http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/technology/farhads-and-pui-wings-week-in-tech-yahoos-hacking-self-driving-cars-and-the-future-of-twitter.html 2016-09-24 16:14:21 Farhad’s and Pui-Wing’s Week in Tech: Yahoo’s Hacking, Self-Driving Cars and the Future of Twitter In Mike Isaac’s absence, Farhad Manjoo joins his boss, Pui-Wing Tam, for a discussion of the week’s technology news. === Each Saturday, Farhad Manjoo and Mike Isaac, technology reporters at The New York Times, review Farhad Pui-Wing Farhad A few things stand out to me about this attack. It’s obviously terrible for everyone whose information has been breached, and it also comes at a terrible time for What do you think? Are the endless Yahoo acquisition talks going to get even more endless now? Pui-Wing But it’s unclear how that might affect the price of the deal, or if Verizon will walk away from Yahoo. Hackings now happen all the time and to almost every corporate entity. So Verizon couldn’t very well build in an escape clause on a deal for an industrywide problem, though it may have some leverage to chip away at price or some other deal conditions. All I know is that a horde of lawyers and investment bankers must be getting well paid right now to figure it all out. Farhad I suspect that like me, you’ve noticed a huge change in Silicon Valley recently. From Uber to Tesla to Google to Apple, much of the industry has become obsessed with cars. Where we used to talk about smartphones and apps, we now talk about electric engines, location mapping and ride sharing. I’m personally gratified to see this happening; cars are expensive, inefficient and environmentally problematic, exactly the sort of big challenge that techies want to fix. But I’ve also heard grumbling both inside and outside the Valley that companies here are biting off more than they can chew in attacking the auto industry. Do you agree? Pui-Wing I usually roll my eyes at all the bright and happy Valley talk of changing the world, but I’ve been impressed with how Silicon Valley has become the world’s transportation hub. In just the last few years, start-ups and some of the big tech behemoths have changed transportation business models (ride sharing), built Did I really just say that? Eyeroll. Farhad Finally, let’s talk about my favorite pastime, I know it’s unseemly to crow in front of your boss, but I just want to note, for the record, that I’ve been calling on Twitter to expand tweets Pui-Wing Farhad These deals are something of a strategy shift for the company. It’s looking to become a kind of TV network, the place you’ll turn to first when you want to watch something. I think this is a great idea. Livestreaming sports, awards shows and other news events can be a hassle today — you’ve got to find a link, usually log in with your cable-company account, and then you’re often presented with some slow, blurry stream that makes you tear your hair out. Twitter, thankfully, is trying to solve this. It could be pretty handy. But it also seems a little bit of an odd game plan to save the company, right? Pui-Wing But for now at least, I don’t see it. The 13-year-olds are into Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest, even Maybe Twitter needs to try something else, like making money off how brands use it for customer service. That sounds incredibly enterprise-y, but those boring businesses are often more predictable and profitable. Farhad Google isn’t surprising. We’ve heard rumors for years that the search company, which has perennially failed at building social apps, is interested in the microblogging network. But an acquisition by Salesforce is a stranger idea. I don’t immediately get how it would work, and there’s a very high chance that a business-focused cloud company could ruin the freewheeling network. But if Salesforce thinks of some out-of-the-box way to use Twitter as a customer service and lead-generation network, that could be lucrative. Ugh, now I’m rolling Anyway, thanks for joining me! I hope you spend the weekend bracing for Mike’s return. That’s what I’ll be doing. Pui-Wing: