The user interface of streaming services is remarkably bad. But why? CC-licensed photo by Michael Sheehan on Flickr.
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A selection of 9 links for you. Start your liveblogs. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.
Experts fear crooks are cracking keys stolen in LastPass breach • Krebs on Security
Brian Krebs:
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In November 2022, the password manager service LastPass disclosed a breach in which hackers stole password vaults containing both encrypted and plaintext data for more than 25 million users. Since then, a steady trickle of six-figure cryptocurrency heists targeting security-conscious people throughout the tech industry has led some security experts to conclude that crooks likely have succeeded at cracking open some of the stolen LastPass vaults.
Taylor Monahan is lead product manager of MetaMask, a popular software cryptocurrency wallet used to interact with the Ethereum blockchain. Since late December 2022, Monahan and other researchers have identified a highly reliable set of clues that they say connect recent thefts targeting more than 150 people, Collectively, these individuals have been robbed of more than $35 million worth of crypto.
Monahan said virtually all of the victims she has assisted were longtime cryptocurrency investors, and security-minded individuals. Importantly, none appeared to have suffered the sorts of attacks that typically preface a high-dollar crypto heist, such as the compromise of one’s email and/or mobile phone accounts.
“The victim profile remains the most striking thing,” Monahan wrote. “They truly all are reasonably secure. They are also deeply integrated into this ecosystem, [including] employees of reputable crypto orgs, VCs [venture capitalists], people who built DeFi protocols, deploy contracts, run full nodes.”
Monahan has been documenting the crypto thefts via Twitter/X since March 2023, frequently expressing frustration in the search for a common cause among the victims. Then on Aug. 28, Monahan said she’d concluded that the common thread among nearly every victim was that they’d previously used LastPass to store their “seed phrase,” the private key needed to unlock access to their cryptocurrency investments.
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From Netflix to HBO, the terrible design of streaming is ruining TV •
Jesus Diaz:
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Each platform has its own flavor of bad. On Apple TV+, for example, the “continue watching” menu is hidden under the fold. Good luck watching the credits on Netflix—they automatically skip to serve up a new episode. Hulu makes viewers hunt for the very show they were just watching. And Amazon Prime has turned its streaming service into an all-you-can-eat buffet of video content that requires watchers to surf its interface as if they were looking for the best deal on toilet paper.
Across the board, the streamers have terrible landing pages and subpar curation algorithms. Playback buttons routinely fail to work properly, and using the time slide to scrub to the right point in the video still feels as fun and precise as playing Tetris with your toes.
In a silo, these UX sins are an annoying, but ultimately ignorable, trade-off for easy-to-access content. But it’s 2023, and really, there’s no excuse for an entire genre of digital tools to so blatantly ignore the basics of good design. I had to wonder: Why do the platforms that are supposed to bring us pleasure seem passionately invested in planting anti-UX mines all over their interfaces? I asked a few experts in the field for their take.
The most glaring issue with the streaming interface is how hard they make it to keep watching a show. On AppleTV+ and Disney+, in particular, finding the “continue watching” feature requires a long scroll. “As UX designers and users of these services, we find this extremely annoying,” Carsten Wierwille tells me over an email interview.
Wierwille, CEO of digital design studio Ustwo, blames the entertainment industry’s fear of the new. Instead of reinventing the TV experience, as streaming promised to do, the platforms have copied some of cable’s worst traits in a quest to hook viewers and maintain subscriptions. Wierwille ventures that the buried “continue watching” menu is likely the victim of marketing objectives. Streamers reserve the prime screen real estate to promote new or popular content, which he says fits with traditional TV design patterns of prioritizing content based on who pays the most for “preferred placement” rather than prioritizing the user needs.
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It’s true: their design is terrible. (John Siracusa made this point, less prominently but no less well, in January 2022.)
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Nobody will tell you the ugly reason Apple acquired a classical music label • The Honest Broker
Ted Gioia:
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If Apple wanted to offer exclusive music to subscribers it wouldn’t buy a label that records so many works in the public domain. This is the first warning sign.
My favorite offerings on the BIS label are the Bach cantatas recorded by Bach Collegium Japan under Masaaki Suzuki. (I recommended them last year in my article about the cantatas.)
The BIS label has also released the full Beethoven symphony cycle—performed by the Minnesota Orchestra under Osmo Vänskä, as well as lots of Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and other core contributors to the classical repertoires. However, unlike the cantatas, these other BIS albums are seldom the most esteemed versions on the market.
But how many music fans searching for Beethoven or Mozart on streaming are picky about conductors and orchestras? If the first search results are the Minnesota Orchestra are they really going to dig deeper to find the Berlin Philharmonic?
