Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 01/09 - Google Assistant Everywhere!

Episode Date: January 9, 2019

Now we know why Google has gone so big at CES: they want to put Assistant in everything, the first foldable phone arrives at CES, Twitter wants to show you only half of an NBA game, and Marc Zuckerberg wants to host his own version of a podcast, I guess.  Sponsors: go.bitrise.io/ride Metalab.co Links: GOOGLE’S PLAN TO TAKE ON ALEXA: NEW FEATURES, NEW DEVICES, AND A TROJAN HORSE (The Verge) The world’s first foldable phone is charmingly awful (The Verge) Twitter hopes you want to watch NBA games from a camera focused on just one player (Recode) Zuckerberg's 2019 Challenge Post VC funding in U.S. startups nears $100 billion in 2018, highest since dot-com era (GeekWire) Venture Capital Funding Report 2018 (CBInsights) Cable operators will fight off 5G with 10-gigabit cable modems (VentureBeat) This pretax benefits startup is giving hourly workers a raise (Fast Company) 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 Wednesday, January 9th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough today. Now we know why Google has gone so big at CES.

They want to put assistant in everything. The first foldable phone arrives at CES. Twitter wants to show you only half of an NBA game. And Mark Zuckerberg wants to host his own version of a podcast, I guess. That and other things explained from a particularly odd day in the world of tech. Google's expanded presence at CES this year has paid off with a bunch of big announcements. TLDR, Google Assistant is coming to everything. A bunch of Google Assistant-supported car devices were announced, so Google Assistant is coming to cars.

Google Assistant is coming to Google Maps on iOS and Android. It's already there, in fact, to help you with navigation, music, and replying to texts. There's a new alarm clock with Google. assistant built in, so anything Amazon can do, Google can do as well in terms of bringing assistant to a universe of products. Assistant is now integrated with the Hopper from DISH. Sonos has confirmed that it is testing turning Assistant on on its speakers. Samsung TV integration is live, but also a bunch of snazy new features were announced. You can now check in to airline flights with Assistant. When the time comes to check in,

no need to go to your airline app, just tap a button on the lock screen and run through those baggage and security questions to generate the boarding pass for the lock screen. Google also debuted what it is calling interpreter mode for Google Assistant on smart displays, allowing you to translate a conversation in real time if you're standing in the same room with somebody speaking a different language. That's pretty amazing. This is all part of an overall push by Google to let you know that it now thinks of Google Assistant as a fully serious software platform akin to Android. In fact, it's calling that platform

Google Assistant Connect, and that's the overall infrastructure that it wants third-party developers to use and manufacturers to use to make Assistant ubiquitous. At the verge, Deeter Bone makes the case that Google chose CES to make its big splash to catch up with Amazon's Alexa moves, not because Google feels it's behind Alexa, but in fact, to make the case to device manufacturers and brands, that it is willing to be a steady, deliberate, reliable partner, Manuel Bronstein VP of product for Google Assistant told Dieter Bone, quote, if you see any carefulness, it's about consistency and greater user experience, it's not about anything else. We do care about scale. We want to make it extremely easy for partners to integrate the product. We

also want to make sure that we deliver an amazing consumer experience, end quote. In other words, Google's not going to do a willy-nilly shotgun approach, but that doesn't mean it doesn't want assistant to be on literally everything. Also from the verge, but this time via Vlad Savov, we got our first foldable handheld gadget at CES. Royole showed off the flexi pie, a hybrid device that measures 7.8 inches. when it's opened up in its tablet form factor, but then the device folds over to close up and voila, it's two Android phones.

This product is actually already available right now in China for around $1,300. But as Vlad points out, CES is often about the race to claim the title of first. And Royol, which is apparently a five-year-old company that was founded specifically to this. develop and sell flexible display devices. Maybe they just saw the writing on the wall with that Samsung photoable phone that has been teased already. So Vlad suggests that Royall maybe hurriedly kicked this flexi pad device out the door to claim the title of first foldable available to the general

public. That might explain why in his description of getting a hands-on with the flexi-poppy LODD includes adjectives like awkward, goofy, and charmingly awful. Beginning in February, Twitter will live stream the second half of some NBA games with the camera's focus on a single individual player. So I know those details don't quite add up. So let's try this again. Twitter is going to stream not all NBA games, but some of them. And you won't be able to watch the first half of those games that they do stream,

but during that first half, which I guess they assume you'll be watching on TNT, you'll be able to vote on the Twitter account at NBA on TNT in order to select the player that you want the camera to focus on in the second half of the game if you decide to switch over to Twitter to watch the second half there. Whatever player wins the vote will be followed by what the NBA calls its ISO cam. If the player selected goes to the bench

or otherwise leaves the game, guess what? If you're watching on Twitter, you'll be kicked back to watching the regular game but from a camera located behind one of the backboards, not the traditional mid-court camera angle. So not optimal viewing, right? Does this make any sense? Well, Kurt Wagner at Recode connects the dots.

