Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 10/09 - Where Would We Be Without Lithium-Ion Batteries?

Episode Date: October 9, 2019

Twitter used your 2-Factor credentials to sell ads against you, the China/Hong Kong/tech controversies roll on, Mark Zuckerberg is going back to Washington, and the Nobel Prize for chemistry gives long overdue recognition to the most important technology innovation of our time. Sponsors: Today In Digital Marketing Podcast Castro Leap.FidelityCareers.com Links: Twitter says it unintentionally misused user data for advertising (Axios) Twitter says phone numbers users provided for security were ‘inadvertently’ used for ad purposes (The Washington Post) 'Protecting rioters': China warns Apple over app that tracks Hong Kong police (The Guardian) 'Call of Duty: Mobile' smashes records with 100 million downloads in first week (Reuters) Kuo: New iPad Pro and iPhone SE 2 in early 2020, followed by Apple AR headset collaboration with ‘third-party brands’ (9to5Mac) Mark Zuckerberg to testify before Congress on Facebook’s libra cryptocurrency (CNBC) Postmates’ new IPO delay says something bigger: Wall Street is turning against Silicon Valley (Recode) Smart fitness device Mirror launches one-on-one personal training (CNET) Nobel prize in chemistry awarded for work on lithium-ion batteries (The Guardian) 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, October 9th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough today. Twitter used your two-factor credentials to sell ads against you, the China, Hong Kong, tech controversies roll on. Mark Zuckerberg is going back to Washington, and the Nobel Prize

for Chemistry gives long overdue recognition to the most important technology innovation of our time. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Twitter says it unintentionally used some user email addresses and phone numbers, which users provided for security purposes, for things like two-factor authentication, for ad targeting. Twitter wrote in a blog post, quote, we recently discovered that when you provided an email address or phone number for safety or security purposes, for example, two-factor authentication, this data may have inadvertently been used for advertising purposes, specifically in our tailored audiences and partner audiences advertising system. We cannot say with certainty how many

people were impacted by this, but in an effort to be transparent, we wanted to make everyone aware. No personal data was ever shared externally with our partners or any other third parties. As of September 17th, we have addressed the issue that allowed this to occur and are no longer using phone numbers or email addresses collected for safety or security purposes for advertising, end quote. Worth noting that it was a mistake just like this that ended up comprising a major part of the FTC complaint that resulted in Facebook paying a $5 billion fine. And as Tony Rahm points out in the Washington Post, Twitter has priors with the FTC.

Quote, adding to Twitter's potential troubles, the company finalized an agreement with the FTC in 2011 that alleged the company failed to protect users from security threats. The resulting settlement requires the company to maintain comprehensive data security policies and refrain from misrepresenting the way it handles and protects users' data. of which could carry fines. Quote, given that Facebook got dinged for this exact practice, I think it likely meets the threshold of material omission or even deception under Section 5 on its own, said Ashken Sultani, a former chief technologist at the FTC, citing the portion of law that prohibits

unfair or deceptive acts and practices. Quote, that's further compounded by the fact that Twitter is also under order already by the FTC, end quote. So again, remember that app that was taken down from the app store, which let people in Hong Kong keep track of protests and police actions, which was later reinstated by Apple. Well, it continues to be an issue. Chinese state media has warned Apple saying that Apple's approval of the app made Apple into a, quote, accomplice in the protests. Quoting The Guardian, the headline of the People's Daily Commentary, carried by its official micro blog on Wednesday said, quote,

Protecting Rioters, has Apple thought clearly about this? End quote. It went on to say, quote, allowing the poisonous app to flourish is a betrayal of the Chinese people's feelings, end quote. The HKMap Live is reportedly the most downloaded app under the travel category in the iOS App Store for Hong Kong. Without specifically naming the app, the People's Daily commentary said it allowed, quote, Hong Kong rioters to openly commit crime while openly escaping arrests, end quote.

It said Apple's approval of the app made it an accomplice in the protest because it, quote, blatantly protects and endorses the rioters, end quote. It questioned what the company's intentions were. It also criticized Apple for allowing glory to Hong Kong, an unofficial anthem frequently sung by protesters during the ongoing anti-government movement, to be available for download in the Apple Music Store. In what appears to be a threat to its access to the vast market in China, the commentary said Apple's, quote, mixing of political, commercial, and illegal activities is unwise and imprudent and would only draw more turbulence, end quote, for the company, end quote. As someone on Twitter said this morning, this week has been a wake-up call for all globally focused businesses. If you haven't had a China strategy before, in a different sense of how.

how we're used to using that phrase, it's time to get one. But especially if you're a tech platform, as Peter Dahlin tweeted, quote, China is now attacking Apple Music site for allowing an unpatriotic song. Next, Spotify, YouTube, etc. We'll need to remove any songs not approved by the Chinese Communist Party, end quote. And the backlash against Blizzard's decision to ban a player over Hong Kong pro-democracy comments continues with some fans boycotting blizzards games like world of warcraft, Overwatch and hearthstone, and flooding the zone with memes galore.

Quoting BuzzFeed, social media and forums like Reddit are now being taken over by pro-boycott memes and promises from players that they're done with the company. Over at Blizzard's campus in Irvine, California, there's also signs that employees are not happy with Chung's punishment. There's a statue on the grounds with the phrase, every voice matters that has been covered with paper. Among the people boycotting Blizzard are people who've worked on their games. Mark Kern, a developer who worked as a team lead for World of Warcraft, tweeted screenshots of himself canceling his subscription, end quote.

Click through to the BuzzFeed article in the show notes for a sampling of the memes. This all got started because we presume of Chinese company Tencent's 4.9% stake in Activision Blizzard. So in a related story, according to Censor Tower, there was a record-breaking game launch recently, Tencent's Call of Duty Mobile, which had 100 million downloads in its first week of release, breaking the prior record of 26 million set by Player Unknown's Battlegrounds. Quote, this is by far the largest mobile game launch in history in terms of the player base that's been built in the first week, said Randy Nelson, head of mobile insights at Censor Tower. Call of Duty Mobile was launched by its publisher Activision Blizzard on October 1st, and Censor Tower

said the numbers reflected worldwide unique downloads across Apple's App Store and Google Play in the period since, end quote. Censor Tower also says that Call of Duty Mobile has thus far generated 17.7 million in revenue in its first week. Ming Chi Kuo pours more fuel on the rumor fire surrounding a new iPhone SE2 that Kuo himself got started. He says we're likely to see Apple launch the new cheaper iPhones in Q1 of next year alongside brand new iPad models. But also he's adding his weight to rumors that will see an Apple AR headset in Q2 of next year as well, quoting 9 to 5 Mac. The purported augmented reality headset release schedule lines up with numerous code findings in iOS 13 and Quo's own report from March. However, Apple's exact plans for

stereo AR remain murky. The design of the headset is unknown. Is it more like glasses or more like gaming AR helmet? Quo says Apple will partner with third-party brands to release the first headsets, whatever that means. The device would mainly be driven by the C-BOR. GPU, GPU, and network connectivity of a wirelessly connected iPhone, end quote. So wait a minute. Apple's going to let others create the hardware. I do get that having an iPhone would likely be key to the experience, but Apple didn't partner with anyone to make the watch. Seems very on Apple, very odd to me.

The House Financial Services Committee this morning said that Mark Zuckerberg himself will testify before the committee on October 23rd as part of a hearing on Libra and more, quoting CNBC, Zuckerberg will be the only witness at a hearing entitled, An Examination of Facebook and its Impact on the Financial Services and Housing Sectors. House members had been pushing for Zuckerberg to testify on Facebook's cryptocurrency plans, as the committee had been in talks with his second in command about testifying CNBC reported last week. Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters previously requested Facebook halt implementation for the Libra Cryptocurrency ahead of a hearing with the project's lead.

Quote, Mark looks forward to testifying before the House Financial Services Committee and responding to lawmakers' questions, a Facebook spokesperson said, end quote. According to Cecilia Kang at the New York Times, indeed, quote, Cheryl Sandberg had been planning to testify, but Chairwoman Maxine Waters was insistent on Zuckerberg, so he'll be defending cryptocurrency. that is getting a lot of scrutiny in Washington. Hill has told me they feel Libra announced launch has shown, quote, hubris, end quote. Once again, our year of the unicorn IPO might be stumbling across the finish line. Postmates, which had planned to go public this year,

has recently told advisors it is delaying its IPO due to market conditions. Now, the whispers have been that any IPO filing by Postmates was just part of a sort of dual path to exit, where the IPO is designed to also maybe shake loose any interest from a larger acquirer out there. But in Recode, Teddy Schleifer sums up the overall mood that the Postmates situation is merely a symptom of. Quote, as the end of the year approaches, a gloom is enveloping Silicon Valley, and it's making for unusual shows of contrition, internal debates and boardrooms, and insurgent attempts to change the Wall Street system that keeps delivering bad news to Silicon Valley. Tech's highest profile startups have large.

