Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 07/14 – Did Apple Deep-Six 69? (NOT Nice!)

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 TechMeme right home for Wednesday, July 14th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, bunch of Apple News. A new buy now pay later service, a new MagSafe battery pack. Is content moderation a hot new area for startups? Facebook groups can now get actual designated experts.

Starting point is 00:00:53 Our evil has suddenly gone dark and why does iOS seemingly find 69 degrees Fahrenheit to be not nice? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Lots of little Apple stories today. For example, sources are telling Mark German and Sridhar Natarajan that Apple and Goldman Sachs are working on a buy-now pay later service to let consumers pay for any Apple pay purchase in installments, sort of how a firm does it, quoting Bloomberg. Goldman Sachs has been Apple's partner for the Apple Card credit card since 2019, but the new offering isn't tied to the Apple card, and doesn't require the use of one, said the people who ask not to be named discussing unannounced products. The service is currently planned to work as follows. When a user makes a purchase via Apple Pay on

Starting point is 00:01:47 their Apple device, they will have the option to pay for it either across four interest-free payments made every two weeks or across several months with interest, one of the people said. The plan with for payments is called Apple Pay and Thor internally, while the longer-term payment plans are dubbed Apple Pay Monthly Installments. When making purchases through an Apple Pay Later plan, users will be able to choose any credit card to make their payments over time. The service has planned to be available for purchases made at either retail or online stores. Apple already offers monthly installments via the Apple card for purchases of its own products, but this service would expand that technology to any Apple pay transaction. The interest rates that Apple plans to charge for the monthly

Starting point is 00:02:33 installments couldn't be learned. A firm charges as much as 30% APR, while other rivals charge less. The interest-free for installment plan would rival similar systems like ones from afterpay, Klarna, and Sezzle, in addition to PayPal's popular Pay-in-4 service, end quote. German is also reporting this time with Debbie Wu that Apple has also asked suppliers to build up to 90 million next generation iPhones this year, which represents a boost of up to 20% year over year. So Apple apparently sees this year as a healthy upgrade year, even though this year's iPhone will likely see changes that are more incremental than what we saw with the iPhone 12. quote. Apple is planning updates to all of the current models spanning the 5.4-inch and 6.1-inch and 6.1-inch and 6.1-inch and 6.7-inch pro models. The phones, codenamed D-16, D-17, D-63, and D-64, are all expected to be announced in September earlier than last year's October introduction, partly thanks

Starting point is 00:03:36 to the supply chain recovering. At least one of the new versions will have an LTPO, low-temperature, polycrystalline oxide display, capable of alternating its refresh rate based on the content being shown. Apple has used this technology in the Apple Watch for several years, allowing the screen to be slower in certain situations, such as the always-on mode, to extend battery life. Oppo, One Plus, and Samsung already have LTP screens in their flagship phones. The new iPhones with LTP displays will also use IGZO, Indian-Gallium-Zink oxide technology for improved power efficiency and responsiveness, end quote. Oh, and this dropped just as I was publishing yesterday. Apple announced a $99 MagSafe battery pack for the iPhone 12 lineup with a total capacity of 1,40

Starting point is 00:04:35 milla-amp hours, quoting 9 to 5 Mac. The MagSafe battery pack attaches magnetically to the back of the iPhone 12 Mini, iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max, offering additional hours of battery life. The pack itself charges with a lightning cable and it can pass through charge to the attached iPhone at the same time. Apple recommends using a 20-watt USBC charger for the fastest charge times. The MagSafe Battery Pack is available to order today with first deliveries beginning July 19. Apple says the MagSafe battery pack requires the iPhone to be running iOS 14.7 or later. The MagSafe Battery Pack joins an existing accessory ecosystem of wireless battery packs that have surface since the iPhone 12 came out. However, all of these third-party options are unofficially

Starting point is 00:05:22 MagSafe compatible rather than MagSafe approved. For now, Apple's first-party accessory is the only official MagSafe Battery Pack accessory. Apple has not yet released official statistics on how much extra battery life the MagSafe Battery Pack provides. Total capacity of the battery is 1,160 MAH, or 11.2 watt hours, as seen on the back of the unit in one of the product photos. That capacity should equate to being able to fully charge an iPhone 12 mini and almost fully charge an iPhone 12, end quote. We'll come back to Apple again at the end of the show, but right now, how about an interesting acquisition? Discord has bought Centropy, which emerged from stealth last summer with AI-powered moderation software to fight online abuse and $13 million in funding, quoting TechCrunch. Discord currently uses a multi-level approach to moderation relying on an in-house human moderation team,

Starting point is 00:06:22 as well as volunteer mods and admins to create ground rules for individual servers. A trust and safety team dedicated to protecting users and shaping content moderation policies comprised 15% of Discord's workforce as of May 2020. Discord plans to integrate Centropi's own products into its existing toolkit, and the company will also bring the smaller company's leadership group aboard. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the acquisition is a sign that taking toxic content and harassment seriously isn't just the right thing to do. It's good business, too. TNS tech and processes should not be used as a competitive advantage,

