Why is the world of these people so different from that of Star Wars? Photo by San Diego Shooter on Flickr.

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A selection of 14 links for you. American holiday? Read them slower. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Google and Facebook also looked at buying LinkedIn • Recode

Kurt Wagner and Mark Bergen:

»Google and Facebook were among the suitors that looked at buying LinkedIn, which ultimately sold to Microsoft for $26bn last month.

A Securities and Exchange Commission document filed on Friday revealed that LinkedIn drew interest from as many as five possible buyers. We knew that Salesforce was one of them, as CEO Marc Benioff confirmed to Recode. But a source familiar with the deal says that both Google and Facebook held meetings with LinkedIn executives to discuss the idea of a possible acquisition.

The SEC filing does not list the other bidders, but instead refers to interested companies as Party A, Party B, Party C and Party D. We’re told that Party B is Google, and Party D is Facebook. Party A is Salesforce, and we were unable to identify Party C.

«

Record doesn’t link to the SEC document in this article, and only links to a version on Scribd in a linked article. Why not link to the real thing? There’s also the page with all the documents.

Worth reading for all the back and forth, and the way the share offer racks up. Also – seems unlikely that Apple would be a bidder.
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Why did the Stars Wars and Star Trek worlds turn out so differently? • Marginal Revolution

Tyler Cowen:

»That question came up briefly in my chat with Cass Sunstein, though we didn’t get much of a chance to address it.  In the Star Trek world there is virtual reality, personal replicators, powerful weapons, and, it seems, a very high standard of living for most of humanity.  The early portrayals of the planet Vulcan seem rather Spartan, but at least they might pass a basic needs test of sorts, plus there is always catch-up growth to hope for.  The bad conditions seem largely reserved for those enslaved by the bad guys, originally the Klingons and Romulans, with those stories growing more complicated as the series proceeds.

In Star Wars, the early episodes show some very prosperous societies.  Still, droids are abused, there is widespread slavery, lots of people seem to live at subsistence, and eventually much of the galaxy falls under the Jedi Reign of Terror.

Why the difference?  Should we consult Acemoglu and Robinson?  Or is it about economic geography?  I can find think of a few factors differentiating the world of Star Wars from that of Star Trek.

«

And they’re not as trivial as you might think this topic would mean.
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LG sacks executives amid mobile struggle • Korea Times

Kim Yoo-chul and Lee Min-hyung:

»LG Electronics has announced a major shake-up of senior executives in its mobile business division, as it struggles to rebrand itself in the highly competitive smartphone market.

On Friday, LG Electronics said it has created a program management office (PMO) in its troubled handset business and replaced some executives.

“Friday’s announcement is because LG Electronics’ latest flagship G5 smartphone failed to generate sales,” LG said, adding it hopes the shake-up will give its ailing mobile business “new momentum.”

«

But in the analysis part of the story we learn:

»In March, the company unveiled what it called the “game-changing” modular smartphone, expressing confidence the G5 would drive up weak profitability in the mobiles unit.

The device looked like meeting expectations in the first few weeks following its launch, garnering huge media attention and recording a threefold sales increase on its predecessor ― the G4.

But the G5’s initial attention is withering, as shipments continue to drop more steeply than expected, analysts said.

“The estimated G5 shipment for the second quarter of this year will remain 2.2m, below a previous expectation of some 3m,” Mirae Asset Securities analyst Cho jin-ho said in a report. “This is because the G5’s market response is getting weaker and the company failed to compete with the aggressive promotion campaigns of its rivals.”

«

LG’s mobile division has lost money since Q2 2015, and there’s no sign of things improving. My thoughts in February were that “modularity in the handset kills premium pricing even faster than OS modularity.” Not looking wrong so far.
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Neural networks in iOS 10 and macOS • Big Nerd Ranch

Bolot Kerimbaev:

»Each [neural network] layer needs to be configured with appropriate parameters. For example, the convolution layer needs information about the input and output images (dimensions, number of channels, etc.), as well as convolution layer parameters (kernel size, matrix, etc.). The fully connected layer is defined by the input and output vectors, activation function, and weights.

To obtain these parameters, the neural network has to be trained. This is accomplished by passing the inputs through the neural network, determining the output, measuring the error (i.e., how far off the actual result was from the predicted result), and adjusting the weights via backpropagation. Training a neural network may require hundreds, thousands, or even millions of examples.

At the moment, Apple’s new machine learning APIs can be used for building neural networks that only do inference, but not training. Good thing that Big Nerd Ranch does.

«

Good, accessible introduction to neural networks overall.
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Why Google stores billions of lines of code in a single repository • Communications of the ACM

Rachel Potvin and Josh Levenberg:

»In October 2012, Google’s central repository added support for Windows and Mac users (until then it was Linux-only), and the existing Windows and Mac repository was merged with the main repository. Google’s tooling for repository merges attributes all historical changes being merged to their original authors, hence the corresponding bump in the graph in Figure 2. The effect of this merge is also apparent in Figure 1.

The commits-per-week graph shows the commit rate was dominated by human users until 2012, at which point Google switched to a custom-source-control implementation for hosting the central repository, as discussed later. Following this transition, automated commits to the repository began to increase. Growth in the commit rate continues primarily due to automation.

Managing this scale of repository and activity on it has been an ongoing challenge for Google. Despite several years of experimentation, Google was not able to find a commercially available or open source version-control system to support such scale in a single repository. The Google proprietary system that was built to store, version, and vend this codebase is code-named Piper.

«

As in.. Pied Piper? Wouldn’t put it past Google to have named it after the fictional company in the TV series “Silicon Valley”. But the whole thing is amazing. Plus humans getting pushed out of the commits.
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Cartography comparison: Google Maps and Apple Maps, part 1 • Justin O’Beirne

O’Beirne takes an enormously deep dive into what things Google and Apple choose to highlight on their maps (because you can’t highlight everything and finds some fascinating key differences:

»It’s interesting, isn’t it? Google is prioritizing roads, while Apple is prioritizing places. And that’s why were seeing such noticable differences in the counts.

But even when it comes to places, the maps are prioritizing different things:

Above, Google is again prioritizing transit places, while Apple is prioritizing landmark places. And Apple is also showing a couple of hospitals and a famous bakery.

What’s more important on a map like this? Transit? Or landmarks and hospitals?

Each map voted with its pixels, and it’s interesting to see.

(And here we’re also seeing the argument for map personalization: Not everyone uses transit, so there might be places—such as landmarks—that are more important to some people. And when it’s life-and-death, hospitals are the most important places in the world. But how often does the average person visit a hospital? Personalized maps are better at surfacing the most appropriate places for each person; but for the default map, something still has to be chosen… and that’s what we saw above.)

«

Google’s tendency to prioritise transit stations does feel like the right one, to be honest – at least to this frequent user of public transport. But O’Beirne points out that it isn’t even that simple: there are places where Google leaves out stations.

And there’s a part 2 forthcoming. Definitely worth the wait if you’re the least bit interested in how to visualise large amounts of information.
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How to crack android full disk encryption on Qualcomm devices • Hacker News

Mohit Kumar:

»Android’s full-disk encryption can be cracked much more easily than expected with brute force attack and some patience, affecting potentially hundreds of millions of mobile devices.

And the worst part: there may not be a full fix available for current Android handsets in the market.

Google started implementing Full Disk Encryption on Android by default with Android 5.0 Lollipop. Full disk encryption (FDE) can prevent both hackers and even powerful law enforcement agencies from gaining unauthorized access to device’s data.

Android’s disk encryption, in short, is the process of encoding all user’s data on an Android device before ever written to disk using user’s authentication code. Once encrypted, the data is decrypted only if the user enters his/her password.

However, after thoroughly analyzing Android’s full disk encryption implementation, a security researcher came to the conclusion that the feature is not as secure as the company claims it is, and he has a working code to prove it.

«

88 lines of Python; see more details. Not absolutely proven – you’d need someone to replicate it – but believable (it relies on a kernel exploit).
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Yahoo exclamation mark, R.I.P. • Pando

Kevin Kelleher watched Yahoo’s shareholder meeting:

»Enough of Yahoo!’s history. This is about Yahoo!’s bleak present and whatever future stands before it. The shareholder meeting Yahoo! held yesterday was hardly a confrontational affair. It was more of a ritual of supplication. Mayer addressed the crowd in what can only be described in a cowed fashion. Her rehearsed hand gestures signaling awkwardness and defeat. Her pitch about “Mavens” ringing more hollow than ever. Her only substantial news being on the theme of retrenchment: The sunsetting of 130 properties. The sale of prime real estate in Silicon Valley for $250 million The nearly $10 billion in stock buybacks.

It’s hard to watch this performance by Mayer. It’s not easy finding the words to describe it.

The next time you find yourself in a stifling fit of self pity, watch it. Or, the next time you find yourself so gloriously high on top of the world your better self asks for a reality check, watch it. Or, the next time you need a reason to have a tall glass of whiskey, or a steaming-hot cup of chicken broth, or a moment in a fetal position with the blankets tugged over your head – whatever the urge is, just watch it. In my years of shareholder meetings and analyst calls – most of which are, I admit, dull to the general population but bizarrely interesting to me – I have never seen anything like it.

«

From Yahoo! to Yahoo?
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The deciders: Zeynep Tufekci at TEDSummit • TED Blog

David Colman:

»The idea of a company or college using an advanced algorithm to sort through mountains of job or school applicants is exactly the kind of thing that worries the Turkish-born technosociologist. “Hiring in a gender- and race-blind way certainly sounds good to me,” she says. “But these computational systems can infer all sorts of things about you from your digital crumbs, even if you did not disclose these things.”

Among the inferences computers can make even without an explicit mention: sexual preference, political leaning, ethnic background, social class and more. “What safeguards do you have that your black box isn’t doing something shady? What if [your hiring algorithm] is weeding out women most likely to be pregnant in the next year? With machine learning, there is no variable labeled ‘higher risk of pregnancy.’ So not only do you not know what your system is selecting on, you don’t even know where to look to find out.”

Tufekci is not a Luddite, though — far from it. “Such a system may even be less biased than human managers,” she points out. “And it could well make good monetary sense as well.  But is this the kind of society we want to build without even knowing we’ve done it? Because we’ve turned decision making over to machines we don’t totally understand?”

«

Tufekci is – as I’m sure I’ve said before – a must-follow on Twitter.
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The music industry buried more than 150 startups—now they are left to dance with the giants • Medium

David Pakman, VC at Venrock:

»The bleak outlook for profitability among standalone digital music companies is a direct result of the high royalty rates incumbent upon startups who wish to license digital music for use in their apps. Whether you negotiate voluntary agreements or avail yourself of the existing compulsory licenses, you will not turn a profit. At least, no one ever has. The few that refused to pay these rates were often sued out of existence.

Given these facts, digital music startups are unlikely to survive and thus unlikely to attract meaningful investment. The failure rate in this market segment dramatically exceeds that of SaaS, eCommerce, and mobile, to name just a few. More importantly, the success rate of digital music companies (4%) is far less than these other segments (mobile at 26.5%, SaaS at 28% and eCommerce at 23%).

It is no surprise, then, that far fewer digital music companies get funded. Only about 175 have been venture funded since 1997 by my count, compared to 5,175 (mobile), 7,987 (SaaS) and 1,800 (eCommerce).

The end result of these perilous market conditions is that the only companies who can afford to be involved with digital music are the internet giants prepared to subsidize their digital music services with profits from their other businesses.

«

I’m having trouble believing that Spotify is suddenly, and uniquely, profitable. That means it’s burning through its $1bn of debt.

Also explains why Tidal might be willing to listen to Apple offering to buy it. What’s the alternative? Keep losing money until you go bust?
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Apple slams Spotify for asking for “preferential treatment” • BuzzFeed News

John Paczkowski on the Apple-Spotify row, now in round two:

»Apple strongly disagrees.

“Our guidelines apply equally to all app developers, whether they are game developers, e-book sellers, video-streaming services or digital music distributors; and regardless of whether or not they compete against Apple. We did not alter our behavior or our rules when we introduced our own music streaming service or when Spotify became a competitor,” Sewell explains. “Ironically, it is now Spotify that wants things to be different by asking for preferential treatment from Apple.”

And as for Spotify’s suggestion that Apple is treading on dangerous, anticompetitive ground, well, Sewell doesn’t seem too concerned.

«

The takeaway for me was that there have been more than 160m downloads of the Spotify app from the App Store. That reads to me like “less than 170m”, and I think it’s comparable on the Play Store. (Spotify passed 100m downloads on Google Play in July 2015.) That, in turn, suggests that – given there are 100m users per month (Spotify’s number) and 30m subscribers, that there’s roughly a 2-in-3 abandonment rate.

(Assuming that downloads are to unique users, and that the average user has one device.)
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Smart pirates are fooling YouTube’s copyright bots by hiding movies in 360-degree videos • Quartz

Mike Murphy:

»YouTube has gotten very good at figuring out when people upload copyrighted material to the video-streaming site, and taking things down. Its program, Content ID, matches videos from the site against a database of video uploaded by content owners. If there’s a match, YouTube will move to take that video down. But what if you upload a video in a video?

An ingenious pirate, going by the name Thuy Pham on YouTube, managed to embed the entirety of the 1995 classic Clueless inside a 360-degree video. At first, it seems like you’re just watching the Alicia Silverstone vehicle as you would any other video on YouTube—albeit slightly sped-up—but if you move the video around, you’ll see that it’s actually injected into what appears to be some sort of dance studio, replete with three women facing away from the movie.

«

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Government retreats from Land Registry sale • UK Authority

Mark Say:

»A Conservative revolt appears to have killed off controversial Government plans to privatise the Land Registry.

Ministers slammed on the brakes after facing fierce criticism from a succession of Tory backbenchers in a Commons debate held against the turmoil of the party leadership race.

It leaves a final decision in the hands of a different prime minister and chancellor, after the resignation of David Cameron and almost certain departure of George Osborne.

Labour MPs sponsored the debate, but Conservatives also demanded a rethink, warning the sell-off would undermine the registry’s impartiality, hike fees and fail to create competition.

«

Good.
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Dell stops selling Android devices to focus on Windows • PCWorld

Agam Shah:

»Dell has stopped selling Android devices as it steps away from slate-style tablets to focus on Windows 2-in-1 devices.

The company isn’t refreshing the Venue line of Android tablets, and will no longer offer the Android-based Wyse Cloud Connect, a thumb-size computer that can turn a display into a PC. Other Android devices were discontinued some time ago.

“The slate tablet market is over-saturated and is experiencing declining demand from consumers, so we’ve decided to discontinue the Android-based Venue tablet line,” a Dell spokesman said in an email.

Though Dell has killed its Android devices, it made interesting products with the OS. One was the Venue 8 7000 tablet, which had an OLED screen and a 3D RealSense camera. Meanwhile, 2-in-1s can serve as both tablets and laptops.

“We are seeing 2-in-1s rising in popularity since they provide a more optimal blend of PC capabilities with tablet mobility. This is especially true in the commercial space,” the Dell spokesman said.

«

Unsurprising. The Android tablet market is going to get squeezed really hard – there was already barely any profit there (Samsung was largest, and well behind Apple on volume), and that’s going to get worse.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified.

Could this unlock your phone? Would you want it to? Photo by Solar Mechanic 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 13 links for you. Use them wisely. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

A tragic loss • Tesla Motors

»We learned yesterday evening that NHTSA is opening a preliminary evaluation into the performance of Autopilot during a recent fatal crash that occurred in a Model S. This is the first known fatality in just over 130 million miles where Autopilot was activated. Among all vehicles in the US, there is a fatality every 94 million miles. Worldwide, there is a fatality approximately every 60 million miles. It is important to emphasize that the NHTSA action is simply a preliminary evaluation to determine whether the system worked according to expectations.

Following our standard practice, Tesla informed NHTSA about the incident immediately after it occurred. What we know is that the vehicle was on a divided highway with Autopilot engaged when a tractor trailer drove across the highway perpendicular to the Model S. Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied. The high ride height of the trailer combined with its positioning across the road and the extremely rare circumstances of the impact caused the Model S to pass under the trailer, with the bottom of the trailer impacting the windshield of the Model S. Had the Model S impacted the front or rear of the trailer, even at high speed, its advanced crash safety system would likely have prevented serious injury as it has in numerous other similar incidents.

«

But it didn’t. The autopilot was in effect an accessory to the death. This was inevitable, eventually; what happens now?
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Exclusive: leaked Note 7 front panel confirms iris scanner • AndroidAuthority

Nirave Gondhia:

»A recent patent application by Samsung showed how its iris scanner would work and suggested that three lenses would be required for accurate recognition, which we can see by the three circular holes at the top of the Note 7. Considering that the iris scanner needs to be mounted above the display, the leak also reveals that Samsung is set to do-away with its logo on the front of the handset, in a bid to reduce the amount of bezel above the screen.

What else do we know about the Galaxy Note 7? Based on other reports, we can expect a 5.8-inch Quad HD dual-edge Super AMOLED display, 6GB of RAM, an improved 12-megapixel camera with dual-pixel phase detection autofocus, and a battery size of between 3,600mAh and 4,000mAh.

«

Iris scanner plus: should be pretty much impossible for someone else to get into your phone with you not there. Iris scanner minus: all they have to do is hold it to your face? Cool, but not necessarily perfect.
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The strategic importance of Apple Music • Technalyzer

Eduardo Archanco:

»
And the one for Apple Music:

There are two things I would like to highlight from these charts:

Spotify daily subscriber growth accelerated dramatically in January 2015. Despite this, claims from the company that Apple Music accelerated user adoption don’t hold water since it launched several months later. If you take a look at daily user addition, Spotify decelerated since the launch of its rival music service.

Apple Music experienced huge adoption in the first six months. It surely helped the one month free trial, but once it expired, users stuck with the service. Even now, when daily growth has relatively slowed, Apple Music has similar daily growth than that of Spotify today: one million new paid users per month.

«

Daily growth is a clever way to look at it.
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Spotify: Apple is holding up app approval to squash competition • Engadget

Billy Steele:

»How do you catch up with the biggest music streaming service? Well, not approving app updates is one tactic, and Spotify says Apple is doing just that. The streaming service sent a letter to Apple’s legal counsel this week claiming that the company is rejecting an update to Spotify’s iOS app and it’s “causing grave harm” to users by doing so. The letter explains that Apple won’t approve the new version because Spotify doesn’t use the company’s billing method for in-app purchases and subscription services. Apple announced the changes to app subscriptions in iTunes just before this month’s WWDC.

Like other apps, Spotify had been getting customers to foot the bill for Apple’s App Store billing fees by charging an extra $3 a month. It recently launched a promotion for the second time that gave new users three months of service for a dollar, if they signed up on the web. As you can imagine, that didn’t make Apple too happy, and the company reportedly threatened to pull the app entirely unless Spotify stopped pushing the deal for iPhone owners. It complied with the request, but it also nixed the iTunes billing option in the iOS version which lead to the current dispute.

«

Puzzled. Amazon similarly avoids letting you buy Kindle content via the App Store (you have to go to the web). Is the problem with Spotify mixing the abilities?
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ATM skimmer caught in the wild by a real security engineer • TechCrunch

John Biggs:

»Tourist/cybersecurity expert Benjamin Tedesco was hanging out in Vienna when he walked up to an ATM. Because he trusts no one he decided to give the reader a little tug and came away with a working skimmer designed to look exactly like the card slot on the original machine.

“It pays to be paranoid,” he said — and he’s right.

Tedesco pulled off the skimmer and took some pictures of it and will try to reverse engineer it when he heads back home (presumably with the credit card data still on it). Some Reddit users have spotted the pinhole camera that the hackers used to grab PIN codes, as well, a feature that lets full cards be stolen in seconds.

«

It is the holiday season, so beware. Get your cash inside a bank if you can.
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How to Compromise the Enterprise Endpoint • Google Project Zero

Tavis Ormandy at Google’s project to find bugs in all sorts of stuff:

»Symantec is a popular vendor in the enterprise security market, their flagship product is  Symantec Endpoint Protection. They sell various products using the same core engine in several markets, including a consumer version under the Norton brand.

Today we’re publishing details of multiple critical vulnerabilities that we discovered, including many wormable remote code execution flaws.

These vulnerabilities are as bad as it gets. They don’t require any user interaction, they affect the default configuration, and the software runs at the highest privilege levels possible. In certain cases on Windows, vulnerable code is even loaded into the kernel, resulting in remote kernel memory corruption.

«

How bad? This bad:

»Apparently,Tavis emailed the exploit to Symantec in a password protected zip file. He included the password in the body of the email. The email server, running Symantec, grabbed the password out of the email, decrypted the zip file, and upon reading the exploit code, crashed itself.

«

(Confirmed by Ormandy.)
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People aren’t spending at duty-free stores like they used to • Quartz

»Shoppers last year shelled out more than $62 billion on duty-free goods, which are imported but exempt from customs duties usually charged for bringing them across a border. While that was a decrease of just over 2% from the prior year, growth in duty-free and travel retail has slowed since 2011.

Last year’s drop wasn’t because consumers just soured on Toblerone chocolate bars, though confectionary and fine foods sales dropped 4%. They spent much less on watches and jewelry, with sales in that category tumbling more than 13.2% from 2014.

The organization chalked up the drop to economic and currency volatility as well as terrorism and geo-political issues.

«

Noted because tech products are also beneficiaries of duty-free spending. And notice how the previous drop was when there was a giant banking recession on.
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BlackBerry 10 devices discontinued, BlackBerry reportedly inform Verizon and AT&T • Rapid Mobile

“Rapid John”:

»An email sent to US Senate staffers yesterday has informed them that BlackBerry smartphones will no longer be officially issued. The email was sent to Administrative Managers, Chief Clerks, and System Administrators.

While many government bodies in a lot of countries have been giving up BlackBerry smartphones, what sticks out in the email is the following part:

»

“BlackBerry has informed Verizon and AT&T that production of all BlackBerry OS 10 devices has been discontinued.”

«

While BlackBerry 10 phones will apparently no longer be produced, the email continues:

»BlackBerry device support will continue  for the foreseeable future and that BlackBerry is committed to maintaining their support of existing devices to include uninterrupted warranty and technical support.

«

This is completely in line with what BlackBerry have been stating for quite some time – that they will continue to support BlackBerry 10.

«

The surprise is that BlackBerry has still been making BB10 phones – I’d have thought they would have stopped six months ago.

It was a billion-dollar effort to create another mobile OS; like many, it failed. Around 13m – perhaps 15m tops – sold over its lifespan since late 2012.
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We’re using technology wrong- how easy wins over better • LinkedIn

Tom Goodwin:

»From Twitter for customer service, a way to very quickly be totally unhelpful to people and give them a phone number to call, to Amazon, the world’s easiest way to not necessarily pay the best price, we’re taking average-quality pictures on phones, carelessly but it’s better than having to think — and a filter will probably make it good and if we take enough one will be OK. We’re consistently choosing sites, apps and experiences that are just about good enough, but totally easy.

It’s not totally new. We’ve done it for years with fast food, the easy but poor choice for decades. IKEA made billions on the back of “it will do,” but what was once exceptional moments have become the general pillar for life. Rather than looking at the channel guide or recording a show, or asking a friend, we’re watching the cute rabbit clip, the man falling down a hole or how did that not break her legs fed to us without a click by Facebook, YouTube or Snapchat.

We’re rushing around museums to find the money shot to put on Instagram, running around Barcelona to broadcast the cool Gaudi thing and checking into Soho house, life has become orienteering for status.

We’ve become passive, our lives endless easy experiences that don’t touch the sides. Where does it end? Will self-driving cars mean we no longer care about car performance? Will we be so transfixed by our phones that we don’t need to choose the posh hotel, or maybe even bother to fly somewhere? Will our lives become products we subscribe to on Amazon so we don’t need to think, music fed to us by software and shows that autostart?

«

The pursuit of “better” rather than “easier” is surprisingly hard, and usually – counterintuitively – more expensive. (You’d expect “easier” would have a price attached.)
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Never-never chip tech Memristor shuffles closer to death row • The Register

Chris Mellor:

»The Memristor always was a rich company’s technology toy, but Meg Whitman wants HPE to be lean and mean, not fat and wasteful, with HPE Labs producing blue sky tech that rarely becomes a product success.

Memristor was first reported by HPE Labs eight years ago, as a form of persistent memory. At the time HP Labs Fellow R. Stanley Williams compared it to flash: “It holds its memory longer. It’s simpler. It’s easier to make – which means it’s cheaper – and it can be switched a lot faster, with less energy.”

Unfortunately it isn’t simpler to make and still isn’t here. NVMe SSDs have boosted flash’s data access speed, reducing the memory-storage gap, and Intel/Micron’s 3D XPoint SSDs will arrive later this year as the first viable productised technology to fill that gap.

«

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European lawmakers want robots to pay taxes • CNN

Charles Riley:

»The proposal suggests that robots should have to register with authorities, and says laws should be written to hold machines liable for damage they cause, such as loss of jobs. Contact between humans and robots should be regulated, with a special emphasis “given to human safety, privacy, integrity, dignity and autonomy.”

If advanced robots start replacing human workers in large numbers, the report recommends the European Commission force their owners to pay taxes or contribute to social security. The establishment of a basic income, or guaranteed welfare program, is also suggested as a protection against human unemployment.

Should robots ever become self-aware, the report suggests that the moral code outlined by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov be observed. Asimov’s laws stipulate that a robot must never harm a human and always obey orders from its creator.

The draft report, which was written by Mady Delvaux, a member of the European Parliament from Luxembourg, could go before the full European Parliament for a vote later this year. Its approval would be largely symbolic, however, since EU legislation must originate with the European Commission. The Commission did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

«

Can’t immediately find a link to the report. But the idea of robot owners paying taxes makes a sort of sense.
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Video compression seeing slower improvement • EE Times

Rick Merritt:

»Video codecs will not deliver historic gains in the foreseeable future unless engineers come up with radical new techniques, according to experts from Google and Microsoft. The good news is pioneering work in areas such as augmented reality is opening new doors and one effort may produce a royalty-free codec in less than a year.

Improvements in video codecs reduce the amount of bandwidth needed to serve video over the Internet. The gains determine the quality of the experience for constrained devices such as smartphones on cellular networks and are key to supporting the business models of cloud-based video services such as Hulu, Netflix and YouTube.

Over the last 20 years, video codecs doubled gains in compression about every decade in a trade-off for ten-fold increases in encoder complexity. Looking forward, gains appear to peak at about 30% with practical results below 25%, said experts at an event here sponsored by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE).

«

First Moore’s Law, now this. And it’s not as if batteries are pulling their weight either.
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Cluster failure: Why fMRI inferences for spatial extent have inflated false-positive rates • PNAS

»Functional MRI (fMRI) is 25 years old, yet surprisingly its most common statistical methods have not been validated using real data. Here, we used resting-state fMRI data from 499 healthy controls to conduct 3 million task group analyses. Using this null data with different experimental designs, we estimate the incidence of significant results. In theory, we should find 5% false positives (for a significance threshold of 5%), but instead we found that the most common software packages for fMRI analysis (SPM, FSL, AFNI) can result in false-positive rates of up to 70%. These results question the validity of some 40,000 fMRI studies and may have a large impact on the interpretation of neuroimaging results.

«

Shorter version: “your brain lights up when..” studies aren’t to be trusted.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida:

No, Britons weren’t all “frantically” Googling “what is the EU” on Friday. Photo by Tjarko Busink 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 13 links for you. It’s what happens. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Intel weighs sale of cyber security business • FT.com

Hannah Kuchler and James Fontanella-Khan:

»

Intel is looking at options for Intel Security, including potentially selling the antivirus software maker formerly known as McAfee which it bought for $7.7bn almost six years ago.

The Silicon Valley chipmaker has been talking to bankers about the future of its cyber security unit in a deal that would be one of the largest in the sector, according to people close to the discussions.

Intel declined to comment.

Private equity buyers are increasingly interested in cyber security companies, anticipating strong cash flow as corporate customers become increasingly worried about protecting their business from cyber attacks. A group of PE firms might club together to buy Intel Security if it is sold for the same price or higher than the $7.7bn Intel originally paid for it.

Earlier this month, Bain Capital sold Blue Coat Security to Symantec for almost twice what it paid the cyber defence company last year. Vista Equity Partners also bought Ping Identity, an authentication service, which had been planning an initial public offering at the start of June.

«

Because basically McAfee doesn’t add any value to Intel, six years on.
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Wearables shipments will grow nearly 30% this year: IDC • Twice

John Laposky:

»

Smart watches: The category is expected to increase from 41% of total wearables shipments in 2016 to 52.1% in 2020. However, not all watches are the same. While smart watches are in the spotlight today, future growth will come from basic watches that provide some sort of fitness/sleep tracking while not being sophisticated enough to run third-party applications on the watch itself. Traditional fashion brands like Fossil and health/fitness companies like Fitbit and Withings will help this segment grow.

«

That’s along with categories like wristbands, eyewear, clothing and “others”. Notable how they aren’t making specific forecasts for Apple v Android in this space.
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How Google is remaking itself as a “machine learning first” company • Backchannel

Steven Levy:

»

The example Giannandrea cites to demonstrate machine learning power is Google Photos, a product whose definitive feature is an uncanny — maybe even disturbing — ability to locate an image of something specified by the user. Show me pictures of border collies. “When people see that for the first time they think something different is happening because the computer is not just computing a preference for you or suggesting a video for you to watch,” says Giannandrea. “It’s actually understanding what’s in the picture.” He explains that through the learning process, the computer “knows” what a border collie looks like, and it will find pictures of it when it’s a puppy, when its old, when it’s long-haired, and when it’s been shorn. A person could do that, of course. But no human could sort through a million examples and simultaneously identify ten thousand dog breeds. But a machine learning system can. If it learns one breed, it can use the same technique to identify the other 9999 using the same technique. “That’s really what’s new here,” says Giannandrea. “For those narrow domains, you’re seeing what some people call superhuman performance in these learned systems.”

«

link to this extract

After firestorm, Facebook training employees to check political biases • TheHill

David McCabe:

»

Facebook will train employees to deal with their political biases, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said at an event Wednesday evening.

“We think a lot about diversity at Facebook,” she said. “And we have a managing-bias class that all of our leaders and a lot of our employees have taken that I was part of helping to create, and we’ve focused on racial bias, age bias, gender bias, national bias, and we’re going to add in a scenario now on political bias.”

“So that, as part of [how] we think about helping people understand different points of view and being open to different points of view, we’re dealing with political bias as well going forward.”

Many Silicon Valley companies have turned to unconscious bias training in recent years as they seek to address the tech industry’s lack of diversity in hiring. Among other tactics, they have also started to disclose more about demographics of their workforces.

A spokesperson for Facebook said the training in question is mandatory for all employees.

The decision to include a segment on political biases was sparked by allegations, which Facebook says are unfounded, that editors for the social network’s trending topics feature systematically downplayed news stories and sources popular with conservatives.

«

link to this extract

Stop using Google Trends • Medium

Danny Page

»

Remember, Trends is relative. And we can see this with the most recent Google Trends Freaking Outrage (GTFO):

“The British are frantically Googling what the EU is, hours after voting to leave it“

The Washington Post [driven by a tweet from Google Trends] notes that searches about the EU tripled. But how many people is that? Are they voters? Are they eligible to vote? Were they Leave or Remain? Trends doesn’t tell us, all it does is give us a nice graph with a huge peak. More likely, it’s a very small number of people, based on this graph that puts it in context with other searches in the region:

(From this tweet).

But it’s giving plenty of people cover to insult the entire country, when it’s likely just a few people searching for something in a way that they always search for something. It makes “The British are frantically Googling what the EU is, hours after voting to leave it” absurdly disingenuous without better numbers.

Remy Smith points out: The peak was merely ~1000 people! It’s ludicrous that so few people get turned into a massive story, but it underscores the need for context.

I’m disappointed that this is how data is being used, and really drives home the need for people to understand the data before they use it incorrectly. Google Trends is an interesting tool, but please do a bit more research before using it.

«

I considered linking fully to the Washington Post article but felt somehow that it just wasn’t right. People surely weren’t madly asking Google what the EU was/is. Not after years of subliminal coverage and months of upfront coverage from every media outlet. But I couldn’t quite see what was wrong – until this. It’s spot on.
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Headphone industry market share statistics • Statistic Brain

Wired headphones 69%, wireless 31% (by sales). The teen buying intention is quite remarkable, as is the device they get connected to – out of MP3 player, computer, smartphone, home theatre and tablet, which would you expect to be the leader and the laggard in terms of which one people connect to?
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Slicing into a point-of-sale botnet • Krebs on Security

Brian Krebs:

»

Over the weekend, I heard from a source who said that since November 2015 he’s been tracking a collection of hacked cash registers. This point-of-sale botnet currently includes more than 100 infected systems, and according to the administrative panel for this crime machine at least half of the compromised systems are running a malicious Microsoft Windows process called cicipos.exe.

The admin panel shows the Internet address of a number of infected point-of-sale devices as of June 4, 2016. Many of these appear to be at Cici’s Pizza locations.

KrebsOnSecurity has not been able to conclusively tie the botnet to CiCi’s. Neither CiCi’s nor its outside public relations firm have responded to multiple requests for comment. However, the control panel for this botnet includes the full credit card number and name attached to the card, and several individuals whose names appeared in the botnet control panel confirmed having eaten at CiCi’s Pizza locations on the same date that their credit card data was siphoned by this botnet.

Among those was Richard Higgins of Prattville, Ala., whose card data was recorded in the botnet logs on June 4, 2016. Reached via phone, Higgins confirmed that he used his debit card to pay for a meal he and his family enjoyed at a CiCi’s location in Prattville on that same date.

«

Of course, if they used chip/PIN.. then probably the PINs would get stolen too. 🤔
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Thoughts on the sociology of Brexit • Political Economy Research Centre

Will Davies:

»

One of the most insightful things I saw in the run-up to the referendum was this video produced by openDemocracy’s Adam Ramsey and Anthony Barnett discussing their visit to Doncaster, another Labour heartland. They chose Doncaster because it looked set to be a strong pro-Leave location, and wanted to understand what was at work in this.

Crucially, they observed that – in strong contrast to the Scottish ‘Yes’ movement – Brexit was not fuelled by hope for a different future. On the contrary, many Leavers believed that withdrawing from the EU wouldn’t really change things one way or the other, but they still wanted to do it. I’ve long suspected that, on some unconscious level, things could be even stranger than this: the self-harm inflicted by Brexit could potentially be part of its appeal. It is now being reported that many Leave voters are aghast at what they’ve done, as if they never really intended for their actions to yield results.

This taps into a much broader cultural and political malaise, that also appears to be driving the rise of Donald Trump in the US. Amongst people who have utterly given up on the future, political movements don’t need to promise any desirable and realistic change. If anything, they are more comforting and trustworthy if predicated on the notion that the future is beyond rescue, for that chimes more closely with people’s private experiences.

The discovery of the ‘Deaton effect’ in the US (unexpected rising mortality rates amongst white working classes) is linked to rising alcohol and opiate abuse and to rising suicide rates. It has also been shown to correlate closely to geographic areas with the greatest support for Trump. I don’t know of any direct equivalent to this in the UK, but it seems clear that – beyond the rhetoric of ‘Great Britain’ and ‘democracy’ – Brexit was never really articulated as a viable policy, and only ever as a destructive urge, which some no doubt now feel guilty for giving way to…

…The Remain campaign continued to rely on forecasts, warnings and predictions, in the hope that eventually people would be dissuaded from ‘risking it’. But to those that have given up on the future already, this is all just more political rhetoric. In any case, the entire practice of modelling the future in terms of ‘risk’ has lost credibility, as evidenced by the now terminal decline of opinion polling as a tool for political control.

«

Excellent analysis. Read it too for its take on “facts” v “data” and the claims in the campaign.
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An iPad Pro is not a Mac • getwired.com

Notorious traveller Wes Miller:

»

I needed something smaller. Lighter. More efficient.

I’m not a developer. So I don’t need Xcode. I don’t work with Mac versions of most legacy multimedia software from Apple, Adobe, or others. I don’t even play games on my computers. But I work in Microsoft Office every single day. And there are things that I need there. There is the mobile version of the Office applications, and I have an E3 subscription that entitles me to using them.

So as I winnowed down my device options, I was seriously looking at the large iPad Pro. While I’m all thumbs when it comes to drawing (or hand-writing), the Smart Keyboard and iPad Pro make an acceptable (although compromising) combination.

In particular, as I pondered life with the iPad Pro, several caveats came up with the hardware, before I’d even considered the software capabilities.

«

“Lappability” is infrequently used, but deserves more consideration.
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Why LaCroix sparkling water is suddenly everywhere – Vox

Libby Nelson and Javier Zarracina:

»

Over the past decade, Americans have done something that would have once seemed downright un-American: They’ve given up soda [sugared carbonated drinks such as Coke]. And when you’re craving a can of pop, LaCroix is a decent substitute. Unlike tap water, it has carbonation and a little flavor. Unlike a countertop SodaStream, it’s cheap, readily available, and portable. Close your eyes, wrap your hand around the perspiring aluminum can, and you could be holding a Coca-Cola. LaCroix is succeeding as methadone for the soda addict.

LaCroix isn’t the only brand to benefit from the sparkling water boom. But it’s the one that’s risen to the coveted status of lifestyle brand, not just generating loyalty but becoming part of how we define ourselves. The secret behind LaCroix’s rise is a mix of old-fashioned business strategy and cutting-edge social marketing. When Americans wanted carbonated water, LaCroix was positioned to give them them fizzy water. Then, sometimes by accident, LaCroix developed fans among mommy bloggers, Paleo eaters, and Los Angeles writers who together pushed LaCroix into the zeitgeist.

«

This article is suddenly everywhere, so I’m just helping out. If Americans are drinking less Coke/Pepsi/7Up/etc, then that’s good. Finally.
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Tech support scams target victims via their ISP • BBC News

Jane Wakefield, on a new wrinkle on the depressingly old “tech support” scam, which used to just involve cold-calling, but now includes audio messages which identify your ISP and say your machine is infected – which would scare the willies out of most non-techie people:

»

How do scammers know your ISP?
In the case of cold calls it may just be a lucky case of guessing a common ISP but in the case of pop-ups, there is an altogether cleverer way for fraudsters to glean information that can help them.

How it works
• Big ad networks allow users to win ad space on websites by bidding at a particular price
• Criminals are taking advantage of this to place adverts which are infected with a single “bad” pixel
• This pixel can redirect users and infect them in the background when they are browsing on a perfectly legitimate site – they do not even need to click on the ad
• The malware in the ad redirects users to a website in the background – invisible to the user – which checks their computer and discovers their IP address
• From the IP address it is easy to find out which ISP owns which IP address
• Victims will be served a pop-up tailored for their specific ISP which warns them their computer is infected and gives them a number to call

Fraudsters do still use cold-calling but their methods here have also become more sophisticated – instead of a vague description of themselves as a Windows Support agent, many are now claiming to represent legitimate ISPs, with very believable answers when they are challenged.

«

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794 Ways in Which BuzzFeed Reminds Us of Impending Death • NYTimes.com

Heather Havrilesky:

»

the more time you spend on BuzzFeed, the more the boundaries between “win” and “fail” seem to blur. After a while, it’s impossible not to slip into a disassociative trance, in which you surrender to the allure of some perpetual, trivial nowhereland, nestled somewhere between “15 Cats That You Don’t Want to Mess With” and the “44 Hong Kong Movie Subtitles Gone Wrong.”

The past is reduced to a slide show. The future is a YouTube video that won’t load. And the present is a jumble of jaunty yellow buttons blurting “omg” and “awww” and “tl;dr.”

«

And then Havrilesky really hits her stride and the piece runs away into brilliance.
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Why we should expect algorithms to be biased • Technology Review

Nanette Byrnes:

»

Fred Benenson, Kickstarter’s former data chief, calls [this] “mathwashing”: our tendency to idolize programs like Facebook’s as entirely objective because they have mathematics at their core.

One area of potential bias comes from the fact that so many of the programmers creating these programs, especially machine-learning experts, are male. In a recent Bloomberg article, Margaret Mitchell, a researcher at Microsoft, is quoted lamenting the dangers of a “sea of dudes” asking the questions central to creating these programs.

Concern has been building over this issue for some time, as studies found evidence of bias in online advertising, recruiting, and pricing strategies driven by presumably neutral algorithms.

In one study, Harvard professor Latanya Sweeney looked at the Google AdSense ads that came up during searches of names associated with white babies (Geoffrey, Jill, Emma) and names associated with black babies (DeShawn, Darnell, Jermaine). She found that ads containing the word “arrest” were shown next to more than 80% of “black” name searches but fewer than 30% of “white” name searches.

Sweeney worries that the ways Google’s advertising technology perpetuates racial bias could undermine a black person’s chances in a competition, whether it’s for an award, a date, or a job.

«

Perennial topic, and worth keeping an eye on.
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified.

“Chim-chiminee-chim-chiminee…” Photo by Dina Regine on Flickr.

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Daily chart: Debunking years of tabloid claims about Europe • The Economist

»THE Brexit campaign has been plagued by little white lies, half-truths and disinformation. Neither side has showered itself in glory in its attempts to persuade the British public of the benefits or drawbacks of EU membership. But Britain has a long and well-observed tradition of fabricating facts about Europe—so much so that the European Commission (EC) set up a website to debunk these lies in the early 1990s…

…the EC has responded to over 400 myths published by the British media. These range from the absurd (fishing boats will be forced to carry condoms) to the ridiculous (zippers on trousers will be banned). Some are seemingly the result of wilful misunderstandings. A story published by the Sun, a tabloid, in 1999 claimed that the queen would suddenly have to make her own tea because of new EU rules. Not only is this inaccurate, as a patient EC official pointed out, but the laws that this referred to were enacted by Britain itself in 1993. Another article in the Daily Star in 2004 reckoned that the EU was going to limit the speed of children’s playground roundabouts. This voluntary guideline, it turned out, was not proposed by the EU at all, but rather by a different organisation with the word “Europe” in its name. Other myths do not originate from anything close to reality, such as the allegation that the EC would ban darts from pubs or outlaw unwrapped sweets.

«

Or just have a look at this graphic:

By the time you read this, the vote decision should be known. Will the untruths have won the day?
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WhatsApp users are making 100 millions calls every day • The Next Web

Napier Lopez:

»WhatsApp users are now making more than 100 million voice calls every single day – over 1,100 calls per second.

That’s an impressive number, given the feature only finished rolling out to Android and iOS in April of last year. Of course, plenty of those calls are from individuals who make multiple calls per day, but it still shows how quickly WhatsApp’s 1 billion users have jumped on the feature.

For comparison, Skype only has about 300 million active users per month, so it’s not a stretch to imagine WhatsApp has already surpassed the number of daily Skype calls (a figure Skype doesn’t make public). Not bad, considering WhatsApp calling is 12 years younger.

«

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Led Zeppelin Did Not Steal ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ Jury Says – The New York Times

Noah Gilbert and Ben Sisario:

»Led Zeppelin did not steal the opening riff of its classic rock anthem “Stairway to Heaven,” a federal jury ruled here on Thursday, giving the band a victory in a copyright case in which millions of dollars were at stake.

The case pitted an obscure song from the margins of rock history against one of the canonical hits of the genre. The suit was filed two years ago by Michael Skidmore, a trustee for the songs of Randy Wolfe, a member of the band Spirit. It contends that the Led Zeppelin members Jimmy Page and Robert Plant had lifted substantial portions of the Spirit song “Taurus,” from 1968, for the beginning of “Stairway to Heaven,” which was released in 1971 and, by some estimates, has earned more than $500m.

«

Phew. (Though you know that quite a few Led Zep riffs were, um, borrowed from other writers? For example “Whole Lotta Love” and others.)
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How a former Apple designer is updating Huawei’s look • The Information

Amir Efrati:

»Last fall, Chinese electronics manufacturer Huawei brought in a former longtime Apple designer, Abigail Brody, to change the look of its smartphone software “skin,” which sits on top of Google’s Android mobile operating system. The Huawei skin has been criticized by Western phone review writers as ripping off elements of the iPhone, such as the way the app icons look.

Ms. Brody is expected to introduce features that look like those found on most Android phones, but with Huawei’s own flair. And to hedge its bets against Google’s control of Android, Huawei is also secretly developing an alternative mobile operating system, according to three people briefed about the project.

Huawei “doesn’t want to be on the crutch of Android,” said one of the people familiar with Huawei’s secret OS project. But two other people with knowledge of the project say the alternative OS team isn’t far along and is meant as a contingency measure in case Google further tightens its grip on Android or stops offering it to smartphone makers.

«

Wouldn’t set much store by it.
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TrendForce estimates VR device shipments to reach 9m units this year owing to strong pre-order sales of Playstation VR • Trendforce

Jason Tsai, analyst:

»Sony made its widely anticipated PlayStation VR (PS VR) available for pre-order this month following the releases of HTC’s Vive and Oculus’s Rift. So far, the market reception towards PS VR has been very good as Japan and several other regions have reported that their pre-order shipments were sold out immediately after the announcement. Global market research firm TrendForce expects PS VR to generate another huge wave of VR device shipments this year. If the branded vendors are able to ensure sufficient supply, TrendForce forecasts that shipments of VR devices (excluding mobile-based products) will grow at a CAGR of 53.5% from 9 million units this year to 50 million units in 2020.

“While sales from various branded vendors have been brisk, this year’s VR device shipments will be mainly influenced by the supply side of the market,” said Jason Tsai, wearable device analyst for TrendForce. “Branded vendors were overly conservative in stocking up their inventories before the market releases of their products. They are now seeing the product demand far outstripping the supply and will have to adjust their inventories in the next two quarters, or else the undersupply situation in the VR device market will likely persist to the second half of 2017.”

«

HTC, which needs this to work, only expected to get 8% of units; Sony to get 67%.
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The Tesla-SolarCity vision collision • Bloomberg Gadfly

Liam Denning:

»Musk says that, once acquired, SolarCity can leverage Tesla’s sales channels to substantially cut stubborn selling costs. He is “highly confident” meaningful benefits would show up within two quarters of the deal closing, a remarkably fast timetable. He also said new panel technology from Silevo, which SolarCity acquired in 2014, would have a big impact.

Here’s the thing: ‘Vision’ is part and parcel of building a new company in a very new industry and persuading investors to fund it. Breakthroughs don’t happen without it, and Tesla can lay claim to have made significant breakthroughs.

But the lesson of SolarCity is that vision is only as good as the faith it attracts. And faith in SolarCity’s vision — which has always benefited partly from its association with Musk — has dwindled sharply. In selling itself to Tesla, SolarCity would become part of a vision that still has a strong following, but isn’t helped by the lack of clarity displayed Wednesday morning.

The flip-side? Selling out at this low price would confirm SolarCity has lost faith in itself. What’s worse is that, judging by investors’ reaction to the news, bringing SolarCity in-house won’t just dilute Tesla’s earnings, but also risks diluting its vital resource: belief in Musk.

«

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Lessons from the tech elite: eat carrots, shower more and tape up your webcam • The Guardian

Stuart Heritage on the many strange things that tech elites do:

»Shower
This gold nugget came from Elon Musk in a Reddit AMA last year. When asked “What daily habit do you believe has the largest positive impact on your life?” he replied: “Showering.” This could be because the time he spends alone in the shower each day makes him more receptive to inspiration. Or it could be because he naturally emits such a hideous stench that nobody would work with him otherwise. Either way, if you want to be as successful as Musk, wash sometimes.

Make an entire room out of gold
Yoshiro Nakamatsu invented the floppy disk. Why? Because he spends all his downtime relaxing in a room tiled with 24-carat gold. The gold, he says, “blocks out radio waves and television signals that are harmful to imagination”. This sounds like the ravings of a lunatic, but remember he invented the floppy disk. What have you ever invented? Nothing. And you never will until you start living like Donald Trump’s wet dream.

«

Splendid.
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Security holes found in widely-used file compression library • Tripwire

Graham Cluley:

»The libarchive programming library was originally developed for the FreeBSD project but is now used by software coders around the world to provide real-time access to a wide range of compressed file formats – including zip, tar, 7z, cab, and many more.

The risk, explain security researchers at Cisco Talos, is that malicious attackers could create boobytrapped archive files that exploit one of the three newly discovered vulnerabilities in order to execute unauthorized malicious code on a user’s computer. All an attacker would need to do is send a poisoned archive file to their intended target.

And as libarchive is used by a number of file and package managers included in Linux and BSD systems, as well as security tools and file browsers including tools running on OS X and Chrome OS, it isn’t necessarily trivial to ensure that your system is completely patched.

«

Great!
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BlackBerry first-quarter breakeven tops expectations, shares climb • Reuters

Alastair Sharp and Allison Martell:

»BlackBerry said it expects an adjusted annual loss of around 15 cents per share, compared with the average analyst estimate of a loss of 33 cents for fiscal 2017.

Software and licensing revenue was $166m in the quarter ended May 31. The company had annual software revenue of $527m last fiscal year and is targeting 30% organic growth.

Chief Executive Officer John Chen said better deals with manufacturing partners struck in the quarter helped it to limit exposure to excess inventory and to better manage cash.

“We’re at a point where our business is extremely efficient and we no longer really are making any hardware,” Chen told analysts on a conference call. “We are really a hardware design house.”

The company said it recognized revenue on some 500,000 handsets in the quarter at an average selling price around $290. Chen said it plans to unveil two cheaper Android-based devices in July.

Morningstar’s Colello said a better-selling smartphone could make the segment profitable.

«

BlackBerry is such a minuscule business now; it’s just another Android OEM, but with a couple of bells and whistles, whose principal profit centre is the Service Activation Fees (SAF) it receives from the monthly bills of people using phones such as the Curve which were discontinued five years ago. (See “reconciliation of the company’s segment results” in this press release: SAF generated $78m in operating profit, at a 73% margin; software/services generated $37m operating profit at a 22% margin; hardware lost $21m, an operating margin of -14%. And that’s ignoring the $41m writedown on inventory – no doubt of unsold Privs.

The trouble is, SAF is shrinking fast – about 14% for a few quarters, but at 25% in the most recent quarter.

John Chen doesn’t have much time.
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John Gruber misses the point completely about Lightning headphones • Medium

Steve Streza on the mooted vanishment of the 3.5mm headphone jack in the next iPhone:

»There will always be rough transitions in technology. What separates this is a few factors. First, adopting Lightning would be a transition from an open technology to a closed one. We would literally be fragmenting the market for speakers and headphones. Second is the fact that the headphone plug is so ubiquitous. It is in everything from high-end home theater speakers and audiophile-quality headphones to cheap computer speakers and dollar store earbuds. It’s a plug on literally billions of devices, including computers, phones, AV systems, portable gaming machines, desk telephones, in-car audio systems, and all kinds of other things. It’s a known quantity; you get a device that can play audio, it’ll probably be there.

You have to start somewhere, yes. But not until it’s compelling. Until then, it’s change for the benefit of nobody but Apple, at the cost of convenience and interoperability for their customers.

Gruber: And as for battery life, surely removing the deep headphone socket can only leave more room for a larger battery.

You can actually calculate this, and the internal volume of the headphone port pales compared to how much capacity you’d get by just making the existing battery slightly thicker. Plus it would keep the battery its nice, manufacture rectangular shape…

…People will not buy into Lightning headphones, they will put up with it. This transition will be painful and difficult because of just how thoroughly entrenched the current solution is, how little the new solution offers, and how many complications it adds for customers.

«

As Streza also points out, the removal of the old ADB connectors from the original iMac in favour of USB is heralded now, but was an absolute nightmare for the first few months after its introduction because all your old stuff didn’t work and needed adaptors. (Some companies got their big start from that.)

Removing the headphone jack would not be good. It totally wouldn’t. I have a pair of sound-cancelling headphones which work on the old 30-pin iPhone socket. Guess how often I use them now?

Bluetooth headphones (the only reasonable option) need charging, and pairing, and that’s a pain. In all these ways, removing the 3.5mm jack is a Bad Idea. If Apple gives a thousand Nos for every Yes, this is one idea to which it definitely should have said No. (Via Richard Gaywood.)
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified.

Apple’s “iPhone design patent” fight in China is against a vanished company that might have been located in this road in Shenzhen. Photo by dcmaster on Flickr.

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Has the “affordable” smartphone let us down? • Android Police

David Ruddock:

»Who’s to blame for the promising ZenFone turning into a bloatware-ridden pile of bugs languishing on Lollipop, seven-plus months since Marshmallow was released? What’s the reason Alcatel’s relatively unbloated Idol 3 took nearly as long to get Marshmallow itself (mine still doesn’t have it)? How did the OnePlus end up the poster child for QA issues, compromise, poor customer service, and slow updates? Why did it take deliberate public shaming to get Motorola to update the Moto E, and even then, not in every country? How did Motorola end up being sued for $5 million over poor warranty support? Why did HTC decide not to renew its promises of rapid Android OS updates on the new 10, all while pricing it at a seemingly obscene $700? Why is Sony trying to charge $550 for for what is, at best, a $400 phone with the Xperia X?

The answer, of course, is money. It has nothing to do with companies “hating” customers. It’s not about whether or not they “care” about you – no multi-billion dollar corporation does, and it’d be silly to assume they did. It’s just dollars and cents. How many customers will I lose by not updating this phone? How much money will I save? How much damage will my brand sustain? How much bloatware do I need to put on here to make this product financially viable? Where can I cut costs on support and reduce warranty claims?

…I have come to think my faith in the cheap smartphone has been largely misplaced. Perhaps it was naive to assume that companies whose business model is to make money on the physical product they sell – and not the things you do with it – wouldn’t be so short-sighted. But they’re proving to be just that.

«

Ruddock is always good value.
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Chinese company in patent dispute with Apple barely exists • WSJ

Eva Dou and Alyssa Abkowitz:

»When a Beijing regulator recently ruled against Apple Inc. in a patent dispute, it handed a victory to a Chinese company that barely exists.

Phone calls to the company, Shenzhen Baili Marketing Services Co., ring unanswered. Its websites have been deleted. Visits to its three registered addresses found no company offices.

Baili and its parent, Digione, are part of a rapid boom and bust in China’s new wave of smartphone makers. When Baili took on Apple in December 2014, telling Chinese regulators that the Cupertino, Calif., company’s new models infringed on its smartphone design patents, it had bold aspirations, a big-name investor in Chinese internet giant Baidu Inc. and a team of experienced executives.

By the time regulators reached a decision this year, Digione had collapsed, brought down by buggy products, mismanagement and fierce competition, according to former employees and investors.

«

Weird but not unlike patent trolls in the US and elsewhere.
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WWDC clues hint at Apple’s post-iPhone era • Above Avalon

Neil Cybart:

»At first glance, it would appear that Apple has all the ingredients in place to move beyond the iPhone. Apple’s industrial design capabilities continue to be industry-leading, and WWDC began to peel away some of the mystery surrounding Apple’s path for incorporating deep learning into its services. However, there are two big risk factors that need to be monitored very closely.

Apple remains a resource-strained company. The most valuable resource is time and energy. Given the company’s functional organizational structure, management has tangible limitations as to the number of projects that can be undertaken at any one time. As seen in the Apple Experience era diagrams, it would not be a stretch to see the number of blue circles, representing Apple hardware form factors, to increase. However, at a certain point, Apple will begin to find that it is unable to expand in new areas while still supporting legacy industries or products. Management is quite vocal that Apple says “no” much more than “yes” when it comes to new products. In addition, the company is not afraid to cannibalize its own products. These statements will likely be tested in the coming years.

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You cannot regulate guns unless you know how to use one • Medium

Yishan Wong:

»I am here to tell you the first thing you need to do if you want meaningful gun control legislation to be passed in America.

If you want to personally do something that will help, here it is:

You Must Learn How To Use a Gun

Sounds crazy, right?

Almost every gun control advocate I know hates guns and wants nothing to do with them. They are vaguely (or very) afraid of them, and believe that if they fire a gun or buy one, they will suddenly become a gun nut or turn evil.

That is nonsense. You need to understand guns intimately if you want to regulate them.

This kind of thinking is common sense when it comes to making laws about anything else, yet somehow it flies out the window when it comes to regulating something as simple and dangerous as guns.

Being a gun owner who doesn’t believe in the Second Amendment is really lonely.

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He makes a lot of excellent points; we decry legislators who try to regulate crypto without understanding it, yet think it’s obvious whether you should legislate against hollow point bullets and AR-15s. I learnt a lot.
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Slow adoption in automotive • Pearl blog

Bryson Gardner is co-founder and CEO of Pearl, whose co-founders used to work at Apple getting the iPod and iPhone out, and now want to get cars to be better sorted:

»Cars last longer than ever and are quickly left behind by the rapid pace of new technology. The industry’s ability to keep them up to date is fundamentally limited by 6-7 year design cycles and how few new cars are produced and bought every year. Historically new features, from airbags to antilock brakes, have taken 30-40 years to reach widespread adoption. The future will be no different, unless we re-think things.

While we see great promise in autonomous vehicles, recent reports project only 4% of the 2 billion cars in the world in 2035 will be autonomous. That leaves more than 95% of the cars without autonomous features nearly 20 years from now.

Should we really be waiting this long? Why not use the very same technological building blocks of the autonomous future to help every driver on the road today? ADAS technologies, such as the backup camera, blind spot warning and forward collision warning, are available in some new cars and have clear benefits, and these new technologies are just too important to limit to only new cars.

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They’re starting with rear-view cameras, priced at $500.
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Taylor Swift and the music industry’s attack on YouTube Is a mistake • Fortune

Jeff John Roberts isn’t saying that Taylor Swift is a mistake, but that the advert attacking YouTube is:

»Here is what the ad will say, according to Billboard:

“[The law] has allowed major tech companies to grow and generate huge profits by creating ease of use for consumers to carry almost every recorded song in history in their pocket via a smartphone, while songwriters’ and artists’ earnings continue to diminish.”

The ad campaign will reportedly also press Congress to use an ongoing review of copyright law to tilt the rules to be more in favor of musicians.

This spectacle of Swift and other A-listers pleading for “reform” will no doubt make an impression on the country’s lawmakers. But that doesn’t mean they should listen. What the music industry is doing is making mischief with an important law in order to put business pressure on YouTube.

The law, as many people are aware, is called the DMCA (the “Digital Millennium Copyright Act,”) and it serves to protect websites like YouTube and Facebook from getting sued when someone uploads a song or video without permission. According to music industry types, YouTube exploits the law to turn a blind eye to piracy and get rich in the process. That’s why, they argue we need “DMCA reform” to put a stop to this.

It’s a compelling argument. But it’s just not true.

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He’s right – what the music business wants is for YouTube to pay out more per play.
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How artificial intelligence will transform our high streets • Tech City News

Rosh Singh, director of digital innovation at Kinetic Active:

»the environment we live in is already being transformed at an astounding rate. For instance, the death of the high street owing to the growth of eCommerce, is often lamented. But new technologies are actually making high streets more accessible, more engaging and more personal than ever before.

For proof, look no further than the rapid rise in campaigns linking out-of-home (OOH) media to mobile marketing. Kinetic recently formed a partnership with Exterion to experiment with beacons used in conjunction with digital out-of-home (DOOH) media. Eventually we will be able to know exactly who is standing in front of a screen at any given time, personalise digital copy based on in-app activity, and serve useful messaging that is unique to every individual.

In the future, knowing you are heading out shopping, the screens on your route would serve you intuitive nudges to remind you of vital items missing from your connected fridge or your cupboards, and share information like in-store discounts, details on busiest shop times or new stockists.

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I’m giving this a no-way-Jose.
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Pando memberships: one year on • Pando

Sarah Lacy and Paul Carr:

»twelve months ago, two things were becoming clear:

1) Our reporting was increasingly an adversarial anomaly in an access journalism world. We’d had threats of pulling ad dollars from us before, called the bluff of those making the threat and still managed to survive. But one day our luck would run out: A major advertiser would cave to pressure (or would find themselves the subject of a negative story on Pando) and yank their spending with us.

2) Most of our advertising and sponsorship customers were newly public SAAS based businesses or ones hoping to go public. And some sort of correction was on the horizon. Our then-multi-million dollar a year ad business had grown year over year at a nice clip. But it was gonna get crushed in 2016.

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Oddly enough, their mixed model is very like that of the Economist, which doesn’t rely on ads.
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The worst thing I read this year, and what it taught me… or Can we design sociotechnical systems… • Medium

Ethan Zuckerman:

»I found Shane Snow’s essay on prison reform — “How Soylent and Oculus Could Fix the Prison System” — through hatelinking. Friends of mine hated the piece so much that normally articulate people were at a loss for words.

A real person thought it would be a good idea to write this and post it on the Internet. pic.twitter.com/rj8viJr1HQ

— Susie Cagle (@susie_c) January 30, 2016«

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With a recommendation like that, how could I pass it up? And after reading it, I tweeted my astonishment to Susie, who told me, “I write comics, but I don’t know how to react to this in a way that’s funny.” I realized that I couldn’t offer an appropriate reaction in 140 characters either. The more I think about Snow’s essay, the more it looks like the outline for a class on the pitfalls of solving social problems with technology, a class I’m now planning on teaching this coming fall.

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Zuckerman wonders “is it possible to get beyond both a naïve belief that the latest technology will solve social problems and a reaction that rubbishes any attempt to offer novel technical solutions as inappropriate, insensitive and misguided?”
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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified.