Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 06/24 – Oculus Go and Olympus (and Force Touch?) Go Bye Bye

Episode Date: June 24, 2020

Brazil puts the breaks on payments via WhatsApp. Advertisers apply pressure on Facebook via a boycott. Oculus is putting an end to the Oculus Go. Olympus is existing the camera business after 80 years. And what might be the first case of a person wrongfully arrested thanks to facial recognition. Sponsors: Tovala.com/ride TinyCapital.com Links: Brazilian Authorities Suspend WhatsApp Payments (Bloomberg) Ad Boycott of Facebook Keeps Growing (NYTimes) Facebook To Stop Selling Oculus Go, Vows No More 3DOF Headsets (UploadVR) Olympus to Exit Camera Business After 84 Years (WSJ) watchOS 7 drops Force Touch support, likely ahead of Apple Watch Series 6 hardware changes (9to5Mac) Wrongfully Accused by an Algorithm (NYTimes) Over 1,000 AI Experts Condemn Racist Algorithms That Claim to Predict Crime (Motherboard) Subscribe to the ad-free version of the show 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 right home for Wednesday, June 24th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. Weirdly, it's a day of goodbyes for the Oculus Go, for Olympus cameras, for force touch, maybe. Brazil puts the breaks on payments via WhatsApp, advertisers apply pressure on Facebook via boycott, and what might be the first case of a

person wrongfully arrested thanks to facial recognition. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. The Central Bank of Brazil has told MasterCard. and visa to stop payments via WhatsApp in that country so that it can evaluate the risks and regulations around digital payments. Somebody said early on in the whole Libra rollout that if creating payments as a bigger business was Facebook's ultimate goal, then it probably wasn't a smart move to draw such attention and scrutiny to payments as a business overall. Maybe this is sort of that, quote in Bloomberg. Brazil's central bank has suspended Facebook's WhatsApp Messenger or payment feature in the country, the app's second biggest market with more than 120 million users.

The decision aims to, quote, preserve an adequate, competitive environment that ensures the functioning of a payment system that's interchangeable, fast, secure, transparent, open, and cheap, the monetary authority said in a statement on its website. Bank authorities requested that MasterCard and Visa stop payment and money transfer activities through the app. A suspension without presenting further arguments is, quote, an unusual, extraordinary move by the central bank, especially in the payments arrangements and technology market, said Tiago Servo Gomez, a partner at Caputo Bastos and Sarah, and a specialist in FinTech's and banking regulation. The decision is a setback for Facebook, which introduced WhatsApp's

payment system in Brazil earlier this month after testing it over the past two years and a handful of markets, including India and Mexico. Payments are a key element of WhatsApp's long-term plan to offer commerce within the app, end quote. Yeah, I don't know that we talked about it when this launched in Brazil a couple weeks ago, but payments inside WhatsApp is absolutely a crucial strategic goal for Facebook. And to see it get knee-capped right away in the first market it's officially rolled out to is not good. And by the way, we've not really covered this either. But the reason this hasn't launched in India yet, which, as we've seen with discussions

with the whole Reliance Geo deals, is really where Facebook. wants to be in terms of WhatsApp and payments is because Indian regulators have long been throwing up roadblocks along the way for a WhatsApp payment rollout in that country. Sort of in the vein of what I said at the top, quoting Osiraten Victor Asimoda on Twitter, quote, the fundamental flaw in the design of any disruptive technology is to depend on incumbents who can see it coming. Augment first, then replace. Telcos didn't see WhatsApp coming. Banks now. Banks now. do, end quote. And some more bad news for Facebook. There's a growing boycott movement among Facebook's

advertisers. It is seemingly a symbolic movement right now, apparently only intended to be temporary, largely to send a message. But the message here is that there are consequences for Facebook around some of the politically tinged decisions that it has either made or not made recently, depending on how you look at it. Ben and Jerry's Eddie Bauer and Magnolia Pictures have joined Patagonia, the North Face, REI, and others in saying they will suspend their Facebook ad buys in the month of July to protest what they say are Facebook's amplification of hate speech, quoting the New York Times. In explaining why it would stop advertising on Facebook, Magnolia Pictures said on Tuesday that it was, quote, seeking meaningful change at Facebook

and the end of their amplification of hate speech, end quote. Ben and Jerry's pushed Facebook on Tuesday, quote, to take stronger action to stop its platforms from being used to divide our nation, suppress voters, foment and fan the flames of racism and violence, and undermine our democracy. End quote, the freelancing platform Upwork and the password manager Dashlane are also participating on the boycott, which advocacy groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Anti-Defamation League have promoted with the hashtag, hashtag stop hate for profit. The efforts against Facebook have also gotten support from ad agencies. In an email to more than 50 clients last week, the digital ad agency 360I said it supported the boycott.

