The smartphone headphone jack has become an endangered species since Apple killed its own with the iPhone 7: CC-licensed photo by Ivan Radic on Flickr.
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A selection of 10 links for you. Plug and play. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.
After 151 years, Popular Science will no longer offer a magazine • The Verge
Emma Roth:
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PopSci, which covers a whole range of stories related to the fields of science, technology, and nature, published its first issue in 1872. Things have changed a lot over the years, with the magazine switching to a quarterly publication schedule in 2018 and doing away with the physical copies altogether after 2020.
In a post on LinkedIn, former PopSci editor Purbita Saha commented on the magazine’s discontinuation, stating she’s “frustrated, incensed, and appalled that the owners shut down a pioneering publication that’s adapted to 151 years worth of changes in the space of a five-minute Zoom call.” Layoffs have impacted journalists on the science beat particularly hard in recent weeks. National Geographic cut the remainder of the magazine’s editorial staff in June, followed by Gizmodo laying off its last climate reporter, and CNBC shuttering its climate desk last week.
“PopSci is a phenomenal brand, and as consumer trends shift it’s important we prioritize investment in new formats,” [PopSci owner Recurrent Ventures flack Cathy] Herbert tells The Verge. “We believe that the content strategy has to evolve beyond the digital magazine product. A combination of its news team, along with commerce, video, and other initiatives, will produce content that naturally aligns with PopSci’s mission.”
PopSci laid off several employees earlier this month, leaving around five editorial staff members
In addition to dropping its magazine format, PopSci laid off several employees earlier this month, leaving around five editorial staff members and “a few” workers on the publication’s commerce team, according to Axios. The digital media group Recurrent Ventures acquired PopSci in 2021 and named its third CEO in three years just one week before the layoffs hit.«
Paper-based magazines are dropping like leaves in autumn. Though the job cuts in digital media doesn’t make for easy reading either.
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Meta designed platforms to get children addicted, court documents allege • The Guardian
Kari Paul and agencies:
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Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta purposefully engineered its platforms to addict children and knowingly allowed underage users to hold accounts, according to a newly unsealed legal complaint.
The complaint is a key part of a lawsuit filed against Meta by the attorneys general of 33 states in late October and was originally redacted. It alleges the social media company knew – but never disclosed – it had received millions of complaints about underage users on Instagram but only disabled a fraction of those accounts. The large number of underage users was an “open secret” at the company, the suit alleges, citing internal company documents.
In one example, the lawsuit cites an internal email thread in which employees discuss why a 12-year-old girl’s four accounts were not deleted following complaints from the girl’s mother stating her daughter was 12 years old and requesting the accounts to be taken down. The employees concluded that “the accounts were ignored” in part because representatives of Meta “couldn’t tell for sure the user was underage”.
The complaint said that in 2021, Meta received over 402,000 reports of under-13 users on Instagram but that 164,000 – far fewer than half of the reported accounts – were “disabled for potentially being under the age of 13” that year. The complaint noted that at times Meta has a backlog of up to 2.5m accounts of younger children awaiting action.
The complaint alleges this and other incidents violate the Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act, which requires that social media companies provide notice and get parental consent before collecting data from children.
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Sports Illustrated published articles by fake, ai-generated writers • Futurism
Maggie Harrison:
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There was nothing in Drew Ortiz’s author biography at Sports Illustrated to suggest that he was anything other than human. “Drew has spent much of his life outdoors, and is excited to guide you through his never-ending list of the best products to keep you from falling to the perils of nature,” it read. “Nowadays, there is rarely a weekend that goes by where Drew isn’t out camping, hiking, or just back on his parents’ farm.”
The only problem? Outside of Sports Illustrated, Drew Ortiz doesn’t seem to exist. He has no social media presence and no publishing history. And even more strangely, his profile photo on Sports Illustrated is for sale on a website that sells AI-generated headshots, where he’s described as “neutral white young-adult male with short brown hair and blue eyes.”
