Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 01/27 – Introducing The Ride Home+ Premium Feed

Episode Date: January 27, 2021

Microsoft earnings are insane, as expected. Wonder Woman might have made HBOMax a contender. YouTube is still the king of getting creators paid. What if I told you Atari doesn’t want to be left out of the game streaming wars. And listen to the end of this episode for the big podcast announcement I’ve been promising. Sponsors: Oracle.com/goto/ride Links: Microsoft profits jump 33 percent as pandemic continues shift to cloud computing. (NYTimes) AT&T Q4: HBO Max Activations Double to 17.2 Million, Warner Bros. Revenue Declines 21% (Variety) Apple fixes another three iOS zero-days exploited in the wild (ZDNet) Apple just had its best quarter in India (TechCrunch) YouTube has paid more than $30 billion to creators, artists, and others over the last three years (The Verge) Plex is launching a game subscription service filled with Atari games (The Verge) Google open sources Tilt Brush VR software as it shuts down internal development (TechCrunch) !!! Subscribe to Ride Home+ tech.supercast.tech 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 Wednesday, January 27th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Microsoft earnings are insane, as expected.

Wonder Woman might have made HBO Max into a contender. YouTube is still the king of getting creators paid. What if I told you Atari doesn't want to be left out of the game streaming wars? And listen to the end of this episode for the big podcast announcement I've been promising. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. earning season, as I said, it's upon us once again. And I think this is maybe one of those quarters where there's not going to be much to say other than the big boys are killing it.

For example, Microsoft yesterday reported net income up 33% year over year, which is, look, for a company as old as Microsoft and as big as Microsoft is, we're talking large numbers here, the law of large numbers, reporting income, not even revenue, but income growth of 33, percent, that's incredible. It's because their cloud revenue was up 23 percent, Azure revenue was up 50 percent, even their stodgy old personal computing business saw revenue up 14 percent, read that as Windows and Office and such. But at the same time, Microsoft stock is up, what, a measly 1 percent this morning? This was already baked in, I guess. Folks have been expecting this. I mean, it's not like some sort of video.

video game retailing stock or something, right? That's a GameStop reference in case you're wondering. Google that story if you're not aware. But also, there is a COVID angle to all of this, quoting the New York Times. While corporate tech spending took a hit early in the pandemic, a recent Citigroup survey of executives found companies are paying again for the kinds of services Microsoft offers. Security, cloud computing, and work platforms like Office 365 and Teams that help people work from home. Mike Spencer, the head of Microsoft's investor relations, said the rebound in commercial spending was pretty broad-based across industries and businesses large and small. Quote, fortunately for Microsoft, the investments we have been making over the last couple of years

align very well with what they are prioritizing, he said, end quote. Yeah, I mean, look, gaming has exploded during quarantine. Check that box for Microsoft with Xbox. Subscription products that aren't as susceptible to short-term trends, Microsoft 365, check. And for all the attention, Zoom has gotten, how much do you want to bet that when all is said and done, that Teams is actually going to be the biggest winner of the last year or so? AT&T also reported earnings, and we don't normally care about their quarterly numbers and actually don't care today. What we do care about is their streaming numbers.

HBO Max went from being sort of a punchline, sort of an also-ran in the streaming wars, to suddenly, all of their movies will be available to stream day of release at no extra cost. Maybe we need HBO Max in our lives after all. So did Wonder Woman 1984 move the needle for them? Early signs are pointing to yes. Apparently, if you take HBO and HBO Max subscribers and put them in one bucket, that number grew 20% year-over-year to 40. and a half million subscribers, reaching a number that HBO was hoping for two years ahead of their

own forecast. HBO Max activations doubled to 17.2 million since the end of Q3, quoting variety. The company said it invested about $800 million in HBO Max in the fourth quarter and more than $2 billion for the year on the streaming service. The subscriber gains in Q4 were undoubtedly boosted by WarnerMedia's deals in Q4 to distribute HBO Max on Roku and Amazon's Fire TV. On the Q4 call with analysts, AT&T CEO John Stanky, said WarnerMedia is aiming for a Q2 launch of a price-reduced, ad-supported version of HBO Max, but he didn't provide other details on the AVOD product. The company plans to launch HBO Max internationally this year, starting with Latin America

in the second quarter. Stanky said AT&T will host an investor event in the... the second half of Q1 to outline this, end quote. So again, as I think I said before, ads supported HBO is not HBO. That's TV. Sorry, that's an obvious joke. But I did want to mention that little bit about the money spent, invested in HBO Max, and also where the subscribers to HBO Max are coming from. Because when Disney Plus adds a new subscriber, it is completely new revenue. With HBO, there's this weird situation where did eight and a half million people start paying $15 a month for HBO Max out of the blue? What number of them were just people

moving from HBO regular to HBO Max? Like if five million people joined HBO Max for the very first time because of Wonder Woman and their totally new subs and they stick around for a full year, then yeah, Warner definitely made back the potentially $1 billion. in Wonder Woman 1984 box office that they should have made if everything was normal. But if not, then the math is not so good. And also, that's only one movie. They have a slate of what, 18 more still coming this year? Remember that conversation we had with Peter Kafka on a weekend bonus episode not too long ago? No one is sure, at least not yet, that the math actually works out on this whole streaming business, at least for anyone not named Netflix.

There is a new iOS 14.4 update available right now, and you might want to jump on that right now, because Apple says this update fixes three zero-day exploits, which Apple was alerted to by an anonymous researcher, and there is reason to believe that these might have been actively being exploited out in the wild, quoting ZDNet. The first zero-day impacts the iOS operating system kernel, and the other two were discussed, covered in the WebKit browser engine. The iOS kernel bug was described as a race-condition bug that can allow attackers to elevate privileges for their attack code. The two WebKit Zero Days were described as a logic issue that could allow remote attackers to execute their

own malicious code inside users' Safari browsers. Security experts believe the three bugs are part of an exploit chain, where users are lured to a malicious site that takes advantage of the WebKit bug to run code that later escalates its privileges to run system level code and compromise the OS. However, official details about the attacks where these vulnerabilities were used were not made public, as is typical with most Apple's zero-day disclosures these days. Apple also declined to comment further, end quote. Am I just imagining this, or have you noticed that iOS Zero Days, something we used to very rarely hear about, have seemingly become more regular? There were three patched in November and another set in December. So yeah, update right now. And staying on Apple for a

little bit longer, it's been a while, but remember how, like everyone else, Apple in the last couple years, has been trying to break into the Indian market in a big way. The problem there was the Indian market seemed to be even more price sensitive than, say, the Chinese market, which has become so important to Apple. So iPhones, coming in at the high end was a problem in India. But according to analysis from Counterpoint and Cyber Media, Apple shipped one and a half million iPhone units in India last quarter, which might not seem like much, but represents the best ever quarter for the iPhone in India, doubling Apple's market share in that country to 4%. Quoting TechCrunch. Overall, Apple shipped more than 3.2 million

iPhone units in India in 2020, up 60% year-on-year, Counterpoint said. shipment growth comes months after Apple launched its online store in the country and offered customers a wide range of financing and upgrade options, AppleCare Plus, and lucrative perks such as a free set of AirPods with the purchase of iPhone 11. The company plans to open its first physical retail store in the country later this year. For more than a decade, Apple has struggled to sell its handsets in India because of the expensive price tags they carry. Most smartphones that ship in India are priced between $100 to $200. Samsung and a group of Chinese smartphone vendors, including

Jaume, Appo, and Vivo, flooded the market in the past decade with their affordable smartphones. Nonetheless, in recent years, Apple has visibly grown more interested in the country. That is also one of the world's fastest growing smartphone markets. The company's contract manufacturers today locally assemble a range of iPhone models and some accessories in an effort the company kick started more than two years ago, end quote.

You might remember how yesterday I read you that tweet from our podcast, Ombudsman, Christmas, where he was remarking on this whole movement by big social platforms toward sort of trial by jury, or at least jury of your peers' content moderation. I offered Chris the chance to elucidate more on what he thought this means, and here you go. So, Ryan, in response to your request, I figured I'd share a few more thoughts on this new jury by peer approach that attempts to stem the tide of mis and disinformation. Now we've got Birdwatch on Twitter, and Facebook has its oversight board.

Parlor also famously operated its five-member user panels to determine what content should stay up or come down. And of course, before all this, social media platforms largely outsource the task of moderating content to the Philippines or to some automated system, with the former wreaking havoc on the mental wellness of the humans in those loops. Still, people seem eternally unhappy about the performance of opaque, centralized moderation systems, especially when people's livelihoods are increasingly wrapped up in these platforms as the passion economy takes root. So rather than continue to fight an unwinnable war where outcomes are often left

to the subjectively arbitrary whims of moderators without context, it finally seems that these firms are wanting to shift the burden and the cost to neighborhood watch style moderators, who will act more like the shepherds of Wikipedia pages, not wielding banhammers, but merely the might of re-contextextualization and expertise. This is the moment when the coarse, brutish content weedwhackers of an earlier internet era will give way to a new gardening class, bringing hedge trimmers and garden trowels to plant flowers and annoyingly pleasant shrubbery beneath the bridges from whence the trolls once staged their hitterades and the zealots compiled their bad faith diatribes. Much still needs to be proven about this new approach.

But like democracy, it may prove to be the fairest way to ensure that no one is happier than anyone else for very long. You know, when I was a kid every night on the NBC Nightly they would give John Chancellor a couple of minutes to do a commentary segment. Sort of felt like that, didn't it? Makes me nostalgia for the days when you only got your news once a day in one 30-minute segment and the rest of the day, you might not even have any idea what was going on in the world. And you might not even find out what GameStop closed at until you open the paper the next morning.

As we've been fascinated by the explosion of the creator economy these last few months, it's worth taking a moment to credit YouTube for being the first major platform to basically set the ground rules and lay the groundwork for creator economies, creator economics, at least in their modern form. So as everything explodes on TikTok, on substack, on only fans, how is the, well, the incumbent doing for creators these days? Very well, thank you very much. In a letter to creators, YouTube CEO Susan Wojicki, says that you, YouTube has paid more than $30 billion to creators, artists, and media organizations over just the last three years, quoting The Verge. In Wojiki's first letter to creators of 2021, the CEO, spent some time addressing YouTube's growth. The number of new channels that joined the company's partner program, which allows creators to earn advertising revenue more than doubled in 2020. YouTube also contributed approximately $16 billion to the U.S. GDP in 2019.

supporting the equivalent of 345,000 full-time jobs, according to an Oxford economics report that Wichiki highlights. The letter also focuses on the work YouTube's team still has in front of them, mainly transparency, especially where content strikes and advertising dollars are concerned. Wichickie noted that at the scale we operate, it's hard for creators to keep up with the changing community guidelines, end quote. One other interesting part of Wajiki's letter was a focus on regulation. A recent hot topic in tech policy circles is reform of Section 230, which effectively allows social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter to operate without being liable for content people post.

Would Jickey referred to Section 230 as an act that, quote, enables us to both keep YouTube open and allow a large amount of content on the internet as well as take the actions necessary to protect our platform, end quote. Okay, how about streaming gaming? but for Pong, because Plex is launching a game subscription service called Plex Arcade, starting at $3 a month, which will feature classic Atari games, quoting the Verge. Instead of focusing on modern console or phone games like its competitors, Plex lets you play Atari games. It's taking the arcade name seriously, as you can play arcade classics from Atari like Centipede, Super Breakout, and Missile Command, as well as games from the Atari 2,600,

and 7800. Overall, there are 27 games available on the service. Unlike other game subscription services, where you can simply sign up from your console and start playing, Plex Arcade has a few requirements. First is a Plex media server running on a Windows or MacOS computer. There isn't Linux support because Plex is using PARSEC to stream the gameplay. This means that you'll have to sign up for a Parsec account if you don't already have one and log into it on Plex. There is a bit more freedom when it comes to what you can stream the games too, as Android devices and TVs are supported, as well as Google Chrome and Apple's iOS and TVOS.

Plex says you can play with just about any Bluetooth-enabled controller, end quote. And I just got my Oculus Quest 2 yesterday. Did I mention that I was going to get one? I do this thing where I think through entire segments in my head, but then never remember if I actually pull the trigger on doing them or not. But yes, this year for my birthday, I decided to dive into the VR space for the first time, and I got and set up my Oculus Quest 2 yesterday. I'll have plenty more to say about that at some point, but for now,

standing offer, someone who knows a lot about the VR space, what games and apps are good to experiment with, just sort of how the technology does or doesn't work. Like, for example, is there any way I can see what my kids are seeing, maybe on my smartphone when they have the headset on and are asking me how to do something and I'm like, I don't know, I can't see what you're doing. Actually, any information about this technology and the cutting edge and where it's going, please get in touch because I'm looking to get schooled on the state of the art in AR and VR this year. Anywho, of course, news like this would drop the very day. I finally

