TechFirst with John Koetsier

Adtech is in upheaval. We've seen 7 billion-dollar acquisitions so far this year and we've seen massive change: Uber Eats has an ad network. Doordash has an ad network. Gaming company Zynga owns an ad network. CVS and Walgreens recently launched ad networks too. So what is an ad network these days? And are emerging titans like Unity, ironSource, Applovin, and Liftoff+Vungle going to be able to cha...

Crypto is hard. Wallets are hard. NFTs are hard. Connecting to DApps, distributed apps, is hard. Brave is trying to make that simpler by building all of this functionality right into its privacy-safe browser. In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, I chat with Brendan Eich, CEO and co-founder of Brave. We chat about the new functionality in the Brave browser, why building a wallet nativel...

Most smart homes are aftermarket affairs: cobbled together bits and pieces of Alexa and Google and Apple HomeKit to make our lights go on, our music play, our security systems work, and our blinds to go up and down. What about building it in from the start? KB Home has built over 650,000 homes in the US. The company was the first builder to make every home ENERGY STAR® certified, and is now making...

There are perhaps a billion buildings on the planet. Maybe a million of those are of significant size, and all of them are going to be smart at some point in the future. The problem? Every smart building is a one-off. Every building is unique. There's no way to make them -- or 10s of millions of warehouses or factories -- smart in the same way, at the same time, quickly, cheaply, easily. That's a...

How do CISOs sleep at night? By failing fast, apparently. In this episode of TechFirst we chat with HP chief information security officer Joanna Burkey and Siemens USA CISO Kurt John on hacking, cracking, and yes ... even sleeping at night. You are going to get hacked, says John. And yet, he can sleep at night because the point of his cybersecurity is to fail fast but fail noisily and recover quic...

Can an entire farm be a complex multi-component robot? According to AppHarvest CTO Josh Lessing ... sure. Kind of. AppHarvest builds greenhouses that know what's happening. Can control light. Control fertilizer and irrigation. Even control pollination, and when is the right time to harvest the crop. Plus, of course, actually harvest the crop by robot. In this episode of TechFirst, we chat about th...

Apple is complicit in Chinese censorship. There’s simply no other way to put it. Thousands of apps have been deleted from the Chinese Apple App Store, including recently a Quran app and a Bible app. Plus hundreds of games, social apps, and more. Apple has to do business in China. That's just realistic. And it has to obey the laws of countries it does business in. That's also just realistic. ...

The Carbon Robotics self-driving farm bot kills weeds with lasers: 8 150-watt lasers, to be precise. That’s pretty cool, but much cooler is that no toxic herbicides are required. That’s safer for the farmer, better for the soil, and produces better crops. In this episode of TechFirst, we check out the robot, talk to the CEO of Carbon Robotics Paul Mikesell, and see the results on the fields. Links...

Do you want sushi by drone? Ice cream or coffee in 2 minutes? Wing is Google's drone division (OK, Alphabet's!) and is doing just that right now in three locations around the world. They're planning to scale globally and in the U.S., but are working out all the kinks and regulatory permissions. And they just announced some exciting news: first of its kind rooftop drone stations at a mall. You orde...

Avi Bar-Zeev has been working on the metaverse for 30 years. He’s one of the key people behind Microsoft’s Hololens, co-founded Keyhole which became Google Earth, helped define Second Life’s technology, and has worked with Apple on, presumably, its rumored smartglasses. In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, I chat with Ari about the metaverse, what it is, what it isn’t, and how AR and V...

Here's (almost) everything Amazon announced for smart home just two days ago, including Amazon Astro, Ring Always Home Cam, Ring Alarm Pro, Ring Video Doorbell, and more Ring, Ring, Ring everything. There's also the Echo Show 15 and the Amazon Glow. But the big picture is how Amazon is competing with Google and Apple in smart home ... and it's not even close. Apple has almost nothing for smart hom...

Can I only experience a Facebook metaverse in Oculus Quest? Can I only enter your virtual event with an HTC Vive Pro? Or can we build connections, doors, windows, and pathways through all digital realities that anyone can access with smartphone, laptop, or -- yes -- a VR headset? In this episode of TechFirst with John Koetsier, I chat with Hans Elstner, the CEO of Rooom. Rooom offers the "first al...

