Tech Brew Ride Home

Facebook lets randos look you up by your phone number; Huawei is about to sue the U.S. government; a Vermont law exposes more than 100 data brokers; USB 4 is announced; Facebook offers a way to log in with your face...kind of; and the W3C has a new standard that promises to do away with passwords forever. Sponsors: Keeps - https://keeps.com/techmeme MetaLab - https://metalab.co Links: Facebook won’t let you opt-out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting (TechCrunch) Scammers abused Facebook phone number search (BBC News) Huawei Said to Be Preparing to Sue the U.S. Government (New York Times) Here are the data brokers quietly buying and selling your personal information (Fast Company) With USB 4, Thunderbolt 3’s benefits become open to all (The Verge) USB Promoter Group Announces USB4 Specification (AP News) Harry McCracken's Facebook tweet (Twitter) Facebook explains how it’ll review nude photos to stop revenge porn (The Verge) Facebook’s New CAPTCHA Test: ‘Upload a Clear Photo of Your Face’ (Wired) W3C approves WebAuthn as the web standard for password-free logins (VentureBeat)  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

4 Mar 201920min

So, I hope you read the piece I mentioned in the long reads, Called Outgrowing Advertising, by Andreessen Horowitz's general partner Connie Chan. Link in the show notes. Again, I think this points a way forward for the one trick pony-ism that I've bemoaned on this podcast. A model for new startups now that the low hanging fruit of "let's just get to a billion users and throw some ads up" is kinda, sorta, done. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

3 Mar 201922min

It's rare that I've seen an investigative piece get as much pickup as The Trauma Floor, Casey Newton's look at the secret lives of Facebook content moderators. It was all anyone could talk about at the beginning of the week. Hope you've read it. If not, link in the show notes. So... simple. We're gonna talk to Casey and dig a bit deeper. How did this story happen? What has the reaction been? And a couple of the implications of the piece, at least to me. THE TRAUMA FLOOR (The Verge) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2 Mar 201920min

Lyft officially files for its IPO and do the numbers reveal concern for Uber, New York wants Jeff Bezos to reconsider, Tesla slashes prices, physical sales trump downloads when it comes to music, and the weekend longreads suggestions. Sponsors: Tiny.website DatadogHQ.com/ridehome Links: Lyft's financials show a $911 million loss ahead of its IPO (CNBC) Amazon stops selling Dash buttons, goofy forerunners of the connected home (CNET) U.S. Music Industry Posts Third Straight Year of Double-Digit Growth as Streaming Soars 30% (Variety) Andrew Cuomo Speaks With Jeff Bezos, Hints of ‘Other Ways’ to Clear Path for Amazon’s Return (NYTimes) The $35,000 Tesla Model 3 has arrived—but it comes with a price (TechCrunch) Weekend Longreads Suggestions: Do You Trust Your VPN? Are You Sure? (Slate) Is Cloudflare a privacy champion or hate speech enabler? Depends who you ask (Fast Company) The Car That Killed Glamour (The Atlantic) How Disney Built Star Wars, in real life (TechCrunch) THE TRAUMA FLOOR (The Verge) Outgrowing Advertising: Multimodal Business Models as a Product Strategy (A16Z/Connie Chan) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

1 Mar 201918min

Amazon Day gives you the ability to schedule your Prime Deliveries, Motorola teases more details about the foldable resurrection of the Razr phone, the state of the smartwatch market, and seemingly every messaging platform might soon have a crypto coin. Sponsors: Tiny.Website DataDogHQ.com/ridehome Links: Amazon Prime members can choose a weekly delivery date with launch of 'Amazon Day' (TechCrunch) Motorola confirms its foldable phone is coming (Engadget) Apple self-driving car layoffs hit 190 employees in Santa Clara, Sunnyvale (San Francisco Chronicle) Apple shipped 9.2M Apple Watch units in Q4 2018 to capture half of market, report says (AppleInsider) Uber and Lyft drivers will reportedly get stock in the highly anticipated IPOs (CNBC) Facebook and Telegram Are Hoping to Succeed Where Bitcoin Failed (NYTimes) Mozilla updates Common Voice dataset with 1,400 hours of speech across 18 languages (Venture Beat) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

28 Feb 201914min

Fast flash storage for phones, TikTok passes a billion downloads, FedEx rolls out its own delivery bot, why you might be overpaying for cloud computing and why China wants to map the faces of pigs. Sponsors: Tiny.website DataDogHQ.com/ridehome Links: Samsung's new 512GB flash chip is twice as fast as its predecessor (Engadget) TikTok was bigger than Instagram last year after passing the 1 billion download mark (Business Insider) Machine learning can boost the value of wind energy (Google's The Keyword Blog) FedEx unveils autonomous delivery robot (The Verge) Threads emerges from stealth with $10.5M from Sequoia for a new take on enabling work conversations (TechCrunch) As AWS Use Soars, Companies Surprised by Cloud Bills (The Information) Containers may be leading to cloud computing cost overruns (ZDNet) Rotten Tomatoes tweaks audience ratings system to thwart online trolls (The Los Angeles Times) China’s Tech Firms Are Mapping Pig Faces (NYTimes) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

27 Feb 201914min

The Game of Thrones when it comes to modern tech platforms is very much up in the air, Satya Nadella defends making the HoloLens for the US Army, could the FTC undo previous tech mergers and that big Casey Newton piece about Facebook content moderators. Sponsors: Tiny.website DataDogHQ.com/ridehome Links: Apple Music Integration Possibly Coming to Google Home Devices  (MacRumors) Apple Plans Sleep Tracking Feature for Future Watch (Bloomberg) Microsoft CEO defends US military contract that some employees say crosses a line (CNN Business) New FTC task force will take on tech monopolies (The Verge) Coinbase Lists Controversial Cryptocurrency XRP, Price Jumps 10% (Fortune) This 18,000mAh battery has a phone in it (The Verge) THE TRAUMA FLOOR (The Verge) Facebook Grappling With Employee Anger Over Moderator Conditions (Bloomberg) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

26 Feb 201915min

It’s a whole slew of headlines from Mobile World Congress: more foldable phones, dates for 5G chip sets and 5G coverage rollouts, and Microsoft unveils its HoloLens2. Plus: why Wikidata proves the bots still need us. Sponsors: Wix.com/podcast DataDogHQ.com/ridehome Links: MICROSOFT’S HOLOLENS 2: A $3,500 MIXED REALITY HEADSET FOR THE FACTORY, NOT THE LIVING ROOM (The Verge) Huawei Launches the Mate X: Folding in a New Direction (AnAndTech) I held the future in my hands, and it was foldable (TheVerge) Sprint’s 5G network launches in May (The Verge) T-Mobile delays full 600MHz 5G launch until second half of 2019 (CNET) microSD Express unlocks hyper-fast data speeds for mobile devices (Engadget) SanDisk and Micron announce the world’s first 1TB microSD card (MSPowerUser.com) The latest Android devices now let you log into apps without requiring a password (The Verge) INSIDE THE ALEXA-FRIENDLY WORLD OF WIKIDATA (Wired) Princeton Tech Meetup Details Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

25 Feb 201916min