get my VR rig. Google has announced it is shutting down internal development of Tilt Brush VR and is open sourcing it on GitHub for developers to build their own customizations. Quoting TechCrunch. Google also notes that the app will continue to be available in the app stores on VR headsets. We want to continue supporting the artists using Tilt Brush by putting it in your hands, a blog post from Google reads. This means open sourcing Tilt Brush, allowing everyone to learn how we built the project and encouraging them to take it in directions that are near and dear to them, end quote.

Google acquired the Small Studio. behind Tilt Brush called Skillman and Hackett back in 2015. Earlier this month, Tiltbrush co-creator Patrick Hackett announced he was leaving Google and would be joining the Studio I Illusions, the game studio behind VR title Space Pirate Trainer. Last month, Google shut down Polly, its 3D object library, which allowed users to share digital art, including designs made in the Tilt Brush software, end quote. Literally, most of my previous experiences with VR, either at expos or meetups or just in warehouses somewhere in Brooklyn, you'd see folks doing just incredible stuff with Tilt Brush.

And that was one of the first things I downloaded last night. So it seems like this isn't the end, just the whatever, the next phase for Tilt Brush. But like taking a position in GameStop stock, I guess it doesn't pay to be behind the curve, Brian. Okay, so on to the big podcast announcement. as promised. Let me give you the top level details and then circle back for the specifics. Today, we are officially launching the TechMeme Ride Home Plus feed. It will be $5 a month.

You can subscribe right in the link in the show notes today or by going to tech. comcast. If you are an existing premium subscriber via Glow, you don't have to do anything. Your existing feeds will work, and you're going to get everything I'm about to mention without having to lift a finger. But if you are new to considering a premium subscription to this show, I would like you to use our new link at tech.comcast.com. That's the new membership system we're going to use going forward. So everything I'm about to outline to you is also helpfully explained if you go to tech. dot supercast.tech.

Okay, so a couple years ago when we first launched the bonus episodes, it was simply to do deeper dives into things that we talk about week in and week out. I love the format of the show, 15 to 20 minutes, here's what you miss, boom, boom, boom, in and out. But sometimes it's worth going deeper. You know, what are small satellites? Why has crypto come back? Who is Massa Son?

What is a SPAC? That sort of thing. So I've long wanted to do more. of that. Thus, the new episode formats we've been experimenting with, like office hours episodes, like interesting raise episodes, like gadget roundup episodes, the first of which is coming this Saturday. And to support the extra work that's going into doing this extra content, we've constructed this new feed, what we're calling the Ride Home Plus feed. I very much didn't want to do a premium feed that took things away from you and just put them behind a paywall.

So Monday through Friday, regular episodes are going to stay exactly the same. The usually weekend bonus interview episodes are not going away either. They will continue at the same cadence of, you know, one to two a month on the free ad-supported feed. But the Ride Home Plus feed will just be getting these new additional episodes on the regs. On the Ride Home Plus feed, you will get the Office Hours episodes. The next one is coming next weekend. It's with Gary Tan, co-founder and managing partner of initialized capital. We'll be talking to VCs in these episodes, but also company founders, founders of huge companies that you know of and founders that are up and coming that you might not know about yet. Again, the point of these episodes is to see what makes folks tick, how they work, and going forward. We also want to try to bring Ride Home Plus subscribers into these office hours sessions live so that folks can ask questions. directly, maybe ask about investment

theses or ideas about what's coming next. Heck, maybe even pitch your ideas to people. The Ride Home Plus Feed will also have what we're calling gadget roundup episodes. We're starting that on Saturday with our best of CES roundup, but I'm also every day collecting news of cool new gadgets announced and released throughout the calendar year to take a look beyond the flagship smartphone.

which is the only sort of gadget we typically get a chance to talk about. Consider this the least high fluton of our new content offerings, because these episodes, they're just going to be cool new gear to learn about and geek out over and maybe even consider trying out for yourself. The Ride Home Plus feed will also have access to the new interesting Rays episodes, which you got a taste of. Again, once a month or so, I want to give you the pulse of the startup space. I scan these rays announce stories every day, and that's how I have a sense of the trends in startup land long before we even get around to talking about them on this show.

