How far would you go out of your way to avoid walking through a graveyard? It might give some indication about your political alignment. Photo by VirtKitty on Flickr.

A selection of 11 links for you. They don’t write good. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

iOS 10 to feature stronger “Limit Ad Tracking” control • Future of Privacy Forum

Stacey Gray:

»Most ad networks treated this flag [Settings – Privacy – Advertising: Limit Ad Tracking] as a user request to opt-out of “behavioral advertising” or “interest based advertising.” Some ad networks continued to target ads based on location or continued to use the ad to help enable cross-device tracking. Other companies treated the flag as a broader opt-out of any targeting and tracking. Apple specifically permitted companies to continue to use the ID for certain limited other uses when Limit ad Tracking was enabled, including “frequency capping, attribution, conversion events, estimating the number of unique users, advertising fraud detection, and debugging.” (iOS Developer Library)

Beginning in iOS 10, when a user enables “Limit Ad Tracking,” the OS will send along the advertising identifier with a new value of “00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000.” This will more effectively ensure that users are no longer targeted or tracked by many ad networks across sites. or over time. But it will also prevent the previously permitted “frequency capping, attribution, conversion events, estimating the number of unique users, advertising fraud detection, and debugging” uses of this ID.

The number of users who enable “Limit Ad Tracking” is now at roughly 17% of iPhone users, down from earlier years. Some speculate this is due to users moving on to use adblocking.

«

Possibly people just didn’t know about it.
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The Internet of Things will turn large-scale hacks into real world disasters • Motherboard

Bruce Schneier:

»With the advent of the Internet of Things and cyber-physical systems in general, we’ve given the internet hands and feet: the ability to directly affect the physical world. What used to be attacks against data and information have become attacks against flesh, steel, and concrete.

Today’s threats include hackers crashing airplanes by hacking into computer networks, and remotely disabling cars, either when they’re turned off and parked or while they’re speeding down the highway. We’re worried about manipulated counts from electronic voting machines, frozen water pipes through hacked thermostats, and remote murder through hacked medical devices. The possibilities are pretty literally endless. The Internet of Things will allow for attacks we can’t even imagine.

The increased risks come from three things: software control of systems, interconnections between systems, and automatic or autonomous systems. Let’s look at them in turn…

«

…from between our fingers, behind the sofa.
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Doping and an Olympic crisis of idealism • The New Yorker

Louisa Thomas:

»Most of the major anti-doping success stories—the cases of Lance Armstrong; balco; and, now, the Russian Olympic team—relied on whistle-blowers and methods more commonly associated with criminal investigations. Doping is a problem in the N.F.L., N.B.A., M.L.B., N.C.A.A., in tennis, in horse racing, in Nascar—everywhere the rewards far exceed the punishment. But it is a particular challenge for the Olympics, because the Olympics are supposed to mean something more than an athletic competition.

The distance between the ideal and the reality has never seemed greater. The bribery scandal during the bidding for the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games exposed an organization rotted by corruption. The price of hosting an Olympics has become so astronomical that few cities, especially in democratic countries, are willing to do it. In the cities that do, the residents who are least prepared to bear the costs often end up bearing the most. The runaway spending during the 2004 Athens Games—much of which was public debt—became a symbol of what was wrong with Greece’s economy when it went bust a few years later. In Beijing, the magnificent “Bird’s Nest” stadium sits underused and rusting. The risk of terrorism has led to draconian surveillance and security measures. Right after the Sochi Olympics, the host nation forcefully annexed Crimea.

And now Rio seems to be a catastrophe even before it begins. The water is polluted, the country is in a deep recession, the government is in the midst of political scandal, and the city is facing rising crime rates. Then came the Russian doping scandal.

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Is your brain Republican or Democrat? • ChartsMe

»27 strange non-political scenarios will appear. Please respond honestly and alone and we’ll guess your brain’s political ideology.

«

Honestly, this is fun to try. Have a go.
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Gawker founder Nick Denton files for bankruptcy • POLITICO Media

Peter Sterne:

»On Monday afternoon, Denton sent the following memo, with the subject line “Before the dawn,” to Gawker employees:

“You may have seen the news that I have, as expected, had to join the company in bankruptcy. Peter Thiel’s legal campaign has targeted individual writers like Sam Biddle, editors such as John Cook, and me as publisher. It is a personal vendetta. And yes, it’s a disturbing to live in a world in which a billionaire can bully journalists because he didn’t like the coverage.

“Still, I’m in a positive frame of mind, because our influential brands will soon be free to thrive under new ownership, and our very existence as an independent entity has been a triumph. For once, the journalistic cliché is appropriate: We’ve spoken truth to power. Sometimes uncomfortable truths. Sometimes gossipy truths. But truths. There is a price to pay for that, and I am paying it now. But we never gave up our souls in the pursuit of an easy life.”

«

There’s more to the memo; Gawker traffic is up, ad revenue is up. The bankruptcy filing is to avoid Hulk Hogan moving to seize his assets.
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Samsung’s new jumbo phone unlocks with iris scanner • Associated Press

Anick Jesdanun:

»You’ll be able to unlock Samsung’s new phone by just looking at it.

The Galaxy Note 7 will come with an iris scanner, which matches patterns in your eyes with what was detected by your phone during setup. It offers an alternative to fingerprint ID, which doesn’t work well when fingers are wet. Of course, the four-digit passcode will still work.

“We challenged our engineers to design a security system that’s convenient and safe at the same time,” said Justin Denison, a senior vice president for product strategy at Samsung. “It took five years to perfect, but it only takes a glance to unlock your phone.”

Samsung isn’t first, though. Microsoft’s Lumia 950 phones had it.

Beyond that, the updates in the Note 7 are mostly enhancements, such as a stronger glass screen and more storage — 64 gigabytes, or double what Samsung usually offers, plus a slot to add more.

The Note 7 comes with a better camera — but it’s the same one that the smaller Galaxy S7 phones got in March, save for interface enhancements to access settings and switch between the front and rear cameras more easily.

«

Neat idea, the iris scanner. Look forward to hearing about the accuracy. Also: August is a strange time to release a phone, but Samsung is now pushing everything forward to get away from the iPhone and to beat its previous year figures.
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How Samsung plans its phones • The Verge

Sam Byford interviews Kim Gae-youn, who is in charge of smartphone planning at Samsung:

»Why was it not possible to include things like waterproofing and a microSD slot before [in the Galaxy S6] — what can you do this year that you couldn’t do last year?

Kim Gae-youn: It takes time, right? So we at Samsung scrutinize what’s the real need for the consumer, so we understand the market and the consumer needs. And we have an end goal, but it takes time. So the S6 was our first time to apply the glass and metal materials for a smartphone design, and we tried to incorporate all that the customer needs, but there was a time limit so we prioritized which features went to the S6 and then we adopted other customer needs for the S7. So it’s a matured product.

SB: How important do you think those features are, if you released the S6 without them?

KGY: So we prioritized, as I said. At the time there were technological and time limitations so we had to decide whether we were going to choose the better aesthetic design, or waterproofing and the SD card slot. We chose the better design at that time, but we understand the market needs for the higher memory size, right, so that’s why we expanded our memory SKUs to 32, 64, and 128. With the S7, now we have the SD card slot so we’re going to reduce the memory SKUs. 32GB and maybe 64GB in the future.

«

This is a fascinating interview, ranging over topics like removable batteries (better to have fast-charging non-removables), bloatware, pricing.. Samsung is a company which thinks clearly about these things. It is (as Benedict Evans has observed) much more like a smartphone version of the old featurephone king Nokia than it is like Apple.
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Murder victim’s phone unlocked with paper fingerprint after 3D printing fails • The Verge

Rich McCormick:

»Researchers who attempted to unlock a murder victim’s phone using a 3D printed replica of one of his fingers were forced to use an alternative method last week, after the models produced were found not to be accurate enough to gain access. The team from Michigan State University was asked by police to gain access to the phone, which was eventually unlocked with a 2D image of the dead man’s fingerprints, enhanced manually to fill in gaps in the original image, and rendered on conductive paper.

Both 2D and 3D versions of the dead man’s fingerprints were produced, but the poor quality of the original image kept in police files stymied the efforts of the team, led by professor Anil Jain. After a failed first attempt, the team used an image enhancement algorithm to fill in broken lines in the print, allowing them to successfully unlock the Samsung Galaxy S6 involved in the investigation. Fortunately for the team, the phone in question did not require a passcode after failed fingerprint attempts, allowing Jain and his colleagues to keep trying options indefinitely.

«

So the Galaxy S6 doesn’t require a passcode after a certain time, which the iPhone does? You can play this both ways: yay, murder victim’s phone unlocked with potentially useful clues! Or: oh noes, police/crooks can get into your Galaxy phone given enough time.
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The future is dark…data • ZL Tech

Mike Flores:

»Gartner.com defines dark data as “the information assets organizations collect, process and store during regular business activities, but generally fail to use for other purposes (for example, analytics, business relationships and direct monetizing)” and blah, blah, blah…it’s basically unused or unprocessed and usually unstructured data that sits in storage. And while that might sound not so bad, it actually gets a little nefarious when you really start looking into it.

The thing is an estimated 80% of stored data is dark data – shoutout to our good friend, Vilfredo Pareto [of Pareto’s power law, on how most attention goes to a few things] – and that starts getting really bad really fast when you consider how much new data is created each day and how many tera- or petabytes of data exist in, say, your average Fortune 500. Or just your average business, even.

And even if you aren’t the CEO of a startup or multi-billion dollar corporation and are more like a casual reader who stumbled across this article, this should still be bad news to you. Why? Well, because your personal information exists somewhere in this black sea of unused bits and bytes and if you’re going to become the victim of fraud or identity theft or some cybercrime in the future, there’s a good chance it’s going to be due to the misplacement of this so-called dark data.

«

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Exclusive: Hackers accessed Telegram messaging accounts in Iran – researchers • Reuters

Joseph Menn and Yeganeh Torbati:

»Telegram’s vulnerability, according to Anderson and Guarnieri, lies in its use of SMS text messages to activate new devices. When users want to log on to Telegram from a new phone, the company sends them authorization codes via SMS, which can be intercepted by the phone company and shared with the hackers, the researchers said.

Armed with the codes, the hackers can add new devices to a person’s Telegram account, enabling them to read chat histories as well as new messages.

“We have over a dozen cases in which Telegram accounts have been compromised, through ways that sound like basically coordination with the cellphone company,” Anderson said in an interview.

«

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Searching for what’s next • Techpinions

Ben Bajarin:

»There are still a few hardware innovations in smartphones to come, like dual lens cameras, which will continue to drive new software innovations. But largely, we are moving from a hardware cycle to a software cycle. This hardware cycle adds roughly another billion consumers to the computing landscape and, between PCs, smartphones, and tablets, we now have roughly two billion people with an internet-connected computing device. During the PC era, our software scale was measured in hundreds of millions but now, thanks to the smartphone, the software industry scale is two billion global consumers and growing.

«

Dual-lens cameras, allied to on-device or fast cloud connections, have huge potential – not for photographs, but for machine vision. The phone (app, service) won’t just know where it is but because the dual lens gives a 3D picture, it can work out what it is looking at, and all of the scene. That feels like a move with giant potential.
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You can now sign up to receive each day’s Start Up post by email. You’ll need to click a confirmation link, so no spam.

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

Battery APIs can give away information about you – and your situation. Photo by jhons2012 on Flickr.

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

A selection of 11 links for you. Use them wisely. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Autopsy: lessons from failed startups

It is what it says – a giant list of what they did and, if possible, where they went wrong. Good for whiling away some time in a VC’s waiting room.
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Judge voids VirnetX’s $625.6 million Apple verdict; VirnetX plunges • Reuters

»A federal judge has thrown out a verdict requiring Apple Inc (AAPL.O) to pay VirnetX Holding Corp $625.6m for infringing four patents relating to Internet security technology, causing VirnetX’s share price to plunge.

VirnetX shares were down $1.93, or 44.6 percent, at $2.40 in Monday morning trading, after earlier falling to $2.14.

In a decision late Friday, U.S. District Judge Robert Schroeder in Tyler, Texas said it was unfair to Apple that two VirnetX lawsuits had been combined into a single trial.

He said jurors may have been confused by more than 50 references to the earlier case, though it contained “incredibly similar” issues, and deferred improperly to the prior jury’s findings when it found Apple’s liable for willful infringement.

«

VirnetX claims patents which it says are used in FaceTime and iMessage. So you can see how the outcome might be important to both it and Apple.
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Battery Status readout as a privacy risk • Lukasz Olejnik

»Privacy risks and threats arise and surface even in seemingly innocuous mechanisms. We have seen it before, and we will see it again.

Recently, I participated in a study assessing the risk of W3C Battery Status API. The mechanism allows a web site to read the battery level of a device (smartphone, laptop, etc.). One of the positive use cases may be, for example, stopping the execution of intensive operations if the battery is running low.

Our privacy analysis of Battery Status API revealed interesting results.

Battery readouts provide the following information:

the current level of battery (format: 0.00-1.0, for empty and full, respectively)
time to a full discharge of battery (in seconds)
time to a full charge of battery, if connected to a charger (in seconds)
Those values are updated whenever a new value is supplied by the operating system

What might be the issues here?

Frequency of changes in the reported readouts from Battery Status API potentially allowed the monitoring of users’ computer use habits; for example, potentially enabled analyzing of how frequently the user’s device is under heavy use. This could lead to behavioral analysis.

«

And plenty more: if an app for a taxi-hailing service sees that you’re low on battery, you might be willing to accept a surge price. (It’s worth an A/B test at least.) That’s a situation where you don’t want such potential. More to the point: didn’t anyone at the W3C consider this when they created the API?
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Yahoo has a tool that can catch online abuse surprisingly well • MIT Technology Review

Will Knight:

»Researchers are, in fact, making some progress toward technology that can help stop the abuse. A team at Yahoo recently developed an algorithm capable of catching abusive messages better than any other automated system to date. The researchers created a data set of abuse by collecting messages on Yahoo articles that were flagged as offensive by the company’s own comment editors.

The Yahoo team used a number of conventional techniques, including looking for abusive keywords, punctuation that often seemed to accompany abusive messages, and syntactic clues as to the meaning of a sentence.

But the researchers also applied a more advanced approach to automated language understanding, using a way of representing the meaning of words as vectors with many dimensions. This approach, known as “word embedding,” allows semantics to be processed in a sophisticated way. For instance, even if a comment contains a string of words that have not been identified as abusive, the representations of that string in vector space may be enough to identify it as such.

When everything was combined, the team was able to identify abusive messages (from its own data set) with roughly 90% accuracy.

Catching the remaining 10% may prove tricky.

«

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‘We were wasting time churning out tweets’: The Economist guide to quality over quantity • Digiday

Lucinda Southern:

»On Twitter, the Economist has about a dozen accounts, split by region or topic — such as EconEurope, EconAsia, EconBizFin or EconSciTech — some with hardly any followers, whereas its main account has 15 million. “When we started doing social media a few years ago Twitter was very much a thing, so the number of accounts we started was very much supply driven,” Law told Digiday.

After an audit in March, the Economist found that more than 50% of their efforts was going into their secondary accounts, but was generating next to nothing in reach and traffic, she said. “We need to balance being lean, efficient and high quality, you can’t do that when you’re writing 15 tweets per article,” said Law, adding that more checks by staff are done on the copy now, and more checklists are in place.

Since then, that resource has been redirected to other, more relevant platforms. For instance, the EconAsia Twitter account has 33,000 followers and has been on Twitter since 2009 (this is substantially more than its EconChina account which has just 700 followers). After launching on messaging app Line the Economist has increased its follower count to more than 300,000 in less than six months, although more mainstream publishers like the BBC have grown following to nearly 1.5 million. Time spent writing for platforms like Tumblr and Pinterest, which weren’t getting much traction, has been redirected to Facebook, Twitter, Line, LinkedIn and YouTube.

«

Hadn’t heard of Line as a significant driver of social traffic before.
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Here’s what top trend spotter Faith Popcorn sees for 2016 • Fortune

Eileen Daspin with an interview with Popcorn (who I hadn’t heard of, but sounds interesting):

»You think Americans binge-consume media—games, programming—as an escape?

They are seeking safety. We want to plug into somebody else’s story. It is escape, escape, escape. Look at Minecraft. Look at what they are building. They are building towns that are safes that have bars and guards with their own water systems. They plug in and they don’t want to get out.

Your perspective is very Brave New World.

People always say that about us. But most people don’t want their symptoms dealt with, they want to be transported to a whole new place. It’s not about flipping a switch in your brain and forgetting about Paris and forgetting about ISIS, it’s looking for things to create memories of happiness and peace as if they didn’t happen. It is altering the whole view. Its really fantasy.

How can marketers use this knowledge to reach consumers?

More and more, we are looking at micro-clans, really small groups that are ever smaller and more specific. The Internet has allowed us to target more specifically. We huddle with people who are more like us—either by their world views or what they collect or how many kids they have. We are creating family out of friends and any kind of grouping that makes us feels safe.

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Joshua Topolsky, former Verge editor, raises funding for digital media venture • WSJ

Mike Shields:

»with The Outline, Mr. Topolsky said he is aiming to reach roughly 10 to 15 million users, most of whom come directly to his site. “This has to be a real brand,” he said. The site’s content will focus on three areas: power, as it relates to subjects like politics and business; culture; and the future. He said he’s aiming for a smart, influential readership.

The plan is to produce roughly 15 to 20 pieces of content a day, including text articles, more visual stories and video.

“I really want to move away from the impressions-based way of judging success,” he said. “We want to focus on the best way to tell a story. Digital media has millions of colors to paint with, and most of the time we only use like four.”

To help, he has hired 10 staffers, including journalists such as Aaron Edwards, formally of BuzzFeed News, and Adrianne Jeffries, who was most recently a managing editor at Vice. In addition, Mr. Topolsky has brought on Amanda Hale, formerly of the politics site Talking Points Memo, as head of revenue. The Outline staff may grow to 20 or 30 over the next few months, Mr. Topolsky added.

«

That’s a lot of staff to generate that comparatively small amount of content per day. The wish of attracting “smart, influential” readers is often made, and frequently abandoned in favour of just getting lots more readers to hit revenue targets.
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Another media-stealing app found on Google Play • Symantec

Shaun Amiato:

»Last time we blogged about malware on Google Play that stole photos from Viber. Since then we’ve discovered another app on Google Play that is moving personal media files (photos and videos) off victims’ mobile devices and onto a remote server.

All your videos are belong to us
In the course of enhancing our Mobile Insight cloud-based features to identify apps that leak personally identifiable information (PII), we came across an app on Google Play that was clearly malicious. This app, ‘HTML Source Code Viewer’ by Sunuba Gaming, poses as a development tool, but actually posts files stored on the device in “/DCIM/Camera” and “/DCIM/100LGDSC/” (standard photo and video storage locations) to a web server hosted on proqnoz.info. A look on this server revealed a wealth of personal media files dating as far back as March, 2015. This personal media could be used for blackmailing, ransomware attacks, identity theft, pornography, and other forms of victimization.

Whois data for this server indicates that it’s hosted in Azerbaijan. The app had 1,000-5,000 downloads from Google Play when we discovered it, targets all versions of Android after and including Gingerbread, and uses the following permissions:

• android.permission.INTERNET (allows app to open network connections)
• android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE (allows the app to access information about networks)
• android.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE (allows the app to read from external storage)
• android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE (allows the app to write to external storage)

This is the second case of media-stealing malware we’ve profiled appearing on Google Play.

«

The problem remains Android’s outdated approach to permissions (can’t pick which you allow), which for the majority of Android users lags about four years behind Apple’s. If iOS had a longstanding flaw like this, you’d never hear the end of it.
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Swiftkey app leaked users’ email addresses and phone numbers to strangers • Daily Telegraph

Cara McGoogan:

»SwiftKey has a database of words and phrases commonly typed by each of its users, which it uses to make suggestions as they’re typing. The app, which can read personal text such as emails, social media interactions and text messages, has access to sensitive information including regularly typed phone numbers, addresses, names and phrases.

One SwiftKey user, who works in the legal profession and asked to remain anonymous, found out their details had been compromised when a stranger emailed them to say that a brand new phone had suggested their email address when logging into an account online.

“A few days ago, I received an email from a complete stranger asking if I had recently purchased and returned a particular model of mobile phone, adding that not one but two of my email addresses (one personal and one work address) were saved on the phone she had just bought as brand-new,” said the user.

«

Swiftkey (bought recently by Microsoft) has disabled this sync. But – ouch. This is a bad mistake. Legal users in particular won’t come back.
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Theresa May’s new government must renew the Government Digital Service’s political mandate • Huffington Post

Tom Watson:

»It is a classic Whitehall power grab carried out while the chaos caused by Brexit is still unfolding. While Cabinet members familiarise themselves with their new roles, the Government Digital Service (GDS) is under threat, with a Whitehall plan to undermine it already well advanced. Unless it’s stopped, a decade of digital progress in central government could be undone. The Home Office has already quietly removed its most senior digital leader and similar positions in the Cabinet Office, DWP and HMRC are reportedly under threat. The mandarin machine is taking advantage of the summer hiatus to launch a minor coup, with the Sir Humphreys of Whitehall effectively trying to repatriate powers to their respective departments. The new cabinet office minister, Ben Gummer, must not allow them to succeed.

The Government Digital Service was set up by the Coalition Government immediately after the 2010 general election with a simple but radical objective; to use the groundbreaking tools and techniques of the internet era to redesign public services around the citizens who use them. Until then, their interests had too often been subservient to government departments that habitually think and act in isolation. As a former Minister for Digital Engagement I’m glad it’s succeeded. According to the Treasury, it saved £4.1bn of public money in four years, and the digital approach it inspired helped transform Government services like the DVLA.

«

The GDS really took off after 2010 in the coalition under Francis Maude, an old-school Tory minister who knew how to get things done, and took no crap from civil servants. It would be a huge loss if his work, and Watson’s, were reversed: it would take us back to crappy big contracts which overspend and overrun.
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Secrets of the Apple Store • Thrillist

Joe McGauley spoke to some people who worked years at the Apple Store. Many of the usual war stories, though there’s always entertainment like these:

»Lucas: “It’s very obvious when somebody is lying. Genii know what they’re talking about. The customer generally does not. Don’t try to bullshit somebody that knows the product inside out. Sometimes I found myself seeing people waiting in line before I even spoke to them and I’d think in my head ‘This guy is a bullshitter.’”

Tony: “I had a guy try to convince me that the liquid damage was some kind of E.T. fluid from when he was abducted [by aliens]. It was hard to keep a straight face during that.”

David: “One time we had a guy bring in a completely destroyed iPhone in a plastic bag. I mean this thing was 100% unrecognizable. He told us it wasn’t working right, so he took it out behind his house and shot it with a rifle because he was so fed up with the thing. We did not replace it.”

Lucas: “The most full-of-shit customer I ever had was a guy that came in and put a mutated, deformed iPhone in front of me and said ‘My phone isn’t working.’ I politely asked what happened. He explained that he had been talking on it, when suddenly the phone got very hot and started to burn his hand, so he threw it on the counter and it erupted into flames. I took the phone into the Genius Room to open it up… it clearly had been subjected to some type of liquid, and I returned to the Genius Bar to tell him. He responds with ‘Well yeah, it caught on fire, so I threw it in the sink and ran water over it.’ Right… I am quite certain that he dropped his phone in water and thought that the best idea was to dry it in the microwave.”

«

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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: Corrected spelling of Lukasz Olejnik’s name.

“Wow, I can see where the pound-dollar exchange rate used to be!” Photo by Janitors on Flickr.

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

A selection of 12 links for you. Use them wisely. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Pokémon GO: an opportunity, not a threat • App Annie

Sameer Singh:

»The Pokémon GO phenomenon is showing little sign of losing steam. The app continues to earn daily revenue of over $10m on iOS and Google Play combined, even though it has been over three weeks since its initial launch. Because of its unprecedented success, we have received numerous inquiries from our customers about its effect on revenue and user engagement of other leading apps and games.

Interestingly, it appears that Pokémon GO’s impact has been largely additive to the app economy. More importantly, it has given app developers a blueprint for increasing engagement with their users and opening up new revenue opportunities.

Pokémon GO’s impact on revenue of other Games on iOS and Google Play has been mostly muted in countries where it’s available. The United States did see a brief dip, but quickly regained prior levels.

According to data from App Annie Intelligence, Pokémon GO has not had a sustained and meaningful impact on the daily revenue of other games on iOS and Google Play.

«

On the face of it, this doesn’t make sense. This is an annualised revenue of $3.6bn which, if App Annie is correct, has simply appeared like a rare Pokemon out of nowhere. It has to be spending that otherwise would go on something else. The question is, what? Possibly it’s subtracted from other games that people launched at the same time, and never had the chance to earn any revenue – and so don’t show on App Annie’s chart. (And it does look like Germany has been affected.)
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iPad-only is the new desktop Linux — Medium

Watts Martin on the differences between using a desktop OS and a mobile OS, such as the iPad Pro:

»Downloading an image from a web site, resizing and editing it in an image editor, and uploading it to WordPress — these are things that people do all the time and require coordination between multiple apps, yet don’t demand specific apps.

If you’re going to tell me “normal people” don’t do those tasks, please don’t. Quilters run blogs. Salespeople create presentations. And non-techie writers send revisions to editors. It’s us nerds who insist that iOS solves the “problem” of normal people who don’t understand the file system putting all their files on the desktop. But the desktop acts as shared document storage, which is something it turns out normal people sometimes need, and iOS does not solve that problem. Lecture me about the virtues of containers all you want, but there is no world in which having to use Dropbox as a temporary storage medium is a step forward.

“But Workflow — ”

Sigh.

Conceptually, I like Workflow. You can do some fantastic stuff with it. It’s kind of like Keyboard Maestro on the Mac. But you can do so much with KM that you can’t with Workflow, and while I know some people think Workflow is much easier to understand than KM or Automator, I can barely make heads or tails of Workflow’s UI. Workflow has an added ball and chain: switching between apps under iOS is, compared to the Mac, positively glacial.

But Workflow is an essential tool for being an iOS Power User, for that thrill of figuring out how to get relatively complex tasks done, right? Realizing that led me to a comparison that’s going to raise hackles, but here it is:

Using iOS as your primary OS is like using desktop Linux.

«

It’s definitely true that without Workflow, you can’t get done a lot of tasks that require content editing and twiddling which usually straddle multiple apps done. It can take some time to figure out Workflow; you have to rethink what you consider “objects” in the normal scripting sense. (After some experimentation, I’ve figured out how to do my essential workflow for this post in Workflow.)
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Field in view: Vive is a victim of Brexit, but the UK price hike is not OK • UploadVR

Jamie Feltham:

»doing business with foreign companies is now more expensive than ever. Hence, HTC has decided to make up for its newfound losses by asking for more money in the first place. It’s easy to see how HTC reached this conclusion, and it’s far from the only company that’s considered this move and acted upon it. Inflation is an unfortunate reality as the UK strives to find its new place in the world.

But, to me, that doesn’t nearly justify punishing UK consumers by adding a significant amount of money onto the price of the Vive without offering any extra value. What’s most frustrating, though, is how the company has handled the situation thus far.

Let’s put this in a little context for our US readers. Without shipping the Vive’s UK price converts to a jaw-dropping $1003, roughly $200 more than the US price of the same unit. Currency conversions rarely work out in the UK’s favor when it comes to hardware, but this is certainly the largest gap I’ve seen between the two in some time, certainly within the VR industry. And we haven’t seen any other major gaming devices hike their price; the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One remain at their original tags.

«

I don’t think Feltham understands forex or VAT. Also, the lossmaking HTC is hardly in a position to eat a 10% differential in price.
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Reversing the wall • Medium

Martin Conte Mac Donell works at Lyft:

»Apple welcomed us [to its Worldwide Developers Conference] in an imaginative and playful way. A wall of sentences pared down to the essence of apps but without removing poetry.

The Hello wall at Apple’s WWDC 2016

“What if we could get the text of every sentence, in the right order and associated with the right colour?” I asked.

And I’m not going to lie, I wasn’t trying to make the ephemeral endure, I was just wondering if it could be done before the conference was over.

This post will go over the steps I took to get this done but the tl;dr; is: it’s possible; go here and check it out.

«

This is an amazing piece of “hacking”, in the old sense of making something clever and delightful happen.
link to this extract

Heat wave sparks anthrax outbreak in Russia’s yamalo-nenets area • NBC News

Alexy Eremenko:

»Thirteen members of a nomadic Siberian community have been hospitalized after a heat wave thawed the carcass of an anthrax-infected reindeer and sparked an outbreak of the disease.

Around 1,500 of the animals have died from the highly infectious disease since Sunday, the government of Russia’s Yamalo-Nenets autonomous district announced on its website Tuesday.

A state of emergency has been imposed throughout the region in western Siberia due to the incident — the first of its kind since 1941.

The carcass of a reindeer thought to have died from anthrax decades ago thawed and released the bacteria, sending the disease rippling through a population of animals already weakened by unusually high temperatures, according to local officials.

