Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 08/19 – You Won’t Be Able To Use An Oculus Without A Facebook Account

Episode Date: August 19, 2020

Soon you can only use an Oculus if you have a Facebook account. But bizarrely, the Facebook Portal (along with the Echo Show and Google Nest Hub Max) is opening up to Zoom. Netflix is testing a “shuffle play” feature. Blackberry phones are coming back. And Apple hits a $2 trillion market cap. Sponsors: BlueNile.com code: RIDE Metalab.co Links: You’ll need a Facebook account to use future Oculus headsets (The Verge) Zoom is coming to Google Nest, Amazon Echo, and Facebook Portal smart displays (The Verge) Trump Expresses Support for Oracle to Buy TikTok (WSJ) Netflix test puts a ‘Shuffle Play’ button right on your home screen (TechCrunch) New BlackBerry-branded devices w/ QWERTY keyboards set to come in 2021 (9to5Google) A TikTok Ban Is Overdue (NYTimes) The ecommerce surge (Benedict Evans) Big Tech’s Domination of Business Reaches New Heights (NYTimes) 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 19th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. Soon, you can only use an Oculus if you have a Facebook account first. But bizarrely, the Facebook portal, along with the Echo Show and Google Nest Hub Max, is opening up to Zoom. Netflix is testing a shuffle play feature. BlackBerry phones are coming back, and Apple becomes a $2 trillion company. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Well, developers are up in arms about something once again, though this is a much narrower set of developers, I guess. Oculus has announced that beginning in October, it will require all of its VR headset users to sign up with a Facebook account,

and it will remove support for separate Oculus accounts around that same time. So if you want to use Oculus at all going forward, you're going to have to do it through the orifice of a Facebook account to paraphrase the late Steve Jobs. quoting The Verge. Starting later this year, you'll only be able to sign up for an Oculus account through Facebook. If you already have an account, you'll be prompted to permanently merge your account. If you don't, you'll be able to use the headset normally until 2023, at which point official support will end. Old headsets using non-linked accounts will still work, but some games and apps may no longer

function. Developers can keep using an unlinked developer account without social functionality, and the Oculus for Business Platform uses a separate login process. that will remain unchanged. Facebook also says that all future unreleased Oculus devices will require a Facebook login, even if you got a separate account already. The company is widely expected to announce a new version of its Oculus Quest headset this fall, and that policy would likely apply to it. The new changes apparently consolidate Facebook's management of its platforms. A new privacy policy will be administered by Facebook itself, not the separate Facebook Technologies hardware subsidiary,

and quote, Facebook will manage all decisions around use, process, retention and sharing of your data, end quote. Oculus will also adopt Facebook's core community standards rather than use a separate code of conduct, and Facebook will add a new VR focus section to its standards. A single login also slightly simplifies launching experiences like Horizon, the social VR world that Facebook announced last year, end quote. As Will Oramus tweeted, it's this kind of thoughtful user-first product development that makes Facebook such a beloved company by all, end quote.

as Rod Breslau tweeted, quote, from Facebook gaming to Oculus, Facebook is doing an incredible job, making gamers not want to use their stuff, end quote. Lots of folks on Hacker News dug up the old posts from Palmer Lucky, where he swore up and down that quote, I guarantee that you won't need to log into your Facebook account every time you want to use the Oculus Rift.

You will not need a Facebook account to use or develop for the Rift. Nope, that would be lame, I promise, end quote. Timely reminder that when you're the, acquiree. You can't make promises like that because, given a long enough arc of time, there's no way a promise like that can be kept. But also, a worthwhile reminder that Zuck may tell you he's acquiring your company because he wants to run it separately and independently, but in the end, Zuck is weirdly jealous of all others. Eventually, your separate platform will be subsumed into the big blue app platform because, I don't know, it's his precious or

something, I guess. Oh, and Sam Biddle made this plea, quote, at an absolute bare minimum, society should agree that nothing literally strapped to your face should be logged into via a global advertising surveillance firm, end quote. This is extremely surprising to me, at least. Zoom says it is adding support for the Amazon Echo Show, Facebook portal, and Google Nest Hub Max later this year. So now, essentially you will be able to zoom on any of these smart hub platforms, quoting the verge. Each of the three solutions will implement Zoom a little differently. Facebook's portal devices will be adding a Zoom app, which will rely on Facebook's smart camera technology to automatically keep you in frame, just like it does for Facebook's

own messenger and WhatsApp calls. Google, on the other hand, will be relying on the strength of its calendar and assistance services, which will be able to automatically pull in existing Zoom meetings directly from your calendar and allow users to start. start meetings with voice commands like, hey, you know what, join my next meeting. Unfortunately, the fact that Google limits Nesthubs to a single account means that it'll be less useful for juggling work and personal Zoom meetings. Alexa customers will also get a similar experience.

