Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 04/10 - Day 2 of Google’s Cloud Next Conference

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, April 10th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, day two of Google's Cloud Next conference, an update on the unicorns still queuing up to come to market.

Starting point is 00:00:47 The heat death of iTunes is closer to reality, and Walmart doubles down on robots. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Day two of Google's Cloud Next 2019 conference, and so a slew of new headlines. First up, Google Assistant can now integrate with calendars. Live captions are available in Hangouts Meet, and G Suite now works better with Microsoft Office files. These are all part of a slew of updates coming to G Suite, including improved security tools, like better fishing and malware detection, and a new security sandbox for G Suite enterprise users, quoting from TechCrunch. The sandbox allows admins to add an extra layer protection on top of the standard attachment scan,

Starting point is 00:01:34 for known viruses and malware. Those existing tools can't fully protect you against zero-day ransomware or sophisticated malware, though. So instead of just letting you open the attachment, this tool executes the attachment in a sandboxed environment to check if there are any security issues, end quote. And speaking of security, Google also said today that any Android device running Android 7 or later can now be used as a physical security key for the purposes of two-factor authentication. Quoting from the Verge, to make your Android phone your security key, you'll just need to connect your phone through Bluetooth to a Chrome browser to verify logins.

Starting point is 00:02:13 Some older desktop PCs don't have Bluetooth, but it's pretty universal on laptops. The new authentication scheme works on Gmail, G Suite, Google Cloud, and any other Google account service, and uses the Fido authentication standard. Google says other websites might join in later on, but it's still in the process of certifying its authentication. communication service, period, end quote. On the dev side, Google announced AI platform, an end-to-end service for building, testing, and deploying AI models aimed at developers and data scientists. Quoting again from TechCrunch, to do this, the service brings together a variety of existing and new products that allow you to build a full data pipeline, to pull in data, label it,

Starting point is 00:02:58 with the help of a new built-in labeling service, and then either use existing classification, object recognition or entity extraction models, or use existing tools like AutoML or the cloud machine learning engine to train and deploy custom models, end quote. There's also AutoML video intelligence, which can automatically annotate and tag video using object recognition, and there's Document Understanding AI, a serverless platform that automatically classifies, extracts, and structures data from documents. And there's a whole set of plugins for IntelliJ, Visual Studio Code and environments that aim to make building cloud native apps easier. Quoting again from TechCrunch. Typically, Google argues, developers edit, compile, and debug

Starting point is 00:03:44 their code locally. That's often just fine, but it can also create issues when the production environment doesn't quite match the local one. But building containers comes with its own challenges, and nobody really enjoys writing YAML files by hand just to test code. Indeed, the promise here is that the developer doesn't have to write a single line of YAML. The promise then is that you can continue to develop your code just like you used to, while cloud code handles all of the work of turning it into a cloud-native application. The tools are also integrated with Google's DevOps tools like Cloud Build and Stackdriver, end quote. Facebook also held an event today.

Starting point is 00:04:29 Just to let you know that it's still hard at work, trying to clean up problematic content on its platforms, or as Facebook puts it, working hard to remove, reduce, and inform. Among the initiatives announced today a new section of the Facebook Community Standards site where you can go to track the updates that they make each and every month, harsher enforcement policy of Facebook groups content, new collaborations with outside experts like the Associated Press to identify false news, changes to news feed rankings to reduce what Facebook is calling low-quality content, and new trust indicators in the news feed context button. Facebook Messenger is also getting a verified badge and an updated block feature.

Starting point is 00:05:14 And you can now remove your posts and comments from a Facebook group after you leave it. I think I said recently that I wanted to shy away from this sort of a thing until the news actually happened, the back and forth of IPOs in the weeks and months before they actually. actually go public, but this is the big narrative of the next several months. So, all right, let's check in with the state of play. Sources are telling Reuters that Uber plans to sell around $10 billion worth of stock at a $90 to $100 billion valuation in its upcoming IPO. The sources say the S-1 for said IPO will be made public tomorrow Thursday. Uber will then begin its roadshow later this month, and the stock will likely start trading in early May.

