Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 10/03 - Presidential Alert - No Action Is Needed

Episode Date: October 3, 2018

Highlights from the Microsoft Surface event, Uber launches its scooter play, streaming service fatigue might be pushing consumers back toward piracy, did you get your smartphone alert from the president, and the new app startup from a young entrepreneur by the name of Bill Gates.  Links: Microsoft has unveiled the $3,499 Surface Studio 2, its super-powerful and gorgeous new competitor to the Apple iMac (Business Insider) Facebook Hack Puts Thousands of Other Sites at Risk (NYTimes) Facebook Login Update (Facebook Newsroom) Facebook Briefs Lawmakers on Breach in Effort to Guard Against Backlash (WSJ) GM and Honda will team up to build an autonomous car (Quartz) First presidential wireless test alert will come to your phone today (Axios) The Rise of Netflix Competitors Has Pushed Consumers Back Toward Piracy (Motherboard) Recommendations startup Likewise emerges from Bill Gates’ private office, letting friends track and share their favorite things (GeekWire) 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, October 3, 2018. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, highlights from that Microsoft Surface event from yesterday.

Uber launches its scooter play. Streaming service fatigue might be pushing customers back towards piracy. Did you get your smartphone alert from the president this afternoon? And the new app startup from a young entrepreneur by the name of Bill Gates. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. As promised, here is everything that was unveiled at yesterday afternoon's Microsoft Surface event. First up, the Surface Pro 6 was announced sporting Intel's eighth generation chips. It reported 13 and a half hour battery life.

The new device is reportedly 67% faster than its predecessor, and it will be available October 16th, starting at $899. Oh, and the tablet laptop hybrid gets a new matte black color variant, the first time in the five years Microsoft has gone black. But much to many people's consternation, there are no USB ports on these new surface devices. So we're somehow now in a universe where people are upset if they don't get USBC. There was also a new Surface laptop two, also with a black finish, and also with the Intel 8th gen chips. Claims of a 85% speed improvement, also coming October 16th, starting at $999 for the 8 gigabytes of RAM. model. And the sort of desktop all in one converts to a drafting sort of surface. Surface Studio

2 was announced. It got 50% faster graphics, a 28-inch display that's 38% brighter. But this Surface Studio 2 is coming November 15th, and it is starting at $3,49. Though it's maybe this last one, the Surface Studio 2 that is the biggest news from yesterday's event, because that original Surface Studio was something of a surprise hit, apparently, even to Microsoft itself. By the way, there is now the Surface All Access program, which will allow customers to purchase any Surface device over a 24-month period, and comes with free Office 365 and in-store tech support. So going after that recurring revenue again, what else?

There is now app mirroring, which will let you use any Android app on Windows 10. It will show up in Windows in that your phone app that they've been touting. The early reports are it seems to work best with Android for now, though Microsoft did announce the ability to transfer web pages from an iPhone to a Windows 10 desktop. So even if Microsoft has finally thrown in the towel on Windows mobile, they're really pushing hard for seamless integration of whatever phone you have with the Windows platform. And finally, the big surprise yesterday, Microsoft unveiled noise-canceling surface headphones with up to 15 hours of battery life,

dial controls on each earcup, and of course support for Cortana. So Microsoft is in the wearables game. Coming to the U.S. later this year for $350. And quick PS on Microsoft Windows news. The Windows 10 October 2018 update began rolling out yesterday. October 2018 represents the OS's sixth upgrade so far, as we've said recently, Microsoft is pushing hard to make Windows more of a SaaS thing,

with regular updates rolling out as opposed to flagship new releases. This October 2018 update includes a dark theme for File Explorer, a cloud-based clipboard, greater integrations with that Your Phone app, fast sign-in features, a more robust game bar, and a bunch of other things. So if you're on Windows, look for that in your Windows Update section. Yesterday, Mike Isaac and Kate Conger had a big piece up in the New York Times about last week's big Facebook hack saying that because it compromised Facebook's Facebook Connect login system, this hack potentially put thousands of other apps and services at risk of being compromised. For example, Tinder uses Facebook Connect for login and account purposes. quote, Tinder, the dating app has found no evidence that accounts have been breached based on the limited information Facebook has provided Justine Sacco, a spokeswoman, for Tinder, and its parent company the Match Group said in a statement, Tinder as well as other Match Group apps rely on Facebook Connect as a method of logging in, end quote.

