Important Note
Tech Narratives was a subscription website, which offered expert commentary on the day's top tech news from Jan Dawson, along with various other features, for $10/month. As of Monday October 16, 2017, it will no longer be updated. An archive of past content will remain available for the time being. I've written more about this change in the post immediately below, and also here.
KGI and Bloomberg Report Leaks on iPhone 8 Security Features (Jul 3, 2017)
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Facebook Has Two More Original Video Series in the Works (Jul 3, 2017)
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Microsoft’s Chatbots Still Seem to be Having Problems Staying out of Trouble (Jul 3, 2017)
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Alphabet’s DeepMind Deal with UK Health Service Deemed Illegal by Regulator (Jul 3, 2017)
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Microsoft Reorganizes Business Sales Teams Ahead of Anticipated Layoffs (Jul 3, 2017)
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Facebook Beats User Privacy Lawsuit, Fights Gag Order over Government Searches (Jul 3, 2017)
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Tesla On Track to Deliver First Model 3s by End of July, But Q2 Production Falls Short (Jul 3, 2017)
Update: following another release from Tesla on Monday, I’ve amended both the headline and content on this piece significantly from the first version published Monday morning.
Overnight, Tesla CEO Elon Musk had tweeted that Model 3 production would begin shortly, with the first deliveries happening by the end of July, with production ramping up slowly from there. Hitting the launch milestone is something of an achievement for a company that’s often missed its own self-imposed deadlines, but the real test is ramping production enormously above past levels, and that continues to be the achievement I’m far more skeptical of. The new numbers provided today suggest far lower total production than Tesla has promised in the past, at least in the second half of this year and first half of 2018. Later on Monday, the reason for getting that news out overnight became a little clearer, as Tesla released its production and delivery numbers for the June quarter, including a shortfall in both due to battery shortages. That’s bad news for Tesla, and more evidence of its inability to plan and execute on production in predictable ways, and therefore to meet the targets it sets itself. None of this gives me any more confidence in the longer term projections of Model 3 production.
Scale of Sexual Harassment and Other Misbehavior by Men in VC Becomes Clearer (Jul 3, 2017)
This article dropped on Friday evening as I was logging off for the week, so I’m only getting to it now. But this article was something of a bombshell, detailing not just the scale of harassment, assault, and other misbehavior by men against women in venture capital, but also naming specific names including some who hadn’t been accused previously. There really seems to have been a tipping point in the last few weeks on this topic, where far more women are now willing to speak out about their bad experiences and name their abusers and harassers. That, in turn, has suddenly exposed many man within venture capital and their past bad actions. This was a much needed change, and although the venture capital world and companies like Uber remain single small pockets in which the real state of things is finally being revealed, I can easily see this movement spreading and penetrating much of the rest of the tech industry. Justice Brandeis’ famous quote about sunlight (publicity) being the best disinfectant seems apt here: the more of these cases come to light, the more some of the perpetrators (like Justin Caldbeck and Dave McClure) will be moved out of roles or dumped by their employers altogether. None of this represents an overnight change, but it does feel like things are finally moving in the right direction, and those who have been protected out of a combination of fear on the part of would-be accusers and collusion on the part of colleagues are finally being exposed to some real consequences. There’s clearly a long way still to go, but breaking the wall of silence feels like a big step forward. Increasing diversity still feels like one of the most obvious ways to prevent this issue in future – at many companies, the overwhelming gender dominance of men is clearly a big part of the cultural problem, even though women seem to have protected some of those accused as well, either covering up bad behavior or dealing with it too quietly (as in the case of 500 Startups). Update: on Monday, per Axios, Dave McClure was asked to resign completely from 500 Startups, and did so, a step which should arguably have taken rather sooner.
Weekly Narrative Video – Facebook’s Power (Jul 1, 2017)
This week’s narrative video is on the Facebook’s Power narrative, which feels particularly relevant in the week that Facebook announced 2 billion total monthly active users globally. But it’s a narrative that’s also been in the news in other ways, including the leak this week of Facebook’s training for its moderators, its ongoing efforts to provide Internet access with drones and through other means, and news about enabling subscriptions for news organizations. And yet Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg also seem more reflective lately on the role Facebook plays in the world, and how it can be more of a force for good. Subscribers can watch the video on the narrative page here as always, and if you’re not yet a subscriber you can sign up for a 30-day free trial here and get access too.
Uber Being Sued by Two Women Claiming Sexual Assault by Drivers (Jun 30, 2017)
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Germany Passes Law Requiring <24 Hour Removal of Hate Speech or Payment of Fines (Jun 30, 2017)
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T-Mobile Helps PBS Stations Move to New Frequencies in Wake of Spectrum Auction (Jun 30, 2017)
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Fitbit Smartwatch Development Again Reported to be Struggling (Jun 30, 2017)
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Facebook Rolls out Find Wi-Fi Feature Leveraging Local Business Pages (Jun 30, 2017)
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AT&T More than Doubles DirecTV Now Live Local Channel Lineup (Jun 30, 2017)
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Tidal and Sprint’s Exclusive of Jay-Z’s 4:44 Causes Aggravation and Won’t Last Long (Jun 30, 2017)
Jay-Z, one of the principal owners of the Tidal music streaming service, released his latest album, 4:44, on the service last night through a partnership with Sprint, which of course recently invested in the service and gave its subscribers six months’ free access. The intent was clearly to get more people to sign up for the service, while rewarding Sprint customers, but the effect was to aggravate many others who assumed they could merely sign up for the service after the album dropped and then found that it wasn’t available, at least right away. In addition, the exclusive seems pretty porous, and potentially short-lived: iHeartRadio has been streaming the album and will continue to do so for the first day, while Apple Music is reportedly getting the album a week in too. That’s a reflection mostly of the realities of the industry: though Jay-Z and Tidal’s other owners might like the idea of boosting subscriptions through exclusives like this, the reality is that the service has a tiny fraction of global streaming users, and over the long term Jay-Z and other artists are best served by the broadest possible distribution, especially given that he can’t pay himself for the exclusive in the way Apple has paid for them in the past. Exclusives generally seem to be waning as a source of differentiation for music services, but for Tidal its connection to artists (several of whom have been owners) has always been a major selling point. But if even its artist owners aren’t willing to stay the course on exclusives for more than a few days, it doesn’t have much hope of ever reaching significant scale, making the Sprint investment more of a temporary lifeline than true salvation.
