Ethereum. Metas VR headset. Intel.TikTok new BeReal?

#64 (TECH) “Ethereum Merge event” — Metas next VR headset. Intel’s new facility.TikTok new BeReal? Cali child protection bill.

Episode Description:

First up – Images and a video of Meta’s next virtual-reality headset have surfaced online.
Our second story – Intel broke ground on a $20B chip manufacturing facility outside of Columbus, Ohio.
Our third story – TikTok is now testing an experimental feature for its platform that replicates BeReal’s daily photo prompt.
Our fourth – Ethereum has completed its anticipated Merge event that switches the blockchain from a “proof of work” to a “proof of stake” system.
And for our fifth and final story… A follow up story to the bill in California which has now been signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom last Thursday.

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What is going on everyone? I’m your host Kevin Muñoz. This is the LEO podcast tech episode, where we discuss all things tech.

For today’s tech episode. I have 5 juicy stories for you!

First up – Images and a video of Meta’s next virtual-reality headset have surfaced online.

Our second story – Intel broke ground on a $20B chip manufacturing facility outside of Columbus, Ohio.

Our third story – TikTok is now testing an experimental feature for its platform that replicates BeReal’s daily photo prompt.

Our fourth – Ethereum has completed its anticipated Merge event that switches the blockchain from a “proof of work” to a “proof of stake” system.

And for our fifth and final story… is A follow-up to the bill in California which has now been signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom last Thursday.

All this, coming up on today’s free episode. Today is Monday, September fifth… if you want early access to episodes and bonus episodes you can find that right now on our patreon.com/latinamericaneo, and if not then enjoy this one!

Article 1: Images and a video of Meta’s next virtual-reality headset have surfaced online.

For our first story!… Images and a video of a “Meta Quest Pro” virtual reality headset surfaced online, posted by Ramiro Cardenas, who claims that the device was left in a hotel room. This device shown resembles the project Cambria headset Meta has been publicly teasing since late last year and looks like the one spotted in leaked setup videos.

The video shows Cardenna removing the device from its packaging, revealing a black headset and controller with what looks like an updated design. While the headset has three cameras on its front, the controllers feature a design that drops the hollowed-out look design that houses the sensors for something more solid.

As for the packaging, it has the “Meta Quest Pro” label stamped in the top-left corner and a graphic showing the VR headset and controllers. Cardenas even provided a closeup of the label stuck to the box which read “Not for resale – engineering sample” and told The Verge that the person who stayed in the room has since claimed the headsets.

These images and video surfaced exactly a month ahead of Meta’s Connect event on October 11th, which lines up with the timeline CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed for when the company will reveal its next VR headset.

Of course, this kind of leak has “grain as salt” written all over it and the video like many “accidentally left in a room” stories, has the same vibes as “my uncle works for Nintendo”. Since then Cardenas has also claimed that the device was returned to its original owner, meaning that we never actually got to see him take the device for a spin or even turn the thing on. He also can’t answer any questions about it. The box also looks identical to the original Quest packaging so take this all as you will.

Article 2: Intel broke ground on a $20B chip manufacturing facility outside of Columbus, Ohio.

For our second story – Intel broke ground on a $20 Billion dollar chip manufacturing facility outside of Columbus, Ohio.

According to Biden “This is the story of the field of dreams in the middle of Ohio, where America’s future will be built…think about the tradition here: The Wright brothers, Neil Armstrong, and John Glenn. They defined America’s spirit, as a spirit of daring and innovation”

Biden also noted that the building and opening of the campus will create seven thousand union construction jobs and three thousand full-time jobs with an average salary of 135 thousand dollars a year and that not all of them will require a college degree.

If you listened to our tech episode 60 then you might recall that Biden signed the 280 billion dollars bipartisan CHIPS Act to boost domestic high-tech manufacturing as Intel, Micron Technology, IBM, Lockheed Martin, HP Inc, and AMD executives watched it happen.

The President says that there is irony in the fact that to prep the site, construction crews must dig 60 feet below ground to provide a secure foundation for the facility that will be 10 football fields long.

