BYTE Vol. 1, Issue 1
Mirror wanted to be the next iPhone, now it’s selling to Lululemon for $500M. Why?
Bought a new laptop? How to switch in under 30 minutes FACEBOOK AD BOYCOTTS: BIG BRANDS PUT PAUSE ON HATE U.S............. 6.95 CAN....... 13.95 BYTE
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Major brands say they won’t be spending money on Facebook ads in July. ANGELA LONG/ BYTE
FACEBOOK AD BOYCOTT: WHY BIG BRANDS ‘HIT PAUSE ON HATE’
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By Queenie Wong acebook has long been criticized for not doing enough to combat hate speech. Now the outrage against the world’s largest social network is growing into a movement that threatens its bottom line. That’s because Facebook’s latest critics are some of its biggest customers. On June 17, a group of civil rights organizations including the Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP and Color of Change called on businesses to “hit pause on hate” and not advertise on Facebook in July. The social network makes nearly all of its money from ads, raking in more than $70 billion in revenue last year. “Let’s send Facebook a powerful message: Your profits will never be worth promoting hate, bigotry, racism, anti-Semitism and violence,” states the website for the Stop Hate for Profit campaign. The campaign has been picking up steam with a variety of major brands, including outdoor clothing brand The North Face, consumer goods giant Unilever and telecom leader Verizon. This week, Sony, Clorox, Adidas, Ford, Denny’s, Volkswagen and Microsoft were among the brands that announced they’ve joined the boycott too. “This definitely seems more widespread,” said Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer’s principal analyst. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this level of marketer action around Facebook.”
old Black man in Minneapolis whose death sparked nationwide protests about police brutality and racial justice. Conspiracy theories and misinformation about Floyd’s death spread on social networks, including false claims that HungarianAmerican billionaire George Soros orchestrated the protests. Some of this misinformation popped up in private Facebook groups that are harder to moderate. Facebook has also included Breitbart News, a far-right site, as a “trusted” source in its news service, and rightwing news and opinion site The Daily Caller is one of the company’s fact-checking partners. Facebook has been used to incite violence against protesters and to suppress voting. Unlike Twitter, Facebook has a mostly hands-off approach to speech from politicians. The company faced criticism for not removing a protestrelated post by President Donald
Trump that advocacy groups and even the company’s own employees said could incite violence. Facebook left the post up because it determined that Trump’s remarks “when the looting start, the shooting starts” didn’t violate its rules. Facebook’s rival Twitter has been labeling Trump’s tweets, including false claims he made about mail-in ballots. Greenblatt characterized the campaign as a “30-day pause on advertising” rather than a boycott. Civil rights groups want to work with Facebook to help the company address these longstanding problems, he said, but the point of the campaign is to show that it’s not only a stakeholder concern but a “shareholder imperative.” •
Why is this campaign happening now?
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said his organization and other civil rights advocates have been pushing Facebook to do more to make the platform safer for many years. Still, the company hasn’t been acting quickly enough, he said. Hate speech on Facebook helped fuel a genocide in 2017 against the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. In 2019, a gunman used the social network to livestream the mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand. “To be frank, we’ve not yet seen enough meaningful change,” Greenblatt said. The lack of progress became even more apparent to civil rights activists in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has come under fire by civil rights activits and employees in his company for being complicit in posts on Facebook that promote hate speech. ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/BYTE
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UBER wants riders to santize backseats 4
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By Derra Ker When hailing an Uber, passengers in certain cities will now get a new prompt that tells them disinfectant wipes will be available during their ride. Through a partnership with Clorox, Uber said Tuesday it’s distributing hundreds of thousands of canisters of the cleaning supply company’s wipes to drivers. Uber is also telling riders which surfaces in the car it recommends they clean before and after every trip. The initiative comes as novel coronavirus cases are surging across many parts of the US. As of Tuesday, the country has seen more than 125,000 deaths and 2.5 million cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. Despite the uptick in cases, many states are continuing to reopen after shelter-in-place orders have lifted over the past few weeks.
in July, Uber will distribute a total of 600,000 canisters of wipes to drivers in three select cities: Atlanta, Chicago and New York. Each city will continue to get 200,000 more canisters per month. Uber recommends drivers focus on cleaning the front seat, including the steering wheel, gear shift, cup holders and door handles. And the company suggests passengers wipe down certain high-touch surfaces in the back seat, including seat belt buckles, window controllers and door handles. If a driver doesn’t have the disinfectant wipes, riders won’t receive the in-app notification before being picked up. Uber said that after piloting in the first three cities, it will possibly expand to other cities around the country.
“As we navigate a new normal and cities continue to reopen, we want all Uber users to travel with confidence. That starts with clean cars,” Uber wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. “Cleanliness is a shared responsibility and riders should also be making an effort to sanitize the frequently touched areas in the back of the car to help create a cleaner environment for themselves, the driver, and the next passenger.” Last month, Uber released a new version of its app focused on safety guidelines around the novel coronavirus. In the updated app, drivers and passengers are required to agree to a checklist of items before each trip, such as confirming they’re wearing a face mask, keeping the windows rolled down when possible and having no one sitting in the front seat. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people avoid sitting in confined spaces with strangers, such as a car, to lower the risk of coronavirus infection. Uber drivers say they’ve experienced a difficult time during the pandemic. Many have reported coming down with COVID-19 and at least five are known to have died from the illness. Uber said it’s spent $50 million to buy cleaning supplies and masks to help protect drivers. Some drivers have said these items are hard to get, however. If drivers do receive them, they say the supplies are often limited and don’t last long. With its new initiative with Clorox, Uber has indicated the wipes will be more readily available. Starting BYTE
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Battle of the 2-in-1’s
Microsoft’s 7th-gen Surface Pro makes it’s presence known in from the classroom to the coffeeshop and everywhere between. $599, 128GB SSD, 12.3” touchscreen
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Apple’s all-new MacBook Air doubles the storage capacity of it’s predecesor and adds the new Magic Keyboard. $899, 13” 1.1GHz i3, 256GB SSD.
The Dell Inspirion 14 7000 blends performance, portability, and and screen size in a enviable package. $779, 10th-gen i5, 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM
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Big things come in
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Illustration by Glenn Harvey
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BYTE
MIRROR Wanted to Be the Next iPhone. Instead, It’s Selling to Lululemon. By John Ballard
n June 29, Lululemon Athletica O announced a strategically important move to acquire MIRROR
for $500 million. MIRROR makes digital workout displays that it sells through its website for $1,495. It operates in the same interactive fitness space as Peloton Interactive, so there is plenty of competition. The deal will be funded with Lululemon’s available liquidity sources, including over $800 million of cash. MIRROR will continue to operate as a stand-alone company. The upstart fitness brand was founded by Brynn Putnam, a former Lululemon ambassador, and launched just two years ago. The two companies collaborated last year on content after Lululemon made an initial investment in MIRROR. Several Lululemon ambassadors have launched content on MIRROR recently, making the deal a natural progression of how the two brands were already working together.
Now that MIRROR will operate as part of Lululemon, management has big plans that could be very beneficial for both companies. Here is why Lululemon and MIRROR make a perfect, and powerful, combo in the world of fitness. MIRROR fits Lululemon’s omniexperience strategy In a statement, Lululemon CEO Calvin McDonald said, “In 2019, we detailed our vision to be the experiential brand that ignites a
community of people living the sweatlife through sweat, grow, and connect.”
Under McDonald, Lululemon has been pushing deeper into experiences to build brand loyalty and drive higher engagement with customers. Lululemon has a fiveyear plan to blend physical and digital experiences, including sweat activities. Last year, Lululemon opened experiential stores in Chicago and Minneapolis with locker rooms and other features to deliver engaging experiences for guests.
“The acquisition of MIRROR is an exciting opportunity to build upon that vision, enhance our digital and interactive capabilities, and deepen our roots in the sweatlife,” McDonald said. “We look forward to learning from and working with Brynn Putnam and the team at MIRROR to accelerate the growth of personalized in-home fitness.”