bombed on the stock market since they went public this year. The value of Lyft has been cut in half. Its rival Uber is down over 25%. Slack and Peloton are trading well below their IPO prices, and of course, WeWorks's ambitions crashed into reality when public investors balked at the company's price tag, leading the company to pool its IPO altogether rather than post its own gnarly red ink. Postmates CEO Bastion Lehman said on Friday at a startup conference that the company was closely watching the macro economy and indicated that other startups had caused them to second guess their timing. Quote, the reality is that we will IPO when we believe we find the right time for the business

and the right time in the markets. And if you look at the markets right now, they are, I believe, a little choppy, he said. They're a little choppy when it comes to growth companies specifically, end quote. One unicorn that did make it out to the public markets this year, as we just mentioned, was Peloton. Turns out there's another smart fitness startup. out there who has a similar business model to Peloton. It's called Mirror. Mirror makes, you might have seen the ads, just that, a reflective LCD device that you stick on a wall

like a mirror, but which also has two-way audio and video so you can do guided fitness routines in front of the mirror. And so today, Mirror also launched the logical extension. You can now get in-home one-on-one personal training using your mirror, starting at $40 for a 30-minute session, quoting CNET. Until now, Mirror's main offerings included live and on-demand fitness classes from a variety of disciplines, including cardio, kickboxing, Pilates, strength training, and more. And while those features were revolutionary as far as home fitness goes, Sayanara ad-interrupted YouTube videos, it turns out Mirror has had something even better in the pipeline. Now this sleek device offers real-time personal one-on-one training.

The device's built-in microphone, speaker, and video camera allows your personal trainer to see what you're doing and vice versa. Mir's fitness professionals deliver real-time feedback, form corrections, and encouragement, just like a personal trainer in a gym does, end quote. But, as CNET points out, for $40 for a half an hour, that's actually a lot less expensive than a lot of gym-based personal trainers, although you do have to factor in the mirror's starting price of $1,495, and the $39 monthly subscription for access to mirror content. Finally, today, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to three scientists for their work in developing lithium-ion batteries, which, let's face it, the entire gadget and smartphone ecosystem couldn't exist without,

not to mention the electric car revolution. The delightfully named John Goodnuff, M. Stanley Wittingham, and Akira Yoshino will receive equal shares of the 9 million Swedish Kroner Prize. And at 97 years old, good enough is the oldest person ever to become a Nobel laureate in any discipline. Here's a quick history lesson from the Guardian, quote. While rechargeable batteries were around in the 1970s, they had drawbacks, not least in the amount of energy they could store. Lithium, it was thought, could be an answer since it is a very light metal and easily

loses an electron. However, lithium's reactivity also made it tricky to harness. In the 1970s, Stanley Whittingham tackled the problem when looking to develop approaches for fossil-free energy in light of the oil crisis. His device, the first functional lithium battery, used lithium metal in the anode, and lithium ions tucked into titanium disulfide for the cathode. Unfortunately, when this battery was repeatedly recharged, it ran the risk of exploding. A situation the local fire brigade were apparently none too pleased about. To improve safety, Whittingham combined metallic lithium with aluminum in the anode. Good Enough picked up the baton at the University of Oxford and replaced the titanium disulfide

in the cathode with cobalt oxide, an approach that doubled the voltage produced. Yoshino used the cathode developed by Good Enough to create the first commercially viable lithium ion battery in 1985 with the anode in his battery composed of lithium ions and electrons housed within a carbon material called petroleum coke. This made the battery much safer than using lithium metal. The upshot was a lightweight compact battery that could be recharged many, many times, the bedrock of modern technology, end quote. Indeed, hazza, sirs, I take my hat off to you.

This recognition is long, long overdue. Silicon Valley listeners, I didn't do a segment on it, but y'all apparently had a day. rolling power shutoffs, delayed commutes. And if the blackouts don't get you, I guess look out for the tarantulas. This is from the Wall Street Journal, quote. Warm weather in the San Francisco Bay Area has extended tarantula mating season, a surprisingly public affair that has led to advisories from officials to be on the lookout for thousands of giant male spiders. The spiders aren't dangerous to people.

In fact, it's the other way around. That message is proving a tough sell around Halloween, end quote. Man, a combination blackout tarantula invasion. Sounds like a horror movie indeed. You all have had it rough lately. Stay safe. Talk to you tomorrow.