Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 03/11 - Now E3 Is Cancelled

Starting point is 00:00:00 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, March 11th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, E3 is canceled. Uber might ban drivers and riders who test positive for coronavirus. A second-gen Chromecast Ultra might be coming. A Peloton-style workout app from Apple might be coming. A look at Apple's entry into the suddenly hot arms race. And am I wrong or wasn't crypto supposed to help during the apocalypse? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Back on the Corona Beat, but over here, E3, the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo, the Gaming World's biggest conference, has been canceled.

Starting point is 00:01:16 Quoting variety, last year's Electronic Entertainment Expo, better known as E3, drew 66,100 attendees. The 2020 Gaming Showcase had been scheduled to run June 9th through 11th at the Los Angeles Convention Center in downtown L.A. The Expo is produced by Gaming Industry Trade Group Entertainment Software Association. Quote, after careful consultation with our member companies regarding the health and safety of everyone in our industry, our fans, our employees, our exhibitors, and our longtime E3 partners, we have made the difficult decision to cancel E3 2020, ESA said in a statement. The statement continued.

Starting point is 00:01:55 Following increased and overwhelming concerns about the COVID-19 virus, we felt this was the best way to proceed. during such an unprecedented global situation. We are very disappointed that we are unable to hold this event for our fans and supporters, but we know it's the right decision based on the information we have today, end quote. ESA said it will be reaching out directly to exhibitors and attendees with information about, quote, providing full refunds, end quote. The trade group said it's also exploring options to produce an online event to showcase industry announcements in June, end quote. In other corona-related news, Google has recommended that all North America,

Starting point is 00:02:31 American employees work from their home at least until April 10th. Google has also banned all advertisements for medical face masks following a similar move by Facebook last Friday, and Reuters is reporting that Uber is considering suspending the accounts of both riders and drivers who test positive for coronavirus, which, I mean, of course, right? Quote, Uber last month suspended 240 accounts of users in Mexico who may recently have come in contact with someone possibly infected with the new coronavirus. Uber said on Saturday, it would offer compensation to drivers and delivery people who diagnose with the coronavirus or placed in quarantine for up to 14 days, end quote. Sources are telling 9 to 5 Google that Google plans to launch a second-gen Chromecast Ultra

Starting point is 00:03:22 Dongle later this year based on Android TV with 4K HDR support and a standalone remote. Quote, the external remote will control the device and resembles. a cross between the Daydream View remote and an Apple TV remote. As is to be expected, the remote has a microphone and a dedicated Google Assistant button for controlling your content with your voice. The remote will also be programmable to your TV, we're told. The remote likely passed through the FCC today, as spotted by protocols Janco Rutgers. Aesthetically, we're told, the device resembles the third-generation Chromecast that Google has been selling since 2018.

Starting point is 00:04:02 It will have a softer, rounder finish, the typical G logo, and an HDMI connector that is very similar to the current Chromecast Ultra, but a design more in line with Google's current hardware. Our source tells us that the device will fill a long-awaited gap in the market, a mass consumer dongle that runs full-fledged Android TV. The device will give users access to apps such as YouTube TV, Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu, and more, end quote. Apple may be working on a new fitness app. code named Seymour. Seymour has been sussed out in leaked code for iOS, watchOS, and TVOS. It looks like Seymour will let users download guided workout videos, quoting Mac rumors. With the fitness app, users may be able to download fitness videos that cover a range of different

Starting point is 00:04:54 workout options and activities, getting guidance on completing those activities on the Apple Watch. Apple provides a gallery of different workout routines that can be downloaded and synced to the Apple Watch with the videos themselves shown on the iPhone, iPad, or Apple TV. The Apple Watch appears to be used to track your progress through each workout routine, similar to how the Apple Watch can track existing fitness activities through the activity app. Apple appears to be providing the workouts through its fitness app for free, as there are no in-app purchases or costs associated with the content at this time. It looks like Apple is working on a wide variety of activity types,

Starting point is 00:05:29 including indoor running, cycling, rowing, stretching, core training, strength training, outdoor walking, dance, and yoga, end quote. Yeah, I don't know about that free aspect of it because, I mean, sure, I'm sure that some workouts will always be free, but I can also really see some sort of premium Peloton-style fitness subscription as a pretty compelling product, either as a standalone subscription or as something bundled into an overall one subscription to fit them all, Apple Prime subscription. Is another tech trade war looming? Great Britain will announce a 2% tax on search engines, social media services, and online