«

Suspicions high that global warming, causing melting of permafrost, is to blame.
link to this extract

‘Webcam hackers caught me wanking, demanded $10k ransom’ • triple j

»One day in Melbourne, when the sun was out and the birds were singing, Matt opened an email and was greeted with a video of a man wanking.

The man was him.

“There I was in all my glory,” he told triple j’s Veronica & Lewis.

He had been hacked. A ‘ransomware’ program had infected his computer allowing the hackers to film him through the webcam. He had been filmed in a compromising situation.

Now they wanted money.

“There was an email saying they were going to release footage to all my Facebook friends and people I worked with if I don’t pay them money.”

“Initially I laughed.”

«

I do love how this Australian Broadcasting Commission site is so straightforward about the amount of wanking going on. And then mentions Mark Zuckerberg having covered over his webcam camera. Hmm…
link to this extract

Cirrus earnings bullish for IPhone 7 • Seeking Alpha

Mark Hibben:

»During its conference call Cirrus management was careful to state that it couldn’t go into specifics about its number one customer, Apple. However, in the shareholder letter that accompanied the earnings release on Wednesday, Cirrus acknowledged in effect that Apple still accounts for 68% of its revenue, while Samsung accounts for 12%. Cirrus refers to “OEMs 3-10” for the rest of its customers that make up the remaining 20%.

Cirrus provides audio codec chips. What are those? Codec chips provide two crucial functions. They provide decoding of compressed audio typically used in MP3 players and smartphones. This is digital processing of the audio files, usually hard wired into the silicon for speed and low latency. The other crucial function they provide is conversion of the digital data to an analog signal that can actually be played back through headphones or speakers. Codec chips may also contain an audio amplifier that can directly drive a set of headphones.

«

Hibben is one of the more sane commentators on Seeking Alpha. (There are lots. They vary in quality.) This seems to have a pointer towards no headphone jack, given that Cirrus made the Logic MFi (Made For iPhone/iPod/iPad) Headset Development Kit for Lightning-based headsets.
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Apple could never recreate the success of the iPhone. But it doesn’t need to • The Guardian

I wrote about what the latest Apple results (where shares went up after revenues and iPhone shipments went down) presages for the future:

»Apple has underperformed the market, recording two successive quarters of falling iPhone sales amid fears that consumers will not flock to upgrade when Apple launches new models in the autumn. Asked about those concerns last week, Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, said the non-hardware part of the business would take the strain. Cook said he expected the services unit to be a star performer, through iTunes, app and iCloud storage sales. “We think [revenue from] services will continue to grow very briskly,” he said.

Nonetheless, despite their positive response last week, investors are understandably keen for Apple to unearth another big seller, with the iPad and the Watch failing to match the iPhone’s success. Could “Project Titan” – the codename for Apple’s electric car project – be the new smash hit? Or might virtual reality headsets, or some augmented reality product akin to Pokémon Go, prompt a new reason for overnight queues outside Apple stores? Analysts are sceptical. With a billion iPhones sold since the handset’s 2007 release, it is the most successful consumer product ever, generating almost $625bn (£475bn) in revenues in just nine years. Apple will struggle to come up with a concept or a category that matches the iPhone – what other hi-tech product could you potentially sell to everyone in the world?

«

link to this extract

Moon calendar • bl.ocks.org

»A 2016 moon calendar. Click to show today.

Uses the “Simple” moon plase calculation from Moon Phase Calculators. Built with blockbuilder.org. Forked from curran’s block: Moon

«

Neat and diagrammatic (you’ll have to click through to see the rendering).
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Exclusive: Clinton campaign also hacked in attacks on Democrats – sources • Reuters

Mark Hosenball, Joseph Menn and John Walcott:

»The computer network used by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign was hacked as part of a broad cyber attack on Democratic political organizations, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The latest attack, which was disclosed to Reuters on Friday, follows reports of two other hacks on the Democratic National Committee and the party’s fundraising committee for candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives.

The U.S. Department of Justice national security division is investigating whether cyber hacking attacks on Democratic political organizations threatened U.S. security, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday.

The involvement of the Justice Department’s national security division is a sign that the Obama administration has concluded that the hacking was state sponsored, individuals with knowledge of the investigation said.

«

link to this extract

British spies used a URL shortener to honeypot Arab Spring dissidents • Motherboard

Musafa Al-Bassam:

»A now-defunct free URL shortening service—lurl.me—was set up by GCHQ that enabled social media signals intelligence. Lurl.me was used on Twitter and other social media platforms for the dissemination of pro-revolution messages in the Middle East.

These messages were intended to attract people who were protesting against their government in order to manipulate them and collect intelligence that would help the agency further its aims around the world. The URL shortener made it easy to track them.

I was able to uncover it because I was myself targeted in the past.

The project is linked to the GCHQ unit called the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group or JTRIG, whose mission is to use “dirty tricks” to “destroy, deny, degrade [and] disrupt” enemies by “discrediting” them, according to leaked documents.

The URL shortening service was codenamed DEADPOOL and was one of JTRIG’s “shaping and honeypots” tools, according to a GCHQ document leaked in 2014.

«

Al-Bassam went under the moniker of “Tflow” when he was part of LulzSec. You have to admit, it’s a great idea of GCHQ’s to set up a link shortener so that people will connect to it and you can see where they come from. How do you spy on the web? Become part of the web. (The Snowden documents contain other very clever things that GCHQ did.)

Also, “Deadpool”? Well before the film came out. Does this mean there will be a film called Luscious Giraffe, or whatever the weird GCHQ naming system generates?
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Making markets work for citizens • Huffington Post

Margrethe Vestager, who is the European Commission’s competition commissioner:

»Do you remember what it was like to search the Internet before Google invented their search machine? I myself have a vague memory of it being very difficult. Today it is easy. But these fabulous innovations don’t give the company the right to stop others from competing. Because consumers need competition and innovation, so they can choose the product that’s best for them. And the economy needs competition, to drive companies to invest.

That’s why we’re concerned that Google seems to have favoured its own comparison shopping service in its search results. It means consumers see the results that Google wants them to see, which might not be the most relevant ones. And if Google’s rivals believe that their services will never be as visible as Google’s, no matter how good they are, that could discourage them from investing and invent new services all together.

We want to ensure that consumers have a choice, and to make sure Internet businesses keep investing in better products. Markets need to stay competitive because in a competitive market companies will invest. And have a fair chance to make it in the market.

«

Wait – “seems to have favoured”? Surely the point of the EC’s complaint is that Google has favoured its own services. Vestager has had ages; what’s the holdup to taking action, exactly, if this risk to rivals exists?
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

On the internet? Supporting Trump? Might be Russian. Photo by Thomas Hawk on Flickr.

A selection of 14 links for you. Quit grumbling, it’s Friday (somewhere). I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Apple’s hard-charging tactics hurt TV expansion • WSJ

Shalini Ramachandran and Daisuke Wakabayashi with the full tale, spread over years, of Apple’s attempt to persuade the TV companies to let it have their content:

»

In 2013, [Eddy] Cue met with Mr. Britt, Time Warner Inc. CEO Jeff Bewkes and other executives in Mr. Britt’s office overlooking Manhattan’s Central Park. Time Warner owns HBO, TNT, CNN and other channels.

Apple’s Mr. Cue arrived 10 minutes late and was wearing jeans, tennis shoes with no socks, and a Hawaiian shirt, says a person familiar with the meeting. The other executives were wearing suits.

The talks dragged on. Apple wanted full on-demand seasons of hit shows and rights to a vast, cloud-based digital video recorder that would automatically store top programs and allow ad-skipping in newly aired shows.

TV-channel owners “kept looking at the Apple guys like: ‘Do you have any idea how this industry works?’ ” one former Time Warner Cable executive says. Apple has said doing new things requires changes that often are unsettling.

By late 2014, the discussions had gone cold. Apple changed directions again, hoping to assemble a “skinny bundle” delivered over the internet.

Apple’s Mr. Cue began pitching Disney, Fox, CBS and other media companies on the streaming-TV service. The goal was to attract consumers who have dumped their cable-TV supplier with 25 popular channels, anchored by the broadcast networks.

«

It’s a detailed story, though it lacks a narrative sweep. Partly because the US TV channel/content maker business is so complex.
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How Apple’s Steve Jobs tried to buy ITV (the brand, not the company) • WSJ

Shalini Ramachandran:

»

In late 2006, British broadcast giant ITV’s then-CEO John Cresswell got a cold call from Apple Inc. founder Steve Jobs.

“I want to buy ITV,” Mr. Jobs said, according to Mr. Cresswell.

Mr. Cresswell says he was shocked. He told Mr. Jobs that it would obviously be the company’s fiduciary duty to consider any offer.

Then Mr. Jobs jumped in: “No, let me be clear: I’m interested in buying the brand, not the company.” The brand iTV, he explained, would fit with Apple’s brands like the iPod. Mr. Cresswell told Mr. Jobs “it’s a very strong, powerful brand for us,” but the board would consider an offer.

Mr. Jobs never followed up, Mr. Cresswell says. But the bold and impulsive move showed him how much Mr. Jobs personally viewed TV as the next Apple frontier. Apple declined to comment on the exchange.

«

So it ended up as just “Apple TV”.
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Apple patent filing shows future potential of Touch ID not tied to a button • Apple Insider

Mike Wuerthele:

»

The patent filing describes more in detail the possibility of a buttonless TouchID implementation that has been rumored for a 2017 anniversary iteration of the iPhone. Additionally, the patent also suggests a conceivable implementation of the entire display acting as the Touch ID sensor.

The patent is attributed directly to Apple, and uses no shell company to obscure ownership, as is suspected is the case with wireless earbuds known as “AirPods.” The primary inventor is Dale R. Setlak, co-founder of biometric company AuthenTec.

AuthenTec was purchased by Apple in August 2012 for $356 million, after multiple electronics developers expressed interest in the company’s technologies, including what would become the Touch ID sensor.

The 2017 edition of the iPhone, which would commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the device, is said to have not only the Touch ID sensor embedded in the display, but also the front-facing camera, and the speaker.

«

I suggested this as a logical outcome of the 6S’s 3D Touch last September. Still think it makes sense. Also, as one of my children pointed out, there’s an easy way to spot an Apple device with a non-TouchID sensor: it has the empty square icon in it. TouchID sensors don’t.
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The real reason America controls its nukes with ancient floppy disks • The Washington Post

Brian Fung:

»

there is a major reason — other than simply being behind the times — for the military’s continued use of floppies: Sometimes, it says, low-tech is safer tech.

That may come as a surprise at a time when digital technologies have almost completely superseded analog ones — heck, some companies literally give away USB flash drives these days because they’re so cheap. It highlights the yawning gulf between consumers and government…

…There are parallels here to fiction, which can be just as instructive. In the 2004 hit TV series “Battlestar Galactica,” humanity comes under assault from robots that it created. Much of the human space fleet is taken by surprise, crippled by a robot-built computer virus that spreads from ship to ship thanks to the sophisticated networks linking the crafts together. The Galactica, an obsolete warship due to be mothballed, is one of the few to survive the initial surprise attack. Why? Because the Galactica’s systems were not part of the humans’ IT network, sparing it from the virus that disables the rest of the fleet. The lesson seems clear: Sometimes, newer is not better.

«

link to this extract

Transistors will stop shrinking in 2021, Moore’s Law roadmap predicts • IEEE Spectrum

Rachel Courtland:

»

After more than 50 years of miniaturization, the transistor could stop shrinking in just five years. That is the prediction of the 2015 International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors [ITRS], which was officially released earlier this month. 

After 2021, the report forecasts, it will no longer be economically desirable for companies to continue to shrink the dimensions of transistors in microprocessors. Instead, chip manufacturers will turn to other means of boosting density, namely turning the transistor from a horizontal to a vertical geometry and building multiple layers of circuitry, one on top of another…

…The new report embraces these trends, predicting an end to traditional scaling—the shrinking of chip features—by the early 2020’s. But the idea that we’re now facing an end to Moore’s Law “is completely wrong,” [chair of the ITRS Paulo] Gargini says. “The press has invented multiple ways of defining Moore’s Law but there is only one way: The number of transistors doubles every two years.”

Moore’s Law, he emphasizes, is simply a prediction about how many transistors can fit in a given area of IC—whether it’s done, as it has been for decades, in a single layer or by stacking multiple layers. If a company really wanted to, Gargini says, it could continue to make transistors smaller well into the 2020s, “but it’s more economic to go 3-D. That’s the message we wanted to send.”  

«

link to this extract

Apple’s car shifts direction in dark • Bloomberg Gadfly

Shira Ovide:

»

My worries are not only financial, it’s also that Apple may be doing harm to its car ambitions by fogging the project in its typical top secret, tighter-than-the-NSA secrecy.

A car isn’t a product that Apple can just cook in a lab for 10 years until everything is perfect and then spring it on the world with a dramatic on-stage reveal. No. Look at what Google has been doing with its self-driving car program. It’s been talking about it for years. It’s conducting test drives under every conceivable condition. It’s changed its mind about doing the actual manufacturing of the car on its own. Google is talking to regulators and suppliers and potential factories that could bring the company’s designs to life. 

Granted, Apple is not as far along with its car project, but it’s not clear it’s in Apple’s DNA to do the kind of glad-handing partner discussions and regulatory assurances that Google is doing. During the company’s earnings call this week, Apple CEO Tim Cook wouldn’t even acknowledge that his company would be releasing a new iPhone in two months. That’s how ingrained secrecy is at Apple. 

Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg this year outlined Facebook’s 10-year plan. Even another crazy secretive tech company, Amazon, talks about its drone project occasionally to put pressure on regulators, spook its delivery partners and excite the public. Of course, these companies aren’t throwing open to the public their board discussions about their next big thing, but they do talk in broad strokes about where they’re going and why.

«

Plenty of time to unveil a car, and let it be known to people. It’s years away. And the testing process will have to be open. Also notable: Apple recently hired the former CEO of BlackBerry-acquired QNX, used in – wait for it – cars.
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Google just showed Wall Street growth where it needed to — in its non-ads business • Recode

Mark Bergen:

»

Facebook isn’t the only tech giant keeping Wall Street happy.

Google parent Alphabet reported its second-quarter earnings today and, like Facebook yesterday, delivered numbers above the Street’s expectations.

More importantly for core Google, the company reported a 33% increase in its “other revenues” — sales from its enterprise unit, Play digital media store and hardware sales.

That total ($2.17bn) is still just around 11% of its gargantuan ads business — so, relatively tiny. But its growth has typically been around 24% in prior quarters. So that jump is a good sign for Google’s ability to find another cash source besides search ads.

