in how its buzzy titles would be released. Moreover, the company felt that Warner Brothers wasn't being transparent with its intentions. Months ago, Netflix had discussed a possible sale of

Godzilla versus Kong for a hefty $250 million, but WarnerMedia, the parent company of Warner Brothers blocked that arrangement. Legendary financed a significant portion of Dune, which costs roughly $175 million, and Godzilla versus Kong, which carries a price tag around 160 million, end quote. Yeah, I'd be pissed if I ponied up a ton of money, only to have the ability to make that money back taken out of my hands. Still, counterpoint. The rollout of Tenet was not exactly a financial success. Again, maybe this is making the best lemonade out of the lemons you've been dealt. And also this from Tanner Johnson, quote, I totally understand the frustration. I miss movie theaters, a lot. But these directors encouraging people to go to the theater during

a pandemic is a bad look. So the options are put the entire slate on hold indefinitely, or use what you got and stream it, end quote. Once again, it's another crunch schedule day for me to attempt to squeeze in recording a weekend bonus episode for you here. So I'm going to run. Talk to you tomorrow.