All this, he said, to make a computer chip that’s the size of a fingertip.

Intel stated that the construction was made possible by the CHIPS and Science Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. And that investing to revitalize the U.S. chip-making ecosystem will bring a broad range of economic benefits while helping to restore balance, dependability, and resilience to the global semiconductor supply chain.

The federal subsidies, which are part of the Chips and Science Act signed into law last month, are sparking a wave of chip investment.

Micron is holding its own groundbreaking ceremony for a 15 billion dollar chip factory near its headquarters in Boise, Idaho. Chip maker Wolfspeed on Friday announced plans to build a new manufacturing facility in Chatham County, North Carolina.

Taiwan’s TSMC, the world’s largest chip maker, has said it will seek subsidies for a 12 billion dollar factory that it has begun building in Phoenix and is aiming to finish late next year.

A partnership between SkyWater Technology and Purdue University will apply for a federal subsidy to build a new 1.8 billion dollar factory and research facility next to the university in West Lafayette, Indiana.

The United States today depends heavily on Asia and especially Taiwan for its chip manufacturing, a reliance that has worried U.S. officials as the self-governing islands’ tensions with China rise.

Asian governments have long subsidized chip manufacturing, helping them corner the lion’s share of production in recent decades, to the detriment of the United States and other Western nations that took a more laissez-faire approach. Chip factories are among the most expensive manufacturing facilities to build, costing 10 billion dollars or more, making many investors reluctant to build them without government assistance.

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Article 3: TikTok is now testing an experimental feature for its platform that replicates BeReal’s daily photo prompt.

For our third story… TikTok launched a new feature last week that is basically just a copy of BeReal, the buzzy French social app that has been steadily gaining popularity. BeReal invites users to take a front and back camera photo at a random time every day, designed to capture a more authentic picture of what our friends are doing all day.

Snapchat and Instagram caught wind of this and have already launched front and back camera features, and Instagram is rumored to be working on its own time-based feature. According to a recent tweet from a mobile developer, Instagram could be looking at a new BeReal-type feature, called IG Candid Challenges which has a lot of similarities to BeReal, right down to a 2-minute warning. The new feature, which a Meta spokesperson says is a “prototype” allows users to take and post an unedited photo at a random time each day. Which sounds familiar, right?

But TikTok beats its competitors to the punch by being the first app to just outright cut-and-paste BeReal into its platform.

The company’s blog read “ TikTok now invites you and your friends to capture what you’re doing in the moment using your device’s front and back camera…you’ll receive a daily prompt to capture a 10-second video or a static photo to easily share what you’re up to”

Every day when the BeReal goes out, users get a push notification telling them that “it’s time to BeReal” while TikTok’s notification looks the same – users are notified between lightning emojis that it is “Time to Now” which honestly doesn’t have the same ring.

According to TikTok, the feature is now available for U.S. users and when looking at the mock-up images it looks like the “Now” button will appear at the bottom of the navigation bar, next to the posting button. I have yet to see it on mine but let me know if this is available to you yet.

Now BeReal comes with its own privacy concerns and if you aren’t careful to turn off the location, you might be accidentally sharing exactly where you live, down to the street name, with all your friends. In the mockup images shared by TikTok, it doesn’t look like the location appears to be part of the TikTok Now interface.

It’s kind of sad to see these social media apps copy each other. Think about how many apps have a TikTok clone now. But according to Crunchbase an app like BeReal isn’t part of a tech giant like Instagram or Youtube and the company has fewer than 50 employees.

Article 4: Ethereum has completed its anticipated Merge event that switches the blockchain from a “proof of work” to a “proof of stake” system.

For our fourth story… The massive overhaul of Ethereum known as the Merge has finally happened, moving the digital machinery at the core of the second-largest cryptocurrency by market value to a vastly more energy-efficient system after years of development and delay.

It is definitely a huge accomplishment swapping out one way of running a blockchain, known as proof-of-work, for another, called proof-of-stake.

Now some of you might be asking why they even did this and why it was so anticipated.

Well, the reason for this is that the payoff is potentially gigantic. Ethereum should now consume 99.9% or so less energy. According to one estimate, it’s like Finland has suddenly shut off its power grid.

Ethereum’s developers say the upgrade will make the network – which houses a 60 billion dollar ecosystem of cryptocurrency exchanges, lending companies, non-fungible token marketplaces, and other apps – more secure and scalable, too.

When the merge officially kicked in at 6:43 am UTC, more than 41 thousand people were tuned in on YouTube to an “Ethereum Mainnet Merge Viewing Party”. After about 15 long minutes the Merge was officially finalized, meaning it could be declared a success. The price of ETH -whose current market value near 200 billion dollars makes it the second-largest cryptocurrency after bitcoin was largely flat after the Merge.

The update, which ends the network’s reliance on the energy-intensive process of cryptocurrency mining, has been closely watched by crypto investors, enthusiasts, and skeptics for the impact it is expected to have on the wider blockchain industry.

Investor and billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team Mark Cuban told CoinDesk he would be “watching [the Merge] with interest like everyone else” pointing out that it might make ETH, the network’s native token, deflationary.

However, not everyone buys into the proof-of-stake hype. There are no signs that Bitcoin, for instance, will ever abandon proof-of-work- which proponents insist remains the more battle-tested and secure system.

Buterin, Ethereum’s most visible figurehead, previously outlined a set of next steps for the network that includes “sharding” – a method that should help address the network’s sluggish transaction times and high fees by spreading transactions across “shards” like adding lanes to a highway.

That upgrade was initially slated to accompany the transition to proof-of-stake. Still, it was deprioritized given the success that third-party solutions – called rollups- have had in solving some of the same issues.

Rollups foreshadow the likely future for Ethereum development, where community solutions – rather than updates to Ethereum’s core code – play the primary role in expanding the chain’s capabilities.

Article 5: Is A follow up to the bill in California which has now been signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom last Thursday.

For our fifth and final story… California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed into law a new bill that could upend how social media platforms deal with underage users. The bill, known as AB 2273 “requires online platforms to consider the best interest of child users and to default to privacy and safety settings that protect children’s mental and physical health and wellbeing”

The law, which won’t go into effect until July of 2024, is meant to place further restrictions on the type of data that platforms can collect from children. In Newsom’s press release they state that “AB 2273 prohibits companies that provide online services, products or features likely to be accessed by children from using a child’s personal information; collecting, selling, or retaining a child’s geolocation; profiling a child by default; and leading or encouraging children to provide personal information”

However, what’s still not clear is exactly what this will mean on a practical level for social media, games, and other online platforms. And the bill has already faced sharp criticism from privacy advocates as well as the tech industry.

One criticism, backed by digital rights groups, is that requiring companies to identify child users could harm the privacy of everyone, not just kids. According to them “The bill is so vaguely and broadly written that it will almost certainly lead to widespread use of invasive age verification techniques that subject children (and everyone else) to more surveillance while claiming to protect their privacy” Fight for the future wrote in a statement denouncing the bill that “requiring age verification also makes it nearly impossible to use online services anonymously, which threatens freedom of expression, particularly for marginalized communities, human rights activists, whistleblowers, and journalists”

Growing concern over the psychological and emotional toll of Instagram on its younger users prompted a senate panel last year. Ahead of the hearing, the platform unveiled new teen safety features, including one that notified users if they were spending too much time on the app and an option to automatically report that objectionable content to their parents. And earlier this year, Instagram launched parental control that allows guardians to monitor who their teens follow and impose time limits on the app.

Now, this recent change likely won’t be too impactful for teen users whose parents or guardians already control their accounts through Instagram’s Family Center. And for teens who are allowed to roam free on Instagram, it’s hard to imagine how many will willingly switch on the most restrictive content settings – especially if many of their peers pick the more lenient filter.

THE END

That’s all for today on the LEO podcast. I’m Kevin Muñoz and as always feel free to send me a message with your thoughts or with any interesting topic that you’d like to see covered.

and for those of you on Patreon, I’ll see you in the bonus episode.

Otherwise, I’ll see you all in next week’s episode!