via Variety
Twitter is Reportedly Testing a Fake News Button (Jun 29, 2017)
The Washington Post reports that Twitter is testing a button that would allow users to flag tweets or links in tweets which appear to be false or misleading, although it says there’s no guarantee that the feature will ever launch, and Twitter itself says it’s not going to launch anything along these lines soon. On the face of it, this is a logical step for Twitter, which has been one of the biggest vehicles for the rapid spread of fake news over the last year or two, even though its much smaller scale means that Facebook still arguably has a bigger impact, especially given its tendency to reinforce people’s existing biases. But on the other hand, given how the phrase “fake news” has lost all meaning and come to take on distinct partisan overtones, there’s enormous potential for misuse and controversy, and if Twitter does launch something along these lines, it’s going to need either a massive team of its own or several big partners with significant resources to handle the refereeing that will be needed. That alone may prevent Twitter from ever launching the feature, needed though it may be. In addition, given that Twitter has arguably bent its own rules on acceptable content a little for public figures such as President Trump (and candidate Trump before him), there are some big questions about whether tweets from the President and others would be subject to the same rules as those from other users.
Facebook’s Aquila Internet Drone has Second Flight, This Time with No Crash (Jun 29, 2017)
One of Facebook’s numerous connectivity efforts is its Aquila unmanned aircraft for delivering Internet access in remote or unconnected areas. The first test flight earlier this year ended in a crash, something Facebook wasn’t entirely forthcoming about before an NTSB investigation revealed the details. The second flight happened about a month ago, but Facebook seems to have waited until now to talk about it for some reason, and it seems to have gone rather better. It was still short – under two hours, relative to the months Facebook expects Aquila to stay in the air eventually – and the landing is still a little awkward given that the aircraft has no landing gear, but Facebook seems to be making progress. At F8 in April, Facebook talked about its various internet connectivity efforts, and put Aquila firmly in the long-term bucket, saying it would take up to 10 years to get the project up and running, so that’s useful context for these efforts and the PR around them, which is mostly feel-good stuff and has little bearing on anything the company might do commercially in the near term. The other connectivity efforts including millimeter wave wireless technology for cities, and tethered antennas for emergency sites or rural areas seem to have nearer-term launch prospects, but it’s hard to see any of them delivering a meaningful boost to the addressable market for Facebook, which is arguably the whole point of these initiatives. But expanding the addressable market is going to be critical as Facebook pushes from 2 billion to 3 billion users, as I wrote in my blog post earlier this week.
via Business Insider (see also Facebook’s own post)
Uber Talking to SEC About Giving Drivers Equity (Jun 29, 2017)
According to Axios, Uber has been meeting with the Securities and Exchange Commission to discuss giving drivers equity in the company. As the piece notes, this was something recently-acquired ride sharing startup Juno promised to do, but which it found legally difficult given SEC regulations. Of course, if drivers were employees, there would be entirely standard ways to deal with stock-based compensation, but the combination of the fact that Uber is a private company and drivers are contractors rather than employees make this more complex. Given the historical meteoric rise of Uber’s valuation, I could certainly see the appeal for drivers of getting a stake in the company, though the attraction will have waned a little as there have been reports of shares selling at lower prices in the private markets over recent months. Longer term, there are still big questions about whether Uber’s valuation will continue to grow if it doesn’t have a clear path to profitability and doesn’t seem to be winning decisively against Lyft and other big competitors in its important markets. And its big investment in autonomous driving is another potential huge cash sink which isn’t guaranteed to pay off, especially given the distraction and uncertainty created by the Waymo lawsuit and the departure of Anthony Levandowski and Travis Kalanick in recent weeks. Still, Uber does seem to be genuinely interested in trying to find ways to improve its relationship with drivers recently, and this is another potential step in that direction.
via Axios
AMC Networks Confirms $5/Month Ad-Free VoD Service Through Comcast (Jun 29, 2017)
Back in March, there were reports that AMC was looking to provide an ad-free version of its TV network through pay TV operators, though the specifics weren’t then known. Today, AMC and Comcast have announced that the service will run (for now at least) as a partnership between them, providing AMC Premiere as a video on demand service through Comcast’s set top boxes and apps for $5 per month. As I said in March, that’s a hefty price for a network which commands just a fraction of that from pay TV operators each month, and which generates only half its current revenue from advertising. It may have decided that pricing a service below $5 per month devalues it, but the $5 price point clearly overvalues it, especially given that it won’t be a standalone service – in other words, you have to be an Xfinity pay TV subscriber to be able to get the service, so this is an add-on to the standard AMC channel, not an alternative to it. Taking a step back, the move clearly taps into a broad consumer push to get ad-free TV, something which Netflix has always offered and Hulu has made something of a default recently too for VoD. And of course competitors like HBO have never had ads either, but they also have massively more content including lots of big-budget original content to justify a higher price. This feels like a good concept in principle, but both the wrong channel to apply it to and the wrong price point for what AMC actually offers. I’m looking forward to better applications of the same idea from other content owners.
via Recode