After a lot of huffing and puffing and threats to leave, Google has started making deals with Australian news organisations. CC-licensed photo by Luis 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 10 links for you. Use them wisely. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Subpoenas start to fly in the GameStop saga as a dude sitting in federal prison offers guidance • Wall Street On Parade

Pam Martens and Russ Martens:

»

Keith Gill is the man who hawked the shares of GameStop on Reddit’s WallStreetBets’ message board under the screen name DeepF***ingValue and on YouTube under the handle Roaring Kitty. As we reported on January 30, far from being an “amateur trader,” as Gill was being characterized by the media, he actually held sophisticated trading licenses and was registered with the broker-dealer unit of MassMutual. As we pointed out in the article, when you are a licensed broker and an associated person of a broker-dealer, you have to follow strict licensing rules. Gill appears to have flouted a number of those rules and Galvin has now subpoenaed him to testify, according to the Boston Globe.

Another poster on the WallStreetBets message board that is likely seeing some sweat beads form on his brow is the infamous Martin Shkreli, who is serving a seven-year sentence for securities fraud in Federal prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania. Shkreli, a hedge fund manager turned “Pharma Bro,” gained notoriety hiking the price of the drug, Daraprim, by 5400 percent. The drug was used to treat life-threatening parasitic infections as well as to treat AIDS and cancer patients with compromised immune systems. Shkreli’s prison sentence was related to his fraud at his hedge funds, not his spiking the price of Daraprim.

Prior to his conviction, Shkreli had been a moderator at Reddit’s WallStreetBets, according to an interview the forum’s founder, Jaime Rogozinski, gave to the news service, Cheddar. In that interview, Rogozinski calls Shkreli “a brilliant financier.”

Rogozinski was removed last year from the WallStreetBets forum over alleged conflicts of interest. Prior to that, he posted under user name jartek. In a post 11 months ago, Rogozinski said he could “confirm” that the posts then being made under the user name “martinshkreli” were “real.” According to the subreddit under the name of user martinshkreli, two people, Mo and Reida, have been making posts on his behalf. In a post under user name martinshkreli on January 29 of this year, it says “I still think GME [stock symbol for GameStop] will trade at 1,000.” The long post notes at the end that it was “sent from martin, posted by mo.”

As a result of Shkreli’s jury convictions, the Securities and Exchange Commission barred him from “acting as a broker or investment adviser or otherwise associating with firms that sell securities or provide investment advice to the public.”

We emailed Shkreli to confirm if he was, indeed, the author of the posts under user name martinshkreli. We heard nothing back.

«

As they point out, the Wall Street Journal notes that there’s now an investigation into whether there was market manipulation in GameStop. (Ya think??)
unique link to this extract

---

Australia says Google, Facebook close to media pay deals • Japan Today

Rod McGuirk:

»

Google and Facebook were close to striking “significant commercial deals” to pay Australian media for news ahead of Australia creating world-first laws that would force the digital giants to finance journalism, a minister said Monday.

Parliament is scheduled to consider the draft laws on Tuesday after a Senate committee last week recommended no changes to the proposed regulations that Google and Facebook have condemned as unworkable.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, one of ministers responsible for the legislation, said he had discussions at the weekend with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary Google. Frydenberg had also spoken with Australian news media executives.

“We’ve made real progress, I think, in the last 48 to 72 hours and I think we’re going to see some significant commercial deals which could be of real benefit to the domestic media landscape and see journalists rewarded financially for generating original content, as it should be, and this is a world-leading reform,” Frydenberg told Nine Network television.

«

From “this will never work” to “OK, we’re leaving Australia” to “here’s some money” in the course of about three weeks. Interesting to discover that Google postures, but its devotion to getting customer data outstrips principle. (The money’s a pittance.)
unique link to this extract

---

Inside the making of Facebook’s Supreme Court • The New Yorker

Kate Klonick:

»

The [Facebook Oversight] board originally included twenty members, who were paid six-figure salaries for putting in about fifteen hours a week; it is managed by an independent trust, which Facebook gave a hundred and thirty million dollars. (“That’s real money,” a tech reporter texted me. “Is this thing actually for real?”) According to Facebook, as many as two hundred thousand posts become eligible for appeal every day. “We are preparing for a fire hose,” Milancy Harris, who came to the governance team from the National Counterterrorism Center, said. The board chooses the most “representative” cases and hears each in a panel of five members, who remain anonymous to the public. Unlike in the Supreme Court, there are no oral arguments. The user submits a written brief arguing her case; a representative for the company—“Facebook’s solicitor general,” one employee joked—files a brief explaining the company’s rationale. The panel’s decision, if ratified by the rest of the members, is binding for Facebook.

The “most controversial issue by far,” Darmé told me, was how powerful the board should be. “People outside the company wanted the board to have as much authority as possible, to tie Facebook’s hands,” she said. Some wanted it to write all of the company’s policies. (“We actually tested that in simulation,” Darmé said. “People never actually wrote a policy.”) On the other hand, many employees wondered whether the board would make a decision that killed Facebook. I sometimes heard them ask one another, in nervous tones, “What if they get rid of the newsfeed?”

«

Very in-depth piece about the FOB, though as it points out, the headline isn’t quite right. FOB decisions don’t set any precedent; nor are they actually binding on Facebook. Nor can it adjudicate on decisions to leave content up (“take-ups”) rather than remove it. But it’s the former which are the real problem. Facebook isn’t suffering a surfeit of overmoderation, as the frequent reports of troubles erupting from it show.

Bonus link: a thread about the FOB in a “historical trajectory” (possibly “context”).
unique link to this extract

---

How our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines • CommonHealth

Dr David Scales:

»

Here’s my story: 20 years ago, I worked part-time in a tumble-down laboratory in a dusty corner of an old medical school building at the University of Pennsylvania, where I was an undergrad. For three years, I studied HIV replication in T-cells under researchers Drew Weissman and Katalin Karikó.

These days, they are coronavirus vaccine heroes, but back then, their very early work on mRNA vaccines aimed to fight HIV. After spending my first four months in the lab on an experiment that never worked, I learned that good science is really, really hard.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I also absorbed what I later could describe as the sociology of science — how the sausage is made — and it wasn’t always pretty.

While Weissman was an expert at designing experiments, I remember him most for his generosity. He made sure all contributors in the lab shared the credit, from the lab tech and lowly undergrad all the way to fellow researcher Karikó.

Still, Karikó was struggling. Her science was fantastic, but she was less adept at the competitive game of science. She tried again and again to win grants, and each time, her applications were rejected.

Eventually, in the mid-1990s, she suffered the academic indignity of demotion, meaning she was taken off the academic ladder that leads to becoming a professor. We never discussed it personally because by the time I joined the lab, Karikó’s history was still only discussed in hushed tones as a cautionary tale for young scientists.

«

In case you don’t grok mRNA vaccines, XKCD has you covered. (Thanks G for the link.)
unique link to this extract

---

Slate Star Clusterfuck • My New Band Is

Liz Spiers helped set up Gawker, and here points out that the paranoia about journalists among some of the tech community is simply loopy:

»

The malicious journalist thesis is the one that was the hardest on my ocular muscles [rolling her eyes] yesterday.  Scott Alexander, the figure at the center of the piece himself believes this and has advanced this theory that the journalist who wrote the piece, and perhaps The New York Times institutionally, was out to smear him. To what end, it’s unclear. (A favorite fallacious rationale: clicks! More about that in a bit.) Alexander has reconstituted Slate Star Codex as a Substack publication called Astral Codex Ten. In a statement on the New York Times article, which he did not like, to put it mildly, he writes, “The New York Times backed off briefly as I stopped publishing, but I was also warned by people ‘in the know’ that as soon as they got an excuse they would publish something as negative as possible about me, in order to punish me for embarrassing them.”

Only in a bubble as insular and tiny as the SSC community would this theory be even remotely plausible. To put this in context: SSC is influential in a small but powerful corner of the tech industry. It is not, however, a site that most people, even at the New York Times. are aware exists – and certainly, the Times and its journalists are not threatened by its existence. They are not out to destroy the site, or “get” Scott, or punish him. At the risk of puncturing egos: they are not thinking about Scott or the site at all.

Even the reporter working on the story has no especial investment in its subject. That reporter is also probably working on six other stories at the same time, thinking about their friends, family, what their kid needs to do in Zoom school tomorrow, the book they want to read, whether Donald Trump will get arrested, whether rats dream of boredom. They do not sit around thinking about how they’re going to “get” people they write about, and when subjects think they do, it’s more a reflection of the subject’s self-perception (or self-importance) and, sometimes, a sprinkling of unadulterated narcissism. 

«

So very much this. The only questions journalists ask themselves about a story are “do I think this a good story?” and then “will anyone else think this is a good story, starting with my editor?” Sometimes the answer to the first question is “no”, but the editor wants them to write it anyway.
unique link to this extract

---

Top five reasons why restaurants fail in the first year • Restaurant Blue Book

What surprised me about this article was that none of the reasons is “food’s not good enough”.
unique link to this extract

---

Clubhouse, a tiny audio chat app, breaks through • The New York Times

Erin Griffith and Taylor Lorenz with your primer about the service, in case you haven’t heard enough about it:

»

Clubhouse has generated debate about whether audio is the next wave of social media, moving digital connections beyond text, photos and videos to old-fashioned voice. In thousands of chatrooms every day, Clubhouse’s users have conducted unfettered conversations on subjects as varied as astrophysics, geopolitics, queer representation in Bollywood and even cosmic poetry.

“This is a major change in how the social internet works,” said Dave Morin, who founded the social network Path more than a decade ago and has invested in Clubhouse. “I believe it’s a new chapter.”

Clubhouse’s trajectory has been rapid — it had just a few thousand users in May — even though the app is invitation-only and not widely available. The invitations are so coveted that they have been listed on eBay for as much as $89. Media companies such as Barstool Sports have also set up Clubhouse accounts, and at least one firm has said it plans to hire a “senior Clubhouse executive.”

The attention has overwhelmed the tiny San Francisco start-up, which has around a dozen employees and was founded by two entrepreneurs, Paul Davison and Rohan Seth. While Clubhouse raised more than $100 million in funding last month and was valued at $1bn, it has struggled to handle the surging traffic. On Wednesday, the app crashed. Also, Facebook and Twitter are working on similar products to compete with it.

Mr. Davison created several social networking apps, including Highlight, which allowed users to see and message people nearby. Mr. Seth was a Google engineer and co-founded a company, Memry Labs, which built apps. Those start-ups were either bought or shut down.

In 2019, the two men — who had met through tech circles in 2011 — built a prototype podcasting app, Talkshow, which they called their “one last try.” But Talkshow felt too much like a formal broadcast, so they decided to add a way for people to spontaneously join the conversation, Mr. Davison said in an interview with the “Hello Monday” podcast last month.

«

So attempts to build podcast businesses/apps have led both to Twitter and now Clubhouse. It’s a space full of frustration which forces people to break out of it.
unique link to this extract

---

Apple approached Nissan to work on autonomous car project • Financial Times

Kana Inagaki, Peter Campbell and Patrick McGee:

»

one person with knowledge of the discussions said talks faltered after the US company asked that Nissan make Apple-branded cars, a demand that would effectively downgrade the automaker to a hardware supplier.

Many carmakers have expressed a fear of becoming “the Foxconn of the auto industry”, a reference to the Taiwanese manufacturing group that assembles iPhones.

Apple declined to comment.

Ashwani Gupta, Nissan’s chief operating officer, said the Japanese group “is not” in talks with Apple, whose interest in entering the auto industry goes back to 2014.

“We have our own customer satisfaction, which comes by car. No way we are going to change the way we make cars,” Gupta said in an interview with the Financial Times. “The way we design, the way we develop, and the way we manufacture is going to be as an automotive manufacturer, as Nissan.”

Gupta said the company was open to exploring partnerships with tech groups to adapt to the shift towards connected vehicles and autonomous driving, pointing to collaborations with Google and other start-ups.

But he added: “We have to check who has got the best competency to catch what the customer is thinking. For this, we can do the partnership, but that is to adapt their services to our product, not vice versa.”

«

Understandable from Nissan; there’s always going to be the fear of being subsumed. Is Apple going to have to struggle to find manufacturing capacity?
unique link to this extract

---

Jaguar to lose internal combustion engines in new EV strategy • Ars Technica

Jonathan Gitlin:

»

Big change is in store for Jaguar Land Rover. The British automaker has a new global strategy, as revealed earlier on Monday by new CEO Thierry Bolloré. There’s a new roadmap for Jaguar, which will lose its internal combustion engines as it focuses on purely electric luxury cars. Six new battery EVs are in the works for Land Rover, and the company is exploring hydrogen fuel cells as well.

…Under the Reimagine strategy, Bolloré said that JLR will become a “battery first business.” For Land Rover, there are six new BEVs scheduled to arrive by 2026, although the first of these isn’t due until 2024. Future Land Rovers will be built using a pair of new flexible vehicle architectures—Modular Longitudinal Architecture and Electric Modular Architecture—both of which are powertrain-agnostic. And production for MLA vehicles will take place at Solihull in the British midlands.

By 2026, the brand will also retire its diesel engines, and Bolloré said that by 2036, Land Rover should have zero tailpipe emissions, with a goal for the entire company to be carbon-neutral by 2039.

«

Well, things are starting to change. Land Rover’s most ardent fans are usually to be found on weekends destroying bridle paths by churning them up and getting stuck. I wonder if they’ll feel the fun is the same without the roar of wasted diesel.
unique link to this extract

---

This radio website is my favorite discovery so far during our lockdown era • BGR

Andy Meek:

»

For anyone who likes to listen to music online and enjoys services like Spotify, there’s a free Internet site called Radio Garden that’s also worth checking out.

Radio Garden is basically like Google Earth, except for radio stations. Anywhere there’s a green dot on the world map, you can start playing a local radio station there.

With a simply click, you can start listening to local radio across the US and beyond, with broadcasts everywhere from Moscow to London, Tehran and more.

«

It is indeed good. A good lockdown diversion. (There was a version about 10 years ago which required downloading a huge app, or plugin, and wasn’t much good. It’s much improved.)
unique link to this extract

---

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

The WHO’s findings from Wuhan suggest a less dangerous form of Covid-19 was circulating there unnoticed for some time. CC-licensed photo by quapan 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 10 links for you. Pourquoi c’existe?. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

What do you actually agree to when you accept all cookies? • Conrad Akunga, Esquire

Conrad Akunga:

»

I have been writing software for exactly twenty years now. In the course of this I have learnt very many things, which I hope to journal over time.

One of them is this: people don’t read instructions.

You almost certainly haven’t read the Windows EULA. You haven’t read the iTunes EULA. You haven’t read the Linux GPL, or the licenses of any software.

Don’t worry. This is normal. You are not alone.

The same issue comes into play in our online existence. We heavily use the internet. And thanks to a thing called the GDPR we increasingly see banners like these [image of typical GDPR banner not bothered with because, hell, you’ll see enough of them today].

And, like almost everybody, the instant you saw one of these you clicked Accept and moved on with your life.

You didn’t click around to learn more, did you?

You are not alone.

The question is – what exactly are you agreeing to when you click Accept All?

So today I set out to actually see what it is one agrees to when they accept all.

«

As with the EULA for your computer software, you won’t actually read all of this post. But you’ll skim it and think bloody hell, is all this infrastructure really necessary?
unique link to this extract

---

WHO Wuhan mission finds possible signs of wider original outbreak in 2019 • CNN

Nick Paton Walsh:

»

Investigators from the World Health Organization (WHO) looking into the origins of coronavirus in China have discovered signs the outbreak was much wider in Wuhan in December 2019 than previously thought, and are urgently seeking access to hundreds of thousands of blood samples from the city that China has not so far let them examine.

The lead investigator for the WHO mission, Peter Ben Embarek, told CNN in a wide-ranging interview that the mission had found several signs of the more wide-ranging 2019 spread, including establishing for the first time there were over a dozen strains of the virus in Wuhan already in December. The team also had a chance to speak to the first patient Chinese officials said had been infected, an office worker in his 40s, with no travel history of note, reported infected on December 8.

The slow emergence of more detailed data gathered on the WHO’s long-awaited trip into China may add to concerns voiced by other scientists studying the origins of the disease that it may have been spreading in China long before its first official emergence in mid-December.
Embarek, who has just returned to Switzerland from Wuhan, told CNN: “The virus was circulating widely in Wuhan in December, which is a new finding.”

China seizes on lack of WHO breakthrough in Wuhan to claim coronavirus vindication
The WHO food safety specialist added the team had been presented by Chinese scientists with 174 cases of coronavirus in and around Wuhan in December 2019. Of these 100 had been confirmed by laboratory tests, he said, and another 74 through the clinical diagnosis of the patient’s symptoms.

«

Think back to last week’s Wired article about how the Kent variant very probably emerged from someone in whom the virus was replicating for a long time, keeping just ahead of their weakened immune system which couldn’t quite stamp it out. (Thanks G for the link.)

Now imagine that someone in China with a similarly weakened immune system was infected by a precursor to SARS-Cov-2: a version which couldn’t spread to other humans for whatever reason. They could have had that for months before the virus hit the mutation jackpot inside them and became something that hooked on to ACE2 and had an efficient spike protein.

And, you ask, where did that person get infected? If they had a weak immune system, it could have been from any of the places where humans interact with animals such as bats and pangolins. They’d have been a target for a virus just able to get a toehold in the human body.
unique link to this extract

---

Coronavirus is in the air — there’s too much focus on surfaces • Nature

The Editorial Board:

»

A year into the pandemic, the evidence is now clear. The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted predominantly through the air — by people talking and breathing out large droplets and small particles called aerosols. Catching the virus from surfaces — although plausible — seems to be rare, according to this Lancet paper.

Despite this, some public-health agencies still emphasize that surfaces pose a threat and should be disinfected frequently. The result is a confusing public message when clear guidance is needed on how to prioritize efforts to prevent the virus spreading.

In its most recent public guidance, updated last October, the World Health Organization (WHO) advised: “Avoid touching surfaces, especially in public settings, because someone with COVID-19 could have touched them before. Clean surfaces regularly with standard disinfectants.” A WHO representative told Nature in January that there is limited evidence of the coronavirus being passed on through contaminated surfaces known as fomites. But they added that fomites are still considered a possible mode of transmission, citing evidence that SARS‑CoV-2 RNA has been identified “in the vicinity of people infected with SARS-CoV-2”. And although the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says on its website that surface transmission is “not thought to be a common way that COVID-19 spreads”, it also says that “frequent disinfection of surfaces and objects touched by multiple people is important”.

This lack of clarity about the risks of fomites — compared with the much bigger risk posed by transmission through the air — has serious implications. People and organizations continue to prioritize costly disinfection efforts, when they could be putting more resources into emphasizing the importance of masks, and investigating measures to improve ventilation.

«

The WHO has looked out of touch the entire way through this pandemic. From its assurance that Covid didn’t spread between humans, to its advice on fomites, it’s appeared two steps behind.
unique link to this extract

---

Analysis: Shell says new ‘Brazil-sized’ forest would be needed to meet 1.5C climate goal • Carbon Brief

Josh Gabbattiss:

»

For the first time, Shell has released a “pathway” showing how the world could potentially meet the Paris Agreement’s ambitious goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C.

This marks a significant shift in attitude towards action on climate change, given that only six years ago executives at the oil-and-gas major were sceptical about warming not breaching 2C. It now says that the 1.5C goal could be achieved by 2100 with CO2 emissions reaching “net-zero” by 2058.

A pivotal moment came in 2018 when Shell outlined a ”plausible” route to meeting the Paris Agreement’s “well-below 2C” goal, including seeing “peak oil” in 2025 with “peak gas” following a decade later.

However, Carbon Brief analysis of Shell’s new “Sky 1.5” scenario shows that, despite its ”highly ambitious” framing, it is, in fact, nearly identical to its 2C predecessor. Shell’s vision of a continued role for oil, gas and coal until the end of the century remains essentially the same.

Aside from the temporary impact of Covid-19, the major difference between the two scenarios is the “extensive scale-up of nature-based solutions”, specifically planting trees over an “area approaching that of Brazil”.

«

A new forest the size of Brazil. Not sure there are that many Brazil-sized spaces currently available for tree planting. We really need something to get carbon out of the atmosphere.
unique link to this extract

---

A “predatory” stop-sign camera is terrorizing my neighborhood • Defector

Dave McKenna:

»

This particular stop-sign camera’s fortunes, however, may well have turned when it flashed at Deepak Gopalakrishna. 

Gopalakrishna happens to be a transportation engineer with a specialty in road safety. He’s lived in Petworth for years and told me he hadn’t ever gotten a ticket on Kansas Avenue NW until this summer. He started asking around and found that just about everybody else on his block had also gotten multiple $100 fines. He said his professional background and personal leanings have had him support pro-bike, “not car-friendly” programs like the Vision Zero project. And he said he has no fixed bias against speed cameras and red light cameras. But the rate at which he’d been nailed told him that this stop-sign camera had to go.

“I’ve got five tickets,” Gopalakrishna told me. “Before I found out about the first one, I’d gotten four more.”

Gopalakrishna FOIA’d for information on the equipment being used by the city for its stop-sign camera setup and just how many tickets had been issued at that one intersection. He learned that the stop-sign cam’s sensor in Petworth, a Smartmicro UMrr-11 Type 44 Radar Antenna, had been recalibrated on June 5, 2020. A ticket boom commenced soon after.

Data from MPD shows that in June 2020, the camera in question snapped 82 violators. Then there were 2,850 tickets in July 2020 (compared to 231 tickets in July 2019). Then the camera started flashing like paparazzi in Cannes: From August through November, a total of 17,216 tickets were issued. That’s $1,721,600 from one camera at one intersection in just four months. 

«

Turns out there’s no legal definition of “coming to a full stop”. Which means the camera operator can essentially define infractions as they like.
unique link to this extract

---

Report: Facebook plotting Apple Watch competitor for as soon as 2022 • 9to5Mac

Michael Potuck:

»

A new scoop from The Information says Facebook is developing an Apple Watch competitor with a focus on health and messaging. The possible smartwatch launch from the social media giant could happen as soon as 2022.

Based on four anonymous sources close to the project, The Information’s report says that Facebook is planning to include a cellular connection with its smartwatch so it could work without a smartphone. The Facebook wearable would have a tight integration with Facebook Messenger, but health features could be compatible with popular fitness platforms like Peloton.

However, as The Information notes, consumers trusting Facebook with health data may be an uphill battle:

»

The wrist device is expected to work via a cellular connection, without needing a smartphone. Facebook additionally plans to allow the device to connect to the services or hardware of health and fitness companies, such as Peloton Interactive, the maker of internet-connected exercise bikes. Given its spotty track record with user privacy, Facebook could face blowback from consumers with its wrist wearable, especially related to health aspects of the device.

«

As far as the OS, this first smartwatch is expected to run on Google’s Android but that Facebook is also developing its own OS for future wearables.

«

To be sold at cost, in order to push sales. Recall that this didn’t work out well when Facebook made a phone with HTC, though it seems to have gone OK with its Portal product. Now, since we’re talking about health-monitoring devices from surveilling companies…
unique link to this extract

---

What to do when your health and fitness goals turn against you • WIRED UK

Becca Caddy:

»

I’ve reviewed many different health and fitness tracking devices over the years, and, at times, I became overly concerned with hitting specific goals each day – to the point where I’d feel panicked or like a failure if my wearable told me I hadn’t burned enough calories or taken enough steps.

I’ve since learned this behaviour wasn’t motivated by fitness challenges or an interest in my health – which would have been my excuses at the time. Instead, this focus on everything my fitness tracker was telling me about my body, my health and my food intake had exacerbated problems I’d had with disordered eating in my teens. Except now I had a smart device strapped to my wrist making the worries about food and weight all that more difficult to escape from.

A growing pile of evidence suggests I’m not alone in finding that excessive tracking can worsen or, possibly, even cause an unhealthy preoccupation with health and fitness.

One 2018 study from Loughborough University and the University of Warwick found that 65% of young people in their sample reported using monitoring tools (this included both fitness trackers and calorie counting apps).

Those who used these tools exercised more compulsively and had more problems with dietary restraint, concerns about weight and shape, exercising for weight control and purging behaviours – which in this case meant exercising to work off calories – than those that didn’t.

«

Facebook wouldn’t find a way to make you anxious about your health readings, I’m sure.
unique link to this extract

---

Rise of the Barstool conservatives • The Week

Matthew Walther:

»

Trump’s greatest achievement, one that speaks far more than his actual record in office to his business acumen, was recognizing that in the 2012 presidential election, the old [conservative] movement vein had been exhausted and that a much richer one was awaiting exploration.

What Trump recognized was that there are millions of Americans who do not oppose or even care about abortion or same-sex marriage, much less stem-cell research or any of the other causes that had animated traditional social conservatives. Instead he correctly intuited that the new culture war would be fought over very different (and more nebulous) issues: vague concerns about political correctness and “SJWs,” opposition to the popularization of so-called critical race theory, sentimentality about the American flag and the military, the rights of male undergraduates to engage in fornication while intoxicated without fear of the Title IX mafia.

Whatever their opinions might have been 20 years ago, in 2021 these are people who, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, accept pornography, homosexuality, drug use, legalized gambling, and whatever GamerGate was about. On economic questions their views are a curious and at times incoherent mixture of standard libertarian talking points and pseudo-populism, embracing lower taxes on the one hand and stimulus checks and stricter regulation of social media platforms on the other.

I have come to think of the people who answer to the above description as “Barstool conservatives,” in reference to the popular sports website, especially its founder and CEO, Dave Portnoy. For many years the political significance of Barstool was implicit at best, reflected mainly in its conflicts with Deadspin and other members of the tacitly liberal sports journalism establishment.

«

This definitely captures something about what was going on. Though don’t forget that many of Trump’s supporters were hardly in the first flush of youth. I do think that Walther is accurate in identifying a segment of the young white male American population which thinks like this. It’s a libertarian streak that has probably been amplified by the internet, which would explain why it has risen so much compared to 20 years ago. The puzzle is how Trump identified it. Through his awful children, perhaps?
unique link to this extract

---

Clubhouse users’ raw audio may be exposed to Chinese partner • Bloomberg

Jamie Tarabay:

»

Clubhouse, the popular app that allows people to create digital discussion groups, says it’s reviewing its data security practices after the Stanford Internet Observatory found potential vulnerabilities in its infrastructure that could allow external access to users’ raw audio data.

The SIO confirmed that Agora Inc., a Shanghai-based start-up with offices in Silicon Valley, provides back-end infrastructure to Clubhouse and sells a “real-time voice and video engagement platform.”

User IDs are transmitted in plaintext over the internet, making them “trivial to intercept,” the Observatory noted. User IDs are like a serial number, not the username of the person. Agora would likely have access to users’ raw audio, potentially providing access to the Chinese government, it said.

“Any observer of internet traffic could easily match IDs on shared chatrooms to see who is talking to whom,” the SIO said in its Twitter feed about its findings. “For mainland Chinese users, this is troubling.”

SIO, a program at Stanford University that studies disinformation on the internet and social media platforms, said it observed metadata from a Clubhouse chatroom “being relayed to servers we believe to be hosted in” China. Analysts also saw audio being relayed “to servers managed by Chinese entities and distributed around the world,” their report noted.

«

This is all totally predictable. There will also at some point be a hack of user IDs, and there will be an influx of Nazis, and…
unique link to this extract

---

Why does the Apple TV still exist? • Six Colors

Jason Snell:

»

Why does this product still exist, and is there anywhere for it to go next? [John] Gruber and [Ben] Thompson [in an episode of their podcast Dithering] suggest that perhaps the way forward is to lean into an identity as a low-end gaming console. Maybe amp up the processor power, bundle a controller, and try to use Apple Arcade to emphasize that this is a box that is for more than watching video.

The thing is, that’s really been the story of the Apple TV for the last few years, and so far as I can tell, it’s basically gone nowhere. Apple isn’t Nintendo or Sony or Microsoft when it comes to gaming. Apple’s track record with gaming products isn’t solid, to say the least. It’s hard for me to see this succeeding—but it doesn’t mean Apple won’t try.

The other possibility that I’ve come up with is to merge the Apple TV with some other technologies in order to make something more than just a simple TV streamer. Gaming can be a part of that, yes, but there needs to be more. Broader HomeKit support, perhaps with support for other wireless home standards, would help, as would a much more sophisticated set of home automations.

And if Apple really wants to continue to play in the home-theater space, I’ve been saying for years that there’s room for an Apple SoundBar, that could integrate the big sound of HomePod with the Apple TV software to create a solid music and video experience.

Then there’s the final possibility: no more Apple TV. Removing it simplifies Apple’s product naming scheme (Apple TV is a hardware box, an app, and a streaming service, but not yet a dessert topping), and allows the company to focus on other things—perhaps including other home-themed products that might be more up its alley.

«

He’s right: as a streaming box, it’s very expensive. It has the other functions like controlling HomeKit, but I suspect that’s still quite niche. But Apple may be saying that it’s dead already by simply ignoring it, as it did with its Airport range of wireless modems. (Thompson made this point, and I agree.)
unique link to this extract

---

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

A cosmic ray helped a gamer produce an unrepeatably fast time on a speedrun – a one-in-a-trillion event CC-licensed photo by Lox & Cream Cheese 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 9 links for you. No, you’re on mute. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Who gets cancelled on Clubhouse? • UnHerd

Gavin Haynes:

»

In purely commercial terms, ugly, fractious environments are lousy for business. Everyone would like to create the next Instagram. Filtered pictures of clean-eating Zoomers in yoga pants equals a place to advertise $1,000 handbags. No one wants to create the next reddit. Incels looking to hive-mind some new social Darwinism equals a space to advertise brain pills and male sex toys.

Clubhouse, then, seeks to address the main issues of the last decade’s social technology. For starters, it responds to what Twitter does badly: allowing aggression, of the “you’d never actually say that to someone’s face” variety, and tames it, by forcing you to actually say that to someone’s… voice, at least. The rooms are moderated, and at this stage moderators hold the power of life and death: not only can they boot you out, they are entitled to delete your entire profile.

In the same way, the fear of the offence archivists is supposed to be mitigated by the sense that the “rooms” operate under informal Chatham House-like rules. No recording is permitted — that’s in the terms and conditions — and it’s physically impossible to record within the app. This is the same system that allowed Snapchat to grab a younger generation, who sought intimacy without permanency.

…Clubhouse, on the other hand, removes the poison hand of the algorithm from the system, by making rooms curated entities: a human creates one, and other humans join it. No upvotes involved.

But without a decent mechanism to pre-sift content, discovery is haphazard at best. Mostly, you’re left ambling the hallways, poking around groups called things like “Why do people fetishize wealth and the wealthy”, “We’re 35+ Why Aren’t We Allowed To Age Gracefully”, “Let Men Cheat I Don’t See The Problem”. It’s a bit like going behind the velvet rope at an exclusive VIP zone, only to find it peopled entirely by those with nothing to say.

Perhaps because of the strong network effects of an invite-only policy, the site’s early adopters seem to be the worst meeting of minds since Molotov shook hands with von Ribbentrop. They divide neatly into five categories: Bitcoin bros, Silicon Valley types, “digital nomads”. Online marketing ‘gurus’, wannabe influencers, failing musicians, pluggers. American women trading low-rent love advice (“What y’all getting ya men for V Day”). Empowerment ‘gurus’ (strong crossover with all three other groups), shilling bromides about believing in yourself (“Happiness Advice from HAPPY Millionaires”.) And Eric Weinstein.

«

unique link to this extract

---

Black doctors work overtime to combat Clubhouse Covid myths • Bloomberg

William Turton:

»

Fagbuyi is just one of dozens of Black doctors and medical professionals who have taken it upon themselves to counter Covid-19 misinformation, which has proliferated on the app alongside the surge in new users. Unlike Facebook, Twitter or Youtube, where the companies have tried to impose rules on objectionable content, Clubhouse leaves the moderation to the app’s users, who control who gets to speak in certain rooms.

Medical professionals of many backgrounds are on Clubhouse too. Some of them, like Fagbuyi, are racing to dispel disinformation. But the effort has taken on added urgency among Black medical professionals, according to several of the participants and researchers. They said Clubhouse has become so popular and influential in the Black community that false claims about Covid-19 and its vaccines can’t be ignored.

“Black people are acting as first responders in the disinformation crisis,” said Erin Shields, a national field organizer at MediaJustice, a social justice non-profit. Some of the medical professionals said they have been bullied and harassed for their efforts.

Clubhouse declined to comment.

Fagbuyi, a former biodefense and public health expert at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said friends urged him to start using the app to counter the false claims. Clubhouse users were spreading conspiracy theories about 5G technology being linked to the virus and about the safety of the vaccine, they told him.

…Fagbuyi said some users have accused him of being secretly paid by the government to promote the vaccine. “There’s a learning curve to using the app,” he said. “Going in on a suicide mission is not necessary.”

«

Gosh, abuse and misinformation. But Tyler Cowen assured us yesterday – in an opinion piece for Bloomberg – that this wouldn’t happen. A day is a long time in social media. Plus it’s a privacy nightmare.
unique link to this extract

---

The man who produced Steve Jobs’ keynotes for 20 years • Cake

“Chris” interviews Wayne Goodrich, who produced every Steve Jobs keynote for 20 years:

»

Chris: How much time went into preparing the iPhone demo?

Goodrich: Quite a lot! That’s the thing, no other CEO would have imagined spending the time Steve invested in his keynotes. For the most important ones, we started 3 or so months out. He would run the company until maybe 2:00 pm and then spend a few hours with me. Then he may start in again in the evening, me at my house and him at his, and we’d stay up until midnight. Sometimes we’d be at it again at 6 am. 

I saw part of my job—and Steve never knew this—as managing his emotional ramp to the event. I’ve even described my job much like being a product manager. There were all kinds of things that could mess that up: the product timing, or the photos that were taken weren’t good enough, or he had a bad day, or we didn’t have all the assets he needed… or at times too many! 

With movies, you never want anything to affect suspension of belief. You want your audience to stay in that magical moment and not think about how things are done.  With the iPhone, we wanted to show that if you rotate your phone to landscape mode, the photo would automatically rotate too. But we were not projecting a video of the actual iPhone that Steve was holding in his hand, only the video from the iPhone. That would have made it shaky on the big screen with distracting reflections.

So we showed a graphic of an iPhone, to look like the Keynote slides, and projected Steve’s demo iPhone screen into the exact right position in the graphic. The trick was that when Steve rotated the iPhone to landscape mode, the right thing to do to keep customers in the moment was to rotate the iPhone graphic with its inserted video feed rotating in sync as well. But how?

It took a month for one of the brilliant Apple engineers to work out how to do this. It looked natural to the audience and no one had to think about how it happened. 

When Steve saw this happen he first time, he knew it’d be magic and it had to be shown live. He rotated it back and forth several times in his demo and no one ever questioned what they were seeing because it looked exactly they way it should.  

If I remember, the internal estimate of the marketing power of the iPhone demo Steve did that day was in excess of $1 billion of PR spend from demo until we shipped.

«

Amazing. From 2018, but evergreen. Never knew that detail about the rotation; no doubt there are many more. (Another piece on Jobs’s keynote preparation: Behind the magic curtain, from January 2006.)
unique link to this extract

---

Despite scanning millions with facial recognition, Feds caught zero imposters at airports last year • OneZero

Dave Gershgorn:

»

US Customs and Border Protection scanned more than 23 million people with facial recognition technology at airports, seaports, and pedestrian crossings in 2020, the agency recently revealed in its annual report on trade and travel.

The agency scanned four million more people than in 2019. The report indicates that the system caught no imposters traveling through airports last year and fewer than 100 new pedestrian imposters.

Since the agency started public tracking statistics in 2018, it has only caught seven imposters trying to enter the United States through airports, and 285 attempting to do so over land crossings. These facial recognition scans are the result of CBP partnerships with more than 30 points of entry to the US.

«

OK, but how many imposto/ers does the CBP thing normally try to come into the US? Surely that’s a pretty important number. The CBP annual report says that since 2018 it has caught seven at airports and 285 in the “land pedestrian environment” – which I suspect means the Mexico border, as with this case in El Paso, Texas. (There were a lot of people being caught with bad documents then.) I suspect airports don’t get many impostors because travellers have already gone through a passport check at the boarding side.
unique link to this extract

---

How an ionizing particle from outer space helped a Mario speedrunner save time • The Gamer

Gavin Burtt:

»

Normally, a player must bump into a ceiling with the edge of their hitbox, while a grabbable ceiling is directly above them, higher up. The game will see that Mario is touching a ceiling and that there is a grabbable ceiling above him, so it will think Mario is grabbing that higher grabbable ceiling, warping him up to it. [The player] DOTA_Teabag was simply landing on a platform, not touching any ceilings, and got up-warped for seemingly no reason.

In the glitch hunt that would follow, numerous speedrunners [link added – CA] and glitch-hunters tried their hands at replicating this glitch. Hunters matched the inputs of DOTA_Teabag down to the frame in emulators in order to try and pull it off and claim the large prize, but to no avail. But why was nobody able to pull it off, even when replicating exactly the inputs that DOTA_Teabag had used? Simple: this glitch requires a phenomenon known as a single-event upset, which is very much out of any player’s control.

