The E3 video games show is officially dead: it failed to power up and Covid was a boss level too far. CC-licensed photo by Sergiy Galyonkin on Flickr.

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A selection of 9 links for you. Use them wisely. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.

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Apple’s forthcoming iOS 17.3 Stolen Device Protection update aims to stop iPhone thieves • WSJ

Joanna Stern and Nicole Nguyen:

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Apple is addressing a security vulnerability that has allowed iPhone thieves to take over customers’ accounts, access saved passwords, steal money and lock people out of their digital memories.

A new [forthcoming – Overspill Ed.] iOS setting called Stolen Device Protection is designed to defend against these attacks. It is rolling out to beta testers starting Tuesday.

The Wall Street Journal reported on a nationwide spate of thefts where criminals used the iPhone passcode to break into victims’ accounts and upend their lives. Thieves in New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Minneapolis and other cities watch iPhone owners tap in their passcodes before stealing the targets’ devices.

The Journal’s reporting outlined for the first time how these thefts resulted in losses far beyond phones, and how Apple’s security settings gave victims few ways of preventing harm once their passcodes fell into the wrong hands. We have heard from hundreds of people over the past year whose iPhones and digital lives were stolen.

…Your passcode, that short string of numbers that grants access to an iPhone, has powerful reach. With this number, typically four or six digits, thieves can access a lot of your data and make sweeping changes to your accounts. And when Face ID or Touch ID fails, the passcode serves as a fallback.

If you enable the new Stolen Device Protection, your iPhone will restrict certain settings when you are away from a location familiar to the iPhone, such as your home or work. Here’s the rundown:

…• With Stolen Device Protection: If you want to change an Apple ID password when away from a familiar location, the device will require your Face ID or Touch ID. It will then implement an hour-long delay before you can perform the action. After that hour has passed, you will have to reconfirm with another Face ID or Touch ID scan. Only then can the password be changed.

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That first one is the big one, but there are plenty more. This should be a free link, available to all, but in case not there’s an Apple Insider writeup. Credit to Stern and Nguyen, who first revealed this flaw back in February.
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The 21 most defining memes of 2023 • Rolling Stone

Julia Reinstein:

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2023 was a heck of a year on the internet. Whether we were eating our girl dinners or declaring our allegiances in the orca wars, this year was jam-packed with memes that captivated us even harder than the Roman Empire. The following are some of the most defining memes of 2023, from nepo babies to babygirl. Here’s to our bygone memes, and may 2024 be as fruitful. 

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The web headline for this story was “The 21 Best Memes of 2023 That Took Over the Internet”, which feels like an overstatement. My internet definitely wasn’t taken over by many of those, though of course you now have plenty to bone up on and talk about at the Christmas dinner table.
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E3 is officially dead, and so is the version of the industry it was made for • Ars Technica

Kyle Orland:

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As smartphones and high-speed Internet access became more popular, though, publishers increasingly found they could get much of the same effect with widely downloadable game demos and choreographed YouTube video presentations. Why pay to impress the media with an E3 press conference when a Nintendo Direct-style video stream can get as much media attention and reach your customers directly as well?

Sure, these purely digital promotions lacked some of the glitz and glamor of the ostentatious, console-war-driven E3 booths of the past. But everyday gamers only got to experience that glamor vicariously, anyway—the show only started offering limited public access in 2017. Meanwhile, the growth of fan-focused events like the Penny Arcade Expo and countless regional expos gave publishers large and small more direct (and cheaper) in-person access to their most devoted fans.

Earned media aside, E3’s importance as a gathering place for business meetings has also eroded over the years. When brick-and-mortar retailers ruled the industry, a summer show was an important place for publishers to woo retail buyers with demos and hype ahead of the all-important holiday season releases. Those relationships and orders had to be established early to allow time for production and shipping to the stores that would make or break a publisher’s year.

Contrast that with today’s industry, where gamers tend to download games without ever leaving the house, and major titles can be released any time of the year—2022’s biggest release quickly sold 12 million copies after a February launch, after all. Just as the Internet blunted E3’s importance as a media show, this transition largely obviated the need for a business gathering as well.

By the time COVID hit in 2020, the writing was already on the wall for what was once the industry’s most important annual showcase. The show’s legacy branding helped it limp along for a while as an important place to be seen as a major industry player. But that bubble of earned self-importance was also remarkably easy to pierce once major publishers started examining what they were actually getting for the sizable expense of a show floor booth.

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E3, which was the video games industry’s big thing, is dead; will that ever happen to CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas?
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Why Li-Fi might be better than Wi-Fi • IEEE Spectrum

Qusi Alqarqaz:

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IEEE 802.11bb defines the rules for how Li-Fi devices will communicate with each other and how fast they can transfer data. According to the standard, such devices should be able to send and receive data at speeds between 10 megabits per second and 9.6 gigabits per second.

The standard introduces a new realm of fast, reliable wireless communication that promises to revolutionize the way we connect and communicate.

Li-Fi uses special light fixtures that have small control units and solid-state light emitters and photosensitive receivers. The fixtures can send and receive information using light waves. To connect to Li-Fi, smartphones, tablets, and other devices need emitters and sensors that can send and see the light signals. Advanced mobile phones already use the emitters and sensors for other applications such as face recognition and lidar.

In a typical installation, we connect to the Internet via a local-area network. LANs now will be able to offer a new wireless access opportunity via Li-Fi-enabled access points (APs) installed in areas such in ceilings or inside desk lamps connected via power over Ethernet or power-line communications.

…One of the key factors driving the adoption of Li-Fi is that it enables peak rates by using the same advanced modulation techniques to encode data onto light waves that are used for Wi-Fi. The optical wireless transmission channel is less disturbed by multipath, Doppler, phase noise, and other interference. Therefore, it can realize the highest speeds through a variant of multicarrier modulation, called orthogonal frequency division multiplexing. OFDM implements subcarriers transmitting multiple parallel data streams. By leveraging the properties of light, Li-Fi results in unprecedented data transfer speeds over short distances typically inside one room.

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Of course, light travels at the same speed as electromagnetic waves used in Wi-Fi because.. light is an EM wave. But the interference risk is different from something at 2.4GHz. Plenty more in the interview that follows the explanation in the article.
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iOS 17.2 arrives with new Journal app and spatial video capture support • The Verge

Jon Porter:

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Apple’s iOS 17.2 update is now available for recent iPhones. The update includes Apple’s new Journal app, which is designed to get you writing about events in your life with prompts that draw from data on your phone as well as the option to record spatial videos.

Announced back at WWDC in June, the Journal app is a health- and wellness-focused feature that aims to get you reflecting on the small and big moments in your life. Although we found its interface a little basic when we tried it out in beta for ourselves, its superpower is its ability to recognize “Moments” based on your phone’s data, including locations you’ve visited, photos you’ve taken, or workouts you’ve done. It can then make writing suggestions based on these Moments.

There’s also support for recording spatial videos, a feature announced alongside the iPhone 15 in September. This works by recording footage simultaneously from the phone’s main and ultrawide cameras to create 3D video. You might struggle to find much to do with the footage for now, but it’s designed to be played back on the upcoming Vision Pro headset after its release next year.

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I think one of these features will be used a lot more than the other. Hint: it’s not the Journal app (which might have been welcomed during the pandemic, but now?). I agree with Dan Moren at Six Colo(u)rs:

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Though Apple may have great hopes for its new Journal app, I think it unlikely that it will transform the average person into an avid journal-keeper if they aren’t already. And, frankly, if they already are, I’m not sure Apple’s Journal app is going to sway those folks from their current journal of choice.

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Spatial video, on the other hand, feels like one of those slow-burn giants. We’ve seen it in SF films of the future; now we just need to fulfil it.
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Women buy more cars, so why are the designs so macho? • WIRED

Nicole Gull McElroy:

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Funnily enough, while the topic feels timely, electric cars [which offer a reset in design terms] have been around since the late 1800s. Ferdinand Porsche’s first car, the Egger-Lohner Model C.2 Phaeton, was electric, and by the turn of the 19th century, the US Department of Energy estimates, one-third of all cars were electric. They were quiet, easy to use, and perfect for local trips around town—which is why they were marketed to women. One model, the 1912 Waverly Electric, highlighted cleanliness and space (“delicate gowns not marred in this roomy electric!”).

As for what’s next in EVs today, [Volvo’s global head of design, Jeremy] Offer says the objective is to “explore a level of customization and modularity in a vehicle that can flex to your own needs: shopping, camping, taking the kids to school. It’s about making the vehicle adaptable whether you’re a man, woman or neither.” Data from the Organisation for Economic Coordination and Development shows that, worldwide, women still do most of the heavy lifting in unpaid household chores and responsibility. Men average a touch more than 2 hours per day, while women complete a little more than 4 hours daily.

Building design elements into cars that make sense for dogs and kids and groceries isn’t sexist, or buying into a stereotype—it’s a nod to the invisible labour women do every day, regardless of whether they work full-time, stay home, or something in between. And, incidentally, plenty of men do that labour, too, and might appreciate a small detail that makes dealing with a car seat or traveling with a golden retriever easier.

Scotty Reiss, founder of the site A Girls Guide To Cars, spends her time helping women navigate the car industry, exploring things like which cars have headrests best suited for ponytails (which lots of people wear regardless of gender), or the way fashion influences car design, even profiling designers at OEMs like GMC and Toyota. She says she’s seeing some inklings of Offer’s notion already, namely at Buick (which, incidentally, S&P Mobility said accounted for more than 55% of all new female vehicle registrations in 2022).

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The Cybertruck, and various other “concept” EV designs, are presented as the counterpoint. One person suggests that Formula 1 cars are the epitome of “masculine” design, which seems wrong to me: they tend to be incredibly thin, like flying insects. It’s NASCAR cars which look beast-like.

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F-150 Lightning: Ford cuts 2024 production plans in half • CNBC

Michael Wayland:

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Ford Motor will cut planned production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup roughly in half next year, marking a major reversal after the automaker significantly increased plant capacity for the electric vehicle in 2023.

The new production plans call for average volume of around 1,600 F-150 Lightnings a week at Ford’s Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan, starting in January, according to a source familiar with the decision. The automaker most recently planned to produce roughly 3,200 of the vehicles on average per week.

“We’ll continue to match production with customer demand,” a Ford spokeswoman said Monday.

Ford executives have recently said the automaker will match production to demand, as the company cancels or postpones $12bn in upcoming EV investments.

…Sales of the F-150 Lightning have steadily increased in 2023, notching a monthly record of roughly 4,400 sold in November. The company has only sold 20,365 of the trucks this year through November, up 54% from a year earlier.

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Meanwhile Ford’s F-150 petrol-fuelled pickup has been the best-selling truck for 46 years. In 2022, Ford sold more than 640,000. So the EV 2023 sales are about 3% of that total. There’s a long way to go.
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Your Smart TV knows what you’re watching; here’s how to stop it • The Markup

Mohamed Al Elew and Gabriel Hongsdusit:

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If you bought a new smart TV during any of the holiday sales, there’s likely to be an uninvited guest watching along with you. The most popular smart TVs sold today use automatic content recognition (ACR), a kind of ad surveillance technology that collects data on everything you view and sends it to a proprietary database to identify what you’re watching and serve you highly targeted ads. The software is largely hidden from view, and it’s complicated to opt out. Many consumers aren’t aware of ACR, let alone that it’s active on their shiny new TVs. If that’s you, and you’d like to turn it off, we’re going to show you how.

First, a quick primer on the tech: ACR identifies what’s displayed on your television, including content served through a cable TV box, streaming service, or game console, by continuously grabbing screenshots and comparing them to a massive database of media and advertisements. Think of it as a Shazam-like service constantly running in the background while your TV is on.

These TVs can capture and identify 7,200 images per hour, or approximately two every second. The data is then used for content recommendations and ad targeting, which is a huge business; advertisers spent an estimated $18.6 billion on smart TV ads in 2022, according to market research firm eMarketer. 

For anyone who’d rather not have ACR looking over their shoulder while they watch, we’ve put together a guide to turning it off on three of the most popular smart TV software platforms in use last year. Depending on the platform, turning off ACR took us between 10 and 37 clicks.

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Instructions provided for Roku (boxes), and for Samsung and LG TVs. No word on whether Amazon’s Fire Stick or Google’s Chromecast are doing the same. I’d think probably they are, but as they’re the conduit, no way to stop them.
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BOOM: Google loses antitrust case • BIG

Matt Stoller on the Google/Epic verdict:

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So what happens now? In this case, the judge will come up with remedies next year. The order could be broad, and will likely loosen Google’s control over the mobile app ecosystem. Google has already announced that it will appeal, so the case isn’t over.

That said, Google is likely to be in trouble now, because it is facing multiple antitrust cases, and these kinds of decisions have a bandwagon effect. The precedent is set, in every case going forward the firm will now be seen as presumed guilty, since a jury found Google has violated antitrust laws. Judges are cautious, and are generally afraid of being the first to make a precedent-setting decision. Now they won’t have to. In fact, judges and juries will now have to find a reason to rule for Google. If, say, Judge Amit Mehta in D.C., facing a very similar fact-pattern, chooses to let Google off the hook, well, he’ll look pretty bad.

There are a few important takeaways. First, this one didn’t come from the government; it was a private case by a video game maker that sued Google over its terms for getting access to the Google Play app store for Android, decided not by a fancy judge with an Ivy League degree but by a jury of ordinary people in San Francisco. In other words, private litigation, the “ambulance-chasing” lawyers, are vital parts of our justice system.

Second, juries matter, even if they are riskier for everyone involved. It’s kind of like a mini poll, and the culture is ahead of the cautious legal profession. This quick decision is a sharp contrast with the six-month delay to an opinion in the search case that Judge Mehta sought in the D.C. trial.

Third, tying claims, which is a specific antitrust violation, are good law. Tying means forcing someone to buy an unrelated product in order to access the actual product they want to buy. The specific legal claim here was about how Google forced firms relying on its Google Play app store to also use its Google Play billing service, which charges an inflated price of 30% of the price of an app. Tying is pervasive throughout the economy, so you can expect more suits along these lines.

And finally, big tech is not above the law. This loss isn’t just the first antitrust failure for Google, it’s the first antitrust loss for any big tech firm.

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Stoller is very big on antitrust and monopoly abuse (to the extent that I feel he sees it everywhere, even when its presence is difficult to prove). What he doesn’t mention is that Apple won against Epic in a similar (though, Google insisted, not legally identical) case, decided by a judge.
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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