Ortiz isn’t the only AI-generated author published by Sports Illustrated, according to a person involved with the creation of the content who asked to be kept anonymous to protect them from professional repercussions. “There’s a lot,” they told us of the fake authors. “I was like, what are they? This is ridiculous. This person does not exist.”
“At the bottom [of the page] there would be a photo of a person and some fake description of them like, ‘oh, John lives in Houston, Texas. He loves yard games and hanging out with his dog, Sam.’ Stuff like that,” they continued. “It’s just crazy.”
The AI authors’ writing often sounds like it was written by an alien; one Ortiz article, for instance, warns that volleyball “can be a little tricky to get into, especially without an actual ball to practice with.”
According to a second person involved in the creation of the Sports Illustrated content who also asked to be kept anonymous, that’s because it’s not just the authors’ headshots that are AI-generated. At least some of the articles themselves, they said, were churned out using AI as well. “The content is absolutely AI-generated,” the second source said, “no matter how much they say that it’s not.”
After we reached out with questions to the magazine’s publisher, The Arena Group, all the AI-generated authors disappeared from Sports Illustrated’s site without explanation. Our questions received no response.
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Such a sad fall for a once-iconic magazine that was home to some of the greatest sports writers.
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Auto emissions could have dropped by 30%, if it weren’t for SUVs: report • Electrek
Jennifer Mossalgue:
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A new report gives us a glimpse of what our world could look like if there weren’t so many big, hulking SUVs cruising around. Because of the rise in electric vehicles, carbon emissions from automobiles could have dropped by more than 30% over the past 10 years, except they haven’t – and that’s because of our global appetite for jumbo cars, the report authors say.
From 2010 to 2022, if vehicles had stayed the same size and the bloated SUV trend had never happened, carbon emissions could have been reduced by more than 30%, according to a report from the Global Fuel Economy Initiative (GFEI). Instead, automotive emissions only dropped 4.2%, essentially undoing all the good benefits of electric vehicles.
SUVs represent 51% of the new car market, and the average light-duty vehicle weight has bulked up to an all-time high of more than 1.5 tonnes. The size of SUVs is growing, with a footprint averaging around 4.2 square meters (about 45 square feet). Plus, automakers make a huge profit from SUVs, which are sold at premium prices but have a proportionally lower manufacturing cost, so they are eager to market them to consumers.
Electric vehicles, which represent 15% of global new car sales in 2022, use three to six times less energy than ICE vehicles to travel the same distance. Markets with strong growth in the EV sector, including China and Europe, saw the largest annual energy efficiency improvements of close to 6%. North America, which has a lower market uptake of EVs, recorded a yearly improvement rate of 1.6%.
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Groan. Can America ever do the right thing?
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Is it time to concede Apple was right to eliminate the headphone jack? • Perfect Rec
Wally Nowinski on the iPhone 7 decision, seven years ago:
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A 3.5mm headphone jack isn’t enormous, but every cubic millimeter of space counts. In 2017, Razer’s CEO, Min-Liang Tan, claimed that dropping the headphone jack allowed Razer to increase battery capacity by about 500 mAh, or 12.5%.
This seems like it is probably an upper bound estimate and it’s possible that the compact form factor of Razer phones was more impacted by layout restrictions imposed by a headphone jack than a more traditional phone design.
We can also estimate the approximate space saved for additional battery capacity. A 3.5mm headphone jack is about 200 cubic millimeters including the port and external components. The battery pack on the base model iPhone 15 is about 20,300 cubic millimeters. By that measure, not having a headphone jack enables Apple to make the battery pack about 1% larger. It’s also worth noting that the iPhone 15 is about 24% larger than the iPhone 7, so the initial space saving was even more significant back in 2016.
200 cubic millimeters might not sound like a lot, but space inside a phone is so valuable that manufacturers are constantly looking for more ways to save it. The recent move by phone manufacturers from the traditional SIM card reader to the eSIM was also a space saving move. But even the eSIM takes up about 20 cubic millimeters. The upcoming iSIM will be integrated as part of the SoC instead of its own small chip, taking up almost no space. This underlines that manufacturers are willing to make fairly tough changes in order to get 1/10 the space savings as removing the headphone jack.
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And, as he also points out, other manufacturers – Google, Samsung, Razer – followed suit. The phone headphone jack is an endangered species.
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Israel tells Elon Musk Starlink can only operate in Gaza with its approval • FT
Chloe Cornish:
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The world’s richest man declared late last month that his satellite internet service Starlink would “support connectivity to internationally recognised aid organisations in Gaza”, which has suffered lengthy blackouts under Israel’s bombardment.
But on Monday, Israeli communications minister Shlomo Karhi posted on X that the entrepreneur had “reach[ed] a principle understanding” with the ministry. “Starlink satellite units can only be operated in Israel with the approval of the Israeli Ministry of Communications, including the Gaza Strip,” Karhi said.
Musk has not yet publicly confirmed any deal.
The SpaceX and Tesla chief executive is visiting the Jewish state for the first time since Hamas’s October 7 assault on southern Israel, which killed 1,200 people and triggered a war between Israel and the militant group.
Israel’s ferocious retaliatory bombardment and siege of the strip has created a humanitarian crisis, killed more than 13,300 people and led to prolonged blackouts. These have obstructed rescue efforts, notably by preventing ambulances from locating wounded people.
Musk’s visit to Israel coincides with the last day of a four-day pause in hostilities, and comes as advertisers pile pressure on X over a rise in antisemitism on the platform.
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You’re thinking: how could Israel control a satellite-based phone system?
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The Starlink signal is received through small satellite dishes called terminals. But Musk said in October that no terminals had actually attempted to connect from besieged Gaza, and Israel controls the movement of goods into the coastal enclave.
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Perhaps there would also be pressure on Tesla, perhaps. And Starlink itself if it wanted to sell in Israel. Plus perhaps Starlink can refuse connections from specific geographic locations.
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This high-tech shirt helps deaf and hard-of-hearing patrons feel music • Smithsonian Magazine
Julia Binswanger:
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Chicago’s Lyric Opera is aiming to make its performances more accessible via the SoundShirt, a garment that vibrates to match the music.
In October, the Lyric became the first opera company to offer the shirts to audience members who are deaf or hard of hearing. The device comes from a London-based wearable tech brand called CuteCircuit. Each shirt costs about $1,900, but interested guests can reserve one for special performances at $20 a ticket, according to Axios’ Carrie Shepherd.
“I am proud that Lyric Opera of Chicago will be the first opera company in the world to bring this new technology to its live audiences,” says Anthony Freud, the Lyric’s general director, in a statement. “The SoundShirt reinforces Lyric’s commitment to accessibility and to broadening the impact of our live performances on all audience members.”
The SoundShirt is worn like a lightweight jacket and features 16 small motors throughout. Microphones are placed around the orchestra on stage to record specific instruments and send a live signal to activate vibrations in the shoulders, forearms and upper and lower back.
Rachel Arfa, commissioner of Chicago’s Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities, recently tested the SoundShirt at a production of West Side Story. “When Lyric approached me with this shirt, I was highly skeptical,” she tells the Washington Post’s Michael Andor Brodeur. “There are often technical solutions designed by people without disabilities for people with disabilities that do not solve barriers that we have.”
The technology certainly isn’t for everyone. The Chicago Sun-Times’ Stefano Esposito says wearing a SoundShirt feels like “your torso has become home to an entire hive of non-stinging bees.”
“It’s not an unpleasant sensation,” he writes, “just odd, very odd.”
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Clever. (Though I think the correct phrase to cover all those people who could benefit from displacing the sound is “hearing-impaired”.)
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Global pay TV penetration to fall for the first time in 2024 • Ampere Analysis
Rory Gooderick:
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Global pay TV penetration (the number of pay TV subscriptions relative to the number of households) is set to decline for the first time ever in 2024 following a peak penetration of 60.3% in Q4 2023. This decline will continue into the forecast period, with a drop of almost 4 percentage points by the end of 2028, according to Ampere’s latest forecasts, which cover 96 markets.
This decline in pay TV penetration has been driven primarily by the Americas, and in particular North America which has seen its pay TV penetration almost halve from a high of 84% in 2009 to 45% in 2023. In the case of North America, this drop has been caused by a combination of high costs (currently over $90 per month) and competition from a mature SVoD market which is driving customers increasingly to cut the cord.
However, the recent distribution deal between Disney and Charter in the US, which saw select Disney streaming products bundled into Charter’s TV packages, demonstrates that cable operators in the region remain a powerful force as distribution partners, giving streamers the ability to reach a larger and potentially untapped audience base. In addition to North America, Latin America has also shown large declines in pay TV penetration, with a drop of around 10 percentage points since its peak of 42% in 2016.
On the contrary, the APAC and Europe have shown the highest penetration growth in recent years, with large gains coming from China, especially after China Mobile acquired an IPTV license in 2018.
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So easy to forget China, the iceberg of content consumption and production.
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X has become a ‘global sewer,’ mayor of Paris says • NY Times
Liz Alderman:
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In a lengthy post, Ms. [Anne] Hidalgo said that X had veered from its original incarnation as a platform for making information freely available into one whose algorithms exacerbated attacks on people seeking peaceful political debate. “Facts are irrelevant,” she said. She further cited a report released by X that ranked France the No. 1 country in Europe for postings of “violent and illegal content.”
A spokesman for X did not reply to a request for comment. A query sent to Twitter’s press office generated an automated response: “Busy now, please check back later.”
Ms. Hidalgo, a Socialist mayor who has made the environment the hallmark of her nearly 10 years in office, has herself faced a torrent of negative comments on X for policies that have included closing major streets to car traffic in order to make way for bikes and plans to limit speeds on the freeways circling Paris. She said that proponents of fossil fuels had flooded X with misinformation about the need for an ecological transformation.
Ms. Hidalgo faced a stream of scrutiny on X this month after a visit to Tahiti, a French territory, where the surfing competition will take place in the 2024 Olympic Games hosted by France. After extending her stay there to include a vacation, which she paid for, a slew of criticism flooded her X feed, including calls for her to step down.
“We need more than ever to keep real democracy alive,” she wrote in her announcement Monday. “Twitter hinders debate, the quest for truth, and the serene and constructive dialogue needed between human beings. I refuse to endorse this evil scheme.”
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As if to prove it, many of the replies to her tweet came from angry paid-for-verification users, and weren’t complimentary.
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Net zero risks wiping $3 trillion from oil and gas companies worth • Daily Telegraph
Jonathan Leake:
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The oil and gas industry faces losses of more than $3 trillion (£2.4 trillion) because of net zero, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned.
The IEA said companies will become increasingly risky investments, potentially losing half their overall valuation, as the world moves to restrict greenhouse gas emissions.
It has accused the global oil and gas industry of failing to understand or respond to the deepening global climate crisis and warned that the result could be a catastrophic loss of value for investors unless companies change course.
Pension and investment funds that rely on oil and gas companies for large chunks of their investment returns could face disastrous declines over the next two decades as a result, the IEA warned.
The Paris-based organisation said the value of the private oil and gas industry, which stands at $6 trillion, will fall by a quarter if all current climate goals set by governments around the world are met.
If targets are toughened up to put the world on course to limit global warming to 1.5ºC, as leaders committed to do under the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, then as much as 60% of the industry’s worth could be wiped out, the IEA said. This would mean companies collectively lose more than $3 trillion of value.
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Note the faint undertone in this story, which appeared in the Daily Telegraph, favourite of the Tory-voting stock-owning (ancient) generation: “net zero” will do these things to companies’ valuations, and therefore net zero is bad. Rather than these companies are contributing to wrecking the planet, and are therefore bad and deserve to fall in value concomitant to the damage they’re causing.
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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. |
Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified
The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say 