This Week On Planet Internet, We're Breaking Up With Big Tech

Oh, baby! We are cracking down on Big Tech. Amy Tom, David Smooke, and Hang Ngo talk about Biden's Executive Order on Big Tech, more space war dram, and decentralization & blockchain technology 🥳

Listen to The HackerNoon Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

• Facebook sells its internet satellite orbit team to Amazon for an undisclosed sum. So of course - Amy, David, and Hang try to guess what the undisclosed sum was 🛸 (00:41)
• Also, between Amazon and Facebook - who benefits in terms of stock price? 📉 (04:57)
• What does Biden's order to crack down on Big Tech actually mean? 🔨 (09:51)
• Apparently, 2020 was a stock super sale. Hang shares her experience with investing in crypto😱 (16:20)
• Is Amy finally going to invest in crypto? She gets the "how-to" on crypto investing (22:03)
• Is decentralization & blockchain here to stay? 🤞 (23:26)

Oh yeah, guys, this is not official financial advice 😂

🗒️ SHOW NOTES:

1. Facebook & Amazon getting incest-y for space: www.theverge.com/2021/7/14/22576788/amazon-acquires-facebook-satellite-team-project-kuiper
2. Biden's Executive Order to promote competition: www.bbc.com/news/business-57783824
3. The best time to buy crypto is right now, or at least so says Crypto Badger on HackerNoon hackernoon.com/the-best-time-to-buy-crypto-was-a-year-ago-the-next-best-time-is-right-now-ww5p357c
4. The blockchain will aid in decentralization efforts because it buts the power into the users' hands - Nicholas Resendez on HackerNoon: hackernoon.com/decentralization-of-the-internet-the-future-frontier-of-the-internet-q2j35aj

READ HACKERNOON.COM 🤓

START CONTRIBUTING: HACKERNOON.COM/SIGNUP🥇

Computer Transcription:

Amy: [00:00:00] This week on planet, internet. I am your host, Amy, Tom. I am joined with David. Smooke the CEO of hacker noon. And I am joined by hung, who does a little bit of everything at hacker noon. And nobody really knows what exactly she does, but she's in all of the pots. So here we go. This week on planet, internet, we are talking about big tech and the crackdown that Biden just sign on big tech.

We're talking about decentralization and the crypto movement and what that means for big tech as well. So let's get started. I'm going to share my screen with you today. Here we go. I want to talk to you about this verge article that was published a few days ago yesterday, and it was by John Porter and it's called Facebook satellite internet team joins Amazon.

So basically the premise of this article is talking about how Facebook had this internet. Connectivity team that was focused on low orbit earth satellites. And that was supposed to be competing directly with Elon Musk and Starlink, and then Amazon decided to acquire the team that was building this project for them.

And so there was about a dozen employees that are moving from Facebook to Amazon for a quote unquote undisclosed. Undisclosed sum of as part of the acquisition. So yeah, apparently Amazon is now trying to compete with Starlink David. Did you hear about this before? 

David: [00:01:36] Yeah, I saw it on the. 

Amy: [00:01:38] Yeah, crazy. I wonder how many people will be how many organizations will be competing into this internet space connectivity thing, because if Amazon has just taken Facebook out, who is a major player, how many people are going to be left? Yeah. 

David: [00:01:56] Yeah. It's wild to also think this is a little sports seat and they're like acquiring players and it's like an acquisition of a subsection of a company that's like point whatever, zero, zero, 1% of Facebook, it's a couple of super high value employees.

And then it's like, where's the line of ownership? Jeff Bezos owns blue origins. He owns Amazon. They're both moving to space, Musk, Starlink and Tesla. Like, how is, did Facebook get those two to bid against each other for these engineers? There's a little bit of, I'm also just seeing all this money. Makes me think of just how bullish these companies are.

To go to space and they think that they know more than us and they think it's a little more realistic to start investing heavily in this right now of how, what type of businesses will be around space. I really want to know how much they paid for this. What's your 

Amy: [00:02:50] guess? I know I was gonna say I was gonna ask hung knowing that Amazon says they plan to invest $10 billion to launch three that over 3000, 3000 satellites, how much do you think that they acquire this dozen person team?

Hang: [00:03:05] Do we have any like information on where the lights, I just paid them to do what they do or do they actually acquire them? Because acquiring a team, it just requires a lot of commitment, but legally and technically in everything, so I will say that it's definitely no. $10 billion

Amy: [00:03:28] billion dollars overall. And they're just going to put it all into acquiring this team. 

David: [00:03:36] Wait, let me play a different scenario. Okay. Here's what I think happened because these are very elite engineers say making. I would probably guess low seven digits, like a million, 2 million a year stock options to maybe double that, something like that.

And what happens is when one, two and three and four starts to lose. Facebook then approaches Amazon and say, Hey bro, that's my IP. Those are, that's my rights. You can't just steal the whole team. And then they're like, oh, do you want to get sued? And they're like, no, I don't want to get sued. And they're like, okay.

Instead of going to court, let me sell you the whole squad. And this is terms of not being sued for building on this technology. So it didn't start from. Approach and try and say, I want to hire 12 people at once. I'm sure it started from, they got mad at their employees and they're basically reaching a compromise to not go to stay out of court.

That's how I read this story. 

Amy: [00:04:26] Okay. Then wait. So of the dozen person team, how many people jumped ship prior to the official acquisition?

Amazing. Okay. Yeah. So speaking of big tech and I have a question for hug. Oh yes. It was 

David: [00:04:40] this between Amazon and Facebook. Who is this better for the stock price for this deal? I 

Hang: [00:04:48] honestly, I like Facebook better. 

Amy: [00:04:53] Forgive me, like basically better. Or will they have a better impact 

Hang: [00:04:57] on the stock price?

Definitely have a better impact. Folio. I think I don't remember correctly. Let me pull up my Robin Hawk. That's like the only thing I have right now, but I believe like I get around 80% when I bought Facebook, which is a lot, but I only get around 40% were about Amazon because Amazon, like there is after I bought it, it went through like it when you went up in it, like gradually, but like it has some ups and downs.

Yeah. And also idolize the Wayfair, Amazon cheers the employee because like when you buy a stock, it's it doesn't just depend on like the initial report is I also buy the stuff, based on how they manage their people. And I heard a lot of backdrop about failure about Amazon's. I don't want to talk here for a legal reason,

David: [00:05:50] the answer, my own question, whose stock price does this help hurt the most? Yes. Yeah. Definitely some competition they've made all their satellite goals, very public too, with their number of satellites. So I think it's good. Get some competition. It's such a, there's such a barrier to entry in the satellite business.

It's you don't just suddenly raise a seed funding and have 10 satellites in the air. It's like you have to have a lot of money to compete with these guys. 

Amy: [00:06:17] Yeah, for sure. But with Facebook selling this team, they're effectively, officially bowing out of the. 

Hang: [00:06:24] Yeah. So I'm looking at stock price right now.

Tesla is only down by 2.3% Facebook. Let's see. So it's out by almost 1% today and Amazon. It down by 1.4%. So what does the market tell us is that people don't think that Facebook and Amazon can compete with alumnus. So Bassoff, and Zucker's is no way. Or 

David: [00:06:55] this, these 12 people switching teams is just small potatoes of effecting those free

Hang: [00:07:04] You have a of excellent engineer in the world. So if these tall people move out as a team, do you have more, do you have more people elsewhere? Who is just equally as talented, 

Amy: [00:07:15] but Facebook's not going to start again. We 

Hang: [00:07:18] don't know. We don't know. 

Amy: [00:07:21] But don't you think that like when they sold that team, they probably sold like, whatever IP as well that they were developing, 

David: [00:07:28] it could have went either way.

They could have just salvaged the thing of some sort of anti, some sort of agreement of things they wanted to reduce the poaching. 

Hang: [00:07:35] Like it's always a contract. I think like Facebook has a very good legal team. So if No about the IP is hurt. Federal is not going to let that happen. I think mark Zuckerberg is way smarter than that, but you never know.

David: [00:07:49] Yeah. I've heard he grew up on space 

Hang: [00:07:50] correct. Yeah. You see his name, like you see like how he looked like Ellen during his hearing in 2018. They make it, you put up a Tri-Faith muscle cupboard hearing to the 18.

Yeah. He looked like a freak free healer by an alien training.

Wow. Okay. 

David: [00:08:20] You're right. Those of you who are audio listeners, I can confirm, we are looking at a picture of yours to be an alien 

Amy: [00:08:30] in this photo, specially, he just looks a little bit like. Bug guide, right? Like of like Spacey. I don't know. 

Hang: [00:08:39] Okay. I don't want to like body shaming. 

David: [00:08:44] He's an alien be gentle. Nice.

We look the way we look. We don't make fun of people. I think.

Amy: [00:08:53] Okay, but I don't even think this is what he really looks like. In other pictures that I've seen of him, I've never seen him in real life, but like this, in this photo, he does especially like alien, like 

David: [00:09:03] hearing scared the shit out of him. Doesn't it? 

Amy: [00:09:05] Yeah. Like he just went completely white.

Yeah. Like he lost it. Yeah. 

Hang: [00:09:09] He's what the hell is going on? 

Amy: [00:09:12] Okay speaking of hearings of crack down to big tech, let's move over to this BBC article that was posted last week. And it w it's about Biden signing of the new order to crack down on big tech. So I. No very little about what this actually means because I'm Canadian.

And so I am trying to like, understand like what this means in terms of the future of big tech firms. The fact that he has signed this executive order that was aiming to crack down on them and to promote more competition. David. Do you have any knowledge on what this means from a business perspective?

David: [00:09:58] Reading from the article it's a little unclear what the, some of the details will mean, but the article says big tech has been accused of making killer acquisitions, essentially buying up competition. Which, they're very well known for the irony here to me. I would say the U S government makes killer acquisitions all the time.

Look at the wheezing, like that is a killer acquisition. And so I'm always a little bit on the side of the government is another business and the more it tries to do good, it's sometimes it can have adverse effects, so I'm naturally skeptical. But the idea that it's very hard to compete and they're going to create more competition.

They're going to unfair. Marketplaces are absolutely rampant people driving traffic to their own marketplaces, moving their own services above of neutral services and pretending to be a neutral ground. So there's plenty of areas where the government could step in and make it easier for more businesses to compete.

But. Overall I'm still skeptical that this is more than political theater. 

Amy: [00:11:04] And hung. Do you think that this is going to have any kind of effect on small businesses and tech? 

Hang: [00:11:10] It's just if it's ever come true, because as the us is known for introducing a lot of bills, but most of us have a past, so I tell you my innocence ever come true. Like it will open more market entry to a smaller company, but sounds oh, we can say for now, because I also, I'm not letting it be us citizens, for sure. Yeah. 

Amy: [00:11:31] I find this 

Hang: [00:11:32] confusing. Yeah. From what I learned in business classes. And if my professor ever listened to it, I hope Titan award might be free any of the Israel, but yeah it can help some to to get more like entry, like to market entry about the competition who don't know because big tech is already has the biggest.

Advantis regarding to capital and reputation and that kind of stuff. So yeah, it may help. It will not help. My significantly. 

David: [00:12:03] The quote from Biden is capitalism without competition. Isn't capitalism, it's exploitation. So it has that political theater ring. It has strong soundbites. I don't know. I don't.

Amy: [00:12:18] What is, this is so unclear. Yeah. Yeah. What I thought was interesting is that one of the things that they talk about in this article is that Biden was essentially like criticizing Amazon. But like not saying that it's definitely Amazon, but there he was talking about online, dominate online retail and marketplaces and how small businesses consult products and then Amazon.

Yeah, Amazon, the satellite company, the web service company, the delivery company, the everything company. Yeah. We call the company. Yeah, the company, just the company, but it was, he was telling how, like Amazon uses the data from small businesses of what products sell the most and then just makes their own.

So they launched competing products with the popular items that are selling on Amazon and try and take out small businesses. So I'm like, okay. Yeah. 

Hang: [00:13:10] So is this those the same as the us? So like I'm looking at a similar article, is that us lawmaker, each use bureau targeting big techs and literally these are five bills.

That five bills at the interview by, in June. Yeah. I scroll up a little bit

so I was like, what? I'm really  but like initially introduced fibrils just to like cure compete, like it basically they make it. Difficult for company to cure competition and stuff. So 

David: [00:13:48] I don't know. Yeah. And the, as the most data, the people that are monitoring the rules of how to control data. So if the government's coming in and they're saying, Hey, we're going to set the rules about how these government, how these companies can control and not control your personal data.

I get a little skeptical of are they really the ones that are

Hang: [00:14:10] I feel like they are going to live in space. 

Amy: [00:14:12] It says these bills were drafted after a 16 month investigation into the powers of Amazon, apple, Google, and Facebook. 

David: [00:14:20] Yes. 

Amy: [00:14:20] Sorry. You're not big tech.

Hang: [00:14:30] not not at all, but I feel as the us government are like, Hey, big, tight. You don't need two guys of people. Data. We have the FBI for that. Oh yeah. I think it just like gives the NBI module of stalking people instead of giving you to like private big tech, but it's. 

Amy: [00:14:48] Yeah. 

David: [00:14:50] Can we stop talking about the government?

They're making me angry. 

Amy: [00:14:53] Yes. That is why we have to jump over to crypto. And so I wanted to talk to you a hung about this crypto article that was posted on hacker noon. It's called the best time to buy crypto was a year ago. The next best time to buy is right now, and that was posted by crypto Badger.

So do you agree with that Hong as a general statement? 

Hang: [00:15:15] I do. I do because 2020 is the big is the best time to buy any, like to get into any cap investment 10 to 20, it was like, basically it's black Friday. Okay. 

Amy: [00:15:32] Oh, wow. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. He says prices skyrocket to all time highs and then crashed substantially over the past few weeks. Yeah. 

Hang: [00:15:50] So you can you can jump in now, but you don't have to go all in into crypto. You can just go like little by little as also I'm doing right now because I'm more on the conservative side of things.

So I think you can start writing now because it's the birthday, but it will go back. That's what I learned from investing it go down. Like you do hit rock bottom and it's just getting better from there. 

Amy: [00:16:14] Okay. I have some questions about, in, about investing in crypto about the logistics, which like maybe are going to be some dumb questions, but like probably other people don't know as well.

So can I like, when you say like a low amount, like I'm investing a low amount into crypto, like. What does that mean in terms of I guess like percentage of your overall portfolio? 

David: [00:16:37] I think one thing to bring up here is your age. So one you saw, I forgot who made the rule of thumb, but one rule of thumb is basically you do a hundred minus your age, and that's basically a rule of you can make that an asset class.

So like the younger you are, the more you want risk in your asset class. And I don't know, no one really knows what the answer is, but you should definitely consider crypto in the volatiles section of your assets in terms of, what direction they could go. Do you look at like a financial instrument?

Like the 4 0 1 Ks and the EFT or ETFs or whatever, any instrument, and then you look towards private equities and then you look towards correct. Crypto is on the riskiness of more of the penny stocks, unless you're talking about premium crypto, like Bitcoin and Ethereum, then you can get into the graphs that you see comparing it to the S and P 500 and see how much better it's done for three years in a row, four years ago.

So I think if there are some of the, and I think this is what this author is saying, he puts Bitcoin as his own class in its top. And it's, over half of the entire crypto market and then Ethereum and then 20 other alt coins. At least they have an ecosystem going and transactions happening.

And beyond that, when you get to 0.5, the small cap, all coins, it's just like penny stocks to me. And that's okay. Whereas it's really just picking out of a hat and it could a hundred X and it could zero. 

Amy: [00:17:59] Okay. But if I was going to invest, if I was going to invest in crypto right now as a first time buyer or investor I don't know how to ask this.

What's an appropriate amount to invest into this, I guess it depends on where every person yeah.

Hang: [00:18:20] I'm just saving right now. And how much light do you are willing to? I 

David: [00:18:23] take this opportunity to confirm this is not investment 

Amy: [00:18:26] advice. No, nobody knows nobody.  

David: [00:18:33] I cannot make that more clear. Yeah, no 

Hang: [00:18:36] like.com.

you heard from us 

David: [00:18:41] last time I was on this podcast, it was someone that put all of their 1.8 million into their own crypto trading bot and his conclusion at the end, after he lost all of his money was to just build another bot and do it again, 

Amy: [00:18:54] which is not our official financial advice either. We actually have official financial advice.

Hang: [00:19:06] I don't think anybody here is quality. To give like friends or advice. But honestly though, it depends on like first, how much you having and you're serving and how much, how many percent you are willing to invest in general, because like you can invest in, go and USD and stock and bone ETF, and crypto.

And it's also like how much rich. You want to take? So if you're a very risk adverse person, you can only get five to 10% of that total. Like I was at the total money that you were willing to invest into crypto and this Cory, but if you are more. You are more risk loving. It can go to 30 or 40%.

So it's really just boiled down to like personal reference that for me, I still like very, I was, I'm a stalker. I'm not like a crypto girl. So like right now, crypto is only like 10 to 20% of my current portfolio. And I am happy it was up. But if if you are best friend with us, software is simple. You can ask him for some USD advice, she chicken out here, like what crypto to.

Non-efficient

Amy: [00:20:13] okay. I guess like my last question is how to buy crypto you Robin hood, you use. 

David: [00:20:19] Don't forget hacker noon sponsor. Bye

Amy: [00:20:24] bye. 

Hang: [00:20:26] You could also buy a Bible, but I know like a lot of people, it was Coinbase and Bible. It's just used to have to find a platform that you trust. You can also like if I have Robin hood, but offer crypto like Bitcoin and deteriorate, 

David: [00:20:40] which is don't lose your privacy. 

Hang: [00:20:42] Yeah. Yeah. And wishes lies the only tool cryptos I'm really interested in.

So is that all I care about? 

Amy: [00:20:50] Yeah. All right, David, what do you think is now the time to go, should I do. 

David: [00:20:55] It has no effect on my life, so 

Hang: [00:20:58] no, honestly, remember last podcast that I also joined, we athlete for five X. I'll sorry. So we can stop that thing. It's time to bring it up with David again.

Amy: [00:21:08] Okay. Yeah. Remember that time that we asked for five extra salary on the podcast or doing it again?

David: [00:21:18] It's a good time to transition to the next 

Amy: [00:21:20] article? I think so, too. Because I would like to talk about the decentralization of the internet with the blockchain in mind. So I am throwing to this article on hacker news. Again, and it's called decentralization of the internet, the frontier of the internet.

So this article was by Nicholas. And does, I finally have said his name, right? I have said this wrong in the past, so hello. But he is talking about how the internet, like decentralization and the internet. He's talking about decentralization through blockchain and about how the. I like wrote, he wrote here at seaside, the decentralized internet under blockchain technology will allow storing information in different places instead of a centralized network.

It's a diverse defied storage system that will prevent data from being erased by centralized networks or blocking users from access. So it. The components are an independent log-in system, an alternative way to store and access files, a peer to peer system, distributed computing and decentralized money transactions.

So as we move towards decentralization, David, do you think that blockchain will continue to have a prevalence in like decentralization as a term or as like a concept? 

David: [00:22:41] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. The fi he highlights five projects at the end. If you want to take a look at his opinion of top open source ones, where he has a file coin, open bizarre D two couple others free time.

Amy: [00:22:55] Yeah. 

David: [00:22:56] It's right now too much of the hosting is just way too consolidated and it's, that is a very dangerous thing. That cause the host has the power to take you down. The DNS has the power to take you down. So there's elements of around if the community wants. That's a community decision and it stays up.

And if the at versus, one executive at one company decides this company is bad and there they take them off the internet. So there's that side of it, of this, the motivation for the community to have things that serve themselves is always. Going to remain. I think the whole self hosting dream, someone is going to nail, and the idea that Netflix could be powered by the people watching it. And you use your leftover internet to serve as the hosting for all the other people, streaming Netflix, like someone, I think we'll solve that in my lifetime where you don't need servers. And each one is operating as an individual. But I just haven't seen anyone successfully do it yet.

I've seen, lot of money thrown around and I've seen it work for certain use cases, but the fundamental idea behind it, that the community has enough hosting power to host the community, I think is true and someone will solve it. 

Amy: [00:24:05] Yeah. Hung, what are your thoughts on the decentralization movement?

Hang: [00:24:09] Can I stay houses because I'm like fish, I don't want to dip into that, but honestly I think that is it's totally possible. It's maybe it's not anytime soon, because these are still like error and trial and not many people are willing to try that, but maybe I don't know, maybe a hundred years because I am a different internet, a more decentralized.

Amy: [00:24:31] Yeah. I thought that this was interesting. He put in a stat that said the, it was a pew research centers study and it said 91% of Americans have already lost confidence and they have lost control over their personal information or how their personal information is collected online, which like definitely fall into that category.

I have zero control about how my personal information is being collected, whether it's via like Facebook, Amazon, Google, whatever. I can't control 

David: [00:24:59] lighting. That could be in the short term, at least more of that big tech government argument of someone, if it's central entity comes in, they may actually be able to solve the problem sooner of panelizing all the bad actors here.

And it's the long-term play is more of a its own decentralized internet, like the necessary evil that comes first, 

Hang: [00:25:21] honestly. Okay. I have a question here. So if you. One way or another collect people's data. Do you know, like Facebook, for example it tried on advertisement, right?

So if they don't collect people with data, how do they make money? How does I target the app to the user and how they make money? So it's really, I don't know, because. I, it doesn't really, it doesn't sit well with me as a company are collecting information and I actually liked during college, I did a whole big ass paper about that, that I know that you need to collect people information to make money, but what is about the light, like with part D is right for your students of color.

Like my name, my age, and my preference, to just to this place they act for example, if I want a biker. Next thing. I know my favorite way is all about biker shop, but of course the lie is the lie. And 

David: [00:26:15] as long as Facebook has your attention, they could switch business models that anytime like when regulation comes up, the first things zackerburg says is I want to work with the government.

And what he means is I want to be the first one. When the law has changed, I want to be compliant and have my business set up to continue to make money in a better way. So that's like how they look at it. When we faced the problem of how to monetize hacker noon, that all of our content is public.

So it's a little bit different than Facebook, but we reached the conclusion that it should be ads are placed by the relevancy, to the content and not the actions of the user. Whenever you get to this story about an Ethereum project, it makes sense that, another Ethereum project would be recommended as the ad, as opposed to saying, because you were looking for searching for shoes.

You would want an ad for shoes, which is the Facebook approach to, the millions of degree of how much they know about us. Yeah. So I guess I would say they could just replace the ads with just being less targeted. They could say, Hey, this is the space for the ad. Just based on the fact that you're like a human in Colorado, we have enough that we can place a billboard as opposed to saying I'm David Smith.

And I recently purchased a blue t-shirt and maybe that means I want to green, long sleeve t-shirt so I don't know that's yeah. How 

Amy: [00:27:32] much is 

Hang: [00:27:33] too much? Yeah. 

Amy: [00:27:36] Yeah, definitely. All right. That's it for the stories. Anybody have any new tech that they're interested in?

David: [00:27:47] I always forget this part. Okay, 

Amy: [00:27:52] cool. Anyways, that was this week on planning. I could 

David: [00:27:57] drop a few new texts we're interested. And no, I shouldn't say we have some partnerships coming up, but I haven't said them on the record yet. So I shouldn't say them on this record. 

Hang: [00:28:09] How about you? Yeah. 

Amy: [00:28:10] I have actually been looking into some things, but I haven't made any purchases yet as of yet.

Did some standing desk research the other day thought about some new podcasting equipment but nothing like too exciting in the pipeline yet? Yeah. Check this 

David: [00:28:28] out. I got a standing desk. This isn't going out.

I'm phasing out, out stage, 

Amy: [00:28:41] right? Okay. Yeah, this is David's transition out of the podcast and it's also ours. So that was this week on planet, internet. Thanks everybody for listening and or watching, if you like this episode, don't forget to Subscribe. It produced by hacker noon hosted by me, Amy, Tom, and edited by our lovely audio wizard, Alex, stay weird.

See you on the internet. Bye-bye.