Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 11/14 - Why Was Google's Traffic Diverted From Nigeria Through China?

Episode Date: November 14, 2018

Why was Google’s traffic routed from Nigeria through China, Ford partners with Walmart on driverless cars, Amazon’s HQ2 stunt seems to be backfiring, and Uber gets a customer loyalty program. Links: Nigerian firm takes blame for routing Google traffic through China (Reuters) Exclusive: Snap reveals U.S. subpoenas on IPO disclosures (Reuters) Ford partners with Walmart and Postmates to test autonomous grocery delivery (TechCrunch) A STARTUP IS SETTING DRONES FREE BY TYING THEM TO THE GROUND (Wired) Amazon’s HQ2 stunt could come back to haunt it (The Verge) This time, Amazon has gone too far: Jeff Bezos's company is profiting and taxpayers are paying the price (NYDailyNews) Uber launches rider loyalty Rewards like credits & upgrades 9 cities (TechCrunch) Amazon's Microwave With Alexa Makes Life Marginally Better (BuzzFeed) 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, November 14th, 2018. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, why was Google's traffic routed from Nigeria through China? Ford partners with Walmart on driverless cars.

Amazon's HQ2 stunt seems to be backfiring and Uber gets a customer loyalty program. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. There was a story bubbling up in the feeds that I watch all the time on Monday about how for a period of several hours, several Google services were unavailable to a lot of users on Monday. Now, I normally shy away from service outage stories because once they're resolved, there's no story, basically, right? And indeed, Google got things back up and running that same day. But there was one interesting wrinkle to this story. Internet research firm Thousand Eyes said at the time that the reason you couldn't access your Google services was because traffic to Google was being redirected

to Russian network operator trans-telecom, and most of it redirected to China Telecom Corp. So people were wondering, was there some sort of actual geopolitical shenanigans going on? Quoting from the Wall Street Journal about this on Monday, quote, network engineers have warned for years that online platforms are vulnerable to network-based attacks that send data widely off course.

Such attacks are possible because large, network service providers exchanged traffic through a system that is largely based on mutual trust through protocols nearly as old as the internet itself, end quote. Well, today, the story got a tad otter, maybe. Nigerian internet provider, Main One cable, said that it was the cause of the misrouted traffic through China. In an email, Main One said during a routine network upgrade, it misconfigured a border gateway protocol filter used to route traffic across the internet. Which, okay, but if it's that easy

to accidentally reroute and redirect the traffic of a company as big and powerful as Google, like don't they have better control over their own stuff? Or is that just the way the internet was constructed? So shrugged shoulder emoji? Google stresses that no data was compromised during this period, but let me quote this from Reuters. Yuvalchavut, a network security researcher at Tel Aviv University, said it was possible that Monday's issue was not an accident. You can always claim that this is some kind of configuration error, said Shivitt, who last month co-authored a paper alleging the Chinese government had conducted a series of

internet hijacks, end quote. Snap is responding to subpoenas from the Department of Justice and the security. and Exchange Commission surrounding its initial public offering. This follows a lawsuit that has been filed alleging Snap misled the investing public about how Instagram was affecting its growth even around the time of its IPO. Snap says that it believes the lawsuit is meritless and that its pre-IPO disclosures were, quote, accurate and complete. But these subpoenas will allow discovery of internal SNAP documents from the time.

so let's hope no one wrote an email that said something like, crap, we've got a IPO quickly before Instagram kills us. Quoting Reuters again, Snapchat, which reported 158 million daily users prior to the IPO, peaked at 191 million in this year's first quarter and fell to 186 million in the third quarter. Snap's investor prospectus warned that Instagram's new ephemeral posting feature stories copied one of Snapchat's core elements and, quote, may be directly competitive, end quote. Following the news that Waymo's true self-driving taxis are coming to real roads sooner than we thought,

is autonomous grocery delivery right behind it. Ford today announced that it is partnering with Walmart and Postmates to test autonomous grocery delivery in Miami-Dade County in Florida. Now, two things to point out, these will not be true autonomous vehicles. quote, Ford will be using research vehicles designed to simulate an autonomous experience, end quote. And what did I say about Phoenix yesterday? Flat, temperate weather, just like Miami-Dade. Still, the interesting thing here to me is if Walmart suddenly threw its weight into the development of self-driving technology.

