Tech Brew Ride Home - Tuesday, May 29, 2018 - Uber Gets a Panic Button and Facebook Gets Paused

Episode Date: May 29, 2018

Uber adds a panic button, Apple updates HomePod, the Chinese trade war is back on, Facebook gets a month-long timeout, another EU privacy regulation, and less-desirable dogs get better PR. Tweets from from @lcmoser, @heldavidson, @jimwaterson Links:Uber adds a panic button in its app (The Verge)Uber’s Exit From Southeast Asia Upsets Regulators and Drivers (New York Times)Apple’s HomePod Speaker Finally Gets Multi-Room Audio And Stereo Mode (Buzzfeed)Papua New Guinea To Shutdown Facebook (Post Courier)Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook’s hardest year, and what comes next (Vox)Bid to Block Trump's Deal on ZTE Would Have Support, Rubio Says (Bloomberg News)The Next Privacy Battle in Europe Is Over This New Law (New York Times)How The Internet Is Changing The Way Dogs Find Homes (Buzzfeed)Credits: Special Guest-Host: Glenn Fleishman Produced by @glennf, @brianmcc, and the @techmeme editors Music by @jpschwinghamer 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, May 29, 2018. Today, Uber adds a panic button. Apple updates HomePod.

The Chinese trade war is back on. Facebook gets a month-long timeout in Papua New Guinea. A second European data protection regulation gets delayed, and less desirable dogs get better PR. I'm Glenn Fleischman in for Brian McCullough, who's on vacation. And here's what happened in Tech News today. Uber has added a panic button to the U.S. version of its app, but don't press it when you see the cost of a ride when surge pricing is on. Rather, it's one of Uber's attempts to address past criticism about safety for both riders and drivers,

as the listing unicorn ship tries to write itself under the management of Darah Khoswashahi, who took over the role in August 2017 from founder Travis Kalanik. This button, which calls 911, previously appeared over two years ago for Uber's customers in India after an Uber driver raped a passenger. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, but the victim later sued Uber for mishandling her private medical information in yet another self-inflicted wound for the company. In its first iteration, The Verge notes that the 911 button appears as part of an easily reached safety center and simply places the call after a user confirms it was intentional. But it's the next stage currently in testing that will be more helpful, providing accurate

location information to first responders. The Verge says Uber is testing location sharing in a few cities, Denver, Colorado, Charleston, South Carolina, Nashville, Tennessee, Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Naples, Florida. Cell phone location accuracy for emergency calls can vary enormously as it relies on the telephone side of things, providing smartphone-based in-app location, which combines GPS, Wi-Fi positioning, and cellular base stations can be dramatically more precise. An Uber spokesman says a panic button for drivers will soon be added to make it easier for them to summon help with a belligerent passenger. Uber has received seemingly endless criticism in

the last year and a half. Uber had plenty of problems before its former software engineer, Susan Fowler, published her essay in February 2017, with the Anodyne title reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber that contrasted with a litany of shocking but unsurprising complaints. However, matters only accelerated after that, leading to the ousting of the company's founder, Kalanik. Khosur Shahi has received high marks for stepping down the company's belligerent and bro-oriented culture and for better communication with governments. However, as the New York Times, Vindu Goel and Y.E. Lim reported over the weekend, the company still makes abrupt and arrogant moves.

It notes that Uber exited eight countries in Southeast Asia on March 25th, turning over operations to a competitor grab. All of Uber's employees were laid off and regulators were given no chance to respond. Arsenio Belisicon, the chairman of the Philippine Competition Commission, told the New York Times, the acquisition results in a virtual monopoly of the ride-sharing market. Uber, in turn, said it had complied with merger regulations and had gone beyond legal requirements in some.

cases. The Times notes how Khos Rasha he carried out the exit plan illustrates the challenges he faces in maintaining Uber's trademark boldness while ditching its devil-may-care disdain for others. Firmware and software updates generally lack the excitement and interest of other tech news, but I have to tell you about this one because it involves Apple and the competition among companies to put listening devices in our homes. This is also the top story this morning at TechMeme because of the buzz around this product segment. In February, Apple shipped its standalone home pod device that can respond to queries made to its Siri system and be used as a target speaker from Mac and iOS devices and iTunes on Windows. The HomePod received lukewarm reviews

partly Siri performs on queries compared to Amazon's Alexa and Google's variously named it available AI voice command tools. However, most galling to some reviewers and customers was that a few HomePod features didn't appear at the time of release and were promised soon. Well, soon has come four months after the HomePod shipped and Apple has added AirBerry, Play 2 support to iOS and for the HomePod, which allows the same audio to stream to multiple speakers and Apple TVs at once. The HomePod can now also provide stereo sound with a catch. BuzzFeed News explains, for fuller immersive sounds, you can put two home pods together to create a true left-right stereo speaker system, but it'll cost you. One home pod costs

$349, while two Alexa-enabled Sonos ones cost $379. Papua New Guinea has a has banned Facebook for a month, according to the post-currier in that country. Its communications minister said, The time will allow information to be collected to identify users that hide behind fake accounts, users that upload pornographic images, users that post false and misleading information on Facebook to be filtered and removed. Facebook has faced criticism from governments, privacy advocates, and human rights groups around the world for the way in which false news reports and incitements to violence

wind up being promoted on the service or not removed. other governments resent the free spread of information on Facebook that allows for political and other mobilization. Sri Lanka briefly banned Facebook in March after a post calling for violence against Muslims is believed to have led directly to violence and arson against hundreds of Muslim families in that country. Even as attacks raged, the post remained up. Facebook Messenger was used to incite attacks in Myanmar as well, according to Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. He told Vox's Ezra Klein, so that's the kind of thing where I think it is clear that people were trying to use our text. tools in order to incite real harm. Now in that case, our systems detect that that's going on. We stop those messages from going through, but this is certainly something that we're paying a lot

of attention to. About the Papua New Guinea ban, the Guardian spoke with Dr. Aimsing Peng, an expert in digital media and politics from the University of Sydney, who said, in paraphrase, the ban rates some troubling questions because when Facebook had been banned in other countries, it was usually in the run-up to elections or banned indefinitely like in China. Dr. Sinpeng said the internet penetration in Papua New Guinea is only about 12% so that Facebook had relatively little reach there. The country's communications minister told the local paper, we can also look at the possibility of creating a new social network for PNG citizens to use with genuine profiles as well. He suggested an app developer in the country could create a site that is more conducive for Papua New Guineans to communicate within the country and abroad as well.

Reaction on Twitter was mixed and rye. Laura Moser running for the Democratic nomination in Texas for the House 7th District, noted, for the first time in my life, I'm considering a move to Papua New Guinea. Helen Davidson, a reporter for the Guardian's Australian outpost, tweeted, This is really troubling. PNGs are super politically engaged, but outside of major cities have few media resources other than social media. The Guardian's media editor, Jim Waterson, noted, This seems like a straightforward vote-winning tech policy for all governments to adopt.

Facebook remains banned in China despite Zuckerberg's public efforts to learn Mandarin and extensive courting of the country. It's on. It's off. It's on. It's off. Well, it's back on. The Trump administration has said it's preparing to move ahead in imposing 25% tariffs on what amounts to $50 billion worth of imported Chinese goods each year. The full list will be out by mid-June. But more significantly for the technology market, the New York Times reports that the government will limit Chinese access to U.S. technology, both by restricting Chinese. investment and imposing stronger controls on what products and components may be exported to China. The basis for these restrictions, national security. These steps will be announced by June 30th and quickly put into effect. The White House said in a statement, to protect our national security, the United States will implement specific investment restrictions and enhanced export controls for Chinese persons and entities related to the acquisition of industrial significant technology. Talks between the two countries continue, so for all we know, we could have another few rounds of on again

and off against stories. Left undecided is the fate of ZTE, a Chinese telecom and smartphone firm that the Trump administration recently put on a list banning U.S. tech companies from exporting to them, which includes items such as chips and software. This has doomed the company, which admitted a year ago selling products with U.S. parts to Iran, which violates U.S. law. ZTE paid nearly $900 million in fines and agreed to fire four employees and reprimand 35 others. It did fire the four, but gave bonuses to those who remained. This violated the agreement leading to a seven-year export ban. On Friday, Trump tweeted that he'd worked out a deal,

despite opposition within his administration and a bipartisan response in both chambers of Congress. Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida said over the weekend, most members of Congress have come to understand the threat China poses. There's a growing commitment in Congress to do something about what China is trying to do to the United States, and this is a good place to start. Of ZTE and Huawei, the world's leading maker of telecom, equipment, Rubio said, none of these companies should be operating in this country, none of them

they are used for espionage. The impact of the new European Union General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR, is still being felt Tuesday as some major media websites stumble with modifying and invasive advertising technology to meet stringent disclosure and consent standards that were required starting May 25th. But the GDPR was just the first step. A second policy that covers privacy, not just data protection, has been delayed from going into effect in May after complaints by a number of industry groups that it would impede Europe's digital economy. The New York Times, Natasha Singer, reports that the e-privacy regulation, as it's known, was delayed as the Council of the European Union, which comprises officials from the 28 EU countries, negotiates over details. While the GDPR requires

disclosure of how data is used, consent to policies and the ability to obtain a copy of all data accompany stores about you and to demand its deletion, the e-privacy regulation relates to how people's privacy is maintained as they go about their business. It effectively allows people to choose to be anonymous while using services unless they agree otherwise. And it includes metadata, so information about messages being sent and calls being placed and the like, not just a person's actual content, are covered. That means, for instance, that EU residents will be allowed to opt out of web-based tracking, but a site will still have to give that user access. The policy will get rid of the irritating cookie disclosures that popped up after the

implementation of a previous EU policy. Cookies used for internal site purposes to improve the experience won't require consent, and the EU expects changes to browsers that will help users mediate better which cookies are accepted and which are not. Firmes that object to the sweep of the new policy say it could destroy the ad market serving EU residents and cause sites to shutdown and apps to stop development. One specter raised is that driverless cars would be unable to report back details to improve safety, ignoring perhaps that people will be given a choice rather than such data collection band altogether. It's also not clear that safety-related data would require consent in any case so long as it wasn't used for any other purpose, or such data could

be granted an exception in the final regulations. The Developers Alliance claims it will cost Europe $640 billion a year in lost revenue or 30% of profit across all sectors that rely on electronic communications. The gloom and doom seemingly ignores the reality of ghostry and other web-based ad blockers as well as firewalls and filters available on consumer routers and corporate systems. The most recent reports from 2017 indicate that 11% of users worldwide block ads, according to page fair, and 15% of mobile and 40% of desktop users block ads in the U.S., from a survey by ad block plus and global web index. Jan Philippe Abrecht, a member of the European Parliament from Germany who steered the GDPR legislation through Parliament, told the New York Times,

most of the lobbying is unreasonable and very low regarding facts. The regulations have to pass through the Council, which will then negotiate the law's final language with the European Parliament and the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU. Finally, a bit of bright news for pups. Like fruit and vegetables and supermarkets, some dogs and shelters are seen as less appealing, It's unfortunate. Those grown foods are just as delicious as they're more aesthetically conforming counterparts and dogs that don't have a certain look are just as loving and wonderful as any allegedly handsome dog. Even color matters.

Black dogs have a harder time being adopted than those of other hues and saturations. Fortunately, the internet is at work. BuzzFeed reports that social media experts have come to shelters to market dogs that linger and it's working. A better photo shoot, the addition of props or costumes, or even putting a dog in pajamas, the nuclear option. helps. According to BuzzFeed, talking about the Lifeline shelter in Atlanta, Georgia, a cute puppy or a purebred golden retriever is likely to get scooped up quickly even with a grainy intake mugshot. The stocky dogs with big blocky heads that make up the majority of lifelines population usually requires a more strategic approach. Some people are concerned this is

the new GoFundMe for medical bills, where a strong social media game means competing for resources. However, it's clear that a lot of people weren't considering a dog or hadn't found the right one, and that better marketing reaches more people, saving more animals or giving them a home. As BuzzFeed's Gray Chapman notes, even if our collective online canine fascination is putting new pressure on rescue groups and shelters to learn new technologies and think like marketers,

every rescuer I spoke with seems to universally agree if it means getting more dogs out of the shelter and into good homes, freeing up more kennel space for the next strudel or fetus, it's a good thing, even when it's hard, costly, and time-consuming, because it's not just about saving individual animals for many rescuers, social media is helping to change the narrative of rescue and how we talk about rescue dogs. I give this story 13 out of 10 would report again.

And for any dogs listening, a good dog, good dog, who's a good dog? You are. And that's the news. I've been your host, Glenn Fleischman, in for Brian McCullough, who'll be back tomorrow, rested, bright-eyed, and bushy-tailed. Thanks for letting me put my voice in your ears on Friday and today. If you're interested in typography, printing history, and all sorts of other nonsense, you can find me at glog.g.g.g.g-l-en-n-f-n-f-f.com on the web. And at Glenn F, G-L-E-N-N-F, like Frank, on Twitter. Thanks to the editors at TechMeme, who tweet out every headline they post every hour of the day at TechMeme.

It's a great way to keep current. Have a great evening.