If you're an investor, these episodes should help you keep abreast of what's hot. If you're an aspiring founder or even looking to work where things are happening, these episodes will help you get a sense of what is getting funded, what is hot, which ways the winds are blowing so you can either jump on the bandwagon or go against some. the trends. And finally, we'll have something completely new, what we are calling our case study episodes. These are completely unique. You won't be able to get them anywhere else. I don't know anyone else doing stuff like this. You all know that I wrote the book, How the Internet Happened. I did the Internet History Podcast. Tech history is how I got into podcasting. So, the case study episodes are going to be me keep doing what I hope I do well, doing tech history and analysis that will be heavily researched and deep dives into all sorts of things. Some episodes will be straight up Harvard

Business School style case studies, like maybe someday we'll do one on TikTok where it came from, what it did differently, what it means to the market. But really, these episodes will be about anything and everything. The first one I've got lined up that I'm actually still writing right now is a look at the Microsoft antitrust case from 20 years ago. Given the current antitrust climate, I thought it would be useful to look back at what happened when we went down this road before. The first episode of that is coming in a couple weeks.

And I should stress, it will only be the first episode because these shows will come out as sort of, I don't know, what would you call them? Mini-series, seasons. I'll be releasing them as I write them. There'll be multi-part series. The Microsoft Antitrust Deep Dive is probably going to be about three episodes, at least, maybe more. And after that, I have planned a history of Silicon Valley, not the concept of

Silicon Valley, but literally the place. If Silicon Valley is over, if everyone is fleeing to Texas or Miami, I thought it would be worth looking at the various economic, geographic, demographic, even environmental reasons why Silicon Valley happened when and especially where it happened in the first place. And I can see that being maybe a half a dozen episodes or more than we could do things like a history of Apple and the first Steve Jobs era, maybe a biography of Bill Gates, a history of Intel or the whole Wintel duopoly, maybe a history of things like the hashtag and the at sign going back to the Renaissance, all sorts of stuff, history, case studies, deep dives. And then on top of that, of course, a quick reminder, every episode in the Right Home Plus feed

will be ad-free, even the daily normal news shows. So not only will you get all these new types of bonus episodes I just described, but you also get the normal weekday episodes and the traditional interview bonus episodes completely add free. Don't sleep on that as a value, because if you listen every day, that would be saving you as much as 65 minutes of listening time every month. And one last personal pitch for why I hope you'll consider subscribing. Yes, some of you might know that we raised a seed round to help grow Ride Home media and hopefully launch a Galaxy of Ride Home podcasts in a bunch of different niches. But this show, the original ride home, the tech meme right home, it's only me.

Still, only me. Every day, I write the 2,500 words or so for the script. I record the audio. I edit the audio. I do the whole shebang. It's only me. This is what I do for my living. The other ride home shows are sort of my side hustle.

If you subscribe to this premium feed, you are very much supporting my work on this show directly every single day. If you value that work I do every single day, I very much appreciate you being willing to directly patronize it, as opposed to having sponsors subsidize it on your behalf. I love our sponsors, of course, but I love having a direct relationship with you even more. So all of this is launching this Saturday with our CES Gadget Roundup episode. Then the following Saturday, office hours with Gary Tan. Then we'll see what comes next, probably episode one of the Microsoft Antitrust case. maybe the next interesting raise episode we'll see. Join us in this new explosion of content.

Go to tech.up.supercast.com. Use the helpful link right at the bottom of the show notes today because that lets you sign up right inside your podcast player right where you're listening to me right now. You can have the Ride Home Plus feed set up in like two minutes. You pay right there via your phone using Apple Pay or Google Pay. There are two options, a monthly, option at $5 a month or a yearly plan at $52 a year, so the better part of two months free if you sign up right now. You can cancel at any time. So if you give it a try and don't like it, just cancel super simple. If you decide to dip in and dip out every few months or so, depending on the bonus content that you're interested in, that's fine. If you just sign up

once to download a bunch of back catalog episodes and binge, that's fine too. But if you sign up for a year. Again, you'll get essentially two months free. And again, you get all this and more information by going to tech.comcast.com.com. Link at the bottom of the show notes. Join the mutant podcast army in a new way. Thanks in advance. Talk to you tomorrow.