Echo Show devices that have been synced with your calendar will be able to automatically start meetings without requiring users to manually input a meeting ID or password, and it'll support Alexa voice controls too. Amazon's rollout will start later this year. year beginning with the Echo Show 8. It's a big expansion for Zoom, which has recently started to branch out into its own licensed video conferencing hardware, and smart displays with their high-quality directional microphones and built-in touchscreens are practically designed to be good video conferencing devices. The new Zoom integration is a big deal for Google, Amazon, and Facebook,

too, given that all three of these companies have almost exclusively stuck to their own in-house video chatting solutions, like Google Meet and Facebook Messenger on their smart displays. The portal will be the first to get Zoom with a rollout planned for this September, end quote. Yeah, that's why I said I'm so surprised by this. Obviously, this is a great deal for Zoom. These devices are frigging custom made for Zoom meetings. And for Zoom to be on every platform under the sun, that's undoubtedly awesome for them. But why would Google and Facebook especially want to cede the video conferencing field to Zoom?

I mean, this is basically doing that, right? This basically ensures that Zoom becomes the brand name for video calls, right? Everyone will just be saying, hey, Zoom me. The same way that Band-Aid and Kleenex and Google are brand names synonymous with products or activities, right? Why would the other guys allow this? Doesn't Google want its Google Meat standard to win? Those annoying pop-ups in my Gmail certainly seem to suggest they do. As for Facebook, they're basically throwing the barn doors wide open because they also announced this morning

that the Facebook portal would be getting native support for WebEx, Blue Jeans, and go to meeting alongside Zoom. But then again, maybe all that matters to Facebook is getting inside your house to begin slurping up all that sweet, sweet personal data to sell on to God knows who. See the previous segment. I think I teed this up almost exactly earlier this week. President Trump this morning expressed support for Oracle's TikTok bid, quoting the Wall Street Journal. Oracle has closer ties to the White House than most other parties involved in the bidding. Larry Ellison, the company's co-founder, chairman, and largest shareholder, earlier this year threw a fundraiser at his house for the president.

Chief Executive Safra Katz also worked on the executive committee for the Trump transition team in 2016. Asked Tuesday if Oracle would be a good buyer for TikTok, President Trump said, quote, well, I think Oracle is a great company, and I think its owner is a tremendous guy, a tremendous person. I think that Oracle would be certainly somebody that could handle it, end quote. Netflix wants to give you some of that early 2000's iPod era goodness because it is testing a feature it is calling shuffle play, which will randomly play a show you're watching, something you've put on a list,

or a title similar to stuff you've watched previously. In other words, Netflix has finally gotten around to programming mindless channel flipping. Or maybe the analogy here is Google's old, feeling lucky button. I don't know. Can't quite settle on a software metaphor here. Quoting TechCrunch, don't know what you're in the mood to watch. Netflix's new shuffle feature could help. The company confirms it's currently testing a feature that puts a big button labeled shuffle play right on the Netflix home screen beneath your user profile icon. When pressed, Netflix will randomly play content it thinks you'll like. This could be a movie or show you're

currently watching, something that you've saved to your list or a title that's similar to something you've already watched, the company says. The new button is currently showing up on the Netflix app for TV devices, much to many users' surprise. The company tells TechCrunch the idea behind the feature is to help its members quickly and easily find content that's tailored to their tastes. This is a challenge Netflix has addressed over the years through a variety of features and tests like screensavers on its TV apps, pre-roll videos, and even promotional content showcased on the home screen. Ultimately, the company wants the experience of using Netflix to feel more like watching traditional TV,

meaning you can just turn it on and something starts playing. Of course, that's also what gave us the annoying autoplay feature, which Netflix finally allowed users to disable with an update earlier this year. The company said it started to roll out this newest test to members worldwide last month and only on TV devices. Netflix has yet to make a decision about if or when it will launch a shuffle feature publicly as it needs to first collect feedback from each different test and compare the results, end quote. And speaking of early 2000's nostalgia, BlackBerry phones are back again, I think.

Right now it's looking like they're coming back next year, 2021, and they'll be picking up 5G, and the only thing you need to hear if you're a true Blackberry stand, it seems like, yes, whatever the new device ends up being, it will have a physical keyboard. You might remember that TCL parted ways with Blackberry, and we wondered at the time if that was all she wrote for the storied Blackberry brand. Well, quoting 9 to 5 Google, the once king of QWERTY smartphones is set to return to European and North American markets

at some point in 2021, thanks to a licensing partnership with Onward Mobility and FIH Mobile Limited. BlackBerry has granted the teams the right to develop, engineer, and produce a new 5G-enabled BlackBray-branded mobile device. Notice device solo rather than a series of devices, as we're not sure if this partnership will extend beyond

one piece of smartphone hardware. Given that there is still an admittedly very small market for Android devices with physical keyboards, this might be fantastic news for some of you out there clamoring for a device to replace an aging Blackberry. However, onward mobility provided no further information on the project or any potential hardware. Given just how difficult a time that Blackberry faced in recent years, it's a strange move, but one that will be welcomed by the hardcore fan base.

It's also impressive just how hard it has been to fully kill off the brand. just when you think Blackberry smartphones are finally dead, it rises from the grave very much like a mid-2000s Undertaker, seem to just in time for WrestleMania every single year, end quote. Long time listeners to this podcast know that Tim Wu is someone that I listen to whenever he has something important to say about tech. His book, The Master Switch, which I'll link to in the show notes if you're interested, is one of the foundational books that you have to have read if you even want to begin understanding the modern, tech industry. So when Tim had an opinion piece yesterday in the New York Times about the whole U.S.-China tech war, I stood up and took notice for a bunch of reasons, not the least of which being, this is an issue that I haven't formed a concrete opinion on myself yet. In essence, Tim wrote that a ban on TikTok is, in fact, long overdue in his opinion, as the U.S. should

confront China's asymmetrical net nationalism and fight for the future of the open internet. quoteing Tim Wu. Behind the TikTok controversy is an important struggle between two dueling visions of the internet. The first is an older vision. The idea that the internet should, in a neutral fashion, connect everyone and that blocking and censorship of sites by nation states should be rare and justified by more than the will of the ruler. The second and newer vision, of which China has been the leading exponent, is net nationalism, which views the country's internet primarily as a tool of state power. economic growth, surveillance, and thought control from this perspective are the Internet's most important functions. Though China is the pioneer of net nationalism, it is on the rise elsewhere,

particularly in nations like Saudi Arabia and Iran, and more recently Turkey and India. For many years, laboring under the vain expectation that China, succumbing to inexorable world historical forces, would become more like us. Western democracies have allowed China to exploit this situation. We have accepted, with only muted complaints, Chinese censors, and blocking of content from abroad, while allowing Chinese companies to explore and exploit whatever markets it likes. Few foreign companies are allowed to reach Chinese citizens with ideas or services, but the world is fully open to China's online companies. From China's perspective, the asymmetry has been a bonanza that has served economic as well as political goals. While China

does have great engineers, European nations overrun by American tech companies must be jealous of the thriving tech industry that China has built in the absence of serious. foreign competition aided by the theft of trade secrets. At the same time, China has managed, to an extent many believed impossible, to use the internet to suppress any nascent political opposition and ceaselessly promote its ruling party. The idealists who thought the internet would automatically create democracy in China were wrong. Some think that it is a tragic mistake for the United States to violate the principles of internet openness that were pioneered in this country. But there is also such a thing as being a sucker. If China refuses to follow the rule,

of the open internet, why continue to give it access to internet markets around the world? End quote. Wu concludes by saying this, quote. The idealists of the 1990s and early 2000s believe that building a universal network, a kind of digital cosmopolitanism, would lead to world peace and harmony. No one buys that fantasy any longer. But if we want decency and openness to survive on the internet, surely a more attainable goal, the nations that hold such values need to begin fighting to protect them.

quote. Finally today, two more quick data points from the modern COVID era in tech. According to Benedict Evans, e-commerce penetration in the UK went from 20% to over 30% in the past two months alone. In the U.S., e-commerce went from 17% of sales to 22% of sales in the same period of time. This spike partly reflects a shift in the denominator. Digital increased, while sales at most physical retail declined except for groceries. This effect was much stronger in the UK, where lockdown was much deeper. Even so, absolute U.S. e-commerce sales rose 32% in Q2. Interestingly, though, Absolute UK e-commerce has continued to accelerate even as the lockdown has eased. The UK's monthly e-commerce numbers make this visible, where the quarterly U.S.

reporting makes it harder to tell, end quote. Check the link to the piece in the show notes for some juicy graph goodness. And on the similar angle of COVID accelerating the dominance of tech overall, with the stock market reaching new all-time highs yesterday, the stocks of Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Facebook rose a combined 37% in the first seven months of 2020, while all the other S&P 500 stocks fell a collective 6%, quoting the New York Times. Those five companies now constitute 20% of the stock market's total worth, a level not seen in a single industry in at least 70 years. Apple's stock market value, the highest of the bunch, is nearly $2 trillion, double what it was just 21 weeks ago, end quote. Well, by the by, right before I stuck my head in the booth to speak these words into your head, Apple did indeed pass a $2 trillion market cap for the very first time.

Speaking of Facebook portal, my second one is being delivered just this afternoon. I've got the TV one in the living room, and now we're going to have one coming for the kitchen. Don't know if that... Don't know if you heard my wife just say what in the background. What can I tell you? It's the easiest way to chat with my folks and the kids. And now Zoom meetings, too. Maybe I'm dumb.

I don't know. Talk to you tomorrow.