In Cuba, getting an iPhone or other Apple product repaired is quite the challenge. But there are those who rise to it. CC-licensed photo by Pedro Szekely on Flickr.

You can sign up to receive each day’s Start Up post by email. You’ll need to click a confirmation link, so no spam.

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It’s Friday, so there’s another post due at the Social Warming Substack at about 0845 UK time.

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A selection of 10 links for you. Eh, it’ll wipe off. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.

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Amazon faces antitrust lawsuit from FTC, US states • The Washington Post

Cat Zakrzewski, Will Oremus and Trisha Thadani:

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The Federal Trade Commission and 17 state attorneys general filed a sweeping antitrust lawsuit against Amazon on Tuesday alleging that the company abused its powers to squeeze merchants and thwart rivals — resulting in higher prices and lower-quality goods for the tens of millions of American households who regularly shop at the company’s online superstore.

Merchants who rely on Amazon to stay in business are forced to pay a range of fees that trickle down to consumers, the FTC argues in the suit. “Pay-to-play advertisements” clog its store and “[degrade] the services” it provides customers, the regulators allege.

The long-awaited lawsuit, filed in Western District of Washington court, marks a historic political test of one of the world’s most influential companies — as well as the regulators who have promised for years to rein in its allegedly monopolistic practices.

FTC Chair Lina Khan’s meteoric rise to the helm of the antitrust enforcement agency has been closely tied to the e-commerce company. She gained national attention while still a law school student for a paper titled “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” arguing the e-commerce giant evades scrutiny because of the relatively narrow way the courts have interpreted antitrust law. Her paper has been at the center of a broader political movement that argues monopoly law should be more creatively and aggressively enforced, extending beyond the prices consumers pay.

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There’s 172 pages of the lawsuit. (Enjoy!) Ben Thompson has an analysis (free to read) of the lawsuit, which to me boils down to “it’s going to be hard to prove antitrust via monopoly on this”.
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An old master? No, it’s an image AI just knocked up … and it can’t be copyrighted • The Guardian

Edward Helmore:

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The use of AI in art is facing a setback after a ruling that an award-winning image could not be copyrighted because it was not made sufficiently by humans.

The decision, delivered by the US copyright office review board, found that Théâtre d’Opéra Spatial, an AI-generated image that won first place at the 2022 Colorado state fair annual art competition, was not eligible because copyright protection “excludes works produced by non-humans”.

Artist Jason Allen claimed his use of the online AI-platform Midjourney allowed him to claim authorship of the image because he “entered a series of prompts, adjusted the scene, selected portions to focus on, and dictated the tone of the image”. But the board ruled that “if all of a work’s ‘traditional elements of authorship’ were produced by a machine, the work lacks human authorship, and the Office will not register it”.

Allen told the Pueblo Chieftain local newspaper that he “wanted to make a statement using artificial intelligence artwork. I feel like I accomplished that, and I’m not going to apologise for it.”

The decision comes as writers, actors, musicians and photographers claim AI is threatening their jobs, and follows a similar ruling last month in a US federal court that an image created by an AI computer system owned by Stephen Thaler could not be copyrighted because human beings are an “essential part of a valid copyright claim”.

US courts are now routinely referring to human authorship requirements under copyright law, noting, in a case called Urantia Found. v. Kristen Maaherra that “it is not creations of divine beings that the copyright laws were intended to protect.”

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How fascinating that AI systems are, in the eyes of the court, “divine beings”. For those worried about AI taking over the world, that might be enough to put the fear of.. gods into them.
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Microsoft is going nuclear to power its AI ambitions • The Verge

Justine Calma:

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Data centres already use a hell of a lot of electricity, which could thwart the company’s climate goals unless it can find clean sources of energy. Energy-hungry AI makes that an even bigger challenge for the company to overcome. AI dominated Microsoft’s Surface event last week.

Nuclear energy doesn’t create greenhouse gas emissions. Even so, it could also open up a whole new can of worms when it comes to handling radioactive waste and building up a uranium supply chain. The role nuclear energy ought to play in combatting climate change is still hotly debated, but Microsoft co-founder, Bill Gates, has long been a big fan of the technology.

Based on the new job listing, it looks like Microsoft is betting on advanced nuclear reactors to be the answer. The job posting says it’s hiring someone to “lead project initiatives for all aspects of nuclear energy infrastructure for global growth.”

Microsoft is specifically looking for someone who can roll out a plan for small modular reactors (SMR). All the hype around nuclear these days is around these next-generation reactors. Unlike their older, much larger predecessors, these modular reactors are supposed to be easier and cheaper to build. For comparison, the last large nuclear reactor to be built in the US finally came on line this summer roughly $17bn over budget after seven years of delays.

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Would be nice if Microsoft were to prove SMRs’ feasibility.
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The first foldable PC era is unfolding • Ars Technica

Scharon Harding:

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Lenovo launched the first foldable laptop in 2020, but the first real era of foldable PCs is only starting to unfold now. Today, LG became the latest OEM to announce a foldable-screen laptop, right after HP announced its first attempt, the Spectre Foldable PC, earlier this month.

LG only announced the Gram Fold in South Korea thus far. LG didn’t immediately respond when I asked if it has plans to release the machine in the US.

A Google translation of LG’s Korean announcement said the laptop is 9.4-mm (0.37in) thick when unfolded and used like a 17in tablet. Alternatively, the OLED PC can be folded in half to use like an approximately 12.2in laptop. In the latter form, a virtual keyboard can appear on the bottom screen, and you can dock a Bluetooth keyboard to the bottom screen or pair a keyboard with the system wirelessly. The screen has 1920×2560 pixels for a pixel density of 188.2 pixels per inch.

One draw of foldable PCs is supposed to be portability. The Gram Fold weighs 2.76lb (1.25kg), which is even lighter than LG’s latest Gram clamshell laptop (2.9lb, 1.32kg).

LG said the Gram Fold will release on October 4 for 4.99m won (about $3,726).

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I really don’t get the point. The screen being foldable is.. no different from a standard laptop, surely. The product and in-use shots in the picture don’t change my opinion. Foldables, both in phones and in laptops, seem a distraction: done because they can be, not because they’re more useful.
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Hydrogen cars are dead as projects are scrapped and refueling prices go through the roof • autoevolution

Cristian Agatie:

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Although battery-electric vehicles have proved they are the best to replace ICE vehicles, many people still expect a miracle fuel to save the combustion engine. For many, this miracle fuel is hydrogen, a gas that promises to burn with zero carbon emissions. Hydrogen is also the most abundant element on Earth, so it looked like the perfect solution for decarbonization. Well, things didn’t pan out the way hydrogen proponents have imagined.

Hydrogen vehicles are still an exotic appearance due to their sky-high prices, whereas hydrogen proved a nightmare to produce, transport, and store. This is why hydrogen refueling stations are confined to small areas, like California in the US, and clean fuel prices are too high to make sense economically. Still, this didn’t prevent car companies like Toyota from pouring billions into hydrogen vehicle development. Today, most hydrogen FCEV vehicles in California are Toyota Mirai, which is owed chiefly to Toyota heavily subsidizing the hydrogen refueling costs.

Shell, the biggest oil company in the world and one significant supplier of hydrogen fuel for both heavy-duty and passenger vehicles, started a year ago to close its car-focused hydrogen filling stations across the globe. The move culminated in August when Shell announced closing all its car-focused filling stations in California while only keeping three heavy-duty stations. These stations were located in San Francisco (two), Sacramento, Berkeley, and Citrus Heights.

Shell went a step further and scrapped plans to build 48 new hydrogen filling stations in California for which it had been awarded a $41m grant. No money has changed hands yet, and the oil giant formally rejected the funding in July, citing “political and economic uncertainty.” At this stage, Shell has no plans to build and operate additional light-duty vehicle fueling stations in California. Considering that Shell closed all its hydrogen stations in the UK last year, we can safely assume the trend is here to stay.

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Won’t be long before plans to replace natural gas with hydrogen are scrapped too. Been tried, doesn’t work. The oil companies like it because they can crack oil to make hydrogen. It’s a bad idea.
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Cuba’s underground Apple technicians are thriving • Rest of World

Lidia Hernández-Tapia:

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Even though prohibition limiting the exportation, re-exportation, sale, and supply of Apple products to Cuba was eased in 2015, getting a hold of, operating, and maintaining them can still be a challenge. This is in part because basic replacement parts are difficult to import, since they cannot be purchased directly from Apple. It’s not just hardware, either: Downloading apps or software updates is tricky because Cuban IP addresses are blocked. And setting up a new Apple ID with two-factor verification requires a phone number from outside Cuba.

García Padrón is part of an exclusive circle of Apple enthusiasts who are defying Cuba’s constraints to create profitable repair businesses. In little more than a decade, these Cuban Apple technicians have evolved from casual tinkerers to a small yet thriving community of celebrity repairers, respected by locals and foreigners alike.

The absence of official Apple stores and product resellers in Cuba has fostered a community-driven ecosystem that relies on unofficial suppliers and a transnational network of individuals who can travel abroad to buy hardware replacement parts. Technicians told Rest of World there are only a handful of Apple repair shops in Cuba, mostly clustered in Havana; it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact number as there are no official statistics.

Orlando Gutiérrez is one Cuban trailblazer who opened Meca Móvil, his own iPhone repair shop in Havana’s Vedado neighborhood. Finding an Android repairperson, he told Rest of World, is easy enough. “You might even find a few on a single block,” he said. “But a Mac technician is the holy grail.”

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Fabulous story. ROW really is excellent at finding novel angles on what could otherwise be tired stories.
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BT begins big switchover ahead of analog phone sunset • The Register

Dan Robinson:

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BT has revealed details on its UK-wide rollout schedule as it switches over from analog phone lines to a digital voice service to hit the deadline of retiring the analog service by the end of 2025.

The former state-owned telecoms giant, which still operates the bulk of Britain’s telco infrastructure, has previously flagged up plans to switch from the old analog phone lines to internet-based voice calls operating over a fiber network.

BT said that pilots of the switchover in Salisbury (Wiltshire) and Mildenhall (Suffolk) were successful, and it is now beginning the next phase in the rollout of its new home phone service, “Digital Voice,” on a region-by-region basis.

This kicked off with the East Midlands in July, then Yorkshire and the Humber region in August and Northern Ireland in September. The future schedule will cover London and the North West of England this autumn, followed by the South East, West Midlands, East Anglia and Wales in spring 2024. Scotland, the North East and South West of England will be switched during the summer of 2024.

…While many people these days use mobile phones rather than a landline for calls, there have been concerns voiced about those who still rely on one, such as more elderly citizens or those with a healthcare pendant that can be used to call for help in an emergency. In the latter case, a power cut could mean the phone service is unavailable.

BT said it won’t be “proactively switching” – an amazing piece of terminology – anyone with a healthcare pendant, those who only use a landline or have no mobile signal, or customers that have disclosed additional needs, where the company is aware of this situation.

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I bet this will be the source of a fair bit of NIMBYism when it happens. I wonder if it will be an election issue at all.
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The plot of all objects in the universe • Kottke

Jason Kottke:

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You just have to admire a chart that casually purports to show every single thing in the Universe in one simple 2D plot. The chart in question is from a piece in the most recent issue of the American Journal of Physics with the understated title of “All objects and some questions“.

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In Fig. 2, we plot all the composite objects in the Universe: protons, atoms, life forms, asteroids, moons, planets, stars, galaxies, galaxy clusters, giant voids, and the Universe itself. Humans are represented by a mass of 70 kg and a radius of 50 cm (we assume sphericity), while whales are represented by a mass of 10^5 kg and a radius of 7 m.

