Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 09/04 - A Phone to Save You From The Internet?

Episode Date: September 4, 2019

Google gets a fine and is about to be investigated by all the states, Android 10 is here, a $14k gaming chair is here, a slew of new Fire TV devices are here, and the Light Phone 2 wants to save you from the Internet. Sponsors: Supercast.com WeWorkRemotely.com Links: YouTube will pay $170 million to settle claims it violated child privacy laws (CNBC) Google emerges as target of a new state attorneys general antitrust probe (Washington Post) Google’s paid search ads are a ‘shakedown,’ Basecamp CEO says (CNBC) Android 10 launches today, and Pixel phones get the day one update (Ars Technica) An Update About Face Recognition on Facebook (Facebook Newsroom) Acer announces a $14,000 gaming chair because why not (TechCrunch) Amazon unveils a new Fire TV Cube, soundbar, and over a dozen Fire TV Edition products (TechCrunch) Amazon tests Whole Foods payment system that uses hands as ID (New York Post) The Light Phone 2 Wants to Save You From the Internet (Gizmodo) 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. September 4th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough.

Yes. Yesterday I said it was Monday, when it was, in fact, Tuesday. Sorry about that. Today, Google gets a fine and is about to be investigated by all the states. Android 10 is here. A $14,000 gaming chair is here. A slew of new fire TV devices are here. And the light phone, too, is here to save you from the internet.

Here's what you miss today in the world of. of tech. A whole bunch of Google news today, so I'm going to try to cram as much in here as possible. First, Google will be paying a $170 million fine to the FTC and the New York Attorney General to settle claims that it violated child privacy laws with YouTube. The settlement announced Wednesday was passed on a three to two vote right along party lines. The two Democrats voted against saying that the settlement didn't go far enough in terms of punishing you. YouTube. The FTC alleged that YouTube violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, Kappa, Kopa? Anyway, this is the largest amount the FTC has ever obtained from a Kappa case.

In the more than 20 years, the law has been in existence. Quoting CNBC, Google and YouTube knowingly and illegally monitored tracked and served targeted ads to young children just to keep advertising dollars rolling in. New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement following the announcement, quote, these companies put children at risk and abused their power, which is why we are imposing major reforms to their practices and making them pay one of the largest settlements for a privacy matter in U.S. history, end quote. YouTube marketed itself to Mattel and Hasbro as the, quote, leader in reaching children ages 6 to 11, the ruling found. Yet in one instance, the company told in advertising company that it did not have users younger than 13 on its platform and therefore

channels on its platform did not need to comply with Kappa, end quote. In addition to that story, sources are telling the Washington Post that more than half of the state's attorneys general in the United States are preparing an antitrust investigation into Google scheduled to be announced September 9th. Quote, it is unclear whether some or all of the attorneys general also plan to open or announce additional probes into other tech giants, including Amazon and Facebook, which have faced similar U.S. antitrust scrutiny. The state's effort is expected to be bipartisan and could include more than 30 attorneys general, one of the people said, end quote. Well, what are the sorts of things people are upset with Google about? What sort of antitrust

concerns? Maybe it's things like this. If you've ever bought ads on Google, you know that you end up buying ads for your own brand name because if you don't, competitors will buy ads against your brand, and especially in this day and age of mobile, that means your own brand or website or whatever could be really hard to find unless you pay for those ads yourself, which is very annoying. In a tweet that went viral, the CEO of Basecamp, Jason Freide, said this, quote, when Google puts four paid ads ahead of the first organic result for your own brand name, you're forced to pay up if you want to be found. It's a shakedown. It's ransom, end quote. Quoting CNBC. In an interview with CNBC, Fryde said the company hadn't previously advertised on Google,

but started doing so since Base Camp would sometimes show up fifth in search results under advertisements, quote, even though we're the first organic result. And it's our brand. brand, end quote. For instance, when searching for base camp on Google, a user might see an ad for Monday.com positioning itself as a base camp alternative. Monday.com didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. This practice called conquesting is a common way for brands to show up when potential customers search for a competitor and is common on many different platforms other than Google. For instance, if you search for one brand on Amazon, you might see a slew of products from other brands before you find what you were searching for, end quote.