Of course, some unique offerings can be found on BIS—especially of obscure Nordic composers. But do you really believe that Apple made this acquisition in order to corner the market on Kalevi Aho or Geirr Tveitt?
The very idea is ridiculous.
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Gioia’s argument boils down to: Apple wants to be able to increase its profits (or reduce its losses) on Apple Music by offering music that is less encumbered by rights payments. I don’t find this persuasive: if that were the case, it would just buy a ton of music companies (which it could do, as Gioia admits, without breaking stride, apart of course from the antitrust challenge).
I think Apple is buying this classical music company precisely because people who like classical music are, indeed, picky about which performance, which conductor, which orchestra. I don’t want the Portsmouth Sinfonia’s version of Beethoven No.5; I want Karajan. (Though you may enjoy the contrast between the content on those two links.)
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The untold story of Elon Musk’s support for Ukraine • The Washington Post
Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk’s biographer, detailing what happened over the derailed attack on Russian ships:
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My phone started vibrating with messages from Musk.
“This could be a giant disaster,” he texted. I went behind the bleachers to ask him what the problem was. He was in full Muskian crisis-hero-drama mode, this time understandably. A dangerous issue had arisen, and he believed there was “a non-trivial possibility,” as he put it, that it could lead to a nuclear war — with Starlink partly responsible. The Ukrainian military was attempting a sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet based at Sevastopol in Crimea by sending six small drone submarines packed with explosives, and it was using Starlink to guide them to the target.
Although he had readily supported Ukraine, he believed it was reckless for Ukraine to launch an attack on Crimea, which Russia had annexed in 2014. He had just spoken to the Russian ambassador to the United States. (In later conversations with a few other people, he seemed to imply that he had spoken directly to President Vladimir Putin, but to me he said his communications had gone through the ambassador.) The ambassador had explicitly told him that a Ukrainian attack on Crimea would lead to a nuclear response. Musk explained to me in great detail, as I stood behind the bleachers, the Russian laws and doctrines that decreed such a response.
What the Ukrainians did not know was that Musk decided not to enable Starlink coverage of the Crimean coast. When the Ukrainian military learned that Starlink would not allow a successful attack, Musk got frantic calls and texts asking him to turn the coverage on. Fedorov, the deputy prime minister who had originally enlisted his help, secretly shared with him the details of how the drone subs were crucial to their fight for freedom.
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So it wasn’t Musk alone who decided; Russia persuaded him. Showing precisely why you shouldn’t put these decisions in the hands of someone who doesn’t understand politics. “Russian laws and doctrines”, huh.
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The value of a customer • Asymco
Horace Dediu:
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the picture becomes clearer. The iPhone customer is 7.4 times more valuable than the Android customer. This is more impressive than the 4x rule I had 10 years ago. The reasons are mainly that my anecdotes were from developers who sold products in the US or EU whereas expansion of smartphones to 7 billion global users has drawn in more lower spending customers.
But Apple’s base has also grown to over 1 billion users (650 million store users). This highlights that Apple has effectively grown and discriminated customers effectively. It obtained not just 1 billion customers but the best 1 billion customers.
How to discriminate effectively is the holy grail of marketing. The naïve approach is to keep prices high. But that usually only results in a “luxury” branding and a small base that tends not to grow. The alternative “premium” approach is to offer functionality and multiple tiers and distribution options and financing and merchandising. There is no simple formula.
The bottom line is that Apple’s approach is attracting 650 million $10/month app spenders. When we factor in additional subscription services, we get to the juggernaut that is Apple Services. This analysis has shown how difficult it is for anyone to come close to this quality of revenue.
As we look forward to Spatial Computing, the idea of increasing that spend from $10/month for a small glass rectangle in your palm to perhaps $100/month for an immersive 360-degree 3D experience does not sound too crazy.
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Building Meta’s Threads app (real-world engineering challenges) • The Pragmatic Engineer
Gergely Orosz got insights from the team that built Threads:
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What was a difficult challenge which arose?
Making an engaging feed for Threads was the biggest one. On a microblogging site, the thing that is most relevant is what is happening right now. It needs to capture what everyone is talking about, and present choices for which conversations to dive into.
There’s a balance between immediacy and helping the user find content from someone they’re most likely to engage with. At the same time, other apps in the space have proved you don’t need an extensive graph of connections in order to serve relevant and interesting content.
We’ve talked on the Threads team about how we’d like to reduce our reliance on users manually curating follow graphs. However, to reduce reliance on manual curation, you need to understand what these posts are about, and know what is going on in the world – which are both challenging, to say the least!
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There’s plenty more very insider-y stuff which will fascinate anyone who has had to run a skunkworks-style project inside a bigger organisation.
