Tech Nuggets with the Technology

Sunday, October 13, 2019

Kik says it’s ‘here to stay,’ following shutdown reports

It’s been a rough run for Kik of late. The once mighty messaging service announced in late September that it would be shutting down its app. CEO Ted Livingston noted in a blog post that the startup would be trimming its headcount from over 100 people to “an elite 19 person team,” following a protracted 18 month battle with the SEC.

Today the service noted on Twitter, however, “Great news: Kik is here to stay!!!! AND there’s some really exciting plans for making the app even better. More details coming soon. Stay tuned.”

Great news: Kik is here to stay!!!!AND there’s some really exciting plans for making the app even better. More details coming soon. Stay tuned.

— Kik (@Kik) October 13, 2019

The news follows an October 7 tweet from Livingston that noted, “Some exciting news: we may have found a home for Kik! We just signed an LOI [letter of intent] with a great company. They want to buy the app, continue growing it for our millions of users, and take the Kin integration to the next level. Not a done deal yet, but could be a great win win. More soon.”

Some exciting news: we may have found a home for Kik! We just signed an LOI with a great company. They want to buy the app, continue growing it for our millions of users, and take the Kin integration to the next level. Not a done deal yet, but could be a great win win. More soon https://t.co/SeLjf9bEaG

— Ted Livingston (@ted_livingston) October 7, 2019

Along with the previously noted shutdown of Kik Messenger, the executive added that the far leaner team would be shifting its focus to its cryptocurrency, Kin. “[N]o matter what happens to Kik, Kin is here to stay,” Livingston said of the two-year-old currency at the time. “Kin operates on an open, decentralized infrastructure run by a dozen independent companies. Kin is a currency used by millions of people in dozens of independent apps.”

Kin was the subject of an SEC lawsuit earlier this year, following its $100 million ICO raise. “The SEC charges that Kik sold the tokens to U.S. investors without registering their offer and sale as required by the U.S. securities laws,” the commission wrote in June.

What the future ultimately looks like for Kik is still very unclear following the fairly cryptic tweet. We’ve reached out to the company for comment.

A book based on labor ideas from the early 20th century has provided a blueprint for workers at Google, Uber, and Kickstarter to organize without a formal union (Noam Scheiber/New York Times)

Noam Scheiber / New York Times:
A book based on labor ideas from the early 20th century has provided a blueprint for workers at Google, Uber, and Kickstarter to organize without a formal union — A book based on ideas associated with a labor group from the early 20th century has provided a blueprint for organizing without a union.

Samsung’s Galaxy Fold concierge service is live in the US for those who need it

Part of Samsung’s reboot of the Galaxy Fold was the announcement of a Premiere Service. Along with a reinforced version of the phone and a lot more warning labels, the company announced that it would also be a 24/7 care service…just in case something happened with the device.

I had some issues with my in just over a day, after not running into any trouble with the original version of the phone. Given how gingerly the company insists users act with the device, my issue doesn’t appear to be particularly widespread — good news for Samsung on that front. Even so, this sort of things feels pretty necessary for a $2,000 (and up) phone that is effectively in mass beta testing.

Two weeks after making the device available in the States, Premier Service has gone live. Sammobile noted the addition of Fold Concierge via a new software update, bringing with it support via phone or video chat. The list of potentially helpful features ranges from on-boarding with the device to a $149, same-day screen replacement service. That can be accommodated in person at a number of locations.

It’s a pretty unique offer from a big consumer electronics company — though the Fold is nothing if not unique, I suppose. I’ve got a fuller write up of my impressions of the handset here. The TLDR version is the I can’t recommend the purchase of what is very much a first generation device that’s double the price of a standard flagship. If you’re so inclined, however, Samsung’s got a hotline for you.

Week in Review: The ‘smart home’ is still so, so stupid

Hey everyone. Thank you for welcoming me into you inbox yet again.

Last week was a short one, but I talked about the merger of a couple of the worst adtech companies in the world.

If you’re reading this on the TechCrunch site, you can get this in your inbox here, and follow my tweets here.

I would also like to take the time to say screw you to Apple for shipping such an awful keyboard that made typing this newsletter so damn difficult…. God! Now, onto the news.

The big story

One thing I rarely cover these days is the smart home, this, despite my apartment hosting two HomePods, two Echos, three Google Home devices and a Facebook Portal+.