We know carbon fiber is strong: 60X stronger than steel. The problem has always been finding ways to 3D print it at speed, and for large objects. Arevo says it's found the solution: "'the world's first high speed additive manufacturing system for continuous carbon fiber composite structures." It's literally the size of a shipping container, and it can print a volume about a meter cubed. Companies...

Epic sued Apple for the right to sell in-app purchases in Fortnite itself and not pay Apple a 30% cut. And it won ... but also lost, as the judge ruled in favor of Apple on nine of the ten claims Epic made. But the big deal is payments in apps. And that changes everything. Here are the most interesting rulings, findings, and facts unearthed in U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers' 185-page r...

Some robots won't replace us. Some will augment us: make us faster, stronger, bigger, more capable. Sarcos Robotics has built both robots that you can wear and robots you can operate, and just recently unveiled the Guardian XT to complement the Guardian XO. One you wear, and it helps you lift 200 pounds with minimal effort. The other you teleoperate in VRwhile wearing motion-capturing clothing. We...

Four months ago I interviewed Lightmatter CEO Nick Harris on his photonic supercomputer. There are now almost 400K view and 2,600 comments ... with lots of questions. In this episode, Harris answers the biggest ones.  - is this real?  - does the chip do what Lightmatter says it will do?  - RGB vs CMYK?  - how do you do linear algebra with light?  - where can I get this? &n...

US President Biden said his goal is that 50% of cars sold in 2030 will be zero-emission vehicles: less than 9 years away. So … is that doable? Maybe, but the US needs 10X more rare earths for magnets. Currently, less than 2% of cars on American roads are electric. About 17-19M cars are sold in the US annually, and a little over 300,000 are EVs. So we’re at about 2%. One of the things you need is b...

Presumably Tesla isn’t busy enough building “full self driving” or cars that have half-year waitlists for new buyers. (Or worse: anyone wondering where Cybertruck is?) Now CEO Elon Musk has revealed a new project: Tesla Bot. Tesla Bot is a 125 pound 5’8” humanoid robot. Launch goal: some time next year. Links: Support TechFirst with $SMRT coins: https://rally.io/creator/SMRT/ TechFirst transcripts...

What could an AI-focused 22nd most powerful supercomputer in the world and 100 new AI faculty do for the University of Florida? I chat with UF provost Dr. Joseph Glover and NVIDIA's Cheryl Martin about what they're planning. Short version: massive impact. We're talking AI-driven climate change research, medical research and infusing artificial intelligence throughout the entire curriculum of a mas...

There are now seven mobile games that pull in over $100 million in an average month, according to a new App Annie report. And 810 scoop up more than $1 million every month. In 2019? Only two made over $100 million/month. In other words, mobile gaming is huge and massive and still growing fast ... 16X faster revenue growth than PC/Mac gaming and home console gaming. Links: Support TechFirst with $S...

If I had a dollar for every 3D startup that has failed, I'd probably have ... a few hundred bucks. Getting no-glasses no-headset 3D right is insanely difficult. But Look Glass Factory CEO Shawn Frayne says he's done it. It's shipping now, and I have friends who say it's the best thing they've ever seen. He's been working on it for literally half his life ... and it has the potential to revolutioni...

Amazon is the beast, the bear, the devil that controls over half of digital retail in America. And they've copied successful products for Amazon Essentials ... because they see all the data. But could that be a great thing for brands? Perch has raised over $900 million to buy, build, and grow microbrands, mostly on Amazon. And executive Mike Frekey is pretty pumped about it, calling Amazon the lar...

Will AI replace us, or make us better? According to AI expert Slater Victoroff, AI is a bionic arm that's going to make us better and faster, whether we're a doctor, lawyer, data scientist, builder, carpenter, or care aide. I also chat the Victoroff, the CTO and co-founder of Indico, about what work will look like in the future, how much white collar and blue collar work will get taken over by AI...

Mashing those buttons may not take massive muscles. But long-term success in eSports takes physical and mental fitness. At least according to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive star JW, a member of the Fnatic esports team. With other eSports stars he's been working out with Freeletics, an AI-powered fitness program. The biggest benefit? Faster, clearer thinking, JW says. Links: Support TechFirst wit...

Smart electricity startup Amber just signed a significant agreement with German giant Infineon to bring its technology closer to market. Amber's tech is a solid state solution for managing and controlling electricity, including transforming AC to DC. That makes electricity software controllable: a 100-year leap in technology. "By controlling the sine wave electricity and you can chop it and dice i...