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Wed. 03/17 – Samsung’s 2nd Unpacked Brings New A-series Phones Mar 17, 2021

Show notes

Samsung’s second Unpacked event of the year brings new midrange phones. But are they really discontinuing the Galaxy Note, and are chip shortages the real reason why? Are reductions in app store fees really what they’re cracked up to be? Has Uber had a change of heart or just an acknowledgement of the inevitable? And the bear case for Clubhouse that everyone is talking about.

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Tue. 03/16 – The 2nd Gen Nest Hub Gets Sleep Tracking Mar 16, 2021

Show notes

Google’s 2nd gen Nest Hub gets sleep tracking thanks to the Soli chip. Intel’s 11th Gen desktop chips launch. Xi brings the hammer down on Chinese tech. And the craziest cellphone hack I’ve ever heard isn’t a hack at all, since it’s in a nutso-buttso unregulated grey area.

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Links:

Google announces 2nd-gen Nest Hub with Soli-powered ‘Sleep Sensing’ for $99 (9to5Google)
Intel’s 11th Gen desktop chips are here with faster speeds but fewer cores (The Verge)
Dropbox will have a free password manager in April — if you’ve got 50 or fewer passwords (The Verge)
Xi Warns Against Tech Excess in Sign Crackdown Will Widen (Bloomberg)
Alibaba browser pulled from Chinese app stores (FT)
Exclusive: Investors value China's Ant Group at over $200 billion after IPO halt - sources (Reuters)
A Hacker Got All My Texts for $16 (Motherboard)

Mon. 03/15 – Stripe The Most Successful (Private) SV Startup Ever? Mar 15, 2021

Show notes

Stripe, by some measures, has become the most successful Silicon Valley startup of all time, with their recent raise. Airtable too has an impressively interesting raise. Facebook wants to find you a vaccine appointment. The US is looking to overhaul its cybersecurity missile shield. And checking in on the whole Jack Ma situation.

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Links:

Stripe valuation soars to $95bn after latest fundraising (Financial Times)
Airtable Tops $5.7 Billion Valuation On Growing Enterprise Sales And A Soaring Cloud Market (Forbes)
Facebook aims to get more people vaccinated against COVID-19 (CNET)
Massive Facebook study on users’ doubt in vaccines finds a small group appears to play a big role in pushing the skepticism (Washington Post)
White House Weighs New Cybersecurity Approach After Failure to Detect Hacks (NYTimes)
China Lays Plans to Tame Tech Giant Alibaba (WSJ)
Clubhouse announces accelerator program for creators on its platform (The Verge)

Fri. 03/12 - Netflix Is Cracking Down On Password Sharing Mar 12, 2021

Show notes

Netflix is cracking down on password sharing. Apple sues a former employee for allegedly stealing trade secrets. Masa Son is back, baby! I guess we have to watch ads on our $1500 smart tvs now, and of course, the weekend longreads suggestions.

Links:

Netflix Begins Test to Crack Down on Password Sharing Outside Your Household (The Streamable)
Apple sues former employee for stealing trade secrets, leaking information to the media (9to5Mac)
SoftBank-Backed Coupang Prices U.S. IPO Above Target (Bloomberg)
I guess I have to watch ads everywhere on my $1,500 LG TV now (The Verge)

Weekend Longread Suggestions:

Interview: Patrick Collison, co-founder and CEO of Stripe (Noahpinion.substack.com)
TWITTER IS REINVENTING ITSELF (The Verge)
Excel Never Dies (Not Boring)
How Facebook got addicted to spreading misinformation (MIT Technology Review)
Bilibili: How a Chinese site dedicated to anime subculture grew up with its Gen Z users to become a mainstream success (South China Morning Post)
Sometimes It’s OK to Give Up (Wired)

Thu. 03/11 – The Roblox Debut Mar 11, 2021

Show notes

Roblox’s public market debut and why people are so excited about it. Twitter to open up spaces to everyone next month. An Apple silicon friendly version of Photoshop sports so eyebrow raising performance gains. Are iPhones about to get heavier? And the NFT sales record has been shattered thanks to Beeple.

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Roblox jumps to $38 billion market cap as public investors get their first crack at the popular kids game app (CNBC)
Twitter plans to let anyone start hosting Twitter Spaces in April (The Verge)
Verkada Workers Had Extensive Access to Private Customer Cameras (Bloomberg)
Google paves way to monetize Pay users’ data in India (TechCrunch)
Photoshop now runs natively on Apple’s M1 Macs (The Verge)
iPhone 13 to Finally Feature Bigger Batteries (MacRumors)
Oppo Find X3 Pro goes official w/ Snapdragon 888, 120Hz display, ‘microlens’ camera (9to5Google)
Beeple sold an NFT for $69 million (The Verge)

Wed. 03/10 – Now The Hackers Are In The Security Cams Mar 10, 2021

Show notes

Hackers breached the security cameras used by everybody from prisons and hospitals to Tesla factories. Why you will no longer “subscribe” to this podcast, but will “follow” it. Why T-Mobile is signing everyone up to have their usage data tracked by advertisers. And Facebook’s 10 year roadmap for AR and VR.

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Tue. 03/09 – An FTC Commissioner To Make Silicon Valley Cower? Mar 09, 2021

Show notes

Is Joe Biden about to name the architect of the current antitrust movement to a seat on the FTC? Are other bad actors swooping in to take advantage of the SolarWinds hack? Is Microsoft gonna play both sides of the fence with new Surface devices? And why popular YouTubers are suddenly building their own platforms.

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Links:

POLITICO Playbook: Scoop: Biden taps another Big Tech trustbuster (Politico/Playbook)
Amazon’s Antitrust Antagonist Has a Breakthrough Idea (NYTimes)
Attacks on SolarWinds Servers Also Linked To Chinese Threat Actor (The Record)
Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 will reportedly include both AMD and Intel configurations (The Verge)
Apple releases iOS 14.4.1 and macOS 11.2.3 to address a WebKit vulnerability (Engadget)
Why popular YouTubers are building their own sites (BBC News)
LOGITECH’S CIRCLE VIEW DOORBELL IS THE CLOSEST THING WE HAVE TO AN APPLE-MADE DOORBELL (The Verge)

The Kottke Ride Home Podcast

Mon. 03/08 – Apple AR Contact Lenses As The Apple Rumor Singularity Mar 08, 2021

Show notes

Ming-Chi Kuo’s grand unified Apple rumor includes AR enabled contact lenses. Is the US about to retaliate in kind for the SolarWinds hack? Mobile World Congress is gonna go ahead and do it live! And in person. Why is Google making Google Pay worse? And do we need a new podcast wager about meaningful quantum computing by 2023?

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Links:

Kuo: Apple to Launch Mixed Reality Headset in Mid 2022 and Augmented Reality Glasses by 2025 (MacRumors)
Preparing for Retaliation Against Russia, U.S. Confronts Hacking by China (NYTimes)
Smartphone Lobby Wants Conference for 50,000 People in June (Bloomberg)
The new Google Pay repeats all the same mistakes of Google Allo (Ars Technica)
Quantum-Computing Startup IonQ Plans Public Debut in $2 Billion SPAC Merger (WSJ)
Sidewalk robots get legal rights as "pedestrians" (Axios)

(Bonus) What Are NFTs? With CoinDesk's Brady Dale Mar 06, 2021

Show notes

I don’t think this one requires any in depth intro. The great Brady Dale of Coindesk, walks us though the whole NFT phenomenon. What are NFTs? How do they work? Why are people so crazed about them at the moment?

Fri. 03/05 – Eyes Emoji On Tim Wu Joining The Biden Administration Mar 05, 2021

Show notes

Tim Wu joined the Biden administration and that sound you hear is a big collective gulp from Silicon Valley. A tweet undo button has been unearthed. Turntable.fm has resurfaced. New data suggests the death of silicon valley has been exaggerated. And of course, the weekend longreads suggestions.

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