NEXT with John Koetsier

In an era of massive budgets, invasive ads, buy now subscription models, and incessant noise, can the good guys still win?

In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat about Insight Timer. You’ve never heard of Insight Timer, but it’s ranked higher than TikTok, Facebook, Netflix, and Twitter for session durations, it has 5X the retention of better-known competitors like Calm, and it has 17M users.

All of which it achieve while spending $0 on marketing. And abiding by a "no selling" policy.

To learn how Insight Timer is changing the world one stressed person at a time, we’re chatting with CEO and cofounder Christopher Plowman.

An alleged YouTube bug has retroactively taken thousands of dollars in revenue away from YouTube creators. YouTube, however, has neither acknowledged the problem nor provide details to YouTubers who rely on the platform for income.

“There are people who can’t feed their families and pay their bills ... one girl I have been talking to ... had a breakdown,” Randy Lynch, who runs the Mid-South Slots YouTube channel, told me via Messenger. “[YouTube] admitted it was a bug, then backtracked, blamed us, and shut down all communication with us eight days ago.”

The 2020 US presidential election is insane and, frankly, proves that current election “tech” is trash. Days later we still don’t know who won for sure, and there’s plenty of allegations of fraud or miscounts, plus plenty of legal challenges already.

Can digital voting fix that? Can blockchain help?

To dig in we’re chatting with Tim Goggin, CEO of Horizon State. Horizon says they offer “fair, transparently verifiable, and ultra-secure voting” via blockchain technologies.

Is space the future of IoT? Australia-based Myriota has the world’s first low power, ultra-low cost global internet of things solution from space. 

In this episode of TechFirst, we're chatting with VP of Engineering Steve Winnall about the company's 20-pound suitcase-sized satellites and its ground-based IoT modules, which cost on the order of hundreds of dollars.

The company's modules are used for wind farms, good-old-fashioned food farms, ships in the ocean ... and even rhinos in Africa.

A ad fraud scheme dubbed Matryoshka is preferentially targeting U.S. swing states in a reportedly Russian-owned mobile app that has historically been linked with white supremacism content, according to an ad fraud vendor.

Matryoshka, of course, are nesting Russian dolls.

The theft is of both advertisers’ dollars and users’ private data, mostly in the United States. Data that the Matryoshka fraud scheme targets is location data including longitude and latitude, device identifier data, and IP address, which can connect you to a specific neighborhood or even exact location. And while key U.S. swing states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin account for less than 10% of the activity in the affected app, they make up 35% of the attacks.

Could rural Montana be the next Silicon Valley? Check internet speed off your list of reasons why not.

Even though Elon Musk’s SpaceX says its expanded “Better Than Nothing” test is still a beta version of Starlink’s eventual capabilities, at least one early Starlink internet service customer says he is getting better than expected speed. Starlink says it should give you between “50 and 150 MB/s with 20-40 milliseconds of latency.” Starlink customer “FourthEchelon19” is getting 161 megabits/second download and 23 megabits/second upload speed.

In rural Montana.

Smartphone shipments dropped just 1.3% in Q3 according to a report from IDC, hitting 353.6 million: more than expected given the Covid-19 pandemic. Samsung was the largest smartphone manufacturer with shipment of 80.4 million phones.

The biggest winner, however, was Xiaomi with a massive 42% growth.

But its quick acceleration might be at risk.

Apple’s beta software program provides pre-release software for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV before broad public releases to everyone. It’s for greedy, impatient people like me who want new functionality before anyone else, and and are willing to put up with a few bugs here and there.

Right now there’s a lot of “here and there” going on.

For the last few days, Apple’s beta software program has been notifying my iPhone that there’s a new update for iOS 14. But there actually is no such update ...

File this one in the didn’t-expect-that department.

TikTok parent company ByteDance has launched a smart desk lamp for school kids in China. The Dali Smart Work Lamp is intended to provide a “better experience for children” doing homework with better illumination ... and constant surveillance. 

(The “constant surveillance” part is not in the press release.)

The Forbes story for this episode is here:

Imagine being able to get a driver's license, pay your taxes, get a fishing license all online. And: anything you want to do with your government, you can do online.

That's what the state of Oklahoma is currently doing. I chat with Matt Pinnell, OK's lieutenant governor, about how.