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iPhone 15 Pro Max with periscope lens, anticipated to capture nearly 40% of new iPhone production • Trendforce
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In regard to specifications for the iPhone 15 series, several noteworthy hardware upgrades have been made. Compliance with EU regulations has led Apple to jump on the USB Type-C bandwagon this year. The iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus will come with significant camera upgrades, sporting a 48MP main sensor to align with the Pro series. Furthermore, they will also be featuring Apple’s Dynamic Island. On the other hand, the Pro series promises cutting-edge processor upgrades, increased Dram capacity, and introduces a titanium-aluminum alloy frame. The Pro Max also intends to elevate mobile photography to the next level with its exclusive periscope lens.
Advances in technology, while exciting, can also ratchet up the intricacies of mass production. Reports of component snags and assembly issues have surfaced as production of the new iPhone models revs up in the third quarter. The iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus, in particular, have been grappling with lower-than-expected yield rates for their new 48MP cameras. Meanwhile, the Pro series is confronting challenges with panel and titanium alloy frame assembly. However, evidence suggests that the Pro series is likely to overcome its obstacles more swiftly than its non-Pro counterparts.
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Trendforce has a helpful graphic that tells you everything about the models forecast to be unveiled on Tuesday. Not sure there’s anything else you need Tim Apple or the other folk to tell you apart from the price. (I think the “periscope” lens means it actually moves out from the back towards the object, rather than popping up from the top, but we await that clarification.)
Washington, D.C.’s secret carpool cabal is a daily slug fest • Car and Driver
Elana Scherr:
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Every city has its secrets. Washington, D.C., may have more than most, but I wasn’t there to dig up bodies, corporeal or political. My interest in visiting our nation’s capital was to find out more about a covert society, an organization of carpoolers who use codes and word of mouth to work around D.C.’s notorious traffic jams and exorbitant tolls. Under cherry blossoms light as dreams and in the long shadow of the Washington Monument, I set out in search of slugs.
The origins of slugging are murky, buried somewhere in the smoggy ’70s, when the Shirley Highway (I-395) from Virginia to D.C. became the first U.S. freeway to implement a high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane. Those early carpool lanes were strict, initially requiring four occupants (now three), so commuting drivers would fill their seats by swinging by the bus stop and sniping riders. Eventually, the bus lines had more hopeful carpoolers than mass-transit riders, and the bus drivers began referring to the faux passengers as false coins, also known as slugs.
Undeterred by the slander, the slugs claimed the nickname and the practice grew in popularity, developing set locations and traditions. When the Virginia Department of Transportation partnered with the private toll-road operator Transurban in the early 2000s, multiperson vehicles were exempted from the expensive fees to encourage carpooling, thus keeping the fast lanes flowing free. Slugging is symbiotic—no money changes hands, but all parties benefit.
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It’s maybe not tech (though it is fuel efficiency!) but it’s fascinating. (Thanks Paul C for the tip.)
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Low-nicotine cigarette maker 22nd Century pursues strategic alternative amid financial struggles • Winston-Salem Journal
Richard Craver:
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In May, 22nd Century provided its first annual fiscal revenue projections as a publicly-traded company at a range of $105m to $110m for 2023. That would represent a 69% to 77% increase from $62.1m in fiscal 2022.
However, to put that revenue range into perspective, the U.S. traditional cigarette marketplace has about $60bn in annual sales, according to a Goldman Sachs analysis.
Other anti-smoking advocates say an FDA emphasis on very-low nicotine cigarettes could steer tobacco consumers toward potentially less harmful products, such as electronic cigarettes, heat-not-burn cigarettes and moist snuff.
Anti-smoking advocates say that if the FDA is successful in mandating very-low nicotine cigarettes, some smokers may go to a black market to buy those made outside the U.S. with current nicotine levels.
Smokers could decide to consume more very-low-nicotine cigarettes in order to gain the same nicotine levels as they are accustomed to now.
“Their basic strategy is fundamentally flawed — tobacco use is a widely and correctly understood as a nicotine-seeking behavior,” said Clive Bates of Counterfactual, a London-based public health and sustainability consultancy.
“So, what does a product with negligible nicotine, but all the toxicity of a conventional cigarette, offer the consumer?”
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22nd Century, which got loads of backing from the US FDA, is essentially heading for bankruptcy. There’s an amazing thread by the American Vapor Manufacturers, who make vaping products, pointing out all the positive coverage 22nd Century got, and yet now barely a peep.
I don’t hold any torch for vaping, but it’s an enormously safer (and more sociable) way of consuming nicotine than burning tobacco.
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| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
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