«

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The real paranoia-inducing purpose of Russian hacks • The New Yorker

Adrian Chen:

»

after speaking with Russian journalists and opposition members, I quickly learned that pro-government trolling operations were not very effective at pushing a specific pro-Kremlin message—say, that the murdered opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was actually killed by his allies, in order to garner sympathy. The trolls were too obvious, too nasty, and too coördinated to maintain the illusion that these were everyday Russians. Everyone knew that the Web was crawling with trolls, and comment threads would often devolve into troll and counter-troll debates.

The real effect, the Russian activists told me, was not to brainwash readers but to overwhelm social media with a flood of fake content, seeding doubt and paranoia, and destroying the possibility of using the Internet as a democratic space. One activist recalled that a favorite tactic of the opposition was to make anti-Putin hashtags trend on Twitter. Then Kremlin trolls discovered how to make pro-Putin hashtags trend, and the symbolic nature of the action was killed. “The point is to spoil it, to create the atmosphere of hate, to make it so stinky that normal people won’t want to touch it,” the opposition activist Leonid Volkov told me.

What Volkov said stuck with me as I continued to follow the trolls. Since the article appeared, last summer, the Internet Research Agency appears to have quieted down significantly. Many of the Twitter accounts stopped posting. But some continued, and toward the end of last year I noticed something interesting: many had begun to promote right-wing news outlets, portraying themselves as conservative voters who were, increasingly, fans of Donald Trump.

«

Fancy that.
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The Apple goes mushy part I: OS X’s interface decline (introduction) • Nicholas Windsor Howard

Part of a longer piece:

»

In the same way, and in step with its phone-bound sibling, iOS 7, Yosemite saw the transition from the metaphorical icon of the retired iPhoto to the unexpressive, meaningless abstraction that is the new Photos icon (see above image). Yosemite also borrowed the new Game Center icon from iOS 7, with its colored bubbles that have a dubious connection to anything. The Safari icon became an abstracted compass in place of the old literal depiction of one. Even the less literal of the previous icons saw more two-dimensional replacements.

A small selection of the numerous visual metaphors that have gone to their graves since 2014.

Buttons across the system now look much less like real buttons. Almost no life-imitating textures survive. OS X, in large part prior to Yosemite, used to crawl with visual metaphors; why has Apple banished so many of the analogies that helped people feel comfortable with the Macintosh in the first place?

«

Can I try? It’s because iOS is the dominant operating system, and dominant driver of UI design. Small icons on a phone need to be immediately recognisable, and different. The direction of travel in the design is towards simple, unfussy icons. Seeing OSX in isolation is the wrong way to do this.
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AR helmet startup Skully goes down in flames •Techcrunch

Sarah Buhr:

»

Last week TechCrunch came to you with the dramatic departure of AR helmet maker Skully’s CEO and co-founder Marcus Weller and now several sources from inside the company tell us the startup is no more.

Operations have ceased within the company, and we’re told the website will be turned off at some point today. Weller has also been asked to sign a confidentiality deal with investors.

Weller told TechCrunch today he will not sign and that he’s completely walked away from all dealings with the company as of 10 days ago.

“I’m shocked and deeply saddened that they would now shut this company down,” Weller said in a phone conversation today. “We were raising a Series B to continue raising capital but then we had a buyer…I’m almost dubious to this.”

«

3,000 helmets ordered – goodbye refunds – and 50 people out of a job. Note:

»

the hardware company now only adds to the heap of carnage starting to pile up in Silicon Valley. Shuddle, the Uber for kids, hit the brakes in April, Buffer and General Assembly both chopped a bunch of staff last week and Zenefits took a tumble earlier this year, letting go of roughly 250 staffers as part of a course correction after ousting Parker Conrad.

Much of the upheaval is likely due to overgrowth issues in an increasingly tight VC market.

«

link to this extract

WikiLeaks put women in Turkey in danger, for no reason • Wikileaks

Zeynep Tefekci:

»

Just days after a bloody coup attempt shook Turkey, WikiLeaks dumped some 300,000 emails they chose to call “Erdogan emails.” In response, Turkey’s internet governance body swiftly blocked access to WikiLeaks.

For many, blocking WikiLeaks was confirmation that the emails were damaging to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the government, revealing corruption or other wrongdoing. There was a stream of articles about “censorship.” Even U.S. National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden tweeted the news of the WikiLeaks block with the comment: “How to authenticate a leak.”

But Snowden couldn’t have been more wrong about an act that was irresponsible, of no public interest and of potential danger to millions of ordinary, innocent people, especially millions of women in Turkey.

And yet Western media reports, ranging from Reuters to Wired, some from journalists I know and respect, made the same assumptions Snowden did. They merely reported the block as an act of censorship and reported WikiLeaks’ allegations of what the emails may contain, without apparently any cursory check.

«

Tricky: in some countries it can be illegal for journalists to look in detail at data obtained through a hack (looking at you, the UK) and then there may be lots and lots and lots of stuff. Plus, if you take time to read the emails then everyone else will have written their Hot! Takes!. So there goes your cursory check in favour of caution and hey, hot take!

Which doesn’t absolve Wikileaks; but it has long since ceased showing compunction or care about what it leaks. (Tufekci received a torrent of abuse on Twitter after this, of course. Wikileaks attracts cult-like behaviour.)
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Mediated/Augmented reality (un)course notes, part I • OUseful.Info, the blog…

Tony Hirst:

»

Pokemon Go seems to have hit the news this week – though I’m sure for anyone off social media last week and back to it next week, the whole thing will have completely passed them by – demonstrating that augmented reality apps really haven’t moved on much at all over the last five years or so.

But notwithstanding that, I’ve been trying to make sense of a whole range of mediated reality technologies for myself as prep for a very short unit on technologies and techniques on that topic.

Here’s what I’ve done to date, over on the Digital Worlds uncourse blog. This stuff isn’t official OU course material, it’s just my own personal learning diary of related stuff (technical term!;-)

«

There’s then a set of links which anyone who has more than a passing interest in AR ought to follow. And you could bookmark and contribute. Hirst teaches a course at the Open University (it’s everywhere!) so worth watching.
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SoundCloud owners said to mull $1 billion sale of music service • Bloomberg

Manuel Baigorri, Stefan Nicola and Kiel Porter:

»

The owners have had trouble finding a buyer willing to value the company at $1bn so far, two of the people said. SoundCloud raised $70m from Twitter Inc. in June, part of a $100m funding round that priced the company at $700m, a person familiar with the matter said at the time.

SoundCloud is working to generate reliable revenue from its approximately 175 million users, who spend time on the site to record, listen to and share songs. SoundCloud introduced a premium service in March, allowing customers to pay $10 a month for ad-free streaming and increased access to songs. It was a dramatic change to a more mainstream model, favored by larger players such as Apple and Spotify, for a company that had found its niche hosting music uploaded by DJs and musicians.

«

How surprising that a would-be unicorn can’t find people willing to agree that it’s a unicorn, even though it has glued a horn onto its head.

But it’s also part of the modern route to monetisation: start out being far more pleasant to use than ad-infested rivals; add annoying ads as you grow; give people the chance to pay money to get rid of the ads. Google has done it with YouTube; wonder if Facebook and Twitter will too eventually.
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Notebook players less keen to adopt USB Type C • Digitimes

Cage Chao and Joseph Tsai:

»

Sources from analog IC makers pointed out that using the USB Type-C interface has become a trend, especially since demand for virtual reality (VR) has been picking up and the interface’s high speed transmission is necessary for related devices to operate stably.

However, most notebook vendors are still conservative about the interface with only a few of them planning to adopt one USB Type-C port for their new products for the second half. The USB Type-C interface is unlikely to become a mainstream technology in the notebook market until 2017.

The sources pointed out that the USB Type-C interface has two issues that have been stopping it to become a mainstream technology in the notebook market. First is that the interface features electric current that is larger than one of the previous-generation interfaces, and could lead to interference and heat dissipation problems when adopting too many at once.

Second is that the USB Type-C features a high-speed transmission, but in order to achieve its maximum speed, it requires an amplifier chip, a receiver chip and a special-spec transmission wire, which significantly raise product costs.

«

USB-C seems to cause more problems than it solves.
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You can now sign up to receive each day’s Start Up post by email. You’ll need to click a confirmation link, so no spam.

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

Augmented reality: this is just the start. What might the finish (or middle) look like? Photo by wZa HK on Flickr.

A selection of 12 links for you. In the 1970s you’d have counted to doublecheck – “you know how computers are.” I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Tor project confirms sexual misconduct claims against employee • The New York Times

Nocole Perlroth:

»

The Tor Project, a nonprofit digital privacy group, announced on Wednesday that an internal investigation had confirmed allegations of sexual misconduct against a former employee who was the public face of the organization.

The group, which has risen to prominence at a time of controversy over government surveillance, had been grappling for months with allegations against Jacob Appelbaum, a top figure in the internet privacy debate. Mr. Appelbaum resigned from the Tor Project in May.

The allegations have divided the internet privacy community and have raised questions about management of the project, which promotes the use of software that helps internet users mask their online identities and whereabouts.

One result was the replacement of the group’s entire board this month.

On Wednesday, the group said that a seven-week investigation into the allegations involving Mr. Appelbaum determined they were accurate.

«

For his part, Appelbaum insists claims relating to him are false.
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Videos of the future • Benedict Evans

Evans (who is suddenly blogging a lot – is summer quiet in Silicon Valley?) on augmented and virtual reality:

»

Where VR seems to me to be a branch off the main strand of computing, a little like games consoles were a branch off the PC, mostly, AR (augmented reality, sometimes called mixed reality) can be your main screen. It can be the next multitouch. Forecasting what that would look like is a bit like forecasting this music video [which is designed to be viewed on a smartphone and uses emoji and apps] in 2006, before the iPhone launched, but this concept video [below] has a go from a dystopian angle – this is what happens if you install too many toolbars in Internet Explorer, so to speak. 

What this really gets at, I think, is that after a decade in which phones swallowed physical objects, with cameras, radios, music players and so on turned into apps, AR might turn those apps back into physical objects – virtual ones, of course. On one hand cameras digitise everything, and on the other AR puts things back into the world. 

«

Watch the video – it really is terrific (and scary).
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Why do people open emails? – The Signal

Justin Megahan:

»

armed with 85,637 subject lines from Mixpanel campaigns – totaling 1.7 billion emails sent and 232 million opens, over a span from June 2012 to May 2016 – I looked to answer the eternal question: What makes people open an email?

One thing worth calling out right away is that Mixpanel campaigns aren’t necessarily one-time email blasts out to an entire list. They can be, but more often they are event-driven emails, meaning the user took some action to trigger the email notification. For example, a campaign might target users who have created an account in the last 30 days, but haven’t returned in the last seven days. Then, for as long as that campaign is active, whenever a user qualifies, they receive the email.

Okay, now here’s what I learned.

Most emails aren’t opened.

«

Uh-huh. 13.5% overall open rate. BUT – and it’s a big but – variations matter. Urgency or “offers” actually don’t work. “How to” does. And so do questionmarks. And manners. And small groups. Hell, you’ll have to read it now.
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Microsoft thinks it can do a better iPhone camera app than Apple • Recode

Ina Fried:

»

The app is part of two big trends at Microsoft. First, and best publicized, has been Microsoft’s move into iOS and Android. Less well known is a big shift inside Microsoft Research, which for a long time was seen as a pure research house. Historically, one of Microsoft’s existing product groups would have to decide it liked a research concept and then do the work of commercialization. With Fix, Hyperlapse and other recent releases, Microsoft is showing it is willing to let the research team directly bring products to market.

Weisberg said that while Microsoft isn’t charging for Pix, it still reaps benefits as more consumers gain an appreciation for the company’s ability to lead in the burgeoning field of machine intelligence.

Weisberg and Microsoft Research colleague Neel Joshi showed off the app at a tricked-out loft in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood last week, using a specially built rig that allows two iPhones to shoot simultaneously, one using Pix and the other using Apple’s camera app.

«

I argued in Microsoft’s internal magazine about 10 years ago that it should quit the blue-skies stuff in Microsoft Research – which had people even then studying computer Go – and focus on applied uses. They missed Go by a mile, but they’re finally getting the applied stuff.
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Parkopedia to provide parking services to Apple globally • PR Newswire

»

Parkopedia®, the world’s leading parking services provider with more than 40 million parking spots listed, today announced that it is to provide its parking services to Apple Maps.

Apple Map users will be able to view key information about parking garages and lots around the world.  In addition, users will have the option to click through to Parkopedia’s website and iOS app to view more detailed information including pricing, user reviews, special offers and real-time space availability. They will also be able to make reservations.

«

Blimey. First carpool karaoke, now this.
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Is Gorilla Glass 5 the end of the road for sapphire screens? • Tech.pinions

Tim Bajarin:

»

At a special event in Palo Alto last week, Corning announced its newest version of Gorilla Glass 5, which is by far the thinnest as well as strongest glass screen they have ever made. When they were working on the specifications of Gorilla Glass 5, they studied one key issue that drove a critical part of its ultimate design. In the past, Gorilla Glass was created to withstand a drop from about the waist of most individuals. But in their research, they realized that, for a lot of people, they often lift it much higher when using it to take selfies or take photos. So, with that in mind, Gorilla Glass 5 is designed to withstand a drop of 1.6 meters (a little over five feet). They showed us a smartphone using Gorilla Glass 5 that had already been dropped around 20 times and dropped it again on a hard surface — it did not break. They showed other tests of Gorilla Glass 5 taking a direct hit from various objects and withstanding all without any breakage.

Gorilla Glass 5 is already shipping to vendors and will be in some smartphones by this fall. Corning’s commitment to creating even thinner glass with harder surfaces is significant. I believe Gorilla Glass 5 makes it unlikely a sapphire smartphone screen of any type will ever gain traction. This product from Corning pretty much makes a need for it less likely.

«

Huawei made a sapphire-screened phone in 2014, expecting the iPhone 6 would have one. It didn’t. Sapphire is sooo over.
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Xiaomi takes on the MacBook with the $750 “Mi Notebook Air” • Ars Technica

Ron Amadeo on the two Xiaomi laptops:

»

Both devices have one USB Type-C port for charging, 2 USB 3.0 Type-A ports, an HDMI port, and a headphone jack. The aluminum body comes in gold and silver, and there’s a backlit keyboard. Manufacturing duties for the Mi Notebook Air are handled by Inventec and Wistron. The outside is absolutely devoid of logos, while the inside follows the MacBook layout pretty closely other than the body-colored keyboard.

The move into the struggling laptop market is an interesting one for Xiaomi. Xiaomi’s usual strategy is to make money with apps and services on its MIUI Android ROM. There isn’t much in the way of Xiaomi services for Windows 10, though. The devices do have “Mi Sync” software, which presumably will pull down some phone data. The laptop can also be paired to a Mi Band fitness band, so it will automatically unlock when the wearer is near, Apple Watch style.

Xiaomi isn’t the first smartphone maker to make the jump to notebooks. Xiaomi’s Chinese rival Huawei introduced the MateBook earlier this year. The 2-in-1 Surface clone marked the Huawei’s first foray into larger mobile devices, but it featured little that made it stand out from the crowd. We’ll have to see if Xiaomi can do better.

«

Those are high prices for laptops in China that aren’t made by Apple. Either Xiaomi knows something the rest of us don’t about the laptop market in China (and the laptop market generally), or it’s going to fail hard on this one. Hmm. Let’s see if there’s any supply chain information…
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Chip orders for notebooks from Huawei and Xiaomi falling, say sources • Digitimes

Cage Chao and Jessie Shen:

»

Chip orders for notebooks from Huawei Device and Xiaomi have fallen rapidly recently, according to industry sources.

Huawei and Xiaomi have both set their shipment goals at one million notebooks for 2016, which are likely to fail, the sources indicated. Orders placed by the two vendors already fell below 100,000 units each in March, the sources said.

Xiaomi once demanded its contract maker Inventec and other related Taiwan-based components suppliers get ready for monthly orders for as many as 300,000-400,000 notebooks, the sources noted. However, actual orders placed by the China-based firm reach only less than 50,000 units, the sources said.

Notebook orders placed by Huawei have also been lower than expected, the sources indicated. Huawei’s initial focus on high-end 2-in-1 models is hampering its notebook sales, the sources said.

«

They could be sourcing inside China. But they probably aren’t.
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From 0 to 1,000,000 to ? • Medium

Adrien Roose is cofounder and CEO of TakeEatEasy.com:

»

Take Eat Easy’s business model is fairly simple. On each order, we charge the restaurant a 25-30% commission, and a 2,5€ delivery fee to the customer. With this c. 10€ of net revenue / order, we then have to pay the bicycle courier.

Contribution Margin is thus a function of Restaurant Commission, Average Order Value, Delivery Fee and Delivery Cost.

The first three parameters are mostly dictated by market conditions. Delivery Cost, however, is a direct function of “Courier Utilisation”, the number of deliveries / courier / hour.

Courier utilisation is one of the most important metrics in our business. Assuming couriers need to make minimum 15€ / hour not to churn, a low courier utilisation (less than 1,5 deliveries / courier / hour) implies a negative contribution margin.

«

Unfortunately looks like the third number in the title will also be “0”.
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Tumblr to introduce ads across all blogs • TechCrunch

Sarah Perez:

»

Tumblr this week quietly announced plans to roll out a new advertising program across its site which will see it implementing ads across users’ blogs. The company did not provide specific details on how the program will operate, but it appears to be an expansion of its earlier Creatrs program, which connects brands with Tumblr users directly, instead of having advertisers work with third-party influencer networks.

Now, Tumblr says that the same opportunity provided by its Creatrs program will be available to “any eligible Tumblr—poet, musician, fan artist, and misfit weirdo memelord alike,” the company explains on its official Staff blog.

Tumblr users wishing to earn money in the program will need to go through some sort of registration process, which is launching this year, Tumblr also noted. The details of the partner program and how users will be onboarded is still being worked out, however.

«

Yahoo bought Tumblr in May 2013, completed in June. It’s taken three years to sort this out?
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In China, Apple’s local competition takes a bite out of its revenue • WSJ

Eva Dou:

»

Apple is facing growing challenges in China, a key market contributing a fifth of its revenue. Local rivals including Huawei, Xiaomi and Oppo are increasingly moving from the budget phone market to the high-end segment. Market leader Samsung has moved to slash phone prices in China in a bid to claw back lost market share in the country. 

In recent months, Chinese smartphone makers have scrambled to pre-empt the next iPhone by beating Apple to the punch on features such as dual-lens cameras and brighter organic light-emitting diode or OLED screens.

“This quarter will still be a challenge for Apple,” said Canalys analyst Nicole Peng. “Local vendors are very, very strong this quarter.”

A prime example is an event scheduled to take place at China’s national convention center in Beijing, just hours after the iPhone maker’s earnings conference. One of China’s most valuable startups, Xiaomi Corp., plans to launch a new smartphone Wednesday with advanced features including a dual-lens camera and an OLED screen, both of which Apple is developing for future iPhones but has yet to bring to market, according to people familiar with iPhone development plans.

«

Apple always struggles in the summer, though the iPhone SE – its first mid-cycle launch – seems to be selling OK. Xiaomi’s high-end phones don’t sell well; as Samsung’s actions show, the action if you’re not Apple is principally at the low end.
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The Ice Bucket Challenge just funded an ALS breakthrough • Wired

Libby Plummer:

»

A breakthrough in ALS research has been made thanks to funding from the Ice Bucket Challenge social media campaign.

A newly identified gene, NEK1, now ranks among the most common genes that contributes to the disease, presenting scientists with another potential target for developing therapies.

ALS, also known as motor neurone disease or MND, is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord leading to paralysis and eventually, death.

The viral campaign, designed to promote awareness of the disease and raise research funds, involves a nominated person pouring a bucket of ice and water over their own head, videoing the stunt and posting it on social media.

«

Good Thing Happens Via Social Media; A Nation Amazed.
link to this extract

You can now 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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Coming soon to a sky near you! Photomontage by Mike Licht on Flickr.

A selection of 10 links for you. They really are. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Power in the age of the feudal internet • CoLab

Bruce Schneier:

»

On the corporate side, power is consolidating around both vendor-managed user devices and large personal-data aggregators. It’s a result of two current trends in computing. First, the rise of cloud computing means that we no longer have control of our data. Our e-mail, photos, calendar, address book, messages, and documents are on servers belonging to Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on. And second, the rise of vendor-managed platforms means that we no longer have control of our computing devices. We’re increasingly accessing our data using iPhones, iPads, Android phones, Kindles, ChromeBooks, and so on. Even Windows 8 and Apple’s Mountain Lion are heading in the direction of less user control.

I have previously called this model of computing feudal. Users pledge allegiance to more powerful companies who, in turn, promise to protect them from both sysadmin duties and security threats. It’s a metaphor that’s rich in history and in fiction, and a model that’s increasingly permeating computing today.

Feudal security consolidates power in the hands of the few. These companies act in their own self-interest. They use their relationship with us to increase their profits, sometimes at our expense. They act arbitrarily. They make mistakes. They’re deliberately changing social norms. Medieval feudalism gave the lords vast powers over the landless peasants; we’re seeing the same thing on the Internet.

«

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Driverless cars threaten to crash insurers’ earnings • WSJ

Leslie Scism:

»

The insurance industry has a $160bn blind spot: the driverless car.

Car insurers last year hauled in $200bn of premiums, about a third of all premiums collected by the property-casualty industry. But as much as 80% of the intake could evaporate in coming decades, say some consultants, assuming crucial breakthroughs in driverless technology make driving safer and propel big changes in car ownership.

As the threat approaches, U.S. insurance executives are spending millions and embedding with car companies, testing the technology themselves, and wrestling with whether to lower prices as parts of the autonomous future hit America’s roads.

For the actuaries who set insurance rates, it is a puzzle like no other: How do they prepare for a world of so many fewer auto accidents? In the future, will underwriters be insuring drivers or computer code?…

…Just as air bags and seat belts did in generations past, increasingly common semi-autonomous equipment is expected to offer significant improvements in safety. Among the most effective is automatic braking, which is in fewer than 10% of cars now but will be standard on new cars by 2022, according to the insurance-industry funded Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

The Highway Loss Data Institute, a sister organization to IIHS, last year found that 11 front-crash-prevention systems from six manufacturers showed 10% to 15% lower rates of claims for damaging other vehicles, compared with models without the gear.

Surprisingly, the institute found no consistent reduction in claim rates from “lane-departure warning” systems.

«

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Nest thermostats offline in U.S. heatwave • Business Insider

Todd Haselton:

»

Google’s Nest is experiencing a widespread outage that has knocked its line of thermostats offline, a particularly scary situation given the widespread heatwave across the United States right now. Members of our staff noticed the thermostats weren’t functioning properly this morning, in multiple states around the U.S., and a quick search on Twitter shows a similar story.

«

This might only be a small number of thermostats, but it’s probably bloody annoying when it does. An internet of things that is completely reliant on an internet that isn’t reliable is less useful than “things that just do”.
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Apple sales top estimates as consumers warm to cheaper iPhone • Bloomberg

Alex Webb:

»

A slump in iPhone sales eased in the third quarter, helped by demand for the new SE model, a low-end device aimed at consumers in China and other emerging regions. With the iPhone accounting for almost two-thirds of sales, Apple has been weathering a slowdown in the global smartphone market, and Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has sought to emphasize surging revenue from services, such as the App Store, iCloud storage and Apple Music, as a way of making up for cooling device sales.

“We had a June quarter that was better than we had expected 90 days ago,” Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri said by phone. “The March quarter seems to have been the low point for the cycle.”
“We had a very successful launch of iPhone SE,” Maestri said, adding that the company wasn’t able to fulfill demand for the lower-end device.

“There are some macro conditions that exist in China, both in mainland China and in Hong Kong.” he said. “The economy has slowed down and the foreign exchange rate has weakened.”

«

Sales of iPhones down by 15% year-on-year to 40.4m. Sales of iPads down (though iPad revenue rose – people and businesses are buying pricier Pros). Sales of Macs down from 4.8m to 4.25m. Watches unknown.

Sure needs a hardware refresh in the autumn to push things along. Though it was always going to be difficult to match the sales bump of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus the year before.
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How to make a…[something] • Kottke

A beautifully shot video of the process for making a fairly common object. Notice the point where you realise what it is. Notice also the stages which do involve a human, and the ones which don’t, and wonder: how long might those last?

Using a computer to beat the crowds at the DMV • The Atlantic

Andrew McGill, who is writing a series about hacking together apps and devices, looks at the pain that is queueing for the US Department of Motor Vehicles, where staff allocations tend not to match demand:

»

If you time your visit right, you can beat the rush and save yourself from the soul-grinding sandpaper rasp of a normal DMV experience. But how can one understand the mysterious rhythms of America’s most-visited bureaucracy?

In this week’s project, I think I’ve found a way. The DMV in Washington, D.C., kindly provides webcam feeds of its centers, like this one in Georgetown. They’re updated every minute to show you the size of the crowd before you schlep down there.

A programming concept called computer vision could help here. Computers aren’t good at intuitively understanding images—that’s why so many of those online human-checks you fill out before buying concert tickets or something involve deciphering a line of text in a picture. But they’ve gotten exponentially better at recognizing patterns. And in this case, the DMV long ago made a decision that will make determining the relative number of people in this photo very easy: They bought those goofy blue chairs.

«

The UK Passport Office in London could probably do something similar.
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Those Freedom Kids who performed at a Donald Trump rally are about to sue him • Mother Jones

Inae Oh:

»

From the Washington Post:

»

It started in Pensacola. When Popick first reached out to the Trump campaign about performing, he spoke with various people including former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. His understanding from the campaign was that the Kids would make two appearances in Florida, where Popick lives. The first event didn’t come to fruition, and Popick says he asked for $2,500 in payment for the second performance, in Pensacola. The campaign made a counter-offer: How about a table where the group could pre-sell albums?

«

According to Popick, no table ever showed up—and the incident was the first of a series of broken promises and unreturned phone calls that went on all the way to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. There, Trump’s team allegedly offered Popick a consolation prize and promised that the girls could perform because of all the previous disappointments. That performance never materialized either and now he says he’s planning to file suit.

«

Make friends and influence people. That’s the way.
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U.K. signs a deal with Amazon to test delivery drones • MIT Technology Review

Michael Reilly:

»

Retail giant Amazon has partnered with the British government to test drones for package delivery—a major coup for the company, which is still forbidden from testing certain drone technologies in the U.S.

In June, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration released updated rules governing drone use that opened American skies up to limited use of commercial drones. Crucially for Amazon, however, that did not include automated flights guided by GPS, or flights in which a drone leaves an operator’s line of sight.

«

The CAA’s rules don’t normally allow drones to travel more than 50m or to go out of line of sight. But Amazon’s announcement does talk of “partnership” to “explore the steps needed” – which include non-line-of-sight operations in rural and suburban areas, and multiple drones operated by one person.

Quite a strange future.

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SMS authentication isn’t security. And that’s official • Consult Hyperion

Dave Birch:

»

Earlier in the week I blogged about mobile banking security, and I said that in design terms it is best to assume that the internet is in the hands of your enemies. In case you think I was exaggerating…

»

The thieves also provided “free” wireless connections in public places to secretly mine users’ personal information.

«

From Gone in minutes: Chinese cybertheft gangs mine smartphones for bank card data | South China Morning Post

Personally, I always use an SSL VPN when connected by wifi (even at home!) but I doubt that most people would ever go to this trouble or take the time to configure a VPN and such like. Anyway, the point is that the internet isn’t secure. And actually SMS isn’t much better, which is why it shouldn’t really be used for securing anything as important as home banking.

»

The report also described how gangs stole mobile security codes – which banks automatically send to card holders’ registered mobile phones to verify online transactions – by using either a Trojan virus in the smartphone or a device that intercepted mobile signals up to a kilometre away.

«

From Gone in minutes: Chinese cybertheft gangs mine smartphones for bank card data | South China Morning Post

Of course, no-one who takes security seriously ever wanted to do things this way in the first place (which is why, for example, we used a SIM Toolkit application for M-PESA).

«

He has lots of suggestions for improvement..
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Platform wars: the final score • Benedict Evans

Evans surveys the battlefield as the smoke clears:

»

it’s now perfectly clear that both Apple and Android have sufficient scale for their ecosystems to be viable (including the Android subset in China), and that no-one else does. But at the same time, once you’ve achieved that scale, further changes in market share are not very meaningful. It doesn’t matter to a product manager at a big US bank how many Android users there are in China, nor to a product manager launching in India how any iPhones are in California. Where your users are, which users you want and which users spend what is more important. 

That is, the war is over. Yes, we’ll go from 2.5bn smartphones to 5bn, but the dynamics of the two ecosystems will not change much with that growth. Apple will get some more uses, perhaps, while Android will convert most of that next 2.5bn, but most of those people are in emerging markets and most will be buying phones for under $50 and certainly under $100. 

Rather, the changes, and the things to think about, come from other directions – VR and AR on one hand, AI and machine learning on the other. They might change the balance between Apple and Google, but they’re more likely to make that distinction boring. I stopped updating my Nokia, RIM and Microsoft models a while ago – my Android and Apple models are increasingly lower on my priority list too. 

«

link to this extract

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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified.

It’s a phone from China’s top-selling Android OEM in June. Can you name the company? If not, why not? Photo by TechStage on Flickr.

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

A selection of 10 links for you. What fun! I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

All signs point to Russia being behind the DNC hack • Motherboard

Thomas Rid:

»

two months earlier, in April, the Democrats had noticed that something was wrong in their networks. Then, in early May, the DNC called in CrowdStrike, a security firm that specializes in countering advanced network threats. After deploying their tools on the DNC’s machines, and after about two hours of work, CrowdStrike found “two sophisticated adversaries” on the Committee’s network. The two groups were well-known in the security industry as “APT 28” and “APT 29.” APT stands for Advanced Persistent Threat—usually jargon for spies.

CrowdStrike linked both groups to “the Russian government’s powerful and highly capable intelligence services.” APT 29, suspected to be the FSB, had been on the DNC’s network since at least summer 2015. APT 28, identified as Russia’s military intelligence agency GRU, had breached the Democrats only in April 2016, and probably tipped off the investigation. CrowdStrike found no evidence of collaboration between the two intelligence agencies inside the DNC’s networks, “or even an awareness of one by the other,” the firm wrote.

«

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Why Armstrong really wanted Yahoo • The Information

Jessica Lessin and Tom Dotan:

»

To understand why Tim Armstrong just convinced Verizon to spend $4.83bn to buy Yahoo’s main business, you have to go back to April 2007.

Mr. Armstrong, then running North America advertising for Google, drove Google’s purchase of display ad firm DoubleClick, launching the search giant into banner advertising. By every measure it was a transformative deal, and it’s loomed large in Mr. Armstrong’s mind in the years since, multiple past colleagues say.

After he jumped to AOL from Google in 2009, Mr. Armstrong dreamed of building an ad network to rival the juggernaut Google became. For years, publishers have whined about wanting such an alternative. And Mr. Armstrong listened, believing you could build a better version of what DoubleClick had become.

Mr. Armstrong took a big step toward that goal last year when he signed a deal for AOL to sell Microsoft’s display advertising. The deal, struck in the wake of selling AOL to Verizon, gave him more ad space to sell to build out his network. Inside Verizon, the Microsoft deal is viewed as successful and part of the justification for taking a swing at Yahoo.

Now, he’ll get another influx of volume from Yahoo.  

If this all sounds a little deja vu to you, it is. Microsoft, Yahoo and many others have tried to dethrone Google in online advertising and proposed all sorts of permutations around teaming up.

«

Oh sure, that’ll work.
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Mayer decries ‘gender-charged’ reporting of Yahoo • FT.com

David Crow and James Fontanella-Khan:

»

Marissa Mayer has hit out at sexist coverage of her leadership at Yahoo, as she agreed to sell the bulk of the internet pioneer’s assets to Verizon for $4.8bn cash, ending the independence of the star of the 1990s dotcom boom.

Speaking after announcing a deal that will bring the company set up 22 years ago by Jerry Yang and David Filo under the same roof as fellow internet pioneer AOL, Ms Mayer decried reporting about her that focused on her gender.

“I’ve tried to be gender blind and believe tech is a gender neutral zone but do think there has been gender-charged reporting,” she told the Financial Times.

“We all see the things that only plague women leaders, like articles that focus on their appearance, like Hillary Clinton sporting a new pantsuit. I think all women are aware of that, but I had hoped in 2015 and 2016 that I would see fewer articles like that. It’s a shame.”

Ms Mayer, who has been repeatedly criticised by analysts for making a series of bad acquisitions and poor hires, will stay at Yahoo until the deal closes, but is unlikely to join Verizon, according to people familiar with the matter.

After she said in a post on the company’s Tumblr page that she planned to stay “to see Yahoo into its next chapter”, she admitted that it was unclear what would happen once the deal closes early next year.

«

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The age of the red pen • The Economist

Natasha Loder on the new gene-editing technology that is sweeping through biotech:

»

One particularly impressive—and potentially worrying—application is in the creation of genes that can spread themselves quickly through a population with blithe disregard for the constraints of natural selection. Engineering the CRISPR-Cas9 system itself into a creature’s genome makes it possible for an organism to edit its own genes, and there are ways that this ability can be used to “drive” a gene through a population (see article). Such a technology might, proponents say, be used to make the mosquitoes that carry malaria, or dengue fever, unable to spread the organisms responsible for causing the disease.

The applications seem limited only by the imagination. Dr Zhang says CRISPR has enormous potential for treating previously intractable diseases. For example, genome editing may make it possible to eliminate viral infections within the body, creating entirely new antiviral treatments. He also speculates that it might be possible to make red meat that is less harmful, or to engineer pig organs so that they could be transplanted into humans with much less risk of rejection. Dr Church, for his part, has speculated about using gene editing to turn elephants into mammoths—or to recreate Neanderthals.

«

Long and detailed, but an important primer. You might not think CRISPR is going to affect you, but it could well affect your children. (Loder won a science writing prize for this piece.)
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Oppo becomes the leading smartphone brand in China in June 2016 • Counterpoint Technology

James Yan:

»

According to the latest research from Counterpoint’s Monthly Market Pulse, the demand for smartphones in China grew a healthy 17% annually in June. This was the best ever June month in terms of sell-through for smartphones, even though the overall market for the June-ending second quarter has seen modest growth over the first quarter of the year.Commenting on the results, Research Director, James Yan, highlighted, “The competitive environment in the world’s leading smartphone market has taken an interesting turn as domestic brands have significantly ramped-up their positions in the smartphone market. Oppo became the number one brand in China for the first time ever in June surpassing Huawei, Apple and Xiaomi with a record 23% market share with sales volumes up a massive 337% annually for the month…

…Chinese brands now control more than 84% of the total Chinese smartphone market as they exert an iron grip on the sales channels, industrial design curve and leverage access to Chinese supply chain. Their dominance extends across the price bands even extending in to the premium segment with models such as Huawei P9, Oppo R9 Plus and Vivo X play 5.

«

Samsung is fading from view – from the leading 14.1% share in June 2014 to 4th place in 2015 to 5th equal (with Xiaomi) this year. And Xiaomi is fading too, on those numbers.
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Ofcom should push for fibre – Ex BT CTO • The Register

Kat Hall:

»

a damning report by MPs last week that warned if BT doesn’t get its house in order and address its significant under-investment in Blighty’s infrastructure, Openreach should be structurally split from the former state monopoly.

Earlier this year the regulator stopped short of recommending a formal separation – but deliberately kept that option on the table. BT has denied the accusations of underinvestment, pointing to its plans to roll-out ultrafast speeds to 12 million homes in the next four years, 2 million of which will be fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP).

But Professor Peter Cochrane, former CTO and head of R&D at BT, has slammed BT’s emphasis on its hybrid copper G.Fast technology. “An ambition of 2 million FTTP delivery is no target at all. It’s woeful. It would be 48 years to get to all the homes.”

He says: “I have no patience with the arguments being put forward that we can do it all with copper. I mean, we can do all our transport by boats on rivers if you want.”

Cochrane believes the estimated speeds of 1Gbps for G.Fast are wrong. “It’s been tested in a laboratory under rather idealised conditions in the field. And some people are quoting they can do a gigabit over 200 meters – I can categorically tell you they cannot. What they can actually do is a gigabit over 20, possibly 30 meters. After that it just dies.

“If they had fibre to the pole at the end of my garden they might be able to deliver 200-300mbps.”

«

“We can do all our transport by boats on rivers if you want” ranks among the very finest technical putdowns I’ve heard.
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Notice regarding the impact of Pokemon GO on the consolidated financial forecast • Nintendo

»

The Pokémon Company, which is an affiliated company of Nintendo Co., Ltd. (the “Company”), holds the ownership rights to Pokémon. The Pokémon Company is going to receive a licensing fee as well as compensation for collaboration in the development and operations of the application.

The Company owns 32% of the voting power of The Pokémon Company. The Pokémon Company is the Company’s affiliated company, accounted for by using the equity method. Because of this accounting scheme, the income reflected on the Company’s consolidated business results is limited.

Also, a peripheral device for use with the application, “Pokémon GO Plus,” which will be produced and distributed by the Company, is scheduled for release. All of the above are reflected in the financial forecast ending March 31, 2017 as set forth on April 27, 2016.

Taking the current situation into consideration, the Company is not modifying the consolidated financial forecast for now. The Company will make a timely disclosure when the Company needs to modify its financial forecasts.

«

Spoilsports. Nintendo shares, which had doubled in value, plunged as a result of this fact-based announcement.
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Hewlett Packard Enterprise: Brexit, weak pound. A price hike is coming • The Register

Paul Kunert:

»

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is to bump up the price of its infrastructure gear in Blighty from Monday, blaming the crash in the value of UK sterling currency for the hike.

According to sources close to the matter, the cost of servers will go up between 6-7%, and storage and legacy networking by circa 10%.

El Reg understands this week was the cut-off date for ordering kit in HPE’s third quarter of fiscal ’16, even though its Q4 doesn’t start until 1 August.

“HPE always carefully considers any price changes for our products and adjusts prices based on exchange rates and currency fluctuations,” a spokeswoman told us.

The value of the British pound had fallen by roughly 7% against the US dollar in the 12 months prior to the EU Referendum, but since the Brexit vote was down around 15%.

«

Follows Dell, HP Inc (printers/PCs), Asus, Cisco. Wonder when Apple will follow suit.
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PonoMusic goes dark for several weeks as the company switches providers • TechCrunch

Brian Heater:

»

Neil Young’s music service is apparently down, but not out. In a note posted to Pono’s front page, the hi-res music provider announced that it’ll be going offline for for “several weeks,” due to the recent acquisition of Omnifone, which has been the driving force behind the service’s infrastructure.

The company’s purchase has led Pono to seek a new partner for PonoMusic, striking a deal with 7 Digital, a London-based digital music platform that has worked with a number of high-profile partners, including Samsung and BlackBerry. In its letter, Pono insists that the move, while “well underway, [is] not yet complete,” hastening to add that the move won’t affect any of its dealings with big music labels.

What all of this means for the Pono faithful is no more music purchases for what’s likely to be several weeks from last Wednesday.

«

All twelve users must be upset.
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Apple: Katy Huberty calls BS on the three-year cycle • Philip Elmer‑DeWitt

»

Smartphones aren’t headed for a three-year cycle, says Morgan Stanley’s chief Apple watcher, contradicting last month’s supply chain rumors, today’s Wall Street Journal, and conventional wisdom on the Street.

“We’re actually quite bullish,” says Katy Huberty in a video released to clients Tuesday.

According to a new AlphaWise Survey of smartphone owners in seven countries, the market may in fact be setting itself up for what Huberty calls a “potential supercycle.”

Most analysts’ estimates for Apple and Samsung, she says, imply that customers are sticking with their current phones longer and longer, stretching a replacement cycle that used to be 24 months to nearly 36 months.

But that’s not what customers are saying.

«

Quite an important distinction. The suggestion is that people have hung on to old phones for quite a while, but are now ready to upgrade. Well, next year will be.
link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

The online ratings for Ghostbusters are all over the place – which demonstrates how screwed up online ratings are. Photo by The Shifted Librarian 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.

A selection of 12 links for you. Helllooooo Monday, if it’s Monday where you are. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Airbnb’s racism “the greatest challenge we face as a company” • The Memo

Oliver Smith:

»

in 2015 a Harvard Business School study reported that there is “widespread discrimination against African-American guests” taking place on Airbnb.

Last month Chesky kick started a company-wide review of discrimination on Airbnb, and this morning he announced that [it will be led by] former US attorney general Eric Holder, the country’s first black person to hold this most senior legal position.

Chesky also reflected on why Airbnb had been so painfully slow to respond to these serious problems.

“Joe, Nate, and I started Airbnb with the best of intentions, but we weren’t fully conscious of this issue when we designed the platform,” he wrote.

“After speaking to many of you, I have learned that there have at times been a lack of urgency to work on this, and we need to rectify that immediately.”

The big question now for Airbnb, and many sharing economy businesses like it, is can they fix both the technical issues allowing discrimination to take place and then win back the trust of users.

In many ways Airbnb’s plight highlights just how significantly better Uber’s system is. Auto-matching passangers and drivers, giving drivers little option but to accept rides, and with a dispassionate rating system which uses average ratings to simply exclude ‘bad’ passangers and drivers.

«

When tech becomes woven into society, you start to see its social effects.
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The iPad paradox • iMore

Michael Gartenberg:

»

“TiVo paradox” is a term I coined to explain how hard it is to market contextual value.

With some products, including TiVo, there’s a distinct conflict between consumer understanding of the features and the value assigned to those features. While the internet was filled with a rabid fan base of customers who loved and praised TiVo at every opportunity, most consumers didn’t understand the value of a $500 “digital VCR.”

TiVo’s features were relevant to the TV viewing experience based on a customer’s immediate contextual need: The pause and rewind live TV feature was killer for any sports fan; remote access to the electronic programming guide was key to any busy traveler’s DVR experience.

Without trying these features, though, customers are unaware of their overall value or how they come together as a whole. Want to pause TV when the phone rings? That’s the killer app at that moment. Recording a show using an EPG to simply search for it? That’s the killer app at that moment. Skipping commercials when you watch recorded content? That’s the killer app at that moment. Contextual functionality ONLY comes together when you get to see the whole, not a piece or part. When you see only pieces, you just get a very expensive VCR not a TiVo.

In short, if you met a TiVo owner at a party, they were rabid. It was like being cornered by an insurance agent. They wouldn’t leave you alone until you tried it. When most people tried it, the lightbulb turned on. TiVo was not an expensive VCR — it redefined watching TV.

I suspect iPad is suffering from the same paradox. Customers who buy an iPad Pro understand the power it unlocks relative to a Mac. The more they use it, the more it displaces their Mac.

They “get it,” but most folks just don’t.

«

link to this extract

How KickassTorrents was able to get movies months before they came out on DVD • Business Insider

James Cook:

»

a regular source of leaks comes from the production of DVDs, as then lots of factory workers are exposed to movies before they’re officially available to buy.

But the criminal complaint notes that many movies available on KickassTorrents have “telecine” or “TC” in their description. 

Here’s a look at a cached version of a “Warcraft” torrent on KickassTorrents, before the site was taken down:

“Warcraft” isn’t out on DVD yet, but it was posted on Kickasstorrents shortly after appearing in the cinema. That’s because it was converted using telecine, a type of machine that takes the original cinema reels of a movie and converts them to a digital file.

The cinema reels are run through the machine, which then records the film and turns them into a digital recording. That’s then shared on torrent sites, giving a faster turnaround than waiting for a screener copy of a DVD to be ripped.

KickassTorrents certainly wasn’t the only site to use telecine copies of movies, but it does show how it got them so quickly. After all, that’s a major reason why the site was more popular than The Pirate Bay — content came to Kickasstorrents before it reached its rivals.

«

It’s a model very like that used by the people who pirated music by getting early access to the masters at CD pressing plants. The next step will be to look for the insiders at the telecine shops.
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Brexit Blues • London Review of Books

John Lanchester:

»

To be born in many places in Britain is to suffer an irreversible lifelong defeat – a truncation of opportunity, of education, of access to power, of life expectancy. The people who grow up in these places come from a cultural background which equipped them for reasonably well-paid manual labour, un- and semi- and skilled. Children left school as soon as they could and went to work in the same industries that had employed their parents. The academically able kids used to go to grammar school and be educated into the middle class. All that has now gone, the jobs and the grammar schools, and the vista instead is a landscape where there is often work – there are pockets of unemployment, but in general there’s no shortage of jobs and the labour force participation rate is the highest it has ever been, a full 15 points higher than in the US – but it’s unsatisfying, insecure and low-paid. This new work doesn’t do what the old work did: it doesn’t offer a sense of identity or community or self-worth.

«

This is a remarkable, detailed, insightful piece.
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Hillary Clinton is launching a game-style mobile app for campaign volunteers • Recode

Ina Fried:

»

A team of technology veterans has built an app for the Hillary Clinton campaign that lets volunteers get most of the benefits of being in a campaign field office straight from their smartphone.

Hillary 2016, built by veterans of DreamWorks Animation, Charity: Water and Lifestream, is set to go live Sunday in the App Store. The app lets users brush up on the issues, post to social media and begin organizing.

Though designed to help Hillary supporters take real-world actions, it is based around gaming concepts like those used in FarmVille and other social games. Volunteers can compete against one another and earn both virtual and real-world rewards.

The Obama campaign also had a mobile app for volunteers, but it was geared more to offline actions, such as directing volunteers to phone banks or on going door-to-door.

«

Sure to be a target for abuse of all sorts. Wonder when the Android one version will come out. (Also: a piece of news about Clinton. Amazing.)
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Three proposes protection in UK spectrum auction • CCS Insight

Kester Mann:

»

Only weeks after the deal to buy O2 was rebuffed, Three CEO Dave Dyson called on Ofcom to impose restrictions on rivals at an upcoming spectrum auction of 2.3 GHz and 3.4 GHz frequencies.

It’s not difficult to see why Mr Dyson started lobbying so soon. Having failed to buy O2, Three is in a precarious position without the assets or scale needed to challenge its larger rivals. The operator claims to carry over 40% of UK data traffic, but holds only about a 15% share of the airwaves — an unsustainable position that has already forced Three to raise prices on some tariffs.

Without adding extra capacity, it will be extremely difficult for Three to deploy the kind of challenger strategy with which it has become synonymous. This is particularly relevant given its preference for pure-play mobile in a market rapidly evolving to multiplay services. In many ways, the network’s very future depends on acquiring more spectrum. Until this happens, Three will be treading water, unable to formulate a long-term strategy as rivals bolster services and Sky prepares to enter the market.

Mr Dyson has called for a 30% spectrum cap on any operator following the auction.

This seems wishful thinking given that the combined BT and EE — which owns over 40% of the spectrum — would have to give up significant airwaves to take part. When the two companies came together, the merger was surprisingly smoothly dealt with by competition authorities, without any requirement to divest spectrum.

«

The BT/EE spectrum ownership does seem out of kilter, though, given that there are four operators; you’d hope for a balancing towards 25% each, surely.
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You can disable Find My Mac by resetting NVRAM • Tidbits

Adam Engst:

»

There is one other problem that my friend Will Mayall alerted me to recently, which is that resetting NVRAM disables Find My Mac. Will discovered this on his own, but it turns out that others have run across the same fact over the past few years, as evidenced by a quick Google search. In essence, Apple stores the Find My Mac data in NVRAM, which is good for keeping it around even if the hard drive is removed, but bad in the sense that it’s easy to reset NVRAM — just restart while holding down Command-Option-P-R. A quick test confirmed the problem in OS X 10.11 El Capitan, and nothing has changed in the public beta of macOS 10.12 Sierra.

The only way to prevent Find My Mac from being disabled is to set a firmware password, which you must enter whenever you start up from a disk other than the usual startup disk. Plus, if you try to reset NVRAM, you’re prompted for the firmware password, and when you enter it, the Mac instead boots into Recovery mode. In fact, when you lock your Mac via Find My Mac, what it’s doing is setting a firmware password.

«

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How Crowdmix collapsed into administration after raising over £14m • Business Insider

James Cook:

»

when Crowdmix — whose management also dreamed of billion-dollar “unicorn” valuation status — moved into the old Mind Candy office in August 2015, the [playground] slide [connecting to the floor above] stood like a symbol of failure. Or a warning.

So Roberts had the slide blocked up, and the company eventually paid to have it removed entirely.

Now, less than a year after moving in, Crowdmix is in an even worse situation than Mind Candy. It blew through £14m (about $20m) in investor funding without ever properly launching. It only managed to ship an invite-only version of its hybrid social network and music streaming app, before costs spiralled out of control. The company spent lavishly on parties, international travel for its staff, and ostentatious decorations for its offices, even though it didn’t have a product for consumers to use. The company never booked any revenue. Roberts, the founding CEO, was forced out, and the company collapsed into bankruptcy administration on July 11.

«

Founded in 2013, aiming to let people join “crowds” to talk about music and share tracks. How this ever got funded I cannot imagine. Cook tells the long story of a bloated startup with lavish parties and a Venice Beach office with a chandelier.
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Sources: Cyanogen Inc. is undergoing major layoffs, may “pivot” to apps • Android Police

David Ruddock:

»

We’re hearing from multiple sources that Cyanogen Inc. is in the midst of laying off a significant portion of its workforce around the world today. The layoffs most heavily impact the open source arm of the Android ROM-gone-startup, which may be eliminated entirely (not CyanogenMod itself, just the people at Cyanogen Inc. who work on the open source side).

Accounts indicate that employees were called into meetings, sometimes in groups, and told they were being let go. In Seattle, Steve Kondik himself is allegedly conducting the layoffs. At this time, we’ve been told roughly 30 out of the 136 people Cyanogen Inc. employs – around 20% of the workforce – have been let go. It’s unclear if that number may change more in the coming hours and days. According to one source, the systems and QA teams in Palo Alto and Seattle have been heavily cut, with Cyanogen’s smaller offices in Lisbon and India reportedly being essentially gutted. Community support members were allegedly removed, too.

«

So it looks like there isn’t a viable third-party business in Android ROMs. (This news leaked out on Friday night.) Discussion on Hacker News shows that nobody can quite figure out what its commercial model should be.
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The last VCR to be made this month • Variety

Lamarco McClendon:

»

Funai Electric, a Japanese consumer electronics company, will end production of VHS videocassette recorders (VCRs) at the end of July, according to Japanese newspaper Nikkei. This will also mark the end of the format as a whole 40 years after it began production.

Funai sold VCRs under the more familiar Sanyo brand in China and North America for nearly 30 years. The company’s move to stop manufacturing comes after years of declining sales and difficulty finding the materials for the electronics.

Funai Electric began production of VCRs in 1983 following the unsuccessful launch of its own CVC format in 1980. The electronics company sold as many as 15 million VCRs per year at its peak. Last year, Funai sold 750,000 units.

«

Sic transit gloria mundi. The phrase “Please rewind” will mean nothing to anyone under 20.
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‘Ghostbusters’ is a perfect example of how internet movie ratings are broken • FiveThirtyEight

Walt Hickey:

»

Most fundamentally, single-number aggregations — like those used by sites such as Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and IMDb — are a pitiful way of explaining the diverse views of critics. More specifically, a vocal portion of men on the internet — shall we say — go out of their way to make their voices heard when it comes to judging entertainment aimed at women, and that appears to be happening with the new “Ghostbusters.”

But let’s back up. Last year, as part of an investigation into the inflated ratings on Fandango’s website, I looked at the world of online movie ratings in general. The moral of this story: Each site that aggregates ratings and reviews has its own skew one way or another, and it’s up to the user to determine which heuristic most accurately matches what they’d consider an ideal rating. (Also, don’t trust always-positive movie reviews from sites trying to use that review to sell you movie tickets. That, too.)

«

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The Moto Z is a good phone headed down the wrong path • The Verge

Vlad Savov:

»

I hate to be a hater, but some things just need to be said. I think Lenovo, the new patron of the Moto brand after it took over Motorola, is going down a very wrong path with its Moto Z modular smartphone series. As a company that’s losing ground to cheaper rivals at home in China and better-marketed iPhone and Galaxy alternatives in the USA, Lenovo is grasping for a unique selling point — modularity. But, to my eyes at least, that bet is never going to pay off. Modular phones are the passing fad of 2016, and Lenovo’s commitment to them beyond this year could be an albatross for an already ailing mobile division.

Modular devices have appeal, both tactile and cultural, that transcends a mere explanation of their function or purpose — but what I’ve found this year is that their economics just don’t work out. No one is disputing that it would be cool to extract one cartridge from your phone, load up another, and suddenly go from high-end photography to high-end audio. What I’m arguing, however, is that LG’s £149 ($195) Hi-Fi Plus module isn’t going to be part of that fantasy. And neither will Lenovo’s Insta-Share Projector Moto Mod, which at $299 costs roughly as much as buying a Moto G and a Moto E.

«

Yeah, I believe I called this already, multiple times. Modules are super-profitable, but the number of people who buy them is tiny, meaning you don’t get economies of scale. Project Ara and modular products will never, ever transform the fortunes of the smartphone business. Other businesses? They might. But it’s still a long shot. (See also Savov’s response to a complaint about ‘negativity’ in the comments.)
link to this extract

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

Baidu has a figure for Apple’s revenues in the past quarter – based on smartphone movement data. Photo by kwramm on Flickr.

A selection of 8 links for you. Spongy. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

What does Brexit mean for open data in the UK? • The Guardian

Marc Ambasna-Jones:

»

“The Government has invested a lot of money in open data but then people were asking, ‘what do you do with it?’” says Ian Hetherington, founder and CEO of 3D mapping software company eeGEO. “What’s the visualisation strategy? The data is useless unless you can visualise it.”

Now there are further concerns over the future of the UK’s open data culture. “Cabinet office policy on open data was in the doldrums well before the referendum,” says open data campaigner Owen Boswarva when asked whether he thought Brexit would give the UK’s open data movement a kicking. “Open data is already under threat from austerity, deregulation and cuts to public services.” Brexit, says Boswarva, could make it worse.

“Government could use Brexit as an excuse to stop maintaining datasets that are produced to support EU programmes like Inspire and Eurostat, or to meet EU targets on air pollution and water quality. The UK would also no longer be bound by the PSI Directive, which underpins our regulatory framework for re-use of public sector information,” adds Boswarva.

Chi Onwurah MP, shadow minister for culture and the digital economy, is also concerned.

«

This is concerning. Literally on the day that Theresa May was abruptly made prime minister I was in a meeting with a minister discussing better ways to use government-collected non-personal data. He didn’t stay through the meeting. May was appointed and he had to go.

He got reassigned. We’ll see if his ideas for data use survive.
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Police asked this 3D printing lab to recreate a dead man’s fingers to unlock his phone • Fusion

Rose Eveleth:

»

Last month, law enforcement officers showed up at the lab of Anil Jain, a professor at Michigan State University. Jain wasn’t in trouble; the officers wanted his help.

Jain is a computer science professor who works on biometric identifiers such as facial recognition programs, fingerprint scanners and tattoo matching; he wants to make them as difficult to hack as possible. But the police were interested in the opposite of this: they wanted his help to unlock a dead man’s phone.

Jain and his PhD student Sunpreet Arora couldn’t share details of the case with me, since it’s an ongoing investigation, but the gist is this: a man was murdered, and the police think there might be clues to who murdered him stored in his phone. But they can’t get access to the phone without his fingerprint or passcode. So instead of asking the company that made the phone to grant them access, they’re going another route: having the Jain lab create a 3D printed replica of the victim’s fingers. With them, they hope to unlock the phone.

«

The fine details of how they’re going to make it work is quite something.
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At Apple, the Sumner boys help build a car • The Information

Amir Efrati:

»

At Titan, the [three Sumner] brothers [who originally worked on Siri] have been developing software similar to what they built for Siri in order to capture the voluminous data that will be generated by the cars. Siri collects voice command data from hundreds of millions of iPhone owners in order to improve its voice-recognition accuracy and answer some of the more complex commands within seconds. In the same way, self-driving cars use cameras, radars and other sensors to collect imagery and other data about objects and scenarios they encounter on the road. That way, the systems (i.e., algorithms) that help the cars decide what to do, based on what they “see” around them, can learn from new data as it comes in. The brothers would also be involved in Apple’s purchase and configuration of computer servers needed to capture, store and process such data.

It’s a challenging job. One self-driving car will capture more than two gigabytes of data per mile, and up to 10 gigabytes a mile, says James Wu, CEO of DeepMap, which develops mapping technology for self-driving cars. Eventually, the software infrastructure for the Apple car fleet “will be way more challenging than Siri because of the volume of data” that the cars would need to collect. Much of that data would then be sent to Apple’s servers so that the company’s autonomous system could learn from the data and improve its accuracy, he says.

«

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Worldwide smartwatch market experiences its first decline as shipments fall 32% in the second quarter of 2016 • IDC

»

Smartwatch vendors shipped 3.5 million units in the second quarter of 2016 (2Q16), which was down substantially from the 5.1 million shipped a year ago. Apple held the top rank by shipping 1.6 million watches. However, it was the only vendor among the top five to experience an annual decline in shipments. In fairness to Apple, the year-over-year comparison is to the initial launch quarter of the Apple Watch, which is in many ways the same product offered in the most recent quarter with price reductions.

“Consumers have held off on smartwatch purchases since early 2016 in anticipation of a hardware refresh, and improvements in WatchOS are not expected until later this year, effectively stalling existing Apple Watch sales,” said Jitesh Ubrani, senior research analyst for IDC Mobile Device Trackers. “Apple still maintains a significant lead in the market and unfortunately a decline for Apple leads to a decline in the entire market. Every vendor faces similar challenges related to fashion and functionality, and though we expect improvements next year, growth in the remainder of 2016 will likely be muted.”

«

Essentially, Apple went from 3.6m a year ago to 1.6m in this quarter, on year-old hardware, and still had nearly half the market. Samsung went from 0.4m to 0.6m, while LG and Lenovo both crept up from 0.2m to 0.3m.

Overall, Android Wear watches may have been about 0.9m shipments. Total activations (measured via Google Play) are less than 5m for its lifetime outside China. (Lenovo’s shipments are probably all inside China.) If you think the Apple Watch is a flop (though I’d say it’s far too early to claim that), what’s the word for Android Wear?
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Why snark is the worst game Hillary Clinton can play right now • Medium

Holly Wood:

»

is snark the right response when it’s towards a man winning half the vote by threatening the wellbeing of virtually every American citizen? Right of the bat, we know his absurd economic policies will destroy the economy. If you listen to Chris Christie talk, we’re going to have about 800 times more cops all getting paid as much as software engineers to gun down Black kids for no reason. Unions will be criminalized. Everyone who cooks anything decent is getting deported. Fracking forever.