Starting point is 00:06:14 marketplaces if those companies have more than $650 million in annual revenues and more than 25 million pounds of revenue inside the U.S. The new tax is slated to go into effect April 1st, quoting CNET. The tax was expected to feature in the government's 2020 budget statement Wednesday, but it was instead announced in a policy paper published on the government's website. The UK's decision to press ahead with taxation comes amid efforts by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to reform international tax rules, which will likely result in digital companies being taxed more widely around the globe, amounting to an estimated $100 billion annually.

Starting point is 00:06:54 Some countries, namely the UK, France and Spain, which approved a tax plan last month, have decided that they'll implement their own tax rules while waiting for globally, agreed measures to come into play. But unlike France, the UK will start collecting tax next month. France agreed in January not to start collecting the new tax until the end of 2020 after it was threatened by the U.S. with tariffs. The British government has previously insisted that the tax is not discriminatory against the U.S. because it applies to all large digital companies, not just those in the states, but with the majority of companies affected by the tax based in the United States, the decision to push ahead with taxation is still likely to increase tensions between the two countries.

Starting point is 00:07:35 Speaking at Davos in January, U.S. Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin said the U.S. would likely retaliate with a levy on U.K. car exports, end quote. Here we go again. Researchers say Intel's CPUs are vulnerable to new LVI attacks, which let attackers inject and execute code inside the CPU, theoretically even from a site's job. JavaScript, quoting ZDNet. Named Load Value Injection or LVI for short, this is a new class of theoretical attacks against Intel CPUs. While the attack has been deemed only a theoretical threat, Intel has released firmware patches to mitigate attacks against current CPUs, and fixes will be deployed at the hardware or silicon design level in future generations.

Starting point is 00:08:24 While the original meltdown bug allowed attackers to read in apps data from inside a CPU's memory, while in a transient state, LVII allows the attacker to inject. code inside the CPU and have it executed as a transient temporary operation, giving attackers more control over what happens. Tests performed by the two research teams who found the LVI attack independently from one another have been successful at proving the attack's broad impact, end quote. The patches for this were released by Intel yesterday, by the way. Aside from security stories like that last one, has anyone else noticed the surge of stories about the chip space lately? It's starting to feel like, were in the early days of some sort of fundamental shift in this key part of the tech ecosystem.

Starting point is 00:09:15 Here's another example. AnandTech has a look at Amazon's Graviton 2 arm chip, which is expected to be publicly available in a few months. Anandtech thinks this chip might deliver better performance per dollar on AWS's EC2 than Intel chips. Amazon's adventure in custom silicon began all the way back in 2015, when it acquired Anapurna Labs to develop a custom arm server-grade chip. Quote, the Graviton 2's potential is, of course, enabled by the new N1 cores. We've already seen the Cortex A76 perform fantastically in last year's mobile system on a chips, and the N1 micro-architecture is expected to bring even better performance and server-grade features, all whilst retaining the power efficiency that's made arms so successful in the mobile space.

Starting point is 00:10:05 The N1 cores remain very lean and efficient at a projected 1.4 millimeters square for a 1 megabyte L2 cache implementation, such as on the Graviton 2, and sporting excellent power efficiency at around 1 watt per core at the 2.5 gigahertz frequency at which Amazon's new chip arrives. Total power consumption of the system on a chip is something that Amazon wasn't too willing to disclose in the context of our article. The company is still holding some aspects of the design close to its chest, even though we were able to test the new chip set in the cloud. Given the chip's more conservative clock rate, arms projected figure of around 105 watts for a 64 core 2.6 gigahertz implementation and Amper's recent disclosure of their 80 core 3 gigahertz and one server chip coming in at 210 watts. We estimate the graviton 2 must come in at around anywhere between 80 watts as a low estimate to around 110 watts for a pessimistic projection. end quote. Anantec then tests the new chips, putting them through the usual paces, and concludes by saying this, quote, In terms of value, the Graviton 2 seemingly ends up with top grades and puts the competition to shame.