The $500 million purchase price could look like a bargain in 10 years If you’ve been following Peloton, you know how fast the market for interactive fitness is growing. MIRROR is no different. It currently has an annual revenue run rate of $100 million, and that’s with a relative lack of brand awareness. While management expects the deal to be modestly dilutive to Lululemon’s full-year earnings per share (EPS), there are plenty of synergies between the brands that will enhance Lululemon’s growth beyond the market of selling pricey digital BYTE
workout mirrors.
Like Peloton, MIRROR already has high engagement with its product and a stream of recurring revenue through subscriptions. What Lululemon can bring to the table to help MIRROR scale into a larger business is more robust marketing channels to lower guest acquisition costs, distribution channels, and access to millions of loyal guests who shop at Lululemon every year. MIRROR also provides Lululemon ambassadors an outlet to continue creating more content, which will be significantly enhanced now that the two companies share the same resources and talent pool.
Lululemon is also looking forward to product integration. There could be major cross-sell opportunities down the road for MIRROR products in Lululemon stores, not to mention special benefits to members of Lululemon’s loyalty program, which it is currently testing in select cities. Creating the ultimate lifestyle fitness brand
As MIRROR takes advantage of these new opportunities to grow, Lululemon expects the business to reach profitability. The market for interactive fitness is steadily growing. As a reference point, consider that Peloton already has a market value of $16 billion. McDonald mentioned during the call that the global fitness activity market is worth $500 billion. MIRROR is a small but fastgrowing upstart, with a long runway of growth ahead. It’s based in the U.S. with opportunities to expand internationally. Lululemon has millions of loyal customers who will be willing to try out a MIRROR product, especially as Lululemon creates its own workout programs for the device.
If MIRROR can continue growing at its current pace with the help of Lululemon’s marketing muscle, it will help build the ultimate lifestyle brand, while adding a growing stream of subscription revenue to Lululemon’s business. This growth stock is more than just an apparel store now. •
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Bought a new computer? Here’s how to quickly transfer all your content in under 30 minutes fication area, click More, then click Settings. Click the “Back up” tab, then click “Manage back up”. Click on each folder name that you want to sync to your new PC, then click “Start back up” and wait for it to finish. Get more storage space Note that Microsoft gives you 5GB of storage space for free with OneDrive. If you want to move more than 5GB of files to your new laptop, you might need to buy additional storage space. By Alex Blake Getting a new laptop usually means transferring your important files across from one computer to another, but this need not be a hassle. In fact, it is possible to do it all in under 30 minutes using apps and services that come with your PC. In this article we will guide you through the process of backing up your files – using OneDrive and a few alternative methods – and how to re-download everything on your new laptop. That will ensure you get up and running as soon as possible, with everything just how it should be. Back up your files on your old PC The easiest way to get started is to use OneDrive. This is Microsoft’s own file backup app, and it is built in on Windows 10 by default. To use it, make sure you’re signed
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in to a Microsoft account. Open the Settings app and click ‘Accounts’; under your username, you should see the email address you use for your Microsoft account. If you are using a local account, click “Sign in with a Microsoft account instead” and follow the on-screen prompts. Once you are done, click the OneDrive icon in your taskbar notification area (it has a cloud-shaped icon). In the bottom-left corner of the pop-up window, click ‘Open folder’. OneDrive uses a special folder that syncs your files to Microsoft’s servers, safely backing them up. Simple drag and drop any files that you want to move to your new computer into this folder and they will be backed up and ready to go. As well as this, you can set OneDrive to back up your Desktop, Documents and Pictures folders. Click the OneDrive icon in the notiBYTE
To do this, click the OneDrive icon in the notification area again, then click “Go premium”. This will take you to a Microsoft web page giving you various upgrade options. You can get 100GB of space for $1.99/£1.99/AU$3 a month, 1TB plus Microsoft 365 apps and extra features for $69.99/£59.99/AU$99 a year, or all those features for six different people for $99.99/£79.99/ AU$129 a year. There are alternatives to OneDrive. If you have a Google account you can use Google Drive, which gives you 15GB for free. Just go to drive. google.com in any web browser and drag and drop the files you want to move to your new PC. If you have a spare external hard drive, you can back up your files to that and transfer them to your new PC. Alternatively, you could use a cloud backup service. These apps regularly back up every file on your computer and let you re-download them
from anywhere. That might be a good bet if you want something that works in the background without you needing to manually back up your important files. You may also want to sync your internet bookmarks to your new computer. In Microsoft Edge, go to Settings and click Profiles, then Sync, then click “Turn on sync”. As well as bookmarks, this will sync your saved passwords, history, and other browser data. When you first load up Edge on your new laptop, sign in to the same Microsoft account and turn on syncing, and all your browser data will come across from your old computer. Download your backed-up files During the initial set-up process for your new PC, make sure you sign in with your Microsoft account. Once you have set everything up, moving your backed-up files to it is easy. In fact, if you chose to back up your Desktop, Documents and Pictures folders using OneDrive, they will be
synced up without you needing to lift a finger, meaning all your files will be automatically re-downloaded to those folders on your new laptop. Moving files from the special OneDrive folder is also straightforward. Like the Desktop, Documents and Pictures folders, the OneDrive syncing folder automatically stays up to date across your devices. As long as you have signed in to a Microsoft account on your new PC, your files will be re-downloaded to this folder. If you decided to use Google Drive, head to the Google Drive website. Highlight all the files and folders you want to download by holding Ctrl and clicking each one (or hold Shift, click the first file, then click the last file to highlight everything in between). Next, right-click the selected files and click Download. Google Drive will compress everything into a Zip archive to reduce the download size – depending on how much you need to download, this might take a few minutes.
When it is ready, choose a download location and save the Zip file. After the download has completed, unzip the archive and move the files to your chosen location on your laptop. Reinstall your favorite apps What about your programs? If you have used a computer for any length of time, you soon find some favorite apps that you enjoy using. There are a couple of ways to get them onto your new PC. The first is to use the Microsoft Store, which is a built-in app that lets you download a large range of programs. In the Windows 10 search box, type “Microsoft Store” and click the first result. You can search for apps by name or browse various categories and popular programs in the store. When you find an app you want to get, click Get (if it is free) or Buy (if it requires a purchase). Another way is to use Ninite. This handy program lets you select a range of apps for your new laptop, then packages them all up into a single installer. Run Ninite and it automatically installs all your chosen apps one by one, without you needing to do anything. It is a real timesaver and makes the laborious process of setting up a new PC just that little bit easier. To get it, just head to ninite.com. With that done, your new laptop should be ready to use. •
Backing up to a cloud storage like Microsoft’s OneDrive can save you time and hassle when it comes to purchasing a new computer.
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A LOOK AT THE 2021 TOYOTA RAV4 PRIME by David Beard
Now in its third model year, Toyota’s fifth generation of its bestselling RAV4 gets more electric oomph courtesy of a new plug-in-hybrid variant, the 2021 RAV4 Prime.
The interior is ergonomically friendly with intuitive ergonomics and nifty rubber-trimmed knobs to control the audio volume and HVAC functions. The touchscreens stand proud on the dash, but their resolution looks more 2015 than the otherwise tastefully modern cabin.
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Beneath its hood, the Prime’s powertrain is similar to that of the plugless RAV4 hybrid model. On the fuel-burning side of its powertrain is a 177-hp 2.5-liter Atkinson-cycle inline-four that has been calibrated for Prime duty.
With the battery packaged beneath the floor, no passenger space is lost versus other RAV4s, and the back seat remains spacious enough to accommodate full-size adults. Cargo volume behind the rear seats (33–34 cubic feet) is slightly penalized, losing four or five cubes compared to the hybrid.
Starting at $39,220, the Prime tops the line’s hierachy but a tax credit for $7500 makes the 2021 RAV4 Prime a compelling purchase.
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