Ford says it will, quote, work closely with Walmart to understand its operations and tailor the new services to that retailer's needs. Quoting TechCrunch, Ford is pursuing two parallel tracks, develop and test the self-driving vehicle system while separately work on the business side of how a dedicated fleet of autonomous vehicles might operate in the real world

as it moves towards its targeted commercial launch in 2021. The company is testing the business model through pilot programs with Domino's Postmates, local businesses in the Miami area, and now Walmart. Ford has already completed more than one thousand deliveries as part of the initial phases of building up its self-driving business, end quote. When we think of drones, we tend to think of their main advantage being their ability to operate freely in the air. No traffic to avoid, no ground-based obstacles. But one startup

thinks it can really make drones useful by actually tethering them to the ground. See, the problem is that even the best commercial-grade drones are hobbled by their batteries, typically a commercial worker drone can only stay aloft for 20 to 30 minutes. But, quote, with the tether, we're able to fly continuous operations for two weeks at a time without coming down. So said Laura Major, CTO of Danvers, Massachusetts-based sci-fi works. By the way, in the drone test, she's describing, the drone only came down after that two-week period because the ground power went out. It probably could have gone on longer. Quoting from Wired, that kind of

flight time may not matter when hauling burritos, but it can make drones significantly more useful for the military and first responders likely to use drones as instant towers. They want aircraft that can hover over a given spot, providing them a bird's eye view or relaying radio and cell signals. The longer they stay airborne, the better. And as a bonus, that tether can double as a transmission line, moving data from the sky to the ground without relying on a wireless signal, end quote. So another obvious application would be to get communication systems back up and running after natural disasters, sort of like what Alphabet's Project Loon wants to do using balloons. There are other companies in this tethered drone startup space, including Elisdair and Hoverfly, but Sci-Fi Works has

already raised 39 million in venture funding from the likes of Bessemer Venture Partners. So I do have to admit that I've been surprised by the stridency of the backlash to Amazon's HQ2 announcement yesterday, especially here in New York. A lot of the anger has been related to that sports team extorting a city to build a new stadium analogy that I made last week. People seem to be aghast at just how much towns were willing to bend over backwards to woo Amazon. New York only ponied up $2 billion in tax breaks, but Pennsylvania reportedly offered up to $4.6 billion to get an HQ2 in Philly or Pittsburgh. And Georgia, apparently offered, among other things, a state-funded academy to train employees, a special lounge at Atlanta's airport,

which is the busiest airport in the world, by the way. That lounge would be reserved for the exclusive use of Amazon employees, also a dedicated Amazon car on Marta, Atlanta's mass transit service. And see, that's the angle here that I didn't anticipate. A lot of the vitriol, especially in New York, has this sort of, not in my backyard, we don't want your kind here, sort of flavor to it, which I can get, if it seems like in order to win the Amazon contract, your municipality offered to treat tech workers as some sort of super first class sort of citizenry, different than everybody else. But also, people seem not to be buying that winning an HQ2 is de facto a good thing. Here's how comedian John Moe put it on Twitter. John apparently used to work for Amazon. Quote, what I saw of Amazon in Seattle, including working there two and a half years,

is that the high-paying jobs weren't filled by Seattleites but by people brought in from elsewhere. Then those people buy slash overpay for housing and drive up prices for everyone. I do believe the culture of the city and the region was altered severely by Amazon. Tech in general, but mostly Amazon. and the old culture of weirdos up in the corner was eradicated by the arrival of hordes of rich people who didn't give a Ness. And so Seattle's culture went from the woods and chainsaws and distortion pedals and constant awareness of native tribes to,

look at this place we discovered in 1996, said about a place that already, you know, existed. I don't see how a city can host Amazon at this point without becoming an extension of Amazon itself because it's more than a business at this point. It's America's company store. but maybe NY and D.C. have the best shot, end quote. So, yeah, the backlash is real, and it's becoming this weird mix of class and culture war stuff,

also mixed in with disgust at governments bowing to big business, mixed with, you know, I don't know, just resentment. And the other angle I didn't anticipate, and I don't think Amazon did either, clearly, was how bad this whole thing makes Amazon look in the world. the end. How badly it makes people feel about Amazon now. Amazon is a company that prides itself on its friendly brand and which until now, if you could believe the consumer opinion studies, was thought of as the one tech company everyone loved. The backlash has been immediate. And if today is any indication, it's only growing. I mean, this is a quote from an op ed in the