But as Adam Conover tweeted, quote, This is what monopolies do. Extract unnecessary fees from everyone in the market, increasing the cost of doing business for even the smallest companies, break them up, end quote. And no less a luminary in the tech world than Bill Gurley tweeted, quote, I have always wondered if this is legal.

Also wondered why all the companies in the world didn't come together to stop this, clearly a shakedown. Because of this, I wonder if a compelling, following search engine committed to only write rail ads that, one, they could take significant share, and two, they could still have a very large business. Would love to see Microsoft spin out Bing with this mandate, very hard for Google to respond, end quote. Yes, Bill is not alone having that thought. I think I made a similar point on this show once upon a time. And lots of people in Silicon Valley have been eyeing Google's nearly $30 billion a year in search revenue, thinking,

If I had a business that only did one-seventh of that, that would still be a pretty amazing business. Quoting Nilai Patel, this is the problem with having a monopoly. Google should be allowed to crap up its search pages however it wants and then suffer whatever consequences. But absent meaningful competition, there's nowhere else to go. So it's just extortion, end quote. And p.S. Android 10 launched today with the update available on all pixel phones. quoting Ars Technica. Android 10 brings a number of changes to the world's most popular mobile operating system. First up, devices are getting fully gestural navigation, which lets you navigate

around the phone with swipe gestures. Just like the implementation on the iPhone 10, gesture navigation removes the need for a dedicated space for navigation buttons, allowing for more space for app content. There's finally full support for a dark theme, which will turn the entire system UI and any supported apps from the usual, black text on white background to a white text on black background. That option significantly reduces the amount of light a phone puts out and saves battery life on OLED displays. Google has also promised dark mode support for all of the Google apps in time for Android 10's launch, so we should be seeing updates to Gmail, Google Play, Google Maps, and a million other Google apps sometimes

soon, end quote. Facebook says its facial recognition tech will no longer automatically identify new users in their photos by default, and all users can now opt out of facial recognition in photos via a face recognition setting. Quote, people who still have the tag suggestions setting will begin to see a notice in their news feed today. The notice will include information about the new features and options to learn more about how we use face recognition, along with a button to turn it on or keep it off. If you do not currently have the face recognition settings and do nothing, we will not use

face recognition to recognize you or suggest tags. In addition, features like photo review, which lets you know when you appear in photos, even if you are not tagged, as long as you have permission to see the post based on its privacy settings will not be activated. People will still be able to manually tag friends, but we won't suggest you to be tagged if you do not have face recognition turned on. If you already have the face recognition setting, you won't receive a notice, end quote. Acer has announced a $14,000 gaming chair because, as TechCrunch puts it, because why not? Quote, the predator Thronos Air is a massive steel structure that encases gamers in an immersive experience.

There are three monitor mounts, an adjustable keyboard and mouse tray, a footrest, and a complex cable management system to hide all the wires connecting everything together. If that's not enough, Acer has several available accessories like a customer. cup holder, cameras, and hubs. The only thing missing are the gaming computer, monitors, keyboards, and, well, you. This is Acer's second gaming chair, and this one is half the price of the original. Announced at IFA 2018, the $30,000 Predator Thrones gaming chair packs even more goodies, including a powered recline mode to tilt the entire rig 140 degrees. This version requires a ground floor location and a floor that can support 715 pounds, end quote. In the strongest sign yet that they are making a bid to compete with Roku and others,

also at IFA 2019 today, Amazon announced over 20 Fire TV branded devices, including a new Fire TV cube, and an anchor-made soundbar. This comes after Roku has found considerable success putting its Roku OS on a whole galaxy of TV sets manufactured by partners. The Amazon Fire TV edition lineup now includes similar partners such as Skyworth, Arklink, TPV, and Compal, and getting into the soundbar game also follows Roku's similar move into home audio, quoting Sarah Perez and TechCrunch. Of the new devices, the new Fire TV cube is one of the more interesting additions to the lineup,

as it represents the second generation and a big upgrade over the existing product. The device offers a hands-free fire TV experience and has become, the testing ground for many FireTV software enhancements before they roll out to the wider product lineup. The updated Fire TV cube now includes a faster hexacore processor that's twice as powerful as the one that shipped in the first generation device. It provides instant access to Dolby Vision and 4K Ultra HD content. Amazon claims add up to 60 frames per second. The new cube also includes on-device processing with local voice control, which lets you more quickly execute some of your common voice commands like Alexa Go Home or Alexa Scroll Right, for example.

These commands will now execute up to four times faster, says Amazon. The Fire TV Cube will also ship with far-field voice recognition capabilities with eight microphones and technology that helps to suppress noise, reverberation, content currently playing, and even competing speech. So Alexa better hears your voice commands, even while the TV is on in a room full of people. Customers will be able to control their compatible TV soundbar, AV receiver, cable or satellite box as well as other smart home devices by way of the devices, support of multidirectional infrared technology, cloud-based protocols, and HDMI CEC combined with Alexa, end quote.

And sources are telling the New York Post that Amazon is also testing a biometric payment system that would be able to identify and charge users by scanning their hands. The high-tech sensors are different from fingerprint scanners found on devices like the iPhone, and don't require users to physically touch their hands to the scanning surface. Instead, they use computer vision and depth geometry to process and identify the shape and size of each hand they scan before charging a credit card on file. The system, codenamed Orville, will allow customers with Amazon Prime accounts to scan their hands at the store and link them to their credit or debit card.

It's accurate to within one-tenths of one percent, but Amazon engineers are scrambling to improve it to a millionth of one percent. ahead of its launch, the source said. Amazon hopes to introduce the tech to a handful of its Whole Foods stores by the beginning of next year and to eventually expand the super fast checkout tech to all U.S. locations. The pace of the rollout will depend on how quickly Whole Foods is able to install it and train employees on how to use it, sources said, end quote. Finally today, there's a new phone option out there.

It's called the Light Phone 2, and it's a $350 stripped down feature phone. with an e-ink display that basically wants to keep you connected without making you feel like you're completely addicted to data, to notifications, to the internet, to apps, to your phone. Basically, as Gizmoto puts it, the Lightphone 2 wants to save you from the internet without forcing you to unplug from the internet completely. Quote, the Lightphone 2 shares the same design principles as its predecessor, featuring an ultra-minimalist appearance both inside and out.

It's only slightly smaller than a deck of cards, and aside from a few buttons for volume, menu, and power, the Lightphone 2's only distinguishing exterior characteristic is its 2.8-inch e-ink touchscreen. Meanwhile, on the inside, the Lightphone 2's custom LightOS is just as Spartan. Unlocking the phone brings you immediately to a log of your recent calls and messages, while pressing the menu button presents a total of three functions, phone, alarm, and settings. That's it, at least to start. By removing the ability to install more apps, the Lightphone too hopes that you'll spend more time focusing on the real world instead of constantly checking your emails or who liked your latest post on Instagram.

However, for a device that's supposed to be a true replacement for your typical smartphone, the Light team knows making calls and setting alarms isn't really enough. So after the phone's official launch today, there are plans to add features such as mapping, ride share apps, music playback, hotspot tethering, and a few more by the end of the year, end quote. With feature creep like that, and I'm not using the term feature creep in a pejorative way, I can see a potential future where you'd have just enough for the phone to actually be fully useful without again becoming totally overwhelming. In other words, potentially compelling. The light phone never wants to have email or internet browser or Instagram on it. But if they can work with folks like Lyft and Uber or Google Maps or Spotify to do all the useful things your phone does without the distracting things your phone does, then yeah, would consider this for myself for sure. That is all for today.

I will not be talking to you tomorrow because I will be heading to the fireside conference up in the wilds of Ontario tomorrow. The great Glenn Fleischman will be filling in. And I should be back with you on Friday. should. The whole idea is to record the show from the conference on Friday, but then the whole idea of the conference is to unplug. No cell signal, no internet. So one of these two concepts can't completely win out. Supposedly, I will have access to some sort of satellite internet to be able to upload a show. If not, you'll be hearing from Glenn again on Friday. But let's see how it goes. Talk to you when I talk to you.