Google Stadia details are revealed, Amazon shows off its delivery drone and Uber debuts Uber Copter, Facebook is going to do an official white paper for its cryptocurrency, and our mobile gadgets have finally dethroned the television.
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GOOGLE’S STADIA GAME SERVICE IS OFFICIALLY COMING NOVEMBER: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW (The Verge)
Google cloud boss Thomas Kurian makes his first big move — buys Looker for $2.6 billion (CNBC)
Facebook plans June 18th cryptocurrency debut. Here's what we know (TechCrunch)
A first look at Amazon's new delivery drone (TechCrunch)
Uber Copter to Offer Flights From Lower Manhattan to J.F.K. (NYTimes)
Average US Time Spent with Mobile in 2019 Has Increased (eMarketer)
People spend more time on mobile devices than TV, firm says (Los Angeles Times)
YouTube actually DOES make some changes, Peloton is going public, could Prime open Amazon up to anticompetitive scrutiny, more on that Sign in with Apple controversy, and why your local police department might want to buy you Ring doorbell.
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Tue. 06/04 - What's The Problem With Sign In with Apple?
20:27
It looks like Washington is serious about going after Big Tech in a big way, Firefox blocks cookies, why are developers trepidatious about that Sign In with Apple scheme, and why it’s time we really need to talk about the YouTube recommendation algorithm.
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Facebook, Google and other tech giants to face antitrust investigation by House lawmakers (Washington Post)
ITUNES IS DEAD. LET'S PAY OUR RESPECTS (Wired)
Apple’s top spec Mac Pro will likely cost at least $35,000 (The Verge)
Firefox starts blocking third-party cookies by default (VentureBeat)
On YouTube’s Digital Playground, an Open Gate for Pedophiles (NYTimes)
How YouTube Became a Breeding Ground for a Diabolical Lizard Cult (The New Republic)
YouTube star who gave toothpaste-filled Oreo to homeless man gets 15-month jail sentence (Fox News)
All the news and headlines from WWDC, the anti-trust brigade might be coming for Google in the US, a big chip acquisition, big news on the payments front, and a dispatch from the frontlines of the streaming wars… but, c’mon, we know what you’re here to hear about.
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Mac Pro (The Verge)
Pro Display XDR (The Verge)
iPadOS and Files app (The Verge)
Sign in with Apple (9To5Mac)
Dark Mode (The Verge)
The Justice Department is preparing a potential antitrust investigation of Google (Washington Post)
Infineon Will Buy Cypress Semi in Latest Chip Mega-Deal (Bloomberg)
PayPal opens up access to e-commerce platform that’s already used by Instagram and Facebook (CNBC)
Stripe Launches Chargeback Protection Service (Pymnts.com)
An HBO Question Is Giving AT&T Executives a Headache (NYTimes)
WWDC Preview and Consumer Startups With Dan Frommer
32:52
Y’all know Dan Frommer. Veteran tech journalist. We’re gonna do a WWDC preview here today, but before that, Dan has his own, excellent newsletter, the new consumer! Sign up for it in the show notes! Link to the free and paid editions. Because this is the beat Dan covers so well, before we get into the WWDC and Apple stuff, a lengthy discussion of the whole consumer unicorn startup space, that I don’t think we cover enough.
https://newconsumer.com/
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Fri. 05/31 - Does Amazon Want To Be A Mobile Carrier?
16:42
Might Amazon get into the cellular carrier game and thus make a Sprint/T-Mobile merger more palatable? Uber’s first quarterly report as a public company, what to expect from WWDC next week, and of course, the weekend longreads suggestions.
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Mealime...
Thu. 05/30 - Google Tells Adblockers To Jump Off A Bridge
16:53
Microsoft brings the Xbox Game Pass to PCs, Google gives the finger to adblockers (and all of us), the DOJ will only approve the Sprint/T-Mobile merger if there’s no actual market consolidation, GoGo wants to bring 5G to airplanes and when will an e-sports stadium come to you...
Amazon has a new Echo Show to go after the Google Nest Home Hub, the NYC subway is entering the mobile era, Uber says it will now ban RIDERS who get bad Uber ratings, and Microsoft outlines its vision for a modern operating system.
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The Amazon Echo Show 5 puts Alexa on a smaller screen, shipping in June for $89.99 (The Verge)
NYC subway riders will be able to swipe in with Apple Pay starting Friday (TechCrunch)
Uber is now kicking low-rated passengers out of its cars (CNET)
Huawei Revs Up Its U.S. Lawsuit, With the Media in Mind (NYTimes)
Inside the Apple Team That Decides Which Apps Get on iPhones (Bloomberg)
The Decrypted Podcast
Microsoft hints at new modern Windows OS with ‘invisible’ background updates (The Verge)
Enabling innovation and opportunity on the Intelligent Edge (Official Microsoft Blog)
The iPod touch lives (and got an update), Dell’s whole laptop lineup got an update, the apocalypse is coming for small vendors on Amazon, MacKenzie Bezos signs the Giving Pledge, and why a laptop infested with malware sold for $1.3 million dollars.
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M...
Nerds and tech folk have always had a special fascination with typeface and font design, and especially with the venerable Helvetica. Today we're going to talk to Charles Nix, who's foundry Monotype had the challenge of updating Helvetica for the 21st century with Helvetica Now. A lot of these bonus episodes are you learning along with me as we take deeper dives into certain tech topics, well no more so than this episode because I knew absolutely nothing about this area of design and so was fascinated to learn about what goes into creating a typeface from an artistic, design, and even business perspective.
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Mealime
This is what the Helvetica Now looks like.
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Fri. 05/24 - iFixit Tears Down the MacBook Keyboard Tweaks
17:23
The Facebook cryptocurrency could be here in about six months, SpaceX launches its first batch of internet satellites, iFixit tears down the MacBook keyboard tweaks, the robots are coming for MLB umpires, and a supersized weekend longreads segment.
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Thu. 05/23 - An Indie Game Boy for the 21st Century
16:31
The Playdate is a Game Boy for the 21st Century, GitHub launches a Patreon for open source developers, Amazon is working on a health app that can monitor emotions, Door Dash is emerging at the leader in the food delivery wars, and Rotten Tomatoes brings the hammer down on rev...
The Huawei mess metastasizes, the EU goes after Google again, Qualcomm loses to the FTC, and Comcast—of all people—is getting into health tech.
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Huawei: ARM memo tells staff to stop wor...
Tue. 05/21 - Has Apple fixed the MacBook keyboard problem?
18:08
Has Apple fixed the MacBook keyboard problem? Huawei gets a 90 day reprieve, Instagram wants to copy Snapchat AND TikTok, the first self-driving mail trucks, and why would your smart car want to tell people if you’ve gained weight?
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Mon. 05/20 - Why 5G Could Ruin Weather Forecasting
17:25
Why Google ghosting Huawei might lead to a chain reaction for all of tech, the Sprint/T-Mobile merger gets a shot in the arm, GM sort of gets the point of software, I guess, and why 5G might be horrible for weather forecasting.
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Eric Jackson is an investor at EMJ Capital Ltd. He’s deep in the media space, he’s deep in the streaming wars, as I think I say in this episode, he’s shaped a ton of my thinking about the streaming wars. So… where are we? Who’s up? Who’s down? Is it time to get bullish on Disney+ for a ton of reasons? Eric has a great podcast: The Eric Jackson Podcast.
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You know them, you love them, Jay Yarrow of CNBC, Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times. It’s another Jay and Farhad Show Reunion! Today’s topics: Uber’s IPO, the Streaming Wars, and Game of Thrones! These are my favorite episodes. I just hit record, and we thumb wrestle each other to get in a hot take. :)
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Fri. 05/17 - Is Minecraft Earth The Killer App For AR?
15:56
Can Minecraft Earth be the killer app for AR? Are the best and brightest shunning working at Facebook? Has drone maker DJI beaten GoPro at its own game? And do I have some killer weekend longreads suggestions? You better believe I do.
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The hammer is coming down on Huawei, China blocks Wikipedia, Google clarifies the Works with Nest shutdown, a 1TB microSD, more 5G rollouts, what should we think of Quibi and you didn’t fall for that porn scam did you?
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Wed. 05/15 - Is Google Effectively Deprecating Search?
19:07
There’s a new major chip flaw called ZombieLoad, the major tech companies sign on to the so-called Christchurch Call to Action, San Francisco bans facial recognition tech, is Google effectively deprecating search, and did Beyonce make $300M on Uber?
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WhatsApp discovered one of the craziest flaws I’ve ever heard about in mobile, Disney now controls all of Hulu, now we’ve got folding laptops, the One Plus 7 Pro is another strike against $1,000 phones and is bitcoin back?
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Mon. 05/13 - The App Store Has A Supreme Court Problem
16:56
A Supreme Court ruling might spell trouble for Apple and others, Amazon is automating the boxers out of a job, Discord is doing some serious MAU’s, what the death of Nest means for IOT, and a LITERAL Bitcoin treasure hunt.
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...
Not too long ago I did a longreads suggestion about Huawei and listener Dexter Thillien got in touch, because he’s a telecoms analyst, and he was actually quoted in the article. Over email, he educated me about some of my misconceptions about Huawei and I was like, “Don’t just school me! Come on the podcast and let’s catch everyone on up Huawei!” And so, today, we do that. Where did Huawei come from? How did it get to a place where it’s the pre-eminent 5G infrastructure firm? Is Huawei just a tool of the Chinese government. I do apologize for the somewhat poor Skype connection, but the content here is so good, you won’t even notice. My thanks to Dexter Thillien.
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I knew Uber was going public this week, and it occurred to me that since this podcast started, my default position has been: Uber: super cool company, but a lot of people have a lot of doubts about them. But I realized, I had never explained that, or gone into detail about WHY people feel that way… unlike how we’ve done with other things. So, I reached out to Shira Ovide at Bloomberg, not to talk trash about Uber, but to… let’s say… get the skeptic’s take about Uber’s business model— which is the ride hailing business model, in a way, which is also the sharing economy business model in a way—so, in that vein, we also talk about WeWork a bit too (which people are also skeptical of).
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Uber’s big IPO had some issues, smartphone shipments are at a 5 year low, do you need an app for unsubscribing to things and of course, the weekend longreads suggestions.
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Uber Jackpot: Inside One of the Greatest Startup Investments of All Time (WSJ)
Americans Have So Many Subscriptions They Need Apps to Track and Cancel Them (Bloomberg)
Blue Origin: Bezos company aims to take people to moon by 2024 (The Guardian)
Weekend Longreads Suggestions:
How Much Is an Idea Worth? In Uber’s Case, $3.7 Billion (Bloomberg)
The VC Who Engineered the 2017 Uber CEO Coup Just Got Very Rich (Bloomberg)
The dangers of in-game data collection (Polygon)
How Unions Are Pushing Back Against the Rise of Workplace Technology (Fortune)
Three years in, Google’s hardware honcho is just getting started (FastCompany)
Thu. 05/09 - Chris Hughes Wants To Break Up Facebook
16:10
Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes says it’s time to break up Facebook, more developer details from I/O, Uber has an arbitration problem, shoe tech is real, and get ready for 64 megapixel smartphone cameras.
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It’s Time to Break Up F...
Wed. 05/08 - The Pixel 3a and Flagship "Lite" Phones
15:54
Google is talking big on privacy, but going after cookies helps their bottom line as well, why the Pixel 3a might usher in a new era of flagship “lite” phones, the huge Binance bitcoin hack and why does Bird want to sell you a scooter, not just rent you one?
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All the news that I could possibly grab from Google’s I/O keynote, again, Alexa IS spying on you, Cruise Automation raises a big round... and will we ever actually see the Galaxy Fold?
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THE PIXEL 3A PUTS GOOGLE’S PHENOMENAL CAMERA IN A $400 PHONE (The Verge)
Alexa has been eavesdropping on you this whole time (The Washington Post)
Check your Alexa recording archive here
Study: Voice Assistants Far From Hot Marketplace For Buying (MediaPost)
GM’s self-driving division Cruise raises another $1.15 billion (The Verge)
How Chinese Spies Got the N.S.A.’s Hacking Tools, and Used Them for Attacks (NYTimes)
Samsung Electronics says no anticipated shipping date yet for Galaxy Fold (Reuters)
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Mon. 05/06 - Headlines From Microsoft's Build Conference
17:42
All the announcements from Microsoft’s Build 2019, Mozilla fixes the Firefox snafu, we think, a grab-bag of Apple rumors and why Netflix’s competitive resiliency might be here to stay.
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Links
Microsoft's IntelliCode for AI-assisted coding comes out of preview (TechCrunch)
Microsoft aims to modernize and secure voting with ElectionGuard (TechCrunch)
Add-ons disabled or failing to install in Firefox (Mozilla Add-ons Blog)
Amazon can already ship to 72% of US population within a day, this map shows (CNBC)
Brussels poised to probe Apple over Spotify’s fees complaint (Financial Times)
Netflix's Competitive Resiliency Is Here to Stay (Netflix Misunderstandings, Pt. 7) (Redef)
Fri. 05/03 - Facebook Coin Is Coming For Credit Cards
17:33
This Facebook cryptocurrency is real, people, Microsoft has a blockchain product as well, Verizon is looking to unload Tumblr, Softbank is considering an IPO for the vision fund and, of course, the weekend longreads suggestions.
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