The Wall Street Journal reported some companies have quietly joined the effort and several ad agencies have developed guidelines for major companies interested in participating, said three people with knowledge of recent discussions, who requested anonymity because the talks are confidential, end quote. And sticking with Facebook for one more. Facebook says it will stop selling the Oculus Go, which was Facebook's first standalone VR headset, priced at the low end at $199 and which only started shipping last year, quoting upload VR. While Oculus Go combined the benefits of standalone VR with one of the lowest prices for an all-in system we've ever seen, dropping to $149 this year before its retirement, the headset also severely limited input options and could only track the rotation of your head, aka 3DOF. Both the Oculus Quest and the PC-powered Rift fully track head position, aka 6DOF.

While Quest sells for $399 and is heavier than go, the addition of 6DOF tracking for both head and hand movements is a considerable upgrade for both comfort and overall experience. The feature is necessary to play VR's most popular titles, including those from beat games, Senzuru Games, and Ready at Dawn. The first three VR-focused game studios, Facebook acquired over the last few months. Quote, you've told us loud and clear that 6DOF feels like the future of VR. A prepared statement from Facebook explains, that's why we're going all in, and we won't be shipping any more 3DOF VR products. We'll end sales of OculusGo headsets this year as we double down on improving our offerings for Quest and Rift, end quote. Facebook removed Go from its business program in January, and an editorial we published last month suggested Facebook's next quest should try to combine the lower weight of Go with the feature set of

Quest and the visuals of a high-end rift. Late last year, Facebook retired its room's social service for Go while only announcing support for its upcoming Horizon Social Networking Service on the Rift and Quest, end quote. Facebook also announced with this news that it will stop accepting new apps for the go in December, but they will support the system with fixes and patches through 2022. Speaking of quitting, Olympus is exiting the camera business after 85 years. It will now instead focus on medical devices and is selling its camera unit to a private equity firm called Japan Industrial Partners. Olympus had been under pressure from the U.S. activist

shareholder firm Value Act Capital to improve shareholder returns. and I guess they hope this move will do just that, quoting the Wall Street Journal. Olympus was a global consumer brand for decades thanks to its cameras, hiring the likes of supermodel Cheryl Teagues to promote its products on television. It shifted readily to digital cameras in the 1990s and was number two in market share behind Sony early this century. As recently as 2007, the dawn of the smartphone era, digital cameras were a $3 billion a year business for Olympus.

Within a few years, however, most of the market evaporated because people were using their phones to take pictures. Camera revenues shrank to just over $400 million in the year ended March 31st, and the business has lost money for the past three fiscal years. The company's main product line is now medical imaging devices such as endoscopes, end quote. One more bit of news that shook loose from WWDC this week. Watch OS 7 apparently drops support for force touch, a hardware feature that has been available on every single Apple watch model at least so far. Now, I know that Forced Touch has been disappearing from Apple products generally,

beginning with the iPhone, but I have to say the one product where I felt like it made the most sense was the Apple Watch. I use Forced Touch on my watch every day because it's actually a great way to reveal hidden menus and such and on a device that's that small. It's, I don't know, I just think it's super useful. Quoting 9 to 5 Mac. In a new version of the Apple Human Interface Guidelines, the company is telling developers to relocate iOS.

items previously accessed by force touch. Firm press and long press. In versions of WatchOS before WatchOS 7, people could press firmly on the display to do things like change the watch face or reveal a hidden menu called a Force Touch menu. In WatchOS 7 and later, system apps make previously hidden menu items accessible in a related screen or a setting screen. If you formally supported a long press gesture to open a hidden menu, consider relocating the menu items elsewhere.

For example, you used to be able to clear notifications on Apple Watch. by firmly pressing on the display and choosing clear all. Apple has moved the clear all button to the top of the notification interface on Apple Watch, meaning you have to scroll up and tap on the clear all button in watchOS 7, end quote. Now, does this point to a hardware redesign as well? Because, you know, taking the sensors required to make force touch happen out might either allow for a thinner design or gain some valuable real estate that would allow for larger batteries, right? might be useful for things like sleep tracking.