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The “sub-Planckian unknown” and “forbidden by gravity” sections of the chart makes the “quantum uncertainty” section seem downright normal — the paper collectively calls these “unphysical regions”. Lovely turns of phrase all.

But what does it all mean? My physics is too rusty to say, but I thought one of the authors’ conjectures was particularly intriguing: “Our plot of all objects also seems to suggest that the Universe is a black hole.” Huh, cool.

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The paper is indeed interesting, but it’s the plot (shown at the Kottke post or the paper) which is most fascinating: there are spaces of “quantum uncertainty” which intersects with “forbidden by gravity” (the latter where something can’t be so small and also have more than a certain mass; black holes lie at its boundary). Essentially it’s a physics paper saying “here be dragons” – well, instantons.
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Cory Doctorow: Silicon Valley is now a world of ‘lumbering behemoths’ • Fast Company

Wilfred Chan interviews Cory Doctorow, whose new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation has just come out:

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Fast Company: You were once more of a techno-optimist. But you argue in your new book that decades of trying to turn Big Tech into “better tech” have been a failure, and it’s time to cut the tech companies down to size. Was there a turning point when you realized the industry needed systemic change? 

Cory Doctorow: It was more of a process than a turning point. 

There used to be a time when the tech sector could be described as a bunch of “fast companies,” right? They would use the interoperability that’s latent in all digital technology and they would specifically target whatever pain points the incumbent had introduced. If incumbents were making money by showing you ads, they made an ad blocker. If incumbents were making money by charging gigantic margins on hard drives, they made cheaper hard drives.

Over time, we went from an internet where tech companies more or less had their users’ backs, to an internet where tech companies are colluding to take as big a bite as possible out of those users. We do not have fast companies anymore; we have lumbering behemoths. If you’ve started a fast company, it’s probably just a fake startup that you’re hoping to get acqui-hired by one of the big giants, which is something that used to be illegal.

As these companies grew more concentrated, they were able to collude and convince courts and regulators and lawmakers that it was time to get rid of the kind of interoperability, the reverse engineering that had been a feature of technology since the very beginning, and move into a new era in which no one was allowed to do anything to a tech platform that their shareholders wouldn’t appreciate. And that the government should step in to use the state’s courts to punish anyone who disagrees. That’s how we got to the world that we’re in today.

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In a nutshell.
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San Francisco techies are living in small pods for $700/month • SF Standard

Joshua Bote:

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The average rent for a one-bedroom San Francisco apartment is $3,040 a month, according to Zillow. Staying in a $700-per-month pod, therefore, is a way to live in San Francisco on the cheap, [Chicago native Christian] Lewis said, without being locked into a pricey yearlong lease. It’s also, he contends, better than an Airbnb—Lewis says he booked “a dump” of a short-term rental on the platform and found it uninhabitable. (He also would rather not live in a shared apartment with roommates.)

The Mint Plaza pod space evokes a co-op, or a much, much more cramped version of those micro-apartments that have popped up throughout the Bay Area. Comparisons to the Hong Kong-style “coffin homes” are not entirely inaccurate. But in Lewis’ words, it’s a form of “minimalist living” for young, unattached people coming in and out of San Francisco. And Wi-Fi and utilities are included.

“For $700, you have workspaces and an office and a place to sleep, so that’s pretty great,” he said. “It’s downtown.”

Back to the pods: They’re each 4 feet high, 3½ feet wide, and long enough to fit a twin-size mattress. It’s comfortable enough for Lewis, who is 5 foot 9. (Lewis jokes that I should report that he’s an inch taller so that he can boast about it on the dating apps. I do not oblige.)

Lewis advises that I take my sneakers off before he takes me to observe the sleeping pods.

You don’t want to disturb anyone who could be asleep, he explains, as we inch toward the stacks of pods on Thursday afternoon. Each is sheathed with a black curtain as the main mode of privacy. There are about 20 of them, stacked in twos like bunks.

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Similar things in Tokyo, I think, though without the potential upside of getting into an AI startup in SF.
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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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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified