Tech Brew Ride Home

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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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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Links:

Exclusive: Amazon interested in buying Boost from T-Mobile, Sprint - sources (Reuters)

Uber stock rises as net losses match expectations (CNBC)

APPLE WWDC 2019: MAC PRO, IOS 13, MARZIPAN, AND WHAT ELSE TO EXPECT (The Verge)

Weekend Longreads Suggestions:

Product Breakfast Club podcast

The unlikely origins of USB, the port that changed everything (Fast Company)

Bing turns 10: Why it’s been more disruptive than you think (Search Engine Land)

The Collapsing Crime Rates of the ’90s Might Have Been Driven by Cellphones (The Atlantic)

This ID Scanner Company is Collecting Sensitive Data on Millions of Bargoers (OneZero)

AT&T Has Become a New Kind of Media Giant (Fortune)

The case for caseless iPhones (Vox)

Disney’s Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge theme park lands, explained (Polygon)

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 your town?

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Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass is coming to PC (Engadget)

Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users (9to5Google)

Apple, Google and WhatsApp condemn UK proposal to eavesdrop on encrypted messages (CNBC)

U.S. Wants T-Mobile to Create New Rival Before Clearing Megadeal (Bloomberg)

Hulu Says 70% of Its 82 Million Viewers Are on Ad-Supported Plan (Variety)

Gogo plans in-flight 5G for U.S. and Canadian aircraft in 2021 (VentureBeat)

Excel for iPhone now lets you take a picture of a spreadsheet and import it (The Verge)

As E-Sports Grow, So Do Their Homes (NYTimes)

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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Apple refreshes the iPod touch with the iPhone 7’s processor (The Verge)

Dell reveals new laptops aimed at gamers and business users (Android Authority)

Amazon Is Poised to Unleash a Long-Feared Purge of Small Suppliers (Bloomberg)

MacKenzie Bezos pledged to give away more than half of her $37B fortune to charity and philanthropy (TechCrunch)

Browser vendors win war with W3C over HTML and DOM standards (ZDNet)

Driverless Delivery Vans Are Here as Production Begins in China (Bloomberg)

Auction for a laptop full of malware closes at $1.3 million (updated) (Engadget)

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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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This is what the Helvetica Now looks like.

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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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Links:

Facebook plans to launch 'GlobalCoin' currency in 2020 (BBC News)

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket deals out a deck of 60 Starlink internet satellites (GeekWire)

Apple’s keyboard ‘material’ changes on the new MacBook Pro are minor at best (The Verge)

Robot umpires are coming to baseball (Axios)

The Weekend Longreads:

Special report - Hobbling Huawei: Inside the U.S. war on China's tech giant (Reuters)

WeWork Wants to Become Its Own Landlord With Latest Spending Spree (Bloomberg BusinessWeek)

How Silicon Valley gamed Europe’s privacy rules (Politico)

AFTER 15 YEARS, THE PIRATE BAY STILL CAN’T BE KILLED (Mel)

One Inventor’s Race to Manage His Parkinson’s Disease With an App (OneZero)

Business Bets on a Quantum Leap (Fortune)

Can AI escape our control and destroy us? (Popular Science)

The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet (OneZero)

A Revolution In Your Pocket (RBS.io)

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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 review stuffing.

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Playdate is an adorable handheld with games from the creators of Qwop, Katamari, and more (The Verge)

GitHub launches Sponsors, lets you pay your favorite open-source contributors (TechCrunch)

Amazon Is Working on a Device That Can Read Human Emotions (Bloomberg)

DoorDash Is Now Worth $12.6 Billion After New $600 Million Investment (Forbes)

Andreessen pours $22M into PlanetScales' database-as-a-service (TechCrunch)

Walmart starts selling self-branded Android tablets starting at $64 w/ Play Store (9to5Google) 

A year after GDPR, mobile notifications are up, location sharing is down (MarketingLand)

Rotten Tomatoes will start verifying ticket purchases for audience reviews (TechCrunch)

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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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Links:

Huawei: ARM memo tells staff to stop working with China’s tech giant (BBC News)

Huawei Considers Rivals to Google's Android After U.S. Ban (Bloomberg)

EU regulator launches probe into Google over data privacy (CNBC)

Google says some G Suite user passwords were stored in plaintext since 2005 (TechCrunch)

U.S. judge says Qualcomm violated antitrust law; appeal planned, shares plunge (Reuters)

Microsoft kicks off the rollout of the Windows 10 May Update, version 1903 (ZDNet)

Medium CEO Ev Williams Goes All-In on Building Subscription Business (Cheddar)

Comcast is working on an in-home device to track people’s health (CNBC)

Leak reveals Uber's $9.99 Unlimited delivery Eats Pass (TechCrunch)

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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Links:

Apple tweaks its troubled MacBook keyboard design yet again, expands repair program (The Verge)

U.S. eases curbs on Huawei; founder says clampdown underestimates Chinese firm (Reuters)

Google will work with Huawei for 90 days after US eases trade restrictions (CNBC)

DOJ Leans Against Approving T-Mobile’s Takeover of Sprint (Bloomberg)

Instagram's IGTV copies TikTok's AI, Snapchat's Design (TechCrunch)

Google brings release channels and Windows Container support to its Kubernetes Engine (TechCrunch)

Self-Driving Trucks Will Carry Mail in U.S. for the First Time (Bloomberg)

Hand Gestures And Horses: Waymo’s Self-Driving Service Learns To Woo The Public (Forbes)

Chevy rolls out new feature that locks teens out of driving until they buckle up (The Verge)

Your Car Knows When You Gain Weight (NYTimes)

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