Starting point is 00:06:05 Meanwhile, sources are telling Bloomberg that ahead of its expected IPO in June or July, shares of Slack on private markets are selling for prices valuing it at around $16 billion. That would represent twice the valuation that Slack raised at in its last round of funding. If you'll recall, Slack is planning to do a direct listing of its shares instead of a traditional IPO, just like Spotify did. And when Spotify did that, they pursued a similar strategy. of allowing shareholders to sell shares early in order to gauge what price shares might fetch on the open market.

Starting point is 00:06:44 And finally, there's one big unicorn going public that I've not mentioned yet, because it's not a huge name that a lot of people know, but it does have a characteristic that distinguishes it from the other debutante unicorns. Lyft went public losing money, $911 million in losses in 2018. Pinterest, of course, recently disclosed that it lost $63 million on $756 million in revenue last year. But those losses are shrinking, of course. So Zoom Video Communications is different because it's already profitable. It made $7.6 million in 2018 on $331 million in revenue.

Starting point is 00:07:24 Who is Zoom Video Communications? Zoom sells video conferencing software to businesses. All signs point to Zoom going. public next week at a price range of $28 to $32 a share. At the top end, that would value Zoom at $8.25 billion. And actually, that might end up being conservative because if there's a first-day pop, and there very likely could be a first-day pop, it could be valued at a lot more. The company is actually growing at 100% year-over-year. So what was I saying recently about all these unicorns coming to market fully mature with no easy growth ahead of them. Well, yeah,

Starting point is 00:08:06 at least for Zoom, maybe never mind. I did pass on this story yesterday because I wasn't sure there was enough of a tech angle to it, but to heck with it, this is online stuff, and it is an infuriating story. So yes, in case you weren't aware, Congress is about to pass a law that would prohibit the government from offering free online tax filing. Quoting Ars Technica, companies like Intuit, the maker of turbotax and H&R Block, have lobbied for years to block the IRS from creating such a system. If the tax agency created its own program, which would be similar to programs other developed countries have, it would threaten the industry's profits, end quote. It should be noted that this bill has bipartisan support because lobbying money doesn't

Starting point is 00:08:57 discriminate by party. That's what lobbying does. Apparently, Intuit and H&R Block last year spent a combined $6.6 million in lobbying Washington. Sources are telling Guillem Rambo at 9 to 5 Mac that the next major version of Mac OS will include standalone music, podcasts, and TV apps alongside a redesigned already standalone Books app. Quote, the new music podcasts and TV apps will be made using Marzapan. Apple's new technology designed to facilitate the porting of iPad apps to the Mac without too many code changes. It's not clear whether the redesigned Apple Books app will also be made using the technology,

Starting point is 00:09:45 but given that the redesign came to iOS first and its usage for the other apps, it's likely that this new Books app will also be using UIKit. With the standalone versions of Apple's media apps coming to the Mac, it's natural to ask, what about iTunes in MacOS 10.15? According to sources, the next major version of MacOS will still include the iTunes app. Since Apple doesn't have a new solution for manually syncing devices such as old iPods and iPhones with the Mac, it's natural to keep iTunes around a little longer, end quote. Yes, but this great thing.

Starting point is 00:10:24 unbundling of the functionality of iTunes is finally happening. So you kind of have to figure that for iTunes proper, its days are definitely numbered. As the Wall Street Journal put it in a headline, Walmart is rolling out the robots, expanding its use of in-store tech in the United States. The big shopper-facing news is that there will now be 900 new pickup towers in stores across the U.S. The pickup towers have been around since 2017, and they allow you to order online and then quickly grab the item from a vending machine-like device. But that's not new, really. I mean, we've seen things like Amazon lockers for years. What is new is this, quoting from the Wall Street Journal.

Starting point is 00:11:12 The country's largest private employer says at least 300 stores this year will add machines that scan shelves for out-of-stock products. Autonomous floor scrubbers will be deployed in 1,500 stores to help speed up cleaning. after a test in hundreds of stores last year. And the number of conveyor belts that automatically scan and sort products as they come off trucks will more than double to 1,200. The company said the addition of a single machine can cut a few hours a day of work previously done by a human or allow Walmart to allocate fewer people to complete a task, a large saving when spread around 4,600 U.S. stores. executives said they are focused on giving workers more time to do other tasks and on hiring in growing areas like e-commerce, end quote.