The deal which is clearly an experiment reflects the quandary facing TV executives today. As more and more people stop paying for traditional TV, professional sports leagues and their broadcast partners are trying to figure out how to translate great TV content like live sports to places that aren't television, like Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, and Google. At the same time, rights holders like turn to. Turner are trying to protect the content they pay billions of dollars annually to broadcast on TV, which is why you see partnerships like this, where Twitter gets a version of something that people actually want to watch NBA basketball,

but Turner keeps the part that actually drives people to tune in the NBA basketball game, end quote. So think of this as the traditional sports blackout, where a sports event that was scheduled to be televised was not actually televised. in a given market because the owner of the sports franchise actually wanted people to pay for tickets to show up and watch the game in person. So the traditional sports blackout, but for the digital era. And as for the Twitter angle on this,

a couple of choice strips of snark for you from Casey Newton. Something you like implemented in a way you don't is the basic brand premise of Twitter. And from Will Aramis. So Twitter's new streaming deal with the NBA is basically Kobe doing work, but without Spike Lee directing. Jeff and Mackenzie Bezos have announced that they are divorcing after 25 years of marriage.

Quote, as our family and close friends know, after a long period of loving exploration and trial separation, we have decided to divorce and continue our shared lives as friends, the pair said in a statement. We feel incredibly lucky to have found each other and deeply grateful for every one of the years we have been. married to each other. If we had known we would separate after 25 years, we would do it all again, end quote. Now, yesterday I mentioned the internal debate at TechMeme sometimes about covering things that are marginally tech, like WeWork and even Tesla sometimes. And I have to admit that my initial instinct this morning when I saw this story was that I would probably skip it today. but I was convinced by the internal argument made by the editors this morning that this is important news for the tech industry because one of the wealthiest, most powerful couples in the tech industry is now two separate entities.

And it is likely that being separate entities might have some impact on the tech industry going forward via their investments, charities, or even direct influence on Amazon in particular. As a couple, the Bezos's currently own 16.3% of Amazon's shares. So if they end up splitting their ownership of Amazon down the middle, each of them would be the single largest Amazon shareholder, owning more than the next largest shareholder, Vanguard, which currently owns 5.8%. CNBC's Carlos Quintanita tweeted this morning, quote, Washington State has community property laws, meaning assets accrued during the marriage would be split.

Of Bezos's wealth, Mackenzie Bezos would get $75 billion or $80 billion of that, says Robert Frank, end quote. Robert Frank is CNBC's wealth reporter. So however you slice it and however they end up slicing it, McKenzie Bezos is now potentially one of the most powerful people in tech, should she ever choose to exercise that power. and I think that that is worth noting. Also in personal news, as he does every year,

Mark Zuckerberg has announced his personal challenge for 2019. It is, he says, to host a series of public discussions about the future of technology in society, live talks with leaders, experts, and people in the tech community. Quote, this will be intellectually interesting. But there's a personal challenge for me here too. I'm an engineer, and I used to just build out my ideas and hope they'd mostly speak for themselves. But given the importance of what we do, that doesn't cut it anymore.

So I'm going to put myself out there more than I've been comfortable with and engage more in some of these debates about the future, the tradeoffs we face, and where we want to go, end quote. Which, hey, fair enough. But lots of people highlighted this next section, from Zuckerberg's post, noting a particular way he framed what he wants to talk about. And the emphasis here is mine, quote, there are so many big questions about the world we want to live in and technology's place in it. Do we want technology to keep giving more people a voice,

or will traditional gatekeepers control what ideas can be expressed, end quote. Nick Confessori, who works the Facebook beat for the New York Times and helped break a lot of those scandalous Facebook stories last year, tweeted this. I don't want to be a cynical, mean reporter who is bent on being negative about everything, but the way Zuckerberg frames this question really struck me. I wouldn't want to make too much of a single phrase, but one hopes the founder of Facebook recognizes that his company is one of the way. the most powerful gatekeepers of information and ideas in human history, end quote. In his post announcing this, Zuckerberg also says he wants to talk about decentralizing authority through encryption, building technology that creates jobs, and keeping up with the pace of technological change, as well as, quote,

what role can the internet play in strengthening our social fabric, end quote. To which Josh Constine tweeted, Zuckerberg is already framing more Facebook, as the answer to questions he'll raise in his 2019 challenge to hold public talks on tech's impact on society. Everyone needs a voice, Facebook, encryption, WhatsApp, social cohesion, Facebook groups, end quote. It would be interesting, I have to say, if Zuckerberg truly held actual freewheeling discussions, especially if he did so with notable Facebook critics. Zanyep Tufetchi comes to mind.

Although Kara Swisher has already tweeted, quote, It goes without saying that I am showing up to all of them, end quote. And believe me, Kara, I'm 100% there for that. According to a report from PWC and CB Insights, VC funding in U.S. startups reached $99.5 billion in 2018, the highest dollar level since the dot-com bubble was at its height in the year 2000. But interestingly, quoting from Geekwire, while investors are putting more dollars behind startups, they aren't making more bets.

Deal activity for 2018 reached 5,536 transactions, the lowest since 2013. This is part of a trend toward fewer, bigger deals. Seed stage deal share fell to 25%. It made up 36% of deals in 2013, end quote. In total, annual VC funding increased 30% in 2018. I've linked to the actual report in the show notes if you want to see a breakdown of the totals by state and even sector. Here's a story tipped to me from a user on our subreddit. Thank you, KV underscore 87.

I've been telling you about the promise of 5G, especially when it comes to the home consumer broadband side. the promise of merely plugging in a router and getting faster internet speeds than any current wired connection. Well, there's no way that big wire is going to take this sitting down, right? No, the cable industry represented by the Internet and Television Association, has announced what exactly the traditional ISP industry plans to do to combat the arrival of 5G. It is adopting what it is calling 10G, 10 gigabit per second data networks. Most cable modems now only offer one gigabit per second of data, so this would be 10 times more. And Intel has signed up to provide the 10-gabit capable network infrastructure, quoting from Venture Beat.

The foundation of 10G is already proven, with cable networks offering one gigabit service today across 80% of the U.S. up from just 5% in 2016. Similar gigabit services are available from cable operators across the world. Ultimately, 10G will deliver symmetrical speeds that are up to 10 times faster than today's fastest networks. Built using a capital-efficient approach and leveraging the expensive cable networks already deployed throughout much of North America, Europe, and Asia, the 10G network will seamlessly support a wide variety of immersive digital services and applications, the cable company said, end quote. The industry also said that 10G will be engineered from the ground up to improve security along with improved reliability and increased capacity.

Something, something. See, this is the way competition is actually supposed to work. So that was good news. An example of competition actually spurring a monopolist to improve their product. So let's end with another. Good News story, a look at what I like to think of as a classic startup, one of those win-win-win scenarios. Fast Company has a profile up of a company called Alice, which lets employers offer pre-tax spending benefits on various costs like commuting, child care, and even dental care

and medical expenses to their employees. And this is why I call it a win-win-win. Quote, If you spend $100 pre-tax, $100 of your income becomes tax-free, and that adds roughly $35 to your paycheck. Employers save money, too, since every dollar that an employee spends on pre-tax is a dollar on which the employer does not pay payroll tax. Most employers of white-collar workers offer pre-tax spending benefits as a matter of course. But Alice is aimed at employers like restaurants, retailers, and nail bars. who are much less likely to do so. There's like 35 million Americans who work at Fortune 1,000 companies that have benefit cultures where all the benefits are provided,

says Avi Karnani, co-founder of Alice. And there's 80 million Americans who are hourly workers, middle-income workers and low-income workers, who don't have any of those benefits. They are the ones who are spending the lion's share of their earnings on commuting, health care, and child care, end quote. So, for example, baristas at Brooklyn Roasting Company via Alice can now save money on, say, a metro card or on daycare. Employees can sign up for Alice via text, manage their enrollment and spending via the Alice app,

and Alice handles the deductions from payroll, thereby saving employers time. And Alice only charges employers 50% of the money that those employers save on said payroll taxes. So again, these are the sort of startups I wish I could be reporting on every day. These are the sort of startups that got me into the technology industry, the win, win, win startups. The startups who fulfill the promise of actually using technology to make things more efficient and just generally make life better. So as many of you know, we transitioned podcast hosts last month, And I had to put out a lot of fires and clean up a lot of messes as we did so. I believe the big issue around pocketcasts has been resolved,

but I think our issues with Spotify are still ongoing. However, this is a new wrinkle. A listener on the subreddit last night told me that starting two days ago, he suddenly needed to use a VPN just to listen to this podcast. Turns out he was listening using Overcast, but he's in the People's Republic of China. Could it be, we've recently gotten on the radar of that great firewall. We have been talking a lot about the censorship regime in China recently,

but I've always assumed that audio is largely immune to censoring algorithms. That's one of the strengths and weaknesses of podcasting. Weakness because it hurts with discovery. It's harder to make content go viral over audio. but it helps because no one can platform your content or lock it down, at least so far. So if indeed this is the case, I have to assume that unless audio transcription and flagging technology has advanced further than I thought, there's some Chinese censor out there who is manually listening to the show and heard some offending content. If this is the case, hello, friendly sensor.

You can still listen to the show, by the way, even if it's your job to block it. Longtime listener, first time censorer, big fan. Talk to you tomorrow.