We’re in a crazy, complex, almost alternate reality now. We see hacking from nation-states, hacking from criminals, hacking for fun, hacking for profit ... and there's probably worse that we don't see. In that context, how does a Chief Information Security Officer function? We chat with Twitter's CISO Rinki Sethi and Info-Tech Research Group analyst Frank Sargent about information security in 2021. Topics: - Russia - SolarWinds Orion and Supernova hacks - Big tech - Social engineering - US elect...
Jan 04, 2021•24 min•Season 1Ep. 153
Intel's Loihi chip is a neuromorphic chip which tries to emulate the human brain. As far as we've come with convention computing, we are still way behind tiny organisms like insects and birds at understanding the world and adapting to it. Now Intel is applying neuromorphic computing to autonomous drones: drones that can fly themselves at high speed in challenging, obstacle-filled environments. To do, essentially, what birds and bats and even tiny-brained insects can already do with ease. How? Pa...
Dec 22, 2020•18 min•Season 1Ep. 152
The internet of things sounds great, but has huge issues. Ubiquity is one. Battery power is another. Cost of sensors -- and sensing tech to sense the sensors -- is another. But perhaps ... we're about to solve all the problems. Wiliot makes a super-smart ARM-based chip with onboard sensors that harvests energy from environmental radio waves to enable battery-free IoT. In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, I interview Stephen Statler, a senior VP at Wiliot. The chip uses a custom-built...
Dec 17, 2020•43 min•Season 1Ep. 151
Think about it: AI chooses your next song in Spotify, your next video in YouTube, your next news item in Flipboard, which updates from friends and family you see on Facebook, and more. Recently I had the opportunity to moderate a discussion between three AI experts: Danny Lange, who led AI at Uber and Amazon before jumping to Unity; Beena Ammanath, Executive Director of Deloitte AI Institute and Founder of Humans for AI; Cindy Gordon, CEO of SalesChoice and a writer at Forbes. We chatted about: ...
Dec 15, 2020•1 hr 18 min•Season 1Ep. 150
What changes when quantum computing is mainstream? Quantum computing is on the far reaches of science, using technology that accesses aspects of matter at quantum scales where physics almost overlaps with magic. Classical computing is simple: deterministic. You have something, or you have nothing. Quantum computing is complex: you can have something, or nothing, or both something and nothing at the same time. If that’s hard to wrap your head around, you’re in good company. Even Richard Feyman, 1...
Dec 10, 2020•34 min•Season 1Ep. 149
There’s a brand-new sensor in the iPhone 12 Pro, and it’s a big clue about the future of technology. Already just 1 month after iPhone 12 launch, the phone accounts for 5% of new uploads to Sketchfab, the largest global platform for immersive and interactive 3D models. It's much faster, high-quality especially at room-scale, but not the best at small-scale objects. In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with Alban Denoyal, the CEO of Sketchfab about why. And about the implicati...
Dec 07, 2020•23 min•Season 1Ep. 148
I've always wanted a Star Trek tricorder ... a mobile sensor unit that tells you all about the world around you. (Who doesn't?) Now a company in Germany, Trinamix, has partnered with Qualcomm to deliver mobile spectroscopy in mobile phones. No attachments required. All onboard your smartphone. The first applications are in skin care and cosmetics, but the tech can also sense what is on your plate to help you record your diet, or tell you the composition of just about anything around you. In this...
Dec 03, 2020•11 min•Season 1Ep. 147
Do deepfakes foreshadow the fall of civilization and the end of all truth? Or are they just good fun? Or is there a third possibility: that they're the foundation of a massive new opportunity to experience what could never be real (for most of us) and a massive new opportunity (for influencers and stars) to essentially become a merger of real person and synthetic being in millions of ways in dozens of languages for billions of people ... simultaneously. In this episode of TechFirst with John Koe...
Nov 30, 2020•29 min•Season 1Ep. 146
Are robot chefs the future of food? We chat with Buck Jordan, the cofounder of Miso Robotics, which makes Flippy … the robot that cooks. We talk about the future of robots in restaurant kitchens, whether this is killing jobs or not, what's available now and what's coming next. We also chat about home kitchens: whether we'll get robots to cook all our food in our homes ... and when that might be affordable. Buck's project: that's about 10 years away.
Nov 26, 2020•18 min•Season 1Ep. 145
Did you know your computer transmits a log of every single app you open? Apple has made privacy a core part of the brand -- including entire TV commercials dedicated to it -- but as a self-described hacker and security researcher recently found, every Mac sends a stream of data about every app you open (and more) to Apple. And ... sends it unencrypted. And … bypasses any local VPN software you’ve installed. In this edition of TechFirst with John Koetsier we're chatting with Jeffrey Paul, the hac...
Nov 24, 2020•23 min•Season 1Ep. 144
Former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold spent 18 months building a custom 100MP camera to take pictures of snowflakes. We chat with him about why :-) and how, which includes equipment from Japan and Canada and trips to Alaska and Yellowknife and Timmons, Ontario. Myhrvold also chats about what drives him to continue inventing and learning. He's a polymath, and while best known for being the CTO of Microsoft, he's the founder of Intellectual Ventures, has more than 850 patents to his name, and has w...
Nov 21, 2020•34 min•Season 1Ep. 143
In the future, most work might be done by robots, but right now, most is done by humans. How do we manage the transition? And, what does a humans + robots economy look like? In this episode of TechFirst I chat with Lior Elazary, CEO of inVia Robotics. Questions we discuss: - What is robotics as a service (RaaS)? - How can you ultimately get the best contributions out of what humans can do and what robots can provide? - What kinds of productivity gains are you seeing from robots? - What size of w...
Nov 17, 2020•22 min•Season 1Ep. 142
Is AI, robotics, and … verticality … about to change farming as we know it? In this episode of TechFirst we chat with Nate Storey, the cofounder and chief science officer of Plenty. Plenty grows food vertically, indoors, anywhere on the planet. A 2-acre Plenty farm produces as much food as a 750-acre traditional "flat farm." We chat about how Plenty uses AI and robotics to increase yield, what crops Plenty offers and will offer, and the company's plans for expansion.
Nov 13, 2020•25 min•Season 1Ep. 141
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" p...
Nov 13, 2020•27 min•Season 1Ep. 140
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 u...
Nov 10, 2020•9 min•Season 1Ep. 139
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.
Nov 06, 2020•18 min•Season 1Ep. 138
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....
Nov 04, 2020•11 min•Season 1Ep. 137
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 addr...
Nov 03, 2020•8 min•Season 1Ep. 136
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/seco...
Nov 02, 2020•5 min•Season 1Ep. 135
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.
Oct 30, 2020•5 min•Season 1Ep. 134
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...
Oct 30, 2020•3 min•Season 1Ep. 133
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 : https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/10/29/tiktok-owner-bytedance-selling-smart-lamp-wi...
Oct 29, 2020•3 min
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.
Oct 28, 2020•20 min•Season 1Ep. 132
Can AI combine data from hundreds or thousands of smartphones simultaneously to make great videos? IMINT algorithms are in 100s of millions of devices globally from smartphone manufacturers like Huawei, Vivo, Opportunity, Sharp, Motorola, Asus, and more. Now the company is working on a collaborative video system that will auto-create movies from the best clips of hundreds or even thousands of people. In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier we're chatting with Johan Svensson, CTO of IMINT...
Oct 28, 2020•13 min•Season 1Ep. 131
It’s the ultimate Covid product: fast, low-latency internet anywhere on the planet for just $99 per month, plus a $500 up-front payment to get the connection kit. As long as you’re OK with occasional blackouts. Elon Musk's Starlink is finally soft-launching in an extended public beta. See the story on Forbes here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/10/27/starlinks-internet-anywhere-via-spacex-satellite-99month/
Oct 27, 2020•3 min•Season 1Ep. 130
Facebook is launching a cloud gaming service to compete with Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, Stream, and all the other cloud gaming services. In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, we chat with head of Facebook Gaming Vivek Sharma about what makes Facebook's cloud gaming service unique and, in his opinion, better than other options.
Oct 26, 2020•18 min•Season 1Ep. 128
Apple’s iOS 14 is probably the most privacy-safe mobile operating system on the planet. But a major part of the planned functionality was delayed until 2021. At the time, Apple said the reason was that mobile developers weren’t ready yet. As it turns out, that might not be true. And Apple has now admitted that its own advertising attribution software has two major bugs. The Forbes story for this episode is here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/10/24/apples-privacy-safe-mobile-attr...
Oct 24, 2020•6 min•Season 1Ep. 126
Apple has extended Apple TV+ for free for three more months for customers who bought an Apple product and received their first year free. The good thing is: now there’s actually content worth watching on the service. “We’re giving you extra time to discover the latest Apple Originals and catch up on shows returning for a second season,” my email from Apple says. “You don’t have to do anything — just keep watching for free until February 2021.” I watched almost nothing on Apple TV in the first fe...
Oct 24, 2020•4 min•Season 1Ep. 126
This week the U.S. government filed suit against Google. Smart move, or just politics? And, which member of big tech -- Amazon, Facebook, Apple -- is next? Google is a behemoth. It owns search in English and many other languages and, with Facebook, dominates digital advertising. But is it a monopoly? And should the government have filed antitrust charges? To dive into the story, we’re chatting with Greg Sterling, VP of insights at Uberall. He's a former lawyer and journalist....
Oct 23, 2020•14 min•Season 1Ep. 125
Raising $1.75 billion wasn’t enough to make Quibi a success. Nor was a massive spend on advertising. The short-form video startup had a short six-month lifespan during which it spent at least $63 million on TV, web, and print ads, according to ad intelligence firm MediaRadar. While that’s a significant amount of money on marketing, it’s only good for fifth place in the streaming video category behind four other players: Amazon Prime, Disney+, Hulu, and Peacock. So what did cause its ultimate fai...
Oct 22, 2020•4 min•Season 1Ep. 124
