Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 08/03 – An Actual Use Case For NFTs And An Actual Flying Car

Episode Date: August 3, 2022

Now the hackers are stealing crypto from individual wallets at scale. Robinhood makes a massive layoff announcement. Y Combinator is shrinking its summer cohort. I’ve found an actual use case for NFT’s and it is college textbooks. And, you know, an actual flying car you could buy right now. Sponsors: Storyblok.com/ridehome Links: Solana, USDC Drained From Wallets in Attack (Decrypt) Robinhood Lays Off 23% of Staff as Retail Investors Fade From Platform (WSJ) Michael Saylor to step down as MicroStrategy CEO, shift to executive chairman role (The Block) Y Combinator narrows current cohort size by 40%, citing downturn and funding environment (TechCrunch) UK regulator makes U-turn on Avast-Norton cyber security deal (Financial Times) Pearson plans to sell its textbooks as NFTs (The Guardian) Samson Switchblade flying car is finally ready for takeoff (New Atlas) 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, August 3rd, 2022. I'm Brian McCullough today. Now the hackers are stealing crypto from individual wallets at scale. Robin Hood makes a massive layoff announcement, why Combinator is shrinking its summer cohort.

I found an actual use case for NFTs and its college textbooks. And you know, an actual flying car you could actually buy right now. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Groundhog Day, though you got it. admit, this one has a new twist. An unknown attacker has been emptying individual Solana and USC wallets. SoulScan says over 15,000 wallets have thus far been affected, draining $4.46 million primarily in Seoul and USDC. Quoting to Crypt. The hack, which was still ongoing at 8 p.m. PST, seemed to originate on the Solana browser wallet phantom, and was believed to compromise user keys,

possibly involving seed phrases that were reused among wallets on different chains. Over 5,000 Solana wallets have been drained in the past few hours, blockchain audit firm Ottersec reported earlier in the evening. These transactions are being signed by the actual owners suggesting some sort of private key compromise, end quote. Salana's status updates Twitter account reported that 7,767 wallets have been affected and noted that, quote, engineers are investigating the root cause on Wednesday morning. A data dashboard tracking hacked funds and wallet activity suggests a much higher figure,

however, engineers across the internet, including blockchains other than Solana, have been working on trying to understand both the cause of the exploit and its extent. Cryptoanalyst and author at Zero X Fubar confirmed that, quote, the attacker is stealing both native tokens, Seoul, and SPL tokens, USDC, affecting wallets that have been inactive for less than six months, end quote. theorizing that it might be, and quote, upstream dependency supply chain attack, he added that the widespread advice of revoking wallet approvals will probably not help, only transferring to an offline hardware wallet would protect funds, end quote. So am I reading that correctly, a potential

vulnerability at the, I don't know, root level of the blockchain itself or the wallet itself? Quoting sole big brain on Twitter. Still seems to be a lot of unknowns on this exploit. nothing concrete on the exact cause yet. Most roads are leading to those who had mobile wallets, phantom or slope. I have used zero mobile wallets, and so far all wallets appear safe. Anybody drained while never using mobile, end quote, and quoting, at this is noose on Twitter, quote, unaffected by the sole exploit due to draining my own wallet, using good old fashioned shit trading at Mango months back, crisis averted, end quote. Robin Hood says it plans to cut its headcount by around 23%.

This is after laying off around 9% of full-time employees just back in April, quoting the Wall Street Journal. Robin Hood also moved up the release of its second quarter results a day earlier than scheduled, reporting its monthly active users tumbled to 14 million, down 34% from a year earlier. Revenue fell 44% to $318 million. By the second quarter of last year, Robin Hood's best, according to public filings, The company boasted more than 21 million active users who flocked to the app to trade flashy meme stocks, options, and cryptocurrencies. But the pandemic darling has seen its fortunes unwind this year as markets have tumbled and customers are no longer stuck at home like they were during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Revenue tied to customers' trading activity dropped 55% in the latest quarter to $202 million. Robin Hood's stock price plunged this year and finished Tuesday at $9.23 down 76% from its initial public offering price last year of $38 a share. Its stock fell 1.6% in recent after-hours trading, end quote. That $38 a share was the IPO price. The all-time high for Robin Hood was $85 a share. The $9 or so a share it's trading at now is still better than its recent all-time low of $7. Micro Strategy CEO Michael Saylor is stepping down from the CEO role at that company and taking the executive chairman role quote, to focus more on our Bitcoin acquisition strategy, end quote. President Fong Lee will take over as CEO, but this is news because, remember, this was

