Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 8/15 - Alexa and Cortana, BFFs

Episode Date: August 15, 2018

Today, Twitter takes action on Alex Jones, a new Intel chip vulnerability, Alexa and Cortana play nice together, consolidation in podcasting and a “rest and vest” for the ages. Stories from: @AnneMarieSteele, @dseetharaman Tweets: @MattRosoff Links:SPECTRE-LIKE FLAW UNDERMINES INTEL PROCESSORS' MOST SECURE ELEMENT (Wired)After a year's wait, Amazon and Microsoft bring Alexa and Cortana to each other's devices (CNET)OneDrive can now automatically backup your PC’s documents, pictures, and desktop folders (The Verge)Public Radio Networks to Merge in Big Bet on Podcasts (WSJ)Uber’s Losses Mount at Self-Driving Car Unit (The Information)Cash Wildfire Spreads Among Young Tech Companies (Bloomberg)WhatsApp Co-Founder’s ‘Rest and Vest’ Reward From Facebook: $450 Million (WSJ) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College deal, everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 premium

and a year of Xbox GamePass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at Windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th, turns at AKA.m.m.S. Welcome to the Tech Meme right home for Wednesday, August 15th, 2018. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Twitter takes action on Alex Jones. A new Intel chip vulnerability announced. Alexa and Cortana play nice together. Consolidation in the podcasting space and a rest and vest for the ages.

Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Seems like we've got two weird tech-related sagas that just keep rolling on day by day. One is the Elon Musk taking Tesla private story, which I'm going to take a break from today. And the other is the Alex Jones getting banned story. Update to Alex Jones. Twitter has put his account into read-only mode for seven days after Twitter says he violated its user policies. Apparently when you're in read-only mode, you can read-tweets, but you can't tweet them yourself. Retweet other times. tweets or even like posts. If you'll recall, Twitter basically stood alone in not taking action against either Jones or his InfoWars organization after everyone from Facebook to YouTube to Spotify

took some editorial action or other. And this is interesting. I only see Ryan Mack reporting on this so far, so it might need more confirmation. But apparently it wasn't a tweet or any sort of content that got Twitter to take action on Jones. It was the fact that his account was doing pre-scheduled tweeting using a client-like tweet deck. Although the Washington Post reports that the offense was that Jones posted a new show to Twitter's video streaming service Periscope where he told supporters to, quote, get their battle rifles ready to combat Antifa and the mainstream media. Whatever the case, Twitter can't seem to make up its mind about Jones, which is the

Twitter we've all come to know, right? As M.G. Siegler tweeted, this might be the most Twitter thing Twitter has ever done, indecision as policy, and now, apparently, as product. Presumably they now have a suspended animation account button. Just make a damn decision, end quote. Casey Newton said,

I love that a common form of internet self-care, quitting Twitter for a week, and a common form of internet punishment, getting banned from Twitter for a week, are functionally identical. It wasn't that long ago that the specter and meltdown vulnerabilities completely upended the tech industry by fundamentally undermining the way we think about the security on actual silicon. Security experts warned then that specter and meltdown might only be the beginning and indeed they were right. Researchers overnight detailed what they are calling foreshadow.

Another speculative execution flaw this time in the secure enclaves of Intel chips. Now this time, the reveal was done correctly. Companies were warned ahead of time before making the existence of the flaw public, so this vulnerability has mostly been patched, but it's another instance where modern computing's reliance on speculative execution can lead to crazy insecurities. Spector undermined one speculation mechanism meltdown focused on another, and now foreshadow yet another. This time attacking the secure enclave area,

otherwise known as SGX, which is supposed to keep data secure by effectively walling it off at the operating system level. SGX ships with all modern Intel processors. Basically, foreshadow tricks applications into sharing data in the secure enclave, even revealing the keys to access it in the first place. Especially vulnerable to this problem would be the machines that make the cloud possible. Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, which all run on what are known as, untrusted virtual machines. This is, in other words, a vulnerability at the infrastructure level. Now, I've been heavily leaning on Owen Williams's explanation for all this from his overnight