So for years, folks have been warning us that faulty facial recognition tech could lead to false matches if used to fight crime, false arrests, the like. Adding to the worry was that facial recognition tech has always had more problems with black and brown faces in terms of accuracy. And sadly, we now have what may be the first known case of its kind. a black man in Michigan was arrested for a crime. He apparently did not commit, thanks to faulty facial recognition tech, quoting the New York Times. The Shinola shoplifting occurred in October 2018. Catherine Johnson, an investigator at Mackinac, a loss prevention firm,

reviewed the store's surveillance video and sent a copy to the Detroit Police, according to their report. Five months later, in March 2019, Jennifer Coulson, a digital image examiner for the Michigan State Police uploaded a probe image, a still from the video showing the man in the Cardinals' cap to the state's facial recognition database. The system would have mapped the man's face and searched for similar ones in a collection of 49 million photos. After Ms. Colson of the state police ran her search of the probe image, the system would have provided a row of results generated by NEC and a row from rank one along with confidence scores. Mr. Williams' driver's license photo was among the matches. Ms. Coulson then sent it to the Detroit Police as,

and quote, investigative lead report. This document is not a positive identification, the file says, in bold capital letters at the top. It is an investigative lead only and is not probable cause for arrest, end quote. This is what technology providers and law enforcement always emphasize when defending facial recognition. It is only supposed to be a clue in the case, not a smoking gun. Before arresting Mr. Williams, investigators might have sought other evidence that he committed the theft, such as eyewitness testimony, location data from his phone, or proof that he owned the clothing that the suspect was wearing. In this case, however, according to the Detroit police report, investigators simply included Mr. Williams's pictures in a six-pack photo lineup.

They created and showed to Ms. Johnson, Shainola's loss prevention contractor, and she identified him. Ms. Johnson declined to comment, end quote. So the Mr. Williams, we were talking about there, is Robert Julian Borkchak Williams, the black man who was arrested for a shoplifting crime. And when he was arrested and brought in to the police station, Mr. Williams held the photo generated by the surveillance camera up to his face in the interrogation room. And it was apparently so obviously not a match that he was subsequently released on a $1,000 personal bond and the prosecutor of dropped the case, the case being dismissed without prejudice, I should note, meaning Mr. Williams could later be charged again. And of course, he had to miss work because of the original arrest and had personal embarrassment with family and neighbors, had to hire a lawyer, had to take vacation days to appear in court, even though he was so plainly not a match to even a cursory glance by human eyes that this was a travesty of justice. How many times have we quoted people on the show or had

experts come on this show to say themselves that for the foreseeable future, we should only rely on AI to augment human judgment, not replace it. Funny enough though, and understand how I mean that because there's nothing funny about all this. It just so happens that another headline on tech meme over the last 24 hours was this, quote, more than 1,000 technologists, including some from MIT, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and other places have urged the publisher Springer, not to publish a paper that describes a system to predict crime based on faces. Quoting motherboard. The paper describes a system that the author's claim can predict whether someone will commit a crime

based solely on a picture of their face with, quote, 80% accuracy and, quote, no racial bias. Quote, there is simply no way to develop a system that can predict criminality that is not racially biased because criminal justice data is inherently racist, wrote Audrey Beard, one of the letters organizers, in an emailed statement. The letter calls on Springer to retract the paper from publication in Springer Nature, release a statement condemning the use of these methods, and commit not to publish similar studies in the future. This is not the first time AI researchers have made these dubious claims. Machine learning researchers roundly condemned a similar paper released in 2017 whose authors claimed the ability to predict future criminal behavior by training an algorithm with the faces of people previously convicted

of crimes. As experts noted at the time, this merely creates a feedback loop that, justifies further targeting of marginalized groups that are already disproportionately policed. Quoting the letter again, as numerous scholars have demonstrated, historical court and arrest data reflect the policies and practices of the criminal justice system, the letter states. These data reflect who police choose to arrest, how judges choose to rule, and which people are granted longer or more lenient sentences. Thus, any software built within the existing criminal legal framework will inevitably echo those same prejudices and fundamental inaccuracies when it comes to determining if a person has the, quote, face of a criminal, end quote.

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