the company and CEO who made that early all-in bet on Bitcoin, which is not going so well, so one has to wonder how voluntary this step down is, quoting the block. As of June 30th, 2022, the carrying value of micro-strategy's digital assets comprised of approximately $129,699 Bitcoins was $1.988 billion, which reflects cumulative impairment losses of $1.9.89 billion since acquisition and an average carrying amount per Bitcoin of approximately $15,326. The firm has consistently refused to alter its outlook on the digital asset, despite the price of Bitcoin plunging below $30,000 in May, which meant Microstrategy was in the red on its average purchase price. Indeed, CEO Michael Susser,

Saylor believes the asset's near-term volatility is largely irrelevant, he told the block in June. Speaking about the new role as executive chairman, Saylor said that he, quote, will be able to focus more on our Bitcoin acquisition strategy and related Bitcoin advocacy initiatives, while Fong will be empowered as CEO to manage overall corporate operations, end quote. Basically, Micro Strategy had to report a billion-dollar loss in earnings because of its Bitcoin holdings. How massive a loss, that billion-dollar loss, came on revenues of only $122.1 million. Losses in the quarter totaled $918.1 million, with $917.8 million directly attributable to the

company's Bitcoin holdings. So basically, all the losses are because of Bitcoin. Another sign of the Times, Y Combinator has shrunk its summer cohort to nearly 250 companies, down 40% from the 414 startups in its winter cohort. due, Y Combinator says, to the downturn in the economy and VC environment. Quoting TechCrunch. Y Combinator's head of communications, Lindsay Amos, confirmed the reduction over text message, saying that the batch is still large, quote, relative to the last five years of batches.

The S-22 batch is significantly smaller than our most recent batches. This was intentional, the statement reads. Amos said that the economic downturn and changes to the venture funding environment caused YC to reduce the number of companies funded between Winter 22 and, and summer 22. Many investors have argued that pre-seed and seed stage startups, the world where YC's accelerator primarily exists, has been immune to macroeconomic tensions because of how removed the stage is from late-stage valuations. This latest move by YC illustrates that such early-stage companies are not immune to the effects of the downturn. In May, the accelerator advised

its portfolio founders to, quote, plan for the worst. You can often pick up significant market share in an economic downturn by just staying alive. Top startup accelerator, Ycombin, wrote in an internal email to its founders this week. The advice was one of 10 bullet points in a memo meant to help companies navigate the economic downturn crushing tech. Other standout quotes include, no one can predict how bad the economy will get, but things don't look good, end quote. The email was a vibe shift from just a few weeks prior when hundreds of Y Combinator startups, many of which already raised venture funding, presented themselves to the public on Demo Day. The startups were the first to receive Y Combinator's new $500,000 standard check,

and were aggressively focused on international opportunity. Now YC is saying that this, quote, slowdown will have a disproportionate impact on international companies, among others. Over the years, Ycombinator's ever-growing batch size has become a common, if not cliche, conversation among techies. Some say that Ycombinator's bloated size has watered down the ability for participants to stand out. The institution, meanwhile, told TechBlog newcomer that it could see itself powering 1,000 startups per batch one day. said that YC did not scale back due to critiques or to the cost of its growing check size. The move will certainly help those within the current cohort stand out simply due to lack of

competition. It's another way YC is, even if unintentionally helping its startups get better marketing. A few weeks ago, Wycombinator announced launch YC, a platform where people can sort accelerator startups by industry, batch, and launch date to discover new products, end quote. All right. All right. All those previous stories are just fitting the current narratives, right? Well, this one doesn't. In a U-turn, the UK's CMA has provisionally agreed to the $8 billion merger between Avast and Norton Lifelock, citing significant competition from McAfee and others in the space. In other words, regulators don't always bring the hammer down. Sometimes they're like, cool, go ahead, quoting the Financial Times. The CMA had said in March that it was worried the

merger would reduce competition and raise prices for consumers. In its initial probe, it found that a lack of significant rivals could lead to a, quote, worse deal for customers when they are looking for cybersecurity software, end quote. However, on Wednesday, the regulator said that after a more detailed analysis, it had concluded that the merged business faced significant competition from McAfee and a range of other suppliers. The watchdog will now accept responses from interested parties before publishing a final report in September.

The companies had originally hoped to close the deal in April. In a statement on Wednesday, Norton Lifelock said September 12 was the first possible date, for closing under the CMA's timeline. The company said it intended to, quote, work with the CMA and with Avast to enable the CMA's final report to be issued as soon as practicable, end quote. The cash and stock deal announced in August valued Avast at between $8.1 and $8.6 billion and would create a business selling security software to half a billion customers. The CMA said on Wednesday that cybersecurity was a rapidly evolving market, adding that providers of both paid for and free services are continually developing and improving their products over time to meet different and changing customer needs, end quote.

Kirsten Baker, chair of the CMA inquiry group, said, quote, after gathering further information from the companies involved and other industry players, we are currently satisfied that this deal won't worsen the options available to consumers. As such, we have provisionally concluded that the deal can go ahead, and quote. And how about this for bucking narratives? I have to say that of all the use cases for NFTs, the original one, the idea, that artists or creatives or just rights holders could make better lifetime revenue from their creation thanks to NFTs still stands out as the best use case, at least to me. So look, in an NFT story that bucks the current narrative because it shows an actual tangible logical reason why

doing something on the blockchain might actually be better. Interesting news that education publisher Pearson plans to sell its textbooks as NFTs. Quoting the Guardian, educational books are often sold more than once, since students sell study resources they no longer require. Publishers have not previously been able to make any money from secondhand sales, but the rise of digital textbooks has created an opportunity for companies to benefit. After the release of Pearson's interim results, CEO Andy Bird explained his plan to sell digital textbooks as NFTs, allowing the publisher to track the ownership of a book even when it changes hands, Bloomberg reported. In the analog world, a Pearson textbook was resold up to seven times,

and we would only participate in the first sale, he said, explaining that, quote, technology like blockchain and NFTs allows us to participate in every sale of that particular item as it goes through its life, end quote. Bird, former chairman of Walt Disney International, joined Pearson in 2020, before which the company had been struggling with the growing costs of producing university textbooks and the fact that many students opt to buy such books secondhand. This new plan is the latest development of his bid to move the publisher in a digital direction. It follows the launch of the subscription app Pearson Plus last year, which gives students access to

1500 titles for $14.99 a month. Selling books as NFTs is not an entirely new concept, although it is yet to take off in the same way that the visual art NFT market has. NFT technology is largely being used in books as a way for authors to self-publish. And while digital distributors such as Germany's Bookwire have launched NFT marketplaces, as the author and performer Walker Kaplan noted in Lit Hub last year, Much of the publishing world does not yet feel the need to engage with this new technology. This is because readers tend to place more value on having read a book than having owned it.

