The Belgian Malinois is a smart dog, and now a company aims to refine its genes to tackle more challenging missions. CC-licensed photo by USAG- Humphreys on Flickr.
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A selection of 9 links for you. Barking. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
Bee Here Now • Spyglass
MG Siegler:
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What we clearly needed was a super simple AI wearable, maybe with just a single button to invoke a chatbot.
That’s basically what the [Amazon] Bee device is. A wearable with one single button to rule them all. Only it’s even more simple than that. Because it’s not even a wearable you talk to, it’s just one that listens to you. And everyone you interact with. And then gives you a summary of what was discussed, and suggests some follow-up ideas and actions based off what it hears.
But the really crazy thing is just how well it works. I bought one almost on a whim because again, I’ve been watching this space and it’s $75 on Amazon. I’m honestly shocked just how good it is at what it does. There’s some lightweight onboarding to be able to recognize your voice, but once you do that, it’s off to the races.
The Bee quickly was able to deduce my various family members — even though I didn’t explicitly input their voices — including their names and ultimately, their wants and needs. This sounds a bit creepy because it is a bit creepy. And it’s going to creep the fuck out of some people. But it’s also sort of awesome just how far this technology has come in just a few short years.
And so I’m torn. I can’t decide if this is a device that every single Big Tech and Big AI company is going to need to copy ASAP, or if it’s going to garner an immediate backlash and be banned everywhere. The latter bit may be why Amazon seems to be underplaying the Bee at the moment. It’s a big deal because it’s so good at what it does. And what it does is listen to all of your conversations.
Amazon, of course, says all the right things about privacy and data protection, but that may not end up mattering as much as the societal pushback here. Meta is already feeling it with the Ray-Ban smart glasses. And even Apple, the most trusted brand in tech, has gotten some blowback against products that leverage this type of surveillance. And that’s before such products and features are even live yet!
Recording capabilities or not, people clearly don’t like the notion of wearables that can be always-on and always listening or watching. Hence, the “PervPods” nickname. And actually, it sure sounds like an upcoming feature of the Apple Watch is very similar to what the Bee offers.
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The safe internet is shrinking • The Atlantic
Matteo Wong:
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When I asked Sam Rubin, a senior vice president at the cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks, about the potential fallout from yet another hack—this one of the cloud platform Railway, which is used by Intuit and MGM Resorts, among others—he paused. “I didn’t see that one,” Rubin said. “It’s been quite a busy week.”
Yet what’s most alarming about the past few days is that by next year, this stretch of incidents—which some security experts are calling “Black October”—may be remembered as normal, or even tame. “It’s going to feel like, over and over and over again, we’re finding more and more bugs in very critical pieces of software,” Matthew Prince, the CEO of the internet infrastructure and security company Cloudflare, told me. “This story, which feels unique and fresh right now—in a few months, it’s going to feel like we get one of these every week.” Prince said he knows of still more vulnerabilities that will be announced in the near future.
For the next year or two, if not longer, the internet is going to feel a bit touch and go, and more dangerous than we’ve come to expect. “It’s going to feel like the sky is falling” for a while, Prince said. There’s a decades-long backlog of bugs in software written without much review or scrutiny—which was more or less fine so long as there was a very small number of skilled hackers. Over the past two decades, companies, governments, and individuals have been lulled into a false sense of security: Most people don’t think twice about punching credit-card numbers into the website of a local restaurant or gift shop, or forking over a home address and phone number in just about any customer survey. But the internet was always a dangerous place. We’re just waking up from a trance.
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Ben Thompson wrote a blogpost this week at Stratechery titled “The End of the Internet”, by which he meant the end of the time when you could just set up your own blog by installing your own (free) copy of PHP, MySQL and Apache and then installing WordPress on it. (I’ve done that.) Nowadays – and for some years already – that’s a ludicrously unsafe thing to do.
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Inside the rift at Netflix as the company faces layoffs and executive shake-ups • Los Angeles Times
Wendy Lee, Meg James and Samantha Masunaga:
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As Netflix grapples with fallout from historic layoffs and upheaval in its senior executive ranks, the streaming giant is facing mounting scrutiny from investors about its growth strategy, diversification plans and response to rising competition from the likes of YouTube.
But the biggest challenge confronting the Los Gatos, Calif., company may be something more fundamental: a clash between the firm’s roots as a technology-driven upstart and its ambition to be a force in Hollywood.
Increasingly, tensions have flared between the LA-based executives dedicated to movies and TV shows and its engineers and technologists in Silicon Valley. Internal disputes have erupted over how best to expand the business and promote content on the platform to boost audience engagement, according to former Netflix employees and industry insiders who spoke to The Times.
The friction has deepened since co-founder Reed Hastings stepped away from management, handing the reins in January 2023 to Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, who share the job of chief executive.
The dual-boss structure has at times hobbled the company and contributed to muddled messages and some costly misfires, such as its foray in the games business, said the sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly due to the sensitivity of the topic.
“With two CEOs, it’s hard to have a singular vision,” said a former Netflix executive who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Netflix declined to comment for this article. But a person close to the company disputed the claim that there was a culture divide in Netflix.
“The idea that this is a power struggle between Hollywood and Silicon Valley misses how Netflix actually operates,” said the person, who was not authorized to speak publicly. “Ted and Greg bring different perspectives to the table, and that’s the point. They debate, make decisions together and recognize that neither great content nor great technology succeeds here without the other.”
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The real problem seems to be the first one: is it a technology company (which is how it used to present itself: all that streaming video! It’s really difficult!) or a content company (all those films and TV shows!). The reality is that the technology part was teething trouble, which it has solved – as have the other streamers. Now it’s a content play.
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Warhound raises $200m to engineer war dogs and arm them with Anduril gear • TechCrunch
Dominic-Madori Davis:
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Colossal Biosciences’ Ben Lamm and Anduril’s Palmer Luckey had an idea: to genetically engineer war dogs for the US military, law enforcement, and other emergency response teams. On Thursday, that idea came out of stealth as Warhound, backed by $200m in funding from investors including Sequoia, 8VC, Corner Ventures, and In-Q-Tel, a venture firm backed by the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. The round values the company at $1.2bn. [So they bought a sixth of the shares – Overspill Ed.]
Warhound’s dogs, which do not exist yet, will take on tasks that are dangerous for humans or difficult for machines, such as bomb detection, searches, and other specialized operations. In its launch announcement, the company said that more than 80% of the US military’s working dogs come from Europe, and less than half of them are fit for service.
That means the supply of working dogs is dwindling, and the US increasingly relies on foreign nations for dogs that play an important role in the military and in law enforcement. Warhound aims to change that. The hope is that Colossal can use its technology to engineer dogs with “characteristics suited to demanding missions,” the company said in a press release.Lamm told TechCrunch he met Luckey about a year ago at a conference, where Luckey said more should be done for the military’s working dogs. The two kept in touch, and Lamm researched how working dogs are bred. He learned that many of them do not make it through training because of inherited predispositions to problems like poor eyesight or the high possibilities of cancer, hip dysplasia, or muscle atrophy.
Lamm believed dogs could be enhanced for health, longevity, and “for things like speed and agility or enhance olfactory sensors for bomb sniffing and whatnot,” he said. His team studied top-performing working dog breeds — the Belgian Malinois and German Shepherd — taking cell lines (living cells grown in a lab) from them and putting them in a biobank.
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First: dogs can already do those things. Second: this could actually be beneficial, because inbreeding for particular characteristics is what leads to those inherited predispositions; if the genes behind those problems could be identified, then many breeds could benefit.
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Some final words on Foursquare • the teenorama
Dennis Crowley, founder of Foursquare:
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Almost exactly a month ago, Foursquare was acquired, marking the end of a 17-year story that started around my kitchen table in the East Village in 2009. “The terms of the deal were not disclosed”, but some details have surfaced online. One of our earliest angel investors wrote…
“Several days after the announcement I got the paperwork about the sale from Foursquare’s legal counsel. […] around page 50 was the sentence I needed to see, which said that “each share of Preferred Stock was cancelled and extinguished, without any conversion thereof or payment of any cash or other property or consideration therefor, and ceased to exist.”
Translation: The Foursquare acquisition was a $0 outcome for equity holders – $0 for preferred, $0 for common. It’s bittersweet to see these details surface publicly – at least now there’s an opportunity to comment on them.
I was heartbroken by this ending. There are so many people who put so much time and energy and passion and love into building Foursquare – the company, the products, the brand, the culture. If you were part of it (or even close to it), you know exactly what I’m talking about. To our ~1600 former employees over 17 years, I am sorry the Foursquare story ended in such a way that makes it seem like our collective efforts were worth… nothing?
I’m writing this post for three reasons, (1) I want an artifact that that captures FSQ’s ending from my POV to exist on the internet, (2) I want to hold leadership (myself included) accountable for the outcome, and (3) I’ve learned a lot – strategically, emotionally, psychologically – about starting, scaling, and losing a company that I loved, and those learnings feel worthy of sharing with other founders and investors. “Trust” and “transparency” have always been core to Foursquare’s DNA, so if there’s going to be any last word on the company, they should echo these values.
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Foursquare, for those who have forgotten, used to get people mad keen to visit particular locations so they could be declared its “mayor”. For no obvious reasons, people would tweet their locations (with 4sq.com URLs) – very much the “digital farts” era of the internet.
And now it’s gone.
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Villa Vie residential ship enters lay up due to financial issues • Cruise Industry News
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Villa Vie’s Odyssey has entered what the company has said is a temporary lay up period in the Far East following financial challenges.
In a letter sent to residents aboard, CEO Kathy Villalbe said that the company was “unable to secure the fuel necessary to continue operations … as a result the Odyssey will enter a temporary layup this afternoon with crew remaining onboard to maintain the vessel and its essential systems.”
Residents were asked to leave the ship, disembarking in Cambodia.
“It was a cascade of problems piling up on one another, from the business model to mistakes by management to the mentioned crisis in fuel cost and availability, and more,” said a post on ResidentialCruising.com, by Randy Cassingham, a resident aboard.
The lay up followed several requests by the company for additional funds from residents, according to sources aboard speaking to Cruise Industry News. Most recently, the company asked residents for an additional $360,000 to cover fuel costs, the sources said.
In April, the company sent a letter to those aboard offering an “Emergency Loan Investment Opportunity” seeking $3m in funding under terms that included interest rates of 12% to 24%. The company offered monthly interest-only payments and a balloon payment after 12 months, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by Cruise Industry News. It could not be determined whether the company raised the funds.
The company has also sought new investors. Sources aboard said former Bahamas Paradise Cruise Line CEO Oneil Khosa had recently been aboard the ship to evaluate a possible acquisition.
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The Odyssey is – or was – intended to be a “never-ending cruise”, circumnavigating the globe every three and a half years. Some people sold up everything so they could have their permanent home on it.
Unfortunately, fuel prices in Asia has tripled or quadrupled: what was $1,800 per month expense went north of $6,000. Though you’d have hoped that their financial model wasn’t that vulnerable. Meanwhile: the occupants of the 509 cabins are left on the Cambodian shore. The Dead Kennedys had a song about that.
Chalk another one up to the Iran war.
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Fine M-Tec denies component defects amid iPhone Duo quality concerns • The Elec Inc.
KIMGEON:
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Fine M-Tec, a component supplier for Apple’s first foldable smartphone, the iPhone Duo, has issued an official statement denying that its components are responsible for reported screen damage. The response comes as concerns about component reliability spread following reports of damaged displays on the foldable device.
On Oct. 26, Fine M-Tec posted a statement on its website addressing quality issues involving a customer’s new product. “The quality issues recently reported in certain products were not caused by defects in components supplied by our company,” it said. Fine M-Tec added that it was considering legal action against claims attributing the defects to its components without objective verification.
The statement followed reports of screen damage involving the iPhone Duo, which was released on Oct. 23. Consumers in the United States, Australia and China reported cracks developing along the central crease of the display or bright horizontal lines appearing on the screen during folding and unfolding.
One Australian buyer claimed that the screen broke after a noise came from near the hinge, approximately six hours after first using the device and following fewer than 20 folding cycles. Apple reportedly replaced the device. The precise cause of the defects and the extent of the problem have yet to be confirmed.
Fine M-Tec manufactures internal hinges, also known as metal plates, that support foldable organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels. These components distribute stress generated by repeated folding and unfolding, helping protect the display panel. The company has supplied related components to Samsung Display and is reportedly part of Apple’s foldable smartphone supply chain.
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The blame avoidance game is well underway, then. (Link via Joe S.)
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Scientists were unsure of how microplastics harmed the body — until now • The Washington Post
Shannon Osaka:
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For decades, scientists believed that plastics were some of the safest materials around. Their long chemical chains, companies and researchers believed, wouldn’t react with food, water or — perhaps most importantly — the human body.
Now, a new study in the journal Nature shows just how flawed that assumption was.
The research from scientists at Columbia University shows that when water is exposed to tiny microplastics, it releases highly reactive chemicals. These chemicals, known as reactive oxygen species (ROS), are known to contribute to heart disease, cancer and neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s.
“They can essentially react with nearby biological molecules such as proteins, DNA, lipids, RNA — you name it — and damage them,” said Wei Min, professor of chemistry at Columbia University and one of the authors of the study, which was published earlier this month. “Because they’re high energy, they can, for example, bump into DNA and cause mutations.”
A range of studies over the past few years have found links between microplastic exposure and various health problems. In humans, research has shown that higher microplastic concentrations in a key artery are linked to heart disease. In experiments with mice, scientists have found that exposure to microplastics can lead to Alzheimer’s-like symptoms and atherosclerosis.
But what these experiments haven’t found is a clear mechanism of action, an explanation for why microplastics could cause these harms. The new paper suggests that the chemicals they release could be causing oxidative stress, where the production of dangerous free radicals in the body overpowers natural defenses.
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Does this mean paper straws are good actually?
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I went looking for the source of one little statistic. That was easier said than done • Nieman Journalism Lab
Elizabeth Bromstein:
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Apparently, 75% of your emotions are generated by smell.
Or that’s what the internet says, anyway. The statistic appears everywhere from marketing books and articles to academic papers about the power of scent. As a perfumer (someone who creates fragrances) and journalist who writes about these things, I came across it several times, and when I finally wanted to cite it for an article about the impact of scent on mood and memory, I went looking for the original research.
But I couldn’t find it.
This wasn’t a totally new experience for me. One time, while working on a workplace story as the editor of a hospitality trade magazine, I couldn’t find the source of an employee retention statistic, so I wrote the people who included it in a study. They wrote back to say they had no idea what I was talking about.
In this case, there was no such dead end. I followed link after link, figuring surely I would get to the bottom of it, but every source pointed to another source, which pointed to another, and somehow none of them led to the original research I was looking for.
I asked ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Claude for help. They gave me links to wellness blogs, aromatherapy companies, and authoritative-looking PDF reports. But as I ruled each one out as the original source, the answers became more circular, and the trail ate itself.
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When picking links here, the experience of following a rat’s nest of “credits” and “thanks” and “first reported at” is familiar and annoying. (Thanks Gregory B for the link.)
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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