Well, in a blog post, Facebook says it has found zero evidence, at least so far, that hackers accessed connected third-party apps, and it wants to be. to help concerned third-party partners. Look into this. Quote, any developer using our official Facebook SDKs and all those that have regularly checked the validity of their user's access tokens were automatically protected when we reset people's access tokens. However, out of an abundance of caution,

as some developers may not use our SDKs or regularly check whether Facebook access tokens are valid, we're building a tool to enable developers to manually identify the users of their apps who may have been affected, so that they can log them out, end quote. So that's good, fingers crossed. It looks like this breach has not, at least so far,

led to a contagion across the entire web. But what I think we're all very interested and still waiting to find out about is who Facebook thinks was behind this breach. No word on that yet. The Wall Street Journal was reporting late this morning that Facebook briefed Homeland Security officials and select members of Congress on the breach late last week. In an onstage interview Monday with the Wall Street Journal as a part of Advertising Week in New York City, Facebook's Vice President of Global Marketing Solutions, Carolyn Everson compared the hackers to an, quote, odorless, weightless intruder that walked in that the company could detect only once they made a certain move, end quote.

Uber has officially launched its first electric scooter service by yesterday deploying Jump Scooters in Santa Monica, California. Jump is the bike share startup that Uber acquired earlier this year. The scooters are branded as Jump for the sake of consistency, Uber says, although it remains unclear to me if you can dial up these scooters on the Uber app itself or if you have to use the Jump app. Either way, through October 7, you can ride these scooters for free. After October 7th, the price is $1 to unlock a scooter and 15 cents per minute after the first five minutes of riding.

Before you ride, you also have to take a photo of your driver's license, and at the end of each ride, you have to take a photo of where you left the scooter. GM and Honda today announced that they are partnering up to develop autonomous vehicles. Honda will be investing $750 million in GM's cruise automation subsidiary and kicking in $2 billion towards the development of said autonomous vehicles. So along with the recent investment from SoftBank, that values cruise animation at $14.6 billion. As many pointed out on Twitter, there is now a whole tangled web of alliances between the incumbent car companies to create driverless cars. If any of these platforms actually succeeds, it will be difficult to figure out who the big winners actually are in the end. And note this graph from Quartz. Quote, GM said it hopes to.

to deploy fleets of self-driving cars onto city streets in 2019, but the company was not able to offer more specifics except to say they would wait for the, quote, right level of safety performance, end quote. So, U.S. listeners, did you get an alert on your smartphone today from the president? Here's what that was all about. Back in 2006, President George W. Bush authorized presidential alerts to phones as a part of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System.

Think of this as taking the country's broadcast emergency alert system that is sent to radio and TV channels and updating it for the 21st century. These alerts are sent to all U.S. wireless customers, and unlike for Amber Alerts, for missing children, and for alerts for dangerous events like natural disasters, you cannot turn these presidential alerts off. What would be the use case for this special alert,

which can only be authorized to be sent by the president. In a release by the Federal Communications Commission and FEMA, it is described like this. In the event of a national emergency, a presidential WEA alert would be issued at the direction of the president and or his or her designee and activated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, end quote. So some people are worried that this president might use this service to broadcast political messages. But apparently it is enshrined into the law that that is not possible. In a briefing with reporters, FEMA's Antoine Johnson said, You would not have a situation where any sitting president would just wake up one morning

and attempt to send a personal message. The system is very well governed and rooted in law in terms of its intended use, end quote. I'll allow you to write your own jokes about presidential tweeting here. Amazon today announced a new fire TV stick for, which as the name implies comes with 4K streaming video also Dolby Atmos and hdr 10 plus support all for $50 and available for pre-order today but shipping october 31st this device will ship with the new alexa voice remote which amazon notes will soon be bringing voice control to other streaming apps including amc HBO now and sony crackle this device is notable because until now 4k video was only available on the higher-end fire TV devices. Now it's available for the most affordable fire thinging you can buy. And also, by the way, if you just want that fancy new Alexa voice remote,

you can buy that remote separately for $30 with the same shipping date as the Fire TV Stick 4K. So, happy Halloween. Somehow we've ended up talking a lot about the streaming video wars this week. And Motherboard has an interesting piece up that looks. at a knock-on effect of all this streaming video activity, apparently BitTorrent usage has been bouncing back into popularity just a bit. Why? Because there are so many streaming services out there,

it can be difficult to figure out where to go to find what you want to watch. In short, because everyone and their mother is trying to compete with Netflix, consumers might be driven back into the loving arms of piracy. Quote, Sandvine's new global internet phenomena report offers some interesting insight into user video habits and the internet, such as the fact that more than 50% of internet traffic is now encrypted. Video now accounts for 58% of all global traffic, and Netflix alone now compromises 15% of all internet downstream data consumed. But there's another interesting tidbit buried in the firm's report. After years of steady decline, bit torrent usage is once again growing, end quote.

According to Sanvine, file-sharing services of which 97% is done via BitTorrent account for 3% of global downstream internet traffic and 22% of upstream traffic. Sanvine says that back in 2011, BitTorrent accounted for 52% of all upstream traffic on broadband networks in North America. That number then dipped down to just 26% by 2015 as Netflix streaming took off. But now, BitTorrent traffic is inching upwards again, especially in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, where BitTorrent now accounts for 32% of upstream network traffic. Quote, more sources than ever are producing exclusive content available on a single streaming or broadcast service.

Think Game of Thrones for HBO, House of Cards for Netflix, The Handmaid's Tale for Hulu or Jack Ryan for Amazon, Sandvines, Cam Collins said in a blog post, To get access to all these services, it gets very expensive for a consumer, so they subscribe to one or two, and pirate the rest, Colin said. Finally, today let me tell you about this cool new app startup that is partially created and funded by checking notes here, Bill Gates. Likewise is a social recommendations app that you can get on iOS and Android for free. It lets you track and share your favorite things with your friends. Quote,

Likewise is the brainchild of Larry Cohen, the former Microsoft Communications Chief, who is now CEO of Gates's private office. It's a way of remembering and finding recommendations for restaurants, TV shows, movies, books, and more, primarily from friends, but also from in-house experts, with the ability to follow other users and their lists of favorites, end quote. So this app was cooked up inside Bill Gates' private office,

and Bill is the sole investor right now, although it's not being developed under the umbrella of any existing Gates organizations. Quote, Cohen, a veteran of companies including Claris, Apple, and Collabra software, came up with the idea for likewise after noticing how often conversations with his friends turned to recommendations for shows, restaurants, or movies. But he wasn't satisfied with any existing apps or mechanisms to collect and share those ideas. Even high-level interactions demonstrated the need for such an app. Cohen recalled former President Barack Obama pulling Gates aside to recommend a favorite TV show, The Nick. In addition to his well-known love of books, Gates is a big TV fan with recent favorites, including the Netflix series Narcos. Cohen brought the idea for the app to Gates, who was hooked. He jumps up from his chair and he starts talking and he really gets into it, Cohen recalled,

describing a classic scene for anyone who has worked closely with the Microsoft co-founder, end quote. apparently likewise uses a follower structure like Twitter and allows you to make lists in the same way that you might make Pinterest boards and it's pure recommendations not a ratings app or any sort of five-star like system such as say Yelp so huh an app about sharing your favorite things makes you wonder why they didn't bring Oprah in on this I guess there's still time to do so As you heard in the first half of the show, we had another ad from fellow listeners today. If you're a listener, and obviously you are, because you're hearing the sound of my voice, if you're a listener and you want to slot in an ad for something you're working on,

you can always get in touch with me over at the email address podcast at techmeme.com. So far, the ads that listeners have bought have been quite successful for, I think, all of them. One of the listener sponsors got in touch and said they landed a contract, thanks to their ad that will go a long way to making their year. And on Twitter, I saw at least one listener who took advantage of that tech conference that we got special tickets for. Sponsoring the show is relatively affordable around $500 for one read, and you don't have to be a big company to buy one either. In fact, that's the point of this.

I like the idea of helping smaller devs and organizations spread the word to the most engaged 20,000 or so tech nerds in the podcast universe. That's you guys. So basically, if you're working on something that you'd like to be. like to promote, that you'd probably promote on something like product hunt, why not promote it on the pod? Thanks to all of you who have bought an ad. And thanks to all of you, as always, for listening.