Tech Brew Ride Home

One of my favorite people to read is the Wall Street Journal tech columnist Chris Mims. We talked about his piece this week positing that email was back, baby! And I read a piece he did a while back about the new way of constructing super energy efficient homes, but when I did the email piece and remembered he did a piece recently about how I’m more likely to get a burrito delivered to me for lunch than to have my self-driving wager come in by commuting to work in a robot car, I knew it was time to hit up Chris to come on the pod. He’s a listener!

This episode has a full transcript.

The posts we discuss:

The Hot New Channel for Reaching Real People: Email

Why Your Ice Cream Will Ride in a Self-Driving Car Before You Do

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Risk! Podcast

Given all the news of layoffs in the digital media space this week, I knew I couldn't sit on this interview with Rafat Ali any longer. Currently the founder and CEO of digital media company Skift—but also, if you weren’t aware, a true digital media pioneer going back to his founding of Paid Content—I knew he could talk about this stuff, and he has a pretty unique perspective on the state of digital media in 2019. TLDR, it’s not good. Dire might even be the word. 

This episode has a full transcript.

Sponsor:

Capterra.com/ride

Now the AIs can defeat us at StarCraft II (too?), Zuckerberg wants to unify his collection of messaging apps, my grand unifying theory for the streaming video wars and of course the weekend longreads suggestions.

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Metalab.co

Links:

Zuckerberg Plans to Integrate WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger (NYTimes)

Facebook knowingly duped game-playing kids and their parents out of money (Reveal)

Facebook ignored kids’ spending problems, internal documents reveal (BBC News)

DeepMind AI Challenges Pro StarCraft II Players, Wins Almost Every Match (ExtremeTech)

Coming to a TV near you: personalized ads (Axios)

The SmartTouchUSA.com Weekend Longreads:

From Founder to CEO (podcast)

EVERYBODY DOES IT: THE MESSY TRUTH ABOUT INFILTRATING COMPUTER SUPPLY CHAINS (The Intercept)

Katzenberg and Whitman: Hollywood’s New Odd Couple (Fortune)

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey: The Rolling Stone Interview (Rolling Stone)

“The Linux of social media”—How LiveJournal pioneered (then lost) blogging (ArsTechnica)

Reddit’s r/changemyview is a template for how all online discussion should be (TNW)

Bing’s Schrodinger-style China Ban, headphones from Sonos, flying cars from Boeing, layoffs for project Titan, and the serious ongoing layoffs in the digital media world.

Sponsors:

Lightstream.com/ride

Metalab.co

DatadogHQ.com/ridehome

Stories from: @pkafka, @markgurman 

Tweets: @stroughtonsmith

Links:

China Appears to Block Microsoft’s Bing as Censorship Intensifies (NYTimes)

Sonos Plans Headphones in Move Outside the Home (Bloomberg)

Boeing’s ‘flying car’ lifts off in race to revolutionize urban transport (VentureBeat)

The U.S. Government Shutdown Has Delivered A Surprise Blow To Bitcoin (Forbes)

Apple just dismissed more than 200 employees from Project Titan, its autonomous vehicle group (CNBC)

Verizon Media Group is laying off 7% of its staff (CNBC)

BuzzFeed is laying off more than 200 people, its second round of cuts in 14 months (Recode)

YouTube TV goes nationwide, Jony Ive’s dream phone design, Patreon milestones and is Spotify killing music’s middle class?

Sponsors:

Joybird.com/RIDE ... Promocode RIDE

Metalab.co

Links:

YouTube TV finally goes nationwide almost two years after launch (The Verge)

Hulu drops to just $5.99 per month after Netflix’s price hikes (The Verge)

Waymo says it will build self-driving cars in Michigan (Reuters)

Xiaomi's flexible phone concept folds on both sides (Engadget)

Meizu Zero debuts with no physical buttons, speaker or charging port (GSMarena)

Millions and Billions | Celebrating Patrons, Creators, and Major Milestones (Patreon Blog)

Digitimes: AirPods 2 launching in first half of this year, redesigned to support ‘health monitoring’ features (9to5Mac)

Spotify Will Soon Let You Block Artists (Thurrot.com)

The economics of streaming is making songs shorter (QZ)

Is Spotify’s Model Wiping Out Music’s Middle Class? (The Ringer)

Munchery bites the big one, Foxconn considers moving production to India, Netflix wants a seat at the adults table, and, yes, even guitar tech is now tech.

Sponsors:

Metalab.co

DatadogHQ.com/ridehome

Links:

Munchery closes on-demand meal-delivery business (San Francisco Chronicle)

Foxconn Looks Beyond China to India for iPhone Assembly (WSJ)

Apple Supplier in Japan Looks to Taiwan for Bailout After iPhone XR Letdown (WSJ)

Apple Pay coming to Target, Taco Bell and more top US retail locations (Apple Newsroom)

Netflix in advanced talks to join major Hollywood lobbying group (Politico)

Rosetta Stone for iPhone adds AI to identify objects for live translations (VentureBeat)

FENDER'S NEW ACOUSTIC GUITAR HAS A MILLION DIFFERENT VOICES (Wired)

The GDPR fines begin, but the EU “link tax” might be in trouble, Uber wants self driving scooters, and why email is back, baby! (Hint: it never left.)

Sponsors:

Flatironschool.com/podcast

Metalab.co

Links:

French data protection watchdog fines Google $57 million under the GDPR (TechCrunch)

Copyright negotiations hit a brick wall in Council (Julia Reda)

Uber is exploring autonomous bikes and scooters (TechCrunch)

A POKER-PLAYING ROBOT GOES TO WORK FOR THE PENTAGON (Wired)

Amazon helped 50,000 SMBs generate $500,000 in sales (Neowin)

The Hot New Channel for Reaching Real People: Email (WSJ)

Ali's Medium Post: Land of the Super Founders

On this bonus episode, we’re going to revisit a past weekend longread suggestion and talk to the author of that longread to go further in-depth. Do you remember I recommended Land of the Super Founders a medium piece by Ali Tamaseb who spent 300 hours gathering data on unicorn startups to answer the simple question what did billion-dollar startups look like when they were getting started? What common traits did they share? 

This episode has a full transcript.

Sponsor:

Squarespace.com/listen

This week had a lot of health tech news in it… a lot of it broken by CNBC’s health tech reporter Christina Farr. So, I reached out to Christina to chat, and we discussed Amazon getting into healthcare—possibly even getting into health insurance—what Apple’s health strategy is, where health tech might go beyond wearables and how the healthcare industry is responding to Silicon Valley invading their turf.

This episode has a full transcript.

Sponsor:

Squarespace.com/listen

Netflix starts to open up, Cortana stops competing, gadget reviews now include shoes as a category and the weekend longreads suggestions.

Sponsors:

DataDogHQ.com/ridehome

Tiny.website

Links:

Netflix beats on subscriber growth, but misses slightly on revenue — stock falls after hours (CNBC)

It’s Official: Satya Nadella Confirms Cortana Defeat (Thurrott)

Nike's auto-laced future (TechCrunch)

NIKE'S NEW SELF-LACING BASKETBALL SHOE IS ACTUALLY SMART (Wired)

The SmartTouchUSA.com Weekened Longreads

Drone Radio Show

Delivery Drones Use Bird-Inspired Legs to Jump Into the Air (IEEE Spectrum)

Why Do Shareholders Agree to Give Up Voting Rights? (New York Magazine)

The Attention Economy Is a Malthusian Trap (The Atlantic)

The Story Behind Meta, the AR Startup That Just Had Its Assets Sold to a Mystery Buyer (Variety)

Rekindled yet again, Nokia’s next-gen phones offer more than just nostalgia (Digital Trends)

INSIDE THE STRANGE YET PROFITABLE WORLD OF RETAIL ARBITRAGE (Mel Magazine)

EA’s Troubled Decade Of Star Wars Games (Kotaku)