A single-event upset is a change of a binary state in a bit – either from a 0 to a 1, or vice versa – caused by an ionizing particle colliding with a sensitive microelectronic device. This occurs because of a discharge in the storage elements (the memory bits) after a free charge is created by ionization of the particle near the node. Cosmic particles that enter the Earth’s atmosphere will collide with atmospheric atoms, leading to a sort of rain of protons and neutrons which can affect electronic devices they contact. While most of the time, the effects are barely noticeable, as the bit affected may not be of huge importance, this case here was very noticeable.

During the race, an ionizing particle from outer space collided with DOTA_Teabag’s N64, flipping the eighth bit of Mario’s first height byte. Specifically, it flipped the byte from 11000101 to 11000100, from “C5” to “C4”. This resulted in a height change from C5837800 to C4837800, which by complete chance, happened to be the exact amount needed to warp Mario up to the higher floor at that exact moment. This was tested by pannenkoek12 – the same person who put up the bounty – using a script that manually flipped that particular bit at the right time, confirming the suspicion of a bit flip.

«

unique link to this extract

---

The CDC says tight-fit masks or double masking increases protection • The New York Times

Roni Caryn Rabin and Sheryl Gay Stolberg:

»

Wearing a mask — any mask — reduces the risk of infection with the coronavirus, but wearing a more tightly fitted surgical mask, or layering a cloth mask atop a surgical mask, can vastly increase protections to the wearer and others, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Wednesday.

New research by the agency shows that transmission of the virus can be reduced by up to 96.5% if both an infected individual and an uninfected individual wear tightly fitted surgical masks or a cloth-and-surgical-mask combination.

Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, director of the C.D.C., announced the findings during Wednesday’s White House coronavirus briefing, and coupled them with a plea for Americans to wear “a well-fitting mask” that has two or more layers.

…“Any mask is better than none,” said Dr. John Brooks, lead author of the new C.D.C. study. “There are substantial and compelling data that wearing a mask reduces spread, and in communities that adopt mask wearing, new infections go down.”

…One option for reducing transmission is to wear a cloth mask over a surgical mask, the agency said. The alternative is to fit the surgical mask more tightly on the face by “knotting and tucking” — that is, knotting the two strands of the ear loops together where they attach to the edge of the mask, then folding and flattening the extra fabric at the mask’s edge and tucking it in for a tighter seal.

«

(Thanks G for the link.)
unique link to this extract

---

Apple partners with TSMC to develop ultra-advanced displays • Nikkei Asia

Lauly Li and Cheng Ting-Fang:

»

Apple has partnered with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) to develop ultra-advanced display technology at a secretive facility in Taiwan, Nikkei Asia learned.

The California tech giant plans to develop micro OLED displays — a radically different type of display built directly onto chip wafers — with the ultimate goal of using the new technology in its upcoming augmented reality devices, sources briefed on the matter said.

Apple is collaborating with its longtime chip supplier TSMC because micro OLED displays are not built on glass substrates like the conventional LCD screens in smartphones and TVs, or OLED displays used in high-end smartphones. Instead, these new displays are built directly onto wafers — the substrates that semiconductors are fabricated on — allowing for displays that are far thinner and smaller and use less power, making them more suitable for use in wearable AR devices, according to sources familiar with the projects.

The project represents a further deepening of Apple’s relationship with TSMC, the sole supplier of iPhone processors, even as the U.S. tech giant works to reduce its reliance on other major suppliers. The Taiwanese chipmaking giant is also helping Apple build its in-house designed central processors for Mac computers.

The micro OLED project is now at the trial production stage, sources said, and it will take several years to achieve mass production. The displays under development are less than 1 inch in size.

“Panel players are good at making screens bigger and bigger, but when it comes to thin and light devices like AR glasses, you need a very small screen,” said a source who has direct information on the micro OLED R&D project.

«

unique link to this extract

---

Apple redirects Google Safe Browsing traffic through its own proxy servers to prevent disclosing users’ IP addresses to Google in iOS 14.5 • The 8 Bit

Taha Broach:

»

Google Safe Browsing is a security service created by Google that checks whether a website is malicious. When you access a website on the desktop version of Chrome on your Mac or PC, for instance, Google Safe Browsing checks if a website is safe to browse and displays a warning accordingly. The user ultimately has the choice, however.

As Reddit user u/jaydenkieran explains, Apple uses Google Safe Browsing when you enable “Fraudulent Website Warning” within the Safari settings in the Settings app on iPhone or iPad.

According to Google, its Safe Browsing system works by scanning sections of Google’s web index and “identifying potentially compromised websites.” Then, Google tests those websites by using a virtual machine to check if the website compromises the system. If it does, it’s added to Google’s online database. Google also identifies phishing websites by using statistical models.

According to Apple, before visiting a website, Safari may send hashed prefixes of the URL (Apple terms it “information calculated from the website address”) to Google Safe Browsing to check if there’s a match.

Since Apple uses a hashed prefix, Google cannot learn which website the user is trying to visit. Up until iOS 14.5, Google could also see the IP address of where that request is coming from. However, since Apple now proxies Google Safe Browsing traffic, it further safeguards users’ privacy while browsing using Safari.

«

I’m not entirely sure what the benefit to the user is here. So Google knows that you’re trying to reach a malicious site? Is that particularly bad? Apple is certainly covering all the crevices here. I guess Google has a record of trying to find ways around blocks that Apple puts in the way. (Via Counternotions.)
unique link to this extract

---

Lockdown scepticism shows the limits of post-truth politics • Politics.co.uk

Ian Dunt:

»

There’s not much good to be said about lockdown scepticism. It is an ethical abyss, a testament to how certain commentators and politicians will allow their need for attention to overrule even the most rudimentary of moral standards. But it has at least achieved one useful thing: it demonstrates the limitations of post-truth politics.

This approach to politics has defined the last few years of British debate. It burst into the open during the Brexit referendum and dominated the way it played out afterwards. It didn’t matter how many experts pointed out that customs borders required checks on goods or how many studies were released demonstrating that friction in trade would reduce its flow. Hardline proponents of Brexit in parliament and the press simply dismissed it.

Lockdown scepticism functions in the same way. It has various levels of severity, from mild to outright lunacy…

…In the country at large, there is very little distinction on lockdown views on the basis of the Leave/Remain divide. A Kantar Public Voice survey found no difference in lockdown compliance according to people’s EU referendum vote. A recent YouGov poll found that Remainers were only slightly more supportive of tougher government action. But the most forceful anti-lockdown writers, broadcasters and politicians are all Brexiters and they have deployed the exact same form of argument used during the Brexit debate.

Except this time it isn’t getting the desired result. It’s like watching an old man use the same chat-up lines he deployed in his youth and finding out they don’t work anymore. The reasons for this are simple and they give a decent indication of the limits of a post-truth discourse. They’re about the speed and spread of refutation.

Brexit was a liar’s charter. You could say whatever you wanted, safe in the knowledge that it would only be disproved years from now. …Covid isn’t so easily smudged. It is a direct and immediate link of claim and empirical verification. Each day, we get new data on infections and deaths. We do not have to wait years to see the effect of policies. And they are not spread out – they are concentrated in a set of basic numbers.

«

It has been noticeable that the anti-lockdown stuff has been getting so little traction more widely. Aside from TalkRadio, which seems to be a hotbed of denial, and pockets of the Daily Telegraph (which turns out not to be that influential). People intuit that lockdowns work for an airborne infection.
unique link to this extract

---

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

The next update to Apple Maps will let users record details about road accidents for crowdsourcing. CC-licensed photo by Mike McBey 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 10 links for you. That’s dialling down? I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Facebook dials down the politics for users • The New York Times

Kevin Roose and Mike Isaac:

»

After inflaming political discourse around the globe, Facebook is trying to turn down the temperature.

The social network announced on Wednesday that it had started changing its algorithm to reduce the political content in users’ news feeds. The less political feed will be tested on a fraction of Facebook’s users in Canada, Brazil and Indonesia beginning this week, and will be expanded to the United States in the coming weeks, the company said.

“During these initial tests we’ll explore a variety of ways to rank political content in people’s feeds using different signals, and then decide on the approaches we’ll use going forward,” Aastha Gupta, a Facebook product management director, wrote in a blog post announcing the test.

Facebook previewed the change last month when Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive, said the company was experimenting with ways to tamp down divisive political debates among users.
“One of the top pieces of feedback we’re hearing from our community right now is that people don’t want politics and fighting to take over their experience on our services,” he said.

Political stories won’t disappear from users’ feeds altogether. Content from official government agencies and services will be exempt from the algorithm change, Facebook said, as will information about Covid-19 from organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization. Last month, Mr. Zuckerberg said users would also still be able to discuss politics inside private groups.

«

You probably feel that you’ve been hearing this story repeatedly over the past few months. That’s because you have. Zuckerberg said so two weeks ago. A block on political ads. A quiet block on political group recommendations in November.
unique link to this extract

---

Clubhouse success shows niceness can exist on social media • Bloomberg

Tyler Cowen:

»

To me, a lot of Clubhouse sounds like elders chatting around a traditional campfire, with many of the younger people listening in (noting that “elder” here is defined more by status than by age). Extra points go to those who are genuine, engaging and good at thinking out loud and leading a group. There is a subtle but definite set of hierarchies, though to the benefit of the conversation.

Tech is a major topic on Clubhouse, but there is also chatter about the NBA, South Asian cuisine, Nigerian politics, and dating advice, as well as many other topics. If you are a member, you can start your own room. Black voices are prominent.

Many of the virtues of Clubhouse stem from its software. Although the company has only about 10 people, the user experience is fun and empowering. For one thing, you can be involved immediately by the mere push of a single button, a kind of “one-click” listening.

Unlike a Zoom call, there is no video option, so it is more relaxing (or you can do the dishes while listening). The audience is represented by tiles with photos, so speakers feel the force of the crowd, which further encourages pleasant behavior. Room moderators can decide who has speaking rights and who does not. Practices of calling on people, and granting speaking rights, produce orderly discussions, though there are also more rowdy rooms with 30 or more people with speaking rights.

Members participate by invitation only, although membership has become increasingly easy to obtain since the service’s debut in spring 2020. Through access to your address book and the list of people you “follow,” Clubhouse connects you to conversations and people in a way that Zoom does not.

Recording conversations is against the rules. That lowers the risk of being canceled for a wayward remark. People still say bad things on Clubhouse, of course — but the people who get upset tend to go to Twitter to complain. The expectation is that moderators will restore order, and disgruntled listeners can just leave the room.

«

So lovely to see someone who believes that there’s a social network where its wonderful design means bad things won’t happen, while admitting that bad things have already happened. Clubhouse is small. That’s why it hasn’t had huge rows. But they’ll come, don’t worry. (Especially now that Elon Musk has agreed to do an interview with, gods preserve us, Kanye West.)
unique link to this extract

---

Apple Maps is getting Google and Waze-like accident reporting • The Verge

Mitchell Clark:

»

Apple is bringing accident, hazard, and speed check reporting to Apple Maps. The feature is currently only available to users with the iOS 14.5 beta, and is similar to user-reporting features found in Waze and Google Maps.

When you’re using the feature, you (or preferably a passenger) can press a new Report button in the bottom tray, and select what type of incident or hazard you’re reporting. You can even do this using Siri: I was also able to say “there’s a speed trap here” or “there’s something on the road.” MacRumors shows that the interface is available on the CarPlay version of Maps, too.

This user-centric reporting feature is now something that all the major maps app either have, or have in development. While this feature was popularized with Waze, it’s been available in Google Maps since April of 2019, so Apple is playing catch-up here (like it’s also trying to do by adding user-generated photos and reviews to Maps).

«

unique link to this extract

---

A lone infection may have changed the course of the pandemic • WIRED UK

Matt Reynolds:

»

natural selection might push the virus to transmit more easily, or become resistant to our immune response, but in the pressure-cooker environment of a single human body these changes can accelerate. Ravi Gupta, a professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Cambridge studied the evolution of Sars-CoV-2 in a man with lymphoma who had undergone chemotherapy and had been chronically infected with the virus for 102 days before dying.

After the man was treated with blood plasma from a recovered Covid-19 patient, at day 63 of his illness, the genetic makeup of the Sars-CoV-2 viruses within him started to shift. By day 82, viruses with a six-letter deletion in the spike gene were now the dominant population. This deletion – called ΔH69/V70Δ – also seems to be partly behind the increased transmission of the B.1.1.7 variant, as it makes it easier for the virus to enter host cells. The same mutation was also found in another chronically infected patient, a 47-year-old woman admitted to hospital in Saint Petersburg who has been ill for more than four months.

Within the man Gupta and his colleagues studied, the composition of the viral population kept changing. By day 86, the ΔH69/V70Δ population had been overtaken by a subset of Sars-CoV-2 with a different mutation in its spike gene. A week later both of these previous populations were barely anywhere to be seen and a new mutant had become the most populous strain.

For Gupta, this genetic tug-of-war is a likely explanation for the emergence of the UK variant. “What’s going on biologically within a person is probably going to explain this because there are very different selection pressures going on,” he says.

«

In hindsight it’s obvious, and scientists were saying from early on that it was likely that the British variant emerged from a single, chronically infected person. But I don’t think we heard this sort of explanation before it happened. (Thanks G for the link.)
unique link to this extract

---

Big Sur upgrade not enough free space = serious issue & possible data loss! • Mr Macintosh

»

When you start the macOS Big Sur upgrade, the installer should first check to make sure your Mac has enough free space available. If the installer finds that you do not have enough free space for the upgrade, it will stop and not let you continue. You should see a pop up message showing you how much space is needed before you can attempt the upgrade again.

This free space check is NOT working. The upgrade will start even if you only have 1% of free space left and will fail. Your hard drive is now 100% full and the installer is now stuck in a boot loop attempting to finish the install. This leaves you unable access your data! I will go over all the details below and show you a fix at the end.

«

Amazing that this was never spotted in all the development. But it’s a serious problem which has left some people with corruption or lost data.
unique link to this extract

---

Authorities arrest SIM swapping gang that targeted celebrities • ZDNet

Catalin Cimpanu:

»

Eight men were arrested across England and Scotland this week as part of a coordinated crackdown against a SIM swapping gang that has hijacked the identities and social media profiles of US celebrities.

The UK National Crime Agency, which made the arrests on Tuesday, said the gang targeted well-known sports stars, musicians, and influencers, primarily located in the US.

“These arrests follow earlier ones in Malta and Belgium of other members belonging to the same criminal network,” Europol, which coordinated the multi-national investigation, said today.

Officials said this gang engaged in SIM swapping attacks, where they tricked US mobile operators into assigning a celebrity’s phone number to a new SIM card under the attacker’s control.

While they had access to the victim’s phone number, the SIM swappers would reset passwords and bypass two-factor authentication on the victim’s accounts.

“This enabled them to steal money, bitcoin and personal information, including contacts synced with online accounts,” the NCA said.

Europol said the gang stole more than $100m worth of cryptocurrency using this method.

«

This was more about targeting people who had cryptocurrency, it seems, and some of the big names got hit too. Quite an international gang – though the internet has made all that a lot simpler at least.
unique link to this extract

---

TikTok sale to Oracle and Walmart is shelved as Biden reviews security • WSJ

John D. McKinnon and Alex Leary:

»

A US plan to force the sale of TikTok’s American operations to a group including Oracle and Walmart has been shelved indefinitely, people familiar with the situation said, as President Biden undertakes a broad review of his predecessor’s efforts to address potential security risks from Chinese tech companies.

The TikTok deal—which had been driven by then-President Donald Trump—has languished since last fall in the midst of successful legal challenges to the US government’s effort by TikTok’s owner, China’s ByteDance.

Discussions have continued between representatives of ByteDance and US national security officials, the people said. Those discussions have centered on data security and ways to prevent the information TikTok collects on American users from being accessed by the Chinese government, they said.

But no imminent decision on how to resolve the issues surrounding TikTok is expected as the Biden administration determines its own response to the potential security risk posed by Chinese tech companies’ collection of data.

“We plan to develop a comprehensive approach to securing US data that addresses the full range of threats we face,” National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne said.

«

Larry Ellison came so close, SO close, to having it in his hand. But Trump’s administration could never hold focus. There is a case (being made by Ben Thompson and Matt Stoller) that TikTok does pose a security risk because who knows what the algorithm, controlled out of China, is doing?
unique link to this extract

---

Elon Musk wants clean power. But Tesla’s carrying bitcoin’s dirty baggage • Reuters

Anna Irrera and Tom Wilson:

»

The digital currency is created when high-powered computers compete against other machines to solve complex mathematical puzzles, an energy-intensive process that currently often relies on fossil fuels, particularly coal, the dirtiest of them all.

At current rates, such bitcoin “mining” devours about the same amount of energy annually as the Netherlands did in 2019, the latest available data from the University of Cambridge and the International Energy Agency shows.

Bitcoin production is estimated to generate between 22 and 22.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year, or between the levels produced by Jordan and Sri Lanka, according to a 2019 study in scientific journal Joule.

The landmark inclusion of the cryptocurrency in Tesla’s investment portfolio could complicate the company’s zero-emissions ethos, according to some investors, at a time when ESG – environmental, social and governance – considerations have become a major factor for global investors.

“We are of course very concerned about the level of carbon dioxide emissions generated from bitcoin mining,” said Ben Dear, CEO of Osmosis Investment Management, a sustainable investor managing around $2.2 billion in assets that holds Tesla stock in several portfolios.

“We hope that when Tesla’s bitcoin ventures are over, they will concentrate on measuring and disclosing to their market their full suite of environmental factors, and if they continue to buy or indeed start mining bitcoin, that they include the relevant energy consumption data in these disclosures.”

«

unique link to this extract

---

Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI)

A useful reference about the amount of energy consumed by bitcoin – with upper and lower bounds, because it has to be a guess.
unique link to this extract

---

bitcom • The World Is Yours*

Alex Hern:

»

That long-run electricity cost is effectively built in to bitcoin. If more electricity is spent than the total value of the rewards, then eventually, the least efficient miners go bankrupt, because they’ve been spending money on electricity and computers and not winning any rewards. But if less electricity is spent than the total value of the rewards, then that means there’s money being left on the table. Imagine a daily raffle with a £25 grand prize, where you learned that only two other £1 tickets were sold each day. It’d make sense, in that situation, to start buying up to £23 worth of tickets each day – since in the long run, that’s how much you could expect to win.

(With bitcoin, in the really long run, there’s going to be interesting interactions between this system, the free-floating exchange rate between bitcoin and the real money people use to pay electricity bills, the fact that the block rewards, that 6.25BTC, halve every four years, and the ability of miners, the lottery entrants, to charge a small fee to validate transactions.)

All of which is to say that Bitcoin doesn’t just use energy, like anything else. It inherently uses a lot of energy. The already-large energy budget of the currency is only as small as it is because, regardless of its potential, it is barely used. If Bitcoin were to live up to its potential, if it were to – I don’t know, replace Visa, or the US dollar, or hamburgers – then that 6.25BTC reward wouldn’t be worth £200k, it would be worth £200m, or £2bn, and the energy budget would go up accordingly.

And so simply handwaving the problem away, saying “this isn’t wasteful because bitcoin isn’t a waste”, doesn’t cut it.

«

The idea of bitcoin using more energy in line with its price going up is quite scary, yet borne out by the evidence. (The whole article is an excellent explainer about bitcoin’s madness.)
unique link to this extract

---

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: Bridgewater Associates (re bitcoin yesterday) is “the largest hedge fund in the world” rather than some dopey financial analysis company (though I guess they do that too). Thanks, Neil Cybart.

The NHS Covid app averted an estimated 600,000 cases – and so perhaps 1,500 deaths. CC-licensed photo by Simon James 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 10 links for you. You can’t hurry, love. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Huawei’s CEO wants to talk to President Biden • The Verge

Sam Byford:

»

Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei has called for a reset in relations between the US and the Chinese tech giant. Speaking to international media in China for the first time in more than a year, Ren expressed willingness to speak with President Biden and said he hoped for “open policies” from the new administration.

“I would welcome [a call from Biden]” Ren said in translated comments provided to The Verge and reported by CNBC, AFP, and the South China Morning Post. “I would talk with him about common development. Both the US and China need to develop their economies, as this is good for our society and financial balance.”

“Allowing US companies to supply goods to Chinese customers is conducive to their own financial performance,” Ren said. “If Huawei’s production capacity expanded, that would mean US companies could sell more. It’s a win-win situation. I believe the new administration will weigh and balance these interests as they consider their policies. We still hope to be able to buy a lot of US components, parts, and machinery so that US companies can also develop with the Chinese economy.”

Huawei is currently unable to do business with US companies because the Trump administration placed it on the Department of Commerce’s trade blacklist, citing national security fears. Among other issues, this means Huawei is unable to license Android from Google, severely hampering its smartphone business outside of China.

This prompted Huawei to sell off its Honor subsidiary in order to protect the brand and allow it to keep on producing smartphones, but Ren dismissed rumors that Huawei might do the same for its own smartphone division. “We will never sell our device business,” he said.

«

No, never sell, apart from the smartphone brand that they sold off last November, but no more than one. Well, two, perhaps.
unique link to this extract

---

Researcher hacks Microsoft, Apple, more in novel supply chain attack • Bleeping Computer

Ax Sharma:

»

A researcher managed to breach over 35 major companies’ internal systems, including Microsoft, Apple, PayPal, Shopify, Netflix, Yelp, Tesla, and Uber, in a novel software supply chain attack.

The attack comprised uploading malware to open source repositories including PyPI, npm, and RubyGems, which then got distributed downstream automatically into the company’s internal applications.

Unlike traditional typosquatting attacks that rely on social engineering tactics or the victim misspelling a package name, this particular supply chain attack is more sophisticated as it needed no action by the victim, who automatically received the malicious packages.

This is because the attack leveraged a unique design flaw of the open-source ecosystems called dependency confusion.

For his ethical research efforts, the researcher has earned well over $130,000 in bug bounties.

Last year, security researcher Alex Birsan came across an idea when working with another researcher Justin Gardner.

Gardner had shared with Birsan a manifest file, package.json, from an npm package used internally by PayPal.

Birsan noticed some of the manifest file packages were not present on the public npm repository but were instead PayPal’s privately created npm packages, used and stored internally by the company.

On seeing this, the researcher wondered, should a package by the same name exist in the public npm repository, in addition to a private NodeJS repository, which one would get priority?

«

That is indeed sneaky. The enormous dependency on open source packages that can be altered maliciously (or accidentally badly) at pretty much any time is being demonstrated again and again.
unique link to this extract

---

Lye-poisoning attack in Florida shows cybersecurity gaps in water systems • NBC News

Kevin Collier:

»

“Water facilities are particularly problematic,” said Suzanne Spaulding, the former chief cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security under former President Barack Obama. “When I first came into DHS and started getting the sector-specific briefings, my team said, ‘here’s what you’ve got to know about water facilities: when you’ve seen one water facility, you’ve seen one water facility.’”

There’s approximately 54,000 drinking systems in the U.S., which are run independently, either by local governments or small corporations. And that means thousands of different security setups, often run by generalists who are responsible for the technology of their particular water system.

“I’ve been to numerous water treatment facilities where there is one IT person or two IT people,” said Lesley Carhart, a principal threat analyst at the cybersecurity company Dragos. “And they have to handle everything from provisioning computers and devices that keep the infrastructure running to trying to do security.”

“Most are very conscious of it, but they’re just drowning,” she said. “They don’t know how to accomplish all the things they’re required to do to both keep things running from an IT perspective and also fill compliance checkboxes.”

All of the city’s cybersecurity services, including that of the water treatment plant, are managed by one man, city manager Al Braithwaite, Assistant City Manager Felicia Donnelly said in an email.

In the case of the Oldsmar attack, all the hackers needed to gain access was to log in to a TeamViewer account, which lets remote users take full control of a computer, which was associated with the plant. That let them open and toy with a computer with a program that sets the chemical content for the underground water reservoir that provides the drinking water for nearly 15,000 people.

«

One person for the water system’s cybersecurity. Aaaargh.
unique link to this extract

---

NHS Covid app prevented 600,000 infections, claim researchers • Financial Times

Tim Bradshaw and Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan:

»

Gauging the effectiveness of Bluetooth-based proximity detection apps, which have been released by governments all over the world, has been complicated by the privacy protections built into the Google/Apple system.

The app’s anonymity means that it is impossible to say how many people have complied with its orders to isolate.

The Turing/Oxford researchers used the limited location information that users are asked to enter when they download the app — the first half of their area’s postcode — to compare app uptake between neighbouring local authorities.

That data was then compared with the overall number of Covid-19 cases reported by each local authority. The researchers found a strong correlation between app usage, which varies between 15 to 45% of the overall population, and case numbers in a given region.

The paper said that a statistical comparison of neighbouring areas with similar socio-economic or geographic properties suggested that there were 594,000 “averted infections”, but gave a range of 317,000 and 914,000 with a confidence interval of 95%.

Extrapolating from normal case fatality rates, that suggests thousands of deaths may have been prevented by the app, the researchers estimate.

“The main limitation of our analysis is that it is an observational study: no randomized or systematic experiment resulted in different app uptake in different places,” the paper noted. “It remains possible that changes in app use over time and across geographies reflect changes in other interventions, and that our analysis incorrectly attributes the effect to the app.”

«

Those under 64 – let’s assume that includes all the smartphone users – have 25% of deaths (New York data). So at 600,000 cases averted, if we assume a 1% overall death rate, that’s about 0.25 * 0.01 * 600,000 = 1,500 deaths averted.
unique link to this extract

---

Is This Beverly Hills cop playing Sublime’s ‘Santeria’ to avoid being live-streamed? • Vice

Dexter Thomas:

»

Sennett Devermont was at the department to file a form to obtain body camera footage from an incident in which he received a ticket he felt was unfair. Devermont also happens to be a well-known LA area activist, who regularly live-streams protests and interactions with the police to his more than 300,000 followers on Instagram.

So, he streamed this visit as well—and that’s when things got weird.

In a video posted on his Instagram account, we see a mostly cordial conversation between Devermont and BHPD Sgt. Billy Fair turn a corner when Fair becomes upset that Devermont is live-streaming the interaction, including showing work contact information for another officer. Fair asks how many people are watching, to which Devermont replies, “Enough.”

Fair then stops answering questions, pulls out his phone, and starts silently swiping around—and that’s when the ska music starts playing. 

Fair boosts the volume, and continues staring at his phone. For nearly a full minute, Fair is silent, and only starts speaking after we’re a good way through Sublime’s “Santeria.”

Assuming that Fair wasn’t just trying to share his love of ’90s stoner music with the citizens of Beverly Hills, this seems to be an intentional (if misguided) tactic to use social media companies’ copyright protection policies to prevent himself from being filmed.

Instagram in particular has been increasingly strict on posting copyrighted material. Any video that contains music, even if it’s playing in the background, is potentially subject to removal by Instagram.

Most people complain about these rules. Beverly Hills law enforcement, however, seems to be a fan.

«

For every measure bringing accountability, there’s a countermeasure that seeks to evade it.
unique link to this extract

---

Why are Covid cases rising in Israel, the most vaccinated country? • NY Mag

Noga Tarnopolsky:

»

Naftali Bennett, the former defense minister who coordinated much of the nation’s initial virus response and is now running to replace [PM Benjemin] Netanyahu, accused the government of adopting a strategy that, in his words, can be summed up as, “We’re not going to manage the crisis in this country, we’re going to put all our eggs in the one basket: vaccines,” he told Intelligencer. [Israel is using the Pfizer vaccine.]

“Israel’s entire strategy relies on the hope that no variant will escape the vaccine,” he continued. “If a mutation that can bypass the vaccine appears tomorrow, we’re in trouble.” 

On Thursday, at a cabinet meeting convened to debate the future of a partial, fraying lockdown, which is scheduled to end on Sunday, Netanyahu acknowledged that “the British mutation is running amok in Israel,” driving 80% of Israel’s recent COVID-19 fatalities.

Health experts, who have grown accustomed to being ignored by the government, oppose lifting the lockdown, imperfect as it is. The government’s COVID czar, Nachman Ash, warned that “if we leave this lockdown with the figures as they are, we will need another lockdown in two weeks.”

The advent of the British strain has been a game-changer for Israel. “The vaccines are a big success,” Ayman Seif, Israel’s deputy corona czar in charge of anti-COVID measures in the Arab community, told Intelligencer. “We began to see their effects, but it is not enough to curb the rise in contagion brought by the mutation.”

Netanyahu dubbed the mission to vaccinate the nation “Operation Getting Back to Life,” and promised Israelis they’d be COVID-free by late March, which is, coincidentally, when they will head to the polls in what is shaping up to be a tight race. On Thursday, he tweeted out that among those ages 60 and over, he said, referring to a group that has almost universally received the second dose of vaccine, “there has been a 26% decrease in the critical-care hospitalizations.”

While true, the numbers don’t seem as unequivocal as the prime minister indicated. A government study showed that 44% of cases diagnosed in Israel between Thursday and Friday were found among citizens younger than 19. Only 6.2% were found in those ages 60 and older. Rahav said that hospital beds left free by the inoculated over-60 population are being filled by the under-50 crowd. “The British variant of the coronavirus brought us to our knees,” she said. Her hospital’s COVID wards remain at capacity, with ever younger patients.

«

I wondered about this. And here’s the answer. But if Israel is struggling against the “British strain”, how is Britain going to cope? [Thanks G for the link.]
unique link to this extract

---

Tesla’s self-driving claims are a problem for Biden • Los Angeles Times

Russ Mitchell:

»

While other driverless car developers — including General Motors’ Cruise, Ford’s Argo AI, Amazon’s Zoox, Alphabet’s Waymo, and independent Aurora — all take an incremental, slow rollout approach with professional test drivers at the wheel, Tesla is “beta testing” its driverless technology on public roads using its customers as test drivers.

Musk said last month that Tesla cars will be able to fully drive themselves without human intervention on public roads by late this year. He’s been making similar promises since 2016. No driverless car expert or auto industry leader outside Tesla has said they think that’s possible.

Although [Bryant Walker] Smith, [a professor and expert in autonomous vehicle law at the University of South Carolina] is impressed by Tesla’s “brilliant” ability to use Tesla drivers to collect millions of miles of sensor data to help refine its software, “that doesn’t excuse the marketing because this is in no way full self-driving. There are so many things wrong with that term. It’s ludicrous. If we can’t trust a company when they tell us a product is full self-driving, how can we trust them when they tell us a product is safe?”

[Paul] Eisenstein [publisher of the Detroit Bureau industry news site] is even harsher. “Can I say this off the record?” he said. “No, let me say it on the record. I’m appalled by Tesla. They’re taking the smartphone approach: Put the tech out there, and find out whether or not it works. It’s one thing to put out a new IOS that caused problems with voice dictation. It’s another thing to have a problem moving 60 miles per hour.”

«

As the article points out, the Trump administration simply punted on this; there wasn’t a proper director for the National Highways Traffic Safety Administration for the past four years. Now things need sorting out.
unique link to this extract

---

Coal and COVID-19: how the pandemic is accelerating the end of fossil power generation • Phys.org

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research:

»

“Coal has been hit harder by the pandemic than other power sources—and the reason is simple,” explains lead author Christoph Bertram from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). “If demand for electricity drops, coal plants are usually switched off first. This is because the process of burning fuels constantly runs up costs. The plant operators have to pay for each single ton of coal. In contrast, renewable power sources such as wind and solar plants, once built, have significantly lower running costs—and keep on operating even if the demand is reduced.”

This way, fossil fuels were partly squeezed out of the electricity generation mix in 2020 and global CO2 emissions from the power sector decreased around 7%. By looking at India, the U.S. and European countries alone, a more dramatic picture emerges: In these key markets, where monthly electricity demand declined by up to 20% compared to 2019, the monthly CO2 emissions decreased by up to 50%.

The researchers estimate that it’s likely that emissions will not reach the all-time high of 2018 again. “Due to the ongoing crisis, we expect that 2021 electricity demand will be at about 2019’s levels, which, given ongoing investments into low-carbon generation, means lower fossil generation than in that year,” says co-author Gunnar Luderer from PIK. “As long as this clean electricity generation growth exceeds increases in electricity demand, CO2 emissions from the power sector will decline. Only if we saw unusually high demand for electricity along with surprisingly few additions of renewable power plants from 2022-2024 and beyond, fossil fuel generation would rebound to pre-pandemic levels.”

«

unique link to this extract

---

What I think of bitcoin • Bridgewater Associates

Ray Dalio is the founder of Bridgewater, which is a financial analysis company (as far as I can make out – its website is pretty vague):

»

Regarding privacy, it appears that Bitcoin will unlikely be as private as some people surmise. It is, after all, a public ledger and a material amount of Bitcoin is held in a non-private manner. If the government (and perhaps hackers) want to see who has what, I doubt that privacy could be protected. Also, it appears to me that if the government wanted to get rid of its use, most of those who are using it wouldn’t be able to use it so the demand for it would plunge. Rather than it being far-fetched that the government would invade the privacy and/or prevent the use of Bitcoin (and its competitors) it seems to me that the more successful it is the more likely these possibilities would be. Starting with the formation of the first central bank (the Bank of England in 1694), for good logical reasons governments wanted control over money and they protected their abilities to have the only monies and credit within their borders. When I a) put myself in the shoes of government officials, b) see their actions, and c) hear what they say, it is hard for me to imagine that they would allow Bitcoin (or gold) to be an obviously better choice than the money and credit that they are producing. I suspect that Bitcoin’s biggest risk is being successful, because if it’s successful, the government will try to kill it and they have a lot of power to succeed.

«

There’s plenty in there, plus some excellent graphs about the value of bitcoin compared to gold, and how much extra is being added compared to existing assets.
unique link to this extract

---

Is Substack the media future we want? • The New Yorker

Anna Wiener:

»

Depending on which source you consult, Substack might be “reinventing publishing,” “pioneering a new ‘business model for culture,’ ” or “attempting to build an alternative media economy that gives journalists autonomy.” It is “writers firing their old business model” or “a better future for news.” Substack’s C.E.O., Chris Best, has said that the company’s intention is “to make it so that you could type into this box, and if the things you type are good, you’re going to get rich.” Hamish McKenzie, one of Substack’s co-founders, told me that he sees the company as an alternative to social-media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. “We started Substack because we were fed up about the effects of the social-media diet,” McKenzie said. Substack’s home page now reads, “Take back your mind.”

Substack, like Facebook, insists that it is not a media company; it is, instead, “a platform that enables writers and readers.” But other newsletter platforms, such as Revue, Lede, or TinyLetter (a service owned by Mailchimp, the e-mail-marketing company), have never offered incentives to attract writers. By piloting programs, like the legal-defense fund, that “re-create some of the value provided by newsrooms,” as McKenzie put it, Substack has made itself difficult to categorize: it’s a software company with the trappings of a digital-media concern. The company, which currently has twenty employees, has a lightweight content-moderation policy, which prohibits harassment, threats, spam, pornography, and calls for violence; moderation decisions are made by the founders, and, McKenzie told me, the company does not comment on them. Best has suggested that Substack contains a built-in moderation mechanism in the form of the Unsubscribe button.

It’s an interesting time for such a hands-off, free-market approach. The Internet is flooded with disinformation and conspiracy theories. Amazon’s self-publishing arm has become a haven for extremist content. The flattening effect of digital platforms has led to confusion among readers about what is reporting and what is opinion. Newsrooms at the Times and the Wall Street Journal have taken pains to distinguish their work from that found in the op-ed sections. Substack has advertised itself as a friendly home for journalism, but few of its newsletters publish original reporting; the majority offer personal writing, opinion pieces, research, and analysis.

«

Original reporting is expensive, and time-consuming, and just as with the blogosphere, few are going to take the risk. Though at least it monetises a bit better than blogs.
unique link to this extract

---

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

Let’s talk about Blade Runner. No particular reason. But who needs a reason? CC-licensed photo by kaytaria 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 11 links for you. Frosty. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Hacker tried to poison Florida city’s water supply, police say • Vice

Jason Koebler and Joseph Cox:

»

On Monday officials from Pinellas County in Florida announced that an unidentified hacker remotely gained access to a panel that controls the City of Oldsmar’s water treatment system, and changed a setting that would have drastically increased the amount of sodium hydroxide in the water supply.

During a press conference, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said that a legitimate operator saw the change and quickly reversed it, but signaled that the hacking attempt was a serious threat to the city’s water supply. Sodium hydroxide is also known as lye and can be deadly if ingested in large amounts.

“The hacker changed the sodium hydroxide from about one hundred parts per million, to 11,100 parts per million,” Gualtieri said, adding that these were “dangerous” levels. When asked if this should be considered an attempt at bioterrorism, Gualtieri said, “What it is is someone hacked into the system not just once but twice … opened the program and changed the levels from 100 to 11,100 parts per million with a caustic substance. So, you label it however you want, those are the facts.”

…”The person who remotely accessed the system for about three to five minutes, opening various functions on the screen,” Gualtieri said during the press conference. “One of the functions opened by the person hacking into the system was one that controls the amount of sodium hydroxide in the water.”

Gualtieri said that on Friday at 8am a plant operator at the Oldmar’s water treatment facility noticed someone remotely accessing the system that he was monitoring. The system was deliberately set up with a piece of remote access software so that “authorized users could troubleshoot system problems from other locations,” Gualtieri added.

«

The astonishing thing here is that they had a system allowing remote access and hadn’t considered that hacking is just access you didn’t expect.
unique link to this extract

---

Facebook says it plans to remove posts with false vaccine claims • The New York Times

Mike Isaac:

»

Facebook said on Monday that it plans to remove posts with erroneous claims about vaccines from across its platform, including taking down assertions that vaccines cause autism or that it is safer for people to contract Covid-19 than to receive the vaccinations.

The social network has increasingly changed its content policies over the past year as the coronavirus has surged. In October, the social network prohibited people and companies from purchasing advertising that included false or misleading information about vaccines. In December, Facebook said it would remove posts with claims that had been debunked by the World Health Organization or government agencies.

Monday’s move goes further by targeting unpaid posts to the site and particularly Facebook pages and groups. Instead of targeting only misinformation around Covid vaccines, the update encompasses false claims around all vaccines. Facebook said it consulted with the World Health Organization and other leading health institutes to determine a list of false or misleading claims around Covid and vaccines in general.

In the past, Facebook had said it would only “downrank,” or push lower down in people’s News Feeds, misleading or false claims about vaccines, making it more difficult to find such groups or posts. Now posts, pages and groups containing such falsehoods will be removed from the platform entirely.

«

Years and years and years too late. Notable though how Facebook has now decided that it can arbitrate on truth, having for years insisted that it was neutral on topics like Holocaust denial and, yes, lies about vaccines.
unique link to this extract

---

Bloomberg: Apple and Hyundai hit the brakes on Apple Car production negotiations • 9to5Mac

Chance Miller:

»

Over the last weeks, a handful of reports have indicated that Apple would be teaming up with Hyundai for the production of Apple Car. Now, a new report from Bloomberg suggests that the two companies have recently paused their discussions.

Hyundai made a bold statement last month when it confirmed that it was in talks with Apple about a potential partnership for Apple Car. Almost immediately after issuing the first statement, Hyundai backtracked and published a new statement without a mention of Apple.

After Hyundai’s initial statement, a handful of different reports corroborated that Apple and Hyundai were in talks about the electric, self-driving Apple Car. Most recently, reports suggested that Apple would be working with Hyundai subsidiary Kia Motors through a potential $3.6 billion investment.

A new report from Bloomberg, however, says that Hyundai and Apple have hit the brakes on their negotiations. One reason for the paused negotiations is that Apple is “upset” over Hyundai’s pre-announcement of the deal.

«

Classic: leak about having a deal with Apple, and suddenly you don’t have a deal with Apple. Been the same for the past 25 years.
unique link to this extract

---

European touring made Radiohead the band we are. Brexit must not destroy it • The Guardian

Colin Greenwood is the bassist with Radiohead:

»

In December 2018, I was lucky enough to play three sold-out shows with the brilliant young Belgian artist Tamino. The gigs were at the Ancienne Belgique, a largish venue in the heart of Brussels’ club and cafe centre. Tamino’s music takes in influences as wide as Jacques Brel and Tim Buckley, as well as the 90s Seattle scene and his Egyptian heritage. It’s been a privilege to work with him. I grabbed my bass in Oxford, jumped on the Eurostar and spent three nights playing with him and his band, staying in a small hotel across the road. No visas, no carnet, just the freedom of music.

What will playing in Europe be like now, after Brexit? I spoke to several old friends who’ve had years of experience planning Radiohead tours. Adrian, our touring accountant, said it will be more clunky and expensive. Before Brexit, a carnet (a list of goods going in and out of the country) was just needed for Norway and Switzerland. Now it would be more like playing South America, where each country has its systems for dealing with “third countries” like us. Adrian said a £10,000 guitar would need a carnet that would cost about £650 plus VAT. The costs of travel and accommodation are already high, and the extra paperwork and expenses would rise quickly for a touring orchestra.

There’s also that ugly word, cabotage – the rights for transport movement – with trucks carrying the gear from the UK only allowed two drop-offs in the EU before having to return to Britain, making a multi-city tour impossible with a UK tour bus or truck fleet. Another of our accountants, Steph, assured me that we would have people to sort it all out, and sent me an email for an online conference about what Brexit means for the music industry: an opportunity to charge artists and touring productions for dealing with the shiny new red tape.

«

The problem is going to be for small bands trying to get their start. The cost will be prohibitive.
unique link to this extract

---

Tesla’s bitcoin buy is a reckless, destructive troll • The New Republic

Jacob Silverman:

»

In a Monday morning SEC filing, Tesla revealed that it had purchased $1.5bn worth of Bitcoin, adding itself to a roster of companies and investment funds that have poured billions into the preeminent cryptocurrency in the last year. Tesla said it would also start accepting Bitcoin as payment for its cars.

The news caused Bitcoin’s price to shoot up about 13% in early trading, but more than any short-term profits, it represents the culmination of a months-long campaign by Bitcoiners to get Musk to embrace Bitcoin and its attendant worldview, a messianic vision of a decentralized currency network leading to economic emancipation, with consumers free of the shackles of politics and central banks. Whether Musk actually believes Bitcoiner rhetoric—or, like any troll, is merely doing it for the lulz—is less important than what it represents: one of tech’s most celebrated companies making a huge commitment to its most controversial commodity.

The Bitcoin buy is also a clear indictment of Tesla’s, and Musk’s, image as an environmentally conscious innovator. There are few speculative assets more harmful to the climate than Bitcoin, which consumes a colossal amount of electricity. In an added irony, the SEC filing showed that Tesla had continued its long-standing practice of selling carbon credits. In 2020, Tesla sold about $1.58bn worth of these credits—almost exactly the value of the Bitcoin purchased. It appears that to bulk up its paltry balance sheet (Tesla is a perennial money-loser), the company sold environmental credits and then funneled the proceeds into the digital equivalent of burning coal.

«

It really does give the lie to Musk’s claims about wanting to improve the environment. The filing doesn’t say exactly how many bitcoin Tesla bought (apparently approved by the Audit Committee). This article from September shows how much energy bitcoin consumes – pointlessly, to create the digital equivalent of diamonds. Except diamonds have actual uses.
unique link to this extract

---

Twitter mulls subscription product, tipping for generating revenue • Bloomberg

Kurt Wagner:

»

The majority of Twitter’s revenue comes from targeted advertising, which serves up promoted posts aimed at specific groups of users. That business has grown in recent years at a slower pace than competitors like Facebook Inc. and Snap Inc., and Twitter’s slice of the digital ad market globally remains at at a lackluster 0.8%, according to EMarketer.

Twitter, the thinking goes, would benefit from a separate revenue stream that isn’t as reliant on brand advertising. The company’s user base in the US, its most valuable market, has also started to plateau, meaning it can’t rely on simply adding users to juice revenue.

To explore potential options outside ad sales, a number of Twitter teams are researching subscription offerings, including one using the code name “Rogue One,” according to people familiar with the effort. At least one idea being considered is related to “tipping,” or the ability for users to pay the people they follow for exclusive content, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are internal. Other possible ways to generate recurring revenue include charging for the use of services like Tweetdeck or advanced user features like “undo send” or profile-customization options.

Subscriptions have always offered a tantalizing alternative to advertising, but social networks have traditionally stayed free as a way to encourage user growth and engagement, which is then subsidized with paid marketing posts. Still, Twitter chief financial officer Ned Segal said on a call with investors last year that a subscription option of some kind would offer sales “durability,” and recurring revenue is more consistent than advertising spending.

«

None of these sounds like really compelling things to do – Tweetdeck, perhaps, for corporate users. Tipping sounds more like Substack does with email, though that could generate some revenue too. But none sounds like a boil-the-ocean scheme that would dramatically increase revenue.
unique link to this extract

---

Siri now allows setting a default music streaming service on iOS 14.5 • The 8-Bit

Taha Broach:

»

Apple launched the initial beta versions of iOS 14.5 to developers and public beta testers last week. Among the list of new features, Apple has also introduced a new functionality within Siri that enables the virtual assistant to set a default music streaming service aside from Apple Music.

First noted by users on Reddit, the first time you ask Siri to play a song on iOS 14.5, it offers an option to choose between different music streaming apps. The third-party music streaming apps should be installed on your iPhone in order for Siri to be able to set them as default.

For instance, if you chose Spotify as the default app, the next time you say “Hey, Siri, play The Lazy Song,” Siri will play it on Spotify instead of Apple Music.

Siri will also set a music streaming app as default if you ask it to play from that specific app for the first time. For example, “Hey, Siri, play The Lazy Song on Spotify.”

«

This is being interpreted as Apple seeking to evade antitrust trouble by not making Apple Music the default, but Spotify’s complaint in Europe is more about the App Store and the 15% (or 30%) cut Apple takes and the barriers to telling people how to sign up in a way that’s advantageous to Spotify rather than Apple.

But I do think Apple is increasingly confident about its position; so much so that it doesn’t worry about defaults any more; that won’t harm its installed base. (Might even help it.)
unique link to this extract

---

The (lithium-ion) battery is ready to power the world • WSJ

Russell Gold and Ben Foldy:

»

Electric vehicles are currently the main source of demand for battery cells. As demand grows and costs fall further, batteries will become even more disruptive across industries. Batteries recently scored a win at General Motors, which said it hoped to phase out gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles from its showrooms world-wide by 2035.

The battery boom could erode demand for crude oil and byproducts such as gasoline—as well as for natural gas, which is primarily used in power plants. While mining materials and manufacturing batteries produce some greenhouse gas emissions, analysts believe shifting to batteries in the auto and energy sectors would reduce emissions overall, boosting efforts to tackle climate change.

US power plants alone produce about a quarter of the country’s emissions, while light-duty vehicles such as cars and vans contribute another 17%.

The rise of rechargeable batteries is now a matter of national security and industrial policy. Control of the minerals and manufacturing processes needed to make lithium-ion batteries is the 21st-century version of oil security.

The flow of batteries is currently dominated by Asian countries and companies. Nearly 65% of lithium-ion batteries come from China. By comparison, no single country produces more than 20% of global crude oil output.

…To meet expected demand, global output of lithium, a silvery metal also used to make nuclear bombs and treat bipolar disorder, has nearly tripled in the past decade, according to Benchmark. Lithium is mostly mined in Australia and Chile, where it is found in underground brine deposits, although efforts to increase U.S. output from mines in Nevada and North Carolina are gaining attention from investors.

«

Following on from yesterday’s article about renewables creating change in world politics, the point about China and batteries is an important one. Swapping one authoritarian regime that produces the energy we need for another?
unique link to this extract

---

From the Archives: ‘Blade Runner’ went from Harrison Ford’s ‘miserable’ production to Ridley Scott’s unicorn scene, ending as a cult classic • Los Angeles Times

Kenneth Turan, the LA Times’s film critic, in a piece first published in September 1992:

»

Though Dick’s novel was set in 1992, the script had updated things to 2020 (finally changed to 2019 so it didn’t sound so much like an eye chart). Scott, who’d been attracted to the film because of a chance to design a city-oriented future, knew he wanted to avoid “the diagonal zipper and silver-hair syndrome” a la “Logan’s Run.” Based on his experiences with urban excess in New York and the Orient, “Blade Runner” was going to be the present only much more so, “Hong Kong on a bad day,” Scott says, a massive, teeming, on-the-verge-of-collapse city that the director at one point was going to call “San Angeles.”

“This was not a science-fiction film so much as a period piece,” Paull explains. “But it would be 40 years from now, not 40 years ago.”

The key design concept came to be called retrofitting, the idea being that once cities start to seriously break down, no one would bother to start new construction from scratch. Rather, such essentials as electrical and ventilation systems would simply be added onto the exteriors of older buildings, giving them a clunky, somehow menacing look. Progress and decay would exist hand in hand, and the city’s major buildings, like the massive, Mayan-inspired pyramid that houses the Tyrell Corp., would tower miles above the squalor below.

«

There’s all sorts of fascinating detail in this deeply researched article about this iconic film. And the only reason that anyone ever knew there was a director’s cut (the original version before the studio got involved) was that it was mistakenly screened at a showing of the film for fans. (Thanks Richard G for the pointer.)
unique link to this extract

---

Next-hour precipitation rolling out in Weather app in UK and Ireland • MacRumors

Juli Clover:

»

Multiple MacRumors readers in the UK and Ireland have noticed that the built-in Weather app now supports next-hour precipitation readings, a feature that appears to have rolled out recently.

Next-hour precipitation details have been available in the United States and Canada since the launch of iOS 14, but had not expanded to other countries prior to this week. The new precipitation charts appear to be showing up for those running both iOS 14.4 and iOS 14.5.

Apple added next-hour precipitation to the Weather app after its acquisition of Dark Sky in March 2020. Precipitation charts offer minute-by-minute weather predictions based on precise location.

Update: Dutch website iCulture reports that the precipitation feature is appearing in The Hague, suggesting rollout is happening in the Netherlands and France, too.

«

I noticed this over the weekend (checking for snow). The Dark Sky API for other apps won’t be turned off until the end of this year, but it seems a safe assumption that Apple will wrap all of Dark Sky’s features into the Weather app by the time iOS 15 comes out, most likely in September.
unique link to this extract

---

Some friendly reminders about day trading • A Wealth Of Commonsense

Ben Carlson, ruminating on the stories about some who made money on GameStop:

»

There will always be winners and losers in the stock market, even for those who aren’t day-trading. This is simply the zero-sum nature of transacting in a market like this. For every buyer, there has to be a seller and vice versa.

But day-traders face a much higher hurdle rate than long-term investors for a couple of reasons:

Day trading is hard. I know, I know, no one likes to hear about the pitfalls of day-trading when it seems so fun and lucrative. But I would be remiss if I didn’t share some statistics as a cautionary tale for those who feel like they’re earning easy money trading stocks right now and assume it will always be like this.

A study of Brazilian futures traders found 97% of individuals who traded in the market for more than 300 days lost money on their trades.

Research on individual day traders in Taiwan over a 15 year period from 1992 to 2006 showed even the most experienced day traders lose money and surprisingly even those traders who lose consistently continue to trade despite their losses.

The SEC studied the habits of retail FX traders and discovered, “approximately 70% of customers lose money every quarter and on average 100% of a retail customer’s investment is lost in less than 12 months.”

Another study of eToro day-traders found nearly 80% of them lost money over a 12-month period with a median loss of 36%.

Are there people who can become successful day-traders? Of course.

Are the odds in your favor? Nope.

The only guarantee when day-trading is taxes. I’m sure some people are trading in tax-deferred accounts but not at Robinhood. All Robinhood accounts are taxable at the moment. And adding taxes to the mix increases your hurdle rate substantially since short-term gains are taxed at a higher rate than long-term gains.

«

unique link to this extract

---

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

Apple’s AirPods have done the same trick as the iPod, cornering the market. But how? CC-licensed photo by tua ulamac 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 10 links for you. Yes, back again. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

How the race for renewable energy is reshaping global politics • Financial Times

Leslie Hook and Henry Sanderson:

»

as the energy system changes, so will energy politics. For most of the past century, geopolitical power was intimately connected to fossil fuels. The fear of an oil embargo or a gas shortage was enough to forge alliances or start wars, and access to oil deposits conferred great wealth. In the world of clean energy, a new set of winners and losers will emerge. Some see it as a clean energy “space race”. Countries or regions that master clean technology, export green energy or import less fossil fuel stand to gain from the new system, while those that rely on exporting fossil fuels — such as the Middle East or Russia — could see their power decline.

Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, the former president of Iceland and chair of the Global Commission on the Geopolitics of Energy Transformation, says that the clean energy transition will birth a new type of politics. The shift is happening “faster, and in a more comprehensive way, than anyone expected”, he says. “As fossil fuels gradually go out of the energy system . . . the old geopolitical model of power centres that dominate relations between states also goes out the window. Gradually the power of those states that were big players in the world of the fossil-fuel economies, or big corporates like the oil companies, will fritter away.”

In Australia, a growing lobby is pushing for the country to become a “renewable superpower” thanks to its abundant wind and solar resources. [Chair of Fortescue Metals Group, the Australian billionaire Andrew] Forrest is an investor in a project called the Sun Cable, which hopes to lay an electric cable all the way to Singapore. He believes the country’s future is at stake. “The impact on the Australian economy, if we get this right, could be nothing short of nation-building,” he says.

New power structures will emerge along with the transition. “The [old] levers of control, a lot of them will dissipate and simply cease to exist,” says Thijs Van de Graaf, associate professor at Ghent University and lead author of an influential 2019 report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena). “This is a completely new constellation, so we cannot think just like the old days,” he adds. “There is a new class of energy exporters that may emerge on the global scene.”

«

I believe the Saudis are trying to invest in solar at a colossal rate with the same intention – to be a dominant energy provider as renewables take over.
unique link to this extract

---

Porn app network scamming iPhone users for $2.6m per month, says Apps Exposed • Forbes

John Koetsier:

»

Dozens of porn apps are scamming iPhone owners and generating an estimated $2.6m in monthly revenue, according to anonymous tipster Apps Exposed.

“In total they are generating $2,626,000 (estimated data for December 2020) a month by breaking the App Store Guidelines and scamming their users with prerecorded videos, fake push notifications, bait and switch prices and hired girls to do naked cam shows to keep the user as much as possible inside the app,” the group says.

«

This is the October 2019 release from Apps Exposed, which counted 1,370 “scam apps”. There’s also this thread from the end of January.

There’s basically a cottage industry pointing to these scam apps. But with more than a million apps on the App Store, the scope of the problem comes into view: scams are perhaps 0.1% of the total apps on there. Even if there are five or ten times as many as Apps Exposed found, that’s up to 1%. And they probably don’t get updated much, so they won’t pop up in app review.

Finding them therefore becomes the proverbial needle in a haystack. Apple has begun removing some of the ones highlighted in this article. But that leaves almost the same number still running. The modern-day Sisyphus doesn’t roll a rock, but searches for scam apps.
unique link to this extract

---

Don’t expect the ‘Apple Car’ to have a steering wheel, analyst says • AppleInsider

Mike Peterson:

»

The fully autonomous “Apple Car” — which will likely lack a steering wheel — could be a major competitor to Tesla and other electric vehicle makers, Morgan Stanley automotive analysts said.

In a note to investors seen by AppleInsider, Morgan Stanley Auto & Shared Mobility analyst Adam Jones shared some thoughts on the implications of Apple’s entry into the car market.