daily newsletter. So let me finish by quoting him directly. Owen joked that it's now been zero days since a processor zero-day vulnerability event. Quote, what's worrying in general is how many of these flaws are lurking under the surface and how often we're seeing them emerge. I say it tongue-in-cheek when I say it's been zero days since the last devastating chip flaw, but it feels like the clock is resetting every few days. Why this matters? Some publications have called this the chip apocalypse, and to some extent that might be true.

Intel is both struggling with building secure hardware and its next-generation processor technology. There is a wide-open window for a competitor to jump in, as every chip purchaser in the world looks to switch away every time one of these exploits appears. Owen says Apple would just love to drop Intel, and Microsoft is flirting with the same. Alexa and Cortana can now talk to each other. Amazon and Microsoft have begun rolling out in integration between their respective smart assistants. If you're on a Windows 10 device, you can now ask Cortana to open Alexa. If you're on an echo, you can politely ask Alexa to invoke Cortana.

Quoting from CNET, first announced one year ago in August of 2017, the long-awaited collaboration is live today as an early access public preview. The idea is that each assistant stands to benefit from the other's strengths. Primarily Cortana's deep access to Microsoft's Outlook email and calendar data and Alexa's expansive smart home controls and growing library of third-party skills. Microsoft tells us that many of those skills will be available at launch with more coming later down the line. Our goal is to create a seamless integration, and this is our first step toward achieving that goal. A Microsoft spokesperson tells CNET, end quote.

So again, it's not full native integration. You have to ask one assistant to invoke the other. but I would like to point out by way of warning that in that movie Her, it was when the smart assistants started talking to each other that the Samantha Bot ascended to the astral plane or whatever she did and left poor Theodore behind. So let's hope that now that Alexa and Cortana are buddies, they don't do something similar and runoff together

because they find our repeated requests to set a timer to be just so mundane and boring. More good news for Windows users. Microsoft has begun rolling out OneDrive's new folder protection feature that automatically backs up your PC's documents, pictures, and desktop folders to the cloud. Now, if you have multiple devices using Windows 10,

OneDrive will keep those folders in sync. This feature rolled out to business users in June, but it's now coming to all OneDrive users. Quoting from the Verge, you can enable the folder protection feature by going into OneDrive settings on Windows 10 and navigating to the Auto Save tab and hitting the Update Folders button

under Protect Your Important Folders. The process will automatically add your documents, pictures, and desktop folders to OneDrive and keep them synced. Microsoft has a number of limitations for OneDrive protected folders, including No Outlook PST files or OneNote files, but for most Windows users, this is a welcome new feature that will make it far more easier to sync important folders.

consolidation has come to the podcasting space. PRX and PRI, two of the largest distributors of public radio programming in the U.S. are merging, and the reason seems to be they want to better capitalize on the growing popularity of podcasts. No money will be changing hands in this deal, but WGBH in Boston will invest $10 million in the new entity to develop new content. The organization will get a new name as well, will be based in Boston, and will reach nearly 29 million monthly listeners via existing relationships with 885 broadcast stations. But the aim here is to expand the reach of the 56 million monthly downloads of podcasts produced by PRX and PRI, and cater to the estimated 73 million Americans who now regularly listen to podcasts.