Even if traditional publishers do enter the space, they, quote, may not be met with open arms, Kaplan wrote, as decentralization is the central ethos of NFT writing, end quote. If Pearson's use of NFTs prove successful, however, this method of selling digital copies of books could become more commonplace among mainstream publishing houses. And Bird is already exploring how other new technologies might be used by the company. He has a whole team working on, quote, the implications of the metaverse and what that could mean for us, he said, end quote. And finally today, bucking the narrative of, we were promised flying cars, but instead got 140 characters, an actual flying car is here. It's hitting the market

right now, quoting New Atlas. After 14 years of development, the Samson Switchblade, a fast Street Legal three-wheeler that converts at the touch of a button into a 200-mile-per-hour airplane has been approved for airworthiness by the FAA. The team is now preparing for flight tests. The switchblade is named after the knife-like way its wings swing out from beneath its two-seat cabin when it's time to fly. The tail, too, swings out from where it's stowed behind the large pusher prop, then unfolds into a generous T-shape. Samson says the entire push-button conversion from Street-legal trike to aircraft, takes less than three minutes, and while it's yet to demonstrate the entire process on a physical prototype, it looks like it'll be a pretty spectacular process. It runs on a three-cylinder

1.6-liter liquid-cooled engine that takes 91 octane pump gas and makes 190 horsepower. This is effectively used as a generator, powering electric wheels in drive mode and an electric prop motor when it's time to fly. As a three-wheeler, it can be registered as a motorcycle in many areas, and Samson says it's capable of speeds over 125 miles per hour. Find an airstrip and takeoff, and the switchblade's standard cruise speed is 160 miles per hour, enabling a range of 450 miles to a full 36-gallon tank of fuel. You'll need a 1,100-foot runway for takeoff and a shorter 700 foot for landing. It'll easily fit in a regular garage since the flight gear is folded away, standing just 5.1 feet high and occupying a 16.8 by 6 foot footprint, not far off from that of a family sedan. In a world of dazzling electric vehicle promises, it's easy to forget what the original flying car vision promised.

Drive out your front gate, mozy down to the local airstrip, soar at high speed over the traffic below, touch you down at an airport near your destination, and drive yourself right to the car park outside the front door. The fact that this thing runs on regular gas also puts easy cross-com. continental journeys well within reach. Samson's been plugging away on this project since the iPhone was a year old, so there's considerable excitement around the team now that the FAA has inspected the prototype and given the thumbs up for registration as an experimental aircraft. This means it's cleared to fly and the team has begun preparations to get it airborne within the coming weeks. That includes high-speed runway tests like the one in the video below. Starting from an estimated

price of $150,000, the switchplate is fairly pricey, but Samson has to be a little bit of $170,000. already taken reservations for the first 1,670 and counting, according to a recent interview with the Hill. Indeed, one reason why the company's so keen to get its prototype Airborne is that many of its free reservations convert into $2,000 deposits within 45 days of the first public flight. The Switchblade will sell as a kit aircraft, taking somewhere around 2,000 hours to build at home. Samson is putting together a build assist center where owners can come and make use of a pro-build team and ideal working setup to get their aircraft finished in as little as a week. At that point, it's time for a paint job and an FAA inspection for experimental aircraft registration.

A visit to the local DMV later, and you should have a license plate for street use, end quote. Wait, not only is this a flying car, which, you know, kind of makes me nervous by definition, but on top of that, I have to put it together myself. I don't know that I have that much faith in my own, shall we say, crafting abilities. Quick question. I got my M2 MacBook Air this week, and I haven't really spoken about it because, as I said, I went very conservative with this one since I use laptops so infrequently right now. But nonetheless, I did want to replace my 7-year-old MacBook Pro. Well, here's the thing. The keyboard on this new air is so good, like the best Apple keyboard I've ever used, full stop. So much so that it's making me hate the magic keyboard that I've been using with. this Mac Studio. So now I've been hunting around for a wireless keyboard replacement for the Mac Studio,

but the problem is, unless I'm wrong, only Apple makes keyboards with touch ID, in which case, look, transitioning over to touch ID on the Mac has been such a game changer for triggering one password and logging into things. I can't do without that. So what do I do? Hive Brain, can you help me? Is there no one out there making a keyboard for Macs that also has touch ID in it except for Apple? if anyone can point me in the right direction much obliged. Talk to you tomorrow.