Starting point is 00:11:59 The AutoS shelf scanners that sit in a charger and then get sent out to the aisles to perform some inventory or pricing task or other are produced by California-based Bossa Nova Robotics. The AutoC floor cleaning bots were introduced last fall in conjunction with Brain Corp. Walmart originally ordered 360 of the floor cleaning robots and now plans to roll out 1,500 more. Not that long ago, I told you about that dangerous Triton malware, which seems designed to attack the critical safety systems of things like chemical plants, power plants, etc.

Starting point is 00:12:41 Well, researcher Fire Eye has uncovered a second critical infrastructure site that it says was infected with the malware. Once again, the unknown attackers targeted the facility's safety instrument. Systems, or SIS, the combination of hardware and software that critical infrastructure sites used to make sure, you know, nothing goes boom. Quoting from Ars Technica, as was the case in the first intrusion, the attackers focused most of their resources on the facility's OT or operational technology, which are systems for monitoring and managing physical processes and devices.

Starting point is 00:13:18 After establishing an initial foothold on the corporate network, the Triton actor focused most of their effort on gaining access to the OT network, Fire Eye researchers wrote in a report published Wednesday, they did not exhibit activities commonly associated with espionage, such as using keyloggers and screenshot grabbers, browsing files, and or exfiltrating large amounts of information. Most of the attack tools they used were focused on network reconnaissance, lateral movement, and maintaining presence in the target environment. Once the attackers in the new attack gained access to the site's SIS controllers, they appeared to focus solely on maintaining, this control. This focus involved strategically limiting other activities to lessen the chances

Starting point is 00:13:59 of being discovered, end quote. So if you downloaded this episode, shortly after it came out and press play right away, you still have time to catch the 635 p.m. Eastern launch of the Falcon Heavy Rocket. SpaceX always helpfully livestreams these launches, so assuming you're hearing this in time and assuming the weather and whatever else cooperated, search. for the SpaceX live feed and check out the launch. This is only the second flight of the Falcon Heavy and the first commercial flight. Last time, it sent a Tesla Roadster into orbit. Maybe there will be another surprise tonight. As Ars Technica points out, in the year or so since its inaugural flight, the Falcon Heavy has done quite a bit to herald the space tech revolution that we've been

Starting point is 00:14:50 investigating lately. Quote, Falcon Heavy's most immediate and tangible impact has been with national security missions. In June, only a little more than four months after the vehicle's debut flight, the U.S. Air Force certified the rocket to fly its reconnaissance and communication satellites into orbit. The Air Force also announced that it had selected the Falcon Heavy to launch its classified Air Force Space Command 52 satellite later in 2020. The rocket offers the military access to all of the desired orbits for its spacecraft. With a base launch cost starting at just $90 million, $1. Falcon Heavy has also emerged as a contender for future NASA science missions to the outer planets. After saying for years that the Europa Clipper spacecraft could only launch on the space launch system SLS rocket,

Starting point is 00:15:37 for example, NASA began talking about the possibility of launching it on a Falcon Heavy due to the ongoing concerns about delays with the larger SLS booster. Planetary scientists have also said the rocket's mere existence has put price pressure on other boosters typically used for deep space probes. quote. NASA has even hinted that the Falcon Heavy could have a role to play in the agency's plans to return to the moon sometime soon. Quote, there is nothing sacred here that is off the table. NASA administrator Jim Bridenstein has been quoted as saying, FYI, I have so far gotten a grand total of two submissions for questions for the listener call-in slash Ask Me Anything show, which is cool. We don't have to do one if it's not a thing that's interesting. And for sure, I won't do it this weekend at this point, but I will keep the lines

Starting point is 00:16:36 open, as it were, keep sending in your questions if you want to brian at techmeme.com. And if there are enough interesting questions by this time next week, we'll do the call-in show. And if not, We won't. Thank you, though, to both of you who submitted questions, by the way. If you remain the only two, maybe I'll just call you both personally and answer your questions directly. Talk to you tomorrow.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 04/10 - Day 2 of Google’s Cloud Next Conference

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