You’ll find that there’s really only a small sliver of the population that’s getting out of Trump’s reach with a snowball’s chance: rich, white people with the luxury of watching the news for sport so as to make jokes about it.

Everyone else? They need a hero.

I’m willing to say this is a crisis. It’s not a drill. That there are this many people willing to fucking Sieg Heil a man on live TV is that moment we agree this isn’t funny anymore.

When you sit down and ask yourself what response you wish we were getting from a leader right now, I hope you don’t say you’re wishing for more snark.

«

Wood has spent the past few months being exhausting on Twitter in her support of Bernie Sanders, who wasn’t (realpolitik would have told you) going anywhere, but spent a lot of time not going away. Occasionally though she hits the spot. This is one of those times.

The real problem for Hillary is that she needs to have an emotional message to make people want to vote for her. Not just against Trump; they can do that by not voting. But for her. What’s her message? What’s her response to “Make American Great Again”? Politics and voting is about emotion. Next week is going to be crucial. Obama had a slogan. Clinton badly needs one. And it had better be a terrific one.
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Baidu uses millions of users’ location data to make predictions • New Scientist

Hal Hodson:

»

Baidu, China’s internet search giant, has shown just what you can learn when you have access to enough location data.

The firm’s Big Data Lab in Beijing has announced that it has used billions of location records from its 600 million users as a lens on the Chinese economy, tracking the flux of people around offices and shops as a proxy measurement for employment and consumption activity. The lab even used the data to predict Apple’s second quarter revenue in China.

We already know that location data is useful, tracking population movements and the spread of disease, for example, but this is the first time that a company on the scale of Google, Facebook or Baidu has shown its hand. The data generated by their huge user bases gives these companies enormous power and insight that they don’t typically talk about. Academic researchers have great difficulty accessing databases like this. But Baidu can just peer into its own servers. The search giant is saying exactly what it can do with the data, and how much data it has.

First, the researchers hand-labelled thousands of areas of interest – offices, shopping centres and industrial zones – across the country. Then they studied the location data – which runs from the end of 2014 to the middle of 2016 – to see how many people were at those places at each time, and how that changed through the year…

…Baidu has collated all the data to build an employment index for China, a number that reflects the overall state of the labour market by tracking how many people are visiting industrial, manufacturing and technology zones in the country. The index shows that employment in manufacturing has dipped by roughly 10% in China since 2014, while high tech employment has grown slightly.

«

Quoted at length because this is quite stunning. Google likely has similar data for the US at least; it knows about footfall traffic via Android phones. The full version of the paper is at arXiv.

For Apple, it forecasts the past quarter’s revenue as being down by 20% year-on-year. (Apple reports next Tuesday.)
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Feds seize KickassTorrents domains, arrest owner • TorrentFreak

“Ernesto”:

»

With millions of unique visitors per day KickassTorrents (KAT) has become the most-used torrent site on the Internet, beating even The Pirate Bay.

Today, however, the site has run into a significant roadblock after U.S. authorities announced the arrest of the site’s alleged owner.

The 30-year-old Artem Vaulin, from Ukraine, was arrested today in Poland from where the United States has requested his extradition.

In a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago, the owner is charged with conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and two counts of criminal copyright infringement.

The complaint further reveals that the feds posed as an advertiser, which revealed a bank account associated with the site.

It also shows that Apple handed over personal details of Vaulin after the investigator cross-referenced an IP address used for an iTunes transaction with an IP address that was used to login to KAT’s Facebook account.

“Records provided by Apple showed that tirm@me.com conducted an iTunes transaction using IP address 109.86.226.203 on or about July 31, 2015. The same IP address was used on the same day to login into the KAT Facebook,” the complaint reads.

«

As TorrentFreak notes in a followup post, quite a few of the pieces of evidence that led to Vaulin are historical, from up to seven years ago. If you want to be net-illicit years in the future, don’t ever be visible and don’t have the same name. Also of note: the investigator who nailed this is the same one who caught Ross Ulbricht of the original Silk Road. Similar MOs in the nabbing.

(And yes, there’s wonderful irony in the person who ran a giant torrent site being grabbed because they bought something on iTunes.)
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The Financial Times decides to get creative with ad-blocker blocking • Digiday

Jeremy Barr:

»

On Wednesday, the newspaper began blanking out, for some users, a percentage of words in articles symbolizing the percentage of the company’s revenue that comes from advertising.

The proportion of words blocked isn’t scientific, and the Financial Times doesn’t break out the exact chunk of revenue that comes from ads, said global advertising sales director Dominic Good. “It’s more illustrative than specific,” he said.

The test group comprises registered desktop computer visitors who don’t pay for a subscription, about .075% of the company’s desktop traffic. Some ad-blocking members of this group won’t see any new messaging, some will be asked to whitelist the website’s ads but can still read regardless, some will see articles with many words blanked out if they won’t whitelist the site, and some will be blocked outright if they don’t whitelist the site.

The company will evaulate the results after three or four weeks.

«

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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified.

Android tablets: where are they going? Photo by fsse8info on Flickr.

A selection of 9 links for you. Use them wisely. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

It’s here! Scrivener for iOS is now available! • The Cellar Door

»

Scrivener for iOS is now available for sale on the App Store. At the time of writing, it is not yet showing up in searches on the App Store, as it can take several hours for Apple’s records to update. However, you can find it by following this link:

https://itunes.apple.com/app/scrivener/id972387337?ls=1&mt=8

If you tap on the above link on your iOS device, it will take you to Scrivener in the App Store.

«

This isn’t a 99p thing – but Scrivener is a terrific app on desktop for longform writing of all sorts, and beta testers have had good words to say about this.
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Skype finalizes its move to the cloud, ignores the elephant in the room • Ars Technica

Peter Bright:

»

As well as addressing certain constraints of the peer-to-peer network, the new cloud-based system is used to underpin various other Skype features. For example, on the peer-to-peer network file transfers required the recipient to be present and to accept the transfer (with the file subsequently transported directly between the clients). File transfers on the new network go via the cloud, allowing fire-and-forget transfers, even to recipients that are temporarily away. This also allows a file to be downloaded by multiple recipients, or by the same recipient on multiple systems, without needing it to be retransmitted from the sender each time. The new voice and video messaging capabilities operate similarly, using cloud storage to hold voice and video messages even when the receiving client isn’t available.

New clients, including both the new UWP Windows client and the new Linux and Web client are built for the new network.

But what is most telling here is not what Microsoft’s blog post says. It is what it doesn’t say.

The Ed Snowden leaks raised substantial questions about the privacy of services such as Skype and have caused an increasing interest in platforms that offer end-to-end encryption. The ability to intercept or wiretap Skype came as a shock to many, especially given Skype’s traditionally peer-to-peer infrastructure. Accordingly, we’ve seen similar services such as iMessage, WhatsApp, and even Facebook Messenger, start introducing end-to-end encryption.

The abandonment of Skype’s peer-to-peer system can only raise suspicions here.

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This is odd, given how robustly Microsoft fought to defend email stored on a server outside the US from US examination. But it’s also inarguable: the cloud-based system is worse than a peer-to-peer one for security.
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Firefox to banish hidden Flash files – and kill off sneaky ad snoopers • The Register

Shaun Nichols:

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Firefox will in the coming months automatically block invisible Flash content that users cannot see when loading a page, says Mozilla as it continues its campaign against Adobe’s plugin.

This should protect netizens from dodgy webpages that load hidden malicious Flash files that attempt to infect their computers with malware or perform similar devilish deeds.

It should also kill off unseen content that pointlessly drains devices’ battery lives. The open-source browser maker will also automatically block advertisers’ Flash scripts that snoop on surfers to make sure they are not blocking or ignoring ads.

This is ahead of a 2017 update that will see Firefox block all Flash content by default – meaning users will have to manually click on the Flash content to confirm that they want to view it.

Websites are urged to move from Flash to HTML5 for their multimedia content wherever possible. According to Mozilla, its browser has encountering fewer crashes since sites have started serving HTML5 media rather than Flash.

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Still too slow. Flash honestly isn’t necessary except in a few edge cases. Try it: delete it from your desktop/laptop; if a site asks for it, change your browser agent to “iPad”. You’ll be fine.
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Windows 10 personal data collection is excessive, French privacy watchdog warns | PCWorld

Peter Sayer:

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Windows 10 breaches French law by collecting too much personal information from users and failing to secure it adequately, according to the French National Data Protection Commission (CNIL).

Some of the privacy failings identified can be remedied by users willing to delve deep into the Windows 10 settings, but one of the commission’s gripes is that better privacy should be the default setting, not one users must fight for.

CNIL served Microsoft with a formal notice on June 30, giving it three months to comply with the law, but only made it public on Wednesday.

The commission conducted seven tests of the data sent back to Microsoft by Windows 10 in April and June of this year. Among Microsoft’s faux pas was the collection of data about all the apps downloaded and installed on a system, and the time spent on each one, a process CNIL said was both excessive and unnecessary.

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US Army Special Forces to dump Galaxy Note II for iPhone 6S because iPhones are “faster” • Android Police

David Ruddock on that story from yesterday:

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In what I am tempted to say may be the stupidest news I’ve read all morning (give me an hour, though, I just grabbed my coffee), the US Army’s Special Operations Command is allegedly dumping its current Nett Warrior embedded tactical smartphone solution – a 4-year-old Galaxy Note II – for an iPhone 6S. Because, and I quote DoDBuzz’s source here, the iPhone is “faster; smoother. Android freezes up.” Wait, you’re telling me a smartphone that’s four years old trying to run a specialized government app isn’t very fast or stable? I am shocked, sir – simply taken aback!

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When you put it like that.. why didn’t the US SOC go with the newer Galaxy Note?
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What I want out of Twitter • Whatever

John Scalzi, in February 2016: T

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witter’s major issue, as everyone except apparently Twitter’s C-bench knows, is that there are a bunch of shitheads on it who like to roll up to whomever they see as targets (often women and/or people in marginalized groups) and dogpile on them. That’s no good.

I get my own fair share of jerks trying to make my Twitter existence miserable, so over time I’ve developed some strategies to trim those down. The problem here is that they require me to be an expert Twitter user, and do things like use a Twitter client with more features than the native web/mobile interface, and also simply to make rules in terms of interaction that don’t involve Twitter at all (see: the Scamperbeasts Rule). It also requires me to have a certain level of “don’t give a fuck” attitude, which fortunately I have.

But then, I’m a well-off straight white dude, and I can laugh off some mouth breather saying stupid things to me. If I were a woman and getting a constant stream of rape and death threats, I’m not sure I could do that, and I’m not sure that I should be required to be an “expert” user not to have to see this stuff. More to the point, this shit exists on Twitter because the assholes know it’s hard to filter it out; they know their target has to see it first to block or mute it.

I think it’s fine if Twitter’s philosophy is that everyone, including complete shitbags, have a right to an account on the service. But I think it would be useful if Twitter also incorporated into its philosophy, far more robustly than it has, that everyone is allowed to decide who is allowed to impinge on their time, and timeline.

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He has some excellent suggestions, including filtering based on account age (new ones don’t show through) and shared mute/block lists.
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As global tablet market tumbles, PC brands develop survival tactics to cope • ABI Research

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Downward trends in tablet shipments, with Apple and Samsung YoY shipments falling from 62% to 54% as the market shrinks, are forcing PC brands to strategize survival tactics for their product portfolios, finds ABI Research. While Amazon and Huawei will focus on tablets despite the dwindling figures, not all vendors share this mentality. Dell and HP, for instance, made the decision to shy away from the tablet market and will instead concentrate on providing 2-in-1 systems based on Windows.

“Amazon and Huawei may successfully buck the trend, but each company is taking a drastically different stance on how to best accomplish this,” says David McQueen, Research Director at ABI Research. “Amazon managed to move away from raising revenue through hardware to recurring digital content sales, but Huawei, and even Lenovo for that matter, are instead looking to form a wider product suite that includes tablets in addition to their legacy PC and smartphone products.”

Xiaomi also plans to follow in Huawei and Lenovo’s footsteps, recently announcing a tie-up with Microsoft to ship Microsoft Office and Skype on Xiaomi’s Android smartphones and tablets.

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Notable in yesterday’s Microsoft results: “lower revenues from patent licensing”, ie from Android vendors. Wonder if the Office/Skype inclusion is the quid pro quo – and if it is, how well it’s converting. I can’t imagine many Xiaomi customers eagerly signing up for an Office subscription.
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Exploring the App Store’s top grossing chart • MacStories

Graham Spencer:

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Diving in a little deeper, we can see that the IAPs offered range from $0.99, all the way up to $399.99.1 Unsurprisingly, a large proportion of the IAPs are in the $0.99-$19.99 price range. But you’ll also notice huge spikes at $99.99, $49.99, and $29.99.

Games dominate the Top 200 Grossing charts, representing an overwhelming majority of 68% of the apps. The next closest is Social Networking at just 11% and comprised mainly of various dating apps. This is followed by Music at 7% (a mix of music streaming and music creation apps) and Entertainment at 5% (a variety of streaming video apps, mostly).

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I really hope Spencer was able to do this in an automated fashion. Note that this barely overlaps with the introduction of Pokemon Go. And the $400 IAP? A “forever subscription” to Headspace.
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Google DeepMind AI to be in all of Google’s data centres by end of 2016 • Business Insider

Sam Shead:

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Google has adopted a DeepMind AI system in several of its data centres over the last few months as a way of reducing the amount of energy the server farms consume. However, the full extent of Google’s plans for the software are only just becoming clear.

“It [DeepMind’s AI] will be in the entire fleet by the end of the year,” DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman told Business Insider on Wednesday. “That will result in a 15% reduction on energy used every year by the entire data centre fleet.”

…every time a user engages with one of [Google’s[ services, a server is spun up and heat is produced that ultimately needs to be removed by an energy-consuming cooling system.

In order to lower the energy consumption of Google’s cooling systems, DeepMind analysed five years worth of Google data centre records that have been collected by sensors measuring variables like temperature, compute load, air pressure, and fan speed.

“We used that to predict what the optimal settings are for controlling the cooling system, which can be thought of as a very complex air conditioning unit that tries to extract heat from the data centre.”

After looking at the data, Google’s self-learning algorithm was able to figure out the best times to use the cooling fans. “We can optimally turn up the fan when we need to and not waste energy on over cooling when we don’t need to,” said Suleyman.

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