We recognize the need to do more to position public media for the future, said Alyssa Miller, Chief Executive of PRI, who will become Executive Chairwoman of the Combined Organization. Quoting from the Wall Street Journal, PRX and PRI are two of the nation's four national distributors of programming for public radio stations and the first to combine operations. The other networks, national public radio, and American public media, are much larger. Founded in 1983, PRI or Public Radio International, produces programming carried by more than 700 public radio stations in the U.S.,

including the world and the takeaway. Public Radio Exchange, known as PRX, is ranked the number three podcast publisher by Podcast Analytics firm Podtrack behind NPR and WNYC Studios. Launched 15 years ago, PRX began as an audio distribution company for radio stations,

but has diversified into producing and distributing podcasts and making ad technology. The information is reporting that some of Uber's biggest investors have urged the company to sell off its self-driving car unit. The reason, the losses in that unit are truly monumental,

$125 million to $200 million in Red Ink per quarter over the last 18 months. That roughly accounts for between 50 and 30% of the entire company's quarterly losses. That's $1 to $2 million burned each day. Quote, some investors have told Uber officials that it may be wise to divest the self-driving car unit, said a person familiar with the issue, Uber has invested at least $2 billion in the unit over the past three years, yet the company hasn't yet come up with a clear path to commercializing the technology it has developed. The argument against selling the autonomous unit would be that Uber needs to have a way to develop self-driving cars

if other companies won't partner with it. Long-term, self-driving cars could help Uber's ride-hailing network reduce costs by not having to employ drivers. If Uber doesn't develop the cars itself, it would need to feel. figure out how to get other car developers to agree to use their vehicles to pick up Uber's passengers, end quote. And if Uber wants to have that successful IPO next year, of course, getting the numbers closer to break even would sure be a big plus. Although, as CNBC's Matt Rossoff pointed out on Twitter, wasn't self-driving a big reason why investors believed Uber was worth $70 billion to begin with? The come down and valuation at IPO next year is going to be

quite a shock, end quote. Speaking of burn rates at tech startups in Bloomberg, Shira OVide analyzed 150 U.S. tech companies that have gone public since 2010 and are still operating independently, key caveat. And OVide found that about 37% of them are still living beyond their means. OVide even found some,

like online car dealer, Carvana, mattress company Purple Innovation and Healthcare Software Company, Nant Health, among those that were on a paste to exhaust their cash reserves in less than a year. Quote, I was surprised at the prevalence of cash-burning tech companies because the conditions weren't so bad in a similar analysis I did more than four years ago.

Back then, a much smaller percentage, about 29% of U.S. tech companies that had gone public from 2010 through that point, or had filed paperwork for an IPO, had negative cash flow from operations. And none of those young tech companies were at risk of exhausting their cash burn within a year based on their rates of cashburn in the 2014 examination. The companies in the most recent analysis included both seasoned and relatively recent public firms.

The big takeaway for me, young technology companies in aggregate are becoming more brittle during one of the longest bull markets ever for U.S. stocks. This trend is not healthy. Finally today, remember how WhatsApp co-founder Jan Kohn announced he was leaving Facebook, even though it meant he might have to forfeit. around $450 million in stock options. Well, according to the Wall Street Journal, never fear over the summer.

Combe has been careful to show up for work at least once a month at Facebook offices to secure his unvested stock awards, quoting from the journal. In mid-May, Mr. Combe collected 2.5 million shares worth about 458 million at the time, according to a securities filing. In mid-August, he is set to collect

another 2.5 million shares or about 450 million at Facebook's stock price of $181 at Tuesday's close. The stock awards have been contingent on Mr. Combe being employed at Facebook during that time or, quote, subject to continued service to us through each vesting date, end quote. According to one Facebook securities filing, Mr. Combe fulfilled that requirement by showing up at Facebook headquarters about once a month, according to two people familiar with the matter. It is unclear what he did on his days in the office or how long he stayed, end quote. Resting and vesting kittos, resting and vesting.

Wait, so then am I being fired because I have a three-year contract and my stock options don't fully invest until after my three- Nobody's being fired. Okay, look, a contract is a contract. You know, you've got a contract and I've got a contract and we all have contracts and here at Huli, contracts are honored. Yours and mine, everybody's. So, um, have I made that perfectly clear?

Yeah, no, that's clear. But when I come into work tomorrow, what do I do? That is unclear. At this time.