opinion pages of the New York Daily News. Quote, Amazon has so much power over our political economy that it can acquire government-like functions itself. In its current form, Amazon and democracy are incompatible, end quote. In an article in The Verge titled Amazon's HQ2 stunt could come back to haunt it, Casey Newton writes, quote, perhaps the furor over Amazon's regional offices will blow over. But it's hard not to feel today as if the company misread the room, overestimating the public's appetite for a billion dollar giveaway to one of the world's biggest companies and underestimating the public's ability to raise hell on and offline. Amazon may yet feel that pain in the long run, end quote. I don't know, man. Let's just end with a joke, I guess. Twitter user Fishbones said this

morning, quote, Jeff Bezos announces an event where he shoots taxpayer money into space using a hundred foot cannon while laughing. To which Jonathan Tepper tweeted, quote, this is already happening with Blue Origin. Uber announced today that it has launched a rider loyalty rewards program with perks including ride credits, upgrades to nicer cars, priority pickups at airports, access to premium support lines, and a waiver on cancellations if you rebook within 15 minutes. You can earn points for every dollar spent on Uber and Uber eats, and the points are tabulated over a six-month period. So if you reach a certain level, you get the perks associated with that level for the remainder of that period and the whole

of the next period. There's even now a little progress wheel. at the bottom of the Uber app that fills up over time as you rack up points. And in case you're concerned that your writer gets shafted in this new arrangement, don't worry, the driver reportedly still gets his or her full rates, even when you cash in points. Josh Constine has a handy breakdown of the various loyalty tiers that I've linked to, of course, in the show notes, tears that go all the way up to Diamond as these things are wont to do. Quote, Uber Rewards launches today in nine cities before rolling out to the whole U.S. in the next few months,

with points for scooters and bikes coming soon. And as a brilliant way to get people excited about the program, it retroactively counts your last six months of Uber activity to give you perks as soon as you sign up for free for Uber rewards. You'll see the new rewards bar on the home screen of your app today if you're in Miami, Denver, Tampa, New York, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Atlanta, San Diego, or anywhere in New Jersey, as Uber wanted to test with a representative sample of the U.S.

U.S., end quote. Finally, today, you know when a new device or gadget comes out, I usually do a review roundup to give you a sense of what people think of it. And I was tempted to ignore the reviews of the new Alexa-enabled microwave from Amazon. But come on, I just couldn't resist. Adding gadget, Sherilyn Lowe said Amazon's Alexa-powered microwave is basic, but that's okay. CNBC's Todd Hazleton said, ultimately it works,

it's cheap, and it's cool. At slash gear, Chris Davies said, frankly, I'd choose Amazon's microwave over rivals just for the sake of never having to set the clock again myself. But I think we can suffice with Nicole Wend's review at BuzzFeed. Quote, Amazon is going to sell a gazillion of them despite what these internet people had to say, and here's why. One, it costs $60, or about $20,000.

20 lattes, which is a very reasonable price. Two, it is available with free two-day shipping to Amazon's over 100 million prime members. Three, it is 0.7 cubic feet, the most popular size of microwave on the shopping giant site, according to Amazon Devices, Vice President Charlie Trichler. And finally, four, it is already number one in Amazon's own search results for microwave in the U.S., and it's even specially badged with electronics gift guide, which, by the way, is something Amazon curates. So it doesn't really matter that after some real-life testing, I found Amazon's leftovers revival machine to be marginally better than normal microwaves, end quote. By the way,

I didn't mention this yesterday because I was in a rush. I had pinged Chris to help write the show for me yesterday because I knew that I had a dentist appointment in the morning and some book business to attend to after that. I thought with a dentist I was just going in for one quick cavity feeling. Turns out it was five, five cavities. Long story about how that happened. Some old dental work had chipped away, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the point is, it was touch and go yesterday. If the Novakane was going to wear off in time for me to actually record the show, I, my lips were totally numb and I could barely make out words, but by about 2.30, which is basically the drop dead time to begin recording. I was mostly

able to form words again. I don't know if you noticed any ill effects. Moral of the story, though, kids, is dental hygiene. It is important. Talk to y'all tomorrow.