I’m dying for this stuff to be useful and fun, and, instead, after a few years of playing with the stuff, I just have a handful of commands that I shout out every so often. All of my digital friends can turn on my lights, turn on my TV, play music, tell me the time and weather and a few other things that probably weren’t worth the thousands of dollars it took to bring them and their accompanying IoT gadgets into my home.

In short, I’m an idiot. On Tuesday, Google will again show off its Pixel 4 smartphone but also its latest visions for the Google Home/Nest line.

I’ve witnessed a few improvements since the first Google Home was announced nearly 3 years ago. After several hardware iterations from Google, Amazon and Facebook, these devices have gotten better looks, better sound and better voices — occasionally courtesy of celebrity partnerships. These devices are growing more capable in distinguishing user voices and offering feedback based on their individual data.

At the same time, home virtual assistants still feel awfully alien and firmly stuck in the 1.0 era.

The Google Home still feels like a flip phone with its basic set of stock apps. Third-party integrations are sparse and largely useless. Plenty of things are “possible” through smart home integrations, but every added set of rails turns the device into a Swiss army knife, rather than a “new computing platform.” Google has seemingly had to reorganize some of its devices around IoT with its Nest renaming just to give them a more cohesive mission.

Google’s Pixel 4 launches next week; here’s what we expect

This is partially an AI problem, but it seems like that element is overplayed when considering long-term potential. Saying a device should “just know” what to say is hardly a suggestion and there isn’t enough context in the world for a virtual assistant to annoy me less with unheeded guidance or advice. There’s just such a narrow runway for success in using these devices as predictive engines, something that severely impedes their potential as commerce or ad platforms. Even adding a screen has failed to help this along.

This isn’t a shot at Google any more than it is against Amazon, Facebook and Apple. The only reason I give Google shit here is because I generally like their products the most. The Home boasts by far the most intelligent assistant in my experience; I am still shocked by some of the answers it can pull out of its hat that are leaps and bounds past my HomePod’s Siri capabilities.

But that still isn’t enough.

I want to be bullish on these devices and voice interfaces as a platform, but they are so painfully unimpressive after several years even as natural language processing has made impressive advances. They are great to demo and are fun to play with but I can’t help but wonder whether this is just an endless march towards further marginal utility, not “the future.”

I will be watching to see what Google releases, my colleague Brian has summed up some of his expectations for the Pixel event.

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On to the rest of the week’s news.

Trends of the week

Here are a few big news items from big companies, with green links to all the sweet, sweet added context:

Apple pulls HKMap from App Store
Apple has found itself smack dab in the middle of a PR crisis that’s pissing off pretty much everybody. Apple’s app store approval, rejection, approval and seemingly final rejection of HKMap has been quite the saga.
Playstation 5 is coming Holiday 2020
Sony has been teasing little dribbles of its next-generation console, but we at least have some idea of when its coming as well as a few of its distinguishing features.
The Catalina wine mixer
This release seems to be pretty meh overall, but there are some decent additions like Sidecar, which my colleague Brian Heater is still psyched about in his full review of the new OS update.

(Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images)

GAFA Gaffes

How did the top tech companies screw up this week? This clearly needs its own section, in order of badness:

Facebook is very chill with advertising political lies:
[Facebook sure does love free $peech]
Apple has long complied with local governments, but it couldn’t seem to make up its mind on this one:
[Apple pulls HKMap from App Store the day after Chinese state media criticized its ‘unwise and reckless decision’ to approve it]

What to expect from Google’s hardware event

Covering the Nobels—is it worth the bother?

One thing we do regularly at Ars is try out new types of content. We can make some pretty informed guesses as to what our readers will want to see but still find ourselves surprised at times—who knew you guys would be such big archeology fans?

But you readers have made it very clear that you're really not into scientific awards and prizes. We've tried out a number and received a clear message: not interested. The one, not-surprising exception had been the Nobel Prizes, which consistently drew a significant readership. (That shouldn't be much of a surprise, given that our science section started out as a blog named Nobel Intent.)

But that's started to change over the last couple of years, and with the falling reader interest, we're starting to re-evaluate our decision to cover these prizes. So, what follows is an attempt to spell out the pros and cons of Nobel coverage and an opportunity for you to give us your thoughts on the matter.

Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments