Tech Brew Ride Home - Wednesday, May 23, 2018 - Why Might Amazon Ban You?

Episode Date: May 23, 2018

Facebook helps you find a plumber, Apple lets you download your data, Comcast wants to buy 21st Century Fox, why would Amazon ban you, and Bill Gates’ summer reading recommendations. Stories from: @kottke, @LauraStevensWSJ Links:Next Generation iPhone Chips Go Into Production (Bloomberg)HTC Announces U12 Plus With Pressure-Sensitive Buttons and Sides (The Verge)Banned From Amazon: The Shoppers Who Make Too Many Returns (WSJ) Bill Gates' Summer Reading List Recommendations:Origin Story: A Big History of Everything by David ChristianLeonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson.Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders.Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved by Kate Bowler.Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World - and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling. Credits: Produced by @brianmcc and the @techmeme editors Music by @jpschwinghamer 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 Ride Home for Wednesday, May 23rd, 2018. Today, Facebook wants to find you a plumber. Apple lets you download your data.

Comcast wants to buy Fox. What would make Amazon ban you? And Bill Gates's summer reading recommendations. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Facebook Marketplace is expanding into home services so that users can now find house cleaners, plumbers, contractors, and more. Facebook is partnering with the startup's handy, home advisor, and porch. To do this, starting today, you'll be able to find thousands of home service professionals

listed, rated, and vetted by other users on Facebook Marketplace. According to the Facebook blog post announcing these additions, quote, more people ask for recommendations related to home services on Facebook in the U.S. than any other topic. Since the beginning of the year, millions of people have asked their friends for suggestions, related to home services such as house cleaners, plumbers, and contractors, end quote. To find these new listings, just select Marketplace services from the Marketplace menu on Facebook. You pick the service you want, then Facebook asks a number of questions to help narrow down your search. How many rooms do you have, for example, how often would you like your place cleaned, maybe?

Then you enter your zip code and Facebook shows a list of parties who will vie for your business. You can get a quote right in the Facebook app and the professionals who were respond, can do so right in Facebook Messenger. Facebook hasn't shared details around whether or not it is taking a cut of bookings or revenue, but this is just the latest move Facebook has made to expand its marketplace offerings, adding to the recent addition of cars and home rentals. Facebook says that as of last year, marketplace had been growing at a rate of 18 million listings a month, and that searches had increased threefold.

Google has recently partnered with HomeAdvisor and Porch as well to, add home services to its voice assistant search offerings. And Walmart recently partnered with Handy to provide in-home installation and assembly services. But by partnering with all three of these biggest home services marketplaces, Facebook continues its push into Craigslist territory in an effort to become a one-stop marketplace for finding home service professionals of every stripe. It's another Mark German Apple Scoop Wednesday, this time ably assisted by Debbie Wu. Sources are reporting to Bloomberg that Apple's manufacturing partner, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company,

has begun mass production of the next-generation processors that will be used in iPhones launching later this year. Bloomberg speculates that the new chip will be called the A-12, and the news is that it will use a 7-nanometer design that will allow the chips to be smaller, faster, and more efficient than the 10-nometer chips in the latest iPhones today. This would make Apple one of the first, phone makers to move to a 7-nanometer design, though Qualcomm and Yahweh are doing similar things,

and Samsung is expected to add these components to its phones as well. Taiwan Semiconductor will reportedly be the sole manufacturer of Apple's processors, as it was last year. It had announced in April that it had started mass production of 7 nanometer processors, but it hadn't revealed for whom the processors were being made. If this rumor proves out to be true, it means that, things are right on schedule. Last year, TSMC began production of Apple's A-11 chips in May as well. So everything is lining up nicely for the announcement of new iPhones this fall. More Apple news. Earlier this morning, the company launched a new privacy portal where you can

download a copy of all the data Apple associates with your Apple account, including Apple ID information, App Store Activity, ICloud store documents like Photos, and, and even your AppleCare history. This is obviously yet another effort to get out in front of the GDPR law, which is going into effect on Friday. And so this privacy portal is rolling out to European users first

with the rest of the world to get access between now and the end of the year. Once it's live for you, you will be able to access your data by going to privacy.com. Apple says the download will not include actual apps or purchased movies, TV shows, or books,

and it could take as much as seven days for the data to be prepared for download. Your data will be available for download for a 14-day period, after which time Apple will delete the data, and you'd have to file another request if you wanted the data but didn't download within the window. An Apple spokesperson told Apple Insider

that, quote, the implementation of the EU law corresponds with the company's privacy values, while at the same time giving Apple an opportunity to provide more control over personal data. Remember how I spoke yesterday about how our on-demand, eternally distracted media habits are upending the entire entertainment industry? Well, more evidence of exactly what I was talking about.

Comcast said today that it is in the advanced stages of preparing an all-cash offer for parts of 21st Century Fox in an attempt to block Disney's planned acquisition of those same assets. Comcast said that any offer for Fox would be, quote, at a premium to the value of the current all-share offer from Disney, end quote. Disney offered Fox a $52.4 billion all-stock deal late last year, and shareholders were expected to vote on the offer this summer. So what is this all about? Well, among other things, control of Hulu,

content that Disney hopes to add to its upcoming streaming service it is launching to compete with Netflix. As you can see here, it's just basically a free-for-all with everyone trying to develop the next-generation media platform and having a desirable library of content is key to that. Daniel Ives, head of technology research at GBH Insights, said in a note to subscribers on Wednesday that, In a nutshell, if Comcast won these assets from the arms of Disney,

it would be a devastating blow to Disney's CEO Bob Eiger and Disney's streaming ambitions going forward, end quote. On CNBC's Squackbox this morning, David Faber said, quote, Everything I hear indicates that Comcast CEO Brian Roberts is extremely focused and aggressive in terms of wanting to own these assets. Ridehaling app Lyft says it will spend $100 million on a network of driver support centers where Lyft operators can go to get low-cost oil changes, basic vehicle maintenance, and car washes. Oh, and also clean bathrooms that the drivers can use at their convenience.

Lyft already operates 15 such support centers, and it will begin by extending the operating hours at those locations. And then the initial plan is to roll out around 30 new centers sometime in the near future. In a blog post announcing the investment, Lyft CEO John McNeil, wrote, quote, Just as advancements in aviation technologies haven't reduced the need for pilots or flight staff, there's still security in the future for the 1.4 million people who depend on driving for an income. We are in the business of supporting our drivers for the long haul, period. Lyft's main competitor, Uber, has its own version of this, what it calls Greenlight Support Centers, of which there are over 600 worldwide.

Aside from providing logistical and maintenance support centers like these allow companies like Uber and Lyft to upsell drivers on services like vehicle rentals, tax filings, and career counseling. HTC announced its U12-plus flagship phone today, a phone that has been heavily rumored and leaked about. Much discussed has been the dual cameras on both the front and back of the phone, which have been eliciting rave reviews for their picture quality. As Dan Seafert joked on Twitter, HTC was like, F everything, we're doing four cameras. But also taking pride of place is the 6-inch quad-hd-plus 2880 by 1440 super LCD6 display.

If you want, we can play a little smartphone bingo. Does the U12 plus have a notch? No, it does not. But HTC hints that that might be coming in later releases. Does it have a headphone jack? No, it does not. But it does have EdgeSense, which allows you to squeeze the phone to do various things. This phone will have EdgeSense 2.

which will now allow the phone to recognize which hand is holding it and adapt the interface to suit. Also, the mechanical hardware buttons are gone from the sides of the phone replaced with haptic feedback for the power and volume control. This was apparently part of an effort to make the phone more water and dust-resistant. Inside the phone, you'll find a Snapdragon 845 processor, 6 gigabytes of RAM, and up to 128 gigabytes of storage. There are three color options.

black, red, and blue. In a process, HTC is calling cold-polished 3D glass. You can pre-order an HTCU12 plus today, starting at $799 for the 64-gigabyte version and 849 for the 128-gigabyte version. Everyone knows Amazon is a customer-friendly company. Amazon very much prides itself on being a company laser-focused on customer service. But according to the Wall Street Journal, even Amazon has its limit. Some customers are reporting that Amazon has actually closed their accounts. What do you have to do to push Amazon to terminate its business relationship with you?

It seems that too many returns or requests for refunds will do it. It does state in Amazon's terms of service that the company can ban you from its service at its sole discretion. A former policy enforcement investigator at Amazon told the journal that bans tend to come only if, quote, you're creating a lot of headaches for Amazon. Another former Amazon employee said, quote, if your behavior is consistently outside the norm, you're not really the kind of customer they want, end quote. So for example, if you return an item for weird reasons,

like if you say an item didn't arrive as described, when like basically every other customer in the world reported no problems, Amazon might assume that you made the return because you simply didn't want it. Some emails from Amazon to customers that the journal looked at said that Amazon told customers it simply couldn't continue to accept returns at the rate the customer was returning items. An Amazon spokesperson told the journal, quote, We want everyone to be able to use Amazon,

but there are rare occasions when someone abuses our service over an extended period of time. We never take these decisions lightly, but with over 300 million customers around the world, we take action when appropriate to protect the experience for all of our customers. Ars Technica has gotten its hands on an internal email from Uber that says it has decided to wind down its self-driving vehicle tests in the state of Arizona.

The memo also indicates that Uber will be changing how it will be testing its driverless cars going forward. Uber executive Eric Mayhofer wrote in the letter that Ars Technica saw, quote, When we get back on the road, we intend to drive in a much more limited way to test specific use cases. Taking this approach will allow us to continually hone the safety aspects of our software and operating procedures, end quote. This move comes, of course, after a pedestrian was struck and killed by an Uber self-driving test car in Arizona in March. And indeed, if data from AAA can be believed, recent high-profile accidents, like that one involving Uber, have had an

impact on public opinion, at least as it relates to self-driving technology. According to a AAA survey of drivers, 73% of American drivers report they would be too afraid to ride in a fully self-driving vehicle, which is up significantly from 63% in late 2017. Additionally, two-thirds, 63% of U.S. adults report they would actually feel less safe sharing the road with a self-driving vehicle. According to Greg Brannon, AAA's Director of Automotive Engineering and Industry Relations, quote, Despite their potential to make our roads safer in the long run, consumers have high expectations for safety. Our results show that any incident involving an autonomous vehicle is likely to shake consumer trust, which is a critical component to the widespread acceptance of autonomous vehicles. So you know, I like to give you long reads suggestions every Friday,

but every year Bill Gates likes to give you his summer book reading recommendations. Over on cocky.org this morning, I saw a video from Gates, where he's announcing his reading list for the summer. The books that Gates is recommending this year are as follows. Origin Story, A Big History of Everything by David Christian. Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. Everything happens for a reason and other lies I've loved by Kate Buller. and factfulness, 10 reasons why we're wrong about the world and why things are better than you think by Hans Rosling.

As always, I will have a link to each and every one of these books in the show notes. That's all for today. I've been your host, Brian McCullough. You can follow me on Twitter at Brian MCC. Follow TechMeme on Twitter at TechMeme. And because I don't credit him enough on here, Justin Schwinghammer composed all the music that we use on this show. So follow him on Twitter at Jake. P. Swinghammer. Thanks for listening.