Starting point is 00:11:15 This aspect not only will be due to the Graviton 2's performance and efficiency, but also due to the fact that suddenly Amazon is now vertically integrated for its EC2 hardware platforms. If you're an EC2 customer today, and unless you're tied to X86 for whatever reason, you'd be able to. be stupid not to switch over to Graviton 2 instances once they become available, as the cost savings will be significant, end quote. A report from Palo Alto networks and their Unit 42 security division says 83% of internet-connected medical imaging devices currently run on outdated operating systems. In fact, that number is up 56% since 2018. Why? Well, it's no doubt related to the end of Windows 7 support back in January, quoting Venture Beat. due to their long life cycles, medical Internet of Things devices are among the worst offenders

Starting point is 00:12:10 when it comes to running outdated and in many cases end-of-life operating systems, Unit 42 said. These devices are neither maintained by IT nor supported by the operating system vendors. Biomedical engineers who maintain medical devices often lack the training and resources needed to follow IT security best practices for employing password rules, storing password securely, and maintaining up-to-date patch levels on devices, end quote. The first slate of Galaxy S-20 and S-20 Plus reviews are trickling out, but again, I'm going to just stick to one today because it's basically the same thing that we've heard.

Starting point is 00:12:52 Excellent screen and hardware, good battery life, but if you're upgrading just for 5G, it's probably not worth the extra cost at the moment. Here's Dieterbone at the verge. Samsung decided to call this phone the Galaxy S20 instead of the Galaxy S11? Was it because it didn't want to be a number behind the iPhone 12, which is presumably coming later this year? Signs obviously point to yes, but Samsung claims it shows the name because it wanted to signal that the S20 is the start of a new generation of

Starting point is 00:13:23 phones. There are two reasons Samsung thinks it can make that claim, 5G and the new camera system. But I still think 5G is a wash right now. It's not something to seek out. As for the camera system, while the ultra version of this phone tries a lot of new things, the regular S20 and S20 Plus are fundamentally evolutionary updates on what Samsung did with the S10. I bought and used the Galaxy S10, and so I have a pretty solid frame of reference for the S20. Despite Samsung's claims, it does feel more like an S11,

Starting point is 00:13:55 a solid improvement over last year, but not a new generation of phones. It's also got too much of Samsung's legacy of limiting software updates in it to be the start of something genuinely new. But as I have been saying, don't take solid improvements for granted. It's the best complete package of an Android phone available right now and a high bar for the rest of 2020 Android phones to try to clear. S11, S20, Samsung can call it whatever it wants, end quote.

Starting point is 00:14:27 Finally, today, we haven't spoken about crypto in a while, and we really won't in any detail right now, but I will note that Block Genesis is reporting that venture funding in the crypto space is on pace to be down 40%. from Q1 of 2019. Now, the funding rate is still on par with crypto investments from Q1 of 2017, but that was three years ago. I'm bringing this up now, not to pile on a sector or anything, but because it gives me

Starting point is 00:14:57 the chance to ask a question I've been wondering about for a couple weeks now. Crypto, in case you haven't been noticing, is crashing, at least the price is. Almost all the coins are down significantly from their highs. Bitcoin was just about kissing up to $10,000 a coin as recently as February 23rd. Since then, it's been trending lower to $7,820 a coin at the time of this writing. What has happened in the meantime? Oh, you know, stock market crashes, global pandemic headlines, entire countries closing their borders. So the question I've been having is, what gives?

Starting point is 00:15:36 wasn't one of the main arguments from the Bitcoin maximalists and other crypto folk, that crypto would be some sort of safe haven, sort of like gold in times of extreme uncertainty, panic, and, you know, the apocalypse? Again, I'm not really making any point here. I'm just seriously asking, shouldn't crypto be up right now? Sorry for the late dropping episode yesterday. Glenn just got a little behind on things. We did come up.

Starting point is 00:16:11 with what I think is a workable process for me to host both this show and the coronavirus daily update every day, at least for the time being. So you should hear from me all the rest of this week. Again, this show will always be my priority. Nothing exciting to share with you today, so I'll leave you with the sign-off I've been using on that other show. Be well, everybody. Talk to you tomorrow.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 03/11 - Now E3 Is Cancelled

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