Starting point is 00:06:57 CentraPCE CEO John Redgrave said in a blog post on the announcement. We all deserve digital and physical safety, and moderators deserve better tooling to help them do one of the hardest jobs online more effectively and with fewer harmful impacts. We are excited to help Discord decide how we can most effectively share with the rest of the internet, the best practice technology and tools that we've developed to protect our own communities. Redgrave said. Discord's future is looking bright. The company walked away from a possible acquisition by Microsoft earlier this year that reportedly valued it at around $10 billion. Discord looks content to remain independent for now and could chart a path toward an IPO in the not too distant future,

Starting point is 00:07:36 end quote. This is a bit of a head scratcher and I'm not sure what it means, so I'm going to just leave this here. Remember, our evil? That big ransomware gang? By the way, I've learned it's pronounced R-Eval, not R-Eval, as I was saying. Anyway, R-Evel's entire infrastructure, their websites, the whole ransomware as-a-service operation, including its data leak sites, are suddenly offline. This comes less than two weeks after R-Eval was accused of attacking more than 1,500 businesses via ransomware, via Kasea, if you'll recall. So did someone get to them? Or is this a case of the heat maybe getting too much on them? So they're going to round, quoting bleeping computer. While it's not unheard of for our evil sites to lose connectivity

Starting point is 00:08:26 for some time, all sites to shut down simultaneously is unusual. Furthermore, the decoder.org clear website is no longer resolvable by DNS queries, possibly indicating the DNS records for the domain have been pulled, or that back-end DNS infrastructure has been shut down. Recorded futures, Alan Liska said that the Reval websites went offline at approximately 1 a.m. Eastern time this morning. This afternoon, the lock-bit ransomware representative posted to the CSS Russian-speaking hacking forum that it is rumored the R-Evil gang erased their servers after learning of a government subpoena. Quote, upon uncorroborated information, R. Evil server infrastructure received a government legal request forcing R.E.E. To completely erase server infrastructure and disappear. However, it is not confirmed, the post says, in Russian, translated to English for bleeping computer by advanced intel's Vitali Kremens.

Starting point is 00:09:19 At this point, it is not. clear if our evil's shutdown of servers is for technical reasons, if the gang shut down their operations, or if a Russian or USA law enforcement operation took place. Other ransomware groups such as Darkside and Babuk shut down voluntarily due to the increased pressure by law enforcement. However, when ransomware groups shut down, the operators and affiliates commonly rebrand as a new operation to continue performing ransomware attacks. This was seen in the past when Gand Crabb shut down and many of its members relaunched as are evil, end quote. So I got to tell you, I had never heard of something like this happening before, but more on that

Starting point is 00:10:06 in a second. In April, Amazon acquired over a dozen staff from Facebook to boost its own low-Earth orbit satellite internet efforts. That's right, acquired staff. Amazon paid Facebook to seal an agreement for the talent transfer, quoting the information. The Facebook employees moved to Amazon in April to help the company develop its network of low-orbit satellites by the middle of this decade. The workers are in the Los Angeles area and included physicists as well as optical, prototyping, mechanical, and software engineers who had previously worked on aeronautical systems and wireless networks according to their LinkedIn pages.

Starting point is 00:10:43 Among the Facebook employees to move to Amazon was Jim Baines, formerly the head of Facebook's Southern California-based internet connectivity efforts, and now a director of Amazon's Project Kuiper. He declined to comment for this article. Last year, Facebook launched what it told regulators was a single experimental low-earth orbit satellite called Athena in order to determine whether it could efficiently transmit internet signals to underserved areas using millimeter wave frequencies. The company has been looking at developing satellite-based internet for the better part of seven years. A Facebook spokesperson said the sale to Amazon was the best way for the satellite team to continue their work, given that Facebook did not intend to launch a network of satellites itself.

Starting point is 00:11:22 Around eight years ago, Facebook began working on a variety of potential internet access technologies in order to expand its pool of customers for its core business. But these efforts have been inconsistent. Some wireless network equipment makers have said they are using software developed by Facebook for moving data wirelessly, part of which the company has open-sourced. Facebook has separately made financial investments in terrestrial and undersea fiber optic cables, the spokesperson said. It's not unheard of for big companies to buy groups of employees from one another, just as they often buy small startups to beef up staff in various parts of their business. For instance,

Starting point is 00:11:56 in 2015, Uber acquired more than 100 maps-related employees from Microsoft, along with some intellectual property, end quote. Okay, I stand corrected. Maybe this sort of thing happens all the time. It just doesn't often make headlines. By the way, Facebook is also rolling out the ability for group administrators, to designate what are going to be called group experts, partly in an effort to help Facebook combat misinformation. But also, I love this because, think about it, in every niche community you've ever been in online, doesn't it always seem that it shakes out that someone becomes the de facto most prominent voice in that community? This has pretty much been a pattern that's held true from the first message boards and prodigy rooms and chat rooms that I was involved in

Starting point is 00:12:47 going back 30 years ago all the way to today with the posters on the Arsenal subreddit. There's always a leader or a loudest voice that rises to the top. So, cool dynamic to actually build that concept into the product, giving these leaders official titles, quoting CNET. If people accept the role as an expert in a group, they'll receive a badge next to their name so others know they're knowledgeable about a certain topic. The company said it's making the tool available to select groups on desktop and mobile. Facebook is also testing a way for some users specializing in fitness and gaming to identify topics they know a lot about.

Starting point is 00:13:22 The administrator of a group can then find these people by way of a search and invite them to join the group as an expert, allowing them to stand out. There are more than 70 million administrators and moderators running active groups, Facebook says. When asked how they're vetting the qualifications of designated experts, a Facebook spokesperson said, it's, quote, all up the discretion of the admin to designate experts who they believe are knowledgeable on certain topics, end quote. The company has pulled down groups in the past because they had the potential to incite violence or mislead others about their identity and purpose, end quote. I think I've mentioned this before on the podcast, but two decades ago when I was actively day trading on the stock market, there was this guy in the Yahoo Finance message boards who called himself Sow, S-O-D-W-E-W-E-W. it stood for shatterer of words. He was the guy whose lead everybody seemed to follow when jumping into and out of stocks. He was also a good long-term investor, too. He was the reason I bought Netflix stock back in late 2002. He was telling folks back then that prices for solar and wind power were poised to plunge almost exponentially, right about all those things. Anyway, I lost track of the dude. I've Googled him for years and still can't find him. If I ever could, believe me, that is a substack that I would 1,000% subscribe to.

Starting point is 00:14:54 And finally today, as I promise, circling back to Apple, you might have heard about this. The current version of Apple's weather app will not show you 69 degrees Fahrenheit as a temperature. That's right, 69. And now I'm legally obligated to say, nice. Anyway, is this Apple being, let's be honest, completely over. wordly prudish, or is it something else? Quoting the verge. If you're an iPhone user, the weather is always a particularly nice 70 degrees, or 68 degrees,

Starting point is 00:15:29 any temperature but 69 degrees, actually, because it turns out that the built-in weather app on some versions of iOS, including the current version iOS 14.6, will refuse to display the internet's favorite number, even if the actual temperature in a given location is, in fact, 69 degrees, along with several other less memeable numerals like 65 and 71 degrees. It's not clear if this is a bug or an intentional attempt from Apple to cut down on 69-related humor. The rounding is only visible in the weather app itself. Clicking through to Apple's source data from weather.com will show the proper temperature, as do Apple's home screen widgets, but the iOS weather app will refuse to show 69 degrees anywhere in the forecast,

Starting point is 00:16:11 whether it's for the current temperature, the hourly forecast for the day, or the extended forecast. A possible explanation for the issue, as pointed out by several people on Twitter, is that Apple may be sourcing data for its iOS weather app in Celsius and then converting it to Fahrenheit. For example, 20 degrees Celsius converts to 68 degrees Fahrenheit, while 21 degrees Celsius converts to 69.8 degrees Fahrenheit, which rounds up to 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The app appears to have similar issues with temperatures like 65 degrees,

Starting point is 00:16:41 where 18 degrees Celsius converts to 64.4.4 degrees Fahrenheit, while 19 degrees Celsius is 66.2 degrees Fahrenheit, end quote. So various versions of iOS do apparently show 69 degrees in the weather app. No one knows if this is a bug that's been recently introduced or what. I have a different possible solution to this puzzle, though. I think that Apple was feeling sorry for tech news content aggregators like me. You know, it's July, the dog days of summer. The news is somewhat. thin in the middle of the summer. Apple knew this and threw folks like me a bone. So thank you, Apple, for the completely childish comedy, even if it ends up being neither here nor there. There really wasn't enough meat on the bones for this story to make a full segment out of it.

Starting point is 00:17:35 So forgive me for just putting this information here. But FYI, TikTok, has surpassed three billion installs globally across iOS and Android, making it the first non-Facebook app. to do so, to pass that $3 billion install mark. So, you know, congrats to them. In other news, that Twitter space that we're doing this afternoon for scheduling reasons, we had to move it up to 3 p.m. Eastern Time. So less than two hours after this episode goes live, I know it's short notice. But if you look at the very bottom link in today's show notes, you will see a link to set a reminder for the space. So if you hear this in time, you can participate. Talk to you soon.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 07/14 – Did Apple Deep-Six 69? (NOT Nice!)

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