For one, Jones notes how high Apple’s reported $3.6bn investment is. That’s “a lot of money to invest into one car factory,” and Jones adds that the investment only appears to be Apple’s portion.

Users who are expecting a traditional automotive experience may want to think again. “Don’t expecting steering wheels,” Jones said.

“We have a hard time imagining Apple entering the automotive market with a vehicle design that involves human intervention in the driving process,” Jones writes. “Just our view but an Apple car with a steering wheel is like an iPhone with physical buttons and a coiled rubber cord connected to a wall. If we’re right, then this could really turbocharge investor appreciation on the AV timeline.”

«

It’s OK, you can use a wheel from one of your older cars. It’s an environmental measure.

(More honestly, I think the analysts are smoking something powerful.)
unique link to this extract

---

Now it’s the Democrats’ turn to destroy the open internet: Mark Warner’s 230 reform bill is a dumpster fire of cluelessness • Techdirt

Mike Masnick:

»

Senator Mark Warner has introduced his new Section 230 reform bill, called the SAFE TECH Act (“Safeguarding Against Fraud, Exploitation, Threats, Extremism, and Consumer Harms Act” co-sponsored by Senators Mazie Hirono and Amy Klobuchar), and it is one of the worst Section 230 bills I’ve seen. It is difficult to explain just how bad this bill is concisely, because it has so many bad ideas crammed into one single bill. It’s as if none of these three Senators or their staff spoke to anyone who actually understands how the internet works, or how content moderation/trust and safety works. It’s stunning in the ignorance it displays.

About the only good thing I’ll say about it, is that (unlike most bills) at least Warner released a redline version to show how it would actually (massively) change Section 230. He also put out an incredibly disingenuous FAQ that flat out lies about… nearly everything. We’ll go through that in a bit.

Basically, this bill takes nearly every single idea that people who want there to be less speech online have had, and dumped it all into one bill. There’s a lot in there, and nearly all of it is bad. Last week I wrote about a draft bill in the House that suggested carving out civil rights law from Section 230. In my analysis of that bill, I noted that it appeared to come from a well meaning place, but was simply misguided. This bill, which also includes a carveout for civil rights law, does not come from a well meaning place. The drafters of the bill are either malicious or ignorant. It’s not a good look for Senators Warner, Hirono, and Klobuchar.

«

Then again, there’s clueless stuff on the east side of the Atlantic too from Conservative MPs, who have been in power for ten years yet act surprised by the power of tech companies and the weakness of laws.
unique link to this extract

---

She wanted a ‘freebirth’ with no doctors. Online groups convinced her it would be OK • NBC News

Brandy Zaraodzny:

»

As well as she can figure, it started with the podcasts. 

Judith worked at a flower shop. The daily drive was an hour outside of town, time she filled by listening to podcasts. When she got pregnant, she devoured episodes of “The Birth Hour” and “Indie Birth,” popular programs on which women shared their childbirth stories, which ranged from hospital to home births. But it was the “Free Birth Podcast” that really spoke to Judith.

Billed as “a supportive space for people who are learning, exploring and celebrating their autonomous choices in childbirth,” the podcast features Emilee Saldaya, 35, a Los Angeles freebirth advocate and founder of the Free Birth Society. The group has 46,000 followers on Instagram, and its podcast hit a million downloads last year.

On the podcast, Saldaya interviews mothers about their freebirth stories. These women reminded Judith of herself; they were college educated, spiritual, creative types who spoke about their births in powerful, radical terms: as euphoric events that happened in bathtubs, in nature or in their own beds, surrounded by their partners and family. Women in these podcasts weren’t listening to doctors but to their bodies. They weren’t lying on their backs waiting for someone to pull a baby from them but bringing their babies into the world with their own two hands. 

Judith tore through some 70 episodes. She relistened to her favorites, one of which featured a woman who had given birth by candlelight in an off-the-grid yurt in the California mountains with only her husband and a dog she called her “midwolf.” 

While she listened, Judith would daydream, imagining herself as a future guest on the podcast. 

«

This is very much a tale of what happens when you don’t involve experts, but instead have lots of people who know very little but are very enthusiastic. (I’m tempted to say Dunning-Kruger applies, but…)
unique link to this extract

---

The capitalist case for overhauling Twitter • NY Mag

Scott Galloway:

»

Twitter is already a landmark company culturally, and with some robust management, it could be appraised as one. Value is created on the platform every second. Influencers build followings, businesses find customers, ideas are generated and shaped. But Twitter, in a misguided posture of neutrality, lets all this economic activity flow across its platform and neither cultivates nor harvests it. The opportunity for Twitter — and the fiduciary obligation for its management — is to command the space that it occupies.

At the heart of my proposed revamp is a subscription model that charges accounts with followers over a certain threshold. Of course, millions of casual Twitter users provide the company with its scale, and I am not proposing the company charge them. Rather, the company should recognize that many people and organizations derive enormous value from Twitter at little or no cost. My 345,000-follower account is an important tool in my professional life and a window into the communities I care about. I’d pay a subscription fee if Twitter thought to ask for it. And I believe @KimKardashian (nearly 69 million followers) would pay more.

This isn’t just a money grab. Subscription encourages a firm to reorient its business around its users — who provide the bulk of the content that brings people to the platform, after all — and build premium features that justify collecting premium revenue. Even many casual users would likely pay a fee for better analytics, control over their feeds (such as the ability to switch easily between work and personal modes), and enhanced profile pages. The lack of innovation in the core Twitter product has been a weakness for years, but now it presents an opportunity to support a subscription fee.

«

Mmm. I don’t think this would work. But Twitter could certainly turn itself into a more profitable network by enabling more transactions of all sorts, by having many more credit cards attached to accounts (though it would need to improve its security first). Also – Galloway owns $10m in Twitter stock? Either he was a really early investor, or he made some remarkable investments a long time back. (Via John Naughton.)
unique link to this extract

---

Kate Bingham: why the UK strategy on Covid vaccines has been a great success • la Repubblica

Fascinating interview with the woman venture capitalist who helped the UK get near the front of the queue:

»

Q: Did you mainly work with institutions like Oxford and Cambridge?
“Oh no. I did not mind where the vaccines came from and in fact, the only vaccine we secured, the only UK based vaccine is Oxford/AstraZeneca. We also secured rights to the UK/French vaccines from GSK/Sanofi and Valneva. As far as I was concerned, geography didn’t matter. I was only interested in securing the best vaccines. For example BioNTech: Sean Marett, who is the chief business officer, was somebody I had backed in one of my companies before. I’ve known him for, I don’t know, 15, 20 years. So it’s very easy for me to just pick up the phone and had lunch with him a year or two ago when he was in London, easy for me to pick up the phone and have those conversations. I don’t think this was anything to do with the UK being better or anything. I think that is the wrong narrative. I think it’s just a different strategy.”

“The UK had a very strategic approach, which was to secure vaccines quickly. And the European approach seems to be more sort of a more typical procurement approach, which was more about making sure you got the best value for money for your vaccines. It wasn’t related to Brexit and is not related to people being better or more experienced. I think there’s plenty of very, very, very good people obviously in the EU and in fact, you know, if you look at the companies are, you know, BionTech his exceptional, CureVac is exceptional. Sanofi is fantastic. Lots of good companies there.”

Q: You are more happy to take a risk in this country?
“Maybe. I don’t know. Our actual upfront cost was 900 million pounds. It’s in the public accounts committee transcript. But yes, we were willing to write off the upfront money which was largely for manufacturing if actually those vaccines failed.”

«

Shows the value of experts. I’d like to see a similar interview for Israel, which got ahead of everyone.
unique link to this extract

---

Why haven’t other true wireless earbuds taken off like Apple’s AirPods? • Android Authority

Jon Fingas:

»

There’s no way to sugarcoat this — much of the competition to Apple’s AirPods just isn’t that great.

You’ll certainly find high-quality options like Samsung’s Galaxy Buds Pro or Sony’s WF-1000XM3. However, the market is saturated with a legion of look-at-me earbuds that explicitly mimic Apple’s AirPods design. The true wireless buds from Huawei, OnePlus and Xiaomi (among many others) have some cosmetic differences, but they’re clearly riding on Apple’s coattails. And if you can afford the real thing, you probably won’t buy the knockoff.

Regardless of uniqueness, all of these competitors face a larger problem: they don’t fundamentally improve on the basic buds-plus-case concept Apple popularized with AirPods. They may sound better or last longer on battery, but there aren’t revolutionizing technology upgrades that would have AirPods buyers thinking twice. Even the Galaxy Buds Pro, as sophisticated as they are, sit in Apple’s shadow.

And that’s just not good enough when AirPods have such a commanding sales lead. While these rivals do bring AirPods-like capabilities to Android users, someone seriously considering a pair of AirPods might not bat an eye at the alternatives unless they’re either cost-conscious or insist on feature parity for Android. Why take a chance on a rival when Apple is a known quantity?

«

Apple took half the market for wireless earbuds in 2020, according to Strategy Analytics. Always interested by analysis like this on Android sites, which grudgingly accept that Apple derives a huge advantage in user experience from its integrated approach. See also: Windows sites doing writeups about the iPod in 2005, except they usually insisted Microsoft was just about to come up with a strategy that would kill the iPod dead.
unique link to this extract

---

The Arctic threat that must not be named • War on the Rocks

Sharon Burke:

»

The Arctic, as the National Climate Assessment [released by the Trump administration in 2018] puts it, is on the “front line” of this change. The region is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the globe, and possibly as much as seven times as fast, based on measurements Norway has taken at Svalbard Airport for the last 120 years. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the Arctic has lost more than a million square miles of ice at its seasonally lowest point since the beginning of satellite records in 1979. That is an area more than twice the size of Alaska, the largest state in America. This is not a projection, it is not a mathematical model, and it is not disputed science. These are conditions that we can see and measure through satellite imagery and through physical observations from buoys and other devices.

While Arctic explorers have long looked for a sea route through the area, often with disastrous results, this is the first time in human history that a truly navigable ocean is opening up in the region. That new sea lane could cut two weeks off the transit time between Asia and Europe, one of the drivers for China’s interest. That thaw will also mean access to trillions of dollars of resources that were trapped under the ice before, including oil, gas, and rare earth elements, a lure for all the littoral countries and for China as well. Ironically, the great thaw will also likely mean an acceleration of global climate change, as the reflective ice disappears and methane trapped under the ice is released. That is likely to happen regardless of whether nations control greenhouse gas emissions, given that a certain amount of warming is already locked in.

«

unique link to this extract

---

GameStop and the Truth Wars • City Journal

Bruno Maçaes, with what could be the last word on the subject (until the next stock madness):

»

The same processes that have been undermining the sense of a shared reality in American politics over the last few years are now doing so in financial markets. As the tech entrepreneur Sam Lessin pointed out, when wealth moved from physical assets to abstract digital records with no existence in physical space, economic elites acquired a new kind of power: the ability to shape reality and do it safe from prying eyes. Several hedge-fund managers told Reuters that the idea to short GameStop had long been a favorite at exclusive “idea dinners,” where fund managers swap their best trades. Now the mob has learned how to play the same game. The Redditors were not interested in GameStop stock insofar as it represented a company that sells items to turn a profit in the physical world. To them, the stock was merely a token to use in certain applications—for example, a short squeeze. And if enough people agree that this token is a store of value, then it becomes a store of value, even if by chance the underlying company were to disappear. Think of Bitcoin, a financial asset with no cash flows.

The Reddit traders—the mob—do not seem to have any philosophy of valuation. Does that make them immoral? Some, hilariously, have argued precisely that on network television. Albert Edwards, a global strategist at Société Générale, said that the Federal Reserve “should hang its head in shame” for having presided over scenes of “a retail mob feasting off each hedge fund kill.” Does this make the retailers naïve? Maybe, though many increased their net worth from $50,000 to $20m or $30m. What it really shows is that they understand the secret of modern capitalism—a secret that until now has been reserved for a happy few.

«

unique link to this extract

---

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified

Magic Leap’s AR glasses were a flop. What’s Apple going to do that’s different? CC-licensed photo by Collision Conf 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 11 links for you. Another one down. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Banning Trump didn’t change how much people use Twitter, new data shows • Big Technology

Alex Kantrowitz:

»

For as long as Donald Trump was president, there was a common misconception that Twitter’s fate was tied to his. That without his presence, Twitter would lose truckloads of users and engagement, and it was therefore beholden to him. Now that Twitter’s banned Trump though, the data shows he had no discernable impact on how much people used it.

Daily use of Twitter has remained remarkably consistent after it banned Trump last month, according to new data from mobile research company Apptopia. Across January, Twitter barely registered a blip in the number of times people used its app. The day of the ban itself is impossible to pick out when looking at the trend line.

“It is not easy for one person to have a noticeable impact on such large social network apps,” Adam Blacker, Apptopia’s VP of insights and global alliances, told me. “Cultural events are seen much better in the data than any singular person’s situation.”

The new data, first published here, can finally put to rest the notion that Twitter kept Trump on its service to boost engagement and make money from ads. Despite Trump’s numerous run-ins with its rules, Twitter kept his account live as a matter of principle.

…Twitter declined to comment. But it didn’t dispute the data. Apptopia pulls data from 125,000 apps on iOS and Android, along with publicly available sources, to reach its conclusions. Its data didn’t show any meaningful change in Twitter downloads, sessions, or time spent after the ban.

«

The graph on usage is pretty much a straight line. There’s absolutely zero decline. (Or increase.)
unique link to this extract

---

Apple’s rumored VR headset could cost $3,000, feature 8K displays and over a dozen cameras • The Verge

Chaim Gartenberg:

»

It’s no secret Apple is hard at work on augmented and virtual reality devices, with a report from Bloomberg in January claiming Apple is working on an ultra-high-end, pricey headset that could hit stores in 2022. Now, a new report from The Information sheds new light on what to expect from the potential headset, including a rendering — said to be based on “internal Apple images of a late-stage prototype from last year” — of what the device might actually look like.

The Information’s report corroborates several details from Bloomberg’s, including the fabric mesh material that the company is said to be using in order to lighten the weight of the device — and the high price tag. The new report claims the price could reach approximately $3,000, considerably higher than most other standalone VR headsets, like the $299 Oculus Quest 2.

The alleged design also appears to borrow cues from a variety of other Apple devices, including swappable Apple Watch-style headbands and a HomePod-esque mesh fabric.

There are also new details on the actual hardware for the rumored device, which is said to offer both VR and mixed reality applications, thanks to over a dozen cameras (for tracking hand movement) and LIDAR sensors (for mapping rooms, similar to AR effects on the iPad Pro and iPhone 12 Pro). It is also said to feature dual 8K displays with eye-tracking technology that could offer resolution far beyond any current commercial VR headsets on the market today.

«

I don’t believe lots of these details. 8K screens? Three thousand dollars? The design looks ridiculous too. Remember how before it launched, people thought the iPad would cost $1,000 (perhaps helped along by Apple dropping hints). There’s no way the price would have been decided for this device so far ahead of launch, either.

Let’s not forget that Microsoft and, mirabile dictu, Magic Leap have collectively burned through billions to achieve pretty much zero effect with mixed-reality headsets. The VR market is bigger, but only just, at the $500-and-below mark. This still feels like a bizarre side project.
unique link to this extract

---

Mother of boy who filmed himself abusing Chris Whitty takes away his PlayStation • Daily Mail Online

Vivek Chaudhary:

»

The mother of a teenager who abused Chris Whitty in the street has revealed how she was ‘horrified’ at her son’s rudeness, has taken away his PlayStation and is making him apologise to the Government’s Chief Medical Officer.

She told MailOnline it was her 15-year-old son who filmed himself repeatedly accusing Prof Whitty of ‘lying’ to the nation about the pandemic that has claimed 100,000-plus lives.

The 47-year-old housewife and mother-of-two revealed she had told her eldest son to make another video apologising to him.

She also said she had reprimanded him by taking away his games console but she was not grounding him because ‘he is already suffering enough because of the lockdown’.

The teenager, who is fond of making short films and has posted several on YouTube, lives with his mother and father – a former warehouse worker – and 12-year-old brother in a council flat in Westminster, not far from where he accosted Mr Whitty.

«

This is so perfect. And the impossibility of grounding someone during lockdown. Although wouldn’t the greater punishment have been to take away his phone and let him have the PlayStation?
unique link to this extract

---

September 2019: Deezer plans 2020 user-centric payment system pilot launch – if it can get rightsholders to sign up • Music Business Worldwide

Murray Stassen, nearly 18 months ago:

»

Deezer has launched a new website and social media campaign to publicly champion a user-centric payment system (UCPS) and is planning to launch a pilot in France early next year – if it can get rightsholders onboard.

Speaking to journalists at a briefing in Paris last week, the company said that it has a “technical solution in place”, the implementation of which “does not require significant investment” and is now in talks with rightsholders and French policy makers to rally support for the new system.

Music companies that support Deezer’s UCPS proposal so far include Because Music, Wagram Music, Play Two, Idol, Tot ou tard, Outhere Music, #NP, Believe Distribution Services, Six et Sept, International Artist Organization of Music, FELIN, UPFI, MMF France and GAM.

Over 40 labels globally have agreed to Deezer’s UCPS, including the majority of French labels, but there are notable major absentees from the list of partners shared by the company.

Deezer, which has 14 million monthly active users, is majority owned by Access Industries, the full owner of Warner Music Group.

The streaming sector currently uses a market share model based on overall market share to calculate payments, which means that artists get a percentage of total royalties based on the percentage of total plays their music accounts for across the whole service.

This system sees top streaming artists and genres get paid a disproportionate amount of money compared to smaller and more niche acts and genres, argues Deezer.

«

Despite having that apparent number of backers, there’s been absolutely zippo movement on this since. (Thanks to .Albert Cuesta who pointed me to this, and has written on the topic [in Spanish.) Is it because it would be difficult to implement? I guess the feeling is that there’s little to be gained, since people assume this is how it works anyway, and artists don’t have enough leverage to make it happen.
unique link to this extract

---

Are Telegram and Signal the next misinformation hot spots? •The New York Times

A conversation between Brian Chen and Kevin Roose, who reports on misinformation at the NYT:

»

Chen: So the migration is heading toward Signal and Telegram. The apps offer “end to end encryption,” which is a jargony way to describe messages that get scrambled to become indecipherable to anyone except for the sender and the recipient.

The obvious benefit is that people are ensured privacy. The possible downside is that it’s tougher for the companies and law enforcement to hold misinformation spreaders and criminals accountable because their messages won’t be accessible.
So what’s your take? Are you concerned?

Roose: Honestly, not really?

It’s obviously not great for public safety that neo-Nazis, far-right militias and other dangerous groups are finding ways to communicate and organize, and that those ways increasingly involve end-to-end encryption. We’ve seen this happen for years, going all the way back to ISIS, and it definitely makes things harder for law enforcement agencies and counterterrorism officials.

At the same time, there’s a real benefit to getting these extremists off mainstream platforms, where they can find new sympathizers and take advantage of the broadcast mechanics of those platforms to spread their messages to millions of potential extremists.

The way I’ve been thinking about this is in a kind of epidemiological model. If someone is sick and at risk of infecting others, you ideally want to get them out of the general population and into quarantine, even if it means putting them somewhere like a hospital, where there are a lot of other sick people.

«

I think the same: putting them into smaller groups reduces the trouble they can cause among the untouched. Facebook is the exact opposite.
unique link to this extract

---

Riddle Of The Sphinx II: Sustained Release Riddlin’ • Astral Codex Ten

Scott Alexander:

»

I was driving down to LA when the cops pulled me over. “You have to turn back sir, the Sphinx here eats any traveler who can’t answer her riddle.”

“I’ve trained my whole life for this” I said, and stepped on the gas. Soon I saw a Sphinx lounging in the middle of the road. When she spotted me, she asked: “What has braces, crowns, and retainers, but is not teeth?”

“A medieval king in armor. My turn. What has pupils, irises, and whites, but is not an eye?”

“A gardening class during apartheid. How is a river like the Federal Reserve?”

“It maintains liquidity despite rushes on the banks. What has wings, but cannot fly – fins, but cannot swim – and heels, but cannot walk?”

“Helsinki General Hospital.” The Sphinx licked her lips. “But tell me, how is Lord Nelson like a cigar?”

«

It continues, and it’s built around a terrific little joke at the end. True comic timing.
unique link to this extract

---

No, Captain Tom wasn’t raising money for the NHS • Odds and Ends of History

James O’Malley:

»

Sir Captain Tom Moore has died, which is sad. He was, it appears, a nice man who ascended to hero status after going almost as viral as the pandemic during the last year of his life. Why? He walked lengths (not laps, as pedants point out) of his garden and in the end, this one simple act of charity raised £32.9m. That’s around £39m once gift aid is taken into account*. A great achievement that should be widely celebrated.

But for what cause was he raising money? According to many viral tweets over the last year and in the wake of his death, he was raising money for the NHS. An act that is damning of the government for not funding the NHS properly.

However, Captain Tom did not, in fact, raise money for the NHS.

Contrary to the emerging mythology, Captain Tom’s cash was not to pay for the ventilators and PPE used in intensive care wards. Nor was he paying the salaries of the heroic doctors and nurses working on the frontlines. The NHS is, after all, funded mostly by the government. A combination of general taxation and National Insurance.

Captain Tom was in reality raising money for a group called NHS Charities Together, which is a central node for dishing out charitable cash to reportedly around 250 smaller charities that all have links to the NHS hospitals and trusts and the like.

And because the pandemic has been dragging on for so damn long now, we in fact already know some of what Captain Tom’s money has been spent on.

…(*Though I guess, amusingly, gift aid is basically a tax write-off, so claiming the gift aid is a bit like taking a chunk of cash, a proportion of which would ordinarily go to the NHS, and spending it on NHS Charities instead…)

«

The “raising money for the NHS” line was repeated quite a lot, though not by larger news organisations. Many people though didn’t hear the second words in “NHS Charities” though.
unique link to this extract

---

Apple Fitness+ could be a great workout solution but it’s missing these 10 key features • Pocket Lint

Britta O’Boyle:

»

Apple Fitness+ joined the plethora of at-home fitness apps in December 2020, competing with the likes of Fiit, Peloton and even individual trainers like Joe Wicks and Bradley Simmonds.

The subscription service offers a number of studio-style workouts, across several activity types, though unlike others, it has been designed around the Apple Watch.

While it offers good foundations though, it is lacking features compared to its competition. Here’s what we think is missing and keeping it from greatness.

«

Pretty good analysis (things like better feedback methods, targeting, streaks and so on). Though don’t forget that Fitness+ is only a few months old. Depending who’s in charge of it, they might update this quickly or… not so quickly. But as this article shows, there’s plenty of space for Apple to expand into.
unique link to this extract

---

Revealed: Brits who fuelled ‘vicious’ conspiracy theory by Trump supporters

Duncan Campbell:

»

Just before Trump took office in 2017, US government intelligence assessed that Russian government hackers had worked to help him win. Court documents reveal that Butowsky fought back by hiring investigators and encouraging Fox TV to broadcast fabricated claims that a murdered Democratic Party employee, Seth Rich, with his brother Aaron, stole the emails and confidential files from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and gave them to WikiLeaks. These baseless claims broadcast by Fox, if believed, would have exculpated the Russian government of having worked to rig Trump’s election.

Fox quickly withdrew its claims. Butowsky and Matt Couch, a far-right activist, carried on until this month. Couch also ran the America First Media Group. All claimed that the Rich family was “in possession of material evidence indicating that Seth Rich downloaded the DNC emails, sent them to WikiLeaks, and requested payment”.

Rich, a voter rights specialist, died after being shot in a north Washington street near his home on 10 July 2016, while fighting off what police considered a botched robbery. His brutal killing was quickly exploited by Trump extremists and Russian propagandists.

But before Trump left Washington in disgrace on 20 January 2021, Butowsky and Couch became the last names in a long list of US right-wing media and conspiracy theory promoters to apologise unreservedly for publishing lies about the Rich family, and so helping cover up Russia’s role in the hacking.

The Rich family has now received a stream of full retractions, as well as millions of dollars in compensation for intentional emotional harm, for what court documents described as “death threats and vicious online harassment”.

«

unique link to this extract

---

Parler CEO says he was fired as platform neared restoring service • WSJ

Jeff Horwitz and Keach Hagey:

»

John Matze, the former CEO, said he was fired on Friday by the company’s board as the platform was within days of restoring service to its roughly 15 million users. He said the board is currently controlled by conservative political donor Rebekah Mercer.

“Over the past few months, I’ve met constant resistance to my product vision, my strong belief in free speech and my view of how the Parler site should be managed,” he said in a statement. “For example, I advocated for more product stability and what I believe is a more effective approach to content moderation.”

Dan Bongino, a conservative talk-show host who has invested in Parler, responded with a Facebook video saying that Mr. Matze bore responsibility for “really bad decisions” that led to Parler being taken offline as well as problems with the app’s stability.

“John decided to make this public, not us, “ Mr. Bongino said. “We were handling it like gentlemen.”

The immediate impact on Parler’s efforts to restore service to its roughly 15 million users isn’t clear, though a person familiar with the company said that Mr. Matze had created Parler’s original code. Mr. Matze told the Journal that the site had overcome most of the hurdles to restoring service both through its website and for people who had previously downloaded its app.

“Anybody who still had the app could have gotten on it” when service is restored, he said. “But no new accounts.”

Mr. Matze said that before he was fired he had been seeking to adjust the platform’s moderation rules in ways that would allow Parler to return to Google’s and Apple Inc.’s app stores.

«

Feels like Parler’s owners are intentionally sabotaging its return. Do they not like the moderation? Or the monster they’ve created?
unique link to this extract

---

Pandemic drove sales of 4G and 5G-enabled PCs to new record in 2020 • Strategy Analytics

»

Global sales of cellular-enabled mobile PCs reached more than 10 million units for the first time in 2020 as home workers sought improved connectivity in response to the closure of office facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the latest analysis from Strategy Analytics’ Connected Computing Devices program, global shipments increased by 70% to 10.1 million, the highest ever annual total. North America accounted for nearly half of 3G-, 4G- and 5G-enabled PC shipments, while Europe and Asia-Pacific accounted for 45%. The report, Notebook PC Cellular Connectivity Shipment and Installed Base Forecast, estimates that more than 26 million cellular-enabled PCs are now in use worldwide, an increase of 25% in twelve months.

«

That’s 10 million in total annual sales of around 300 million last year. It’s hardly gigantic; if anything, more people being at home would probably have suppressed sales. Bigger question whether those modems are active.
unique link to this extract

---

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: I’ve emailed the BBC’s More Or Less programme (which looks into questions about statistics, data and more) to ask them to figure out whether the Dunning-Kruger effect is real or not. More news as we get it.

Apple is reportedly close to a $3.6bn deal with Kia, which will make cars for it. What will they look like, though? CC-licensed photo by Eric Rice 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 10 links for you. What’s the sound of an electric vehicle revving? I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

The next cyberattack is already under way • The New Yorker

Jill Lepore reviews Natasha Perlroth’s book “This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race”, about cyberattacks at government level:

»

By 2015, Russians were inside the State Department, the White House, and the Pentagon. The hackers didn’t turn things off; they just sat there, waiting. Beginning in 2014, in anticipation of the 2016 election, they fomented civil unrest through fake Twitter and Facebook accounts, sowing disinformation. They broke into the computers of the Democratic National Committee. As with the Sony attack, the press mostly reported the gossip found in the e-mails of people like John Podesta. All the while, as Perlroth emphasizes, Russian hackers were also invading election and voter-registration systems in every state in the country. Donald Trump’s response, once he was in office, was to deny that the Russians had done anything at all, and to get rid of the White House cybersecurity coördinator.

In the spring of 2017, still unknown hackers calling themselves the Shadow Brokers infiltrated the N.S.A.’s zero-day archive, a box of digital picklocks. They walked into the cyber equivalent of Fort Knox, and cleaned the place out. But it was worse than that, because they stole cyberweapons, the keys to the kingdom.

«

unique link to this extract

 

---

 

The Dunning-Kruger effect probably is real • Medium

Benjamin Vincent is a lecturer in psychology at the University of Dundee:

»

The fact that the self-perceived ability of those with low ability is higher than expected based on actual test scores has been used to argue that low ability participants over-estimate their ability by a lot. Similarly, the fact that the perceived ability of those with high ability is lower than expected based on test scores has been used to argue that high ability participants underestimate their ability by a little.

Recently however, simulations have shown that this basic result can be generated when no over- or under-estimation effect exists (Ackerman, Beier, & Bowen, 2002; Nuhfer, Cogan, Fleisher, Gaze, & Wirth, 2016). This was recently echoed in a blog post by Jonathan Jarry. In that blog post, a plot (created by Patrick McKnight) was used to argue that the Dunning-Kruger effect was not real.

If the claims of over-and under-estimation biases are based upon quartile plots, and this basic pattern of results can be generated from simulated null models with no bias, then this is worrying. It suggests that the Dunning-Kruger effect is artifactual, being the result of measurement error alone. But is this the case?

Not being satisfied with someone else’s plot (with no code to inspect) I thought I’d create my own data generating model. This model can be considered as a noise + bias model where each participant has a true ability, x, and their subjective ability score is a noisy estimate of their true ability + some bias.

«

OK well the previous one said it isn’t, so now I’m confused. I think I’ll have to refer it to Tim Harford at the BBC’s More Or Less program.
unique link to this extract

 

---

 

Report: Apple to invest $3.6bn in carmaker Kia to manufacture its Apple Car • BGR

Chris Smith:

»

Korean media has reported that Apple is about to invest $3.6bn in Hyundai affiliate, Kia, with plans to have its first car models out in 2024. The Reuters report said that Apple was targeting production for 2024.

Korean language site Donga reported that Apple Car production would take place at the Kia Georgia plant, with the contract to be signed as soon as February 17th. The report notes that the date might be changed so Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Eui-sun can attend the formal event. Apple certainly has the cash to afford such massive investments. Apple purchased Beats for $3bn in 2014, in what’s its biggest acquisition so far. Apple buys smaller companies regularly, without making splashes about the smaller acquisitions.

Apple’s $3.6bn investment would go towards building manufacturing facilities that would only serve the Apple Car line, the report notes. Kia would mass-produce 100,000 units per year starting with 2024, but the production can be expanded to 400,000 units annually.

The report notes that Hyundai might be the best partner Apple could seek in the industry. The company just launched its own electric car platform, the E-GMP announced in early December, has a production facility in the US, and can meet Apple’s demands to have a car ready by 2024. An association with Apple would also benefit Hyundai, even though the Apple Car would compete directly against Hyundai electric vehicles.

«

The comparison with Beats is a smart one. This would of course only be a beginning investment. For another comparison, Tesla’s capital expenditure is about $2bn annually; around $15bn since 2008, and sold about 1.5m cars.
unique link to this extract

 

---

 

Introducing Birdwatch, a community-based approach to misinformation • Twitter Blog

Keith Coleman is Twitter’s VP of Product:

»

Birdwatch allows people to identify information in Tweets they believe is misleading and write notes that provide informative context. We believe this approach has the potential to respond quickly when misleading information spreads, adding context that people trust and find valuable. Eventually we aim to make notes visible directly on Tweets for the global Twitter audience, when there is consensus from a broad and diverse set of contributors.

In this first phase of the pilot, notes will only be visible on a separate Birdwatch site. On this site, pilot participants can also rate the helpfulness of notes added by other contributors. These notes are being intentionally kept separate from Twitter for now, while we build Birdwatch and gain confidence that it produces context people find helpful and appropriate. Additionally, notes will not have an effect on the way people see Tweets or our system recommendations.

«

Only available in the US, so I can’t tell you what it’s like. Rather hard to see how it can scale, though.
unique link to this extract

 

---

 

New study cracks the case of why food sticks to center of nonstick pans • Ars Technica

Jennifer Ouellette:

»

sometimes food still gets stuck to the center of a frying pan, even with a nonstick coating. Researchers at the Czech Academy of Sciences were curious about why this might be the case, and they decided to experiment. They videotaped sunflower oil in a nonstick pan coated with ceramic particles being heated, and they noted the speed at which a suspicious dry spot formed in the oil and grew. They performed similar experiments with Teflon-coated pans.

According to co-author Alexander Fedorchenko, a physicist at the Czech Academy of Sciences, food getting stuck to the center of the pan “is caused by the formation of a dry spot in the thin sunflower oil film as a result of thermocapillary convection.” It’s a variant of the so-called Marangoni effect—after Italian physicist Carlo Marangoni—which is responsible for both wine tears and the infamous “coffee ring effect,” which has also generated much interest among physicists.

As we’ve reported previously, British physicist James Thomson (elder brother to Lord Kelvin) first noticed wine tears in 1855. The effect is most notable in wines (or other spirits like rum) with alcohol content at least as high as 13.5 percent. That’s because alcohol has a lower surface tension than water. If you spread a thin film of water on your kitchen counter and place a single drop of alcohol in the center, you’ll see the water flow outward, away from the alcohol. The difference in the alcohol concentrations creates a surface-tension gradient, driving the flow.

«

Lockdown really is forcing us to find all sorts of distractions, isn’t it.
unique link to this extract

 

---

 

Apple urged to root out rating scams as developer highlights ugly cost of enforcement failure • TechCrunch

Natasha Lomas following up on Kosta Eleftheriou’s complaint about a fake app ripping off his IP:

»

Fake reviews are pretty much a universal experience across the Internet — whether you’re trying to buy stuff on Amazon, looking at places to visit on Tripadvisor or trying to find a local dentist with the help of reviews on Google Maps (in short; don’t) — given how many platforms now incorporate user reviews.

But the issue does look especially toxic for Apple.

A core part of the USP for its App Store is the claim that Apple’s review process sums to a higher quality, more trustworthy experience than alternative marketplaces that aren’t so carefully overseen.

So a failure to do more to enforce against review scams and rating manipulations risks taking a lot more shine off Apple’s brand than Cupertino should be comfortable with.

Simply put: Consumers expect a higher standard from Apple. That’s why they’re willing to pay a premium for its products. Under-resourcing App Store review and enforcement thus looks like a false economy — not least because it risks driving quality developers like Eleftheriou away.

«

Eleftheriou had some followup on his own thread: some success, but a lot yet to do.
unique link to this extract

 

---

 

Is the Google Fitbit deal the end of Wear OS? • Android Authority

C Scott Brown:

»

If in seven years with zero distractions Google couldn’t make the Wear OS platform shine, what would change now that Fitbit is on board?

The way I see it, there are three potential outcomes for Wear OS now.

Outcome 1: Google abandons Wear OS entirely
This might be the most likely outcome. The so-called Google Graveyard gets bigger and bigger every year. Platforms and products are in the graveyard that you would never have thought would have ended up there. Google Play Music, Hangouts, Cloud Print, Inbox, and even Chrome Apps are all dead or are confirmed to die soon.

With Wear OS essentially stagnant and owning a dismal market share, it would have been a textbook case of future Google Graveyard material even before the Fitbit acquisition. With Fitbit on team Google now, my money is on Wear OS heading off into the sunset. It might not happen this year or even the next, but I feel it’s an inevitability now.

Outcome 2: Google and Fitbit merge Wear OS and Fitbit OS
People like to dump on Wear OS a lot, but it’s actually got quite a lot going for it. Its app library is robust (certainly much more so than Fitbit’s) and its openness allows for plenty of innovation. That all being said, it’s also incredibly resource-heavy which makes battery life and memory management very bad.

Since Wear OS’s big strength is in apps and Fitbit’s big weakness is a lack thereof, merging the two software systems together would seem like a good match. However, this might just be an extension of Google killing off Wear OS. In other words, it would certainly be easier for Fitbit OS to stay as the platform for Fitbit devices rather than porting a reconfigured Wear OS/Fitbit OS hybrid. This is especially true when you remember that Fitbit makes fitness trackers, too, which simply wouldn’t be able to handle Wear OS.

So, in essence, this wouldn’t be that much different from the previous potential outcome…

Outcome 3: Wear OS and Fitbit OS exist simultaneously
This is the most unlikely possibility.

«

Google is amazing at being first into a hardware category and then screwing it up. See also: Google Glass.
unique link to this extract

 

---

 

Spotify adds subscribers with focus on podcasts • WSJ

Anne Steele:

»

At the end of the fourth quarter, Spotify had 345 million monthly active users, up 27% from a year earlier and at the high end of the company’s guidance. Paying subscribers, its most lucrative type of customer, grew to 155 million, up 24% from the same period a year earlier and above expectations.

Average revenue per user for the subscription business in the quarter fell 8% to €4.26, the equivalent of $5.13, as the company continued to attract new subscribers via discounted plans and charge lower prices in new markets such as India and Russia. In October, Spotify raised the price of its family plan in seven markets, a move the company said didn’t affect churn or customer intake. In February, it extended price increases to another 25 markets, including in Europe, Latin America and Canada.

Revenue from subscriptions rose 15% from the year before, to €1.89bn. Advertising revenue jumped 29% to €281m, growing for a second consecutive quarter after sliding in the first half of the year amid pandemic headwinds. Advertising, historically less than 10% of Spotify’s top line, accounted for 13% of revenue. It has become a growth area as the company expands its podcast business.

…The company posted a loss of €125m, or 66 European cents a share, compared with a loss of €209m, or €1.14 a share, the year before.

«

So profitability (or less loss) improves because people listen to podcasts. But allocation of revenues to music artists still isn’t done in the way it should be: your monthly payment isn’t apportioned between the artists you listen to, but instead is all lumped into one basket and then shared according to the aggregate of what all of Spotify’s users listen to. That needs to be fixed, because it’s a key way in which it differs from recorded music before when you used to buy the music you wanted to listen to.
unique link to this extract

 

---

 

Analysis: car makers face screen test to judge safety • Autocar

 

»

The danger of drivers becoming distracted by ever larger in-car touchscreens is becoming the focus of potential new legislation as countries grapple with the reasons why road deaths and accidents are no longer falling but plateauing.

Currently, there is little in the way of regulation surrounding the design of infotainment systems and both safety experts and legislators are worried car makers are losing sight of the distraction factor in their rush to add ever more functions via the touchscreen.

Just how distracting they can be was revealed in a 2020 study by the UK’s TRL (formerly the Transport Research Laboratory). It found that operating features within Apple CarPlay and Android Auto significantly increased driver reaction times to an emergency event, even more so than texting or driving under the influence of alcohol or cannabis.

The results were an eye-opener to Neale Kinnear, head of behavioural science at TRL and organiser of the study. He had expected significant distraction but the length of time drivers took their eyes off the road for certain events went beyond his predictions.

“I was surprised by the extent,” he told Autocar. “Items such as choosing a music track, for example, on Spotify took up to 20 seconds. We just don’t have any way of understanding the impact of that on safety in the real world.”

«

Of course while you were choosing the track you’d be allowing your self-driving vehicle to, well, self-drive itself, wouldn’t you? (Thanks, Mark Gould, for the link.)
unique link to this extract

 

---

 

GameStop stock tipster Roaring Kitty reveals he lost $13m in one day • The Independent

James Crump:

»

The Reddit user whose stock market tips have been credited with inspiring the GameStop trading frenzy has revealed that the value of his shares fell by $13m (£9.5m) in one day.

Keith Gill, 34, who is known as Roaring Kitty on YouTube and DeepF*****gValue on Reddit, said that he lost more than $13m on Tuesday as share prices plummeted.

He shared the information on Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum, where the tipster has been regularly sharing updates on his investment, with many users refusing to sell their GameStop shares until he does.

Mr Gill, who is known for wearing a bandana in his YouTube videos, has 50,000 shares and 500 call options in the gaming merchandise retailer, which he bought for $53,000 (£38,382) in June 2019.

The value of his stake fell significantly on Tuesday after the share price for GameStop dropped by around 60%, and followed a fall of about $5.2m (£3.8m) on Monday.

Despite the dramatic drop over the first two days of this week, Mr Gill still has a profit of $7.6m (£5.5m) from his initial investment. He has not sold any of his shares in the company.

Following his advice, Reddit users carried out a short squeeze last month and saw the Gamestop share price rise to a high of $483 (£353), before dropping to $90 (£65) on Tuesday.

«

So of course he didn’t actually lose that money, since it was only a notional profit. He hasn’t yet made any money; it’s in a possibly liquid stock. The big social media stock excitement is over. Until the next, unexpected time, of course.
unique link to this extract

 

---

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: re Wikipedia, Paul Clarke observes: “I’m not sure Wikipedia’s escape from the mire has been as much to do with lack of an algorithm, as it has the tremendous amount of friction that lies in the path of a would-be regular contributor. Everything from sign-up, to interface, to the bewildering hierarchy of insiders and their culture, mitigates against short-term off-the-cuff troublemaking. I think. I often think how much easier they could make it to participate; and then realise why that might not be a great design choice.

“The decline in friction is behind so much of the badness. One reason IMHO that Instagram has maintained a relatively healthier (I know I know) culture is just the simple act of restricting search to hashtags and usernames, not free text. That simple bit of friction makes it so much harder to track down and pick on a random stranger who’s voiced something you disagree with. Tiny bit of engineering. Significant difference. Twitter [by contrast] hasn’t just removed friction, it’s done spectacular bits of engineering to apply actual grease to the cog…”

The next iOS update will unlock your phone if you’re wearing a facemask – and an Apple Watch CC-licensed photo by Marco Verch 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 11 links for you. Not stepping aside. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.

Email from Jeff Bezos to employees • About Amazon

Bezos is moving to become executive chairman and handing over the CEO reins to Andrew Jassy:

»

Today, we employ 1.3 million talented, dedicated people, serve hundreds of millions of customers and businesses, and are widely recognized as one of the most successful companies in the world.

How did that happen? Invention. Invention is the root of our success. We’ve done crazy things together, and then made them normal. We pioneered customer reviews, 1-Click, personalized recommendations, Prime’s insanely-fast shipping, Just Walk Out shopping, the Climate Pledge, Kindle, Alexa, marketplace, infrastructure cloud computing, Career Choice, and much more. If you get it right, a few years after a surprising invention, the new thing has become normal. People yawn. And that yawn is the greatest compliment an inventor can receive.

I don’t know of another company with an invention track record as good as Amazon’s, and I believe we are at our most inventive right now. I hope you are as proud of our inventiveness as I am. I think you should be.

As Amazon became large, we decided to use our scale and scope to lead on important social issues. Two high-impact examples: our $15 minimum wage and the Climate Pledge. In both cases, we staked out leadership positions and then asked others to come along with us. In both cases, it’s working. Other large companies are coming our way. I hope you’re proud of that as well.

I find my work meaningful and fun. I get to work with the smartest, most talented, most ingenious teammates. When times have been good, you’ve been humble. When times have been tough, you’ve been strong and supportive, and we’ve made each other laugh. It is a joy to work on this team.

«

As someone quipped, he’s leaving to spend less time with Congress. Amazon’s at an odd inflexion point, bigger and more powerful than ever, but also facing employee unrest.
unique link to this extract

---

Thread by @keleftheriou: how subscriptions create scams on the App Store •Thread Reader App

Kosta Eleftheriou is the developer of a Watch app which puts a keyboard on your watch:

»

The App Store has a big problem👇

You: an honest developer, working hard to improve your IAP [in-app purchase] conversions.
Your competitor: a $2M/year scam running rampant.

«

There have been so many stories like this one (which is well worth reading) – Eleftheriou points to some – that it’s still amazing Apple isn’t wiping these out left and right. If it is, it should say so.
unique link to this extract

---

Inauthentic Instagram accounts with synthetic faces target Navalny protests • Medium

Digital Forensic Research Lab:

»

Prior to the January 23 protests, Navalny’s team announced plans for mass gatherings across Russia, publishing a list of cities, specific locations in those cities, and times. Moscow’s Red Square was not on the list of locations — the main protests in Moscow were planned for Pushkinskaya Square, which is approximately a 20-minute walk from Red Square. On the day of the protests, Russian authorities blocked Red Square, in a likely attempt to prevent demonstrators from approaching the Kremlin.

Immediately prior to the protests, posts geotagged Red Square on Instagram appeared to be flooded with content unrelated to the location. Geotags allow users to search for locations on the platform to see what kind of content was posted from the specific area. Search results display the latest posts geotagged with that particular location. In this case, Russian users might have been searching for the Red Square geotag to check for developments related to the January 23 protests, despite the Square not being the official demonstration location for these particular protests.

From January 17 onward, Instagram serach results for Red Square returnined the same type of images: profile pictures of various individuals. The DFRLab has determined these images are generated by StyleGAN, a type of neural network that can generate synthetic faces.

«

Notable that the systems for spotting synthetic faces are getting better. Of course, there’s quite a clue when you’re looking at accounts like these, where your first suspicion is that they’re fake.
unique link to this extract

---

IBM Blockchain is a shell of its former self after revenue misses, job cuts: sources • CoinDesk

Ian Allison:

»

IBM has cut its blockchain team down to almost nothing, according to four people familiar with the situation.

Job losses at IBM escalated as the company failed to meet its revenue targets for the once-fêted technology by 90% this year, according to one of the sources.

“IBM is doing a major reorganization,” said a source at a startup that has been interviewing former IBM blockchain staffers. “There is not really going to be a blockchain team any longer. Most of the blockchain people at IBM have left.”

IBM’s blockchain unit missed its revenue targets by a wide margin for two years in a row, said a second source. Expectations for enterprise blockchain were too high, they said, adding that IBM “didn’t really manage to execute, despite doing a lot of announcements.”

A spokesperson for IBM denied the claims.

“Our blockchain business is doing well, thank you,” Holli Haswell, a director of public relations at IBM, said via email.

«

Not quite a denial about the shrinking job numbers – which the story puts at about 100 departures. Missing revenue targets by 90% is quite a miss. Enterprise blockchain seems to be Not A Thing.
unique link to this extract

---

iPhone Face ID will soon work with masks – but only if you’re wearing an Apple Watch • Pocket-Lint

Dan Grabham:

»

Your Face ID iPhone will soon be able to unlock even if you’re wearing a mask. However, there’s a catch in that it will only do this if you’re wearing an Apple Watch that’s paired with the phone and unlocked.

One problem with having to wear face masks over your mouth and nose is that facial recognition doesn’t really work with them. That’s been a particular problem with newer iPhones (iPhone X, XS, XR, 11, 12) that rely on Face ID.

But that’s about to change with the next iteration of iOS 14, version 14.5. It’s now out as a developer beta for those who have access and will be publicly available over the coming weeks. iOS 14 was first released back in September.

Apple tells us that Face ID works just as you would expect with the new software. Your Apple Watch will give you some haptic feedback to let you know your iPhone has been unlocked. This is similar behaviour to using the Apple Watch to unlock your Mac which has been available for some time. Once again your Watch will need to be in close proximity to your iPhone.

«

So your iPhone unlocks your Watch, and then your Watch unlocks your iPhone. Apple only ever expected to do the first one. So it’s taken a little while to figure out the protocol.
unique link to this extract

---

NYU researchers find no evidence of anti-conservative bias on social media • The Verge

Kim Lyons:

»

The report from NYU’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights says not only is there no empirical finding that social media companies systematically suppress conservatives, but even reports of anecdotal instances tend to fall apart under close scrutiny. And in an effort to appear unbiased, platforms actually bend over backward to try to appease conservative critics.

“The contention that social media as an industry censors conservatives is now, as we speak, becoming part of an even broader disinformation campaign from the right, that conservatives are being silenced all across American society,” the report’s lead researcher Paul Barrett said in an interview with The Verge. “This is the obvious post-Trump theme, we’re seeing it on Fox News, hearing it from Trump lieutenants, and I think it will continue indefinitely. Rather than any of this going away with Trump leaving Washington, it’s only getting more intense.”

The researchers analyzed data from analytics platforms CrowdTangle and NewsWhip and existing reports like the 2020 study from Politico and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, all of which showed that conservative accounts actually dominated social media. And they drilled down into anecdotes about bias and repeatedly found there was no concrete evidence to support such claims.

Looking at how claims of anti-conservative bias developed over time, Barrett says, it’s not hard to see how the “anti-conservative” rhetoric became a political instrument. “It’s a tool used by everyone from Trump to Jim Jordan to Sean Hannity, but there is no evidence to back it up,” he said.

«

Truly the most boring disinformation campaign is right-wingers complaining of being censored or ignored. Before social media, the Conservatives in the UK used it about the BBC (that it was biased against them, they were being ignored, and so on). It’s never true.
unique link to this extract

---

The writing’s on the wall for Google Stadia – The Verge

Sean Hollister:

»

After 14 months, Google has decided it doesn’t want to be a game company anymore. Where once it had its own cloud-based console, controller, and the promise of homegrown triple-A games, it no longer wants to build its own games as of last Monday.

And though a Google spokesperson emphasizes that the company continues to “remain committed to Stadia as a platform,” it’s looking increasingly likely that platform won’t be a service where you sign up with Google to buy and rent cloud games.

Stadia boss Phil Harrison announced that Google was shutting down the company’s game studios in a memo today, and I think the exact wording of that memo is extremely telling. Go read it for yourself. I’ll wait.

Did you see the part about how Stadia is now a platform for Google’s partners? It’s pretty hard to miss: Harrison brings it up no fewer than five times in four paragraphs. In all but the very last paragraph, “partners” — not gamers — come first.

This suggests Google has realized an important truth: Stadia, like so many of Google’s other businesses, is optimally one where you aren’t the customer. The paying customers, if Google can get them, are game publishers themselves, and possibly ISPs that would like to deliver a cable-like bundle of games to go along with their cable-like bundles of shows.

Today, Harrison defines Stadia as a “technology platform for industry partners” — which suggests to me that he’s talking about turning Stadia into a white-label cloud gaming service.

«

That wouldn’t be such a bad future for Stadia. Or the white label version of it. Google doesn’t need to be in the game space. Perhaps this was the plan all along, or perhaps it just realised quite quickly that being a game studio wasn’t really going to fit with all its other interests. People are describing it as Google not having any idea what it’s up to, but quite possibly it did, and this is a smart way to utilise its cloud processing facilities without the pain of game hits and misses.
unique link to this extract

---

Wikipedia’s new code of conduct targets harassment and misinformation • Engadget

K Holt:

»

The Wikimedia Foundation has announced the first Universal Code of Conduct to tackle misinformation and harassment on Wikipedia. The foundation says that the rules clearly spell out what behavior is acceptable.

The code explicitly prohibits Wikipedia users from deliberately adding false or biased information to articles, as well as harassing others on and off the platform. The use of slurs and stereotypes, doxxing, hate speech and threats of violence are all banned. In addition, the rules aim to stop the abuse of power, privilege or influence.

Editors are encouraged to assume edits were carried out in good faith, help newcomers and give credit where it’s due to show mutual respect for other users. The foundation also underscored its commitment to “creating spaces that foster diversity of thought, religion, sexual orientation, age, culture, and language to name a few.”

«

They seem like obvious things? I suppose though that having a code of conduct means that you can point to it when you ban someone for breaching it. Notable though that Wikipedia, by virtue of not using algorithmic targeting, has managed to stay largely free of the decline we’ve seen on social networks.
unique link to this extract

---

Brexit witness archive: Philip Hammond • UK in a changing Europe

This is an interview about Brexit, as seen from inside the Tory administration that first triggered the referendum and then tried to figure out how the hell to do it. This is an interview with Philip Hammond, who was foreign secretary to David Cameron and then Chancellor to Theresa May – about whom he is repeatedly quite stingingly rude, in that British way. He’s also entertainingly rude about David Davis, who was one of the negotiators, and that’s worth quoting:

»

David Davis in particular had this very crude 1980s approach to negotiation. I know David quite well, I knew him before I went into politics – David’s backstory is that he was the trouble-shooter for Tate & Lyle. When there was a problem, they sent David Davis. Shut down a refinery, fire a load of people, get rid of the troublemakers: the bare-knuckle fighter. That’s how he liked to see himself. David Davis’ approach to negotiation is you slap it on the table, you lean across, and you eyeball them. If they don’t give way immediately, you say, ‘I’ll see you round the back.’ That was always his view on this. ‘We’ve got the money, they want our money, so we wave a cheque at them then we stick it in our back pocket and we say, ‘Right, show us what you’ve got’. In the end, they’ll want our money. They’ll want access to our market. How long is this going to take, 15 minutes? Give me 15 minutes in a room with these people. I’ll sort them out.’ That was his view of the world, and it was widely shared among the Brexiteers.

So they always assumed that this was entirely discretionary and we could just threaten to withhold it. That would give us this huge bargaining leverage. It never did.

«

unique link to this extract

---

Tesla to recall 135,000 U.S. vehicles under pressure from auto safety regulators • Reuters

David Shepardson:

»

Tesla Inc has agreed to recall 134,951 Model S and Model X vehicles with touchscreen displays that could fail and raise the risk of a crash after US auto safety regulators sought the recall last month, according to a recall posted on a government website Tuesday.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) made the unusual recall request in a formal Jan. 13 letter to Tesla, saying it had tentatively concluded the 2012-2018 Model S and 2016-2018 Model X vehicles pose a safety issue. Automakers usually agree to voluntary fixes before the auto safety agency formally seeks a recall.

The agency said touchscreen failures posed significant safety issues, including the loss of rearview or backup camera images, exterior turn-signal lighting, and windshield defogging and defrosting systems that “may decrease the driver’s visibility in inclement weather.”

…Tesla acknowledged the problem but said if the display was not working, “the driver can perform a shoulder check and use the mirrors. If the screen is not visible to control the climate control and defroster settings, the driver will be able to manually clear the windshield.”

«

So the thing that’s the big selling point – the touchscreen – Tesla says is just an optional add-on? Mixed messaging to say the least.
unique link to this extract

---

Facebook knew calls for violence plagued ‘Groups,’ now plans overhaul • WSJ

Jeff Horwitz:

»

Facebook executives were aware for years that tools fueling Groups’ rapid growth presented an obstacle to their effort to build healthy online communities, and the company struggled internally over how to contain them.

The company’s data scientists had warned Facebook executives in August that what they called blatant misinformation and calls to violence were filling the majority of the platform’s top “civic” Groups, according to documents The Wall Street Journal reviewed. Those Groups are generally dedicated to politics and related issues and collectively reach hundreds of millions of users.

The researchers told executives that “enthusiastic calls for violence every day” filled one 58,000-member Group, according to an internal presentation. Another top Group claimed it was set up by fans of Donald Trump but it was actually run by “financially motivated Albanians” directing a million views daily to fake news stories and other provocative content.

Roughly “70% of the top 100 most active US Civic Groups are considered non-recommendable for issues such as hate, misinfo, bullying and harassment,” the presentation concluded. “We need to do something to stop these conversations from happening and growing as quickly as they do,” the researchers wrote, suggesting measures to slow the growth of Groups at least long enough to give Facebook staffers time to address violations.

… In a 2020 Super Bowl ad, it celebrated amateur-rocketry buffs, bouldering clubs and rocking-chair enthusiasts—brought together through Groups.

Nina Jankowicz, a social media researcher at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., said she became alarmed after hearing a Facebook representative advise a European prime minister’s social-media director that Groups were now the best way to reach a large audience on the platform.

“My eyes bugged out of my head,” said Ms. Jankowicz, who studies the intersection of democracy and technology. “I knew how destructive Groups could be.”

«

unique link to this extract

---

Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: @Reynolds, who has direct experience working in the NHS, has a followup about Terence Eden’s suggestion on using LinkedIn to bug senior execs: “I always advise people having trouble with the NHS start by threatening to go to the Trust PALS department. And then go to PALS if that doesn’t solve the problem. Patient Advice and Liason Service short circuits the whole Org chart.”